Raintree County (66 page)

Johnny stood looking at his wife Susanna, whose left hand now nervously touched the scar on her breast, while her violet eyes glared indignation at him, her little foot stamped, and her breath panted through her pouting lips. Something hot gripped his entrails, and he felt like vomiting. A man had almost lost his life for looking at a scar on the breast of this girl. He stood, appalled at himself and the black moment that had sprung upon him from ambush in this genial place, among these hospitable people who loved him and had been so good to him.

—Hell, Cousin Bobby said, if Johnny wants to wrastle me in the sight of my own hands, I don't give a goddam. I want the boy to have a good time.

Later, after a couple of tall rum punches, Cousin Bobby remarked privily to Johnny,

—I assure you, son, I wouldn't kill a thousand dollars' worth of nigger just because the boy looked a little too long at my cousin's lovely tit. Frankly, I think the boy showed good taste. But you have to learn 'em young, as my old man used to say.

The thing passed over very well, and Susanna even made it up to Johnny privately that night. She crawled across his knees and said,

—Give me a good spanking, Johnny. I deserve it. Go on and hit me
hard,
honey.

He looked at her back in the warm dark—soft olive, with its graceful furrow. Suddenly, he imagined it covered with long, cruel gashes.

He didn't sleep at all well that night, and for the first time he began to want to leave the South.

During all this time, he had been absorbed in a highly personal preoccupation with the woman he had married. All the blind stirrings, hungers, and subtle lusts awakened in him by the feverflower of New Orleans seemed to embody themselves at last in her. Upon
her catlike body, a creature of this earth, this South, this river, and this city, he sought to exhaust and still them. Through the long days he yearned for her and for the night as she for him.

Susanna had returned to her home as to a conquest. In its congenial air, her beauty acquired a hectic emphasis. Everywhere she attracted attention. But she remained entirely true to Johnny and exhibited him everywhere with open pride. Her whole effort during their time in the South was to make him accept and love this life in which she had been reared and from which, curiously, she had fled to find her love.

It was almost at the end of their stay in the South that Susanna made a special trip with him.

—It's a surprise, she said. I won't tell you where we're going.

They drove for miles north of the city and at last turned into a narrow lane overgrown with grass. There was a smell of rottenness and the river. In places the swamp oozed across the road.

—They haven't kept the levee in repair here, Susanna said.

The path they were following became lost in marshy growth, though now and then they found surviving traces of the way. At last close to the river, they passed through an ornamental gate into the remains of a once classic garden. Rare flowers and rank weeds grew thickly together around chunks of old statues and sections of fence. They passed pools of dark water, misted with mosquitoes. As they walked in the insufferable, still heat, a peculiar smile kept tugging at Susanna's pout.

At last they reached stone steps going up to a charred verandah. They stood on the roofless, uncolumned porch and looked down into a rectangular pit like a huge sunken grave, boiling with weeds so dense and tall that Johnny could scarcely see to the base of their stalks.

—Here's where I lived when I was a little girl, Johnny, Susanna said.

As she stood looking down at this great, festering grave of something that had once been her life, Johnny reconstructed the mansion in his mind, building it up from the shadow-smudge of an old daguerreotype. The desolate tangle of the garden became once more barbered and coolly lovely. An old black gardener worked among the roses and the lilies. The house reared its white walls from a
verandah shaded with slender and tall columns. On the steps stood a little girl with black hair and violet eyes clutching under her arm an unburnt doll. Father and mother stood beside her, and in the shadow of the porch, leaning against a column, was a darkskinned woman with tragically lovely eyes.

—How did it burn, Susanna?

—No one knows, she said.

She stared fixedly into the grave.

—How—how many died?

—Three, she said. Mamma and Daddy and Henrietta. You saw their picture.

—Only those three?

—Yes. Only those three. I was lucky to get out alive. I slept next to Henrietta's room, and she was burnt.

—How old were you then?

—Just seven, she said.

—You remember it, of course?

—Yes, she said evasively.

—Why wasn't it rebuilt?

—I don't know, she said. There was a controversy over ownership. No one wanted to build again.

Later, she walked back in the direction of the river and hunted around a long time for something.

—There used to be a little cabin here, she said, but I guess it's gone.

After that, they drove away and, returning to the main road, stopped some distance down at a small but wellkept cemetery. Susanna led the way through the filigree gates and down a walk shaded with lindens to a little marble fountain featuring motifs of resurrection. She stopped by two stones near-by, enclosed in a rusty iron fence.

—Here's where my daddy and mamma are buried, she said. Johnny read the inscription:

JAMES SEYMOUR DRAKE
and
wife REBECCA
Died August 16, 1844

—August 16, Johnny said. Why, that's today!

Susanna had the same strange little smile as she studied the grave. She kept glancing shyly at Johnny as if to see if he approved. Confining himself to cautious banalities, he followed her to a less pretentious plot, set clearly apart from the rest of the cemetery. Here there were many mounds but few stones. Johnny read some of the inscriptions in passing:

Here Lies Old Ned, A Good Slave

. . .

Eliza Gone to Heaven

. . .

This Stone Is Erected to the Memory of Dred
Who Was Brought to This Country from
Africa
in 1780
and Died a Christian in the Arms
of His Master, John Drake
at the Age of 82.

There were no last names on these stones. Then Susanna stopped before an exceptionally fine stone on which was the following inscription:

Here Lies HENRIETTA COURTNEY
Died August 16, 1844.

—Here's where they buried Henrietta, Susanna said. She took care of me. You can't imagine how lovely she was, Johnny. She was like a great lady. In fact, she
was
a great lady. I'm not ashamed to say it. Of course, she
was
a Nigro.

—Was—was she a slave?

—O, no! Susanna said. She came from Cuba—Havana, that is. That's where I was born. Daddy was there several years, and Henrietta came back with us from there. It's funny now to think of her lying there. That is, if she
is
lying there.

She paused and looked almost shyly at Johnny.

—How's that? Johnny said.

—Some people say the graves were mixed. It's sort of a family scandal. I had an aunt several years ago said she wasn't sure but that nigger hussy Henrietta was sleeping in Mamma's grave.

—How could that be? Johnny said.

—O, they could hardly tell the women apart they were burned so bad. Though it's funny, because Mamma was kind of fat and Henrietta was slim.

—How could they make the mistake then?

—O, I don't know, Susanna said. You know how some people will blab. This particular aunt had never spoken to Daddy anyway for years. It's funny, isn't it, to think of them lying down there. And here I am. Is that you, down there, Henrietta?

Susanna cocked her ear prettily to the silent grave.

Johnny studied the grave. A woman lay beneath this earth, hair, eyebrows, eyelashes seared off by fire, the same fire that had touched the shoulder of the girl beside him. He and Susanna looked silently a long time at the grave, but the earth gave no sign, except to remain beautiful with summer. It had taken back the white flesh and the black, made no distinction between them. Now they lay beside the river, all passion stilled.

The following day he took Cousin Bobby aside.

—Bobby, he said. There's something I thought maybe you could tell me. What's all this about Susanna's family and that darn fire and the identification of the bodies?

Cousin Bobby laughed disarmingly and took Johnny affectionately by the arm.

—Just one of these old family skeletons, John. You know how crabby and suspicious women are! After all it was a pretty gruesome situation, those bodies burned beyond recognition. They hadn't any trouble identifying the man, but the women were another matter. Of course, I was just a shaver then. It all had something to do with the location of the bodies when found-—I think they'd fallen through to the cellar. It was a hell of a mess, John, especially, you see, when one of the ladies was nigger. But there's no use digging all that up again.

—Still I'd like to know. After all, I'm married into the family and might as well be privy to its secrets.

—What did Sue tell you?

—She won't talk about it much.

—Well, Cousin Bobby said, weighing his words with an air of studied casualness, it was Sue's Aunt Tabby, sister to Aunt Becky, Sue's mother, who raised special hell over it. You see, Susanna's
father was a queer sort—marvellous guy, everyone loved him, especially the women—but he was headstrong, and then he had a hell of a bad piece of luck. The woman he married—that was Aunt Rebecca—was from one of the finest families down here, and well, to put it brutally, she wasn't all there. She went loony, and it was a pretty bad life for him. You'd have found that out sooner or later, anyway. But don't let it worry you. Most families have a nut in 'em somewhere.

—But about this fire, Johnny said.

Cousin Bobby slowly lit a cigar.

—Well, John—puff, puff—to get back. After the fire Sue's Aunt Tabby charged into the mess, and there was a fight between her and Aunt Prissy—that was Uncle Jim's sister. Why, they couldn't even bury the bodies for a while. There
were
some odd wrinkles to the case. Two of the bodies were glued right together by the fire—sort of morbid—no use going into that.

He puffed on his cigar.

—So? Johnny said.

—So, Cousin Bobby said, what the hell!—it looked like there might have been foul play. I mean, why didn't they wake up? Everyone else did.

—I don't know, Johnny said. Why didn't they?

Cousin Bobby got interested in the story. It was evidently something he knew a lot about. He drew hard on his cigar and began to talk a little more freely.

—That's just it. Why didn't they wake up? And then as I said before, there was this question of identifying the bodies. Which was the odd woman?

—I don't know, Johnny said. Which?

—She was found some distance away from those two. What with coroner's autopsies and Aunt Tabby getting into it, and Aunt Prissy—that's the younger sister who always idolized Uncle Jim—trying to hush it all up, it was some story. There was some talk of Uncle Jim and—and the woman he was found with being shot in their bed.

—The woman he was found with?

—Act your age, John, Cousin Bobby said. Anyway, the thing was hushed up, and Uncle Jim was buried with the woman he was found with, and that was that. Probably, the whole thing was a lot of petticoat
gossip. Aunt Tabby had it in for Uncle Jim ever since he beat the hell out of her husband.

Cousin Bobby stopped, laughed, and shook his head.

—You sure are getting a dose of family skeletons, John, he said.

—Go on, Johnny said. What for?

Cousin Bobby paused a moment, but the story was clearly too good to keep.

—The way they tell it, he said, Uncle Jim walked into a saloon in downtown New Orleans and took Uncle Buzbee by the collar and pulled him up. Neither man said a word. Uncle Jim had his horsewhip in his hand, and he started in hitting Uncle Buzbee. He hit him and hit him—on the face and the chest—and Uncle Buzbee stood there and took it till he dropped. Uncle Jim walked out, and no charges were brought. But after that Uncle Buzbee was a broken man and never showed his face in public again. He was a loose talker when he was drunk, and he must have said something. That wasn't so very long after Uncle Jim came back from Havana. Well, after that, people didn't talk—at least openly.

—Talk? Johnny said. What about? O, I suppose about Uncle Jim and Henrietta.

Cousin Bobby looked blandly at Johnny and made a smoke ring.

—I suppose so, he said. You know how women are. And this family is worse than most. I don't want to scare you, boy, but you won't lead a quiet life with that little woman, God bless her.

—Does Susanna know all this? Johnny asked.

—Well, of course, people don't talk about it around her. But since Aunt Prissy ran off with Susanna up to your country and sort of looked after her for years, she probably gave her the lowdown on it.

—Thanks a lot, Johnny said, for clearing things up.

He was more confused than ever. And somehow he didn't want to pursue the subject any farther.

That night, he lay a long time awake thinking of many things. Around him lay the putrid flower of the City of New Orleans, rankly nodding its head above the magnolia swamp. The languid stream of the river, draining all the waters of middle America, found its way here through many changing channels to the sea. Mingled with its yellow tide was the water of a little river far away in Raintree County, the legendary Shawmucky. The girl beside him lay in
a characteristic posture, her knees drawn up, her head resting on her two hands pressed together. Her deep lips were open, the heavy lids lay lightly on her violet eyes. Susanna!
I had a dream the other night when everything was still. . . .

It seemed to him then that she lay there couched in mystery like a sphinx, and that her presence and her musical name meant something tragic and mysterious which was at the heart of all human existence. Surely a strange fate had ferried this scarred, lovely creature up the great river to his arms.