Of Love and Dust (25 page)

I was laying across the bed Saturday evening when I heard somebody coming up on the gallery. I had been thinking about Marcus. Aunt Margaret had already told me what Marcus and Louise had been talking about Wednesday night. He had left the house the following night to go up the quarter, and I was wondering if he had gone to Marshall Hebert. I hadn’t heard anything from Aunt Margaret about it, and I hadn’t said anything to Marcus about it, either. But I couldn’t believe that he would go to Marshall and tell him that he and Louise wanted to leave from here together. I knew Marcus was bold (or crazy), but I didn’t think he was bold (or crazy) enough to take a chance like that. This is what I was thinking about when I heard somebody coming up on the gallery. When I turned my head, I saw Aunt Margaret coming in the room. She didn’t knock. She had been coming there so much lately, she didn’t think she had to knock any more. A step or two behind her was Bishop. I didn’t know who he was at first. I had never seen him this far in the quarter before. I had seen him far as the church, but I couldn’t remember seeing him on this side of the church ever since I had been on the plantation. He was a little man with a shining bald head. He wore steel-rim glasses with thick lenses. He always had on a seersucker suit or a plain
white suit. Today he had on the white suit. He had taken off his white straw hat and closed up his umbrella, and now he was carrying both of them in the same hand. He had a folded pocket handkerchief in the other hand. As he came in the door, he passed the handkerchief over his bald head. I stood up when I saw him and Aunt Margaret coming inside.

“James, you know Brother Bishop,” Aunt Margaret said.

I nodded to him. I didn’t speak his name because I didn’t think it would have been right for me to just come out and call him Bishop. At the same time, I had never heard anybody call him Mister, and it would have sounded funny to me if I said it now.

“Take these things from you?” I said.

I took his hat and umbrella and laid them on the bed. I asked Aunt Margaret if she wanted me to rest her hat, but she didn’t give it to me. She didn’t answer me, either, she just started fanning with it.

“Would you people care to sit down?”

Aunt Margaret started back in the kitchen. Bishop was a step behind her, wiping his face and neck with the pocket handkerchief. The pocket handkerchief was wet and dirty, and it was more gray than it was white. I followed them in the kitchen and offered them a glass of lemonade. I wanted a beer instead of lemonade, but I changed my mind and took lemonade, too. I didn’t think drinking a beer around them would have looked right.

“Brother Bishop say that boy went up there,” Aunt Margaret said. I thought Aunt Margaret looked mad when she first came inside the house, and now I was sure she was. She was sitting on one side of the table, and Bishop was sitting on the other side. I sat in a chair in the middle door. Both the back door and the window were wide open to let air through the house.

“Yes,” Bishop said, wiping his face and neck. “He came there Thursday night.”

Then he told me everything. He told me about him shelling beans, he told me about Marshall walking across the floor drinking. He told how Marshall had gone in the yard and come back inside; how he had heard the gate slamming and thought that Marcus was Marshall at first, then how he thought it might be Bonbon. All the time he was talking he was wiping his face and neck with the handkerchief.

“He just pushed his foot in there,” Bishop said, looking at me. Bishop’s eyes looked big behind the thick glasses. “The house his great-grandparents built. The house slavery built. He pushed his foot in that door.”

Aunt Margaret sat on the other side of the table fanning with her big yellow straw hat. She was looking toward the window, not at me or Bishop. But Bishop was still looking at me. He wanted me to know what it meant for Marcus to push his foot through a door that slavery had built.

“And then?” I said.

“Mr. Marshall invited him to his library.”

“He did what?” I said.

Bishop nodded, wiping his face and neck.

“Then?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Bishop said. “I was too put out. A few minutes later the boy left the house. I don’t know anything else.”

“You didn’t hear them?”

“No sir, they was in the library,” Bishop said. “But I’m sure it was something to do with that Cajun. I’m sure of that.”

I looked at Aunt Margaret. She was fanning with the straw hat and looking toward the window. She looked like she had given up hope on everything.

“You said they had some kind of proposition?” I asked her.

“That’s what they say,” she said, not looking at me.

Aunt Margaret acted like she didn’t want to talk, so I looked at Bishop again.

“I’m scared, Mr. Kelly,” he said.

“I’m sure Marcus’s not that crazy,” I said.

“No?” Bishop said. “He stuck his foot in that door. That was the house that slavery built.”

Bishop wanted me to understand that any black person who would stick his foot in a door that slavery built would do almost anything.

43
 

Bishop drank his lemonade and looked down at the sun on the floor. When we first came back there the sun had barely reached the top step; now it had crossed the step and had come about a foot inside the kitchen. Bishop was looking down at the sun like he expected to see it move if he looked at it long enough. When a bunch of flies lit on the floor in front of him he watched the flies. When they flew away, he raised his head. Aunt Margaret was quiet all the time—just waving that big yellow straw hat before her face.

“I been seeing it coming ever since that boy came there,” Bishop said. “I could see it in the clothes he wore—them pink shirts, them two-tone shoes. I could see it in the way he rode on that tractor, the way he strutted across that yard. I saw the way he looked at that Cajun from the side. And Mr. Marshall saw it, too—and that’s when he started watching him. Every time the boy came to the yard, he put himself in a place to watch him. He even went riding in the quarter to look for him. Not ready to speak to him—not yet—just to look at him. Then last Saturday he made his move. He stood on the back gallery a long time before he went out there where he was. I watched them from the dining room. I kept saying, ‘No—Lord, please don’t let him,
please don’t let him.’ I saw how the boy jerked around when he told the boy what he wanted him to do. I had a glass in my hand. The glass fell and broke.”

Bishop had spread the wet pocket handkerchief on his knee to dry out, but now he picked it up to wipe his face and neck. He looked at me long and sadly. His thick glasses made his eyes look bigger and sadder than they really were.

“He didn’t get Marcus out of jail to kill Bonbon, did he?”

Bishop frowned and groaned. He started shaking his head like he never would stop. Nothing else I could say could have hurt him more than that.

“He got him out for her,” he said. “For her. He got him out ’cause she came there crying. He didn’t know that boy from Adam. It was his clothes, the way he walked across that yard; it was the way he looked at that Cajun: these was the things that gived him the idea. No, he didn’t get him out to kill him. God knows, I wish he had never heard of that boy, or Miss Julie Rand.”

Bishop looked down at the floor again. Aunt Margaret went on fanning. Everything was quiet, while I waited for Bishop to go on.

“Exactly what is it Bonbon got on Marshall?” I asked.

Bishop raised his head slowly and looked at me. He didn’t like the way I said “Marshall”; I should have said “Mr. Marshall.” Then he started looking at me the way Miss Julie Rand had looked at me when I asked her that same question. He didn’t want to tell me what the bad blood was between Marshall and Bonbon. It would have been different if it was something just about Bonbon. Bonbon was a poor Cajun, and he would have talked about Bonbon all day. But things were a little different when they were about Mr. Marshall. At the same time, he knew he had to tell me because he needed me. He glanced at Aunt Margaret to see
what she thought. Did she think it was all right to let Marshall and Bonbon’s secret out? Aunt Margaret was fanning and not looking at either Bishop or me. She had given up hope. The world was crazy. If she could save Tite out of all this madness, she would be satisfied. As for Marcus and Louise, and now Bonbon and Marshall, she had given up on them. So Bishop got no help from her at all. If he wanted to tell me, then it was up to him.

“Mr. Marshall had a brother called Bradford,” Bishop said. “He was a gambler, a big gambler, but he used to lose much more than he ever won. One night he lost a great deal more than he could ever pay back. He signed a letter to the man who had won the money, then he came home and packed up his clothes and left. Nobody knows where he went and nobody knows if he’s living or dead. A week or so after he left, the other man showed up with the letter, claiming his money. I heard him and Mr. Marshall squabbling over the money in the library. He left without getting the money, and a few weeks later he was killed in a saloon—another gambler killed him. The place was packed full of people and there was nothing but noise and moving with people trying to get out. While all this was going on, the second man was killed, too. Bonbon was there that night. People figure he killed the second man after he had put him up to kill that other one …”

Bishop let out his breath like he had been holding it in a long time. I waited for him to go on.

“He been doing anything he want ever since then,” Bishop said. “Mr. Marshall been trying to get him ’way from here ever since. He’s offered him money, but he won’t take it. He’s offered other people money to get Bonbon way from here, but they won’t take the money, either. Bonbon got too many brothers; and you can’t spend money from the grave.”

“So he makes Bonbon work Marcus like a slave so Marcus can get mad enough to kill him?” I said. “He can see how much Marcus already hates this place, and he thinks if he press him enough, sooner or later he will have to kill Bonbon …?”

Bishop lowered his head. It was the truth. But Bishop couldn’t ever say anything like that about Marshall Hebert. He would rather put it all on Marcus: Marcus’s clothes, his strutting, his side glances at Bonbon.

44
 

We talked for a couple of hours. Bishop wanted to know what we could do to keep this from happening. That’s why he had come down the quarter to see me. He felt so helpless up there in that big house, knowing all this was going on and knowing he couldn’t do a thing about it. I told him I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? What could any of us do? This whole thing was left up to Marcus. Marshall was only pushing him because he had somebody to push on. But I didn’t think he would push too hard and too long. As for making Bonbon kill Marcus if Marcus didn’t kill Bonbon, that was just to scare Marcus. Marshall wouldn’t dare let Bonbon kill for him again. He was still paying off for the first killing that Bonbon had done for him.

All the time Bishop and I sat there talking, Aunt Margaret sat on the other side of the table fanning with her straw hat. The longer we talked, the madder she got. All of a sudden she jumped up and put the hat on her head.

“You leaving, Brother Bishop?” she asked.

“Yes, Sister Margaret,” he said.

I moved my chair to the side to let them go by me. After Bishop had gotten his hat and umbrella off the bed, we went out on the gallery. Marcus was coming in the yard. He had on his blue shirt and black pants; he wore his cap and dark shades. Bishop and I looked at Marcus, but Aunt Margaret
wouldn’t. She had given up on him. All she wanted to do now was save Tite (if that was possible). Bishop looked at Marcus like he wasn’t really seeing him. His mind was somewhere else—probably at the big house with Marshall Hebert. Marcus came up on the gallery and nodded to us and went in his room.

Bishop turned to me again. He had put on his hat, and now he held the umbrella and handkerchief in one hand. He held his other hand out to me. I felt how small and soft his hand was when I shook it.

“I hope I didn’t take too much of your time,” he said, looking very sad.