truth, I am too struck with horror to talk.
On the ride upstate I am handcuffed to the juvenile court officer so I cannot make a break for it, but at last I get time to think and I realise that it is not as bad as it looks. I am supposed to work for a dame named Mrs. Parry and get chow, clothes and Prevailering Wages. I figure it takes maybe a month for her to break me in on the cow racket or even longer if I play dumb. During the month I get a few bucks, a set of threads and take it easy and by then I figure you will have everything straightened out and I can get back to my regular occupation, only more careful this time. Experience is the best teacher, Mr. Marino, as I am sure you know.
Well, we arrive at this town Chiunga Forks and I swear to God I never saw such a creepy place. You wouldn't believe it. The main drag is all of four blocks long and the stores and houses are from wood. I expect to see Gary Cooper stalking down the street with a scowl on his puss and his hands on his guns looking for the bad guys. Four hours from the Third Ward in a beat-up '48 police department Buick—you wouldn't believe it.
We park in front of a hash house, characters in rubber boots gawk at us, the court officer takes off the cuffs and gabs with the driver but does not lose sight of me. While we are waiting for this Mrs. Parry to keep the date I study the bank building across the street and develop some ideas which will interest you, Mr. Marino, but which I will not go into right now.
All of a sudden there is a hassle on the sidewalk.
A big woman with grey hair and a built like Tony Galento is kicking a little guy who looks like T.B. Louis the Book, who I guess you know, but not so muscular and wearing overalls. She is kicking him right in the keister, five- six times. Each time I shudder, and so maybe does the bank building across the street.
'Shoot my, dawg, will you!' she yells at the character. 'I said I'd kick your butt from here to Scranton when I caught up with you, Dud Wingle!'
'Leave me be!' he squawks, trying to pry her hands off his shoulders.
'He was chasin' deer! He was chasin' deer!'
Thud—thud—thud. 'I don't keer if he was chasin' deer, panthers or butterflies.' Thud. 'He was my dawg and you shot him!' Thud. She was drawing quite a crowd. The characters in rubber boots are forgetting all about us to stare at her and him.
Up comes a flatfoot who I later learn is the entire manpower of Chiunga Forks' lousiest; he says to the big woman: 'Now, Ella' a few times, and she finally stops booting the little character and lets him go. 'What do you want, Henry?' she growls at the flatfoot and he asks weakly: 'Silver Bell dropped her calf yet?'
The little character is limping away rubbing himself. The big broad watches him regretfully and says to the flatfoot: 'Yesterday, Henry. Now if you'll excuse me I have to look for my new hired boy from the city. I guess that's him over there.'
She strolls over to us and yanks open the Buick's door, almost taking it off the hinges. 'I'm Mrs. Ella Parry,' she says to me, sticking out her hand. 'You must be the Cornaro boy the Probation Association people wired me about.'
I shake hands and say, 'Yes, ma'am.'
The officer turns me over grinning like a skunk eating beans.
I figure Mrs. Parry lives in one of the wood houses in Chiunga Forks, but no. We climb into a this-year Willys truck and take off for the hills. I do not have much to say to this lady wrestler but wish I had somebody smuggle me a rod to kind of even things a little between her and me.
With that built she could break me in half by accident. I try to get in good with her by offering to customize her truck. 'I could strip off the bumpers and put on a couple of foglights, maybe new fenders with a little trim to them,' I say, 'and it wouldn't cost you a dime. Even out here there has got to be some parts place where a person can heist what he needs.'
'Quiet, Bub,' she says all of a sudden, and shields her eyes peering down a side road where a car is standing in front of a shack. 'I swear,'
she says, 'that looks like Dud Wingle's Ford in front of Miz' Sigafoos'
place.' She keeps her neck twisting around to study it until it is out of sight. And she looks worried.
I figure it is not a good time to talk and anyway maybe she has notions about customizing and does not approve of it.
'What,' she says, 'would Dud Wingle want with Miz' Sigafoos?'
'I don't know, ma'am,' I say. 'Wasn't he the gentleman you was kicking from here to Scranton?'
'Shucks, Bub, that was just a figger of speech. If I'd of wanted to kick him from here to Scranton I'd of done it. Dud and Jim and Ab and Sime think they got a right to shoot your dog if he chases the deer. I'm a peaceable woman or I'd have the law on them for shootin' Grip. But maybe I did kind of lose my temper.' She looked worrieder yet.
'Is something wrong, ma'am?' I ask. You never can tell, but a lot of old dames talk to me like I was their uncle; to tell you the truth this is my biggest problem in a cathouse. It must be because I am a kind of thoughtful guy and it shows.
Mrs. Parry is no exception. She says to me: 'You don't know the folks up here yet, Bub, so you don't know about Miz' Sigafoos. I'm old English stock so I don't hold with their foolishness, but——' And here she looked real worried. 'Miz' Sigafoos is what they call a hex doctor.'
'What's that, ma'am?'
'Just a lot of foolishness. Don't you pay any attention,' she says, and then she has to concentrate on the driving. We are turning off the two-lane state highway and going up, up, up into the hills, off a blacktop road, off a gravel road, off a dirt road. No people. No houses. Fences and cows or maybe horses, I can't tell for sure. Finally we are at her place, which is from wood and in two buildings. I start automatically for the building that is clean, new- painted, big and expensive.
'Hold on, Bub,' she says. 'No need to head for the barn first thing. Let's get you settled in the house first and then there'll be a plenty of work for you.'
I do a double take and see that the big, clean, expensive building is the barn. The little, cheap, rundown place is the house. I say to myself:
'Tough Tony, you're gonna pray tonight that Mr. Marino don't forget to tell the judge you're a personal friend of his and get you out of this,'
But that night I do not pray. I am too tired. After throwing sacks of scratch feed and laying mash around, I run the baling machine and I turn the oats in the loft and I pump water until my back is aching jello and then I go hiking out to the woodlot and chop down trees and cut them up with a chain saw. It is surprising how fast I learn and how willing I am when I remember what Mrs. Parry did to Dud Wingle.
I barely get to sleep it seems like when Mrs. Parry is yanking the covers off me laughing and I see through the window that the sky is getting a little light. 'Time to rise, Bub,' she bawls. 'Breakfast on the table.' She strides to the window and flexes her muscles, breathing deep. 'It's going to be a fine day. I can tell when an animal's sick to death, and I can tell when it's going to be fine all day. Rise and shine, Bub. We have a lot of work ahead. I was kind of easy on you yesterday seeing you was new here, so we got a bit behindhand.'
I eye the bulging muscles and say 'Yes, ma'am.'
She serves a good breakfast, I have to admit. Usually I just have some coffee around eleven when I wake up and maybe a meatball sandwich around four, but the country air gives you an appetite like I always heard. Maybe I didn't tell you there was just the two of us. Her husband kicked off a couple years ago. She gave one of her boys half the farm because she says she don't believe in letting them hang around without a chance to make some money and get married until you die. The other boy, nineteen, got drafted two months ago and since then she is running the place on her own hook because for some reason or other it is hard to get people to work on a farm. She says she does not understand this and I do not enlighten her.
First thing after breakfast she tells me to make four crates from lumber in the toolshed, go to the duckpond and put the four Muscovy ducks in the crates so she can take them to town and sell them. She has been meaning to sell the Muscovy ducks for some time since the word has been getting around that she was pro-communist for having such a breed of ducks when there were plenty of good American ducks she could of raised. 'Though,' she says, 'in my opinion the Walterses ought to sell off their Peking ducks too because the Chinese are just as bad as the Roossians.'
I make the crates which is easy and I go to the duck-pool. There are four ducks there but they are not swimming; they have sunk. I go and tell Mrs. Parry and she looks at me like I was crazy.
