“Let’s get something fast and hard, Jobbo,” I said.
“Right,” Jobbo said. Then he started tapping his feet and popping his fingers, going “One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four …”
11
For the first couple hours in the field the next day, Marcus could hardly straighten his back. He wore a pair of my khaki pants and shirt and the old straw hat I had tried to give him the day before. Since I was bigger than he was, my clothes didn’t help his looks at all. And John and Freddie pitching that corn like they wanted to finish it all in one day wasn’t helping him out either.
Bonbon showed up an hour earlier than he had done the first day and set the horse right behind Marcus. Marcus kept up with the tractor for a row, then he had to get his sack. He pulled it on the left shoulder because the right shoulder was still sore. Bonbon noticed it but didn’t say anything. He just leaned a little on the pommel of the saddle and squinted his eyes from the hot sun.
It went on like that for the rest of the week. That white sun didn’t let up any. John and Freddie didn’t let up once, and Bonbon, neither. For my part, I couldn’t do a thing but keep the tractor going at the right speed. I spoke to the Old Man a couple of times, but I’m sure He didn’t hear a word I said. He had quit listening to man a million years ago. Now all He does is play chess by Himself or sit around playing solitary with old cards.
So man has to do it for himself now. No, he’s not going to win, he can’t ever win; but if he struggle hard and long enough he can ease his pains a little. I mean he can spread it out more and it won’t hurt so much all at once. This is what Marcus did by trying to keep closer to John and Freddie. He didn’t keep up all the way—no, that wasn’t possible; but he did stay a little closer. Every night when he came in, he bathed his hands in salt water to draw out the soreness. By the end of the week his hands and his shoulders had gotten much better.
But wait, wait, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I jumped to the weekend when I should have stopped at Thursday—because Thursday at twelve o’clock, Marcus saw Pauline Guerin for the first time. He was riding on the tractor beside me—not in the trailer where he had been all those other times—but standing beside me now. He was telling me about the boy he had killed. He said it was over a woman. It happened at a nightclub. The nightclub was packed and hot. There were women everywhere—women, women, and more women. But he saw only one. She had on a red dress—no, not red; sort of wine color. Everywhere she turned he was looking at her. She had the prettiest brown skin he had ever seen. He wanted her, he didn’t care what it cost him, he wanted her. Every chance he got, he got in her way. Finally she noticed him and gave him a smile. Soon they were dancing and he was giving her a pile of his jive talk. He almost had her outside the door when all of a sudden somebody jerked him around and knocked him down on the floor. He looked up and he saw the same nigger he had won a pile of money from in the toilet that night. Oh yes, he said, he had forgot to tell me he had been gambling all evening and he had won a pile of money. Well, the same nigger he had won all that money from owned the woman he was trying to get outside. The same black sonofabitch—and he had a punch like a mule. When he fell he heard the nigger (they called the nigger Hotwater) telling his other nigger buddies to drag his ass outside. Before he could get to his feet, two of Hotwater’s boys had him by the ankles, and the next thing he knew he was out there on his back looking at that yellow light over the door. He jumped up and he really wanted to run, but there was nowhere for him to go. The people had made a big circle round him and Hotwater, and, he said, that big, sweaty nigger wanted just one thing—his ass. He kept backing away, backing away, and that big nigger kept coming on him. Every time the nigger hit him he went down. After a while he got tired falling and he stood up and started hitting back. He said the nigger was strong and could hit like a mule, but he didn’t know anything about covering up. The nigger kept his face unguarded, and he kept his fist in the nigger’s face like you keep your fist on one of those little punching bags. His left cut the nigger’s face so much it looked like beef liver. “You know how beef liver look?” he asked me. “Kind of blackish red?” “Yes,” I said. “I know how it looks.” “Well, that’s how I had the nigger’s face,” he said. “Reddish black. The red was his blood, the black was his face.” So when the nigger saw he couldn’t get his face from off his fist, the nigger wanted to change tactics, Marcus said. Now he wanted his knife. But by the time the nigger got out his knife, he had got out his own, too. He said he let the nigger get two good whacks at him (he always believed in playing fair, himself); then he threw that knife into the nigger’s belly far as he could. He said his hand was red when it came back. But by then the police was there, dragging him to the car.
“They was probably there all the time,” he said. “But they just wanted to see one nigger kill another one. What they care.”
“And soon as they threw you in jail, you sent word to your nan-nan, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And she came to Marshall Hebert?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I wasn’t going to spend no five years in Angola for a chickenshit nigger like that. If he had o’ fit me fair he wouldn’t ‘a’ been dead.”
“And that’s all it means?” I asked.
“That’s all it means,” he said.
Just about then, we saw Pauline Guerin coming down the quarter.
12
Pauline wore a pink, flowery dress and a big white straw hat. She was walking slow—she always walked slow with her head high like she’s always thinking about something far away. As we came closer to her she smiled and waved at us. The next moment you couldn’t see her for the dust.
“Who was that?” Marcus said.
“Pauline,” I said.
“I ain’t never seen her before.”
“She lives down there.”
“She pretty,” Marcus said. “That other woman was something like that. But she darker than that other woman was. She married?”
“No, but you can say she is. She’s Bonbon’s woman.”
“Bonbon?”
“Bonbon,” I said.
“Well, that sure don’t cut no ice with me,” he said.
“It better,” I said. “It cut ice with everybody else in the quarter.”
“Well, not with this kid,” he said.
By then we were passing Bonbon’s house, and as I glanced toward the house I saw his wife Louise sitting on the gallery in the rocking chair. She was looking at Marcus. Marcus wasn’t standing more than two feet away from me, and Louise Bonbon was a good hundred and fifty feet away from the road, but I could tell she was looking only at Marcus.
“Ain’t that his wife?” Marcus was saying. He hadn’t noticed the look; he probably hadn’t seen her looking.
“That’s his wife,” I said.
“So he got two, huh? A black one down the quarter and a white one up here?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And y’all don’t do a thing, don’t even chunk on his house at night?”
“No, we don’t chunk on his house,” I said. “We were waiting for you to lead us.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m go’n do,” he said. “I’m taking that black woman.”
“Sure,” I said.
He jumped down and opened the gate for me, and after I had parked the two trailers before the crib, I put some water and fuel in the tractor and hooked up the empty ones. Then we went on back down the quarter.
Louise Bonbon was still on the gallery, still watching Marcus. I had seen her look at other black men in the quarter, but I had never seen her watch any like she was watching Marcus now. But Marcus wasn’t paying her any attention. He was thinking about Pauline. That evening he fell back again and he had to drag that sack on his shoulder again, and that black stallion was only about six inches behind him. But he didn’t mind at all. He was thinking about Pauline. He was thinking about the sweet words he was going to whisper in her e
ar. (He had told me what a great lover he was at dinner before we went back in the field. He had told me how once he got after a woman she couldn’t do a thing but fall for him.) Marcus was a pretty handsome fellow and he knew it. He was about six feet tall, slim, but well-built; he had medium brown skin and a pile of curly black hair. He had light brown eyes, a kind of straight nose, thin lips, and a well-shaped mustache. Marcus had a lot of Indian blood in him, and he probably had a lot of white blood in him, too. So already he was thinking about him and Pauline in bed. He had already seen those long, pretty arms round his neck, he had already heard the deep sighs from her throat. And after it was over, he was going to lay beside her and whisper words she had never heard before. He was going to tell her things Bonbon had never thought about. How could a white man—no, not even a solid white man, but a bayou, catfish-eating Cajun—compete with him when it came down to loving. So now he was glad Bonbon was there on the horse. He was glad the horse was so close he could feel his hot breath on the back of his neck. He was glad he could hear the sagg-sagg-sagg of the saddle every time the horse moved up. And even that hot, salty sweat running into his eyes couldn’t make him hate Bonbon.
That night when I came back from the yard, Marcus had already taken his bath, had already ate, and had dressed.
“Taking off?” I said.
“Going courting,” he said.
“Courting?”
“Miss Guerin.”
“Pauline?” I said, stopping him.
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t go there, Marcus,” I said.
“Take it easy, babyboy, I won’t hurt your overseer.”
“Don’t go there, Marcus,” I said.
“I’m going,” he said.
My grip tightened on his arm.
“Don’t go there, Marcus,” I said.
But he just stood there grinning at me.
“You want him to kill you, don’t you?”
“He ain’t go’n kill me, you know that.”
“Don’t push your luck, Marcus,” I said.
“See you later, babyboy,” he said, pulling my hand away from his arm and going down the steps.
13
Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully lived in the same house Pauline lived in, but in opposite sides. So it was Aunt Ca’line who told me what happened. She said she and Pa Bully were sitting out on the gallery that night, and Pauline and Tick-Tock were sitting on the gallery on Pauline’s side. Pauline sat in a chair by the door, and Tick-Tock, who had just come there a few minutes before, was sitting on the end of the gallery with her back against a post. There were mosquitoes that night. Aunt Ca’line was fanning them away with a piece of white rag (her special mosquito rag) and Pa Bully was using his old felt hat. Pauline had a white rag, too (maybe a diaper), and Tick-Tock had a piece of pasteboard. Every now and then Aunt Ca’line could hear the pasteboard hit against Tick-Tock’s leg or her arm.
The second bell had rung for church, and Aunt Ca’line could see people passing by the gate on their way to prayer meeting. She tried to remember the last time she had been to church. She even mentioned it to Pa Bully. (She didn’t call him Pa Bully, she called him Mr. Grant. And he called her Miss Caroline instead of Aunt Ca’line like the rest of us did.) She told him old as they were they ought to be in church. They were going to die soon, she said, and it wouldn’t look right for people to sing and pray over them in their coffins when they hadn’t been to church in so long a time. “You right there,” Pa Bully said. “Yes. Yes.” But even when he was saying it, Aunt Ca’line knew Pa Bully wasn’t going into any church. He hadn’t been inside of a church in twenty-some years.
Aunt Ca’line had been listening to the singing in the church only a few minutes when she saw somebody coming up the walk. She didn’t know who it was until he spoke.
“Miss Pauline Guerin live here?” he said.
Aunt Ca’line looked at Marcus but didn’t answer him. Pauline heard him asking about her but she didn’t even turn her head. It was quiet for nearly a minute. Tick-Tock slapped at a mosquito on her arm, then it was quiet for nearly another minute. Marcus still hadn’t moved. Aunt Ca’line said it looked like he wasn’t going to ever move, so she motioned toward Pauline across the way.
Marcus started up the steps and went back down. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully had this barb-wire fence that came up on the gallery all the way to the wall. The fence was brought up there, according to Aunt Ca’line, to keep Pauline and Bonbon’s two little mischievous mulattoes on their side. But putting the barb-wire fence up there was like putting nothing there. The two little boys had ridden the fence so much, a grown person could step over it without touching a strain of wire.
But one look at the fence, and Marcus changed his mind and went back out the yard. A second later Aunt Ca’line saw him coming back up Pauline’s walk.
“Miss Guerin,” he said.
Pauline didn’t speak and Marcus sat on the steps. It got quiet again. Every now and then Aunt Ca’line would swing her mosquito rag at a mosquito singing round her ear. Pa Bully had put away his hat for his pipe now, and Aunt Ca’line could hear the soft sucking on the cob pipe and then see a little stream of smoke every time Pa Bully heard or even felt a mosquito might be heading his way.
“Mr. Grant,” Aunt Ca’line said, warningly.
Because, according to Aunt Ca’line, she had caught Pa Bully cutting his eyes toward the other side of that fence where they had no business going.
14
Aunt Ca’line had been saying “Mr. Grant” warningly like that ever since the other one first started coming to the house: that was seven or eight years ago. The other one had never sat out on the gallery. He didn’t have to, because it had started long before he came there. It had started in the field, where he had all the right to call her over into a patch of corn or cotton or cane or the ditch—the one he was closest to—and make her lay down and pull up her dress. Then after he had satisfied his lust, he would get back on the horse like nothing had happened. And she would pull down her dress and go back to the work she was doing before he had called her to him. The other women wouldn’t say anything to her, and she wouldn’t say anything, either—like nothing in the world had happened.
But something had happened to Bonbon. At first he had laid with all and any of them. When his lust was up he had called the one closest to him. But after being with so many, now he settled for one. And when she saw what had happened, she saw her chance to make life a little sweeter.
“I’m tired of this field,” she told him. “I want get in that house. I’ll cook, I’ll be his maid, but I’m tired of this field.”
Bonbon told Marshall Hebert he was bringing her there. Marshall Hebert couldn’t say anything because Bonbon already knew something about Marshall’s past. Marshall told him to bring her; then he tried to break the news to Miss Julie Rand gently as possible. But, according to Aunt Ca’line, he could have saved his breath because Miss Julie had expected that this was coming all the time.
When Pauline came to the big house she quit wearing the gingham dresses she had worn in the field. Now she wore light-color dresses that had printed flowers on them. She bought two big white straw hats—one had a red ribbon and one had a green ribbon round the band. She wore loafers and not the hard work shoes the other women wore in the field. But only Pauline’s clothes had changed; she stayed pretty much the same person. From what I heard and knew about her she had always been very quiet. She was kind to everyone and had a lot of respect for the old people on the plantation. She didn’t go to church but nobody had ever heard her saying anything against it. When she first started working at the big house a lot of people in the quarter felt the same way she did: they knew that long as she lived on the plantation she would have to lay with Bonbon if he wanted her to. So why not make the best of it? Why not get out of the hot sun? Why not wear better clothes, why not eat better food? Then there were the other people in the quarter who pretended she was sinning more than any of them had ever don
e. They did all they could to hurt her, but she took all their insults with a little smile that said, “If he had chose you, where would you be right now?”
It wasn’t too long after Pauline went to the big house that Aunt Ca’line started warning Pa Bully about his eyes and his tongue. She would never say, “Mind your own business”; she would never say, “Bring your eyes back where they belong” or “Stop up your ears.” She would say only two words, “Mr. Grant”; and Pa Bully understood exactly what those two words meant. It had started the first night that Bonbon came to the house. It was summer just like it was now, and he had tied the horse at the gate and walked toward the house just like it was his own. He had not said anything to Aunt Ca’line or Pa Bully; he had said something softly to Pauline, who had been sitting in a chair by the door, and she had followed him inside. They had talked a few minutes, then they had gotten on the bed. Anybody who ever slept on a cornshuck mattress don’t have to be told the noise one can make, Aunt Ca’line said. And Pauline’s moaning round there didn’t pacify matters at all.
“Good Lord,” Pa Bully said. “What the world he got there?”
“Mr. Grant,” Aunt Ca’line said, warningly.
After a while Bonbon came out and got on the horse and rode away, and a few minutes later Pauline came back on the gallery. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully pretended they hadn’t been listening to anything. Farther up the quarter the people were singing in the church.
“Ain’t that Cobb doing the leading?” Pa Bully asked Aunt Ca’line.