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

can learn and love both, and some people can't, and Pappy might very well be one of the can'ts.
    Still, I feel hope for him.
    We pass three goats. Pappy takes one of them and rubs snuff in its snout, then calls out to the farmer in the field and
says, "Looka here." The farmer sees his goat snuffing and snorting and pawing at the ground.

    "What's wrong with him?" the farmer asks.
    "He's got a bad case of black snout," Pappy says.
    "What's that?" the farmer asks.
    "It's a catching sickness, and if you don't get rid of this one, the other two will get it for sure."
    Pappy offers his services, saying for a peck of fruit wine or brandy he'll slaughter the goat himself, even dispose of him for the farmer. The farmer runs home and comes back with a peck of peach brandy, and Pappy leads the snuffing, snorting goat away.
    "Come on, Addy Cakes," he says, chuckling to himself. "Better times coming."
    Pappy used to call me Addy Cakes.
Addy Cake, Addy Cake, baker man,
he'd sing.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it and prick it and mark it with an
A.
Put it in the oven for Addy and me!
    What else can I do but follow Pappy and the goat? This is not stealing because the farmer agreed. Tricking him is not the same as stealing. I say this to myself over and over, as though I am trying to talk myself into something.
    When we get back home with the goat, there is no Momma
to hail us at the gate. From where I stand now, I see my house for what it is—a one-room frame hut leaning in a field of red clay.

    "Where's Momma?"
    "I was fixin' to ask you the same," Pappy says.
    "She went to Texas to look for you."
    He looks at me in a queer way as he thinks on this, then he laughs and laughs, though I don't know why.
    "Did you go to Texas?" I ask.
    "Sure I did," he says, not looking me in the eye.
    Inside, the place does not look the same. We never did have much, no iron pot or fancy kitchen fireplace. No, here we cooked in a wash pot out in the yard over a fire with stakes on each side, with an iron bar across them to hang pots on. But Momma and I kept it clean and tidy when we lived here together.
    Now it is a stale, sodden place, reeking of mud and garbage. The air is heavy with the smell of man sweat, whiskey, wet leather, and animal manure—cow and chicken both.
    It's Pappy's place now. Pappy's old shirts, worn boots, empty bottles, and ripped breeches are on the floor, shoved aside in the corners. Rusted knives, bits of broken dishes, and chicken bones stick to the dirt floor.
    It's winter now and he keeps the windows covered with wooden shutters. The flour sacks Momma put up for curtains are all tattered and half down. There are still two beds, but I don't know what happened to the table and chairs, and I know enough not to ask. The wind blows through the unfinished chinks in the sides of the house.

    A barrel marked u.s. sits in one of the corners of the room. I break into it and see that it is filled with cornmeal. I set out to make cornbread. Pappy sees what I've done.
    "How could you do such a thing?" he says. "That barrel of food wasn't meant for No-Bob, but for all of Smith County."
    I look at him. He has half a grin starting to run across his mouth.
    "That barrel was marked," I say. "It said 'U.S.,' so
us
commenced to eat from it."
    Oh but Pappy sure likes this one. He repeats what I said himself. He slaps his leg. He says it over and over and he laughs and laughs as he slits the goat's neck.
    That night, we feed all the O'Donnells who come by. Pappy says we are feasting to celebrate my homecoming. He tells everybody he sees about the cornmeal in the barrel marked u.s. He says, "See? What'd I tell you? She's one of our own."
    I am proud that my pappy is so proud. We sit on the dirt floor eating goat meat, all around the open-pit fire inside a circle of stones.

    Pappy brings out his fiddle and one of my uncles brings out his washboard and they play and we get up and dance the heel-and-toe and the forward-and-back, whirling