A Woman on the Place

by Harry Whittington

  Rhodes bit down on the back of his hand, but they did not speak. If there were words, none knew them. They were simple men, and they had no words for the hurts they felt.

  “We did all we could,” the doctor said. “You must remember that, Rhodes. We all did everything we could, all of us.”

  There was a knock on the door. The doctor said, “I’ll answer it. I’m sure you don’t want to see any one. I’ll send them away.”

  Rhodes sat up on the couch. He felt chilled, alone and frightened. He was faced with death, realizing the full impact of it for the first time in his life — someone you need taken from you. He was cold all the way through, and did not know how he could ever be warm again. Through his mind raced the threat Darl Hollister had made, that he would kill Will. He was sure in his mind that was Darl knocking on the door. He remembered Connie, the green Lincoln, the disease that Connie had, and the way that Darl had said he was going to kill Will Johnson.

  “No!” Rhodes cried out. He could not stand to lose Will, too, not now.

  He jumped up from the couch and ran toward the front door. Will leaped out of the chair and caught Rhodes in his arms.”

  “There’s no use going up there, Rhodes,” Will whispered. “There’s nothing you can do, boy.”

  Rhodes stood there, unable to get free, trembling all over. In agony he stared toward the front door as the doctor went to open it.

  The doctor opened the door. It was not Darl Hollister. Not this time. Not yet. In the shaft of light Rhodes could see Sheriff McCall. His trembling subsided, he drew short halting breaths.

  The sheriff thrust Ab Taylor through the front door ahead of him.

  “I come out here to talk with Mrs. Johnson,” the sheriff said. “She made some statements that showed her mind was just completely upset. I figured it would put her mind at ease if I brought this no-good out here and made him tell her the truth. Sick as she is, I felt she would rest easier if she knew the real truth.”

  “Mrs. Johnson is dead,” the doctor.

  Sheriff McCall twisted his hat in his hand. He looked first at the doctor and then at Ab Taylor. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly, I’m deep sorry.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “Yes, we all are.”

  Will and Rhodes came out into the foyer. The sheriff stirred uncomfortably. “The boy was in the room yesterday when his mother said — what she did about his Cousin Tom gettin’ killed. Don’t you think, Doc, the boy ought to know the truth — from this trash? And he’ll tell the truth. I been working on him all night.”

  “Some other time,” Dr. Beckwell said.

  “No,” Rhodes said. His voice shook. “I want to hear it. Now.”

  He glanced upward, saw Rosanne standing at the head of the stairs.

  The sheriff rolled his hat in his hands. “Well, I reckon there ain’t so much at that. It just seemed that your mother was sure that Will wanted to fight with Tom — used the theft as an excuse.” He glanced at Ab Taylor. “You, Ab. Tell the boy the truth.”

  “Tom bragged that he was going to kill your — your father, boy, he said it over and over, whenever we drank together. He was just looking for an excuse. He suspected — well, he thought Will and Tom’s wife was — sweet on each other — and he wanted to kill Will. Will did everything he could to make Tom leave that pen the day Tom was killed — Will tried everything in the world. I’m telling the truth now, son. I — admit we stole them calves. They was penned there near the road, looked like too good a chance to miss — and we’d been drinking. And I didn’t know it, but maybe Tom thought Will might catch him — and that would give Tom the excuse he was looking for.”

  • • •

  It was midnight. Will and Rosanne were in the kitchen. They faced each other over coffee cups at the table. Rosanne said, “What will you do now, Will?”

  He breathed heavily. “The farm. This house. There’s plenty to do — for the boy and the old man.”

  Pain showed for an instant in the deep brown eyes. “What … do you want to do, Will?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes I get to thinking it don’t matter much what a man wants to do. He accepts a responsibility — a big debt … and that decides his life for him … it ain’t what he wants to do.”

  “You’ve done all you could. It’s time now that you did what you want.”

  “I wish I could believe that. But about the only good thing I remember about my old man was that he paid his debts. All his debts. He did a lot of bad things. The things I never saw him do … I heard about — from well-meaning people after he was dead. But he used to tell me that a man had to pay his debts, had to accept his responsibilities. He said a man had to face up to them, because he couldn’t escape them, and when you began to run, you weren’t a man any more. I don’t know whether I believe him any more or not, but one thing I do know. I got the habit … and it’s a bad one … it won’t let me alone … I owe something, I got to stay with it until it’s paid up.”

  She moved her hands on the table, looking at them, hearing him but not understanding him at all.

  “You’re going to stay here?”

  “I got to, Rosanne. Until the boy can take over anyhow. I reckon I’ve fallen into the place now — whether I ever wanted it or not.”

  “What about me?”

  “You got to go home, Rosanne.”

  “No.”

  “You’re young — you ain’t even twenty. You can find a man you can love, a man who can give you something.”

  “I know who I love, Will. I won’t ever love nobody else.”

  “I can’t give you nothing, Rosanne. I got nothing to give you. Sure, this big old farm — I guess it’s mine now, mine to work — and make money — for the boy, so it can be his. I ain’t complaining about that. It’s just that I can’t ask you to take on all that staying here would mean … the working and the doing without — and for nothing. It couldn’t ever be yours. It couldn’t ever be ours.”

  “I could have you.”

  “I can’t let you tie yourself down to a half grown boy and an old man, Rosanne. You deserve a lot better — and you’ll get it.”

  “I won’t go. You can’t make me leave, Will. I’ll stay down there in your shack, and I’ll take in washing or sewing — anything I can do … but I’ll be there when you change your mind.”

  There was the sudden pound of feet outside the house, a man running. The sound grew loud outside the kitchen, and it seemed they could hear the rasping gasp of a man trying to catch his breath. Then the man ran on around the house. Then they heard the breathless cry of “Mist’ Will! Mist’ Will!”

  Around came the pounding feet again.

  Will stood up, listening.

  The kitchen door was flung open and Rhodes ran into the room in his nightgown.

  “Will! There’s somebody outside.”

  Rhodes’ hair was standing on end, and his eyes were wild as though he’d wakened from a nightmare.

  “It’s all right, boy.” Will’s voice was calm.

  Will started toward the kitchen door. Rhodes cried out. “Will! It might be Mister Darl! He might have a gun.”

  Will opened the door. “No, boy. It’s all right, now. You’re all upset. Now just calm down.”

  “Mist’ Will! Mist’ Will! Please, ‘fore God, Mist’ Will!” The man was crying and scratching at the back steps.

  Will stepped out on the back stoop. He looked down at the winded man toppled on the steps.

  “Uncle Felix!” he said to Darl’s grayed old houseman.

  Uncle Felix stared up at Will. “Please God, Mist’ Will. Come quick. They is trouble in our house. Trouble. The good Lord never saw trouble before the way we got it in our house.”

  Will poured a pitcher of cold water and bent down, handing it to Uncle Felix. Uncle Felix was so out of breath from running that for a moment he could not swallow and had to spit out the water he tried to drink.

  “Trouble.” Uncle Felix’s eyes rolled, showing the whites in the light
from the kitchen door.

  “Now you take it easy, Uncle Felix. Now tell me slow what’s the matter?”

  “I got me no time to tell you, Mist’ Will. I came running over here to fetch you. They’s trouble at my house. Bad trouble. You got to come, Mister Will. Please God, you got to come.”

  • • •

  Will stopped the pick-up truck at the front steps of the big Hollister farm house.

  Every light in the house was burning, all the way to the attic above the third floor.

  The lights on the front porch were glaring. Will and Uncle Felix ran up the front steps. The house was silent, with a chilled, eerie silence.

  Uncle Felix threw open the door and led the way into the hall. Suddenly he began to cry, the tears running down his cheeks. “Come this way, Mist’ Will. Come this way.”

  Will followed Uncle Felix up the steps. A bedroom door was thrown open. Uncle Felix went as far as the opened door, and stood there pointing. Tears streaked down his face, and his eyes showed white, but Uncle Felix would not go into the bedroom.

  Will stepped past Uncle Felix and stopped, staring. Connie was sprawled on her back across the bed. Her gown was up and she was smeared with her own blood.

  Will’s gaze moved from her to the body almost across the room to the window. It was Enoch Gaines. He looked as though he’d been running toward the window and had been shot in the back. His back was ripped and bloody. He lay with his arms out as though he were clawing at the floor.

  “He done hit. He done hit.” Uncle Felix sobbed. “He done killed bof of them. I knowed a long time there was trouble, that Mist’ Enoch pricking around in Mister Darl’s house. But wasn’t no stopping him — just like there wasn’t no stopping Mr. Darl when he cotched him. This time he really cotched ’em. He done killed both of them.”

  Will looked at them again. Then he walked out into the hall and called the sheriff.

  He hung up. “Where is Darl, Uncle Felix?”

  “Lord, I don’t know, Mist’ Will. I went running for you. I knowed if anybody could stop this trouble, you could. But I was too late. I’m too old. I couldn’t git to you.”

  “It’s all right, Uncle Felix,” Will said. “You done the best you could…. We better go downstairs and wait for the sheriff.”

  “Yassuh.”

  They went down the stairs. Uncle Felix was still crying and mumbling. “I tried to tell her … ‘course I couldn’t say nothing right out … but I said what I could …”

  As they came off the lowest step, they heard a cough from the library.

  Will started toward it.

  “Look out, Mist’ Will, he’s got that gun … and he’s done gone crazy. That woman done drove him insane.”

  Will opened the door. The library was dark. Uncle Felix said, “Light switch, there by the doah, Mist’ Will.”

  Will snapped on the light. Darl was sprawled in his big club chair with a drink in his hand. At first, it looked the same as always until you saw the way he was holding his chest, and the way the blood leaked through his clenched fingers like spilled wine.

  Darl’s laugh was sardonic. His voice was weak. “Been looking for you, Will. Knew Uncle Felix would run get you. Sets more store by you than any white man alive.” He laughed again. “Uncle Felix always said it was too bad you wasn’t colored, Will, because — otherwise — you were a fine man … Old fool … Always wanted me to be like you.”

  Uncle Felix’s voice broke. “No suh, Mist’ Darl. I never did. I just wanted you to be a good man — like youah Paw.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. I’m not. I never was.” He waved a paper. “Here’s your mortgage, Will. I want you to have it back. If it’s among my — papers, there’ll be a mess when the estate tries to collect … I figure I owe it to you, Will.”

  “What for?”

  Darl’s mouth twisted. “For being Uncle Felix’s idea of a fine man … maybe … or maybe it’s because I did you a great wrong … I thought you were bedding my wife, Will … God, I see how funny that was. You had better sense, didn’t you, Will? She threw herself at you, and you wouldn’t touch her … you had better sense than me, Will…. You had sense enough not to get mixed up with her….”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS a cold day, a bitter bone-chilling morning.

  Grandpa sat between Rhodes and Will in lawyer Lem Hall’s office over the drug store. All the Wilkes and Burris relatives were here for the reading of Lena’s will, but Grandpa didn’t pay any attention to the relatives. According to Grandpa they only showed up for funerals, and when there was a chance to get their hands on something.

  Grandpa was still fuming. He hadn’t wanted to come in to hear the will read. He didn’t see how it could concern him, and besides he had been sure that on such a cold day, the lawyer would never have his office heated enough for him.

  He sat there, with three coats buttoned around him, a shawl about his throat and his stocking cap pulled down over his ears.

  “That danged fool’s got a winder wide open,” Grandpa whispered to Rhodes. “What’s he trying to do — kill all of us off?”

  Rhodes smiled to himself and glanced at the window behind lawyer Hall’s desk. It was cracked less than an inch.

  Lawyer Hall was a small pompous man with pince-nez and thinning gray hair. He adjusted the glasses, and looked at the people in the room.

  “Now that we are all here, and acquainted with the reason why we are here, I shall proceed with the reading of the last will and testament of the late lamented Lena Burris Johnson.”

  “Git on with it. Git on with it.” Grandpa fretted. “How long we going to have to stay in this here ice box?”

  The lawyer frowned at Grandpa. Grandpa stared back at him, took out his handkerchief and loudly blew his nose. The lawyer looked apprehensive and was about to raise the window another inch when Grandpa’s voice stopped him. “You just let that there window alone there and git on with it.”

  The lawyer rattled the paper. “The will is brief. There are a few minor bequeaths to members of the family — ” He read these, and voices buzzed in the room, some surprised, and most disappointed. Nothing of any real value had been affected by this part of the will. “And now to my dear husband William Johnson, I will and bequeath the sum of one dollar, simply as a token of my appreciation for his years of devotion and kindness to me in my illness.”

  The lawyer stopped reading after that. He had to stop. He could not longer even hear himself above the astonished hubbub in the room.

  Rhodes stared straight ahead. He could not bring himself to face Will on the other side of Grandpa. But he knew that Will had not moved.

  “Well, goddamn,” Grandpa said. “Well, I’ll be goddamn.”

  That seemed to express the sentiments of everybody in the room, and left nothing else to be said. Order was restored and the lawyer continued.

  “To my dear son, Rhodes, I leave all property, real and personal, the home, lands and all stock upon those lands, to have and keep as his father would have kept them in his life before him.”

  Again there was chatter that flushed across the room and would not subside.

  The lawyer looked embarrassed. “Plainly, Mrs. Johnson expected to live much longer than she did. A thirteen year old boy to run those many — ”

  “I don’t know,” Grandpa broke in. “She was my daughter, and I reckon I knowed her pretty well.” He shook his head. “Lena was never one to give a body anythin’ … if’n she knowed she couldn’t take it with her … I fìgger she decided she was doin’ the next best thing.”

  • • •

  It seemed to Rhodes that it lasted for hours after that. But as far as he was concerned, it all ended when the paragraph was read leaving all the land and stock to him.

  He sat there and through his mind went all the things he knew about Will’s life with his mother. The times when she’d commanded Will, ordering him about like a servant, and never once thanking him for anything he did. The way she’d used Will�
�s strength, from early morning until late night when Rhodes would waken to hear Will waiting on his mother at all hours. He remembered the way Cousin Tom had come and borrowed Will’s money without intending to repay it, moved into Will’s shack as though it were his, and belonged in no way to Will. And hadn’t Grandpa said that Rhodes’ own father had gotten ill, and called on Will years ago to keep that farm together? They’d leaned on Will, and they’d used him. As long as there was a Wilkes or a Burris, there’d be somebody whining and demanding from Will, and refusing even to thank him, because by thanking him they’d admit their debt … and their weakness.

  All around him they were whispering that naturally Will Johnson would have to stay on at the farm and run it at least until Rhodes was eighteen or so. They were still leaning on Will, and they’d already forgotten the dollar he’d been willed as a token of appreciation for all the years they’d taken out of his life.

  Rhodes tried in his mind to excuse his mother. From Will he’d learned generosity. But because like Will he was generous, he was more aware of the tight-fisted stinginess of the backwoods people. From the grown men who’d buy a “poke” of candy on Saturday night and stand with it clasped in fists until the last piece was gone, so that even their own children wouldn’t be allowed to share it, from these backwoodsmen to his own mother who never admitted that Will had kept her alive for years, had denied himself everything for her and was now left with a dollar.

  He glanced toward Will, thinking that Will had been left with something else. Freedom. For the first time in over ten years Will was free to go where he wished, do what he wanted.

  Rhodes listened to the hubub in the room. That was fine, to think that no Burris or Wilkes would be leaning on Will and using his strength.

  But there was more to it than that. Even if his own mother would not admit her indebtedness to Will, Rhodes didn’t pretend that he could ever forget it. Almost all the worthwhile things he knew, he’d learned from Will. God knew, he was a better person for one good reason: consciously and unconsciously he was always trying to be as much like Will as he could.