It was twelve o’clock and Will came in from the field. The perspiration
streamed down his face and the top of his overalls was wet with it.
Annie put dinner on the table. She had cooked a piece of smoked hog
jowl and boiled some collards in the liquor, and there was a pudding of
yellow corn. At Will’s place stood a pitcher of milk, covered with a
cloth to keep the flies out. Will washed his hands and sat down; Henry
was already in his accustomed place. A cat came in and curled its sleek
sides around the table leg. Will kicked at it and the cat jumped in a
great arch through the kitchen door.
“I’m going to kill ’at cat,” he said. No one answered him, no one spoke
throughout the meal.
The kitchen was stifling hot. When Will had finished he carried his
chair out on the porch. A little breeze was stirring, he propped the
chair against the side of the house, sat down and closed his eyes. In
a minute more he was fast asleep. Annie washed the dishes and set the
kitchen to rights. As she crossed the porch on her way to the house she
leaned over and shook him awake: “Ain’t you ever goin’ to work?” she
said.
He stretched himself and stood up: “Tain’t none of yore business, ifn’t
I don’t!” he told her as he crammed his hat on his head and went down
the back steps to the field.
He came in early, long before sunset, and asked for a towel and hot
water. He took the bucket Annie gave him to their bedroom and whistled
as he washed and put on clean clothes. He joined them at supper in his
best suit of clothes and ate his food in a great hurry.
“Goin’ to town again tonight, Will?” Henry asked.
“None er yore business!”
“Well,” Henry said mildly, “you needn’t take a feller’s head off when
he asks you a question.”
Will’s eyes were red as he looked up, “Who ast you to put in? You mind
your own business--if you don’t, you know what’s good for you! I guess
I got a right to go to town when I dam’ please! Who does all the work
aroun’ here--you tell me that----”
“I didn’t mean nothin’,” Henry said.
“No, an’ you better not neither!” Will got up from his place. He turned
toward Annie, “An’ you needn’t leave no light burnin’ for me!” Annie
did not look at him. In a minute or two they heard him drive out of the
yard. He would be gone all night and in the morning would appear, sober
and sleepy, to spend the whole day lying in a stupor on a pallet at the
end of the porch, sleeping away the effects of the raw liquor he had
drunk.
Henry tapped his way out to the porch and sat down in a rocking chair.
When Annie had put up the supper dishes she came out and joined him. It
was cooler out there. The sun had long since gone down and the river
had lost its look of parchedness. The water was black as it hurried by
to the sound. There were black shadows under the myrtle and willows on
the opposite bank, but the trees waved green higher up where the light
struck them. The sky back of them was soft with a scattering of white
clouds. Night flew close to the water. A crane’s broad wings circled
and went on downstream. The frogs began their nightly singing.
Henry’s hands rested on his knees. Annie sat tense and drawn in her
chair, her hands on the arms and her head back against the high, broad
top of it. They were both rocking. Suddenly Henry’s chair ceased
rocking and he turned to Annie.
“You ain’t right well, are you, Annie?”
Annie did not answer him at once and he went on: “Seems to me like you
been ailin’ quite a spell. You don’t never say nothin’, but I kin feel
you moving ’round slow like. What’s the matter with you?” His slow
tones were anxious.
Annie rocked all the harder. “Tain’t nothin’,” she said briefly.
“Well, I’m right glad to hear it. Maybe you need a dost of
quinine--that’ll put you right in a jiffy----”
“It’ll be a long time afore I’m right agin!” Annie said passionately.
The full meaning of it sank into Henry’s mind in the long pause that
followed. He cleared his throat helplessly, and his voice, as he
questioned her, had a quaver in it: “You don’t mean you’re goin’ to--to
have another young ’un?”
“Yes, I do, an’ I wish I was dead! I been thinkin’ I’d better go down
and jump in that river----”
“Now, Annie, don’t talk like that!” Henry put out a hand and felt for
her in the dark. “That kind of talk ain’t right. You know what the
Bible says about takin’ your own life. It ain’t right. You ought not to
even think it----” he lapsed into silence.
“Maybe you made a mistake--maybe it ain’t so,” he said after a little.
“Yes, maybe!” Annie’s voice was bitter.
“Does--does Will know?”
“I ain’t told him, but he knows well enough--” she broke off and
suddenly stood up. “I--I forgot, I ain’t fed the cat.” She went swiftly
into the house. Through the blinds back of him Henry heard her fling
herself down on the bed and smother her sobs in the quilts. He rocked
violently, his fat, helpless hands around the knobs of the armchair.
“It ain’t right! It ain’t right!” He repeated it to himself over and
over.
The stars were out when Annie stole back to her place beside him. The
sky was powdery with them. Crickets chirped in the yard and the frogs
cried loudly out of the swamp. Annie’s chair began to move. At first it
went slowly back and forth and then it struck its gait. Henry’s rocker
kept time to it.
“I been sittin’ here thinkin’ while you was gone, Annie. I been
thinkin’ somethin’ mighty curious--about us--an’ how things is fixed
in this world. It ain’t right, some of it. Now here’s us--Will all
time runnin’ after them girls in town--an’ drinkin’. An’ then there’s
you--you has to work too hard. Will don’t work hardly enough--he reely
ain’t able too--maybe if’n he was to stop drinkin’ he might----”
“He won’t!” Annie interrupted.
“No, I don’t guess he will. It’s a pity. I seen a lot of it up an’ down
the river in the old days--it don’t never lead to no good end. If you
was to have somebody to help do the cookin’--an’ was to go to meetin’
now and then--an’ git some pretty clothes----”
“Huh!” Annie’s rocker stopped. “Where you think we goin’ to get all
them things? I ain’t been to meetin’ in months--that’s how I git to
meetin’!”
“I wasn’t sayin’ you was goin’ to git ’em. I was just thinkin’,”
Henry’s voice rebuked her.
“Huh!” The rocking chair took up its accustomed gait again.
“Maybe--maybe when yore time come--” Henry’s voice went on out of the
darkness, “maybe yore baby would live--and you could raise it up to be
a comfort to you.”
Annie said nothing.
“Then ther’s me. All my life long I took good care of myself. I never
had nothin’ much to do with girls--never drunk much--a toddy now an’
then, that’s all--but look at me?” There was no bitterness in Henry’s
voice. “But here I am--a big lump--good for nothin’--I jest sit aroun’
an’ make a lot of work for you.”
“You’re a sight o’ company, Henry,” Annie interrupted.
“Well, thank you, Annie, but I’ll never be good for nothin’ again.
An’ what I got to look forward to--just tell me that? Tain’t like I
got married an’ had some children--it wouldn’t matter so much then--I
wouldn’t keer--I’d be more resigned like----”
Annie stopped rocking.
Henry went on. “I sometimes sits an’ thinks about it for a good spell.
We don’t know if what the preacher says is true. We ain’t certain
’bout that kingdom up in the sky--leastways I ain’t----” Henry paused
uncertainly. “It may be agin’ the Scripters, but sometimes I think all
we got is right here on the earth--an’ it don’t seem right that some of
us gits so little.”
Annie sat still under the weight of it. “No, it don’t, Henry,” she said
at last.
“I lived pretty good. I didn’t miss much when I was on the river--but I
wish I’d got married. I wish I’d got a boy or girl to take keer of me
now.” He heaved a deep sigh. “Well, it’s like that--but don’t guess it
does any good to talk about it much.”
“I never knowed you cared nothin’ ’bout children,” Annie’s voice held a
wondering interest.
“No, I don’t reckon you did. I ain’t never talked about it to nobody
before.”
There was a long pause broken only by the creak of the boards under the
two swaying chairs.
“Henry,” Annie began again, and her voice was solemn “if ’n I was to
take keer of myself--same as Doctor White tole me last time--drink a
lot of milk and let some of the heavy work go--do you ’spose this baby
what’s comin’ would live?”
“Maybe it would, Annie----”
She leaned forward and touched him on the arm. “An’ if ’n it does
live, Henry,” she said in sudden excitement, “it’s goin’ to _be yore
chile_----”
Henry stopped rocking. “What you mean, Annie?”
“I mean I’m goin’ to give it to you--to grow up an’ be a comfort to
you. It’s going to be named Henry Sherrod--an’ you is goin’ to raise
it----”
“But how can you do that, Annie--you can’t give Will’s child away?”
“Can’t I?” the same scornful laugh was in Annie’s voice. “Will hadn’t
ought to have no children--the doctor done said so--an’ anyway he
shan’t tech it----”
“But what’ll he say?”
“He won’t say noth’n--you leave that to me!”
“But look here, Annie,” Henry leaned toward her in the darkness, his
voice betraying his earnestness, “supposen you did--people would think
it kinder queer----”
“Let ’em! Nobody never comes down here no more. When he gits big we’ll
go away----”
“Where’ll we go?”
“I dunno--some place!” Annie leaned back, relaxed. Her voice was full
of ease and happiness. “We’ll go away all right. Some place where
there’s movin’ pichers an’ ’lectric lights. He kin go to school--pay
school. I ain’t goin’ to sen’ my chile to no free school! Maybe he’ll
have a tobacco warehouse when he gits grown----”
“Maybe he’ll be captain of a steamboat----” Henry’s voice took up the
chant.
“Yes, an’ we’ll have a parlor an’ a organ----”
“Maybe he’ll read the newspaper to me----” Henry’s voice was wistful.
Once more the rockers rocked in cadence. It was cooler now, a little
wind blew from across the river and brought the steady “flop flop” of
the fish trap as it dipped down in the current.
Henry loosed himself from the dream first. “It’s gettin’ kinder late,”
he said. “I reckon we all better be gettin’ to bed.”
Annie drew a long breath. “Maybe it won’t live,” she said.
“Maybe so,” Henry too seemed to have lost interest. He shuffled across
the porch and through the doorway, the tap of his stick preceding him
down the hall to his room.
Annie sat on, her hands gripped tightly together in her lap. “Oh, God,”
she prayed, “I got to have somethin’--I got to have somethin’--”
V
October was on the river. Swamp maples flaunted a blare of color as far
as eye could reach. The slim dagger leaves of the willows, already
yellow, fell to eddy in the current before the river swept them away.
Pokeberries were as black as ink. Green holly was swelling, turning
red for winter. Up in the bare branches of the gum trees mistletoe, in
round full bunches, swayed with every passing wind, the milky berries
gleaming against gray-green leaves.
Annie Sherrod was jellying. She stood over the kitchen table pouring
the crimson juice of wild grapes into tumblers and sealing them with
round pieces of white paper dipped in rum and white of egg.
Propped against the door in a split bottom chair, Henry was skimping
through the strains of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” on his fiddle. His head
was bent low, only the thin, reddish hair brushed carefully across the
top was visible to Annie as she looked across at him.
“It sure is gran’ jelly!” she told him.
Henry lowered the fiddle. “I can tell that jest by smellin’,” he said.
Annie wiped her hands on her big checked apron. “I’m goin’ to git you
some in a saucer to taste in a minute. I never did see the beat of it
for jellyin’. Most times you has to wait ’till it gits cole--or set it
in the sun--but this here--” She dug her fingers in the cooling stuff
and lifted a mass of it high. It dropped with a soft “slosh,” heard
plainly across the room. Annie laughed, “Did you hear it?” she said.
“Sure did!”
“I got nine glasses,” Annie went on. “I aim to pick some more grapes
next week an’ do up a even dozen ’fore I stops.”
Henry returned to his fiddling. The kitchen glowed in the afternoon
light. The stove shone red through the cracks and the kettle on it
poured out its song of steam. There was a red cloth on the eating table
and a bunch of goldenrod stuck in a tumbler decorating the center of
it. Over all, hung the rich, spicy aroma of the fox grapes.
Annie brought a saucer half full of jelly over to Henry.
“Here, taste it!” She filled a spoon and put it in his hand. She stood
over him as he sampled it, her hands akimbo on her hips.
“Um----” Henry smacked his lips noisily. “It sure is good stuff!”
“Tomorro’ is Sattiday. You an’ me is goin’ to hitch up and drive to
town right after brekfast and do some tradin’ at Latham’s. I already
done washed your other ves’--it was terrible greasy. You got to stop
dribblin’ things on yourself, Henry Sherrod. If n’ you don’t----”
Annie’s voice was mocking, she threatened him with a flourish of the
now empty saucer, “if n’ you don’t I’m goin’ to tie you up in one er my
apruns!” She threw back her head and laughed.
“Huh! Huh!” Henry laughed with her.
“You all seem mighty happy in here.” Will stood in the doorway. He
carried his gun slung across his shoulder.
The laughter stopped in mid-air. Henry returned to fingering his
fiddle. Annie picked up the tray of jelly glasses and carried them out
on the back porch, passing Will in the doorway, where he grudgingly
made way for her. Coming back she took off her apron and, smoothing her
new calico dress down over her full hips, got out the big pasteboard
box she used for sewing.
All this time Will stood glowering in the doorway. No one had spoken to
him. He seemed uncertain what to do, but as Annie fitted on her thimble
and lifted a tiny shirt from the garments in the box, and began to
stitch with fine stitches upon it, he turned and banged the door behind
him.
“Huh!” Annie laughed, “Will don’t feel right comfortable ’roun’ me no
more. He ain’t forgot that piece er my mind I give him----”
“You best not be too hard on him, Annie,” Henry lowered his fiddle.
“If that ain’t jes’ like you, Henry Sherrod! Now you takin’ up for
Will!”
“No, I ain’t,” Henry protested.
“It’ll do him good. I notice he’s been stayin’ home pretty regular
nights lately.”
“Yes, he has, an’ it’s a good sign----”
“Time’ll tell.”
Annie stitched on in silence. The needle moved methodically in and
out. Presently she began to hum under her breath. Then she interrupted
herself: “Henry,” she said, “why is it ducks’ eggs don’t bring as much
as hens’ eggs, can you tell me that?”
“Seems to me you ought to git more for ’em.”
“Well, you don’t! I got a lot of ’em, too, but they don’t bring much.
I believe I’m goin’ to do all my cookin’ with duck eggs and sell every
one of them hen eggs----”
“That would be a good thing to do----”
“Tomorro’ I aim to buy a cake of that pink soap to the drug store. It’s
real pretty----”
Henry nodded his head at her. He was busy with the fiddle again.