The Last Road Home by Danny Johnson Page A

shit.”
    â€œMostly a man thing, women usually dip snuff.”
    She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “My old granny dipped, spitting that nasty mess all over the place.”
    The moist air was warm and the tree leaves lay still, like they were waiting. “Talked to Grandma about school today.”
    â€œWhat’d she say?”
    â€œThat it was up to me to decide what to do.”
    â€œWell?” She’d brought the bag of candy and popped one in her mouth, then shoved the bag toward me.
    A heavy odor of rotting leaves under our feet mixed with the sharp woodsy smell of pine. “Don’t think I’m going back.”
    â€œMight wish you had one of these days. If you want to have a big farm like Mr. Wilson, learning would do you some good. Every time I go over to help Mrs. Wilson with the cleaning, I wish we had such a house.”
    â€œToo much to keep up. He gets the thing painted every other year, and Mrs. Wilson has to spend a lot of time working on those nice wood floors and cleaning all the time.”
    â€œYou might have a wife and some babies to take care of one of these days and need a big place.”
    â€œReckon I’ll have to cross that creek when it shows up.”
    She leaned way over, acting like she was trying to see through the trees, the sky suddenly of interest to her. “I might consider marrying you.”
    A picture of us in front of the pulpit at the church flashed through my mind. “We’d be dead before we got to ‘I do’.”
    â€œThat’s true. Plus, I wouldn’t want to find you hanging from a sweet gum tree one of these nights.”
    I picked up a pinecone lying at my feet and pitched it into the bushes. “I got a shotgun. They might get me, but there’d be some of them riding to hell too.”
    â€œA gun won’t do you no good if they burn your house down. With you in it.”
    â€œI ain’t scared of a bunch of Boo Boys.”
    â€œMomma said they hung one of her uncles some years back. Got to messing with a white woman. They took a rope and strung him up down by the Neuse River. Nobody found him before he rotted; body fell right off his neck. Said it was the worst thing she ever saw, only his head still swinging.”
    â€œYou’re so full of shit.” My hand went to my neck. “His body fell completely off?”
    â€œThat’s the way she told it. Said animals had about eat all the rest of him.”
    Raindrops started to hit the leaves, must have been what the trees were waiting for. “You need to head on back before you get wet.”
    â€œYou going to walk with me?”
    â€œI guess.” We got up and Fancy grabbed my hand. The inside of her palm was calloused and rough, hands like mine.
    By the time Fancy took off across the field to her house, the rain came hard. Limbs of the big trees overhead shed most of the downpour, sounding like the roar of a train. I sat under the tobacco shelter until it eased, thinking about how Fancy and me were much more alike than different. And I thought about Grandma saying how all the things I didn’t think were right weren’t. But I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change it.

C HAPTER 8
    A fter a hard frost in late October, I hitched the wagon and pulled corn. Being out in the field let me talk loud and not worry about anybody hearing. “Sally Mule, Grandma ain’t none too happy with me right now.” I walked beside the wagon yanking ears of corn off dry stalks and tossing them in the wagon. “She’s real disappointed I’m not going back to school, and it makes me feel bad. It’s the first time I ever went against her wishes. What do you think?” Sally lifted her tail and farted three or four times, meaning either she didn’t care, or she was trying to choke me to death.
    On Thanksgiving morning, Grandma asked me to build a fire under the black iron wash pot in the