God's Little Acre (7 page)

“Every time I hear about Ty Ty digging those holes I sort of get the fever myself,” Will said. “But just take me over there and put me out in that hot sun, and I lose all interest in it. I wouldn’t mind striking gold there, and that’s no lie. Looks like there isn’t much use of waiting around here to make a living in the mill. That is, unless we do something about it.”

Will had turned and was pointing out the window towards the darkened cotton mill. There was no light in the huge building, but arc lights under the trees threw a thin coating of yellow glow over the ivy-covered walls.

“When’s the mill going to start up again?” Pluto asked.

“Never,” Will said disgustedly. “Never. Unless we start it ourselves.”

“What’s the matter? Why won’t it run?”

Will leaned forward in his chair.

“We’re going in there some day ourselves and turn the power on,” he said slowly. “If the company doesn’t start up soon, that’s what we’re going to do. They cut the pay down to a dollar-ten eighteen months ago, and when we raised hell about it, they shut off the power and drove us out. But they still charge rent for these God damn privies we have to live in. You know why we’re going to run it ourselves now, don’t you?”

“But some of the other mills in the Valley are running,” Pluto said. “We passed five or six lighted mills when we drove over from Augusta tonight. Maybe they’ll start this one again soon.”

“Like so much hell they will, at a dollar-ten. They are running the other mills because they starved the loom-weavers into going back to work. That was before the Red Cross started passing out sacks of flour. They had to go back to work and take a dollar-ten, or starve. But, by God, we don’t have to do it in Scottsville. As long as we can get a sack of flour once in a while we can hold out. And the State is giving out yeast now. Mix a cake of yeast in a glass of water and drink it, and you feel pretty good for a while. They started giving out yeast because everybody in the Valley has got pellagra these days from too much starving. The mill can’t get us back until they shorten the hours, or cut out the stretchout, or go back to the old pay. I’ll be damned if I work nine hours a day for a dollar-ten, when those rich sons-of-bitches who own the mill ride up and down the Valley in five thousand dollar automobiles.”

Will had got warmed to the subject, and once started, he could not stop. He told Pluto something of their plans for taking over the mill from the owners and running it themselves. The mill workers in Scottsville had been out of work for a year and a half already, he said, and they were becoming desperate for food and clothing. During that length of time the workers had reached an understanding among themselves that bound every man, woman, and child in the company town to a stand not to give in to the mill. The mill had tried to evict them from their homes for nonpayment of rent, but the local had got an injunction from a judge in Aiken that restrained the mill from turning the workers out of the company houses. With that, Will said, they were prepared to stand for their demands just as long as the mill stood in Scottsville.

Rosamond came over to Will and placed her hand on his shoulder. She stood silently beside him until he finished. Pluto was glad she had come. He felt uneasy in Scottsville then; Will talked as though there might be violence at any minute.

“It’s time to go to bed, Will,” she said softly. “If we’re going back with Darling Jill and Pluto in the morning, we ought to get some sleep. It’s after midnight now.”

Will put his arm around her and kissed her on the lips. She lay in his arms with her eyes closed, and her fingers were interlocked with his.

“All right,” he said, raising her from his lap. “I reckon it is time.”

She kissed him again and went to the door. She stood there for a moment, partly turned, looking at Will.

“Come on to bed, Darling Jill,” she said.

They went into the bedroom across the hall and closed the door. Pluto began taking off his tie and shirt. After he had removed them, he began to unlace his shoes. He was ready after that to lie down on the floor and go to sleep. Will brought him a pillow and a quilt and tossed them on the floor at his feet. After leaving Pluto, he went into the room across the hall and closed the door.

“Where am I going to sleep?” he asked, standing in the middle of the room and watching Darling Jill undress.

“In the other bed, Will,” Rosamond said. “Now please go along, Will, and don’t bother Darling Jill. She’s going to sleep with me. Please don’t try to start a row. It’s awfully late. It’s after midnight.”

Without another word he opened the door and went into the adjoining room. He took off his clothes and got into bed. It was too hot to sleep in nightclothes, or even in underwear. He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. He still felt a little drunk, and his head was beginning to hurt behind his temples. If he had not felt so badly just then, he knew he would have got up and argued with Rosamond about sleeping in the other room.

When Darling Jill and Rosamond had undressed, Rosamond turned out the light and opened the doors of all the rooms so there would be better circulation of air. Will could hear her open the door of his room, but he was too tired and sleepy by that time to open his eyes and call her. It was nearly one o’clock before they all went to sleep, and the only sound in the house was Pluto’s snoring on his pallet across the hall.

Towards morning Will woke up and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. It was cooler then, but still too hot to get under covers. He came back and looked at Pluto on the floor, watching him in the flickering street light that shone through the windows. In the other room he went to the bed and looked down at Rosamond and Darling Jill. He stood beside the bed for several minutes, wide awake, looking down at their white bodies in the dim glow of the street light on the comer. Will thought for a moment of waking Darling Jill, but he felt a little sick and his head was beginning to throb again, and he turned away and went back to his room and closed his eyes. He did not remember anything else until the sun woke him by shining in his face. It was nearly nine o’clock then, and there was not a sound in the house.

W
ILL WAS LYING
on his side, looking out the window at the yellow company house next door, when he felt something warm against his back, something that felt like a purring kitten against his bare skin. He turned over, wide awake, partly raised on his elbow.

“Well, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed.

Darling Jill sat up and began teasing him. She pulled his hair and ran her hand over his face rather hard, mashing his nose.

“You wouldn’t get mad at me, would you, Will?”

“Mad?” he said. “I’m tickled to death.”

“Tickle me some, Will,” she said.

He reached for her, and she squirmed out of his reach. He thought he had such a grip around her that she could never get away. Will lunged after her, catching her arm and pulling her back beside him. Darling Jill cuddled up in his arms, kissing his chest, while he laughed at her.

“Where’s Rosamond?” he asked, suddenly remembering her.

“She’s gone downtown for a box of hairpins.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“Only a minute or so.”

Will raised his head and tried to see over the foot of the bed.

“Where’s Pluto?”

“Sitting on the front porch.”

“Hell,” Will said, letting his head fall upon the pillow, “he’s too lazy to get up.”

She cuddled closer, putting her arms securely around him. Will pressed her breast tightly in his hand.

“Don’t do that so hard, Will. You hurt me.”

“I’m going to hurt you more than that before I get through with you.”

“Kiss me a little first, Will. I like it.”

He drew her closer and kissed her. Darling Jill threw her arms around Will and pulled herself to him. When she was closer, Will kissed her more desperately.

“Take me, Will,” Darling Jill begged. “Please, Will, right now.”

The woman in the yellow company house next door leaned out the window and shook a dust-mop, striking it several times against the side of the building to shake loose the sand and lint.

“Take me, Will—I can’t wait,” she said.

“You and me both,” said he.

Will got on his hands and knees and raised Darling Jill’s head until he could draw her hair from under her. He lowered her pillow, and her long brown hair hung over the bed and almost touched the floor. He looked down and saw that she had raised herself until she was almost touching him.

He awoke to hear Darling Jill screaming in his ear. He did not know how long she had been screaming. He had been oblivious to everything in the complete joy of the moment.

He raised his head after a while and looked into her face. She opened her eyes wide and smiled at him.

“That was wonderful, Will,” she whispered. “Do it to me again.”

He tried to free himself and arise, but she would not let him move. He knew she was waiting for him to answer her.

“Will, do it to me again.”

“Damn it, Darling Jill, I can’t right now.”

He struggled once more to free himself and arise. She held him determinedly.

“When we get back to Georgia?”

“If it’s as good in Georgia as it is in Carolina, you’re damn right, Darling Jill.”

“It’s better in Georgia,” she smiled.

“Strike me down,” he said.

“I said, it’s better in Georgia, Will.”

“It had better be. If it’s not, I’m going to bring you back to Carolina right away.”

“But I would still be a Georgia girl, even if you did bring me back over here.”

“All right, you win,” he said, “but if all the Georgia girls are as good as you are, I’m going to stay over there.”

Darling Jill raised her arm and rubbed the teethmarks where he had bitten her. Will wished he could get up and lie on his back, but she still refused to release him. He lay quietly for a while, with his eyes closed, feeling good all over.

Suddenly, like a stroke of lightning out of a cloudless sky, something hit him an awful whack on the buttocks. Will let out a yell and turned completely over in the air, falling on his back with his eyes almost popping out. He knew a bolt of lightning could not have frightened him any more thoroughly.

Before he could say anything, his eyes fell upon Rosamond at the side of the bed. She had the hairbrush raised threateningly in one hand, and with the other she was trying with all her might to turn Darling Jill over on her stomach. She succeeded in getting her sister turned over, and she whacked five or six times in quick succession, striking before Darling Jill could squirm out of reach.

Will realized that there was no sense in his attempting to get up, so he lay still, watching the hairbrush in Rosamond’s hands and praying that she would not turn him over on his stomach and blister him again.

Darling Jill first laughed, but she was so badly blistered, and the blisters hurt so much, she started to cry. Will put his hand under himself and felt the big welt that had been raised on his body. He rubbed it, trying to make the stinging feeling leave. Darling Jill’s buttocks were as red as fire all over, and there were ridges of scarlet welts on her tender flesh. He looked again and saw that there were welts on top of welts, rising like oblong blocks the size and shape of Rosamond’s hairbrush.

Pluto stood behind Rosamond looking pityingly at Darling Jill’s trembling bare body and at her quivering blistered buttocks.

“Jesus,” Will said, touching the blister behind.

“Is that all you got to say for yourself?” Rosamond asked him. “I went down the street to the store and was gone for fifteen or twenty minutes. And this is what you were doing while I was away! What do you suppose Pluto would say if he could talk? Don’t you know he hopes to marry her? It’s almost breaking his heart to see this. Suppose you had gone downtown and had come back and found me in bed with Pluto—what would you do about it? Can’t you say anything but ‘Jesus’?”

Darling Jill suddenly burst out laughing. She looked at Rosamond a moment, and at Pluto. She laughed louder.

“Not with that belly, Rosamond,” Darling Jill said. “How could he with that belly of his?”

Rosamond choked back a smile, but Pluto’s face became crimson. He turned his head, backing against the wall and trying to press himself into it out of sight. Darling Jill put her hand on the blisters and began crying again. “Now, wait a minute, Rosamond,” Will said. Rosamond looked down at Will, resting the hand that held the hairbrush on the foot of the bed.

“I have to beg you to sleep with me sometimes, but Darling Jill comes to the house just for one night and you take her. She’s no better-looking than I am, Will.”

He could think of nothing to say. He could not think of a single word to utter in reply. She continued looking down at him, however; he knew he had to say something before she would move.

“Just once was all right, wasn’t it, Rosamond?”

“Once! That’s all you ever say. Every time I ask you why you did it, you say you only did it once. You’ve had every girl in town, once. It might just as well be a hundred times. Don’t you ever stop to think how it makes me feel—you out somewhere with a girl you have no business being with, and here I am sitting at home wondering where you are and what you’re doing?”

Will turned his head just enough to see Darling Jill out of the corners of his eyes.

“Maybe it’s because she’s a Georgia girl, Rosamond. I reckon that’s why.”

“That’s no excuse—you can’t even make one up. I’m a Georgia girl myself—at least I used to be before I married you and came over here to Carolina.”

Will looked at Pluto, but Pluto apparently had no suggestion worth the offer. He stared back blankly at Will.

“Rosamond, honey,” he said meekly. “I felt of her and kissed her some and then the first thing I knew about it was that I just had to do it. I didn’t mean any harm. That’s just how it was.”

“If I had a baseball bat, I’d do a thing or two to you,” Rosamond replied.

Will began to have a little more confidence in his ability to argue with Rosamond. He was not afraid of Rosamond any longer, and he knew he could take the hairbrush away from her if she tried to blister him again.