Of Love and Dust

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Pauline didn’t say anything.

  Tick-Tock said, “Hope a certain party ain’t coming here tonight.”

  “Tomorrow,” Pauline said.

  They watched Marcus come up the walk.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  Nobody spoke, but Pauline nodded. Then it was quiet for a while. Farther up the quarter the people were singing in the church.

  “Cobb got ’em going up there,” Pa Bully said.

  “Yes,” that’s Cobb, all right,” Aunt Ca’line said.

  It was quiet for about ten minutes; then everybody on the gallery saw the car lights coming down the quarter. Tick-Tock slid off the end of the gallery and nearly ran out of the yard. Nobody else moved. Since Pauline didn’t look worried, Aunt Ca’line said she wasn’t worried, either. Pa Bully wasn’t going to move unless Aunt Ca’line moved—and Marcus acted like he wouldn’t move no matter who it was.

  The car didn’t stop. It wasn’t Bonbon, it was Marshall Hebert. Marshall went down the quarter and turned around and went back out again.

  “Good night, Aunt Ca’line, you and Pa Bully,” Pauline said.

  “Good night,” they said to her.

  Pauline stood up to take her chair inside, and Marcus jumped up, too.

  “Pauline?” he said.

  “I told you to stay ’way from here,” she told him.

  “Pauline?” he said, going toward her.

  “You stay ’way from my house,” she told him.

  “Boy, can’t you hear?” Pa Bully said.

  “Mr. Grant,” Aunt Ca’line said, warningly.

  “Pauline?” he said, still going toward her.

  She went in and locked the door. Marcus stood before the door a long time before he turned around and went back down the steps.

  18

  Twelve o’clock Saturday we were through for the week, and Marcus went to the yard with me. Louise watched him from her gallery when we passed by the house but he still didn’t pay her any mind.

  “I didn’t think you could do it,” I said.

  “I can do anything,” he said.

  “That’s your trouble,” I told him. “You ought to show some humbleness sometime.”

  “For what?” he said.

  “Just so people can like you, Marcus.”

  “People,” he said. “People the cause I’m in the trouble I’m in now.”

  “Not people,” I said. “You put yourself in that trouble. If you hadn’t messed with that woman you wouldn’t have been in it.”

  “If that nigger hadn’t been chickenshit, I wouldn’t have been in it,” he said.

  “That was his woman,” I said. “Don’t you think he had the right?”

  “Any man’s a fool to die over a woman,” he said. “They got too many of ’em.”

  He got down and opened the gate for me; then after I had gone in the yard and after he had locked the gate, he got back on the tractor.

  “When I get back I’m go’n take a good hot bath and just rest, rest for a while,” he said.

  “I’m going to rest first, then I’ll take a bath,” I said.

  “I can’t rest with dirt on me,” he said.

  “City boy, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “I like soap and water and I like cologne. You can have some if you want some. Women got to run after you with that stuff smelling.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick to plain soap and water.”

  “Go on and be country if you want to,” he said.

  I drove up to the crib and parked the tractor. We had just climbed down and gone around the trailer when I saw Bonbon coming across the yard. He raised his hand with one finger sticking up. We stopped to see what he wanted.

  “Made it, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Bonbon had on a pair of clean, well-pressed khakis. He wore his white cowboy hat and not the sweat-stained straw hat he wore in the field everyday. He had on a pair of brown shoes and not the cowboy boots he always wore when he rode the horse.

  Bonbon was about six-four or -five, and I must say he was an impressive-looking man. He was handsome—I think very handsome—but nothing pretty or cute. Marcus, I think, was pretty. Young gals would say that Marcus was “dreamy.” Nobody would say Bonbon was dreamy, like nobody would say he was ugly. He was handsome in a rough way. He had a good build—maybe two hundred, two hundred and ten pounds. He had light gray eyes, a long, good-shaped nose, and a dry-shuck-color mustache. His mustache was lighter than his tan face and much lighter than his red neck.

  “Burning up,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m going to make it on down,” I said. “Paying off about the same time, huh?”

  “Yeah; four, four thirty.”

  “I’ll be back up then,” I said. “Anything else you want me to do?”

  “No, not you,” he said.

  Then I knew why he had stopped us. Marcus didn’t move.

  “You,” he said.

  Marcus waited. I waited, too.

  “Them children we had unloading that corn there all took sick.”

  Marcus didn’t know what Bonbon was getting to. I did.

  “That’s your job this evening,” he said.

  “My job?” Marcus said. “Unload that? Unload all that corn? I load all that corn.”

  Bonbon looked across the yard. He had given his orders; he didn’t think there was any need to carry it any farther.

  Marcus started trembling. I could see his fist tighten and then gradually open. For a second there I thought he was going to act a fool and jump on Bonbon. But Bonbon wasn’t worried at all. And I think that’s what made Marcus so mad. Bonbon gave him an order and forgot all about him.

  “It’s hot,” Bonbon said. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the flat side of his wrist.

  Marcus looked up at Bonbon, who wasn’t paying him any attention; then he leaned against the trailer and started crying. He cried so deep and fully, his whole body was shaking.

  “Can he eat?” I asked Bonbon.

  “Sure,” Bonbon said. “Just be there at one.”

  “Come on,” I said to Marcus. “Let’s go to the store.”

  Marcus turned away with me.

  “See you,” I said to Bonbon.

  “Yeah, see you there, Geam,” he said.

  Marcus and I didn’t say anything all the way to the store. I bought a loaf of bread, a can of lunch meat, a cake, a couple big bottles of pop; then we went out on the gallery. The sun was on the gallery, so we moved to the big pecan tree to the right of the store. The pecan tree was no more than three or four feet from the highway. On the other side of the highway was the river. You had to climb through a barb-wire fence and feel your way down a steep, grassy bank before you came to the water. Right now the river was clear and blue. Later this evening when it got cool, the white people would be out there in their boats.

  “You can push a man too far,” Marcus said. “I worked—what more can I do?”

  “You’ll have off tomorrow,” I said.

  “Tomorrow? Tomorrow? What about today?”

  Nothing I would have said could help matters so I didn’t say any more. I opened the can of lunch meat, and sliced it up and put it on the bread. I gave Marcus half and I took the rest. He raised the food to his mouth, then he started trembling and threw it down.

  “Lord, have mercy,” he said, crying.

  “You better eat,” I told him.

  “Eat?” he said. “Eat?” He looked like he wanted to jump on me.

  “Eat,” I said. I handed him another sandwich. “Here.”

  He wouldn’t take it. The tears just rolled down his face.

  “Here,” I said.

  He still wouldn’t take it—just looking at me with the tears rolling down his face.

  “Marcus?” I said.

  He drew back and knocked the food out of my hand. The bread went one way, the meat went the other way.

  “All right,” I said. �
��I did all I could.”

  I went back to eating. When I finished I stood up.

  “I’ll see you,” I said.

  “I got to do all that by myself?” he said.

  “You killed that boy by yourself, Marcus,” I said.

  “It’s not for that boy,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not for the boy. But you killed him; that’s why you’re here.”

  I went on down the quarter. It must have been a good hundred. That dust was white as snow, hot as fire. The sun was straight up, so it didn’t throw any kind of shadows across the road. You had nothing but hot dust to walk in from the time you left the highway until you got home.

  19

  After I took a bath and a nap I went back to the front to get paid. Marshall Hebert was paying off on the store gallery. He always paid off out there when it was hot. When it was cold or raining he paid off inside the store. Marshall was sitting behind a little gray table with the roll book and the money on the table in front of him. He had stacks of twenty-dollar bills, tens, fives, and ones; in change he had halves, quarters, nickels, and pennies. Marshall was a big man with a red face and light blue eyes. He was a heavy drinker and even now he looked half drunk. Winter and summer he wore a seersucker suit and a panama hat. His coat and hat hung on the back of the chair now. His shirt collar was opened and his shirt was soaking wet with sweat.

  The line of people waiting to get paid stretched from the end of the gallery almost to the mouth of the quarter. It was about four o’clock, but it was still blazing hot. Everybody was fanning. The women used their straw hats and pieces of pasteboard. The men used their hats or pocket handkerchiefs. The handkerchiefs were wet and dirty because the men had been wiping their faces with them, too. Bonbon, who stood on the gallery ’side Marshall, was the only person who looked cool. His khaki shirt was just as neat and dry as it was when I saw him at twelve o’clock. No doubt he had been sitting near the electric fan inside the store. Now he was standing there drinking a Coke. He spoke to everybody who came up to the end of the gallery to get paid. The people nodded or spoke, then they went inside the store or back down the quarter. Some of them stood on the side of the road trying to get a ride into town. By the time I came up to the gallery to get paid, Bonbon had finished his Coke and was standing there with the empty bottle in his hand. I spoke to him, then I spoke to Marshall. Marshall didn’t speak. He looked too tired to speak. It wasn’t just the heat, either; he was like this summer and winter. I think every day of his life was nothing but a burden for him to carry. After checking the roll book he reached me my money. I thanked him and stepped to the side.

  “Don’t give it all to the first gal you meet,” Bonbon said to me.

  “I won’t,” I said. “Is it all right if I take Marcus a Coke?”

  “Go on.”

  When I mentioned Marcus’s name, I saw Marshall looking at me. I went in and bought the Coke, then I came back out and walked down the quarter to the big gate. If I could have gone through the back of the store I could have saved myself plenty time and walking. But a colored person couldn’t go through the back of the store to the yard. He had to enter the yard from the big gate. Only white people or servants who worked inside the house could come in from the store.

  When I came up to the crib, Marcus had just about finished unloading the first trailer. He looked so beat and sweaty, I didn’t see how he was going to get the second trailer done.

  “How’s it going?” I asked him.

  Marcus looked down at me with an armful of corn. Right now he hated me as much as he hated Bonbon or Marshall.

  “I brought you a Coke,” I said.

  Marcus pitched the armful of corn into the crib. I opened the bottle with my knife and raised it up to him. He threw some more corn into the crib before he reached down and took the bottle from me.

  “Making good time,” I said. “Few more hours and you’ll have it all done.”

  Marcus drank his Coke and didn’t say anything. His khaki shirt was soaking wet with sweat. Sweat ran from both of his temples down the side of his face.

  “Going to Bayonne,” I said. “Need anything?”

  He still wouldn’t answer.

  “After you unload this one,” I said, “all you have to do is move the tractor up a little.”

  Marcus raised the bottle to his mouth and looked across the yard. He didn’t even look at me any more.

  I walked away from the trailer. I was going to Bayonne with Snuke Johnson, Burl Colar and Jack Claiborn. They were waiting for me in Snuke’s car when I came out the yard. Bayonne was ten, twelve miles away, and we made it there in about twenty minutes. After I bought a shirt uptown, we went back of town and had a few drinks. Jack Claiborn saw one of his old girlfriends and she invited us over to her place. When we got there she called three more of her friends over. The one I was talking to was sort of short and a little plump, and after a while we went in the bedroom. She pretended I was the best she ever had and I told her she was the best I ever had. When I got up she asked me for two dollars more than what she had asked me for at first.

  “Sure,” I said, and threw it on the dresser.

  “Now, you mad,” she said.

  “No, I’m not mad,” I said, getting into my pants.

  “Don’t do that,” she said, still laying there. “Come back here.”

  “I don’t have seven more to give you,” I said.

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said. “Come back here.”

  I sat on the bed and looked down at her. My pants was down round my ankles. She started messing with the hairs round my navel. I pushed my pants off and got back in bed with her again.

  “That’s the way the world is, Honey Dew, you know that?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “That’s the way it is. You get what you can.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “But mama ain’t like the rest of these old people round here,” she said. “Mama go’n give her Honey Dew little dessert.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said. “Just steaks and no dessert ain’t good for no man. ’Specially mama’s Honey Dew.”

  After it was over I got up and looked down at her. She was kind of pretty with her plump, big-eyes self. I took out five more and laid it on the dresser. She shook her head.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  I went back to the bed and kissed her on both of her sweet, soft goodness. She put her arms round my neck and kissed me hard on the mouth. Then she got up and put on her clothes. After she picked up all her money, we went out.

  I looked at Snuke Johnson and he was looking worried.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “We got to get back,” he said. “I got to take Josie them three cases of beer for the fair.”

  “Fuck Josie,” Burl said.

  Jack Claiborn laughed. “You fuck her. I want Ethel.”

  “You going or I’m going?” Burl asked.

  “You go,” Jack said. “You pulled the first trey.”

  “Come here, woman, let me give you li’l satisfaction,” Burl said to the woman he had been talking to.

  So Burl went in and stayed about an hour, and all that time Snuke Johnson was looking worried. Then Jack went in and stayed his hour and Snuke Johnson was looking even more worried. When Jack came out everybody was waiting for Snuke to go in. Everybody could see how bad Snuke’s little yellow, bad hair woman wanted to go in. Then Snuke got up and went in with her, but about fifteen minutes later they came out. In all my days I’ve never seen a more hurting look on anybody’s face like I saw on Snuke Johnson’s woman’s face when she came out of that room. Most women try to hide it when things don’t go well, but Snuke’s woman didn’t care if the whole world knew.

  It was about nine when we left the women, and by the time we got the beer from the store and got back to the quarter it was close to ten. Snuke was bitching all the way back. He said he
knew Josie was going to be mad. But it wasn’t his fault, he said. He said Burl, Jack and I were to blame.

  When we passed the big gate, I looked over the yard and I saw a lantern hanging outside the crib. So Marcus was still there.

  “What’s Bonbon trying to do, kill him off in one week?” Jack Claiborn asked.

  “Trying to break him,” I said.

  “He’ll do it, too,” Jack said.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said.

  20

  The quarter has two house fairs every Saturday night. Mrs. Laura Mae gives one up the quarter and Josie Henderson gives one down the quarter. Mrs. Laura Mae’s fair is quiet and orderly. She doesn’t have any music, and only good people—usually Christians—go there. Her food is better than Josie’s food—her pralines, her cookies, her gumbo—and I think she even gives you more for your money. Still, most of the people go to Josie’s fair because Josie’s got music. She’s even got an old loud-speaker hung up on the gallery so you can hear the music all over the plantation. Josie’s got another room for gambling, and still another room with a bed for—well, you can guess for what. Josie is the only single person on the plantation, woman or man, who’s got a whole house to herself. According to the people in the quarter, Bonbon had something to do with that, too. He was getting a cut out of everything Josie was bringing in.

  Just like any other night, the quarter was pitch-black. And in that blackness we could hear the music coming from Josie’s house fair. That old loud-speaker was all worn out and that music had a gritty sound, but still it brought the people there.

  When we got down to Josie’s, the place was crowded, noisy and hot. Everybody in the front was dancing. Snuke, Jack Claiborn, and I had the beer. Burl didn’t have anything; he was walking behind Jack. Josie was in the kitchen when we first came in, but before we got halfway across the room she was in there where we were. Josie was short and stocky and she was strong as a man. She could curse like hell, too. She pushed her way toward us, looking straight at Snuke Johnson. She was sweating and you could see she was mad. I thought Snuke was going to drop that case of beer and run.