“I’ll send you to hell for this,” the Cajun said to Robert. “I’ll send you to hell for this for sure.”
“You come, you come in front,” Robert said. “You can bring the whole goddamn family, just come in front.”
“Well, nobody’s going to hell long’s I’m here,” Mack Grover said. “Robert, get on that wagon.”
About three months later, Robert disappeared. No one knew how, nor where to. That morning he had gotten on his horse and left for Bayonne. Neither he nor the horse was ever seen again.
A few days after Robert’s strange disappearance, the two women moved across the field to another house. No one in the quarters knew exactly why the women had gone, but every other person had an opinion. One was that the house was haunted—Robert’s ghost had been seen several times by several different persons; another was that Raoul was courting a woman that neither his mother nor his aunt approved of; still another was that the woman he was courting did not like the mother nor the aunt.
When Della Johnson came to the house, everyone brushed aside the idea that Della could dislike anyone. Not only did she love her in-laws whom she visited across the field, but she had a nice word to say to anyone else who went by the house. She would stand on the porch or out in the garden, talking to you so long that you would have to say, “Della, I just have to be getting home. I’ve spent more than my time already.” And even after you had said that, she would find something else to talk about to keep you there a few minutes longer.
One day while going to the store, Olive Jarreau stopped under the big oak tree just outside the fence and called for Della to come to the window. Della did not answer. Olive called again—she called at least a half-dozen times—but Della never did show up. Olive knew she was in there, because she had heard Della singing just as she came up even with the house. That same afternoon, Sue Jacks spoke to Della in the garden. Della mumbled something under her breath, but that was all. Sue Jacks had a few minutes to spare, but Della did not. Sue Jacks went on, thinking little about it, because even a person like Della would have “off days” at times. But Aunt Rose Culluns did not feel as Sue Jacks did when she spoke to Della and Della pretended she did not hear her. Aunt Rose fussed all the way to the store and all the way back down the quarters again. “Well, he got her jest like he want her,” she grumbled to herself. “She couldn’t stay that way for long, not around something like that.”
CHAPTER FOUR
There were three children. They were Catherine, Mark, and Lillian. One day when Catherine was six years old, she came home from school and told Della that she had a boyfriend.
“Oh?” Della said, smiling. Then Catherine noticed how quickly the smile left her face. “What color he is, baby?”
“He’s dark.”
“Dark? How dark?”
“Well,” Catherine said, going from one finger to another; “he’s darker than me, he’s darker than you, he’s darker than Daddy, and he’s darker than Marky. Mommy, can he come play with me sometime?”
“Yes,” Della said. “But he’ll have to leave before Daddy gets home, you hear?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s going to be a secret between us, you hear? Just me and you, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The second child was Mark. Everyone knew that the second child was not Raoul’s. He was darker than anyone else in the family, and the children at school were always teasing him about it. One day while Raoul and the boy were sawing down a tree in the woods, the tree suddenly made a false turn, crushing the boy into the ground. The people in the quarters called it murder, but the sheriff, as well as Mack Grover, agreed with Raoul that it was an accident. After this happened, Della was seldom seen any more. The people saw her go into the field and come back home. Whenever she was at the house she remained inside. Catherine did all of the outside work.
The third child was Lillian. She was less than a month old when she was taken to New Orleans by one of Raoul’s sisters to be brought up as a lady. It was Lillian whom Catherine had now come to the highway to meet.
CHAPTER FIVE
The bus stopped. Brother watched two people come down the aisle and step to the ground. Then as the bus pulled away, he heard Catherine whisper, “Jackson?”
The two people came across the highway. Brother recognized the girl immediately. She was Lillian, Catherine’s sister. But was the man really Jackson? Jackson was only a boy when he left here. This man was six feet tall or better.
“Jackson?” Catherine whispered again. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”
She threw her straw hat back into the car, and she tried to fix her hair, straighten her dress, and pass her hands over her face before he saw her. She started toward Jackson and her sister, then stopped, and waited for them to come into the quarters. Brother did not move either. What could he say? Anyhow, this might not be Jackson at all. There was something too different about him—something Brother could not put his finger on at the moment.
When they came into the quarters, Lillian saw Catherine and came over to where she was. Jackson followed her with the two suitcases. Lillian and Catherine embraced, and Lillian kissed Catherine very hard and long. Then as she stepped back to introduce Catherine, she saw that Catherine and Jackson were already looking at each other.
“Catherine,” he said.
She bowed slightly, smiled, but did not say anything. It was obvious to everyone that she was too filled with emotion to speak at that moment.
“I can tell you two already know each other,” Lillian said.
“Yes,” Jackson said. “How’ve you been?” he said to Catherine.
“Fine.”
Neither one of them said anything else, but they continued looking at each other as though there was much more to talk about between them. Then suddenly Jackson seemed to catch himself; he smiled embarrassedly and looked away.
“Stranger,” Brother said, coming up behind him. Brother had been standing by the car looking at Jackson and the two girls. He had not come up to him before, because he was still not sure that it was Jackson; and besides that he had very little to say to either one of the girls. He spoke to them when he met them in the road, but that was as far as their conversation went.
“Brother?” Jackson said.
“That’s me,” Brother said, smiling and nodding.
Jackson set the suitcases on the ground and grasped Brother’s hand.
“Damnit, man, you done growed some there,” Brother said. “I wouldn’t ’a’ knowed you.”
“You look the same.”
“Yeah, me, I never grow,” Brother said, laughing. But the laugh ended almost as quickly as it had begun. There was something about Jackson’s face that made him feel that his laughing was out of place. A moment of silence followed. Neither one of them could think of anything more to say. Brother smiled uncomfortably and lowered his eyes.
“Well, I think we’ll go on down,” Lillian said. “Thanks again for taking my suitcase off for me.”
“It was nothing,” Jackson said, turning to her and glancing at Catherine. “Why don’t we go over to the store and have a cold drink? I can stand one.”
Lillian glanced at Catherine quickly and shrugged one of her shoulders. “All right with me,” she said.
“Miss Charlotte got lemonade at the house,” Brother said, moving in closer.
“That’s better still,” Jackson said. “We won’t have to buy it.”
There was a look of apprehension on both Catherine’s and Lillian’s faces.
“Maybe some other time,” Catherine said.
“Afraid I might bite you?”
“No,” she said. “But I have to go up the road to get the mail.”
She and Jackson continued to look at each other and Jackson seemed to understand what she meant. He nodded his head.
“Maybe some other time.”
Lillian, who had turned away unnoticed, was staring out at the river. Jackson put her suitcase in the car,
then came back to get his own. He looked at Catherine and nodded again. She was trying to tell him something with her eyes, which he seemed to understand quite well. He and Brother got into the car and drove away.
“I said that ’cause I knowed they wouldn’t go,” Brother said.
“And I shouldn’t get too close, huh?”
“Left to her she would ’a’ gone,” Brother said. “Left to her, she ’ud do lotta things. But it’s Raoul.”
“He’s still the same?”
“He go’n die the same.”
“Nobody has taken her from him yet?”
“And nobody go’n do it.”
Jackson did not say any more. He looked out of the window, but seemed only half interested in the things they were passing.
CHAPTER SIX
Charlotte was getting ready to go out on the front porch for about the tenth time that afternoon when she heard her back gate slam shut. She had an idea who it was, and she turned around in the door and came back into the kitchen. A young woman, wearing a big yellow straw hat and a white dress, came up to the door and knocked.
“It’s open,” Charlotte said. “Just get in ’fore them flies do. They waiting.”
The girl looked tired, but managed a smile as she came into the kitchen. Two strings of perspiration ran down her face.
“Look how you sweating,” Charlotte said. “Bet you run all the way from the Yard.”
“Yes’m.”
“Eh, Lord,” Charlotte said. “Fall in one of them holes and break your leg there, hear.”
“I’m careful most the times,” Mary Louise said.
“If you know like I know you better be careful all the time,” Charlotte said. “I don’t see how come they don’t chop them weeds down.”
“Reckoned they waiting for the frost to kill ’em,” Mary Louise said.
“That’s probably the only way they’ll get down,” Charlotte said.
Mary Louise smiled and looked toward the front door.
“You’ll hear it come ’round Morgan Bend,” Charlotte said. “It ain’t failed to blow in thirty years.”
“Truck blowed there few minutes ago and I thought that was it,” Mary Louise said. “Ought to been seen me running out to the front.”
“Can’t you tell a truck horn from a bus horn?” Charlotte said.
“Most the times,” Mary Louise said.
“I can tell that horn in my sleep,” Charlotte said.
But she had gone out there also when she heard the horn blow. It was still too early for the bus to show up, but when one is as anxious to see another person as she was to see her nephew (he was her grand-nephew, her niece’s son) time does not matter. “That’s it, that’s it,” she had said, running out on the porch. Then as the big oil truck went past the road, Charlotte looked both left and right to see if anyone had seen what she had done. She did not see anyone, and she moved back inside, but stood just behind the screen. “Should ’a’ knowed it was too early,” she said. “I’m just’s jumpy’s a flea.”
Then they heard it—two great blasts. Their hearts leaped into their throats. They looked toward the door, then at each other. Charlotte nodded her head; Mary Louise smiled.
Then suddenly Charlotte spun around. Mary Louise thought she was going out on the porch, and Mary Louise started after her. But Charlotte turned toward the dresser to check herself in the mirror. First, the kerchief. The kerchief was all right. The dress. She pulled it one way, then the other, then the same way again. She found a speck of lint on her shoulder and brushed it off, then she brushed off the other shoulder for safekeeping. Then she brushed off the front of the dress, each side, and turned around and brushed off the back. She faced the mirror again, and this time she did not like the way the kerchief fit her head. She tried pulling it into shape, but finally took it off and stuffed it into a drawer.
She turned from the dresser to look over the room again. The floors had been scrubbed that morning, the walls and furniture dusted several times since, but still she felt that something might have been missed. She went from her room into the room where he would stay, then back into her room, and finally into the kitchen. She raised the lid off one pot to look at the gumbo, then the lid off another pot to look at the rice. She got a dishtowel and began waving it at three houseflies that swarmed around in the sunlight. The flies darted in all directions, and though she was an expert at getting them out of the kitchen or knocking them down on the floor and crushing them under the sole of her shoe, this time she was unable to get even one. She hung up the towel and came back into the front again.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” she said. “I thought you would ’a’ been out there.”
“No’m,” Mary Louise said, shaking her head.
She had wanted very much to go outside and watch the bus stop in front of the quarters. But she had told herself that it would not have been fair to Miss Charlotte for her, Mary Louise, to be the first one to see him get off.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They stood on tiptoes to look at the bus. When the bus drove away, they saw two people coming across the highway.
“That’s him?” Charlotte asked.
“Must be,” Mary Louise said.
“Look like he got somebody with him,” Charlotte said. “Look like she white.”
“Yes’m,” Mary Louise said. “She look white from here.”
“Lord—don’t say that,” Charlotte said. “Don’t tell me Jackson done done something like that.”
Mary Louise did not say anything. She was both afraid and jealous of the other woman. She moved to the end of the porch and held onto a post to get a better look. She saw the woman who looked white going toward the car where Catherine stood.
“I think that’s Lillian,” Mary Louise said.
“Lillian? Who Lillian?” Charlotte said.
“Catherine sister,” Mary Louise said.
“Thank heavens,” Charlotte said. “Thank the good Lord. What they doing, talking?”
“Yes’m, I believe so. Yes’m, that’s Lillian. Her and Catherine just hugged. And I can see Brother. He talking to Jackson, and now they shaking hand. That’s Lillian.”
“Thank the Lord,” Charlotte said. She passed her hand over her forehead because she had suddenly begun to perspire. “You can’t tell what might get into children head these days.”
Mary Louise came from the end of the porch to stand beside Charlotte. Charlotte tried to see what was going on at the front, but could not, and she asked Mary Louise to look again.
“Just talking,” she said.
“Still talking to Raoul gals?” Charlotte asked. “Yes’m.”
“That just’s bad’s white,” Charlotte said. “Worser. They still talking?”
“I think they getting ready to come now,” Mary Louise said.
Charlotte began rubbing her hands together. What was she going to say when she saw Jackson? What was she going to do? It had been ten years since she saw him—ten long years. And now he was coming back.
How should she meet him? Where? The gate? In the road? Wait for him to come up to the house? Where?
“They coming,” Mary Louise said.
Charlotte’s heart beat faster. Her mouth began twitching uncontrollably. A heavy lump rose up in her throat, and her legs became weak.
No, she thought. Please; please don’t y’all fail me now. Able me to stand. Able me to see him first.
The car stopped, sending a cloud of dust all over the place. Charlotte did not know when she left the porch, how she went down the steps or through the gate. She threw her arms around Jackson, almost knocking him back inside the car. She laid her head against his chest, and there for the next few moments she prayed and wept.
She raised her head to look at him again. Brother stood at the back of the car with the suitcase. Mary Louise stood in front, looking at them.
“Stand back,” Charlotte said to Jackson. “Stand back.”
She stood away instead, and looked at him, and
nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
Then she went up to him again and kissed him hard on the mouth.
“Yes,” she said; “I prayed. And, yes, He sent you back.”
“How’ve you been, Aunt Charlotte?” Jackson asked, looking down at her.
Brother, standing at the back of the car with the suitcase, saw a thin smile come on Jackson’s face. That’s it, Brother thought. That’s what I seen out there. He just won’t let go.
“Little sick there in the grinding,” Charlotte said. “But I can’t feel no better ’an I do right now.”
“You look well,” Jackson said, looking down at her as though he wanted to say more, but something inside of him kept him from doing so. He looked at the girl who stood to the side.
“Isn’t that Mary Louise?” he said.
“Course that’s who that is,” Charlotte said. “Don’t tell me you done forgot Mary Louise now?”
“She has changed,” he said. “How are you?”
“All right,” she said, smiling.
“Been waiting like the dickens,” Brother said.
“All right, Brother,” Mary Louise said.
Brother laughed. Jackson looked toward the house. It was a small gray house with two doors facing the road. A line of hedges that needed cutting badly stood just inside of the picket fence, and a small mulberry tree to the left of the house threw its shadow across the yard and part of the porch. Jackson looked at all of this before going into the yard. Everything—his aunt, the house, the trees, the fence—seemed strange, and yet very familiar.
“Let’s go in,” Charlotte said; “you can get out that coat.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Jackson came out on the porch again, Brother and Mary Louise were sitting in the swing, and Charlotte sat in a rocker in the middle of the porch. Another chair was next to her chair. The chair had not been there before Jackson went inside.
“Come here and sit down, Jackson,” Charlotte said.
He sat in the chair beside her.