Old Powder Man (29 page)

He woke the following morning at Winston's, remembering only vaguely Leila had insisted he stay overnight. Doc, sleeping on the sofa, opened one eye to say weakly he hoped to see him when he was down in this part of the country again. After breakfast, Son went out to his car with Winston, opened the door and threw in his grip, caught the familiar smell of the car's interior, the worn and old leather smell of the grip itself, stale cigarette smoke, a permanent faint musty smell of dust, it was these that reassured him when he woke unexpectedly in strange hotel rooms, in strange towns, and wondered what the hell everything was all about. At dawn, starting out in search of strange roads and unfamiliar faces, he could answer when he entered the car. If he never had figured out anything else, he had figured that out: knew exactly who he was getting in this car, hitting these country roads, selling powder.

“You've drunk up all my whisky, I guess you ought to go,” Winston said.

“Hell, come up to my house I'll give you some good drinking whisky,” Son said. “You figured out yet whether you going to let me sell you dynamite to clean out them ditches?”

Winston said, “If you can spit past the end of the sidewalk I'll try to.”

Aiming, Son shot saliva beyond and it landed on a blade of grass, sliding like a tear drop. They shook hands. Starting off, Son anticipated the wet smell of the early spring morning. Mist stood over fields and covered the emerging sun like dust. Chill bumps formed on his arm resting on the windowsill but the afternoon would be hot. He went on for several hours through little towns then thought, Here she comes, as abruptly the tires left smoothness and hit gravel. Up beneath the car it came like a great wash of water, in a rush, then singularly, chip chip chip beneath the fenders, against the axle and sometimes the windshield. He went unnoticeably up until grass-filled ditches and fields where geese weeded were below and he travelled a levee. Small wild primroses were tangled in the grass on either side and bobwhites and mourning doves called unseen; back and forth across the road small blue titmice flitted. Poplar leaves shook in the wind, dark then quickly silver, and he listened to the steady thump of his tires and the random cracking of twigs. Long before arriving in any levee camp, he heard the same familiar noise, the broken grinding rhythm of the tractors that rocked him more than the rising and falling feel of the car as he fought the road.
Lordy
was a joyous song he sang, coming near where the Negroes worked. He was heralded by dust and those along the road turned to see who came, leaned on shovels, touched hats. Dynamite man coming, someone called and others waved. He flew on, waving back.

He found Will at the water barrel rack where Skinner, several others were filling their tractors with water. To hear one another, he and Will moved away from the pump's noise. Son was to see about draining an old borrow pit that was full of water. Will wanted dirt from it again. They walked toward it. As many mules as once had been on the levee, they had all had names. Not so many were left, but Son heard the Negroes' same cry, Come on, Daisy, Mildred! Get on, Bucky! Having seen the borrow pit, he stayed on the levee with Will, talking to Tangle-eye and others who would help him. Men filled tractors for the following day and left them; the trudge back to camp was beginning, the sun going down. Men, quitting, came along the levee carrying shovels, passed saying, Evenin' Cap'n. Will nodded, still talking to Son. Then, suddenly, like a dog at point, he simply froze; stared straight ahead, not a muscle moving, and was silent. Son turned to look in the same direction, seeing the figures coming shadowed against the sky, saw nothing amiss, wondered. He was almost on them before Son took in the slight variations in one figure among them, that he was not sweating enough to have been working, wore a shirt fairly clean, and the overalls were dusty only to the knees as if from trudging. After all these years, at least ten, Son thought, it could not be the same hat, but it was similar and flopped as it always had, in time to his loping stride. He stopped before Will and removed it.

“I come home, Cap'n,” he said.

“You want a job?' Will said.

“Yes suh,” he said.

“Be here in the morning,” Will said.

He walked on down the levee, now toward camp, his hat flopping and a little heavier, otherwise looking against the setting sun exactly as he had the day he had walked off down it. Son wondered if Will would ask questions, heard afterward he never did. Sho Nuff told only that he had worked his way as far as New Orleans; the Depression years were bad ones and he had been out of work and hungry. That was why he came back, Son guessed, then correcting himself used the words Sho Nuff had: Come home.

It was a time when the night seemed magical, silver-sprayed, the moon was high. Martha came to supper laughing. Carrie had said the moonlight was in her secret parts; someone else would care for the baby; she had gone to camp to find a man. When Son came from supper, Emmie was digging outside the tent. “What in the world you looking for?” he said.

“Plantin', Mr. Frank,” she said. “You got to plant a garden when the moon's high or you don't get good roots.”

Sis Woman, far away in California, knew longing. Martha showed Son a letter she had just received. Miss Martha, I want to be in the woods where it's calm, Sis Woman had written. And the buds is in the trees. It's funny how you can get lost and somebody else got to help you find yourself. Son thought the old Negro knew just the right words. One thing he regretted was that it was through Lillian he had found what he wanted to do; he always would be sorry about that. Never had he found the self he was when he was not working; it was another reason, he guessed, he worked so hard. Maybe if you'd had some education you didn't have this feeling of being lost, standing still.

In the morning, Will said, “Boy, if you don't get that hair cut I'm going to get the other niggers to hold you while I get the mule shears and do it.” Tangle-eye, Son, the other Negroes who would help him laughed at the younger one. Then Son said, “I don't see but one way to do it.” He descended the bank, and as he entered the borrow pit a moccasin with evil eye slid from a log into the muck; he went on, hoping the Negroes had not seen. Ahead of him he pushed an opened box of dynamite; the Negroes, following, did the same. Son called, “Stick one, lay one long.” Plop, his box went ahead in the muck. Like echoes, the boxes of the Negroes made the same sounds, plop, plop, and afterward the sluicing sound of their bodies. “Stick one, lay one long,” Son called again. To the boy behind him, he said, “Seems like you all had some winter here.”

“Whoo-ee,” the boy said. “This one winter I wished I lived three pairs of pants farther south.”

Laughing, Son said, “That cold'll toughen you up now. It's good for you.”

At last, like divers rising strangely from the sea, they came out, dripping and muddy. “Stick one, lay one long,” a Negro said. “Whew.” The work went on for days. Son blew a section; it drained; when it was dry enough the tractors moved out dirt. Steadily they droned until Son was ready to shoot and a shout carried warning of danger. “Dynamite!” the Negro nearest Son called; the next in line repeated the single word. “Dynamite!' went the shout until someone close enough to those on tractors could make them hear; everyone sought shelter before the blast. No matter how many times they had seen it, they felt awe when the dull roar came and the dirt sprang into the air. Every time Son's heart quickened. He had come a long way since the first time he had come out to Mister Will's, a peddler, since the time he'd talked him into using dynamite and together they had found ways. The job was done. He was leaving and had walked up to Will on the levee to say goodbye when Sho Nuff, his hat flying, came shouting, “Boss! We out of water, we out of water!”

Son would remember always that he was already too far behind Will, running, to ever catch up when Sho Nuff stopped shouting. Like shears, Will's long legs parted and were together, quick as clipping. The pump had quit and the water barrels were almost empty; if the tractors could not run, the job would shut down. Tangle-eye was trying to fix the pump. In rage, Will shouted, “Where's the water brigade?”

“I ain't started one, Cap'n. I been trying to fix the pump,” Tangle-eye said.

“Barrels going dry while you're fixing the pump. Get water started into the barrels then fix the pump,” Will said and cursed Tangle-eye again.

From all directions men came, bringing anything that would hold water. Son, grabbing an empty oil can, joined the line that reached to Indian Lake, shining in the distance. Tangle-eye continued work on the pump and Will, helping, still cursed. At last the pump, having sputtered and died repeatedly, sputtered and caught; a relief as if it had been breath itself that had ceased and then begun. They faced one another, Tangle-eye's bottom lip protruding. Helplessly, like a chicken beheaded, he fluttered his arms, waist high and down, again and again, slapping his thighs, mute and furious. Will, as equally furious, put his hand flat against Tangle-eye's bottom lip and pushed it up, flap flap flap, saying, “If you want to cuss me, say it. But don't stick that lip out at me.”

Tangle-eye stuck it in, flapped his arms again in frustrated fury and went silently away. After supper Will, Carter and a new salesman, out of Helena, came to Son's tent to play Pitch. Son said, “Suppose he had cussed you, would you let him?”

Will said, “I told him he could. I would have had to let him. I reckon he knew better. But I still rather have a Negro cuss me, than stick out that bottom lip.”

Son disliked the new salesman at first only because his face was covered as thickly with pimples as with prickly heat. Then he asked to see the cards after Carter shuffled. Son and Will said nothing, did not lift their eyes, not for the rest of the game: endured him knowing it was the first and last time. Will won the money and Son and Carter paid, but the salesman, saying he did not have enough cash, gave a check. When he went to his own tent, Will held up the check to tear it in two, saying he didn't think it was worth the paper it was written on. “I don't think so either,” Son said, “but I'm not going to let him get away with it. Sell it to me at face value. I'm going into Helena tomorrow, I'll see if it's good.” The next afternoon, he went to all the banks in Helena and the man had no account. He drove as a last resort to a little country bank on the edge of town and found it there, scratched out the name of the bank printed on the check and wrote in the correct one and cashed it. He drove on to Helen's Isle to meet Buzz who was finishing up a job he had been on for months. Buzz was in a box car, overseeing his equipment being loaded on the train; he was staying there to escape the crowd of salesmen waiting for him. They knew he had just been paid off after months of work. “I told one fellow I'd buy some equipment from him if he'd get rid of all them other pests,” Buzz said.

Son looked out of the box car. “What the hell they doing?” he said. The salesmen, in a circle, were shouting and laughing and looking at something on the ground. Son and Buzz came up and saw it was one of the salesmen, a little fellow from Magnolia, Arkansas, referred to as a hothouse flower; pale and delicate. The salesman whom Buzz had told to get rid of the others had started with the little fellow, telling him to leave or he'd whip him. To the amazement of all, the little fellow stretched out flat on the levee bank. Now the other salesman was walking around trying to make him get up. He circled him one way, then the other, occasionally nudging him with the toe of his shoe. “Get up, Goddamn it!” he shouted.

“Naw,” the little man said, turning his head to look up, his cheek cradled in one palm. “If I get up you'll just knock me down.”

He was still lying there when Son and Buzz started to Delton, laughing. Son guessed they laughed all the way. When he got home his sides ached. He tried to tell Kate about the little fellow, about cashing the man's check, about Mister Will standing there flapping that Negro's lip in. She didn't think any of it was funny; why did he think everything rough so funny? He guessed she didn't understand either when that fellow whose check he cashed called the next night to say if he ever came in his county again he'd beat him. Son had been in bed reading a detective magazine. He put his feet to the floor and said he could start for Helena again right then. Kate, putting down her knitting, said, “Frank, are you crazy?”

He said into the phone, “Hell yeah, I like to fight. I'd fight a circle saw if I had the chance. My wife hasn't even unpacked my grip. Where am I going to meet you? Oh, you want to apologize?” He listened; then he slammed down the phone. “Hell,” he said and got into bed, “he would have to change his mind.”

Coming in, Laurel said, “Look, Daddy.”

“What's that all about?” he said.

“My first evening dress,” she said. “To play in my piano recital.”

“Some other damn thing to spend money on,” he said.

“Why, Frank,” Kate said. “You ought to be ashamed.” She got up and followed Laurel, who had gone. Well when he was twelve years old, he wasn't thinking up ways to spend money, he was out making some. And he didn't let up on Kate about bills, even though that summer his long-ago prediction came true; he looked back fifteen years to the night he had made it, sitting alone in that hotel room. For a long time now he thought he had seen it coming. All spring driving into dawn and at dusk up to some little hotel in some burg, he had thought: soon. Often he was so tired he hoped not to see anybody he knew, ate supper alone and went to bed. But coming into big places, Vicksburg, Helena, Little Rock, walking into a lobby, dropping his grip and registering, he always saw a familiar face or was called by a voice he knew, Hey, Dynamite! Many times, tired as he was, he was happy to break a long day's silence, to have something to listen to besides the radio, even to hear his own voice after hours of disuse, dry with that, with dust. But he would give nothing for those fifteen years, wanted to remember too the times he had thought he was too tired to make it, could barely drag that grip out of the car and across the hotel lobby or into his own house. There were compensations, travelling out of starry, insect-sounding southern nights and into the warmth of the little lobbies, smelling always of age and old magazines and carpets and polished wood and tobacco-stained old men who passed time greeting strangers; Hidy or Evening, they always said. And to himself he had said, Someday. Lately, he had said, Soon: because there was nowhere he could go they weren't expecting him, having thought when they thought of dynamite of Dynamite Wynn. If there was any business he wasn't getting, it must be so small he didn't even want it, knowing there was not any; he had it all. So that maybe he was not even surprised when, coming into Delton one evening, he stopped by Mr. Ryder's house and his wife came out in old felt bedroom slippers to greet him and behind her Mr. Ryder stood grinning shyly and said, “I don't have but the one telephone in my house any more, Mr. Wynn. They taken out the two others today.”