When his bicycle broke, Willy pushed it to Ham’s house to get it fixed. It was a half hour before dark when he knocked on the door.
“Come on in,” Ham said.
Willy walked in the front door to see a mattress on some concrete blocks on one side of the living room, and on the other side bicycles and pasteboard boxes of bicycle parts, some of which were laid out on a table. The bedroom and the bicycle shop were separated by a narrow path which continued all the way to the back door.
In the bedroom side Ham’s wife, Miss Lucy, was lounging on the mattress.
“Come over here, boy,” she said to Willy.
“What you want?” Willy asked.
“I want you to come get in the bed with me.”
“No ma’am,” he said. “I got to get Ham to fix my bike so I can get home before dark.”
“Bring it here,” Ham called, “so I can see what’s going on.”
After Willy brought his bike in, Ham turned the bicycle upside down and sat it on the table,
“How in the world did you do that, boy?” Ham squeaked as he looked at the rear wheel.
Willy shrugged his 11-year-old shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“I ain’t never seen a axle broke clean off,” Ham said, then knuckle-busted the axle out with a crescent wrench to lay the wheel on the table. Then with the axle in his hand, he began rummaging through cardboard boxes.
“I know I got one in here, somewhere,” he said.
“He’d lose his backside if it wasn’t hooked to his leg,” Miss Lucy called.
Willy slid back against a wall, as a big man in overalls and a baseball cap busted in. It was the Polkton spitter, who had besmirched many a bully who had tried to poke him in the ribs.
“He’s 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds,” Willy said as he shrunk down. “That dude could drown you.”
“Backie won’t bother you,” Ham said. “He’s my helper.”
Backie walked toward Miss Lucy. “Hey, Mama,” he said.
“Hello Backie,” she answered. “Don’t you come bothering me, I’m trying to sleep.”
She paused.
“You just help Ham work on that bicycle.”
“Hey Backie,” Ham smiled from the box pile, “Help me find an axle, like this.”
They walked down the path to the back, where Backie touched a box with his brogan, and Ham bent down to look.
“That’s it, Backie,” Ham called, holding up the axle bolt, which he brought in, then screwed into the hub.
He suspended the wheel by holding each end of the axle, then motioned to Backie.
“Give her a twist, there, buddy,” he said.
As Backie spun the wheel, Ham smiled broadly.
“Wheee,” said Miss Lucy. “Come in here Harry,” she called. “Ham and Backie’s playing with a bicycle wheel again.”
A man, about the age of Ham, stuck his head in the door.
“Yep, I see them,” he said, then shook his head and disappeared.
Ham paid no attention to his detractors; he put bread in their mouths, and as far as he was concerned, that was attention enough. So he put the wheel back on, and threaded the chain onto the sprocket, then gave it a really good spin by turning the pedals around and around.
“They’re playing again, Harry,” Miss Lucy called, but Harry did not respond.
“I love bicycles,” Ham said as he sat Willy’s bike on the floor, then handed it to the boy.
“How much do I owe you?” Willy asked.
“A dollar and a quarter.”
Willy pulled his left pocket wrong-side-out.
“I know I got money in here somewhere,” he said. When he pulled out the other pocket, out fell four quarters.
“Let’s just make that a dollar,” Ham said. Willy handed him the money, then pushed his bike outside. Ham followed.
“Come see me when you can,” Ham said.
“I will, for sure,” Willie said, as he mounted his bike. Ham and Backie watched him ride up the ridge.
“Baw,” Ham said, as he patted the chest pocket of his own overalls. “Let’s get us some heart trouble.”
Backie watched as Ham pulled out a plug of tobacco, then bokered off a chew for each of them with his pocket knife.
“Baw,” Backie said, smiling, as he chomped down on the tobacco Ham offered and put half in his chest pocket. “Backie.”
After Ham cut himself a bite, they sat down on the yard chairs to chew, watch the dimming light, and listening to the summer bugs.
Ham knew more about Backie than his friend knew about himself. Backie, born in 1909, was a year older than he was. And the year Ham was born, his friend took a ride up Pigeon Ridge in his baby carriage.
“Look, he likes it,” his brother and sister may have said, as they neared the square curve.
“Let’s give him a real good push,” they said, at the same time.
So, running as fast as they could, they pushed the carriage hard, then turned it loose.
The laughed as they watched it roll straight, but sucked in their breath as it veered and tumbled into a ditch, and they became dead silent as they ran to pick the baby up.
Backie was still when they reached him, lying beside the stone that changed his life forever.
As Backie’s cross-the-path neighbor, Ham knew his friend lived with his younger brother, Hanes, his wife Helen, and their daughter, whom he called “Jukie.” Ham knew you didn’t mess with Jukie when Backie was around, for he would put his bulk between her and any imagined enemy and not move until the sun went down.
Just as Backie loved Jukie, Hanes and Helen, Ham was pretty sure Backie loved him too, for his friend stood, waiting when Ham got home from the state highway, to help him work on bikes and chew tobacco. But Ham had no idea that Backie would ever be a part of his family.
Jukie moved away for college in 1956; Hanes died in 1967, but Helen kept on taking care of Backie, getting him dressed in the morning, serving him coffee, biscuits and molasses with butter, before she left for work at the shirt factory. At lunch and supper time, she came home to fix their meals. She did so for supper on Wednesday, July 14, 1976, but they planned to wait a while to eat, so that Helen could work in their garden.
That evening, Jukie phoned her mother, but there was no answer to her call.
“I’ll just catch her in the morning, before she goes to work,” she said to herself.
Around bedtime that evening, Ham may have noticed Backie sitting alone on the front porch; but he did not see that Backie was still sitting in that same spot the next morning.
That morning, no matter how she tried, Jukie could not get her mother to the phone, so she called her cousin Tim in Wadesboro.
“Can you go check on Mama?” she asked.
“I’ll go right now” he said.
When he walked into the kitchen, Tim saw Helen, lying in the floor. The food on the stove remained as she had left it. When he found Backie and tried to bring him from the porch to the kitchen, Backie set his jaw, and would not move from his chair.
Ham was at work when they found Helen. But the first time he saw Backie, I think he walked up to him, to touch the pocket of his own overalls. Then he cut off a sliver for Backie, and they walked back down to Ham’s yard to sit and look at the evening sky.
“Backie,” Ham said, after a while, “I think you ought to come live with me.”
And by the grace of God and the love of a lot of good people, that’s just what Backie did.
