Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  Shut-eye’s niece, Laurel’s age, was cooking. Shut-eye asked them to eat and Son agreed. Laurel was embarrassed to find only two places set, could not look at the niece who did not look at her, went to sit in the living room with Shut-eye while they ate. Afterward, Son took a toothpick from a little glass in the center of the table and left several dollars under the rim of his plate. Going home, Laurel said, “Couldn’t we have asked them to eat with us?”

  “Shut-eye don’t want to eat with me,” he said. “Wouldn’t if I had asked him.”

  She bet he would, Laurel thought, thinking of the niece; nothing would make him think ways he had treated Negroes in the past were wrong; why argue? The future was important and she was sorry but he would have no influence on that. It was impossible to understand why it outraged him to see Negro entertainers on television (is that another nigger they got on there?), though he enjoyed being with Negroes and had been more than anyone she knew except those who lived in levee camps: had risked safety for them: had told her all the time he drove Greaser looking for Booker T. his flesh had prickled wondering if that big Negro on the back seat would lose control, turn on him. He seemed to sense disapproval by her silence, suddenly told about Mister Will taking Emmie’s galvanized pail of change to the bank every week to get a hundred-dollar bill. Did she know any Yankees who would have? He had known men who had Negro gal friends, too, if she wanted to know that, because they liked them. Yankees ran off at the mouth, thought they knew everything, tried to run everybody’s business, but when it came to taking care of Negroes they never had or would. They sped through countryside where once he had gotten out of his car, knocked on a cabin door, asked a Negro woman to use her outhouse; she had fed him too; he guessed none of it could happen anymore; it was too bad. Laurel asked if the woman had come to his house would he have let her use his bathroom? He said a four-letter word and they sped on, he knowing one thing, it had been a mistake sending her up there to that college in New York. He was silent; she thought her words had sunk in. He knew there was no sense telling about Sho Nuff coming back up the levee saying he had come home, wanting a job, and Will saying nothing after ten years but, Go back to work then.

  Kate said he had changed. He would eat and do things he never would before. An Italian restaurant opened and they went over and over to eat a special salad. Wop salad, he called it. Kate said, “I never thought I’d see the day you ate garlic, green peppers and ripe olives.”

  He smiled, suddenly shy. Remembering the Gibsons in California he told Kate to invite Martha and Will to dinner, he was going to fix some at home. In the afternoon he went for a haircut and came home with a bottle of wine. Kate lit candles and he said nothing at all about turning on the overhead fixture too. Afterward she said it was the nicest party they had ever had.

  Will walking in gave Son a start; white-haired, fragile, old, he seemed Red Johnson coming all over again, until Son looked in the mirror at himself, thought how young he had been when the old man taught him to figure, marvelled at the time passed since, wondered looking at Laurel where he had been all the years she was growing up? Mister Will was determined despite bad health to have the last camp on the river; there were only a few and Son hoped he made it. After dinner Martha said, “Frank, we had been thinking about you. First thing when we came home we were going to call but you beat us to it. Is there a single scrap of old times we haven’t talked about tonight?”

  “Not any I can think of,” he said. They had taken turns recalling. Son remembered Tangle-eye eating powder before he shot dynamite, had always meant to try it. Once more, they would all like to be in camp on a pay day, the way it had been. Remember the conjure woman? Emmie with her pains leaping here and there? I could even put up with trying to sell Mrs. Riley some good food to cook for all those kids she had, Martha said, laughing. I’d even like all those old fly-bitten mules around. I’d like every boy back in those old floppy straws and pinned-up overalls. “What would you like, Mister Will?” Son had said.

  “Shoot,” Will said, his way quiet and hesitant. “I’d just like to have it all to do over again.”

  Son knew that was what it came down to: it had been more fun making his money than having it. Once more he would like to fly down a dusty road, have Negro boys turn to call, Dynamite man coming! He recalled the eighty-two cases he had shot up in a day, could not tell how the single cry shook him like love: Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite! He heard it mutely in his long and silent days and nights.

  Leaving, Will shook hands, turned to shake Laurel’s and said what she had not wanted anyone to: unsaid it might not be true. “When are you leaving, Laurel?”

  “Day after tomorrow. But we’ll be back Christmas,” she said.

  “I know your momma and daddy hate to see that baby go,” Martha said. They were gone and only her words remained. The three left said nothing, avoided one another’s eyes and went silently to bed.

  Then it was that morning and Laurel felt it was a dream saying, “Tell Grandpa you’ll see him Christmas.” She took the baby from Son who had held him wordlessly to the airport. He could not walk to the plane and back, would wait in the car until Kate returned. Laurel leaned through the open door. “Christmas. Take care of yourself till then.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “The doc says he’s going to try me on some oxygen. Maybe that’ll fix me up.”

  Kate said, “Laurel, they’re calling your plane,” took the baby’s bulging diaper bag and hurried inside.

  He sat forward in his characteristic bent way, looking at nothing; she stood on the curb. Behind were years of silence and ahead was understanding; but what words made any difference now that she was leaving?

  He said, “Do you need any money?”

  “No, I have plenty,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Kate called from the doorway; even the porter returned to hurry her. She took one step backward and closed the car door. “Goodbye,” she said. “We’ll see you.”

  He said nothing. A loudspeaker called her name. In a rush she turned and ran in the direction she did not want to. Strapped into the plane, she was breathing heavily, her arms ached; she realized how far she had run, up steps, through the terminal, down a long ramp, carrying the baby unaware, the weight inside her was so much greater. She held the bag Kate had thrust, whose face had been cold and moist. Kissing her, Laurel had smelled the particular sweet smell she always associated with Kate. “You all come to see us,” she had said. The stewardess had urged her on, someone barely looked at her ticket, hurried her through a turnstile; she had been running frantically again as if she might outrun Kate’s answer, “He can’t go anywhere.”

  How many times had she looked out from a plane window in exactly this way? This time Kate did not even wave. She stood in a grey dress hardly distinguishable against the grey building, except for her lonely and still lovely face, was obscured when the plane moved. Laurel held the baby so tightly she wondered he did not cry and told herself not to: he would be here and they would be back. The stewardess approached with gum. Laurel concentrated on the rhythm of chewing rather than on the scene she had left, could not look a last time at the flat brown land and the river in the distance, looked instead at the baby, wondering what he had thought jounced along in his running mother’s arms. Kate had said, He’ll probably throw up. She brought the clean diapers closer, wondering if George would have bought anything for dinner, if he would cook, whether she would have to, whether the baby would sleep on the trip, thinking, Now they’ll be home; they’ll have come into the silent house and tomorrow when he gets up it will be quiet too; he won’t yell Roll-o!

  Sarah had said, I’m going to take down his bed and playpen and have everything in the basement before they even get back.

  She had gone away to college and he had said, Now maybe you can find out some of the things I never could. But the older she got she did not have answers, she had more questions.

  The baby slept and she tried to. Closing her eyes, she saw him. Sh
e had told herself to memorize him and found she had, in detail. She saw exactly the way his hands had rested on the chair as he watched television, how he had sat resting halfway down the long hall, head hung, cigarette smoke curling about him, rubbing his hands through his hair, remembered how suddenly one day he had stood as straight as ever he had showing how Mister Will had flapped Tangle-eye’s lip shut saying don’t stick it out at him, then dropped back into his chair laughing until he whooped, happy the rest of the day, remembering.

  Holston, she told George, had said he did not believe her father would ever have retired if he had not gotten sick, even though the business had shrunk, even though he had always planned to. Did George think he would have? Who knows, George said.

  After Laurel left, there was a heat wave. The oxygen tank was placed in his bedroom and he spent a little time using that. But he had to get out and bought air conditioning for his car. Then he began again, travelling roads old and new. He realized one afternoon that he turned toward home each day as the fieldhands did. In Arkansas, shady pecan groves alternated with open cotton fields and by four o’clock every afternoon clouds were so low in the distance over the flat land it seemed you could touch them. Early the Negroes were like scarecrows in a bunch in the fields. But by four-thirty, coming from them, they were silhouettes against the horizon. He saw a man coming as if crucified against the sunset, a hoe across his shoulders, his arms stretched wide on either side holding it. Maybe that set him to thinking about the Bible he won as a boy for perfect Sunday School attendance; at home, he found it. He began to read it, was embarrassed to tell even Kate, afraid she would laugh. Sometimes he did not understand what it was all about and laughed telling himself, Well, that was why he was reading it, because he didn’t know what things were all about. He got enough comfort to keep reading. The hot summer was abundant with wild hollyhocks and petunias swinging in pans on the porches of houses and cabins. Wherever he drove, people sitting on porches watched him go. Often he was caught by a quick southern rainstorm; one moment the day was beautiful and the next the windshield was splattered with rain, causing him to jump. Bright clouds would be replaced by dark ones as quickly as a scenery shift. Rain came swiftly, hard on a rising wind, pelting the car as once gravel had. He would have to slow, wipers could not keep up, peer, would hear the ceaseless flap of his tires on the pavement. Always there was jagged lightning and a moment later thunder, as if something had fallen and rolled on and on into the distance. With lessening rain he would enter the city, the whop whop whop of the wipers louder as his speed reduced, the sound a rhythm in his brain. As suddenly as it had begun the rain would stop; the sun would shine, jubilant against the sky only a short time before it set, giving a similar ocher glow to wet magnolias and city streets. Steam rose from pavement and as if the rain had never been, heat settled over the city again. The last thing in the world he would have told anybody was that in the days when he travelled most, driving along, he used to think up stories. But you had had to think about something mile after mile; after awhile you hadn’t heard the radio anymore, got burned out thinking about the things you passed, though you had had to be constantly alert, particularly if caught by dark. Down in his part of the country, there had always been farmers and Negroes out in some old vehicle without good lights or any at all. Crossing the bridge into Delton once, he had come smack up on a wagonload of Negroes sitting with their legs dangling out the back, completely covering a little lantern they had tied on as a tail light. Whew! he thought, if he hadn’t stopped just in time, they’d still be scraping up nigger off that pavement. He had always wanted to write a story about a cowboy, once had begun and threw it away. He had felt silly thinking up a name but had wanted something plain like Sam. He (Sam) went out of the bunkhouse and saw a horse to rope. He walked over and got a rope … The story had begun that way but now he didn’t have what it took to think up any more. Laurel once had wanted to be a writer; maybe she’d get it all down some day.

  That summer Buzz was in town for several weeks. They took the wives out to dinner and played cards. Afternoons when he did not feel like doing much, Buzz sat with him. They talked about old times. Buzz asked what advice he’d give a young boy starting out as he had. Son said, Don’t. He’d hate to see any young boy starting out to stay on the road the way he had. Then I’d tell him one thing I learned quick. Don’t ever order any kind of egg out on the road but a fried one; and don’t eat it unless it’ll stand up and look at you. They talked of things they were proud of. Son said one thing was thinking up the way to set off a whole line of charges with one cap. He sat back, laughing so hard he had to have a whiff of oxygen afterward. Once he had been shooting such a charge, a ditch in a farmer’s pasture. At the last minute the man said he had his prize Black Angus bull in there; but it was too late. As the charge went off the bull straddled it, was lifted straight up; he came down tail first and lit out, unhurt, running. That farmer told me, Son said, reaching for the oxygen again, he didn’t find that bull for three days!

  Buzz left, saying he’d see him Christmas. O.K., old man, Son said. Take it easy, thinking, Roll-o would be here too.

  In the fall he crawled behind decrepit leaning school buses overloaded with cotton pickers, a water barrel strapped to the rear, Jesus Saves scrawled along the side. With cool weather people were inside and only dogs stood at doors. The foliage was gone, the countryside was bare, and he had covered every road he could find more than once and began to stay at home. One day he thought about a steak and a butcher shop across town where they would cut a good one. Kate had gone out. He asked Sarah to come with him. She exchanged working shoes for her Sunday pumps, put on a brown wool tam, doubled a shiny velveteen ascot across her neck. They bought steak and pork sausage the butcher made the way, they both said, their Mammy had. What did she need to make a cherry pie? He bought those things. He bought dog candy on display and peppermint sticks for himself and Sarah. While Tippy ate on the back seat, they ate. He drove Sarah to see the first little bungalow he had ever owned and Sarah told about her sister who wanted to buy a house. He told things her sister ought to know before she did. Another time, having bought another steak and more candy, he drove Sarah out from the city to see his office. He told how he had come to have it, how he had gotten into the dynamite business, some about good times and bad, and about the redecorating he had done. He gave her more advice for her sister, who was negotiating about the house, and told what it had been like giving up his business.

  Regularly they went to buy food that struck his whimsy, Sarah in her Sunday clothes. They bought pecans from a friend of hers who had a good crop and was selling them cheap. A week, he sat by the gas logs shelling pecans. Later Kate was to say it was then he began talking to her in a way he never had, even asking questions about things she did, people she saw.

  One morning a dozen roses arrived. Coming from the door in amazement, holding the card that read Happy Birthday from Frank, Kate entered his room and bent anxiously to the bed. He lay so still, so pale, and it was unusually late. But he was breathing. She waited a long while until he woke. He had had to take a pill, toward dawn. He struggled up and she motioned to the flowers she had set in the room. “Frank, I never have been so surprised,” she said. He grinned and she said, “How did you know it was my birthday?”

  He said, “Hell, you’ve talked about it for a week.”

  She said, “I’ve talked about it thirty years and I never got anything before.”

  He said, “I was too busy selling powder to listen. How old are you?”

  “Fifty-five,” she said. “And you don’t have to put it in the newspaper either.”

  “Whew. Pretty soon I’m going to be sixty years old. Goddamn,” he said. He got up and went to eat and talked to Sarah about problems her sister was having with her mortgage. Kate went into the kitchen, having decided to make herself a birthday cake. Once she came out to say she was making the kind Cally had. When the doorbell rang, he got up and went into the living room to see th
e man Sarah let in. Holding his hat, the man said, “Dynamite, you remember me?”

  Son said, “Damn, if I know.”

  He introduced himself. He was one of the salesmen Son had run out of the territory. He had been out ever since, selling equipment in the southeastern part of the state: retired, he had come to live with his son. They talked until the man said he had to go home, his daughter-in-law was expecting him. “I was driving by and saw your name on the mailbox and I got to thinking about old times. I didn’t see what difference it all made now. I just thought I’d like to see old Dynamite.”

  “I’m mighty glad you stopped in,” Son said.

  “This being retired now ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

  “Naw,” Son said. “I guess all us old peckerwoods were any good for was work. We worked too, didn’t we?”

  “You can say that,” he said, shaking hands. Son said stop in again when he had a chance and the man said he would. Son stood at the door a long time, having watched him go, breathing in. Then from the closet he took an old leather jacket he had worn to shoot ditches in the fall.

  Kate had closed the oven door when Sarah, wide-eyed, tip-toed in, saying in a whisper for no reason except from surprise, “Mrs. Wynn, come quick and look.” They stood together at the front window in astonishment. He was halfway down the driveway in slow but certain steps. At the end, he stood, hands in his pockets, looking both ways. Shortly, he returned. Kate said, “Sarah, I swear he’s been taking more oxygen lately. I think he’s getting better.”

  “He been looking better to me too,” she said. “I pray so.”

  He came inside saying he had just thought he could make it; and he had. “I got to have my wind up if I’m going to start teaching Roll-o to fight when he comes.”