by Frank Yerby
“I—I ain’t hongry, Tom,” Sarah whispered; “I ain’t hongry none a-tall.”
“You better eat,” Tom told her sternly. “You’re eatin’ for two now, remember.”
“All right, Tom,” Sarah said.
But that night she lay there unable to sleep. She turned it all over in her mind. But it didn’t make sense. Unless they had changed the law, nobody could get a divorce outside of a court hearing, and that meant waiting three or four months till the circuit judge rode around to Cantonment Jesup to sit over all the cases that had piled up by then. A body was lucky to get a case heard before he had to ride on again.
There was no sense to it at all. Reverend Bob couldn’t free her. It wasn’t that easy or that quick. Yet he had said he could. She remembered the Bible burning suddenly and sat bolt upright in bed. Out of his mind! she thought wildly; poor man’s been drove plumb loco by what I done to him—me who he was good to an’ loved and trusted—that’s it—course that’s it! Oh, my Lord—I—
There was a moon caught in the oak trees, silvering the night. From the bayou a night bird screamed—harsh and out of tune. Then it was still, so still she could hear Tom’s breathing and the beating of her heart. She couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t bear the silence. She was afraid, suddenly. Something’s happening, she told herself, something bad’s happening.
The swamp bird screamed again, night-lost, star-crazed. Sarah sat there, ghostly fingers crawling over her skin. Then, far off, a dog howled—just once, the sound hanging quaveringly on the night.
“Tom!” Sarah shrieked. “Oh, Tom!”
“Yeah?” Tom muttered. “Whatcha want, Sary?”
She bent her head down, suddenly, wildly, and ground her mouth into his; her fingers tore at him.
I’m tired, Tom thought, dog-tired and this fool woman . . .
She writhed against him, moaning.
“Hell,” Tom grinned, “reckon I ain’t so tired after all.”
It was high noon when Henry Hilton reached the plantation. Tom Benton took one hand off the plough handle, and mopped the sweat from his brow with his bandanna. Sarah moved in close to him, her eyes very big. Only Jonas went on working.
“Howdy, Mister Hilton,” Tom said.
Hilton didn’t answer him. He just sat there on his horse staring at the two of them with an expression on his face that Tom couldn’t define. Then he spat copiously into the dust at his horse’s feet.
“What’s on your mind?” Tom growled.
“Reckon you know what’s on my mind,” Hilton said dryly, “since it was you who sent Miz Tyler to ask him to do it.”
“Hold on now,” Tom said. “I don’t get you, Mister Hilton. I sent Sary to ask who to do what?”
Hilton studied him.
“You mean to stand there, Tom Benton,” he drawled, and tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“ ‘Fore God, I don’t,” Tom said quietly.
All right. Maybe you didn’t send her. Anyhow you must know that your—that Miz Tyler went to her husband and asked him to free her so she could marry you. So he did—the quick way.”
Sarah caught Tom’s arm, her fingers digging in, working.
Tom looked at the land agent.
“What do you mean, ‘the quick way’?” he said.
“He,” the land agent said slowly, clearly, “put Jim Rudgers’s shot-gun betwixt his feet, with the muzzles of both barrels rammed into his mouth. Then he pushed down on the triggers with a forked stick. Kind of messy. They had to scrape his brains off the—”
“No!” Sarah got out. “Oh Lord, oh Jesus, no!” She bent double, her whole body shaking, the sobs tearing out of her, her own arms wrapped about herself, holding hard against grief and pain.
“That’s enough!” Tom spat. “Sary, come on up to the house; you ain’t in no condition to take on so.” He took her by the arm and led her away from the field. A few yards away, he looked back. “Wait for me, Mister Hilton,” he said; “you and me’s got some talking to do.”
Sarah moved beside him like a broken thing, unalive, but moving slowly, terribly moving.
“Come on,” Tom said; “come on, Sary-gal. Don’t take on so. Ain’t your fault. Ain’t your fault none a-tall.”
She didn’t answer him, but allowed him to lead her up to the cabin. She lay down on the bed and turned her face to the wall. It was no good trying to talk to her, and Tom knew it. So he went outside and stood in the yard, peering up into the heavens with the noonday sun in his eyes. And it was there that Henry Hilton came upon him.
He got down from his horse and stood there looking at Tom.
“Ain’t my place to pass judgment,” he said slowly. “Ain’t nobody’s business, I reckon, except God’s. But you, Tom Benton, have taken a man’s woman, his fields, and—his life. Damnedest part about it is, the law can’t touch you. Reckon you feel mighty proud.”
Tom didn’t answer him. He looked at Hilton, and his face didn’t change.
“The will’s valid and legal. Had any relatives, they might make a case on the grounds of undue influence while in a state of unsound mind. But Reverend Tyler was alone in the world. So this place goes to Sarah and her heirs—for ever. Reckon when you get around to marrying her, that makes it yours. Anything I can do, you let me know.”
“I,” Tom said, “am going to need a loan.”
Hilton looked him up and down silently.
“Wish I could refuse you,” he said dryly, “but my instructions are to grant loans according to the need of the planter, the value of the land, and the man’s ability as a farmer. You need the money, the land’s valuable; and I looked the place over on my way up here. What you’ve done with damn near nothing is a miracle. I have to admit you’re the best goddamned planter I ever did see. And since the instructions don’t say anything about refusing a man because he’s an ornery cuss, a skunk and a polecat, I have to let you have the money. You come to my office tomorrow, Tom Benton.”
“Thank you,” Tom Benton said. Then: “When they burying the preacher?”
“Done buried him. Eleven o’clock this morning, in a closed pine box so nobody could see wasn’t no top to his head.” He paused, staring at Tom. “On second thought, I’ll come out here tomorrow to talk about that loan. Folks down in town are pretty riled up. Might not be safe for you to come in. Anyhow, see you tomorrow, Benton.”
Tom didn’t answer him, or even watch him go. Instead, he walked out over his fields. I’ll build the barn here, I reckon, he thought; and after that, a decent house for Sary. Buy me some niggers, and get ready for a big crop next year. Young ‘un’s going to have something to start with, yessirree.
But something eluded him. He dropped down on one knee and ran his fingers through the rich, black loam. His land now, his. He should have been happy, but he wasn’t. He was, he realised suddenly, plumb, downright miserable.
God damn him, he thought, he beat me! I drove him off his land, took his woman, and still he beat me. And I don’t know how he done it. I got everything, but still I feel whipped. Why the devil do I feel like that?
It wasn’t a mood he could support very long. A slow, black anger descended upon him. He wanted to strike out, to smash his fist against—whom? Can’t whip no dead man, God damn it! he thought. Got to get shut of this—got to, or, by hell, I’ll bust!
Then it came to him in a savage burst of feeling that was very like triumph:
Them mangy polecats down in town. Riled up, are they? Sending that hoss-faced land agent with his store-boughten teeth up here to warn me to stay out of town. Reckon they could do with a mite of learning—reckon they could, at that!
He turned back to the house. When he reached it, he was almost running.
Sarah lay on the bed with her face to the wall. She didn’t turn over as he came in. She lay very still until she heard him pull the bureau drawer, and, after that, the sound the Colt made when he cocked it, spinning the chamber with his thumb. Then she whirled and stared at him, wild
-eyed.
“Tom,” she got out, “what you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about it, Sary-gal,” he said; “I’m just going to take me a little walk, right slap-dab down the middle of main street down in town. Heard tell there’s a bunch of folks down there what don’t cotton to me and the things they think I done. ‘Pears to me they could do with a mite of learning—time they found out who Tom Benton is—yep, time they found out for good and all!”
“Tom,” Sarah whispered, “for God’s love—Tom . . .”
“Be back in a little while, Sary,” he said. “Don’t worry your pretty head none a-tall.”
She sat up in bed, facing him.
“I ain’t worrying about you,” she said savagely. “It’s your child I’m worrying about, Tom Benton I Go on—go get yourself killed! Leave me helpless with your child—go on, I tell you!”
He thrust the revolver into his belt and came over to her; but as he put out his arms to her, she whirled away, crying:
“Don’t you touch me, Tom Benton! Don’t you dare!”
He straightened up, his face darkening.
“All right, Sary,” he said. “I’m going now. See you when I get back.”
Then he went out and closed the door very quietly behind him.
When he dismounted and tied his horse up at the hitching-rail on the main street, a silence moved before him. From man to man the silence went, words dying in mid-phrase, falling down into bottomless pools of quiet, so that the dry little wind that ran along the street grew by contrast in volume, and all the slight, usually unheard sounds augmented themselves into small thunder—a bough scraping against another, a horse’s whinny, a dog’s bark far out beyond the town’s limits, sounding clearly, hard against the stillness. Women snatched their children and hurried off the street, banging the doors shut behind them, and most of the men bethought themselves hastily of pressing affairs far from that part of town.
He stood there, tall and grim, the butt of the Colt showing in his belt, there in the very vortex of that silence, feeling in his bones neither fear nor excitement, but a rock-bed sureness, a conviction that no one living could stand against him, that armoured him against fear, even against wonder. More, he felt, down deep at the very core of his being, a profound and savage joy. He moved, and the measure of his tread sounded loud in the silent street, coming slowly, steadily forward, through that roadway emptied suddenly of life, of movement, even the men held there by their shame at their own cowardice frozen into grotesque caricatures of the elaborately casual attitudes they had assumed upon learning of his coming.
He did not even look at them. He walked on, his big arms swinging at his sides, his hands not touching the gun-butt, not even coming near it, as though he were unaware of its presence, his gaze straight forward, his eyes quiet, speculative, almost peaceful, twinkling a little as from some secret amusement, some cosmic joke which he shared only with the universe itself, with God.
He pushed open the door to Tim’s place. The noisy babble inside continued for a half-second longer, during which he heard his name spoken, combined with picturesque invective, until the nods, nudges, gestures, had run from man to man; and then the silence was there before him after the words had run down a tinkling little glissando into stillness. Tim was pouring whisky into a shot-glass for a client. He went on pouring, not seeing the whisky brim over the edge and gather around the bottom of the glass in a red pool, thickening, spreading until it ran over the sides of the bar and dripped on to the floor.
Then Tom Benton spoke:
“Damned shame to waste good liquor like that, Tim,” he said; “s’pose you pour me a snort, stead of watering the floor with it.”
Tim gulped, his brick-red face paling into pink.
“We don’t want no trouble in here, Mister Benton,” he got out.
“Ain’t going to be none,” Tom said mildly. “Pour me that snort, Tim.”
He took the whisky, holding the glass in his hand, studying the liquor as though it were the most important, the loveliest thing in the world, his eyes sober, calm, peaceful. Then he lifted it to his lips. By the time he set it back on the bar, the saloon was empty of all but one other man.
Henry Hilton came over and stood next to him.
“If there’s any one thing I do admire,” he said quietly, “it’s simon-pure guts. And you got ‘em. Have another on me, Tom.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Tom Benton said.
And that was the end of it, the lynch mob that was never formed, the talk of whipping, of tar and feathers, of riding him out of the parish on a rail. He stood there, drinking and talking easily, slowly, with Henry Hilton for a long time. Then he got back on his horse and rode once more out to his fields, where Jonas and the mule waited, and the cotton stood waist-high.
3
TOM BENTON looked at Sarah and his eyes were sombre. She was very big with child now, sitting there placidly in the rocking-chair, sewing the things she would need for the baby. Tom swore savagely under his breath.
Can’t live alone in back country, he thought for the hundredth time. What’m I going to do when it comes to the birthing? Need the neighbouring wimmen then—need them damned bad. I don’t know what to do—ain’t never seen a young ‘un come into this world. And ain’t no wimmenfolks hereabouts who’d cross my threshold for all that Sary ‘n’ me’s hitched now, legal and proper. Reckon I crowded these here Louisiana folks a mite too far. Lord God, but they’re proud!
Got to git th’ barn up. That’s another thing. No proper place to store the crop. Need help for a barn-raising. . . . Once I git a crop in an’ buy some niggers, I’ll be independent of these folks. But till then it’s nip an’ tuck. Got to do something to change these folks’ minds about us. Just got to.
He stood up. Sarah looked at him questioningly.
“Going somewheres, Tom?” she said.
“Yep. Think I’ll ride down to the settlement and kind of spy out the lay of the land. Maybe if I was to talk to folks a 1ittle—act friendly-like . . .”
“Tom,” Sarah said, “Tom-love, it won’t do no good. I know these folks. They’re plumb mule-stubborn. Ain’t nothing going to change their minds—nothing short of a miracle.”
“Then,” Tom said, “reckon I’ll have to kind of arrange a miracle, Sary-gal. ‘Cause we sure Lord can’t keep on like this.”
“All right, Tom,” Sarah said. “But please don’t let them git you riled up. Lose your temper and git into a fight be about the worst thing you could do, I reckon.”
“Sure Lord would,” Tom sighed. “All right, hon, I’ll be careful.”
He bent down and kissed her quickly. Then he marched out into the yard.
But once he had reached the little, unnamed settlement, consisting merely of a few feed and general stores, a saloon, and flow, brand-new, built since his arrival in Louisiana, a small white church, he could think of no way out of his problem. He went into the saloon, but the men there ignored him with elaborate casualness. He thought of ordering a round of drinks for everyone present, but he decided against it almost at once. If any man refused his offer, he’d be honour bound to fight. He was certain-sure he could lick the tar out of any man there; but, win or lose, fighting wasn’t going to help matters.
He had two quick snorts of bourbon and walked out, frowning. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and he knew it. He moved aimlessly down the wooden sidewalk, stepping into the dusty street now and again to avoid bumping into anyone, because Sarah’s warning that he must keep away from trouble clung like a burr in his mind. Idly he stopped before the white Baptist church. There was a signboard placed in front of it. Painfully, Tom spelled out the words:
“Great Protracted Meeting! The Reverend Silas Boone of Kentucky will conduct a fourteen-day Protracted Meeting for the Salvation of Sinners! Monster tent on the shores of the Bayou Pierre. Come and give Rev. Boone your hand, and God your heart! Accept Jesus Christ, Your Lord and Saviour!”
Tom stood there, staring at th
e crudely lettered poster a long time. Something stirred inside his mind.
Protracted Meetin’, eh? Ain’t been to one since I was a green young ‘un. ‘Member how old Preacher Curtwright used to make a body dang near smell the brimstone. And all the sinners crowding up to the mourner’s bench to confess their sins. Funny—Good Lord! Many’s the man had to listen while his wife confessed what she done and who with—and him honour bound not to do a living thing on account of she done repented. People taking sinners to their bosoms and forgiving thieving, drunkenness, pleasuring round about, even killin’s! Funny what folks will forgive when they’s worked up and think a body’s seen the light.
He stiffened suddenly.
Jehoshaphat! Sary said we’d need a miracle. Well, Sary-gal, here’s yore miracle all made to order! I can see it now—me down on my knees a-crying—new onion shoot in my bandanna ‘ll produce some mighty convincing tears. And Sary, big like she is now, calling for forgiveness so’s damnation won’t fall on th’ head of an innocent child!
His grin faded. Sary won’t go along with no trick like that, he thought morosely. She’s good all the way through. Be so easy, though, wasn’t for that . . .
He moved on down the street, frowning. Midway down the block he stopped dead.
Lord God, how big a fool can a body be! Sary’s been grieving her heart out thinking she caused old Preacher Bob’s death. Wasn’t for the baby coming, she might of gone out of her mind by now. Put it to her straight—say something like:
‘Well, hon, maybe we can’t fix things up with the neighbours; but leas’ways we got a chance to git right with God.’ Have to pretty it up a bit, else she won’t believe me. Tell her the baby’s coming done give me a change of heart. Being a father, got to live right so my child can respect me. That’ll do it! That’ll do it, sure!
He was almost running now towards the hitching-rail where he had left his horse. He was almost there when he saw Hilton coming towards him. He stopped, his brain racing.
Luck! The one man in town I kin talk to. Lay in a seed right now.