Benton's Row

by Frank Yerby

  And added to this—Wade, his son, growing up timid, placid, weak.

  Tom looked at him, standing there before the fire, shivering and rubbing his eyes. He could see from the expression on the boy’s face that Wade wanted to cry, and also that out of fear of him, Tom Benton, the child did not dare. The thing infuriated Tom, as complicated emotions and glimpses of normal, human weaknesses always did.

  “Get a move on, boy!” he roared. “We ain’t got all day! Ducks be half-way to Canada before we get there, waiting on you!”

  “Aw, don’t be mean to Wade, Paw,” Stormy said. “He ain’t nothing but a little snot; and before you know it you’ll have him bawling his head off.”

  She, of course, was already dressed. She sat in the corner by the fireplace, lovingly polishing her gun.

  Tom looked at her, and his gaze softened.

  “Help him out, missy,” he said, “else we ain’t never gonna get there.”

  Stormy put the gun down and came over to her brother.

  “Come on, you little snot,” she laughed; “let me fix you.”

  She started to dress Wade, jerking him this way and that with considerable force. Tom stood there watching her, grinning at her unfeeling efficiency, until Sarah’s voice came from the doorway, saying:

  “That’s enough, Stormy, I’ll dress him.” Then, looking at Tom: “Lord God, but she’s your child!”

  “Whose you expect her to be?” Tom growled. “Glad one of them’s got grit in her craw.”

  “I’m not,” Sarah snapped. “Call it grit if you like, Tom Benton; but that there’s a streak of poison meanness a yard wide—just like yourn. And you’re going to live to weep over it yet, mind you!”

  “Didn’t bother you oncet,” Tom said grimly; “but that was before . . .”

  “Before what?” Sarah said, and her eyes were level and still.

  “Before you found out that a man ought to talk real pretty-like, and maybe carry a little satchel, and hold people’s hands and look wise”

  “That,” Sarah said quietly, “is more than enough, Tom Benton. Man what talks like that in front of his children ain’t much of a man, to my way of thinking.”

  “To hell and tarnation with your way of thinking!” Tom roared. “Don’t get me riled up, Sary! I can shoot other critters beside ducks—hunting polecats ain’t a bad sport neither, if you understand me rightly.”

  “I do,” Sarah said. “Only you’re forgetting one thing, Tom. Ducks can’t shoot back. And this particular breed of polecat can—right smart good, too. There, son, if it gets too cold, you tell your paw to bring you home.”

  “Yes’m,” Wade sniffed, and wrapped his fat little arms about her neck. “I love you, Maw,” he blurted. “You’re nice, not mean like Paw and Stormy.”

  “Come on, you sissified li’l’ snot,” Stormy railed. “Come on, cry-baby, mama’s boy, so me’n’ Paw can feed you to the garfish for bait!”

  “Stormy,” Sarah said.

  “Yes, Maw?” the girl’s voice was sullen.

  “Wade come home and tell me you been pestering him, there’s gonna be trouble, you hear me?”

  “Yes’m,” Stormy said, and started for the door. But in the doorway she whirled.

  “No, they won’t neither!” she jeered, “ ‘cause Paw won’t let you—so there!” Then she skipped out into the dark.

  Sarah looked at Tom.

  “You are going to teach that child to respect me,” she said, “or there really is going to be trouble, Tom. More trouble than you ever heard tell of.”

  Tom looked at her; but her gaze met his, held it. He put out his big hand and took Wade’s.

  “Come on, son,” he growled. “We got to get going flow.”

  The reeds stood up out of the bayou, black against the reddening sky, like a forest of spears. The morning haze, a legion of tormented ghosts, moved over the grey-silver water. When the first glow of light from the not-yet-risen sun struck the bayou, the water was blood-coloured. The pirogue moved towards where they waited, a black sliver on the blood-and-silver waters, a thing out of, beyond, time, unheard, phantom-like, the silence of its coming robbing it of reality, making of it a thing out of man’s darker dreams, out of his secret fears.

  It slid up to the bank and Louis Dupré looked up at them. “Brung ma Babette along,” he said flatly. “Didn’t reckon you’d mind, M’sieur Tom, since you bringing your own kids, you.”

  “Fine,” Tom said, “glad to have her along, Louis. She’ll be company for Stormy. Here, take this here boy of mine.”

  He swung Wade out and over, and Louis took the boy in his iron grip. Stormy jumped at once into the pirogue, causing it to rock wildly, so that Louis had to steady it with the pole. When, in his turn, Tom had got into the boat, he looked at Louis’ second daughter. He had not seen her since before Clinton’s birth; because after that Lolette had always managed to meet him far from her father’s house—in Natchitoches on shopping trips and, from time to time, even in New Orleans. The last vivid memory he had of Babette was as a tot playing on the floor and disturbing his efforts to talk to her sister. Now his blue eyes widened. At fourteen, Babette was already prettier than Lolette had ever been, as pretty, almost, as Stormy herself; delicate and fine, already budding into maturity. She had Lolette’s soft, dark colouring; but there was something about her more earthy, something that smouldered out of her great, dark eyes, which Tom, with his roué’s instincts, recognised at once.

  But, for some obscure reason, it made him sad. He was conscious once more of the slow bleeding away of time: yesterday, a grimy tot playing on the floor, and himself that was, but gone now, a ghost and phantom out of yesteryear, sitting beside the pallet, holding Lolette’s hand, seeing the great welts where Louis had beaten her; now, today, half a heart-beat later, this almost-woman sitting here in a pirogue on the frosty bayou, regarding him with smouldering eyes. He felt immensely old, unbearably weary. Ten years. What had happened to them? Where down the slow-rolling river of time had they gone?

  He looked at Louis. This one, at least, had escaped time. Louis Dupré was ageless. Not by a whitened hair, or a single additional crease in his leathery skin, did he show change. He poled the pirogue with the same effortless certainty that he had before, skimming through the black clusters of reeds on and on towards—what?

  A flock of ducks feeding in the marshes. Or towards time, eternity, man’s fate, the answer to all the seeking, the stilling, of all hungers, all lusts—the final quenching of all thirsts of the flesh and of the spirit—this, too, perhaps.

  Tom shook his head to clear it of these thoughts that plagued him, ideas, feelings, he hadn’t the words for, could not, in fact, define even to himself. Getting crazy, he told himself angrily, getting moonstruck, loony, mulling over silliness. I’m me. I’m big Tom Benton, a pizen wolf from Bitter Creek; I’m half hoss and half bull ‘gator, and when I roars . . .

  But it was no good, and he knew it. Even this—tall talk, back-country brag—did not help. He was himself a tired, ageing man, beset by the feelings he had armed his heart against; defeated by all the tenuous, insubstantial things that bent before his blows, slipped aside, melted into air, leaving him baffled and sick with weary, impotent rage.

  Louis stopped the pirogue before his shack and came back with the retrievers, black, shaggy dogs, at home almost in the water as on land, silent dogs who almost never barked, intelligence in every line of their broad, fine heads.

  “Mighty late now,” Louis said. “Sun’s gonna be up ‘fore long, yes. Kids held you up, I reckon, then.”

  “Yep,” Tom growled, “but whatcha gonna do? Got to teach a boy to use a gun sooner or later.”

  “Sure, sure,” Louis grinned. “He fine boy, him.”

  Tom snorted, but said nothing. He was thinking of Clint—tall and fine and manly even as a tiny child. Wonder what he looks like now, he mused. Hope they don’t gentle the manhood right out of him.

  They moved through the marshes. Louis stopped poling
and stood straight up, listening.

  “Over ther’,” he said, pointing.

  Tom passed a light double-barrelled shot-gun to Wade.

  “Cock it,” he said.

  Wade regarded the weapon with pure, undisguised terror.

  “Cock it, I said!” Tom spat.

  The boy picked up the gun. His pudgy fingers tugged at the hammers, slipped. He couldn’t budge them. Great tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. He tugged at the hammers in a fury of desperation. Tom watched him in mounting, icy rage.

  “Here,” he snorted, “give me that gun!”

  Wade passed it over, his hands trembling so he a1most dropped it.

  “Sissy!” Stormy laughed.

  Tom cocked the gun and gave it back.

  “When Louis tells you,” he growled, “you shoot. And God help you if you miss!”

  Babette looked from Stormy to her brother.

  “Poor little boy,” she murmured in Cajun French; “he has fear, him.”

  “Yes,” Stormy mocked in English, “he has fear all right. He always has fear. He’s a coward, and I hate him!”

  “You’re bad,” Babette said. “You’re a bad, bad girl. I would not hate my brother, me. I would be so glad to have a brother that I would always be good to him, yes!”

  “Tais toi!” Louis spat. “Shut up, Babs!”

  He took out a peculiar object, made of a section of reed and pieces of leather. He put it to his lips, and a wild high honking came out, exactly the same sound that the ducks made, but higher, clearer.

  It was Stormy who saw them first, coming in high over the marshes in a black V. etched against the flaming sky.

  “There!” she breathed, and lifted her gun.

  “No!” Tom said. “Wade first.”

  The boy lifted the gun; then, without waiting until the ducks were near enough, or taking aim, he closed his eyes tight and fired both barrels at once. The gun kicked against his shoulder, hard. He cried out in pain and dropped it. It made a great splash in the water. When he opened his eyes again; the ducks were gone.

  No one said anything. They all sat there staring at him. He looked from one face to another, his mouth slack with terror, crouching like a trapped animal, waiting. He saw his father’s eyes, blazing like blue coals in his great, dark face. Then suddenly, wildly, hopelessly, the boy started to cry.

  Babette worked her way forward towards where he sat. She put her arms around him and drew his head down upon her breast.

  “Poor little boy,” she crooned, “poor scairt little boy. Don’t you cry, you. It’s all right. Nothing wrong with being scairt. Everybody’s scairt of something.”

  Louis shrugged.

  “Leave him be, M’sieur Tom,” he said. “Ain’t your kind of a boy, him. Be professor maybe, fiddler, poet, something like that. Takes all kinds to make a world.”

  “Aw, hell!” Tom spat. “Come on, Louis, let’s go find them ducks!”

  But they couldn’t. No matter how Louis honked, the wildfowl weren’t coming back. They had fled that section of the marsh. And now the sun was up, the haze lifting, so that the hunters hadn’t a chance, and they knew it.

  “Thanks to him,” Stormy said. “Paw, we gonna leave him home, next time, ain’t we? We ain’t a-going to bring him along to spoil things with his cry-baby self, are we, Paw?”

  Tom stared at his son.

  “No, Stormy,” he said. “We ain’t a-going to leave him. He’s my son. He’s got to learn to ride and shoot and hold his liquor like a gentleman. He’s got to, and I’m going to make him, or beat him to death a-trying!”

  “Aw, hell!” Stormy said clearly.

  “Mind your language, missy,” Tom said mildly. “All right, Louis, reckon we better be getting back now.”

  In those next two years, between his tenth and his twelfth birthdays, Wade Benton went through pure, unmitigated hell. He managed finally to bring down a wild duck about every fifth or sixth time his father took him hunting. He learned to stay on a horse finally at the cost of a broken arm, two fractured ribs, endless beatings, shouts, silences, deprivations of supper and of the minor pleasures dear to his boyish heart. He learned to tramp endless, aching miles without complaint, to work like a negro in the fields, and never to contradict his father.

  And he learned one thing more and this, finally, the saddest aspect of his personal tragedy: he learned to hate his father with a passion that was all-consuming and bottomless and complete; thereby setting the pattern of all future generations of Bentons as yet unborn, as yet even unthought of—thereby, though nothing was farther from his thoughts than this—dooming them.

  7

  HISTORY, the march of days, the muted clangour of far-off events, is usually, in a man’s life, no more than bee-drone on a summer’s day. Off-stage noises, a few spear-bearers in the wings clashing their counterfeit weapons to represent an army, the Greek chorus rolling ponderous antistrophes about disasters unheard, unseen—these penetrate a man’s consciousness dimly, if at all.

  But there comes a time when the clangour becomes louder, more insistent; when the spear-bearers clash their wooden swords into present thunder, when the far-off disasters loom nearer, near until there is no longer any escaping them. Then, suddenly, cruelly, history becomes personal, becomes, indeed, a matter of individual choices, which a man must make for himself, and by himself—alone.

  So it was with the decade of disaster, 1850—1860. Tom Benton had seen young men he had known well sail away with Narciso López to die before Spanish firing-squads in Cuba; he had read thirty pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin before putting it down for ever with a snort of abysmal disgust. And having himself, in bandit days, raided frontier towns, the clash of arms and screams of dying men at Lawrence, Kansas, and John Brown’s murderous vengeance at Pottowatomie Creek, were like tocsins sounding in his own blood.

  He went abroad more now; he talked to other men. He stood, a tall and greying man, heavier of build now, approaching his fifties, in the court-house squares, and listened to the fervent roll and boom and bombast of Southern oratory. He made no speeches himself; talking was never his forte; but men, seeing him there, knew with absolute conviction that here was one of the leaders, here was a Southern Captain, standing tall in chivalry, quiet and knightly in his pride.

  They were not entirely wrong. That there was going to be a war, Tom Benton knew. And granted that one inescapable fact, the approach of what William Seward had already labelled the “Irrepressible Conflict”, it followed that he must presently march out at the head of his cohorts, to blaze in glory before the eyes of his fellows, to come back in weary triumph after it was done, or to fall in honour upon the field, soaked, in his imagination, with the blood of heroes.

  It had been a long time now since the Mexican War—more than ten years. In Tom Benton’s mind, essentially Southern, and hence essentially unrealistic, romantic, inexact, the filth and boredom, the bad food, the flies, the heat, the weary marching, the unjust, bullying nature of that conflict, conceived in dishonour, and consummated in thievery, had long since died away. Even the battles themselves, instead of the disgraceful driving of an army outclassed, untrained, poorly armed, from a few fields won without cost and without honour, had augmented themselves in the warm distortions of his memory into heroic victories against overwhelming odds.

  He would go again once the time came. He was in love with glory; he pictured in a thousand multi-coloured variations himself single-handedly winning the day, saving the South, returning in triumph to the plaudits of the multitudes. That these dreams of his were basically adolescent, even puerile, troubled him not at all; because in no way did they make him less than his fellows. The Southern mind was, and, sadly, is, basically adolescent, puerile, infantile; the conditions of life under which it developed making it so: geographical isolation, rural living, the economic necessity of defending, of distorting into a virtue, a thing totally without virtue, of inventing sophistries, syllogisms to justify the most nearly indefensible syst
em ever invented upon the face of earth. And to this add the fact that this painful necessity of defending slavery, the South’s “Peculiar Institution”, made as a byproduct absolute conformity of thought an essential condition of living: to differ being to weaken the defence, to make a chink in the armour against a people who, however wrong they might be in other things—their own wage slavery, child labour, hellish working conditions, protective tariffs, business methods not even one cut above pure chicanery and fraud— were in this, at least, absolutely and indisputably right.

  Even Tom Benton, hard as he was, dimly sensed this. There were times when, gazing upon some magnificent physical specimen of a black—a fine physique being a thing he found easy to admire, he was vaguely troubled. It was true that, in a rough way, he was kind to his slaves; but it was also true that no amount of kindness could make up to a man the soul-destroying indignity of being owned like a dog or a horse. So, like most other Southerners, he put these disturbing thoughts quickly out of his mind and settled back into that comfortable orthodoxy that was to cost the South so much, stifling, as it necessarily must, every trace of boldness, of originality of mind, making of that vast and blooming land a cultural desert so arid, sterile, bare, that in those days, while the poets of bleak New England sang like angels, the South could boast but three very minor bards, not one novelist of stature, no painter, no composer, no instrumentalist even worthy of the name. More, for all the superficial spouting of Greek and Latin tags by planters’ sons, sent for the most part to hated New England for their education, or in rarer instances to England or France, a semi-illiteracy was the rule, extending in the vast majority of cases into the parlour of the Big House itself, so that they, the ruling classes, were themselves to leave behind them a host of papers, diaries, letters, whose spelling, grammatical constructions, incoherence, and almost total absence of logic would have disgraced a New England schoolboy, and which were to make the task of the historian as painful as it was boring.