Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  “Them Durhams hadn’t ought to sent keels up the river in high water,” said Gideon.

  “Ah, sure, but they pays extra for boatmen in flood-time, and I reckon pa figured it would be all right.” Esther did not even speak resentfully.

  But Gideon was less cowed. He said, “Men’s all the time getting killed or having their bones broke trying to go up in high water. They ought to send niggers.”

  Esther shrugged without trying to answer. Gideon spoke desperately.

  “Esther, sugar, won’t you get married to me and let me get you off these docks?”

  “Oh Gideon,” she said in a despairing voice, “don’t start that again! By the time I’d had two or three babies and you were having to pay some woman to look after them while I had another one—and pa yelling his head off seeing alligators climb the wall—and ma sick and needing somebody to make gruel—”

  Gideon’s hands unconsciously doubled. Esther was so right, but he exclaimed, “Honey girl, you’s just plumb outen your mind. I been crazy about you so long.”

  She patted his hand gently. “There ain’t many like you, Gideon. But I ain’t got no right making you take over my troubles. You better just go on looking out for yourself.”

  “Hell,” said Gideon. “Why can’t I look out for you too? I’m strong and I work hard and I don’t go running to the bar every time I get money in my pocket like some. Why can’t I get enough to look out for my girl and her po’ old ma and young uns too if they gets born? I ought to!”

  “Yeah,” said Esther. She looked around at the boats. “Tell that to them that owns the wharfs.”

  They were silent. “I reckon I better be getting rid of this here,” said Esther after awhile. She reached again for her basket.

  “I’ll tote it for you,” said Gideon.

  They walked around, toward the stalls where rich folks were examining the goods brought by the trading ships. A carriage stopped above the wharf and a footman opened the door. He bowed as a gentleman got out, followed by a young lady in long fluttering skirts and a ribboned hat. Behind her came a maid in a tignon, who held a parasol over the lady’s head. As they passed Gideon and Esther the lady remarked:

  “I hope they’ve brought some nice Irish linens.”

  She was a soft-voiced lady, very blonde and lovely, but Gideon did not notice her very much. He was looking with eyes that were cold and angry at her husband’s high silk hat and fine-tucked linen shirt and long tight trousers. They met some friends, and the lady held out her hand to be kissed. She bought something at a stall and handed the parcel to her maid.

  Gideon turned suddenly. “Esther.”

  “Huh?”

  “You see that air fellow buying leather? He’s got his wife with him in a yellow dress and the nigger woman holding the parasol over her.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You know who that is?”

  “Ain’t it them Sheramys from Silverwood?”

  “Yeah. What’d you say if I told you that air fancy-pants was my brother?”

  “Huh?” She gave him an incredulous scowl.

  “Ain’t it funny?” said Gideon. “Him strutting around in a tall hat and got mo’ niggers ’n he can count and buying his wife enough pretties to sink a ship—ain’t it too funny? Couldn’t you just bust laughing?”

  “You better lemme get rid of this here fruit before you start any yarns,” said Esther practically. Gideon made her rest on a goods-box near the stalls while he hawked the fruit for her. When at last the basket was empty he came back and gave her the money. It was getting late, and the crowd about the stalls was thinning. Gideon and Esther walked arm in arm to the park above the wharfs, and he told her about his relationship to Roger Sheramy.

  “Lawsy me,” said Esther, marveling. “But Gideon—how come he don’t pay you no mind?”

  “I expect he don’t even know I’m living, honey.”

  “But don’t you reckon, if you went around to Silverwood nice and proper like, and told him who you were—”

  “Huh,” said Gideon. “Them snippy niggers’d throw me off the place. And he wouldn’t believe me. I’d be just one more wharf-rat to him, claiming kin.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Esther. “I expect you’re right. But it’s queer, knowing.”

  Gideon stroked the dust with his toes, making five marks in a line. Esther added:

  “I better be getting home. Time I was cooking supper.”

  They walked out of the park. The shops gave place to taverns and these to lodging-houses. The street got narrow and smelly, and noisy with children yelling and women quarreling indoors. Gideon held Esther’s arm and guided her close to the houses. They turned into an alley. As they neared the door of the house where she lived Esther started and drew back against him.

  “Oh my God, Gideon, listen to that!”

  “Just some drunks having a fight, sugar. I’ll get you home safe.”

  Her hand tightened on his arm. “It sounds like pa. If he’s home again—”

  Before he could answer she broke from him and pushed open the door. He came after her, and by the light of the cooking-fire he saw Esther’s mother crouched behind a chair that she held as a barricade, pleading with Esther’s father as he stormed about, his peg-leg thumping on the floor. The room had the smell of cheap stale whiskey. The man’s clothes were filthy and there were streaks of tobacco-juice down his shirt.

  “Where’s Esther?” he was shouting. “I got to have some money. Brat—break every bone in her body—”

  As Gideon sprang at him Esther screamed. “Please get out and leave us alone! He’ll kill you with that peg-leg!”

  The man was raving drunk, but with a fierce twist he jabbed the peg at Gideon’s knee, knocking him down. Gideon heard Esther scream again and saw her father twisting her wrist. Her hand unclasped and the coins she had earned that day clinked on the floor. As Gideon pulled himself to his feet the man staggered out. Esther said, “Wait, ma,” and ran to Gideon.

  “Is you hurt bad?” she panted.

  He supported himself against the wall, shaking his head. There was blood creeping from a cut in Esther’s forehead.

  “I can walk in a minute,” said Gideon. “You better look out for your ma. I reckon she’s fainted.”

  Esther retreated slowly and knelt by her mother. Gideon moved his leg to see if he could walk. He got to the side of the room where Esther sat on the floor with her mother’s head in her lap. Gideon held himself up with the overturned chair.

  “Can’t you bring her to?” he asked.

  Esther looked up at him. She shook her head. After a moment she answered:

  “Ma’d all the time get blue and not breathe right when pa tried to beat me. I reckon this time done for her.”

  “Oh lawsy me,” said Gideon tenderly. He sat down on the floor by Esther. She had covered her face with her hands, and tears trickled through her fingers, reddened with blood from the cut in her forehead.

  “You don’t know how I feel, Gideon,” she murmured. “Ma was all the time sick, but she was mighty sweet to me. And I reckon you don’t understand about pa. She was in love with him, I swear to God she was, and she said he was all right till he got his leg off—”

  Her voice broke. Gideon put his arms around her and held her tight. Her mother’s body slid off her knees to the floor. She cried on his breast. He could hear people screaming and talking in the other rooms of the house. It was nearly dark, and the cooking-fire made only a vague glow in the shadows. At last Esther said:

  “I wonder what I’m gonta do now.”

  That roused him. “Don’t you know?” he demanded. “If you don’t I’m just before telling you. You’s gonta get married to me first thing in the morning and I’m gonta look out for you and if that drunk pa of yourn ever bothers you again he’s gonta get killed.”

  Her face
was still hidden against him. “He treated me right when I was a little thing,” she whispered.

  “Well, he don’t no more. Ain’t you gonta marry me, Esther?”

  She nodded. “I reckon I ain’t no count by myself. Oh, you are so good!” she exclaimed, and put her arms around him.

  Gideon took her home with him that night, to his sister’s, where he had lived since his father died. His sister’s husband had a good job as watchman in one of the Valcour warehouses, and they had three rooms, so that Lulie and her husband had a bedroom all to themselves. That night Esther slept in the room with Gideon and the children. The next day he got a body-collector to come for Esther’s mother and they put her into a grave in the public burying-ground.

  Esther said it wasn’t right for them to get married the day after her mother died, but Lulie said that was better than Esther’s sleeping in the same room with Gideon when they weren’t married. Lulie’s little girls slept in the room with Gideon but then they were children and besides they were related to him. So Esther and Gideon were married, and they rented a room in another alley. Lulie hated to have Gideon move, for he had paid for lodging with her and that helped out, but she could see he and Esther would want a room of their own.

  Esther was a good wife. She worked hard and took good care of him. Every morning she cooked him a fine breakfast and packed him dinner of corn-pone and fried eggs and sometimes an orange, and she wasn’t all sloppy like some women. No sir, Esther was clean, and she scrubbed the floor till you could mighty near eat your dinner off it. She washed his clothes regular, and he had a clean shirt two days a week, ironed and mended, and what was more they always had a sheet to their bed, not lying on the bare mattress like some. Gideon didn’t know how he’d ever got along without Esther. Lulie was a good woman and did the best she knew how, but Lulie was always having children and she’d get careless. Not that you could blame her, she said it seemed like there was all the time a baby between her and the washtub and scrubbing gave her such pains in the back. But it was nice having Esther, young and well and sweet.

  When he came in of an evening she would make him lie on the bed with his head in her lap and she would run her hand over his forehead and tell him how good he was, and how fine for her not to have to tramp the docks any more, and he’d feel less tired. Then she’d bring a pan of water and wash his feet and get them cooled after working all day, and make him rest while she dished up supper. It would be a good supper too, cornbread crisp and hot and not soggy like some women’s cornbread, and molasses, and generally stew-meat. You most generally could hardly eat stew-meat; that was what the butcher shaved off the bones after he’d cut the chops and steaks for rich people, but she was smart about boiling it with bay-leaf till it tasted like something. “You got to have meat in your belly if you tote cottonbales,” Esther said, and she was right too. When she had washed up the pans and covered the fire they’d take a stroll along the bluff where the streets were wide and quiet, or maybe if he’d been lucky at getting work they’d go see a cock-fight, or call in some neighbors and play cards. Or if it was bad weather they’d just sit and talk to each other, and she’d tell him how much happier she was now than she’d ever been and all on account of him.

  Oh, they were doing fine, they were, and he loved Esther more all the time. She got nicer, and began to drop the way of tough talking she’d picked up on the docks. There were some words it was all right for men to use but not women, and when he told her so she wouldn’t be mad, she’d just say, “I’m powerful sorry, honey—you know what it’s like on the docks, and pa.” He wondered where her pa was. Not that it mattered, long as he kept away from Esther.

  Even after she told him she was standing behind a baby and didn’t feel so peart, Esther got the cooking done all right and kept the place tidy. The baby turned out to be a little girl, and Gideon named her Gardenia for the flowers that smelled so sweet in the park in summertime. It was fun sometimes having the baby around, but sometimes it was bad, like when Gardy had colic in the night and kept him awake, and a man had to have his sleep if he was going to do a job of work. Sometimes of a morning if the baby had been wakeful Esther would be too tired and bothered with it to fix him much breakfast and he’d get cross though he tried not to. By the time he got to the docks he’d be groggy in the head from no sleep.

  Days like that, he’d get plumb worn out by dark and it wasn’t as nice going home as it used to be. The room wasn’t so neat, for the baby’s clothes were hanging around to dry and everything was messed up. Not that Esther was lazy, but with Gardy crawling around and pulling things out of place she couldn’t be forever picking up and doing the cooking and washing too. She didn’t scold him, not even when she needed a new wash-pot and he couldn’t get it for her because he’d got tired staying around hearing the baby squall and had spent all his money at a cock-fight. He told her he was sorry, but she just gave him a funny look and said, “Don’t you go feeling bad, honey. I know how it is.”

  But that night he woke up and she was crying. He thought maybe the baby was sick again, but little Gardy was in the bed on the other side of Esther sleeping like nothing could wake her but the last trump. Gideon put his arms around Esther, saying, “Don’t be so upset, sugar. I know it’s hard, washing without no good pot, but I’ll get you one.”

  “It ain’t the wash-pot,” said Esther. “It’s—it’s—well, everything. I knowed it would be thisaway. Before long you’ll wish you ain’t never set eyes on me.”

  “Ah, go on,” said Gideon. “You know I’m crazy about you. Go to sleep and you’ll feel better.”

  Esther said, “No.” She sat up. “I’ll go to sleep but I won’t feel better. I’ll quit whining but I won’t feel better.”

  “Whatever is the matter with you?” he exclaimed. “You keep me awake like this and then you wonder why I’m fuzzy-headed in the morning.”

  “I’m behind a baby again,” said Esther.

  “Oh Jesus,” said Gideon. “And her just weaned?” Then he felt ashamed of himself, and he added, “Say, that don’t matter. Anybody to hear you talk would think you weren’t married or something disgraceful.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Esther, and lay down again. When they got up the next morning she fixed the baby’s milk and boiled his hominy without saying anything else about it, but she had a look that made him think of somebody that was seeing forty years all at once instead of just one day at a time.

  Pretty soon he knew she had been wiser than he, for the water was extra high that spring. Men on the docks dreaded high-water years like the plague. The river got full to bursting and the current was so fast men couldn’t control the boats, and mighty few traders would risk cargoes. There would be days and days when Gideon got hardly any work at all. Esther dragged herself around the stalls, trying to find one where they would give an onion with the rice, but the grocers said with trade held up they couldn’t afford to be giving lagniappe. Some nights they had no supper at all.

  He might have asked Cass, Lulie’s husband, for help, though he’d hate to, but Cass was just getting half wages now. Mr. Valcour had put the free laborers on half-time work. When Cass asked how they were doing Gideon stuck out his chest and said: “Oh, we’re doing fine, fine,” because he couldn’t bear to have folks know anything else of him. It was shame more than hunger that hurt him. There were always bad times now and then when you didn’t expect to have everything, but to see his own wife big with child pulling herself around and looking like death, and his own little girl getting thin, that made a man feel terrible.

  “If I was you and could walk,” said Esther, “I’d go to them Sheramys and tell them how it is with us.”

  “Hush your mouth,” said Gideon. “I swear they wouldn’t do nothing.”

  “But why not?” she demanded. “Holy heaven, they still buys things. I see them folks, coming down in painted carriages, scolding because ain’t no boat brought up fancy shoes from New
Orleans. They got to have shoes in warm weather even. And that Roger Sheramy own brother to you.”

  “Christ almighty,” said Gideon, “the water’ll be down by June.”

  “Sure,” said Esther, “and me being delivered before May.”

  “I swear to you, Esther,” he argued, “them folks on the bluff don’t know what it’s like for us when the river’s high. My ma lived at Silverwood and she knew. She said when you’ve got plenty you always got something else to worry about.”

  “I don’t know what folks worry about when they’ve got plenty,” said Esther wearily.

  She nearly died when the second baby was born. Lulie came in and nursed her, and the neighbor women, though they had little enough for their own families, brought rice or pieces of fruit to help Esther get her strength back. The baby was so little and wizened Gideon marveled that he lived at all, for Esther didn’t have any milk. But three other women in the alley who were nursing young babies took turns feeding him at first so he wouldn’t starve. Times like this made you understand how good people were, Gideon thought sometimes; if it wasn’t for bad years and trouble you never would know.

  He managed to get some carpentry work. The Purcells were taking advantage of the slow trade to repair the wharf-sheds. It was hard, for he wasn’t used to carpentering and didn’t know much about it. But he thought he was right lucky to be having any work at all when there were so many that didn’t. It seemed the river wouldn’t ever go down, for instead of getting to a peak and breaking out over the plantations it stayed mighty near on a level, not making any really bad floods but too swift for traffic. There never had been such a hard spring for the dock people.