The Morning and the Evening

by Joan Williams

  “He fallen off the bed again. Bad, this time,” Lou said, softly.

  After a moment, she said, “Did he cry?”

  “No’m,” Lou said.

  She had dampened the dough and rolled it over the pin again securely before she left it. Afterward, wondering why she had taken that time, she thought it was that she had wanted so much for something to go right.

  She found him lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, blood gushing like a small fountain out of his head where he had struck the iron bed post in falling. They had had to carry him to the doctor that time; then there was no more room for doubt.

  The sins of the parents. The words haunted her over and over in the car going home. When she was alone she cried, But why not me? why wasn’t I crippled or maimed or made to lose my senses?

  She considered saying it was the blow on the head that made him the way he was. But she remembered Lou’s knowing and compassionate looks and knew that she could not. She remembered the looks of others that she would not acknowledge before and now had to, and knew that she could not. “Just don’t let ’em pity me,” she said.

  “Jesus H. God!” Jud had said. “First, I got to be born in this little town, to this stinking farm, and now this!”

  He had pointed to the hurt child huddled like a heap of old rags, bandaged now and unmoving, lying on the farthest reaches of the bed, against the wall.

  Looking at Jud’s face, she had thought, It ain’t just that he’s a grown man at fourteen. It’s that he’s a bitter old one.

  But she said only, “Don’t use His name that way.”

  To her annoyance she found that now she spied on Jud. She watched to see how he treated the littlest chicks in the brood and the runt of his bitch’s litter. He showed no distaste, however, even for a rooster that developed a gigantic and unsightly goiter. She saw him once step over a bug crossing the road. He drowned a kitten born with only two feet, but that was merciful, she thought.

  She did her best about Jake: kept him clean, trained him as much as he could be trained and taught him as much as he could learn. When he was older, she let him go about as freely as she would have any child.

  One day Jud came home from town, embarrassed, yelling, “Keep that bastard home!”

  “He ain’t no bastard,” she said.

  “All right—idiot!” he said: a word that hurt her worse, and she knew he knew it.

  Afterward whenever he spoke of Jake he would say, “That blithering, slobbering …”

  And before he could finish, she would cry, “Hush! Oh my God, hush!”

  “Well, keep him home then,” he would say.

  “But why?” she said finally. “Why? He ain’t some dumb animal to be penned up.”

  “Oh?” he had said. “Ain’t he?”

  That time she said, “What is it you want, Jud?”

  “To go,” he said, simply. “Just to go. To get as far as I can away from here and this little town and him. Woman, I want to see something.”

  Cecil would have told him not to holler at his momma, she thought. Aloud, she had said, “Well, go.”

  “Oh, Ma,” he had said. “I ain’t just plumb rotten. How can I just go off and leave you with nobody?”

  “I got somebody,” she said.

  “Oh sh——,” he said.

  She did not want him to go. At night she lay awake asking herself, How can I keep him here? How much longer is he going to stay?

  In the room next to hers she would sometimes hear a whimper in sleep from the mute child. In winter she would lie awake listening to his troubled adenoidal breathing; he always had a cold. She would strain toward any noise in the other part of the house, always imagining Jud creeping from one of the low windows of the house with all his possessions. If an acorn or a pecan fell with a crack to the ground she was sure it was his heavy feet treading it. Winter wind rattling the panes sent her bolt upright in bed listening for the stealthy opening of the window afterward. Mornings when she woke and heard Jud coughing or spitting or sometimes whistling in his room, she was glad.

  No mother wants to be left, she told herself. It’s all right to want him here long as I don’t do nothing to keep him.

  When Cecil died, Jud had had to quit school. She often thought things might have been better if that had not happened; though the truth was, and she suspected it, that left to his own devices, Jud would not have gone on to the next grade anyway. Though in later years when he began to feel his lack of education, he blamed everything on that; he said he had never had a chance.

  The years went by and Jake grew. She and Jud worked, but the farm did not grow. It remained about the same, sometimes slipping a little, gradually recovering.

  Jud’s friends had become the worst boys in the county: the ones who smoked behind the schoolhouse if they went to school, and anywhere if they did not; who drank when they could get something, took Negro girls as a lark and otherwise told impossible tales of their prowess with white ones. The room he lived in became almost a separate part of the house. When he was not at home, the door was closed and locked. She was allowed in to clean only when he was there. He would sit on the bed, watching from the corner of his eye each flick of her dust cloth, ostensibly reading a comic strip in a ten-cent “big-little” book. She had no suspicions about what she might find in his room; often she wondered what it was he thought she was looking for.

  Jake stayed in what she had come to think of as their part of the house: his room and her room and the kitchen. She grew accustomed to his being about, the way one does to a dog or cat; having to dress, feed, care for him was like playing a child’s game with a doll. She talked aloud to him as lonely people do to animals, continually and intimately, and because he could neither respond nor understand, she had the pleasure of sharing her innermost secrets with him; yet she retained them. To her surprise, she noticed one day that he was listening. He nodded and smiled and his eyes never left her face. She broke off her sentence and stared. Then she smiled. She reached over and patted his knee. Then she nodded for him to follow. They went into the kitchen and she fixed a pot of tea and set it between them. In this manner, filling and refilling their cups, he nodding and smiling, she talking, they fell into the habit of reviewing their whole day’s happenings.

  He followed her outside at five, as usual—he followed her almost everywhere. Except to Jud’s room, she thought suddenly, turning around and looking at him; and no one had ever told him not to. On impulse, she thrust the feed sack forward into his hands. He stared at her. But it was not with a look of ignorance at all, but rather one of recognition of her recognition. She thought a look of relief passed across his face. He went straight to the chickens and scattered their feed about in exactly the right proportions. His mouth moved the while and his throat worked convulsively.

  He’s trying to say, Here chick, chick, she thought.

  She went to the steps, put her head in her lap, and cried. It was for the first time since Cecil died.

  She did not mention it to Jud. The next afternoon when he was home, she simply handed the sack to Jake. She saw Jud was at first surprised and then seemingly both glad and angry. She found other things for Jake to do. One day she told everybody in town proudly, “He’s a good fetcher and toter.”

  Everyone, glad of her happiness, patted Jake and smiled, and he grinned back. He came to know those words: fetcher and toter. When she said them, he grinned and nodded and in some way, everyone was aware, congratulated himself.

  Jud was beginning to lose meaning for her, and her love was transposing. Sometimes she felt he had already moved away. No longer allowed into his room, she no longer saw his boyishly rumpled head on the pillow. She did not straighten his covers or dwell over the impression on the bed where he had slept his deep youthful sleep. When she touched his clothes, it was only to wash them; the pockets had already been emptied. They could have been the clothes of a stranger. He had selected and bought them himself, without even her knowledge. When he was away fr
om home, it was as if he had never been there.

  “You’d think having his room locked up all day, there’d be some smell of him to it when it was open,” she told Jake.

  But there was nothing of him about, not a smell of tobacco or hair tonic or shaving cream. No smell of him even clung to his clothes. It was as if the coldness about him had killed everything.

  She depended on the familiarity of Jake, on the warmth of the room after he had bathed in it and the smell of Octagon, the soap he liked. The smell of the feed sack clung to his clothes and the musky smell of the corn he fed the chickens. There was about him later the smell of shaving lather when he finally grew a slight beard and she shaved him. Often there was the smell of food about him. He spilled it and she could not get him clean again until that smell had become part of her memory of him, too. When she kissed him, his breath had a warmth to it and a smell slightly like gravy, like the breath of small puppies.

  Then Jud was going. She was still shut out of his room, but somehow she knew on that day that behind the closed door he was packing. She imagined how he would look picking and choosing among his things, reluctant to part with anything. She knew what he would decide on and what he would have to leave. She wondered what to do afterward with all the things he had tacked on his walls, with the baseballs and gloves, the pictures of old girl friends.

  He would have to leave the slick black-and-white nickel pictures that had been on the walls so long now they curled away from them: baseball boys, their peaked caps pulled low; the baseball king, what’s his name? she thought. And the two good-looking fighters, the Tunney boy and Jack Dempsey—somehow she had always thought all fighters had permanently mangled ears and noses and almost-closed eyes. He even had a picture of a Negro on the wall. When she asked about it he said, “He beat out the Heinie, didn’t he?” But she had secretly hoped no one else who came to the house would notice it. He even had a few pictures of movie stars; one was of Johnny Mack Brown, to whom she was partial herself.

  She wondered if Jud would take his guitar, and sat waiting to see. She thought of how the room would look after he left, strewn but empty.

  When he opened the door, he had the guitar. Her impulse was to say, “That’s going to be a bulk to carry, Son.”

  On the other hand she did not want to have to send it to him. He would want it and he would not be back. She knew that. Though when he opened the door and saw her, he looked sheepish. He said, “I’m going, Ma. But I’ll be back so much you’ll say, ‘Why don’t he make up his mind whether he’s coming or going.’ And you’ll be coming to Memphis, somehow.”

  “Memphis!” she said. “I haven’t been to Memphis in ten years and don’t expect to go. All that noise! I’d be so nervous I’d be fit to be tied. I’m not getting any younger, you know. I’m forty-three years old.”

  “I’m not gettin’ any younger either, you know,” he said, quietly.

  “I guess none of us are,” she said. “So go on and go, before it’s too late.”

  “It ain’t ever going to be too late,” he said. “I always was and I aways will be going to go.”

  “Well, go on then,” she said, “while I’m still alive to take care of him.”

  What would happen after that hung unasked between them. But only a moment, for Jud bent and picked up the valise he had set down and went to the door. She followed him to the edge of the porch and stood as he stepped off it and went down the short path to the gate. He half spoke over his shoulder, half turned around.

  “So long, Ma,” he said.

  She watched him walk off down the winter-rutted road and thought, It sure would make a whole lot of difference if he did get rich.

  She thought, Suppose he got on the stage with that guitar. He was good with that guitar; he could even make up tunes himself.

  She turned away from the sight of his powerful strong shoulders and his broad back going off down the road. He was carrying the cracked old patent-leather valise she had had when she came to this house a bride. She did not believe it had been off the place since then. Facing the house, she saw it truly: falling-down, paint-peeling, ugly and poor. She thought of Jake inside, sitting at the kitchen table where she had told him to wait some hours ago; she had forgotten all about it. She thought of Jud walking off with all his wits and his strength and his youth about him, and she said to herself, I reckon Jake and me and the house are kind of pitiful-looking.

  When she entered the house it seemed quieter and emptier than usual, just knowing that Jud would not be back. He had closed the door to his room. Habit, she guessed, passing it. She could not look into it yet. She went to the kitchen and spoke gently to Jake, telling him he could move, and said, “We’re alone now, Jake. There’s just the two of us.”

  And she gave him a large slice of strawberry-iced cake, though it was just before his supper.

  About dusk she went to Jud’s room. Its emptiness gave her the feeling he was dead, too. And she felt guilty at the lack of emotion she felt at the thought. She took down the black-and-white pictures one by one, running over in her mind the idea of taking in a boarder. But who was there to board in Marigold? she wondered. The pretty young schoolteachers all boarded at Homer Brown’s, by custom. Besides she knew they would not want to stay where Jake was.

  She made piles of things to throw away and put everything she was going to keep from the various drawers into one drawer. She had swept half the room when she saw Brother Moore pass by one of the low windows on his way around to the front of the house. She put down the broom and looked at herself in the bureau mirror. She buttoned the neck of her blouse and ran her fingers about her hair. By the time she came into the hall, Brother Moore had entered the front door and was coming down the hall calling, “Mrs. Darby. It’s Brother Moore calling.”

  They met just outside Jud’s door and shook hands. “I thought you weren’t to church Sunday,” he said. “Then I saw you sitting way over on the right side ’stead of the left. Behind Miss Loma’s big green hat. I declare I could hardly see you. Then I said to myself, I haven’t seen Jud here for …”

  At the moment, he saw over her head just as she reached behind her to close the door.

  “He’s gone?” he said, incredulously. “Has he really gone?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Jud has gone. And I was just thinking it’s like he’s dead. But that time comes to us all, don’t it, Brother Moore? When our grown children leave us. Even if they just get married, they ain’t ours any longer.”

  Brother Moore shrugged, and his limp pale hand circumscribed nothingness. “But, Mrs. Darby,” he said, and bit his lip.

  For the last time Jud was quite close to her; she remembered the day he was born and in one instant, it seemed, his whole babyhood and boyhood too. She felt him in her arms again as if he were actually there, a baby. As if it were an actual physical occurrence, she felt her arms broken apart and with a sharp ache in her breast she felt him gone. She remembered a headful of shining golden curls and a tiny wet, pink mouth pursed to kiss her. Then, as if a great curtain had fallen across the past, all she saw and would remember forever was his great massive back walking away.

  I wish he had said just Thank you, she thought. That’s all children ever need say to their mommas and daddies; it’s nice if they love you, but it’s all right if they don’t. All you need is for them to appreciate the trouble you’ve gone to to bring them up; they ought to know what it’s like—though they’ll learn soon enough when they got kids of their own. They don’t have to like where they were brought up or even how; but they ought just to appreciate getting there.

  “What will you do?” Brother Moore said. “How can you do everything yourself? Even a young woman couldn’t, Sister Darby.”

  “Oh, I got another son, Brother Moore, don’t you remember?” she said.

  She thought she wasn’t going to think about the look on his face, and him a preacher of divine love and charity. She said, “Come and let’s have a cup of tea.”

  She
walked ahead, dusting her hands together, and he came behind; then suddenly they were running together; they had heard the commotion in the kitchen for the first time.

  Jake was trying to restrain the hounds. They were jumping against the screen door. One had already burst the bottom part of the screen and started it ripping from the frame. Both were howling the long-lost wails of hounds. Before they reached them, the larger of the two had lunged through the screen and was free now with the other following him; skidding on their rear feet, they were around the side of the house and off down the road after Jud.

  “Well, that’s two less mouths to feed,” she said wearily, and turned back to the kitchen to fix the tea.

  She carried it into the dining room, and when they had drunk it Brother Moore clasped his hands on the table, closed his eyes, lowered his head and said, “Will you pray with me?”

  When she had done so and he had gone, she went back into the kitchen. Jake was gone. For an instant, her heart pounding, she thought he had followed the others. Then she went onto the porch and he was sitting on the back steps staring off where the dogs had run, his knees hunched up close to him. She said from the doorway, softly, “Come in, Son.”

  He did not move and she thought, I never called him by any other name but his given one before. She said again, gently, “Son.”

  When he did not move this time, she thought, He’s not use to it yet. I got to say it a lot so he’ll get use to it. She called again, “Jake. Son. Come inside. It’s getting to be suppertime.”

  He’ll forget them, she thought. But it was as if Jake knew that too and did not want to. He took one last long lingering look before he came inside.

  And she was not sure whether he ever had forgotten. She stared off toward the pasture now, where he had gone, wondering.

  Chapter Three

  She was dead. He knew it was death. She did not move for a very long time while he watched, and then he knew it was death. He had loved animals and they had been taken from him, but only after he had watched a long time and they had stayed still. And she was that still, like everywhere after a summer storm. He sat, and in the way that was his, after a time he said, “Ma.…”