Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  Janson had been reared on those dreams, but, as that cold winter of 1924-25 passed, and the spring months of plowing the red earth and planting the cotton, he knew those dreams were no less in danger than they had been the year before. Cotton prices were falling, and production was up. Many farmers were no longer even getting enough per pound of lint to cover the costs of growing their crops. There would be no more choice this year than there had been the last; the cotton would have to be sold out of the County if they were to hold onto the land.

  The fields were lush and green by the time the hot summer weeks of laying by came in 1925, the long, curving rows thick with green cotton plants, leaving little to be done there now but wait. Soon enough the bolls would burst open and the back-breaking work of picking the cotton would begin—until then there were only chores to be done at the house, the garden to tend, the barn to sweep out, or work that could be done for a neighboring farmer at a day’s small wage. Janson soon became restless, bored in those days, unaccustomed to having time on his hands with little or no work that had to be done.

  He visited with his kin, walked the green fields just as his pa did, and courted several of the girls from church, but there never seemed enough to do in the days to help make the time pass. He cleared land with his Uncle Wayne and his gran’pa, and wove baskets for sale from white oak splits he prepared himself—bow baskets, egg baskets, cotton baskets; and bottomed chairs for hire—but still laying by that year seemed to pass more slowly than had any other he could ever remember. He knew that soon enough the green fields would turn white with cotton, and that the long hours of dragging a pick sack behind him down the never-ending rows would begin—and also would begin the trouble with Walter Eason, for, sometime between now and the time the cotton was sold in the fall, something would have to happen, something aimed toward preventing them from selling the crop out of the County. Something —one farmer’s rebellion might bring two, two might bring three, until the system that had been in operation in the County since the hard years following the War Between the States might finally come to an end. And Walter Eason could never allow that.

  So far there had been few incidents, things for which there was no explanation, but things behind which Janson could see clear meaning—windows broken out at the front of the house, sending shards of broken glass into the old sofa and braided rugs there; several of his pa’s hunting dogs shot through the head and left; a brush fire set near the front of the house. Warnings alone—but the real struggle lay ahead in the fall when the time came again for them to sell out of Eason County. And that was still months away.

  On a hot Saturday morning toward the end of laying by that year, Janson started the eight-mile walk toward town, unable to find anything more useful to put his mind or his hands to. It was a warm morning, the hot July sun already baking down on his shoulders through his faded workshirt and the crossed galluses of his overalls as he turned off North Ridge Road and onto the road toward Pine. There would be a long walk ahead of him, and a hot one, but it was a walk he had made many times in the past, and in weather even hotter than the weather of this day. Besides, it was likely someone would stop to offer him a ride before he had gone too far a distance, some passing farmer or one of the churchfolk, for someone almost always did.

  There was a little money in his pocket from hired work he had done the day before, and, after several hours debate with himself over the waste, he had decided to treat himself to a phosphate at the soda fountain in the drugstore, and then to some time spent watching girls pass along the street. He would have liked to have gone to the picture show as well, to see the moving picture people he heard so much talk about: Clara Bow, whose photograph he had seen once on the front of a moving picture magazine in the drugstore, Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, Theda Bara; but he knew he would not go. He had been to a movie show only once in his life, on a day he had told his parents he was going elsewhere, only to go to the picture show in town instead. When his mother had found out, his pa had taken him out behind the smokehouse—but Janson had not gotten a whipping that day, or ever again since. His pa had told him he was a man now, and that it was time he learn to choose right from wrong on his own—Janson had never again gone to see a picture show after that, though he still could not see why it was supposed to be wrong, even if the preacher did say it was; any more than he could see why it was supposed to be wrong for a man to curse, if the occasion warranted it; or to drink corn liquor, even if Prohibition had made liquor illegal since five years back; or to dally with a girl who was not a lady, so long as he did not have a wife at home to take care of the things any man needed.

  He was thinking on that subject as he walked toward town that morning, of a wife, and of how nice it would be if there were a girl in his bed at night. He was a man now, eighteen years old, with the needs of any man. He knew plenty of nice girls—and a man only married a nice girl—plenty of girls who were pretty, with nice figures and long hair, girls who had been raised to be ladies, who would not let any man see their bare knees until they were married, and then only in the privacy of a bedroom with the door closed behind them, and then maybe only if he was very lucky and all the lamps were blown out. His pa had said ladies did not know much about the sort of things that happened between men and women, and that a man had to be understanding with the girl he married, for ladies were delicate in such matters—there were good girls and there were bad girls, and a man only married a good girl. He was not really supposed to have fun with a bad girl before then, or ever—Janson knew plenty of good girls, and a few bad ones, but he had not found one he could really think of himself being married to.

  There was the sound of a motor car coming along the road behind him, headed in the direction of Pine, but Janson paid little attention to it as it drew near. It seemed to have an expensive sound to it, unlike the rattly Model T Fords and the Chevrolets that most people who could afford cars drove, sounding nothing like the sort of car that would stop to give someone like him a ride, someone in patched overalls, and with feet dirty from the walk over the red clay roads—but the car did stop, slowing and then coming to a halt beside him, the door opening after a moment, and a female voice calling out: “Hey, honey, you want a lift or not?” as he continued to walk on.

  Janson stopped and turned back, staring with surprise as he saw the car, and then the driver.

  Lecia Mae Eason, the oldest of Walter Eason’s two granddaughters, sat staring at him from behind the wheel of the black Cadillac touring car, one eyebrow raised in question. She was perhaps at least a few years older than his eighteen years, with a well-known reputation in the County for being “fast,” as Janson’s mother would have called her—and in that moment she looked to Janson as he thought a “fast” woman would look. Her brown hair was bobbed short in the current style, her face painted with lipstick, powder, and rouge. She was not exactly pretty, with the same square jaw and self-possessed attitude that her brother, Buddy Eason, often wore, but she was pleasant enough to look at, and she seemed almost to have an air of sexuality about her that Janson fancied he could sense even over the distance.

  Her eyes seemed to move over him for a moment through the windshield of the Cadillac, her eyebrow raising again, this time in irritation. “Well?”

  “Ma’am,” he asked, unsure.

  “You want a lift or not?” she asked, her voice rising with impatience.

  He never knew later why it was he said yes—or perhaps he did, finding himself seated beside her in the touring car as it headed on toward Pine. He looked around the interior of the Cadillac with curiosity, never once in his life having thought to be inside such a fancy machine—then the girl took his attention away, or the woman, he told himself, for she looked perhaps even a few years older now that he was sitting beside her. She kept glancing at him, and he tried not to stare at her too openly, for her knees were actually visible below the edge of her skirt, her silk stockings rolled right down to them, an
d, even as he tried not to stare, he knew she noticed, and that she did not seem to mind.

  “You like this car?” she asked a moment later, after having secured his name and where it was he was headed.

  “Yeah, it’s nice.”

  “It’s ten years old now, you know. It’s not mine; it belongs to the Old Man, my grandfather, but I had to borrow it for the day. Had a new Packard myself, that is until I got a bit blotto and ran it into a tree a few weeks back—”

  Janson stared at her for a moment, but did not respond, not knowing what to say. He had never before met a woman who drank, much less one who admitted to having done so.

  After a moment, she reached and took up a paper sack from the seat between them, pulling down on the top of it with a thumb to reveal the shiny cap of a hip flask. “You want a drink, honey?” she asked, holding the flask out toward him.

  “No, ma’am—” he said, staring at her openly now. He had tried corn liquor several times in his life, as had any other young man his age in the County, but had never really acquired a taste for it—besides, she was a woman, even if she was not a lady, and a man never drank in front of a woman, not even a woman who herself might drink.

  “You sure?” she asked, bracing the flask between her exposed knees and unscrewing the cap. She tilted it up for a moment, the car almost going off the road as she swallowed a mouthful and then offered it to him again. “It’s good gin, smuggled in off a rumrunner, not any of this bathtub swill—”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure—”

  “Stop calling me ma’am,” she snapped. “I’m not any older than you are—” It was a lie, and they both knew it. “My name’s Lecia Mae—”

  He looked at her for a moment, surprised at her words, reminding himself again who she was. “Yes, ma’am—I mean, Lecia Mae.”

  “Good—” She smiled, glancing at him again. After a moment she asked: “How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’m eighteen.”

  “Eighteen—” she said, but said nothing more.

  Silence fell between them for a time, and she seemed again to appraise him with a side-long glance. He felt that look, and he wondered again if she was thinking the same thing he was thinking—if women, even “fast” women, thought such things.

  “You in any particular hurry to get anywhere?” she asked after a moment.

  “No, ma’am, not really.”

  “Good—” she said, and glanced his way again. He felt the gray eyes moving over him, and he understood. “Good—”

  When they reached Pine, she skirted the town, going out through the edge of the mill village, passing through quiet dirt streets that were lined with row upon row of identical, white two-family houses. She drove too fast, paying little attention to the few other cars that were on the road, or even to the children playing near the edges of yards, then she doubled back toward Main Street, going back toward downtown. Janson watched her, a nervousness growing in the pit of his stomach, at the way she was driving, and at more—he was anxious, wondering how much experience she had actually had, for he had never been with anyone like her before in his life. This afternoon, he well knew, would be far different from the times in the hayloft with Lois Dewey. Far different.

  She stopped the touring car on Main Street before a large, white two-story house that sat up on a hill not far from the brick-paved section of downtown. She stared out the open side of the car for a moment at the big house on the rise, and at the shining, new green four-door Cadillac that sat in the circular drive before it.

  “Dammit—” she swore under her breath, and Janson stared at her for a moment with open surprise, for he had never before heard any woman curse in all his life. “We’ll have to go out back to the coach house. Daddy’s home, and the Old Man’ll be with him—”

  Before he could speak, she pulled the car into the drive and on around toward the rear of the house, causing Janson to flinch inwardly at the risk they were taking so close to her father’s home, and to her grandfather. But his unease was quickly replaced by curiosity as he stared past her and out her side of the car toward the big house with its many windows, then at the large kitchen standing separate and apart at the back of the house, connected only by a bricked footpath, and at last at the flower garden with the small, white-painted gazebo at its center. She drove the Cadillac up to a large brick building sitting at a distance beyond the house, the two open archways in its center opening onto a wide hall, and windows above to rooms in a second floor. She pulled the car in through one of the archways and over an oilspot on the bricked floor, parking it beside a new-looking roadster that had been pulled beneath the second archway; then she shut the motor off.

  Janson looked around the white walls of the large open space, hearing the car’s engine tick as it began to cool. Lecia Mae took up the hip flask and drank again, then retrieved her lipstick and a small mirror from the handbag at her side, freshening the makeup she wore as she talked absently of things Janson paid little attention to. His eyes came to rest on the narrow flight of stairs that rose from the rear of the hall to the floor above—surely they would go up there, to some room, maybe even to a bed, before they did it, he told himself, feeling the openness of the archways behind him, the presence of the large house beyond.

  She was watching him when he brought his eyes back to her.

  “You, nervous, honey?” she asked, absently patting her bob with one hand. “Ain’t you ever done it before? You’d relax, you know, if you took a drink—”

  But her hand went to his knee, then slid up along the inside of his thigh, and he knew there was nothing that would help him to relax—and he also knew it would happen right here, right where someone could walk in and catch them; and he found that he really did not care anymore.

  Her hands were moving over him in ways that he knew should have shocked him, her mouth coming easily to his, tasting of the liquor, her tongue moving over his own. He was aware of the open archways behind them, her father’s house beyond, but for some reason none of that mattered.

  There was a sudden, prickly sensation along the back of his neck, an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he tried to take his mouth from hers to look toward the archways, but she would not release him, tightening her hand on him, making him moan instead as he pressed her back against the seat of the touring car—it was safe, he told himself. She would not have brought him here if it was not safe. It was—

  “You goddamn—” The car door was suddenly yanked open behind him, and he was hauled off the girl and out of the car, then turned and slammed hard back against its side, the impact driving the breath from his body as he found himself staring into the face of Buddy Eason—the younger man’s face was red with rage as he stared from Janson to his sister, his body shaking as he forced almost unintelligible words through tightly gritted teeth. “You goddamn red-nigger trash with my sister—you goddamn—”

  Before Janson knew it was coming, a hard fist to his stomach doubled him over, knocking the breath from his body again, making him gag and choke and fight for air, then a second sent him stumbling backwards, bloodying his nose and sending him reeling back into the open doorway of the touring car. Lecia Mae shoved him away, sliding to his side of the car, yelling something toward her brother, words Janson finally understood, and he looked back at her quickly, seeing the sudden excitement in her eyes at the diversion before her—and Janson realized with a sudden and complete anger that a diversion was all he had been as well, a moment’s diversion for a damned rich girl. She had never wanted him, or even the pleasure, but only the diversion. Only the—

  He hauled himself to his feet from where he lay half against the side of the Cadillac, his eyes on Buddy Eason—he might be whipped by an angry brother under such circumstances, but there was no way he would allow the hell to be beaten out of him just to entertain a bunch of rich folks. There was no way—

  He began to fight bac
k as Buddy started toward him again, landing a hard blow to Buddy’s jaw that made his knuckles ache, and then another to his midsection that sent the younger man reeling backwards against the red roadster parked nearby—Buddy suddenly seemed to go into a rage, his entire body shaking, the blood rushing to his face to darken it even further, not at what he had found Janson and his sister doing, but simply because Janson was fighting him, was fighting him and whipping him. Buddy screamed and came at Janson again, one hand going to his pocket, then coming up quickly—there was one brief second, a glint of light off metal, and then the hand began to descend—

  Janson blocked a sweeping arch of the knife with his free hand, the hard impact of the blow making his arm ache all the way to the shoulder. Buddy stepped away, keeping the knife between them, the cold, gray eyes searching for an opening. Janson watched him, wary, cautious, leaping away as Buddy lunged again, the knife missing him by only a bare few inches, then again, as Lecia Mae urged Buddy on, her legs now out the door of the car and crossed, her skirt now seeming to be hiked well above her thighs.

  Buddy lunged at him again, the knife blade slicing into Janson’s hand as he tried to fend it away—for a moment, there was no blood; then it came, running down over his wrist as a burning pain filled his palm. Buddy slashed at him again, missing his cheek by only a bare few inches, then again, and Janson twisted away, stumbling, almost falling, catching himself, starting to turn—then the cold impact of the knife blade hit him, the shock of the metal driving up to the hilt through his right shoulder. For a moment, there was nothing; then a wash of pain swept through him, turning him sick and making the coach house twist about him. His bowels felt suddenly weak, his face cold from the shock, the smells around him intensified—the oily smell of the cars, the odor of gasoline, of Buddy’s sweat, the decidedly sexual scent of the girl. Vomit rose to his throat as he grasped the knife handle in his left hand, a cry finally escaping him as the blade cleared his flesh—he held it in one bloody hand, staring down at it; at the red on its blade, soaking into the knife handle, covering his hand, soaking through his shirt sleeve—blood, his own blood.