Crunching Gravel by Robert Louis Peters Page B

boat. Albert threw a mesh bag over him and drew it tight against the boat. While Rosa and I held the bag, Albert rammed a gaff at the skull, piercing it. The stunned fish thrashed for several minutes and then died.
    My uncle, I was later told, dismissed the catch as paltry and berated Albert for taking the day off without his permission: He should have cultivated corn. His mother refused to cook the fish, even after Albert cleaned it. He gave most of the meat, wrapped neatly in newspaper, to my dad, keeping a steak for himself He shellacked the head, mounted it on a pine board, and hung it near his bed.
    The next morning he found the mounted head crushed flat on its board. His brother Jim had smashed it with a hammer. An altercation ensued. From the start, Albert had the better of Jim—until their mother appeared and started to beat Albert with a stick. Jim swung an axe at Albert, who grabbed it and sent it flying into the grass. Jim retreated to his room, locking himself in. Kate screamed, berating Albert, claiming he had cut her. She seemed to want to drive him to more violence, to the suicide he had threatened on more than one occasion.
    Albert entered the house, grabbed a .22 rifle, and declared he would kill himself Near the road, a few feet from his car, he died, a single clean hole visible behind his ear.
    Hysterical, Kate sent my cousin Frenchy for my dad—Uncle Pete was in town. Albert appeared to be sleeping on his side with his knees drawn up. The gun was still in his hand, his finger on the trigger. The bullet hole seemed no larger than a hornet’s bite. My mother stayed with Kate, who was screaming that it was all Albert’s fault. Dad drove to town for the sheriff and the undertaker.
    The funeral, two days later, was at Gaffney’s. A fundamentalist preacher said a few words, but nothing personal, since he had seen Albert only twice in his life and my aunt and uncle were not members of his flock.
    Some deaths jolt survivors into something like enlightenment over the cryptic and tragic nature of life. Albert’s death served that function. I stand now in memory at the site, the luxuriant grass crushed where his body lay. I visit his grave. There are no answers.
Garden and Field
    The survival equation was clear: The harder we worked during the brief growing season, about ninety days, the better supplied with food we’d be for winter. Once the potatoes blossomed and the corn grew silk, the soil required mounding. When hilled, potatoes reproduced more prolifically, and corn plants better withstood wind and rain. Cheap canvas gloves protected our hands. Against sunburn, we wore straw hats.
    We hoed for entire mornings or afternoons, stopping only long enough for swigs of ice-cold water from mason jars. We took pride in our neat rows, knowing Dad would be pleased.
    By early July, potato bugs appeared. For picking these one by one, Dad paid us a nickel a quart. The bugs spit orange juice and stank. We filled quart jars, which we dumped into a pail of kerosene to kill the bugs. We also examined the undersides of leaves for deposits of orange eggs. We either picked the infested leaves and crushed them or rubbed the sides of the leaf together into an orange mush.
    The vegetable garden required more weeding and hoeing than the fields. Radishes matured first, followed by string beans and peas. We picked the ripe vegetables and helped my mother can them. Beets—not one of our favorites—and carrots matured late. These we buried in sand under the living room floor. When the sweet corn was ready, we ate it at numerous meals and spent hours shucking and slicing kernels for canning. Dad made a special rack for the jars so we could process a whole wash boiler at a time. By September, the cellar shelves were crammed with jars. The cobs we fed to the pigs.
    Of all the crops, strawberries and rhubarb were the most resistant to insects and diseases. We always had luck with strawberries, and we devoured