Of Love and Dust

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Now, I was no more than a couple feet away from that back door when Marcus hit Murphy Bacheron, but by the time Murphy hit Black Ned I was halfway across the kitchen. I wasn’t trying to get there, I still don’t know how it happened. I’ve been in house fights and bar fights, and I know the best thing for you to do is get out quick as you can. That probably was in my mind (I’m sure it was), but some kind of way I found myself halfway across the kitchen. I wasn’t fighting, mind you, I was just trying to get back to that door. But like a man trying to swim against a stiff wind, every time I got close, the crowd would knock me back.

  “Goddamn you,” I heard Josie saying. “Goddamn you, Snuke Johnson.”

  Josie was cursing Snuke Johnson and trying to push her way toward Marcus at the same time. But there was a crowd of people between her and Marcus, and every time she pushed one foot forward, the crowd pushed her that far back.

  “You sonofabitch you, Snuke Johnson,” she said, still trying to get to Marcus. “You sonofabitch you.”

  Then somebody got thrown against the wall, and a bunch of pans and spoons and pots and cups and tops all fell down.

  “Who hit me? Now, who hit me?” I heard Sun Brown saying. “Who hit me? I want to know the exact man who hit me. I ain’t after hitting nobody but the exact man who hit me. I’m a peace-loving and—”

  I heard a hit and a groan.

  “Oh Lord, now I’m mad,” Sun said. “The same sonofagun done hit me again.”

  Then somebody else got slammed against the wall and something else fell—probably a tub.

  “Oh goddoggit, I’m the maddest man in the house now,” I heard Sun Brown saying.

  “Snuke Johnson, you sonofabitch,” I heard Josie saying. “You sonofabitch you.”

  All this time I was pulling on people, pushing on people, squeezing through people, trying to get to that back door. Nothing happened to me until I was one step from it, until I could smell the good air, until I had cocked up my leg to jump. Then somebody said, “Don’t leave us now, Kelly, the fun just starting.” And he or somebody else cracked me over the shoulder with something that felt like a rolling pin. As I started down—I wasn’t out—but as I started down I grabbed hold to the first thing I touched. It was soft and fleshy but I didn’t care.

  “Get your hands off my ass,” I heard a woman saying from a long way off. “You horny son—goddamn you, get your hands down.”

  I wanted to tell the woman I wasn’t after feeling her ass. All I wanted was to stay on my feet long enough to reach that door because I was afraid if I went down I was going to be trampled to death. I was screaming these words inside, but they wouldn’t come out. They wouldn’t even come out in a whisper.

  “Get ’em down,” she said, hitting me on the hands. “Goddamn it, I mean, get ’em down.”

  I recognized Josie’s voice and I tried to explain why I was holding on, but the words still wouldn’t come out. And she went right on hitting me. She beat me on one hand for a while, then she twist to the other side and beat me on the other hand. Finally I went down. I didn’t move for a couple seconds, then I started crawling toward the door. Before I could get there somebody fell on me and knocked me flat on my face.

  “Kelly,” Black Ned said, and hit me on the same shoulder that the other person had hit me with the rolling pin. “You wouldn’t get me that beer, huh, you no-good sonofabitch.”

  He hit me in the side and ’cross the head. Before I could hit him back he was already up in the air. It had happened so quick, I didn’t see it happening. One second he was on the floor hitting me ’cross the head, the next second he was in the air kicking like a fish on a string. Somebody had him by the collar with one hand, slapping him around with the other.

  I tried to crawl toward that back door again, but with so many legs around me I didn’t know if I was going toward the door or the window. Then somebody picked up the tub of ice water that the beer had been in and dumped all that on my back.

  “Oh Lord,” I screamed.

  I tried to push myself up, but somebody else fell on me. This one was softer and heavier than Black Ned, so I figured it wasn’t him again. It wasn’t; it was Josie.

  “You sonofabitch you, Snuke Johnson,” she said. “You sonofabitch you.”

  “I’m not Snuke Johnson, Josie,” I said.

  “You sonofabitch you, Snuke Johnson,” she said, looking at me. “You sonofabitch you.”

  I thought Josie had finally gone crazy. I pushed myself up real slowly, then I reached down and pulled her up.

  “You all right, Josie?” I said.

  “You sonofabitch you, Snuke Johnson,” she said, turning from me. “You sonofabitch you.”

  “That’s the way you fight, Kelly?” one of the Aguillard boys said next to me. He swung but I blocked it and clipped him before his punch got through. He went down on the floor like somebody had grabbed both of his ankles.

  Just about then Jocko Thompson threw Black Ned on that hot stove, and Black Ned sprung up in the air almost to the ceiling. While he was coming back down, somebody stuck his fist under Black Ned’s chin and Black Ned slammed against the stove again. This time he disconnected the pipe. The pipe fell first, then the stove came down. By then, though, one of the Aguillard brothers had seen what I had done to his other brother and he clipped me ’side the ear and down I went.

  “You again, Kelly?” the one on the floor said, and hit me in the chest.

  By then, though, that hot stove and those hot coals were beginning to mix with that ice water on the floor, and nobody in his right mind wanted to be down there. So I got up before the Aguillard boy did, and as he tried to grab my leg, I jerked it back and landed a shoe up ’side his face. He went over groaning, and I turned just in time to catch one of the others swinging on me. I went under his fist and clipped him hard and he went down to join his brother on the floor. Then they started fighting each other. The place was so full of steam and smoke you didn’t know who was who now.

  Some kind of way I made it to the middle door, and just as I stepped into the front room, Murphy Bacheron nodded and spoke my name like he hadn’t seen me in a long time; then he hit me so hard I saw a dozen different color stars. The punch didn’t knock me out because I heard Murphy saying, “Honor munks gent’mans.”

  That’s all I remembered of the fight, but the next day Jack Claiborn told me the rest. He said he was fighting one of the Aguillard brothers in the front room when he saw Murphy hit me. He said I fell back in the kitchen and about a minute later I came out (out of that steam and smoke) like a man drunk, but a man ready to do anything to get out of there. He said I staggered through the front room, out on the gallery, then down the steps. He said I bent over and picked up Marcus out of the grass and dew where Murphy had thrown him a few minutes before, and I put Marcus on my shoulder and carried him all the way home. There I dumped him on the gallery, then I went to my room and went to bed.

  I don’t know if all this is true, but I do know that when I woke up the next morning I was laying on the bed with all my clothes on. When I went outside I saw Marcus laying on the gallery still asleep.

  PART TWO

  23

  Monday, twelve o’clock, Marcus started looking at Bonbon’s wife. He was riding on the tractor with me, and as we went by the house I saw him looking at her on the gallery. I didn’t think too much of it then because I thought he was still hooked on Pauline. But Louise had seen him looking at her, and when we came back down the quarter I saw how she had shifted that chair so she could face the road better. Marcus looked at her again but he didn’t say anything to me about her. Since I didn’t think he was looking at her on purpose, I didn’t say anything either.

  Marcus was still pretty bruised up from the fight last Saturday night. He had already told me what had happened before Murphy Bacheron knocked him out and threw him outside. He said he had knocked out one guy himself and had thrown him through the window. Then he saw this woman hiding in the corner. As he started toward her the woman s
tarted screaming. “Shut up,” he told her.

  “Oh, please, Mr. Convict, I got two little bitty children,” the woman cried. “Please, I got two little bitty children, and I’m all they got.”

  He said he grabbed her and kissed her very hard. (“That’s the best thing for ’em when they carrying on like that at a fight,” he said.) While he was making her toes curl from his blazing kisses, he felt somebody touching him on the shoulder. He didn’t pay the person any mind, he went on kissing the woman. He said he had ideas of forgetting this fight now and jumping through the window with the woman under his arm. The person touched him on the shoulder again. He still didn’t pay him any mind. The person touched him a third time. He said he turned and saw this old, scarred-up man standing in front of him with this old derby setting just on the top of his head. He said he wondered where the old man had come from, because anybody who had been there any length of time not only had lost his hat, he had lost half of his clothes. He said to the old man, “Yeah, what you want, grandpa? Can’t you see when a man busy?”

  He said the old man said, “It ’pears to me lak you was the young gent’man who started dis li’l commotion.” Marcus said he started to tell the old man to go home and get his rest and he would talk about it with him the next day, but just about then the old man turned around, blocked a punch, and knocked out the guy who was trying to hit him in the back. He turned to Marcus again.

  “People like Harry got no honor,” he said. “And I think there ought to be honor munks gent’mans. What you think?”

  Marcus said he knew he had to hit this old man before the old man hit him, so he pretended there was somebody else coming up behind the old man. “Watch it,” he said. “Watch out.” The old man snapped his head around, Marcus threw up his fist to clip him, but before his fist could get through, the old man was facing him again.

  “What?” the old man said, ducking to the side. “And I had just told you ’bout honor.” Marcus said that was all he heard, that was all he remembered. The next day when he woke up on the gallery, the left side of his face felt like somebody had hit him with a mallet.

  Marcus told me all this Sunday evening when we were sitting out on the gallery. Sunday morning after I had cleaned up, I went down the quarter to help Josie clean up her place. Couple the other fellows were down there, too. When we got through, Josie gave us a pint. We stood in the kitchen drinking and talking about the fight; then I went back to the house. Miss Julie Rand and Marcus were sitting out on the gallery. Miss Julie waved a pasteboard fan slowly before her face.

  “Miss Julie,” I said.

  “How are you, Mr. Kelly?” she said, in that little, high-pitched voice.

  Miss Julie was sitting in a chair Marcus had brought out of my room. She wore a purple dress; the dress was silk and it shined like new tin. Miss Julie had probably got it out of her trunk or the armoire, because it had a little of that odor I had smelt in her room that night. The dress was long and pleated and came all the way to her shoes. She wore old, high-topped shoes with wooden heels. The shoes didn’t have strings, they had buckles. On the floor ’side her chair was her old pocketbook. The pocketbook was black and shiny with brass knobs. I sat on the gallery against the post. Miss Julie waved the fan before her face a couple times. It was one of those old pasteboard fans that undertakers donate to churches every four or five years. It had a picture of Jesus Christ on one side. On the other side was writing, probably the address of the undertaker parlor.

  “Well,” Marcus said, “I suppose y’all want talk and don’t want me round.”

  He got up and went inside.

  “What happened to his face?” Miss Julie said. “Yours—what happened to yours?”

  I touched my bottom lip. It was swole and it still hurt a little. My left shoulder was still hurting me, too.

  “Bunch of us got in a fight last night at the fair,” I said.

  Miss Julie moved the fan slowly before her face and looked down at me.

  “Marcus didn’t start it, did he?” she said. “He’s a good boy.”

  “No ma’am, he didn’t start it,” I said.

  “Sounds like something one of them Aguillard boys might do,” she said.

  “I don’t know who started it,” I said.

  “But it wasn’t Marcus?”

  “No ma’am, I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Thanks, Mr. Kelly,” she said. “I’m glad I heard it from you. I’m go’n do little visiting while I’m here, and I’m sure they’ll be talking ’bout it.”

  I sat against the post, looking across the gallery. I could feel Miss Julie looking down at me. I could hear the ruffling of her silk dress when she waved the fan before her face. After a while I raised my head and looked at her. In the daylight she looked even older. Her skin had the color of a ripe prune. It was just as wrinkled as a ripe prune. But her eyes were still quick, sharp, piercing and knowing. And she knew I had lied about Marcus. She knew all the time he had started the fight. But she knew I knew what she wanted to hear. She was sharp, all right; she had picked well when she picked me to look after him. She knew I would do what she wanted me to do, I would say what she wanted to hear.

  “How’s he getting ’long with Sidney out there?” she said.

  “All right,” I said.

  She moved the fan slowly before her face and looked down at me with those sharp, knowing eyes—telling me she knew everything wasn’t “all right” with Marcus and Sidney Bonbon. She knew Marcus and Sidney Bonbon too well to believe that everything was all right. Yet, she knew I knew what she wanted to hear. And she didn’t want to hear the truth.

  “Marcus talked to Mr. Marshall?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You think I ought to talk to Mr. Marshall again?”

  “I don’t think you need to, Miss Julie,” I said. “Marcus will make out all right long as he do his job.”

  She looked down at me with those sharp old eyes that pierced at the heart.

  “I worked for them forty years,” she said. “Forty years, Mr. Kelly. I never asked for a’ extra penny; never even asked for a’ extra piece of bread. Forty years, Mr. Kelly.”

  I nodded.

  “I ain’t saying they owe me nothing. Because they was good people to me when I was there. But it’s the good people you go to when you in trouble, ain’t it?”

  “Yes ma’am, I suppose so.”

  “Yes, it’s the good people,” she said. “But sometimes even good people forget. They don’t try to forget—but sometimes they forget. Sometimes they need reminding what you did.”

  “I’m sure he won’t forget what you did for his family,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “How’s he doing out in the field?”

  “All right.”

  “Sidney never threat to hit him or anything?”

  “No ma’am,” I said.

  “And that sack?” she said.

  “Sack?” I said.

  She didn’t answer, she just looked at me with those sharp old eyes that pierced to the heart. I didn’t know she knew anything about the sack. But I supposed she had seen the same thing done to somebody else.

  “He had to pull it,” I said. “But every day he pulls it less and less. He’s learning how to keep up now.”

  “Talk to him, Mr. Kelly,” she said.

  “I do what I can.”

  “The Lord will pay you back even if I can’t.”

  I looked down at the floor. It always make me shame-face when old people start telling me what the Lord’s going to do for me.

  “It’s hot, isn’t it?” Miss Julie said after a while.

  “Burning up,” I said.

  It was about twelve o’clock, and that sun was so hot you had to half shut your eyes to see anything out there.

  “I brought some food there,” she said. “A nice cake. I told him half of it was for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Ehh, Lord, it’s hot,” sh
e said. Then she looked over her shoulder and called, “Marcus?”

  He didn’t answer her. She didn’t call again, like she knew he had heard, like she knew he would come sooner or later. After a while he showed up.

  “You feel all right?” she asked him.

  “Sure, nan-nan,” he said.

  “You need anything?”

  “I can use couple bucks if you got it.”

  She reached over and got the old pocketbook off the floor. After clicking it open, she pulled out an old pocket handkerchief. It took her so long to untie the handkerchief, I started to ask her if she needed help. Marcus just stood there waiting, not even looking at her.

  “There,” she said, and caught her breath.

  She spread the handkerchief out in her lap and picked up several old, rolled-up bills. She unrolled the bills and looked at them a long time. She was wondering how much she could give him. She probably had to save some money for things she needed in Baton Rouge. She reached him a five-dollar bill. He didn’t say thanks or anything; he didn’t even nod his head.

  “Ehh, it’s hot,” she said, after she had tied up her handkerchief and stuffed it back into the old pocketbook again. “Well, I think I’ll go down and see some of the people,” she said. “Now, you sure you don’t need me to do anything in there?” she asked Marcus.

  “What?” I thought. “And you had to rest from untying a pocket handkerchief.”

  “Everything all right,” he said. “I got plenty food. When George picking you up?”

  “Sometime this evening,” she said. “Ehh, Lord, it’s hot. I hate to even stand up.”

  She got up and just stood there, looking out in the yard. Then she said, “Ehh, Lord,” again and started down the steps. I took her by the hand and helped her to the ground. She bowed to me and thanked me and went out of the yard. Marcus was standing in the door; he wasn’t even looking at her.