Benton's Row

by Frank Yerby

  She brought her eyes up, wide with questioning.

  “It was easy and simple,” Randy said. “I did little for him. And—I don’t like getting paid for something I did against my will.”

  “Against your will?” Sarah whispered.

  “Yes,” Randy snapped. “For since I’ve seen you, Sarah, I wish your husband were dead and in hell—where he belongs!”

  Sarah stared at him.

  “You oughtn’t of said that,” she said slowly. “That was a mighty ugly thing to say, Doctor McGregor—”

  “Randy to you, please!”

  “All right, Randy. But it was still an ugly thing to say.”

  “But true,” Randy said. “Ugly as truth often is.”

  “You mustn’t come back,” Sarah said. “I’ll tend to him. I—I think he knows—how you feel.”

  “And how you feel?”

  She stiffened under his gaze. Then she looked away from him to the drive, down which one of the negro boys came now. leading his horse.

  “I asked you a question,” Randy McGregor said.

  “I—I can’t answer that, Randy.”

  “Afraid to?”

  “No. I—I just don’t know!”

  “Then I’ll help you find out,” Randy said grimly, and stepping forward, took her in his arms. She didn’t fight, she just stared up at him, her grey eyes slowly closing, as his face came down, shutting out line, feature, colouring by its nearness, shutting out the world, time, thought.

  In the hallway Harry Hilton came to a soundless halt.

  When she could breathe again, when time itself came sighing back into existence, Sarah stepped back a little. She stood there in the circle of his arms, looking at him, and ever so slowly the great tears spilled over her lashes, and made two bright tracks down her face.

  “You’d better go,” she said.

  “All right,” Randy said harshly; “but now you know.”

  “I know,” Sarah got out, “just one thing: I mustn’t never see you again—not never!”

  “Why?” Randy whispered.

  “Because now I am scairt. I wasn’t before, but I sure Lord am now. And I’ve got more than enough sin on my soul. Go, Randy—please go!”

  Randy stood there a long moment, a little smile lighting his eyes. Then he bowed to her, a little mockingly. He picked up his bags and marched down the stair.

  In the hallway Hilton hugged himself in pure delight. Well, I’ll be damned, he thought happily; I’ll be ring-tailed, double damned! But if ever a man had that coming to him, it’s you, Tom Benton!

  He stepped out on the gallery. Sarah whirled, her eyes big with terror.

  “ ‘Scuse me, ma’am,” Hilton said gallantly. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. Didn’t even know you was there, in fact. Reckon I’m getting kind of old. My sight ain’t what it used to be—nor my hearing. Well, so long now, ma’am—be seeing you.”

  “ ‘Bye, Mister Hilton,” Sarah said. Then she turned and fled wildly back into the house.

  6

  THE years, going, were a kind of bleeding, draining the strength out of a man. Tom Benton knew that now. He knew, thought about, accepted many things that he hadn’t before: that life itself is a long, slow dying; that you couldn’t ever win, really—even when you thought yourself conqueror you were already slipping imperceptibly over the line into the ranks of the vanquished. There were the days that crept up out of the bayou mist and stole into night, going down in swamp haze to the sound of a whimpering wind; there were the days that came up in trumpet blasts of sun and flamed down a red sky into darkness heralded by the wild-fowls’ honking. There were the dreaming days, with the coon-hounds mourning through the pine wood, and turtle-doves talking darkly in the oak tops, with the sun-wash taking the edges off everything so that the difference between what was and what was not became unclear. But they all had one thing in common: they went.

  They went, and with their going bled the strength out of a man—so slowly that he did not feel its loss, feeling himself the same, Tom Benton, rampaging over the earth, ravishing the world, fighting, loving, taking—until he tried to do exactly and precisely the things he had done before: finding, indeed, that he could do them still; but without his former ease: that battle lacked its savage joy, each victory leaving him a little more gasping-spent, a shade nearer to defeat; that love itself had lost its savour, so that women who formerly would have caused his eye to sparkle, his pulse to quicken, passed him by without awakening so much as a glance. More, he no longer wanted things so much. He was letting opportunities slide by, and cursing himself for so doing, yet not caring really, feeling in his bones that he had enough, that—and this was the worst, the most damning thought of all—the things he had got at so much cost in time, in effort, in pain, were not really worth what they had cost, becoming himself the man encamped upon the mountain peak, gained by the most arduous and heart-breaking labour, knowing with absolute certainty and sorrow that all roads lead down, that the journey downward into night, defeat, death, is encompassed about with all the crevices, precipices, perils, struggles of the climb itself, and himself, enfeebled, facing that, with no incentive towards the struggle, with no rewards in the offing, except the final lassitude of surrender, the promise at long last of rest. And the rebellious spark within him still struggled against this-the unwillingness to give up life, the instinct to fight on, but growing dimmer now, the day of acceptance approaching.

  So it was that he sat now with Randy McGregor at a table in the saloon that autumn day in 1854, thinking how, only a few years before, he had been certain that sooner or later he would have to kill the young Scotsman. Now, looking at Randy, he smiled dryly, because he not only no longer had any conceivable excuse for murder; but could not even imagine any circumstances where the thing would be necessary or feasible. Under his back-country code, you could only take action when your rival had committed some overt act, some open assault upon your honour; and Randy had done nothing, nor was he likely to.

  Ought to blast him just the same, he thought with grim self-mockery; if a man is what he thinks, like the Good Book says, Randy McGregor ought to be dead. Ain’t you what kept the horns off me, is it, boy? Neither you, nor Sary, but a man what’s dead. Warn’t for Preacher Tyler a-mouldering in his grave, 1 wouldn’t know now where the two of you had lit. ‘Tain’t me what’s prevented it, but Sary’s shame at doing twicet a thing that cost so much the first time.

  Yet the strange relationship amused him. He cultivated the younger man, sought his company, kept, in fact, an eye upon him. And Doctor McGregor knew it, playing in his turn, with the same grim amusement, his part in the comedy that skimmed forever upon tragedy’s very edge.

  Even during the war they had been together; for Tom had not dared enlist until he had learned that Randy had already done so. At Buena Vista, that dress rehearsal for future glory, where Braxton Bragg had raked the Mexican forces with artillery fire, and old Zach Taylor’s son-in-law, Jefferson Davis, had given the order to charge, getting a ball through his foot for his pains and thereby gaining national renown which was to lead him on to a darker immortality than even he had dreamed of, they had both distinguished themselves:

  Randy by the cool heroism with which he had tended the wounded under fire, and Tom by his reckless, roaring, fullthroated courage.

  And that, strangely, had formed the basis of their new relationship; for, after that, each of them respected the other with that profound respect that one brave man has for another. They were not friends even now, nor were they enemies; they were something less, and something more; bound to each other by their love of the same woman, held in fragile equilibrium by tenuous, insubstantial things: Randy’s honour, Sarah’s fearful memories, Tom’s allegiance to a code which could only take vengeance after the fact, never before, however certain he might be of both desire and contemplation. Somewhere, some time, something had to give way, had to break; but until then they waited—and watched.

  “Been a long time, ain’
t it, boy?” Tom said. And Randy, holding his glass almost level with his lips, nodded, then gulped the fiery liquor down.

  “Too long,” he said.

  “Funny you ain’t never married,” Tom baited; “fine upstanding young fellow like you.”

  Randy studied him.

  “I,” he said evenly, “have never found a woman who suited me, and who was—free.”

  Tom grinned at him, but didn’t answer. That was a part of the game, part of the slow, deadly duel they fought with each other, each time they met. They both knew the limits, and the rules. When one of them pushed it a little too far, as Randy had done now, the other retreated. For they could not bring it to a conclusion and they knew it; not by words, talk, a provoked quarrel. Only Sarah could do that—by making a choice; and the choice, actually, was not left with her: a dead man held it in his skeletal hands.

  Funny about women, Tom thought. They’re a mighty heap of trouble when they don’t mean nothing to you—and when they do, they’re worse. Lolette, now—didn’t think she meant so much to me; but Gawd-dammit how it hurt when I came back and found her gone!

  “What are you thinking about?” Randy demanded.

  “Nothing. No—that ain’t so. I was thinking about a girl I was in love with once. You brought her to mind when you said that about not being free. Sweetest little thing you ever did see—gentle-like and loving. Her folks warn’t much, swampers and such-like. But her paw brought her up to be a lady, educated and fine. Then she ran afoul of me.”

  “Poor thing,” Randy mocked.

  “Yep. Poor thing. Only she had grit in her craw. When you’n’ me was off fighting the greasers, she kind of took stock of things. Ran off to N’Orleans, found work. I’d of swore she’d of gone to hell in that there town; but she didn’t. Married young Jules Metroyer.”

  “Lolette,” Randy said. “Lolette Dupré. So it was you who fathered her child.”

  “I ain’t a-saying,” Tom grinned. “How come you know so much about it?”

  “Delivered the little bastard,” Randy said. “Fine-looking kid, too.”

  “Could be,” Tom said. “All brats look alike to me. Anyhow, she married this here young Creole sprig. His family raised hell. She wouldn’t lie about the child or give him up. So Jules took her, child and all. I can understand that. She was worth it.”

  “Where are they now?” Randy said.

  “France. Couldn’t live in N’Orleans under the circumstances. And there’s a branch of the Metroyers still living in the old country. High mucker mucks over there, too. And they didn’t know the story. So the two of them went there, carrying the kid. Hear they’re doing all right, too—moving in the highest circles.”

  “Ever,” Randy said evenly, “think of the child?”

  Tom laughed.

  “Just want me to give you a stick to beat me with, don’t you? I ain’t afraid. Yep, I think of that boy right smart. Hate like hell to have him growing up a dainty frog-eater with perfume behind his ears. Only they can’t ruin him. He’s got too much good stuff in him—from both sides. Look, Randy . . .”

  “Yes?” Randy said.

  “Sary ain’t never heard tell of that. I hope she don’t never. And right now the only way she ever could would be from you.”

  Randy stared at him. Tom could see his face tighten.

  “Ever know me to fight dirty, Tom?” he drawled.

  “Naw,” Tom said. “You ain’t that kind, thank God—or else I would of let some daylight into you long before now.”

  “Don’t let the kind you think I am stop you,” Randy said grimly; “I’m perfectly willing.”

  Tom grinned at him.

  “Now get down off of that high horse, boy,” he said. “What the hell have you’n’ me to fight over?”

  “Nothing,” Randy said disgustedly; “though I sometimes wish we had.”

  “Well, we don’t,” Tom said flatly; “and what’s more, we ain’t never going to have. ‘Cause the choice ain’t left with us, and you know it. Come on now, drink up; I got to go.”

  They came out on the banquette together. As they did so, a woman came towards them. She was leading three small children by the hand, and her face was hidden by her poke-bonnet. But seeing them standing there under the street lantern, she stiffened; then she came on more slowly.

  Another one, Randy thought. Having a woman like Sarah, he still turns to creatures like this. Dear God! And I would give my life to sit near her for an hour, stretch out my hand and touch . . .

  But the woman had reached the place where the lantern-light could illumine her face. It was weather-beaten, worn. She was not old, Randy saw; but if he had been called upon to guess her age, he would have erred by fifteen years too much—perhaps by twenty. I’m wrong, he thought grudgingly, not even Tom Benton would have . . .

  Tom stood there looking at her, and the sadness inside of him was a weight, pressing intolerably against his lungs. He was seeing, feeling, again that unutterable, lost, moon-burning night of the Protracted Meeting, and contrasting it with now, looking nakedly into the face of time, into the slow decay by which living becomes dying, by which life eases into death.

  Rachel! he breathed inside his mind. Lord God, who would of thought it!

  This wrinkled, sun-whipped, middle-aged woman. This creature bowed down by pain, by labour, by never having enough of anything, neither of time, nor leisure, nor even the simple necessities of life. Tom didn’t know her husband, but he could have pictured him to the hair. A hound-dog man. A coon-hunting man. Sitting under the shade trees for days on end, communing with a jug of bust-head. Exploding into violence, into action, only in the hunt, the square dance, the bar-room brawl. Leaving his wife and scraggly, underfed brats to scratch a perilous living from a few acres of worn-out, eroded, sub-marginal land.

  Could of left her her looks, damn it! he thought savagely. But that’s too much to hope for, I reckon. Even Sarah’s fading a bit—and me . . . He snorted with abysmal disgust, and spat the end of his cigar into the gutter.

  “Another of your loves?” Randy mocked.

  “No,” Tom growled. “Just an old, old friend of mine. Many’s the favours that there woman’s done me in the old days, Randy. And, damn my soul, you should have seen her years ago—she was pretty as a picture.”

  “If she was so all-fired pretty,” Randy said, “why wasn’t she one of your loves?”

  “ ‘Cause she and Lolette was such good friends,” Tom said honestly, “that I never could figure out how to manage it. But, Lord God, look at her now!”

  “The faded rose,” Randy said, and put out his hand.

  “Good night, Tom.”

  “ ‘Night,” Tom said absently. “Drop by the place some time.”

  I’ll see you in hell first, Randy thought. You know damned well that’s the one thing I couldn’t stand.

  Riding homeward towards the white cottage, not yet a big house even in contemplation, Tom thought about tomorrow, and what he was thinking did not help the blackness of his mood.

  Got to do something about that Wade, he thought bitterly. Never would have dreamed that a son of mine would of turned out like that. Fat, greasy little bastard—no wind, no strength, no guts. God in Heaven! Why wasn’t Stormy the boy?

  Thinking about his daughter, he smiled. Stormy did that to people. Even at eleven she was beautiful—darkly, vividly beautiful. Her eyes were Tom’s own eyes, crazily, impossibly blue, flashing like summer lightning out of the sunburnt darkness of her face. More, she was his child, with nothing of Sarah about her. She could ride anything that had four feet, and at an age when other small girls were lovingly dressing their dolls, she had asked for and got her dearest possession: a gun. Tom had had it made for her—a beautiful fowling-piece, intricately engraved, fitted with a hand-carved walnut stock, cut to her measure. She delighted in banging away at trees, stones, small animals, with remarkably accurate aim, while Wade stood by, both hands covering his ears, and a mingled expression of fear and acute disgu
st upon his round, porcine little face.

  There was nothing new about the problem before Tom Benton. Like every other father living before or since, he found it simply impossible to contemplate his son as a being living, dreaming, thinking, suffering upon the face of earth. Wade was to him something more: an extension of his own personality, his gage against death, his personal guarantee of immortality. Therefore, Wade must be more than he himself had ever been; bigger, stronger, fiercer, more courageous. He must drink deeper, laugh louder, love more women more beautiful than any Tom had ever known. That the boy might have a different standard of values, that he might prefer quiet, a good meal, lazy contemplation instead of active participation, had never entered Tom Benton’s head. And now, confronted with the actuality of that difference, being incapable of doubting the virtues of his own concepts, Tom’s reactions were conventional: he was both shocked and outraged.

  He set about then upon what was indisputably the worst course of action possible: he was bent upon forcing Wade into his own semi-heroic mould, upon making of the boy that which, given the basic raw materials comprising Wade’s sleepy, gentle being, could not, in sober fact, ever be made, the result foredoomed, the whole course of action having its own dark inevitability.

  The ground was grey with hoar-frost when he got Wade up that next morning, making even the oaks the same colour as the Spanish moss that clung to them. From the river below, the white haze rose slow and heavy, and thin columns of smoke stabbed the sky from the chimneys of the neighbouring houses, more numerous now, giving Tom Benton the feeling that he was being hemmed in, the broad expanse of space, the immensity he subconsciously found necessary to move about in, to breathe, to have his being—the sweep of land commensurate with his own grandeur, his physical and spiritual giantism, limited by them, so that, although he was far and away the biggest landowner in the parish, he felt diminished, robbed.

  Before his encounter with Davin Henderson, he would have done something about it, striking down without compunction all who dared invade his kingdom; but now he did nothing. It was not, as the parish dwellers whispered: “That there Davin Henderson done put the fear of God into him—he ain’t been the same since . . .” for he was no more afraid than before, had, if anything, even less respect for the rights, wishes, feelings of his fellows; but that he was pervaded with a cosmic fatigue, as big as his emotions always were. He was baffled into idleness by Sarah’s indifference, by his involvement in a situation which could not be solved by force, by violence, not realising that nothing in human history has ever been solved that way truly, nor ever will be, so that his roars fell upon deaf ears, and his blows smashed against the thin and yielding air.