Had I a Hundred Mouths (17 page)

Son wrote back and said, “All right Aunt Linsie, I know I've led you and Aunt Perrie a life, but none of that ghost stuff, this is no ghost, I just want to know about Aunt Perrie and am asking you.”

Aunt Linsie wrote back and said, “Well, Son, if this is some other stunt of yours I'll cherish it against you the rest of my life, for pore Perrie was my own sister and your only mother in this world and gave a goodly part of her life to raising and tending to you when you was a boy; but anyways you remember how she was such a stout woman when you left? She fell off so you wouldn't have recognized her as the same pore Perrie after you and Ace left, and when she died (that death's part yours and you know it) we buried her as small as a Cheedee. If you're hurrawing about pore Perrie I can't stand it, that pore suffering thang Perrie.”

Son wrote a letter back that said, “No, Aunt Linsie, I'm not making light of Aunt Perrie, how could I? So write me back and tell me what I ask, then I'll tell you why I'm asking.”

Aunt Linsie's answer said, “Son don't you know by now there's no room anywheres in the world, no quarters in any house or billin, that can hide you from your own folks, they live in your memory and blood, you bring them in a room when you move in. You can build a house against weather, but you can't build it against your own conscience. Get right, face your life, all what's in it, and that includes pore Perrie, was like your own mother, called you her own, and then you treated her like you did,
when are you going to settle down?
That's all right, you're coming outa the little end of the horn now, and I know it and you know it; but I'll help you outa your trouble, will do it till I'm dead and gone (and then who'll do it then, oh who, I wonder?)”

Son's answer said, “Aunt Linsie, hush lecturing me. I'm not perfect and I know it; and Uncle Ace was not perfect. But there was only one man in this wide world who was perfect and He was crucified. Just don't devil me. I expect you're right on most of what you say. The thing of it is, I all of a sudden see Aunt Perrie's life so plain, plainer than I could ever see when I was looking, and I can see her rooms in our house, the one with the machine she pumped and sewed at, with the wooden drawers full of spools and bias tape. I
want to get something straight.”

(Aunt Linsie did not answer, and the next thing she knew, Son was on the place.)

4

“Now listen to me while I tell you the story of pore Perrie, because it'll be the last and enough. Then hush ever asking me about it.

“Well, as you know, because I've told you, they called us the Polk Sisters in this town of Crecy Texas. We were the seamstresses of the town. Our mother and father died young and Perrie took me and brought me up. Our house was a good house—'cept for the 'shackley steps in back—built next to the Campbellite church (now a Presbyterian one); cool in summer and then with a vine on every string that strung the porch like a harp, and cold in winter; but good lives found a home in it. Pore Perrie sat on the porch in summer and sang the hymns along with the congregation next door despite they was Campbellites, for hymns are the same in all Houses of God, she said. She had her own church there behind the vines. In the front flowerbeds was a duke's mixture of Rainlillies after it rained, Touchmenots, Old Flags and Calico, with always a grasshopper on the Calico. There was a frail Huisache tree on the side of the house, brought there from a West Texas place by a cousin long ago who said it might live, she couldn't say, in this damper climate; but it did, grew up pretty as a tree on a calendar, spraying out its yellow insect blooms and so limber that even a bird would bend it to light there, and scatter the blossoms. On one side was the churchhouse and in the afternoons the shadow of the churchhouse lay on the grass and Son played in the shadow; and on the other side was the patch. In back was the clothesyard where there lived several White Leghorn hens that left enough eggs for us to eat and bake with, and there was a few Golden Seabright Bantams just for ornament and for Son to have. Back of that was the grove of little pinetrees.

“Perrie and me were both cut out by the Lord, who had his designs for all of us, to be missionaries; but I gave my life to Perrie and Perrie had a lame foot, to begin with, and then she spoiled the Lord's design by marrying—against all wishes—and so late.… And there my story commences. Or ends… 'cause I don't want to tell it anymore. Hush making me.”

“Tell it out, this is the time to tell.”

5

“When Perrie Polk married—so late (she was thirty-eight and I was twenty-eight)—Ace Wanger, a traveling lumber salesman living in hotels and all that kind of boarding-house life, she adopted a child, little Son, through the Methodist Church Orphanage, because she could have none of her own. The Church was this orphan child's parentage, and that's the way Perrie wanted it.

“Now Uncle Ace had been an orphan too, a foundling of some kind, nobody knows or ever knew who his folks were; and he would never talk about it. He took our home when he came into it as Perrie's husband and he took little Son as his son, as you will see; but this so late and after so much misery.

“Son grew along, in the house and in the yard, me and Perrie doing our sewing, Ace away on the road three weeks out of four all over Texas and Arkansas with his lumber, and little Son playing around the sewing machine that Perrie was pumping. When he could call a name he said Aunt Perrie and Aunt Linsie and Uncle Ace. So there was this household. All in the little house you can see right chonder, that nobody lives in since I moved, just a shell of a house.

“Son was the best child in this world, then; never put his fingers in the sewing-machine pedal, never took the bobbins or the needles, sat very quiet—whose child? As he grew along he never gave any trouble, not even to switch his legs, and when he was old enough in the summertimes—we never even had to send him to Bible School in the summertime—but he went of his own choosing—nor give him a real blistering. Pore Perrie and I would watch him through the window where he played in the woodpile and wonder where Son came from.

“By the time he was twelve he had turned real dark complected and very very nervious. His nerviousness so worried Perrie that she took him to Doctor Browder for it. Perrie said Doctor Browder said this is the most nervious child ever I saw in my practice, but think he'll outgrow it—Perrie said Doctor Browder said—
if
he has his tonsils and adenoids out. Son had these out, and then we got him glasses. But we had to take him out of school.

‘Then we trained him ourselves, with the Bible, Stories of the Bible, Children of Faraway Lands—put out by the Missionary Society; and had him count eggs and tomatoes. He planted and pruned and toted round the place; and grew along.

“By the time he was seventeen his distress began, finding him dark and lean and beginning to be very different. He was so nervious that if he'd be sitting by the washhouse studying something on his mind—oh I wonder what?—and the Leghorn rooster would crow in his face, Son would startle up and chunk a rock at him. Once he did this; and hit the Leghorn rooster in the head and killed it—to give you a notion of how Son was in those days. We didn't know what to do with Son, and pore Perrie worried and worried. I worried too. Uncle Ace was no help, as he should have been, for he was always off traveling. So what could we do, so what could pore Perrie do? We tried to quieten Son down. We read him out of the Bible—
My mother and my brethren are these…
Saint Luke eight twenty-one.

“The thing of it is he had never had it told to him that he was an orphan. People who knew it kept it quiet; but they tried to tell him about it in ways that people have about a stranger—as you will later see. Some came to Perrie and said Son probably had some foreign blood in him, did he have nigra blood in him maybe? Did he have any papers? These things hurt pore Perrie, and hurt me; but Perrie said Son was Child of the Church and any parentage beyond that was unbeknownst to her. Once I said, 'Perrie regg'n it is the time to tell, do you think Son is of the age to have it told him'; but Perrie said, 'Not yet.'

“Something had happened between Perrie and Ace, as it was bound to. One day in July he wrote a letter from Memphis and said he had a new job that would keep him there and he was going to take it and stay. Perrie would not quarrel with him and sent him all his things. There had never been a whole minute's talk between Son and Ace, but suddenly when it was known that Ace was gone, and to stay, Son's change happened. He was gone from his room one July morning soon after and there was a message left saying, 'I have gone to Memphis to see Uncle Ace.'

“A long terrible time and no word. Perrie was ailing most of the time now, her lame foot had caused her hip to ache so that she could scarcely pump the sewing machine. I said a mite, not much; but I was grieving. We ate supper together quietly. There was a medicine show come through, but we didn't go. A Preacher Healer from the 'Postolics came to town and the town filled his tent and several were healed by the Miracle; but Perrie said that if the Lord had taken her one side it was for His uses and that he had strengthened the other for her own; it was His Design; she pumped left-footed and would not go to the Healer. Now that's enough; quit asking me. My mouth is shut.”

“But tell how the letters started. Tell about the letters.”

6

“Well, then the letters started. First Son wrote and said, 'Aunt Perrie why did you have to let me find it out for myself that I am somebody's son we never knew, probably a bastard'—he wrote that word. 'Uncle Ace has told me again what was first told to me on the Church Hike the Fourtha July.'

“Perrie wrote back and said, ‘Son I never wanted to hurt you and you were too young to know, besides. If you hadn't run off I'd have told you, or had Brother Riley at the church to tell you. But I have been your mother as good as any mother could have been; and your Aunt Linsie, too. If you had no mother then think how you had
two
mothers showering all their love and care on you, count your blessings Son, and don't make light of me. For I done the best I could.'

“Son wrote a letter back that said, ‘Aunt Perrie I am working in a lumbermill out of Memphis and like it; and if I had two mothers in Crecy Texas then I have three in all, but one to begin with and that one to end with, will you please do me the favor of telling me who my mother was, and where; and I'll be much oblige.'

“Perrie wrote back an answer that Son was to please not change his nature and his ways, that he was please not
to hurraw
about three mothers, that she would tell him now that who or where his mother and father were never would be known, and to send his things on home and come on with them. To just count her, Aunt Perrie, as his mother and go on with his life. ‘For I have raised you,' Perrie's letter said, ‘In this house and yard in Crecy Texas to the best of my gumption, under the shadow of the Church and in the name of God. You was a good child and now can be a good young man. I ask you to abide in the Lord who is our only Father.'

“No answer.

7

“On the Fourtha July on account of the celebration at the Picnic Grounds all the heavens was aglow for two hours, just one solid blast, shook us all up, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end; and about nine o'clock I looked out and here was Son coming from the to-do and we could see something was wrong, that he had been hurt. He looked so hurt. Perrie said, ‘Son commere to me and tell me who or what it is that's hurt you; I can tell when something has hurt you, and come and tell me.' But Son wouldn't say. And I thought, because he was so peculiar and so changed,
what child is this?
And I thought child o child what is ever going to happen to you in this world I wonder, oh what will your life be, if we could just put it into the right hands, see that it goes right and good and doesn't get hurt or astray—who will ever look after you, you little thing. But I know we can't help, no one can do that for nobody, have to go this way and that, find our ground and try to stand our ground, learn our wisdom and then try to be strong enough to bear our wisdom, O hep this little boy, child a mine, is what I thought.

“Well, Son wouldn't tell and so Perrie didn't press him, he went to bed and I said, 'Perrie regg'n what's the matter with him?' and Perrie said, 'Let him alone, Linsie, he'll tell dreckly.'

“The next day he was so peculiar, we was so far apart, wouldn't say much, face right peaked, until that afternoon Perrie said he come to her with the wildest face and said, ‘Aunt Perrie I've hurt myself and I'm scared, maybe we ought to call Doctor Browder.' Perrie said, ‘Son what have you done to yourself, come talk to me, come let me see.' Son said, ‘Aunt Perrie I can't tell you or show you, 'cause you see I was climbing over a bobwire fence at the Fourtha July fireworks and I slipped and fell upon the bobwire. I didn't look until we got in the light of the fireworks and then I saw blood on myself.'

“Oh, I said, this is when he needs his Uncle Ace, but let Ace stay on away on the road, let him stay until Doomsday, we can get along without him (this boy was always trying to run away from where he was or from people he was with to be by himself, as if to still something rankling in him, as if to put something to rest within him or for some reason we could never know. But everytime he broke and ran away, and mind you this, he harmed or wounded himself in some way: it was the harm and the wound that brought him back, then, time and time again, so as to heal harm and hurt, it seemed). ‘Come let
me
see,' I said, ‘Son.'

“‘Nome,' he said, ‘
you
can't see, either, just call Doctor Browder.'

“Doctor Browder come and he and Son went in the back room and closed the door, and we heard Doctor Browder say, ‘Son let me see you, let me see what have you done to yourself.'