Some Sweet Day by Bryan Woolley Page B

At night, he played dominoes with Mother and Gran, as he used to. But he never argued, never accused them of cheating. Used to, when he lost, he’d get up and stomp out of the house. Now winning and losing seemed the same to him. He went downtown once, on a Saturday, when all his friends would be there. But he didn’t stay long, and when he returned, he had Belinda pull a kitchen chair up to the living room window that faced the little empty pasture between the house and the school grounds. He sat down, and with his two hands lifted his legs, first one and then the other, and placed his feet on the window sill. He sat there all afternoon, smoking, never speaking, staring out. We crossed the room on tiptoes and whispered when we spoke at all.
    But on the morning of the livestock show he awakened me with the tip of his walking stick and asked me if I wanted to go.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œHurry, then. I want to see the cattle before the crowd gets there and the tent gets hot.”
    He was wearing his Army boots and khaki pants, but with a blue, short-sleeved work shirt with washed-in grease stains on it. I held his two black walking sticks while he lifted his legs into the car and tucked them under the steering wheel, and when I got in on the other side, he looked at me and grinned, for the first time, I think, since he came home. He lifted his hand, folded it into a fist, and struck his thigh.
    â€œThey’re getting better, by God!” he said. “They ain’t as heavy to lift now. Pretty soon, they can lift themselves, by God!”
    â€œWill we go back to the farm then?”
    â€œYou bet your bottom dollar.”
    He was still smiling as he backed the car slowly into the road, eased his foot from brake to clutch and shifted into low. “Fact is,” he said, “I been thinking I ought to go out there and take a look around the place. There’ll probably be a lot of fixing up to do after that cropper gets his crops in and gets out. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow.”
    â€œCan I go with you?”
    â€œI reckon.”
    We parked in front of Dale’s Dry Goods, and Daddy motioned for me to bring his sticks around to his door. He lifted his legs over the running board, pulled himself up on the open door, and took the sticks. “Let’s go in here a minute,” he said.
    In the middle of the store, between the yard goods and the shoes, was a table full of straw hats. Daddy headed directly for it, leaned his sticks against the table, picked up a yellow hat just like the one he’d worn before he left for the Army, and put it on. He tugged the brim. “I guess I should have gotten a haircut first,” he said. “I might get it too big.”
    â€œIt looks fine, Will,” said Mr. Dale, coming up from behind a pile of shoe boxes. “What size is it?”
    â€œSeven and an eighth.”
    Mr. Dale shook his head and picked up another hat. “This one’s for you,” he said. “You always wore a seven, and you probably do now. I doubt if the Army put any weight on your head.”
    Daddy didn’t respond to Mr. Dale’s grin. “I reckon you’re right,” he said. “You got one for the boy, too?”
    â€œYessir. We just got a shipment of cowboy hats in, chin strings and little sheriff’s badges on them. They’re still in the stockroom, but I’ll get one for you, young man.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I’ll just take one like Daddy’s, if you’ve got it.”
    Daddy grinned and tousled my hair. “This boy ain’t no cowboy, Mr. Dale,” he said. “He’s a farmer like his daddy.”
    We left the car at Dale’s and headed for the big circus tent that had been raised on the vacant lot behind Pearly White’s blacksmith shop. The cool breeze tugged at the flat brims of our new hats and threatened to carry them away, since they weren’t yet molded to our heads. Daddy