Up front, the driver of the old Ford truck with Kentucky license plates was shouting at the driver of the hog truck with Arkansas license plates. Carleton laughed to see, both these guys had fat bellies. Their driver had a cut eye. Carleton checked to see was anybody dead up front, lying in the road in the rain, sometimes you saw newspaper photos like that, and he'd seen one of a Negro man lying flat on his back in some place in Mississippi and white men banded around the body grinning and waving at the camera, and it made you sick-feeling but excited too, but the driver's kid brother, a smart-ass bastard who rode up front sucking Colas like a baby at a teat, was walking around unharmed, Carleton was disappointed to see. This kid started saying to Carleton, like Carleton had come to accuse him, “It wasn't our fault! It was that sonuvabitch's fault! He come around the turn in the fuckin middle of the road, ask Franklin, go ask him, don't look at me, it ain't none of our fault.” Carleton pushed the kid aside. He was taller than this kid, and taller than fatass Franklin, and the less friendly he was with them, the more they were respectful of him, and maybe scared. For they seemed to see something in Carleton Walpole's face. The other driver was cursing at Franklin. He was a squat fattish man with a bald head and eyes like suet and he talked funny like there was mush in his mouth. The cab of his truck was smashed inward but the rear looked unharmed. Too bad, Carleton was thinking, the hogs hadn't got loose. Not a one of them had got loose. Christ he'd have liked to see that, hogs piling out of a broke truck and landing hard on their delicate-looking hooves (that were not delicate in fact but hard and treacherous as a horse's hooves) and squealing in crazed outrage as a hog will do then running off into the countryside. And some of those hogs weighing two hundred pounds which was a nice lot of hog. Carleton smiled to think of how that would've been, hogs running away squealing not taken to the slaughterhouse where the poor beasts were awaited. The hog driver was cursing and whining and half-sobbing holding his belly with his elbows like a pregnant woman clutching herself. This driver was alone with his truck: they could gang up on him, and he knew it, and there was the thrill of anticipation that they might, but it would maybe be a mistake, they were in Arkansas and not Kentucky and the local law enforcement was Arkansas, and you had to know it, you had to acknowledge it. So nothing would come of the possibility like a match that didn't get lit and dropped into hay. Not this time.
Carleton saw with satisfaction that the hog truck's motor was steaming beneath the wrecked hood, the left front fender twisted against the tire so you'd need a corkscrew to untwist it. How bad off their truck was nobody could see since it was lying on its side like a stunned beetle in the ditch.
The last time they'd had trouble like this, it had been raining too: outside Owensboro, Kentucky. Whenever there was an accident or motor trouble everyone was disgusted and angry and threatening to quit but a few hours later they forgot. It was hard to remember anything overnight. And if you moved on, after a few hours on the road you forgot what happened behind you in some other county or state or time. Franklin was promising now he'd make the purchase of a new truck, if they could get to Texarkana he would get the money by wire he was saying, louder and more sincere than he'd made the promise last time, and Carleton shook his head, Jesus! you wanted to believe him even if you knew better.
There was a philosophy that said: The more accidents you had, the less in store for you.
Like the philosophy credited to Jack Dempsey: The more punches a man takes, the closer he is to the end. Because a man has only a fixed number of punches he can take in his lifetime.
“Pa? Momma wants you.”
It was Sharleen pulling at his arm. Carleton went with her to the back of the truck, worried now. What about Pearl? But there was Pearl squatting at the side of the road, on her haunches so she looked like something ready to spring, even with that watermelon belly. An older woman she was friends with was holding her arm. Women's faces lifting to his like this, Carleton steeled himself for reproach. Goddamn, he wasn't going to be blamed for this was he? This and every other goddamned thing? Hadn't never wanted to marry. Not anybody. Hadn't never wanted to be anybody's daddy how the fuck did all this happen?
“Honey, you all right? I thought—I saw you—you were lookin all right.” Carleton didn't want to show any anxious concern for his wife in front of the other women gaping at him.
“Hell of a lot you care.”
Pearl spoke sullenly. Her face was a pale pretty moon-face: or would've been pretty if it wasn't that bulldog look Carleton hated. When he wasn't standing in front of her, Carleton could recall how pretty she'd been, and not that long ago. Pregnant with Sharleen, and her skin rosy like a peach. And she'd been loving with him then, even with her belly starting to swell. Not like now.
Pearl was younger than Carleton by three years. Fifteen when they'd gotten married, and Carleton had been eighteen. She'd been shy of him, and shivery in love if just he touched her sometimes, or rubbed his stubbly jaw against her skin. He'd been crazy for her too, he seemed to remember. Whoever he'd been.
Strange how Carleton couldn't see the change in Pearl day following day. A pregnant woman, her belly swelling up. Until by the eighth and ninth month it's a size you'd need a wheelbarrow practically to transport. How their legs supported them, Carleton was stymied to think. Made him sickish and faint to think. Where Pearl Brody had been a hard-breasted hard-assed little girl he'd liked to wrestle with, the two of them shrieking and panting, there was now this sallow-faced sullen woman with hair she never washed, and her underarms stale and sour, body soft as a rotted watermelon and a mouth that was set to jeering.
“Hell of a lot you care.” It was like Pearl to say things twice, the second time with some emphasis meaning he hadn't comprehended it the first time. Trying to make him look stupid before others.
Before Carleton could mumble he was sorry, or better yet tell Pearl to shut her mouth, there she was pushing past him—“Bastard just takes our money, don't give a damn if he kills us.” She was on her way to yell at Franklin, a look in her eyes wet and shining like gasoline. “You men ought to do something, what the hell's wrong with you? All you do is drink, get drunk.”
Drunk?—Carleton hadn't had a drink that day.
Pearl was a head shorter than Carleton and her lower body was swollen to twice its size, but damn if he didn't have to walk fast to keep up with her. Damn!—Carleton was embarrassed of her, his young wife, carrying on like this in public. Lately Pearl was flying into rages at the least provocation. Sharleen, who was five, had sometimes to plead with her—“Mamma? Mamma no.” Pearl was wearing shapeless bib overalls some fat woman friend had given her, and over top of these a pink cotton smock printed with flamingos that would have been pretty except it was soiled, and on her feet frayed tennis shoes. She was furious, glowing hot. She cast off Carleton's hand on her left, and on her right little Mike who was whining and sniveling for her. “You men don't give a damn! Call yourselves men! Cowards!” Pushing her way through a band of observers, Pearl clambered up to Franklin, grabbed his arm, and continued to yell in a high-pitched quavering voice: “Why in hell don't you look where you're going? Who gave you a license to drive? You let my husband drive and pay him, he's better than you any day. ‘Carleton Walpole'—he's a better driver than you. And you're cheatin us, too. What about my baby? Where'm I gonna have my baby?” Franklin tried to appease the indignant woman, you could see he was frightened of her, and the blood trickling down from his cut eyebrow made him appear more frightened; and Franklin's kid brother trying to intervene, and Pearl threw off their hands with a look of contempt, and turned to the Arkansas man, the hog driver, standing there in the middle of the glass-strewn road gaping at her—“You! You hit us on purpose! Trying to kill us! I'm gonna have you arrested! What about my baby? Look here, you bastard,” Pearl was pleading now, lifting the pink smock to show her pregnant belly, “what about this? Think I got this on purpose? Not some man? One of you's fault? Fuck you all lookin at me, thinking you got a right to kill us like ve
rmin.”
Other women joined in. The fat woman friend of Pearl's put her arm protectively around Pearl's shoulders and yelled at Franklin and his brother. When women began yelling like that, there was nothing to do but back off, exchange glances with other men, smile, try not to laugh out loud. 'Cause that only combusts them more. Any public display of female rage was exciting and scary: it was comical, but you had to admire it, too. A man flying off the handle like that, he'd be shamed, but a woman like Pearl, and almost-pretty with her widened blue eyes like a startled doll's, flailing her hands about like that, you felt different. Still, Carleton felt the sting, being called a coward, though he knew for damned sure he was no coward, and Pearl would regret her accusation later, when they were alone. For now, Carleton wasn't going to intervene. Pearl was winding down, another woman was yelling, louder. Louder and uglier. The mood of the crowd was becoming festive. Carleton smelled fresh-opened whiskey. And there was his little girl Sharleen nudging his knee—“Pa? Pa, look.” Sharleen was proud of a bump on her forehead the size of a crab apple. She took her father's stained fingers to feel it, and Carleton teased, “Know what that is, sweetie? A billy goat horn coming out.” Sharleen giggled, “Is not.” A little-girl friend of Sharleen's felt Sharleen's bump and showed her a flame-like rash on her own neck, that was like some rashes Carleton had on his neck, and on his sides, bad as poison ivy but it was some insects, or maybe pesticides, itched like hell. “Don't you go touchin that,” Carleton scolded Sharleen, but she didn't listen, running off with her friends squealing bad as the hogs. Too many kids in the truck, his own and the others' and the shock of it was, damned if you could tell them apart sometimes. Especially the small ones like little Mike runny-nosed and sniveling for his Momma all the time.
Hadn't wanted to be anybody's daddy how the fuck did all this happen? That was not true of course. Carleton Walpole was crazy about his kids, and his wife. All a man has is his family, when you get right down to it.
Carleton spat. His mouth was dried out from the tobacco he'd been chewing. Christ, he was bored!
Drifted to the side of the road where some guys were passing a flask of home brew. They included him, and he thanked them. These were men who liked Carleton Walpole, and he liked them. They were his age mostly. They were young fathers, too. They had his young-old face. His ropey-muscled arms, and fair skin that burnt faster than it tanned, and his bad teeth, that were mossy-green and crooked. They had his quick laugh, and his hopeful way of glancing up, squinting, to see what was coming next. Some of these guys, “Red” from Cumberland, for instance, were alone on the truck, they'd left their families back home. Like Carleton, Red was working to pay off debts. Not that Carleton didn't have money saved, too: his mother had told him, always have a few dollars in the bank no matter what. And so Carleton had, forty-three dollars that Pearl knew nothing of, and would not know of, though maybe when they got back he'd buy her a little present from it, her and the baby, to surprise her as sometimes he did. Red was saying he sent money home to his family, and he missed them. When they'd been drinking together once Red had confided in Carleton, he was eleven hundred fifteen dollars in debt to a Cumberland bank, and Carleton bit his lip not knowing what to say—he was only eight hundred some odd dollars in the hole, not that he was proud of such a fact but—well, it wasn't eleven hundred, that sum made you swallow hard. Of course, trouble is, Red and Carleton had to laugh, you can't pay off a debt more than a few dollars since you have got to eat, and your family has got to eat, right now. So Carleton and Red, they got along like brothers. Better than Carleton got along with his own brothers in fact. But like brothers they were cagey not to tread on each other's toes. Red respected Carleton who looked and behaved older. It had required a couple of weeks of groping around before they discovered the “facts” about each other. The way they pronounced their a's and i's, the way words slurred out into an extra syllable, turned out their father's families—Walpoles, Pickerings—were both from North England, the countryside around Newcastle—but a long time ago, neither could have said how long. And Pearl's people, Brodys, they were from Wigtownshire, that was in Scotland. Carleton didn't know or care much about these old places—“Have to figure people left for a good reason.”
Carleton was telling Red this was going to be his last season on the road. The money he owed was mostly to one of Pearl's uncles and that would be paid off, or nearly. Two wet springs in a row back in Breathitt County, wiping them out. Small farms, less than fifty acres. And the soil hilly, thin. He and Red were standing beneath a tall scrubby willow tree where the smell of hogs wasn't so bad. Inside the truck, you ceased smelling the truck; but when you climbed back in, it hit you. Like the camps they stayed in picking lettuce, onions, radishes. Carleton was chewing a plug of tobacco, and spat in the direction of the truck. “Yeah. I'm settling what I owe. Going back.”
They talked of going back. At the moment neither could have said which direction Kentucky was in, the sky was hazy and overcast like mucus so you couldn't see any sun to know which side it was slanting down on, that would be west. Anyway, on the road, the road's always curving so you get confused. What Carleton meant by Kentucky was just where he lived, a circumference of perhaps thirty miles at the most, though there was Hazard he'd been to a few times, and Pikeville. He didn't try to add up how long he and Pearl had hired out for farmwork, how many seasons. It was like cards in a deck: shuffled together, in no order. There was no point in trying to remember because there was nothing to remember. Like squatting at the edge of the truck watching the road roll out. Seeing where you'd been, not where you were going. There was a comfort in that. If you could live your life backward, Carleton thought, you wouldn't make so many mistakes.
Aloud he said to Red, “Ever thought how, like a mirror you could look in over your shoulder, you'd see where you were going, but backward? And not mess up.”
Red laughed, spitting tobacco juice. Whatever the hell Carleton Walpole was speaking of, he'd agree.
Red spoke of quitting, too. Going back to work construction. There was a dam going to be built, somewhere near Cumberland. Carleton was silent, jealous of Red: not the thought that Red would get a good job but the thought that Red believed he might, at least for the moment. Carleton himself had been hired for highway construction in east Kentucky but with that kind of work he was the only person in the family to work and they needed more money than that—in the fields his wife could work, and she'd used to have been a good picker, especially of difficult things like strawberries where you can't grab and clutch with a big hand, you need smaller fingers to avoid the leaves, and some places even kids could work: Sharleen who was five could make herself useful somehow. This was against the law in some states but nobody gave much of a damn. Local law enforcement did not. Very rarely did law intervene except if you got drunk and caused a ruckus in some local place which was dangerous anyway. Turned out, the sheriff 's men were guys looking like Carleton, same lean severe face and a look of being cheated, it was their bosses with the bald heads and fat faces like Herbert Hoover. Carleton sneered, and spat.
A cry went up: a tow truck had appeared. Carleton and Red went to watch. Carleton felt a stab of envy, Christ he'd have liked to own such a truck, and to drive it like that guy was driving like it was just something he did, a job. Like it wasn't anything all that unusual or special. Though you could see the driver knew he was important. Carleton caught this guy's eye as he backed the truck around, and a young kid jumped out of the cab to assist. Franklin was standing there wiping his hurt face with a rag and looking worried. Thank God, Pearl had shut up; the other women were quiet, too. Carleton was aware of kids playing in the drainage ditch but damned if he was going to look for his, if Pearl wasn't.
Carleton wished the tow-truck man would ask him to help. Invite him to ride into town with him. Carleton was good with his hands, good at repairing farm equipment. Not trucks or tractors but wagon wheels. Carleton, Sr., was a blacksmith and also did farm equipment repair. But there was
no money in it, you could rely on.
There came Pearl clutching at Carleton's sleeve, her face pinched. “Carleton, I don't feel right.”
Except she was poking at him, with her fists. Like trying to wake him. Carleton stared at her. She'd been crying, had she? He felt his underarms break out in a sweat. That damn rash up and down his sides like fire ants stinging. Was she going to have the baby here? So soon? Carleton wanted to protest it was early, wasn't it? Pearl had not gone to any doctor but had counted the months and this baby was not due until next month.
“Carleton, I told you I don't feel right.”
Carleton yelled, “ 'Melda, Lorene? Hey—Pearl's gonna need you.”
Carleton was holding Pearl, who'd begun to lose strength in her legs. She gave a sudden high scream like a kicked dog, and clutched at her belly. Contractions? Carleton knew what that meant. But it meant you had time, too. Last time, with Mike, Pearl had been in labor through a day and most of a night, Carleton hadn't been present and had been spared.
Now, women hurried to Pearl, to claim her. That animal glisten in their eyes a man found fearful to behold.
Carleton and Red backed off. White-faced, and needing a drink. There came Franklin bellying up to them, the cut on his face still fresh. “You, Walpole. She's having that baby right now, you and her are out. We can't wait for you. We got a contract, we're not waiting.”
When Carleton ignored him, Franklin said, appealing to the others, “If that woman dies it ain't my fault! I don't want no pregnant women on my truck! I don't want no nursing babies! I got troubles bad enough!”