The critique stung at first. “He’s just teasing. We’ve been friends for a long time, now, and I trust him.”
“I wouldn’t trust him in church.”
“But I’m his friend,” Jacks said sharply. “Not his date.”
The date dropped his hand. “Well, if that’s the way you think of me. I’ll just go on back to the porch.”
Jacks tried to sound indifferent. “Suit yourself. Sugar.”
“Well, I just might.” The date stopped and put her hands on her hips. Jacks looked at her, but continued to walk. The way was illuminated by a filament bulb on a pole, around which insects swarmed. The peafowl rested in a cluster at the edge of the yard, barely visible. The cattle, too, had come to rest along the edge of the fence in several large groups, the white patches on their faces visible.
The date caught up to him. “Well, we can be friends, can’t we? What did I do to you? I mean … well … you don’t have to be so serious. So straight.” She sighed. “I swear, you and Vernon look so much alike. You could be brothers. You’re both tall and you’ve got that lanky look. I like a tall man. I am tall myself, as you can see. But, I swear, you are not a thing alike, otherwise. You could be brothers, but you’re just not a thing alike.” From the porch they heard Betty’s laughter. Roughly, the date attempted to slip her hand into his again, but he pulled it away.
SIXTEEN
It was the bourbon that had made him do it, Noland Jacks thought. Bourbon was dangerous. Old Jake Beam, Old Grand Dad, Old Fitzgerald, Old Kentucky Gentlemen—all of them gentlemen, and he was not one. Venable was a Georgia gentleman, as much as they had gentlemen in Georgia, but he, himself, was an interloper. The gentry knew it and tolerated him; the crackers knew it and considered him uppity. The niggers knew, too, but to a nigger it was all the same, or it ought to have been. He had the fine house, and his mother had had Talmaedge blood. And he had the land. The land made it all possible. What he didn’t have was the manners. Something in his bones and muscles prevented him from being gentry. He felt he had no easiness about him. He couldn’t assume that the world was made for him because in his blood was the knowledge that land could be taken away. Those Cherokee chiefs knew it, and his Irish forefathers knew it, and so he knew it. It made him tense, but it kept him hard. Bourbon, on the other hand, clouded his mind, slackened his body.
The incident with the woman in the barn had been brief. All evening, she had flirted with him, winking, smiling, and touching him, and Venable had been doing the same to Betty. He had wanted to say something to Venable, to tell him to stay away from Betty and to tell him that Betty was not a whore like the other woman. That Betty was his girl, not Venable’s. But the bourbon had shut his mouth. His jaws wouldn’t work, and when he could open them, his tongue lay like a fat, slimy slug. Even if his tongue had been quick, his mind was no good. He seemed to have faded in and out of sleep. He followed the conversation all right—he had heard everything that Venable said, had seen every gesture, the way Venable bounced his knee, the way his thigh quivered like an eager stallion, and worse, the way Betty pretended to be upset, but with every gesture moved closer to Venable. “Oh, Noland, do something about your friend!” What could he do? He could have killed Venable. But it was he who acted like the gentlemen, then. It was he who had the degree, a Bachelor of Science from the University of Georgia. It was he who had the Roadster. It was his grandfather who had fought in The War Between the States. The Venables claimed colonels and the Talmaedges generals—but neither family had had a soldier in the war. And he knew it was he—his people—that had more money, more land. The Venables might call their farm “Thousand Acres,” but he knew, altogether, if they counted every square inch, every fallow field, every sharecropper yard and weed patch, they couldn’t muster eight hundred. But he and his old man, they had that much and that much again. But sitting there, that evening, bound by the bourbon, he felt like nothing. Like a nigger.
That was when he had decided to go for a walk and the whore had followed him. In the barn, she had said something to him about a kiss—after all, Vernon and Betty were getting along so well, she said, why shouldn’t they? He didn’t remember it all, but looking at her face, pasted with rouge and lipstick, and her cigarette-stained teeth, he couldn’t bear the idea of kissing her. And still, he grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her into the bales of hay. He pulled at her blouse and she started to fight him. “Not good enough for you! A hussy, like you! Not good enough!” He saw in her expression that she agreed, and he slapped her. She let out a surprised screech, and seeing that she was more surprised than hurt, he stepped back from her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You will be! You will be when I tell Vernon.”
Was he supposed to be afraid of Vernon Venable? He wasn’t, and at that moment, he realized he wasn’t. “I’d slap him, too. Give me a chance.” But he wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t do anything else to the woman, either, he realized, because he was not a gentleman if Vernon Venable was one. He was not Vernon Venable. He was better than that.
It was a week later that he saw Betty again, and a week after that she was seeing Venable. That was all right with him. “Do as you please,” he had told her, and he had said it coolly, and had looked at her and then turned to look at the line of trees along the river.
“If you put it that way …”
He hadn’t answered her. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, and then, suddenly, as if God had sent a balm to ease his pain, his father, Spurgeon, fell ill. Then Jacks had the farm to manage by himself, a house, and a sick father. He didn’t receive an invitation to the wedding, and had he, he told himself over and over, he would have been too busy to attend.
A few weeks after the wedding, he told his father that he was hiring a housekeeper. The old man sat up in his bed, threw back the crocheted spread, coughed and pointed a finger at him. “There has never been a housekeeper in this house. You don’t need one. You need a wife.”
Jacks knew then that, whoever the housekeeper was, the old man would not be easy on her. He asked of his field helpers if one had a wife or daughter who could do house work, and Deacon Thompson, one of his favorite and hardest workers, said he would send his younger cousin. Her name was Milledge.
She had come early the next morning and was sitting on the steps of the back porch when he opened the door to go out to the fields.
“’Scuse me, sir,” she said and averted her eyes.
The way she averted her eyes caught his imagination: there seemed a coyness, almost as if she were smiling at him before her eyes turned away. Then he realized that it was not shyness or flirtation, but respect. He was wearing only a strap undershirt, a threadbare one that he worked in, and her aversion had little to do with him, and everything to do with her sense of herself. She might be too proud, he thought.
“How old are you, girl?”
“Seventeen, sir.”
“Have you done housework before?”
“Yes, sir. Around the house. I mean, I help my mother.”
“Can you cook?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What?”
“Just about anything you like, sir. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“Cook and clean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cook biscuits?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My mother could cook good biscuits. Butter on the top. Soft inside and would cover them thick with honey or preserves.
“I ain’t saying I can cook as good as your momma,” she said. She looked up at him, turning her brown eyes for a flash, and then looking away again. “So I hope you don’t hold me to that high of expectation, sir. But I can cook good biscuits, and fry up bacon or ham, and fry eggs, and fix up some grits. Or if you want, I can stir up some griddlecakes or waffles. I even know how to make some scones or short bread and some yeast rolls, too.”
The backyard was beginning to fill with green light, filtering through the canopy of the large trees. Jacks inhaled deeply.
His stomach growled and he hoped the girl hadn’t heard it. Then he laughed to himself. “I don’t reckon I’ll be needing all that. Just get on in there and start. Make two breakfasts. Make anything you can find. I’ll have a big one, but the old man, well, see what you can get him to eat.”
The girl came up the steps and passed him without looking at him. He went to the barns to give instructions to the workers, and when he returned, she was well underway making biscuits. By the time he had shaved and put on a shirt, the house was filled with the smell of baking bread, brewing coffee, and frying meat. She had laid the table for him and had placed the newspaper beside his plate. Somehow, though at first he didn’t consider it, she had presented the meal at his usual seat. She didn’t ask about the old man, but took a plate on a tray to him. Jacks waited to hear a ruckus, but there wasn’t one. He bit into a hot biscuit without putting it on his plate, without butter or preserves. It was flaky and sweet, slightly different from his mother’s, but every bit as good. He heard the old man talking, so he got up to go and see what it was he wanted. When he walked into the room, the girl was helping Spurgeon back into the bed, having helped him to the pot. Then, she wiped his face and hands with a wet cloth. Spurgeon looked up at Jacks and winked.
Jacks looked at the girl as she smoothed the covers around Spurgeon’s thin legs, and put the bed tray on his lap. She was small, he thought, but she had full round hips and a pleasant air. Her motions were quick, efficient, and confident. When she finished, she left the room without a word.
“Where did you find her?” Spurgeon asked. He tasted a spoonful of the grits.
“You approve?” Jacks asked.
“What have I got to approve or disapprove? It’s your farm now, Noland. It’s no longer up to me.” He chewed on the rind of a slice of bacon. “When the house started filling up with the smell of bread, I realized that I missed something. Your mother. Her cooking. Her singing and humming around the house. I’ve got sense enough to know that my days are numbered, and I got sense enough to know that there’s no sense in eating your cooking for the last days of my life.” Spurgeon didn’t smile as he said this, and though Jacks knew his father had not meant the comment as humor, he smiled anyway.
“I’m happy to see that you have come around, Papa.”
“I have not come around to any new position. You still need a wife, but until you get one, this girl will do very well.”
In the kitchen, the girl had kept his breakfast warm, and was already gathering his dirty clothes for washing.
“I think you will work out just fine,” he said to her. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Milledge, sir.”
“What?”
“Milledge, sir. Like in Milledgeville.”
“I’ll just call you Millie,” he said. He liked the sound of it.
Six weeks later, that ole turkey vulture that had come for his wife years earlier, came to rest on the roof above Spurgeon Jacks’ bedroom. Though he could not see it, he knew it was there. He heard it hissing and flapping its wings. He heard it claw the slate roof and the occasional splatter of its guano against the rain gutter. He complained about it to Jacks and said he wished Jacks would shoot it. Jacks shook his head, laughed, and patted his father on the arm. The girl understood him, Spurgeon said, even if his own son did not. Spurgeon couldn’t eat the girl’s cooking anymore, but Jacks observed that the old man seemed to enjoy it when she attended him. It was she who gave him his morphine, and so it was her brown face that Jacks’ father saw last before his glance drifted across the room and out of the window. Jacks imagined that his father’s mind was floating across the fields, backwards and forward in time, riding the waves at the edge of a great lake.
Did he regret his life? Jacks wondered of his father. Yes, but what person wouldn’t? Was he terrified of death? He didn’t appear to be, and with each retreat of the waves back into the great body of the lake, his father seemed less afraid. Not happy to die, but resigned. Had he done wrong? Many things, Jacks knew. He remembered offenses against his mother and himself. And there were many more good things he could have done that he hadn’t. Was he going to Hell? Jacks didn’t know. He didn’t feel that his father would. If there was a God, then he would be a forgiving God, a generous God; he would forgive his father for all the wrong he had done and for all of the good he had not done.
On his last day of life, Spurgeon seemed alert and anxious. He claimed that three other birds sat in the sill of his window. They had come long before the sun, he said, but in the new light, he saw them clearly: a robin, a jay, and a black-capped chickadee. They sang for him. The robin said, “chee-rup;” the jay said, “gaw-gaw;” and the chickadee said, “chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee.” The robin was his wife, the jay his father and chickadee, his beloved mother.
About noon, when Jacks was supervising his field workers, the girl approached him. She waited until she had his full attention, then said quietly, “I’m sorry, Mr. Jacks, but your daddy just passed.”
The house was emptiest in the evening, after Milledge—Millie—had gone home. She prepared and served him his supper about five in the afternoon. It was a lighter meal than dinner, the midday meal, traditionally heavy in farm communities. Then she cleaned the kitchen while he sat on the side porch and smoked. By six o’clock, she was asking if there would be anything else. He never had anything else for her. She was thorough, and long ago, he had learned that it was unnecessary for him to inspect her work.
One day, the spring after his father died, as he looked out toward Thousand Acres, he saw a light shoot into the sky and explode. Milledge had just come out onto the porch to pardon herself, and had seen it, too. She gave a little start, and then a bit of a laugh and smoothed her hands across her apron.
“Well, God almighty, what do you think they shooting off fireworks for?” Jacks asked. “It ain’t the fourth of July.”
“No sir, I reckon it’s the birth they are celebrating.”
“Birth?”
“Yes, sir,” Milledge answered. To him, her tone suggested his stupidity on the subject. “The new Mrs. Venable supposed to have her baby about now.”
It hadn’t occurred to him, but now it made sense. The quick wedding had been necessary. Perhaps it had nothing to do with love, but only sex, lust. He had had better control with Betty, apart from the long kisses, he had not been carnal with her, though he had wanted to. He was a man, after all, and not immune to desire. Many a night he walked around and around the grounds to wear it out of his thighs so he could sleep. “Birth?”
“Yeah, I saw her in town about three weeks ago, and she was as big as a house. Wouldn’t surprise me if she delivered twins.” Milledge said, and then seemed to catch herself talking too freely to him. To him, it seemed the first genuine thing she had said to him since he employed her, the first genuine display of interest or emotion, and he smiled.
“Tell me,” he pressed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, “you like children, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, sir. I don’t think I know of any person—any woman, anyhow—that wouldn’t like to have a little baby. They are so soft when you hold them in your arms, and so.…
“Go on,” he encouraged.
“Oh, I don’t reckon you want to hear that foolishness, sir.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Why do people think I wouldn’t want to hold a little baby in my arms?”
“Oh, excuse me, sir. I ain’t meant to say—”
“You didn’t. But plenty do. People think I’m hard.”
“No, sir.”
He could tell she was being disingenuous. “I know what they think.”
“Well, maybe some folks do. But then, some people need to be hard or they won’t get through. Doesn’t mean you going to be hard for every minute of your life. You have your hard spells, and you have the times when you are not so hard.”
“Is that so?” He studied her and he could tell that his regard made her nervous. He didn’t want to make her nervous, only to talk to her.
But what would be the use? She was a colored girl and she was smart, and a smart colored girl would never talk to him the way he wanted just then. It wasn’t allowed, and he wouldn’t allow it either.
A week later, a letter came from Thousand Acres. It was from Betty. It announced the birth of the child, a boy, and it expressed regrets, belatedly, for the death of his father. Then it invited him to supper. He stood for a long time in the middle of the kitchen floor, where he had opened the letter, having just come in from the mailbox. A reconciliation, he thought. What did he want to reconcile with the Venables for? He would always feel an outsider with them, the rejected boyfriend, the odd neighbor. Then he realized he was blocking Milledge’s progress as she stood with a plate of food, unable to get around him to put it on the table.
“Scuse me, sir. Your dinner.” He moved to the chair, the letter still held open in his hand, as if he were reading it. His hand shook a bit, and then he placed the letter on the table. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” Milledge asked, having laid the food on the table. Suddenly he realized what she meant. She was asking if he were all right.
“No. No,” he said and picked up his utensils, bowed his head though he did not actually pray, and cut into his meat. It was a smothered fried pork chop. It was a meal his mother cooked, and when he looked up from the plate, he expected to see his mother sitting next to him, his father directly across from him.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, this time referring to the food.
“Yes. Yes. Delicious.” He put the meat in his mouth. The gravy was savory and the meat tender, but he had no hunger, just then. “Millie,” he said, “why don’t you take a plate and join me?”
She was still for a minute and he looked up from the plate and saw that she seemed frozen by the stove, in the middle of spooning okra from a pot. “No, sir,” she said hoarsely, “I’ll take mine later.”
It was his mistake. He wished he hadn’t put her into the position. But she was smart, and she would figure a way out of it. And she did. She quickly finished spooning the food and excused herself, saying she needed to clean in the front room.
The Vain Conversation Page 18