The Handsome Road

by Gwen Bristow

  “I’ll show you around,” said Budge.

  Corrie May suspected that half his pleasure in seeing her was caused by the chance to have her follow him around and listen while he enlarged on the excellence of his farm. And it was a good farm, too. His cotton was thriving, and his vegetables, and he had chickens and a sow with a litter of pigs. This fall when the cotton came in he was going to get a cow. And he was building a barn. He stood among the corn and grinned proudly down at her, like a fellow with a crown on his head showing off an empire. “How you like it?”

  She smiled with wondering admiration. “It’s just grand, Budge.”

  “Ain’t it?” he said eagerly. “And there wa’n’t nothing here when I come out. Just a lot of weeds.”

  Corrie May swallowed. She looked down.

  There was a pause. Suddenly Budge put his arm around her and kissed her.

  She started back. “Oh Budge—don’t do that!”

  But he still held her. His face was close to hers. “You think I ain’t missed you all this time?” he asked in a low voice.

  She looked up at him. “I—I reckon I’ve been missing you too. I made out like I didn’t. I tried to make out like I didn’t want to think about you at all.”

  “What you suppose made me work so hard?” he demanded. “You told me you had to be somebody. You said you’d rather be a nigger than po’ white trash. You thought I was trash. I reckon I was born trash but I reckon by God I don’t have to stay thataway.”

  He took a long breath. She felt his body press against hers.

  “You going there to Ardeith and working in the house with all them niggers,” said Budge. “Coming out here in wore-out clothes them Larnes gave you, and shoes in the summer time. Is that what you call not being trash?”

  She pulled away from him and burst into tears. She felt like a bug being stepped on.

  “I know,” she got out, scrubbing her eyes with her sleeve. “I hate them.”

  “I thought you would,” said Budge grimly. “I was aiming to get you and bring you out here one day so you could see my place. Honest, Corrie May,” he blurted, “wouldn’t you rather be here with me than bowing and scraping to them Larnes?”

  She looked up again, tears still on her eyelashes. “Budge,” she said, “I don’t know.”

  “You said you hated them.”

  “I do,” she cried. “Tiptoeing around their house scared I’m gonta get mud on their carpets. Swallowing my tongue so I won’t tell them what I think of them. Yes ma’am, thank you ma’am, I sho do appreciate it, ma’am—oh Jesus, I’d like to bust their jaws sometimes!”

  “Then what makes you want to stay there?” Budge insisted. “Corrie May, I been loving you pretty nigh ever since I first laid eyes on you. Why can’t you quit them people and come on out here with me?”

  Corrie May twisted her hands together. “It’s so warm there in the winter time. It’s so clean and quiet and they talk with such pretty voices. They don’t give me no hard work, I just sew and mend and they got flowers in the yard—”

  Budge took a cornstalk in his hand and began to smooth one of its leaves. “You like that better than being here with me?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said again.

  Ethel’s voice sounded from the cabin. “Hey, you all! Supper’s on.”

  Budge looked down at Corrie May with a slow smile. “I reckon,” he said, “there ain’t no urging you till your mind’s made up.”

  She followed him toward the back door. Budge paused to wash at a basin set there. Watching him, Corrie May began to realize how fastidious she had become since she first went to work at Ardeith. It irritated her to see Budge scraping the mud off his feet so as not to track up the cabin. He only washed his hands as far as the wrists and she could see the black shadow on his arms above the clean ring. The soap smelt sour and strong. It did not occur to him to clean the black ridges from under his nails.

  She went inside, and saw Ethel disposing of a rat she had just killed. She was holding it by the tip of its tail. “How them varmints do get in!” Ethel exclaimed good-naturedly as she threw it out of the back door. She brushed off her hands on her skirt and sat down at table. The kitchen was low and dark, and had a heavy smell of food. Supper was corn-pone and pork and some tomatoes stewed with onions. They sat on rough home-made stools with no backs. Corrie May thought of the meals they gave her at Ardeith, roast beef with rice and cream gravy, vegetables cooked in butter, chocolate cakes with pecan frosting. She tried to make talk.

  “How’s your husband like the army?” she asked Ethel.

  “Oh, he liked it all right, last time I seen him. Course I ain’t had a chance to ask him how he likes fighting.” Ethel laughed.

  “But thirteen dollars a month besides your keep is a fine mess of money,” observed Corrie May. “More’n he ever made on the wharfs, ain’t it?”

  “Except in mighty good times. I sure am proud of him. He went right in and joined up soon as the war started.”

  “I’d be proud of him too,” Corrie May agreed. “I’m right proud of my pa. Southern men sure is brave. What about you, Budge? Is you thinking of the army?”

  Budge paused in his hungry attack on his plate. “Not much, I ain’t. Course I love my country and all like that, but I ain’t got nobody to leave on my place.”

  “He ain’t no coward,” Ethel said hastily. “But he’s right about nobody to raise the crops if he left.”

  Corrie May considered. She hated to think of Budge not going into the army. How would she feel if she married him and people asked her what regiment he was in? She’d be ashamed.

  “Don’t you think everybody ought to fight the Yankees?” she asked.

  “No I don’t,” said Budge with decision. “Somebody’s got to raise the crops. I’ll quit cotton and raise vegetables if they say I ought to, but I ain’t gonta leave my piece of ground to grow up in weeds.” He pointed his fork at her. “I’ve got up before daylight and worked till I can’t see no more, every day, to get this place cleared up and raise my cotton, and just when I’ve got it going good I ain’t gonta leave it. Suppose I went off with the army? When I got home they’d have rented this land to somebody else and I’d have to take a new piece and start over. I’m patriotic as anybody,” he ended, settling back on his stool, “but I just ain’t gonta leave my piece of ground.”

  She smiled, though she was still doubtful about his being right. He talked about his ground as if it were his child. “I reckon I see how you feel,” she owned. “Still—”

  Budge grinned at her across the table. Apparently he thought it unnecessary to justify himself any further, for he began praising Ethel’s skill at making an onion-and-tomato stew. Corrie May got the idea that he thought the war a needless interference with people’s lives, too faroff to concern a man who could occupy himself with anything so important as setting up a homestead on a piece of ground. But she was not going to marry Budge. Not yet, anyway. While Budge might be entitled to his own opinions she certainly did not agree with him about the war, and she wasn’t going to marry anybody who thought anything more important than saving the country from the Yankees. On the way home that night she told him so.

  “Look here, Budge, I reckon I get how you feel about your place. You been doing fine out there and you get good crops and all, and I don’t blame you for being proud of it. But when there’s a war a man ought to go out and fight.”

  “Ah, Corrie May,” he insisted, “I’d lose all my work if I went off. Even if I could send them the rent with my army pay, it would all grow up in weeds while I was gone.”

  “Well, that’s your business,” she returned stubbornly. “I ain’t saying I’m not fond of you, Budge. I guess I’m fonder of you than I ever knew till this minute. But I ain’t going to have to apologize to nobody for my husband.”

  Budge sighed. For a long time they were
silent. But when she got out of the wagon in Rattletrap Square he caught her in his arms and kissed her again, so urgently that Corrie May almost felt herself yielding. “I can’t say I understand you a little bit,” Budge said wearily. “But I just can’t help loving you, Corrie May.”

  “I—I’ll think about it,” she promised. Her voice was not quite steady. She broke from him and ran into the house.

  Chapter Seven

  1

  She thought about Budge a great deal in the months that followed. It wasn’t hard to understand how he felt about abandoning his little place. But after all, this was a war, and everybody’s plans were upset when the country had to be saved. Much as she disliked the Larnes she could not overlook the fact that Denis had gone right out and put on a uniform as soon as the first call came. To be sure, there were a great many rich gentlemen who were not in the army—Jerry Sheramy among them—but that didn’t alter the fact that they ought to be. For though the air was ringing with news of Southern victories, for some reason the war was not over by grinding time. It just lasted and lasted, and the Northern army took New Orleans and sent gunboats up the river, so that for several days there was such panic on the levees the overseers couldn’t make the Negroes do any work. But all the troops did was go up and march through Baton Rouge and then make a vain attack on the Confederate fort at Vicksburg. They retreated to New Orleans with abashed quietness, apparently finding it all they could do to stay there.

  And the war went on. With its lasting so long, and with the dreadful Yankees menacing everything, Corrie May didn’t see how any man worth a corn-pone could stay out of the army.

  Then one morning at Ardeith she overheard something that made all her opinions about the war turn somersaults.

  Jerry and some others had come over for dinner and as they sat in the parlor they talked about the war, which was all anybody talked much about these days. Coming into the parlor with a shawl she had been sent to bring for old Mrs. Larne, Corrie May heard Jerry exclaim,

  “But what do the Yankees think they’re going to do with the Negroes if they do set them free? Do they want to turn loose four million people who haven’t any more notion of how to take care of themselves than babies?”

  “Of course,” said Bertram St. Clair, “Northern people don’t realize how ignorant the Negroes are. They think—”

  Corrie May went out. She had given Mrs. Larne the shawl and knew she was not welcome to stand around listening to their conversation. But her ideas about saving the country had begun to totter in her head. She returned to her task of darning Ann’s stockings. Presently Ann came to give her an order, for Mrs. Maitland had resigned her post as housekeeper to be a hospital nurse and Ann had to pay more attention to things these days, though she still left her housekeeping largely to Bertha and Napoleon. Corrie May emboldened herself to ask a question. Ann was saying,

  “When you’ve finished those, will you mend these dresses of the baby’s? Aren’t children hard on clothes!”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Corrie May, “they all is, I reckon. Miss Ann, excuse me for disturbing you, ma’am, but about this war—?”

  “Yes?” Ann set the pile of little Denis’ dresses on the chair beside her. “What about it?”

  “If the Yankees should win it would they turn the niggers loose?”

  “Why yes,” said Ann, “that’s one of their ideas. Throw that stocking away, Corrie May, it’s not worth darning.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Corrie May set the stocking aside for her own use. “Miss Ann, would the Yankees pay you folks for the niggers, or just turn them loose for nothing?”

  “Of course they wouldn’t pay for them. You can get dinner from the kitchen at half-past two, and when you’ve finished those dresses you may go.”

  Corrie May did not answer. After Ann had gone out she sat holding her needle in the air, looking through the window of the sewing-room toward the fields where the Larne Negroes were working.

  She tried to calculate the value of the slaves at Ardeith. She didn’t know how many there were, but there must be at least six hundred. A baby in arms was worth a hundred dollars, an adult fieldhand five hundred to a thousand depending on his age and strength. An expert cook or seamstress, a lady’s maid or butler, two to five thousand—Corrie May whistled softly. No wonder Denis Larne had gone to war. No wonder rich people wanted everybody to fight Yankees. But why in the name of reason should a fellow like Budge go out and fight their battles for them?

  She jabbed her needle into the cloth. Budge was a simple soul. He didn’t think very much. But he just knew by some kind of instinct that this wasn’t his war. What a fool she had been. Patriotism and the Bonnie Blue Flag and the band playing Dixie—“Damn their souls,” said Corrie May. She clenched her hands, crumpling baby Denis’ dress between them. What was she doing here among these people? She didn’t belong to them. None of their ideals had any meaning for her; she envied their stately, gorgeous life without having any hope of sharing it. All she had experienced of them was their selfishness, their suave cruelty, their assumption that charm and grace made them so superior that they were justified in crushing their fellowmen in order to retain the way of life that had produced those pretty qualities. When they talked about defending the country they meant defending their own property and their right of exploitation—the insolence of them! What was she doing here, picking up crumbs from their abundance? They didn’t care if she lived or died. And yonder was Budge, who loved her, to whom she, Corrie May Upjohn, was of particular importance as a human being—and she was spurning him because he wouldn’t go out and offer himself as a sacrifice to save the wealth of the Larnes! Corrie May felt that she was reddening with shame.

  Well, she was done with them. She was leaving. She was going to marry Budge Foster and help him work his piece of ground. The first minute she could get there she was going out to Budge’s place and tell him she’d marry him. Only first she’d make him swear to stand by his resolution of not getting mixed up in their war. Then let the Yankees come on down and free the slaves, and the sooner they did it the sooner Negroes and white folks would both have to work for wages and there’d be no more of this having to work in competition with slaves who worked for nothing. That was the way to be somebody—make them give you the chance to earn your own right to walk up the handsome road and not be poor white trash.

  That evening when she left for home she told Ann she didn’t feel so peart and wouldn’t come to work tomorrow. She doubted very much if she was ever going back to Ardeith as long as she lived.

  But as she went through Rattletrap Square and entered her alley she heard some excitement. There was a bonfire burning in the street, and folks were roasting sausages around it and children singing the Bonnie Blue Flag. Corrie May hurried toward the fire, and in the midst of the gathering she saw a group of soldiers in spanking new uniforms, boys from the neighborhood who had joined up with the army and were getting a fine sendoff from the home folks. “The poor fools,” Corrie May thought furiously. Just then several girls ran to meet her and pulled her in to join the fun, and as she got close to the soldiers the firelight flared up and she saw that one of them was Budge.

  Budge was grinning and munching a sausage somebody had roasted on a stick. He had on a gray suit with shiny buttons, and on his feet were big strong shoes. He looked sheepish, as if he didn’t quite know how to behave with himself the center of so much going-on, but at the same time he appeared mighty proud of himself. Corrie May broke from her friends and ran directly to him.

  “Oh Budge,” she burst out. “Oh Budge!”

  “Well, if it ain’t Corrie May!” He slapped his chest. “How you like me in my new clothes?”

  Her breath was coming short and fast. She gripped her hands around his arm and pulled him aside a little so they could talk with more privacy.

  “Tell me, Budge—did you join up on account of me? On account of all them silly t
hings I said?”

  Budge looked down, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Well no, not exactly. Course I been thinking about what you told me. I thought about it a lot. About you being ashamed and all like that if you was to be married to a man that didn’t think enough of his country to fight for it—”

  “Budge, I don’t feel like that no more.” She pulled him into the shadows away from the fire. Her heel struck the step of somebody’s lodging and she sat down, drawing him down beside her. “I’m all done with them notions, honest,” she insisted. “I was coming out to your place tomorrow if I had to walk every step of the way, so I could tell you—”

  “Why—you mean honest, Corrie May?” Budge’s face was aglow in the light. “You mean you was coming to see me?”

  “Yes. I’m crazy about you!” Her words tumbled out. “I reckon I’ve been crazy about you always. I’ll get married to you and I’ll make you the best wife I know how. Only you got to get rid of that damn uniform and get back to working our piece of ground.”

  “Why—But—” Budge floundered, and looked down at his shiny buttons and back at her. “Why, honey child, I can’t get back. I’m in the army. The men came and got me.”

  “Came and got you? What you talking about?”

  “The conscription officers. Said there was a new law that all young men had to be in the army.”

  She gasped. “You mean they made you come? Even when you said you didn’t want to?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly mind so much then. Not after I’d been thinking about all them things you said about being ashamed of me. Only—” Budge hesitated. He took a breath, and blurted, “Only I did pretty near bust out crying when I had to leave my piece of ground.”

  Corrie May got slowly to her feet. She could see what they had done. Budge had cleared out that patch of weeds and worked from dawn till dark to plant his cotton so he could be independent and get somewhere in the world, loving every bit of it, working proudly through heat and rain and backaches and mosquitoes, and now that he had it all planted and his cabin built, those officers tore him away.