On Saturday morning, Henry Givens came by to take Nate to Grandmother Tillman’s. He was probably in trouble too. After all, he was the one who took Nate to Jim Frank’s every Saturday while he and Jim Frank told tall stories, smoked cigarettes, and drank beer. Nate slid into the front seat and just stared down at his sneakers.
Before Henry put the Caddy into gear, he looked at Nate. “Here’s how I see it. I’ve got seventeen dollars in my wallet and half a tank of gas. We can either make a run for it and take our chances with what we’ve got or we can go over to Mother Tillman’s.”
He gave Nate a poke in the ribs when he didn’t answer.
“I vote for running and taking our chances,” Nate said with a smile half playing on his tight lips.
“That would be the reasonable thing to do,” Henry said, “but I’m afraid I have to do the grown-up thing instead.”
They both chuckled and it felt to Nate as if the world lifted off him for a moment. Being in trouble with someone else is so much easier than going it alone, he thought.
As soon as they crossed the bridge over the Sawatassee River and came into sight of Grandmother Tillman’s, the world settled back on Nate’s shoulders with all its weight. He prepared himself for what he expected to be the worst experience of his life.
They parked in the drive and got out of the car. Old Redemption gave a mandatory bark then settled back to his position in the front yard when he realized who it was. He gave a heavy sigh that blew up the dust by his nose. Henry hollered their arrival from the front porch and they walked in.
“Back here,” Grandmother Tillman called out from the kitchen. Her voice sounded friendly and inviting.
Henry and Nate looked at each other in surprise and shrugged their shoulders. They walked back. Grandmother Tillman was at the stove in a long, purple, velvet robe with a lace collar. Her slate gray hair was pulled back from her face by two barrettes and hung loosely around her shoulders. Nate was used to seeing her with her hair pulled up and pinned back. She looked comfortable and approachable, and Nate almost forgot the purpose of the meeting.
“I’d like some time with Nate, this morning,” she said to Henry in a diplomatic tone. “Could I make you a cup of coffee to take out onto the porch?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll just see if Old Redemption wants to escort me around the farm and chase sticks or something.”
“Don’t let him overdo it.” Grandmother Tillman smiled. “He’s not a puppy by a long shot.”
Henry gave Nate a sympathetic look and quickly exited out the front door. Nate heard him call to Old Redemption and wished he were with them. Grandmother Tillman poured coffee into two large, blue and white china mugs and set them down on the wooden kitchen table. Rings in the table attested that saucers were saved for Sunday dinners in the dining room and not for coffee in the kitchen. Nate had never drunk coffee before and was flattered at being treated in such an adult fashion. Grandmother Tillman set a bowl of sugar and a small pitcher of milk on the table.
“I drink mine black,” she said, “But you might like to try it with milk and sugar.”
Nate sipped it black at first. He made a face and quickly added two teaspoons of sugar and finished filling the cup with the milk. He tried it again and kind of liked it. He thanked her for the coffee and set his cup down. He could tell it was time to move to the agenda, and he was ready to get it over with.
“It seems you’re growing up,” Grandmother Tillman said. “You’re becoming independent and quite adventuresome too, I might add.”
Nate squirmed a little in his chair and tried to hide his unease by drinking more coffee.
“I’ve heard all kinds of stories lately, so why don’t we start by you telling me what really happened.”
Nate started to report what he had told the policeman, being equally careful not to say what he’d said to Grub.
Grandmother Tillman pressed, however. “Just what did you say to Grub Hanley?”
“I can’t say it here. I’m too embarrassed to tell you.” Nate stared into his coffee cup.
“That’s fine, you don’t have to tell me.” Grandmother Tillman looked at Nate for a moment. “Any time we do something or say something we’d be embarrassed to have someone else know about, especially if it’s someone we respect or care about, it means we’ve done something wrong. Whenever we feel like we’ve let someone else down, it means we’ve let ourselves down.”
She was quiet for a while and let Nate think about what she’d said.
“But I had to do something. I didn’t know what else... I just didn’t think.” Nate didn’t know how to tell her about how he felt about her and his grandfather, how he wanted to be like them and stand up for himself. “What would you have done, instead?”
Nate wasn’t challenging her, he really wanted to know. Grandmother Tillman could tell that, so she thought about it and gave him her sincerest answer.
“I’d have thrown rocks at him.”
“Rocks?”
“Lots of advantages to rocks,” she said. “You can hurl them from a distance so you still have escape possibilities, and you’re safe from immediate punches. They hurt, and that’s what you’re trying to do, make the bully’s behavior painful to him, instead of to you. Most important, you don’t degrade yourself by throwing rocks. David threw rocks at Goliath.”
Nate was impressed by her answer, but said, “It’s against school rules to throw rocks. I’d have gotten in trouble for that too.”
She shrugged her eyebrows and sipped her coffee. “Nothing’s free. You asked what I would’ve done.” She looked at Nate for a moment. “If you’d thrown rocks at Grub, and we were sitting here and I asked what you had done, could you have looked me in the eye and said ‘I threw rocks at him, Grandmother’?”
Nate thought about it. “Sure.”
“That’s my only point. Pick someone you respect before you do anything, and ask yourself if you could look that person in the eye and admit to it. If the answer’s ‘yes,’ it’s probably the right thing to do, even if it means getting in trouble.”
Nate thought about Grandmother Tillman on the bridge with Ricky Thornton. “Did you point a gun at Mr. Thornton for drowning puppies in the Sawatassee River?” His eyes locked on hers.
“I did, indeed,” she said without blinking.
“They could’ve thrown you in jail for that.”
“Nothing’s free,” she said.
“You really would’ve thrown rocks at Grub Hanley,” Nate said, believing it for the first time.
The two of them laughed. Nate could see Grub running from some girl on the schoolyard as she coolly squinted one eye, took aim, and launched rocks at him. Nate could hear Grub yelp each time one hit him. Knowing Grandmother Tillman, he assumed that more than one would’ve found their target.
Grandmother Tillman’s face got serious again. “Tell me the rest of what happened.”
Nate went through the rest of it, neither afraid nor embarrassed. When he got to the part about Grub shooting at him, Grandmother Tillman asked a lot of questions about the gun. She wanted to know things like what it looked like, how big was it, had it been a revolver, and all kinds of stuff. She seemed disappointed that he hadn’t seen the gun and couldn’t answer any of her questions.
“You could have been killed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“I’ve had a talk with your mother,” she said. “School lets out next week for the summer, and I’d like you to come stay out here on the farm with me for awhile. Seems you have a lot of energy, and farm life would be good for you. I have lots of chores I need help with, and besides, it would give us some time together.”
Nate figured that his mother must have known this yesterday. Part of her attitude probably came from being overridden by her mother. Apparently, Grandmother Tillman wasn’t pleased with how her daughter was raising her grandson, so she was taking over for a while.
“Sure,” Nate said awkwardly. “That’ll be fine.”
They heard Henry come in the front door and Grandmother Tillman hailed him to come back to the kitchen. He saw Nate and gave him a questioning look. Nate just smiled back in a way that said he was okay and it hadn’t been all that bad.
“There’s some unfinished business you need to help Nate with,” Grandmother Tillman said. “I believe he needs to return that wretched statue to Jim Frank.”
Nate had completely forgotten. It was still out on Founder’s Hill.
She looked at Nate. “You have to take it back.”
“But it’s broken.”
“Still, you took it. Now you have to take it back.”
Her tone of voice wasn’t commanding. It was more like she was explaining a law of physics. Nate had to do it, not because she told him to, but because it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll see you boys for dinner tomorrow,” she said and ushered them out the front door.
Henry drove Nate to Founder’s Hill. There was the statue, right where it had fallen that night. Nate was amazed that no one had taken it, but then figured that no one would want it. Henry looked it over and let out a respectful whistle.
“That Grub Hanley’s a pretty cool shooter, considering it was dark and all,” he said.
Nate looked at the statue with its head half blown off, and for the first time, realized it could have been him, in fact, was intended to be him. He felt sick to his stomach.
“Let’s get him in the car,” Henry said.
They carried the statue to the Caddy and put it in the trunk. Henry tied the lid down with some old rope and they headed to Jim Frank’s.
They didn’t speak much on the ride. Nate felt worse now than he had when they’d been headed to Grandmother Tillman’s. Everything else had been abstract and just being in trouble. This was tangible. He had stolen something and broken it.
They got to Jim Frank’s and Nate wanted to die when he saw Jim Frank pop out of the junk reef. Jim Frank didn’t give his usual hoot and greeting, but stood quietly waiting for whatever Nate had to say.
Nate got out of the Caddy and walked up to Jim Frank. “I’m the one who took your statue,” he said right away, so as to get the worst of it over with.
“I see,” Jim Frank said. He had known it was Nate that night. He knew that Nate had come to confess and was letting him do what had to be done.
“The bad part,” Nate wanted to get it all over with, “is that I broke it.”
Jim Frank tugged nervously at his overalls. “Well, let’s see what we got.”
Henry untied the lid and they all stood around, looking at the statue. “Help me get him back on his stump,” Jim Frank said to Henry.
They lifted the statue out of the trunk and sat it back on its usual perch.
“You can’t sit him out like that,” Nate said, in horror.
It looked grotesque with its head half blown away. Its one remaining eye looked to be wide in terror and what was left of his naive grin looked maniacal.
“Why not?” Jim Frank said.
“It’s broken,” Nate said weakly.
“It’s mostly still okay,” Jim Frank said.
“Can’t you just throw it away?”
Jim Frank let out a soft, amused laugh and gestured all around him. “Where would I throw him? I’m the junk man, he’s already been thrown away.”
“But he’s ruined and everyone’ll see he’s ruined.” Nate started to cry. His face burned with humiliation. “It’s ruined.” He tried to get Jim Frank and Henry to understand.
“The statue?”
“No.” Nate cried even harder. “The phrase. Look at him. He’s not happy anymore. Nobody’ll ever be able to say ‘happier than Jim Frank’s ...’ you know what, anymore.
It sank in on Henry and Jim Frank. More than just the statue had been broken, part of Davis Corners had been broken too. Henry started to say something, then stopped. It was true. There was nothing happy about the statue any more, and the phrase no longer made any sense.
Nate made one last appeal to Jim Frank. “Please take him down and put him where nobody’ll see him.”
Only Jim Frank knew, however, where junk belonged in his junkyard. Only he knew the toonickle of that statue.
“But that’s where he belongs,” he said.
It was the same tone that Grandmother Tillman had used when she told Nate he had to return the statue.
He gently touched Nate’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay, and so will you.”
Jim Frank thanked Nate for returning the statue, and Nate and Henry drove off. They didn’t talk about it, but they both knew the end of an era had occurred. The Saturday trips to the junkyard, the cigarettes, and the beer were all tied, somehow, to that statue and its phrase. They were gone as well.
That moment marked the start of the period Nate would call “Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation.” With the phrase she hated so much now excised from its tiny culture, Davis Corners was a little less crude, a little less cruel, a little more civilized. And that was only the beginning. As Nate rode in the Caddy, watching the phone poles and rural countryside flicker past his window, he couldn’t help but think that Grandmother Tillman would have the whole summer to dedicate herself to his further improvement.
Chapter 13
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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