Cane-grinding at Abner Lantry's place began in the afternoon of the last day of October. Abner was the first to grind along the river, and every one would be there for the fresh cane juice and the fun. Cars and wagons began to pass Kezzy's house after dinner. Youngsters went by on foot, bare-legged and jostling. Kezzy watched the road for Lant's car. He swerved into the yard at three o'clock. Piety bounced beside him on the front seat.
Lant said, "You ready to go git your belly full o' cane juice?"
She picked up the small boy and the baby and dropped them into the back of the open car.
"I cain't hardly wait to git my nose in the bucket," she said.
Lant shut off the motor.
"Ain't Cleve goin'?" he asked.
"He ain't even here."
"Ain't he quit sullin' yit about Jim cuttin' him?"
She shook her head.
"Now, Lant," she said, "Cleve went off soon this mornin' and said he was gittin' a ride to Jacksonville. I don't know, did he mean it."
Piety asked, "Is his cuts healed good?"
"You cain't hardly see the scar. Hit didn't amount to nothin'." She threw back her smooth dark head and laughed.
"This is one evenin' I ain't goin' to set home and worry," she said lightly. "First day o' cane-grindin' don't come but oncet a year."
She loaded herself in with the children.
She said to them delightedly, "Ain't we the biggety things now, ridin' to cane-grindin' in a automobile."
She hailed the gathering with zest as they turned under the live-oaks into Abner's yard. She held the baby loosely in one arm like a bundle and waved her free hand to her friends.
"I swear, Ab," she called to the host, "you ain't growed enough sugar-cane to make all the juice I aim to drink."
"You go chase a hog!" he cried.
"I've done enough o' that!"
She handed Piety the baby. She ran to the mill, where boys pushed long stalks of sugar-cane into the gears as a slow horse walked around and around. Kezzy pushed the boys away and fed in a handful of stalks.
"The bucket o' juice I'm fixin' to drink," she told them, "I ain't got the heart to let nobody else do the mill-feedin'."
Abner followed her. "I hope you satisfied, Miss Kezzy. You been rarin' to feed the mill the first day o' grindin'." He looked at her closely. "Your old man Cleve got better comp'ny than ours this evenin'?"
She picked up a fresh handful of stalks and watched them attentively.
"Now, Ab," she said, "they's jest no sich thing as better comp'ny than yours."
He laughed and went across the yard to Lant and Piety and the children.
The juice gushed from the spout into a wooden bucket. It was green and clouded. Children dipped tin cups into its thin sweetness and ran away into corners to drink. The juice was chilled by the November air, and it seemed as if no one could get enough. Kezzy called Lant to take her place, and tipped back her black head to drink until she gasped for air.
Abner would not begin to boil syrup until the next day. Every one was thirsty for cane juice, and all the evening the horse would walk around the mill, with a child or two on his back. Some would take turns at feeding in the stalks while others satisfied a year-old longing. A mule and wagon were bringing in load after load of new-cut stalks. In the morning the great fire would be built under the syrup kettle and the juice would be boiled down in forty-gallon lots. The grinding and boiling would go on for two or three weeks. Today and tonight folk drank and laughed and children ran and romped.
Eph Wilson's wife had died and they talked of her and of Eph. He was mean and stingy and they said of him, "He'd favour a nigger a heap quicker'n one of his own young uns." Eph's wife had needed her teeth pulled and the man had refused her, saying he could not afford the work. They said, "She had beef cattle enough when she died, to fix her teeth. He sold her cattle right along with his." For the most part, the talk had no malice. There was much joking and pranking. When a commotion arose among the children, a mother of ten settled it by a general slapping of small ears.
"You have to frail all the young uns to git the right un," she explained. "Start with a big un and end with the least un."
Piety and Lant and Kezzy ate cold supper with Abner and his wife. As the autumn dusk sifted crisp and blue through the piney-woods, newcomers came for the night's cane-grinding and the night's frolic. Abner had a small talking machine with a horn, and the younger men kept one record going for an hour, "The Fox Chase." One called to another, "Come listen to this here ol' nigger playin' and singin' the Fox Chase!" They imitated the record. "Listen to them ol' dogs a-bayin'—yip-yip-woo-o!"
Lant said, "I'd like to have me a talkin' machine, jest to set and listen to the Fox Chase."
Martin Posey said, "The nigger do it all hisself, too."
Lant said, "He don't do it all. Them's rale dogs."
Martin insisted, "No they ain't. It's him."
Lant said, "Well, if he kin sound that clost to a dog, the Lord had orter give him a tail and call him 'Spot' and let him run rabbits and drink branch water."
Old man Lonny Sours began to play the fiddle in the desultory fashion of a dog scratching himself. He scraped the strings casually, then struck off tuneless phrases, looking around the room with a solemn detachment. The music took form in a tune. He played "The Rosewood Casket" and two children crossed hands and danced the schottische down the length of the bare pine floor. Abner's wife waddled in from the kitchen with an extra kerosene light to place on the mantel near the fiddler. Abner came into the room with Eph Wilson, holding out a white china pitcher of cane juice. He put his arm around his wife's thick waist as she passed.
"When you git you another wife, Eph," he said, "you want you a big woman like this un. Then you won't have to buy you no cover for winter."
She said behind her hand, "Now I jest wonder what my Uncle Ben would say if I was to go on home with you, Eph?"
"I might have somethin' I didn't know what to do with," Eph said. "I might have to call somebody to git me out from under Abner."
The fiddler played "Hog, Hominy and Grits," and Martin Posey eased into a chair beside him and joined in on a harmonica.
Lant said to Kezzy, "I'd a heap rather he'd play the jumbo jew's-harp. I don't like the way he chokes his mouth-organ."
A girl called from the doorway to the crowd around the cane-mill. A bonfire burned between the mill and the house for light and warmth. Boys foraged about the yard and down the road and threw on dry palmetto fronds and dog-fennel to make it blaze. Half a dozen couples detached themselves from the light, like shadows shifting, and ran into the house to join the set that was forming for the square-dance. Two or three older pairs entered the circle and stood with linked hands to wait for the calling. A boy, scurrying about for a partner, coaxed Ab's wife into the circle. She was an old hand and knew the figures, and moved her feet under her bulk as lightly as chipmunks. Martin Posey took his mouth from the harmonica.
"One more couple, and le's go. Lant Jacklin, you take out Kezzy."
The circle began to shuffle. The boys hailed Lant.
"Here, Blue-john! Here's your home!"
His head bobbed on his long neck. He grumbled good-humouredly.
"Dogged if I wouldn't rather be home in the scrub than messin' up in sich a ruckus with you sorry jessies."
They laughed. One said, "Lant, you a hell of a streaklin'."
Kezzy said affectionately, "Honey, you do favour a Blue-john somethin' turrible. You cain't quarrel with 'em about it no-ways."
He said, "You catch you another Blue-john for the next, then. One set and I'm done with you."
He had not danced since early spring. He unlimbered his long legs and swung Kezzy with gusto. Her white skin was flushed and her soft black eyes were shining.
"I was about to figger I was gittin' old," she panted when they were dancing close.
In the doorway he caught a sudden glimpse of a familiar round face. It was looking directly at him. It was white with hate. It could not be Cleve, he thought, staring at him so. When the change of partners in a figure brought him opposite the doorway again, the face was gone. He thought, "I'm gittin' bad as a damn nigger to see things." When the set was ended he left Kezzy abruptly and ran into the yard. There was no one there. Beyond, men and women and boys and girls ran and shouted about the cane-mill. The bonfire blazed between house and mill. Lant walked in and out among the groups. Cleve was not in sight. He thought, "That booger gittin' awful light-footed." He walked back across the yard and studied the footprints about the doorway in the light that came from the room. Kezzy stood by the hearth-fire. He walked across the room to her.
"Kezzy, was Cleve wearin' them big ol' boots he had half-soled in the spring?"
"I believe he did have 'em on this mornin', Lant." She looked at him curiously. "Why?"
"I jest wondered."
He stood beside her, warming himself at the fire. No one was dancing.
The fiddler and young Posey played "Double Eagle" and "Ninety-seven" and "Waiting for a Train." The music whined and squeaked unheeded. Even the young bloods preferred to be outside tonight, drinking cane juice and racing around the bonfire. The older folks had become chilled in the cool air, and most of them were gathered in the room for gossip near the fat-wood fire.
Here were lights and music and talk and gayety. A cane-grinding was the best of life, and a frolic warmed the blood like wine. Tonight there was a common safety; a common closeness and a common delight. The room grew warm and the old fiddler and young Posey were red and wet of face. Kezzy went to them and fanned them with a palm leaf while they played. She stood placid and maternal, smiling a little to herself.
The young baby slept in the adjoining bedroom with others of his age. Piety held the older boy on her thin lap, where he dozed uncomfortably, burrowing his head against her flat chest. It was good to be sitting with old women who knew the things she knew. Age marked these women early. The young girls were inclined to be plump and buxom, with heavy legs and large buttocks. They were dressed with much flimsy style. Their bland faces were painted. They were ripe and enticing. Life pared them down in a hurry. Here and there a middle-aged woman, prosperous as the section went, was fat and hearty. Almost without exception the older women were stripped gaunt and meagre, as though they had walked on foot a long sandy way.
But if the road had been hard, it was also pleasant. If a living was uncertain, and the sustaining of breath precarious, why, existence took on an added value and a greater sweetness. The tissues of life were food and danger. These were the warp and woof, and all else was an incidental pattern, picked out with varicoloured wools. Love and lust, hate and friendship, grief and frolicking, even birthing and dying, were thin grey and scarlet threads across the sun-browned, thick and sturdy stuff that was life itself. The old women sat together with bare, translucent faces, knowing that the pulse of blood through the veins was a rich, choice thing, and the drawing of a breath was good.
As the evening wore on, men joined them by the hearth, and then the young folks, surfeited and sleepy. They talked of hogs and cattle; of crops and the weather and the law. They spoke of a family of Yankee newcomers to the piney-woods, who had not come to the cane-grinding.
Kezzy said, "Them pore leetle ol' Yankees don't know what to make of us Crackers. I tell 'em I'm a fool and cain't he'p it and no use to hide it."
Old man Lonny Sours offered, "I hears tell they're Catholics."
"That's what they say."
Abner tilted back in a cow-hide chair and said, "Hit don't make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o' churches. There's the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don't know what-all. I cain't see much difference to nary one of 'em. There's a good to all of 'em and there's a bad."
Lonny Sours persisted, "All I got agin the Catholics now, is they got no freedom. Ary one seed them nuns with them bonnets, like, over their heads and faces? They has to wear them things all the time."
He added, nodding his head, "Even to bed."
Abner said, "Well, I never watched one of 'em go to bed."
His wife remarked, "Sho, ever'body goes in a Catholic church has to have his head kivered."
Lonny pondered. "Don't you reckon," he asked, "hit's an opinion they hold?"
Abner said, clearing his throat, "We been gittin' a magazine. Hit tells about a heap o' quare idees. Hit tells about the Muslems."
"I've heerd tell o' them, seems to me," Lonny said, "but I cain't rightly place 'em. Who was them Muslems? A form o' Catholics?"
"I cain't say as to that. But they pays right smart attention to the sun and figgers ever'thing comes fum the East, like. They think it's fitten and proper a man should keep hisself a hull mess o' wives."
"Seems to me that's all right," Martin Posey ventured mildly. The girls giggled.
They talked a while of all strange things and far-off people. The women gathered up the sleeping children and said, "Goodnight, all. Some kind of enjoyed the cane juice." The boys ran from the house and into the road in a last gust of energy.
Abner Lantry called, "Kezzy, you keep away from them Muslems."
She laughed.
"'Tain't right to laugh," she said, sobering. "I declare, it makes me faint-hearted to think there's sich people with sich ways."
She carried the baby, sleeping, high on one shoulder. Piety led the small boy. They climbed into Lant's car. Lant's mouth was dry and he left them and cut across the yard towards the cane-mill to drink from the bucket of juice. His tread was light in the sand. He saw two men in the darkness under a shed roof. He recognised Jim Posey. Then he heard the voice of the storekeeper and postmaster.
He heard him say to Jim, "I'm not supposed to mention what goes through the mails. But you men have been good customers so long I feel obliged to warn you. A letter went to the Prohibition agents at Jacksonville yesterday. I'm pretty sure it was in Cleve Jacklin's writing."
Lant went to his car and drove Kezzy home through the spiced darkness of the piney-woods. A light was burning in her house when he stopped at the gate. He said "Good-night" and with Piety drove quickly away.
A week later he stood in the sandy yard under the live-oak oiling a steel trap. He heard the gate click at the rear of the garden and looked up. Kezzy was coming through the garden. She had not hailed jovially from a distance, as was her custom.
She walked to him without speaking. Her face was white and her eyes were red and swollen. Her mouth trembled. She spoke in a low voice.
"I don't know if I'm doin' right or not. I cried all night, studyin'. Hit ain't natural for a woman to go agin her husband, whatever he do. But 'tain't natural for Cleve to do what he's a-doin'."
"Come in the house and set down, Kezzy."
Piety joined them at the breezeway, holding to the wall as she walked.
"Who's there?"
"It's me, Aunt Py-tee. I jest now rowed acrost the river."
The younger woman laid her cheek a moment against the other's.
"I'm carryin' bad news, Aunt Py-tee. Hit concern you as much as Lant."
"Well, set down, anyway."
"Lant, Cleve's turned you up to the Prohis."
Piety said sharply, "He ain't done no sich thing."
"I know what I'm sayin'. Ain't I tried to ask him out of it, until it was me keep still or him to knock me down for it? He's turned you up, Lant, right along with Poseys and Luke Saunders. You ain't heerd about the letter he wrote to Jacksonville? I didn't know nothin' about that, but a letter come back to him. I went to the box for the mail and I seed where 'twere from, and it marked gov'mint business, or somethin' like that. He's been jest a-boilin' since Jim cut him, and right off I figgered what 'twas. Bless God, I no more thought you was in it—but I opened it, and that was it. The Prohis had done got a letter from him, sayin' they was three stills he could tell 'em about along the river. They was sendin' a man and wanted he should name a place and time to meet him. I jest nachelly tore the letter up. I reckon he kep' askin' at the post-office hadn't no letter come for him, and he found out. When he come at me about it, I faced him down about the hull mess. He said, Yes, he was turnin' you all up. I says, You got some complaint against Jim. He were hasty cuttin' you. You got nothin' agin Luke Saunders. God know you got nothin' agin Lant."
"What did he say then?"
"He think he do. He said you wouldn't give him work when he asked for it."
"'Tain't so, not that-a-way. He quit me in the winter. Jest walked off to Poseys and said nothin'. I give Zeke the work and I couldn't see my way to take it from him agin, and Cleve mebbe do me the same way he done before. I'd done offered Cleve shares in the outfit and he wouldn't do the work."
"Don't tell me. Nobody on earth cain't git him to work. He won't work and he don't want the other fellow to git no beneefit from workin'. Time you painted your ol' car, and put a kiver to it, he acted like he had the itch ever' time he'd see you in it."
Piety said, "He wouldn't turn Lant up for sich as that?"
"Aunt Py-tee, there's twenty-five dollars in it. Ary still a man turns up, he's heerd tell the Prohis pays that much. He says if there's twenty-five dollars in it, he'll turn up all he kin find. I says to him, You cain't take a man's livin' away from him that-a-way, not even Jim. Hit's their livin', you got no right to tech it. Think of Lant and Aunt Py-tee, I says. What would Aunt Py-tee do if Lant was to have his livin' takened away? Cleve, I says, you cain't do it. Them's your kin-folks."
"What did he say?"
She drew a hand across her red, tired eyes.
"He said, 'Damn the kin-folks.'"
She rose to go.
"Like I say, mebbe I'm doin' wrong, but hit's my best opinion to tell you. I've done tole Luke and tole him to tell Poseys. A man's got nary right to interfere with another man's livin', I don't keer what he's done."
She leaned down to stroke Piety's cat, then hurried through the garden and across the clearing. The staunch figure disappeared in the hammock at the top of the ledge. Lant and Piety had not stirred from their places in the breezeway.
Piety asked, "You goin' to move the outfit, eh?"
"I dunno."
He began to walk up and down with his hands behind him and his chin sunk on his chest. Piety could make out his features dimly. A memory, as blurred as her sight, came to her of Lantry, her father, pacing in the same tense fashion. At last he stopped.
"I ain't a-goin' to move it. Hit's a heap o' work, and mebbe them scoundrels ketch me in the middle of it. Mebbe I'd git it moved, and them come up on the new place. Ain't no better place on the river no-ways, excusin' the Dread. I couldn't git the stuff down the river to the Dread now, and them not see me."
"Well, I'd move it," she said. "Cleve knows right where it's at."
"He cain't describe it so's no stranger in the world could find it."
"He mought show 'em the way hisself."
He snorted.
"That sorry bastard won't show his tracks nowheres along this river."
"Now you call him most ary name you're o' mind to," she said, "but Marthy were his mother and she were my sister, and she were a good woman. Don't you go callin' Cleve no bastard. Nor no son of a bitch, neither. You're awfu' free with your names."
"The pimp, then."
"That's better," she agreed cordially. "A whole heap better. The pimp."