Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  “Afternoon. Mr. Bianco?”

  “That’s right. Careful.” With a strong square hand, he caught her elbow as she stumbled. Cally held toward him a newspaper taken from her shopping bag. “I saw your ad about the houses you’re building for only a small down payment.”

  “All over here, there,” Mr. Bianco said, taking a cigar from his mouth. He pointed and the lit end glowed and darkened, circumscribing air. “You pick which lot you want. I build the house. The road will run along here.” Having stepped off the planks, they walked along a swath cut through the field and stood where Mr. Bianco said a sidewalk would be, looking up and down at two rows of foundations. Mr. Bianco told which plots, all one-fourth of an acre, were already sold and which of those left he thought most desirable. If you were going to use the street car line, why build at the other end of the block?

  Cally saw the logic in that. She did not want Henry walking any farther than necessary, having noticed a certain slowing down in him. Yet you did not want to be too close, she said, to hear the noise, or have folks taking a short cut over your property.

  Mr. Bianco saw the sense in that and sized Cally up as a practical woman, with a level head.

  She asked about the occupants of the houses he had sold. Not having small children, she did not want to plop herself in the midst of too many.

  Mr. Bianco took out a list on yellow paper and with a contractor’s loving eyes looked up and down the street, describing the people. In one house was a Baptist minister and his wife, older, quiet people. The ends of Mr. Bianco’s heavy, muddy boots turned straight up into the air; Cally wondered if his toes went with them. Perhaps his stomach balanced him, sitting over his toes, his belt beneath. Under his coat he wore only a thin undershirt; his stomach and chest were covered with hair. When he spoke, a dark gold tooth caught the sun and gleamed.

  “What about just this side of the pastor’s?” she said.

  “Perfect!” He threw out his hands lavishly, delighted.

  “We’re Methodists but they ought to be nice people. And it’s not too far from the street car.”

  “Lady, I wish all my customers could know their mind like you. Two or three bedrooms?”

  “Two.”

  “Brick? A nice red brick. I got a whole car load of new brick.”

  “Stucco.”

  “Stucco.” He threw his hands higher. It made no difference.

  “Yellow,” Cally sighed. “It’s going to be the first house we’ve ever owned. I’ve always wanted a yellow stucco house. With brown trim.”

  “Brown trim.” Mr. Bianco seemed to be making a mental note.

  Cally was smiling. “Oh, I can see it. I want a screen porch across the back. Awnings on the windows where the sun comes in. And lots of shrubbery.” Her mind held all together, separate and distinct, in one flash, every house they had ever lived in. They had come along rent free like the one they lived in now, or at a nominal rent because they went with the business. There had been rooms over stores, or houses they rented only because they were nearby. Never had there been money to buy a house they wanted, and she was determined not to die in a rented house. “Well, I’m ready to put down a down payment.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-five dollars.”

  “Twenty-five dollars!” Mr. Bianco’s gold tooth glinted dully a long time before he closed his mouth.

  “It’s all the money I’ve got. I’ve saved it. It’s all the money I’ve got,” Cally said.

  “But, lady, how do I know you’ll ever get the rest? Where are you going to get the rest?”

  “I’ll get it. If I miss one payment, you can take the house back. You can put it in the contract. I’ll never miss a payment. I’m a cateress and I can work even harder. I plan to take in a boarder too.”

  Mr. Bianco threw his cigar to the ground and spit after it, shook his head from side to side a long time, as if the wrath of the Bianco clan, all connected with him in business, had already descended on him, then looked her straight in the eye. “Lady, if you got the nerve to come here with twenty-five dollars and ast me to build you a house, I got the nerve to do it.”

  He stuck out his hand, and Cally, having reached into her bag, put the twenty-five dollars, neatly folded, into it.

  They returned across the grassy field and signed the necessary papers. Cally went alone over the plank walk to the street car fine, hearing the street car in the distance, whining along the tracks a long way off, a thin, high sound. All around above the vacant fields, the sky seemed far away. The sun, not yet down, glowed behind a bank of clouds, turning them yellow-pink; the glow fell on the earth, touched the ugly empty fields, lit the windows of the little houses in the distance, fell full on her face, and gave her a sense of peace: God was in heaven, it seemed to say, and with a full heart, Cally thanked Him for the house they would have at last.

  At Cecilia’s school, she consulted the newspaper again, made a telephone call and was driven away as all brilliance left the sky. Through the grey evening, she went with Cecilia’s friends along a dingy street where the shops were still open; secondhand clothes strung outside them on clothesline danced in the air like frenzied things as people stopped to stare, and pulled. At a traffic light, a vendor in a sidewalk stand tilted forward in a cane chair to say, “Fresh fruit?” Cally stared past him at a small shop on Main Street, then was driven on between closed cotton warehouses where cotton, laid out on sampling tables, looked, in its amazing whiteness, phosphorescent in the darkened rooms. The car rattled over cobblestone pavement to the crest of the natural bluff on which the city was set. Below, placid and muddy, the Mississippi stretched as far as they could see. As they descended, Cally looked at the waterfront full of colorless barges and tiny boats bobbing like toys; a paddlewheel steamer lit up, looked garish, for here at the foot of the street, beyond the river, the last of the pink and yellow sunset stretched, blindingly. They travelled a road paralleling the river, on one side the waterfront and the failing sunlight, on the other the dark high bluff where night had already come. Feeling tiny, insignificant against the sky’s panorama, the great river beneath them, they crossed the bridge, feeling one moment airborne, the next, going again over flat land at the car’s top speed between marshy fields that were Arkansas now. Cally looked back with a new feeling of kinship at the city.

  Poppa met her at the Mill’s Landing train and listened intently, walking her home. She told first news of Cecilia, then of her doctor’s visit. He was relieved at first the draining had not taken place; then hearing of the planned future treatments, wished it had; the gall bladder phase might have ended.

  When Cally was not home, no one remembered to turn off lights. Approaching, she said, “It looks to me like every light in the place is on.”

  “Boss, don’t fuss,” Poppa said. “We’ve got a surprise.”

  “So have I,” she said.

  They entered the house among a quick exchange of greetings and Poppa let the words go by; but while Cally and Lillian warmed supper, he and Son sat in the living room and the words came back ominously. Poppa wondered why he had not given them more thought. On legs slightly trembling he went to the table, lost in thought, did not even hear Son return grace, had his head still bowed, his eyes closed, until Cally said, “Henry, you can carve the ham.”

  He carved, watching the opposite end of the table. “You’re hacking,” Cally said.

  He tried to focus but his mind dwelt on the other end of the table; at her place Cally had a small, cut-glass decanter full of her blackberry wine. Four small matching glasses beside it reflected like diamonds in the dull-orange light from the ceiling fixture. The bottle with its dark, still wine seemed foreboding, and made Poppa feel melancholy. Having poured the wine, Cally passed the glasses; they sat, their full plates before them, looking at the glasses apprehensively. She served wine only on occasions and what could this one be?

  “I bought a house today,” she said.

  Poppa jumped as if someone had slapped hi
m on the back, his glass in mid-air; wine splashed out, warm and sticky, dripped over his fingers, one by one, encircling the glass, fell onto the white tablecloth which drank it like a blotter, leaving a shocking stain. Lillian, glad to escape, went to the kitchen for a wet rag and took her time coming back. She washed at the tablecloth almost viciously, until the stain was as gone as possible, and left the towel beneath like some terrible malformation. Poppa, gone white, sat and stared as if the stain were his own blood, drained away; he felt weak and helpless and wiped his fingers with a napkin, but the stickiness would not leave.

  “In Delton,” Cally said. Her cheeks took on a becoming redness; even her lips were red and her eyes shone like a young woman’s. The orangey light reflected smoothly on her hair, giving it its original color.

  “In Delton? What the hell you going to do with a house in Delton?” Son said. The light dealt harshly with him, heightened his face with shadows out of which his eyes stared pale and furious.

  “Don’t curse at your Mammy,” Poppa said.

  Cally said, “We’re going to live in it, that’s what. If Poppa and I don’t get out of this little country place now, we never will. He’s got to get a job some place better before he gets too old. I’ve answered a very fine ad in the Delton paper. The people were ready to take Poppa as soon as I told them all his experience. You don’t realize, Henry, you’ve got a very fine experience. It’s a shoe store off Main Street, one of those chain stores selling a good, low-priced shoe. You’ll have a big business at that location. Colored and white. Just think, right near Main Street, downtown in Delton.” She drank wine and it seemed to flood her cheeks; they flushed and were redder. “You’ll have to go for an interview.”

  “Shoes?” Henry said, as if the word were foreign.

  “Shoes!” Son said, his teeth clenched; he held the sound a long time, gave it a final hiss before letting it go, without saying the other word on the tip of his tongue.

  “What about us if Poppa leaves?” Lillian said. She was ready to switch; they would not have the automobile, but they would be moving to Delton.

  “What if Poppa doesn’t leave?” Son said. His huge hands tightened on either side of his plate, his knuckles whitened. “Listen, Poppa has a surprise too. He’s bought a Ford.”

  “A Ford?” For a moment, they saw everything Cally was eating, then she swallowed with difficulty and said, “A Ford automobile? Why, Henry.”

  He gave a little desultory wave with his fork. “It was a little surprise. If I’m going to change jobs, though, we’ll have to let the automobile go, Son.”

  “Well, we don’t need a automobile in Delton,” Cally said. “The house is right near the street car line. But I declare.” She sat back with a pleased look. They had to smile back at her expression: Obviously she pictured herself as they had—riding down the road. “Wouldn’t it kill Sudie Baker and Thelma Owens?” she said. They heard a slight hesitancy, then it was gone. “We need a house more than we need a automobile. Have you given them any money?”

  “Not yet,” Henry said.

  “I’ve made a down payment on the house.”

  Lillian said again, “What’s going to happen to us when you all move?”

  “The house has two bedrooms,” Cally said. “You can rent one.”

  “If we go, we’ll get our own place,” Son said. “It’s time Lillian had her own kitchen. Maybe we won’t go. Maybe we’ll stay. I could run the commissary and we’d have this whole house.”

  A whole house, Lillian thought, looking at him affectionately; but he looked back with hard eyes. She knew he wanted to go—the success he talked of by implication meant leaving Mill’s Landing—but he did not want to be told when to go. Suddenly, Lillian feared ending up with neither the car nor Delton.

  Everyone in Mill’s Landing went to work at the same time, and everyone went to bed soon after dark. Supper went on longer than usual. By the time Lillian and Cally had washed dishes, swept up, set the breakfast table, the town was in almost total darkness, and it was nine o’clock. In the railroad station a light was on. A bare bulb burned over the entranceway to the mill; Poppa had left on the one hanging over the cash register. At the drug store a small blue night light burned, but there were no street lights.

  After the Wynns settled into bed, the house was silent. Son thought Lillian was asleep but could not tell; she breathed as unnoticeably in sleep as when she was awake; to have her beside him was like having a small warm animal—perhaps a rabbit—asleep there. Down the hall he could hear Poppa snoring faintly, with the regularity of a pump running; once he stopped, cried out, “Huh?” then was quiet again. Son knew Cally had pushed him until he turned over.

  He thought of Betty Sue and how she had slept, as roughly as she lived, thrashed about, flailed her arms, kicked. It was a workout to have slept beside her; the times they had managed it, he had waked exhausted, but she woke as lively as ever. She had been coarse and too much like him; that was why, he guessed, he had not married her. When she ate, if she spilled, she did not even look down, just kept on eating. Lillian was dainty and yet, of the two, he sometimes thought Betty Sue had been more like a woman. She had plowed in the fields beside her Daddy, helped her Momma wipe the noses and bottoms of eight at home, kept her Daddy’s grocery going when he was lying up in bed with a jug of whisky. She could hold her own whisky, too. Lillian had worked—but not really worked, not broken her back or gotten her fingernails dirty. It made a difference about what a woman expected, he was beginning to see. To make the money he wanted, he was going to have to leave Mill’s Landing, but he was afraid of Delton, the place itself. It was so big. He was afraid of the men he would find there, educated men; they were all going to know a lot more than he. But he had a system he did not think could be beat. Going over it in his mind, he fell asleep.

  In sleep he had the job. He was selling dynamite for the Delton company, the way Lillian wanted. Only he was out West doing it, pumping a handcar along a railroad track with the boxes of dynamite stacked up behind him. Wind rushed back against his face and pine trees whispered all around him, the ground beneath them brown and soft with dropped needles. He flew along the track until he came to its end and a great, faceless man said, But you brought the dynamite with you. You were supposed to have sold it along the way.

  Cursing himself, he stood, wanting to hide. Then a white fury took hold of him and he cried out, Son-of-a-bitch! They would not beat him. He would make it. Country boy or not. Schooling or not. He would make it.

  He fought back the only way he knew how, with his two great fists, beating the featureless face. Two things in the whole world he had no fear of, fighting and work. He would bet you right now it was the right system. All you had to do to make it was work.

  He cried out telling it and woke to find Lillian bending over him. “Wake up, Frank,” she said. “You’re having one of those dreams again.”

  He was soaking wet as well as the pillow beneath him and the tangled sheets. Trailing a blanket behind her, Lillian went toward the sitting room to sleep on the couch. Hell, let her go, he thought, and it was the first time he had not called her back.

  He lay back, his breath coming short, thinking now he would sleep with everything against him thought out, whipped. But suddenly he sat up, crying out to Poppa, to Cally, to Lillian, to the whole vast dark Goddamned world: “Listen! There’s got to be a place in the world for a man as willing to work as me.”

  There was silence before Lillian’s voice came back. “Oh, go to sleep, Frank,” she said.

  Despite the rainiest winter anyone could remember, Cally and Poppa moved after New Year’s. Cecilia would continue at boarding school, and Son and Lillian moved into the tiny second bedroom. As always, the southern winter alternated with spring; one day it would be thirty degrees, the next seventy-five. Cally and Poppa sat on the new front steps warming themselves beneath the sun as beneath something furry, though the steps, being concrete, held winter still, were cold. Cally, busy settling the house,
did not think about weather but talked continually of needing a back porch. Where would she put the daily things no kitchen could hold, newspapers, gardening shoes, canning jars empty and filled, the bushels of vegetables and fruits themselves, a churn she might someday use again? Quick, she caught in their faces a hint of acquiescence and repeated often, as if it were beyond belief, A house without a back porch, making the family feel she bore the lack alone; aging, she must wash, cook, clean, cater handicapped. The matter, taking root as she had intended, was settled at the suppertable. Son swallowed and something difficult went down. He said, “Mammy, make your plans. I’ll pay what Poppa can’t to put the porch on.”

  Poppa would not be able to pay anything; they knew that. He looked away a moment and the room’s objects seemed colorless, almost indistinguishable. He assumed embarrassment caused it. Lillian’s napkin fell to the table like something unbillowed and she thought how satisfaction became Cally. Her eyes and face had a new luster. Her smile, turned inward, seemed it would be enigmatic, then was not. It said she had won and they could understand winning. But they could not forgive the smile’s briefness or their helplessness watching as her eyes turned thoughtfully to something else she wanted. She passed salad in a cut glass bowl to Son and he shoved the bowl past him hard, into Lillian’s hands, as if the poked out edges of ornate glass could cut and hurt, it did not matter who.