Miss Jane

by Brad Watson

  “Papa ought to say something to him about it,” she said.

  “Your papa is not the kind to interfere in other people’s affairs.”

  “What if he was to really hurt her, I mean bad?”

  “I reckon the sheriff would come calling if it came to that,” and then she said no more on the subject.

  That weekend, late Saturday afternoon, they had a visit from her uncle Virgil McClure, her mother’s younger brother. Sometimes when he came by it was just for family matters and he would bring his beautiful wife Beatrice, with her abundant black hair, full lips, beautiful pale skin, dark brown eyes, and their two children, Little Bea and Marcus. But this afternoon he came alone, wearing his narrow-brim Open Road Stetson, and his business coat, and carrying the leather briefcase he used in his job selling insurance for the Rosenbaum firm down in Mercury. There weren’t all that many ways to get out of a farming life, but Virgil had the smarts to start selling insurance on the side and got good enough to do it full time. No one disrespected him for it.

  He sat and had a cup of coffee with her mother while they waited on Jane’s father to come in from the pecan grove, where he had been up on a ladder all day pruning and trimming. Spring would be coming soon and they hoped for a good, heavy crop this year, as the year before had been a light one. Jane loved the pecan grove, the way you crossed through a narrow strip of woodland between the cotton field behind the house and the view opened up to the beautiful gray-barked trees with their crazy limbs splayed against the sky and how they leafed out in spring, their long, narrow leaves so green in the spring and summer, like precise clippings from larger leaves when they browned, shrank, and fell in the fall. You could walk around the field and woods but she liked taking the path through them. She loved walking through the grove after harvest and searching for pecans they’d missed and cracking two together in her palms to get the sweet nut meat from those that hadn’t rotted in the rains. She helped gather at harvest, and her father had explained to her how the catkins were the male flower and the little spiky new flowers were the female, and how they had planted two different kinds of pecan trees so that the differences between them would combine to make a robust crop. The wind would blow the pollen from the catkins to the female and the nut would begin to grow in the female flower, on the new growth. It was fascinating to Jane. It made the trees seem alive in a whole new way. They made their fruit, working together. It wasn’t just some accident of nature. It made her wonder anew about the strange miracle of creation, how the world came to be, and all the beautiful and strange plants and animals and insects that made it alive.

  When her father came up onto the porch and into the house from the grove, he seemed surprised.

  “Didn’t expect you today, Virgil,” he said, and Jane noticed her mother shut herself down in the secretive way she sometimes did when she wanted to hide something from you. Jane went silent and tried to turn her ears toward their talk the way a dog or cat would when it heard something curious and interesting.

  Uncle Virgil had a quiet, soft voice and an old country way of not moving his jaw or mouth much when he spoke so that his words somehow always seemed private and friendly. Intimate, like he was chewing softly on the words. Even when he was speaking of hard matters, such as a death or someone in trouble, he spoke in the same even voice, and somehow that carried a kind of authority, his expression consistently one of earnest interest, not like he was amused but like he took it all in stride as part of life. He had briefly been sheriff in the county and had been good at it but did not run for reelection, saying it saddened him too much to see all the hard things a sheriff has to see. But the experience had made him more even-tempered than he’d been before.

  “Well,” he said then, glancing at Jane’s mother and straightening his gaze onto her father. “I had me an idea. I don’t know as you’d like to spend the money, but it’s a pretty good arrangement and likely to help everybody out should there be an accident.”

  Her father just looked placidly back at Virgil, waiting, seeming neither impatient nor overly interested. He could be a patient man when his work had gone well and he wasn’t itching for a drink.

  “What I’m talking about is something more and more farmers are doing these days, and that’s taking out accidental death and dismemberment policies on their tenants and sharecroppers.”

  Her father still said nothing, although he leaned his head just slightly to the side and his eyes registered a combination of wary curiosity and heightened interest.

  “I take it you want me to continue on,” Virgil said.

  Her father nodded, only then taking off his field hat and setting it on the table beside a cup of coffee Jane’s mother had set in front of him on a saucer. He brought the hot black coffee to his mouth and took a careful sip, set it back onto the saucer. Virgil did the same with his cup. Her mother occupied herself with mending a tear in the shoulder of a shirt she had in her lap.

  Virgil took some papers from his briefcase and set them on the table.

  “Now, these here pay you, the one paying the premiums, if one of the people you take out a policy on should die as result of an accident here on the farm or anywhere else, or if they lose a hand, arm, part of an arm, or a leg, even a finger or two-three. Anything that affects their ability to continue to work for you.”

  “How much is it for each policy?”

  “Here’s the price of the monthly premium, you can see it’s not much. You could pay for it easy out of their rent if they’re tenants and their crop if they’re sharecroppers. You just get a little less, but if something should happen to them, well, then you get paid this”—and he pointed to some figures on the papers—“for a death, and this”—he pointed again—“if it’s a dismemberment. It’s more than enough to carry you over till you find someone else to lease the land or sharecrop it.”

  Her father looked at the papers and figures, blinking a couple of times, seeming to study them and to think.

  “It’s an investment, Sylvester, if you think about it. Against potential catastrophic loss. You do have to put some money in up front, but after that you can figure it out of your profit from these sections, just like you would any other expense. Now, I know for a fact you’ve had it happen before. Accident, I mean.”

  “That fellow name of Whitehead. Saw blade caught him in the leg right where the big artery sits, he bled out on the spot.”

  “That’s right,” Virgil said. “Nothing anybody could’ve done. And you had to hire help to finish his crop. And still gave his widow a share of the profit.”

  Her father nodded, still looking at the papers. He took a sip of his coffee, glanced at his wife, who got up and poured a bit more in to reheat it.

  “And not to mention the poor Stephens woman helping her husband pitch hay and catches him right in the neck, that must’ve been a good ten, twelve years back.”

  Her father nodded, sipped the fresh coffee.

  “Ten,” he said.

  “Now, if you look here,” Virgil said, pointing, “for just fifty cents more each premium, you get enough to cover a lost crop, should you not be able to get anyone in there to take it over in time, and still have money left over. I’d say it’s worth it.”

  “And this all goes to me, something happens?”

  “’Less you want to give something to the widow, or help out the disabled man, which of course some do, some don’t.”

  “Let me think on it a little bit,” her father said.

  “How many you got here on the place now?” Virgil said, although even Jane knew Virgil knew the answer to that. He was a good salesman, even to his own kin.

  “Got the colored ’cropper Harris, and the young tenant Temple.”

  “Each doing eighty.”

  “Right. I do my forty in cotton, tobacco, and corn. Ten acres in pecan trees. Rest in cattle pasture and the woods here behind the house. I keep it for hunting, fishing, and just pleasure, you know.”

  “Well, you don’t have to cover eve
rybody. I’d say the tenant, maybe. Maybe just Harris himself, not his sons.” Virgil scribbled some numbers on a pad. “This premium every three or six months, your choice. Feel safer, protected from some fool accident, or one couldn’t be avoided, for that matter. Happens.”

  “Happens,” her father said, nodding. “And what about myself?”

  “Wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Virgil said, scribbling again. “I can get you a discount on yourself, I’m pretty sure, you being the owner and taking responsibility for them that work your land.” He scribbled a little more.

  Her father studied the new numbers a minute, nodded, went to the jar in the kitchen cupboard, and gave Virgil some bills and coins.

  “All right, then,” Virgil said. “All I’ll need is for you to get their full legal names and dates of birth. You can tell them it’s like a liability policy on the whole place, as it is, practically speaking. This is completely legal, and as I said more and more common. Makes good sense in the farming business, all things considered. I can set up everything here, and you can fill out that information about these men when you get it, and I’ll come back by next week and get the papers.”

  Then they both signed, and Virgil and her father stepped out onto the porch after Virgil had said good night to Jane’s mother.

  Jane slipped out the kitchen door and crept through the breezeway to spy-listen on them there.

  “I’m recalling that business up in Scooba,” her father said.

  “Well,” Virgil said, “that was an unfortunate case.”

  “I wouldn’t want anybody thinking I had anything like that in mind.”

  “No reason anybody would, you got a spotless reputation.”

  “Drinkin’ aside.”

  “Well. You got a lot of company in that, I’d say. Now, like I said, this is becoming more and more common among your farmers.”

  “Folks know I’m a good businessman, always aboveboard.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Anything was to happen, I’d hope nobody’d think anything underhanded gone on here.”

  “No reason to think that. Besides, that thing in Scooba—I wouldn’t call a fellow dying of poison spasms exactly an accidental death. They got away with it for so long because that doctor up there was involved in it.”

  They were quiet for a long moment.

  “Well, Virgil, I reckon this is good business.”

  “It is, Sylvester. You don’t have to think twice about that.”

  “I generally think three, four times about most everything.”

  “Well. That’s why people respect you.”

  “I mean to keep it that way.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Want a little snort before you go?”

  “I would, but Bea wouldn’t approve.”

  “You stay on her good side, don’t you?”

  “That’s good business, too.”

  “How come you all don’t call this kind of thing ‘death insurance,’ since that’s what it is, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That would be bad for business,” Virgil said.

  The men chuckled together at that. And then there were no more words at parting. She heard Uncle Virgil descend the porch steps, make his way to his Ford pickup, and the pickup coughed and rattled and creaked on down the drive out to the main road. She heard her father descend the steps, walk across the yard to his little store, and then come back. When she heard him sit in his rocker and pull the stobber from his jug, she stole around and sat on the porch boards beside the chair.

  “Want me to roll you a cigarette, Papa?”

  “Here you go, girl,” he said, handing her a tin of Prince Albert and his little rolling machine. She rolled up a perfect one for him.

  “Can I light it for you?”

  He handed her a box of matches. She struck one, held the match to it, and sucked lightly on it.

  “Mind you, don’t take it into your young lungs.”

  She handed him the lit cigarette, held the warm smoke in her mouth and then puffed it out.

  “I won’t,” she said.

  “I don’t want you to take up smoking like your sister Grace.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You do, I’ll tan your little hide.”

  They watched a mockingbird come down from his perch and peck at Top’s head as he tried to cross the yard toward them. The dog ducked his head, then leapt up to try to catch the bird in his jaws when it came at him again. They watched this dance until Top made it to the porch and the bird quit and flew off. The way Top looked at them then, the look on his face, like he was both happy and confused at the same time, just made them laugh again. The dog, embarrassed, went underneath the porch instead of coming up onto it with them.

  “Oh, come on up, Top,” Jane said. “Come on up here.”

  But they heard the dog sigh hard through his nose and flop down in the dirt.

  “Sometimes that dog acts like he knows as much about what’s going on as we do.”

  “He does, Papa.”

  “Dog’s supposed to have it easier than that,” he said.

  ON A SPRING AFTERNOON when it was near harrowing time, before planting, Jane walked up on her father having what appeared to be an argument with young Temple down by the shed. She slowed and stayed back, behind the tractor pulled up near the shed for repair.

  “Well, then, you do like I did,” she heard her father say to Temple in his quiet, hard voice. He never raised his voice but he had a way of leveling and hardening it that let you know he was angry and meant business.

  Temple said something she couldn’t understand, half mumbling. He had his hat off and was nearly crushing the brim in both hands in front of his waist. He kept looking down at the hat, off at the field, and then giving her father brief looks, askance. He caught her peeping from behind the tractor before she could duck down and his face reddened. Now she was caught spying and couldn’t sneak off.

  “You do like I did and like anybody would do that wants to make a better life,” her father said. “You save everything you don’t have to spend to live on. You find any way you can to make a little money during the winter, you can’t be too proud about what it is, neither. When you have a good year, you put as much back as you can and don’t just spend it. And when you can, you buy yourself some land of your own.”

  Temple mumbled something else. Jane couldn’t see him now, kept her head down behind the tractor wheel fender.

  “You can’t resent them that has more than you if you don’t put in the honest effort to make your own way. And you might try and fail by plain bad luck when others make out all right trying no harder, but there’s nothing to be done then, either, but to try again. Let me tell you, son, I’ve known failure, and I could fail tomorrow, any farmer or cattleman could, and you know that. So don’t come to me complaining about a fair, agreed-on trade which is me giving you a chance to make a start. Everybody starts humble. If you didn’t like this agreement, you shouldn’t have signed on to it.”

  Temple said nothing. Jane peeked up. He was looking down, but looking angry, too.

  “And you can pack up and go now, too, if that’s what you want,” her father said. “I’ll find a way to finish your crop, if that’s what you want to do. But if you walk away from it, it’s not your crop anymore, you understand? You don’t get your rent money back. You’ve had the land while you’ve worked it.”

  Temple said something, looked her father in the eye kind of sideways, and seemed like he said he didn’t want that.

  “Well, then,” her father said. And both men stood there another minute, her father looking steadily at Temple and Temple trying to meet her father’s eye but unable to for more than a moment at a time.

  And then Temple said something, and held out his hand, her father took and shook it once, and Temple went on back walking toward his place. Her father turned and Jane ducked down, then peeked up to see him go into the shed, taking his hat off and running a hand through his graying hair, s
haking his head.

  Two days after that, a Saturday, Jane was walking in the woods looking for a sweet gum tree that might be leaking some sap she could nibble. Top kept dashing off to chase foraging squirrels. She heard the tractor muttering its way in a field and looked up to see she was on the edge of it, and it was Temple on the machine, having stopped to tinker with something. Her father let him use it when he could. Temple looked up and saw her there, and she ducked back into the shrubs and trees and made her way toward the trail again. In a while she found a tree with a leaking seam, gathered a little of the gum on the end of a twig, and rolled it into a ball she put in her mouth to nibble with her front teeth. She sat there and Top came to lie down beside her. But in a moment he stood up and gave a low growl and she saw the fur on the back of his neck stand up. When she stood up and turned around she saw it was Lon Temple standing among some oak saplings not far away, looking at her.

  “I want a word with you, girl,” he called out just loud enough for her to hear, and she froze. Top growled. She could still hear the tractor idling off in the field.

  It took a moment to get her voice. She put a hand on Top’s bristling neck. “All right,” she said.

  “My wife said you been coming around snooping at our place. Far as I’m concerned, even though we rent from your daddy, my place is private property. You ought to respect that, keep it in mind.”

  Jane flushed with embarrassment, afraid he was on to her sometimes spying on them, but then realized he was probably only talking about her seeing Lacey in the yard with her bruise.

  “You hear what I’m saying?” Temple said. “I ain’t saying nothing nobody wouldn’t say about their property.”

  “I haven’t been snooping,” Jane said. “It was just that once and I was only coming down to be neighborly.”

  He stared at her.

  “We ain’t neighbors,” he said. “We’re tenants.”

  Temple spat, as if to spit that word out of his mouth, then turned and made his way back up the hill through the woods and out of sight.