Journeyman

  “Can’t you trust a man of God?”

  “Just look here a minute,” Clay said. “Now I want to know exactly what kind of a preacher you are. I asked some folks in McGuffin about it, and they said they’d heard a heap about you, but hadn’t ever run across you. When I told them how you’ve been carrying on out here in Rocky Comfort, first with Sugar, and then sopping up corn liquor, and now shooting dice, they said you sounded like the damnedest kind of preacher they’d ever heard tell about. I told them you was a real traveling preacher, but I couldn’t hardly convince most of them of it.”

  “You don’t doubt my word, do you, coz?”

  “Me? I can’t say. It was the other folks who said that about you. But just what kind of a preacher be you, anyway?”

  “God called me to preach to sinners,” Semon said gravely. “That’s all the explaining I ever have to do to white people. If folks don’t take my word for it, then I know the devil is in them.”

  Clay drew up a chair, holding the money tightly in his fist. He looked at it closely, his eyes blinking at the sight of so many soiled green notes.

  “Are you still aiming to preach at the schoolhouse Sunday?” he said, turning to Semon.

  “I am, I am,” Semon said solemnly. “That’s what the Lord told me to come back over here to Georgia for. I wouldn’t be sitting here now if He hadn’t told me to make haste and come.”

  “I’ll be doggone if you don’t hang on, as a fellow said, till there ain’t no knowing about you. I never did see a man just keep on and on like you do.”

  “What do you mean to say by that?”

  “You’ve got a nearly brand-new car, and Dene’s daddy’s watch, and this hundred dollars I’m bound to give you, and I can’t see why you don’t go on off to the next place now.”

  “I’m going to preach Sunday,” Semon said doggedly. “Can’t nothing, hell or high water, stop me from doing that. I came over here to save sinners, and I’m going to save them if I have to get down and come through with them myself.”

  “Well, here it is,” Clay said, reluctantly handing over the greenbacks. “And I reckon you’ll say you ain’t got a hold on Dene now.”

  “Me?” Semon said. He grabbed the money and started in at once to count it.

  “Yes, you,” Clay said bitterly. “I’m getting a little doggone tired of having you around here. If I’ve got to get my religion from you, I don’t care now whether I get none or not.”

  “Now that’s no way to talk, Horey,” Semon said, stopping to look at Clay. He held the money between his fingers where he had stopped counting. “You act like I done something mean to you.”

  “It ain’t that so much as it’s something else. I ain’t convinced that you are a preacher.”

  “The Lord heard you then.”

  “He did, sure enough?”

  “He sure did. You want to be careful of what you say.”

  Clay thought for several minutes. He looked across the yard towards the woods where Rocky Comfort Creek was hidden.

  “But you ain’t a reverend, are you?” Clay asked.

  “No,” Semon said. “I ain’t. I leave that to other people who crave to be called that.”

  “Then what kind of a preacher be you, anyway?”

  “I’m a lay preacher.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes, I’m that kind.”

  “Is that any different than the real kind?”

  “What real kind?”

  “The reverend kind.”

  “Those kind of preachers ain’t a bit more privy to the Lord than I am. I take my living where I can find it, and those other kind stick to one place all the time. That’s all the difference there is. And with the Lord there’s no difference at all. All of us are preachers in His sight. I don’t take no back-water from any kind of preacher, reverend or lay.”

  “I reckon you’re resting up today to do some powerful preaching at the schoolhouse tomorrow,” Clay said. “I wouldn’t miss that session for nothing in the world. I always said I’d like to be on the ground to see a preacher make the devil take to his heels. I reckon that’s what you’re aiming to do tomorrow.”

  “I always give the devil a licking,” Semon said. “Not only tomorrow, but every time I preach I bear down on him till he hollers for the calf-rope. And he’ll holler for it tomorrow, too.”

  “Maybe you’ll drive the devil clear out of Rocky Comfort. That would be a fine thing to do. The folks here has always had a little of the devil in them. Looks like they just try to see how wicked they can be. You will have to do some tall preaching to get them to shed their ways.”

  “The people here are no different than the folks all over the country. The devil is everywhere in Georgia. No matter where it is you go, you see his shiny head sticking up.”

  “Has the devil got a shiny head?” Clay asked.

  “Has he! Just like a bald head slicked with lard.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “And it’s red, too.”

  “Well, I’ll be doggone! I never knew that before. I somehow had the idea that the devil looked something like—well, to tell you the honest-to-God truth, Semon, I didn’t know what he looked like.”

  Semon had finished counting the money by then. He held it in his hand, looking at it, shaking it, and feeling it with his fingers. It was with reluctance that he put it into his pocket out of sight.

  “Maybe we’d better ride up to the schoolhouse and let you look over the ground,” Clay suggested. “You can see the lay of the land, and you’ll know what to look for tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine. I would like to see it. I haven’t been no further away than Tom Rhodes’ since I got here last Wednesday afternoon.”

  “I reckon we can ride up in the automobile,” Clay said, leading the way to the shed.

  “Sure,” Semon said. “We can ride in my car.”

  He got in, found the key he had put in his pocket, and started the engine. Clay sat down beside him in the front seat, holding the door partly open, and keeping one foot on the runningboard.

  Semon operated the car with no trouble at all. He backed it out, drove it out of the yard, and turned up the road just as if he had been in the habit of driving it for two or three years. They had nothing to say to each other.

  A hundred yards from Tom Rhodes’ house Semon slowed down. He looked at the house and barn and at the outhouses scattered around the place without design.

  “What’s the matter now?” Clay asked, following his eyes, and feeling the car slow down.

  “It might not be a bad idea to stop and speak to Tom,” Semon said. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”

  Without waiting for Clay to reply, he turned into the driveway and drove down to the barnyard gate. He stopped the car, pocketed the key, and got out.

  “Now I don’t know where Tom might be,” Clay said, walking towards the barn. “Sometimes he goes to town on Saturday, and sometimes he don’t.”

  “There’s his car in the shed. He ought to be around somewhere.”

  The Negro who worked around the house and barn came out of an outhouse.

  “Where’s Mr. Tom?” Clay asked.

  “Down in the pasture,” Frank said, pointing beyond the garden and orchard. “You can find him down there.”

  They climbed the barnyard fence at the gate and walked across the garden. The vegetables were up and growing well. Semon stopped and pulled up a carrot. After wiping the soil off with his hands, he began eating it, taking big bites one after the other and crunching the pulp in his jaws.

  Tom was nowhere to be seen in the pasture, but there was a cow shed near the creek. They went towards it, stepping gingerly along the crooked cow path.

  At the door Clay stopped and looked inside. There was Tom, perched on a stool, looking through a crack in the wall of the shed. He had not seen them.

  “What in thunder are you doing peeping through that crack, Tom?” Clay said, stepping inside and stopping to look closely at Tom.
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  Tom jumped to his feet, his face suddenly red. He did not know what to do to hide his embarrassment.

  “Nothing,” he said, trying to laugh.

  Semon went across the shed and bent over at the crack. He peered through it for a few minutes, shutting one eye and squinting the other.

  “I don’t see a thing but the woods over there,” Semon said, standing erect and looking at Tom. But he was still wondering what it was that could be seen through the crack.

  Tom did not try to explain.

  “What in thunderation’s going on over across there, Tom?” Clay asked. He bent over and looked through the crack in the wall. He shut one eye, squinted the other one, but he could still see nothing except the pine trees.

  “Is somebody over there, Tom?” Semon asked.

  Tom shook his head, trying not to meet the eyes of either of them.

  “I just come down here sometimes and sit,” he said, hemming and hawing. “I don’t have much else to do, so I just sit and look through the crack. It used to be that I could find plenty to do, but I’ve got so I’d rather stay down here.”

  “And look at nothing?” Semon asked in amazement.

  “Well, there’s nothing but the woods over there, I reckon. There’s that, and something else. I don’t know what.”

  “I’ll be doggone,” Clay said. “I never knew you did that before. There ain’t much sense in doing it, is there, Tom?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I don’t reckon there’s a bit of sense in it. But I just do it, anyway.”

  Semon sat down on one of the stools. He then saw the jug that had been sitting all the time against the wall.

  “I reckon you’re going to be neighborly with the jug, won’t you, Tom?” he said.

  “That’s what it’s for. Just help yourself.”

  Semon took a long draft of the corn whisky and set the jug down none too lightly. There was no floor under the shed, only the bare earth, and so it did not break. He passed the back of his hand across his mouth and licked it.

  “Help yourself, Clay,” Tom said. “That’s what I made it for. Wouldn’t be no sense in running it off if nobody made use of it.”

  While Clay and Tom were drinking from the jug, Semon moved over to the stool by the wall and bent his head against the crack. He sat there, looking through it with his eye squinted for several minutes. After that he raised his head and looked at the others rather sheepishly.

  “See anything?” Clay said.

  “Not much.”

  “Move over, then, and let me take a look through it.”

  Clay sat down and looked through the crack. There was nothing much to be seen except the trees on the other side of the pasture. The fence over there that bordered that side of the pasture was barbed wire, and the posts were split pine. He saw all that in a glance, and there was nothing else to see, but he continued to look through the crack as though he saw something that he had never seen before in his life.

  “Where you folks headed for?” Tom asked Semon.

  “To the schoolhouse. That’s where we started. I don’t reckon there’s much up there to see, though.”

  “No,” Tom said, moving restlessly on his stool. “No, there ain’t much up there. Least, I never could see much up around there.”

  He turned around to see if Clay had finished looking through the crack. After waiting as long as he could, he got up and went over there.

  “What’s the matter?” Clay asked.

  “It’s about my turn now.”

  He pushed Clay away from the stool and sat down to press his face, against the wall where the crack was. He moved his head slightly to the left, then lowered it a fraction of an inch. After that he sat motionless.

  “See anything, coz?” Semon said.

  Tom said nothing.

  “I reckon I’ll take my other drink now, instead of later,” Semon said. He picked up the jug and drank heavily.

  After he had finished, he handed it over to Clay.

  “There wouldn’t be much sense in going to the schoolhouse now,” Semon said, shaking his head at Clay. “There’s nothing much up there to go for.”

  “It’s bound to be just like it was the last time I saw it,” Tom agreed.

  Semon walked nervously around the cow shed. He came to a stop beside Tom.

  “Don’t hog it all the time, coz,” he said, pushing him. “Let a white man take a look once in a while.”

  Tom got up and looked for the jug.

  “I can’t seem to remember when I liked to look at a thing so much as I do now,” Semon said, adjusting his eye to the crack.

  Clay leaned against the wall, taking out his harmonica. He tapped the flakes of tobacco and weed out of it, and drew it swiftly across his mouth. It made a sound like an automobile tire going flat.

  He started playing “I’ve Got a Gal.”

  Semon, with his eye glued to the crack, began keeping time with his feet on the bare earth.

  “That’s the God-damnedest little slit in the whole world,” Tom said. “I come down here and sit on the stool and look through it all morning sometimes. There’s not a doggone thing to see but the trees over there, and maybe the fence posts, but I can’t keep from looking to save my soul. It’s the doggonest thing I ever saw in all my life.”

  Semon settled himself more comfortably on the stool.

  “There’s not a single thing to see,” Tom said, “and then again there’s the whole world to look at. Looking through the side of the shed ain’t like nothing else I can think of. You sit there a while, and the first thing you know, you can’t get away from it. It gets a hold on a man like nothing else does. You sit there, screwing up your eye and looking at the trees or something, and you might start to thinking what a fool thing you’re doing, but you don’t give a cuss about that. All you care for is staying there and looking.”

  Semon continued keeping time to the harmonica with both feet. Neither of them made any sound on the bare ground, but he kept it up just the same.

  “She wore a little yellow dress—”

  Clay was playing as though his life depended upon it, and Tom was singing a line every once in a while. He hummed under his breath when he was not singing.

  Semon was reaching for the glass jug. His hand was searching in a circle for it, but it was beyond his reach. He would not stop looking through the crack for even a second to see where the jug really was.

  “Can’t help you out none, preacher,” Tom said. “You’ll have to come and get it. It’s my time to look some now.”

  “—those eyes were made for me to see.”

  Tom sang a line, and stopped to talk again.

  “You ought to give somebody else a chance to look, every once in a while, preacher.”

  Semon got up from the stool without moving his head. He stood there bent over until Tom shoved him out of his way.

  “In the night-time is the right time—”

  “Shove off, preacher,” Tom said, giving him a final push.

  Semon sat down on the other stool, rubbing the strain from his left eye. He blinked several times, resuming the tapping of his feet.

  He took a long drink and put the jug down at Clay’s side.

  “That’s the God-damnedest slit I ever saw in all my life,” Semon said. “You can look through there all day and never get tired. And come back the next day, and I’ll bet it would look just as good. There’s something about looking through a crack that nothing else in the whole wide world will give you.”

  Clay had warmed up until he could not stop. The song he was playing had long before run out, but the chorus would not end. He could not make himself quit.

  Finally the harmonica filled up, and he had to stop. He was sorry the song was over.

  Tom was still humming the tune, though, and he ended up with another line from the chorus.

  “Coz, do that some more,” Semon said. “I want to hear that piece again. I don’t reckon I’ve ever heard a mouth-organ play a prettier one.”

/>   “It’s my time to look through the crack now.”

  “Here, take another drink, and me and Tom will give you the next two turns, instead of one. Just go ahead and play that pretty little piece some more. It makes me want to cry, it’s that good, and I feel like crying over it now.”

  Clay drank, and jerked the harmonica across his lips. It sounded this time like air going into a tire.

  With his head pressed tightly against the shed wall, Tom started humming again. He patted his feet on the ground, swinging into rhythm with the tune Clay was playing.

  “There’s never been but one gal like that in all the world,” Semon said. The tears welled in his eyes and dripped against the backs of his hands. “If I could just look through the crack and see her, I wouldn’t ask to live no longer. That crack is the God-damnedest thing I ever looked through. I sit there and look, and think about that gal, thinking maybe I’ll see her with the next bat of my eye, and all the time I’m looking clear to the back side of heaven.”

  He strode to the wall and pushed Tom away. Without waiting to sit down first, he pressed his eye to the slit in the wall. After that he slowly sat down on the stool.

  “—you’re the prettiest one and the sweetest one.”

  Tom stopped and picked up the jug. He took his drink and replaced it at Clay’s feet. Clay was too busy then to stop for a drink. He could not stop.

  “When I’m loping you, I’m telling you—”

  Semon put his hand to his face and wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without that crack in the wall,” Tom said. “I reckon I’d just dry up and die away. I’d be that sad about it. I come down here and sit and look, and I don’t see nothing you can’t see better from the outside, but that don’t make a bit of difference. It’s sitting there looking through the crack at the trees all day long that sort of gets me. I don’t know what it is, and it might not be nothing at all when you figure it out. But it’s not the knowing about it, anyway—it’s just the sitting there and looking through it that sort of makes me feel like heaven can’t be so doggone far away.”