God's Little Acre (23 page)

“That ain’t a fair question, son. You know good and well how tired I am when Sunday comes, after digging all week long in the holes. God doesn’t miss me there, anyhow. He knows why I can’t come. I’ve spoken to Him about such things all my life, and He knows pretty well all about it.”

“What’s all that got to do with her?” Buck asked, pointing his fork at Griselda. “I was talking about her before you butted in about something else.”

“Nothing, son. I ain’t got a thing in the world to do with her. She already knows about it. I was talking for your benefit so you would try to learn more about living. If I was you, son, when I went to bed tonight, I’d get down on my knees in the dark and talk to God about it. He can tell you things nobody else can, and maybe He’ll tell you how you ought to act with Griselda. He’ll tell you, if you’ll only take the time and trouble to listen, because if there’s anything in the world He’s crazy about, it’s seeing a man and a woman fools about each other. He knows then that the world is running along as slick as grease.”

T
Y
T
Y STAYED UP
late that night trying to talk to Buck. He knew it was a duty he owed his children to convince them that living was deeper than the surface they saw. The girls seemed to realize that, but the boys did not. Ty Ty knew there would be plenty of time later to talk to Shaw, and he gave all his attention to Buck for Griselda’s sake. Buck was irritated by the things he tried to explain and he acted as though he did not wish to understand.

“You boys just don’t seem to catch on,” Ty Ty said, dropping his hands at his sides. “You boys seem to think that if you have a little money to spend and a new raincoat or some such knickknack and a belly full of barbecue, there ain’t another thing to be concerned about. I wish I could tell you all about it. It’s a ticklish thing to try to explain, because I don’t know none too much about using words, and if I did know, it wouldn’t help matters much because it’s something you’ve got to feel. It’s just like the fellow said: ‘It’s there, or it ain’t there, and there are only two ways about it.’ You boys appear like it ain’t there. Just take a walk off by yourself some time and think about it, and maybe it will come to you. I don’t know what else to tell you to do.”

“I don’t know what in hell you’re trying to say,” Buck broke in, “but if it’s what Griselda’s got, I don’t want it. She went over there to Horse Creek Valley and got shot full of something. And if you ask me, I’ll say it was some of Will Thompson. That lint-head!”

“Will Thompson was a real man,” Darling Jill said.

“A real man, huh? And you got a shot, too, didn’t you? It’s a damn good sign when you come back here with your mind made up to marry Pluto Swint all of a sudden. You’d be in a mess now if he wouldn’t marry you.”

“Will was a real man, anyway.”

“What in hell is a real man? Will Thompson wasn’t any bigger than I am. He wasn’t any stronger, either. I could throw him any morning before breakfast.”

“It wasn’t the way he looked that made him different. It was how he was made inside. He could feel things, and you can’t.”

Buck got up and looked at them for a moment from the door.

“What do you take me for, anyway—a sucker? Don’t you reckon I know damn well you and Griselda are making up that for an excuse? I’m not all that dumb. You can’t suck me in with that kind of talk.”

He left the house and no one knew where he had gone. Ty Ty waited a while, thinking Buck might come back in a few minutes and listen with more reason after he had cooled off in the night, but at twelve he had not returned. Ty Ty got up then to go to bed.

“Buck will come around all right when he gets a little older, Griselda. Just try to be patient with him till he lives a little more. It takes some people a lifetime, almost, to learn some things.”

“I’m afraid he’ll never learn,” she said. “Not before it’s too late, anyway.”

Ty Ty patted her shoulder.

“You girls are all wrought up over Will getting killed. Just go to bed now and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning things will look a lot different.”

“But he’s dead,” Darling Jill said. “I can’t forget that he’s dead.”

“Maybe it’s best that he is now. The three of you couldn’t have stayed over there in Scottsville. Rosamond was married to him, and you and Griselda would have made a mess that the law doesn’t allow.”

Long after everybody else in the house was asleep, Ty Ty lay awake thinking. Buck had not returned, and Griselda was alone in the room across the hall, crying. For nearly an hour he had lain on his side listening to the restless toss of her body as she lay sleepless upon the bed. But she finally became quiet, and he knew she had fallen to sleep at last. Ty Ty wondered where Buck had gone. There was no need for him to get up and go out in the night looking for him, so he tried to dismiss Buck from his thoughts.

Some time in the night he heard Darling Jill go to the back porch for a drink of water. He could hear her walking in her soft-soled slippers through the hall past his door. She remained on the porch only a minute and came back into the house. Ty Ty turned over and looked through the door into the dark hall when he heard her returning. He could see dimly the moving light of her nightgown, and he could have reached out and touched her with the tips of his fingers when she passed the door. He was about to ask her if she were ill, but he thought better of it. He knew she was not sick, anyway; there was nothing the matter with her except that which also made Rosamond and Griselda restless. He allowed her to go back to her bed without speaking. All three of them would feel much better after several hours of sleep. When breakfast was over, he would try to say something to them.

At daybreak Buck still had not returned to the house. Ty Ty lay a little while staring at the beginning of light on the ceiling, turning later to watch the gray dawn break into day. When he heard Black Sam and Uncle Felix talking in an undertone in the yard, he jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. He looked out the window and saw the two colored men sitting on the rim of the crater, their feet hanging over the side, waiting for him to start them to work.

He left the room and walked out into the yard.

“Did you see Buck anywhere?” he asked Uncle Felix.

Uncle Felix shook his head.

“Mr. Buck didn’t get up this early already, did he?” Black Sam asked.

“He stayed out somewhere all night. I reckon he’ll show up before long.”

“Trouble in your house, boss?” Uncle Felix asked cautiously.

“Trouble?” Ty Ty repeated. “Who said there was trouble in the house?”

“When white folks don’t stay in the house to sleep, there’s pretty nearly always trouble.”

Ty Ty sat down several feet away, looking down into the big hole at his right. He knew it was useless to try to lie to Negroes. They always knew.

“Maybe there was trouble,” he said. “It’s about over with now, though. One of them got killed, and I don’t look for much after today. It’s all over with now, I hope.”

“Who got killed?” Black Sam asked. “I didn’t hear about anybody getting killed, Mr. Ty Ty. That’s news to me.”

“It was Will Thompson, over there in Horse Creek Valley. Somebody shot him over there day before yesterday. The girls got all excited about it, and I’ve had a hard time trying to calm them down.”

“I sure reckon you do have a hard time trying to do that, boss. It’s pretty hard to calm the women folks down after the male man’s gone.”

Ty Ty turned around quickly, looking at Black Sam.

“What in the pluperfect hell are you talking about, anyhow?”

“Nothing, Mr. Ty Ty. Nothing at all.”

“Go on to work,” he said shortly. “The sun’s been up half an hour already. We can’t get nothing done if we’re going to wait till after the sun rises before we start digging. The only way to strike that lode, I’ve been thinking, is to dig and dig and dig.”

The two colored men went down into the ground. Black Sam was singing a little, but Uncle Felix was waiting for Ty Ty to leave so he could talk to Black Sam about the trouble in the house. Presently he looked up to the top where Ty Ty had been standing. Ty Ty had gone from sight.

“That Buck would have killed him pretty soon himself,” Uncle Felix said. “He would have done it first if he hadn’t been so slow to catch on. I saw that look in his wife’s eyes a long long time ago when Will Thompson first started coming over here to Georgia. She was getting ready to make way for him then. It didn’t look to me like she knew it herself, but I could see it a mile off. That other girl was getting ready for the same thing, too. They just had to make way for Mr. Will. Wasn’t no stopping them.”

“Who you mean?”

“Darling Jill’s the other one I mean.”

“Man, man! black fellow, that wasn’t nothing new for her. That white girl’s always been like that. I’ve stopped paying any attention to her. But I reckon she was getting ready for it a heap sooner than she generally does, because Mr. Will just naturally made them all that way. But that Griselda is the one to watch. She makes a man itch all over till he don’t know where to scratch first.”

“Lord, Lord!”

“I was born unlucky. I wish I was a white man myself. She’s got what I’m talking about.”

“Lord, Lord!”

“One day I was passing the window around yonder and I looked in.”

“What did you see, nigger? The moon rising?”

“What I saw made me just want to get right straight away down on my hands and knees and lick something.”

“Lord, Lord!”

“I was born unlucky.”

“Ain’t it the truth!”

“Trouble in the house.”

“Lord, Lord!”

“One man’s dead.”

“And trouble in the house.”

“The male man’s gone.”

“He can’t prick them no more.”

“Lord, Lord!”

“Trouble in the house.”

“My mammy was a darky—”

“My daddy was too—”

“That white gal’s frisky—”

“Good Lord, what to do—”

“Lord, Lord!”

“The time ain’t long.”

“Somebody shot the male man.”

“He can’t prick them no more.”

“And trouble in the house.”

“Lord, Lord!”

Ty Ty shouted down into the hole from the ground above. They picked the clay without looking up. Ty Ty slid down into the crater, bringing a yard of loose sand and clay with him.

“Buck’s come back, and I don’t want you to say anything to him about staying out all night. I’ve got enough trouble on my hands, Uncle Felix, without making more. Just leave him alone and don’t ask him where he’s been. I’ve got all the trouble now I can stand.”

They nodded while he looked at them.

“Somebody shot the male man,” Black Sam said aloud.

Ty Ty wheeled around.

“What did you say?”

“Yes, sir, boss. Yes, sir. We won’t say nothing to him.”

He started up the side of the hole.

“He can’t prick them no more.”

Ty Ty stopped. Suddenly he jumped from the side of the crater, turning around in the air.

“What in the pluperfect hell are you darkies saying?”

“Yes, sir, boss. Yes, sir. We won’t say nothing to Mr. Buck. We won’t say nothing at all.”

Once more he started climbing to the top.

“Trouble in the house,” Black Sam said aloud.

Ty Ty stopped for the third time, but he did not turn around. He waited there, listening.

“Yes, sir, boss. Yes, sir. We won’t say nothing to Mr. Buck. We won’t say nothing at all.”

“He’ll be down here in a little while, and I want him left alone. If I hear you talking to him about staying out all night, I’ll come down in here with a singletree and knock your blocks clear off your shoulders.”

“Yes, sir, boss,” Black Sam said, “Yes, sir, whiteboss. We ain’t saying nothing to Mr. Buck.”

Ty Ty climbed up the side of the hole, leaving the colored men silent. He was confident that they would obey his orders. They were smart Negroes.

Up on the ground Ty Ty met Buck coming to work. He put his arm around his son’s shoulder when they met. Neither of them said anything, and after a moment Buck turned from Ty Ty and slid down into the crater with the two colored men. Ty Ty stood above for several minutes watching them shovel the clay. Later he left and walked around to the front yard.

Coming down the road from the Marion-Augusta highway was a big car blowing up a cloud of dust. At first Ty Ty thought it was Pluto, but the car was traveling twice as fast as Pluto ever dared drive, and, besides that, it was a larger car and it was shiny black with nickeled trimming that glistened in the sun like new half-dollars.

“Now, who can that be?” Ty Ty asked himself, stopping at the water-oak to watch its approach.

The automobile was at the yard before he realized it. The driver slowed down in a quickly enveloping cloud of yellow dust, coming to a stop so suddenly that the dust passed on in front of it.

Ty Ty ran several steps toward the large black car. It came into the yard then, swaying on the deep springs and roaring in its long motor.

With mouth agape he saw Jim Leslie step out and come towards him. He could not imagine seeing Jim Leslie there. It was the first time in nearly fifteen years that he had set foot on the place.

“Well, I’ll declare!” Ty Ty said, running forward to grasp his son’s hand.

“Glad to see you, Pa,” Jim Leslie said. “Where’s Griselda?”

“Who?”

“Griselda.”

“You didn’t come out here to ask that, did you, son?”

“Where is she?”

“You must be all balled up, Jim Leslie. Didn’t you come to see the whole family?”

Jim Leslie started towards the house. Ty Ty ran and caught up with him, pulling his arm and stopping him quickly.

“Now, wait a minute, son. Just hold your horses. What do you want to see Buck’s wife about?”

“I haven’t got time to talk to you now. I’m in a big hurry. Turn my arm loose.”

“Now, listen, son,” Ty Ty begged, “there’s sorrow here in the house now.”

“What about it? What’s the matter?”

“Will Thompson was killed the other day over in Scottsville. The girls in the house are nervous and sad. I don’t want you to come here and make a mess. You come on out to the hole and sit and talk to the boys and me. When you get tired of staying, then just turn around and go on back to Augusta. We’ll all take a trip up there next week to see you when the girls have calmed down some.”