Less than a year after that night, Pauline had twins. But she still wasn’t in love with Bonbon. If he had walked out on her anytime, she would have gone with somebody else who would have been very glad to have her. Not because she had once belonged to this white man, but because she was still as decent as any other black woman on the place could be around him. But he didn’t walk out on her, he came to her more regularly now. He didn’t pick up the twins and bounce them on his knees like he would do his little girl later, but he did bring them food and clothes. He gave them toys at Christmas and he gave them pennies on Saturday to put in Sunday School. No, he didn’t give the money to the children, he gave it to Pauline to give to them. Because he and the twins could never have any close-ness at all. They could never call him papa no matter how many times they heard him in the bed with mama. They couldn’t even carry his name. They were called Guerin like their mother. Billy and Willy Guerin—and they were probably the worst two Billy and Willy the Good Lord had suffered for.
Bonbon was in love with Pauline when he brought her to the big house, but it took years for Pauline to fall in love with Bonbon. She didn’t want to fall in love with this white man because she knew nothing good could come of it. She knew she would have to be his woman long as she lived on the plantation and long as he wanted her, but she didn’t want to hold any feeling for him at all. She wanted it to be “come and go” and nothing else. She figured that after a while it would come to an end, anyhow.
But it didn’t come to an end. Aunt Ca’line said Bonbon didn’t miss coming there a week after he started. He came summer and winter. When the weather was good he usually came in the truck. When it had rained he would come on the horse because the truck would get stalled in the mud. Many times he got wet coming down the quarter and he would have to change his clothes at the fireplace and wrap a blanket round him while Pauline dried the clothes on the back of a chair.
After so many years, Pauline did fall in love with Bonbon. She couldn’t help but fall in love with him. She knew he loved her more than he did his wife up the quarter or his people who lived on the river.
So now the shuck mattress was quiet. There wasn’t any need for all the noise, because now Bonbon and Pauline’s love was much softer—more tender. Aunt Ca’line and Pa Bully could hardly hear the mattress at all from their room. The twins sleeping on their bed in the kitchen probably couldn’t hear the mattress either.
But this was not the only place where Pauline and Bonbon went together. Sometimes it happened at the big house while they made Bishop, Marshall Hebert’s butler, look out for Marshall. Bishop hated what he had to do—but what else could he do? If he had mentioned to Marshall that Bonbon had gone farther than that kitchen, Bonbon, or Marshall himself, probably would have killed him. So he kept his mouth shut. He went out on the front gallery and looked out for Marshall like Bonbon told him to do. Since he wasn’t supposed to be out there unless he was cleaning up or serving someone, Bishop had to keep himself hid. There was a palm tree on the left side of the gallery and he stood behind the tree all the time he was out there. Sometimes he had to stay there an hour. If Bonbon went to sleep he would have to stay even longer.
Marshall never did catch Pauline and Bonbon, but even if he had he probably wouldn’t have done anything about it. Bonbon already had something on Marshall, and long as he held this proof Marshall couldn’t do a thing but go along with him no matter what he did. This went for stealing, too. Marshall knew Bonbon was stealing from him. He had seen a lantern in the crib at night; he had heard the children laughing in there while they shelled corn that Bonbon was going to sell in Bayonne the next day. Marshall had missed hogs, he had missed cows—he had even missed bales of cotton from the barn. But since he couldn’t do a thing about it, he pretended that it wasn’t happening.
Bonbon was a simple man and a brutal man, was the way Aunt Ca’line described him. He was brutal because he had been brought up in a brute-taught world and in brute-taught times. The big house had given him a horse and a whip (he did have a whip at first) and they had told him to ride behind the blacks in the field and get as much work out of them as he could. He did this, but he did more: he fell in love with one of the black women. He couldn’t just take her like he was supposed to take her, like they had given him permission to take her—no, he had to fall in love. When the children came he loved them, too. He couldn’t tell them he loved them, he wasn’t allowed to tell them that. He probably never told it to Pauline, and maybe he never told it to himself. But he could feel it, and when he did he tried to show it by giving them toys and clothes. No, no, no, he never gave it to them, he gave it to Pauline to give to them. When they made five years old he gave them a BB gun to play with together. Aunt Ca’line said the moment they learned how to shoot the gun, nobody and nothing was safe on the place. If they weren’t shooting at another child, they were shooting at a dog or a chicken. They put a hole in the back of Jobbo’s little girl’s neck, and Jobbo had to take the girl to the doctor and pay the doctor bill himself. They shot the mule that Charlie Jordan was riding and the mule threw Charlie in the ditch. While he was trying to get up, Billy and Willy kept on shooting at him. Charlie never did get back on the mule. He ran one way, the mule took off in the other direction.
Aunt Ca’line said the day after the children got the BB gun, she noticed that her number one rooster wasn’t walking straight. The rooster was acting like he was drunk. He didn’t know if he wanted to go left or right.
“What’s wrong with that crazy chicken?” Aunt Ca’line said. “Don’t tell me them two or three little hens out there done finally wored him down—Mr. Grant, catch that chicken for me,” she told Pa Bully.
Pa Bully sat on the bottom step, shelling corn and dropping it on the ground. All of the other chickens ran there to pick corn—all but the rooster. He staggered left, he staggered right; he went backward, he went forward. He looked like a child walking a rail and trying to keep his balance.
“Chip, chip, chip,” Pa Bully said.
Finally, the rooster staggered toward the steps. Pa Bully grabbed him under the wings.
“Both eyes gone,” he said. “Had to be shooting fast to get ’em both like that.”
Aunt Ca’line took the rooster to the other side to show Pauline what her children had done. Pauline and Bonbon were in the kitchen. Bonbon was standing by the window drinking coffee. Pauline sat at the table cutting okra.
“You see what them two little bastards done done my chicken?” Aunt Ca’line said to Pauline.
“Oh, Aunt Ca’line, I’m so sorry,” Pauline said. “That gun ain’t causing nothing but trouble,” she said to Bonbon. Bonbon sipped from his coffee but didn’t say anything. “I’ll pay for him,” Pauline said to Aunt Ca’line.
“Pay for him?” Aunt Ca’line said. “Pay for this rooster? This rooster do the work of five on this plantation, and you go’n pay for him? What you go’n do, give me five roosters?”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Ca’line,” Pauline said.
“You can be sorry if you want,” Aunt Ca’line said, shaking the rooster in front of Pauline’s face. “If I catch either one of them little mulatto bastards on my side again I’m go’n poison him. You hear me? I’m go’n poison the little shit.”
Bonbon never said anything. He didn’t even look at Aunt Ca’line. He just stood there sipping his coffee.
Aunt Ca’line didn’t poison Billy or Willy, she just had the barb-wire fence brought up on the gallery. But that didn’t do any good, either. The children got on the fence and rode it the way you ride a horse. The stickers on the fence didn’t bother them at all. Aunt Ca’line tried to get Marshall Hebert to run electricity through the fence, but Marshall told her that was against the law.
“Ain’t shooting out people chicken eye ’gainst the law?” she asked Marshall. “Ain’t making mules throw old people in the ditch ’gainst the law, too?”
“Yes,” Marshall said. “But I guess we’ll have to put up with it.”
“How long?” Aunt Ca’line asked.
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. “Maybe one day Bonbon’ll get generous and buy them two shotguns. Maybe they’ll load them and shoot at each other at the same time.”
Aunt Ca’line and everybody else on the place waited for Bonbon to buy the two shotguns. He never did.