Raintree County (52 page)

Susanna was pleased.

—Let's have some of it, she said. To celebrate.

The brandy was excellent. After a while Johnny and Susanna began to review the events of the marriage, which at a distance became very comical. They both talked and laughed volubly. Johnny imitated Susanna's Southern accent, and they began to have a very good time. It seemed to him that perhaps this was a good chance to get something off his conscience.

—I ought to tell you something, Susanna, and I should have done it before. My family has a skeleton in the closet.

—What is it?

—My father's an illegitimate child, Johnny said. I learned about it myself just recently.

—O, is that all? Susanna said. There's lots worse things than that, Johnny.

—O?

—Like having Nigro blood in you, Susanna said.

—Well, Johnny said, laughing, we're all white in my family except for one of my grandpas, who was as black as the ace. They captured him on the Congo after a terrific fight, and——

—Mustn't joke about it, Susanna said gravely. Just one little teeny drop, and you're all Nigro. Think of it. One little teeny-weeny drop makes you black. And you can't always tell whether you are or not. Some of the octoroons in New Orleans are as white as I am.

—I hear they're very pretty, Johnny said irrelevantly.

—It makes a person very passionate, Susanna said, to have just a little of it in them. Think of it. One teeny-weeny drop. You heard about the woman, she was all white, and one of the best families of Louisiana, and she married a fine man, a sailing captain or something. He was from one of the wealthiest and most respected families in New Orleans. When they had their baby, it was a Nigro.

—O, Johnny said.

—Men are so careless, Susanna said. Would you want a Nigro woman?

—I? Did I ever tell you about the time I——

But Susanna was not amused.

—O, Johnny, she said, suddenly taking his head in both hands and putting her deep lips to his, I
do
love you so much. I have a feeling that nothing can happen to me as long as I have you, honey. You won't let anything happen to me, will you?

She snuggled up and put her head on his shoulder. It was all very sweet and romantic. But abruptly she sat up.

—Now let's undress you and put you to bed, she said.

It seemed to be a whim of hers to reverse the situation in which they had been once before, and it wasn't long until Johnny was entirely without clothes and shone upon by gaslight, while Susanna sat fully clothed on his lap, laughing with little excited shrieks and tickling his ribs.

—Enough of this nonsense, Johnny said.

He picked her up and tossed her, still laughing, on the bed.

—No! she shrieked. You can't see my scar! Protect me, Jeemie!

Earlier she must have hidden the charred doll under her pillow. Now she pulled the hideous little thing out and hugged it to her breast, shaking her head, and laughing helplessly. In a way it was charming.

—Does this little personage go everywhere with us? Johnny asked, tugging at one of Susanna's shoes.

—Naughty boy! she shrieked, kicking and twisting. Trying to ravish us! I'm going to keep everything on!

However, in a short time, Susanna had nothing on but her wedding ring and her scar. Johnny threw the last stocking on a chair. Feeling victorious, he grabbed, none too gently, the doll in Susanna's hand.

There was a terrible shriek. It seemed to come from the doll. Johnny sprang up, his flesh crawling. People were shouting and yelling, and over all rose the unearthly screeching of the doll.

Only it wasn't the doll after all—it was a siren right under the hotel window. Someone began to pound a gong. A woman screamed. People were running on the street. Doors slammed. Fear, guilt, shame rushed over him. He and Susanna both ran and peeped out of the window. Around a lighted building across the way, a growing crowd churned excitedly. Several small boys ran out of the building waving papers and yelling in hoarse voices.

—What is it? Johnny yelled down.

No one paid any attention. A little while later, someone pounded on the door of the room. Johnny opened it a little way, and it was a newsboy with an armload of papers. Johnny gave him a dime and took one of the papers.

—What is it, honey? Susanna asked.

—They hanged John Brown.

—Serves him right, Susanna said.

Johnny read the headlines.

THE EXECUTION OF JOHN BROWN

HE MAKES NO SPEECH

HE DIES EASY

THE BODY HANGS HALF AN HOUR

BROWN FIRM AND DIGNIFIED TO THE LAST

THE BODY GIVEN TO HIS WIFE.

—O, I don't know, Johnny said wanly. He believed he was doing right.

—He was a damned old murderer! Susanna said, her face broad, flushed, wild-looking in a shower of loose black hair. I only wish the whole race of nigger-lovers and abolitionists had got hung along with him.

They listened a moment. People were trampling around in the rooms of the hotel. A sound of boots approached their door, and someone knocked.

—Who's there? Johnny said.

—They hanged the son of a bitch, a drunken voice said. Come on out'n have lil drink.

—Go away, Johnny said.

The man went away. Johnny looked at the paper again and saw the words:

The old man was swung off at 11:15 precisely, he having remained firm and dignified to the last.

—Come on to bed, honey, Susanna purred.

He looked about him in the wavering gaslight, and he wondered how he had come to be so far from home in this hollow, rambling, echoing old hotel somewhere in the Southern city of Louisville on the Ohio River, while a naked girl lay on the bed, her body glowing olivebrown in the rich light, her proud eyes closed as if in sleep already, her wide nostrils flaring and falling with her breath, her deep lips parted.

—Come on, Johnny, she said in her small child's voice. I'm so tired.

It turned out that she wasn't tired at all. Far from it. And as for young John Wickliff Shawnessy, the life was strong in him that night, so strong that even when at last he slept (while the gasjet burned on weakly through the dawn), he continued his marriage day in fevered and strange dreams that were like a climax and farewell to a life that he had left forever.

In his dream, he was late to his wedding, and besides he hadn't yet obtained a marriage license. Riding into the Court House Square, he drove up the south side. The Square was jammed with people so that he could hardly get through.

NEWSBOY

shoving newspaper into Johnny's hand,

—Read all about it. Git yuh papuh, heah! Biggest dern newstory of the yeah!

JOHNNY

stepping into doorway of Post Office, reading from headlines printed in jasmine-scented ink,

—LAST OF THE PURITANS SUNK IN SHAME. SCARLET LETTER REVEALS HIS NAME. POET INVOLVED IN WHISKEY RING. ONE-SHOT JOHNNY IS GOING TO SWING.

The Square had darkened. Some great catastrophe had overtaken the County. Portions of it had been ravaged by fire and flood, and in the darkness crazed multitudes streamed past. Broad waters were flowing through the County, washing away beloved hills. Perhaps it was the last deluge, the flood intended by God to purify a guilty earth, stained with the lust and folly of mankind. Familiar roofs, fences, buildings were slowly sinking in the flood.

NELL GAITHER

turning over and over in December waters, her voice trailing back to him, with a dim, rehearsed sound,

—One for whom you once professed affection, Johnny . . .

He ran along the bank of the river, touched with a great sorrow. What was it that had happened to his beloved earth? It was all dissolving in the flood. The Shawmucky had overflowed its banks and become a torrent of disaster. Who was it that had struck this mortal blow at the old County and its way of life? And how could the bloody wound be healed?

A great assemblage had gathered around him. He was standing on a kind of scaffold overlooking the Ohio River. Softspoken but brutal Southerners were fitting a noose to his neck. In the crowd, he saw his own friends and relatives, waving handkerchiefs. His mother was crying. He remembered then that he had been guilty of a great betrayal. It was he who had uprooted a sacred rock and had caused the dark flood which had come upon the land.

GARWOOD JONES

prosecuting attorney,

—The State of Virginity versus John Brown Shawnessy. The
prosecution charges that this man did wilfully and willingly beget the said child upon the said woman in the said state at the stated time in the state of the Union, a Union of States, wherefore we do hereby denounce them a man and his life forever redescended into slavery.

JOHNNY

—May it please the court, I have a few words to say. My only purpose was to free——

T. D. SHAWNESSY

reading from family Bible,

—Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this company to join together . . .

A girl was sitting on his shoulders, her nude legs wrapped around his neck. He had a tenfoot pole in his hand and was teetering on a wire cable stretched from the Indiana to the Kentucky shore of the river. His performance had something to do with reconciling the split between North and South. That was why thousands on both banks were cheering him as he swung perilously above the yellow flood.

GIRL

tightening her legs,

—You'll
love
it, honey. You'll just 1-o-o-o-o-ve . . .

He was strangling. The cable thrashed back and forth. He was falling, falling, falling. . . .

The steamboat going to New Orleans was a fat, wallowing hotel, honeycombed with rooms. He wandered through endless interiors blazing with gaseous light, opulent with scarlet curtains and ornamental mirrors. All the men and women were fashionably dressed. Their faces were unnaturally white, and they all smiled with radiant, fixed grins.

Suddenly from this gay throng there burst a man with a black, blistered face. He seized Johnny and attempted to strangle him. He threw Johnny down, and his knees ground on Johnny's chest. All the men and women gathered around.

JOHNNY

—Help! Pull him off!

No one seemed to understand that this dreadful person was a
murderer and fugitive. No one seemed to understand that this broad palace concealed a crime so dark and a secret so dreadful that it had never been put into print. The men and women began to run here and there, waving their arms, swinging their canes, but all still smiling happily. They didn't seem to know that the boat was sinking from a gash beneath the water line. No one tried to help Johnny, grappling with the stuffed body of his assailant, who uttered fiendish grunts and shrieks.

He saw then that all the men and women were dolls, jiggling and bouncing on hooks and ledges. They began to tumble down on him, shrunken, disintegrating, in a dreadful rain. He was floating down the river in a canopied bed, which was gradually sinking in the yellow water, dolls and all. He held the doll Jeemie, in fact a dead child with faintly negroid features. The bed was sinking; he was going down fully clothed in cold water.

A woman swam nearby, her dress soaked to her body. The flood flung them together. She rose and threw her arms around his neck. He struggled to keep his head above. His hand gripping her dress tore it away exposing . . .

The marriage license which he held in his hand was wet as he floated downstream, turning over and over like a
carte de visite
photograph. The script was still legible on the fleshlike parchment.

This is to certify that I have this day joined in the bonds of holy matrimony John Wickliff Shawnessy and . . .

The print ran and blurred. The parchment was a map of Raintree County. A red gash had been torn in it, the wound was bleeding, the whole map was covered with dark blood, staining his hands and covering him with shame and a hideous fear from which he kept trying to awaken with small choked cries. . . .

He awoke. He had no idea where he was. A face was leaning over his face, almost as though it had been drinking his breath.

—Johnny, what in the world's the matter? It's me, honey! Wake up!

In gaslight enfeebled by the gray dawn coming through the window, he recognized the face of his wife Susanna, lips, eyelids, and cheeks faintly swollen by love and sleep.

And that was how Johnny Shawnessy, in a single day and night,
left Raintree County for the first time in his life, crossed the river that divided North from South, and came to his marriage bed at last a long way from home and in an alien earth. And that was how he discovered a dark land and a dark sweet love together in the night, and, in the days that followed, great rivers going to the gulf, majestic steamboats stacking to the piers, music on bright waters, rank odors rising from off swamps, and a city at the river's mouth, the Mistress of the Delta, languorous and enchanting, steeping in beauty and incantation the oldest, darkest crime in all the world; that was how he found white columns beside the river, and eternal summer like a memory of his prehistoric childhood—a dark land and a dark sweet love together. But he found also that he couldn't wholly forget a leafless tree that waited for his return in the cold December of Raintree County beside the little river, nor a face with wide green eyes that made hot tears of love in the night, nor a stone at the limit of the land—no, he couldn't have forgotten them though he had steeped himself

IN THIS DARKBLOODED AND DELICIOUS LAND
NOT ONCE,
BUT

—S
EVEN TIMES
, the Senator said. Laugh if you will, gentlemen, but back in those days I was a brute of a boy.

Somewhere down the street a boy touched off a cannoncracker. Mr. Shawnessy jumped, felt unhappy. The Senator was approached by delegates of the Sitting and Sewing Society, whose hands he pumped for a while.