“What happened?” a woman cried. “Tell us what happened! What’s wrong?”
Rosamond and Darling Jill and Griselda were not close enough to hear what the men answered in weak voices. They stood on tiptoes, clutching each other, waiting to see Will and to hear from him what the trouble was.
A woman nearby screamed, sending shudders through Griselda. She cried with the pain of the woman’s scream.
They pushed and fought their way towards the men coming from the Mill. Griselda clung to Rosamond, Darling Jill clung to Griselda. They went forward slowly, pushing frantically through the crowd to the men coming so slowly from the mill.
“Where’s Will?” Griselda cried.
A man turned and looked at them. He came toward them to speak to the three of them.
“You’re Will Thompson’s wife, aren’t you?”
“Where is Will?” Rosamond cried, throwing herself upon the man’s bare chest.
“They shot him.”
“Who shot him?”
“Will! Will! Will!”
“Those Piedmont guards shot him.”
“Dear God!”
“Is he badly hurt?”
“He’s dead.”
That was all. There was no more to hear.
The women and girls behind them were silent like people in slumber. They pressed forward, supporting Will Thompson’s widow and sisters-in-law.
More men filed out, walking slowly up the hill towards the long rows of yellow company houses, while the muscles on their bare backs hung like cut tendons under the skin. There was a man with blood on his lips. He spat into the yellow dust at his feet. Another man coughed, and blood oozed through the corners of his tightly compressed mouth. He spat into the yellow dust of Carolina.
Women were beginning to leave, running to the sides of the men and walking beside them up the hill towards the long rows of yellow company houses. There were tears in the eyes of the girls so beautiful who walked homeward with their lovers. These were the girls of the Valley whose breasts were erect and whose faces were like morning-glories when they stood in the windows of the ivy-walled mill.
Rosamond was not beside Griselda and Darling Jill when they turned to put their arms around her. She had run towards the mill door. She fell against the side of the building, clutching in her hands the ivy that grew so beautifully.
They ran to be with her.
“Will!” Rosamond cried frantically. “Will! Will!”
They put their arms around her and held her.
Several men stepped out the door and waited. Then several others came out slowly, carrying the body of Will Thompson. They tried to keep his wife and sisters-in-law back, but they ran closer until they could look at him.
“Oh, he’s dead!” Rosamond said.
She had not realized that Will was dead until she saw his limp body. She still could not believe that he ‘would not come to life. She could not believe that he would never be alive again.
The men in front took Rosamond and Darling Jill and Griselda up the hill towards the long rows of yellow company houses, holding them and supporting them. The bare backs of the men were strong with their arms around Will Thompson’s wife and sisters-in-law.
When they reached the front of the house, the body was kept in the street until a place could be provided for it. The three women were carried to the house. Women from the yellow company houses up the street and down it came running to help.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do now,” a man said. “Will Thompson isn’t here any more.”
Another man looked down at the ivy-walled mill.
“They were afraid of Will,” he said. “They knew he had the guts to fight back. I don’t reckon there’ll be any use of trying to fight them without Will. They’ll try to run now and make us take a dollar-ten. If Will Thompson was here, we wouldn’t do it. Will Thompson would fight them.”
The body was carried to the porch and placed in the shade of the room. His back was bare, but the three drying bloodclogged holes were hidden from sight.
“Let’s turn him over,” somebody said. “Everybody ought to know how Will Thompson was shot in the back by those sons-of-bitches down there.”
“We’ll bury him tomorrow. And I reckon everybody in Scottsville will be at the funeral. Everybody but those sons-ofbitches down there.”
“What’s his wife going to do now? She’s all alone.”
“We’ll take care of her, if she’ll let us. She’s Will Thompson’s widow.”
An ambulance came up the street and the strong barebacked men lifted the body from the porch and carried it out to the street. The three women in the house came to the door and stood close together while the bare-backed men carried Will from the porch and put him into the ambulance. He was Will Thompson now. He belonged to those barebacked men with bloody lips. He belonged to Horse Creek Valley now. He was not theirs any longer. He was Will Thompson.
The three women stood in the door watching the rear end of the ambulance while it went slowly down the street to the undertaker. The body would be prepared for burial, and the next day there would be a funeral in the cemetery on the hill that looked down upon Horse Creek Valley. The men with blood-stained lips who carried him down to his grave would some day go back to the mill to card and spin and weave and dye. Will Thompson would breathe no more lint into his lungs.
Inside the house one of the men was trying to explain to Pluto how Will had been killed. Pluto was more frightened than ever. Until that time he had been scared of only the darkness in Scottsville, but now he was afraid of the day also. Men were killed in broad daylight in the Valley. He wished he could make Darling Jill and Griselda go home right away. If he had to remain in the yellow company house another night, he knew he probably would not sleep. The man with the bare chest and back sat in the room with Pluto, talking to him about the mill, but Pluto was not listening any longer. He had become afraid of the man beside him; he was afraid the man would suddenly turn with a knife in his hand and cut his throat from ear to ear. He knew then that he was out of place in a cotton mill town. The country, back at home in Marion, was the place for him to go as quickly as possible. He promised himself he ‘would never again leave it if only he could get back safely this time.
Late that evening some of the women from the yellow company houses on the street came and prepared the first meal any of them had had that day. Will had eaten breakfast early that morning, but none of the others had. Pluto felt starved after missing two meals. He had never been so hungry in all his life. Back home in Marion he had never been forced to go hungry for the lack of food. He could smell the cooking food and the boiling coffee through the open doors, and he was unable to sit still. He got up and went to the door just as one of the women came to call him to the kitchen. Out in the hall he became frightened again and would have gone back, but the woman took his arm and went with him to the kitchen.
While he was there, Darling Jill came in and sat down beside him. He felt much safer then. Somehow, he felt that she was a protection in a foreign country. She ate a little, and when she had finished, she remained seated beside him.
Later, Pluto ventured to ask Darling Jill when they could go back to Georgia.
“Tomorrow as soon as the funeral is over,” she said.
“Can’t we go now?”
“Of course not.”
“They can bury Will all right without us,” he suggested. “They’ll do it all right. I wish I could go home right away, Darling Jill. I don’t feel safe in Scottsville.”
“Hush, Pluto. Don’t be such a child.”
He remained silent after that. Darling Jill took his hand and led him to one of the dark rooms across the hall. He felt exactly as he once had many years before when he was a small boy holding the hand of his mother in a dark night.
Outside the windows was the sound of the Valley town with all its strange noises and unfamiliar voices. He was glad the street light shone through the leaves of the tree and partl
y lighted the room. It was safer with a little light, and he was not so afraid as he had been earlier that evening. If somebody should come to the window and crawl inside to slit his throat from ear to ear he would be able to see them before he felt the blade under his chin.
Darling Jill had brought him to the bed and had made him lie down upon it. He was reluctant to release her hand, and when he saw that she was going to lie down beside him, he was no longer afraid. The Valley was still there, and the strange company town, but he had Darling Jill to lie beside him, her hand in his, and he could close his eyes without fear.
Just before both of them dropped off to sleep, he felt her arms around his neck. He turned to her, holding her tightly. There was nothing to be afraid of then.
Chapter XVIII
Ty Ty was waiting for them on the front porch when they reached home late that afternoon. He got up when he recognized Pluto’s car, and walked across the yard to meet them before the automobile was brought to a stop.
“Where in the pluperfect hell have you folks been the past two days, anyhow?” he demanded severely. “Me and the boys are near about starved for woman’s cooking. We’ve been eating, yes, but a man can’t get the proper nourishment out of just eating. We crave woman’s cooking to satisfy us. You folks have been aggravating me like all get-out.”
Pluto was ready to explain why they had not come back sooner, but Darling Jill made him be quiet.
“Where’s Will Thompson?” Ty Ty asked. “Did you bring that good-for-nothing Will Thompson back again? I don’t see him in the car, though.”
“Hush, Pa,” Griselda said, starting to cry.
“Of all the fool women, I never heard the like. Why can’t I ask about Will? I only asked one question, and all of you girls started to cry. I’ll be dog-gone if I ever seen the like of it.”
“Will isn’t here any more,” Griselda said.
“What the pluperfect hell do you take me to be, anyhow? Don’t you reckon I can see he ain’t here?”
“Will was shot yesterday morning.”
“Shot? What with--corn?”
“Killed with a pistol, Pa,” Darling Jill said. “We buried Will this afternoon in the Valley. He’s dead now, and covered with earth.”
Ty Ty was speechless for a moment. He leaned against the car, searching each face before him. When he saw Rosamond’s face, he knew it ‘was true.
“Now, you don’t mean Will Thompson,” Ty Ty said. “Not our Will! Say it ain’t so!”
“It is so, Pa. Will is dead now, and covered with earth over there in Horse Creek Valley.”
“Trouble at the mill then, I’ll bet a pretty. Or else over a female.”
Rosamond got out and ran to the house. The others got out slowly and looked strangely at the buildings in the twilight. Pluto did not know whether to remain where he was or whether to go home immediately.
Ty Ty sent Darling Jill into the house to cook supper without loss of time.
“You stay here and tell me what happened to Will Thompson,” he told Griselda. “I can’t let our Will pass on without knowing all about it. Will was one of the family.”
They left Pluto sitting on the runningboard of his car, and walked across the yard to the front steps. Ty Ty sat down and waited to hear what Griselda had to tell him about Will. She was still crying a little.
“Did they shoot him for breaking into company property, Griselda?”
“Yes, Pa. All the men in Scottsville went into the mill and tried to start it. Will was the one who turned the power on.”
“Oh, so that’s what he was always talking about when he said he was going to turn the power on? Well, I never did fully understand what he had in mind when he said that. And our Will turned the power on!”
“Some company police from the Piedmont shot him when he turned it on.”
Ty Ty was silent for several moments. He gazed out through the gray dusk, seeing through it to the boundaries of his land. He could see each mound of earth that had been excavated, each deep round hole they had dug. And far beyond them all he could see the cleared field beyond the woods where God’s little acre lay. For some reason he wished then to bring it closer to the house where he might be near it all the time. He felt guilty of something--maybe it was sacrilege or desecration--whatever it was, he knew he had not played fair with God. Now he wished to bring God’s little acre back to its rightful place beside the house where he could see it all the time. He had very little in the world to live for anyway, and when men died, he could find consolation only in his love of God. He brought God’s little acre back from the far side of the farm and placed it under him. He promised himself to keep it there until he died.
Ty Ty had no eulogy for Will Thompson. Will would never help them dig for gold. He laughed at them when Ty Ty asked him for help. He said it was foolish to try to find gold where there was no gold. Ty Ty knew there was gold in the ground, and he had always been a little angry with Will for laughing at his efforts to find it. Will had always seemed to be more interested in getting back to Horse Creek Valley than he was in staying there and helping Ty Ty.
“Sometimes I wished Will would stay here and help us, and sometimes I was glad he didn’t. He was a fool about cotton mills, I reckon, and couldn’t pretend to be a farmer. Maybe God made two kinds of us, after all. It looks like now, though I used to never think so, that God made a man to work the ground and a man to work the machinery. I reckon I was a fool to try to make Will Thompson take an interest in the land. He was always saying something about spinning and weaving, and about how pretty the girls and how hungry the men were in the Valley. I couldn’t always make out what he was talking about, but sometimes I could just about feel something inside that told me all the things he said were true. He used to sit here and tell me how strong men were in the Valley when they were young and how weak they were when they grew up breathing cotton lint into their lungs and dying with blood on their lips. And Will used to say how pretty the girls were when they were young and how ugly they were when they were old and starving with pellagra. But he didn’t like the land, anyway. He was one of the people of Horse Creek Valley.”
Griselda pushed her hand into his. He held her hand awkwardly, not knowing why she wished him to touch her.
“You and Will were not different in every way,” she said softly.
“Which way is that? It looks to me like I just finished telling you how different we were. Will was a mill man, and I’m a man of the land.”
“You and Will were the only two men I’ve ever known who treated me as I liked to be treated.”
“Now, now, Griselda. You’re just all wrought up over seeing Will get shot over there in the Valley. Don’t take on so about him. Everybody dies in this world sooner or later, and Will died sooner. That’s all the difference.”
“You and Will were real men, Pa.”
“Now what in the pluperfect hell do you mean by that? I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
Griselda stopped crying until she could tell Ty Ty. She pushed her hands tighter into his, laying her head on his shoulder.
“You remember what you said about me sometimes--you used to say that and I’d try to make you stop--and you never would stop--that’s what I mean.”
“Now, I don’t know. Maybe I do.”
“Of course you know--those things about what a man would want to do when he saw me.”
“I reckon I do. Maybe I do know what you mean.”
“You and Will were the only two men who ever said that to me, Pa. All the other men I’ve known were too--I don’t know what to say--they didn’t seem to be men enough to have that feeling--they were just like all the rest. But you and Will weren’t like that.”
“I reckon I know what you mean.”
“A woman can never really love a man unless he’s like that. There’s something about it that makes everything so different--it’s not just liking to be kissed and things like that-- most men think that’s all. And Will--he said he wanted to do that--j
ust like you did. And he wasn’t afraid, either. Other men seem to be afraid to say things like that, or else they aren’t men enough to want to do them. Will--Will took my clothes off and tore them to pieces and said he was going to do that. And he did, Pa. I didn’t know I wanted him to do it before, but after that I was certain. After a woman has that done to her once, Pa, she’s never the same again. It opens her up, or something. I could never really love another man unless he did that to me. I suppose if Will had not been killed, I would have stayed over there. I couldn’t have left him after that. I would have been like a dog that loves you and follows you around no matter how mean you are to him. I would have stayed with Will the rest of my life. Because when a man does that to a woman, Pa, it makes love so strong nothing in the world can stop it. It must be God in people to do that. It’s something, anyway. I have it now.”
Ty Ty patted her hand. He could think of nothing to say, because there beside him sat a woman who knew as he did a secret of living. After a while he breathed deeply and lifted her head from his shoulder.
“Just try to get along with Buck somehow, Griselda. Maybe Buck will be like that when he grows older. He’s not as old as Will was, and he hasn’t had time to learn the things he should. Help him along as much as you can. He’s my boy, and I want him to keep you. There’s not another girl in ten thousand like you. If you left him, he’d never find another wife as fine as you are.”
“He’ll never learn, Pa. Buck just isn’t like you and Will. A man has to be born that way at the start.”
Ty Ty got up. “It’s a pity all folks ain’t got the sense dogs are born with.”
Griselda put her hand on his arm and got to her feet. She stood beside him unsteadily for several moments, trying to balance herself.
“The trouble with people is that they try to fool themselves into believing that they’re different from the way God made them. You go to church and a preacher tells you things that deep down in your heart you know ain’t so. But most people are so dead inside that they believe it and try to make everybody else live that way. People ought to live like God made us to live. When you sit down by yourself and feel what’s in you, that’s the real way to live. It’s feeling. Some people talk about your head being the thing to go by, but it ain’t so. Your head gives you sense to show you how to deal with people when it comes to striking a bargain and things like that, but it can’t feel for you. People have got to feel for themselves as God made them to feel. It’s folks who let their head run them who make all the mess of living. Your head can’t make you love a man, if you don’t feel like loving him. It’s got to be a feeling down inside of you like you and Will had.”