(First published in Clay)
A Knife to Cut the Corn Bread With
THE SUN OPENED Roy’s eyes. Through the curtainless window-opening, a four-by-four hole in the side of the house which could be closed by a wooden door in stormy weather, he could see the sun rolling over the top of the sandhill half a mile away. Behind him in the other room of the house he could hear Nora working over the fire in the kitchen stove.
The early morning air was chill and damp. A dull coating of mist had settled on the room, and even the quilt felt moist and watery.
“You awake yet, Roy?” Nora asked through the door in her soft girlish way.
“Just about,” he said, listening for the sound of her bare feet in the room. “The sun looks like it’s going to set the whole world on fire today. Look out the window at it.”
She came out of the kitchen and stood beside the bed, one hand resting on the rattly iron headpiece, looking pale and fragile in the first clear light of the morning. She did not smile when she looked at him, but he could see in her eyes the sparkle that lingered there yet after two years.
“There’s nothing like the sun to stir things awake,” he said, looking neither at her nor away from her. “Every time I see it come up like it did just a while ago — like the world on fire — it does something to me inside.”
Her eyes wandered away as his had done, seeing only their own stare.
“All the fat-bacon is gone,” she said, her lips trembling almost imperceptibly. “I guess we’ll just have to eat the bread without it.”
Roy did not say anything. His eyes turned back toward the sun, which looked like a house on fire in the middle of the night. The red ball was over the crest of the sandhill, moving swiftly over the tops of the stunted pines and scrub oak.
Nora had left before he knew it. He did not know she had gone until he heard the soft tread of her bare feet in the room behind him.
“Maybe Mr. Gene will let us have a little piece of fat-bacon today,” he said, raising his voice for her to hear. “I know it’s early in the week, but you’ve already worked two whole days for him. He ought to let us have a little piece today.”
A little while later he heard her go to the well for a bucket of fresh water. When she came back, he waited for her to say something, but there was no reply. She opened the oven door and looked to see how the corn bread was cooking. When she closed the oven door, she went out on the back porch and threw a pan of dishwater into the yard.
In a few minutes she brought in the plate of hot corn bread and the pot of coffee and set them on the floor beside the bed. Then she sat down and poured him a cupful of coffee.
Roy could manage to hold the cup in his hand once Nora had placed it there. Then by bending his head a little he could sip the coffee whenever he wished to. Nora, though, always watched carefully so he would not spill it. He could have fed himself the corn bread, once it was placed in his hand and his hand placed on his chest, because he could bend his head down far enough to bite it with his teeth. But Nora always sat beside him where she could help him, and she could not keep from feeding him with her own hand every once in a while.
Nora had finished eating and was ready to go. She gave him a second cup of coffee while she was there, and then she went to the back porch to comb her hair again.
“How many more days of hoeing have you got up there in Mr. Gene’s cotton?” he asked her.
“Maybe three, and there might be four. Two of the colored hands didn’t come yesterday. If they don’t come today, it will take us four days to finish the piece.”
“You’ll have six days’ pay coming to you then, won’t you?” he asked. “When you see Mr. Gene today, tell him we’re all out of fat-bacon, Nora. Tell him we’d like to get a little two-pound piece.”
She did not say anything for a while. She went into the kitchen, and came back into the room with him.
“Suppose he won’t let us have it?” she asked.
“But Mr. Gene ought to do that for us,” he told her.
She had left before he realized it. He had closed his eyes for a few moments and, when he opened them again, she was no longer there. He supposed she thought he had dropped off to sleep again, and had gone to hoe cotton without waking him.
He was wide awake. He looked out the window again, but the sun had traveled so far he could not see it any longer.
There was another whole day before him. Until sundown that night he would lie there on his back, unable to move a single limb of his body. He could move his head a little, because his neck was not limp like his arms and legs. But still he could not move out of the position he was in. He had lain there, except for the times when Nora half dragged, half carried him across the room or to the porch, for the past eight months.
It had been eight months, not the eight years it seemed to him, since the bale of cotton had fallen on him when he was helping Mr. Gene and a Negro to store the ginned crop in the shed beside Mr. Gene’s barn. Nobody had ever said whose fault it was that the bale had fallen off the truck and had knocked him flat on the ground, landing on top of him. Roy did not know himself. It might have been an accident, or one of the others might have toppled the bale over just to see what he would do. But whatever the reason was, he had not seen the bale fall until it was too late to get out of the way. It struck him, knocking him flat on the ground, and then fell on him, landing on his back. He had not been able to move a hand or foot since, Mr. Gene had said it was just an act of God, and could not be helped. He had said many times since then that there was nothing he could do about it.
For a while Mr. Gene had wanted him to move off the farm. He told Roy there was nothing he could do any more, and that he needed the house for another tenant to take his place. But Roy and Nora had said they had nowhere else to go, and that since Roy had been paralyzed while working for him, they thought he ought to let them stay. Mr. Gene finally agreed to that, but he told Nora she had to work out the rent, and the bread and meat and coffee. She went to work with the Negroes in the fields, doing the best she could with what little strength she had.
Ever since then Roy had tried to get off his back. The doctor came once, soon after he had got hurt, and said that he would never walk again, much less work, and that he probably would be flat on his back for the rest of his life. If it had not been for Nora, Roy did not know what would have happened to him. There was nobody else to take care of him. He and Nora had been married only two years. She was fifteen when they were married and came there to live, and even at seventeen she was not fully grown. She was still a little girl.
Sometimes the Negroes who lived in the tenant houses farther down the road stopped and talked to him, and most of them brought things from their gardens when they had enough to spare. On rainy days, and sometimes on Sundays, Ernest Mann, who lived with his wife and children in the closest Negro tenant house, came by and stopped to talk a while. Ernest would tell him everything that was happening on the farm, and Roy was glad of that, because there were many things that Nora never got a chance to find out about.
Roy did not know what was going to happen to them. He was afraid that Mr. Gene was going to put them off the place, almost any day. He knew it would happen sooner or later. When it did happen, he did not know what they would do. It was difficult for Nora to earn a living for both of them, even there; if they moved away, he did not know what she could find to do that would bring in enough to pay house rent and buy food and provide clothes now and then. He worried about that all the time; but he could find no answer that seemed to satisfy him. Several times he had told Nora he wanted her to go away and leave him, because he did not wish her to break herself trying to support him. Nora would never let him talk about it when she could stop him.
There did not seem to be much he could do about things. There was nothing much to live for; all he had was his love for Nora, and hers for him.
After all those months in bed he could determine almost to the quarter-hour the time when Nora would come home
. He watched the sun’s rays shining through the windows as though they were hands on a clock.
Nora came up on the front steps while he was looking through the door. He had been expecting her any minute. She looked more tired and weary than ever when he saw her. It was painful to see her coming home at night like that. He could not help feeling like somebody who with a whip was forcing a seventeen-year-old girl to go out and do a man’s work in the hot sun for ten and eleven hours every day.
“That’s you, isn’t it, Nora?” he said, trying to see her plainly.
“Yes, Roy,” she answered.
Nora came into the room and sat down on the bed beside him. The old stockings that she wore over her hands to protect them from the sun and to keep the wooden hoe handle from blistering her fingers were in shreds. She took them off and dropped them weakly on the floor at her feet.
“Have you been all right today, Roy?” she asked. A smile broke the corners of her mouth, but she was too tired to let it go any farther across her cheeks. “Are you all right now, Roy?”
He smiled at her and turned his face as close to hers as he could. She bent over and placed her mouth against his while he kissed her. Her eyes closed slowly while he kissed her hungrily. She did not move for a long time.
“Did you ask Mr. Gene for the piece of fat-bacon?” he said after a while.
She nodded her head.
“Wouldn’t he let you have it?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“He said we’d have to wait until Saturday before he could let us have anything. He said we ought to make out with what he lets us have once a week.”
Roy could feel himself trying with all his mind to make his body move. He felt as though he had been strapped hand and foot with iron bands. Every time he strained to raise his hands he felt as though some force were beating him over the head and face with heavy chains.
“I don’t care if he did say that; that’s not fair at all,” he said as loud as he could. “You work for him by the day just like anybody else works, and he ought to give you enough to eat, besides the house rent.”
Nora fell across his chest, her arms squeezing him tightly. He could feel her breast jerk with sobs, but she did not make any sounds. He closed his eyes and tried to think of something he could do. It was driving him mad to have to lie there and see her suffer like that. Presently she stopped crying and sat up.
“I’ll go cook some corn bread and make the coffee,” she said. She stood up, but her hands were still on his face. “I’ll hurry and cook us something to eat, Roy.”
He let her go without saying anything more. He could hear her bare feet on the kitchen floor, and he could hear the frail house shake and tremble each time she took a step.
It was dark by then. The twilight had gone quickly, lasting, it seemed, only a few minutes.
Out on the steps he heard somebody knock.
“Who’s that?” he called through the door.
“Ernest.”
“Come in, Ernest,” he said.
Roy could not see the Negro in the dark, except for a moment when he passed through the door. When he got there, he sat down on the floor, his back against the wall.
“What have you been doing today, Ernest?” Roy asked him.
“Chopping cotton like everybody else,” Ernest said.
“Be finished soon?”
“Maybe Friday night, in that field, maybe Saturday noon.”
“That’s what Nora thought, too,” Roy said.
Neither of them said anything for a while. Presently Ernest shuffled his feet on the floor, but he did not get up.
“I heard Miss Nora ask the white-boss for a piece of fat-bacon tonight,” Ernest said, “I sure felt something or other, too.”
“Mr. Gene wouldn’t let us have a piece,” Roy said. “He told Nora we’d have to wait till Saturday.”
“I know it,” Ernest said. “I was standing right there and I heard it all. I never felt like doing something more in all my life, either. I sure had a feeling come over me.”
Nora could be heard opening the oven door and sliding the bread pan inside.
“I reckon you know all about the way the white-boss goes to church every Sunday morning down at that church on Swift Creek, don’t you?” Ernest said.
“I used to see him down there sometimes,” Roy said. “Before I got hurt.”
“They tell me he’s the biggest-talking man in the church now. They say he talks the loudest, prays the loudest, sings the loudest, and makes the most noise when he puts money in the collection box.”
“That’s the way I remember him,” Roy said. “He makes a big to-do about going to church. He always was a religious man. He told me once I was going to hell for sure because I didn’t go to church like him.”
Ernest shuffled his feet on the floor some more.
“He’s all that religious-acting, but he won’t give his tenants a little piece of fat-bacon until Saturday afternoon.”
Roy lay still for a while. He was hungry, hungry as could be. He could smell the coffee boiling, and he could hear Nora taking the pan of hot corn bread from the oven, but he was so hungry for a little piece of meat he felt as though he would be willing to cut a slice out of his numb legs if he dared. He had never thought of doing that before, and he wondered what would happen to him if he did. He did not believe he would feel any pain. He had not been able to feel anything at all in his arms and legs for eight months. The blood, if there was any, could be stopped by tying a piece of cloth tightly around it. He wondered what Nora would do — he would not be able to eat any himself if she refused to. But he would not have to tell her where it came from. She could think Ernest, or one of the other Negro tenants, gave it to him. His mind felt as if it was racing like a bird in flight. His own hunger pained him, but he knew that Nora’s, after she had been working day after day in the fields doing a man’s work, was even greater than his. If he could only feed her, he would be able to lie there day after day without straining to do something but feeling as helpless as a man bound hand and foot with iron bands.
In the midst of it, he heard Ernest saying something. He listened with one ear.
“You white-folks call him Mr. Gene,” Ernest said, “but do you know what I call that white-boss?”
“What?” Roy said.
“I call him Mr. Jesus. When he’s not around to hear me. That’s it. Mr. Jesus.”
Something struck Roy’s mind like a pinprick. He could see Mr. Gene — Mr. Jesus now — standing up in Swift Creek Church and shouting out a prayer. He could see him taking the preacher home to dinner and sitting down to a table piled high with chicken and pork and sweet potatoes and white bread. He could see his own self lying there in bed with a knife slicing off pieces of his leg. He could see —
Nora had come in and sat down on the bed beside him. He felt her hand on his forehead, cool and soft.
“Did you bring a knife to cut the corn bread with?” he asked her.
“No, Roy,” she said in surprise. “Do you want me to get a knife?”
He was thinking that he could keep the knife beside him in bed until the next day, when she would be away chopping cotton in the field.
“You never wanted a knife before, Roy. Do you want me to get one now?”
“The sharpest knife,” he said. “The sharpest knife to cut the corn bread with.”
The moment she took her hand from his forehead he could remember nothing. He closed his eyes and lay there waiting for her to come back. He did not know how he would ever again be able to let her leave him, even for so short a time as a second or two.
(First published in Direction)
The Man Who Looked Like Himself
EVERYTHING THAT LUTHER Branch touched was wont to crumble in his hands like so much desiccated clay. It had always been like that. He was barely able to keep himself alive, and his clothes were always in rags. But no man could truthfully say that Luther had not tried and was not still try
ing to make a decent living. He worked harder, day in and day out, than any other man in town.
Several years before, one of his efforts to get ahead had been selling fire insurance to storekeepers and house owners. He failed in that just as he did in everything else he tried to do. It looked as though it were impossible for him to make a dollar.
Once, while he was trying his best to sell insurance, somebody came right out and told Luther that he was not suited to that line of work.
“Luther,” the man said, “I can’t buy fire protection from you. You don’t look like an insurance man.”
There was nothing Luther could say, because he knew he did not look like the other men who sold insurance. And, for that matter, he knew he did not look like anyone else in town.
“That’s the whole trouble, Luther. You don’t look like an insurance man ought to look.”
“What do I look like, then?” Luther asked.
“I’ll be jumped if I know, Luther. If I could see you in the right job, I’d know for sure; but to save my life I can’t figure you out. I suppose you just look like yourself.”
Luther Branch did look like himself. Everybody had been saying that since he was a boy, and now that he was past forty, that was all there was to it.
He went into Ben Howard’s grocery store early one morning to have a word with Ben. He had been going in there for the past ten or fifteen years to see if Ben had anything to tell him. Ben told him that he ought to start out that same hour and try every kind of known way there was to make money, and to jump from one to the other just as fast as he discovered that he was not suited to a particular line of work.
“It’s the only way I know to tell you how to do,” Ben said. “I’ve known you all my life, and we live on the same street, and go to the same church every Sunday, and I want to do everything possible to help you. I’ve always tried to be your friend. That’s why I say the best thing to do is to try everything there is until you find the work you were cut out for. If I could think of a better scheme, I’d certainly tell you about it the minute I heard about it.”