God's Little Acre (5 page)

“I didn’t aim to mail a letter,” Ty Ty said. “A letter would take too long to get there. I figured on sending after them. I reckon Darling Jill could go over there to Scottsville and bring them back all right. I’ll send her on the bus to Augusta, and she’ll get there early tonight. They could all start back tomorrow morning on the bus and maybe get here in time to start digging in the afternoon just as soon as dinner was over.”

“Darling Jill isn’t here,” Buck said. “There’s no way of knowing when she’ll be back, either. If we have to wait for her, we’ll never get started to the swamp.”

Pluto sat up erectly and looked down the road. He would never get around to make a personal call on the voters at the rate he was going.

“She’ll be back any minute now,” Ty Ty said assuredly. “We’ll wait and take her to Marion with us. When we get to town, we’ll leave her at the bus station and go on to the swamp after that albino. That’s the thing to do. Darling Jill will be home any minute now. Wouldn’t be any sense in going off and leaving when she’ll be here before long.”

Buck shrugged his shoulders and walked up and down in the yard disgustedly. Two hours had already been wasted, and nothing had been accomplished by the delay.

“I would—” Pluto said, and then he hesitated.

“You’d do what?” Ty Ty asked him.

“Well, I was going to say—”

“Say what? Go on, Pluto. Speak your mind. We’re all of a family here.”

“If she wouldn’t object, I thought—”

“What in the pluperfect hell has got into you, Pluto?” Ty Ty asked angrily. “You start out to say something, and then you get all red in the face and neck, and you carry on like you’re scared to say it and scared not to. Go on and tell me what it is.”

Pluto’s face got red again. He looked from person to person, at last taking out his handkerchief and holding it over his face while he pretended to wipe it. When his face became less inflamed, he put it back into his pocket.

“I was going to say that I’d be pleased to drive Darling Jill over to Horse Creek Valley this evening, if she would bring my car back. I mean, I’d be pleased to take her over there if she’d let me.”

“Why, that’s real neighborly of you, Pluto,” Ty Ty said enthusiastically. “Now I know you can count on our votes. If you’ll take her over there, it’ll save me some money in the end. I’ll tell her to go with you. She won’t mind it at all. What do you mean by saying if she’ll let you? I’ll tell her to, Pluto. Much obliged for the offer. I’ll save a lot of money in the end by that deal.”

“Do you reckon she’ll go with me—I mean, do you reckon she’ll consent to letting me drive her over there in my car if she brings it back?”

“I reckon she will when I tell her to go, and she ought to be real pleased to have you taking her,” Ty Ty said emphatically, spitting upon a wild onion stem at his feet. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I ain’t got a hand over my own children, Pluto. She’ll go, all right, when I tell her to go. She won’t mind it a bit.”

“If Pluto is going to take her, then let’s get started for the swamps, Pa,” Buck said. “It’s getting late. I want to get back here by midnight, if I can.”

“Boys,” Ty Ty said, “I’m mighty proud to hear you say you want to be up and doing. We’ll start right off. Pluto, you drive Darling Jill over to Scottsville and leave her with Rosamond and Will. It’s mighty fine of you. I’m mighty much obliged to you, Pluto.”

Ty Ty ran up the porch steps and back to the yard again. He had forgotten for a moment how excited he was over the prospect of finding the albino.

“Griselda, when Darling Jill gets back, tell her to go over to Horse Creek Valley and bring Rosamond and Will back tomorrow morning. She’ll have to explain what we want with them, and you can tell her what to say to them. We need them to help us dig. Tell Darling Jill that me and the boys have gone to the swamp after that all-white man, and tell her we’re going to strike the lode in no time. I won’t say when, but I can say in no time. I’ll buy you and her both the finest clothes the merchants in the city can show. I’ll get the same for Rosamond, when we strike the lode. I want Rosamond and Will to know we need their help pretty bad, so they’ll come tomorrow and help us. We’ll all start in as soon as dinner is over tomorrow, and dig and dig and dig.”

Ty Ty fumbled in his pocket a moment, at length taking out a quarter and handing it to Griselda.

“Take this and buy yourself a pretty the next time you go to town,” he urged. “I wish I had more to give you, because you’re so much prettiness and when I look at you, I can’t help it, but we ain’t struck the lode yet.”

“Let’s get going, Pa,” Shaw said.

Buck cranked up the big seven-passenger car and idled the engine while his father was giving Griselda final instructions for Darling Jill. Just when Buck thought Ty Ty was ready to get into the car, he wheeled around and ran down to the barn. A few moments later he came running back with three or four more plow-lines. He tossed them into the back seat with the others.

Ty Ty stood looking at Pluto on the steps for several minutes, his brow wrinkled, intent upon him as if he were trying to remember something he had meant to tell him before leaving. Unable to recall it, he turned and climbed into the car with Buck and Shaw. Buck raced the engine, and a cloud of black smoke blew out of the exhaust pipe. Ty Ty turned around in his seat and waved good-by to Griselda and Pluto.

“Be sure and remember to tell Darling Jill what I told you,” he said. “And tell her to come home the first thing tomorrow morning without fail.”

Shaw had to reach over his father and shut the door that Ty Ty had been too excited to close. With a roar and a rank odor from the exhaust pipe, the big car shot out of the yard and rumbled into the highway. They were out of sight a moment later.

“I hope they find that albino,” Pluto said, not particularly to Griselda. “If they don’t find him, Ty Ty will come back swearing I lied about him. I swear to God, the fellow said he saw him down there. I didn’t lie about it. The fellow said he saw him in the thicket on the edge of the swamp cutting wood as big as life. If Ty Ty doesn’t find him and bring him home, he’ll take his vote away from me. That’ll be real bad. And that’s a fact.”

Griselda had gone to the porch while Pluto was talking. She could not hear what he was mumbling to himself, for one thing; and she did not care to stand out in the yard with him, for another. She sat down in a rocker and watched the back of Pluto’s head. From the position she was in, she could get a better view of the road, and she watched for the first sign of Darling Jill’s returning home.

Pluto sat alone on the steps mumbling something to himself. He no longer raised his voice high enough for her to hear what he was saying. He was thinking of what Ty Ty Walden would say and do if he could not find the albino. He was beginning to feel sorry that he had ever mentioned the albino in the first place. He knew then that he should have kept his mouth shut about something he was not certain of.

Griselda stood up and looked down the road.

“Is that your car, Pluto?” she asked, pointing over his head towards the cloud of red dust rising from the road. “It looks like Darling Jill driving it, anyway.”

Pluto got to his feet with effort. He stood up and took several steps in that direction. He waited beside the sycamore stump while the automobile came closer. It was making a lot of noise, but it did look like his car. He wondered why it was making so much noise. He had never noticed it when he drove.

“Yes,” Griselda said. “That’s Darling Jill, Pluto. Can’t you recognize your own automobile?”

Darling Jill turned into the yard without slackening speed. The heavy sedan skidded a distance of ten or twelve feet, coming to an abrupt stop turned half-way around in the yard. One of the rear tires was as flat as a board, and the innertube, which was hanging from the rim, had been chewed all to pieces. Pluto looked at the tire with a feeling of great fatigue coming over him.

Pluto heard Griselda coming down the steps behind him and he moved out of her way a little.

“You had a puncture, Pluto,” Darling Jill said. “See it?”

Pluto tried to say something, and he found that it was difficult to pull his tongue loose from the roof of his mouth. When it finally came loose, it fell between his lips and hung on the outside.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, jumping out to the ground. “Can’t you see it? You’re not blind, are you?”

“Who had a puncture?” Pluto managed to ask. He realized how weak his voice was only after he had spoken. “Who?”

“You did, you big horse’s ass,” Darling Jill said. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see anything?”

Griselda came running up.

“Hush, Darling Jill,” she said. “Don’t talk like that.”

As soon as Pluto could recover, he began jacking up the wheel to change the spare on to it. He went about replacing the punctured tire, puffing and blowing, but he did not have a word to say to Darling Jill for rim-cutting a brand new tire and chewing up a new two-dollar innertube. Darling Jill watched him at work a moment, laughed at him, and started to the porch with Griselda.

“Who’s been eating melons, and didn’t save me some?”

“There’s plenty left,” Griselda said. “I saved you two large pieces in the kitchen.”

“What is Pluto Swint doing around here?”

“Pa wants you to go over to Rosamond and Will’s and bring them back,” Griselda said, quickly remembering Ty Ty’s messages. “Pa and Buck and Shaw have gone to the swamp to catch an albino to divine the lode for them, and he said he needs Rosamond and Will to help dig. Pluto will take you over there right away, and Pa said you and Rosamond and Will can come back tomorrow morning on the first bus. I wish I could go, too.”

“Come on and go. Why can’t you?”

“Buck said he might be back by midnight, and I want to be here when he comes home. I’ll go over there some other time. You’d better hurry and dress.”

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” Darling Jill said. “I’ve got to take a bath first, though. Don’t let Pluto go off and leave me. I’ll be ready in no time. It won’t take me long.”

“Oh, he’ll wait for you,” Griselda said, following her into the house. “He’ll be here, all right. You couldn’t pry him loose until you’re ready to go with him.”

She and Darling Jill went into the house, leaving Pluto alone in the yard to change the tire. He had already got the punctured tire off the wheel, and he was getting ready to put the spare on and tighten the lugs. He worked away in the heat, not mindful of the fact that Griselda and Darling Jill had left him alone in the yard.

When he had finished and had replaced the jack and lug wrench under the seat, he stood up and tried to dust his clothes. His face and arms were covered with dirt and perspiration, and his hands were grimy. He tried for a while to wipe it off with his handkerchief, but he had to give that up when he saw how hopeless it was. He started around the house to the well in the back yard where he could bathe his face and hands.

Pluto reached the corner of the house without raising his eyes from the ground. When he got to the corner, he looked up and saw Darling Jill in the yard.

First, he stepped back for a moment; then, he stepped forward again and looked at her the second time. After that he did not know what to do.

Griselda was sitting on the top step at the porch talking to Darling Jill. She had not looked in Pluto’s direction. Darling Jill was standing over a large white enameled tub that had been hurriedly carried to the yard from the house and placed halfway between the porch and the well. She was busy talking to Griselda and soaping her arms when Pluto saw her.

It was at that moment when Pluto realized fully where he was. He did not wish to turn around and leave, but he was afraid to go closer.

“Well, darn my socks!” Pluto said, his mouth agape.

Darling Jill heard him and she looked at him. She paused with the soapy washcloth on her shoulder, and looked even more intently than before. Griselda turned to see what she was staring at so long.

For a while, Pluto thought that perhaps Darling Jill was trying to stare him out of countenance, or perhaps drive him back around the house, but he had remained there several minutes already, and he did not know what she intended to do. He was determined, after having stood there that long, to make her take the first move. Darling Jill did not attempt to run from his sight, and she did not try to cover herself with the washcloth or with anything else. She just stood over the white enameled bowl, staring at him.

“Well, darn my socks!” Pluto said again. “And that’s a fact.”

Darling Jill reached down into the bowl with both hands and, picking up all the suds she could hold, threw the soapy froth at Pluto. Pluto, only a few feet away, saw the suds coming towards him, but he could not force his body to move in time to escape them. By the time he finally moved a few steps, the soap was already stinging his eyes and running down the collar of his shirt. He could not see a thing. Somewhere in front of him he could hear both Griselda and Darling Jill laughing, but he was unable to protest. When he opened his mouth to say something, he tasted soap all over his tongue, and the inside of his mouth tasted just as disagreeable. He bent as far forward as he could and tried to spit out the taste of the soap.

“That will darn your socks,” he heard Darling Jill say to him. “Maybe you’ll think twice the next time you try to slip up on me while I’m naked. What can you see now, Pluto? See anything, Pluto? Why don’t you look at me now—you could see something if you did!”

Griselda laughed at him again on the steps.

“I wish I could take a picture of him now,” she said to Darling Jill. “He would make a pretty picture to show the voters on election day, wouldn’t he, Darling Jill? I’d call it the ‘Soapy Sheriff of Wayne County Counting Votes.’ ”

“If he ever tries to slip up on me again while I’m naked, I’ll duck him in a tub of suds until he learns to cry ‘Uncle’ in three languages. I never saw such a man in all my life. He’s always trying to put his hands on me and squeeze something, or else trying to sneak up and grab me while I’m naked. I never saw such a man.”