The Handsome Road

by Gwen Bristow

  Jerry tightened his big mouth before he answered. Being deferential to these people was harder than paying their taxes. “I only wanted to ask if you knew where I could find your friend Miss Upjohn.”

  “Lord no,” said Gilday, “I don’t know where she is. I don’t keep up with all her goings-out and comings-in. What’s the idea anyway? Here it’s Saturday and I’m a busy man.”

  “My sister wants to buy some ice,” Jerry said desperately. Exhaustion and hunger were beginning to tell on him. “Her little daughter is very ill, poisoned by stale food.”

  “Oh hell,” said Gilday, “I ain’t got no ice. You’re just like one of these fool niggers hanging around the Freedmen’s Bureau, thinking we’re giving away anything they happen to want. What you think I’d be doing with ice around here?”

  “Miss Upjohn has bought all the ice in town,” Jerry pled. “And my sister’s child is likely to die without it.”

  “That so?” Gilday inquired. He pushed his chair back further so he could rest his feet on the desk. “Kids sure do take on and die, don’t they?” he went on conversationally. “Seems like when I was a boy, hearing about how easy young uns die. My mother used to moan about it all the time. Said she didn’t know why the Lord had to make so many, seeing they was gonta die anyway.” His little eyes narrowed and his upper lip stretched and lifted away from his teeth. “You know, I expect, tell you the truth now, if Corrie May’s bought up all that ice it must have been she wanted it for something important. And I guess your sister can get plenty more kids where that one came from.”

  Jerry felt his fists doubling. Without any conscious prompting of his own he reached across the desk and banged Gilday on the jaw.

  Gilday’s chair toppled over, but he was up and over the desk in an instant. Jerry felt a blow at his temple that sent him sprawling on the floor. Since he had had scurvy at Vicksburg he was not as strong as he looked.

  A couple of Negro policemen pushed the office door open. “You havin’ some trouble, Massa Gilday?”

  Gilday brushed off his coat. “Take that white fool to cool off in jail tonight. Attacking an officer of the United States government in the peaceful exercise of his duties. And hurry up, will you?”

  3

  Jerry didn’t come back and didn’t come back. The clouds broke into a shower, and when it was over the sun blazed out again and the dampness rose in clouds from the earth. At last the sun went down in a crimson and purple glory that was tauntingly beautiful, and the stars hung low and big like gold coins. Ann sat at the window. These resplendent summer nights—she and Denis used to watch them, telling each other the stars were so near they seemed to brush the moss on the oaks. But she and Denis had both been so healthy they had never realized that these nights could be as dangerous as they were beautiful.

  She turned from the window and looked through the starlit dark at Virginia. Earlier in the night Virginia had been screaming with delirium, but now she was quiet again. Ann bit on her fist to choke down the sob that came into her throat. Oh, where in God’s name was Jerry?

  As the day broke she fell asleep from sheer weariness, lying on the bed by Virginia, but she was wakened by her crying out again. It was another of those merciless days. She sent Napoleon to town to find out what had become of Jerry.

  She was afraid to give Virginia anything to eat, and she was tormented lest in spite of his vigor little Denis be made ill too by food that could not be kept fit to eat in this weather. But Denis, though he protested at being put on a diet of sun-warmed vegetables without milk or meat, continued well. Ann left him in mammy’s care and stayed with Virginia. If only Jerry would bring that ice! People afflicted with dreadful nausea could sometimes ease it with melting ice on their tongues. As it was now, Virginia had a hard time keeping down even the cool water drawn up from the bottom of the well.

  At last Napoleon came back to tell her Jerry had been locked up for striking Gilday. Ann had run downstairs when she heard him come in. At his news she sank down on a step of the staircase, resting her head against the dusty balustrade. She covered her face with her hands. “Please God, let her get well anyway!” she whispered desperately. “Don’t do this to me. I can’t stand any more.”

  Behind her closed eyes she could see Gilday’s sneering mouth and Corrie May in the gaudy finery she had seen her wearing in the courthouse. It was as though they were laughing at her. “You can’t stand any more? Oh yes you can. We’re not done with you yet.”

  She went back upstairs. Cynthia met her at the nursery door.

  “Ann—” she began, but with one look at her Ann thrust her aside and rushed into the room. Cynthia had drawn the sheet up over Virginia’s face. Unbelieving, Ann tore it off again, but she saw Cynthia had not been wrong, though Virginia’s little body was still hot with the fever that had consumed it.

  She buried her face in the pillow beside Virginia’s head. Nobody had ever told her what this was like. Even in the past days when she had been so frightened, she had not dreamed what the suffering would actually be. Virginia was dead, and she was such a little girl. Ann thought, “It won’t really make any difference to anybody. Nobody will even remember her but me.”

  She thought of Corrie May Upjohn giving a party. There would be molds and bottles packed in buckets of ice. Blocks of ice and small lumps of it and chips of it, glittering under the candles, like diamonds.

  4

  In the weeks after that she felt so beaten that there were long stretches when she really did not care what became of Ardeith or of her, and all she wanted was to smother her consciousness under a weight of black velvet oblivion. She thanked heaven there was enough in the liquor-closets for that; it was all she ever felt thankful for.

  Jerry took her cotton down to a swamp-gin. But for his taking care of her that fall the taxes would have swept Ardeith out of her hands. Sometimes when he remonstrated with her she roused herself, but after a week or two her resolutions slipped out of her hands again. There didn’t seem any possible end to this. What was the use of fighting unless you could see something ahead to fight for? She remembered how Denis’ mother had died, and began to understand why so many of her acquaintances were dying now of mysterious ailments for which the doctors could provide no pills or plasters. It had never dawned on her before that there were times when death was simply a matter of giving up before a world too hard to bear.

  Chapter Twelve

  1

  Those men who went galloping around at night all dressed up in sheets, scaring the daylights out of the Negroes, Corrie May thought they were funny. They were just lazy aristocrats used to partying their lives away and night-riding gave them something to amuse them. It was a scary awakening she got at the discovery that the Ku Klux was made up of desperate men risking their lives to fight the Reconstruction terrors. She had thought it was fine to tax every pound of cotton that went to the gins. Those planters had started the war and now let them pay for it. When she heard they had set up machinery in the swamps to seed their cotton so they could ship it tax-free down the river, she thought Gilday and Dawson and their friends were right to say they would find the hidden gins and kill any Ku Kluxer bringing in his cotton.

  They did find a gin, away down in a swamp across the river. They hid there and when a line of sheeted men came up with several wagonloads of cotton they started firing.

  But in spite of the laws against firearms for ex-rebels, the Ku Kluxers had guns too, and they fired back. And while Gilday was too smart to get hurt, hiding behind some machinery as he was, that fool Dawson got himself killed.

  Well, it was too bad, for Dawson was a pleasant fellow. Corrie May went decorously in a black dress to his funeral. There in church was that woman Laura, all decked out in widow’s weeds with a veil reaching to her knees. At the sight of it Corrie May nearly laughed out loud while the choir was singing “Asleep in Jesus.” That woman being a widow and carrying a black-bor
dered handkerchief for her husband!

  It was not until some weeks later that she was made frighteningly aware of the fact that Laura’s widowhood was not destined to remain indefinitely amusing.

  Some nights now, Gilday just didn’t come home. At first Corrie May was not concerned. She accepted it when he said he had been writing up records at the courthouse or playing poker with the boys. But one morning when she asked him where he’d been Gilday lost his temper and told her roughly to hold her noise. She swallowed the angry reply that came to her, thinking herself very clever to know enough not to nag at him, and before Gilday went out again he had become as genial as ever. Then, that afternoon, when she dropped by the courthouse to ask him for some money, she went through the outer office and looked through a half-open door into the inner room where Gilday kept his private records. He was sitting behind the desk and Laura Dawson, her widow’s veil thrown back from her face, was half-lying across the desk, supporting herself on an elbow while she showed Gilday some papers she held in her hand.

  Corrie May turned around and went out softly. She wanted to go home and think.

  That woman, she thought fiercely when she got there. Whatever Laura Dawson was doing at any time you might know she was up to devilment, but just what kind of devilment was she up to now? Those papers. Whether or not Laura could read Corrie May did not know, but Gilday could.

  Gilday did not come home that evening. Corrie May sat alone in the dark. This was something that had to be figured out. Laura might be smart, but the puzzling part of all this was that Gilday was smart too. Gilday had no conscience and no heart, and he would take what he wanted, but trying as hard as she could to be honest, Corrie May could think of no reason why he should want Laura. Why should he? Laura was neither very young nor very pretty, and Corrie May knew she was both.

  “Oh please God,” Corrie May began to pray, and it was the first time she had said a prayer since the men shot Budge, “please God blast that woman’s sight out of her and make him come back so we can be nice and peaceful like we was. God, I know I been wicked. But if you’ll make him like me as much as he did I swear to you I think I can get him to marry me. Don’t punish me like this. I never hurt nobody in my life. I’m sure I can get him to marry me if you’ll give me a chance to try.”

  She opened her eyes. Yes, she had been very sinful and not troubled by her conscience at all. So now God let her know the dreadful thing it was to be a bad girl. You wanted your man and you didn’t have a single thing to hold him by.

  Oh you didn’t, didn’t you? Yes you did. You had your complexion and your figure, and the pretty ways you’d learned, and your new fall clothes. When she got up the next morning Corrie May brushed her hair till it shone, and put on her new dress of lavender-spotted black silk. This was Saturday and Gilday might come in early.

  But he didn’t come. Sunday morning she dressed herself fancy again. But again he didn’t come. It was Monday afternoon when he finally showed up.

  She sprang to meet him, flirting her train across the carpet as he entered the parlor. “Why Sam honey,” she exclaimed, “how are you? Is you had your dinner or do you want some?”

  Without answering, Gilday took her by the shoulder and put her into a chair. She sat there dumbly, wondering if he could possibly be drunk. She had no idea how he would act if he were, for she had never seen him take more than two or three drinks in an evening. But there he was, sitting across the parlor from her, and not saying a thing. Corrie May looked sadly at the big flowers of the wallpaper, thinking how beautiful she had made this house for him and now he didn’t seem to appreciate that or anything else.

  There was a silence, while she watched the sun on the wall move from one rose to another, and she could not think of any pretty things to say. She could only think, “Oh please God, please. Please!”

  Finally Gilday asked, “You been waiting for me to come in, Corrie May?”

  “Why sure,” she returned cheerfully. “I didn’t have nothing better to do. Can I get you a drink or something?”

  “Ah, shut up,” said Gilday. “All the time trying to be nice to me. Because I’m such a cuss.”

  She tried to laugh. “Why Sam, sure you’s a cuss. I been knowing that. Is you all of a sudden getting religion or something?”

  “Oh, get out,” said Gilday.

  She stood up slowly and started to leave the room. But he recalled her. “No, go sit down. I got to tell you something. I declare, Corrie May, I never thought it’d be so tough to tell you.”

  Corrie May sat down. “What you mean, Sam?”

  He said, “Corrie May, I got married Saturday morning.

  She gripped the arms of the chair till she thought the gilt must come off on her hands. She got out, “Samuel Gilday, are you losing your simple mind?”

  “My mind ain’t so simple,” he returned with a short laugh. “That’s why I got married.” He braced himself and sat upright. “Now look here,” he said sternly. “You got no right to be reproaching me. You knew how I was from the start. I got to get places, Corrie May. You knew it. Sure, you knew it all the time.”

  “Sam,” said Corrie May, “did you marry Laura Dawson?”

  “That’s right.” He laughed awkwardly. “Pretty smart of me, don’t you think?”

  Corrie May’s heart was pounding till she felt as if it were about to knock the sense out of her. “That woman,” she said. “Been on the street half her life.”

  “She’ll be good from now on,” said Gilday. “I can handle women.” He leaned forward. “Now Corrie May, I’ll tell you how it was. I didn’t think I’d tell you. Just thought I’d say for you to pack your duds and move. But I got to make it plain. You’re a nice girl. You got more sense than any other girl I ever did know, and if I got to marry somebody I’d a sight rather it’d have been you.”

  “What about you and Laura Dawson?” she asked harshly.

  “Well, it was like this. That fellow Dawson, I never did give him credit for very much brains, but he was brighter than you and me ever knew. He was aiming to go to New Orleans. That’s a big town and a rich town too. Even with the war they still got plenty money down there. And that Dawson, he had contracts to build levees at New Orleans—”

  “What about you and Laura?”

  “She’s got all his contracts,” said Gilday, “with his name written right on ’em. I couldn’t get hold of them unless I married her.”

  “Your name ain’t Dawson.”

  “Well,” he exclaimed, “don’t nobody in New Orleans know that.”

  The sun shone brightly on the wallpaper flowers. “Yes, I see, Sam,” said Corrie May. “I see.”

  Gilday got up with evident relief. “Sure, I knew you’d see soon’s I told you. Mighty nice of you to take it calm like this.” He came over and fondled her arm. “Corrie May, I think a lot of you. I didn’t want to do nothing to make you feel bad. It’s a big load off my mind, your taking it like this.”

  She could not answer. She stared at him, nodding like a halfwit.

  “But this is goodby,” said Gilday. “It’s got to be. I expect you’d better pack your things and be out of here by tomorrow so I can give up the house. I’m leaving next week for New Orleans.” He pulled a roll of greenbacks from his pocket and peeled off several bills. “There’s a hundred dollars.”

  She said stupidly, “A hundred dollars.”

  Gilday chuckled. “You’ll get along. Well, baby, I got to be going. Goodby.”

  Then he was gone. She sat in the parlor among the cupids and roses with the bills in her lap. For a moment she could not think of anything except that it was the second time she had been left to face the world with a hundred dollars. Only this time she knew it was not very much money.

  But as she heard his footsteps dwindling she sprang up. He could not go. Not this way. She rushed out to the front gallery and saw him getting into a carriag
e. Yes, he was going, he was disposing of her as coolly as he had taken her, and she would never see him again. The carriage turned the corner.

  2

  Corrie May went back to the woman from whom she had rented lodgings while she worked in the courthouse. The woman looked her over with distaste, but told her she could have a room if she’d pay for it in advance. Corrie May paid and moved her things in. For the next few days she sat on her bed bleakly, trying to tell herself things that would get her mind adjusted to what had happened.

  That Gilday was a lowdown sneak. She’d been mighty fond of him, too. But she wasn’t going to think about that now, she told herself as the weeks began to dull the shock of his desertion. She knew by experience that rent and food could play havoc with a hundred dollars, and she had to do something. She’d worked before and she could work again if she had to. Only she might not have to. She had a trunkful of clothes and she wasn’t bad-looking, and there were plenty of men around the courthouse who had looked enviously at Gilday when she was with him. But just as she had straightened out her thoughts to this point there came to her a revelation that sent every plan inside her head toppling as sandbags toppled when the levee broke. She was going to have a baby.

  At first she would not believe it. After nearly a year! In the beginning she had been apprehensive, but then as time passed she had ceased bothering about it. And now that she was stranded alone, with Gilday gone, this had to happen to her.

  Yes, they had been right, all those people who had looked askance at her and at whom she had laughed. They had known God would punish her. So God had punished her, even though she had promised she was going to try to make Gilday marry her, because God knew that if only Gilday hadn’t left her she wouldn’t really have cared whether he married her or not. God did all the things pa in his preachments used to say he would do. She hadn’t believed pa, and now God was proving pa had been right.

  She had plenty of friends, or thought she had. They had come to her parties. But now that she could give no more parties they obviously didn’t care if she lived or died. As for her old friends in Rattletrap Square—why, when she went down there she found out most of them could hardly eat, and they had a “serve-you-right” look about them when they spoke to her. She hadn’t been near Rattletrap Square when she was prosperous, so why come back there now?