There Is a River

by Charlotte Miller

  He sat staring at the closed, heavily varnished door that led into his office, waiting. Only a year before no one would have kept him waiting. Only a year before, Bickham would have been in his office almost before Walter’s order could go out—I’m not that old, no matter what they think. I’m not so old that I can’t break a man, any man, if I choose to, Walter told himself—but he had broken so many things that he now felt he should make right.

  Eason County—his county—was not the same anymore, and neither was the South or for that matter the country. People had left for the cities. Men had fought in distant lands. Women had worked who had never worked before. The war had changed so many people, and now they were coming home, and so many of them did not want to stay in the village. They wanted homes of their own that were not rented or shared with another family. For days now a memory had lurked in the back of his mind about that very thing. Someone years ago had defied him by saying that a man had a right to something his own, something no one could take from him, something he could work for and that would be his own that he could pass on to his children.

  Walter had set about having the mill houses piped for running water, having bathrooms boxed in on back porches, taking bids on bathroom fixtures and kitchen sinks, all while the thought continued to gnaw at him. He had made arrangements with his lawyers for selling off the mill houses, to give the people living in them a chance to buy them at a fair price and to have deducted from their wages payments on something that would be their own. Buddy would never keep the mill houses up once Walter was dead, and Walter knew it. Buddy would run the rents up so high the millhands couldn’t afford them. It was better to get things arranged now, better to take care of his people, as Walter believed he had been doing all his life. The hands would never be able to buy houses on their own, he told himself. They needed him—they had always needed him. And this would give them something of their own. Each house would be offered to a family now living in it. Where two families shared a home, it would be offered to the one that had lived there the longest.

  One vacant house in particular he set aside, had piped and the facilities put in, had it freshly painted and newly underpinned with brick. It had always been a duplex but he had connecting doors cut through the dividing wall, dispelling the ghosts, converting it into a single-family dwelling. Walter was going to offer that house to Janson Sanders, and that very morning, as he inspected the empty house, he finally remembered that it had been Janson’s father, Henry, who spoke the quietly defiant words that had been haunting Walter for days. It had been Henry who told Walter that a man had a right to something that was his own, something that he could work for and put into and pass on to his children.

  Walter realized that in preparing this house to offer Janson Sanders, he was trying to put right a debt. Walter had not thought twice when he cut off Henry Sanders’s credit in 1926. Then Henry had died and the boy had lost his land and Walter had known he was to blame. He told himself the land would have been lost even if he had not interfered—so many lost their land in those hard years. But perhaps then Janson Sanders would not have held him to blame, in both his father’s death and in a fire God himself had caused. But Janson did blame him, and Walter knew the blame was just—I could have had Henry’s credit extended, he had told himself so many times; I could have kept the foreclosure from taking place. The boy might still have his land, and Henry might still be alive—but he should have done as the other county farmers did and sold his cotton in Eason County. All Walter had wanted was the continuation of the custom that had gone on in the county for so many years. He had not appreciated that Henry’s cotton and land had been all his own, something no one could ever take from him. Something he could work for and put into and pass on to his children.

  But Henry Sanders had died. And Walter Eason was to blame. And now he was too old for his own credit to be extended.

  He stared at the door, waiting for the house boss. The house Walter had set aside would go to Janson Sanders for a fraction of what it was worth; Janson would never know, but Walter would, and at the moment that was all that seemed to matter.

  There was a tap at the door and the balding house boss entered. Walter stared hard at him before ordering, “Tell the overseer of the card room to send Janson Sanders to see me when his shift’s over, and I want you here as well. There are some things I need to get taken care of.”

  Janson Sanders would have back his land.

  Walter sat staring at the closed office door long after Janson Sanders and the house boss had gone out it. Sanders did not want the mill house Walter had picked out and fixed for him. Sanders would farm again and have something that would belong to him. And he had done it with no help from anyone. Walter was surprised that he felt proud for Sanders, and felt as if a burden had been lifted from him—let Sanders farm his land, he told himself. Let him feed his family, see his children grow, play with his grandchildren.

  Let him also get too old to care.

  It was over, and somehow no one had lost. It had been a dying system that Walter had been trying to hold together twenty years before when where the Sanders cotton was to be sold had meant so much to him. Walter could see that now. The modern world had outgrown it. The independence brought on by two great wars, with the Depression in between, had only served to cover its demise. This was not his county anymore. It had not been his county for a very long time. It had only been the people’s loyalty to the old ways and their respect for him, and for his father before him, that had kept those ways alive. It all seemed so simple now.

  But nothing was simple where Buddy was concerned.

  “I won’t have him on that land,” Buddy raged when he found out, coming to Walter’s office that afternoon to pace back and forth.

  “I won’t have you interfering with—”

  “Fuck you, old man!” Buddy roared, stopping in front of Walter’s desk, a fist raised between them. “I don’t give a damn what you ‘won’t have’!”

  Walter rose slowly to his feet, placing his fingers spread on the desktop before him. “I’m tired of your smart mouth. I’m not too old to—”

  Buddy laughed, which took Walter by surprise. No man had ever dared to laugh at him.

  “You’re too old to even jerk off anymore—and if you’re too damn stupid and weak to put a stop to that red nigger, then I’m not.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “I put a stop to his father, didn’t I?” The words were spoken quietly, and for a moment Walter could do nothing but stare at him. “I made sure that son-of-a-bitch lost his land—you were too weak even back then to do anything, but I wasn’t. I set fire to their fields and saw old man Sanders die and I knew that meant they’d lose the land—and I’ll do it again. I’ll see that red nigger’s whole family dead before I’ll see them on that land.”

  “You won’t go anywhere near them!” Walter shouted.

  “Go to hell,” Buddy said, slamming the door as he left.

  Walter stood for a long time, staring at the door, his hands shaking where his fingers were pressed to the desktop, staggered by the revelation that Buddy had been responsible for Henry Sanders’s death. Buddy had set the fire in the fields, burned the cotton. Buddy had done what Walter had always believed had been an act of God—but God had no part in Buddy Eason. Walter had not known, but he now realized he was responsible and that he had to stop Buddy.

  He rubbed his aching left shoulder but the pain worsened, moving down his arm and across his chest, making it difficult to breathe. It felt as if someone were squeezing him. He sat back into his chair, rubbing his arm, reaching up to loosen his tie. The pain was growing and he clutched at his chest—not now, he told himself. Not now; I’m not ready yet. He had to stop Buddy. He had to make certain Janson Sanders and his boy got their land. He had to see the twins taken away from Buddy and Cassandra before they could grow up to be like either parent. He had to—

&n
bsp; There was a great weight on his chest, crushing him down, forcing the life from him. He tried to pray but no prayers would come, only the halting words of a child:

  “Now I lay me down . . . I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . Now I . . . if I should die before I wake . . . God forgive me . . . I pray the Lord my soul to take . . .”

  13

  Walter Eason was dead and Janson found that he was sorry. After twenty years of holding the old man responsible for both his father’s death and for the loss of the land, after all that time, and all that had taken place between them, Janson Sanders was sorry. He had respected the old man, and he knew somehow the old man had respected him. But now Walter Eason was dead and Eason County was Buddy’s county. It was Buddy’s town and village. Buddy’s cotton mill.

  Janson quit his job on the spot, walking out of his shift that October morning just as soon as he learned that Walter Eason had died. The mill had not shut down out of respect for the deceased, as it had when other members of the Eason family passed away. Buddy had countermanded the orders that went out from the mill office, saying he had no intention of losing money by shutting down the cotton mill.

  Everyone was shocked, and much quiet whispering was going on even though mill workers knew that to be overheard and reported to the office would very likely cost them their jobs and the homes they had been living in for many years.

  “Did you hear? Old Mr. Eason died, and Buddy—I mean Mr. Eason—won’t shut the mill down. At first they said we were shutting down, but Mr. Eason stopped it—”

  “Haven’t you heard—”

  “Would you believe—”

  “Poor old man, a heart attack right there in his office. You know he should have retired years ago—did you hear we’re not shutting down even for the funeral?”

  Janson had not whispered. He had gone directly to the overseer of the card room. “I ain’t workin’ for Buddy Eason,” he said, and walked out of the mill.

  On his way home he walked past men digging a trench in a yard, running pipe to one of the mill houses, several brick masons at work underpinning a house on the next street, the sound of carpentry work going on a block away—soon the houses would be modernized, with bathroom facilities and running water, underpinned and ready for sale to the mill workers, that is unless Buddy Eason decided to keep them, which Janson doubted that he would. Buddy would be thinking only of the money he might make from the sale of the houses, the savings from not having to keep them up.

  It would be a different life in the village with the mill workers owning their houses. Walter Eason had told Janson all about it the day before when he offered him a nice house on a corner lot, with a place in back for a garden. Janson had turned him down, and he was doubly glad now that he had done so—even if it had not been for his land, he would not have been able to live in Buddy Eason’s mill village, for it would be no less than that now, no matter who owned the homes.

  They would have to move now out of the mill house they had been living in for six years, and they would have to do it before Buddy Eason could have them thrown out. Janson had planned on quitting soon, but he would not have been ready for at least a few more months. There was a tenant on his land, and the man would have the place until his cotton was picked and sold—besides, the deal had not been closed, and it would be several months before they would be able to move into the house. They would have to rent a place for the time being. He would need work to keep them from having to live off their savings, Elise’s sewing, or Stan’s charity—that is, if Buddy Eason did not fire Stan immediately for his connection to the Sanders family. Stan had been contributing to the savings, and planned to move with them to the farm—but, even if Stan managed to keep his job in the mill for the time being, Janson would not turn to his brother-in-law for help. Elise, Henry, and the girls were his responsibility, and he would take care of them.

  The hardest thing now would be telling Elise—I quit my job. I quit my job, and we won’t have a place to live.

  She was waiting for him when he came into the yard, seated on a rocker on their half of the front porch. She watched him as he walked up the board steps. “Stan told me that Mr. Eason died,” she said. “I knew you would quit. How long before we have to move?”

  Janson stared at her in amazement. How could she know him so well? “Th’ sooner we’re outta th’ mill house, th’ better.”

  She nodded and rose to go into the house, but he stopped her. “It won’t be for long. A couple ’a months, maybe a little more, an’ we can move out onto our own place. I’ll find work ’til then, an’ a place we can rent. I just couldn’t work for Buddy.”

  She smiled and touched his cheek, halting his words. “I knew you couldn’t work for him. You didn’t have any other choice but to quit.” The note of worry in her voice made him think again of something he had been considering earlier—not only was it Buddy’s village and mill, but so much of the remainder of the county belonged to Buddy now. Janson might quit his job in the mill; they might leave the mill village and town, but the land still was located in Eason County.

  And Eason County was Buddy’s county now.

  Buddy sat on the front pew of Pine’s First Methodist Church there on Main Street, frowning at his grandfather’s face where the old man now lay in the flower-covered casket at the front of the church—damned old bastard, Buddy thought. The old coot had been an inconvenience when he was alive, and he was an even bigger inconvenience dead. He even looked as if he was still breathing, laying there, his face as ruddy as ever, framed by all that white hair, his eyebrows bristling out and meeting across the bridge of his nose. The damned old bastard had always been spouting his religion, so holier-than-thou—Buddy dearly hoped that he was burning in the hottest pit of hell at the moment, though he really doubted that hell existed at all.

  He was glad the old man was finally out of the way, but there were other things he would rather be doing this afternoon than sitting here in a church pretending that he was sorry the old bastard had finally kicked off. This was the first time he had been in a church since the day he married Cassandra, and he hoped it would be the last time until the day came when he would have the pleasure of attending Cassandra’s funeral—she was sitting beside him now, pretending to cry into a lacy handkerchief. How dearly he would love to tell the entire congregation of mourners behind him what a hypocrite she was now with her faked grief—the first thing she had wanted to know was how much money they would inherit now that the old man was dead.

  He took out his watch and looked at it, wishing the damned Bible-thumper in the pulpit would get it over with. There were things he had to do. Most importantly there was Janson Sanders still to be dealt with—but taking care of Sanders would be a pleasure, a long-waited-for pleasure, if only the goddamn Holy Joe would just hurry up so they could get the old bastard in the ground. It had been damned inconvenient for the old coot to have died when he had. It was none too soon, and it had done nothing more than delay Buddy’s plans—but at least the old man was out of the way now, and Buddy had the county in a way his father never had.

  He lifted his gaze from the watch face and looked to the casket again, a smile slowly spreading across his face. He was aware that the preacher began to stare at him reprovingly, and Cassandra as well, but he did not care—they were nothing anyway.

  He stared at the casket and continued to smile—with the old bastard out of the way, no one could stop him now. No one at all.

  There was no man alive with power over Buddy Eason.

  Buddy stood near the large front windows of what had been his grandfather’s home the next morning, staring out—today was the day. The world would be different now. It was his, all of it: the mill, the village, the town, the county, the people. All his.

  And he could do whatever he wanted.

  This would be the first day when there would be no one looking over his shoulder, disapproving, trying to
keep him in control. Never again—he was in charge now, as he should have been all along.

  Most importantly, this was the beginning of the destruction of the Sanders family—they would crawl when he was through with them.

  He had known this day would come for so long, for twenty-one years, since the day he had come upon Janson Sanders with his sister when he and Janson had been no more than seventeen or eighteen years old. It had not been the fact that Sanders was with her, for Buddy knew many men in the county who had had a turn at Lecia Mae by then—it had been the fact that Sanders had fought him and had whipped him. Buddy could remember so clearly the pleasure when he drove a knife into Janson Sanders’s shoulder, and the fear, only moments later, when Sanders held that same knife to Buddy’s throat—Buddy had pissed himself, pissed himself out of fear, and he could remember so clearly that look of disgust and loathing that had set on Janson Sanders’s face when Sanders let him go.

  Buddy had hated him since that day, sworn he would see him die—but he would hurt him first. He would hurt him and watch him bleed. He would hurt him in the way that could hurt Janson Sanders the most.

  Buddy stood staring out the window as a car pulled up the circular drive, a shiny, well-kept Chrysler with a burly man in a dark suit behind the wheel, another big man in a matching suit beside him. The man who stepped from the back seat seemed out of place with the other two, ill-at-ease as he stared up at the large house before him. He looked to be just what he was, an old man from the country, a farmer, though of better means than most who farmed in Eason County. Inge Harper wore clean work pants and had heavy brogans on his feet, and wore a coat that had seen heavy use. The old man held a well-worn hat in his hands as he was ushered into the house and to the room where Buddy waited for him.

  “Mr. Eason, I was sure sorry to hear about your granddaddy,” he said. “Fine man he was. We’ll all—”