Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  Whitley stared at him for a moment longer, then turned his gaze on Janson, placing the unlit cigar in his mouth and clenching it firmly between his teeth. Janson felt as if he were being summed up with that look, assessed, and he did not like it—damn rich folks, he told himself, returning the stare.

  After a moment, Whitley turned and walked through the door and back into the library, speaking back over his shoulder. “Make it quick, boy. I’ve got work to do—”

  Janson waited for a moment, and then followed Titus into the library. He only hoped to hell he was not making the worst mistake of his life.

  William Whitley sat down at the cluttered rolltop desk in one corner of the library, shifting papers and a ledger that sat on the desktop before him, then turning back to the two men who stood near by—they would not be seated unless he told them to, and he would not tell them. He looked instead at the tall young man who stood at Titus Coates’ side, impressed somewhat by what he saw. The boy was lean, but seemed powerfully built, without even a spare ounce of flesh on him. He looked as if he were accustomed to hard work, from the calloused hands, to the faded and patched overalls, to the thin but muscular frame that showed from beneath the old and tattered coat—but he met William’s eyes with a directness that was unsettling.

  William stared at him, his stare being met in return from pale green eyes that seemed oddly out of place in the dark face. He chewed down on his cigar, sensing a spirit of pride and dignity in the boy that he did not like—proud, independent men had a tendency to be trouble, and trouble was something that William would have none of.

  He looked at Titus, deliberately speaking to him as if the younger man were not even in the room. “He sure is dark,” he remarked, glancing again at the boy. “Looks like a Gypsy. I don’t hire Gypsies—”

  “I’m half Cherokee,” the boy responded, just as if he had been addressed. “My ma was Indian, my pa white—I ain’t no Gypsy.” Then he fell silent again, continuing to meet William’s gaze through the strange green eyes.

  The boy doesn’t know his place—William thought, staring at him. “Are you trying to get smart with me, boy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you better not, boy.” William continued to stare at him, unsure as to how to deal with someone such as this. Pride had no place in such a person. There was no reason for pride in faded overalls, sunburned skin, and calloused hands, no reason for pride in poverty—only in money and power and family name was there any reason for pride. This man had none of that, and yet there was as much pride in him as in the wealthiest men in Endicott County, of which William knew himself to be one—he owned more land, more property, worked more sharecroppers, produced more cotton; the Whitleys had been in Endicott County for generations, had carved this place out of the virgin forests, had held onto it through war and Yankees and carpetbaggers. The Whitley name meant something in this and the surrounding counties, and few men possessed such power, such prestige, as did William Whitley—Hiram Cooper did, perhaps Ethan Bennett, but few others.

  William stared at the young man before him. “You’re not from anywhere around here. I know everybody in this County.”

  “I’m from Alabama, Eason County—”

  “That’s a long way off—you in some kind of trouble, boy? Running from the law or something?” He peered closely at the boy; it paid to be careful.

  “I ain’t in no trouble. I just moved on.”

  “You’re just passing through, then?”

  “I aim t’ stay, if I can find work.”

  “Do you have a family? A wife to help you crop, children you can put to work in the next couple of years—I expect my sharecroppers to have their children in the fields soon as they’re old enough, boy, and I expect a good return for my half of the crop every year.”

  “I ain’t married, but I been farmin’ all my life. I can do most any kind ’a work around here that needs doin’.”

  William leaned back in his chair, considering. He could make use of the boy. It seemed as if he were strong and healthy and accustomed to hard work, and, as William questioned him further, he found him to be knowledgeable about cotton farming and the chores that had to be done about a place—but that air of pride bothered him.

  William stared at him, making a decision. He had run a man off only a few days before, having caught him stealing, and had also had to deal rather strongly with several others. He needed a good man right now, a dependable farmhand; there were two new fields to clear, land to break up for cotton planting in a few months—and this boy could be handled, William told himself. There was not a man alive that could not be handled.

  “Boy, I don’t take no back talk and no trouble out of nobody—you get that through your head right now. I pay my hands good wages, and I expect good work out of them in return. You do what you’re told to do, and you do it with no sass; and you remember your place and show respect where it’s due—you got that, boy?” he asked, watching the man closely.

  “Yes, sir, I got it—”

  “All right, boy, you be out at the barn at sunup tomorrow morning and I’ll give you a chance. I pay wages every other Saturday at quitting time—you got a place to live yet?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Well, there’s a good room off the barn where you can sleep. It’s got a cot and a wood stove and some furniture in it—the rent’ll come out of your wages before you get them, so will the money for the store charge. I run accounts at the store for my people—I don’t cotton to people who work for me doing their buying in town—” He stared at the man for a moment, seeing that he understood. “I’m good to my people, boy, and I expect them to show their appreciation in return—”

  The man only stared, increasing William’s irritation.

  “I’m going to give you a chance, boy, but you give me one reason and you’ll be sorry you ever showed your face around here, you got that?”

  “Yes, sir, I got it—” the man answered. “I got it—”

  William stared as the door closed behind the two men a few minutes later, satisfied that the boy understood what was expected from him. He turned and looked at the open ledger on the rolltop before him, then reached to shut it, needing a smoke very badly. He got up and crossed the room, going past the deep shelves of books that lined the walls, out into the hallway, and then through and out onto the front veranda of his home.

  He lit his cigar and drew in on it heavily in the chill night air, watching the shadowy forms of the two men as they made their way down the long drive and toward the dark clay road that led away from the house. He was pleased with the decision he had made to hire the boy, though still disquieted by the look of pride and dignity that had been so apparent on the dark face. Proud men so often proved to be trouble—but William Whitley knew how to deal with trouble. He made sure it could never bother anyone again.

  Titus was quiet as they left the big house, Mattie Ruth having quickly told them goodbye at the back door, saying she would be home as soon as her work was finished. Now there was nothing but silence as they walked along, broken only by the occasional sound of their feet shifting in loose dirt and rocks alongside the hard-packed clay road, or the night sounds from the dead cotton fields, and then the woods, as they drew near, and Janson found that he was glad for the quiet.

  He did not like William Whitley, of that much he was already certain. He did not like the man, or anything there was about him—but Whitley was a rich man, and all rich folks were alike, Janson told himself. Eason or Whitley, it did not much matter. They were all the same.

  There was a sound from the large house behind them, a door opening and closing, and Janson paused for a moment and looked back just before the curve of the road could cut off sight of the house. Whitley stood on the front veranda of his home now, a bulky shape framed by the light of one of the parlor windows. There was a brief flame lighting his features for a moment as he
lit his cigar, then he walked to the edge of the veranda, folding his hands behind his large buttocks for a moment and drawing in heavily on the cigar, the red glow of its ash dimly visible for a moment even over the distance.

  Janson stood for a moment and watched him, thinking of the reasons he had to stay here, to work, to earn and save money—thinking of that white house on those red acres back home; of a tall, brown-haired man and a small, gentle woman he could never fail—and thinking of people like the Easons and the Whitleys, and somehow damning them all to hell somewhere in the back of his mind.

  He knelt in the red dirt of the road and unlaced and removed his shoes, gathering them into one hand, and then straightening to meet Titus Coates’s eyes. Neither man spoke. They just turned and started down the red clay road again, away from the brightly lighted house behind them, and into the chilly darkness of the January night.

  4

  Elise Whitley was in trouble. Again. Not that she was in trouble alone, for she rarely if ever was. Phyllis Ann Bennett, sitting at her side, seeming to try to appear mature and aloof and above the current situation, was in trouble just as deeply as she.

  Eva Perry sat behind the wide expanse of her desk in the principal’s office of the girl’s school, considering the two girls over the tops of her eyeglasses. She rubbed her temples, trying to calm the pounding inside her head. She was in a horrid mood, having been awakened in the middle of the night only to be told these two were in trouble again. It had to be at least 11:30 p.m., if not even later, and she knew that she looked a fright. The heavy cotton nightgown she wore had to be her oldest, buttoned to the throat and wrists and covered by her most shapeless wrap; her long hair was twisted up in rag rollers, and there was not a touch of powder or rouge on her face—but at the moment she did not care. Her head hurt—but, then again, her head always seemed to hurt where these two were concerned. They were constantly in trouble: this time they had been brought back to the school by the police long after school curfew had passed, having been involved in a minor automobile accident while out driving with a number of boys from town; the previous week there had been a food fight in the dining hall, started by these two; less than a month before, a nighttime raid on the instructors’ rooms, stealing undergarments and other unmentionables, only to later strew them out over the campus grounds; a few days before that an improper novel had been found in their possession, a novel so shocking the principal herself had seen to its destruction after severely lecturing both girls—always these two.

  They were both sixteen now and ought to know better, both from good, old-Georgia families, families that had money and social standing—and both were spoiled, pampered, and petted, and a burden that had been gladly placed on Miss Perry’s narrow shoulders by their long-exasperated families.

  She stared at the two girls over the tops of her eyeglasses for a moment before pushing them up to the proper position on the bridge of her nose, then laced her fingers together and placed them on the desktop before her, leaning forward to look first at one girl, and then at the other, her eyes finally coming to rest on the girl to the right.

  “Well, Miss Whitley, do you have something to say for yourself this time?” she asked, and watched as the girl glanced quickly over at her friend.

  Elise Whitley was dressed in a straight, rather shapelessly-cut coat of the current fashion, over a low-waisted dress of a pale blue shade that was almost the same color as her eyes. Her hair was cut short, curling in at her cheeks below the dark cloche hat she wore, and was a rich, red-gold color that Eva had rarely seen before in her life. Her hands were quiet, folded tightly over the small purse in her lap; her rouge and lipstick a bit too obvious for a girl her age—but, then again, all the girls at the school were wearing it that way these days. She was not really a bad girl, Eva thought as she considered her across the desktop—if she could only manage to keep herself out of trouble for even a few days. If only—

  “Well?” Eva prompted again, waiting for a response.

  Elise Whitley looked quickly at her friend again, then back to the principal. “Well, we just—”

  “Now, Miss Perry—” Phyllis Ann interrupted, a deliberate tone in her voice as if she were addressing a particularly slow child—a device Phyllis Ann employed quite often, and one which Eva heartily detested. “We were only—”

  “Be quiet, Miss Bennett!” the principal snapped, feeling a muscle clench tightly in her jaw. She did not like Phyllis Ann Bennett, in fact, could find nothing even remotely likeable within the girl. Phyllis Ann was spoiled, self-serving, selfish, and vain, with a temper that was often unpredictable, and a manner of speech and behavior that constantly grated on Eva’s nerves—“fast,” Eva thought, not for the first time, for there was no other word she could find to describe the girl.

  Phyllis Ann sat back in her chair, a look of anger in her dark eyes as they met those of the principal. Her legs were crossed before her at the knees, her kneecaps visible below the hem of her skirt, as well as the tops of the flesh-pink, rolled stockings she wore. She loudly popped the gum in her mouth and bobbed one foot up and down impatiently, but did not speak again—fast, the principal thought again. The girl had been behind almost all the trouble at the school since she had first arrived here months before—she cut classes; smoked cigarettes, both in her dormitory room and in the girls’ lavatory; spread gossip, often outright lies, about the other girls, freely and without conscience; wore her skirts indecently short; and ran around with all sorts of young men. There were even rumors about the campus that she had been seen leaving a speakeasy late one Saturday night, though Eva could hardly believe that, even of Phyllis Ann.

  It seemed all the girls were changing these days, shortening their skirts and bobbing their hair, wearing makeup, and wishing more than anything else they were Zelda Fitzgerald or Clara Bow, and many of those changes Eva could see little harm in. But Phyllis Ann Bennett was another matter altogether. Whatever she was involved in, Elise Whitley and many of the other girls at the school soon followed suit. She was a bad influence, trouble as the principal had never thought to have at her school, with her indecently short skirts, her cigarette smoking, and loose ways—fast, Eva thought again. She even doubted the girl was still a virgin, though she would never dare utter such a thought aloud.

  “I was addressing Miss Whitley, Miss Bennett. I will get to you in a moment,” the principal said, watching as the girl loudly popped the gum again and then tilted her chin into the air as if she considered herself to have been insulted. “You were about to explain why you were out riding in a motor car with a number of young men, when you were supposed to be in your dormitory here after curfew?” Eva prompted again, looking at Elise.

  The girl glanced again quickly to her friend—for all the world, Eva could not understand how the two had ever become friends in the first place, much less how the friendship had endured over all the years she had been told it had existed. For all their pretensions, they were very different, and, although spoiled and often annoying, Elise Whitley could at times be a likeable girl—but she was just that: a girl trying very hard to be a woman, considering herself very mature and grownup and very worldly, but still nothing more than a child, not even yet knowing what it was to be an adult. Eva doubted if Elise had ever faced one hard truth in all her life, reared in the ivory tower of the Whitley name as she had been, and that bobbing her hair and shortening her skirts had probably been the worst act of defiance she could ever dream up—the girl had a lot of growing up to do if she were ever to be the woman she already considered herself to be, Eva thought; painful growing up if she did not end the friendship with Phyllis Ann Bennett, for it was the principal’s considered experience that girls such as Miss Bennett always came to no good ends, and that they often took everyone else they knew down along with them.

  “We went for a drive with some boys who just got a new car. I guess we forgot the time—” Elise Whitley said after a moment.

&n
bsp; “You forgot the time—that is until these boys you went riding with ran this new car of theirs into an electric pole, and the police brought you back to the school because these boys had been drinking—” Eva looked at her for a long moment. “Do you realize how fortunate you are that those officers did not take you to jail right along with the boys you were with?” she asked, receiving only silence in response to her question, and thus getting the answer she had expected. She sighed and shook her head. “You’re both sixteen now. You should be old enough to realize the dangers a young lady can find herself in when she’s off alone in a motor car with a strange young man—especially if liquor is involved—”

  “But we weren’t drinking,” Phyllis Ann interrupted. “And we weren’t alone. There were two of us, and three of them; and they weren’t strangers—”

  “That very well might be the case, but we have a curfew here for a reason, Miss Bennett. A young lady just does not go off to all times of the night with—” But she let her words trail off, realizing they were being ignored by both girls. “Your parents have entrusted your well-being to us while you are at this school,” she said more sternly. “For the time you are here, you will obey our rules, whether you see a need for them or not—am I understood?” She looked directly at Phyllis Ann, but Elise was the first to respond.

  “Yes, ma’am—”

  “Yes, of course,” Phyllis Ann said, but her face spoke more truth than did her words—she would continue to do whatever it pleased her to do, just as she had always done.

  Eva leaned forward, considering both girls again as she rested her arms on the desktop before her. “Your parents will be informed of your little misdeed tonight, and they will also be informed of this one fact, that if you are again found in one more infraction of our rules, one more food fight in the dining hall, or being caught out of the dormitory after curfew for any reason, or anything else along that vein, you will be summarily expelled from this institution—am I understood?”