“Sounds like his voice,” Aunt Ca’line said. She listened to the singing a while. “That’s Cobb,” she said. “Who else got a heavy voice like that.”
15
Less than a year after that night, Pauline had twins. But she still wasn’t in love with Bonbon. If he had walked out on her anytime, she would have gone with somebody else who would have been very glad to have her. Not because she had once belonged to this white man, but because she was still as decent as any other black woman on the place could be around him. But he didn’t walk out on her, he came to her more regularly now. He didn’t pick up the twins and bounce them on his knees like he would do his little girl later, but he did bring them food and clothes. He gave them toys at Christmas and he gave them pennies on Saturday to put in Sunday School. No, he didn’t give the money to the children, he gave it to Pauline to give to them. Because he and the twins could never have any close-ness at all. They could never call him papa no matter how many times they heard him in the bed with mama. They couldn’t even carry his name. They were called Guerin like their mother. Billy and Willy Guerin—and they were probably the worst two Billy and Willy the Good Lord had suffered for.
Bonbon was in love with Pauline when he brought her to the big house, but it took years for Pauline to fall in love with Bonbon. She didn’t want to fall in love with this white man because she knew nothing good could come of it. She knew she would have to be his woman long as she lived on the plantation and long as he wanted her, but she didn’t want to hold any feeling for him at all. She wanted it to be “come and go” and nothing else. She figured that after a while it would come to an end, anyhow.
But it didn’t come to an end. Aunt Ca’line said Bonbon didn’t miss coming there a week after he started. He came summer and winter. When the weather was good he usually came in the truck. When it had rained he would come on the horse because the truck would get stalled in the mud. Many times he got wet coming down the quarter and he would have to change his clothes at the fireplace and wrap a blanket round him while Pauline dried the clothes on the back of a chair.
After so many years, Pauline did fall in love with Bonbon. She couldn’t help but fall in love with him. She knew he loved her more than he did his wife up the quarter or his people who lived on the river.
So now the shuck mattress was quiet. There wasn’t any need for all the noise, because now Bonbon and Pauline’s love was much softer—more tender. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully could hardly hear the mattress at all from their room. The twins sleeping on their bed in the kitchen probably couldn’t hear the mattress either.
But this was not the only place where Pauline and Bonbon went together. Sometimes it happened at the big house while they made Bishop, Marshall Hebert’s butler, look out for Marshall. Bishop hated what he had to do—but what else could he do? If he had mentioned to Marshall that Bonbon had gone farther than that kitchen, Bonbon, or Marshall himself, probably would have killed him. So he kept his mouth shut. He went out on the front gallery and looked out for Marshall like Bonbon told him to do. Since he wasn’t supposed to be out there unless he was cleaning up or serving someone, Bishop had to keep himself hid. There was a palm tree on the left side of the gallery and he stood behind the tree all the time he was out there. Sometimes he had to stay there an hour. If Bonbon went to sleep he would have to stay even longer.
Marshall never did catch Pauline and Bonbon, but even if he had he probably wouldn’t have done anything about it. Bonbon already had something on Marshall, and long as he held this proof Marshall couldn’t do a thing but go along with him no matter what he did. This went for stealing, too. Marshall knew Bonbon was stealing from him. He had seen a lantern in the crib at night; he had heard the children laughing in there while they shelled corn that Bonbon was going to sell in Bayonne the next day. Marshall had missed hogs, he had missed cows—he had even missed bales of cotton from the barn. But since he couldn’t do a thing about it, he pretended that it wasn’t happening.
Bonbon was a simple man and a brutal man, was the way Aunt Ca’line described him. He was brutal because he had been brought up in a brute-taught world and in brute-taught times. The big house had given him a horse and a whip (he did have a whip at first) and they had told him to ride behind the blacks in the field and get as much work out of them as he could. He did this, but he did more: he fell in love with one of the black women. He couldn’t just take her like he was supposed to take her, like they had given him permission to take her—no, he had to fall in love. When the children came he loved them, too. He couldn’t tell them he loved them, he wasn’t allowed to tell them that. He probably never told it to Pauline, and maybe he never told it to himself. But he could feel it, and when he did he tried to show it by giving them toys and clothes. No, no, no, he never gave it to them, he gave it to Pauline to give to them. When they made five years old he gave them a BB gun to play with together. Aunt Ca’line said the moment they learned how to shoot the gun, nobody and nothing was safe on the place. If they weren’t shooting at another child, they were shooting at a dog or a chicken. They put a hole in the back of Jobbo’s little girl’s neck, and Jobbo had to take the girl to the doctor and pay the doctor bill himself. They shot the mule that Charlie Jordan was riding and the mule threw Charlie in the ditch. While he was trying to get up, Billy and Willy kept on shooting at him. Charlie never did get back on the mule. He ran one way, the mule took off in the other direction.
Aunt Ca’line said the day after the children got the BB gun, she noticed that her number one rooster wasn’t walking straight. The rooster was acting like he was drunk. He didn’t know if he wanted to go left or right.
“What’s wrong with that crazy chicken?” Aunt Ca’line said. “Don’t tell me them two or three little hens out there done finally wored him down—Mr. Grant, catch that chicken for me,” she told Pa Bully.
Pa Bully sat on the bottom step, shelling corn and dropping it on the ground. All of the other chickens ran there to pick corn—all but the rooster. He staggered left, he staggered right; he went backward, he went forward. He looked like a child walking a rail and trying to keep his balance.
“Chip, chip, chip,” Pa Bully said.
Finally, the rooster staggered toward the steps. Pa Bully grabbed him under the wings.
“Both eyes gone,” he said. “Had to be shooting fast to get ’em both like that.”
Aunt Ca’line took the rooster to the other side to show Pauline what her children had done. Pauline and Bonbon were in the kitchen. Bonbon was standing by the window drinking coffee. Pauline sat at the table cutting okra.
“You see what them two little bastards done done my chicken?” Aunt Ca’line said to Pauline.
“Oh, Aunt Ca’line, I’m so sorry,” Pauline said. “That gun ain’t causing nothing but trouble,” she said to Bonbon. Bonbon sipped from his coffee but didn’t say anything. “I’ll pay for him,” Pauline said to Aunt Ca’line.
“Pay for him?” Aunt Ca’line said. “Pay for this rooster? This rooster do the work of five on this plantation, and you go’n pay for him? What you go’n do, give me five roosters?”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Ca’line,” Pauline said.
“You can be sorry if you want,” Aunt Ca’line said, shaking the rooster in front of Pauline’s face. “If I catch either one of them little mulatto bastards on my side again I’m go’n poison him. You hear me? I’m go’n poison the little shit.”
Bonbon never said anything. He didn’t even look at Aunt Ca’line. He just stood there sipping his coffee.
Aunt Ca’line didn’t poison Billy or Willy, she just had the barb-wire fence brought up on the gallery. But that didn’t do any good, either. The children got on the fence and rode it the way you ride a horse. The stickers on the fence didn’t bother them at all. Aunt Ca’line tried to get Marshall Hebert to run electricity through the fence, but Marshall told her that was against the law.
“Ain’t shooting out people chicken eye ’gainst the law?” she asked
Marshall. “Ain’t making mules throw old people in the ditch ’gainst the law, too?”
“Yes,” Marshall said. “But I guess we’ll have to put up with it.”
“How long?” Aunt Ca’line asked.
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. “Maybe one day Bonbon’ll get generous and buy them two shotguns. Maybe they’ll load them and shoot at each other at the same time.”
Aunt Ca’line and everybody else on the place waited for Bonbon to buy the two shotguns. He never did.
16
They’d been sitting on the gallery half an hour and nobody had said a thing. Every now and then Aunt Ca’line swung her mosquito rag just in case a mosquito was headed that way. At the same time she could hear Pa Bully sucking on the pipe and blowing out a stream of smoke just in case the mosquito changed his mind about biting her and decided to get him. Aunt Ca’line wasn’t looking toward the other end of the gallery any more so she didn’t know what Pauline was doing. But Tick-Tock was still slapping at mosquitoes with the pasteboard, and every now and then Marcus would hit at one on his arm or his face.
Things were so quiet on the gallery, Aunt Ca’line could hear all the singing and praying in the church. She was thinking how she and Pa Bully ought to get back in the church again. She wondered what the people would think if she walked into church Sunday morning and told them she wanted to pick up the Cross. She was thinking about this seriously when all of a sudden one of Pauline’s little boys bust into the yard.
“Now, what?” Aunt Ca’line asked herself. “What—where is that other one?” (The little boy busting into the yard had made her forget about church.) “When you see one, you see two, now where is that other one? Where—” Then she saw the dust. She didn’t see the boy—he was running too fast; she saw the dust trailing him up the quarter. “Now what they done done?” she asked herself. “Whose pig they been riding this time?”
Then she started thinking about the teacher. The teacher had gone around with the shakes two weeks before he broke down and ran away from Hebert’s plantation. And the reason was this: The teacher had whipped one of the little boys for hitting Jobbo’s little girl. He didn’t see which one had hit the little girl and the little girl wasn’t too sure, either, but she said she thought it was Billy. Billy said it wasn’t him, it was Willy. Willy said no, it wasn’t him, it was Billy. So the teacher said, “Come here, Billy,” and whipped Billy. Then Willy said it wasn’t Billy, it was him, Willy. Then Billy said he was going to tell his paw.
The teacher said he had been living in the South long enough to know that no black child was going up to a white man and say “paw,” so it wasn’t this that had brought on the shakes. What scared him half to death was that one of the other children might let his mouth slip in front of Bonbon and get Bonbon to believing that he (the teacher) was allowing Billy and Willy to go around school calling him “father.” Though every grownup on the place and every child at school knew that Bonbon was Billy and Willy’s father, they still were not allowed to say it in public. Billy and Willy, for all everybody was supposed to know, came out of a cabbage patch. There was no father. Or if there was, he surely was not white.
So the teacher went around with the shakes for two weeks, because he knew that one of the children was going to let his mouth slip in front of Bonbon. And he knew then that Bonbon and his dozen or so brothers were going to come to the churchhouse and drag him out of there and lynch him. But after two weeks had passed and Bonbon still had not showed up, the teacher thought he had better leave because the tension was slowly killing him, anyhow.
Aunt Ca’line was thinking about the teacher when the second boy bust into the yard. Then halfway up the walk both of them threw on brakes. They came toward the gallery now so quietly, you would have thought they had never done a minute’s devilment in all their lives.
“How y’all feel there, Aunt Ca’line?” they spoke to her and Pa Bully.
“So-so, and y’all?” she and Pa Bully said.
“Fine, thank you ma’am,” they said at the same time.
They looked at Marcus but didn’t speak to him. They spoke to Tick-Tock, then they went up on the gallery where Pauline sat by the door.
“Hi, mo’ dear,” they both said at the same time, both kissing her on the face at the same time.
“Y’all ain’t been up to nothing, I hope,” Pauline said.
“They was born up to something,” Aunt Ca’line thought. “What you asking them that for?”
“No’m,” they said at the same time.
“Y’all go in there and wash your hands and eat,” Pauline said.
“All right, mo’ dear,” they said. They kissed her again. But this time the one who had kissed her on the right jaw before kissed her on the left jaw, and the one who had kissed her on the left jaw kissed her on the right one. Or so it looked to Aunt Ca’line. But who could be sure who did what? One was the other one and the other one was the same one. The only person alive who knew Billy from Willy was Pauline. Even Bonbon couldn’t tell them apart.
After the twins went inside everything got quiet again.
“Think I’ll make it on in,” Tick-Tock said.
“Taking off, Tickey?” Pauline said.
“Yeah,” Tick-Tock said. “Got to hit that cotton field again in the morning.”
Tick-Tock said good night to Pauline and then to Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully, and went out of the yard. She hadn’t said anything to Marcus.
“Can I speak to you?” Marcus said, standing up and facing Pauline.
“Speak,” she said.
“Somewhere by usself,” he said.
“What you got to say to me, you can say it in front of Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully.”
“Come, Mr. Grant, let’s go inside,” Aunt Ca’line said.
“No, don’t y’all leave,” Pauline said. “Your name Marcus, ain’t it?” she said to him.
“Yes,” Marcus said.
“Say what’s on your mind, Marcus.”
“I want us to speak by usself,” he said.
“Then you better leave,” she said.
“You ain’t even heard what I had to say.”
“If you can’t say it in front of Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully, I don’t need to hear it,” she said.
“I just want come and see you sometime,” he said.
“I didn’t hear that,” she said. “You can leave.”
But he didn’t move. He stood there looking at her like he wanted to come closer and touch her. Pauline wore a light green dress that had dark green leaves and red flowers. She looked fresh and pretty sitting there.
“And don’t come back, please,” she said. “I don’t want no trouble.”
“They don’t have to be no trouble,” Marcus said.
“No, they won’t be any,” she said, getting up. “Good night.”
He started toward her.
“Pauline—”
Just about then the twins came into the doorway. Aunt Ca’line could see just the front of them; she didn’t know if they had anything behind their backs or not.
“Y’all get back inside,” Pauline said to the twins. They moved back. “Yes?” she said to Marcus.
“You the prettiest lady I know,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “Good night.”
“Can I speak to you sometime?”
“I speak to everybody,” she said. “Good night.”
She went in. He stood there a while, then he went down the steps.
“That one won’t be here long,” Pa Bully said. “And on the other hand he might.”
“Six feet under, you mean?” Aunt Ca’line said.
“Six feet under,” Pa Bully said.
17
Marcus got up early the next morning and went to the yard with me to get the tractor. He thought he was going to see Pauline, but I could have told him she didn’t go to work until nine o’clock. That morning in the field, John and Freddie worked him just as hard as they had done the day before
and the day before that. At twelve he went up the quarter with me again, still hoping to see Pauline. He saw Louise Bonbon sitting out on the gallery, but he paid no more attention to her than he did a weed standing ’side the road. He still didn’t know she was watching him. He saw her looking that way but he still didn’t know it was him she was looking at. He looked for Pauline again when we came up to the yard. He didn’t see her at first, but as we were getting ready to go back down the quarter he saw her coming from the store. He watched her walk across the yard.
“Jim,” she said, waving at me when she came closer.
“How’s it going, chicken?”
“So-so,” she said. Then she looked at Marcus and nodded.
“Hot enough for you?” I said.
“Too hot,” she said.
“You got it made, chicken,” I said.
She smiled and went toward the house. And Marcus just stood there looking at her, looking at the smooth, easy way her body moved in that dress. I knew where his mind was. It was there and nowhere else.
“Let’s get to getting,” I said.
We started on back down the quarter, and again I saw Louise watching him from the gallery.
That evening Bonbon was out there again. Marcus fell back and had to drag the sack on his shoulder. He still thought he was going to make Pauline, but you could see he wasn’t sure as he was the day before. You could see him watching Bonbon from the side. He wondered what it was about Bonbon could make Pauline love him. He couldn’t understand how Pauline could love a white man. How could she possibly love one? He still didn’t want to believe she did.
He went back down there again that night. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully were sitting on the gallery just like the night before. Aunt Ca’line was fighting off mosquitoes with her special mosquito rag, and Pa Bully was fighting them with his hat. Pauline was sitting by the door in her chair, and Tick-Tock was sitting on the end of the gallery against the post. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully were talking softly to each other when she looked up and saw Marcus coming into Pauline’s yard. Aunt Ca’line heard Tick-Tock saying, “Lover-boy.”