[MUSIC]
Chapter one.
Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.
Baroom, baroom, baroom.
Baripety, baripety, baripety, baripety.
Good, his dad had the pickup going.
He could get up now.
Jess slid out of bed and
into his overalls.
He didn't worry about a shirt
because once he began running,
he would be hot as popping grease
even if the morning air was chill, or
shoes because the bottoms of his feet were
by now as tough as his worn-out sneakers.
Where are you going Jess?
May Belle lifted herself up sleepily
from the double bed where she and
Joyce Ann slept.
Shh, he warned.
The walls were thin.
Momma would be as mad as flies in a fruit
jar if they woke her up this time of day.
He patted May Belle's hair and yanked
the twisted sheet up to her small chin.
Just over the cow field, he whispered.
May Belle smiled and
snuggled down under the sheet.
Gonna run?
Maybe.
Of course, he was going to run.
He had gotten up early every
day all summer to run.
He figured if he worked at it,
and Lord had he worked,
he could be the fastest runner in
the fifth grade when school opened up.
He had to be the fastest,
not one of the fastest or
next to the fastest, but the fastest.
The very best.
He tiptoed out of the house.
The place was so rattly that it screeched
whenever you put your foot down.
But Jess had found that if you tiptoed,
it gave only a low moan, and he could
usually get outdoors without waking
Momma or Ellie or Brenda or Joyce Ann.
May Belle was another matter.
She was going on seven, and she
worshiped him, which was okay sometimes.
When you are the only boy
smashed between four sisters and
the older two had despised you ever since
you stopped letting them dress you up and
wheel you around in their
rusty old doll carriage, and
the littlest one cried if you
looked at her cross eyed.
It was nice to have
somebody who worshiped you.
Even if it got unhandy sometimes.
He began to trod across the yard.
His breath was coming out in little puffs,
cold for August, but it was early yet.
By noon time, when his mom would have
him out working, it would be hot enough.
Miss Bessie stared at him sleepily
as he climbed across the scrap heap,
over the fence and into the cow field.
Moo, she said, looking for
all the world like another May Belle
with her big, brown droopy eyes.
Hey, Miss Bessie, Jess said soothingly,
just go on back to sleep.
Miss Bessie strolled over to a greenish
patch, most of the field was brown and
dry, and yanked up a mouthful.
That a girl, just eat your breakfast,
don't pay me no mind.
He always started at the northwest
corner of the field,
crouched over like the runners he
had seen on Wide World of Sports.
Bang, he said and
took off flying around the cow field.
Ms. Bessie strolled toward the center,
still following him with her droopy eyes,
chewing slowly.
She didn't look very smart even for
a cow, but
she was plenty bright enough
to get out of Jess's way.
His straw colored hair flapped hard
against his forehead, and his arms and
legs flew out every which way.
He had never learned to run properly, but
he was long legged for a ten-year-old and
no one had more grit than he.
Lark Creek Elementary was short on
everything, especially athletic equipment,
so all the balls went to the upper
grades at recess time after lunch.
Even if the fifth graders started out the
period with a ball, it was sure to be in
the hands of a sixth or seventh
grader before the hour was half over.
The older boys always took the dry
center of the upper field for
their ball games, while the girls claimed
the small top section for hopscotch and
jump rope and hanging around talking.
So the lower grade boys had
started this running thing.
They would all line up on
the far side of the lower field,
where it was either muddy or
deep, crusty ruts.
Earl Watson, who was no good at running
but had a big mouth, would yell, bang, and
they'd race to a line they'd
toed across at the other end.
One time last year, Jesse had won,
not just the first heat, but
the whole shebang.
Only once.
But it had put into his mouth a taste for
winning.
Ever since he'd been in first grade,
he'd been that crazy little
kid that draws all the time.
But one day, April the 22nd,
a drizzly Monday it had been,
he ran ahead of them all.
The red mud slooching up through
the holes in the bottom of his sneakers.
For the rest of that day and until after
lunch on the next, he had been the fastest
kid in the third, fourth, and
fifth grades, and he only a fourth grader.
On Tuesday,
Wayne Pettis had won again as usual, but
this year,
Wayne Pettis would be in the sixth grade.
He'd play football until Christmas and
baseball until June with
the rest of the big guys.
Anybody had a chance to be the fastest
runner, and by Miss Bessie,
this year it was going to be
Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr..
Jess pumped his arms harder and
bent his head for the distant fence.
He could hear the third
grade boys screaming him on.
They would follow him around
like a country music star, and
May Belle would pop her buttons.
Her brother was the fastest, the best.
That ought to give the rest of the first
grade de something to chew their cuds on.
Even his dad would be proud.
Jess rounded the corner.
He couldn't keep going quite so fast,
but he continued running for a while.
It would build him up.
May Belle would tell daddy, so it wouldn't
look as though he, Jess, was a bragger.
Maybe dad would be so proud, he'd forget
all about how tired he was from the long
drive back and forth to Washington and
the digging and hauling all day.
He would get right down on the floor and
wrestle, the way they used to.
Old dad would be surprised at how strong
he'd gotten in the last couple of years.
His body was begging him to quit,
but Jess pushed it on.
He had to let that puny chest
of his know who was boss.
Jess, it was May Belle yelling from
the other side of the scrap heap.
Momma says you gotta come in and eat now.
Leave the milking til later.
Crud.
He'd run too long.
Now everyone would know he'd been out and
start in on him.
Yeah, okay.
He turned, still running and
headed for the scrap heap.
Without breaking his rhythm, he climbed
over the fence, scrambled across the scrap
heap, thumped May Belle in the head,
ow, and trotted on to the house.
Well, look at the big Olympic star, said
Ellie, banging two cups onto the table so
that the strong black coffee sloshed out,
sweating like a knock-kneed mule.
Jess pushed his damp hair out of his
face and plunked down on a wooden bench.
He dumped two spoonfuls
of sugar into his cup and
slurped to keep the hot coffee
from scalding his mouth.
Ooh, Momma, he stinks.
Brenda pinched her nose with
her pinky crooked delicately.
Make him wash.
Get over here to the sink and
wash yourself,
his mother said without raising her
eyes from the stove, and step on it.
These grits are scorched in
the bottom of the pot already.
Momma, not again, Brenda whined.
Lord, he was tired.
There wasn't a muscle in
his body that didn't ache.
You heard what Momma said.
Ellie yelled at his back.
I can't stand it, Momma.
Brenda, again, make him get his
smelly self off this bench.
Jess put his cheek down on
the bare wood of the tabletop.
Jesse!
His mother was looking now,
and put on a shirt.
Yes'm.
He dragged himself to the sink.
The water he flipped on his face and
up his arms pricked like ice.
His hot skin crawled under the cold drops.
May Belle was standing in
the kitchen door watching him.
Get me a shirt, May Belle?
She looked as if her mouth was set to say
no, but instead she said, you shouldn't
ought to beat me in the head, and
went off obediently to fetch his t-shirt.
Good old May Belle.
Joyce Ann would have been screaming yet
from that little tap.
Four-year-olds were a pure pain.
I got plenty of chores need
doing around here this morning,
his mother announced as they were
finishing the grits and red gravy.
His mother was from Georgia and
still cooked like it.
Momma, Ellie and
Brenda squawked in concert.
Those girls could get out of work
faster than grasshoppers could slip
through your fingers.
Momma, you promised me and Brenda we could
go to Millsburg for school shopping.
You ain't got no money for
school shopping.
Momma, we're just going to look around.
Lord, he wished Brenda
would stop whining so.
Christmas!
You don't want us to have no fun at all.
Any fun Ellie corrected her primly.
Shut up.
Ellie ignored her.
Miss Timmons is coming by to pick us up.
I told Lolly Sunday you said it was okay.
I feel dumb calling her and
saying you changed your mind.
All right, but
I ain't got no money to give you.
Any money,
something whispered inside Jesse's head.
I know, Momma, we'll just take the $5
Daddy promised us, no more than that.
What $5?
Mama, you remember?
Ellie's voice was sweeter
than a melted Mars bar.
Daddy said last week, we girls were going
to have to have something for school.
Take it,
his mother said angrily reaching for
her cracked vinyl purse on
the shelf above the stove.
She counted out five wrinkled bills.
Mama, Brenda was starting again.
Can't we have just one more,
so it'll be three each.
No.
Mama, you can't buy nothing for 250,
just one little pack of
notebook papers gone up to.
No!
Ellie got up noisily and
began to clear the table.
Your turn to wash Brenda, she said loudly.
Ow Ellie.
Ellie jabbed her with a spoon.
Jesse saw that look.
Brenda shut up her whine halfway out
of her rose luster lipstick mouth.
She wasn't as smart as Ellie, but
even she knew not to push Momma too far,
which left Jesse to do the work as usual.
Momma never sent the babies out to help,
although if he worked at right,
he could usually get
May Belle to do something.
He put his head down on the table.
The running had done him in this morning.
Through his top ear came the sound
of the Timmons' old Buick.
Wants oil, his dad would say, and the
happy buzz of voices outside the screen
door as Ellie and Brenda squashed
in among the seven Timmons.
All right, Jesse,
get your lazy self off that bench.
Miss Bessie's bag is probably
dragging ground by now and
you still got beans to pick.
Lazy, he was the lazy one.
He gave his poor, dead weight of a head
one minute more on the table top.
Jesse, okay, Mama, I'm going.
It was May Belle who came to tell him in
the bean patch that people were moving
into the old Perkins place
down on the next farm.
Jesse wiped his hair out of his eyes and
squinted.
Sure enough, a U-Haul was parked right by
the door, one of those big jointed ones.
These people had a lot of junk,
but they wouldn't last.
The Perkins place was one of those ratty
old country houses you moved into because
you had no decent place to go and
moved out of as quickly as you could.
He thought later how peculiar it was
that here was probably the biggest
thing in his life.
And he had shrugged it off as nothing.
The flies were buzzing around
his sweating face and shoulders.
He dropped the beans into the bucket and
swatted with both hands.
Get me my shirt, May Belle?
The flies were more
important than any U-Haul.
May Belle jogged to the end of the row and
picked up his t-shirt from where
it had been discarded earlier.
She walked back holding it with two
fingers way out in front of her.
Ooh, it stinks, she said,
just as Brenda would have.
Shut up, he said, and
grabbed the shirt away from her.
