Free When I Crossed No-Bob by Margaret McMullan Page A

eyes study him long and hard. I know she is taking in every last detail of what I see. Here stands a man come to reclaim his property.
    He taught me how to catch lizards, kill ducks, feather chickens, skin rabbits. He taught me how to hold a gun and a knife. He taught me how to tree a possum, then how to shake him down. He taught me how to be a boy even though I was a girl. He taught me what Momma wouldn't, and how could I not feel a need to pay him back? When he looks me in the eye, I read what that look means to say. I seen that look before when he went calling on folks, getting them to pay up on bets he liked to make. His eyes are saying,
I come to collect.
    I can see that Miss Irene don't know what to do. This here's my pappy and he has a right to take me. And I bet she's wishing he'd just go on and do just that. Since I've been here, seems like nothing but trouble has come their way, just the way Mr. Frank thought it would be. Their eggs and chickens get stolen, a schoolhouse burned down and a little boy killed, and me, another mouth to feed. I take matters in my own two hands then and step down off the Russell porch.

    Pappy, he hugs me, and when his beard scratches my face, I think of how Momma would have his hide on account of his scratchiness and ill-kept ways. He smells as though he has just been in the river where he bathes and I think that was for me. He cleaned up for me and I'm not used to this sorrowful feeling I have for Pappy, and I know right away that he wouldn't like it one bit—his twelve-year-old girl feeling sorry for him. No, he wouldn't like it one bit, and he'd surely whip me for that.
    Pappy. He is bad and mean and dangerous, but he is still my pappy.
    I think maybe it will be a fine thing to go back home, whatever is left of it, and sit in a familiar room among familiar things. "Yer shoes is too big," he says, looking down at my feet. "I
can fix those." I don't tell him Mr. Frank made me these shoes. I know he knows. Pappy, he knows everything.

    I say my thank-yous and farewells to Miss Irene. Pappy won't let me take anything she wants to give. No blankets or biscuits or peaches. Nothing. We set to walking.

    I look at the back of Pappy's slicked-back hair as he walks ahead of me to cross back into No-Bob. We don't say much because Pappy never did, not with me, anyway. But I can't help but wonder,
Did he go to Texas or was he here all along?
    He says, well, sure, he went off to Texas and to other places too.
    "What were you gone so long for?"
    He doesn't answer me. He tells me stories of his travels instead. He says he saw a woman with no legs or hands who cut out paper silhouettes by holding a common pair of scissors in her mouth. He says he met a man who sold skunk oil to people with rheumatism and another who could tell you your future by feeling the bumps on your head.
    "Yeah?" I say. "What'd he say about you?"
    He stops walking, turns around, and lays my hands on the top of his greasy head. I feel a few bumps and even a
bald spot. I have my hands in Pappy's hair and I have to laugh and joke. "Which bump is it that makes a fellow a chicken thief?"

    He sniffs through his nose. That's the way Pappy laughs. "I was meant to be a statesman," he says serious and proud, acting like a statesman, whatever that is. "I have natural ability."
    I can't help but smile, and we walk on. Pines grow closer together out here at the edge of No-Bob where the road gets narrow and buggies can't pass easily. Breathing in the smell of the pine trees, poplars, and cypresses, taking in such beauty, you feel goodness. You don't want to be mean.
    "Sure is pretty," I say, looking around, changing our line of talk.
    I want to think that Pappy could love or at least that he could learn how to love. Maybe Mr. Frank or Miss Irene could teach him or maybe I could. But some folks don't have the learning in them. Some folks won't let their hearts open up for learning. That's what I've learned. I've learned that some people