Old Powder Man (31 page)

The fourth morning was a grey still day, cool for the time of year. Everyone came to breakfast in tight pants and boots to their knees. Would the Negroes show up? Buzz said, “I told them to the first morning it quit raining if it went on forty days and nights.” As the men went to work, the sun came out, at first like a winter sun in some far north place, wispy and moon-white, its edges mingled fuzzily into the pearlized sky. Meeting, the workers spoke unconsciously in lowered voices, realizing only when the sun grew stronger they had felt themselves in someplace mysterious. They were used to heat, trusted it; as the sun grew stronger, the dirt warmed and the smell of ragweed drying overpowered the smell of everything else green and growing. With fifteen Negroes, Son started across a field single file, each man with a box of dynamite on his shoulders. At an old drainage ditch, now full of water, they could not cross, set down their boxes to search until someone found a log long enough to reach, and they started across, one by one. Halfway Son slipped, felt the dynamite box glance off his leg, falling behind him. He came up cursing, waded out pushing the box and laughing, not at himself but at sight of those dark faces and widened eyes peering down at him, the Negroes afraid to laugh until he did. They helped him; one carried the dynamite box and another said, “I seen one foot slip, I know Cap'n going,” another said, “Splash.” Along the line laughter passed again; they went on and Son spent most of the day working in damp clothes.

The following morning they began blasting. One of the hardest things he found about rock blasting was the white silt afterward. More than anyone, he seemed choked by dust as if his lungs could not get enough air. Dusted white, all the men stared out of round-looking eyes. Even in Son's ears the word rang excessively all day long; others said afterward they hardly remembered anything else about the day: Dynamite! Hardly had the sound of the blast receded, the smoke cleared when the word came again and then again, Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite!

At six o'clock that evening the Negroes gathered about him, quit. “You boys know how much powder we shot up today?” Son said. “Two tons and a hun'ert pounds. Eighty-two cases. That's the most dynamite I ever shot in a single day and I been shooting it a long time.” Everyone went home talking of the large amount. At the motel Son told them to wash up; he was buying everybody a steak. He had to celebrate. They had gathered back in his room, having changed, and had started celebrating when a knock came at the door. Over the noise no one heard it until it had come again and again; then Buzz, the closest, threw open the door, about to shout greetings, and hushed instead. They all hushed seeing the white-haired woman in the doorway, one arm in a huge bandage. “Who's the fellow shooting that dynamite off that's blowed windows out all over town?” she said.

“Phew,” Son said, sinking to the bed, his head fell forward but he could not help laughing, on top of whatever was to come; those eighty-two empty cases had put him there. The woman held up her arm. “I reached up to pull down my window shade and the whole glass fell out on me. I been at the doctor's hours getting splinters picked out. He's sending you the bill.”

Son stood. “I was in the limits of the law where I was doing that blasting at,” he said. “If the concussion got carried into town, that's the wind, and I'm not about to be responsible for the wind.”

“All I know is, the bank's wall got a crack and more windows than mine fell out,” she said.

Son said he reckoned he'd be seeing her in court. He took everyone out to eat steak anyway, the only difference being he did not ask the waitress to go out afterward, his mind on business now. He stayed on in East Tennessee until the case came to court. An Act of God, the wind, was responsible. Having won, he came out of court to tell the woman he was sorry as could be about what had happened, and he'd pay half her doctor's bill.

All the way back to Delton the sun was in his eyes. At home, Kate put drops in them and fixed cold compresses. Why in the world didn't he wear sunglasses? she said. He never had thought about it, he said; hell, when he was twenty-five years old the sun didn't bother his eyes. She said, Frank, I swear. Several days later he faced the sun again starting out to Will's, stopped and bought dark glasses, though it seemed as if he were giving in to something he should not be. His way of thinking had always been if you were cold, you were supposed to be, if you were hot stay that way, if the sun was in your eyes, make the best of it. But the glasses helped. Driving into Will's new camp he noticed it was set up in a grove of trees which Martha had long begged for; but Will chose a spot closest to the road, not for comfort. “The old man getting weak in his old age?” Son said, walking into the commissary. “How'd you talk him into settin' up in the shade?” Martha laughed. “Luck. This pecan grove just happened to be close enough to the road to get in and out when the weather's bad.”

Word had reached Delton of Greaser's death. Son said, “I sure was surprised to hear about that big strong buck just dying thataway.”

“Frank, it like to killed Will. He hardly spoke to anybody for three days. Greaser had been with him always; we didn't even know he had any other family but we located a sister down in Mississippi and took him all the way down there to be buried. Will just sat rigid during the funeral. I knew he wanted to bawl. Greaser was driving his tractor. Will said he pulled up to him, started to say something, then just fell off dead. The doctor said his heart must have been bad a long time; not even Greaser knew it.”

“Forty-six years old too,” Son said. It brought death closer. “I reckon it could happen to any of us.” Several Negro women waiting said in wonder and agreement, Um-
mmm
. A crowd of Negroes entered to shop and Son went out as Tangle-eye passed. “Boy, I finally remembered to bring you them shirts I promised,” he said, handing him a sackful.

Tangle-eye, removing his hat, grinned. “I thank you,” he said. Looking inside, he brought out a white shirt with whiter stripes. “I'm going to wear this here one to get married.”

“Tangle-eye, you ain't gettin' no married,” Son said.

“Yes suh, Sis Woman come back from California and ketch me.” Proudly, he took from his pocket a round metal disc and handed it to Son. “What's that all about?” Son said.

“I got the license,” Tangle-eye said. “Preacher sells 'em to us for a dollar and it's two up at the co'thouse.”

Giving it back, Son said, “Well, that's mighty fine.”

“Yes suh.” Tangle-eye, clapping on his hat, went away.

At supper, Son said, “How long that preacher been selling them old dog licenses to get married on?”

“Long as I can remember,” Will said. “He buys them up at the end of every year. Gets by with it as long as the Negroes can't read.”

Son dared speak of Greaser. “Did cocaine kill him?”

“No sir,” Will said, and Son felt that sudden rigidity too; Will's hands lay perfectly still on the table; then, as if deciding he would someday have to speak his friend's name, he said, “Almost all the boys I've known on the levee take cocaine but I've never known a one become an addict; they work too hard, sweat too much, I believe. Greaser had a packet on him when he died, like the doctor out in town sells them; but it's half ground-up chalk. It's white powder, that's all the Negroes know.”

It was time for him to start trying to catch up on his rest, Son said then. He was going to do a lot of advising, let the contractors have their own men do the actual work. For the second year, he and Will had tried to stabilize a bank where the river curved; each time after the June rise, it began to wash away. “Think it will again next year?” Will said as Son was leaving the next day.

“Well, if it does, I'll be back,” Son said. “There it'nt anything we haven't figured out yet, Mr. Will.” He drove home hurriedly, two things on his mind. A teacher had suggested Laurel be sent to a private school; she could continue music for which she had a talent and she had made a high grade on some kind of test—he didn't know what that was all about—but she needed a smaller place; she was so quiet, shy, even fearful, the teacher thought. He guessed he never had paid much attention to Laurel; he had left her bringing up to Kate and maybe that had been a mistake. He thought Laurel was going to turn out exactly like her; all the time she had her nose stuck in some book. She had been a pretty little girl and he thought her still pretty, though she just stood around too much biting her fingernails; he told Kate so and she said well, they both had inferiority complexes and she guessed Laurel did too. If anybody had asked him he probably would have said Laurel looked just like her mother. Many people thought so but just as many thought she looked like Son; somehow she was an exact cross between the two; her skin was not as dark as his but darker than Kate's; when she wore certain colors her eyes looked blue but at other times they were hazel, closer to Kate's dark eyes; sometimes they seemed even to have flecks of yellow. Her hair had never been the color of sunlight, like Kate's, but it was blonde, almost as dark as Son's. Something about the smallness of her face helped to make her seem so shy.

Driving, he decided she could go to the school. He didn't mind putting his money out for education: maybe it would keep her from making any mistakes. The second thing on his mind was buying a house. He had always been going to buy a big pretty house when he could. For the past several Sundays the three of them had driven around looking. For the first time, he felt he knew the city as well as he knew the country roads surrounding it. He liked a large one-story house set at the end of a circular drive, out from the city. Kate said they would never see anybody living way out there; he said he saw enough folks. When he decided to buy the house, Kate said she hoped he'd have the gravel drive paved; it would ruin the tires and every pair of shoes she had. He said he wanted it gravel, to remind himself of all the country roads he'd been over. To celebrate buying the house, they went downtown to eat and to see a picture show. It was a war picture with a long printed explanation of what all the shooting was about; whispering, he said, Why didn't they make the writing in picture shows big enough to read? They do, Kate said. Can't you read it? He shook his head and she said he needed glasses.

That was something to think about the rest of the show. Monday morning he went to see Willard Owens who had grown up in Mill's Landing and gotten to be big stuff as an eye doctor, Kate said; she saw his name in the newspaper all the time. Son found him about the same. Sitting in the dark cubicle, the pinpoint of light probing his eyes, he and Willard talked about how far they had come, to have started out country boys. Willard's mother still lived near Mill's Landing; occasionally he went back. The mill had burned fifteen years ago and now the Rankins farmed the land; the two rows of houses and the commissary stood, for the tenants.

Willard said Son did need glasses, mostly for seeing at a distance. Since Son was on the road so much, Willard prescribed a pair slightly tinted. On another floor Son picked out rimless gold frames, then crossing the building's lobby, on impulse, went into a photographer's studio where he was fitted in without an appointment. His proofs would be ready the same day as his glasses, and he kept the pictures a secret. From then on he divided his life into two parts, before he wore glasses and after. When he arrived at home in them, the proofs in a brown envelope, Kate exclaimed over both; they were the best pictures she had ever seen anyone have taken. She had one enlarged and put in a heavy gold frame. Eventually, in the new house, she put it on a long table in the entrance hall. When anyone came, Son would say, “See that. That was taken when I was still a young man, before I put on spectacles and got old.” He would laugh, explaining. If he wore the glasses for a long stretch of time, they left a red mark across his nose. Kate finally accepted that mark as part of him; a long time she urged him to have the glasses readjusted; he said it wasn't worth bothering the man about.

He told Kate he didn't know a thing in this world about what you needed to make a house look pretty but get what she needed, within reason, and don't ask him any questions; he'd pay the bills. On moving day Kate was awakened at six o'clock and looking out saw two Negro boys directing Mr. Ryder up the driveway in the dynamite truck. “Ye Gods and little fishes,” she said as Son got up, “is that how we're going to move?” He hadn't seen any sense hiring a truck when he had one, he said. What's the matter?

Didn't he know anything about the way other people did things? she said. He didn't care what the other fellow did, he said, he did the way he wanted to.

That's just the trouble, Kate said.

Loaded, the truck pulled away from the house about noon. He followed in his car and Kate and Laurel in hers, piled high with things Kate had been afraid for the Negroes to touch. He told her she looked like an okie pulling up; he could always get her goat telling her she looked as if she had just come from the country; she couldn't get over the fact that once she had.

Kate said she never had expected to have such a pretty house, and thought maybe in it, things would be different. She had an opportunity to buy some of the nice things she had always wanted; but having to make so many decisions alone made her nervous. Only a drink made her able to face painters, rug salesmen, furniture stores without qualms. On New Year's Eve they invited almost everyone they knew to a party, to see the new house. Ever since they had been married, he had started celebrating New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve at the office; they always went to parties on those nights and always came home in an argument; the holidays had long been ones Laurel dreaded. This year Kate begged him not to start celebrating until the party began. He did not mean to. He had had only a couple of drinks and was leaving for home when the phone rang. It was two contractors he had kept in business, lending them money during the Depression. Mr. Will, nobody else liked him doing it; they thought these two were unreliable, dishonest and gave contracting a bad name; to Son it had been a business deal. But he liked the fellows too, thought others didn't because they had both started at the bottom, way down, driving bulldozers. They had gone to Oklahoma some years ago, told him when he met them down at the Andrew Johnson, they had become millionaires. He tried to tell Kate that, arriving home. She only burst into tears and said he had ruined the night again. She went into the kitchen and had a drink herself, thinking that was one way she could get back at him, match him. And it would help her to relax, face the party alone; he had to go to bed and slept halfway through it. That night Kate slept in the extra bedroom again. It had always been her habit to go there when she could not sleep, when she was mad; she had begun to leave things there, her night cream, hair net, a night gown and robe in the closet. Gradually she moved altogether. His snoring kept her awake, she said.