Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [99]
“You give her that, and tell her I think of her all the time.” He laughed his black laugh. “I think of her biscuits. These cooks here can’t make a biscuit a man can eat.”
I played with the wallet and watched the other families on the grass. All the women had leather handbags with stenciled roses. Little tooled leather vines wrapped around the shoulder straps, the edges of the wallets. I ran my fingers over Mama’s wallet and wondered how it was done.
How did they tool the leather?
I opened Mama’s wallet and stroked the unfinished leather. Around us, women were feeding children and keeping close to their husbands. The glaring hot yard smelled of spoiling food, sweat, and sour baby diapers. I looked up at Uncle Earle and saw he was watching the women, sweat running down into his eyes.
“How do you do it?” I asked him, lifting the wallet to catch his glance. “Don’t you have to cut all this stuff?”
He took the wallet from me and ran his fingers over the leather roses, the engraved vines. “We use punches. You hit them with a wooden mallet, pound out the design over and over again for hours. Just the thing for men in jail. Keeps ’em busy and off each other’s necks.” He grinned.
I stared up at him, not quite able to ask.
He laughed at me then, understanding perfectly.
“They count ‘em—the punches, the blades. If the count don’t match at the end of the afternoon, we don’t get out for dinner. Of course, sometimes they count wrong, and sometimes the razors break.” He wiped sweat on his jeans and brought his hand up, palm open. A slender metal blade glinted in the sunlight. He laughed again, that low growling laugh, while I stood with my mouth open.
“They think they so smart.” He spit in the direction of the fence. He looked different without his long black hair, harder and older. Only his eyes were the same, dark and full of pain. Now those eyes burned in the direction of the guards walking the other side of the fence.
“They think they so damn smart.”
My heart seemed to swell in my breast. His hand wiped again at his jeans, and I knew the blade was gone. He was my uncle. I was his favorite sister’s favorite child. I knew absolutely that I was his and he was mine, and I was suddenly fiercely proud of him, and of myself.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Sure you do, sunshine.” He laughed. “Sure you do.”
Uncle Earle picked me up and hugged me tight to his shoulder. I looked toward the fence and narrowed my eyes. We’re smart, I thought. We’re smarter than you think we are. I felt mean and powerful and proud of all of us, all the Boatwrights who had ever gone to jail, fought back when they hadn’t a chance, and still held on to their pride. When Aunt Raylene called my name, I took my time walking back to the car.
“Why does he have to be so stubborn?” Raylene was leaning forward with her hands on the wheel of the Pontiac. “Why does that man have to go looking for trouble all the time?”
“He don’t look for trouble.” I was still full of the magic of the hidden knife. “He just knows how to handle it when it finds him.”
“He does, huh?” Aunt Raylene turned to look at me. “Well, if he knows how to handle it, how did he get his ass in jail? How come he couldn’t handle himself well enough to stay out of jail? How come he couldn’t handle his own temper enough not to break the jaw of the best friend he’s got in this county?”
She shook her head and shoved her new pocketbook under the seat. “All you kids think your uncles are so smart. If they’re so smart, why they all so goddam poor, huh? You tell me that.”
I went looking for Grey when we got back from the county farm and told him it was