God's Little Acre Page 18

  He walked to the edge of the porch and looked up at the stars. She waited beside him until he was ready to leave.

  “We’d better go in and see how supper is cooking,” he told her.

  They walked through the dark hall, smelling the aroma of freshly ground coffee. Nearer the kitchen they could smell frying ham on the stove.

  Buck looked up at Griselda from his chair behind the partly opened door when they walked into the brightly lighted kitchen where the others were. She had to turn her head and shoulders halfway around in order to see him. He glared at her surlily.

  “I reckon if he hadn’t been shot, you’d still be over there, wouldn’t you?”

  The words were on the tip of her tongue to shout at him that she would, but she bit her lips and tried to keep from speaking just then.

  “You and him got pretty thick, didn’t you?”

  “Please, Buck,” she begged.

  “Please, what? Don’t want me to talk about it, huh?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. And anyway, you ought to have some regard for Rosamond.”

  He looked at Rosamond. She stood with her back to him turning the ham in the griddles.

  “What’s wrong with me? Why did you have to chase off after him? Don’t you think I’m good enough for you, huh?”

  “Please, Buck, not now.”

  “If you were going to run around with your legs spread open, why in hell didn’t you take better aim? That son-of-abitch was a lint-head. A lint-head from Horse Creek Valley!”

  “There’s no particular spot in the world where real men live,” Darling Jill said. “You can find just as many in Horse Creek Valley as you can on The Hill in Augusta, or on farms around Marion.”

  Buck turned and looked her up and down.

  “You talk like you’ve been pricked, too. What in hell went on over there, anyhow?”

  Ty Ty thought it was time to step in before things went too far. He laid his hand on Buck’s shoulder and tried to quiet him. Buck threw his father’s hand off, moving his chair to another part of the kitchen.

  “Now, son,” he said, “don’t go and get all heated up over nothing.”

  “To hell with that talk,” he shouted. “You stay out of this and stop trying to take up for her.”

  The girls began carrying the supper dishes into the next room and placing them on the wide table. They all went into the dining-room and sat down. Buck had not said all he wished to say, by any means. He merely transferred the scene from one room to the other.

  “Go get Pluto, Darling Jill,” Ty Ty said. “He’ll sit out there in the yard all night and not get a bite to eat if somebody doesn’t look out for him.”

  Griselda sat with lowered head, her eyes averted. She hoped Buck would not say anything else while Rosamond was in the room. It hurt her to have Buck talk about Will in Rosamond’s presence, and so soon after the funeral, too.

  Pluto came back with Darling Jill and took his accustomed seat at the table. He could feel the tension in the room, and he took care to keep his mouth shut unless he was spoken to. He was afraid that Buck was going to ask him what had happened in Scottsville.

  After several minutes of silence, Ty Ty tried to take advantage of it to change the subject.

  “A man was out here watching us dig yesterday, and he tried to tell me I called the lode by the wrong name. He said he used to mine gold up in North Georgia, and up there a lode was a streak of gold in the rock. He said what we were aiming at was placering. I told him as long as we struck gold, I didn’t give a dog-gone what name he called it by.”

  “He was right,” Shaw said. “In high school the teachers said placer mining was getting gold out of dirt or gravel. Lode mining is by blasting it out of rock and crushing it and cooking it out with heat.”

  “Well, he still may be right, and you too, son,” Ty Ty said, shaking his head, “but a load of gold is what I’ve got my heart set on. That will be my ship coming in, and I don’t give a dog-gone for the name you call it. You can call it lode mining or placer mining, whichever you want, but when I get a load of it, I’ll know dog-gone well my ship has come in.”

  “The man said the only way nuggets could get into the ground around here would be by a flood washing them down a long time ago, and then being covered up with silt.”

  “The man you mention don’t know no more about digging for gold on my land than one of those mules out there. I’ve been doing it for nearly fifteen years, and I reckon if anybody knows what I’m doing, I do. Let the man have his say, but don’t pay him no heed, son. Too many men talking will get you all balled up, and you won’t know which way is straight up and which is straight down.”

  Buck leaned over the table.

  “I reckon if I was to put my hands on you now, you’d say, ‘Ouch! Don’t do that, Buck. I’m sore there.’“ He looked at Griselda steadily. “Can’t you talk? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Of course, I can talk, Buck,” she pleaded. “Please don’t say such things now.”

  Pluto looked at Darling Jill uneasily. He dreaded for the time to come when Buck would ask him what had happened in Scottsville.

  “Well, he’s dead now,” Buck said, “and I can’t do much about it, to him. But if he wasn’t, I’d sure do something you wouldn’t forget. I’d take that gun hanging up there and do plenty. It’s a God damn shame you can’t kill a man but once. I’d like to kill him just as long as I could buy shells to fire at him.”

  Rosamond cried. She laid down her knife and fork and ran from the room.

  “Now, see what you’ve done!” Darling Jill said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for doing a thing like that.”

  “You and her,” he said, pointing his fork at Griselda, “you and her don’t look ashamed for anything. If I was married to you, I’d choke hell out of you. You’re as loose as a busted belly-band on a gray mule.”

  “Now, son,” Ty Ty said. “She’s your sister.”

  “What of it? She’s loose, ain’t she, sister or no sister? I’d choke hell out of her if she was my wife.”

  “If you’re not man enough to hold your wife, you ought to be too ashamed to say anything,” Darling Jill told him. “You ought to go somewhere and hide your face.”

  “We’re going on like this all the time,” Ty Ty said wearily, “and we’re getting further and further a’way from the happy life. All of us ought to sit down and think a little about living, and how to do it. God didn’t put us here to scrap and fight each other all the time. If we don’t have a little more love for each other, one of these days there’s going to be deep sorrow in my heart. I’ve tried all my life to keep a peaceful family under my roof. I’ve got my head set on having just that all my days, and I don’t aim to give up trying now. You folks see if you can’t stop your scrapping and laugh just a little, and I’ll feel much better. That’s the finest cure in the world for scrapping and fighting.”

  “You talk like a damn fool,” Buck said disgustedly.

  “Maybe it does sound that way to you, Buck. But when you get God in your heart, you have a feeling that living is worth striving for night and day. I ain’t talking about the God you hear about in the churches, I’m talking about the God inside of a body. I’ve got the greatest feeling for Him, because He helps me to live. That’s why I set aside God’s little acre out there on the farm when I was just a young man starting in. I like to have something around me that I can go to and stand on and feel God in.”

  “He ain’t got a penny out of it yet,” Shaw said, laughing a little.

  “You boys don’t seem to catch on, son. It ain’t so important that I get money out of God’s little acre to give to the church and the preacher, it’s just the fact that I set that up in His name. All you boys seem to think about is the things you can see and touch--that ain’t living. It’s the things you can feel inside of you--that’s what living is made for. True, as you say, God ain’t got a penny of money out of that piece of ground, but it’s the fact that I set God�
�s little acre aside out there that matters. That’s the sign that God’s in my heart. He knows I ain’t striking it rich down here, but He ain’t interested in how much money a man makes. What tickles Him is the fact that I set aside a part of my land for Him just to show that I have got some of Him inside of me.”

  “Why don’t you go to church more than you do then?” Shaw asked. “If you believe so much in God, why don’t you go there oftener?”

  “That ain’t a fair question, son. You know good and well how tired I am when Sunday comes, after digging all week long in the holes. God doesn’t miss me there, anyhow. He knows why I can’t come. I’ve spoken to Him about such things all my life, and He knows pretty well all about it.”

  “What’s all that got to do with her?” Buck asked, pointing his fork at Griselda. “I was talking about her before you butted in about something else.”

  “Nothing, son. I ain’t got a thing in the world to do with her. She already knows about it. I was talking for your benefit so you would try to learn more about living. If I was you, son, when I went to bed tonight, I’d get down on my knees in the dark and talk to God about it. He can tell you things nobody else can, and maybe He’ll tell you how you ought to act with Griselda. He’ll tell you, if you’ll only take the time and trouble to listen, because if there’s anything in the world He’s crazy about, it’s seeing a man and a woman fools about each other. He knows then that the world is running along as slick as grease.”

  Chapter XIX

  Ty Ty stayed up late that night trying to talk to Buck. He knew it was a duty he owed his children to convince them that living was deeper than the surface they saw. The girls seemed to realize that, but the boys did not. Ty Ty knew there would be plenty of time later to talk to Shaw, and he gave all his attention to Buck for Griselda’s sake. Buck was irritated by the things he tried to explain and he acted as though he did not wish to understand.

  “You boys just don’t seem to catch on,” Ty Ty said, dropping his hands at his sides. “You boys seem to think that if you have a little money to spend and a new raincoat or some such knickknack and a belly full of barbecue, there ain’t another thing to be concerned about. I wish I could tell you all about it. It’s a ticklish thing to try to explain, because I don’t know none too much about using words, and if I did know, it wouldn’t help matters much because it’s something you’ve got to feel. It’s just like the fellow said: ‘It’s there, or it ain’t there, and there are only two ways about it.’ You boys appear like it ain’t there. Just take a walk off by yourself some time and think about it, and maybe it will come to you. I don’t know what else to tell you to do.”

  “I don’t know what in hell you’re trying to say,” Buck broke in, “but if it’s what Griselda’s got, I don’t want it. She went over there to Horse Creek Valley and got shot full of something. And if you ask me, I’ll say it was some of Will Thompson. That lint-head!”

  “Will Thompson was a real man,” Darling Jill said.

  “A real man, huh? And you got a shot, too, didn’t you? It’s a damn good sign when you come back here with your mind made up to marry Pluto Swint all of a sudden. You’d be in a mess now if he wouldn’t marry you.”

  “Will was a real man, anyway.”

  “What in hell is a real man? Will Thompson wasn’t any bigger than I am. He wasn’t any stronger, either. I could throw him any morning before breakfast.”

  “It wasn’t the way he looked that made him different. It was how he was made inside. He could feel things, and you can’t.”

  Buck got up and looked at them for a moment from the door.

  “What do you take me for, anyway--a sucker? Don’t you reckon I know damn well you and Griselda are making up that for an excuse? I’m not all that dumb. You can’t suck me in with that kind of talk.”

  He left the house and no one knew where he had gone. Ty Ty waited a while, thinking Buck might come back in a few minutes and listen with more reason after he had cooled off in the night, but at twelve he had not returned. Ty Ty got up then to go to bed.

  “Buck will come around all right when he gets a little older, Griselda. Just try to be patient with him till he lives a little more. It takes some people a lifetime, almost, to learn some things.”

  “I’m afraid he’ll never learn,” she said. “Not before it’s too late, anyway.”

  Ty Ty patted her shoulder.

  “You girls are all wrought up over Will getting killed. Just go to bed now and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning things will look a lot different.”

  “But he’s dead,” Darling Jill said. “I can’t forget that he’s dead.”

  “Maybe it’s best that he is now. The three of you couldn’t have stayed over there in Scottsville. Rosamond was married to him, and you and Griselda would have made a mess that the law doesn’t allow.”

  Long after everybody else in the house was asleep, Ty Ty lay awake thinking. Buck had not returned, and Griselda was alone in the room across the hall, crying. For nearly an hour he had lain on his side listening to the restless toss of her body as she lay sleepless upon the bed. But she finally became quiet, and he knew she had fallen to sleep at last. Ty Ty wondered where Buck had gone. There was no need for him to get up and go out in the night looking for him, so he tried to dismiss Buck from his thoughts.

  Some time in the night he heard Darling Jill go to the back porch for a drink of water. He could hear her walking in her soft-soled slippers through the hall past his door. She remained on the porch only a minute and came back into the house. Ty Ty turned over and looked through the door into the dark hall when he heard her returning. He could see dimly the moving light of her nightgown, and he could have reached out and touched her with the tips of his fingers when she passed the door. He was about to ask her if she were ill, but he thought better of it. He knew she was not sick, anyway; there was nothing the matter with her except that which also made Rosamond and Griselda restless. He allowed her to go back to her bed without speaking. All three of them would feel much better after several hours of sleep. When breakfast was over, he would try to say something to them.

  At daybreak Buck still had not returned to the house. Ty Ty lay a little while staring at the beginning of light on the ceiling, turning later to watch the gray dawn break into day. When he heard Black Sam and Uncle Felix talking in an undertone in the yard, he jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. He looked out the window and saw the two colored men sitting on the rim of the crater, their feet hanging over the side, waiting for him to start them to work.

  He left the room and walked out into the yard.

  “Did you see Buck anywhere?” he asked Uncle Felix.

  Uncle Felix shook his head.

  “Mr. Buck didn’t get up this early already, did he?” Black Sam asked.

  “He stayed out somewhere all night. I reckon he’ll show up before long.”

  “Trouble in your house, boss?” Uncle Felix asked cautiously.

  “Trouble?” Ty Ty repeated. “Who said there was trouble in the house?”

  “When white folks don’t stay in the house to sleep, there’s pretty nearly always trouble.”

  Ty Ty sat down several feet away, looking down into the big hole at his right. He knew it was useless to try to lie to Negroes. They always knew.

  “Maybe there was trouble,” he said. “It’s about over with now, though. One of them got killed, and I don’t look for much after today. It’s all over with now, I hope.”

  “Who got killed?” Black Sam asked. “I didn’t hear about anybody getting killed, Mr. Ty Ty. That’s news to me.”

  “It was Will Thompson, over there in Horse Creek Valley. Somebody shot him over there day before yesterday. The girls got all excited about it, and I’ve had a hard time trying to calm them down.”

  “I sure reckon you do have a hard time trying to do that, boss. It’s pretty hard to calm the women folks down after the male man’s gone.”

  Ty Ty turned around quickly, looking at
Black Sam.

  “What in the pluperfect hell are you talking about, anyhow?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Ty Ty. Nothing at all.”

  “Go on to work,” he said shortly. “The sun’s been up half an hour already. We can’t get nothing done if we’re going to wait till after the sun rises before we start digging. The only way to strike that lode, I’ve been thinking, is to dig and dig and dig.”

  The two colored men went down into the ground. Black Sam was singing a little, but Uncle Felix was waiting for Ty Ty to leave so he could talk to Black Sam about the trouble in the house. Presently he looked up to the top where Ty Ty had been standing. Ty Ty had gone from sight.

  “That Buck would have killed him pretty soon himself,” Uncle Felix said. “He would have done it first if he hadn’t been so slow to catch on. I sa’w that look in his wife’s eyes a long long time ago when Will Thompson first started coming over here to Georgia. She was getting ready to make way for him then. It didn’t look to me like she knew it herself, but I could see it a mile off. That other girl was getting ready for the same thing, too. They just had to make way for Mr. Will. Wasn’t no stopping them.”

  “Who you mean?”

  “Darling Jill’s the other one I mean.”

  “Man, man! black fellow, that wasn’t nothing new for her. That white girl’s always been like that. I’ve stopped paying any attention to her. But I reckon she was getting ready for it a heap sooner than she generally does, because Mr. Will just naturally made them all that way. But that Griselda is the one to watch. She makes a man itch all over till he don’t know where to scratch first.”