Of Love and Dust

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “Turn the other way,” Louise said.

  Tite did what she said. Aunt Margaret was still watching Louise, not Tite. Louise dipped the muff inside the box and patted Tite under the chin and around the neck. Then Aunt Margaret, watching Louise all the time, could tell Louise was rubbing the soot into Tite’s skin. When she was through, she put the powder muff inside the box, and she tied the kerchief around Tite’s head.

  “Well?” she said to Aunt Margaret.

  Aunt Margaret and Tite looked at each other at the same time. Aunt Margaret felt like somebody had hit her in the chest with his fist. She said Tite looked more like a little nigger than Jobbo’s little girl Edna ever did.

  “That child still white,” she said.

  “Where?” Louise said. “You can’t see her hair. “I’ll put gloves on her hands.”

  “She still white,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “Nobody can tell at night.”

  “And the day?”

  “We sleep in the day.”

  “Sleep where?”

  “They have rooms for people.”

  “A black man, a white woman and a white child leaving the South?”

  “We’ll sleep,” Louise said. “They have good people somewhere.”

  “Yes, you’ll sleep,” Aunt Margaret said. “Y’all go’n sleep.”

  “Shut up,” Louise said. “Shut up. If you can’t help me, just shut up.”

  Tite started crying. Aunt Margaret reached out her hands, and Tite went to her. The water started running down Tite’s face, leaving a white trail from her eyes to her mouth. Aunt Margaret picked Tite up and held her in her lap.

  “You can wash that off her face when you get up from there,” Louise said. “I’ll try it one more time before we leave. If it worry her, I’ll try something else.”

  “Y’all ain’t going nowhere, Miss Louise,” Aunt Margaret said.

  Louise had started in the other room, but now she stopped by Aunt Margaret’s chair. Aunt Margaret looked up at her standing there with her hand raised. Louise was so mad she had turned red in the face.

  “Go on and hit me, Miss Louise,” Aunt Margaret said. “Go on and hit me if that make you feel better.”

  “Margaret, just shut up,” Louise said, trembling and crying. “Just shut up. Just shut up, Margaret.”

  She went out of the room crying. Tite was crying, too. Aunt Margaret rocked Tite in her arms, saying, “Shhh, shhh, shhh.”

  When Louise first went in her bedroom she laid down on the bed and cried. But after a while she got up and sat before the dresser. Aunt Margaret had started cleaning up the house, and going back and forth by the door, she could see Louise sitting before the looking glass powdering her face.

  Aunt Margaret was on the back gallery washing clothes when she heard Louise coming through the house.

  “How do I look, Margaret?” Louise said.

  Aunt Margaret was rubbing one of Tite’s dresses on the washboard. She said she rubbed the dress couple more times before she turned and look at Louise in the door. She said you couldn’t tell Louise wasn’t colored. She had blacked up her face just the right amount. She had put on a hat with a veil. You couldn’t see her yellow hair at all, and you had to raise the veil to see her eyes or her mouth.

  “You can pass,” Aunt Margaret said.

  Louise smiled. “Just like a child,” Aunt Margaret thought. “Just like a five-year-old child playing out there in the yard.”

  “Oh, Margaret,” Louise said. “Why don’t you understand?”

  “I think I understand too much already,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “I mean us.”

  “I understand y’all, Miss Louise,” Aunt Margaret said, and went back to washing.

  Louise came closer and put her hand on Aunt Margaret’s shoulder.

  “Margaret, I wasn’t going to hit you in the kitchen,” she said.

  Aunt Margaret rubbed Tite’s dress on the washboard and didn’t answer.

  “You forgive me, Margaret?”

  “Yes’m, I forgive you,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “Oh, Margaret,” Louise said. “We just want to be happy. That’s all. That’s all, Margaret.”

  Aunt Margaret turned to look at her. She didn’t straighten up, she didn’t even take her hands off the washboard.

  “Some people can’t be happy together, Miss Louise.” she said. “It’s not made for them to be happy.”

  “We can,” Louise said. “I’m always happy with Marcus.”

  “It’s wrong, Miss Louise,” Aunt Margaret said. She said she was talking to her the same way you talk to a child. Louise couldn’t understand anything else.

  “It’s not wrong round Yankees,” Louise said. “Yankees don’t care.”

  Aunt Margaret said she straightened up now to look at her better.

  “Y’all ain’t round Yankees, Miss Louise,” she said.

  “We’ll get round them,” Louise said. “We won’t mix with them, but we’ll live there. Judy’ll have to go to school with the little Yankees, but I’ll tell her not to get too close.”

  Aunt Margaret said she just stood there looking at Louise’s black face through the veil. Even talking to Louise the way you talk to a child wasn’t doing any good.

  “You not mad at me, Margaret?”

  “No, I’m not mad,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “Oh, Margaret,” Louise said, and kissed her on the jaw through the veil. “Margaret, we won’t send for you—I was just playing; but I’ll write to you, and I’ll send you a present. And if you ever want to come there, we’ll send you something on your ticket. ’cause he likes you, too, Margaret. He’s always telling me how much he likes you. Just last night he was saying, ‘I like that maid you got there.’ I said, ‘Who? Margaret?’ He said, ‘Uh-huh, her; I like her.’ See?”

  “Yes’m, I see,” Aunt Margaret said.

  Louise smiled.

  “Now, you go’n help me?”

  Aunt Margaret nodded. “Yes’m, I’ll help.”

  “We have couple more days, but we might ’s well start now,” Louise said. “After you get through washing, we’ll figure out what we need from the store. We’ll have to buy something to make sandwiches with. Don’t worry ’bout the money. I got little bit saved up. Didn’t know I had saved, did you?”

  “No’m.”

  “I got little saved up.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to wait till Monday to make the sandwiches?” Aunt Margaret said.

  “Monday? Why?”

  “This hot weather, they might spoil.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, you’re right, Margaret. Margaret, you’re always so right. Well, what we can do today is wash clothes.”

  “I’m doing that now, Miss Louise.”

  “And iron and sew on buttons,” Louise said. “We might need a little patching here and there. Oh, my heart is singing, Margaret, I want to fly away.”

  She held out her arms and started dancing. Aunt Margaret was looking at her all the time, and she soon quit. She grinned at Aunt Margaret—a long, slow, shame-face grin—then she went back inside.

  For the rest of that day and all day Monday, Aunt Margaret was helping Louise get ready to leave. But she knew that Louise and Marcus weren’t going anywhere.

  49

  Marcus started getting his things together that Sunday a little after twelve. When I came to the door he was sitting on the gallery polishing his shoes. He had six or seven pairs. He had brown and white shoes, black and white shoes, oxblood shoes; he had plain brown shoes, plain black shoes; he had a pair of yellow, pointed-toed shoes, and he had a pair of gray cloth shoes. He had a bottle of polish and a can of polish for all but the gray shoes. He had two shoe brushes and a couple of shoeshine rags laying on the steps. When I came to the door, he was polishing the oxblood shoes.

  “How’s it going?” I said.

  “Trying to get things together,” he said.

  He didn’t have on a shirt or an undershirt—he wore a pair of brown
pants. He had been to the barber the day before; I could see the neat razor line on the back of his neck. Hanging on the clothesline over his head was a bunch of shirts, pants and suits. The shirts were all colors—blue, pink, white, green. He had about a half dozen suits and sports jackets there, too. He had even brought out his suitcases. He had them opened, airing out against the wall.

  Marcus called to a little boy going by the gate. The boy came in the yard—no shirt, no shoes, just a pair of overalls that had been torn off at the knees. His face and his body was shining with sweat. His hair looked like grains of black pepper on his head.

  “Yes sir?” he said to Marcus.

  “Want make a dime?” Marcus said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Go in the house and get that money off the bed. Then go down to Josie and tell her send me two chicken dinners and some beer. Four bottles of beer. You can remember all that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Say it.”

  The little boy said it.

  “All right, get the money and go on,” Marcus said.

  The little boy ran inside to get the money, then he ran out of the yard and down the quarter. He was spanking his behind the way you spank a horse to make him run faster.

  “Want have dinner with me?” Marcus said over his shoulder.

  “Don’t mind at all.”

  I went over where he was and sat on the end of the gallery, looking at him.

  “Fixing things up,” he said.

  “Yeah, I see.”

  He spit on the tip of the oxblood shoe and brushed it down. Then he put the shoe between his knees and started rubbing it with the shoe rag. He rubbed it hard and fast, popping the rag a couple times. When he was through, the gloss on the tip hurt your eyes.

  “Pretty good, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Used to do little that for a living,” he said.

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah, long time ago.”

  After he finished with the oxblood shoes, he got the brown ones.

  “This time tomorrow, guess that trial be over,” he said, thoughtfully. “This time Tuesday I’ll be somewhere in Texas.”

  “California, huh?”

  “Yeah, I figure that’s the best place for us to go,” he said. “They say they got a lot of them army and navy plants out there. Should be able to get some kind of work.”

  I looked at him, but I didn’t say anything. I could feel that tightness in me again. It had been coming and going ever since Marshall first showed up in the field. It was in me Friday evening when Marcus went to that house. I waited for him in the road and asked him what had happened. He told me everything was set. But when I came up to the yard the next day, Bishop came up to me shaking his head. He looked sadder and sicker than I had ever seen him, and he just stood there shaking his head. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t even try to open his mouth, he just shook his head like doomsday had finally got here. When I saw Marcus again that evening I told him about it, but I could have saved my breath for all the good it did.

  Now, Marcus looked up from the shoe he was working on and grinned at me. It was a little knowing grin, like he knew what I had been thinking about all the time.

  “Still don’t think it’s go’n work, huh?” he said.

  “Aunt Margaret and Bishop don’t think so,” I said.

  “I don’t pay too much ’tention to old people talk,” Marcus said.

  “That’s not a good thing to say, Marcus; not at a time like this.”

  “Jim, stop being old-fashion,” he said. “Where would people be if they didn’t take a chance? You know where? Right here. Right here in this quarter the rest of they life.”

  The little boy came back with the food and the beer.

  “Go in my kitchen and get that opener off the table,” I told him.

  He ran in and ran back out. After handing me the opener, he ran out of the yard. He was the running-est little boy I had ever seen.

  We sat there eating. I was hungry because I hadn’t ate a thing since last night. I had done some gambling at Josie’s place until about four this morning, and I had left there, half broke, without eating anything. I hadn’t ate anything when I got up, so right now I was half starved. Marcus was pretty hungry, too. He was tearing into that chicken like he hadn’t seen food in days.

  The second bell rang for church. I saw people going by the gate. It was hot, and all the women and girls had on light-color dresses. Most of them had straw or pasteboard fans. The men used their pocket handkerchiefs to fan with. The smaller children didn’t have anything, and they didn’t mind the heat half as much as the older people did. Most of them waved or spoke to me as they went by. They didn’t say anything to Marcus; they just looked at his clothes hanging on the line.

  “I used to belong to church,” Marcus said.

  “Yes?” I said.

  He could see I wanted him to talk, so he wouldn’t say anything else for a while.

  “I was baptised when I was about twelve,” he said. “Was a good little Christian, too. Used to go to church all the time—me and my mama. People used to say I was go’n be a preacher. I used to read the Bible in the church sometime. Then my mama died. My daddy put me with my nan-nan and he took off somewhere. After he left, I had to get a job to help support myself. I got a job on a parking lot. They had another nigger working there they called Big Red. I wasn’t no more than fifteen then, so Big Red showed me the ropes. He charged me a dollar a day for showing me the ropes. I didn’t think that was fair and I went to the boss and told him. He told me not to give Big Red a damn thing. I told Big Red what he said. I didn’t say the word damn, because I was a Christian and damn was a bad word. I just told Big Red the boss said I didn’t have to give him anything.

  “ ‘So you went to the white man, huh?’ Big Red said. ‘For that you go’n give me two dollars a day. Now, go tell the white man that.’

  “I went and told the white man Big Red said I had to give him two dollars a day. He said I didn’t have to give Big Red a damn thing. I asked him to tell Big Red that because Big Red wouldn’t believe me. He told me he was a little busy then, but for me to go out there and tell Big Red what he said. I didn’t tell Big Red anything because now I saw what was going on. Big Red was his number one nigger, and he didn’t care what Big Red did.

  “So I went to Jesus on my knees. Every night before I went to bed I asked Jesus to go with Big Red. I figured if He blessed Big Red, Big Red would leave me ’lone. Big Red might even take pity on me, seeing I was a little boy, and even give me some money. But that was the farthest thing from Big Red’s mind. Every day just ’fore I knocked off, he came to me and asked me for his two dollars. If I told him I hadn’t made that much tip, he jugged his hand in my pocket and took everything. I wanted to quit the job, but my nan-nan told me not to. She said the white man would put a bad mark behind my name and it would be hard for me to get another job anywhere else in Baton Rouge. So I stayed there. I stayed there, and every night I prayed. I prayed so much, I even mentioned Big Red’s name in church. But instead of me saying, ‘Jesus, go with Big Red,’ I said, ‘Jesus, please make Big Red stop taking my money.’ When I said that, the church cracked up. Everybody started laughing. Even the preacher on the pulpit. Everybody laughing and coughing and wiping they eyes. Because, you see, Jesus didn’t do things like that. Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, but He didn’t stop people from taking your money. That wasn’t a miracle—not even a little miracle.

  “The next day when I went to work, Big Red said, ‘I hear you been talking ’bout me to a Jew now. That go’n cost you another dollar.’

  “That night he came to collect his three dollars. I had just bought a big bottle of pop.

  “ ‘All right, pay off,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to hold back, I’ll just go in your pocket.’

  “I paid him off, all right. I splintered that bottle on his head.

  “But ’fore I could move, the law was there hauli
ng me off to jail. They put me in a cell with about six other niggers. They called one of them Cadillac. Soon as I got in there, Cadillac said, ‘You brought my cigarettes?’

  “ ‘No,’ I said.

  “ ‘You shouldn’t come to a man house and don’t bring his cigarettes,’ he said, and rammed his fist in my stomach. I went down. He picked me up and hit me again. He beat me so bad I couldn’t even go to my bunk. Two other niggers had to take me there. The next morning the jailer looked at me all bruised, but he didn’t say a thing. He even gived Cadillac more food than he gived the rest of us. Cadillac was his nigger just like Big Red was the other white man’s nigger.

  “When my nan-nan came to see me, I told her to bring me some cigarettes next time. She bought the cigarettes ’fore she left the jail, and I gived them to Cadillac. That went on every time she came. She gived me the cigarettes and I gived them to Cadillac. When Cadillac got out, somebody else came in. They called him Horse Trader and he said he was Cadillac cousin. He told me Cadillac told him to collect the cigarettes I owed him. So when my nan-nan came now, I gived the cigarettes to Horse Trader. I wasn’t the only one Cadillac and Horse Trader did this to; they did it to everybody they could. Horse Trader even made people suck him off. Not me, some other cats. If he had ever tried that on me, I woulda killed him while he slept. But he tried that on other people. If the jailer caught anybody sucking anybody off, he took the person who was doing the sucking to another room and beat the hell out of him and brought him right back. And Horse Trader would make him suck him off again. Horse Trader had a favorite one, a little yellow cat called Chinaman. Horse Trader used to make Chinaman hit it every night. Every time Chinaman got through, he puked and prayed to Jesus. Every night he had to eat, then he puked and prayed. I could have told him praying wasn’t going to do any good, but I thought I better keep out of this shit. One day they took Chinaman off to Jackson to the crazy house.

  “When Horse Trader got out of jail, another one came in. I forgot his name—Boxcar, or something—and he said he was Horse Trader half-brother. So I gived the cigarettes to Boxcar. Then one day I told myself I ain’t giving these fuckers nothing no more even if they killed me. If I had to go through life like that, life wasn’t worth it. So I told my nan-nan to stop bringing cigarettes. She wouldn’t stop. So everytime she brought them, I ripped open the pack and dumped them in the toilet. Boxcar beat me every time I did that, but I didn’t care no more.