The Handsome Road (24 page)

He reached across the desk and stroked her hand. “Oh, come on. Try it around your shoulders.”

“No thank you,” repeated Corrie May. She turned around and went to the door. “I don’t need it, Mr. Gilday.”

Before he could answer she had shut the door behind her. She ran to the back entrance, and stood there a moment holding the duster. Jed was giving directions to a group of Negro men who wanted to see one of the government agents. She looked at Jed’s ruddy honest face, and when he saw her and grinned it was as if somebody had lit a lamp.

“Gee, you been running?” he inquired. “You’re all flushed up in the face. It’s right becoming.”

The Negroes were ambling into the courthouse. Corrie May stood where she was. She had several more offices to clean, but she wanted to talk to Jed; it didn’t matter what about, but just to get a reminder of his friendly respectfulness. It didn’t matter either if she neglected her work. She was probably going to lose her job anyway.

“I got a letter from my mother,” Jed was saying. “She says it’s mighty cold up home now. Snowing.”

“Sho ’nough?” said Corrie May. “I ain’t never seen it snow.”

“It’s right pretty,” said Jed. “Gets all over everything, and freezes. We ride in sleighs.”

“What’s a sleigh?” Corrie May asked.

“Well, it’s like a carriage, only it’s got runners instead of wheels, and bells. It’s fun. You’d like it.”

She leaned back against the wall. “You make it sound so nice. I reckon I’d like everything up there. Don’t you miss it?”

He smiled and sighed at once. “I sure do. Been about three years now since I left home.”

“Then you wasn’t in the army from the beginning of the war?”

He shook his head. “No. Truth is, I didn’t see much use for me to be in it at all. I didn’t know nothing about this part of the country, and I had to make a living for my mother. But then, you know how it is.” He grinned sheepishly. “They got me in the conscription.”

“Oh, they had conscription up there too?” She was surprised. With their wonderful ideal of freeing the slaves and making the country liberal she shouldn’t think they’d have needed any conscription for Northern soldiers.

“I expect they always have conscription when they have a war, don’t they?” Jed asked. “But of course it was for the right, saving the Union and all.”

“Yes, I guess so. But they worked it right up there, I reckon, didn’t they? Up there where everybody is equal.”

“What you mean, worked it right?”

“I mean, took all the men regardless.”

“Oh yes, except they made exemptions for men with young children, and them as wasn’t well.” Jed’s eyes went to the blue ribbon in her hair and he smiled admiringly. “And of course,” he added, “them as could pay for exemption.”

Corrie May dropped the duster. Jed bent to pick it up for her. She felt her mouth fall open. But it must be she just hadn’t understood.

“What you mean, Jed, them as could pay for exemption?”

“Why I mean, if a man was conscripted and didn’t want to go to war, if he had money he could pay three hundred dollars and they’d let him stay home.”

“You mean—the rich men didn’t have to fight?”

“Well, not if they was rich enough,” said Jed. “Of course it got hard after awhile, for with every new draft they made it tougher. I hear some men that had lots of money paid over and over so as to keep out of it.”

“That was up
North?
”
said Corrie May in a strained incredulous voice.

“Why Corrie May, what’s the matter with you? You look like you got a pain.”

“I ain’t got no pain. Why didn’t you pay to stay home and keep your arm where God put it?”

He gave a short laugh. “Why Corrie May, where you think I’d ever get so much money?”

She drew a long breath. “You wouldn’t,” she said slowly. “You never will, either. You ain’t smart.”

“Lord, child,” said Jed, “I ain’t never made out to be very smart.” He patted her arm. “But I’m smart enough to know a pretty girl when I see one. You do look dressed up with that ribbon in your hair. Be sure to wear it to the barbecue Sunday.”

She wheeled around and faced him. “Jed, I ain’t going to no barbecue. And here’s your ribbon. You better give it to some girl that ain’t no smarter than you.”

“Why Corrie May!” He took a step away from her, astonished and hurt. “What did I say to make you mad?”

“Oh, nothing. I couldn’t tell you if I talked a thousand years. God just makes some people stupid, I reckon, so they can do the dirty work for them that’s smart. And I’m getting to be smart. So you keep your ribbon and you keep your snow and your sleighs with bells on and your blasted North. Free and equal! You make me laugh. You’re gonta make the South like the North! Well, you needn’t bother, mister, because the South is already like the North. There’s just two kinds of people in both places, and one kind gets what they want and the other kind wanders around believing what they’re told about flags and getting their arm shot off to lay it on their country’s altar. Hell and high water. You!”

She started to rush in, but Jed barred the door. He had heard her with such uncomprehending amazement that even now he spoke breathlessly and his mind could grasp only the obvious fact that she was furious. “Corrie May, please tell me what I did! I didn’t mean nothing!”

“Oh, you never will mean nothing. You better go back home to Indiana and pray God to take care of you, for there ain’t nobody else ever gonta do it. And let me in.”

She threw the ribbon on the floor and rushed past him. Her blood inside of her was boiling and waves of anger were beating in her head, anger not at anybody nor any circumstance, but at herself for having been so foolish as once more to have been taken captive by those rusty traps of duty and honesty in which the rich ensnared the poor. Look at the people who believed them—her brothers who had died in the swamp, Jed who had to start over because he couldn’t pay for exemption and thus had lost his arm and his trade, her mother who had died old and stricken while she was still young in years. And the people who were too clever to believe them, like Mr. Gilday, dressed in broadcloth and carried in their pockets rolls of bills two inches thick. Corrie May put her hand on the doorknob of Mr. Gilday’s office and went in.

Mr. Gilday was talking to a scrubby, faded man in a Confederate uniform so worn you could barely tell it had ever been gray. It had no buttons, for the law said no man could appear on the street in a Confederate uniform, and when it was pointed out that many men had no other clothes the law was amended to read that all insignia and buttons must come off. If a man who hadn’t heard of the decree appeared on the street the carpetbaggers amused themselves by sending Negroes to rip the buttons off. The man at Mr. Gilday’s desk was listening to some orders with the hangdog gratitude of a man who had been knocked around more than he could stand. As Corrie May closed the door she heard him say,

“I am very grateful, Mr. Gilday. It’s good of you.”

“Well, get along now,” said Mr. Gilday. He twisted his finger in the gold watch-chain that hung across his vest. “Mind you go every day, weather no excuse.”

“Yes, I understand.”

The stranger bowed politely. He was highclass, you could tell that by the way he spoke his words and the cleanness of his pitiful uniform. Corrie May’s lip curled with contempt. Slavedriver. Let him take the consequences of his damned war. Good for him.

She watched him go past her and out of the doorway. Mr. Gilday turned, his eyes sweeping her up and down with that look that always made her feel as if her clothes were transparent.

“You want something?” he inquired, with that little twist at the side of his mouth that could only be called a smile and yet wasn’t like a smile.

“Yes,” said Corrie May. She went up to the desk and leaned across it. “You still got that shawl, Mr. Gilday?” she asked.

His thick eyebrows tilted slightly in surprise. “Sure,” he returned, “I still got it.”

“I been thinking,” Corrie May said clearly. “I got an awful hankering after that shawl. It sho is a pretty thing.”

Resting his elbows on the desk, Mr. Gilday folded his hands one on top of the other and put his chin upon them. “Well, well, well,” he commented dryly. “So you’re beginning to get some sense.”

“Yes,” said Corrie May, “I’m beginning to get some sense.”

Mr. Gilday began to chuckle softly. It was less in joy at her presence than in triumph for having conquered something.

“Sure,” said Mr. Gilday, “you can have that shawl. I kind of thought you’d take it, after you thought about it awhile.”

Corrie May began to laugh too. She made a dodge of her head toward the closed door. “Who’s your friend?” she asked.

“He’s going to carry the mail.”

“Oh,” she said. It was as though they were talking over a conspiracy. She felt a sense of amused pleasure.

“I got a contract to carry the mail,” said Mr. Gilday. “Get a hundred dollars a month.”

“That’s a lot for just toting mail,” she remarked. “But how come he’s gonta take it?”

“I pay him forty dollars a month.” Mr. Gilday reached out and stroked her neck down to where it met her collar. “That’s the idea, baby. Let the damn fools do the work.”

Corrie May smiled and glanced at the door. She felt completely at ease. But Mr. Gilday had sobered. He was watching her with that intent regard of his, as if he could look through her eyes and see everything on the inside of her head.

There was a pause. Corrie May raised herself to sit on the desk, her hands laced in her lap. Gilday reached out and laid his hand over hers. She smiled at him. For a little while they sat there, looking at each other with comradely interest. It was as if they had been friends for years and had such mutual understanding they had no need for talk to clarify it. At length Corrie May inquired,

“Mr. Gilday, was you in the army during the war?”

He gave a little chuckle. “Lord no. Didn’t you think I had more sense than that?”

“I thought you had,” said Corrie May. “How’d you get out of the conscription?”

“Paid for exemption,” returned Gilday. “How’d you think?”

“That’s what I thought. Folks that’s got money enough can do practically like they please, can’t they?”

“Sure,” said Gilday. He nodded pleasantly.

“But go on,” urged Corrie May. “How’d you get so much money? Was you rich before the war?”

“Not a bit of it. Truth was, I got fired out of a good job down in these parts just a year or so before the war broke out, and I was pretty bad off. But lucky as it happened, when I went back North I got in with a fellow that ran a clothing factory—cheap men’s suits, and all that—and we got a contract to supply some army uniforms. Right at the beginning of the war practically any man that manufactured anything could get a contract to supply it to the army.”

“Oh,” she said, with increasing respect. “So even then you was making money out of the government?”

“Sure thing,” Gilday assured her. He laughed at the recollection. “Corrie May, I tell you those were times. Everybody was bewildered at the thought of a war, the government most of all. Men were being dragged in from everywhere to be soldiers, and no clothes, no shoes, no guns, no saddles, no blankets, no nothing was ready for ’em. So the factory men took orders to supply the stuff, and of course there wasn’t that much wool or leather in the country—” He laughed again and slapped her hands merrily.

She leaned forward. “So how did you do it?”

“Why, we made ’em uniforms out of shoddy.”

“Shoddy? What’s that?”

“Well, baby, it’s practically anything you can lay hands on. It’s old rags you buy for junk and ravel up and weave again into cloth, it’s floor-scrapings, it’s crokers-sacks, it’s flour-bags, it’s anything. You weave it up, you dye the cloth blue and you glaze it and iron it out shiny, and that damn fool of a United States government pays you better prices than they ever paid before for good woollens, and you go home and kneel down and thank the good Lord that put so many trustful halfwits on earth.”

“But didn’t the cloth fall to pieces?” she asked in astonishment.

“Of course it did. Soon as the troops got rained on, or even if it didn’t rain some of them uniforms wouldn’t stand two days’ march. But by that time they’re a long way from Washington and who cares anyhow? They were brought out to fight, not to complain because they wasn’t quite comfortable.”

Corrie May laughed out loud. “You’re a fine patriot, you are.”

“Why baby,” said Gilday in a voice of mock-injury, “I’m one of the finest patriots you ever did see. I bought government bonds and I gave money to young ladies that came around asking subscriptions for hospitals, and I went to Soldiers’ Aid bazaars and bought pincushions and penwipers and crocheted antimacassars and all like that—” He joined the laughter she was not even trying to suppress. “Why Corrie May,” he added, “if I hadn’t been known as a fine patriotic citizen do you think the government would have appointed me to come down here to look out for the niggers and see to it them aristocrats paid their taxes?”

Corrie May shook her head awesomely. With admiration that was almost reverence she said, “Mr. Gilday, I reckon you are the
most
lowdown man I ever did see.”

Gilday smiled. His eyes moved over her. He repeated that mean, triumphant chuckle she had learned to know so well. “I expect I am, baby,” he agreed. He took his hands off hers and folded them on the desk as he continued to regard her with steady amusement.

She asked abruptly, “Mr. Gilday, who are you? Where do you come from?”

Without moving his little eyes from her he answered, “If you mean where was I born, it was on a farm in Ulster county, up in York state, near Kingston.”

His eyes seemed to get narrower still. Then he was not looking at her. He was looking past her, as if he could see through the wall to that place in Ulster county of which her question had reminded him. His mouth became tight, as if he had been about to say something and had thought better of it.

“Funny about you,” said Corrie May musingly. “Everything you do is wicked and yet it seems like you somehow ought to do it.”

“Ought to?” he repeated. “Sure I ought to.”