Standing in the Rainbow (30 page)

Hamm said, “I think I can do it with five hundred.”

“I’ll get you six.”

Hamm said, “I’ll pay you back.”

“I know you will.”

“I’ll never forget this, buddy,” said Hamm.

“Don’t worry about it. You just go out and win the damn thing.”

Once again they moved and again Betty Raye’s home life was turned upside down. As soon as he announced, the house was filled with men coming and going, day and night. When she went to bed there were men in her living room. She slept, got up, got dressed, got the baby changed, and by breakfast there were already four or five men sitting at the kitchen table, filling up the place with cigar smoke. She hardly ever saw Hamm alone. If he was not traveling, he was always with his pack of cronies. The house was in a constant mess and she spent most of her time cleaning up after them. There was only one bathroom, so all day long men were traipsing through her bedroom. And if she went into the bathroom she could never be sure that some man would not walk in on her. She tried her best but when she woke up with a strange man she had never seen before walking through her bedroom, that was the last straw. Hamm never understood why she was so upset. It did not bother him at all to have people around him twenty-four hours a day. In fact, he thrived on it. It seemed to energize him. This constant and relentless lack of privacy, however, was making a nervous wreck out of Betty Raye. She could not even find a place to sit down and cry by herself. Six long months later, it was all over: between the radio ads, the posters, and Hamm stumping all over the farm areas, he’d won. He was now state commissioner of agriculture.

Betty Raye was so glad when it was final. At last she could have her husband all to herself and they could get back to a normal life again.

Hamm and Rodney

T
HE PHONE RANG
in the office of the Tillman and Reid used-car lot and Rodney Tillman picked it up. “Hello?”

A man’s voice said, “Hey, sport, what are you doing?”

It was his friend Hamm Sparks. Rodney said, “Right now I’m sitting here trying to figure out if I should kill my ex-brother-in-law or not.”

Hamm laughed. “What’s he done now?”

“We got the best-looking little forty-nine Chevy in here and he went out and started fooling around with the odometer after I told him not to and the damned idiot just put an extra two hundred miles on the thing.”

“Why don’t you just run it back the other way like you always do?”

“I would if I could, Hambo,” he said, glaring at his ex-brother-in-law, who’d just passed by, “but the damned thing’s stuck. What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna be working in your area today. Why don’t you come take a ride with me this afternoon, keep me company.”

Rodney looked through the glass window at the lot, full of dusty cars and empty of customers. “Might as well.”

As they rode out to the farms Hamm was checking on that day, Rodney pulled his pint out of his back pocket and took a swig. “I tell you, son, some days I wish I had just stayed and married that little Japanese gal; this alimony is about to kill me. You sure lucked out with Betty Raye. Now, that’s a sweet woman.”

“Yes, she is,” said Hamm.

While he stopped at the farms on his list, Rodney sat in the car scrunched up in the front seat and watched Hamm trudging out in the fields, walking around in barnyards and pigsties, talking to each farmer, patting them on the back, saying whatever agriculture people say to each other, and swigged from his pint. After about the fifth farm Rodney asked, “How many more places do you have to go to today?”

“Just six more.”

“Well, can we stop somewhere? I need to eat something.”

“Oh sure, there’s a place right up the road.”

Right up the road turned out to be twenty-three miles.

As they came out of the small roadside filling station and country store with sausage biscuits, cheese crackers, and Cokes, Hamm headed back to the car.

“Can we eat outside?” Rodney said. “I hate to say it, buddy, but you’re beginning to smell like a barnyard. God knows what you’ve been stepping in, and those hog-snout marks on your pants ain’t all that appetizing, either.”

Hamm looked down at his pants and laughed. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Sorry, it’s just part of the job.”

They walked over to a wooden bench set up beside a creek behind the store and sat down. Rodney handed Hamm his Coke. “Drink some of this for me, will you.” Hamm took a swig and handed it back and Rodney filled it back up to the top with whiskey, took a drink, and said, “Now, that’s a Coke. So, Hambo, is this what you do every day? Stomp around in barnyards?”

“Just about.”

Rodney examined the sausage biscuit in his hand with skepticism but bit into it anyway. “Why you ever wanted this job in the first place is a mystery to me. I know you aren’t making any money.”

Hamm agreed, “No, it’s sure not the money. But somebody has to give these folks a hand, trying to scratch out a living with nothing but these little piecrust roads between them and the market. Most of them are just hanging on by a thread as it is.” Hamm bit into a cheese cracker with peanut butter in the middle and said, “When it rains, they can’t get out and the government won’t fix the roads. They throw money at the big cities and build fancy buildings and all those overpasses and underpasses and in the meantime the small farmer is getting ignored. I’ll tell you . . . it makes me mad to see good, hardworking, tax-paying people being kicked around like that. I watched my daddy get kicked around like that, so I know how it feels. . . . But I can’t do much. Just give them a little encouragement.”

“Well, that’s life, Hambo. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, bless their pea-pickin’ little hearts. The only difference between you and me and the rich is they’ve got money and we don’t.”

Hamm said, “Naw, Rodney, I don’t think it’s just the money—they are different from us. I was around a few of those rich people once and found that out myself.”

“When was this?”

“After the war, when I was in school, I met a few of those rich college boys while I was waiting tables. I used to joke around with them every once in a while. I wasn’t friends with them or nothing like that, but this one kid from Minneapolis must have thought I was unique or something and invited me to go home with him one weekend.”

“Wait a minute. You? Unique?”

Hamm smiled. “Yeah, well, they thought I had a funny accent and I laid it on a bit, you know, played the hayseed for them. So anyhow, I go home with him and we pull up to this big, huge three-story deal where he lives. I never saw anything like that in my life, the whole damn backyard is a lake.”

“What lake was it?”

“It was
their
lake. I’m telling you, these people were rich, and the kid tells me it’s their summerhouse. I said, Where do you live in the winter, Buckingham damn Palace? Anyhow, I never felt so out of place in my life. That family of his was nothing but a bunch of cold fish. I don’t even think they liked each other and they treated me like I was something that just dropped out of a tree. And I’ll tell you something: After that weekend, I’d take any one of those farmers over them any day of the week. I don’t want a thing they have. They can keep all their big houses, the servants, the cars, I don’t need them.” Then his voice trailed off. He looked down at the little stream with a faraway look in his eyes and said quietly, “But they did have this boat. One day his old man took us all out on the lake in it and oh, man alive, that was the prettiest thing you ever saw . . . all white, with shiny wood inside.” He shook his head. “To tell you the truth, sport, I’d cut off my right arm for a boat like that.”

Rodney suddenly felt sorry for him. He tried to cheer him up. “You know what you need, Hambo? You need to come up to St. Louis with me, play a little poker, we’ve got some good games up there, and fool around a little. Have some fun for a change, what do you say?”

“Wish I could but I just don’t have the time to spare,” Hamm said, getting up to leave.

“Well, you know what I always say . . . if you can’t get anywhere in this world, you might as well have fun while you aren’t getting there.”

Up in a Tree

A
FTER
A
UNT
E
LNER
lost her husband, Will, she had wanted to stay on the farm but Norma was worried about her living out in the country all by herself and insisted she move to town. She wanted her close so she could keep an eye on her and she was not going to rest until she did. So Aunt Elner sold the farm and Norma and Macky found her a house a couple of blocks from them. It was a small house, with a bedroom, kitchen, living room, and a nice front porch; but the thing Aunt Elner liked right away was the big fig tree in the backyard. She brought a few of her favorite chickens and her cat Sonny and moved in, but Norma still checked on her day and night. Aunt Elner said, “You’d think two blocks was twenty miles the way you carry on. I might as well have stayed out on the farm.”

“Yes, but at least I know we can get to you in a few minutes if anything happens.”

“Honey, if I die here or out on the farm, getting to me faster is not going to make much difference.”

“Maybe not to you but I’ll feel better knowing you’re not lying around in the yard dead, with the chickens pecking at you.”

Aunt Elner laughed. “It would not bother me. I’ve eaten enough of them in my day.” Aunt Elner liked to tease her but promised her she would take good care of herself. Even though Elner said and meant it, she was still capable of upsetting Norma from time to time. Just this morning there had been an incident, and Norma was still going on and on about it. “You shouldn’t even be climbing stairs at your age, much less a ten-foot ladder. I have never been so close to fainting in my life. I came out into the yard and looked up and there you were just hanging in the top of the tree.”

“I wasn’t hanging, I was sitting.”

“Well, sitting or hanging, what if I had not come over? You’ve
got
to be more careful. What if I’d found you dead on the ground?”

“Oh, Norma, I’ve picked fruit all my life and I’m not dead yet. Besides, it’s that Griggs dog’s fault. He’s the one that knocked the ladder down chasing after poor Sonny. Go fuss at him.”

“I don’t care whose fault it was, promise me you will not get on that ladder again. Let Macky do it or call next door and get Merle.”

“All right.”

“You are not as young as you used to be, you know.”

Later that night, Aunt Elner called. “Norma, let me ask you this.”

“What?”

“Who
is
younger than they used to be? I don’t know anybody; even those that get face-lifts are still just as old as they were. Even if you went into a different time zone you’d still be the same age, wouldn’t you?”

Norma had to admit she was right but added, “That’s not the point; the point is you need to be more careful.”

“The point is that Griggs dog ought to stay out of my yard and quit chasing my cat.”

“Aunt Elner.”

“I know, a promise is a promise.”

But a new day is a new day. The next morning around ten, when Linda was at school, the phone rang. Norma picked up.

“Norma? I have a question for you,” said Aunt Elner.

“Hold on, let me turn off my beans.”

“What kind of beans are you making?”

“String beans. I just threw in a handful so Macky would have something green with his lunch. Why?”

“I just wondered. . . . What’s he getting?”

“Salmon croquettes, sliced tomatoes, corn, and string beans.”

“What kind of bread?”

“Cornbread. I had a few slices left over. Why?”

“Just wondered.”

“Did you have a question for me?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What was it?”

“Wait a minute . . . let me think.”

“What was it about?”

“I know. Norma, do I have any insurance?”

“What kind of insurance?”

“Any kind.”

“Uncle Will had his Mason’s policy, I think. Why?”

“Well, some lady came to the door and wanted to know and I didn’t know what to tell her so I told her she’d have to ask you.”

“What woman?”

“Some woman. I don’t know who she was . . . she left her card. Do you want me to go and get it?”

“Yes.”

There was a loud clack when Aunt Elner put the phone down on the table. A few minutes later she came back on the line.

“Her name is June Garza. Do you know her?”

“No, what company is she with?”

“Aetna . . . Insurance . . . so I told her that my niece and her husband handle all that for me.”

“Good, what did she say?”

“She said she wanted to know where you lived so she could ask you about it.”

“Good Lord, you didn’t tell her, did you?”

“Well, I had to. She asked me.”

“How long ago . . . ?”

“Just a little while ago—”

“Oh Lord . . .”

“She’s real nice. She has on a green suit and—”

“Aunt Elner, let me call you back.”

“Okay . . . I just wanted you to be on the lookout.”

“I’ll call you back.” Norma put down the phone and ran into the living room and looked up and down the street and shut the front door and closed her blinds and pulled the curtains. She went back to the kitchen and closed those blinds and she hid down under the wall phone, reached up, and dialed Macky’s number. When he picked up she whispered, “Macky . . . when you come home, don’t come in the front door, come up the alley and come in the back. And knock three times so I’ll know it’s you.”

“What?”

“Aunt Elner gave some insurance woman our address and she’s headed over here . . . and I don’t want to have to deal with her.”

“You don’t have to deal with her—just go to the door and tell her you don’t need any insurance.”

“I’m not going to be rude to her, for God’s sake.”

“That’s not being rude.”

“You can’t just say no, until you let them go through their sales things. You don’t know why that poor woman is having to work . . . she might have children to support. You might be able to break her heart but I can’t—”