She picked up the poker and gave her attention to the smouldering back log again, not replying.
He asked once more.
Finally she said, “Son, you needn’t worry no mo’ ‘bout Malinda. She ain’t goin’ to git well. . . .She comin’ here, all right, but ‘twon’t do us no good—nor harm!”
Adam jerked up from his chair angrily. “Ma, don’t gi’me dat kind-a talk! Don’t gi’me that!” He moved toward the door. “Here, I’m goin’ to let the coon in by the fire to prove you wrong!”
She turned and, in the glow from the hearth, showed the glint of her eyes in their sockets, as she stared at him, but she did not move to arrest him. “I wouldn’t,” she said in quiet warning, “they won’t be no coon there. . . .” She tensed to her listening, then spoke again. “Hit wuz close, close!” she said, “but hit went on by.”
“Whut you mean, ma?” Adam asked, irresolutely halting, turning back from the door. “Whut you mean?”
She spoke over her shoulder, facing the fireplace, in a different voice now, a singsong. “Land lines and timber. . .boat in the River. . .”
15.
THE NEXT MORNING Adam put his red mule to the buggy. He was off to Peter Bright’s place the first thing after breakfast. He hoped to catch the old man at home, before he started for the field to relieve his son, David, with the plowing, as he sometimes did. It was a long three miles over to Bright’s.
Land lines and timber! He had enough on his mind already, without any of the trouble his mother predicted for him for the night before. She had, however, sometimes a way of putting it like she wanted it to be. He hoped this time it was her druthers and not the future that wagged her tongue. He couldn’t make out what she meant about the lines and the River. But she had been near enough to overhear (pretending she was deaf) some of Slappy’s talk with him. She may have thrown in the Land Deal just to give it a twist. If he did bring Malinda home, she would probably go back across the River to Deadman’s. Yet she never really had a good word for Babe, either. She was a curious woman!
Adam got down to open his gate and he led his mule through it. He had left Bo with Marse and the little Bruce boy to entertain them. And he had put Jake in charge, to look after them ‘til he could get back. He told Jake not to let them get out of sight.
Adam latched the gate with impatience to be gone. Slappy’s news was bad, any way you looked at it! He had better move fast. There were two good reasons for starting with Peter Bright.
Adam found the old man squatting down in the breezeway of his barn mending harness. He rose as Adam approached. The mild, fair, lean face seemed to smile as usual in the adornment of its handlebar mustache. But Adam was sharply aware of the constraint about the thin nostrils. He said, with more formality than he had once been accustomed to use, “I-I hope y’all are all well this mornin’, Mr. Peter?”
“All well, thank ye!” Peter said in a crusty voice. In a posture not unlike a question mark, he continued to confront Adam with inquiry on his face.
Adam was disturbed by this coolness and decided to announce the warrant for his visit at once. “That’s fine!” he said, going on, without pausing. “You know that note of mine is comin’ due the first of July and you sont me word a while back you wanted to see me ‘bout it.”
Peter blinked and for a moment lowered his gaze reflectively before he could speak. “We didn’t git to it that other time. I thought we might talk about it now?” Peter’s face was unresponsive, but he continued. “You remember when we made it, you wuz w-willin’ to let hit run til the first of the year. But I said I could give ye half of it in July?”
Peter turned away to hang the bridle on the wall. He said over his shoulder in a tepid tone of voice, “We’ll talk about it.” He began to move away. “Come along to the well. I want a drink of water!”
Adam followed him through the barnlot gate reluctantly. He had wanted to talk about the note first. He surveyed the gray, hard-swept backyard before the covered well dubiously. How was he going to reassure old man Peter about the Land Deal, anyhow?
There was water drawn in a cedar bucket, but Peter chose to draw a fresh supply. As the chain ran through his fingers, lowering the bucket down the well, he said, with a slight life in the pitch of his voice, “I hear the widow Hightower’s boy is out stayin’ at yo’ place?”
Adam glanced down the dark barrel of the well to the distant dollar of water. So Slappy had been before him! He shrugged. He studied Bright’s pensive downcast profile for an instant, then said circumspectly. “Mr. Marse and Mr. Robert Bruce’s little brother, Walter, are out campin’ in that old wine house. Doin’ some fishin’. . . .I took ‘em over to Murdock millpond yest’idy. But there wuz too much water.”
Peter rested the dripping bucket on the shelf, saying in deference to manners, “Have a drink, Adam?” but going on, without pausing for a negative response, to take a dipperful himself. “We’ve got too much of everything in this country,” he said, taking up Adam’s remark with a will that denoted purpose, “except money!”
Adam acknowledged his wit with a wag of his head.
Peter drank and lowered the dipper, again offering Adam a drink, then he went on. “Yeah! Take corn. I got half of last year’s crop in the barn right now and if I wanted to git shut of it, I couldn’t give it away. And cotton. I done give that away, of course, to git out of debt to the bank. I don’t know why we are plantin’ ag’in this year?” He shook his head in token of his puzzlement. “Just for the fun of watchin’ it grow, I reckon!”
Adam laughed politely. Seeing the drift, he pulled out a new slab of chewing tobacco and his pocket knife and extended them toward him. “Mr. Peter, you s-sound like a man as needs him a good c-chew of ‘bacca,” he said heartily to turn the edge of his homily. “Here’s a fresh plug of Brown Mule. Cut ye a mouthful!”
For a fraction of a second Peter’s blue eyes gleamed, then his face, almost imperceptibly, stiffened and his thin nostrils curved. “Don’t believe I care for any just now,” he said.
Adam, to carry off the rebuff with a show of manners, said, “Well, if you don’t mind, I believe I’ll take one?” He cut himself a chew.
“Same way with land—too much of it!” Peter’s bugle-tone resumed. “And then when it looked like we’re going to git the chance to sell off a little of it for real money that you can bite true metal and ring on the counter, why somebody goes and gits notionate.” Peter plopped down, in demonstration of his disgust, on the bench between two of the posts of the well shed.
Setting his teeth in his chew, Adam decided to get the Land Deal out in the open. “Mr. Slappy tells me that banker Littleton thinks the Land Deal is done blown up.”
Peter went on as if he did not hear him. “Notionate! First it’s except this and except that. Then when it comes about that there don’t need to be any exceptions, why somebody else gits ‘er all upset over land lines! In five thousand acres of timber, what difference does it make where one land line runs, more or less?”
Adam repeated, “Mr. Slappy says the banker believes the Deal’s off.”
Peter looked up sharply. “I heard ye. Slappy told me too, So did Littleton!”
Adam went on in patient persistence. “If’n hit is, I don’t b-believe Mrs. Hightower knows about it.”
Peter wiped his mustaches with the back of his hand and staring straight ahead of him at about the level of Adam’s overalls’ bib pocket, said, “She ain’t never knowed what was good for her in this thing!” He thrust out his hand abruptly. “Sit down, Adam. It’s cooler under this shed.”
Adam took a seat at right angles to him. He said, after the manner of casual inquiry but in a tone that loaded it with meaning, “M-mr. Peter, ain’t yo’ wife some kin to the Hightowers?”
Peter replied, with an air of judicious admission, “Georgie and Marcellus were third cousins.”
Adam’s mouth limbered in humor and he spat out into the yard. “Ye still kin, ain’t ye?”
Peter swiped at his
mustache again. “We ain’t no kin to the widow! She don’t hardly know we’re livin’.” He brought a small sandy piece of chewing tobacco out of the bib of his overalls. “She ain’t never bin out here to see Georgie—not during the whole time she was married to Marcellus.”
Adam said, in an apologetically-lowered-depth of voice, “She’s always lived away from here mostly.” He had taken a wrong track there!
Peter lifted the tobacco plug to inspect it and bit off a chew with a jerk of his head. “Oh, we’ve managed to git along without it,” he said ironically. “All we interested in is the Land Deal going through.”
Adam nodded.
Peter masticated his tobacco for a time then went on. “You keep gittin’ her excited about those blamed land lines and it won’t go through, howsomever. That Yankee buyer don’t give a damn about her clay or the swamp field, either, but he don’t intend to have his titles messed up. And, with all of the wild land in south Georgia that’s beggin’ to be bought, he sho’ hell don’t have to!”
Adam had been studying his face as he spoke and at the end of it he shrugged and got up from his seat. He walked back and forth before the well shed, gazing at the ground. Finally he came back and sat down on the bench beside Bright, but facing the other way. He spoke with a brief preliminary jerk of his jaw, without stuttering, and with deep assurance in his voice. “She ain’t goin’ to have that line run out, Mr. Peter, I can guarantee you that—just between us not to go no further.”
Peter moved the pin-point pupils of his incredulous eyes over Adam’s face. After a time he said, still unconvinced, but impressed, “Well what’s holdin’ up the Deal, then? Why did she want to put it off, indefinitely—Littleton says, ‘indefinitely’.”
Adam spoke again with the same assurance under the scrutiny of Bright’s gaze, “The widow told me for sho’ that the Deal waun’t off.”
“Then what is she and them Yankees up to? Actin’ so mysterious.”
Adam let out his breath and turned the chew of tobacco over in his mouth, like a juggler who is balancing a ball on his nose, but he did not shift his gaze. “She ain’t told me nothin’, not a thing, mind you! But you know the Colonel owned a lot of timber land—a lot of land away from here.”
Peter jerked up his head. “Oh the hell you say! I’d never thought of that!” He came to his feet. “She may just sell Lincoln some of that Okefenokee Swamp land and let this whole thing drop!”
Staring, Adam’s eyes widened until their whites shone, then he winced and shut them on the scene of his misadventure and shook his head. He came to his feet. Old man Peter was moving away toward the barn and he caught up with him. “M-mr. Peter, you ought not to jump to no conclusions, like that,” Adam pleaded. “I don’t know a blame thing. Besides it would take a long time—cruisin’ the timber and clearin’ the land titles—to work up a deal on the Okefenokee swamp. And she like the rest of us. She need money now.”
Peter paused and looked back, taking a swipe at his mustache. “I reckon that’s so,” he agreed. “But I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that Okefenokee tract before!” He turned back, opening the gate to his barnlot. He went inside and fastened the gate behind him. He started toward the barn, then looked back over his shoulder, calling out apologetically. “Oh yes, Adam. When the Deal fell through, I had to sell that paper of yours to the bank—you know, like I sent you word I might have to? Littleton’s got it.”
Adam’s breath caught in his gullet and made him gag.
On the following afternoon, in the back room of the bank, he stood in front of the director’s table, facing Mr. Littleton who sat behind it in a wide arm chair. Adam stood firmly, with his hat in his hand, in noncommittal gravity. He had waited a day to come to the bank to be able to think the thing over and pry around it. The Colonel had believed that such time was well spent. He wanted old man Peter to have time to get there with his story ahead of him, too. “M-mr. Littleton,” he said evenly, “Mr. Peter Bright tells me he done sold my mortgage note to the bank.”
The big banker nodded stolidly, his double chins like a bellows.
Adam kept his voice steady. “We had an understanding that I was to pay five hundred in July and git it renewed til the first of the year.”
Littleton erupted in a mixture of a belch and a snort and, turning his head, dropped a mouthful of tobacco juice in the brass spittoon by his chair. Then his voice rolled out under the weight of his great belly. “What’s this yarn you’re spreading about Mrs. Hightower dropping the River deal to sell Lincoln her Okefenokee land?”
Adam was rocked on his feet, his cheeks tightening against the bone and his eyes beginning to burn. He had been afraid this was the way it would come out, ever since he got to town and overheard Paley, back of the stores.
“Well?” barked the banker.
Adam limbered his stance. His words came crustily. “I-I heard that too!” he said smiling wryly. “Here in town!”
Littleton blinked, aimed his long nose at him. “What do you mean, you heard it?”
Adam’s face was still darkly flushed, but he had regained control of himself, his jaw loosening a little and his eyes bland.
“Yessuh! This mornin’. S-standing behind the Ocmulgee River Tradin’ C’operation!”
Littleton frowned. “Well, what about it?” he said peremptorily.
“T-there to my left was a-standin’ Mr. Milt Murdock, Mr. Hinshaw Slappy, and Mr. Oswald Paley, with his back to me.”
His frown deepening, Littleton interrupted, “I said—”
Adam raised his voice. “Well, just a minute! Mr. Paley was sayin’, ‘She tryin’ to work up a deal with ‘em on her Okefenokee land. Hit’ll leave us—’ But just then Mr. Slappy, he seed me and hushed him up.”
The banker had waited, pitched forward impatiently, with his mouth half open and his question ready. “What did you tell such a tale for?”
“What Mr. Paley is tellin’ for me, I feel pretty bad ‘bout it.”
Adam gave him an indulgent smile of admission. “H-hit waun’t much I said. But when I come to town and h-hear…” His voice sharpened. . . .“In fact, knowin’ how Mrs. Hightower feels about Mr. Paley, I feels bad, sho’ nuff! I feel like I could kick myself s-slap across the county, knowin’ how she regard Mr. Paley!”
“Well you know,” Littleton fairly bellowed, “Mrs. Hightower didn’t tell you she had up a trade with Mr. Lincoln on her Okefenokee land!”
Adam thought he detected a subterranean note of question in his voice. He smiled wryly. “M-mr. Paley, he don’t seem to think so! Whut interest Mr. Paley got in spreadin’ that story, you reckon?”
Littleton spat again, frowning, and began tapping on the table with a celluloid ruler, in a show of annoyance. “Well, did you start it?”
In an otherwise grave face Adam’s eyes shimmered with amusement. “H-hit would almost seem like I did, Mr. Littleton—to hear ‘em tell it!”
“Well?” The banker’s mouth now set in a labored display of patience.
“I asked myself that same question.”
Littleton broke in irritably. “This is nothing to get funny about!”
Adam came erect. After a pause, he said quietly. “I couldn’t hardly be more serious, Mr. Littleton, than I am right now”—his voice vibrated with earnestness—“not, if’n I wuz goin’ to be sont to the Mines tomorrow!” The banker seemed mollified. He went on. “I wuz only supposin’ to Mr. Peter, as a might-be-may-be, in strict confidence. He wuz the one jump to the conclusion that she might be workin’ up a substitute trade. That never crossed my mind!” He paused prepensely and caught the banker’s eye. “Did he say anything to ye ‘bout my tellin’ ‘im she waun’t goin’ to git no surveyor?”
Littleton bridled. “Hell, you’re the one who, all the time, has been getting her worked up over those blamed lines!” He leaned forward, his nose censorious. “She had told me that she was going to get a surveyor!”
Adam wagged his head, then his face smoothed and rippled in a bland
smile that turned sly and then a little awkward, as if he were about to make a confession. “I ask her to do that—a while back.” He laid his hand on the table and leaned forward. “H-hit just happenstance that she got around to sayin’ it the same night!”
The banker rumbled meditatively, looking somewhat appeased. He leaned over and dropped a mouthful of ambeer into the spittoon. “Oh, so you put her up to that as a bluff, hey?”
“That’s right!” Adam said, still smiling and holding to the edge of the table.
Littleton turned his tobacco over in his jaw ruminatively. “Hum,” he murmured. . . . “The same night—” He suddenly frowned and glared at Adam. “What the hell you mean? The same night!” Adam winced and came upright. Still glaring at him, Littleton exploded, “Did she tell you—!” He broke off in a splutter, without finishing his sentence. He had swallowed some of his ambeer, in his outburst and it sent him into a fit of coughing.
But Adam had seen it in his face and he winced again and shook his head with foreboding. He had seen jealously flare up in the banker! Jealousy of the widow’s confidence in him!
Littleton’s spasm of coughing continued and he got up and went inside the banking room to the water cooler.
Adam stood by the table for a while, drumming on it with his fingers, listening to the banker cough. Finally, shaking his head, he quietly turned around and walked out of the bank.
16.
THE TRAIN, smelling of cinders and coal smoke, its air brakes whistling, moved ponderously into the Charleston station. Lucy Hightower sat poised on her Pullman car seat. Her shoulders were resolutely erect, though she felt very queasy. To add to her general discomfort, she had just realized that she had already given the porter her quarter when he brushed her off. Now she would have nothing to hand him at the step, where she always did this, when she got down.
She dismissed the thought with a frown. Trifles, vanities, and vexations seemed to have usurped her mind, when she should be immersed in distress over her sister, who might never speak or move again and who even now might have passed away! The Pullman itself was an extravagance now for a widow in her reduced circumstances, though she had never made the trip except by Pullman. But after waiting in Jesup for eleven exhausting hours, she felt she couldn’t withstand the night ahead of her in the day coach and she had already finished rereading the volume of Dickens she brought with her. Though she had slept but little during the night she knew she looked more presentable.
This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4) Page 18
