RHODES drove the pick-up truck into the yard and parked it near the barn. The place was quiet with Will gone. It was as though the land itself would die if Will were not there. Rhodes looked around the yard, wishing he knew what to do, and knowing there was nothing without Will there to guide him.
He looked around for Grandpa. Something was troubling him, and he had long ago learned that Grandpa would answer all his questions. Disease. Connie Hollister and her rich-girl friends. Diseased. Will and the men he knew wouldn’t touch them. But he could not see Grandpa anywhere in the yard. It was mid-morning, but there was still a bone-chill in the air. Smoke rolled black from the chimney.
“Rhodes!”
He saw Rosanne standing in the backdoor. Her hands and arms were soapy and pink from hot water. She smiled at him, “Your mamma wants to talk to you in the front room, Cousin Rhodes, right away.”
He wondered if Rosanne might know about diseases that the rich girls got when they went away to college. But he decided not to ask her. She was married, but she wasn’t much older than he was. And there was a frightened look about her. Probably she didn’t know any more than he did.
Lena looked up when Rhodes walked into the overheated parlor.
“Where’s your father?” she said.
“He stayed in town,” Rhodes said.
Grandpa turned from his chair before the fire. “Long time since Will did a thing like this — in middle of the week.”
“Was he drunk?” Lena said.
Rhodes shook his head. “No, ma’m. He wasn’t. He didn’t say anything about gettin’ drunk.” Will hadn’t mentioned drinking, but Rhodes had known when he sent him home that Will was on his way. In his own mind there seemed a lot of extenuating circumstances, the way Connie Hollister had lied, blaming him for something he had not done, and would never do because she was diseased, the way Darl Hollister had acted, and then the bank refusing to lend Will money. “He didn’t mention gettin’ drunk in this world.”
Lena’s mouth twisted. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have told you if he had.”
“He tells me pretty much everything, ma’m.”
“Oh, don’t think I don’t know that. Treats you like you’re grown, instead of a baby. Letting you drive that truck home alone. Well, he’ll hear about that.”
“Will says a man’s got to learn to rely on himself, ma’m,” Rhodes said. “And I drive careful. Will knows that.”
“You think that Will Johnson is something pretty wonderful, don’t you?” His mother’s voice rose with the anger in it.
“Yes’m. He’s pretty fine. He’s always treated me pretty fine. Seems to me he does all he can for us, all of us.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Lena wadded the needlework in her thin fists. “If only your own father hadn’t died, if only Chris hadn’t left us.”
Grandpa stood up suddenly and stared at her. “Now you listen to me, Lena Johnson. You were already looking moon-eyed at Will Johnson before Chris Burris died. There ain’t but one thing ails you, Lena, you got sick and Will Johnson got healthier, and you can’t stand it.”
“That’s not true. I don’t see how you can say such terrible things about your own flesh and blood,” Lena said. She was holding her breath. “You’re an evil old man, Gran’pa.”
“Yes. I reckon I am. I see things true, instead of the way you want me to see ’em. That makes me pretty evil all right.”
Lena waved her hand. “I haven’t time to talk about it now.” She turned her head, facing Rhodes again. “Where did you and your father get off to this morning?”
“We rode over to Mr. Darl Hollister’s, m’am.”
“Did your father pay Mr. Hollister?”
“No ma’m.”
“What did he do? Don’t make me dig the truth out of you, child. Speak up and tell me what your father did over there?”
“Well, ma’m, he asked for some more time on that note. But Mr. Hollister refused to let him have it.”
Lena bit her lip, then said. “And perfectly right. A man should meet his obligations. Chris always said that.”
Grandpa snorted. “You listen here, daughter. If that Chris Burris had ever butted head on into just one-tenth the troubles Will Johnson has met the past five years he’d of taken a shot gun and blowed the top of his head off.”
“That does not excuse Will for missing a payment on a just and legal debt.”
“Oh, my good lord, deliver me from a woman’s figuring,” Grandpa said, “and from a sick woman most of all.”
Lena would not look at him. “Did Will promise to get the money right away, Rhodes?”
“No ma’m. And Mr. Darl Hollister threatened to take this farm unless he did. He didn’t act like himself at all, mamma. He was mean, and he was already drinking heavy when we got over there.”
“You shouldn’t say such things about Mr. Darl Hollister, Rhodes,” Lena said.
“It’s the truth.”
Grandpa snorted. “Don’t matter if it’s truth or not. Your ma thinks that when a man is as rich as Darl Hollister, you only say nice things about him, no matter what he does to you.”
“Whatever Mr. Darl Hollister does,” Lena said, “I’m sure he’ll be within his rights. Will will just have to get that money somewhere. I can certainly understand why Darl Hollister feels as he does.”
Rhodes stared at his mother a moment, wondering if she had heard about Darl’s wife and the man in her bedroom. But he knew better. She was too calm. If she had heard that Will had been over there to see Connie Hollister she would have been hysterical. Rhodes had seen her get hysterical when Will just stopped to talk to another woman at church.
“And instead of looking about to see where he might get the money he owes Mr. Darl Hollister why what does your fine Mr. Will Johnson do? He stays in town the middle of the day, the middle of the week to get drunk and chase some no-good woman.”
“Sometimes when a man’s troubles crowd him too much, he just about has to get away from them for a few hours.” Grandpa’s voice was mild.
“Stop excusing him!” Lena’s voice lashed at him. “He had nothing. I took him in. And he let everything go until it is now at a place where we stand to lose everything. Everything in this world. They’ll take our house away from us. Everything that poor Chris Burris worked so hard for.”
Grandpa spat into the fire. “Wouldn’t do one bit of good to remind you that this here farm is three times as big as it was when Chris Burris was alive, would it?”
“This was Chris Burris’ farm!” Lena’s voice was shrill. “He left it to me and to my son. Will Johnson had nothing in this world, and we took him in. This is the thanks we get for it. He loses our land right from under us — and instead of doing anything about it, he lays around drunk in some cheap woman’s room.”
Nobody spoke. Rhodes wished he had begged Will to come on home. But he knew it would not have helped any.
Lena said, “Well, I’m not going to sit by and let Darl Hollister take my farm away from me.” She wheeled her chair over to a small mahogany secretary that was littered with letters and bills. She got a fountain pen and began to hunt for writing paper.
Grandpa said, “What you going to do now, Lena?”
“Protect myself,” Lena said. “Protect myself and my son. I’m not going to let Will Johnson throw away our birthright. I’ve still got those groves. The concentrate people will send their crews in, and they’ll pay me. Will Johnson can be a fool, but I won’t be.”
“Mamma!” Rhodes shook his head.
Lena was writing swiftly.
Grandpa said, “You listen to me, Lena. You’ve done a lot of fool mean things to Will Johnson. But even you must have better sense than do a thing like this. You know good and well how Will feels about having strangers wrecking his groves. And that’s what they’ll do.”
“Do I have to remind you they are my groves?”
“No. You don’t. But I can remind you that Will Johnson is handling them groves in the way that will best help them and you — ”
“Will Johnson is lying drunk in Pine Flat right this minute.”
“Please, Mamma,” Rhodes said, “Will is going to handle this. He said he would.”
“I’m tired waiting for Will Johnson. He’s hurt me and humiliated me for all these years. You’re too young to understand, Rhodes, and I don’t expect you to understand. But your grandfather understands. Will Johnson won’t leave women alone. It’s gossip in this county where I have to live. How have I stood it?”
“Will Johnson is a growed man, Lena, with a growed man’s needs. Blind yourself to it, and rail against him. He works like a mule — like a slave, and still there’s a need in him that you got sense enough to recognize, if you only would. But you don’t — because you don’t want to.”
“Will Johnson married me. He took vows.”
“A vow is a thing a man can take. But damn few of them can live with them when they got nothing else to live with!”
“Don’t you dare to yell at me.”
“I got to yell some sense in your head, I got to do it before you hurt Will Johnson some more. Don’t you reckon Will tries to stay away from these here women? But it don’t matter if he does. They wouldn’t let him alone nohow. It’s something you can see when Will Johnson walks in a room. Women look at him. It don’t matter who they been looking at until that moment. Once they see Will Johnson, there ain’t any other men. You was that way. I seen you, heated up and silly-actin’ — long before you was free of Chris Burris. Why then in God’s holy name can’t you understand other women feeling the same way?”
“It was different!” Lena’s voice rose shrilly. “I was in love with Will Johnson. I married him.”
“What you wanted was to close him up in your fist. And that’s what you did until illness struck you down. You think I never saw them tantrums you threw ever’time some woman looked his way. They was all sluts and worse when they looked at Will Johnson.”
“And that’s what they are!” Lena cried, writing as she talked. “If they were decent women, they’d keep to their own men and leave my man alone. You think I can’t see it in their faces? You think I can’t see it in the face of this woman that Tom married?”
“You got no call to talk so loud,” Grandpa said, “that poor girl will hear you.”
“Let her hear me. She knows it’s the truth. You see her? You see the way her cheeks color up when Will comes near her? You think she ain’t seeing how it will be with him next her in some bed? Let her hear me. I want her out of here. I can’t trust Will Johnson, and I won’t have no young thing like that there one tossing her bottom and twitching herself around in front of Will.”
Grandpa was barely whispering. “Where you reckon they’d go, Lena? Has Tom any place to take her?”
“I don’t care where he takes her. I want her out of here before that Will Johnson disgraces this here very house.”
“Oh lord,” Grandpa said. “Oh, my good lord.”
Rhodes stared at his mother. He wished he could beg her to treat Will better, to thank him for the things he did for her, to smile instead of spitting at him, to trust him a little more. But there was nothing he could say. He had no words, and she would not listen to him anyhow.
Lena folded the paper and stuffed it into an envelope. She looked up. “Rhodes.”
He came slowly across the room. She held out the envelope addressed to the manager of the Golden Cold Orange Concentrate Company.
“Rhodes, I want you to take this letter into the concentrate man.”
“Please, mamma — ”
“I’m telling you what to do, Rhodes. And I’ll punish you if you disobey me. You know that, don’t you, Rhodes?”
“But, Mamma — ”
“Your mamma knows best what is good for us, Rhodes. You’ve got to believe that she is doing this for you. You won’t lose all this land, not as long as your mamma is breathing. Now take this letter, and go to the packing house, the concentrate man will be there. You walk right up to him and tell him that this letter will give him permission to move his crews into my groves. Today.”