“You got no call to talk so loud,” Grandpa said, “that poor girl will hear you.”
“Let her hear me. She knows it’s the truth. You see her? You see the way her cheeks color up when Will comes near her? You think she ain’t seeing how it will be with him next her in some bed? Let her hear me. I want her out of here. I can’t trust Will Johnson, and I won’t have no young thing like that there one tossing her bottom and twitching herself around in front of Will.”
Grandpa was barely whispering. “Where you reckon they’d go, Lena? Has Tom any place to take her?”
“I don’t care where he takes her. I want her out of here before that Will Johnson disgraces this here very house.”
“Oh lord,” Grandpa said. “Oh, my good lord.”
Rhodes stared at his mother. He wished he could beg her to treat Will better, to thank him for the things he did for her, to smile instead of spitting at him, to trust him a little more. But there was nothing he could say. He had no words, and she would not listen to him anyhow.
Lena folded the paper and stuffed it into an envelope. She looked up. “Rhodes.”
He came slowly across the room. She held out the envelope addressed to the manager of the Golden Cold Orange Concentrate Company.
“Rhodes, I want you to take this letter into the concentrate man.”
“Please, mamma — ”
“I’m telling you what to do, Rhodes. And I’ll punish you if you disobey me. You know that, don’t you, Rhodes?”
“But, Mamma — ”
“Your mamma knows best what is good for us, Rhodes. You’ve got to believe that she is doing this for you. You won’t lose all this land, not as long as your mamma is breathing. Now take this letter, and go to the packing house, the concentrate man will be there. You walk right up to him and tell him that this letter will give him permission to move his crews into my groves. Today.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY heard Will coming home in the middle of the afternoon. A truck stopped out front beside the gate. Rhodes ran to the window. He saw Will stumble as he got out of the truck. Will laughed and waved. The truck pulled away and Will came into the yard, carrying his coat.
Rhodes felt his mother move her wheelchair close to his side. Her sharp intake of breath seemed drawn across his nerves.
Will seemed not to have a care in the world. He stopped out there in the yard and looked all around. He seemed pleased with what he saw. He laughed to himself and stumbled twice coming up the front steps.
“God’s fires,” Grandpa said, “He’s really tied one on this time.”
Rhodes ran to the front door and opened it for Will. Will stared at him. “Hello, kid,” he said. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a harmonica. “Brought you something.”
Lena had wheeled herself into the hall. “You think this is somebody’s birthday, Will Johnson?”
He looked at her and laughed. “You mean it’s not?” He wavered toward her. He touched her cheek with the palm of his hand. She batted his arm down. “It feels like somebody’s birthday, Lena.”
“You’re drunk!”
“Yes, ma’m, I am.” He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a package. “I bought a little something for you, too, Lena.” He dropped the package in her lap.
Lena did not touch it. Her mouth twisted. “It’s bad enough for you to drink. But when I think about you — staggering from store to store — spending your money.”
Will laughed. “You think they care whether’s drunk money or sober money, as long as you spend it?”
“What will people say?”
“Reckon what you brought me, Will?” Grandpa said from the parlor door.
Will laughed and staggered over to him. “Brought you a box of them chocolate cherries you’re so partial to, Gran’pa. Couldn’t bring you a big box, but reckoned even a little one was better than nothing.”
He took the box of chocolate cherries from his coat pocket. Grandpa grabbed at it. Will laughed at him. Grandpa started back toward his chair but at that moment the kitchen door was pushed open and Rosanne stepped out into the hall.
Grandpa stopped, holding the unopened box in his hands. He stared first at Will. Then his gaze moved to Lena and finally to Rosanne down the hall.
Will squinted, shading his eyes and stared at Rosanne. “Who’re you?” he roared.
“I’m Rosanne, Cousin Will.”
“You know who she is,” Lena’s voice cut at him.
He hardly heard her. He went on staring at Rosanne.
“What you doing here?”
“I came to visit, Cousin Will.” Her voice was soft.
Rhodes felt his heart hammering crazily. He was watching Cousin Rosanne. She did not look scared of Will now, and she didn’t keep her eyes turned down. Only her voice was low.
“You came to visit. Came all the way from Alabama.” Will turned, glanced at Grandpa, “you ever see a girl pretty as that come down the road?”
“I reckon I never did,” Grandpa said.
“You’re a pretty girl,” Will told Rosanne. “Anybody ever tell you you were a pretty girl?”
“I don’t guess so.”
“You don’t guess so? What’s the matter with them fellows up there in Alabama? Ain’t they got blood in their veins? They afraid to tell a girl when she’s the prettiest thing ever came down the road.”
“That’s enough, Will,” Lena said.
Will glanced at Lena. “Enough? What you mean enough? Here’s a poor little girl all the way down here from Alabama. And you don’t want me to tell her how pretty she is.”
“No, I don’t,” Lena said.
“It’s all right, Cousin Will,” Rosanne said.
“Don’t call me Cousin Will,” Will said. “I’m not your Cousin. Thank God for that. I’d take it most unkindly if God had made me your cousin, Rosanne. You just call me will.”
“It doesn’t make any difference what she calls you,” Lena said. “She doesn’t have to call you anything. She has a husband, Will, or are you forgetting? Just as you forget most of the time that you’ve a wife?”
“You mean Tom?” Will laughed.
“I mean Tom,” Lena said.
“Lena is right,” Grandpa said. “Lena is awful right, Will. Tom may not be much of an excuse for a man. But he is Rosanne’s husband. And he will kill you for fooling around with her.”
Will laughed. “Grandpa, you’re gettin’ old.” Will shook his head. “A man is really gettin’ old when he’s not willing to die for the loveliest girl that ever come down the road.”
Lena’s voice was savage. “You might forget dying for every pretty slut you see, and remember you got a wife and a son to live for.”
Will pulled himself tall and stared at Lena. “Reckon what else could I do for you and the boy, Lena?”
“You could behave yourself. You could act like a man with self-respect, and respect for his wife and his son.”
Will looked at her a long time, then he turned back and looked at Rosanne. “Reckon you got here too late, Alabama girl. Reckon it’s too bad … Maybe some other life time, you reckon, Alabama?”
Rosanne’s voice was soft. “Yes.”
“Oh, my God’s fires,” Grandpa said. “It’s worse than I thought. This here filly has knowed all the time what she wanted, and what she’s been looking for.” He stepped forward and stared at Rosanne. “What you doing down here, girl?”
“Tom brought me,” she said. Her voice was low. “He made me come. I never wanted to.”
Will wavered slightly as he went down the hall. “Don’t you worry, Rosanne. You’re fine now, you’re all right.”
She looked up at him, nodded.
He touched her hair, laying the flat of his hand against her head. From along the hall, Rhodes saw Cousin Rosanne quiver, and he knew that Grandpa was right about Tom’s wife. Rosanne was like a nervous, frightened filly that knew no master’s touch.
Rosanne was still trembling. She tried to withdraw from Will�
��s hand without moving away.
Lena said, “Will! You get in that kitchen and have some hot black coffee. This instant. I won’t have you carrying on with that slut in my house.”
Rosanne trembled all over again. Will’s flat hand moved on her dark hair, soothing her.
“It’s all right, Rosanne,” he whispered. “You’re all right now. You know that, don’t you, Rosanne?”
Her lips were quivering but Rosanne nodded again. She was looking at Will and did not take her eyes off him.
Will’s voice went soft. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you, don’t you, Rosanne?”
His hand moved in her hair. His fingers touched the rubber band that held it caught in a pony’s tail. Her hair fell loose about her shoulders.
Grandpa said, “Oh, God’s fires.”
Rhodes stared, unable to move.
Will’s voice continued, softly, “All the way from Alabama. You came a long ways, didn’t you, Rosanne?”
“Yes, Will.”
“But you’re all right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to be afraid any more, are you?”
“No,” Rosanne said. “No. I’m not afraid any more.”
Will’s hand soothed her dark hair. Gradually her trembling subsided.
Lena moved her wheelchair down the hall. “I want her out of here,” Lena cried. “I won’t have her in this house. If she came from Alabama, she can go back to Alabama. I won’t have her sluttin’ around in my house.”
Will smiled. “You want to go back to Alabama, Rosanne?” She shook her head, gaze still fixed on him.
“I don’t care where she goes,” Lena said. “Just get her out of my house.”
Rosanne’s mouth quivered.
Will’s hand moved in her hair again, gently, soothingly.
“It’s all right, Rosanne,” he said. “Such a pretty girl. All the way from Alabama.”
“I want her out of my house!”
Will’s voice was soft.
“But she’s got nowhere to go. She came down here from Alabama to my house. Yes sir. She came all the way down here from Alabama to my house.”
“Your house!” Lena’s voice rose. “You don’t have a house. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even have this farm left. Out drinking, chasing after Tom’s wife like some alley cat, right in front of your own family — letting creditors take my farm.”
“No creditors have taken your farm, Lena,” Will said.
“No. You can bet your life they are not. And they won’t. Not as long as I’ve the strength to make decisions, to act to protect my son and me — from a rotten woman-chasing drunk like you!”
Will moved his hand from Rosanne’s hair. She stepped back, leaned against the wall. Her face was starkly white.
“What you talking about, Lena?”
Grandpa opened his box of chocolate-covered cherries and plopped two of them into his mouth. He began chewing on them, not taking his eyes from Lena and Will.
“What difference does it make what I’m talking about? I can run this farm. I can take care of my boy and me. You can get out, Will Johnson, you can chase your sluts all day long.”
“You’re talking like a fool, Lena,” Grandpa said.
Will stepped nearer the wheelchair. He stared down at Lena. “What are you talking about, Lena?”
“It don’t matter. I won’t lose my farm because of you.”
“I told you you wouldn’t lose it. What have you done?”
Lena laughed at him. “I’ve only done what you’d have done if this simpering little no-good hadn’t showed up here from Alabama, smiling and twitching in front of you.”
“Rosanne’s done nothing, Lena. What have you done?”
Lena just stared up at him, and laughed in his face. Will looked down at her a moment, then suddenly he straightened and lunged past her wheel chair.
“Will!”
He did not stop. He pushed by Rhodes and threw the front door open. Sharp cold air blasted into the hall, but none of them moved.
Will ran out on the front porch and to the end of it. He stood there and stared toward the groves. He growled and they heard him growl all the way at the rear of the hallway.
Grandpa stuffed two more candies into his mouth. He did not stop chewing.
Will ran back into the house. Grandpa stepped out of his way, still chewing. Will ran into the parlor and snatched his shotgun down from the wall. He found a box of shells and emptied them into his pockets.
“God damn you,” he said when he came back into the hall. “Someday you’re going to pull a trick like this on me, and I’m going to use this shotgun on you.”
Lena’s laugh was loud, mirthless. “Just you be sure, Will Johnson,” she yelled after him, “that I don’t use it on you first.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
RHODES ran out of the front door and followed Will across the bare yard.
Before Will could reach the truck, Rhodes ran around him.
“Let me drive, Will?” he said. “I’d take it most kindly if you’d let me drive.”
“Drive, boy,” Will said. He climbed up in the rear of the pick up. He leaned against the cab with the shotgun across his arm.
Rhodes started the truck, backed it around and drove out into the road. He did not drive fast. He could see the big green hitch-trucks of the concentrate people pulled into the rows between the trees. But the aisles were too narrow for the trucks, and limbs were smashed and trees crushed all along the path of the trucks.
Rhodes pulled into the aisle and then he saw the two dozen men with their bags strapped over their shoulders, ladders pushed carelessly into the bright laden orange trees.
The men stopped picking when they saw Will in the back of the pick-up with the shotgun across his arms. Then the men who were dumping the oranges into the hopper that fed the fruit along a conveyor belt into the trucks, paused. When they stopped, the fruit backed up and a man jumped out of a Buick pulled ahead of the trucks.
“What the hell is the matter?” the man yelled. He was less than medium height, stocky with a straw hat on the back of his round head. He waved a cigar as he talked.
At first nobody answered him.
A man mumbled, “Trouble.”
The word was echoed from the trucks along the rows of trees.
“Get back to work!” the stocky man shouted. “You people think I’m paying you to stand around gawking.”
Then he saw Will standing in the back of the truck with the shotgun across his arms.
“What the hell you want?”
“Kannister,” Will said, “I’m going to shoot a hole in your tail.”
Kannister took a few steps forward and shaded his eyes from the sun. He stared up at Will.
“God damn it, Will,” he said. “You’re drunk. What are you doing out here?”
Will stepped down from the rear of the truck.
“That’s just what I came out here to ask you,” he said.
Kannister yelled once more at the men. “Get back to work!” He looked at Will. “Now, Will, I don’t want any trouble with you.”
“That’s fine,” Will said. “So in that case, you’ll take your men and your trucks and get to hell out of here. You can have the oranges you’ve already picked. I don’t care what you do with them. But get out of here. And I don’t mean in five minutes, I mean right now.”
The men stopped working again.
“Trouble,” a colored man said.
“Trouble,” they echoed the words.
“Now look here, Will,” Kannister said, “I can see you’ve had a little too much to drink. Why don’t you just go off and sleep?”
“You got one hell of a lot less than five minutes to start gettin’ these men out of here.”
Will’s voice carried through the silent grove.
Some of the men on the ladders began to move down them slowly, gazes moving from Will to the concentrate man.
Kannister said, “Will,
I’m losing my temper fast. You’re holding me up. We got to get through here.”
“Sure. You got to rip the fruit off, break the limbs, run over the trees, just because you got no time. Not in my grove, Kannister.” Will turned from the concentrate man and shouted to the men on the ladders. “I’m telling you men to get out of those trees and take down those ladders. In less than three minutes, I’m starting to shoot. I know you were hired by this man, and I’ll feel plumb sorry if I shoot some of you, but feeling sorry ain’t going to stop me from getting you people out of this grove.”
“Trouble.”
Will’s word was good enough to get the men out of the trees.
Kannister nodded at two men who were working the hopper and the conveyor belt. They leaped down to the ground and came over to him.
Kannister said, “Will, you’re making a lot of trouble for yourself. Now I got a letter here from your wife, agreeing for me to bring in my crews here. I checked. These here groves are all in your wife’s name. Her signature on this here letter is good enough for me.”
“You’re gong to get shot, Kannister.” Will’s voice was low. “You’re yelling in the wind and you know it.”
“Goddamn it, Will, stop acting like a wild man.” Kannister reached into his pocket. “Here, here is the letter, Will. I agreed on a price with your wife, but just to keep you quiet and since my trucks are in here, I’ll up it a dollar a hundred.”
“If I’d been interested in your money, I’d a told you to come in here,” Will said. “If I’d a been interested in getting more money out of you, I wouldn’t have brought this shotgun. You knew I didn’t want you in here, Kannister. You knew that when you came.”
“I tell you I got this letter from your wife.”
“You already had my word.”
“There. That kid there. He’s the one brought me the letter. Didn’t you, kid?”
Rhodes nodded.
Will didn’t take his gaze from Kannister’s face. “All right, now we got it all settled about the letter. Where it came from, who delivered it. Now pack up and get out.”
“I got a legal right here!”
“You’re going to get filled with buck shot.”
A Woman on the Place Page 5