Dark Don't Catch Me (22 page)

“Yeah, we know who dat is. Prettiest piece around. Huh, Jack?”

“Sure.” Jack laughs. “Just like we tole you, Yankee. Dey come down to The Toe beggin' us. See dat?” “Dat's Miz Hooper,” Claus repeats.

“Hey,” Jack Rowan says, “you, Yankee! I bet I know something you'd chicken out on.” “Naw, you don't.”

“Well, if up North dey just don't bow and scrape around like you say, maybe you
won't
chicken, but I bet you will.”

“Put your money where your mouth is.”

“Bet you don't dare go up to dat car an poke yo head in de window and cluck yo tongue at her.”

“Huh? Cluck my tongue? Man, I'd dare go up to that car and do more than that.”

“Like what more?” Rowan looks at Millard. “Huh?”

Millard shrugs. “Ask her for a date.”

“You'd dare do that?” Raleigh says.

“Sure I'd dare.”

“Miz Hooper, she nice,” Claus says. “Don't scare her.”

“He ain't gonna scare her. He just gonna ask her for
a
date. Oh, dat wouldn't scare her,” Raleigh says.

“Uh-uh,” Rowan says. “She be thrilled to her white bones.”

“Sure,” Raleigh says. “Dat happens all de time round here.”

Millard Post says, “Now who's a chicken?”

“I ain't saying
I'd
ask her for a date;
you
saying it, boy. Not me!” Rowan answers. “You making the big talk; not me.”

“I would, too.”

“I got a quarter says you wouldn't,” Raleigh says.

Millard looks at him, looks down at the car, figures he could do it and run like hell. What the hell? Show these damn squares something. Woman wouldn't know him anyhow. He says: “You want to pay me now or after?”

“Hey, don't scare Miz Hooper, Miller. She nice.”

“I'm not going to scare her, f'Chrissake!”

“I'll pay you
after,”
Raleigh says, his eyes waiting for Post's to relent.

Rowan nudges him. Rowan says: “We don't want no trouble, Pit.”

“He ain't gonna do nothin',” Raleigh tells Rowan. “He just talk!”

“You watch talk,” Millard Post says. “You just watch talk.” He looks again at the car, at the fields to the left, where he could run. He calculates and says again, “You just watch talk,” and then starts to move.

“You damn fool nigger!” Rowan barks curtly. “You damn nervy nigger. You want to hang?” But Millard doesn't listen; Millard feels big now, bigger than anyone. He feels them watching him; he'll show them. Christ, he can run like hell after.

“Hey, I ain't giving you no quarter!” Raleigh blurts out. “Hey, nigger, bet's off, you hear?”

“Cousin Miller!” Claus squeals. “He ain't givin' you
a
quarter.”

“Gawd, Pit, he gonna do it!”

“Bet's off!” Raleigh yells, watching Millard Post's back, watching him amble down slowly in the direction of the car.

“I'm going after my cousin,” Claus cries, starting to run; but Jack Rowan grabs the boy by the collar. “No you ain't either, nigger,” he says. “You going the opposite way, same as us. C'mon! C'mon. Let's get outa here!”

“He my cousin,” Claus protests.

“C'mon,” Pit Raleigh yells, helping Rowan drag Claus. “Fly, legs! Gawd, fly!”

Millard Post doesn't look back, doesn't see them run; he just keeps going toward the car; thinking, I'll show them; you just watch talk; then afterward, I can run like hell. How she going to know who did it?

• • •

Inside the Posts' shack, Thad Hooper stands with his coat and hat on, ready now to leave. Bissy and Bryan stand by him near the door. Old Hussie sits in the corner in the rocker, smoking her pipe wordlessly.

“… so now that it's all settled,” Hooper concludes the matter, “you stay off that corn, boy. You hear?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Thad. I certainly do most ‘preciate all this, Mr. Thad.”

“Well, I figured there was no sense deducting that money from your family's share of the crops, or from Hus's wages. No sense them paying because of you. And God knows you'd never save it from your mill check, so we'll drop it. And you can do those extra chores I mentioned … But I'm warning you, boy. No corn on my place!”

Bissy says, “Don't you worry, Mr. Thad. I'm gone keep tight rein on dis no-good nigger.”

Bryan, looking and sounding sheepish, scratches his head and drawls, “Don't worry ‘bout me, Mr. Thad. I got my lesson studied by now.”

“Okay.” Hooper starts to reach for the doorknob, but glances back at Hussie before he does. “Nice to have a day off, hah, Hus? We sure appreciate your taking the trouble with the barbecue last night.”

The old lady rocks and nods.

“Well,” Hooper says, his hand going to the door, “I'll be — ”

When suddenly from outside there is the sound of
a
woman screaming.

Jerking the door open, Thad Hooper sees his wife running up the path, the car door left open behind her as she comes stumbling toward him. In the dusky lige off toward the fields he sees a Negro running, sees his dark pants and his white shirt; sees a jacket drop in the road; then he feels Vivie's arm cling to him, her body trembling.

“Thad, he — ” She is sobbing now so that she can hardly speak the words. “He — tried to — ”

“Who, honey?
Who!”
Thad Hooper demands. “Who tried to do what?”

T
HE
sharp sound of a knocking on his front door jolts Hollis Jordan awake. He had fallen asleep on the old stuffed divan beside the fireplace in his front room, where he had been since noon, when he came back from town, dazed by the news of Ada Pirkle's death. For hours he had lain there smoking and tossing, getting up now and then to pace from the fireplace to the window and back. The bag of groceries he had bought still leaned against the chair on the floor where he had let it fall when he had come home. His thoughts had been as restless and desultory as his movements, thinking from Kathryn to Ada, and from Juddville to Paradise; from the boisterous boy — heir to half the wealth of Criss County, cocky and arrogant and aggressive — to the shell of a man living off the land, listless, lonely and unwanted….

Shaking himself as the rapping continues and grows more and more impatient, Hollis Jordan sees the hands at midnight, on his clock. He frowns and forces himself up to his feet, mumbling, “Who the hell at this hour?” He shuffles sleepily toward the door and opens it.

“Where is she, Jordan?”

Jordan blinks back at the little Negro man.

“Don't pretend,” Doctor James says. “She left my house half an hour ago.” He stretches to try to see behind Hollis Jordan's large figure into the front room, standing on tiptoe, his dark face sullen and angry.

“I don't know who you mean!” Jordan says, stepping back, allowing the doctor to enter.

He pushes past Jordan.

“I don't know who the hell you're looking for,” Jordan says, “but there's no one here.”

The doctor leans around the corner of the front room, glancing over it; then glaring at Jordan. “Reverend Greene told me about it, Jordan.”

“Huh?”

“Don't act dumb. I'm going to have it out with you
and
Barbara. She may as well come on out!”

Hollis Jordan begins to understand. “Well, my God, you don't think she'd be
here,
do you?”

“I'm asking you where she is.”

“I don't know … I'm not her keeper.”

“She's not here?”

Hollis Jordan shakes his head. “Did you think she would be?”

“All right,” the doctor says, “I don't know whether you're telling the truth or not, but you're going to listen to some truth, Hollis Jordan. I'd planned to call on you tomorrow to straighten this whole matter out, but when Barbara left suddenly tonight, I decided it couldn't wait.”

“Look, it isn't my fault,” Jordan protests, “I don't know why you're placing the blame on me because your daughter — ”

“Just hear what I have to say.” The doctor stands peering up at Jordan angrily. “Then we'll see … I vowed I'd never say this to you, but I'm forced to.”

“I think you're mistaken somewhere along the line.”

“No, listen. You're the one that's mistaken. You've been mistaken since you left Criss County … about a lot of things … Did you know that Kathryn is dead?”

Jordan stares at the man. “Kathryn? You
know
her?”

“Kathryn was my sister-in-law … But how would you know that, Jordan? You were never much for coming around and meeting the family, were you?”

Jordan stands stunned. He murmurs, “When did she die?”

“About two months after the baby died.”

“I'm — sorry to hear that.”

“Are
you?” The doctor glares at Jordan. “I thought you'd be relieved.”

“My father should have written. Things would have been different.”

“Your father never got over what you did to Kathryn. No, Jordan, I'm not talking about the fact that you married her. That was the only decent thing you did do, even if it wasn't legal between white and Negro — ” “Kathryn wasn't all Negro!”

“She was Negro, Jordan. You never wanted to believe it. She was a light Negro, but Negro — or nigger, as you put it that night. The same way Barbara's a Negro.”

Jordan leans against the wall, rubbing his eyes. “Christ!”

“Your father loved Kathryn as if she was his own. He was a good man. After you left he helped Kathryn as much as he could; did everything he could to save her. He never got over how you treated her.”

“I loved her,” Jordan says almost in a whisper.

“You didn't love anyone. You just took what you wanted.”

“No. No, I was just — just very young — and a coward,” Jordan answers, his mind a web of confusion spiraling dizzily back through the years.

• • •

Seeing the scene of their childhood — his and Kathryn's — the same long, green, luxurious lands enveloping them, drawing a circle around them. Inside was the plantation — for him the manor house, for her the colored quarters; but for both, a life inside the same circle.

And growing up together in the glad-easy game of boy and girl, leaping through the same wind-stirred fields together, and running down the same sprawling hills to the same secret meeting spot by the glen …

Until Kathryn to him became not the little Negro girl who lived on his place, but a feeling — an easy sound of soft laughter, husky voice inflections, funny-sweet way she said his name —
Haw-lis.
She had brushed-up hair above her temple, a vein that throbbed there when she was tired. He knew the sudden way she would lean forward when excited, though her voice stayed always low.

Kathryn, the girl he loved; soft body and the look of her lithe limbs wearied from loving. Kathryn, the girl his life was bound to, swelling her female flesh with the blossom of their passion. Kathryn, whom he married, stealing off with her on the wild-crazy night he swore nothing would keep them apart again; and whom he brought back as his bride, arrogantly, rebelliously; until the secret of his rebellion broke open, baring the unconscious time-worried white man's scorn:
I
married a nigger!

And letting whisky feed the fire, he kicked her with his coward's love-and-hate crazed hardness, shouting, “I don't want a nigger kid!”

• • •

“Yes, you're a coward.” The doctor's solemn voice slices through the dizzy recollecting. “And you wear it like a medal.”

“I could never bring myself to act the way I believed,” Jordan says quietly. “When I married Kathryn, my father gave us his blessing. He actually did … He had guts — I never had. I couldn't forget she was a nig — Negro. Always — ” Jordan grimaces — ”always I put a match to something and then when I get it burning, I'm scared. Can't follow through; never could … even during the war. Used to read the papers and just cuss the goddam Germans; just cuss them and cry, and I couldn't — ”

Doctor James cuts in tersely, “Jordan, I didn't come out here to soul-scratch with you. I came out here to tell you I want you to stay away from Barbara.”

“Me?” Jordan stares at the Negro doctor. “But you must be crazy!”

“Joh Greene confirmed my suspicions, Jordan.”

“Joh
did! Hell, part of the reason — no, no — the whole reason I went to Joh was because I saw myself somehow in Dix Pirkle. Saw him about to do what I did, and got angry; angry at
him
for what
I
did a long time ago. I'd see them meeting night after night up here around my place, and I'd get reminded — and in some funny way, I felt a loyalty toward Ada. I might have married Ada, and Dix might have been my son. Might have been me.”

Doctor James says, “Wait a minute.
Dix Pirkle?”

• • •

Standing in her nightgown at the top of the stairs, Kate Bailey calls down to her husband, “What is it, Storey?”

She sees him in his robe and pajamas at the doorway to their house, hears the gruff voices of men who are angry and excited, and calls again, “Storey, what is it?”

Then he shuts the door and bounds up the stairs toward her, taking the steps by twos. “Trouble,” he says. “I have to get dressed.”

He starts into the bedroom, but she catches his bathrobe sleeve. “Storey, it's midnight! What kind of trouble?”

“That smart nigger from up North. He made a pass at Vivs!”

“He
what?”

“Thad was down in The Toe tonight and Vivs waited out front of the Posts' for him. That smart nigger came along and made a pass at her. Put his hands on her! Smart, goddam Yankee nigger! Thad's got him out in the car with Doc Sell. We going to learn him a lesson,” Storey says.

He pulls away from his wife and rushes into their bedroom, slipping out of his robe, and the jacket of his pajamas. He grabs his pants from the back of the chair and pulls them over his pajama pants. “That smart nigger! We'll show him what for!”

Kate Bailey stands in the entrance to the doorway, watching her husband carefully.

Then she says, “Storey, what are you going to do to the boy?”

“What do you think we're going to do? Give him a good whupping!”

“I don't like it, Storey. I don't like it at all!”

“Listen, Kate, when a smart nigger comes down here after our women, what the hell
can
a man do! Stand by and let him maul whoever he takes a fancy to? Let our niggers see him get away with it so they think
they
can get away with it too?” He pushes his feet into his shoes, not bothering with socks. “Smart nigger!”

“Well, what exactly did he do?”

“He made a pass at her! He mauled her! I can't give you a blow-by-blow description now, but he made a pass at her!” He pulls a shirt from a hook in the closet, getting it on his back frantically.

“I don't want you to go, Storey.”

“Kate, Thad's my best friend! If some smart nigger had tried it on you, you think he wouldn't go along with me?”

“Are you sure it could have happened to me?”

“What's that mean, for the love of Pete?” He grabs his belt and shoves it through the loops.

“You know what you told me about Vivie this morning.”

Storey Bailey stops what he is doing and stares at her. “Kate!”

“Well?”

“Oh, Kate, look — after all! This is a nigger!”

“You said this morning it could be
anyone.”

“Kate, you and me and Thad and Vivs have been friends for years.” Storey looks uncertainly into his wife's steady gaze. “Look, you don't actually think that Vivs — ”

“I don't want you to go. I'm not saying any more than that. I just don't want you to go.”

“Kate, I think the world and all of Thad!”

“That may be. I don't deny that. I feel very sorry for Thad.”

“Oh, no, Kate! Not a nigger … She wouldn't.”

“Storey, I didn't say she would, or she did. I simply say that I don't want you to go along with them. I've never liked Doc Sell's ways anyhow. I don't want you to be a party to this. It's after midnight.”

Storey Bailey stands limply, holding the unfastened belt buckle in his hand, frowning. “Kate, Thad would never understand if I — if I didn't go along. Kate, he's beside himself with rage. I'm afraid if I don't go, Doc Sell will work him up all the more.”

“I'm sorry for what Thad can't understand …
I
suppose some day an understanding will be forced on him, if it's gone this far.”

“Kate, I think you're jumping to conclusions. What
I
mean is — about last night, Kate. About last night … Now, sure, Vivs was upset, but maybe I made it too strong when I said she was — well —
that
kind of woman. I was drinking a lot.”

“It's natural to want to protect her, Storey, but I'm only going to say two more things on this whole subject. One,
I
don't approve of this kind of midnight justice, particularly when Doc Sell is involved. We have courts of law, Storey, and it isn't right to take the law in your own hands. Two, let Thad Hooper set his own house in order. It's not your job to do that.”

“Kate, listen! It isn't Thad's house only! It's mine, and it's every white man's in this country. Kate, you know yourself there's five niggers to every white man. We got to keep them in line! If that smart nigger gets away with what he does — ”

“It isn't likely he will, Storey, if he's in Doc Sell's hands.” “Thad's my best friend, Kate. He's in an awful rage!” “I'm sorry for Thad,
and
for Vivian Hooper.”

“You don't believe she had anything to do with it, Kate? I wouldn't want you believing that! About last night — I exaggerated, Kate. I exaggerated, hear?”

“I know your loyalty to Thad. I hope I know your loyalty to me, Storey. I don't want you to go. I don't
want
you to!”

“Kate, what'll I tell Thad?”

“Tell him you're not going.”

“He'll never forgive me, Kate, if I don't go.”

Kate Bailey answers flatly, “And I'll never forgive you if you
do
go. Make your choice, Storey.”

• • •

There is no wind, only light from a shadow-striped moon, and the leftover heat from the day. A few feet behind them the Naked Hag stands like a shabby shack long since deserted, left for the night to hide. In the distance, the midnight freight squeals at the crossing off in the cypress swamps, and down on Route 109 the sparse traffic of trucks and cars seem like minute dots occasionally lighting the blue-colored blackness.

They have found an open space on the hill which is free of cinder dirt and bears some grass; they have spread the auto robe on it and are sitting beside one another. Below them lays Paradise, dark and sleepy, but inescapably there.

“Look at it,” he says. “It's like some bitch asleep. Looks almost vulnerable. Tricks you.”

She puts her hand on his knee.

He says, “Dad's taking it hard. Poor Dad. My God, he really loved her, I think.” He laughs harshly. “I think it's the only way we're different. I mean, Colonel loves what belongs to him. He loves his own, no matter. Sort of my country right or wrong, only applied to family, and to people in Paradise. He told me tonight that some day I'd realize that my roots are me, and if one of my roots is pulled up, part of me goes with it. In a way it's like saying you never escape the world you're born into, because it's you, both good and bad. Somehow I don't believe that.”