Of Love and Dust

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Also by ERNEST J. GAINES

  Catherine Carmier

  Bloodline

  The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

  A Long Day in November (for children)

  In My Father’s House

  A Gathering of Old Men

  A Lesson Before Dying

  ERNEST J. GAINES

  Of Love and Dust

  Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. His other books include A Lesson Before Dying, A Gathering of Old Men, In My Father’s House, A Long Day in November, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Bloodline, and Catherine Carmier. He divides his time between San Francisco and the University of Southwestern Louisiana, in Lafayette, where he is writer-in-residence.

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JUNE 1994

  Copyright © 1967 by Ernest J. Gaines

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by The Dial Press, New York, in 1967.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gaines, Ernest J., 1933–

  Of love and dust / by Ernest J. Gaines.— 1st Vintage Contemporaries ed.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: New York: Dial Press, 1967.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83035-7

  I. Title.

  PS3557.A355036 1994

  813′.54—dc20 94-4283

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to LeVell Holmes and

  Alice Ryan Holmes

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Two Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Part Three Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  PART ONE

  1

  From my gallery I could see that dust coming down the quarter, coming fast, and I thought to myself, “Who in the world would be driving like that?” I got up to go inside until the dust had all settled. But I had just stepped inside the room when I heard the truck stopping before the gate. I didn’t turn around then because I knew the dust was flying all over the place. A minute or so later, when I figured it had settled, I went back. The dust was still flying across the yard, but it wasn’t nearly as thick now. I looked toward the road and I saw somebody coming in the gate. It was too dark to tell if he was white or colored.

  “You Kelly?” he said, when he came up to the steps.

  He was a tall, slim, brown-skin boy. He had on a dirty, light-color shirt and dark pants. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned and the sleeves were rolled up to the elbows.

  “I’m Kelly,” I said. “Jim Kelly.”

  “He want you out there,” the boy said, nodding toward the gate. “Mind if I have some water?”

  “Some in the icebox in the kitchen.”

  He came up the steps to go by me, and I could see how he was sweating and I could smell the sweat in his clothes. I went out to the truck where Sidney Bonbon was sitting behind the steering wheel. Bonbon was the overseer of the plantation. He still had on that sweat-stained white straw hat and he was still wearing the dirty, sweat-smelling khakis he had worn in the field that day. He was looking at Charlie Jordan’s old house on the other side of the road. Charlie had his light on in the front room, and he and somebody else were sitting out on the gallery.

  “Yeah?” I said leaning on the truck.

  Bonbon turned to me.

  “Doing anything?” he said.

  “Sitting down.”

  “Take him to Baton Rouge. Get his clothes and bring him on back here. He got that room ’side you there.”

  I wanted him to tell me more about the boy.

  “Anything in there?” he asked.

  “A stove; no pipe,” I said. “That’s about all.”

  “No bed?”

  “No; they had an old cot in there, but somebody must have taken it.”

  “If he don’t get one in Baton Rouge, they got one in the tool shop,” Bonbon said. “He get the rest from the store.”

  I nodded my head. I still wanted to know more about the boy. Who was he? What was he doing there?

  “I’m putting him there ’side you; he be working with you from now on,” Bonbon said. “Jonas going in the cotton field.”

  The boy came back and stood by the truck.

  “You ready?” Bonbon said to me.

  “I’m ready,” I said. I turned to the boy. “You shut the door?”

  “I closed it.”

  “Hop in,” I said.

  He got in the middle and I got in beside him. It was blazing hot in there with all three of us crammed together. Bonbon went down the quarter to turn around at the railroad tracks, then he shot back up the quarter just as fast as he had come down there. I knew what to expect when he came up to his house, so I braced myself. The boy didn’t know what was coming, and when Bonbon slammed on brakes, the boy struck his forehead against the dashboard.

  “Goddamn,” he said.

  “All right, Geam,” Bonbon said to me. He acted like he hadn’t even heard the curse words.

  I put my hand on the door to get out, but I stopped when Bonbon started talking to the boy again.

  “Don’t reckond I need to tell you to come back?” he said.

  The boy didn’t answer. He was frowning and rubbing his forehead. I touched him with my knee.

  “I’m coming back,” he said.

  Bonbon didn’t see me do it, but he knew I had touched the boy; and now he just sat there looking at the boy like he expected to have trouble out of him. He raised his hand and pressed the silver button on the dash drawer and took out the gun.

  “All right, Geam,” he said.

  My name is James Kelly, but Bonbon couldn’t say James. He called me Geam. He was the only man, white or black, who called me Geam.

  Bonbon got out the truck and I got out, too. We met at the front. The light was on us a second.

  “Leave it here when I get back?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Put the keys in the dash drawer.”

  “Taking off,
” I said.

  “See you tomorrow, Geam,” he said.

  He went in the yard and I got in the truck. I shot away from there just as fast as Bonbon had come down the quarter.

  “That sonofabitch,” the boy said.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I said.

  “Not me,” he said. “If they think I’m go’n stay here any five years …”

  “Oh, I see. One of them, huh?”

  He didn’t say any more. Now he was holding a handkerchief on his forehead. When I came out to the highway, I sat myself good behind the wheel. I wanted to get to Baton Rouge and back quickly as I could.

  “Never seen you around here before,” I said. “How did you get to know Marshall Hebert?”

  “All right,” he said. “If you want to know what happened you don’t have to beat around the bush. Just come on out and ask me what happened.”

  “You don’t have to get mad with me, buddy,” I said. “All I have to do is drive you places.”

  “And ask questions,” he said.

  “You don’t have to answer them,” I said.

  “Well, I killed somebody,” he said. “Marshall Hebert bond me out. And you can tell him this—if you his whitemouth—if he think I’m serving any five years on that plantation he can just haul back and kiss my ass. I’m running ’way from there first chance I get.”

  “Like tonight?” I said.

  “You’ll never know, whitemouth,” he said.

  “Well, let me and you get one thing straight right now,” I said. “I’m nobody’s whitemouth. And another thing: if you want to run tonight I’ll stop the truck right now and let you go. Did you hear me?”

  He was quiet, still holding that handkerchief against his forehead.

  “All right,” I said. “We got that settled.”

  “Shit,” he said, and laid back in the seat.

  2

  A half hour later I was crossing the Mississippi River into Baton Rouge. I could smell the strong odor from the cement plant down below the bridge. Sometimes the odor was so strong it nearly made you sick. Farther to the right were the chemical plants and oil companies. I could see hundreds and hundreds of electric lights over there. High above all the lights and buildings and oil tanks was a big blaze of fire. The fire came from a flamestack burning off wasted gas.

  I woke up the boy and asked him where he lived. He told me to go to South Baton Rouge. I asked him where at in South Baton Rouge and he told me Louise Street. When I came to Louise Street I had to wake him up again. This time he sat up in the seat and nodded for me to go on. After I had gone about two blocks he pointed to a house on the right. I drove the truck to the side and parked before a little white cottage house. The front door was open and there was a light on inside.

  “What all you have to get?” I asked the boy.

  He didn’t answer; he just got out and started toward the house. I got out of the truck and followed him. I wasn’t doing it to keep an eye on him—that was his business if he wanted to run; I was going with him to help him bring the things back outside.

  “Marcus,” a woman said, soon as he walked into the room. “Mama, Marcus here.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” another person said. This was an old lady’s voice. “Didn’t I tell you?” she said again.

  I came in the room and stood by the door. Everybody was so busy looking at Marcus, they didn’t see me or hear me come in. An old lady who must have been eighty or ninety was patting Marcus on the face. Marcus didn’t like it, but the old lady was so happy to see him she couldn’t stop. Another, younger woman and a man were standing to the side. The young woman looked happy, but the man just looked disgusted. A little boy and a little girl stood on the other side of the man, looking at Marcus, too. Both of them acted like they were a little afraid of him. The little boy was the first to notice that somebody else had come in the room. After he had looked at me a second, everybody else did, too.

  “You come for his clothes?” the old lady asked me.

  “Yes ma’am; a bed too if you got one.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m Miss Julie Rand,” she said. “I christened Marcus.”

  “I’m James Kelly,” I said, going up to her.

  I shook hands with all of them. The man was called George and he was Miss Julie Rand’s son. The young woman, Clorestine, was George’s wife. Clorestine acted just the opposite from her husband. He was disgusted and ashamed of Marcus; she was happy to see Marcus was out of jail.

  “I don’t remember you,” Miss Julie Rand said to me. “How long you live at Hebert?”

  “The last three years.”

  “No, I had left by then,” she said.

  “Long before then, Mama,” Clorestine said.

  “Yes,” the old lady said. She looked at Marcus again. “Hungry?” she asked him.

  “Starving,” he said. He didn’t use any kind of kindness or respect in his voice. I could see George looking at him from the side. He hated Marcus for what he had done, and he was ashamed because I knew about it.

  “Care to have supper with us, Mr. Kelly?” Miss Julie asked me. Miss Julie had a little, high-pitched voice just fitting for somebody about her size and age.

  “No ma’am, I haven’t so long ate.”

  “Well, there’s some ice cream and pie there,” she said. “You might have little dessert with us.”

  “I’m taking a bath,” Marcus said. “Eat when I come out.”

  Everybody watched him leave the room. He started pulling the shirttail out of his pants before he reached the other door. The back of the shirt was smeared with dirt and there was a tear on the right sleeve. For about a minute after he left the room, nobody said a thing. Then the old lady looked up at me. I’m about six-feet-one and she was about four-eight or -nine, so she had to hold her head ’way back to look me in the face.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said.

  “Sure,” I thought; “and handy with a knife, too.” Because now I had figured out who he was. A colored boy had killed another colored boy at one of the honky-tonks over the weekend. What I couldn’t figure out was where did Marshall Hebert fit into this.

  “Come to my room with me, Mr. Kelly, will you, please?” Miss Julie said in that little, high-pitched voice that was so fitting for her.

  I followed her into a small, ill-smelling room that had too much furniture. All old people who move from the country to the city live in rooms like these. They try to bring everything they had in the country and cram it into a little room that can’t hold half of what they own. Miss Julie had an old sofa chair against the wall and another little rocker by the bed. There was an old trunk by the window with a pile of quilts and blankets stacked on top of it. Against the other wall was an old armoire leaning to one side. There must have been a half dozen paste-board boxes stacked on top of the armoire. In the corner by the armoire were several paper bags packed full of clothes. The mantelpiece was cluttered with all kinds of nick-nacks, and there was an old coal oil lamp there, too, just in case the electric lights went out. No matter what wall you faced, you saw pictures of Jesus Christ. These pictures were on old calendars that Miss Julie Rand had never thrown away. They dated from the late thirties up to this year—forty-eight. Above the mantelpiece, stuck inside an old black wooden frame, was a picture of a man and a woman. The man was sitting; the woman was standing beside him. I figured that this was Miss Julie and her husband when she was much, much younger.

  “Please, sit down, Mr. Kelly,” she said.

  So I sat in the sofa chair while she sat in her little rocker looking at me. She was a very small old lady, and now, sitting there with her feet hardly touching the floor, she looked even smaller. Her head was tied in an old pink rag, and her gray dress nearly touched the floor. The old brown slippers on her feet looked pretty near old as she did.

  But the thing that hit me most about the room was the odor in there. It was the odor of old people, old clothes, old liniment bottles.

  “From ro
und here, Mr. Kelly?” she asked me.

  “Pointe Coupee up there,” I said.

  “You look like a very nice person, Mr. Kelly,” she said. Then she looked at me a long time, studying me closely. “Yes, a very nice person.”

  I didn’t know if she wanted me to agree with her or not, but I know I didn’t feel comfortable with her looking at me like that. And that odor in the room wasn’t helping out matters, either.

  “I want you do me a favor, Mr. Kelly,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Look after Marcus up there.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Sidney Bonbon still overseer there, I hear.”

  “Yes ma’am, he’s still there.”

  “Still the same?”

  “Most of us get along with him,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “But first he got to try you, he got to break you. I want you talk to Marcus. I want you make him understand.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

  I could still smell that odor. It came from everywhere in the room. I wanted to hold my breath, but the old lady was looking at me all the time.

  “I hate to see him come there,” she said. “But that pen can kill a man. There ain’t much left to you when they let you go.”

  “That plantation can do the same to some people,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “But you got the open air, and you got people who care round you.”

  “He’ll make out all right if he take orders,” I said. “But he’ll have to take orders there.”

  “You can talk to him, Mr. Kelly. You look like a person he’ll listen to.”

  “That one listen to anybody?” I thought. “You trying to kid me, little old lady?”

  “Because he’s a good boy,” she said, looking at me like she didn’t believe what she was saying herself. “That other boy was wrong. They forced him to fight that boy. That other boy was the first to pull his knife.”

  “How do you know all this?” I was thinking. “That happened about three in the morning and you probably had been in bed eight or nine hours already. You would believe anything he said, wouldn’t you?”