Next day I walked alongside Wiley, the youngest drover, for the last tote to the stock market. Floyd had told me to—told me to feed him and the other boys a little more feechie talk so they’d be ready for the feechie show we was going to put on in the cattle camp.
Wiley introduced me to his dog, Scamp, who was a sweet feller and frisky too. He about knocked me down every time he come over to say hello. And he come over to say hello every five minutes. It was a routine he had: check on all the cows, get a pat from Wiley, come say hello to me, check on all the cows, get a pat from Wiley, say hello to me. We traveled eight leagues that day, but Scamp, I reckon, traveled twenty with all the back-and-forth.
Wiley could make a cow go exactly where he wanted her to go just by whistling and tapping her on the haunch with the end of his cane switch. He was a wonder to watch. When we passed by a stand of river cane, Wiley cut a switch for me so I could have a go at cattle herding. But I never got the hang of it. Any time I nudged a cow with my switch, she paid me no mind, just went exactly where she wanted. Then Wiley’d trot over, laughing, and set her straight with one little poke from his switch. It was a friendly laugh, not a mean or a mocking laugh like I got so much from Floyd.
Another thing I never got the hang of: lying to a feller as friendly and trusting as Wiley. My whole reason for walking with him was to play him for a fool on the feechie business, but I was having a hard time making myself do it. Wiley was what Floyd calls a sap. A man who makes a habit of telling the truth assumes that other folks is in the same habit. That’s what makes a sap when you get right down to it.
Floyd speaks scornful of saps, but a sap gives me hope. It’s a pleasure and a relief to know that the world makes room for folks like Wiley. Sure, folks like Floyd and me come along every now and then to skin folks like him, but most of the time, folks like Wiley get along just fine—a whole lot better than Floyd and me. In quiet hours I try to picture it—a world where telling the truth don’t necessarily lead to a man’s ruination. I aint had much luck picturing it, but don’t it sound grand?
Wiley asked me, “So you and the perfesser is out looking for feechiefolks?”
“That’s right,” I said, but I didn’t feel very good about it.
“And you been hearing reports of civilizers seeing feechie signs near the villages?”
“So the perfesser says.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. Floyd had said it.
Wiley shivered. “How about you?” he asked. “You ever seen a feechie?”
I thought on that one for a minute. Then I said, “Just one. A little one.”
Wiley’s eyes got bigger. “What was he like?”
Of a sudden I got so lonesome for my old self—my feechie self—that I thought I was going to bust out crying. “He was fun and full of fight,” I said. “And kind of stupid.”
It wasn’t long before we come over a rise and got our first glimpse of the Middenmarsh Stock Market and the crowded city beyond it and the ocean beyond that.
Try to picture every cow and half the goats and sheep on the whole island of Corenwald piled into one huge field. Imagine the dust and the racket and the bumping and the jostling—the clack and rattle of horn on curving horn and the mooing and bleating fit to deafen a feller. Add to that eight hundred drovers scattered amongst them, whistling and hollering and boasting and bargaining and fighting and greeting old friends, and as many dogs barking and frisking. If you can hold all that in your mind, you begin to get an idea of what the Middenmarsh Stock Market looks like.
As for the smell—if you ever smelt one cow, just multiply that smell by forty thousand and you’ll be in the neighborhood. But the overpowering smell of the cows keeps you from smelling the drovers, and that’s a mercy at least.
The Bluemoss boys drove their cattle into the corral and left Arch to tend to the business side of things. Then they hurried into the swirl of drovers out in the middle of the camp, and me and Floyd went with them. Drovers spend a lot of their market time renewing old acquaintances, which mostly means trying to outbrag one another. If you believed one-tenth of what them drovers said about theirselves, walking through the market would be a terror.
“I’m the bully of the Hill Country! I et two panthers for breakfast and a alligator for my midmorning snack. Whoop! Which of you boys is going to be my lunch?”
“My pap can whip any man in Corenwald! And I can whip my pap!”
“Hyah!” one feller shouted. “I’m the Blossom of Bonifay. I’m the heart-thump of every city gal’s idle hour. Whoop! Aint I handsome? Don’t look at me square, ladies, lest you die of a broken heart!”
It’s possible that the ladies of Bonifay had low expectations for their menfolks, but with his lazy eye and three missing teeth, I didn’t reckon the Blossom of Bonifay was going to break any Middenmarsh ladies’ hearts.
There was this one bully strutting all through the stock market carrying a big slate and a piece of chalk. “Whoop!” he hollered. “I’m Hardy Martenson! Whoop! I’m the baddest man in this cattle camp! Whoop! I can whip any one of you boys, and soon too!” With the chalk he pointed at a list of names that covered about half of his slate. “Who’s going to be the next name on my list?”
He was a huge man—a head taller than Floyd, maybe more, as thick through the torso as a oak tree, and not one dollop of fat anywhere on him. If he said he could whip any man in the cattle camp, I was inclined to believe him.
He strutted right up to where me and Floyd was standing with the Bluemoss boys, tapping the chalk on his slate. We all tried to act like we didn’t see him, but he wasn’t easy to ignore when he was an arm’s length away and breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows.
“Hello there, gentermen!” he hollered, like he was trying to get our attention from the other side of a river.
We all give him a little nod.
“I’m making a list of all the men I can whip!” If a bull could talk, he would have sounded just like that feller. He shoved his slate right in front of our faces. “As you can see, it’s a pretty long list!”
We all nodded and agreed that, yes, it was a pretty long list.
“But it aint near complete!” he hollered. “I aint put none of you boys on it yet!” He put his slate on the ground and took one step toward Floyd. He balled up his fists; the chalk stuck out from his right fist like a extra thumb. “I believe I’ll start with you, mister!”
Floyd tilted backwards so he could look up into the big man’s face. “I got no truck with you, friend,” he said. “I suppose you could whip me. Why don’t you just go ahead and put me down on your list.”
The big man give Floyd a little nod and a smile. “That’s probably smart, mister!” He reached down to pick up his slate. “What’s your name?”
“Bertie Culbertson.” Floyd was still using his made-up name.
The man licked his chalk. “Bertie Culbertson! Can you spell that for me?”
Floyd spelled out his name, and Hardy wrote it down, one slow letter at a time. It looked like this list of his may have been the only writing he had ever done. When he was finally finished, he turned to me.
“All right, boy! You going on my list the hard way or the easy way?”
It hurt my heart to say it, but I said, “The easy way, I reckon.”
“Good thinking! Name?”
“Grady.”
I glanced over at Floyd. “I aint got a last name. It’s just Grady. G-R-A-D-Y.”
“Whoa!” Hardy said. “Slow down, feller!”
He went around the circle that way, writing all the Bluemoss drovers’ names down one letter at a time. He come at last to Basel, who wasn’t very much smaller than he was. We all kind of held our breath, wondering what was going to happen. There wasn’t a lot of back-down to Basel.
Hardy stood there with his slate and his chalk. Basel looked from the big man’s rippling arms to his huge legs to the long list of men he could whip and finally to his face.
“Basel Uelson,” he said. “B-A-S-E-L. U-E-L-S-O-N.”
Concentrating hard on his work, Hardy stuck his tongue out while he wrote. “All right then!” he said when he was finished. “I reckon we’re done here! Thank you, boys!” He turned and walked off toward a group of drovers across the way.
We all stood there looking at the ground and at one another, trying to decide whether to laugh or be embarrassed. You could see Basel wasn’t taking it very well. After a few seconds he balled up his fists and went to walking real purposeful toward Hardy’s back. We all followed.
Basel tapped Hardy on the shoulder. The big man whirled around to face him.
“I been thinking on it,” Basel said, “and I don’t believe you can whip me.” He stepped back, raised two fists in front of him, and went to bouncing around on the balls of his feet. He was ready to prove it. Hardy took a step back too and looked Basel up and down.
“All right then,” Hardy said, nodding his head. “I better take you off my list!” He licked his thumb, wiped Basel’s name off the slate, turned back around, and kept walking toward the other drovers.
“Whoop!” he hollered. “I’m the baddest man in this cattle camp! Whoop! I can whip any one of you boys, and soon too! Who’s going to be the next name on my list?”
Just outside the corrals there was so many show tents you’d have thought an army of charlatans was laying siege to Middenmarsh.
A drover only has pocket money a few days out of the year, when he’s sold his stock at market. Nothing swells up a feller like a pouchful of money. And nothing attracts hucksters and show people like a pouchful of money carried by a feller who’s used to being poor as dirt.
An old rascal named Orris stood on a flour barrel surrounded by a crowd of drovers, trying to sell them shares in a gold mine he claimed to own up in the mountains. When Floyd and me walked past, Orris was saying, “Boys, I wouldn’t lie to you. Gold mining is hard work.” He paused and give Floyd and me a quick wink before turning back to his fascinated audience. “In my gold mine you have to chip through two feet of solid silver before you even get to the gold. Yes, boys, it’s hard work indeed.”
In the next tent a man was selling truth powder. If you sprinkle it on somebody’s food, he said, they can’t lie to you for four to six hours. I wasn’t convinced he had been using his own product.
Most of the hucksters was doing the same old tired acts, selling the same lies and junk you see over and over again—the shell games, the fortune-telling, the juggling routines. But there was a new feller named Clarence who had something I hadn’t seen before: a praying machine. It was a windmill-looking contraption. Each arm of the windmill had a little box on the end. The idea of the thing was to write your prayers down on pieces of paper and put the papers in the boxes on the arms of the praying machine. When the arms rotated, they tripped a little clicker at the top of the contraption. According to Clarence, every click sent up whatever prayer was enclosed in that arm of the machine.
“It’s a much more efficient way to pray than just bowing your head and saying the words,” he said. “By spinning the wheel a few times, you can send up more prayers in a minute than you could pray all day the old-fashioned way. Or you can leave it outside in a windy place, and it can pray for you while you go about your business.
“One feller wrote me to tell how my praying machine saved his life,” he said. “It was a stormy day, and the wind was up, and the sky turned green like it does just before a tornado. He ran for his praying machine and put the same prayer in every box: ‘Deliver me from this tornado.’ The wind got to spinning that thing like all nation; who knows how many prayers that machine sent up for him. And do you know that tornado took a turn and missed his farm completely? Gentermen, no household should be without Reverend Clarence’s Praying Machine.”
I realize Floyd and me made a living off lying to people, but the kind of lie Clarence was telling—even Floyd was disgusted at that.
But we was glad to run into an old friend named Hazel—Doctor Hazel, he now called hisself. He was selling bottles of a concoction he called Doctor Hazel’s Youth and Beauty Tonic. I been knowing Hazel all my life. Him and his gawky little black-haired daughter, Barbary, used to be in the snake oil trade, then they pitched liver pills for a while.
But now Hazel, old and ugly as he was, was in the youth-and-beauty trade. He had gathered up fifty or so drovers and was giving them a palaver about how his tonic goes to work on the spleen. The spleen, he said, is the seat of anger and meanness, and it’s anger and meanness that makes wrinkles and worry lines and turns your hair gray. So if you can get your spleen softened back up, you can look young again.
“My dear old mother has been drinking my tonic for years,” he said, “and it’s done her a whole heap of good.” Then he hollered back toward the curtain behind him, “Come on, Mama. Come say hello to the nice folks out here.”
Out from behind the curtain come the likeliest gal I ever saw. From the looks of her, I wouldn’t have thought she was more than eighteen, if that. She didn’t look like no granny, I can tell you. She had dark hair as shiny as a crow’s wing and blue eyes as bright and snappish as a songbird’s. Her jaw was squared off sort of proud looking, and her teeth—you’d a thought a string of oyster pearls was stuck onto her gums, they was so white and straight and even.
After a couple of weeks on the drove, them old boys was just about ruint at the sight of her. They didn’t even whistle at her—just stood there with their mouths half open. I got to looking at her myself, and I begun to see Barbary—that gawkish little gal I used to know. She had grown up—and grown up good.
“Ladies and gentermen,” Hazel said, “I’d like you to meet my dear old mama, the sweetest old lady in all of Corenwald.”
Barbary patted that ugly old man on the head just like a mama would do to a little feller and said, “You’re mighty sweet to say so, sugarplum.”
Sugarplum said, “Tell them how old you are, Mama.”
“Eighty-two next month.”
Hazel beamed at her. “Aint she something, folks?”
Then Barbary launched into a palaver of her own. “What a nice-looking bunch of young people,” she said, which was funny since she was the nicest looking young person in the place by a pretty good piece. “I remember when I was your age. Happy times those were. But hard times too. You young people don’t know how good you got it. Back in the old country, the snow was knee-deep eight months out of the year.”
She sure talked like a old lady even if she didn’t look like one. The boys started asking her all sorts of questions about her eighty-two years of life, and she kept the wagon in the road pretty good. If I didn’t know she was Barbary, I might have believed she was as old as she said she was.
“What do you remember about the floods of twelve?” somebody asked.
Granny asked, “You mean the spring floods of twelve or the hurricane?”
“What kind of ship did you take from the old country?”
“A little sloop called the Liberation.”
“Who was the governor of Corenwald when you come over?”
Granny wagged her finger at the old boy. “You’re trying to trick me, you naughty young man. I’d been in Corenwald fifteen year before there was any governor.”
“Where did you live when you first come over?”
“A little palm-thatch hut below Hustingreen.”
When somebody asked her a stumper, Granny tapped on her forehead with a finger and said, “My memory aint what it used to be. Young man, it aint fair asking an eighty-two-year-old woman a hard question like that.”
I wish you could have seen her. She managed to play the sweet little old lady and the pretty, flirty young gal at the same time, and fellers loved every minute of it.
Floyd whistled low. “She’s a good one,” he said. “There aint going to be a lot of loose pocket money around here when she’s finished.”
After a while, Doctor Hazel busted in. “Well, ladies and gentermen,” he said, “I didn’t come here to pervide you with a free history lesson. I come here to pervide you with some expensive tonic.
“You heard me right. This here tonic is expensive: twelve coppers for a half pint. But it’s still a bargain. You seen what it done for my sweet old mama. Who wouldn’t pay twelve little coppers to see their youth and beauty return in their declining years? If you look older than my mama, here’s my earnest advice to you: buy yourself a bottle. If you have any friends or loved ones who look older than my mama, you can’t call yourself a loving friend or relative if you don’t buy a bottle of Doctor Hazel’s Youth and Beauty Tonic for every one of them.”
A few of the drovers went to digging around in their money purses to buy some of that tonic for their mamas and wives—or maybe for their own selves.
“Say, Doc,” one of the drovers sung out, “does this tonic work on men?”
“Why, yes it does,” Hazel answered.
“Then why are you so old and ugly?”
Oh, everybody thought that was a good one; they just hooted and har-hawed.
But Doctor Hazel raised his hand for silence. “You’re right, friend,” he said. “I am old and ugly. There was a time when I had taken so much of my own tonic that I looked like I was fourteen years old. But who’s going to buy a medical product from a fourteen-year-old? No, fellers, a salesman got to have a little age and gravity to him. It’s the irony of my life, friends: to spread youth and beauty around this island of Corenwald, I had to forfeit youth and beauty for my own self.”
Well, between the two of them, that pretty young granny and that ugly old he-dog sold I don’t know how many bottles of tonic.
Walking the dusty path between the tents, Floyd said, “Look around you, boy. This is the kind of small-time business we’re leaving behind.” He pointed to his hat. “I got big ideas, boy. Brilliant ideas. We’re going to be huge.”