“I reckon I can wait here,” he said, taking a new grip on his walking stick and bending forward to reach the weeds farthest away. “It’s a small day when I can’t afford to spend a little time waiting.”
Walter watched the heads tumble off the stalks of weeds. Governor Gil went about it as if he were determined not to let a weed in the whole county go to seed that year. Every once in a while he shifted his position a little, stamping down the wilted weeds and reaching for new ones to whack at. Sometimes he started out in the morning, after breakfast, on horseback to see how his cotton and cane crops were growing, but before he got out of sight of home he always got off his horse and started whacking away at the weeds with his walking stick. He hated weeds worse than he did boll weevils or screwworms. However, for some reason or other, he never paid any attention to the weeds that grew in the yard around his house; they were so rank there that sometimes his hunting dogs got lost in the growth and had to backtrack their way out.
“Did you want to see me, Governor Gil, or was it Daisy you asked about?” Walter said, wondering.
Instead of answering, Governor Gil stopped a moment and glanced down the path. He nodded his head in that direction, and returned to swinging his stick at the weeds.
Governor Gil Counts had once, for a term, been governor of the state, about twenty-five or thirty years before, and the title suited him so well that nobody ever thought of calling him anything else. He ran his farm with the help of Walter Lane and several other tenants, and never left it. He had not been out of the county since the day he came home from the governor’s office, and he had said he would never leave home again. He lived a quarter of a mile up the road in a big three-story mansion, from which the white paint had peeled while he was serving his term in office. The once-white, three-story columns rising from the front porch were now as dark and rough as the bark on a pine tree.
“There’s no sense in standing out here in the sun,” Walter said. “Come on to my house and take a seat in the porch shade, Governor Gil. Daisy’ll be along to the house just about as soon as she’ll get here.”
“This’ll do,” he said, stopping and looking down the path. “I haven’t got time to sit down now.”
He went past Walter and started down the path toward the spring. Walter left his pails and followed behind. Heads of weeds tumbled to the right and left of them.
At the crown of the slope they saw Daisy coming up. She was carrying a pail of water in one hand and fanning herself with a willow branch.
“I may as well tell you now, Walter,” Governor Gil said, stopping. “It’s time for your girl to marry. It’s dangerous business to put it off after they get a certain age.”
Walter took half a dozen steps around Governor Gil and stopped where he could see his face.
“Who ought she to marry?” Walter said.
Governor Gil let go at some pigweeds around his knees, whacking his stick at them just under the seed pods. The heads flew in all directions.
“I’ve arranged for that,” he said. “I sent my lawyer a letter today telling him to get a license. It’ll be here in a few days.”
Walter looked again at Governor Gil, and then down the path. Daisy had come over the crown of the slope.
“That might be all right,” Walter said, “but I don’t know if she’ll be tamed. Right now she’s just about as wild as they come. Of course, now, I’m not raising any serious objections. I’m just going over in my mind the drawbacks a man might run into.”
“A year from now there might be plenty of drawbacks,” Governor Gil said. “Right this minute drawbacks don’t count, because she’s reached the marrying age, and nothing else matters. If I had a daughter, Walter, I’d want to do the right thing by her. I’d want her to marry before drawbacks had a chance to spoil her. I’m ready to marry her without an argument.”
“You damned old fool,” Daisy said, dropping her pail, “what put that into your head?”
Governor Gil had drawn back to let go at a clump of weeds swaying in the breeze beside the path, but he never finished the stroke. His stick fell back against his knees and the clump of weeds continued to sway in the wind.
“Now, that’s what I was thinking about,” Walter said. “I had an idea she wouldn’t be willing to be tamed just yet.”
“Why, I’ve been counting on this for a pretty long time,” Governor Gil said excitedly. “I’ve just been biding my time all this while when you were growing up, Daisy. I’ve had my eyes on you for about three years now, just waiting for you to grow up.”
“You damned old fool,” Daisy said, stooping down for her pail and starting around them in the path.
Walter did not try to stop her. He looked at Governor Gil to see what he had to say now.
They watched her for a moment.
“She’ll tame,” Governor Gil said, nodding his head at Walter and following her up the path to the house.
When they got to the back door, Daisy put the pail on the shelf and sat down on the doorstep. She sat and looked at them with her knees drawn up under her elbows and her chin cupped in her hands.
“Maybe if you could just wait —” Walter began. He was waved aside by a sweep of the walking stick.
“I’m going to have the handseling tonight,” Governor Gil said, nodding his head at Daisy and flourishing the stick in the air. “The marrying can wait, but the handseling can’t. The license will be along from my lawyer in a day or two, and that’s just a matter of formality, anyway.”
Walter looked at Daisy, but she only stared more sullenly at them.
“I reckon we ought to wait till my wife gets back from visiting her folks,” Walter said. “She ought to have a little say-so. For one thing, she’ll have to make Daisy some clothes first, because Daisy hasn’t got much to wear except what she’s got on, and that’s so little it wouldn’t be decent if we weren’t homefolks. Just about all she’s got to her name is that little slimsy gingham jumper she’s wearing. My wife will want to make her a petticoat, if nothing else. It would be a sin and a shame for her to get married like she is now. If she had something to wear under what she’s got on, it might be different, but I won’t be in favor of sending her out to get married in just a slimsy jumper between her and the outside world.”
Governor Gil shook his walking stick in the air as if to wave away any possible objection Walter might mention.
“That’s all right for the marriage,” he said, “but that won’t be for a few days yet. Your wife will have plenty of time to make up a petticoat for her if she wants to. But she won’t even have to do that, because I’ll buy her whatever she’ll need after the marriage. And what she’ll need for the handseling won’t be worth mentioning.”
He stopped and turned around to look at the sun. It was already setting behind the pine grove in the west.
“Had your supper yet?” he asked, looking at Walter and nodding at Daisy.
“Not yet,” Walter said. “We didn’t stop work in the cotton until about half an hour ago, and the first thing that needed doing was carrying up the water from the spring. Daisy, you go in the kitchen and start getting something ready to eat. Maybe Governor Gil will stay and eat with us tonight.”
“No,” he said, waving his stick at Daisy, “don’t do that, Daisy. You just come up to my house and get your meal there tonight. There’s no sense in you getting all worn out over a hot stove now. There’s plenty to eat up there.”
He turned to Walter.
“If your wife won’t be home until late tonight, you just come up to my house and go around to the kitchen, and the help will set you out a good meal, Walter.”
He started walking across the yard toward the road. When he got to the corner of the house, he stopped and found that neither Daisy nor her father had made a move to follow him.
“What’s the matter?” he said impatiently.
“Well, now,” Walter said, “I can make Daisy go up to your house, Governor Gil, but I can’t be held responsible for what she does after she gets there
. I wish you would wait till my wife came back tonight before you took Daisy off, but if your mind is made up not to wait, then all I can say is you’ll have to charge her yourself after she gets there.”
“She won’t need any charging,” Governor Gil said. “I’ve yet to know the wildest one of them that wouldn’t tame when the time comes to handsel.”
He turned around and started walking toward the road that led to his house, a quarter of a mile away.
Walter looked down at the doorstep, where Daisy still sat sullen and motionless.
“You ought to be tickled to death to have the chance to marry Governor Gil,” he told her. “Who else is there in the county who’ll treat you nice and give you all you want? I’ll bet there’s many a girl who’d jump at the chance to marry him.”
“The damned old fool,” Daisy said.
“Well, you’d better,” he told her. “I’ll bet your mother will make you, if I can’t. She’s no fool, either. She knows how well off you’ll be, not having to go hungry for something to eat, and having enough clothes to cover your nakedness, neither one of which you’ve got now, or ever will have, if you don’t go on up there like you ought to.”
Walter sat down on the bottom step and waited for Daisy to say something. The sun had set, and it would be getting dark soon. If she did not go right away, Governor Gil might get mad and change his mind.
Presently he turned around and looked at her.
“What’s the matter with you, Daisy? You won’t even say anything. What’s got into you, anyway?”
“What does he want me to go up there tonight for?” she asked. “He said the license wouldn’t be here for two or three days.”
“That’s just Governor Gil’s way, Daisy. He makes up his mind to do something, and nothing stops him once it’s made up. He wants to marry you, and he wants to right now. There’s no sense in putting it off, anyway. The best thing for you to do is to start right in before he changes his mind. If you don’t, you’ll live to be sorry, because tomorrow you’ll have to go right back to the field again — tomorrow and every day as long as cotton grows.”
Daisy got up without saying anything and went into the house. She was in her room for ten or fifteen minutes, and when she came to the door it was dark outside. She could barely see her father sitting on the steps at her feet.
“Now, that’s what I call sense,” Walter said. “I thought you’d change your mind after you got to thinking about all these hot days in the sun out there in the cotton.”
She went down the steps past him and crossed the yard without a word. She started up the road in the direction of Governor Gil’s mansion.
After Daisy had gone, Walter began to wonder what his wife would say when she came home. He was certain she would be glad to hear that Governor Gil wanted to marry Daisy, but he was not so sure of what she would say when he told her that the marriage license would not come for another two or three days. He decided it would be best not to say anything about that part to her. Just as long as she knew Governor Gil had come to the house to ask Daisy to marry him, she would be satisfied.
It was pitch-dark when he got up and went into the kitchen, made a light, and looked around for something to eat. He found some bread left over from dinner, and he did not have to build a fire in the cook-stove after all. He sat down at the kitchen table and ate his fill of bread and sorghum.
After he had finished, he blew out the light and went to the front porch to sit and wait for his wife to come home.
Up the road he could see lights in Governor Gil’s house. There was a light in the kitchen, as usual, and one in the front part of the house too. Upstairs, two or three rooms were lighted for the first time since he could remember.
Just when he was expecting his wife and children to get there any moment, he heard somebody running down the road. He got up and listened as the sound came closer. It was somebody running fast, because the sound came closer every second.
He ran out to the road to see who it was. At first he thought it might be Daisy, but he soon knew it wasn’t, because a boy called out to him.
“Mr. Walter! Mr. Walter!”
“Who’s that?” he shouted back.
A Negro houseboy stopped, panting, in the road beside him.
“What’s the matter, Lawson?”
“Mr. Walter, Governor said to tell you if you ever raise another hell cat like Miss Daisy, he’ll chop your head off. Now, Mr. Walter, I didn’t say it! Please, sir, don’t think I said it! It was Governor who told me to tell you that! You know I wouldn’t say that myself, don’t you, Mr. Walter?”
“What’s the matter up there, Lawson?” Walter asked the boy.
“I don’t know exactly, Mr. Walter, except that Governor started yelling upstairs a while ago, and he hasn’t stopped yet. He told me to telephone for the doctor and the lawyer to come in a hurry. He hardly stopped yelling long enough to tell me, either. Soon as I telephoned for them, he told me to run down here as fast as I could and tell you what I told you.”
“Was Miss Daisy up there then?” Walter asked.
“I reckon it was Miss Daisy who made him yell,” Lawson said hesitatingly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know if Governor wants me to tell you,” Lawson said. “He only told me to tell you what I already told you, Mr. Walter.”
“You’d better tell me, Lawson. What was it?”
“Miss Daisy flew into him and pretty near bit the daylights out of him. Governor was yelling and nursing his hurt so much, he didn’t have time to say much else.”
Walter started back to the porch to sit down and wait for his wife to come home. He could not keep from laughing a little, but he tried to hold himself back so he could laugh all the more with his wife when she got there.
Lawson was still standing outside the yard. He turned around to tell the boy to go on back.
“What else did Governor Gil say, Lawson?” he asked him.
“I didn’t hear him say much else, except Governor said it’ll be a mighty small day when he tries to handsel a hellcat like Miss Daisy again.”
Walter went to the porch and sat down. He leaned back and started to laugh. He could not wait for his wife any longer. He leaned back and laughed until he slid out of the chair.
(First published in the New Yorker)
Indian Summer
THE WATER WAS UP again. It had been raining for almost two whole days, and the creek was full to the banks. Dawn had broken gray that morning, and for the first time that week the sky was blue and warm.
Les pulled off his shirt and unbuckled his pants. Les never had to bother with underwear, because as soon as it was warm enough in the spring to go barefooted he hid his union suit in a closet and left it there until fall. His mother was not alive, and his father never bothered about the underclothes.
“I wish we had a shovel to dig out some of this muck,” he said. “Every time it rains this hole fills up with this stuff. I’d go home and get a shovel, but if they saw me they’d make me stay there and do something.”
While Les was hanging his shirt and pants on a bush, I waded out into the yellow water. The muck on the bottom was ankle deep, and there were hundreds of dead limbs stuck in it. I pulled out some of the largest and threw them on the other bank out of the way.
“How’s the water, Jack?” Les asked. “How deep is it this time?”
I waded out to the middle of the creek where the current was the strongest. The yellow water came almost up to my shoulders.
“Nearly neck deep,” I said. “But there’s about a million dead limbs stuck in the bottom. Hurry up and help me throw them out.”
Les came splashing in. The muddy water gurgled and sucked around his waist.
“I’ll bet somebody comes down here every day and pitches these dead limbs in here,” Les said, making a face. “I don’t see how else they could get here. Dead tree limbs don’t fall into a creek this fast. Somebody is throwing them in, and I’ll bet a pretty he doesn’t live
a million miles away, either.”
“Maybe Old Howes does it, Les.”
“Sure, he does it. He’s the one I’m talking about. I’ll bet anything he comes down and throws limbs in every day.”
Les stepped on a sharp limb. He held his nose and squeezed his eyes and ducked under and pulled it out.
“You know what?” Les said.
“What?”
“Old Howes told Pa we scared his cows last Saturday. He said we made them run so much he couldn’t get them to let down their milk Saturday night.
“This creek bottom isn’t his. Old Howes doesn’t own anything down here except that pasture on the other side of the fence. We haven’t even been on the other side of the fence this year, have we?”
“I haven’t seen Old Howes’s cows all summer. If I did see them, I wouldn’t run them. He just told Pa that because he doesn’t want us to come swimming in the creek.”
Pieces of dead bark and curled chips suddenly came floating down the creek. Somewhere up there the trash had broken loose from a limb or something across the water. I held my arms V-shaped and caught the bark and chips and threw them out of the way.
Les said something, diving down to pull up a dead limb. The muck on the bottom of the creek was so deep we could not take a step without first pulling our feet out of the sticky mud; otherwise we would have fallen flat on our faces in the water. The muck had a stink like a pig pen.
Les threw the big limb out of sight.
“If Old Howes ever comes down while we’re here and tells us to get out of the creek, let’s throw muck at him. Are you game, Jack? Wouldn’t you like to do that to him just once?”
“That’s what we ought to do to him, but we’d better not, Les. He would go straight and tell my folks, and your pa.”
“I’m not scared of Old Howes,” Les said, making a face. “He hasn’t got me buffaloed. He wouldn’t do anything. He’s scared to tell anybody. He knows we’d catch him some time and mudcake him.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He told on me that time I caught his drake and put it in that chicken run of his.”