Georgia Boy by Erskine Caldwell Page A

happens to the littlest one of them woodpeckers, or to my sycamore, you’ll wish you’d never seen a shirt-tail woodpecker.”
    During the day nobody minded the ’peckers much, because they were always busy flying off somewhere to get something to eat, or just resting, and if one of them did peck a little on the sycamore, the rest of them did not join in like they all did early every morning for two hours. My old man said he liked to listen to a lone woodpecker pecking, because it was like having company around all the time. Ma didn’t say much, except that she was going to have the sycamore chopped down if my old man didn’t do something about the rat-tat-tat that woke us up every morning before dawn.
    Then one morning a whole hour before daybreak we heard the worst clatter in the sycamore we’d ever heard before. It sounded as if forty or fifty people were banging on the side of the house with claw-hammers. Ma struck a match and looked at the clock on the mantel, and it was three o’clock. My old man got up and put on his shoes and pants and lit the lantern on the back porch. After that he went across the yard and called Handsome. Handsome always slept in the loft over the woodshed. Pa told him to get dressed and come out in the yard right away.
    “Them ’peckers won’t let me get a wink of sleep,” Pa told Handsome. “You come on around to the sycamore with me and help me quiet them down.”
    I got up and looked out the window. The sycamore was only about ten feet from the window, and in the lantern light I could see everything that was going on. Handsome came dragging his feet over the ground and yawning.”
    “Handsome,” Pa said, “we’ve just got to figure out some way to make them ’peckers quiet down.”
    “How you figure on going about it, Mr. Morris?” Handsome asked, leaning against the tree and yawning some more.
    “Hitch yourself up there and maybe that’ll stop it,” Pa told him.
    “What you mean, Mr. Morris? Go up that sycamore?”
    “Of course,” Pa said. “Shin yourself up there right away. I want to get a lot more sleep before the night’s over.”
    Handsome stood back and peered in the darkness towards the top of the tree. The lantern light shone only halfway up, and nobody could see all the way to where the ’peckers were. We could hear the ’peckers up there rapping on the dead wood, and once in a while some big chips and splinters showered down.
    “I don’t know as how I can,” Handsome said protestingly. “I ain’t never learned how to climb a tree that didn’t have no limbs at all on it. I’d slip backward a heap faster than I could go forward. There wouldn’t be no limbs to clutch to.”
    “Never mind that,” Pa said. “When you get halfway up you can get a toe-hold in the woodpecker holes, and it’ll be easier than eating pie.”
    My old man gave Handsome a shove towards the sycamore. Handsome put his arms around the trunk and measured the bigness of it. He hugged it for a minute, and then he groaned.
    “I ain’t never tried to do nothing like this before, Mr. Morris,” he said, stepping back. “I’m scared.”
    Handsome looked up at the tree in the darkness. We could hear the woodpeckers pecking away for all they were worth. They pecked so hard it shook the tree all the way down to the ground, and pretty soon the panes in the window began to rattle.
    My old man gave Handsome a hard shove and made him start up the tree. As soon as he got started, he went up out of sight like a squirrel. I couldn’t see a thing after that, because as soon as he was out of sight, Pa blew the light out of the lantern. He said he could see better in the dark without a light.
    In another minute there wasn’t a sound to be heard anywhere. The woodpeckers were as still as dead mice.
    “How are you making out up there, Handsome?” Pa shouted up at him.
    There was no answer at all. Pa and I listened, and all we could hear was a sound like a dog panting.
    “What’s going on