Saturday, when we came up to the yard, we could see the children standing at the crib. So Marcus and I both knew he wouldn’t have to unload corn today, or if he had to he was going to have plenty help. As I drove the tractor up closer, the children all moved back to look at Marcus. Bonbon was there by the time I had turned off the motor and climbed down.
“See you made it,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He wore a white shirt and brown pants and his white cowboy hat. No khakis today and no boots; brown shoes, shining like new tin.
“Y’all children, there, get on that trailer,” he said. “That corn can’t unload hisself.”
The children climbed up on the trailer and started pitching corn into the crib. But soon they were making a game of it. One would flip up an ear of corn, then the others would throw to hit it before it fell in the crib.
“Hey there,” Bonbon said. “What you think this is, a baseball or something? Throw that thing right.”
The children quit playing and started working the way he wanted them to do. Bonbon watched them a while to make sure they wouldn’t start playing again.
“Mind you up there, now, I don’t play, no,” he said. “You hear me there, Billy Walker?”
“Yassuh.”
“You better.”
He turned to me.
“Little bastards,” he said.
I glanced up at the children. Children are children, I thought, and soon as you turn your back they’ll be playing again.
“Geam, I want you go to New Orleans with me,” Bonbon said.
“New Orleans?”
“Yeah. The old man there. Got to pick up a piece for that hay machine.”
“Well, I’ll have to take a bath and change,” I said.
“Yeah, take the truck,” he said, nodding toward it over by the tool shop.
“What time you leaving?”
“Soon’s you get back. Want get there and come back ’fore night. You need your pay?”
“No, I have a few bucks. I won’t be spending anything in New Orleans.” I glanced at Marcus and looked at Bonbon again. “I reckond Marcus can attend a little business in Bayonne?” I said.
Marcus didn’t have any business to attend in Bayonne (at least he hadn’t told me about any), but I thought I would try to get him off any kind of work Bonbon might have had in mind.
“No. Some other time. Today he got to clean up my yard there,” Bonbon said.
“Your yard?” I said, almost screaming it out.
Bonbon looked at me surprised. I had never answered him quite so impolitely before.
“Something the matter, Geam?” he said, squinting down at me.
I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was frown and shake my head.
“I know what you thinking,” Bonbon said. “Them leafs been there ten years and all a sudden she want them raked up. Women—how you figure them, hanh?”
My heart was jumping too much for me to say anything; and I wouldn’t dare look at Marcus, either.
I didn’t know then that Marcus had seen Louise those two nights, because I hadn’t talked to Sun Brown, yet. But I knew he had been noticing her from the tractor and he was just waiting for the chance to get near that house. Once he got there (where both him and her wanted him to get) he was going to make his move.
“So that’s your job this evening,” Bonbon said. “And mind you, I want that raked, yeah.”
“I’ll rake it,” Marcus said. “Give it the best raking it ever had.”
Bonbon was looking at him. Bonbon was three or four inches taller than Marcus, so now he squinted down at him.
No, this didn’t have anything to do with Marcus hitting Pauline. Bonbon didn’t know what had happened between Marcus and Pauline. Pauline had probably told him she had hit her jaw against a doorknob or that a can of something had fell off the shelf and hit her. Or maybe the clothesline prop had slipped away from the line and hit her while she was hanging clothes. No, this had nothing to do with her. This was all Louise’s doing. She had found out that he had to go to New Orleans and he would be gone for at least half a day.
How? How? How? she had probably thought. How? How? How? And probably, while walking across the yard, she had looked down and seen the leaves—leaves that had been laying there ten, maybe twenty years; leaves on top of leaves on top of leaves; leaves that weren’t leaves any more, but had turned back to dust. Even if Marcus used a shovel and even if he dug six feet in the ground he would never reach the bottom of all those leaves.
I looked at him now. He knew I was going to look at him, and he knew I was going to look at him then. He wanted to grin. He was grinning inside, he was laughing his head off inside.
“Well, it’s going to be cool under those trees,” I said. “Nice and cool under there. Almost like a picnic.”
“It won’t be no picnic,” Bonbon said.
“Almost one,” I said, still looking at Marcus. “I wouldn’t mind having a job like that myself.” I turned to Bonbon now. “Couldn’t give me that job and take him with you, could you?”
“The old man want you to go.”
“Sure,” I thought. “The Old Man want me to go. He want him in there. He want Bonbon to find him and her in that bed. Sure, He want that. He want a fire. He want Bonbon to burn the place down. Didn’t the Bible say He was going to destroy the world next time by fire? Sure, He want me to go.”
“Well, I was figuring that since he’s the convict and I’m not I would get the easiest job,” I said.
“You get it next time, Geam,” Bonbon said.
Marcus coughed; he wanted to laugh. He was laughing so much inside, he was ready to fall against that trailer. And up on the trailer the children had started playing again.
“Hey, what I say up there,” Bonbon said.
The children quit playing.
“You better take off, Geam,” Bonbon said to me. “You better go on home and eat,” he said to Marcus. “Be at that house one o’clock. That rake and broom waiting there.”
“Yes sir,” Marcus said. “I’ll surely be there, sir. And I’ll do a good job, sir. You won’t even recognize it when you get back.”
When we got in the truck, I turned to him.
“Don’t mess with that woman, Marcus,” I said.
He grinned. “I’m going there to rake leaves,” he said.
“You hear me, don’t you?” I said.
“The man want me to rake his leaves,” he said. “You don’t want me to rake his leaves?”
“I’m warning you,” I said.
I started up the truck and drove out of the yard.