Of Love and Dust (15 page)

Now he was looking for her every time he went by the house; and every time he went by she was looking out for him, too. He had quit riding on the tractor with me; he was riding in the trailer on the corn now. But if I glanced back at him, I would see him watching out for her; if I looked toward the house I would see her sitting out there on the gallery. They would watch each other like that until they couldn’t see each other any more for the dust.

But when I said Louise was watching Marcus, I don’t mean she made it clear to everybody what she was doing. She never ran to the end of the gallery or smiled or waved or anything like that. What she did was watch him from inside; I mean, she watched him by thinking the same way he was thinking. She knew he had seen her, he was noticing her, so all she had to do now was think the way he thought. No, she never moved, she never smiled, she never waved or anything; she just looked and thought and waited.

Thursday night, Marcus and I were sitting out on the gallery when Bonbon went down the quarter in the truck. We saw the truck stop in front of Pauline’s house and we saw the lights go out. A minute or two later, after the dust had settled, Marcus stood up and went out of the yard. I
didn’t have any idea where he was going—unless he was going up to the church. Sun Brown was the one who told me later what had happened. Sun Brown said he was in front of Joe Walker’s old empty house when he heard somebody calling Bonbon’s name in front of Bonbon’s gate. Sun Brown said it was too dark for him to see who it was, but he could hear the person clear as day. It wasn’t too loud, he said, but very, very clear: “Oh, Mr. Bonbon; oh, Mr. Bonbon.” Sun said he figured that the person had come from up the quarter, because if he had come from down the quarter he would have seen the truck parked in front of Pauline’s house. He said he started walking a little faster to tell the person that Bonbon wasn’t at home. But, he said, as he came up to the line fence (that oak tree) he saw Miss Louise coming down the walk toward the gate. And by the time he got to the gate where the person (the convict) was standing, Miss Louise was there, too. Louise had little white-head Tite by the hand. Sun said he heard the convict saying, “Mr. Bonbon home?” He said he could have easily told the convict that Mr. Bonbon was down the quarter at Pauline’s, but he figured that Miss Louise would do that much. He said he didn’t know if Miss Louise answered the convict or not. All she was doing when he went by was standing there holding Tite by the hand. He said he got all the way to the other line fence (that big pecan tree) and still he couldn’t hear if she had answered.

Louise didn’t answer Marcus that night, Marcus told me later. She just stood there holding Tite by the hand, looking across the gate at him. He said he didn’t know what to make of the look—unless you want to call it dreamy. He said she made him feel like he could have done her anything and she wouldn’t have even made a sound. She wore the same white dress she had on the night before. The dress was tight round
the waist and it had lace on the sleeves. Marcus said the dress made Louise look like a girl about twelve years old. He said he didn’t know before how little her waist was, how scrawny her arms and legs were.

Marcus and Louise looked at each other, then Marcus looked down at the little girl Louise was holding by the hand. He said Tite was just standing there quiet-like, holding on to Louise’s hand like she might have been in a little dream all her own. He said he didn’t know at the time that she was sick with a bad heart.

He looked at Louise again. She was still watching him in that wandering, dream-like way. He said she reminded him of a person who had been lost in the woods; she had been lost for days and days now and she had seen all kinds of things back there that looked like a human being, but none of them had turned out to be human, and now she was looking at him, wondering if he was.

“I reckond Mr. Bonbon ain’t here?” he said.

She still didn’t say anything—her face didn’t even change. She just stood there looking at him like she was wondering if one of them things in the woods had spoke.

Tite leaned over and slapped at a mosquito on her leg. Marcus said Tite did it so slow, it looked like it took all of her strength just to bend forward.

“Come, Judy,” Louise said.

The next day Louise was on the gallery when we went by at twelve. She looked at Marcus when we were going up the quarter, she looked at him when we came back down. That evening he took his bath soon as he got home, and went up to the church. But he must have stayed there only a few minutes (he didn’t go inside, he stood outside and looked through the window); then he was going up the quarter again. And again Sun Brown saw him. No, he heard
the same low, clear voice: “Oh, Mr. Bonbon; oh, Mr. Bonbon.” Sun was coming from up the quarter this time and he said he had just met Bonbon going toward the highway in the truck. So he figured that the person who was calling Bonbon now had come from down the quarter. Sun said as he came closer (he was by that big pecan tree) he saw Miss Louise coming out to the gate. So by the time he got to the gate, Louise and Tite were there, too. Sun said he thought, “Now that’s funny; that is funny.” He said he never thought that the convict had any idea ’bout getting into Bonbon’s yard—what fool would have thought that? He said what he meant by, “That’s funny; that is funny,” was that the same person was calling at Bonbon’s house two nights in a row only minutes after Bonbon had left. He said what made it even more funny was that that same person had been working round Bonbon all day both days. He said what was even funnier still was that this same person should have been the last person in the world to be looking for Bonbon after Bonbon had worked him like he had. But to cap everything, Sun said, was that Miss Louise had come out to the gate twice. He said she had never done that to anyone else long as he had been there, and he had been on the plantation twice as long as she had.

Sun said by the time he got to the gate, Louise was there with little white-head Tite. But this time she was standing much closer. He said he heard the convict say, “Mr. Bonbon home?” He said again he didn’t know if she answered him or not. He strained his ears until he got to that other line fence (that big oak tree); then he stopped because he was too far away to hear anything anyhow.

She didn’t say anything to him again that night, but Tite did.

“Hello,” Tite said.

“Hi,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Tite,” she said.

“Didn’t your mama call you Judy?”

“Judy,” Tite said.

“Tite Judy?” he asked.

“Tite,” Tite said.

He said he looked down at her. He said he didn’t know she was sick then, he just thought she was half crazy.

“Don’t Tite mean little?” he said.

“Judy,” Tite said.

He said he looked at her and thought she was crazy, then he looked at Louise. Louise was looking at him the same way she had looked at him the night before: she still couldn’t make up her mind if he was human or if he was one of them things in the woods.

He was standing close to the gate now and his hand was on the gate post. He said Louise raised her hand very, very slowly to one of the pickets in the gate. Her face had no more changed than if she hadn’t even moved. He let her hand stay on the picket a while, then his hand moved there and touched hers. No, it wasn’t his hand, he said, it was his finger. He touched her with his finger, and before he knew what was happening, his fingernail was digging into her knuckles. He didn’t know why his fingernail did that—he wasn’t a tormentor, he was a lover. He wanted to hurt her—yes, yes, he wanted to hurt her, but not with no fingernail. His fingernail did that for half a minute before he knew what was happening. When he caught himself, he drew his finger back. But she didn’t move. Her expression hadn’t even changed. He said all around them crickets were making noise, frogs were calling for rain, lightning bugs were blinking their little lights. Some kind of bird (he didn’t know the name) bust out of the weeds along the ditch, flew by them
and across the field. All that time Marcus and Louise were standing there looking at each other across the gate. Then he put the tip of his finger in his mouth and rubbed it lightly over the spot where he had hurt her. He told her with his eyes how sorry he was. He could have spoke the words, he said, because Tite was too busy watching lightning bugs to pay him and Louise any mind. Just when he got ready to lean over and kiss her hand, Louise drew her hand back.

“Come, Judy,” she said.

27
 

Saturday, when we came up to the yard, we could see the children standing at the crib. So Marcus and I both knew he wouldn’t have to unload corn today, or if he had to he was going to have plenty help. As I drove the tractor up closer, the children all moved back to look at Marcus. Bonbon was there by the time I had turned off the motor and climbed down.

“See you made it,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He wore a white shirt and brown pants and his white cowboy hat. No khakis today and no boots; brown shoes, shining like new tin.

“Y’all children, there, get on that trailer,” he said. “That corn can’t unload hisself.”

The children climbed up on the trailer and started pitching corn into the crib. But soon they were making a game of it. One would flip up an ear of corn, then the others would throw to hit it before it fell in the crib.

“Hey there,” Bonbon said. “What you think this is, a baseball or something? Throw that thing right.”

The children quit playing and started working the way he wanted them to do. Bonbon watched them a while to make sure they wouldn’t start playing again.

“Mind you up there, now, I don’t play, no,” he said. “You hear me there, Billy Walker?”

“Yassuh.”

“You better.”

He turned to me.

“Little bastards,” he said.

I glanced up at the children. Children are children, I thought, and soon as you turn your back they’ll be playing again.

“Geam, I want you go to New Orleans with me,” Bonbon said.

“New Orleans?”

“Yeah. The old man there. Got to pick up a piece for that hay machine.”

“Well, I’ll have to take a bath and change,” I said.

“Yeah, take the truck,” he said, nodding toward it over by the tool shop.

“What time you leaving?”

“Soon’s you get back. Want get there and come back ’fore night. You need your pay?”

“No, I have a few bucks. I won’t be spending anything in New Orleans.” I glanced at Marcus and looked at Bonbon again. “I reckond Marcus can attend a little business in Bayonne?” I said.

Marcus didn’t have any business to attend in Bayonne (at least he hadn’t told me about any), but I thought I would try to get him off any kind of work Bonbon might have had in mind.

“No. Some other time. Today he got to clean up my yard there,” Bonbon said.

“Your yard?” I said, almost screaming it out.

Bonbon looked at me surprised. I had never answered him quite so impolitely before.

“Something the matter, Geam?” he said, squinting down at me.

I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was frown and shake my head.

“I know what you thinking,” Bonbon said. “Them leafs been there ten years and all a sudden she want them raked up. Women—how you figure them, hanh?”

My heart was jumping too much for me to say anything; and I wouldn’t dare look at Marcus, either.

I didn’t know then that Marcus had seen Louise those two nights, because I hadn’t talked to Sun Brown, yet. But I knew he had been noticing her from the tractor and he was just waiting for the chance to get near that house. Once he got there (where both him and her wanted him to get) he was going to make his move.

“So that’s your job this evening,” Bonbon said. “And mind you, I want that raked, yeah.”

“I’ll rake it,” Marcus said. “Give it the best raking it ever had.”

Bonbon was looking at him. Bonbon was three or four inches taller than Marcus, so now he squinted down at him.

No, this didn’t have anything to do with Marcus hitting Pauline. Bonbon didn’t know what had happened between Marcus and Pauline. Pauline had probably told him she had hit her jaw against a doorknob or that a can of something had fell off the shelf and hit her. Or maybe the clothesline prop had slipped away from the line and hit her while she was hanging clothes. No, this had nothing to do with her. This was all Louise’s doing. She had found out that he had to go to New Orleans and he would be gone for at least half a day.

How? How? How? she had probably thought. How? How? How? And probably, while walking across the yard, she had
looked down and seen the leaves—leaves that had been laying there ten, maybe twenty years; leaves on top of leaves on top of leaves; leaves that weren’t leaves any more, but had turned back to dust. Even if Marcus used a shovel and even if he dug six feet in the ground he would never reach the bottom of all those leaves.

I looked at him now. He knew I was going to look at him, and he knew I was going to look at him then. He wanted to grin. He was grinning inside, he was laughing his head off inside.

“Well, it’s going to be cool under those trees,” I said. “Nice and cool under there. Almost like a picnic.”