The Morning and the Evening

by Joan Williams

  Ever since the night Jake ran amuck, the mention of his name or of anything that had happened to him that night threw Ruth Edna off. She would cry and sigh and gulp and tremble. Though, Cotter said, she was nervous as a witch all the time and cried if you asked her what time it was. Did anybody realize what he was having to put up with? People certainly realized it was hard trying to carry on a conversation with her. She never finished one sentence before she started another, so that you could never be sure you were exactly sure you knew what she was talking about. All she could offer as excuse was that she was “blue,” just “blue all the time.”

  Do you think it’s possible, some of the women queried each other, that Ruth Edna’s just now having the change?

  And poor Hattie—with the loss of Ruth Edna’s wits she was even more lonely. She had given up completely the idea of marrying Cotter, and that same fateful night when so much else had happened the rooster had died. In the time since, Hattie had worked it around in her mind to being the town’s fault. If everyone else had not run that night to see Jake, she would not have; thus, at the crucial moment, she would have been there with a drop of whisky or to reapply his mustard plaster. She had turned to the Bible for succor and prayed alone nightly before the little fire it had taken all her strength to build. Forgive ’em, for they didn’t know what they was doing. They had killed him, her only companion.

  She had tried to explain it once to Mary Margaret, who had said, “Why, Hattie, I declare. It was a rooster. Only a bantam rooster.”

  Passing Hattie’s now, seeing her little light far back off the road, Mary Margaret thought of that time and wondered what was the matter with everybody; was everybody losing their faculties?

  Why, she had almost run over that bird in the road once, a long time ago. She wondered what in the world Hattie would have thought of her then. She had looked aghast enough just because Mary Margaret said, “After all, it’s not like it was a child.”

  It seemed everybody was acting strange lately. She said as much to Wilroy, but she might as well have been talking to herself. Wilroy was hungry and he was tired of driving; he was not looking for any conversation.

  Sighing, Mary Margaret thought she had even felt a lot different herself this past month. She was often depressed too, and she went around with a great feeling of disappointment. She had not been quite sure what the disappointment was about. But now, sighing even more heavily, she admitted that it was just about people, people in general.

  Chapter Twelve

  It did not snow the following day, and Jake did not come to town. He did not come that whole first week while Jurldeane was there, though she tried to persuade him. He stayed in the house mostly, finally ventured to the porch and then went to the yard and began to feed the chickens, which Wilroy had kept while he was gone and now returned. People said they bet he would come once he was by himself again, but when he had not appeared by Wednesday of the following week, they began going to see him. They took jars full of homemade chicken-and-rice soup and coconut cake, as if they expected to find him in bed, sick. But there he was, up and around, the same as always, except he seemed withdrawn and older and paler. But he’d put a little meat on his bones, hadn’t he? they consoled themselves.

  Gradually they stopped going, thinking still that he would come to town. But when he did not, they said it was probably just as well. They would have forgotten him really, except that Wilroy and Mary Margaret and Miss Loma did not let them. One of the two women was always approaching another woman to say, Why don’t you fix up a little cake or a pot of stew for me to take to Jake? Or Wilroy would point out to a man that something or other he had on was looking a little worn; why didn’t he give it to Jake?

  With these constant reminders, they would have to remember and would have to ask themselves again, Did we do right? Then, for fear that they had not, they would give Wilroy the shirt off their back, or go home and put the stew meat on to simmer.

  Of all the people around, Little T. was probably the only one unaware of Jake’s return. He never went to town on Sunday and when cold weather came on seldom left the bottomland at all. He knew what happened to Jake the night after he saw him in the road, and surely as a trap springing, his mind closed over the fact that Ruth Edna had something to do with it. When he returned the following Thursday with the medicine, he had been more sure of it than ever. The woman who came to the screen and took the medicine was not the woman who had given him the money the week before. He would have sworn on his momma’s and daddy’s graves, both, that her hair had turned white in a week. Before, it had been a gray-and-brown mixture, but that night it stood up around her face wild-looking and white. Perhaps it was a reflection of her face, for that was as white as if she had painted it to be a clown. Her lips were a dark, cold purple, as if stained with Grape-ade, and were narrower and thinner-looking. He handed her the paper sack wordlessly, stepped back and would have made tracks for home, but she said, “Little T., come back soon as you can.”

  “Yes ’um,” he said. “Yes ’um.” And he knew if he had met a ghost in the graveyard he would not have been any more miserable than he was confronting Miss Ruth Edna that night.

  He had been holed up in the bottomland since then, happy to be alone, happy not to have to tramp to town in the cold and happy not to have had any truck with Miss Ruth Edna since then. But how was he going to get the lure? He was sitting on his porch this early December day, huddled into his old Army jacket, trying to think of a better, also quicker, way. He felt sorry for himself. Didn’t a man deserve a little seventy-five-cents’ worth of something at Christmastime? There was nobody who was going to give it to him, no Santa Claus in his life. The only person who was going to look after Little T. was Little T.

  He was surprised himself at the way his thoughts had persisted all these months, until it seemed now he had to have the lure, no matter what. Even, he had decided, if he had to take the money off somebody. Shoot, to some folks seventy-five cents was nothing. Yet you could not go up and ask them for the money. That was the system, screwy as it was. Life. Phew.

  He had been thinking of people he could take the money from, who wouldn’t miss it: Miss Loma, Mister Wilroy, anybody who owned a store, and preachers. He believed firmly that all preachers kept their hand in the till. But there was a very good reason he could not rob any of these people: he was scared to.

  He had a piece of kindling wood in his hand and he began to whittle. He whittled all morning, and it was long about noon he realized that what he had been whittling was a small gun. He looked at it lying in the flat of his hand. Then he thrust it into his coat pocket and went inside. Standing before the broken piece of glass over his washstand, he said, “Put ’em up. Hand over seventy-five cents.”

  He said it over and over in various imitative ways, using voices he had heard on the radio and in the movies. He was firm in his decision not to steal more than he needed for the lure. It made him feel not so guilty. He said it so many times that finally he could hear himself off from himself and he told himself the truth. The whole thing was too silly to think about. Nobody was going to hold up somebody for that little. But just suppose he did. Then, the next thing, he walks into Miss Loma’s and plops down that amount for the lure. Everyone would know it was him had done it.

  He thought of robbing a house off somewhere. In summer he could do it. But in winter people stayed home, kept their windows closed tight and were liable to lock their doors when they left. Still, that seemed the only possibility, a house off by itself somewhere. He thought of robbing Miss Loma’s store, right there on the main road of town, and he thought he’d cream his pants standing in his own house, it made him so afraid. He could not do it. Who lived off? He thought of Mister Metcalf, and he thought of his collection of rifles that was famous the whole county and more, and he gave up that idea. If only he could find out somebody who was going up to Memphis for a day’s Christmas shopping, he would have it made. For once, it was convenient to be colored; he would w
ear dark clothes and no one would see him even if the moon came full.

  He would not carry the gun; it was too risky. If he got caught later, and it was known he had carried a gun, no one would want to believe it had been a toy. They would want to make it out as bad as they could. He was not in any particular favor in town right now anyway. For the heck of it only, he had not long ago referred to a white man, in public, by his first name. A white man, overhearing, had said, “Boy, I believe you mean Mister Bill, don’t you?”

  “Yes, suh, I believe I do,” he had said, without malice.

  Later on Bald Dave had said, “You got rocks in your head? You want to get us all in Dutch?” And in her store one day, Miss Loma said casually, with a hint of warning, “Little T., you need a job to keep your mind occupied.”

  He had not observed any particular unfriendliness in town, only a certain air of watchfulness. He knew what people said was, “If ever there is any trouble here, Little T.’ll be one of the ones that starts it.”

  Today, after his noon dinner, he started off to town to get some coffee, a supply he had forgotten to lay by. When he had not gone far, he heard behind him the crackling of dry winter branches on the ground and, turning, saw Stump, his friend who had had three fingers shot off in a dynamite accident, coming along with a gun and a brace of quail over his shoulder.

  “Wait on me,” Stump called.

  When he came up, Little T. said, “Boy, what you doing sneaking around?”

  “Sneaking?” Stump said. “I was just walking like I walk. What’s the matter with you? You jumped like you been shot when you heard me.”

  “Just got something on my mind,” Little T. said. He looked at the birds. “Where you been? I ain’t heard no shooting this morning.”

  “I been way on through the bottom and clear to the other side,” Stump said. “Some good shooting.” They came out of the bottom and reached the road, and indicating his old truck pulled to one side, Stump said, “Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Much obliged,” Little T. said. He pulled himself up to the running board and got in. The truck was a Model A, with seating benches built opposite each other in its open bed. Everyone called it The Whoopee. The floorboard on Little T.’s side was missing. He had to balance one foot the best he could; the other he put out on the running board. He braced himself in the truck by holding on to the windshield frame. He looked down at the road speeding by where his feet should have been, and when gravel flew up, he threw it back again. Cold rushed around his head and stung his eyes, blistered his ears. Conversation was impossible until they stopped in front of Miss Loma’s. Then, feeling his fingers frozen into their bent position around the windshield frame, Little T. said, “Cold.”

  “Good bird weather,” Stump said.

  Little T. got down and said again, “Much obliged.”

  “Come see us,” Stump said, and drove off. He looked for a moment into the rear-view mirror and waved, and Little T. waved back.

  Miss Loma was nowhere to be seen; her daughter was tending store. When Little T. entered, she was talking to another woman, and it was as if he had not come in at all. She kept right on talking, though the other woman had completed her purchases. She was holding a large grocery bag and looked as if she had been trying for some time to edge her way out of the store. Frances, having just learned she and Billy were to have another baby, was bitter. “I’m telling you thirty-one years old’s too old to have another baby.”

  “Oh, go on, Frances,” the other woman said. “You got years to have two or three more kids.”

  “That’s what you think,” Frances said, slowly, as if she would kill her with words, thrown like knives, if she could.

  Little T. had stood in the background, waiting, patient, his eyes averted; now he glanced up in surprise, her voice was so harsh, so full of a hateful sound. She caught him looking and said, “You want something, boy?”

  “Yes, ma’m, pound o’percolatin’.”

  “Credit, I guess,” she said. She moved along behind the counter and took down the coffee.

  “Yes, ’um.”

  She did not look at him but wrote his name in a book, and he took the can from the counter. Meanwhile the other woman had edged her way all the way to the door, and now she said, “Well, you just got to make the best of it, Frances. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  “Oh yes, just six years after it’s finally born and it’ll be off to school. I can hardly wait.”

  “Well, I got to run along,” the other woman said hurriedly, opening the door. Before closing it she looked around and said, “Still seems funny in here without Jake sitting by the stove.”

  “Lonesome in here,” Frances said. The mention of Jake’s name made her start, as if the life in her had already quickened.

  “You reckon he’ll come back to town in the spring?” the woman said.

  “I don’t know,” Frances said. She did not want to talk about Jake and showed it; it made her feel the same as the morning sickness she had had earlier.

  “Bye-bye,” the woman said.

  “Come back to see us,” Frances said. The woman closed the door, and Frances looked at Little T. and said, “You want something else?”

  “No’m, I was just looking at that lure,” he said. He indicated his coffee and said, “I thank you.” He went to the door and opened it. “Miss Loma sick?”

  “Got a cold,” Frances said. She had gone back along the counter to her chair near the cash register. She sat down and picked up her knitting.

  “Oh,” Little T. said. He started to close the door.

  “Come back to see us,” Frances said, automatically.

  “I thank you,” Little T. said. He closed the door.

  The loony man. Why hadn’t he thought of him? Little T. stood on the store porch breathing in the crisp, cold day. Even that white man would have at least seventy-five cents to his name laying around. They’d dragged him off so quick, his house was liable to be just as he’d left it. It would be easy to rob. And he was away. Man, that man was gone and had been for a month or more. Nobody watched his house. There it was, just sitting out there by itself, a house to rob if ever there was a house. Cold went right through Little T. as if he had on no clothes at all. But he thought he could do it. There seemed so little risk. He began to plan.

  At eight o’clock he came again out of the bottom, braced with coffee, wide awake, trembling. A car went by just as he reached the road and he fell to the bank and hugged it far beyond a reasonable length of time, until he was thoroughly chilled and knew that tomorrow he would have a sore throat; he could already feel the first faint scratchy tickle way down; he swallowed two or three times.

  He thought he could still hear music from the car’s radio floating across the countryside, but the car had been gone too long. It was fear, only fear that he heard louder than the music ever had been. Cautiously he went up the bank and peeped over into the road, and from the treetops on the other side the moon peeped back. Go home, it said. It was white and full: too full. He could see everything as clearly as if it were dawn. The road ahead, the gravel, the little cabins of cedar-wood were white as chalk. Washing machines on their porches were great white hulks. He left the main gravel road, crossed a moon-washed field and entered a soft dust road, the dust shooting ahead of him in soft white puffs, that would take him a back way. He saw families inside their cabins, and it gave him a great sickening feeling that he was so alone here in this white and silent world, even in the real world. He had never realized before how alone he was. Who had chosen his lonely way? Not him; he would not have chosen it for anything in the world.

  He came to a pond and skirted it and could see his figure, elongated and wavery, as he did so. He heard frogs croaking deep in their bellies. Too bad he didn’t have a shotgun. Blam. There was nothing he liked better than frog legs so fresh they were still hopping in the skillet. Why had he never thought of hunting frogs here before? Perhaps it was premonition that told him he never would
now, that he would never see this pond again.

  His feet echoed hollowly against the cold wood of the man’s front porch. The unlocked door creaked open on cold hinges. He entered and saw a kerosene lamp burning so low it was no more than a waver. It was sitting on a rickety table. Beside it was a white plate, an unfinished meal on it. The man sat in a chair beside the table and looked at it. Why, Little T. wondered, hadn’t anybody told him the man was home again. It seemed everybody in the world had ganged up to play one giant mean trick on him, and his feelings were hurt; he wanted to cry.

  The man turned and looked at him and something crossed his face. Perhaps it was surprise; it was not fear, and Little T. was sorry that it was not. For his own fear was in the room, as large, as ominous as the world. He hardly knew what to do with it. He took a step forward, and he took two steps back. He felt that whatever had guided him wrongly along life was going to guide him now. If it took him to the door, he would open it and leave. Otherwise, he would stay. Now he was rooted to the spot.

  Around the flickering wick the room was a cavern of darkness. The room beyond was also a great dark cave, with a tiny candle burning in a saucer on a bureau. Suddenly Little T. was walking toward it. He brushed right by the man, doing so. The man did not even turn. He merely continued to look at what was before him: the table, the lamp, the unfinished food on the white plate. It was as if he knew full well now that whatever was his was not.

  Little T. began to search the bureau drawers, but he could see nothing. When he picked up the saucer, tallow dripped onto his hand and burned it; it was a nuisance to hold the saucer while he searched. He looked around the room and found a kerosene lamp without a shade sitting in a corner of the room. It was full of coal oil, and he set it on top of the bureau and lighted it from the candle. He searched again and found nothing. All of the drawers stuck, and he had to slam them to shut them again. Two of them were empty. One contained old clothes that seemed to have belonged to a woman. One held candle ends and rubber bands and all sorts of odds and ends. He was just going through the bottom drawer—there were some boxes in it and he was opening those—when he heard someone behind him. He whirled around, overwhelmed by fear, even when he saw it was only Jake. The man was older than he, but much taller; perhaps he was powerful; Little T. didn’t know. At the moment of his turning, he kicked the drawer to. The lamp slid backward and off the bureau and down the wall, spilling kerosene and igniting it. The wallpaper had long been browned and stained and torn, but once the pattern had been clusters of pink roses and trailing ivy. It was dusty and ignited quickly. Dust was everywhere, catching fire. Fire ran helter-skelter, igniting curtains, a bedspread, a rag rug—the entire room. In a few moments, they could barely breathe. Tears burst from Little T.’s eyes: tears from the fire, but tears of rage and sorrow. He opened his mouth to yell at Jake and found he could not talk. Fumes from the fire rushed down his gullet. Smoke choked him. He was finally able to cry, “Git out. Git!”