Hill Man
Page 20
But he wasn’t no more licked than he would of been when he was a kid, knowing what he wanted and getting it. He asked for the loan of my mules. “Got to git my tobaccer patch ready,” he says, “an’ I’m aimin’ on puttin’ in a right smart corn.”
“Use ’em an’ welcome,” I says, “an’ ary other thing I got you need.”
“Much obleeged,” he says.
We walked out to the gate, it being time for me to go. “You like it here, Rady?”
He bent over and picked up a green twig and commenced stripping it down. When he had it bare he stuck it between his teeth to chew on. “Not rentin’,” he says, “but I ain’t aimin’ on rentin’ long. I’ll have it back in a couple of years.”
He turned and pointed out over the slope. “This fall I’m aimin’ on seedin’ another pasture over there, an’ I’ll git me a start of calves. I’m aimin’ on raisin’ me a nice beef herd come another year.”
I followed his finger and then I looked at him. He was looking up the slope, and I allowed he was already seeing, in his mind’s eye, his corn standing high, and his tobacco broad and green, and fat calves feeding on a green stand in the new pasture. And it came over me then why I felt so good Rady was home again. It was because he was Rady and not hell nor high water could ever change him or lick him. It gave a man a braver feeling because he was around, and it made you feel like, because he was your friend, you were a little something of the same breed of man.
I hoped him well. “Jist go up with me,” I said, opening the gate.
“Can’t,” he said, “I got the night work to do up. Jist stay on.”
But I had my own night work to do up, if Junie hadn’t already done it, me being gone overly long already. So I raised a dust up the road. I looked back once and he was still standing at the gate. I waved at him and he waved back at me. Then the turn of the road put the trees between us. But I knew he was still there.