Curtis got up early on this Thursday morning in March of 1943. He hitched his favorite mule named Emma to the old wagon with rusty wheels and a few loose boards. He rode the wagon to a field near the woods on the small tobacco farm his Grandpa Luther left him.
The back of the wagon had a pile of dried manure covered with burlap to keep it from blowing off if the wind kept picking up. Curtis had planned to spread the manure this morning. This little tobacco farm and Brown and Williamson chewing tobacco were what he enjoyed most.
Everything seemed to be going alright until a few years ago when some local small time gamblers tricked Curtis out of his savings. Now the bank’s Trust Department manages his finances. They pay his bills and he has a small cash allowance each month to cover his necessities. He does some of his shopping at Miss Agnes’s country store. He goes to town twice a month on Saturday morning to get his allowance.
The weather in March can be a bit unpredictable but Curtis looked at the sky and didn’t see any rain clouds. He kept thinking about his chewing tobacco getting low and he did need to get the sack of flour his sister Bertha, had asked for. The flour and feed sacks from P. L. Woodard had pretty printed designs and Bertha makes a dress or aprons from the empty sacks. He didn’t want to give out of biscuits or his chewing tobacco. He patted the breast pocket of his bib overalls where he kept the chewing tobacco. Grandpa Luther had left a second two room house to Bertha. The two houses were so close to each other Bertha could throw dishwater out the kitchen window and it would splash on Curtis’s house. Bertha had married a neighborhood fellow in 1928 named Willie Lee when she was just sixteen. She thought her marriage and everything was fine until that day in September when Willie Lee went to the Wilson County Fair and took up with the redheaded fair girl selling cotton candy and wearing enough make up to paint one side of a barn. Willie Lee left with the fair and with the cotton candy girl. He even took the little bit of money Bertha had saved and kept in a Luzianne coffee can. That was about fourteen years ago. She said. “I ain’t heard from him since. Willie Lee did always like that cotton candy they sold at the County Fair.”
Curtis and his sister lived in the separate unpainted shotgun houses and they watched out for each other.
Curtis cut wood and split the logs to make stove wood for the heater and for the wood burning cook stove in Bertha’s small kitchen. They didn’t have electricity in the house and no running water. They used a kerosene lamp or lantern for light. Neither of them could read or write much so they listened to the Grand Old Opry on a battery powered radio sometimes. They had an outhouse that they shared. Bertha made box lye soap right after hog killing time and she got up early on wash days, built a fire around her iron wash pot and boiled their clothes with box lye soap to kill germs.
Curtis moved the Brown and Williamson chewing tobacco from his left jaw to the right jaw and spit the brown tobacco juice over the side of his wagon and forgot all about his farming and guided Emma and the wagon toward Wilson. Curtis did have a short attention span.
Curtis was thinking about flour and sugar being rationed because of the war and he was needing a new pair of work shoes but his government stamp wouldn’t allow him to get another pair until August. He would go by the Shoe Repair shop across the street from the bank and get some new soles on his old shoes. As he spit over the side of the wagon again he hoped that chewing tobacco don’t get rationed. When the wagon got to the main road headed into Wilson the cars were passing him and some honking on their horns. Not many folks still traveled by mule and wagon in 1943 but Curtis couldn’t get a driver’s license so Emma and the wagon got him where he needed to go. Most mules and horses would get spooked by the loud honking but Emma didn’t pay them any rabbit assed mind.
The old wagon rolled noisily into town. Emma eased the wagon to the curbside on Goldsboro Street near the bank. The aroma of the manure in the back of the wagon drifted through the burlap cover and across the sidewalk. As if that wasn’t enough, when Emma stopped in the parking space she relaxed and dropped some mule apples right there on the street. Curtis kept a shovel in the wagon. He climbed out of the wagon and he scooped the droppings up and shoveled them onto the wagon. He then went on into the bank and straight to Miss Ruth’s teller window. Ruth greeted Curtis with a smile and knowing that he always came to the bank on Saturday. She said. “Curtis, what’s going on? You always do your banking on Saturday and here you are on Thursday. It is good to see you but you told me you worked in your fields on the “weeky” days. What brings you to town on a Thursday”? Without hesitation Curtis said, “well, I tell you it’s like this - my back was ailing too bad this morning to pick my bacca’ plant beds and to tell you the plain truth it was just too windy to spread manure today”.
Montress Greene
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