best friend. Together the boys would climb trees, walk back-line fences, play rubber gun wars and string tin cans on heavy thread between their bedroom windows in a futile effort to maintain constant communication, and to be each other's alibi whenever one was needed.
David lived with his mother and grandmother. His father had left the family without warning and had not made his whereabouts known. Bax, as Billy came to call his friend, would often, in a moment of silence, look at Billy and ask, "Wonder where my Dad is?" A common bond developed between the two due to the disappearance of Bax's father and Billy's lonesomeness for his own father.
Conversations during their idle moments, perhaps while sitting on the curb tossing pebbles across the street, frequently brought out memories of experiences shared with their fathers. Fishing for Billy, hunting for Bax.
Shortly after Billy had arrived at the Blair’s, Mrs. Blair and David's mother sat visiting on the front porch stoop watching the two boys playing in the street. "My goodness, those boys could be brothers." Mrs. Blair observed. "Yes, they do look a lot alike. David seems to be a bit taller and a little heavier than Billy. Of course he is three months older," remarked David's mother, and his father was such a huge man." "Yes. He certainly was that. Don't suppose you have heard from him?" "No. Not a word. It's been so long now I really don't want to hear from him. Its all behind me now." She paused, letting go a large sigh. "Sooner forgotten, the better." She returned to the comparison of the two boys. "Billy's red hair is gorgeous. I just love the way it waves row after row." Rhetorically, she asked, "Why is it that boys have naturally curly hair and girls have straight hair?"
"Do you suppose it's his red hair which gives Billy his violent temper?" offered Mrs. Blair.
"Oh, I don't think so. David's hair is brown and he has no shortage of temper. What color are Billy's eyes? David's are blue."
"His are blue. Blue as the sky. His mother says Billy takes after his father who is of Irish extraction with red hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion and a fierce temper. Billy go it all, I'm afraid."
"He is quite a scrapper, isn't he?"
"Oh my, yes. You know, Mrs. Baxter, the Devil has gotten control of that boy. I'm sure God sees it all and will ..... "
David's mother interrupted, "You will excuse me, but I must get home." She knew from prior happenings that Mrs. Blair was about to launch into one of her God-fearing evangelistic sermons, and she had no desire to sit out another one. She rose and walked away toward her house thinking about the boys, pleased they seemed to be becoming close friends, yet worried about the influence Billy might have on David. She passed the low, well-trimmed green hedge bordering the Baxter's front yard which held beautiful roses and a plush lawn where the neighbor children were allowed to run the D-shaped sprinkler on hot summer days. Preparing to enter her walkway she noticed Mr. Blair approaching from High Street carrying his lunch box. She stopped, waiting for Mr. Blair to close the distance between them. "Good evening, Mr. Blair."
"Ev'ning." He reached up and tipped the wide brim hat he customarily wore.
"Mrs. Blair told me you were working. I am so happy for you."
"Right neighborly of you to say so." Mr. Blair was not a man of many words, and he considered Mrs. Baxter's well intended comment to be an invasion of his privacy. Later he would tell his wife, "Ain't £it'n fer neighbors to be know'n our business." He continued on past Mrs. Baxter. "Good ev'ning, Mrs. Baxter." Again the hand was raised to the wide hat brim.
"Good evening, Mr. Blair," Her words were muted. Men, she thought, how silly they are in their senses of pride and guilt.
Mr. Blair walked diagonally across the barren yard to the cement walkway leading to the rear of the house, entered by the back door and hung his hat on a peg on the washroom wall, placed his lunch box on the pantry counter, and moved to his wooden rocking chair in the living room. Mr. Blair, traditionally called Pop by all those who lived in the Blair household, was an unassuming person, quiet in his behavior, but stern and unrelenting in his principles. Never borrow and never lend. Solve your own problems and mind your own business. His standard answer to nearly all situations was, "Stay on your own side of the fence." He was a tall, rather frail man in his daily dress of bibbed overalls and blue cotton work shirt, both of which appeared to be several sizes too large. The years of hard life and suffering showed in his lined and weathered face.
First there had been years of trying to support his growing family of nine children as a farmer in the dust bowl of Oklahoma. Then he made an attempt at lumbering where he suffered the crushing of both legs in a tree felling accident. Now, as a self-taught carpenter, in the years of the Great Depression, with little work to be found and the physical inability to hold a full-time job, he was a spent man without the knowledge or courage to seek new endeavors.
The burdens of caring for the family and finding ways to make ends meet fell to his wife, an evangelistic fanatic, whose reasoning for her often questionable actions stemmed from the fear of God, and the Day of Reckoning. While Mr. Blair's religious beliefs were less dramatic than those of his wife, he did describe himself as a "God fearing man", and together they espoused the damnation preaching’s of their evangelical beliefs. Mrs. Blair was seen differently by different people. To some, she was the champion of the Blair household, giving of herself to the pleasures of the members. To others, she was an uncompromising religious fanatic who bestowed ungodly trepidations upon the household members and all those around her. And to others she was the source of energy behind the Blair's ability to sustain themselves in a time of desperate needs and hardships. In truth, Mrs. Blair was all of those things. Billy often studied Pop as he sat in his rocking chair leaning forward stroking his aching legs in rhythm with the rocking while uttering in barely audible words, "mercy, mercy, mercy, Oh God have mercy." Mr. Blair's eyes would be closed, his face turned skyward, pleading his words. "Oh God, give me mercy, give me mercy." Billy tried to understand his pleading, to gain a sense of feeling, but it was beyond his ability.
Here was Mr. Blair asking for mercy, yet Mrs Blair spoke of God as someone who saw all the bad and made black marks on people's souls. Whatever a soul was.?
Billy did not understand. Billy liked Pop Blair when he would whittle a stick for him or let him turn the crank on the ice cream freezer. At other times he feared Pop Blair for the painful knuckle rap Pop gave him to the top of his head when he was late in bowing his head for the supper prayer or in finishing his meal. When darkness carne Pop Blair would stand, and bless those present before starting his long, painful climb to his bed in the attic. Billy wondered, but never knew why Pop Blair slept in the attic, while Mrs. Blair slept in her own bed on the second floor.
"Clean the chicken coops tomorrow, Billy." This time it was the words of Pop Blair..
The round pot-belly stove which Mrs. Blair perpetually coated with stove blackening was a symbol of friendship to Billy. It was warm and inviting, and smelled good, especially when Mrs. Blair placed two or three coffee beans on the top of the stove where their toasting sent off a satisfying l aroma.
"Go to bed, Billy."
Bedtime was not a friend of Billy's. The angle iron cot he slept on sat just inside and to the left of the bedroom door. It was a small bed compared to the two brass poster double beds used by Mrs. Blair and Eugene.
Randolph, who was becoming known more by Timmy, the name Mrs. Blair had given him, slept in the crib at the foot of Eugene's bed and across the room from Mrs. Blair's bed. The single bare light bulb hung by its electrical cord in the center of the bedroom. During the daytime the ever-present horde of flies would swarm round the hanging cord, landing on it to brush their forelegs before flying off to another destination. The cord was obliterated with the deposits of the flies. From his bed Billy could see tomorrow's pesky population positioned for the night
