by Jim Thompson
I glanced back over my shoulder and made a spurt toward the porch.
The chances were that I’d be a mighty sore-backed ploughhand if I wasn’t a little more careful.
3
Most people think of Oklahoma as being new country, a place that wasn’t settled until the last forty years or so, and that’s reasonably true of part of it. But it doesn’t hold for the south and southeast section.
The Five Civilized Tribes—the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees and Seminoles—started moving in around 1817. They came up from the deep south, blazing the Trail of Tears as they called it; and they established five Indian nations with towns and courts and schools and newspapers, and, well, about everything you’d find in any country of the period. Because maybe they had reason to hate the white people, but they’d lived too long like whites to change. They farmed like whites, they and the slaves they brought with them; they cottoned and corned the land to death. It began losing topsoil, then subsoil; and by the time of statehood there were whole counties that weren’t producing a fourth of what they should have.
The state and federal governments finally woke up and tried to build the soil back up. But the share-crop system just naturally doesn’t attract people with much brains; if they understood anything about scientific farming and all, they wouldn’t be croppers in the first place. Anyway, it’s hard to show a man where he can gain by improving land he doesn’t own.
So, as late as fifteen years ago, when we moved in from Mississippi, a lot of land was still going to pot—and it still is—and probably it’s a good thing it was. Otherwise we’d never even have been able to buy ten acres from one of Matthew Ontime’s kin.
We’d never got any more than that because that was another farm that Matthew fell heir to, and he knew what could be done with worn-out land as well as Pa. He knew a lot more about the subject than Pa did.
So all we had and were ever going to have was those ten acres, and the two tenant shacks and outbuildings that had come with ’em. But that was something; it was a big step up from being ordinary croppers, and we’d made the most of it.
We’d placed the two shacks end-to-end, with a screened-in breezeway connecting them, and we’d torn down one of the outbuildings and built a long porch across the front. We’d rubbed down the floors with sandstone and varnished ’em—they’re probably the only cropper-house floors in the country with varnish. And we’d painted the outside white with a green trim; and that’s something else you don’t see often—a painted house—in cropper country. It looked real nice, for what it was.
I reached the porch just as the oil scout’s car slowed down for the turn into the yard.
Mary snatched the sweater out of my hands. She thrust a bucket at me with a little water in it and disappeared inside the house. I hadn’t needed to tell her a thing. She’d known just what to do.
I poured the water into the wash basin and jerked up my sleeves. By the time the car lights hit me, I was bent over the washbench, busy as all getout.
I’d just brought in an armload of firewood, maybe, and now I was scrubbing up for dinner.
The car stopped in the yard, and for a minute or so there was a heavy silence. Then the lease scout—I couldn’t see what he looked like—cleared his throat. And I picked up the water bucket and sauntered down toward the well.
“I just can’t understand,” he said, irritated and trying to sound like he wasn’t. “I’ve been in this business all my life, Mr. Carver, and I can’t…”
“I’m trying to tell you, mister…”
“Is there anything that isn’t clear to you? What more could you ask for? We’ll give you a royalty of one-eighth of the production, the usual production royalty; no one can give you more than that. But we’ll pay you an advance against that royalty of twenty-five hundred dollars an acre…”
Twenty-five hundred! That was two-fifty more an acre than the last offer we’d had.
“… think of it, Mr. Carver! We pay you twenty-five thousand dollars—tuh-wenty-fi-uhv thousand—cash on the barrelhead! And that’s just a starter. Why, if this area here is even half as rich as our geologists’ report, you’ll…”
Pa groaned. He actually groaned, and without seeing him I knew the way his face was twisting like a man in agony.
“… tuh-wenty-fi-uv thousand dol—”
“Stop it! Durn your hide, stop it! Don’t you say another word!”
“But I don’t under…”
“I’ve been tryin’ to tell you!” Pa yelled. “I’ve been tryin’ to tell you for an hour, now! You can’t lease my ten acres! You can’t! Your company wouldn’t let you!”
The scout started to butt in again, but Pa yelled him down. “Don’t you reckon I know? I’ve seen it tried, man! They’d have to check over the lease before the money was paid, and they’d find out that my little ten here was all they could get! And they wouldn’t touch it then with a ten-foot pole! They couldn’t hope to more’n break even, if they were lucky enough to do that!”
“If you’d just leave that to…”
“I ain’t going to leave it to you! I ain’t gonna let you waste your time or mine. What’s it cost to drill a deep well, anyway? A hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, right? So you can’t just have you enough room for one well; an’ you put two or three down side by side you don’t gain nothing. They just drain each other off. Before you could drill on my acreage, you’d want everything in sight under lease! And that biggety Indian won’t let you have one single acre! Not one, mister.”
The scout laughed. A match flared as he lighted a cigarette. “Well, now, I’m sure if we offered him the right kind of proposition…”
“All right, mister,” said Pa, wearily. “All right.”
“It’s a deal, then? You and I have a deal?”
“You go talk to him,” said Pa. “Or go talk to some of the oilmen around town. Then come back and see me.”
“Agreed! We’ll call it a deal, Mr. Carver. I’ll bring an attorney out tomorrow morning, and…”
“No,” said Pa. “You won’t be coming back, tomorrow morning or any other time. But I ain’t goin’ to argue with you about it.”
He got out of the car, swinging the white meal sack full of groceries over his shoulders. He stood back to let the scout drive off, and then he went plodding up toward the house, not looking at me; probably not even seeing me. I emptied the water bailer into my bucket and ran and caught up with him.
“Here, Pa,” I said, “let me take that.”
“Huh?” he blinked at me. “Oh. Howdy, boy. How’s school?”
“Fine,” I said.
“You’re showin’ ’em, huh? You ain’t slackin’ up any? You’re showin’ ’em what us Carvers can do?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I eased the meal sack onto my shoulder, but he still stood blinking at me, looking at me and through me. He was as tall as I was, tall and wiry. But years of cropping had pushed his chest in, curving his back and neck, and he had to bend his head back to look at me. His leathery upturned face made me think of one of those big snapping turtles that grab hold of something and never let go.
“You see that fool Indian girl?” he said.
“Indian girl?”
“Almost ran me and that oil feller into the ditch. Good thing she ain’t my daughter. I’d peel the hide right off of her.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He went on into the house, nodded absently at Mary and entered his bedroom—the bedroom and the kitchen were the only two rooms in that house, the one on the south end of the breezeway. My room and Mary’s and what passed as a sitting room was in the other house.
He’d closed the door but we didn’t have real walls between our rooms, just two by eleven plank partitions, and I heard him sigh and drop down on his cornshuck mattress. I gave Mary a grin, letting her know that everything was all right, and we began unloading the groceries.
“Hungry, Tom?” she said softly.
“That’s not the word for it,” I said.
“You want a sweet potato while you’re waitin’? I got them and the greens done.”
“I guess I can hold out until supper,” I said.
I unwrapped the slab of side meat and started slicing it into strips. She ripped open the sack of flour, began measuring double handfuls into a crockery bowl.
“Him,” she muttered, “just too mean to live, that’s what he is.”
“Aw, now, Mary,” I grinned, “You don’t really mean that.”
“I do so!” She tossed salt and baking powder into the flour. “Hardly a bite in this house since yesterday morning, all on account o’ his meanness! He was in town yesterday, wasn’t he? Why couldn’t he’ve bought groceries then instead of today?”
“Well,” I said, “you know how Pa figures. We’ve only got so much to spend for food. If we eat it all up at one time…”
“Who eats it all? Who eats more around here than anyone else?”
I shrugged. “Well, he has to do without, too.”
“Yeah,” she said, bitterly. “I just bet he does! He wants him a sandwich or a sody pop or somethin’, he buys it. I see him doin’ without anything!”
I told her she’d better keep her voice down, and she turned a little pale, glancing at the partition. Then, since there wasn’t much else I could help with, I crossed over through the breezeway to the parlor.
It was the best fixed-up room in the place, and it was a pretty good best, considering. Mary had made the big hooked rug. She’d made the dyed flour-sack curtains. She’d woven the raffia mattings that padded the two easy chairs and the little settee. Pa and I had made the bases of the furniture—rustic, you’d call it—but the bent-willow arms and backs, the parts that really prettied it up, were Mary’s work. Excepting the little packing-box center table, and, of course, the kerosene lamp and the big old-time Bible, practically everything in the room had been made by Mary.
I lighted the lamp, turning the flame down low to keep the wick from smoking. I looked around me, at the rug, the furniture and curtains; and, suddenly, for no reason I could think of, I blew the lamp out again. I stood there in the semi-darkness, the first rays of moonlight seeping through the windows, and I looked out of the room because I no longer liked it—I liked it but it made me uncomfortable—I stared across the breezeway and into the kitchen.
How old…?
Quite attractive…?
She plodded back and forth from the stove to the table, from table to cupboard. Her bare brown legs rose tapering and strong from the old unlaced ploughshoes, an old pair of mine. The faded gingham dress clung to her body, swelling and filling and curving, as she reached up to the cupboard or bent over the table. Her breasts, her pear-shaped hips, her belly, her…
I sat down, trembling a little. I took out my bandanna and wiped the sweat from my face, wiped my hands.
I didn’t need to imagine. I knew what they—what all of her was like. And why shouldn’t I? I thought. Why shouldn’t I know and remember? She’d been like a mother to me. She’d been almost the same as the mother I’d never known.
No, there hadn’t been anything wrong back then, back when I was a tot. There was nothing wrong in knowing and remembering; and there was nothing wrong now. It was right to kiss her goodnight; it was right to hug her and pat her when she was feeling blue and lonesome and beaten down.
It was right. It was just as it should be. Everything was the same as it always had been except that I’d let Donna put a crazy notion in my head. That was the whole trouble, and I’d better get over it fast. Because I had some real troubles to worry about.
I’d have a mess to face at school tomorrow. And, probably, if Pa did what I thought he would, there’d be an even worse fracas tonight with Matthew Ontime.
Mary called out that supper was ready.
We all sat down at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table, and Pa said a bless-this-bounty-Lord, and we ate.
I’d been half-starved fifteen minutes before. But sometimes, you know, when you get too hungry, you lose your appetite; and I guess that was the trouble with me. Mary kept passing me dishes, and I’d pass ’em back. I’d take a little sometimes, but more often I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t eat much.
“You sick?” she said, finally.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Just not very hungry.”
“You ought to be hungry. What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter with you?” said Pa, looking up from his plate. “Why’n’t you stop gabbing all the time?”
“Y-yes, sir,” said Mary.
“He knows whether he’s hungry or not. He ain’t no baby.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mary again.
It was funny to watch her. Kind of sad-funny. The minute his back was turned she couldn’t say enough against him or do enough; although there wasn’t really anything that she could do. But she couldn’t face up to him for as much as a second. When he spoke to her or looked at her, she went down like a sunflower under a hoe. That was one side of Pa, the way he treated Mary, that was awfully hard to take.
Pa pushed back his plate and poured coffee into his saucer. He lifted it up, letting his eyes stray off to the right. And my heart skipped a beat. I knew what he was considering as he stared at the long shelf where the double-barreled shotgun lay.
He squinted thoughtfully. Then, he sighed and gave his head a little shake. He put the saucer down on the oilcloth. His mouth twitched.
“God damn him,” he said, and he was praying not cursing. “God damn his black soul to hell!”
He glared from me to Mary, his leathery face working; and he raised his hand and slapped it against the table.
“I’m gonna make him! I’m gonna make him, you hear me?”
“All right, Pa,” I said. I knew there wasn’t any use arguing with him.
“Come on! We’ll go right now.”
I pushed my chair back and got up. All I could hope for was that he would not say anything to Matthew Ontime about Donna. Matthew had taken a lot off of Pa—more than he had any call to—but I knew there’d be fireworks if Pa said anything about his only daughter. Donna was the only family he had, his wife being dead, and Indians set a heap of store by their families.
“Pa”—I hesitated—“there’s just one thing…”
“Yes,” said Mary, her voice strangely loud. “Don’t forget to tell him off about that crazy girl of his!”
It was probably the only time in her life she’d ever spoken up to Pa, and you can imagine how he took it. Up until then, I’m pretty sure, he had intended to speak his mind about Donna. But wild horses couldn’t have made him do it now. He couldn’t do something that she told him to do.
If I hadn’t been a little sore at Mary, I’d have felt sorry for her.
“Now, that’d make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it?” he jeered, his head thrust forward on his neck like a turkey gobbler’s.
Mary didn’t say anything. She’d started to fold up as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
“Supposin’ something happened to him, and I had to deal with her,” he said, arguing with himself, convincing himself. “How you reckon she’d act after I’d low-downed her to her Daddy? Hey? You think I’d want her feelin’ mean and stubborn toward me?”
It was a good argument. I hoped he remembered it. “You’re dead right, Pa,” I said. “You’re a thousand percent right.”
“ ’Course I am,” he nodded. “Anyone but that danged idjit could see it. Why, for all we know ol’ Ontime might be dead right now. He mightn’t even live the week out. An’ what would a flighty girl want with runnin’ a plantation?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Why, any number o’ things could happen to him,” he went on. “Someone might decide to take that uppitiness out of him, or he might tumble off one of them pranky horses, or…” He broke off, glaring at Mary as though she’d disputed him. “You tellin’ me it couldn’t happen? You think I don’t know what I’m talkin’ ab
out?”
“N-no, s-sir.”
“Better not, either.” He jutted his chin out. “Grab your sweater, Tom.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
4
I’m nineteen, not a man yet according to the law. But I’ve got to go a long way back to remember when I wasn’t one otherwise. A man in thinking, acting, working.
You grow up fast in cotton country, or you don’t grow up. You stop being a child just about as soon as you’re out of the cradle. You’re concerned with cornbread not cookies, beds not bedtime stories. You’re part of something that always has a little heavier load than it can carry, that always has to put out more than it can get back. So you hold up your end, or it falls on you. You don’t drag your feet, or you get left behind.
We walked along silently, one of us on each side of the road where the walking was easiest, the brown-dry Bermuda grass rustling against our shoes. The first frost was in the air. Out in the fields the dead cotton plants drooped sleepily.
It didn’t seem loyal to Pa to wish for the time when I’d be my own man. Because that was like wishing he was dead; he’d want me until then. So I didn’t wish—not more’n a little when I thought about Donna; no more than I could keep from wishing—but I couldn’t help thinking.
Pa wouldn’t be able to turn his lease. But it wouldn’t really change anything if he did. We’d eat better, dress better; I’d get to go to college. But there wouldn’t be any real change. I’d still be Pa’s man, doing what he liked, doing nothing that he didn’t like.
I owed it to him.
I was so wrapped up in my thinking that I didn’t hear him for a few seconds after he spoke. It took that long for the words to register.
“What?” I said. “Why, no, I wanted to come with you, Pa.”
“You really did?”
“Sure, I did. Naturally.”
“Well,” he said, doubtfully. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve let you, though. I don’t want nothin’ but good for you, son. You’re gonna be someone, and I can’t let no trouble fall in your way.”
“I’ll be all right,” I said.