by Jeff Fields
The frail little man hurried out of the bathroom hooking on his glasses. "What is it, Jayell, for God's sake what is it this time?''
Jayell pulled an envelope from his pocket and waved it in the bookkeeper's face. "The Internal Revenue people, they say we've not paid our withholding. Will you put me out of business; is that your intention?"
The bookkeeper sighed. "Jayell, I can't pay your taxes from my own pocket. Have you checked the bank balance lately?"
"My God, are we flat again?"
"And three returned. I called Maudie Fisher at the bank and she's agreed to hold 'em until tomorrow noon, but she's getting tired of this."
Jayell slapped his pockets. "Here, wait a minute." He pulled a check from a wad of time sheets. "Here, that's the last on the college job. Will that clear us?"
Mr. Tagg looked at it. "Well, it'll take care of Maudie, but not the Internal Revenue."
"But they'll get their money. Don't they always get their money?"
"Eventually, but I've told you, Jayell, the taxes withheld from wages must be deposited monthly. They don't want you operating with government money. It should be put in a separate account."
"What the hell's the use of opening two accounts when we can't keep money in one? Talk to 'em, I.V., tell 'em we've got to have more time. They've got to bend with us a little."
"Jayell, you've got to remember who you're dealing with. This is the federal government, they don't have to bend with anybody. And how am I to figure taxes if you keep trading work for supplies and paying people out of your own pocket? You never withhold the proper amounts, you can't even get the correct social security numbers. I got a new list back from Baltimore this morning."
The veins stood out in Jayell's neck. "All I know is there are ragged sons of bitches all over these hills living in their own houses for the first time in their lives, put together with stuff most builders throw away, and we done it without red tape or any help from the federal government, and in the process a few black boys learned a trade who might otherwise end up on the welfare rolls. It seems to me the federal government ought to be told to remember who they're dealing with!"
"Jesus," said Jayell, clumping back down to the truck, "for every man who tries to do, there's a hundred to hold him back."
Em Jojohn sat up and looked around, and seeing we were not at our place of work, cocooned himself in his tarpaulin again.
"Look at him," laughed Jayell. "Would you believe he's the one who finally got me started on this? We were down at Dirsey's one night, right after I'd left the high school; figured I was washed up by that time, everybody thought so. And I was carrying on about the shape housing was in, how I'd like to just start a company to build houses like this, and he looked at me and said, 'Why don't you do it?' Just like that: 'Why don't you do it?' Hah! Crazy son of a bitch." Jayell reached back and slapped the tarpaulin and slipped into a one-block short-cut up One-Way Street and headed out toward Wolf Mountain.
6
Lilly Waugh's farm was located at the very top of Wolf Mountain, which rose out of the rolling foothills at the back of Quarrytown and overlooked the town and the Ape Yard.
By driving back and forth between Quarrytown and Atlanta on the weekends during the summer he was at the college, Jayell had kept his construction business going as best he could. But the Waugh house, almost finished when he was called away, had been largely neglected. Building that house had been a pain. Since none of Jayell's black shop boys were allowed up there, Jayell concentrated on his other houses during those weekend visits and ran by to work on the Waugh house when he could. Now it was all finished except for the outside trim work, but Lilly Waugh said she wasn't moving in a stick of furniture until the house was completely done.
Pete Williteer, the elderly Negro sharecropper who lived on the Waugh place and looked after Miss Lilly, was waiting for us at the jobsite. He had talked a reluctant Jayell into building this house by promising him ten acres of Waugh land on the northeast slope, just above the Ape Yard, and agreeing that Lilly Waugh would not set foot on the job.
"Gon' finish up today, Mr. Crooms?" Pete Williteer asked, smiling.
"Just touch up the paint and be gone," said Jayell. "How's the old woman?"
"Fine. And she likes it, 'specially likes them high board fences. She sho' is anxious to get in it."
Privacy had been the central theme of the Waugh house. It was a miniature feminine fortress. Even the doors had blind entrances. "Yeah? What'd she say about it?" asked Jayell.
"Ain't said nothing. But I can tell she likes it."
"Well, just keep her away one more day."
Pete Williteer nodded. "I got to go over to Little Holland today. Need anything before I do?"
"No, we'll be okay." When Williteer had gone, Jayell got out the paint cans and rousted Jojohn.
The big old Waugh house sat on the crest of the mountain surrounded by tall, broken oak trees. The Waughs had been rich people before the Depression. Mrs. Cline remembered the parties they used to give, with the house all lit up and shiny new automobiles winding up through those trees. Miss Lilly brought her whole class home from finishing school one weekend for a houseparty. Then they lost it all, and Mr. Waugh shot himself. But Mrs. Waugh kept spending and donating money on the old grand scale until she died, and Lilly was left almost penniless, and subsequently became a recluse.
She stayed on at the Waugh farm, and with the help of Pete Williteer raised a few acres of cotton to keep them going, and to my knowledge, never set foot off the place.
I'd never seen her, but Em had; he said she walked straight and tall like a man, and had deep blue eyes that looked out of slits of waxy skin, and always wore an ankle-length white dress and bonnet.
It was obvious why she wanted to get out of the old house. It was literally falling in, and the roof was damaged in several places by falling limbs from those fire-gutted oaks. The fire department had tried to get Miss Lilly to have those trees cut down. They said the reason the trees had been hit by lightning so many times was that they sat on a hill surrounded by open fields. Miss Lilly ordered the fire chief off her place with a pistol. Her grandfather had planted those trees.
Em had, to me, a much more plausible explanation. He said it wasn't the trees drawing the lightning, it was Miss Lilly. God was trying to kill her because she was a witch.
Checking the fields and woods to make sure she was nowhere about, Jayell got a paintbrush and started to work. After half an hour or so, he grew impatient. "Hell, you two can finish this up, I need to get another one started. Just take it easy on the trim and don't get sloppy."
When he had gone, Em and I settled into a more comfortable working pace, taking frequent breaks with the water jar, and finally stopping to nibble on wild fox grapes we found growing along a pine log. At least I ate them. Em wouldn't touch anything that grew within a mile of the Lilly Waugh place. He lit a smoke and rummaged in his pocket, and began unwinding fishing lines from the spool he carried. "I wonder if that creek down yonder has got any bream in it big enough to eat," he said. I wondered about that, too, but I knew we really ought to stay on the house. "I know what we ought to do," he said, "but what do you want to do?" Naturally, we set off to see about the bream.
Moving downstream, we dropped our hooks around the wooden pilings of an old bridge where he was sure there were congregations. Em crooned to the fish and waggled his line, snatching out his hook every few minutes to check the worm. He was about the worst fisherman I ever knew, but how he loved to fish. We sat in the late-morning warm of creek rot and silence, broken only by the steady wash of current against the pilings and Em plunking his sinker from spot to spot, to get their attention, he said. By eleven o'clock I had hooked and thrown back two small perch. Em was playing his line from the bridge when suddenly he caught something that put up a terrible fight. It was an eel. Em forfeited the line in roaring frustration. "Well, damnit, then, I think I'll have a swim." And setting his Vaseline jar of matches on the rail, he somersau
lted into the water. We had a good long swim, and, our wants taken care of to Em's satisfaction, returned once again to the unfinished ought.
The pine thicket behind the Waugh place was like an oven, and though our clothes had quickly dried when we came out of the creek, by the time we had finished touching up the final trim work we were soaked through again and steaming.
The Waugh house seemed docile enough sitting across the field, and I wondered vaguely if the old terror of the Waugh place wasn't just another of those time-embellished tales that grew up about eccentric people. She was probably just a quiet little old lady who talked to her flowers. I started to mention this possibility to Em, and found him frozen, a paper half-filled from his tobacco can, staring past me. I turned and saw her standing at the fence. And she was nothing like that at all.
At least six feet tall, feet apart, she stood glaring from the shadow of her bonnet, one fist against her hip and the other dangling a big revolver.
"Uh-huh," said Em, and he went crashing through the brush.
"Come here, boy," she ordered. The voice was harshly masculine, but with an unnatural squeak, like green shucks being pulled off corn. Steadying my legs, I cautiously approached the fence. Up close she was even more striking. Her hands were long and spidery, and seemed to leap about on their own. One sprang to a post and crouched there. She had too much hair for her small head, and there was something defiant about the way she let it stream down her back instead of tying it up in a bun the way old people are supposed to. But most discomforting to me were her eyes, flat little blue disks that alternately drifted unfocused, then ganged up and bore down on you. "What are you doing down here?''
"Jayell Crooms hired us to help on this house."
"Who's that hiding in the bushes?"
"Em Jojohn, he's helping too."
"He a nigger?"
"No," I said, "he's an Indian."
"Looked pretty dark to me."
"Well, maybe you got bad eyes."
The eyes zeroed in on me, burning. The revolver trembled in her fist.
"Run, boy, run!" came the voice from the woods.
"We're hired hands on Jayell Crooms's payroll," I said, "and you got no call to come around threatening us with a pistol."
"I never threatened nobody, and don't you go sayin' I did!"
"Then what you doin' with the gun?"
"Don't look her in the eye, Earl!"
"I was going to shoot some dogs when I saw somebody sneaking around down here, and come to investigate. There's been stealing lately."
"Well, I've never set foot on your property, and he ain't neither."
"See to it you don't. Now, get your work done and get on away from here." She turned and started back toward the house.
"Ma'am, wait a minute! What was that you said about the dogs?"
She stopped and turned around. A strange little smile touched the corners of her mouth. "My bitch got run over yesterday. I'm going to do away with the puppies."
"You're going to shoot 'em because they got no mama?"
"You tend to your business, I'll tend to mine."
I jumped the sagging fence and landed in front of her, a move so unexpected it startled everybody, including me. Em started out of the woods. "Give them to me," I said, "I'll take 'em off your hands."
"That's foolish. They ain't even weaned."
"I'll bottle feed 'em."
"They'll die."
"Well, at least I can try. It's better than shooting them before you even give 'em a chance!"
She hesitated, mulling it over.
"Give 'em to him," called Em. "Ain't no skin off yours one way or t'other." She shot him a sharp glance and he took an uncertain step toward the woods.
Miss Lilly took a lace handkerchief and pinched at the corner of her mouth, the blue disks floating. "What'll you give me for 'em?" she said.
"Give for 'em? What are they worth if you're going to kill them anyway?"
"Nothing, to me. The question is, what are they worth to you?"
I couldn't believe my ears. "But, I've got no money, and couldn't get any to buy dogs with!"
The old woman eyed me cannily. "Then maybe you and the big 'un would like to do some work for 'em."
"Yes, ma'am," I said eagerly, "we could do that! I'm good at chores . . ."
"Got a few big pieces of furniture to move down here from the big house. Too much for Williteer. You-all do that and maybe I'll give you the dogs."
Em and I looked at each other. The thought of setting foot across the threshold of the Waugh place threw a chill on the whole proposition. "Shoot the dogs," voted Em.
"No," I said, "I'll help you."
"You can't lift nothing."
"I know what I'm doing." I was already walking toward the house.
"Come back here!" yelled Em.
Miss Lilly caught the drift, and turned to follow me.
"Come back here, I said!" I kept walking. Once I glanced back; he was still at the fence, mumbling, shaking the wire, fretting and cursing to himself. But by the time we reached the yard he was trudging along up the hill, looking warily about.
Miss Lilly opened the door to an upstairs bedroom and it was obvious why she wanted it evacuated. There was an enormous tree limb hanging through a hole in the wall. The rain had peeled the wallpaper and left a large brown stain on the floor, from which she had rolled back an oval hooked rug.
The furniture was of the old solid oak, elaborately scrolled variety that has no redeeming qualities except that it's "in the family," and been in the family, and therefore can't be got rid of, and travels from generation to generation, with the taste of some unschooled and ignorant pioneer girl tormenting every subsequent bride until it meets one with the guts to throw it out. Or smart enough to sell it to the fools who pull U-Hauls and hang out at auctions. Miss Lilly hated it, I could tell by the way she looked at it, but there she was, locked in the tradition, starting it on its way.
"Looks like you could of emptied the drawers," groaned Em, heaving a bureau away from the wall.
"They are empty," she said.
"Oh, God."
"Pick up now, don't you scar the floor!"
"Pick up, hell, I ain't gettin' no rupture rasslin' this junk!"
We maneuvered it through the door and Em got under it trying to lift the rusted rollers over the steps of the stairs. Miss Lilly hovered about fussing and fretting as though we were moving an invalid aunt. When it was dragged across the field and into the new house Em was ready to strike a bargain. "Give him one dog for the bureau, and do what you want with the others."
"Nothing doing, Em," I said.
And Miss Lilly was quick to take my side. "All or none."
Next we wrestled down a dresser with flapping wing mirrors and an overstuffed chair so large Em was moved to comment on the inordinate obesity of the Waugh line. Then he cut his hand knocking the bed apart. "Now look! Just look at that!" He stepped out and let the high headboard crash to the floor and examined his bleeding palm by the window. "Right across the lifeline," he said woefully. "I knew I should'a never set foot in this place."
Miss Lilly lifted her dress and tore a strip of cloth from somewhere underneath. But Em backed away in horror. "Get away from here! Wrop it in that thing hit'd rot off at the elbow!"
"Get blood poisoning, then, see if I care. Just don't you get blood on my furniture."
When the room was emptied she took a key from her pocket and locked it as casually as if she were leaving for the day. She moved to the other rooms, the kitchen, choosing what else she wanted dragged to the new house. When the last items were moved we were both eager to get out in the open air. I drew a drink from the well but Em shook his head. He kept his cut hand closed in a protective fist. Miss Lilly came and stood on the back steps. She said nothing.
"Well, we'll go now," I said. "Where are the puppies?"
Still she said nothing. She stood with her head tilted to allow the sun to her face.
"Ma'am, the pu
ppies . . ." Then the realization hit me.
I looked back at her, still standing with her face to the sun. "Em, there ain't any puppies. There never was any puppies!"
"What?" Em rubbed his bleeding hand on his pants. "Where's the dogs, old woman? Look, we ain't got time to . . ."
A spidery hand leaped to her apron pocket and suddenly the pistol was leveled at his nose. The blue eyes blazed from the funnel of her bonnet.
I struggled to keep my voice steady.
"Let's go home, Em. It don't matter. Come on, it's gettin' late."
Em was outraged. "What do you mean? She said she would give you the dogs! We moved the goddamned furniture so she wouldn't kill the dogs!"
"Never mind about the dogs. Let's go."
"You mean that crazy old woman . . ." She was eyeing him curiously, as though he were some animal that had suddenly started speaking. "She ain't crazy. She's just puttin' on. She knew what she was doin'."
I pulled him close, trying to keep my voice down. "Em, if there wasn't any dogs to shoot, why'd she bring a gun down to the fence in the first place?"
Em stopped blustering. I could see the logic taking hold. He looked at me, and back at Miss Lilly. If she wasn't going to shoot dogs, there was the very real possibility that she had fully intended to shoot us, and when she found we weren't prowlers, decided to trick us into the work.
The anger drained out of Em's face. We started backing away. At the edge of the field we broke and didn't stop running until we were across the fence and into the safety of the woods. When we looked back she was gone. The old house looked undisturbed and calm.
But the more I thought about it, the madder I got. "No, she set the whole thing up, made pure fools out of us."
Em's mood, on the other hand, seemed to reverse." Aw, let it ride," he said. "She only done it 'cause she hadn't no money. Pulled it off, too, she did."