God's Little Acre (8 page)

“Now, listen here, Rosamond,” he said. “A girl like Darling Jill can’t come around without someone getting her. She was made that way from the start.”

Rosamond made as if to take the hairbrush and blister them both all over again, but she turned instead and ran to the dresser near the corner where Pluto was. She jerked open the top drawer and pulled out the little pearl-handled thirty-two she kept there. She ran back to the bed, holding it out in front of her.

“For God’s sake, Rosamond,” Will shouted, “Rosamond, honey, don’t do that!”

Darling Jill looked up from the pillow just in time to see the hammer go back and to hear it cock. Will sat up in bed, hugging the pillow in front of him.

“If I blister you, you won’t stay blistered, but if I shoot you, you’ll stay shot, Will Thompson.”

“Honey,” he begged, “if you’ll put that down, I’ll never do it again. I swear to God I won’t, honey. If a girl tries to make me, I’ll throw her in Horse Creek. I swear to God I’ll never do it again as long as I live, Rosamond, honey.”

Rosamond pulled the trigger and the room was full of white smoke. She had shot at Will’s feet, but she had missed. Will jumped at Rosamond, with one hand out after the little revolver. Rosamond shot it again. The bullet went between his legs, and he was scared to death. He looked down to see if he had been shot, but he was afraid to take the time to look closely. He ran to the window and jumped out, landing on his hands and chest. He was up and out of sight around the corner of the house a second after he had struck the ground.

The woman in the yellow company house next door ran to the window and stuck out her head. She saw Will running naked across the front yard and down the street as fast as his heels would fly. After he had passed from sight, she turned and looked at Rosamond at the window with the little pearl-handled revolver shaking in her hand.

“Is that Will Thompson?” the woman asked.

Rosamond leaned out the window, looking up the street and down it.

“Where did he go?” Rosamond asked her.

“Down the street yonder,” the woman said, unable to keep from laughing any longer. “It’s something new for Will Thompson to get shot out of his own house, ain’t it? I’ll have to tell Charlie about Will when he comes home. He’ll die laughing when he hears about it. And Will Thompson was as naked as a jay-bird, too. Ain’t that something, though?”

Rosamond went back and put the revolver into the dresser drawer and shut it. Then she sat down in a chair and cried.

Pluto did not know what to do. He did not know whether to go after Will and try to bring him back home, or whether to stay in the room and try to quiet Rosamond and Darling Jill. Darling Jill had quieted down some, and she was not crying so loudly then. But Rosamond was. Pluto leaned over and put his hand on her arm and patted it. Rosamond threw his hand off and cried even more hysterically. Pluto decided then that the best thing for him to do was to do nothing for a while. He sat down again and waited.

Presently Rosamond got up and ran to the bed where her sister was. She threw herself upon the bed, hugging Darling Jill in her arms and bursting into tears once more. They both lay there consoling one another. Pluto looked on uneasily. He had expected to see them fly at each other, pulling hair, scratching, and calling each other names. But they were doing nothing of the sort. They were actually hugging one another and weeping together. Pluto could not understand why Rosamond did not try to shoot Darling Jill, or at least why she was not angry with her. To look at them at that moment, Pluto could not imagine how Rosamond had acted as she had a few minutes before. They were behaving as though suffering a common bereavement.

When Rosamond’s sobs had almost ceased, she sat up and looked down at her sister. The red welts on Darling Jill’s buttocks still throbbed with intense pain, and she could not lie upon them. Rosamond touched one of the welts tenderly with the tips of her fingers as though she might be able to soothe the hurt a little thereby.

“Lie where you are until I come back,” Rosamond told her. “I’ll only be gone a moment.”

She ran to the kitchen and came back with a cup of lard and a large bath towel. She sat down on the side of the bed and dipped her fingers into the grease.

“Come here, Pluto,” she said, not turning around to look at him. “You can help me.”

Pluto came over to the bed, blushing to the tips of his ears at the sight of Darling Jill lying naked before him.

“Lift her gently, Pluto, and hold her across your lap,” Rosamond instructed. “Now be careful. Don’t irritate those welts, whatever you do.”

Pluto put his arms under Darling Jill, laying the palms of his hands flat against her breasts and thighs. He jerked his hands from under her, his face and neck burning.

“Now, what’s the matter?”

“Maybe you had better lift her.”

“Don’t be silly, Pluto. How can I? I’m not strong.”

He put his hands under her again, closing his eyes and compressing his lips.

“Hurry, Pluto, and let me put this lard on those swollen places before they turn blue.”

Pluto lifted her and turned around. He sat down on the side of the bed next to Rosamond with Darling Jill lying across his knees. Rosamond began applying the lard at once. Pluto would have watched her, but he could not take his eyes from Darling Jill’s long brown hair hanging to the floor. He raised her a little so her hair would not touch it. She winced once or twice when Rosamond touched her, but she did not protest or try to get up. When the lard had been carefully spread, Rosamond wiped her fingers on a piece of cloth and began folding the towel until it was a long thick bandage. Pluto looked down at Darling Jill’s soft buttocks with a sudden desire to touch them and try to soothe the pain. Each time he looked down at her in his lap, though, he began to blush all over again.

“Help her to her feet, Pluto,” Rosamond said. “Lift her up and let her stand on her feet, Pluto.”

Darling Jill stood up in front of Pluto and her sister while the towel was being fastened securely around her. Pluto’s gaze was fixed on a point of her body that happened to be the closest. He looked straight ahead, moving his eyes neither to the right nor to the left. He knew Darling Jill was looking down at him, but he could not bring himself to raise his head and look up into her face.

He was not at all certain, but he believed she had leaned forward towards him.

“Like me, Pluto?” Darling Jill asked, smiling.

Pluto’s face trembled, his neck stung with a sudden rush of blood, and he tried to look up and meet her eyes. It was an exertion for him to move his head upward and backward, but he forced himself to move it.

“I’m going to be angry if you won’t say you like me now,” she pouted.

“I’m crazy about you, Darling Jill,” he said, partly choked. “And that’s a fact.”

“Why do you turn red in the face and neck when you see me like this, Pluto?”

He felt fresh blood rush in to embarrass him. He pulled at a loose thread in the counterpane without knowing what he was doing.

“I like it, though,” he replied.

“Marry me, Pluto?”

“Right now, or anytime you say,” he told her. “And that’s a fact.”

“But your belly is too big, Pluto.”

“Aw, now, Darling Jill, don’t let that stand in the way.”

“If it wasn’t so big, Pluto, you could stand closer.”

“Aw, now, Darling Jill.”

“And that’s a fact,” she said, mocking him.

“Aw, now, Darling Jill,” he said, reaching out to put his arms around her waist.

She allowed him to draw her close enough to be kissed. Pluto drew her between his legs and stretched his head as high as he could but her lips were so far above his reach he knew he could never kiss her unless he stood up beside her or unless she bent down to him. He reasoned that it would be much easier for her to bend over than it would be for him to get to his feet, and he knew she was aware of it. But she remained standing erectly in his arms, tantalizing him by refusing to bend over and place her lips on his. When he did not know what to do, unless it was to get to his feet beside her, Darling Jill leaned against him and twisted her body a little. Before he realized how it had come about, he felt her warm breast against his face and he was kissing her madly.

“Stop it this instant, Darling Jill!” Rosamond said, getting up and pulling them apart. “Stop teasing Pluto like that. It’s a shame to treat the poor boy the way you do all the time. Some of these days he’s going to turn on you, and anything may happen.”

Darling Jill, jerking herself out of his embrace, ran to the door and into the next room holding the towel around her buttocks. Pluto sat in a daze, his hands lifeless beside him, and his mouth hanging agape. Rosamond, turning, saw him; she felt so sorry for him that she came back and patted his cheek tenderly.

A
T NOON THE
whistles of the cotton mills up and down the Valley blew for the midday shutdown. Everywhere else there was a sudden cessation of vibration, and the men and women came out of the buildings taking cotton from their ears. In the company town of Scottsville the people did not move from the chairs on their porches. It was noon, and it was dinner-time; but in Scottsville the people sat with contracted bellies and waited for the end of the strike.

The woman in the yellow company house next door made a fire in the cook-stove and put on a pan of water to boil. Such as there was to eat, she and her husband and the children would devour without breaking the tightly drawn lines at the corners of their mouths. Each successive day was a victory; for eighteen months they had stood out against the mill, and they would never give in while there was hope.

Rosamond suggested making a freezer of ice cream. “Will would like some when he comes back,” she said.

Pluto was sent down the street for a cake of ice. He went to the store at the corner, hurrying down and back as fast as he could walk, while Rosamond was scalding the freezer and paring the peaches. He was frightened every second he was in the Valley. He was afraid somebody would jump at him from behind a tree and slash his throat from ear to ear, and even in the house he was afraid to sit with his back to a door or window.

Darling Jill came out on the back porch while Rosamond was preparing the cream and sat down on a pillow in the shade. She had combed her hair but had not pinned it up. It hung down her back, covering her shoulders, and reached almost to the floor. Rosamond had lent her a dressing gown, and she wore that over the towel and the black silk stockings supported by canary yellow garters.

When Pluto returned with the cake of ice, the cream was ready to be frozen. He saw that it was up to him to turn the freezer.

It was cool on the shaded back porch, now that the sun was passing over the house. There was a breeze that blew occasionally, and the ninety-degree temperature at midday was bearable. Broad, green, cool Horse Creek looked like an oblong lake down below, stretching for miles up and down the Valley.

“I’ve got to be getting home,” Pluto said. “And that’s a fact.”

“The voters won’t miss you,” Darling Jill told him. “They’ll be glad you’re not there today to worry them. Anyway, we’re not ready to go back yet.”

“I missed yesterday, and the day before, and two or three days before that. And now I’m missing today, too.”

“When we get back, I’ll campaign some for you, Pluto,” Darling Jill said. “I’ll get more votes than you will know what to do with.”

“I wish I was back now, anyway,” he said. “And that’s a fact.”

He turned the freezer faster, hoping to finish it in time to start back within the hour.

“I wish Will would come back,” Rosamond said. “Do you suppose he’ll stay away this time—and never come home?” Darling Jill sighed and looked into the kitchen window of the yellow company house next door. The people over there were eating sandwiches and drinking iced tea. It made Darling Jill a little hungry to watch them eat.

Rosamond thought the cream was getting stiff. Pluto was having difficulty in turning the freezer at the pace he had started, and the perspiration rolled from his face and his mouth hung open with exhaustion. He held the freezer with one hand and turned doggedly with the other.

No one happened to be looking in that direction when Will stuck his head around the corner of the house and watched them for several minutes. When he saw that Pluto was freezing ice cream, he stepped around the corner and walked slowly down the path to the steps.

“Why, there’s Will now,” Darling Jill said, seeing him first.

Will stopped in his tracks and looked at Rosamond. “Will!” she cried.

She jumped up and ran down the steps to meet him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him frantically. “Will, are you all right?”

He patted her shoulder and kissed her. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants he had borrowed somewhere, and he was barefooted and shirtless.

Rosamond drew him up the steps and made him sit down in her chair. Pluto stopped turning the crank to look at him. He had not expected to see Will again for a long time.

“The cream is stiff by this time, Pluto,” Rosamond said. “Take off the top while we’re getting the dishes and spoons. And be careful of the salt. Take out some of the ice before you forget it.”

She was gone only a moment. Darling Jill took the large spoon and filled the dishes, and passed them around. Rosamond remained with Will, refusing to leave him again. He took a bite of the peach ice cream and smiled at her.

“Did you hear anything about the mill opening?” she asked him.

“No,” he replied.

The women in the yellow company houses asked that every day, but the men always said they had heard nothing.

“The other mills are still running, aren’t they?”

“I reckon so,” he said.

“When will ours start up?”

“I don’t know.”

The thought of the other mills operating regularly stiffened Will. He sat up erectly and stared down at the broad green water. Horse Creek lay down there as calm as a smooth lake. The thought of the other mills in the Valley running night and day started a vivid picture that began to unroll across his eyes. He could see the ivy-walled cotton mill beside the green water. It was early morning, and the whistle blew, calling eager girls to work. They were never men, the people who entered the mill now; the mill wished to employ girls, because girls never rebelled against the harder work, the stretching-out, the longer hours, or the cutting of pay. Will could see the girls running to the mill in the early morning while the men stood in the streets looking, but helpless.