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simon brawl

I ran into the fields one April morning, thinking to climb to the benchland where Uncle Jolly was breaking new ground. The sky was as blue as a bottle. A rash of green covered the sheltered fence edges, though the beech and poplar trees were still brown and bare. I began to climb, hands on knees, the way being steep. I went up through a redbud thicket swollen with unopened bloom and leaf, coming at last to where Uncle Jolly was plowing. He had already broken a half acre of furrows in the rooty earth.

My family had moved from Houndshell mine camp in time to grub* fields for a corn crop and put in a sass† patch. Although I was born on Sporty Creek, more than half of my life had been spent at mine camps where Pap worked in good years. Bad times at the mines brought us back to Old Place, our home seat a quarter of a mile below Uncle Jolly’s farm. Uncle Jolly lived in the head of the hollow. Up Sporty the creek bed was the road.

“Whoa-ho,” Uncle Jolly said when he saw me. He drew rein and leaned against the plow handles, blowing. He whistled a long redbird whistle. His forehead was moist, his shirt stuck to his back. He’d been hustling the mule and was glad of the rest. “Hain’t you got a sup of water?” he asked. “I’m dryer than a preacher’s hat.”

“I never thought to bring water,” I said. “I’ve come up to learn to plow.”

A drop of sweat hung and stretched on Uncle Jolly’s chin.

“Jumping Josie!” he said. “This gentleman would pull you clear over the plow handles.”

“Now, no,” I said. “I’m a-mind to learn.”

I was happy he wasn’t plowing Jenny Peg, his anticky* horse. He had taught her many a prank. Uncle Jolly was a trickster. Said Pap, “Keep your eyes skinned in his neighborhood. Anybody with a standing order for hens’ teeth, wheelbarrow seed, and ’possum bushes needs watching.” On the other hand, our movings were a standing joke to Uncle Jolly. He called Pap “the last of the mountain gypsies.” Pap countered with Uncle Jolly’s courting troubles. Uncle Jolly was thirty and had never found a wife.

Uncle Jolly grinned, scratching into the thick of his hair. “A tadwhacker† never caught on too young,” he said. “Just you fetch me a jug of spring water, and then I’ll let you try a furrow or two.”

He hung the reins about his neck and leveled the plow. He dug a shoe toe into the black dirt. “I’m a stump-chewing nag if this ground won’t make corn. It’s as black as Old Scratch’s* heart and as rich as sin.”

I footed downhill and back, bringing the water. Uncle Jolly stuck a finger into the jug’s ear, swinging it to his shoulder. He drank loud, gulping swallows. Water ran down his neck. It drained under his collar. Not till then did he poke his tongue out, tasting. “Seems to me a family of frogs have been washing their warts in the spring,” he said. “Hit’s got a powerful whang.”† He took another long drink. He must have downed a quart. “I like a wild taste,” he said. “The wilder, the better.”

“What’s the mule’s name?” I asked.

Uncle Jolly sat the jug down. “Banged if I know,” he said. “If I’ve asked the gentleman once, I’ve asked him a jillion times. He won’t tell me. My opinion, he ought to be called Simon Brawl, he’s so feisty. To start him going, I have to take measures. No trouble to stop him, though. He’s a mule. What he wants is to stay stopped.”

A flock of flax-birds circled the newground, their cries sowing the air. Per-chic-o-ree, per-chic-o-ree. They settled at the field’s edge, and it was as if the dry stickweeds had burst yellow blossoms. They pecked at seed heads. They rattled the dry pods of milkweed.

Uncle Jolly studied the plowed area of the field. His furrows were straight as a measure, running true without a bobble. “Hain’t many folks know how to tend dirt,” he said. “A mighty piddling few. Land a-wasting and washing. Up and down Sporty, it’s the same. Timber cut off and rain eating the hills away. Alike, hit is, on Ballard Creek, Cain Branch, Sugar Orchard, and Deer Lick. What’s folks going to live on when these hills wear to a nub?”

“I aim to learn proper,” I said.

He lifted the plow, setting the point into the ground. I stood there, not knowing what to do. “Best you walk betwixt the handles to get the hang of it,” he said. I stepped between, holding to the crosspiece. Uncle Jolly grasped the handle ends and clucked. The mule didn’t move. He whistled and shouted, but he might as well have been talking to a tree.

Grinning, Uncle Jolly said, “See what I mean? This fool beast won’t stir. He’s too trifling even to be called a mule, low as that is. His brains are in his heels.” He tried a string of names: “Git along, Jack! Pete! Crowbar! Leadfoot!” When nothing availed, he reached down and caught up a handful of dirt and threw it onto the mule’s back. The mule started to move, shivers quivering his flanks. “It’s like that every time I halt,” Uncle Jolly said. “A mule has a nature plime-blank* the same as a man. Stubborn as crabgrass.”

The earth parted. It fell back from the shovel plow. It boiled over the share. I walked the fresh furrow, and dirt welled between my toes. There was a smell of mosses, of bruised sassafras roots, of sweet anise. We broke out three furrows. Then Uncle Jolly stood aside and let me hold the handles. The mule noted the change but kept going. The share rustled like drifted leaves. It spoke up through the handles. I felt the earth flowing, steady as time.

I turned the plow at the end of the third row. “This land is so rooty,” Uncle Jolly said, “I’m going to let you work over what I’ve already broken. You can try busting the balks.* Strike center, and go straight as a die.”

I grasped the reins and handles. “Get along,” I called, big as life. The mule didn’t budge. Neither did he lift an ear.

“He’s a regular Simon Brawl all right,” Uncle Jolly said.

The mule started after I threw dirt on him. He traveled the first row peart† enough, ears standing ends up, for Uncle Jolly began singing at the top of his voice:

O, I had a little gray mule,

His name was Simon Brawl,

He could kick a chew tobacco

Out of yore mouth

And never touch your jawl.**

I plowed three furrows, and pride swelled in me as sap expands a willow bud. I was being master where till now I’d only stood in awe. I was finding strength I’d no knowing of. When I doubled back again, I saw Uncle Jolly sitting on the ground, leaning against a chestnut stump, eyes closed to the sun. The mule saw Uncle Jolly, too, and his ears drooped. He began to walk faster. The harness rattled on his bony frame. The furrow wandered a bit, and I got uneasy. “Hold back there!” I shouted, but he didn’t mend his pace.

At the fourth row’s end I looked anxiously at Uncle Jolly, hoping he would take over. One glance, and I saw he had gone to sleep. I was ashamed to cry out. The mule hastened the furrow, the plow jiggling, scooping dirt, running crooked as a black snake’s track. I jerked the lines. I shouted all the mule names I’d ever heard. The share hooked a root, and the reins pulled from my hands. Grabbing up the lines, I called Uncle Jolly, being at last more frightened than ashamed. Uncle Jolly slept on.

We no longer bore north and south. The mule cut northwest, southeast, back and forth, catty-cornered. My feet flew over the ground. We plowed a big S. We made a long T and crossed it on the way back. I reckon we made all the letters of the alphabet. We struck into the unbroken tract, gouging a great furrow, around and around, curling inward, tight as a watch spring.

I couldn’t shout or raise a sound. There was no breath left in me.

A voice sprang across the bench. “Hold thar, Bully!” The mule stopped in his tracks, and I went spinning over the plow. I got up, unhurt. A bellow came from the chestnut stump. It was a laugh almost too great for a throat to utter.

I looked in time to see Uncle Jolly rise to his feet, then crumple to the ground. He threshed about, his arms beating the air, laughing in agony. He jerked. He whooped and hollered. He got up twice, falling back slack-jointed and weak. A fresh squall of joy flowed out of him each time.

And when Uncle Jolly had his laugh out, he came across the field. The mule watched him come, lowering his head, acting a grain* nervous. Uncle Jolly sniggered when he reached us, and I saw fresh laughter boiling inside him, ready to burst. The mule raised his head suddenly. He licked his yellow tongue squarely across Uncle Jolly’s mouth.

“I bet that’s a wild enough taste,” I said scornfully.

  

*grub: remove sprouts by digging

†sass: vegetables

*anticky: clownish

†tadwhacker: boy

*Old Scratch: devil

†whang: taste and smell

*plime-blank: exactly

*balk: space between field rows

†peart: smartly

**jawl: jaw

*grain: bit