Tales from a Free-Range Childhood Page 13

  And he was right. We did not know it at the time, but as it turned out, Miss Annie ended up being our babysitter until my brother and I both graduated from high school.

  We also learned an important personal lesson at a fortunate early age: if you are messing with an old lady, it does not matter if the only thing that works is her mouth, you are going to be the loser. So you might as well give up from the start.

  Chapter 14

  BROKEN BONES

  Mama was the oldest of the nine children in her family. There were seven girls in a row, then two little brothers. The earliest memories of her life were of taking care of children. Her youngest brother was born when she was a sophomore in college.

  After practicing on her own little brothers and sisters, when Joe and I came along, she was sure that she was going to “get it right” as a parent. We were going to be the perfect children. Whenever we were at home with her, Mama seemed to have one main thing to say about most everything we did: “Don’t do that!” It was her parenting motto.

  Instead of learning “Don’t do that,” what I really learned was how important it was to spend time at my grandmother’s house. She had a different motto. No matter what we did there, her main thing to say was, “You are so cute!” I loved spending time at my grandmother’s house.

  One day, we were at Grandmother’s and Joe and I did something that did not please Mama. We were not surprised to hear the words, “Boys, don’t do that!”

  Grandmother took up for us. “Why are you being so hard on those cute boys?” was her question.

  “Well,” Mama took up for herself, “I certainly wouldn’t have done something like they did when I was their age.”

  “You’re right about that,” Grandmother smiled. “You were worse!”

  Then she turned to us. “Come here, boys. Do you want to hear a story about when your mother was a little girl?”

  Of course we did. Mama moved to the far side of the room. She wanted to pretend that she was not interested in the story but at the same time wanted to be sure that she could hear everything that was going on.

  Grandmother then told us the story. Mama was about seven years old when it all happened. At that time, all of the farm work was done with a team of oxen. One day, her father, my granddaddy, went off somewhere for the day. He was gone all day.

  When he came home late that afternoon, he called all of the family together and told them, “I bought something today. Everybody come out on the porch and see what I got.”

  The family followed him to the porch. He lined them up where they could all see, then pointed out across the yard to the trees at the edge of the garden. “See that thing standing there? That is called a ‘horse.’ It is going to do the work that the oxen have been doing, but it is a lot faster and easier to handle. Now, listen, it is not a toy! It is a workhorse only. Whatever you do, do not try to ride on it.”

  At age seven, that was all Mama needed to hear. She knew that she had to ride that horse or she would die. That was all there was to it. She knew that she had to watch and wait for a time when no one was looking. So she waited.

  One day, no one was around the house but her. She slipped out to the back of the barn, where the horse was tied. It looked tame and peaceful. This would be easy. There was only one problem: she was short and the horse was tall. How would she get up on top of the horse? Then she saw the solution. Right beside where the horse was tied, there was a gate that opened into the back of the barn. It was made of long slats and looked remarkably like a ladder.

  So she opened the gate until it was right beside the horse. Then she climbed to the top of the gate, stood on the very top, and jumped onto the horse’s back. The horse did not calmly stand there. No, it took a big jump and tossed her right off on the ground on the other side.

  She landed on her right arm. As soon as she landed, she knew that something was wrong. Her arm did not look straight the way it had all of her life. Then the pain hit, and she realized what had happened. Her right arm was broken, both bones, halfway between her wrist and her elbow. She went crying, almost carrying her arm with her left hand, back to the house.

  Then the real trouble started. Where they lived, back there on the farm, it was about sixteen miles to town. They never went to town at all. There was no way to get there. And if they did somehow get to town, they did not even know a doctor.

  But right up the road lived Uncle Will. He knew all about herbs, and so he would have to do. He was brought down to the house and declared that he could set a broken bone “as well as the next man.”

  Uncle Will walked out to the little creek below the garden and cut a short limb from a willow tree. He skinned all of the bark off of the limb with his pocketknife and split the limb right down the middle. Then he smoothed both sides with his little knife.

  When all was ready, he and Granddaddy put Mama in a chair at the kitchen table with her broken arm laid out on the table. Granddaddy held Mama so that she couldn’t jump or jerk. Uncle Will, on the other side of the table, got hold of her by the wrist. Suddenly, he pulled her arm straight out as hard as he could, and while it was pulled he told Grandmother how to wrap the splints to either side of the now-straight broken arm. That is how it healed.

  When Joe and I heard that, we looked over at Mama. She was listening with her head down in her folded arms.

  Joe asked her, “Mama, did that hurt?”

  She raised her head. “I cannot tell you. I passed out. But if I had not passed out, there are still no words I could use with children to tell you how much it hurt.”

  The broken arm happened in the late winter, as that was when Granddaddy had bought the horse so it would be ready for work in the spring. Now that she was set and splinted up, Mama hoped that the arm would be well by Easter. Her mother, my grandmother, had made her a new Easter dress, and she wanted to be able to wear it. The Easter dress had sleeves that were like big puffs at the top and were very close-fitted with tiny buttons from the elbow to the wrist. Until the splints came off, there would be no way to wear the new dress.

  Every day or two, Mama would walk up to Uncle Will’s house so he could feel of her arm and give her a guess about when it might be well. He wouldn’t dare let her take off the splints until long after there was no pain when he felt her arm.

  Finally, that time came. It was the week before Easter, just in time for her to get into the new dress.

  On Easter morning, Mama was up before anyone else in the house. She was happily dressed and ready to go before anyone else was out of bed.

  When Grandmother got up and saw her, she asked, “What are you doing up when it is not even daylight yet?”

  “I am ready to go to church so people can look at me!” Mama proudly (and honestly) answered her mother.

  “Well, we are not ready. I have to fix breakfast and get all of the little children ready. It looks like you’re not going to be much help to me, since you are already dressed up in your new outfit. At least you can stay out of the way. Why don’t you go outside and look over there next to the garden where all those daffodils are blooming and pick us a big bunch of flowers? Get us two bunches—one to take to church and one to go on the table for dinner when we get back. Don’t get dirty.”

  Mama headed out the door in the fresh, early light. She walked over and began to look at the daffodils. All of a sudden, she heard a neighing sound. When she looked up, there was the horse. It was tied right beside the gate where Granddaddy almost always seemed to keep it.

  I know how to do it now, she thought. She had spent a lot of time thinking about it.

  Mama forgot all about daffodils. She hiked herself around the side of the barn and patted the horse on the neck. Then she opened the big gate until it looked like a ladder beside the big horse. In her new Easter dress, she climbed to the top of the ladder.

  Mama later admitted that she had seen pictures in a book of women riding sidesaddle, and that is what gave her the idea about how to handle the dress. She jumped backwa
rds from the top of the gate and landed on the horse with both legs on the same side.

  The big workhorse jerked wildly. Mama went head over heels off the opposite side. This time, she landed with an audible cracking noise—it was her left arm this time. It was broken in almost exactly the same place as the just-healed right arm.

  With no daffodils, she walked, crying, back to the house.

  Grandmother just shook her head. “Law, law,” she moaned. “You just keep walking right on up there to Uncle Will’s house. I’ll send your daddy to help.”

  The new dress was ruined, as the two men had to cut her out of the left-arm sleeve. Uncle Will still had the splints. The only difference this time was that they were seated at Uncle Will’s kitchen table. Granddaddy held her, Uncle Will pulled her arm, and the splints found a new home! She passed out just like the time before.

  Mama was looking out the window like she was not listening at all as Grandmother finished the story. It was like she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t there and that she didn’t know anything at all about the story that was being told.

  It was not over yet. Grandmother looked at Joe and me. “You see, boys,” she smiled. “You boys did not invent evil. It is an inherited trait. You got it from your mother! Go over there and feel of her arms.”

  Mama could not escape. Joe and I went over to where she was seated. She had to cooperate. We each felt one forearm, then the other. About halfway between the elbow and wrist on each arm, we could feel a big lump on the bone. This was the thickened bulge where the breaks had healed.

  We loved that story when we first heard it. It was later, however, when its full meaning came through to our whole family.

  Up until I was twelve years old, we lived at our “old house” on Plott Creek Road. There were no children our age anywhere within playing distance. Joe and I were stuck having to play with one another. We had no idea what it would be like to have playmate neighbors. It was simply not part of our world.

  At the end of my sixth-grade year, the whole world changed. After looking and saving for years, our family moved to the “new house.” It was big (to us) and had a wonderful large and flat front yard. We also had playmates.

  The house straight behind us, only across Daddy’s new garden from our house, was the Leatherwoods’ house. Mr. Leatherwood, our first elementary-school principal, was now the school superintendent. Mrs. Leatherwood taught at the high school. We went to the same church, and they had been good friends of my parents for years.

  The Leatherwoods also had two children. Larry was the older, and he was almost the same age that I was. His little brother, Ronnie, was the same age as my little brother, Joe. We had something we had never had in our lives: playmates right through our back fence.

  Every day, we would come home from school and go over to Larry and Ronnie’s house. We would get something to eat. Then they would come with us back over to our house. We would get something to eat.

  Pretty soon, it would be Larry who made the suggestion: “Want to play football?” We loved to play football. The front yard of our new house was long and wide and totally flat. It was surrounded by an edging of white pine trees that defined the playing area perfectly. No one could have planned a better football field for four kids.

  Larry, Ronnie, Joe, and I would grab the football and head out into the yard.

  “Are you boys going to play football?” Mama would ask as we headed out the door. “You boys better not get hurt. I want you to be sure you play touch football so you won’t get hurt!”

  We would laugh. We thought that was a silly request. After all, how could you possibly tackle someone without touching them? We laughed again.

  As soon as the four of us got out in the yard each day, the first thing was to choose up teams. It always came out the same way: big boys against the little boys. Larry and I told Joe and Ronnie that it was not fair for brothers to be on the same team, and they never did seem to figure out that there was any other way to do it. We always kicked off to them first. Somehow, it made them think they had a real advantage.

  There was only one problem with football in the yard. It was called “the big picture window.” Right in the center of the house, right where the imaginary goalposts would be, there was a gigantic floor-to-ceiling picture window. We lived in fear of breaking it.

  Mama would actually go in the living room and talk to the window when we went out for our football games. She would look at it sadly and intone, “You’re going to get broken. I just know you’re going to get broken.” One Saturday, we were playing football in the yard when Daddy was at home. He watched us for a few minutes and seemed to be thinking about what he was seeing.

  When we took our next break, he called us over to the side to talk with us. “Come over here, boys. I want to tell you something. We have some new rules here about football. Let me explain this to you. This is a single-ended football field,” he started.

  “What does that mean?” It was Joe who asked.

  “That means that it doesn’t have two ends. It only has one end, and”—he was pointing away from the house—“both ends are down there! No matter who has the ball, you need to run that way, away from the house.

  “Now, listen to this: no more kicking toward the window, no throwing toward the window, no running toward the window, no looking toward the window, no thinking about the window. No matter what, boys, go that way.” He again pointed away from the house.

  We had the most mixed-up football games anyone could ever have had in this world. First of all, we had to kick off aiming away from the house. Then, when the others got the ball, they had to turn around and keep running away from the house. It made no sense, except that no one could ever catch the kicked ball anyway, so it would bounce on the ground, then we would get it, turn around, and start over in the other direction.

  One day, Larry and I were kicking off to Joe and Ronnie. I held the ball while Larry ran and kicked. The ball went tumbling end over end toward my brother, Joe. I knew that Joe was ten years old and had not caught a football in more than twenty-five years. But on this day, the ball simply fell into his arms. He had no choice. The ball caught itself.

  Joe stood there not knowing what to do. Instead of blocking for him, Ronnie turned around and started running in the other direction. Larry and I had no choice at all; we jumped on Joe and both tackled him to the ground, hard.

  When we got off and Joe tried to get up, he was crying. He was also very funny looking. One of his arms looked completely normal. The other arm was limply hanging longer and lower than it was supposed to. We had broken his right collarbone snap in two.

  We called for Mama. She came out and immediately put Joe and me into the car and sent Larry and Ronnie running home. We headed for the emergency room at the Haywood County Hospital.

  I still do not know what doctor was on duty. It does not matter. Joe came out of the emergency room with a figure-eight-shaped strapping bandage that pulled his shoulders way back to hold the broken bone where it could heal. It must have been horribly painful.

  When we got back to the house, Larry and Ronnie came over to see what had happened at the hospital. As soon as all three of us looked at Joe, Larry and I jointly began to call him “Chicken Boy.” He really did look like a big old chicken with his shoulders pulled so far back.

  We would imitate sounds: “Pwwwaaakkk, pwak, pwak, pwak. Look at Chicken Boy. Going to lay an egg?”

  Joe was furious, but he was in so much pain that he could not do anything about it.

  The collarbone was broken in the late winter. Now that Joe was tied back together, he began to hope that he would get well by Easter. When our Easter-weekend school break came, our family was going to take a little trip to Fontana Village, a little resort beside Fontana Lake. Since we normally never went anywhere, this seventy-mile trip really was a big deal.

  Joe had a complaint: “Unless I get well, I am not going on that trip. Everybody in this world who knows me is calling me Chicken
Boy. I am not going over to that place where a whole bunch of people who do not even know me are going to start calling me the same thing. If I do not get well by then, I am not going!”

  Mama kept taking him back to the doctor’s office to be checked because she wanted us to get to go on the trip.

  It was the Thursday afternoon before Easter. That was the day that the doctor declared that Joe was healed and removed the strapping from his shoulders. He came home as happy as a child could be. “I’m not Chicken Boy anymore, I’m not Chicken Boy anymore,” he kept repeating as he waved his now-free arms around and around.

  As soon as Mama got him home from the doctor’s office, she called Daddy at work. “We can go!” she gushed. “He’s well.”

  “That’s great. I expected that.” Daddy was always the optimist. “Here’s a good idea. What if I take the day off tomorrow and we start on the trip a day early? I’ll call and get it all fixed up, and you go ahead and pack for all of us.”

  Mama was happy.

  Joe and I wanted to help her pack. There were a lot of our things that we needed to be sure ended up in the car on the way. After all, the trip was going to take nearly two hours, and we needed lots of things to make such an infinite duration pass.

  Mama was frustrated. “You boys are in my way. Why don’t you go outside and play so I can get this packing done for our trip? Now, go on!”

  Joe and I headed outside. He was still swinging his arms around and singing, “I’m not Chicken Boy anymore.”

  We walked around toward the back of the house, and there, right across the fence from us, we saw Larry and Ronnie playing in their backyard. “Hey, Ronnie. Hey, Larry. I’m not Chicken Boy anymore.”

  That was all that it took. It was Larry who suggested it: “Want to play football?” We were on the way.