Painted Ponies

The carny folk came ta town las’ month. They come ever' year, first weekend in July, and those folk stay for two weeks of shillin’ and flim-flam. Most years ‘at means Independence Day boosts the loot for the whole dang summer. They gotta need it by the time they reach Topeka just before the fall harvest, folks say. I been goin’ to the show ever' year since I’s old enough to walk the five miles from our place over by the road out t’ward the next town along.

Paw grew sorghum and soy’beans, right through the years a’dust and drought and I will too whatever comes. Never grew wheat, never will. There’s a crick runs through our land. T’ ain’t never dried up since the Exodusters settled Nicodemus in 1879. Course, Nicodemus didn’t turn out so well fer them. An’ it ain’t no more ‘n’ a crick neither. A frog could jump it without breakin’ no records. Granpaw tole me onct that a guy from the Carnival came by the farm in nineteen-hunnert. Spent the night inna tent next the crick. Aunt Hepzibah took’m grits for breakfast and didn’t come back ‘til noon. Granpaw says he went up the crick with a shotgun, but they weren’t nuthin’ ta shoot but varmints. Never dried up yet, that crick.

Aunt Hepzibah wuz in the parcel next ta Potter’s Field when the carny wagons rolled in the follerin’ July. Wuz a different roustabout on the painted ponies. Musta been five years later, I recall holdin’ Hepzibah’s hand that first time I went to the sideshows. My Paw, nor even Maw, ever set foot in the field next to the poor folks’ cemetery. My aunt never went agin after that first time she took me. Ast her ever’ year but she wouldn’t go. I went on my own, ‘til Ezekiel, Esther, Ephraim, and Ebenezer tagged along scarce a year between ‘em as soon as I was ten years old and growed enough to bring ‘em home safe.

I ‘member Paw standin’ on the stoop, hands dug into his back above his hips,

‘Jacob, doncha ride those painted ponies, nor let yer youngers neither.’

We ran down the dirt track t’ward the road into town. Ma brothers and sister never called me Jacob, nor even in church. I’s called Red, even today, though ma hair’s mostly grey or gone. Esther’s hair wuz broo-net, nearest colour to mine out of all of ‘em I guess.

One year, prob’ly 1915, two years afore I went to France with Black Jack Pershing, the guy on the ponies let me ride for free, the last night of the carny shows. I hadta get off when I saw Esther talkin’ to the shill for the Ring the Bell stand. Hell, he war’n’t no guy from the county never mind the town. And Esther had her smooth hand on the guy’s muscles. We went home. I b’leve Ebenezer told Maw. Youngest always wants ‘tenshun, do most anythin’ ta get it. Tell secrets an’ who knows whut.

Right along 1917, Ezekiel lied about his age and we both fought in the Argonne Forest the year after, but I came back alone. Maw said she wisht I didn’t come back an’ I thought Paw wuz gonna hit her until Aunt H slapped her sister-in-law first. Doc Visser came out from town a few days after, said Hepzibah wuz in a dee-cline. A hystery-call dee-cline. I reckon the laudanum was all he knew to give Aunt H. Cain’t say as it helped her dee-cline, but yuh cain’t be much lower than daid. An’ she was daid by the start o’ the new decade.

Anyhoo, I still go to the carny. I don’t ride the painted ponies. I look in at the Bearded Lady, but she ain’t the woman from forty years ago. That wuz her Granma. Some things skip a generay-shun, they say, but some things don’t. There’s another guy runs the carousel now. If’n I ever hadda a son I s'pose he would be that age now. Dang if his hair ain’t as red as mines ever wuz.