The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine

  Don’t know why the Indians built them mounds. Ulman said something about a temple for heathen gods; Elman claimed they needed a lookout. But if you ask me, I say it was a scheme come up with by some old woman to punish naughty children. Ain’t nothing worse than hauling dirt.

  Only took a couple of minutes for me to lead Emma through a field and a bit of wood to my mound. This was the place I went when I wanted to be alone. It wasn’t the tallest mound, but it had the best view when you climbed to the top. The mound was steep and covered with pricker bushes too, which made it a hard climb. I figured Emma wouldn’t like getting sweaty and dirty and that climbing the mound would be the best way to get rid of her.

  Sure enough, Emma took one look up the steep grassy hill and shook her head. “No thank you,” she said.

  “No thank you, what?” I said, playing dumb.

  “I’m not really that interested in climbing your mound after all. Please take me home.”

  “I’m going up,” I said, “but you’re free to go back on your own.”

  Emma turned on her heel and marched back toward the woods. When she reached the edge, she paused and glanced at me again. “I’m not sure I know the way.”

  “Then I guess you’d better come with me.”

  Emma took one last longing look at the woods, then trudged back over to where I was standing.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Now as you may see, this mound is kind of steep. So what you need to do is hold on to the base of these shrubs and use them to pull yourself up.”

  I demonstrated, scrambling a few feet up the mound.

  Emma grabbed a couple of leaves and pulled. The branch she was clutching broke off and she tumbled to the ground.

  “The base,” I said. “You grab the leaves, they’ll fall right off.”

  Emma nodded and tried again. This time she got a pricker bush. She screamed and let go, falling down in the dirt again.

  I shook my head.

  Tears formed in her eyes as she held her hand up as if it were broken. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Shoot, you haven’t even given it a try.” This girl was more a baby than I expected. “But if you’re gonna cry about it, forget it. You can wait here and I’ll pick you up on my way home.”

  “No,” said Emma. She stuck her finger in her mouth and pulled out the thorn with her teeth. “I’m not a crybaby.”

  I started on up the hill, and Emma followed as best she could. By the time we got to the top, Emma only had a couple more scratches on her hands, but she was complaining like she was taking a bath with bees.

  “If this is what you do for fun around here,” Emma said as she tried to brush a smudge of dirt off her dress, “I’m never going to leave my front porch.”

  Fine with me, I thought. But all I said was, “Quit your whining,” and led Emma to the edge of the mound to see the view.

  The tops of the trees were as bushy and soft as green-dyed cotton. The Black Warrior River wound lazily through the forest. The fields of corn spread out in shades of brown and beige. Between the fields, a train chugged along, tooting its horn and letting off a stream of smoke. The sun shone down through hazy clouds and caused everything to shimmer.

  “Wow,” Emma breathed.

  I knew what she meant. I’d seen this view a thousand times, but it still made me feel big and small at the same time.

  Emma shook her head. Her mama had plaited her hair into little braids and tied the ends with bits of ribbon. “I take it back,” Emma said. “This view is worth the scolding I’m going to get when my mama sees my dress.”

  I frowned. She wasn’t supposed to like it that much. This was my place, and I didn’t need no company. “Want to see something else?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I took my flip-it out of my back pocket. This was a slingshot I had made by whittling down an old stick till it had two strong prongs and a comfortable handle. This particular one I had made out of a piece of driftwood from the Black Warrior. I cut a strip of rubber from an old automobile tire and a little piece of leather from the tongue of an old shoe and tied them together. With my flip-it, I could hit just about anything.

  “Find me a little stone,” I said to Emma.

  She picked one up and handed it to me. “See that bird?” I said, pointing to a yellowhammer picking ants off a nearby tree. The yellowhammer is actually a kind of woodpecker, with bright yellow feathers under its wings that are only visible when it flies. They are as common as ants in Moundville.

  “Yes,” Emma answered.

  I put the rock in my flip-it and let it fly. The bird was stretching out its neck for another ant. When the rock hit it, the yellowhammer fell to the ground.

  “You killed it!” Emma gasped.

  “Yeah,” I said, grinning. Everyone was always real impressed with my flip-it skills.

  Emma looked at me like I was a pig with slop all over its face. Then she turned and ran toward the fallen bird. I caught a glimpse of its yellow feathers as she picked it up.

  “Want to see me get another?” I called out.

  Emma didn’t answer. She had a stick in one hand and was trying to dig a hole in the ground.

  “What you doing?” I asked.

  “You killed it,” she repeated.

  “You bury it in the ground, it’s just gonna rot.”

  “What do you want to do with it?” The frown on her face let me know she was definitely not a pig lover.

  “I’m gonna feed it to the eagle.”

  Emma put her hands on her hips. “I don’t see an eagle.”

  So I wrapped up the bird in a large leaf, tucked it in my pocket and led Emma down the mound to Big Foot’s house.

  Big Foot was the town sheriff, a large man, tall as one of our mounds and mean as a hooked snapper. He lived in a small wooden house given to him by his mama, Mrs. Pooley, who owned the general store. The house had been well built once, but now it needed a new paint job and the front porch was beginning to sag. In one corner of the yard was a large iron cage, where an old eagle slept with her head tucked under her wing. I rapped on the bars to wake the bird up, then threw the dead yellowhammer into the cage. The leaf wrapper fell away. The eagle lifted her head and devoured the dead bird in a few messy bites.

  Emma put her hand to her mouth like she was gonna throw up.

  “You feeling all right?” I asked.

  “You should’ve let me bury it.”

  “Why?”

  “That bird just tore the other one apart!”

  I shrugged. “She’s gotta eat.”

  “Well, it’s disgusting.”

  “Bet you don’t look too pretty chewing your food up either.”

  Emma ignored me. “You shouldn’t keep an eagle in a cage anyway. They’re supposed to fly free. Poor bird.”

  “Poor bird?” I asked. “I just gave her a delicious supper.”

  “I wouldn’t want a free supper if it meant I had to be locked up in a cage.” She stroked the side of the cage with one finger, then gave me that look again.

  I’d had just about enough. “Don’t you look at me like I’m some old sow!”

  Emma tipped her head like a confused dog. “An old what?”

  “A pig! After I was nice enough to show you around.”

  “You weren’t that nice,” she snapped back. “You didn’t warn me about the thorn bushes.” She held up her scratched hands.

  She had a point.

  “Who’s there?” a voice suddenly called out. We both took a step back. Big Foot came out onto his porch carrying a shotgun. Though it wasn’t a Sunday, he wore a white shirt with a starched collar. Big Foot always had a clean shirt on, I’ll give him that. Either Mrs. Pooley still did her son’s laundry or she’d taught him to wash and iron them himself.

  “It’s me, Dit,” I said. “I was just feeding your eagle.”

  Big Foot glanced at me, then looked Emma over. “You the new Negra girl?” he asked finally.

  “Yes,” said Emma.


  “You say, ‘Yes, sir,’ to a white man around here.”

  Emma said nothing.

  “Dit, I warned you about uppity Negras. That Elbert’s bad enough. Don’t you go being friends with this one too.”

  Elbert was a colored boy I went fishing with in the summer. Since Chip went to visit his grandma just about every year, I guess you could say Chip was my school friend and Elbert was my summer friend. But Elbert was fifteen, same age as my older brother Elman, who had recently started acting strange. Pa had taught him how to drive, and all at once, Elman was more interested in chores and crops and being responsible than in fooling around with the rest of us. I was worried the same thing was gonna happen to Elbert, which was why I’d been counting on the postmaster’s son to be my backup.

  “Aw, Big Foot,” I said with a wave of my hand. “My mama’s making me show her around. We ain’t friends.”

  Big Foot nodded and went back inside. Me and Emma walked home. She was awful quiet. When we reached her house, she didn’t even bother to say goodbye.

  5

  ELBERT AND DOC HALEY

  IN MOUNDVILLE ALL THE LITTLE KIDS RAN together in the street playing kick the can, white and colored alike. The big kids played ball. Pa sometimes helped a colored neighbor with their fence and stayed for supper, and there was an old Negra woman Mama liked to quilt with now and then. There were no Negras at our church or school, but everybody sat in the rocking chairs on Mrs. Pooley’s front porch. Only if all the chairs were taken and Big Foot or Mayor Davidson came by would one of the Negras jump up and lean against the railing instead.

  My friend Elbert’s pa was called Doc Haley, even though he was a barber, not a doctor. His shop was right on Main Street. All the men in town went to Doc Haley’s shop, whites and Negras. There were two rooms—the front room where Doc cut hair and the back room where he and Elbert slept. The front room had a large barber chair, a shelf full of creams and tonics, a water basin and a small stove and table in the back corner where Doc and Elbert did their cooking. Elbert’s mama had died when he was little, so Doc had gotten as good at frying fish as he was at giving haircuts.

  About a week after Emma had arrived, I stopped by the shop to see Elbert. He was sitting in the barber chair while his father cut his hair. Elbert’s hair was just as dark as Emma’s, but his skin was a shade or two lighter.

  “Sure,” Elbert said when I asked if he wanted to go fishing. He moved to jump up from the chair, but Doc Haley put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Just a minute, Elbert,” Doc said. “You remember that talk we had about this summer?”

  “Yes, Pa,” said Elbert. He frowned. “Do we have to start right now?”

  Doc Haley smiled. “No, I guess we don’t. Go ahead. But tomorrow, we’ll get to work.”

  When me and Elbert were settled on the bank of the Black Warrior with our fishing rods, I asked him what Doc had been talking about.

  “Pa’s gonna teach me how to give shaves and cut hair this summer,” Elbert explained. “Says he ain’t gonna live forever and the store’ll be mine someday.”

  Back before I was born, Doc had been one of my pa’s sharecroppers. We usually had four or five families working on our land. Instead of paying Pa money to use the land, they promised to give him part of their crops. Some people had a hard time getting sharecroppers because of the way they treated them, but Pa was honest and never had no trouble dividing up the profits at the end of each year.

  Doc Haley had finally decided he was tired of sharecropping and he was gonna get himself some land of his own. Problem was, no one wanted to sell. He finally convinced my pa to give him a bit of land and some tools on credit. Pa always admired gumption. By the end of one year, Doc Haley had earned enough to pay Pa back every penny he owed him. “I ain’t never seen a man work so hard,” Pa said whenever he told the story. They became friends after that. Couple of years later, Doc Haley gave up farming and bought the barbershop.

  “That’s great,” I said to Elbert, though I was a little jealous. My pa wasn’t treating me like a man.

  “Yeah.” Elbert reeled in his line and threw it out again without looking at me. “’Cept it means I won’t have as much time for fooling around. So I expect this’ll be our last fishing trip for a while.”

  “Oh.” I knew it. Just like Elman.

  “Sorry, Dit.”

  I shrugged like I didn’t mind. But I did. Elbert was patient and didn’t talk much either. These two things together made him just about the perfect fishing partner. Inside, I cursed Emma again for being a girl. It was gonna be one lonely summer.

  That afternoon I caught me four large catfish, and Elbert got only one. I was teasing him something awful as we walked back to his pa’s shop. I usually traded fish for a trim, and it was about time for a haircut. Doc Haley had just invited me to stay for dinner when the bells on the front door jingled. We all looked up and saw Big Foot standing in the doorway.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Big Foot, sir,” said Doc Haley. “Would you like a haircut?”

  “Nope.” Big Foot looked around the room. Drinking had turned his nose permanently red, but his hair was still a nice shade of brown, even if it was a little uneven. I wondered if he cut it himself.

  “How about a shave and a shoe shine?” Doc Haley was a tall man, with short gray hair and a clean-shaven face. But today, he looked shorter than usual.

  “No.” Big Foot casually let his hand rest on the pistol on his belt.

  “Then what can I do for you?” Doc’s low voice cracked a little.

  Big Foot picked up a bottle of hair tonic from the shelf.

  “That’s twenty-five cents, sir,” said Doc brightly. “Right good tonic. Want me to ring it up for you?”

  Big Foot just put that bottle of tonic in his pocket and walked right out of the store. I probably seen the same thing happen ten times before, but for some reason, I questioned it that day.

  “Why you let Big Foot steal from you?” I asked.

  Doc Haley ignored me till Big Foot turned the corner out of sight.

  “Well, Dit, there is some things in life that are worth making a stink over,” said Doc as he put the fish in a pan on the stove. “But a bottle of hair tonic ain’t one of them.”

  6

  THE BUZZARD

  EMMA MADE GOOD ON HER PROMISE NOT to leave her front porch. She was just about always sitting in an old rocking chair, swaying back and forth and reading a book. The only book we owned was the family Bible, but every few days Emma had a new book that was a different color or thickness. Left one on her front step once. I crept over and snuck a peek. Treasure Island, by someone called Robert Louis Stevenson. Sounded kind of promising, but when I opened it up, there were no pictures, just words, words, words. I left it on the stoop.

  When Emma wasn’t reading, she was watching me. Which was awful annoying. She never said nothing, though, so I had almost gotten used to it till one day she called out, “Why are you carrying that gun?”

  I turned around. I had my shotgun slung over my shoulder and was heading for the path into the woods. “Going hunting,” I said. “I’ve gotta practice for the Fourth hunt.”

  “The Fourth of July was last week.”

  “I know that.” I kept walking. That girl must have thought I was as stupid as a pumpkin. She’d seen me at the town celebration. I knew ’cause I caught her watching me give baby Robert and Lois a ride in my wagon, and I’d seen her watching the fireworks from the post office stoop. She’d looked kind of lonely.

  Emma put her book aside and scrambled down her steps. “So what’s the Fourth hunt?” She fell in step beside me, following me down the shaded path. I didn’t have no choice but to answer.

  “Every year on the Fourth of July, all the best hunters meet in front of Mrs. Pooley’s store. They each pay two dollars to enter the contest. Then everyone has eight hours to go out and shoot all the squirrels, rabbits and birds they can. The person who brings back the most game wins all the money. I’m gonna
win next year.”

  “Why do you want to win a stupid contest like that?” asked Emma.

  “It’s not stupid. My pa won the hunt twice when I was little, and Ulman once came in third.”

  “Who won this year?”

  “Mr. Fulton, the town carpenter. Big Foot came in second and he was real mad.”

  Pa always talked about how winning the hunt had really been something. I was sure I was gonna win next year. Everyone said I had the best aim of anyone this side of the Mississippi. Give me a baseball, a stone or a shotgun—I could hit anything. If I could only find enough money to enter, my pa wouldn’t call me “Della, Ollie, Ulman, Elman, Raymond, uh, I mean Dit” ever again.

  “So why are you practicing now if the contest is already over?”

  “I’m gonna enter next year. Gotta be at least thirteen.”

  “And where are you going to get two whole dollars?” asked Emma.

  I hadn’t quite figured that out myself. We went over a small bridge and walked along the river for a while. The woods were thick here, shading us from the hot July sun.

  “You haven’t shot anything yet,” Emma broke the silence.

  “That’s ’cause I ain’t seen no rabbits. I can kill any bird with my flip-it.” At that moment, a huge low-flying buzzard appeared downriver.

  “Couldn’t kill that buzzard,” said Emma.

  The buzzard flew in lazy circles, eyeing a dead squirrel on the path about twenty feet in front of us. It came closer and closer till the bird hovered right above the squirrel.

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you know nothing? There’s a big fine if you kill a buzzard. You could even go to jail.” Wasn’t quite sure if this was true. But Raymond said Elman knew someone whose brother’s cousin had gone to jail for shooting a buzzard. So I wasn’t taking no chances.

  “I knew you couldn’t do it,” said Emma.

  I raised the gun to my shoulder, and before I could think about that fine, I’d fired. The kickback of the weapon knocked me to the ground.