Of Love and Dust

by Ernest J. Gaines

  When the fight started, Louise jumped off the gallery and crawled under the house. The little girl started toward the steps, but the sound of blade against wood and wood against wood made her move back. She tried again—she tried several times; but each time she did, it looked like Marcus and Bonbon were fighting right by the steps, and Tite had to go back upon the gallery.

  Sun still wanted to run, but he couldn’t run. Even when Marshall Hebert went back up the quarter—with the lights on and driving fast—Sun still couldn’t get up and run. He couldn’t get his eyes off that little girl who was trying to come down those steps.

  Then, for a second, everything was too quiet. Then he heard a scream, and he jerked his head to the left. He saw that Marcus had lost the picket and he saw Bonbon raising the blade. He had time to shut his eyes, and even though he couldn’t see, he heard when the blade hit. When he was able to look again, he saw Bonbon standing there with the blade in his hand. Bonbon swung the blade far across the yard and went up on the gallery to get his little girl. He sat down on the steps with the little girl in his arms.

  Sun still couldn’t move. He didn’t move until he heard the tractor coming up the quarter. Then he jumped up and started running. He ran all the way home. He didn’t tell anybody what he had seen. He wouldn’t tell anybody what he had seen for a whole week. He wouldn’t even come out of his house. The only person he let come to him was his smallest daughter who was too young to talk and ask questions.

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  There wasn’t a trial, there was a hearing. Bonbon got off with justifiable homicide. According to the record, this is what happened: Marcus had stolen Marshall Hebert’s car and was trying to run away with Louise when Bonbon accidentally caught them. Marcus started a fight and Bonbon killed him trying to protect himself. Nothing was brought up at the hearing about Marshall.

  Bonbon left the plantation the day after the hearing. The night before he left, he came down to the house and tried to explain things to me. He told me he knew Marshall had put Marcus up to this—that Marcus was supposed to kill him, not him killing Marcus. But Marcus didn’t have the gun that Marshall had put in the dash drawer. Bonbon told me he had seen Marshall searching in the other car after he went in the yard, but he didn’t know until after the fight what Marshall was looking for. He told me he didn’t want to fight Marcus, he was hoping Marcus would run from him. If Marcus had made any attempt to run, he would have let him go, and there wouldn’t have been a thing said about it. But when Marcus didn’t run, he had to fight him. Not just fight him, but he had to kill him. If he hadn’t killed Marcus, he would have been killed himself. The Cajuns on the river would have done that.

  I sat on the gallery listening to Bonbon, but I couldn’t feel any pity for him. Far as I was concerned, all the human understanding we had had between us was over with now. He saw this in my face and I could see how it hurt him. He left the house and the next day he left the plantation with his little girl. Pauline left a couple nights later with the twins. The same night of the fight, some people had taken Louise to a hospital in New Orleans. Not long after that, they took her to Jackson—the insane asylum.

  The Saturday after Bonbon and Pauline left the plantation, Marshall Hebert called me to his library.

  “You better leave from here,” he said.

  “Yes sir, I was thinking about that, myself,” I said.

  “These Cajuns know you and that boy lived in the same house, and they might get it in their heads to do you something.”

  I nodded. He wasn’t worried about the Cajuns hurting me. He wanted me to leave because I knew the truth about what had happened. He was afraid I might start blackmailing now and he would have to get somebody to kill me.

  Marshall was sitting behind his desk. He pushed a big envelope across the desk toward me. I picked up the envelope and took out the letter.

  “It’s only a recommendation,” he said. “Telling people that you’re a good worker.”

  After I had read the letter, I folded it neatly and put it back in the envelope. Then I laid the envelope on the desk.

  “You don’t want it?” he said, getting red in the face.

  “No sir, I’ll get by,” I said. “Thanks very much.”

  I went back home and packed my things; then I went up to Aunt Margaret’s house. I told her that everything I had left in the house was for her. If she couldn’t use them, she could give them away.

  “Sit down and eat something ’fore you leave,” she said.

  It was about three o’clock in the evening. I sat down at the table, and Aunt Margaret dished up a big plate of meat and rice and set it in front of me. She got a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, too.

  “Yes, you have to leave,” she said, nodding her head thoughtfully.

  “I know,” I said, eating.

  “You see, you won’t forget,” she said.

  “I can’t, Aunt Margaret.”

  “That’s why you got to go,” she said. “You’ll just keep reminding him.”

  “You forgot already, Aunt Margaret?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The food was good. I ate slowly, looking across the table at her.

  “When you live long as I done lived, you learn to forget things quite easy,” she said.

  “I can’t. He killed Marcus; Bonbon didn’t.”

  “That’s what you saying,” she said.

  “That’s what we all know,” I said.

  “I don’t know nothing,” she said, looking straight in my eyes.

  “I was thinking about leaving anyhow,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you go before now?”

  I looked across the table at her. I loved Aunt Margaret very much.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She nodded. “I know,” she said.

  “But you don’t know Marshall Hebert was the one who killed Marcus?”

  “No, I don’t know that,” she said.

  I ate and looked at her. “I’ll be like this one day,” I thought. “But Marcus never would have been like this.”

  “I wonder where they at now,” she said.

  “Pauline and Bonbon?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think she followed him?”

  “She might have.”

  “They’ll have to go North,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “That’s where Marcus and Louise wanted to go,” I said.

  “You liked Marcus, didn’t you, James?”

  “At the last,” I said. “Him and Louise both. They showed lot of courage.”

  “That’s why it had to end like that,” she said. “They can’t let nothing like that happen now.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Bonbon and his kind,” she said.

  “But not Marshall?”

  “He didn’t have nothing to do with it,” she said.

  “Then why is he sending me away from here?” I said.

  “Them Cajuns might start some mess,” she said.

  After I finished eating, I put my plate in the pan of soapy water on the stove. Then I came back to the table where Aunt Margaret was sitting. She stood up and I saw tears in her eyes.

  “Lean down here, James,” she said.

  I leaned over for her. She held me close and kissed me on the jaw.

  “Well, I’m going,” I said.

  “Where you going, James?”

  “I don’t know, Aunt Margaret.”

  We went out on the gallery. Unc Octave and Mr. Roberts were out there. Mr. Roberts had his little switch that he used for popping at flies. I told him and Unc Octave good-bye, then I hung my guitar round my neck and picked up my suitcase and handbag. Aunt Margaret followed me to the gate.

  “Good-bye,” I told her again.

  “I’ll walk piece way,” she said.

  She took the handbag from me. The people we met in the road told me good-bye. The ones on the galleries waved at me. Some of them inside the houses ca
me to the door to wave at me.

  When we came up to Bonbon’s old house, Aunt Margaret and I stopped for a moment. The place looked cool, lonely, and very peaceful. I started shaking my head.

  “I know what you mean,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “I was thinking about what that preacher said at Marcus’s funeral,” I said. “ ‘Man is here for a little while, then gone.’ ”

  “Ain’t it the true,” Aunt Margaret said.

  “Well, good-bye again,” I said.

  I put my hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the jaw.

  “Take care yourself, James,” she said.

  I picked up the suitcase and the handbag and walked away. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw her going back home.