Benton's Row

by Frank Yerby

  He stood up then, surged up rather, and raised his big fists against Heaven.

  “How, God?” he boomed; “I ask You—how? How could You let this happen to me? To me—Your servant.”

  He stood there, listening. Jonas crept closer. When he was very close, Reverend Tyler turned, and the negro hung there, frozen, seeing his face. It was not that it was sick and anguished and terrible; it was more; but how much more was beyond old Jonas’s grasp. He saw, unbelievably, that his master was laughing.

  “Jonas!” Bob Tyler roared, “we’re free! You’re free, and I’m free and every man on earth is free! Free to drink and fornicate and gamble! Free to lie, to steal, to kill, to do adultery before the House of God! You know why, Jonas? I ask you, you know why?”

  “Nosuh, Marse Bob,” Jonas croaked.

  “ ‘Cause God is dead! Ain’t no more God!”

  “Marse Bob!” Jonas whispered.

  “No God!” Bob Tyler thundered. “No God a-tall!”

  Then he shoved Jonas out of his path, and went down the trail, into the deepening darkness. And Jonas, in his turn, crept like a scurrying thing of night back to the house, pausing to listen fearfully for sound within.

  They’s sleepin’, he thought; they kin sleep, them! But he was half wrong. Sarah lay propped up on one elbow, staring into the dark. Her mind worked slowly, clearly, in the night: Done sold my soul to the devil an’ brung down hell-fire on my head. After what he done to Reverend Bob, my stomach ought to of been sick when he touched me. But I come to him, all willin’ like a setter bitch in season, and all my heart is saying is ‘Let Reverend Bob stay away—please God, don’t let him come back.’

  She sat up suddenly and said it aloud, flinging the words into the mindless night: “Stay away, Reverend Bob! Dear Lord, keep him away!”

  “Huh?” Tom muttered sleepily. “Whatcha say?”

  “Nothing,” Sarah whispered. “Nothing, nothing a-tall.” Then she put her face down in the darkness, and found his waiting mouth.

  2

  THE sun was below the tree-tops now. It caught the man and the mule in the last yellow wash of light, pinning them blackly against the sky, fixing them in space, in time, dwarf-them into minutia, crawling bug-like and diminutive out of, and into, nowhere. Behind them the woman and the old negro came, scattering the seed, their motions stiff, ritualistic, themselves wedded to the earth in this oldest of all the rites of spring.

  Even Tom Benton felt it. Something about this business of planting, he thought; but beyond that his mind would not go. He had a distaste for things he couldn’t put his finger on. Obscure emotions, and vagrant thoughts which, like every man living, he occasionally had, baffled and annoyed him. He felt that they demeaned him somehow; softened his manhood into something—less.

  He shook his big head to clear it of his mood, and looked behind him at the furrow he had turned. He could see Sarah and Jonas laying in the seed he had found, along with the mule—an animal so ancient that but for the fact it stood upright he had been hard put to tell that it lived—in the ramshackle wreck which had served Reverend Bob Tyler as a barn. Nothing here was his: neither the mule, the plough, the land, the seed, the negro, nor the woman. But he had to work as though they were, hoping that something—luck, a trick of fate, an unforeseen warping of the web of chance—would make them so.

  He had taken them and still they were not his. This wasn’t the kind of loot a man could stuff into his saddle-bags and ride off with. He had taken them; but equally and conversely they had taken him. He grinned wryly, thinking of it.

  Any day now the old boy can come ridin’ back headin’ up a posse. An’ I won’t have a leg to stand on. Remember how old man Burke back home caught Miz Burke with that overseer? Put a double load of buckshot through the overseer’s belly, holdin’ so close it tore a hole in him big as my two fists put together, then after that hoss-whipped Sally Burke to a inch of her flighty life. Never spent a hour in jail neither. Same thing as this. All I can expect, I reckon.

  He stared ahead of him and his thought changed. No point in dwelling on a thing a man couldn’t help short of what he was already doing—keeping the Patterson Colt under his pillow. But what he was thinking now was scarcely more pleasant.

  Be lucky to get two bales out of this. Not enough seed. Land could use a mite of fertiliser, I reckon. Next year it’ll be the same thing—if there is a next year.

  “Tom,” Sarah called, “Oh, Tom—”

  “Yep, Sary-gal?” he answered, turning.

  “I’m plumb tuckered out. ‘Sides, it’s gittin’ too dark to see anyhow—an’ Jonas is too old to keep up like this.”

  “All right,” Tom said. “We’ll finish this here row and call it quits for today.”

  He drove the mule on. Damn fine land, he thought. Was mine, I could go to the land-office and git a loan on the strength of what any fool could see it would yield. Sary knows Hilton, the man in charge; but she’s shamed to face anybody now, and Lord knows I can’t. Hell! Even if the old boy don’t come back, it’ll be root hog, or die, for years. Don’t want to do that to Sary—nothin’ ruins a woman’s looks faster.

  She came up to him now and helped him unhitch the mule from the traces, leaving the plough at the furrow’s end waiting for tomorrow’s planting. They went back towards the cabin with their arms locked about each other. Even with all the work, the nights were still something between them; less than before perhaps, but very little less.

  Any one of those up-state towns, Tom thought again, would be easy. Ain’t had the practice guarding their banks and factors that they’ve had out Texas way. But I can’t. I got this thing over my head now, and I’m done with runnin’ and hidin’. Wonder, if I went to Preacher Tyler and axed him outright to give Sary a divorce, would he do it? Find some way to buy him out then—or move on to a new place where folks don’t know us.

  “Tom,” Sarah said; “it’s funny . . .”

  “What’s funny, Sary-gal?”

  “Thought I was gonna die of shame at first. But you know what, Tom-love? I ain’t shamed no more. I ain’t got time. I’m just too busy being plumb, downright happy.”

  “I’m glad,” Tom said. “I ain’t too bad a cuss, once you git used to me—”

  “You,” Sarah whispered, “are the best, absolutely the best, in the whole wide world!”

  “How do you know that, Sary?” Tom mocked her. “How many you done tested out to prove that?”

  “Was to tell you,” Sarah teased, “you’d be mighty mad.”

  “Sure Lord would,” Tom laughed. “Mess up my ploughing right smart. Hafta take time out then to kill ‘em—every living one!”

  Sarah looked at him and her grey eyes were wide.

  “Would you do that, Tom?” she breathed. “Would you kill a man what tetched me?”

  “Kill him for lookin’, let alone tetching,” Tom said. He sighed wearily. “Hog meat and greens again, I reckon? Lord God, I’ll be glad when we can afford somethin’ else.”

  “That’ll be soon, Tom-love,” Sarah said; “I know it’s gonna be mighty soon.”

  But it wasn’t. The days blurred into weeks, lost in sun-glare and the ache of labour. The work went on, the seed sown now, the young shoots coming up; the warfare against the weeds enslaving them in the ceaseless day-long round of hoeing. There were nights now when they fell into bed like logs, asleep as soon as their heads touched the pillows. Tom had a hard time waking Sarah in the mornings. Often she was near tears when she dragged herself upright and began to dress. How long, he asked himself, is it gonna be like this? How long before she learns to hate me?

  He worried it over in his head, watching her lying there in a swathe of moonlight, moaning a little in her sleep from the ache in her limbs. He got his mind into it and shook it this way and that; but he could get nothing out of it—nothing at all.

  It was half a minute later, it seemed to him, when he heard her call him. But when he straightened up he saw the dawn haze blowing through the window
and he knew he had slept the night through. He could see Sarah standing beside the bed. Something was wrong with her face. It was white, too white, her mouth slack and trembling. He saw her double over suddenly, and the sounds came over to him, the ugly, racking spasms of nausea.

  He jumped from the bed, got water, cloths. The retching passed. Sarah lay upon the bed, crying.

  “I knew,” she whispered; “oh, Tom, I knew! But I tried to tell myself it wasn’t so. Oh, Tom-love, what we gonna do now?”

  “Do?” Tom growled. “Damned if I know, Sary. Have the little maverick and tend to it, I reckon, like we got to.”

  Sarah straightened up and faced him.

  “But, Tom,” she got out; “the other children’ll torment it—they—they’ll call him bastard!”

  “So?” Tom muttered. “Words don’t hurt nothin’, I reckon—”

  She looked at him. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him. Seeing her grey eyes minded him of a long time ago, fifteen years it was, he reckoned, when he had lain on the ground with the blood all over his face and looked up at the man who had beaten him. Nobody had ever whipped him since. Nobody—up to now.

  He watched her moving about, gathering her clothes, putting them on.

  “Where you goin’?” he growled.

  Sarah turned and her face was still.

  “To see him,” she said.

  “Sary, Name of God!—” Tom got out. Then he stopped. It was bluster, and he knew it.

  She came over and put her hand on his arm.

  “Tom, this young ‘un’s gonna be our’n—” Her voice held him. Something in it shut off his protests before he had half-formed them.

  “Told you yesterday I ain’t ashamed—of us. I ain’t, Tom. I’m proud—mighty proud. You’re mine and I’m yours, an’ that’s good and natural and right. What I had before was wrong—a mistake, Tom. I should of waited knowing some day you’d come along. But I didn’t wait.”

  “Sary-gal,” Tom muttered.

  “Hush! I’m doin’ the talkin’. Look, Tom, I been with you, God knows how many times. And ain’t nobody or nothin’ gonna cast no shame on this child I been a-hankering for—God, God, how long! Your child, Tom—that makes it better yet—your’n an’ mine.”

  “So you gonna talk to the old boy,” Tom said. “What d’you aim to say?”

  Sarah turned her face aside for a moment. When she turned back again, her eyes were still and calm.

  “Ax him to divorce me—charge me in public for what I done. Good man, Tom. Don’t want him to take nothing on hisself, pretend the fault was his’n. I don’t care ‘bout me. My child’s got to have a honest name. Let ‘em call me whore, I don’t care. They don’t understand, Tom, they don’t . . .”

  “You kinda wrought up, Sary,” Tom said. “ ‘Pears to me hit’s my place to . . .”

  “No, Tom. He wouldn’t listen to you. You’re a man—would you listen to him in a thing like this?”

  “No,” Tom said honestly.

  She stood there a long time, looking at him.

  “I’m going, Tom,” she said.

  “All right,” Tom said wearily.

  She tied her bonnet under her chin and went down towards the creek. It was a long way to the Rudgers’, where the Reverend Bob Tyler was staying, and already it was getting hot. The land lay before her in a shimmering wash of heat, the lines of everything vague, blurred by the heat-waves rising from the sunbaked earth, and in the air the flies hung, droning blue motes suspended in the light.

  Under the oaks it was cooler. She went on slowly, moving from shade to shade, scarcely feeling her discomfort, feeling only the muted tumult going on inside her mind.

  Got to face him. Got to. Got to say: Forgive me Reverend Bob. I’m wrong; forgive me an’ let me go an’ forget me, ‘cause I ain’t sorry. What you gonna do with a sin, Lord God, you ain’t sorry for? How kin you help a damnation you can’t give up? Say to him, I’m gonna have a child, the child he wanted and couldn’t have, say I got this child from another man more man than he is, say that to him and stand there watching his heart die inside his eyes, stand there watchin’ his face. Don’t want to hurt you no more, Reverend Bob, done hurt you more’n enough. But this one more time I got to. Just this once, please God. ‘Cause you ain’t important and I ain’t and Tom ain’t. Just the child comin’ not axin’ to be born, just so’s he won’t suffer none a-tall for something that ain’t his fault nohow.

  She went on, pushing the weary miles backward under feet unaware of their going until she came to the edge of the bayou and saw the Rudgers’ house—a wisp of smoke trailing lazily upward from the chimney.

  They home. That’s bad. Have to ax him to walk me a little ways off, so’s we kin talk. Dear Lord, what Nelly Rudgers going to say when she sees me? Likely show me the door. And I can’t blame her. I ain’t fittin’ to keep company with decent folks no more.

  But she moved on until she came to the cabin. The door was open and Reverend Bob Tyler sat before the fireplace—alone.

  She drew in a breath, held it. He had been burning something in the fireplace—something that smelled like leather. It hadn’t burned very well, and he was poking it now, trying to make it fall to pieces. She came up behind him very quietly, and when she was close, she saw what it was. The covers of that book had been made of good stout leather, and the flames, which had destroyed the pages already, had been able to do no more to those covers than make them curl a little so that the words, ‘Holy Bible’ gleamed stubbornly up at her, the gold embossment dulled by the fire.

  The breath she was holding came out in a rasp of sound.

  “Oh, no!” she breathed. “No, Reverend Bob, no He turned and she saw his eyes.

  “Howdy, Sarah,” he said quietly.

  “Reverend Bob,” she moaned, “that’s a sin—that’s a terrible sin! You’re a good man, you can’t—”

  “I’ve done it,” he said; “I burnt that pack o’ lies—”

  “But why, Reverend Bob, why?”

  He looked at her.

  “You ask me why, Sarah? You?”

  She stood there so still that only when he looked at her face did he see she was crying. Reverend Bob sighed.

  “Sit down, Sarah,” he said. “I’ll make you some tea.”

  “No, please don’t, Reverend. I—I ain’t got time. I come to talk to you. I got to ax you somethin’. I hate worse’n anything to have to, but I just got to.”

  “Then ask me,” Bob Tyler said.

  “Give me a divorce,” Sarah whispered. “Please, Reverend Bob—”

  “So’s you can marry him?”

  “Yes.” He had to lean forward to hear the word. ‘Pears to me you took yore time gettin’ around to considering what you been doin’, Sarah,” Bob Tyler said.

  “No, I wanted to ax you right from the first. But I couldn’t, Reverend Bob—I’d hurt you enough. I—I was shamed to face you.”

  “Was?” Bob Tyler said.

  “I still am. But now I got to. Can’t put it off no longer. Now I can ax you to do it, ‘cause it ain’t for my sake no more, not even for his’n.”

  Bob Tyler’s face greyed.

  “I—I can’t do it, Sarah,” he whispered. “I can’t go before a judge and brand you a harlot.”

  “I am a harlot,” Sarah wept, “an’ worse—I done earned hell-fire.”

  “No. Ain’t no hell, Sarah—nor no heaven, ‘cept what folks makes for themselves right here. When I was young, I was a mighty big sinner—and now it’s caught up with me. I wonder what it’s going to be like for you.”

  “Awful,” Sarah said; “but, Reverend Bob, please—”

  “You’re with child, ain’t you, Sarah? That’s why you come to me now?”

  “Yes,” Sarah whispered.

  He didn’t say anything. He turned and looked into the dead fire a long, slow time. When he looked at her again, his face was calm.

  “All right, Sarah,” he said; “I’m gonna free you. Wait here a minute.” He
walked into the bedroom. When he came back, he had a heavy envelope in his hand. In his other hand he carried a slim stick, freshly cut, the bark peeled off. The end of it forked.

  “Here,” he said, “take these here papers down to Hilton at the land-office. Give them to him. Tell him not to open ‘em till tomorrow morning. By that time you’ll be free.”

  “But—but, Reverend Bob,” she got out, “I always thought that it took a tolerable long time to git a divorce.”

  “Not the way I’m going to free you,” he said gently. “That don’t take no time a-tall.”

  She took the papers. She stood there staring at him, until, finally, the stick in his left hand caught her attention.

  “What’s that stick for, Reverend Bob?” she said. “What you gonna do with it?”

  He smiled at her.

  “That,” he said gently, “is the rod of your deliverance, Sarah.”

  He walked her to the door.

  “ ‘Bye, Sarah,” he said. “Make sure you get them papers to Henry Hilton afore closing time. They’re mighty important. An’—Sarah—”

  “Yes?” she whispered. “Yes, Reverend Bob?”

  “I hope you’re going to be happy,” the Reverend Bob Tyler said.

  Coming away from the land-office, Sarah felt like stripping off her clothes and washing herself in the first creek she came to. The way Hilton had looked at her! Like I was dirt, she almost wept. And the things those men on the sidewalk had said—out loud, too, on purpose so she could hear. But the women had been the worst, crossing the street to keep from having to speak to her, or holding their skirts aside as though she would dirty them by a passing touch.

  What else could I expect? she thought bitterly. I axed for it; I plumb downright axed for it.

  Tom was waiting at the cabin when she got back, his hoeing done.

  “Well?” he growled at her.

  “He’s gonna do it,” Sarah said tiredly. “He’s done promised to set me free.”

  “Good,” Tom grinned. “Told you wasn’t nothing to worry about. Come on, I fixed some vittles for you.”