A Painted House by John Grisham

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Categories	Genre Fiction
Author	John Grisham
Publisher	Anchor; Reprint edition (February 3, 2004)
Language	English
Paperback	384 pages
Item Weight	10.2 ounces
Dimensions	5.25 x 0.74 x 8 inches

I. Book introduction

A Painted House is a 2001 novel by American author John Grisham.

Inspired by his childhood in Arkansas, it is Grisham’s first major work outside the legal thriller genre in which he established himself. Initially published in serial form, the book was released in six installments in The Oxford American magazine. The entire novel was later published in hardback and paperback by Doubleday. Set in the late summer and early fall of 1952, its story is told through the eyes of seven-year-old Luke Chandler, the youngest in a family of cotton farmers struggling to harvest their crop and earn enough to settle their debts. The novel portrays the experiences that bring him from a world of innocence into one of harsh reality.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world.

A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born … and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives — and change his family and his town forever….

Plot

The story begins as Luke Chandler and his grandfather Eli, also known as Pappy, search for migrant workers to help them with the cotton picking. They initially consider themselves lucky to hire the Spruills, a family of “hill people,” and a few Mexican migrants who annually come to the area looking for work.

Aside from working long hours under the hot sun in the fields, Luke’s life is fairly idyllic. He is obsessed with beautiful 17-year-old Tally Spruill, who on one occasion lets him see her naked, bathing in a creek. But a much more unpleasant experience is seeing Tally’s brother, the overly aggressive and mentally unstable Hank Spruill, attack three boys from the notorious Sisco family, one of whom is beaten so severely that he dies from his wounds. Hank arrogantly identifies Luke as a friendly witness who can support his version of the event, and the fearful boy backs up his story, although the adults in his life, including local sheriff Stick Powers, suspect he’s too frightened to admit the truth.

When Luke sees Cowboy, one of the Mexicans, later murder Hank and toss his body into the river, Cowboy threatens to kill Luke’s mother if Luke tells anyone what he saw. Cowboy and Tally then run off together and are not seen again. Luke also learns that his admired Uncle Ricky, fighting in the Korean War, might have fathered a child with a daughter of the Latchers, their poverty-stricken sharecropping neighbors.

Grisham surrounds these dramatic moments with descriptive passages of life in the rural South and the ordinary events that fill Luke’s weekly routine. His hard work in the fields is preceded by a hearty breakfast of eggs, ham, biscuits, and the one cup of coffee his mother allows him, and at day’s end he’s rewarded with an evening on the front porch, where the family gathers around the radio to listen to Harry Caray announce the St. Louis Cardinals baseball games. A devoted fan, Luke is saving his hard-earned money to buy a team warm-up jacket he saw advertised in the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Saturday afternoons are spent in town, where the adults share idle gossip and serious concerns and the youngsters visit the movie house, while Sunday morning is reserved for church. A visiting carnival, the annual town picnic, and Luke’s introduction to television – to see a live broadcast of a World Series game – are additional bits of local color scattered throughout the tale.

A flood devastates the family’s crop before the harvest is completed, and Luke’s parents decide to travel to the city to find work in a Buick plant, breaking a history of generations working on the land. The novel ends with Luke’s mother smiling on the bus, having finally gotten her wish to leave cotton farming.

The book’s title refers to the Chandler house, which never has been painted, a sign of their lower social status in the community. One day Luke discovers that someone has been secretly painting the weather-beaten clapboards white, and eventually he continues the job with the approval of his parents and the assistance of the Mexicans, contributing some of his own savings for the purchase of paint.

Editorial Reviews

“John Grisham is about as good a storyteller as we’ve got.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The kind of book you read slowly because you don’t want it to end … John Grisham takes command of this literary category just as forcefully as he did legal thrillers with The Firm…. Never let it be said this man doesn’t know how to spin a good yarn.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Characters that no reader will forget. .. prose as clean and strong as any Grisham has yet laid down … and a drop-dead evocation of a time and place that mark this novel as a classic slice of Americana.”—Publishers Weekly

“Some of the finest dialogue of his career … Every detail rings clear and true, and nothing is wasted.”—Seattle Times

About John Grisham

John Grisham (born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing.

Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.

Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. Grisham’s first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies. The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films:

• The Chamber,
• The Client,
• A Painted House,
• The Pelican Brief,
• The Rainmaker,
• The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas.

Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.

When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.

John Girsham lives on a farm in central Virginia.

II. Reviewer: A Painted House

Here is a summary of the book Review “A Painted House by John Grisham”. Helps you have the most overview of the book without searching through time. Please access “BookQuote.Net” regularly or save it to keep track and update the latest information.

1. GINA reviews for A Painted House

I learned that John Grisham should write more books in this genre because this is his best work….forget all those clients, partners, pelicans. One night, with a bunch of old friends in an apartment above Times Square, we tuned in to tv before turning in and The Bill Moyers Report was being aired; his guest was John Grisham. From his first responses, it was obvious that he possessed “gravitas” beyond his public persona.

Grisham grew up in Arkansas, the son of a cotton farmer, and went on to Law School but swiftly left that field of endeavor. He was a born story teller and has used the law background to great advantage. The next week I read “The Partner” which was clever and classy and all those best-seller adjectives. However, as I started reading “The Painted House” it was a most touching, true and arresting book that deserves the most serious consideration. Not just a “coming of age” story, this book deals with so many universal themes that no one could read it without making contact. It is a beautiful book. Put it on your bedside table pile.

2. BRINA reviews for A Painted House

John Grisham’s legal thrillers were a big part of my high school reading repertoire. A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Client; I read them all and looked forward to each new book as part of my summer reading list. After a while, Grisham’s books became formulaic and rather than anticipate his next thriller, I put him aside for years, choosing instead books with a literary bent. John Grisham, the baseball fan? Most men of his generation are, but I did not make the connection until Grisham came into the Cubs television broadcast booth during a game to promote his new book, Calico Joe, which featured baseball and the Cubs front and center. As much as Grisham enjoyed taking in Wrigley Field, he grew up in the south as a die hard Cardinals fan. While Calico Joe had been a thought provoking book, I found out from friends in the baseball book club that Grisham had written another book featuring baseball, only this book was more biographical in nature as it takes the reader back to the south in the 1950s when cotton was still king and the Cardinals were the only baseball team that mattered. Still starving for baseball, I decided to pick up A Painted House and view the world from John Grisham’s childhood point of view.

In 1952, the Mexicans and hill people arrived on the same day. The Cardinals were six games back of the Dodgers with six weeks to play, the season all but over. To seven year old Luke Chandler, baseball was his world. The only child of cotton farmers living outside of Black Oak, Arkansas, Luke’s year centers on cotton and baseball season. He constructed a makeshift field in the front yard and played catch with his father and grandfather almost every night. We find out that both his father and grandfather had what it took to be major leaguers but after serving and being injured in World War I and II respectively, their baseball dreams were cut short, although his father could still play well. Luke, on the other hand, dreamed of getting off the farm. He was not going to plant cotton for the rest of his life because he was going to to St Louis and play for the Cardinals, every boy’s dream during that era. In the meantime, Luke would have to settle for a Cardinals jacket from the Sears Roebuck and Co catalogue. If he picked enough cotton during the harvest, he would have enough money to purchase the same jacket that all his favorite players wore. The thought of wearing the same jacket as his idol Stan Musial was enough to get Luke through another cotton harvest, even in a year when the Cardinals would not win the pennant.

Although Grisham tells this story through the eyes of a child, A Painted House is not without controversy. Small time farmers like the Chandlers rely on hired help to get them through a harvest. Each year, Black Oak families hired both Mexicans and hill people from Ozark country. In 1952, the Chandler’s hill people invited trouble. The Spruill family set up their camp on the Chandler’s front yard, the place where Luke had designated his baseball field. The family did not know their place and expected Luke to respect them as elders even though every hill family in the past treated their employers with reverence. Hank Spruill was a menace and scared not only Luke but everyone in Black Oak. His sister Tally was seventeen and invited Luke on many an adventure that was not appropriate for child viewing. That was just the hill people as Mexicans brought their own set of problems to Black Oak, including the inevitable showdown with the hill people, leading to tension during the cotton harvest. Yet, for cotton farmers, this is the risk they took when hiring help each year , although how many more years the Chandlers would farm remained to be seen.

Luke’s mother was a city girl and educated. She did not expect to live on a farm for her entire life nor did she expect her son to be a farmer. She grew up, said Luke, in a painted house. After his father was injured in World War II, he moved with his new wife to his parents’ farm to assist with the farming. Although married for ten years, one could see that the tension was always there, as it was a foregone conclusion that one day they would leave. Her pride and joy was the garden that could feed the entire Black Oak for an entire winter. Yet, one could sense that Kathleen Chandler wanted more, perhaps to teach school in a city or to give a better life to her son. This would never happen in Black Oak where the biggest thrills were going to the general store once a week and the annual Baptist vs Methodist picnic and baseball game. Kathleen desired a life where her son could attend Major League Baseball games and where his schooling was not interrupted each year by the cotton harvest. From the first descriptions of Kathleen Chandler, one could sense that this entire story was looking back at 1952 through Luke’s point of view and that eventually his family would leave the farm. Grisham had to create tensions from both the harvest itself and outsiders to make this happen.

Grisham takes a page from his formulaic thrillers to tie this book up neatly. Each event that occurs would be a blip in a larger community but dominated the chatter in Black Oak for weeks. Grisham himself grew up the son of cotton farmers and then left to attend law school, deciding on writing for his profession. One could tell that he wrote from the heart for this book but being used to his thrillers still wanted all the plot lines to end without controversy. One could sense that slowly the future was coming to Black Oak when Luke got to watch the 1952 World Series on a neighbor’s new television set; however, it was still too slow for his mother. A Painted House takes a look a southern farming community during a simpler era. The entire book was told from a seven year old’s point of view and was comprised of simple sentences that did not take much effort to read. One gets a glimpse at how it must have been for Grisham growing up, so one can appreciate how much effort it must have taken him to achieve academically to make it to law school. Although not a literary gem, it made for relaxing reading on a lazy, baseball starved summer afternoon.

3. BAILEY JANE reviews for A Painted House

For being from John Grisham, this was such a great book! For a long time I’ve enjoyed his legal thrillers, but after a while I suspected each book would be exactly the same as the last with the only difference being the plot. Granted that’s one of the reasons I liked his novels, because I could trust they would be consistently good. When this book first came out I couldn’t wait to read it and I fell in love with his ability to tell a heartfelt, meaningful story having nothing to do with law. I liked this book so much that I even recorded the Hallmark channel original that was made of it!

4. FLORENCE reviews for A Painted House

I was wary when this book came out – doubting Grisham could pull off historical fiction. Well he absolutely nailed it. It’s obvious Grisham drew from his personal experiences growing up in rural Arkansas. This is a heart-wrenching story of an impoverished farming community. It’s got it all, destitute share-croppers, migrant farm workers, a sweet young boy who lives for baseball, a devastating flood and a mentally unhinged murderer thrown in for good measure.

I wonder if Grisham had written this under a pseudonym if it would have been taken more seriously. Who knows, even ranked as one of the great American novels – it was that good.

Plus it inspired me to getting around to giving my house a fresh coat of paint.

5. GREGGORIO reviews for A Painted House

A Painted House, by John Grisham, is a beautiful book. The story is told from the perspective of seven year old Luke Chandler, a young lad who lives to please his family, love his God, be a good Baptist, but most importantly, grow up to play for the St Louis Cardinals.

Life on an American farm in the 1950s is hard enough but when you grow cotton for a living on poor land that will flood every time the nearby river breaks its banks then you soon learn to expect the worst from the weather, from fate or providence or whatever forces of nature you believe in. This book however is not entirely about farming. It is about families and faith and justice and coming of age, and about love and hate and even touches on racism and ignorance. It makes us think about vendettas and protecting the people you love and when times get tough we witness the glory of forgiveness as enemy reaches out to enemy to become life long friends.

Special mention must be made of the ending. It was one of the most moving, emotional and hard to read, and yet perfect finishes to a book i have ever read. A family finds itself at a dead end and yet by making a tough choice they will live through some more tough times but come out on top later on.

John Grisham, you have written a classic , a masterpiece, in fact A PAINTED HOUSE is a book for the ages. I thank you for writing this book and everyone who is lucky enough to come across it will thank you, as well.

6. WILHELMINE SHUCK reviews for A Painted House

After someone told me not to read this book because she had never been able to get farther than page 20, I decided to read it after all. I had never read a John Grisham book but had been told that this one was not like the others (implication: negative).

My reason for choosing it was because we had moved from Hawaii to Arkansas and, knowing that John Grisham is from Arkansas, I wanted to read a narrative about cotton farming. And that is exactly what I got. The story is realistic in an almost John Steinbeck sort of way, relating the joys to be found within the hardships of a cotton farmer’s life. That life was so rough AND touch in the 1950s surprised me since it took place twenty years after the Great Depression.

A murder that occurs early in the book puts the story right into the “John Grisham” type of territory. While this book seems to be deeply personal, it still moves, has tension, has resolution, as a well told story should have. In addition it is informative about the lives of the Mexicans, the “hill people” (hillbillies in our parlance), so called “poor white trash” and a struggling white farm family. This book gives a true sense of what the lives of these families must have been like.

I was left with no doubt about why someone would want to escape kind of life entirely and also why a family might choose to stay.

My expectations of this book were adequately met. This might not be the case for the average John Grisham reader.

7. SEV’S MOM reviews for A Painted House

I admit, I was a bit skeptical about this one, because I am a serious legal & crime drama fan, which is why I became hooked on Grisham’s books from the very beginning. But I had to read it, because, without exception, I own and have read everything he’s published. Well, I was pleasantly surprised – I loved this book.

Far from the flashy courtroom dramas, tailored suits, and lawsuits, A Painted House carries the reader, on a gentle breeze, to a simpler time and place, facing challenges and drama of a very different nature. Through the eyes of the young protagonist, Luke, we are welcomed into the Chandler family to escape into a world of hand-picked cotton and homemade fried chicken, and where, for entertainment, the family gathers around the radio in the evenings to listen to broadcasted radio shows and baseball games.

But it’s not all peaches and cream on the Chandler farm. Luke’s family is struggling to make good on the debts incurred while running their farm, and when they acquire the help of migrant workers and a hired family from the hills, conflicts arise, tension builds, and their lives take some very different and sometimes turbulent turns.

I enjoyed “escaping” within the pages of A Painted House, and JG does a magnificent job painting his story so vividly, one can almost smell baking biscuits over the clean morning air in rural Arkansas. This is a great read for anyone looking to take a brief respite from today’s supercharged Reality-TV-laden nonsense.

8. CHARLES J.MARR reviews for A Painted House

John Grisham needs no praise. We all know his work. Yet this novel is something of an completely different order from previous work. What The Great Gatsby is for the WWI era and the twenties, this novel is for WWII & Korean war and the fifties. Grisham brilliantly paints the transformation of American society.In our daily intercourse we have forgotten the familial and civic ties of small family farms and a life with minimal possessions. The nickel coke, the dime matinee, the evening baseball game on the radio were the treats of life. A can of tomatoes may have cost only a dime, but it was worth canning them at home as well as other vegetables. A dime meant something. How many people depended on gardens to live? How many wore feedsack dresses? When was the last time any of us patched an innertube? When was credit something between customer and shipkeeper, carefully entered in a big black ledger book?

The world has greatly changed and this novel records what was once there, but like all great novels in its assertion of the particular it becomes universal. People had very little. Perhaps a change of clothes, two pairs of shoes. No closets full, no electronic marvels, no refrigerators and freezers and nearby supermarkets to fill them. Rural America, in Arkansas or Pennsylvania, Ohio or Missisippi was a way of life, now gone, and what we are today is a result of that change both for better and worse.

9. WAYNE BARRETT reviews for A Painted House

A surprisingly good book. For me anyway because usually I’m not into the legal courtroom thrillers (which this book is not) so I have avoided Grisham. And I have to also humbly admit that I have only read one of his novels, The Firm, and I liked it. So, I think I will give the guy a chance and add another of his books.

I only read this because my mom recommended it and I felt like I needed to reciprocate because she usually reads my recommendations. Well, thanks mom. This was a pretty darn good read. There were some thrilling moments in the story but mostly it was just a down to earth story about a family’s struggle and eventual overcoming of life’s hardships.

Even though there were a couple of pretty harsh moments in the book I think I would have to call this a ‘feel good’ story. It’s easy to read, entertaining, and I would recommend it to any of my friends.

10. MACIEK reviews for A Painted House

“The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a `good crop.'”

This was a really pleasant surprise. When asked about John Grisham, most of us immediately think of his wide catalogue of legal thrillers and their film adaptations. A Painted House is nothing like his other work (I admit to having read only one title – The Firm – a fact that I intend to change in due time) because it in no way relates to his traditional formula of legal thrilers. There is not a single lawyer in A Painted House; the best we get is a single policeman, because this story is set in rural Arkansas in 1952.

The novel is narrated in first person by a certain Luke Chandler, who also happens to be seven year old. The Chandler family are cotton farmers, and the book chronicles their struggles from late summer to early fall, when they harvest their crop with the help of Mexicans And Hill People. Luke will spend many hours picking cotton and living a boy’s life; he’ll hear things he shouldn’t hear and see things he shouldn’t see. These experiences will change him, as he’ll have to grow up and face the dangers of adult life. But there will be many pleasant moments, too; the carniva;, first crush and many sweets from the stores in town. The people on farms have to be tough, or they won’t survive. We experience their simple joys like listening to a baseball broadcast, but we also experience their despair with difficult harvest, their variness of people from other regions, the town gossip and the ever present preachers.

This book is the testament to Grisham’s ability to tell a meaningful, sweet story that has nothing to do with the law. As he himself grew up in Arkansas, the novel has a certain autobiographical feel to it, and many events might have occured to the 7 year old John as well (I think many of them dealt with snakes). Grisham’s narrator’s voice is precocious but not offensive; easy to read and very desriptive.

This is not a coutroom drama, but the book is just as suspenseful, if not even more; the events and the characters are well drawn and memorable, and we only wish we could spend more time with them. This is a very sweet coming of age story, dealing with universal themes, which is also a real delight to get immersed in. Forget the chambers, appeals and clients; check in at the Painted House.

III. A Painted House Quotes

The best book quotes from A Painted House by John Grisham

“The Methodists thought they were slightly superior, but as Baptists, we knew we had the inside track to God.”

“If outlaws like the Siscos could make it to heaven, the pressure was off the rest of us.”

“The only farmers who made money were those who owned their land. The renters, like us, tried to break even. The sharecroppers had it the worst and were doomed to eternal poverty.”

“I was tired of secrets, tired of seeing things I was not supposed to see. And so I just cried.”

“I looked at her and tried to speak, but all I could think about was how shocked she’d be if I said what I was thinking.”

“Ricky had taught me a few cuss words. I usually practiced them in the woods by the river, then prayed for forgiveness as soon as I was done.”

“Once again, I was reminded that Tally was the prettiest girl I’d ever met, and when she smiled at me my mind went blank. Once you’ve seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.”

“The sky had cleared, and now the sun was overhead, already baking the wet ground so that you could see the humidity drifting lazily above the cotton stalks.”

“Once again I had asked an innocent question, and because of it, I was banished from the conversation.”

“I was on the verge of tears, so I turned and ran past the trailer and along the field road until I was safely out of their sight. Then I ducked into the cotton and waited for friendly voices. I sat on the hot ground, surrounded by stalks four feet tall, and I cried, something I really hated to do.”

“Once you’ve seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.”

“Percy had never owned a ball or a glove or a bat, had never played catch with his dad, had never dreamed of beating the Yankee. In fact he’d probably never dreamed of leaving the cotton patch. That thought was almost overwhelming.”

“I was hurting, too. How could she have done such a terrible thing? She was my friend. She treated me like a confidant, and she protected me like a big sister. I loved Tally, and now she had run off with a vicious killer.”

“How often would I have the chance to see a pretty girl bathing? I could recall no specific prohibition from the church or the Scriptures, though I knew it was wrong. But maybe it wasn’t terribly sinful.”

“I wished i were seven feet tall. I’d hop up there and attack ol’ Samson while the crowd went wild. I’d whip him good, send him flying, and become the biggest hero in Black Oak. But, for now, I could only boo him.”

“In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there’d been in other towns — Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.”

“I had never seen a woman’s breasts before, and I doubted if any seven-year-old boy in Craighead County had. Maybe some kid had stumbled upon his mother, but I was certain no boy my age had never had this view.”

“I wanted to work alone (painting the fence). I wanted to seem outmatched and undermanned by the insanity of the job before me, so that when the Mexicans returned they’d feel sorry for me.”

“The loft was as clean and neat as the day they’d arrived. The pillows and blankets were stacked near the fan. The floor had been swept. Not a piece of trash or litter could be found. She was quite proud of the Mexicans. She had treated them with respect, and they had returned the favor.”

Excerpted from A Painted House by John Grisham

Chapter 1 – A Painted House

The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a “good crop.”

They were farmers, hardworking men who embraced pessimism only when discussing the weather and the crops. There was too much sun, or too much rain, or the threat of floods in the lowlands, or the rising prices of seed and fertilizer, or the uncertainties of the markets. On the most perfect of days, my mother would quietly say to me, “Don’t worry. The men will find something to worry about.”

Pappy, my grandfather, was worried about the price for labor when we went searching for the hill people. They were paid for every hundred pounds of cotton they picked. The previous year, according to him, it was $1.50 per hundred. He’d already heard rumors that a farmer over in Lake City was offering $1.60.

This played heavily on his mind as we rode to town. He never talked when he drove, and this was because, according to my mother, not much of a driver herself, he was afraid of motorized vehicles. His truck was a 1939 Ford, and with the exception of our old John Deere tractor, it was our sole means of transportation. This was no particular problem except when we drove to church and my mother and grandmother were forced to sit snugly together up front in their Sunday best while my father and I rode in the back, engulfed in dust. Modern sedans were scarce in rural Arkansas.

Pappy drove thirty-seven miles per hour. His theory was that every automobile had a speed at which it ran most efficiently, and through some vaguely defined method he had determined that his old truck should go thirty-seven. My mother said (to me) that it was ridiculous.

She also said he and my father had once fought over whether the truck should go faster. But my father rarely drove it, and if I happened to be riding with him, he would level off at thirty-seven, out of respect for Pappy. My mother said she suspected he drove much faster when he was alone.

We turned onto Highway 135, and, as always, I watched Pappy carefully shift the gears — pressing slowly on the clutch, delicately prodding the stick shift on the steering column — until the truck reached its perfect speed. Then I leaned over to check the speedometer: thirty-seven. He smiled at me as if we both agreed that the truck belonged at that speed.

Highway 135 ran straight and flat through the farm country of the Arkansas Delta. On both sides as far as I could see, the fields were white with cotton. It was time for the harvest, a wonderful season for me because they turned out school for two months. For my grandfather, though, it was a time of endless worry.

———–

On the right, at the Jordan place, we saw a group of Mexicans working in the field near the road. They were stooped at the waist, their cotton sacks draped behind them, their hands moving deftly through the stalks, tearing off the bolls. Pappy grunted. He didn’t like the Jordans because they were Methodists — and Cubs fans. Now that they already had workers in their fields, there was another reason to dislike them.

The distance from our farm to town was fewer than eight miles, but at thirty-seven miles an hour, the trip took twenty minutes. Always twenty minutes, even with little traffic. Pappy didn’t believe in passing slower vehicles in front of him. Of course, he was usually the slow one.

Near Black Oak, we caught up to a trailer filled to the top with snowy mounds of freshly picked cotton. A tarp covered the front half, and the Montgomery twins, who were my age, playfully bounced around in all that cotton until they saw us on the road below them. Then they stopped and waved. I waved back, but my grandfather did not. When he drove, he never waved or nodded at folks, and this was, my mother said, because he was afraid to take his hands from the wheel. She said people talked about him behind his back, saying he was rude and arrogant. Personally, I don’t think he cared how the gossip ran.

We followed the Montgomery trailer until it turned at the cotton gin. It was pulled by their old Massey Harris tractor, and driven by Frank, the eldest Montgomery boy, who had dropped out of school in the fifth grade and was considered by everyone at church to be headed for serious trouble.

Highway 135 became Main Street for the short stretch it took to negotiate Black Oak. We passed the Black Oak Baptist Church, one of the few times we’d pass without stopping for some type of service. Every store, shop, business, church, even the school, faced Main Street, and on Saturdays the traffic inched along, bumper to bumper, as the country folks flocked to town for their weekly shopping. But it was Wednesday, and when we got into town, we parked in front of Pop and Pearl Watson’s grocery store on Main.

I waited on the sidewalk until my grandfather nodded in the direction of the store. That was my cue to go inside and purchase a Tootsie Roll, on credit. It only cost a penny, but it was not a foregone conclusion that I would get one every trip to town. Occasionally, he wouldn’t nod, but I would enter the store anyway and loiter around the cash register long enough for Pearl to sneak me one, which always came with strict instructions not to tell my grandfather. She was afraid of him. Eli Chandler was a poor man, but he was intensely proud. He would starve to death before he took free food, which, on his list, included Tootsie Rolls. He would’ve beaten me with a stick if he knew I had accepted a piece of candy, so Pearl Watson had no trouble swearing me to secrecy.

But this time I got the nod. As always, Pearl was dusting the counter when I entered and gave her a stiff hug. Then I grabbed a Tootsie Roll from the jar next to the cash register. I signed the charge slip with great flair, and Pearl inspected my penmanship. “It’s getting better, Luke,” she said.

“Not bad for a seven-year-old,” I said. Because of my mother, I had been practicing my name in cursive writing for two years. “Where’s Pop?” I asked. They were the only adults I knew who insisted I call them by their “first” names, but only in the store when no one else was listening. If a customer walked in, then it was suddenly Mr. and Mrs. Watson. I told no one but my mother this, and she told me she was certain no other child held such privilege.

“In the back, putting up stock,” Pearl said. “Where’s your grandfather?”

It was Pearl’s calling in life to monitor the movements of the town’s population, so any question was usually answered with another.

“The Tea Shoppe, checking on the Mexicans. Can I go back there?” I was determined to outquestion her.

“Better not. Y’all using hill people, too?”
“If we can find them. Eli says they don’t come down like they used to. He also thinks they’re all half crazy. Where’s Champ?” Champ was the store’s ancient beagle, which never left Pop’s side.

Pearl grinned whenever I called my grandfather by his first name. She was about to ask me a question when the small bell clanged as the door opened and closed. A genuine Mexican walked in, alone and timid, as they all seemed to be at first. Pearl nodded politely at the new customer.

I shouted, “Buenos días, señor!”

The Mexican grinned and said sheepishly, “Buenos días,” before disappearing into the back of the store.

“They’re good people,” Pearl said under her breath, as if the Mexican spoke English and might be offended by something nice she said. I bit into my Tootsie Roll and chewed it slowly while rewrapping and pocketing the other half.

“Eli’s worried about payin’ them too much,” I said. With a customer in the store, Pearl was suddenly busy again, dusting and straightening around the only cash register.

“Eli worries about everything,” she said.

“He’s a farmer.”

“Are you going to be a farmer?”

“No ma’am. A baseball player.”

“For the Cardinals?”

“Of course.”

Pearl hummed for a bit while I waited for the Mexican. I had some more Spanish I was anxious to try.

The old wooden shelves were bursting with fresh groceries. I loved the store during picking season because Pop filled it from floor to ceiling. The crops were coming in, and money was changing hands.

Pappy opened the door just wide enough to stick his head in. “Let’s go,” he said; then, “Howdy, Pearl.”

“Howdy, Eli,” she said as she patted my head and sent me away.

“Where are the Mexicans?” I asked Pappy when we were outside.

“Should be in later this afternoon.”

We got back in the truck and left town in the direction of Jonesboro, where my grandfather always found the hill people.

———–

We parked on the shoulder of the highway, near the intersection of a gravel road. In Pappy’s opinion, it was the best spot in the county to catch the hill people. I wasn’t so sure. He’d been trying to hire some for a week with no results. We sat on the tailgate in the scorching sun in complete silence for half an hour before the first truck stopped. It was clean and had good tires. If we were lucky enough to find hill people, they would live with us for the next two months. We wanted folks who were neat, and the fact that this truck was much nicer than Pappy’s was a good sign.

“Afternoon,” Pappy said when the engine was turned off.

“Howdy,” said the driver.

“Where y’all from?” asked Pappy.

“Up north of Hardy.”

With no traffic around, my grandfather stood on the pavement, a pleasant expression on his face, taking in the truck and its contents. The driver and his wife sat in the cab with a small girl between them. Three large teenaged boys were napping in the back. Everyone appeared to be healthy and well dressed. I could tell Pappy wanted these people.

“Y’all lookin’ for work?” he asked.

“Yep. Lookin’ for Lloyd Crenshaw, somewhere west of Black Oak.”

My grandfather pointed this way and that, and they drove off. We watched them until they were out of sight.

He could’ve offered them more than Mr. Crenshaw was promising. Hill people were notorious for negotiating their labor. Last year, in the middle of the first picking on our place, the Fulbrights from Calico Rock disappeared one Sunday night and went to work for a farmer ten miles away. But Pappy was not dishonest, nor did he want to start a bidding war.

We tossed a baseball along the edge of a cotton field, stopping whenever a truck approached.

My glove was a Rawlings that Santa had delivered the Christmas before. I slept with it nightly and oiled it weekly, and nothing was as dear to my soul.

My grandfather, who had taught me how to throw and catch and hit, didn’t need a glove. His large, callused hands absorbed my throws without the slightest sting.

Though he was a quiet man who never bragged, Eli Chandler had been a legendary baseball player. At the age of seventeen, he had signed a contract with the Cardinals to play professional baseball. But the First War called him, and not long after he came home, his father died. Pappy had no choice but to become a farmer.

Pop Watson loved to tell me stories of how great Eli Chandler had been — how far he could hit a baseball, how hard he could throw one.

“Probably the greatest ever from Arkansas,” was Pop’s assessment.

“Better than Dizzy Dean?” I would ask.

“Not even close,” Pop would say, sighing.

When I relayed these stories to my mother, she always smiled and said, “Be careful. Pop tells tales.”

Pappy, who was rubbing the baseball in his mammoth hands, cocked his head at the sound of a vehicle. Coming from the west was a truck with a trailer behind it. From a quarter of a mile away we could tell they were hill people. We walked to the shoulder of the road and waited as the driver downshifted, gears crunching and whining as he brought the truck to a stop.

I counted seven heads, five in the truck, two in the trailer.

“Howdy,” the driver said slowly, sizing up my grandfather as we in turn quickly scrutinized them.

“Good afternoon,” Pappy said, taking a step closer but still keeping his distance.

Tobacco juice lined the lower lip of the driver. This was an ominous sign. My mother thought most hill people were prone to bad hygiene and bad habits. Tobacco and alcohol were forbidden in our home. We were Baptists.

“Name’s Spruill,” he said.

“Eli Chandler. Nice to meet you. Y’all lookin’ for work?”

“Yep.”

“Where you from?”

“Eureka Springs.”

The truck was almost as old as Pappy’s, with slick tires and a cracked windshield and rusted fenders and what looked like faded blue paint under a layer of dust. A tier had been constructed above the bed, and it was crammed with cardboard boxes and burlap bags filled with supplies. Under it, on the floor of the bed, a mattress was wedged next to the cab. Two large boys stood on it, both staring blankly at me. Sitting on the tailgate, barefoot and shirtless, was a heavy young man with massive shoulders and a neck as thick as a stump. He spat tobacco juice between the truck and the trailer and seemed oblivious to Pappy and me. He swung his feet slowly, then spat again, never looking away from the asphalt beneath him.

“I’m lookin’ for field hands,” Pappy said.

“How much you payin’?” Mr. Spruill asked.

“One-sixty a hundred,” Pappy said.

Mr. Spruill frowned and looked at the woman beside him. They mumbled something.

It was at this point in the ritual that quick decisions had to be made. We had to decide whether we wanted these people living with us. And they had to accept or reject our price.

“What kinda cotton?” Mr. Spruill asked.

“Stoneville,” my grandfather said. “The bolls are ready. It’ll be easy to pick.” Mr. Spruill could look around him and see the bolls bursting. The sun and soil and rains had cooperated so far. Pappy, of course, had been fretting over some dire rainfall prediction in the Farmers’ Almanac.

“We got one-sixty last year,” Mr. Spruill said.

I didn’t care for money talk, so I ambled along the center line to inspect the trailer. The tires on the trailer were even balder than those on the truck. One was half flat from the load. It was a good thing that their journey was almost over.

Rising in one corner of the trailer, with her elbows resting on the plank siding, was a very pretty girl. She had dark hair pulled tightly behind her head and big brown eyes. She was younger than my mother, but certainly a lot older than I was, and I couldn’t help but stare.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Luke,” I said, kicking a rock. My cheeks were immediately warm.
“What’s yours?”

“Tally. How old are you?”

“Seven. How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“How long you been ridin’ in that trailer?”

“Day and a half.”

She was barefoot, and her dress was dirty and very tight — tight all the way to her knees. This was the first time I remember really examining a girl. She watched me with a knowing smile. A kid sat on a crate next to her with his back to me, and he slowly turned around and looked at me as if I weren’t there. He had green eyes and a long forehead covered with sticky black hair. His left arm appeared to be useless.

“This is Trot,” she said. “He ain’t right.”

“Nice to meet you, Trot,” I said, but his eyes looked away. He acted as if he hadn’t heard me.

“How old is he?” I asked her.

“Twelve. He’s a cripple.”

Trot turned abruptly to face a corner, his bad arm flopping lifelessly. My friend Dewayne said that hill people married their cousins and that’s why there were so many defects in their families.

Tally appeared to be perfect, though. She gazed thoughtfully across the cotton fields, and I admired her dirty dress once again.

I knew my grandfather and Mr. Spruill had come to terms because Mr. Spruill started his truck. I walked past the trailer, past the man on the tailgate who was briefly awake but still staring at the pavement, and stood beside Pappy. “Nine miles that way, take a left by a burned-out barn, then six more miles to the St. Francis River. We’re the first farm past the river on your left.”

“Bottomland?” Mr. Spruill asked, as if he were being sent into a swamp.

“Some of it is, but it’s good land.”

Mr. Spruill glanced at his wife again, then looked back at us. “Where do we set up?”

“You’ll see a shady spot in the back, next to the silo. That’s the best place.”

We watched them drive away, the gears rattling, the tires wobbling, crates and boxes and pots bouncing along.

“You don’t like them, do you?” I asked.

“They’re good folks. They’re just different.”

“I guess we’re lucky to have them, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are.”

More field hands meant less cotton for me to pick. For the next month I would go to the fields at sunrise, drape a nine-foot cotton sack over my shoulder, and stare for a moment at an endless row of cotton, the stalks taller than I was, then plunge into them, lost as far as anyone could tell. And I would pick cotton, tearing the fluffy bolls from the stalks at a steady pace, stuffing them into the heavy sack, afraid to look down the row and be reminded of how endless it was, afraid to slow down because someone would notice. My fingers would bleed, my neck would burn, my back would hurt.

Yes, I wanted lots of help in the fields. Lots of hill people, lots of Mexicans.

….

Note: Above are quotes and excerpts from the book “A Painted House by John Grisham”. If you find it interesting and useful, don’t forget to buy paper books to support the Author and Publisher!

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