WHEN CHURCH CAME up the street after dinner, he had one of his father’s oat sacks that was large enough to hold a barrelful of walnuts. I had got a forty-eight-pound flour sack, and was waiting for him at the corner.
“We’ll break our backs carrying these big sacks full of walnuts,” I said when Church stopped and showed me his. “Why didn’t you get a smaller one?”
“Why didn’t you?” Church said.
“It’s the only one I could find. We don’t have to get them full, anyway. I’d be satisfied with mine half full this time,”
“Same here,” he said. “Come on. We won’t have time to find even a pocketful if we don’t hurry. I’ll bet somebody’s out there in the woods beating us to them right this minute.”
We went up to the end of the street and crossed the cotton field behind P. G. Howard’s barn bordering the road. The field was about half mile wide, and beyond the field were the woods where we hunted walnuts every fall. There were lots of walnut trees there, but the woods were so large that sometimes it took a long time to find any.
“I hope we get some whoppers this time, Ray,” Church said, running down the cotton rows and jumping over the dried-up stalks. “I’d like to take home enough to fill a wash tub, after they’re hulled and dried out.”
The year before we brought home three or four loads of them, and after they had been hulled and spread out in the sun to ripen, we put away enough to last us almost all winter.
“How about last year?” I said. “If we get that many again, we ought to sell some and make a little money.”
“There’s no fun in that,” Church said, picking up a rock and throwing it ahead of us as far as he could. “I’d rather eat them, any day.”
We crossed one of the lateral drain ditches that ran from the lower end of town to the creek. The ditch was dry at that time of year, because it carried water off only during the winter rains. Down on the sandy bottom of the ditch were a lot of rabbit tracks. From the way if looked, rabbits must have learned to use the ditches when they were going somewhere so they could keep out of sight of the dogs that were always prowling around the cotton and oat fields looking for them.
Church stood on the side of the ditch and kicked some dirt down to the bottom.
“I’ll bet rabbits have a hard time getting out of there when they fall in,” he said. “I’d hate to be a rabbit.”
“They have a better time than we do,” I said. “And, anyway, they have steps and paths they can use when they want to get out.”
Church kicked some more dirt down into the ditch. Like all the drain ditches that had been dug near town, it was about six feet deep and two or three feet wide at the bottom. It was not hard to jump across any of them, but dogs and rabbits fell in sometimes when they were not watching what they were doing.
Church walked backward and got a running start and jumped across, and I followed him. The woods were not far away then, and we did not stop again until we had got there. The oak trees were so tall that they hid all the other trees from sight, and it was hard work looking for walnut trees. After we had gone almost to the other side of the woods, we found a walnut tree, a big one, too; but somebody had beat us to it, and there was not a single one left on the tree or ground. Whoever it was had taken the crop, and they had even hulled some of them there instead of taking them home first.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Church said, throwing down his sack and looking at the hulls on the ground. “But I’d like to know who’s been getting walnuts in these woods, just the same.”
“They couldn’t have found them all,” I said. “I’ll bet there are a hundred more trees all around us.”
I started off, and Church picked up his sack and came behind. It was easy to see that he was angry because we had not come sooner. When we got to the other side of the woods, we had not found a single walnut.
“What do you know about that, Ray?” he said, kicking his father’s oat sack around on the ground.
“Let’s try the grove on the other side of that field,” I told him. “There are bound to be walnuts somewhere.”
Church picked up his sack and came along, dragging it on the ground behind him.
We had gone halfway across the field towards the second grove when we came to another drain ditch. We were about to jump over it then I happened to see somebody lying on the sandy bottom a dozen yards away. I caught Church by the sleeve before he could jump, and pulled him back.
“What’s the matter, Ray?” Church asked.
“Don’t talk so loud,” I told him, pulling him back out of sight of the ditch. “There’s somebody down in there, Church.”
“Where?” he said, looking scared.
I pointed where I had seen somebody.
“What are we going to do?” he asked, trembling a little. “We’d better go back home, hadn’t we?”
I got down on my hands and knees, and Church dropped beside me, keeping as close as he could.
“Wait till I see who it is,” I told him. “I’m going to crawl up there and find out. It’s funny for somebody to be out here lying in the bottom of a ditch like that.”
Church would not follow me until I had got almost to the edge of one ditch. Then he came hurrying up behind me.
“Don’t let anybody see us, Ray,” he said. “They might shoot, or something.”
I crawled slowly to the side, holding my breath, and looked down at one bottom. Annie Dunn was lying on her back on the sand, staring straight up into the blue sky. Her clothes were knotted around her, and he was covered with streaks of red clay that looked like fresh blood in the sunshine. She was as still as the silence all around us then, but she looked as if she had been having a terrible fight with somebody down here.
Annie lived around the block from us, and she was always going somewhere or coming back. She never stayed at home much after her father got killed in the flour mill, and sometimes her mother came to our house to ask if any of us had seen Annie.
Church caught my sleeve and tried to pull me away. I shook my head and pulled away from him. After a while he stopped trying to make me leave and came back to where I was at the edge of the ditch. Annie had not moved an inch since we first saw her.
“Hello, Annie,” I said.
Some pieces of earth broke loose from the side of the ditch and fell tumbling down upon her. She looked straight into our faces.
“What’s the matter, Annie?” Church said, so scared he could hardly be still long enough to look at her.
Annie looked straight at us but did not say a word.
“What are you doing down there in the bottom of that ditch, Annie?” I asked her. “You look like you’ve been fighting somebody down there, Annie.”
Annie closed her eyes, and a moment later her face was as white as a boll of cotton. While we watched her, she doubled up into a knot; then she began kicking the sides of the ditch with her feet. One shoe had come off, and the sole of her stocking on her foot was caked with damp red clay. Church backed off a little, but when Annie screamed, he hurried back to see what the matter was with her.
When she had quieted down again, Church looked at her with his mouth hanging open. “Are you hurt, Annie?” he said. “What’s hurting you to make you scream like that? Why won’t you say anything, Annie?”
“Why don’t you get up from there and go home, Annie?” I asked her.
Annie screamed again, and then she lay still for a while, not making a sound or a motion. Some of the color came back to her face, and she opened her eyes and looked up at us in the same way she had the first time.
“Don’t tell anybody, Ray, you and Church,” she said weakly. “I don’t want anybody to know.”
She sounded so much like someone begging you to do something for her that you could not keep from making a silent promise.
“You’d better get up from there, now,” Church said.
“I can’t,” Annie said. “I can’t get up, Church.”
“Don’t you want to?” Church said.
Annie shook her head as much as she could.
“I’m going to tell your mamma, Annie,” he said. “If you don’t get up from the bottom of that ditch and go home, I’m going straight and tell your mamma.”
Annie’s face suddenly became white again, and she dug her hands into the sides of the ditch, squeezing the moist red clay until it oozed between her fingers. She began screaming again.
“I’m going home,” Church said. “I’m not going to stay here.”
I was scared, too, but I did not think we should go away and leave Annie lying there screaming in the bottom of the ditch. I caught Church’s sleeve and held him.
Some more dirt broke loose under our hands and fell tumbling down onto the ditch upon Annie. She seemed not to notice it at all.
When she stopped screaming and opened her eyes and looked up at us, she did not look like Annie at all. The color had not come back to her cheeks.
“Don’t tell anybody, Ray, you and Church,” she said weakly. “Will you promise?”
“Why not, Annie?” Church said. “Why don’t you want us to tell anybody?”
“I’m having a baby,” she said, closing her eyes.
Church leaned so far forward that a whole armful of clay and sand broke loose and fell down into the ditch. Some of it covered one of her legs.
We backed away from the ditch, not getting up from our hands and knees until we were a dozen yards away.
“Let’s get away from here,” Church said, holding his breath between he words. “I want to go home.”
We ran across the field. When we were halfway across, I happened o think about our walnut sacks that we had left at the drain ditch, but I did not say a word to Church about them. When we reached the grove, Church was all out of breath, and we had to stop a minute and lean against some of the trees to get our wind back.
“Do you think Annie’s going to die, Ray?” he said, holding his breath between the words and almost choking each time he said one of them.
I did not know what to say. I started running again, and Church began crying because he was behind. By the time we had got to the field behind P. G. Howard’s barn, Church was crying so much he could not see where to run. He fell down and tumbled head over heels two or three times, but I did not stop to wait for him to catch up. I kept on running until I got on our front porch.
(First published in Kneel to the Rising Sun)