Collected Stories

  We looked at Nancy. Her shoulders kept shaking, but she quit making the sound. We watched her. “What’s Jesus going to do to you?” Caddy said, “He went away.”

  Nancy looked at us. “We had fun that night I stayed in yawls’ room didn’t we?”

  “I didn’t,” Jason said. “I didn’t have any fun.”

  “You were asleep in mother’s room,” Caddy said. “You were not there.”

  “Let’s go down to my house and have some more fun,” Nancy said.

  “Mother wont let us,” I said. “It’s too late now.”

  “Dont bother her,” Nancy said. “We can tell her in the morning. She wont mind.”

  “She wouldn’t let us,” I said.

  “Dont ask her now,” Nancy said. “Dont bother her now.”

  “She didn’t say we couldn’t go,” Caddy said.

  “We didn’t ask,” I said.

  “If you go, I’ll tell,” Jason said.

  “We’ll have fun,” Nancy said. “They won’t mind, just to my house. I been working for yawl a long time. They won’t mind.”

  “I’m not afraid to go,” Caddy said. “Jason is the one that’s afraid. He’ll tell.”

  “I’m not,” Jason said.

  “Yes, you are,” Caddy said. “You’ll tell.”

  “I won’t tell,” Jason said. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Jason ain’t afraid to go with me,” Nancy said. “Is you, Jason?”

  “Jason is going to tell,” Caddy said. The lane was dark. We passed the pasture gate. “I bet if something was to jump out from behind that gate, Jason would holler.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Jason said. We walked down the lane. Nancy was talking loud.

  “What are you talking so loud for, Nancy?” Caddy said.

  “Who; me?” Nancy said. “Listen at Quentin and Caddy and Jason saying I’m talking loud.”

  “You talk like there was five of us here,” Caddy said. “You talk like father was here too.”

  “Who; me talking loud, Mr Jason?” Nancy said.

  “Nancy called Jason ‘Mister,’ ” Caddy said.

  “Listen how Caddy and Quentin and Jason talk,” Nancy said.

  “We’re not talking loud,” Caddy said. “You’re the one that’s talking like father—”

  “Hush,” Nancy said; “hush, Mr Jason.”

  “Nancy called Jason ‘Mister’ aguh—”

  “Hush,” Nancy said. She was talking loud when we crossed the ditch and stooped through the fence where she used to stoop through with the clothes on her head. Then we came to her house. We were going fast then. She opened the door. The smell of the house was like the lamp and the smell of Nancy was like the wick, like they were waiting for one another to begin to smell. She lit the lamp and closed the door and put the bar up. Then she quit talking loud, looking at us.

  “What’re we going to do?” Caddy said.

  “What do yawl want to do?” Nancy said.

  “You said we would have some fun,” Caddy said.

  There was something about Nancy’s house; something you could smell besides Nancy and the house. Jason smelled it, even. “I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  “Go home, then,” Caddy said.

  “I don’t want to go by myself,” Jason said.

  “We’re going to have some fun,” Nancy said.

  “How?” Caddy said.

  Nancy stood by the door. She was looking at us, only it was like she had emptied her eyes, like she had quit using them. “What do you want to do?” she said.

  “Tell us a story,” Caddy said. “Can you tell a story?”

  “Yes,” Nancy said.

  “Tell it,” Caddy said. We looked at Nancy. “You don’t know any stories.”

  “Yes,” Nancy said. “Yes, I do.”

  She came and sat in a chair before the hearth. There was a little fire there. Nancy built it up, when it was already hot inside. She built a good blaze. She told a story. She talked like her eyes looked, like her eyes watching us and her voice talking to us did not belong to her. Like she was living somewhere else, waiting somewhere else. She was outside the cabin. Her voice was inside and the shape of her, the Nancy that could stoop under a barbed wire fence with a bundle of clothes balanced on her head as though without weight, like a balloon, was there. But that was all. “And so this here queen come walking up to the ditch, where that bad man was hiding. She was walking up to the ditch, and she say, ‘If can just get past this here ditch,’ was what she say …”

  “What ditch?” Caddy said. “A ditch like that one out there? Why did a queen want to go into a ditch?”

  “To get to her house,” Nancy said. She looked at us. “She had to cross the ditch to get into her house quick and bar the door.”

  “Why did she want to go home and bar the door?” Caddy said.

  IV

  NANCY LOOKED at us. She quit talking. She looked at us. Jason’s legs stuck straight out of his pants where he sat on Nancy’s lap. “I don’t think that’s a good story,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  “Maybe we had better,” Caddy said. She got up from the floor. “I bet they are looking for us right now.” She went toward the door.

  “No,” Nancy said. “Don’t open it.” She got up quick and passed Caddy. She didn’t touch the door, the wooden bar.

  “Why not?” Caddy said.

  “Come back to the lamp,” Nancy said. “We’ll have fun. You don’t have to go.”

  “We ought to go,” Caddy said. “Unless we have a lot of fun.” She and Nancy came back to the fire, the lamp.

  “I want to go home,” Jason said. “I’m going to tell.”

  “I know another story,” Nancy said. She stood close to the lamp. She looked at Caddy, like when your eyes look up at a stick balanced on your nose. She had to look down to see Caddy, but her eyes looked like that, like when you are balancing a stick.

  “I won’t listen to it,” Jason said. “I’ll bang on the floor.”

  “It’s a good one,” Nancy said. “It’s better than the other one.”

  “What’s it about?” Caddy said. Nancy was standing by the lamp. Her hand was on the lamp, against the light, long and brown.

  “Your hand is on that hot globe,” Caddy said. “Don’t it feel hot to your hand?”

  Nancy looked at her hand on the lamp chimney. She took her hand away, slow. She stood there, looking at Caddy, wringing her long hand as though it were tied to her wrist with a string.

  “Let’s do something else,” Caddy said.

  “I want to go home,” Jason said.

  “I got some popcorn,” Nancy said. She looked at Caddy and then at Jason and then at me and then at Caddy again. “I got some popcorn.”

  “I don’t like popcorn,” Jason said. “I’d rather have candy.”

  Nancy looked at Jason. “You can hold the popper.” She was still wringing her hand; it was long and limp and brown.

  “All right,” Jason said. “I’ll stay a while if I can do that. Caddy can’t hold it. I’ll want to go home again if Caddy holds the popper.”

  Nancy built up the fire. “Look at Nancy putting her hands in the fire,” Caddy said. “What’s the matter with you, Nancy?”

  “I got popcorn,” Nancy said. “I got some.” She took the popper from under the bed. It was broken. Jason began to cry.

  “Now we can’t have any popcorn,” he said.

  “We ought to go home, anyway,” Caddy said. “Come on, Quentin.”

  “Wait,” Nancy said; “wait. I can fix it. Don’t you want to help me fix it?”

  “I don’t think I want any,” Caddy said. “It’s too late now.”

  “You help me, Jason,” Nancy said. “Don’t you want to help me?”

  “No,” Jason said. “I want to go home.”

  “Hush,” Nancy said; “hush. Watch. Watch me. I can fix it so Jason can hold it and pop the corn.” She got a piece of wire and fixed the popper.

&nbs
p; “It won’t hold good,” Caddy said.

  “Yes, it will,” Nancy said. “Yawl watch. Yawl help me shell some corn.”

  The popcorn was under the bed too. We shelled it into the popper and Nancy helped Jason hold the popper over the fire.

  “It’s not popping,” Jason said. “I want to go home.”

  “You wait,” Nancy said. “It’ll begin to pop. We’ll have fun then.” She was sitting close to the fire. The lamp was turned up so high it was beginning to smoke.

  “Why don’t you turn it down some?” I said.

  “It’s all right,” Nancy said. “I’ll clean it. Yawl wait. The popcorn will start in a minute.”

  “I don’t believe it’s going to start,” Caddy said. “We ought to start home, anyway. They’ll be worried.”

  “No,” Nancy said. “It’s going to pop. Dilsey will tell um yawl with me. I been working for yawl long time. They won’t mind if yawl at my house. You wait, now. It’ll start popping any minute now.”

  Then Jason got some smoke in his eyes and he began to cry. He dropped the popper into the fire. Nancy got a wet rag and wiped Jason’s face, but he didn’t stop crying.

  “Hush,” she said. “Hush.” But he didn’t hush. Caddy took the popper out of the fire.

  “It’s burned up,” she said. “You’ll have to get some more popcorn, Nancy.”

  “Did you put all of it in?” Nancy said.

  “Yes,” Caddy said. Nancy looked at Caddy. Then she took the popper and opened it and poured the cinders into her apron and began to sort the grains, her hands long and brown, and we watching her.

  “Haven’t you got any more?” Caddy said.

  “Yes,” Nancy said; “yes. Look. This here ain’t burnt. All we need to do is—”

  “I want to go home,” Jason said. “I’m going to tell.”

  “Hush,” Caddy said. We all listened. Nancy’s head was already turned toward the barred door, her eyes filled with red lamplight. “Somebody is coming,” Caddy said.

  Then Nancy began to make that sound again, not loud, sitting there above the fire, her long hands dangling between her knees; all of a sudden water began to come out on her face in big drops, running down her face, carrying in each one a little turning ball of firelight like a spark until it dropped off her chin. “She’s not crying,” I said.

  “I ain’t crying,” Nancy said. Her eyes were closed. “I ain’t crying. Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Caddy said. She went to the door and looked out. “We’ve got to go now,” she said. “Here comes father.”

  “I’m going to tell,” Jason said. “Yawl made me come.”

  The water still ran down Nancy’s face. She turned in her chair. “Listen. Tell him. Tell him we going to have fun. Tell him I take good care of yawl until in the morning. Tell him to let me come home with yawl and sleep on the floor. Tell him I won’t need no pallet. We’ll have fun. You member last time how we had so much fun?”

  “I didn’t have fun,” Jason said. “You hurt me. You put smoke in my eyes. I’m going to tell.”

  V

  FATHER CAME IN. He looked at us. Nancy did not get up.

  “Tell him,” she said.

  “Caddy made us come down here,” Jason said. “I didn’t want to.”

  Father came to the fire. Nancy looked up at him. “Can’t you go to Aunt Rachel’s and stay?” he said. Nancy looked up at father, her hands between her knees. “He’s not here,” father said. “I would have seen him. There’s not a soul in sight.”

  “He in the ditch,” Nancy said. “He waiting in the ditch yonder.”

  “Nonsense,” father said. He looked at Nancy. “Do you know he’s there?”

  “I got the sign,” Nancy said.

  “What sign?”

  “I got it. It was on the table when I come in. It was a hog-bone, with blood meat still on it, laying by the lamp. He’s out there. When yawl walk out that door, I gone.”

  “Gone where, Nancy?” Caddy said.

  “I’m not a tattletale,” Jason said.

  “Nonsense,” father said.

  “He out there,” Nancy said. “He looking through that window this minute, waiting for yawl to go. Then I gone.”

  “Nonsense,” father said. “Lock up your house and we’ll take you on to Aunt Rachel’s.”

  “ ’Twont do no good,” Nancy said. She didn’t look at father now, but he looked down at her, at her long, limp, moving hands. “Putting it off wont do no good.”

  “Then what do you want to do?” father said.

  “I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I can’t do nothing. Just put it off. And that don’t do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain’t no more than mine.”

  “Get what?” Caddy said. “What’s yours?”

  “Nothing,” father said. “You all must get to bed.”

  “Caddy made me come,” Jason said.

  “Go on to Aunt Rachel’s,” father said.

  “It won’t do no good,” Nancy said. She sat before the fire, her elbows on her knees, her long hands between her knees. “When even your own kitchen wouldn’t do no good. When even if I was sleeping on the floor in the room with your chillen, and the next morning there I am, and blood—”

  “Hush,” father said. “Lock the door and put out the lamp and go to bed.”

  “I scared of the dark,” Nancy said. “I scared for it to happen in the dark.”

  “You mean you’re going to sit right here with the lamp lighted?” father said. Then Nancy began to make the sound again, sitting before the fire, her long hands between her knees. “Ah, damnation,” father said. “Come along, chillen. It’s past bedtime.”

  “When yawl go home, I gone,” Nancy said. She talked quieter now, and her face looked quiet, like her hands. “Anyway, I got my coffin money saved up with Mr. Lovelady.” Mr. Lovelady was a short, dirty man who collected the Negro insurance, coming around to the cabins or the kitchens every Saturday morning, to collect fifteen cents. He and his wife lived at the hotel. One morning his wife committed suicide. They had a child, a little girl. He and the child went away. After a week or two he came back alone. We would see him going along the lanes and the back streets on Saturday mornings.

  “Nonsense,” father said. “You’ll be the first thing I’ll see in the kitchen tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll see what you’ll see, I reckon,” Nancy said. “But it will take the Lord to say what that will be.”

  VI

  WE LEFT HER sitting before the fire.

  “Come and put the bar up,” father said. But she didn’t move. She didn’t look at us again, sitting quietly there between the lamp and the fire. From some distance down the lane we could look back and see her through the open door.

  “What, Father?” Caddy said. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Nothing,” father said. Jason was on father’s back, so Jason was the tallest of all of us. We went down into the ditch. I looked at it, quiet. I couldn’t see much where the moonlight and the shadows tangled.

  “If Jesus is hid here, he can see us, cant he?” Caddy said.

  “He’s not there,” father said. “He went away a long time ago.”

  “You made me come,” Jason said, high; against the sky it looked like father had two heads, a little one and a big one. “I didn’t want to.”

  We went up out of the ditch. We could still see Nancy’s house and the open door, but we couldn’t see Nancy now, sitting before the fire with the door open, because she was tired. “I just done got tired,” she said. “I just a nigger. It ain’t no fault of mine.”

  But we could hear her, because she began just after we came up out of the ditch, the sound that was not singing and not unsinging. “Who will do our washing now, Father?” I said.

  “I’m not a nigger,” Jason said, high and close above father’s head.

  “You’re worse,” Caddy said, “you are a tattletale. If something was to jump out, you’d be scairder than
a nigger.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Jason said.

  “You’d cry,” Caddy said.

  “Caddy,” father said.

  “I wouldn’t!” Jason said.

  “Scairy cat,” Caddy said.

  “Candace!” father said.

  III

  THE WILDERNESS

  Red Leaves

  A Justice

  A Courtship

  Lo!

  Red Leaves

  I

  THE TWO INDIANS crossed the plantation toward the slave quarters. Neat with whitewash, of baked soft brick, the two rows of houses in which lived the slaves belonging to the clan, faced one another across the mild shade of the lane marked and scored with naked feet and with a few homemade toys mute in the dust. There was no sign of life.

  “I know what we will find,” the first Indian said.

  “What we will not find,” the second said. Although it was noon, the lane was vacant, the doors of the cabins empty and quiet; no cooking smoke rose from any of the chinked and plastered chimneys.

  “Yes. It happened like this when the father of him who is now the Man, died.”

  “You mean, of him who was the Man.”

  “Yao.”

  The first Indian’s name was Three Basket. He was perhaps sixty. They were both squat men, a little solid, burgher-like; paunchy, with big heads, big, broad, dust-colored faces of a certain blurred serenity like carved heads on a ruined wall in Siam or Sumatra, looming out of a mist. The sun had done it, the violent sun, the violent shade. Their hair looked like sedge grass on burnt-over land. Clamped through one ear Three Basket wore an enameled snuffbox.

  “I have said all the time that this is not the good way. In the old days there were no quarters, no Negroes. A man’s time was his own then. He had time. Now he must spend most of it finding work for them who prefer sweating to do.”

  “They are like horses and dogs.”

  “They are like nothing in this sensible world. Nothing contents them save sweat. They are worse than the white people.”