The Handsome Road

by Gwen Bristow

  “Why of course, honey. Don’t you know how much I love you?”

  Corrie May put her hand over his. “Will you get outen that uniform and come off with me some place where they ain’t heard of this war?”

  Budge started. He stared at her unbelieving. “You mean—desert?”

  “That’s just what I do mean,” said Corrie May.

  Budge’s jaw had dropped. “Honey girl, you don’t know what you’s talking about.”

  “Yes I do. I been thinking about it every minute since I got hurt. There ain’t no hope in this country for folks like you and me. I’m getting out. I’m going across the river. Out West. Out where there ain’t no rich people owning everything and treating poor folks like cockroaches. I’m going. If you’ll come with me we can get married soon’s we can find a preacher. If you won’t come with me I’m going by myself.”

  Budge was dumfounded. He opened his mouth and shut it again. Finally he said, “You’s wanting me to be a traitor!”

  “Traitor to what?” she cried scornfully. “To a lot of rich people that send the band out to play Dixie and get you so choked up in your throat you ain’t got sense enough to think what you’s fighting about. That’s all.” She flung the shawl off her knees and stood up. “Budge, in the name of the good Lord God, do you know what you’s fighting for?”

  Budge sprang up to face her. “Sure I know. I’m fighting for my country. And if you think I’m a coward that’s gonta run away now I’m in the army—”

  “Oh, squashes!” said Corrie May. “The Larnes’ country and the Sheramys’ country and the Purcells’ and St. Clairs’ and Durhams’. Your country! You make me laugh. But it ain’t your fault. Ain’t nobody ever told you.”

  “I ain’t gonta listen to you,” said Budge sternly.

  “Oh yes you is.” She came close and caught his arms. “Budge, they told you they wanted you to save the country from the Yankees. But do you know what the Yankees want to do? They want to come set all the slaves free. So men like you could make more money because there wouldn’t be any niggers working for nothing.”

  Budge scowled. “They want to turn loose the niggers? Who told you that?”

  “They told me out at Ardeith. Since when is it your business to fight so they can keep their niggers?”

  “Well, well, well,” said Budge. He sat down. He stroked his chin. “Still, though, I don’t know as the niggers ought to be free. They’d get awful uppity if they was working for money like white folks.”

  “They couldn’t be no more uppity,” said Corrie May with slow conviction, “than them niggers at Ardeith is this very minute. I know, Budge. They won’t even say good morning to me when I pass them, they’re so stuck up. But I want to tell you something else, Budge. Maybe those folks is got a right to keep their niggers that they bought and paid for. But they made a law saying a man that owned niggers didn’t have to fight for them unless he wanted to. Mr. Denis Larne joined the army of his own free will and accord. But they came and got you, because you was a po’ man that didn’t own no niggers.”

  Budge scowled, impressed but still hardly believing. “Corrie May, how come you say that?”

  “Because it’s a law. A policeman told me, and who’d know the law if it wasn’t a policeman? If you’d been rich enough to own twenty niggers them conscription officers couldn’t have made you join the army.”

  Budge got up. He walked to the end of the room and back. He said, “Corrie May, that’s the meanest damn thing I ever heard of.”

  “Ain’t it?” she asked him intently.

  “And think,” said Budge slowly, “the way I worked. The way I nearabout broke my back planting that cotton.” He was quiet a moment. “You mean if I’d had niggers and just took my ease on the gallery drinking juleps they’d have let me alone?”

  “Yes,” said Corrie May.

  Budge kicked at the leg of a chair so roughly that he knocked over the chair and scuffed his bright new shoe. Bending, he righted the chair and sat down in it, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and looking at the floor. Corrie May sat down too. She waited. Her outburst had tired her, for she was still more weak than she had realized. After a long silence Budge asked,

  “What you aim to do about your ma if you run off?” He was still not looking at her.

  “Pa gets his army pay,” said Corrie May. “He’s been sending her half of it.”

  There was another silence. A group of tattered children ran down the alley, chasing a cat. Their voices sounded loud. Budge got up abruptly.

  “It ain’t fair,” he said to the wall. “Taking me off my piece of ground because I ain’t rich.” He turned around on his heel. “Where you figure to go?”

  “I don’t know the names of no places,” said Corrie May. “But we could go up the levee till we came to a ferry landing and get over to the west side of the river. Ain’t nobody over there ever seed you. They wouldn’t know you was ever in the army. Then we could keep going.”

  “I wish I could read,” said Budge. “I’d get a map.”

  “Map or no map,” said Corrie May, “any place is better than this.” She went up to him. “Budge, do you mean you got your mind made up to come with me?”

  He started. “I ain’t got my mind made up to nothing. It’s a terrible thing, deserting the army in war-time.” He doubled his fists. “But it ain’t the same as if they had done me right. If they’d given me the same chance to go or stay they’d give a rich man.”

  “Well, they didn’t,” said Corrie May. “And I guess you notice there ain’t no rich people sending their niggers out to get shot, neither. Niggers costs a lot of money. You don’t cost but thirteen dollars a month.”

  “Look here,” said Budge, “I got to be going. I ain’t got but a little while off.”

  She smiled derisively. “You sho is scared not to mind them, ain’t you?”

  “Oh Corrie May, shut up. You don’t know what you’s asking me. It’s a dreadful thing to do. I got to go.”

  “You’ll be coming back to see me?”

  “Sho, honey. Soon as they’ll let me.”

  “It better be soon,” Corrie May warned him quietly. “I ain’t staying here one day after I feel natural in my legs again.”

  “Oh, quit talking like that,” said Budge. “I got to be going”.”

  “Goodby,” said Corrie May.

  He put his arms around her so tight she winced, for she was still more battered than he knew. She buried her face against him. “Budge, please come away. I’m so crazy about you. I can’t stand to think of them doing you like that.”

  Budge kissed her. He released her suddenly and rushed away without saying goodby.

  4

  For another ten days she did not see or hear of him. One afternoon while she was mending a torn jacket the door burst open without a preliminary knock. She looked around, expecting to see her mother, who had gone visiting a neighbor, but sprang up in welcome when she recognized Budge.

  Budge did not respond to her greeting. He stood stiffly, his hand on the closed door behind him, looking around the kitchen with eyes that were grim and apprehensive.

  “Where’s your ma?” he asked.

  “Gone to see Mrs. Gambrell. They been having a hard time ever since Mr. Gambrell died in the cypress swamp. Come sit down, Budge, I’ll make you some coffee.”

  “I don’t want no coffee.” His eyes went over the room again, as though fearful of what they might see in the corners. His hand gripped her. He dropped his voice. “Corrie May, I’m leaving.”

  She jumped. “Budge! You mean it?”

  “Yes. I been finding out things. It’s true what you said. I see them bring the men into camp every day, po’ fools like me, drug out to fight when they don’t no more know what it’s about than I did. It ain’t human. I’m gonta break for the West tonight.”

 
Corrie May’s heart began to pound. “I’ll go with you.”

  “It’s an awful thing, what we’re doing,” said Budge.

  “It ain’t awful. I’m so proud you had the nerve.”

  “Are you, sho ’nough?” he asked wistfully.

  “You’re mighty right I am.” She put her arms around him and kissed him. Budge held her tenderly.

  “Corrie May, you got lots of spunk. It ain’t gonta be easy.”

  “Since when do you think I been used to having things easy?” She slipped out of his arms and pulled up a chair. “Now sit down and tell me what you aim to do. How’d you get out?”

  “I got permission to come see you. I’m supposed to be back by six.”

  He sat down. Their heads close together, they made plans. Budge told her he would hide in the gin-house behind the warehouses till after dark, when she would meet him and they would go up the levee until they came to the first ferry-landing, where they would cross the river. Neither of them had ever been on the west bank of the river, and once there they would be unrecognized. Corrie May promised to bring Budge her father’s long black preaching-coat. The trousers would be harder, she thought, till she remembered an old pair of overalls that had belonged to Lemmy. They were badly torn, but he could wear his uniform pants under them. It would be a shame to throw away such a good pair of pants.

  She was astonished at his grim determination. Now that his mind was made up, he was more firmly resolved than she was, and less apprehensive of possible dangers. Budge, she decided as she talked to him, had a head that could hold but one idea at a time, and she was grateful now for his simplicity. She promised to bring a package of food and her money-box when she came to the gin-house.

  When Budge got up to go he put his arms around her yearningly, as though he hated the prospect of being separated from her for even so brief a time.

  “Corrie May, honeybunch, you ain’t scared?”

  She shook her head.

  “’Fo’ God,” said Budge, “you got more sand than any girl I ever did see, or any man either, I reckon. Oh I declare, Corrie May, when we gets West I’ll pray the good Lord every night to let me make things easy for you like you deserve to have ’em. Rugs on the floor and shawls warm enough in the winter time and a good big stove that don’t smoke.”

  “I’ll love them things, but I’ll love you anyway no matter how we get on.” She pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. “You go on now. I’ll be at the gin-house right after dark.”

  “And by morning we’ll be across the river.” He smiled proudly and kissed her goodby.

  Left alone, Corrie May found her heart thumping and her knees unsteady. Her imagination, more flexible than his, began to present all sorts of frightening pictures-deserts, hunger, Indians. She had no idea how far one would have to go before reaching the West, and she found it hard to visualize a landscape with neither trees nor a river. But they’d get there, she promised herself. They need not go as far as the desert. The West had farms and villages. Other people got along there, so why not herself and Budge?

  She wrapped the overalls and her father’s preaching-coat in a paper, and made up another bundle of bread, cheese and side-meat. That done, she sat down and waited. Her thoughts went guiltily to her mother. It was going to be bad to leave her mother, who had no more children now. Somehow she must contrive to let ma know she was all right. Yet there was nobody she dared take into her confidence, and she could not think how otherwise to leave a message. If she only knew how to write! Her father had taught her to recognize capital letters, but she had had little experience in combining them except to make her own name. And there was nothing in the cabin to write with even if she had known how.

  But at last she decided to try it. She spread out a piece of wrapping paper and burnt the end of a sharp stick in the stove. Down on her knees she started to print, slowly and with effort. Before she was done she had to re-blacken the stick several times, and she was afraid her mother would come in any minute. However, she was not interrupted and at the end of half an hour she was through.

  MA I WEL BEE ARIT DON WOREY

  CORRIE MAY

  Her mother could not read, but somebody could be found hereabouts to read it for her. She hid the note in her bed, and put the packages between the bed and the wall.

  Getting through supper was dreadful. Corrie May kept telling herself she ought to eat a lot so as to have plenty of strength, but she couldn’t make herself feel hungry.

  Mrs. Upjohn fell to recounting a long story about Mrs. Gambrell’s troubles with her oldest daughter, who was always slipping off to the camp, where everybody knew a girl wouldn’t be going if she was up to any good in this world. Corrie May twisted her ankles around the legs of her chair and sat stiffly. At least she wouldn’t be disgracing her ma. She would be married. Soon as they got to a town where there was a preacher she would get married, and she wouldn’t let Budge touch her till then.

  After supper Mrs. Upjohn had to patch an apron. Then she had to cover up the coals in the stove so she could start the breakfast fire without wasting a match. Corrie May could have screamed with nervous impatience. But after what seemed like endless delays her mother went to bed. Corrie May pretended to go to bed too. She lay stiff, feeling perspiration creep from her armpits down her sides. At last she made sure her mother was snoring.

  She got up and set her letter on the stove where Mrs. Upjohn would see it first thing in the morning, and taking her bundles she crept out. At the door she paused and looked back through the dark to the vague lump of her mother’s body on the bed. She wondered if she would ever see ma again. But she must not think of that. She had to set all her mind on getting Budge safely out of town.

  The alleys were dark and nobody paid much attention to her. One or two men jogged her elbow or spoke to her, but she brushed them aside and hurried on to the gin-house.

  The gin-house was a black mass behind the warehouses. Moving uncertainly among the sheds, Corrie May looked for Budge. It was so black she had to walk blindly, holding her foot out in front of her before she took each step to feel for a possible box or wheelbarrow in her way. The silence pressed on her like a weight. Then suddenly she heard a movement on the platform. She halted. It might be a rat, or a pile of sacks settling down. She spoke faintly. “Budge?”

  “Sh!” he said instantly.

  Dimly she made him out, flat on his stomach, creeping toward her on his elbows. He whispered, “Here I am. You all right?”

  “Sho,” she whispered back. She knelt down by him. “Here’s the coat and overalls. Put them on.”

  Budge kissed her wrist as she laid the package by him. Corrie May went to the edge of the platform to keep watch. But there was nothing around her but silence and the dark. Budge came to her. “Ready,” he said in an undertone.

  They climbed down off the platform and walked around the building. Budge whispered to her that they’d better take the back alleys and avoid the wharfs, and not walk along the levee until the town was behind them. Except for that they went ahead silently. Already at the start they were comprehending the seriousness of their undertaking, and too weighted by the knowledge to want to talk.

  They walked around the park, and took the back ways behind the residential streets. The roads were rough and more than once Corrie May stumbled against loose clods of earth. Budge helped her up gently. Few people passed them, and those gave them scant attention. It was hard walking. Once they stopped to shake the earth out of their shoes. Corrie May ventured,

  “We’s past town now. And we’ll make better time if we go by the river road.”

  “Right,” said Budge. “I wonder what time it’s getting to be.”

  “Nigh onto midnight, I’d say,” she returned.

  “Tired?”

  “No,” she said, though her knees were beginning to have little aches in them.

>   He took her hand and they crossed a field to the smooth oak-lined curve of the river road. As they plodded along Corrie May was surprised to see how much traffic there was on the river road even this time of night. Young gentlemen passed on horseback, sometimes singing hilariously on their way. Now and then a carriage came along, bearing a group from a theater or a party. She was surprised too at how the inhabitants of these fine houses sat up of nights. Half the windows were still lighted, with senseless waste of candles, just as though there wouldn’t be plenty of light in the morning for whatever they wanted to do. She heard another clatter of hoofs and Budge caught her and drew her against a tree. Down the road came five or six carriages together, evidently bringing a lot of guests from some party. The horses were trotting at a leisurely pace as though the passengers didn’t care whether they got home before sunup, and the ladies and gentlemen called from the carriage windows to one another, laughing merrily. The voices were louder than necessary; they sounded half tipsy. Several of the young gentlemen waving from the windows had on army uniforms. The ladies had bare arms and bosoms, and flowers in their hair. Corrie May stared as the gorgeous cavalcade swept past, and trembled lest one of these officers see and recognize Budge. But they were too merry to notice anybody but themselves. As the last carriage went by the young soldier on the back seat pulled the lady by him into his arms and kissed her.

  “Huh,” said Budge, “they sure are enjoying the war.”

  “Well, it’s their war,” said Corrie May. “Let ’em have it.”

  They started trudging through the mist of dust the carriages had raised.

  “I reckon we could get over to the levee now,” Budge said presently. “We done got past where the steamboats are moored. And there’s too much passing on the road to suit me.”

  “All right,” Corrie May agreed.