As the wagon creaked through the familiar and arrived finally at the most familiar sight of all, Bessie’s confidence and good humor returned, whereas Eugene grew sullen and taciturn. Leon stood behind them on the floor of the wagon, looking as hopeless as a duke in a tumbril.
By nightfall the three had resumed their old roles. Bessie commanded the house, having gone over the barn and examined the livestock with Eugene as soon as they came home, grumbling at the way the level of corn had gone down in their absence. Leon tagged along beside his mother, but when he asked if he might sleep in the barn where Eugene used to sleep, Bessie said, “No, you may not. I won’t have you out here with a candle; you’d forget to blow it out and burn up my stock.”
Leon went to bed after supper without waiting to be told, eager to shut his eyes against the surroundings and to have that day over. Tired more from the things he had felt than the things he had done, he soon slept; nor did he wake when Bessie and Eugene came in.
“Be quiet as you can,” Bessie cautioned as they began to undress.
“What for? There’s nobody within a mile.”
She looked at him quickly but said nothing, making the bed ready for them and then herself ready for it.
“We ought to stayed in Savannah.”
“Takes money,” she said.
“I could have made some if we’d stayed.”
“You tell me how.”
“If I had a stake to start, I could build it up, a place like Savannah.” He kicked his shoes to the wall and squirmed out of his trousers. Hopping on one foot to keep balance, he said offhandedly, “How much you spect we could get for the farm?”
“I don’t plan to sell,” she said irritably, but her face softened as she looked at him in the lamplight. “Whatever, it wouldn’t be enough for what you want. It’s piddling to think about, and a waste of time to imagine I’d let go the only thing I’m certain of.”
He didn’t dispute what she said. “What about getting more where we got the fifty dollars?”
“They’re not fools.”
“They are about him; you tell me.” She blew out the lamp and got into bed. “I’m not ready,” he protested.
“Find your way in the dark.”
They lay silently on their backs for a time before he turned to her. She pushed him away. “I don’t want to.”
“I do.”
“It ain’t comfortable for me no more with all this.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Wait till after I’ve had it.”
“Two months?”
“Maybe not so long.”
“I ain’t gone that long since I learned how to do it.”
“You can stop acting like a young’un that has to have everything he wants.”
Presently he said, “I got to have me some. If you won’t give it to me, others will.”
She reached to touch him. “I reckon you are hard up.”
“You right. Hard and up.” He snickered.
“Sh.”
“Your hands are rough as a grater. Use some spit.” He waited a minute and said, “That ain’t a lot better. Use your mouth. Now, that’s it. That’s better. That’s all right. That’s good. Good. Good. That’s good. Go slow. Slow. Stop. Just wait a minute. Again. That’s it. Hold it tighter. Fast. Faster. Keep it going. That’s it, that’s it, oh. Oh, I’m coming. Oh, here I come!”
When they settled themselves for sleep he asked curiously, “Did you swallow it?”
“I forgot where the slop jar was in the dark. I couldn’t let it run on the sheets; only have to wash them again before time.”
“Remind me not to kiss you for a while,” he said.
“You don’t much anyhow.”
“Are you complaining?” he said, then again with increasing anger, as if his own question stoked his displeasure. “I said: Are you complaining about me, old woman? For if you are, I can find some that won’t, and don’t forget it neither. Godalmighty.”
“You and your peter,” she said bitterly. “I reckon that’s about all you got to be proud of.”
“Well, I sure ain’t proud of marrying you. I had me a nigger gal before I come here that could suck better than you can fuck. Now what are you going to say to that?”
“That you’re low-down. Go to sleep. There’s work tomorrow.”
“If you think I’m going to work my ass off forever on this one-mule farm, you’re wrong; you’re mighty wrong. I got other things on my mind; can’t you see that?”
“Reckon you won’t speak to us all when you’re Mr. High and Mighty. What you figure doing, trapping critters again with old Crawford? Making moonshine? Or just plain stealing?”
“There’s ways and ways.”
“You can forget about selling my farm from under me.”
He was silent for a time and she began to be sorry for him because he was young. She remembered well enough the feeling she’d had when she was young, of its being the end of the world out here with no one to turn to. “Are you ’sleep, Gene?” she whispered.
“Leave me alone.”
31
James Davis owned three quarters of the sawmill, but Bonard Saxon, whose father owned the other quarter, managed it. This had come about naturally enough, because James was blind, and everything had to be read or explained to him before he could make a decision. Bonard now made the routine decisions, although he was meticulous about consulting his uncle on important matters. Bonard worked early and sometimes late, to keep up with the extravagance of his wife, he said, although that was more a matter of brag than of fact, Frankie being only about as self-indulgent as other wives of her position. And for all his steady application to the sawmill’s business, Bonard still found time for his own indulgences in women and drinking. Alf Crawford was an old acquaintance who, if he didn’t have a thing himself, usually knew where it might be got; and he had often been the means of supplying Bonard’s needs. So it was that when Eugene Betchley turned to Alf to advise him how to make money, Alf sent him to Bonard, the only man of any substance he might call upon for a favor. Bonard was alone in the office on the October morning Eugene pounded at the door.
“Gene!”
“Alf Crawford said come.”
“Well, come on in then. Hear you been playing the dude in Savannah. How you like it, hum? Not much like little Highboro. More eyes watching but not all of them on you. Alf tells me you’re worried about something. Sit down.”
“Not so much worried as wanting,” Eugene said. “Wanting a job to work.”
“You?” Bonard looked amused. “Thought you’d turned respectable farmer and settled down—”
“‘Down’ is right. I’m looking for ‘up.’ Like to rise a little by doing a week’s work for a week’s wage and hoping for even better if I show some worth.”
“How’s married life?” Bonard winked.
“She’s got a baby on the way. You must have heard.”
Bonard nodded. “Quick work, or was the cart before the horse? Never mind, never mind; happens ever’ day, don’t it?”
“Not much to a farm in winter, and with another mouth about to open and squawl for victuals—”
Bonard laughed. “Don’t sound much like the old Gene, no sir! Used to be ready to grab gun or girl, never mattered which, long as there was game in it. Well, don’t give up your fun. When you try to get it back, you won’t find it easy. I tell it from my own experience.”
Eugene affected relaxation, sprawling in his chair before slowly fanning his knees in and out. “Never heard of you stinting on your fun. Fact, Alf tells me you still—”
“Well, you know, have to keep my hand, so to speak, in. A job, you said. Do you mean it?”
“I mean it.”
“Women do drive men to it, don’t they? Damnedest thing. Reckon the sight of Savannah ladies opened the eyes of your missus and now she wants you to buy her a little of this and a lot of that. Don’t I know! Tell you what, I’ll think on it some and talk it over with Uncle
James. Don’t make a decision without his say-so. Might be. Uh-huh, you might well do. We been taking on more niggers, you see, because they come cheaper than white men; but the trouble is making them work. Tell a white man to do a thing and leave him to do it. Leave a nigger and he sets down on his ass. Keep ’em on their feet or they go to sleep. How you like to be nigger watcher for me, see to it they don’t stop pulling and pushing my saws ’cept to tear off a piece of chewing tobacco twice a day?”
Eugene started to work at the mill the following day, as Bonard told him with a wink, “After I talk it over with Uncle James. He’s the real boss; rest of us just draw our pay.” Eugene proved himself immediately. That he lacked experience working with Negroes was an advantage, because it made him edgy. The men took his tension for meanness, which it presently became. They didn’t like him, but they no longer idled over their work; and Bonard soon understood he had hired a useful man.
Early in November, Sarah went to see Bessie. She found her and Leon at work in the barn, the woman with a pitchfork, the boy with a rake, their knuckles red and cracked with the cold. When Sarah made it clear she intended to stay a while, Bessie put down the fork and led them to the warm kitchen, where she made a pot of coffee. After praising Eugene for the way he was applying himself to his work at the mill, Sarah observed sympathetically that it must leave everything for her to do on the farm.
“Well’m, I’m used to it, ain’t I?”
“Not so near the time you’ll take to bed.”
“Leon’s a help.”
“Leon’ll be starting school one of these days. You need somebody to shoulder the heavy, now Gene’s doing so well for you-all at the mill. You know what a lot of hands we keep at Beulah Land. Try to hire by the month but wind up taking them for the year, because we have to have the best and that’s the only way to get them. Then they stay on and on, and it’s not much different from the old days, is it?”
“That’s because you’re too easy with them. Gene tells me—”
“They earn their keep, only there’s not so much for them to do now. I’m going to send a man over tomorrow and from now on to do whatever heavy work you tell him needs doing.”
“That’s kind of you, Miss Sarah, but Gene won’t like it.”
“I’ll be in Highboro this afternoon, and I expect to stop at the mill. It used to be ours, you know, before I sold it to Mr. Davis.”
“Yes’m, I remember.”
“I still act bossy when I go around there, and people do what I tell them. Gene will be no exception; you’ll see.”
32
Crossing his back porch in a leap, Benjamin burst into the kitchen, shaking himself like a wet dog. “Raining ice water, I’d swear before God! Never known it so cold and not freezing. It’ll freeze tonight.”
At the stove Freda said, “I recollect a freeze one September, oh, back some years. September! With summer another month to go. “
“Well, we’re nearly into December, and if it freezes and stays frozen a day or two, I’m going to butcher a few hogs.” He sat warily on a wobbly-legged, cane-bottomed chair to remove his shoes.
“Won’t they taste nice!” she exclaimed approvingly.
“What’re you cooking that smells so good?” She lifted a pot lid as he stood again. “You mean that’s just chicken and dumplings? Heaven never smelled so sweet on Easter morning.”
The shifting of her eyes warned him before she said it. “Mrs. Ben is home.”
“Where?”
“You better go up there, Mr. Ben. Give me that wet coat.” She kicked his shoes under the stove to dry.
At the top of the stairs he met Velma, crying and wringing her hands. “Is anything wrong with the baby?”
“Her’s all right. Other her, big her, she say to fotch my clothes and hit the grit, for Velma not needed no more!” Overcome with her revelation, she wept with fresh vigor.
He took her hands and shook them roughly. “Don’t cry. It’ll be all right. I promise you’ll stay. Go to the baby.”
Leaving her, he went to Priscilla’s room and knocked on the closed door, entering without waiting for permission. Priscilla had dragged her biggest trunk to the center of the room and was on her knees before it.
“Traveling or going somewhere?”
She swiveled her head to acknowledge him with a frown. “You make a joke of everything.”
“A pleasantry only, from surprise. It’s a while since you were here, and you’ve sent no direct word. What are you doing?”
“I should think it obvious. I’m going to be at Mama’s for a few weeks.”
“You’ve been there now for a few weeks.”
“A few more then. Maybe a few months. She’s alone, with Elizabeth married and Papa dead. She needs me.”
“You’re needed here.”
“Not in any way I can permit myself to be used,” she asserted.
“The Glade is your home.”
She looked about the room slowly before shaking her head. Going to the wardrobe, she removed two cloaks, one light, the other heavy, shook them out and began to fold them. “It never was, and when I came back today, I felt more lost than ever. Mama’s house is home.”
“You mean to stay there.”
“For the time being.”
“For the indefinite time being?”
“If you like to put it that way.”
“It’s not what I like. It never is with you.”
“It pleases you to abuse me.” The straight stare of her eyes belied the mechanical quirk of her lips. “Very well.” On her knees again, she placed the cloaks carefully at the bottom of the trunk. “At least I satisfy that need.”
“You’re angry because of what Elizabeth has done. That’s it, I see. You think I should go to your mother and apologize, beg forgiveness for your sister’s deciding to make her life with a man instead of rotting away in that female piety and mortification of the flesh your mother calls ‘goodness,’ And you’d like to blame me.”
“You cannot claim innocence.”
“You blame Grandma and Jane as well, and you’ve decided to punish us. By leaving, you show the world that you withdraw from the contamination of Beulah Land. You and your mother have settled on this way to mete out punishment.”
“My absence cannot be much punishment to you.”
“You hope it will shame me.”
“I have given up expecting anything to shame you.” She busied herself opening doors and drawers, transferring small items of apparel to the trunk, pushing all down gently when she had completed a layer.
“It’s your mother’s revenge.”
“How dare you accuse her?” she said without inflection, as if determined not to show anger.
“I’m to have no wife.”
“You’ve told me I’m none already.”
“I begged you to love me once, but I’ll beg no more, and I’ll not make apologies.”
She opened and stretched a shawl, examining it with exaggerated care before folding it again. “You have evidently discovered someone to gratify that need. I only hope it isn’t one of the Negroes, Velma or Freda.”
“It isn’t like you to speculate on such matters,” he pointed out.
“Earthly love, if love you can call it, does not concern me. I am not a soulless animal.”
“When I think of your mother,” he said, “I wonder how your poor father managed to sire four children.”
“You are disgusting,” she said as a sad fact.
“What did you say to Velma?”
“That I don’t want her to nurse my daughter, whom I intend to take with me when I leave today.”
After a pause he said, “You shall not take Bruce.”
“Yes, I shall. A child, a female child in particular, belongs to a mother.”
“She’s done without you since she was born. You hardly handle her even when you are here.”
“If I’ve seemed to you to neglect her, it is because I shared the humiliation of her deformity, the
mark she bears as witness to your sins. Henceforth, I shall do my duty and raise her as she should be raised, to fear God and hate the devil. I shall pray for her, and with her, for salvation.”
“I have never touched you in anger—”
“No, you have done worse.”
“Understand this—Bruce stays with me. If I must say it—I am stronger than you.”
She looked at him intently, as if measuring the degree of his strength. “Will you force me to apply to the Reverend Quarterman?”
“I am also stronger than he.”
“Even you would not strike a man of God.”
“When you go to him, tell him what I say, and let him judge how brave he is.”
“You risk damnation.”
“Without a qualm.”
“I shall tell people, you know that.”
“There are always fools to listen.”
“I know why you are determined to have her; don’t think me a fool. However many bastards you sow and reap, she’ll be your only legitimate child. You cannot marry again.”
“Why did you come today in a freezing rain?”
“Mama hired a wagon to take Elizabeth’s trunk to her. It brought me and will pick me up with my trunk as it returns. I am not dependent on you.”
“What of your mother’s means?” he asked after a moment’s thought. “I’ll arrange for you to have whatever you require.”
“I’ll send you accountings. As for Mama, she will not need your charity. Papa had railroad shares and never sold them, as so many others tried to do after the war.”
At the door he paused. “I hope that in time you will want to return to the Glade and to your child.”
“If I am without my child,” she said, “it will be her loss and upon your soul, which is already heavy-laden.”
He left the room without a word and went to the nursery to reassure Velma, which took a little while. When he left her, he told her to lock the door and to open it to no one until he came again. Returning to Priscilla, he watched as she finished packing and closed the trunk. When she stepped back and nodded, he lifted it to his back and carried it down the stairs so carefully it bumped neither wall nor banister, setting it down in the hallway beside the front door. Coming after him, Priscilla took a narrow chair under the wall dock, folding her hands on her lap. Benjamin stood on the porch until the livery wagon drew up to the house, whereupon Priscilla came out to give the Negro driver instructions on the loading of the trunk. When he had secured it to her satisfaction under the canvas hood covering half the wagon body, she joined him on the driver’s seat. From the doorway Benjamin called to her to take shelter with the trunk. Without turning her head, she replied, “I intend to be seen by all.” The driver picked up his reins and turned mule and wagon toward the road that followed the curve of the hillside down.
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 19
