God's Little Acre (16 page)

After a while he sat back on the seat, stretching his legs against the footrest, and clutched more tightly in his moist palm the roll of three hundred dollars Jim Leslie had let him have.

R
OSAMOND,
B
UCK, AND
Shaw were waiting on the downtown corner when they arrived. Will, though, was not in sight. They rode up to the curb and stopped, shutting off the motor. The second-storey windows behind the iron-grilled balconies were still open and lights were burning in most of them. Ty Ty tried not to look higher than the plate glass windows on the street level.

“Did you get it, Pa?” Rosamond asked, the first to reach the car.

“I reckon I did,” he said proudly. “Just look at this big wad of greenbacks!”

Buck and Shaw were drawn to the side of the car to see it. Everyone looked pleased.

“I need a new raincoat,” Shaw said.

“Son,” Ty Ty said, shaking his head and pushing the roll of money back into his pocket out of sight, “son, when it rains, just peel off your clothes and let your skin take care of the rest. God never made a finer raincoat than a man’s skin, anyhow.”

“What are you going to do with all that money, Pa?” Buck said next. “You can spare a little of it, can’t you? I haven’t had any spending-money since a month ago Sunday.”

“And you won’t get none of this in a month of Sundays. You boys talk like this was nuggets I’ve got, expecting it to be shared. Jim Leslie let me have all this money to see us through the fall and winter. We’ve got to eat on this, and share with the mules besides.”

Ty Ty craned his neck to find Will. He was anxious to leave for home, because it was nearly midnight then and he wished to get an early start in the morning. He was planning to resume digging at sunrise. “Where’s Will?”

“He was here a minute ago,” Rosamond said, getting into the car and sitting down beside Ty Ty on the back seat. “He’ll be back any second now.”

“Will ain’t gone and done it again, has he?” Ty Ty asked. “Ain’t no sense in a man going to the dogs ever so often.”

“Will didn’t go to the dogs this time,” Shaw said, winking at Griselda. “He went with a good-looking blonde. I reckon he’s through with her by now, though, because the last time I saw him pass by he was getting ready to ditch her.” Rosamond choked back a sob.

“Will never means no harm,” Ty Ty said. “Tomorrow morning bright and early we’re all going to go out and get a good start digging in the holes. That’ll straighten Will out.”

“It looks like rain now,” Shaw said. “Won’t be no early start in the morning if it rains hard tonight.”

“It can’t rain now,” Ty Ty said assuredly. “I’m against it raining for yet a while. We’ve got to dig in the holes without fail.”

Each time there was a hard rain, the holes filled up with water, sometimes two or three feet deep. The only thing they could do in cases like that was to syphon it out with the long hose. They would put one end of the long hose in the hole they were digging, the other end in a hole situated lower on a hillside, and syphon the water from one to the other. Before Ty Ty had bought the second-hand fire hose from the Augusta Fire Department, they had had many trying days of labor. They had to carry out the water in buckets in those days, and if the water was deep, a day or two was lost after every rain before they could resume excavating the earth. With the fire hose now they could syphon out several feet of water in an hour or less.

Ty Ty continued to crane his neck, looking up the street and down it.

“Here comes Will now.”

Rosamond turned around to see in which direction Ty Ty was looking. She began to sob again.

Will sauntered up to the car, his hat tilted precariously on the side of his head, and leaned against the front mudguard on Ty Ty’s side. He took off his hat and fanned his face.

“Have any luck?” he shouted at Ty Ty. “Get the money, fellow?”

He could be heard for several blocks. People as far away as the next corner stopped and turned around and looked back to see what the disturbance was.

“Hush, Will,” Griselda said.

She was the closest to him and she believed it was her duty to try to quiet him until they could get out of town.

“Why, hello there, good-looking!” Will shouted at her. “Where’d you come from? I didn’t see you when I drove up.”

Buck and Shaw stood nearby and laughed at Will’s behavior. The others were anxious to get him into the car and drive away before a patrolman came by.

“I’m sure-God thankful I ain’t a man of drinking habits,” Ty Ty said. “Once I got started I wouldn’t know when to stop. I’d go the whole hog, as sure as God makes little green apples.”

Buck and Shaw helped Will into the back seat, in spite of his violent protest. Rosamond pulled up the auxiliary seats and gave Will her place beside Ty Ty. Buck sat with her while Shaw and Ty Ty held Will down between them.

“You folks ain’t doing me fair and square,” Will protested, kicking his feet against Ty Ty’s shins. “I’m not getting justice. Don’t you know I can’t leave the city till the last shot is fired? Just look at everybody still up and walking the streets. Let me out of here.”

Darling Jill pulled away from the curb and started out the street that led to the Marion highway.

“Now wait a minute,” Will said. “Where we going? I’m going home tonight. Turn around and take me to the Valley.”

“We’re going home, Will,” Ty Ty said. “Now just sit back and cool off in the night air.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, “because we’re going toward Marion. I’ve got to get back to the Valley tonight. I’ve got to see about turning on the power in the mill.”

“He’s out of his head a little,” Ty Ty said. “He drank too much raw corn.”

“He talks about turning on the power even when he’s sober, though,” Rosamond said. “He even talks about it in his sleep at night now.”

“Well, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I can’t make head nor tail out of it. What power? What’s he going to turn it on for?”

“Will says they’re going to take the mill away from the company and turn on the power and run it themselves.”

“That’s just some more of those crazy cotton-mill workers’ doings,” Ty Ty said. “Farmers ain’t never talking like that. Farmers are peace-loving creatures, taking it all in all. It looks like those fools in the Valley ain’t got a bit of sense. Neither Will nor any of the rest of them. He ought to stay and farm some and dig a little in the holes on the side. I’m in favor of making him stay away from Horse Creek Valley before he gets his head shot off.”

“He wouldn’t be content to do that,” Rosamond said. “I know Will. He’s a loomweaver through and through. I don’t suppose there ever was a man who loves a cotton mill as much as he does. Will talks about a loom just like it was a baby, sometimes. He wouldn’t be content on a farm.”

Will had stretched out on the seat, his feet propped against the footrest, and his head thrown back on top of the seat. He had not closed his eyes, however, and he looked as if he were aware of every word spoken.

They had left the city far behind. Each time they went over the crest of a sand hill they could look back and see the yellow glow of the lighted city behind them on the flood plain. Far up above it, looking as if it were built in the sky, the lighted streets of The Hill appeared like a castle in the clouds.

The big seven-passenger car was rushing through the night, its two long beams of light looking like the feelers of a fast flying insect as it broke through the wall of darkness ahead. Darling Jill had driven over the highway hundreds of times, and she knew when each curve was coming. The hot tires sang on the smooth concrete.

The fifteen miles to Marion were driven in twenty minutes. Just before they reached the town, the car slowed down and they turned off the paved highway on the sand-clay road home. The house was only a mile and a half away, and they were there in a few minutes. Ty Ty got up reluctantly. He always enjoyed riding in an automobile at night.

“This has been my lucky day, folks,” he said, climbing out and stretching. “Man alive! I feel like nobody’s business!”

He walked over the yard, feeling the familiar hard white sand under his shoes. It was a wonderful sensation to come back home and walk around the yard. He liked to take trips to Marion and to Augusta merely for the opportunity it gave him to come back and walk over the hard white sand and to stand and look at the big piles of earth scattered over the farm like magnified ant hills.

Will sat up and stared at the shadowy outline of the house and barn. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, leaning forward in order to see better.

“Who brought me out here?” he asked. “I had to go home tonight.”

“That’s all right, Will,” Rosamond said soothingly. “It was late, and Pa wanted to come home and go to bed. We’ll get back tomorrow some way. If Darling Jill can’t take us, we can go on the bus.”

She put her arm around his waist and led him toward the house. He followed her resignedly.

“I’m going to turn the power on,” he said.

“Of course you are, Will.”

“If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to turn the power on.”

“Of course, Will.”

“They can’t stop me. I’m going in there and throw those switches on, so help me God!”

“Let’s go to bed now,” Rosamond said tenderly. “When we get into bed, I’ll rub your head and sing you to sleep.”

They stumbled up the steps in the darkness and entered the house. Darling Jill and Griselda went behind them and lighted the lamps.

“I’ve been wondering how that Dave is,” Ty Ty said. “Come on, boys, and we’ll step down to the barn to see.”

“I’m tired,” Shaw said. “I want to go to bed.”

“It won’t take a minute, son. Just a minute.”

They walked down to the barn silently. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and the stars were bright. The threatening clouds had disappeared, and there was little possibility of rain before morning. They went through the barn gate and on into the barn where the stalls were.

There was no sound, except that of somebody snoring. Even the mules were quiet.

Ty Ty struck a match and lighted the lantern that always hung by the barn door. He carried it to the stall where Dave slept at night.

“Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule,” Ty Ty exclaimed in a low husky undertone.

“What’s the matter, Pa?” Buck asked, coming up and looking through the hay rack.

“Now ain’t that something, son?”

Shaw and Buck looked at Dave and at Uncle Felix. Both of them were sound asleep. Uncle Felix’s shotgun was standing in the corner of the stall, and he was propped uncomfortably against the stall partition, with his head on his shoulder, snoring loud enough to be heard all the way to the other end of the barn. Dave had stretched out on his back and rested his head on a bundle of fodder. He looked as peaceful as a newborn babe, Ty Ty thought, and he turned away so Dave would not be disturbed.

“Don’t bother them, boys,” he said, backing off. “Uncle Felix couldn’t help going to sleep. He looks dog-tired, sitting up there snoring to beat-the-band. And I don’t reckon Dave is after getting loose. If he was, he’d be gone long before now. He’s content to stay, it appears to me. Just leave them alone. He won’t run off before morning, anyhow.”

On the way back to the house, Buck walked beside his father.

“That Dave is after Darling Jill, Pa. You ought to stop him from taking up with her. The first thing you know, she’ll be running off with him.”

Ty Ty walked along thinking for several moments.

“He’s already had her once,” he said. “They went out under that oak tree yonder the other night, and that’s where Will and me found them. What I’m thinking now is that I don’t reckon I need to worry about them running off. A man and a girl only run off when they can’t do what they’re after at home. So I reckon there won’t be nothing for them to run off together about. I’ve got a notion that Darling Jill is done with him, anyhow. She is set up all she wants.”

Buck walked ahead a little distance. He spoke to his father over his shoulder. “You ought to make her behave herself, Pa. She’s going to get ruined the way she’s headed.”

“Not if she keeps an eye on the curvature of the moon, she won’t,” he replied. “And I reckon Darling Jill can take care of herself all right. She knows what she’s doing, most of the time. She’s crazy as hell sometimes, and about nothing. But that don’t keep her from knowing which is straight up and which is straight down.”

Buck went into the house without further comment. Shaw went to the back porch for a drink of water before going to bed. Ty Ty was left in the hall alone.

The bedroom doors were open, and the rest of the house was getting ready for bed. Rosamond was undressing Will, pulling off his trousers by the cuffs while he sat on a chair falling asleep again. Ty Ty stood and watched them for several moments.

“See if you can’t talk Will into staying here and working on the farm, Rosamond,” he said, coming to the door. “I need somebody to oversee the crops. Me and the boys can’t spare the time, because we’ve got to dig all the time, and those two darkies invite watching. They like to dig in their own holes better than they do plowing the crops.”

“I couldn’t make him do that, Pa,” she said, shaking her head and looking up at Will. “It would break his heart if he had to leave the Valley and come over here to live. He’s not made for farming and such things. He was raised in a mill town, and he’s grown up in one. I couldn’t think of trying to make him leave now.”

Ty Ty walked away disappointed. He saw that it would be useless for the present to try to argue her into it.

At the door of Buck and Griselda’s room he stopped and looked inside. They also were getting ready for bed. Buck was sitting on a chair taking off his shoes, and Griselda was sitting on the rug taking off her stockings.

They looked up when Ty Ty stopped at the door.

“What do you want, Pa?” Buck asked irritatedly.

“Son,” he said, “I just can’t help admiring Griselda, there. Ain’t she the prettiest little girl you ever did see?”

Buck tossed his shoes and socks under the bed and lay down. He turned over, his back to Ty Ty, and pulled the sheet around his head.