Of Love and Dust

“Tite Judy?” he asked.

  “Tite,” Tite said.

  He said he looked down at her. He said he didn’t know she was sick then, he just thought she was half crazy.

  “Don’t Tite mean little?” he said.

  “Judy,” Tite said.

  He said he looked at her and thought she was crazy, then he looked at Louise. Louise was looking at him the same way she had looked at him the night before: she still couldn’t make up her mind if he was human or if he was one of them things in the woods.

  He was standing close to the gate now and his hand was on the gate post. He said Louise raised her hand very, very slowly to one of the pickets in the gate. Her face had no more changed than if she hadn’t even moved. He let her hand stay on the picket a while, then his hand moved there and touched hers. No, it wasn’t his hand, he said, it was his finger. He touched her with his finger, and before he knew what was happening, his fingernail was digging into her knuckles. He didn’t know why his fingernail did that—he wasn’t a tormentor, he was a lover. He wanted to hurt her—yes, yes, he wanted to hurt her, but not with no fingernail. His fingernail did that for half a minute before he knew what was happening. When he caught himself, he drew his finger back. But she didn’t move. Her expression hadn’t even changed. He said all around them crickets were making noise, frogs were calling for rain, lightning bugs were blinking their little lights. Some kind of bird (he didn’t know the name) bust out of the weeds along the ditch, flew by them and across the field. All that time Marcus and Louise were standing there looking at each other across the gate. Then he put the tip of his finger in his mouth and rubbed it lightly over the spot where he had hurt her. He told her with his eyes how sorry he was. He could have spoke the words, he said, because Tite was too busy watching lightning bugs to pay him and Louise any mind. Just when he got ready to lean over and kiss her hand, Louise drew her hand back.

  “Come, Judy,” she said.

  27

  Saturday, when we came up to the yard, we could see the children standing at the crib. So Marcus and I both knew he wouldn’t have to unload corn today, or if he had to he was going to have plenty help. As I drove the tractor up closer, the children all moved back to look at Marcus. Bonbon was there by the time I had turned off the motor and climbed down.

  “See you made it,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He wore a white shirt and brown pants and his white cowboy hat. No khakis today and no boots; brown shoes, shining like new tin.

  “Y’all children, there, get on that trailer,” he said. “That corn can’t unload hisself.”

  The children climbed up on the trailer and started pitching corn into the crib. But soon they were making a game of it. One would flip up an ear of corn, then the others would throw to hit it before it fell in the crib.

  “Hey there,” Bonbon said. “What you think this is, a baseball or something? Throw that thing right.”

  The children quit playing and started working the way he wanted them to do. Bonbon watched them a while to make sure they wouldn’t start playing again.

  “Mind you up there, now, I don’t play, no,” he said. “You hear me there, Billy Walker?”

  “Yassuh.”

  “You better.”

  He turned to me.

  “Little bastards,” he said.

  I glanced up at the children. Children are children, I thought, and soon as you turn your back they’ll be playing again.

  “Geam, I want you go to New Orleans with me,” Bonbon said.

  “New Orleans?”

  “Yeah. The old man there. Got to pick up a piece for that hay machine.”

  “Well, I’ll have to take a bath and change,” I said.

  “Yeah, take the truck,” he said, nodding toward it over by the tool shop.

  “What time you leaving?”

  “Soon’s you get back. Want get there and come back ’fore night. You need your pay?”

  “No, I have a few bucks. I won’t be spending anything in New Orleans.” I glanced at Marcus and looked at Bonbon again. “I reckond Marcus can attend a little business in Bayonne?” I said.

  Marcus didn’t have any business to attend in Bayonne (at least he hadn’t told me about any), but I thought I would try to get him off any kind of work Bonbon might have had in mind.

  “No. Some other time. Today he got to clean up my yard there,” Bonbon said.

  “Your yard?” I said, almost screaming it out.

  Bonbon looked at me surprised. I had never answered him quite so impolitely before.

  “Something the matter, Geam?” he said, squinting down at me.

  I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was frown and shake my head.

  “I know what you thinking,” Bonbon said. “Them leafs been there ten years and all a sudden she want them raked up. Women—how you figure them, hanh?”

  My heart was jumping too much for me to say anything; and I wouldn’t dare look at Marcus, either.

  I didn’t know then that Marcus had seen Louise those two nights, because I hadn’t talked to Sun Brown, yet. But I knew he had been noticing her from the tractor and he was just waiting for the chance to get near that house. Once he got there (where both him and her wanted him to get) he was going to make his move.

  “So that’s your job this evening,” Bonbon said. “And mind you, I want that raked, yeah.”

  “I’ll rake it,” Marcus said. “Give it the best raking it ever had.”

  Bonbon was looking at him. Bonbon was three or four inches taller than Marcus, so now he squinted down at him.

  No, this didn’t have anything to do with Marcus hitting Pauline. Bonbon didn’t know what had happened between Marcus and Pauline. Pauline had probably told him she had hit her jaw against a doorknob or that a can of something had fell off the shelf and hit her. Or maybe the clothesline prop had slipped away from the line and hit her while she was hanging clothes. No, this had nothing to do with her. This was all Louise’s doing. She had found out that he had to go to New Orleans and he would be gone for at least half a day.

  How? How? How? she had probably thought. How? How? How? And probably, while walking across the yard, she had looked down and seen the leaves—leaves that had been laying there ten, maybe twenty years; leaves on top of leaves on top of leaves; leaves that weren’t leaves any more, but had turned back to dust. Even if Marcus used a shovel and even if he dug six feet in the ground he would never reach the bottom of all those leaves.

  I looked at him now. He knew I was going to look at him, and he knew I was going to look at him then. He wanted to grin. He was grinning inside, he was laughing his head off inside.

  “Well, it’s going to be cool under those trees,” I said. “Nice and cool under there. Almost like a picnic.”

  “It won’t be no picnic,” Bonbon said.

  “Almost one,” I said, still looking at Marcus. “I wouldn’t mind having a job like that myself.” I turned to Bonbon now. “Couldn’t give me that job and take him with you, could you?”

  “The old man want you to go.”

  “Sure,” I thought. “The Old Man want me to go. He want him in there. He want Bonbon to find him and her in that bed. Sure, He want that. He want a fire. He want Bonbon to burn the place down. Didn’t the Bible say He was going to destroy the world next time by fire? Sure, He want me to go.”

  “Well, I was figuring that since he’s the convict and I’m not I would get the easiest job,” I said.

  “You get it next time, Geam,” Bonbon said.

  Marcus coughed; he wanted to laugh. He was laughing so much inside, he was ready to fall against that trailer. And up on the trailer the children had started playing again.

  “Hey, what I say up there,” Bonbon said.

  The children quit playing.

  “You better take off, Geam,” Bonbon said to me. “You better go on home and eat,” he said to Marcus. “Be at that house one o’clock. That rake and broom waiting there.”

  “Yes si
r,” Marcus said. “I’ll surely be there, sir. And I’ll do a good job, sir. You won’t even recognize it when you get back.”

  When we got in the truck, I turned to him.

  “Don’t mess with that woman, Marcus,” I said.

  He grinned. “I’m going there to rake leaves,” he said.

  “You hear me, don’t you?” I said.

  “The man want me to rake his leaves,” he said. “You don’t want me to rake his leaves?”

  “I’m warning you,” I said.

  I started up the truck and drove out of the yard.

  28

  We ate at the same time. I sat at the table, he sat on the steps. I was looking at the back of his curly head. I started to hit him—no, kick him—but what was the use? Do you think kicking him would have done any good? Bonbon had made him pull a sack two weeks and that hadn’t done any good; do you think kicking him would have done any good? Murphy Bacheron had almost knocked his head off and that hadn’t done any good. I had talked and the old lady from Baton Rouge had talked to him and that hadn’t done any good—do you think kicking Marcus would have done any good?

  I thought about killing him—shooting him in the head with my gun or hitting him in the head with the axe—but why should I? Why should I go to the pen for something like that? Let him get in that bed with her. He wanted to get there, she wanted him there, so why should I worry?

  After I finished eating, I took a bath in that big number three tub. All the time I was sitting in the tub I was thinking about Aunt Margaret. All of my big talk about not caring what Marcus did didn’t mean a thing. I would do almost anything in the world to keep Marcus from messing around with Louise. So I thought about Aunt Margaret. I knew it was kind of indecent of me to think about an old Christian lady like that while I was in the bathtub, but I would try almost anything. “Yes, yes,” I thought. “Yes, yes, that’s it.”

  By the time I had put my clothes on it was one o’clock. I shut up the doors and windows and went out on the gallery. Marcus was laying there on his back with his legs crossed.

  “All right, let’s make it,” I said.

  “You the boss,” he said.

  After turning the truck around I drove up to Aunt Margaret’s house. I didn’t see her, but I saw Unc Octave and Mr. Roberts sitting out on the gallery. They were talking about the war when I came into the yard. They talked about the war every time they got together, and that was every day God send. The war had been over three years already, but they talked about it like everybody was still shooting at everybody else. Mr. Roberts had his little switch as usual. He carried it everywhere he went. He used it for popping at flies when they lit on the floor near him. He was pretty good, too. He very seldom missed.

  “How y’all feel?” I said.

  “So-so, and yourself, Jimmy?” Unc Octave said.

  “Pretty hot,” I said. “Unc Octave, can I speak to Aunt Margaret?”

  “She still up the quarter,” he said.

  “She’s working this evening?”

  “She better be working,” Unc Octave said.

  He and Mr. Roberts both laughed.

  “Well, I’ll see her up there,” I said. “How you feel, Mr. Roberts?”

  “Fine, and you, James?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Well, I’ll be seeing y’all later.”

  They told me good day, and I went back to the truck and drove slowly up the quarter. When I stopped in front of Bonbon’s house to let Marcus out, I got out, too. Just before he went in the yard, I stopped him. I could see the rake and the broom leaning against the fence.

  “That’s what you work with,” I said. “If you want any water there’s a hydrant round the back. You hear me, don’t you?”

  He grinned. He hadn’t heard a thing. I knew before telling him he wasn’t going to listen; I just thought it was my duty to say it, anyhow.

  “You can start working,” I said.

  “You the boss,” he said, and went to the rake.

  I looked toward the house and called Aunt Margaret. She didn’t show up at first and I called her again. She came out on the gallery. Tite was with her.

  “Mind stepping to the gate a minute?” I said.

  Aunt Margaret came down the steps holding Tite by the hand. Aunt Margaret was short and fat. Her face was round and black and oily. Her short nappy hair (you could even see her skull) was just starting to turn gray.

  Aunt Margaret was funny even when she was sad. If she was fussing at Unc Octave or singing in church, there was something funny by the way she did it. I’m sure even if Aunt Margaret was dying she would do something you didn’t expect. She would probably move one of her toes or her eyes would pop open just when you thought they were closed for the last time. Aunt Margaret and I had been friends ever since I came to the plantation. Many times I had ate at her house when I didn’t have anything at my house to eat or when I didn’t feel like cooking.

  “How you feel, Aunt Margaret?” I said, when she came up to the gate.

  “All right; yourself?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Aunt Margaret was pretty strong for somebody her age and she still had a good, strong voice. She was looking at me now like she knew what I had in mind.

  “She want her leaves raked, huh?”

  Aunt Margaret nodded.

  “Been there twenty years, but now all of a sudden she want them raked, huh?”

  Aunt Margaret grunted this time, still looking straight in my eyes like she knew what I had in mind.

  “Listen, Aunt Margaret,” I said.

  “Don’t have to say it,” she said. “I know.”

  “No, I better say it,” I said. “Don’t let him get ten feet of that house.”

  “That dog there.”

  “That’s right, the dog; I forgot about him. Don’t let her serve him any water.”

  “They got a hydrant there.”

  “She might want to give him some cold water though, or some lemonade.”

  “He drink hot hydrant water or he don’t drink no water,” Aunt Margaret said, looking at Marcus and looking at me again. “I hate that trash already. Here good people trying to live in peace and he show up with his mess. What Mr. Marshall brought him here for in the first place? You can’t tell me he like Miss Julie Rand that much.”

  “I suppose he does,” I said. “She gave that family forty years of her life.”

  “Ehh, Lord,” Aunt Margaret said. “And I had planned to do me little fishing this evening. But that’s over with, though. I won’t leave this house ’fore that trashy thing leave even if this world was coming to a’ end.”

  “If you do, it might just do that,” I said. “It’s in your hand, Aunt Margaret.”

  “My hand,” she said, looking at the hand that wasn’t holding Tite. “My hand. All they done done all they life was housework and clean baby mess—’cepting little fishing now and then; now I’m old, they got to protect the world.” She looked at Marcus. “Black trash,” she said quietly. She looked at me. “Sometimes I think the Master must be ’sleep.”

  “I think He’s tired.”

  “He must be something.”

  “What’s she doing in there?”

  “Laying ’cross that bed resting.”

  “For this evening, huh?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Aunt Margaret said. She looked at Marcus raking leaves against the fence. “Not if I can help it, you dirty thing.”

  “Well, I got to take off,” I said. “I’m going to New Orleans with Bonbon.”

  “New Orleans, my foot,” Aunt Margaret said. “He taking her to Baton Rouge to shop.”

  “What did you say, Aunt Margaret?”

  “Just what I said,” she said. “He taking Pauline to Baton Rouge to shop.”

  “He told me—”

  “Uh-huh,” Aunt Margaret said, cutting me off.

  “Louise know about it?”

  “Don’t she know everything he do?”

  “And that’s why she wan
t her leaves raked today, huh?”

  Aunt Margaret didn’t answer me; she looked at Marcus. Both of us looked at him a second, then I told her I was leaving.

  29

  I drove out to the store where I figured Bonbon was waiting for me. He came out and told me to move over, and he got under the steering wheel. We hadn’t gone a quarter of a mile before I saw Pauline walking ’side the road. She was in pink and she had on her big white straw hat. Bonbon stopped the truck and I got out so Pauline could sit in the middle.

  “How’s it going?” I asked, when we started moving again.

  “Burning up,” she said.

  She glanced at Bonbon but neither one of them said anything. She even sat a little closer to me than she did to him.

  So that’s why he needed me, that’s why he wanted me to go with them. Not that a white man couldn’t ride all over the South with a black woman, but if they were traveling in daytime by themselves, the black woman had to look like she was either going to work or coming from work. It wouldn’t be safe for her to be dressed like Pauline was now or to have that powder smelling on her breast like Pauline did now. No, they wouldn’t say anything to Bonbon; they probably wouldn’t say anything to Pauline in front of Bonbon. But if they caught her by herself they would definitely remind her to never do it again. And sometimes they reminded you in ways you could never forget.

  So that’s why they needed me. She was my wife, not his woman. And nobody was going to ask any questions. Even if they knew better they wouldn’t ask any questions now.

  Bonbon drove about seventy all the way into Baton Rouge. The only time he slowed up was when he came up behind another car. Then soon as he saw daylight he shot around the car and hit seventy again. He and Pauline didn’t exchange two words. Pauline glanced at him every now and then when she thought he was going too fast. Once when Bonbon cursed a man for driving too slow, Pauline looked at Bonbon and went, “My, my.” Then she looked at me and smiled. She smiled the way a wife smiles after telling-off her husband.

  When we came into Baton Rouge, Bonbon went by the hardware store and bought a little piece of iron so little that Tite could have come and gotten it by herself. Then he parked the truck in a parking lot while I went shopping with Pauline. I’m not one of these people who like to shop—I even hate to buy a loaf of bread—but I liked walking around with Pauline. I liked watching her walk in front of me down the store aisles. I liked seeing her pick up things and lay them back down carefully and neatly when she didn’t care for them. She had that quality, that real woman quality, that made you like being with her.