The Handsome Road (29 page)

The weather had brightened and the air smelt like spring. Corrie May stood on the street watching people pass. None of them noticed her. She just stood there, feeling sick and too heavy to walk. After awhile she sat down on the curb.

There was a ticklish feeling in her stomach. She tried to remember when she had last eaten anything. Yesterday, maybe. Or the day before. No, yesterday. She remembered slipping down to the back of the house and finding some cornbread and an old cabbage head in the garbage bucket. Maybe that was why she had this funny feeling as if she wanted to be sick and yet couldn’t be. She was so miserable she could think no further. She was only aware of her misery.

A Negro policeman passing by shoved her with his foot and told her to move on. She got up obediently, glad the weather had grown mild, for her dress was no good for warmth. It was a plaid silk that had looked very fine when she had bought it, but she had never learned to tell the difference between silk that was really fine and silk that merely looked it, and this had begun to split with its third wearing.

The policeman had told her to move on, and she was moving almost mechanically. Without paying much attention to where she was going, she turned toward the wharfs. In the bright spring sunshine she stood watching Negro laborers load the boats. There weren’t nearly as many boats as there used to be. Corrie May looked around, remembering how she used to enjoy standing on the wharfs to watch the world go up and down the river. Funny how when you lived on the river your whole life centered on it. If she was happy and wanted to celebrate she came to the wharfs, and in her moments of deepest perplexity she came to the wharfs, as she had done now without thinking, as though the wharfs were sure always to provide what she needed. Whatever happened, the Mississippi went on and on, heaving its golden waters to the sea unchanged and unconcerned. It seemed to her now that the river was the only thing in the world that had not changed in her lifetime.

Everything else had changed, and everybody, and now here she stood sick and tired and hungry with nobody in the world to care what became of her. But she cared. Oh, she did care, and standing here in the familiar sun by the familiar river Corrie May knew she cared in spite of herself, as if there were a little something inside of her that kept shouting through her despair that she didn’t have to be beaten even now. You weren’t beaten as long as you were so determined to stay alive that you’d do anything, anything in the world, to keep going.

Only now there were two people that had to be kept going, herself and her baby. She was startled to recall that she had even imagined she would not care if her baby died. She hadn’t wanted it; she had hated it because it belonged to Gilday who had deserted her, but after all it was her baby too. Why, maybe it was her child who was going to be somebody, basing its rise in the world on its mother’s knowledge that if you made up your mind to it you could stand anything. That would be something to leave a child. If you couldn’t give it a big house and a plantation you could give it the ability to stand anything.

She was leaning against a box of freight, watching a Negro man load some empty hogsheads into a wagon. He climbed in and turned the mule toward the road that led out to the plantations. It reminded Corrie May of the day she had been so sunk in discouragement and had ridden out to Ardeith to ask Ann for work. Ann had been very sweet that day. To tell the truth, she always had been. With all her silliness and her exasperating luxury, she had been kind-hearted—and it occurred to Corrie May that of all the people she had ever known, how few there were from whom she had never experienced anything but kindness.

The driver of the wagon stopped a moment to lean out and chat with another Negro lounging about the wharf. Corrie May shuddered. No, she couldn’t. After throwing that ten-dollar bill in Ann’s face like that, she couldn’t ask her for a meal now. She couldn’t even ask for the ten dollars, for she had already received it, enclosed with a single sheet of paper with writing on it. She couldn’t read the writing and had shown it to Gilday. He read it to her: “To Corrie May Upjohn, in payment of loan, Ann Sheramy Larne.” She remembered how Gilday had laughed when he read it, and how she had turned red, ashamed. Today it seemed to her that she would rather jump off the wharf into the river than ask Ann for a piece of cornbread.

But what was it she had been thinking?—that she could stand anything. Lord, this was harder than being hungry. But if you were going to tell your child that the main idea was to stay alive and keep going, you must be able to say too that there were times when you gathered up your pride and swallowed it like a pill and pretended you didn’t care. The wagon-driver wasn’t noticing her. She climbed up and huddled into a knot behind the hogsheads. He finished his talk with his friend and started the mule.

“I’m going to be sweet,” Corrie May told herself grimly as the wagon bumped over the rutty road. That thieving Gilday should have fixed this road. It was as rough as a forest trail. “I’m going to be nice and proper. I’m going to apologize for acting so stuck-up that day, and I’ll tell her I want to work. I could do field-work if I had a good dish of victuals every day. And even if she’s poor she’s got victuals growing on the place. I’ll work for my eating.”

The thought was already making her feel better. Oh sure, she was going to have a baby. But she didn’t have to whine like one of these fine ladies that acted as if they couldn’t do a thing but sit around and be waited on. She remembered how Ann had lounged about in her frilly dressing-gowns before little Denis was born, and she laughed derisively.

The wagon stopped before a storehouse about a mile from the gates of Ardeith. As the driver started to unload the empty hogsheads he caught sight of her.

“Why hey, white girl,” he demanded, “what you doin’?”

She smiled at him. “I just wanted a ride out the road. I wasn’t hindering you.”

“Well, you better get off now,” he told her. “I got my work to do.”

“You ain’t going no further?” she asked hopefully.

“No, I ain’t. Got to go in my house and have my old woman fix my dinner.”

Dinner. Corrie May’s stomach gave a jump. “Where you live?” she inquired.

He pointed to a cabin a long way out in the field, toward the levee. “Say, get along wid you, white girl,” he urged good-naturedly. “I got to be gettin’ home.”

“All right,” she acquiesced, and climbed down.

Ardeith was up the road. If she could keep walking long enough she could get there. She started to plod. How strange the fields looked. Here and there were a few laborers working, but not many. Half the ground was grown up in grass. But she had very little energy for noticing. She had to keep walking. No matter how tired she was, she had to put one foot in front of the other and keep doing it. If she could do it long enough she’d get there.

At last when her legs were aching and her head throbbing, she came to the gates of Ardeith. She’d go in by the front gate. Maybe it wasn’t respectful, but around to the back was such a long way.

But the great iron gates were shut and locked. Odd. She had never known they had a lock on them. Corrie May put her face to the bars and looked in. Away down at the end of the oak avenue was the manor, its white columns shining through the moss as they always had, but between the iron fence and the house was a jungly growth of weeds, some of them shoulder-high. Here and there she could see flowerbeds not quite grown over, and oleander and gardenia bushes struggling bravely against the encroachers. Only the avenue was clear, though it was grassy between the carriage-tracks. Up near the front steps a little white boy and a little Negro were throwing a ball. That little boy must be Denis Larne. Why, he was a big child. Seven or eight years old. And husky too, by the way he was running around. If he’d been her child, Corrie May thought, she wouldn’t have let him play with any ball, she’d have set him to pulling up weeds. These idiotic aristocrats! Not even war and poverty could put any sense into them. Probably it hadn’t entered Ann’s head that a healthy little boy could be taught to make himself useful.

The ball bounced in a wheel-track on the avenue and rolled down toward the gate. The children ran after it. As Denis caught the ball and tossed it to his companion, Corrie May called.

“Please, little boy! Denis!”

Denis turned toward the gate and saw her through the bars.

“Come here a minute, will you?”

He came up to the gate. “Ma’am?”

“You’s Denis Larne, ain’t you?” she inquired.

“Yes ma’am,” he answered politely, “I’m Denis Larne.”

“Could you please let me in?” asked Corrie May. “I got some business to do with your mother.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I haven’t the key to the gates. My mother has it.” How precisely he spoke, with the same beautiful inflection she had listened to and envied before the war. “My mother is in the kitchen, around behind the house,” said Denis. “Maybe if you went back there she’d let you in.”

“Oh, all right,” said Corrie May scornfully. She started around the estate, forgetting in her contempt how tired she was. That young one and his exquisite syllables and all those weeds around the house. Just like her, and all of them, putting fine manners ahead of good sense.

Some of the fields were being worked for cotton. They all had a neglected look, but it seemed to her she’d heard talk about how folks were putting in more cotton now, since Congress was going to take off the cotton tax. It had been impossible to collect it. Lord, but she was tired. She paused and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to look too tired. Ann wouldn’t give her work if she didn’t look strong enough to do it. Here was the back gate, but it was locked too.

The back yard was laid out in a vegetable garden, and a young girl was working there, training some bean-vines over the wooden supports set up for them. Near the door of the kitchen-house was a washtub, and the clothes were hanging out to dry on a line stretched between two fig trees.

“Please, miss?” Corrie May called.

The girl in the garden turned and came toward the gate. She was tall and thin, with a knot of black hair at the nape of her neck, and she was dressed in an ancient blue calico darned at the armholes. Corrie May thought she had the sharpest face she had ever seen. “A mean woman,” was her first opinion.

“What did you want?” the girl asked as she reached the gate.

“I’d like to see Mrs. Larne,” said Corrie May. “Could you please ma’am let me in?”

“What do you want with her?”

“I want to ask for a job of work, please ma’am.”

“I’m afraid we have no work to offer.” The girl spoke shortly, as if she had been bothered this way before.

“Please ma’am let me see her,” urged Corrie May, remembering that she must be humble. “I need work something awful. Please let me ask her myself.”

“Oh—very well.” Taking a key from her pocket the girl unlocked the gate. Corrie May looked up at her, marveling that such a young girl could have such a bitter face. She began to remember—the day she had stood in the street to watch the troops march, the Ardeith carriage driving up, and an elegant child in a gown of spotted muslin dropping a curtsey as she murmured, “Good morning, Uncle Alan.” It must be Miss Cynthia Larne.

She went up to the door of the kitchen-house. There was a fire going in the stove, and by the table Ann sat cutting a head of collards into strips like shoestrings on the plate. At her elbow was a plate of muffins. For an instant Corrie May stood there and looked at her. Ann’s face was flushed from working at the stove, and her hair had slipped in little damp tendrils over her forehead. She had on a dress that had been some kind of print, but it had faded till the design was nearly gone, and at the neck it had lost a button and was held together with a pin. And cutting up collards. Good heavens above. Slave-rations.

As Ann became aware of the shadow in the doorway she raised her head with a puzzled expression.

“Why Miss Ann,” said Corrie May, advancing a step, “don’t you know me?”

Ann laid down the knife and fork and stood up. “Corrie—May—Upjohn,” she said slowly. Then she exclaimed, “What do you want with me? Who let you in?”

“Miss Cynthia let me in,” Corrie May answered. “I wanted to see you.” Though she had meant to be very deferential and ask for work properly, the odor of the collards came to her nostrils and there on the table was that plate of muffins, and behind Ann she caught sight of a wire safe full of food, milk and a slab of side-meat and oranges piled up on the shelf. Her head got light and something twitched at the bottom of her stomach and she dropped into a chair on her side of the table, gasping, “Miss Ann, for God’s sake give me something to eat!”

Ann came slowly around the table. When she spoke her voice was thin with amazement.

“Why—do you mean you’re hungry?”

Corrie May nodded. She sat with her elbows on the table and her suddenly damp forehead in her hands. “I ain’t had nothing to eat since yesterday I got some scraps out of a garbage can.”

There was a silence. It lasted so long that the lightness passed away from Corrie May’s head and her stomach righted itself and she was able to look up. Ann still stood by the kitchen table, looking at her, and not moving at all. On a shelf at the side was a bucket of water with a dipper in it. Corrie May asked,

“Could I please ma’am have a drink?”

As Ann still did not say anything she took this for permission and went to the bucket. A dipper-full of water made her feel better. She turned around. Ann’s eyes had followed her. Corrie May began,

“Miss Ann, I reckon you thought I was kind of crazy, acting like that. But what I meant to say was, I want to come back and work for you. If you ain’t got no money that’s all right, I’ll work the best I can if you’ll let me eat here. I’d do anything in the world for you if you’d just give me one of them muffins there.”

Still Ann did not move. Corrie May reached tentatively toward the plate. As she heard no forbidding words she grabbed a muffin and began to eat.

Ann was watching her. “You’re going to have a baby, aren’t you?” she asked in a strange monotonous voice.