Music of the Swamp Read Online Free PDF Page A

the door, calling angrily to her husband. I didn’t wait to see more.
    I hung around the vacant lot and waited for someone to show up to play ball. For a long time I was alone. I tossed the ball up in the air and caught it with my fielder’s mitt. Therewas not much else to do. I thought of Dixie Dawn getting cracked over the head with the hoe. It was summer and the sun was beating down on the Delta. Fields of cotton plants stretched like long green carpets in all directions from where I stood. I could smell the cotton flowers on the wind. On the street a mule-drawn wagon trundled past, driven by a black man. The wagon was filled with blocks of ice and covered with a tarp. The ice melted and water poured out in streams beneath the wagon wheels.
    At last another boy showed up, Roy Dale Conroy. Roy Dale was a white-trash child. He had milk-white skin and large coppery freckles. His hair was red and badly cut, probably by his older sister. He spat constantly, ptooey ptooey ptooey. It was a habit, a compulsion I would say.
    Roy Dale was worthless as a playmate. He had no ball or glove or bat. He relied on the charity of others. He didn’t really know how to play ball anyway. He would put the bat between his legs and make sexual jokes. Or he would put the ball down his pants and strut around. Nobody wanted to play with Roy Dale.
    He said, “Hey, Sugar.” Ptooey ptooey ptooey.
    I said, “Hey, Roy Dale.”
    He said, “Throw me the ball. I want to show you something.” Ptooey.
    I said, “Mr. McNeer just beat Dixie Dawn over the head with a hoe.”
    Roy Dale went ptooey ptooey ptooey.
    I said, “She was bleeding and everything.”
    He said, “Did she let you see her tits?”
    I turned and headed for home. Roy Dale ran along and caught up with me.
    He said, “Hey, man, just kidding. Take a joke.”
    I kept walking.
    He said, “No kidding, let me see the ball. Just for a second. I’ll give it right back.”
    We walked along towards my home. Roy Dale kept nagging me about the baseball.
    I said, “She wants to sing opera songs.”
    He said, “I’ll give you a quarter to let me see the ball.”
    We cut down an alley, a short way to my house. There was a weedy ditch with water running through it. Roy Dale said, “Hole up.” He climbed down in the ditch and scrambled around, this way and that, grabbing at something in the weeds and finally cornering it in the water. He stepped in the ditchwater and didn’t seem to notice that his shoes were wet. Finally he caught the thing he had been chasing, a mouse the size of a Ping-Pong ball.
    We were in sight of my house now.
    Roy Dale said, “What shall I do with it?” Talking about the mouse.
    I said, “Let it go, Roy Dale.”
    He said, “I don’t know. . . .” Teasing me.
    I said, “Here, take it, take the ball.” I held it out to him.
    He said, “Hm. I don’t really need the ball any more.”
    I said, “Don’t hurt the mouse, Roy Dale. C’mon, take the ball.”
    He held the mouse tight in one hand. Its head stuck up between his fingers. It was tiny as a button, the little head, and yet all the features were distinct, the big ears and pointy face and little whiskers and frightened eyes like bright punctuation. It had little mouse-teeth, small as sand crystals.
    Roy Dale took the baseball from me in his other hand.
    He said, “I wonder which one I could throw farther.”
    I said, “You can have the ball. I’ll give it to you. Let the mouse go. I’m telling you Dixie Dawn was bleeding all over the place. I thought he was going to kill her.”
    He said, “Do you mean it? I can have the ball?”
    I said, “Just let the mouse go.”
    He said, “You’re lying,” and made me think he was about to hurl the mouse to the ground.
    I said, “No, really. You can have it.”
    He said, “I