THE TRUCKERS were already pulling out of the groves when Rhodes drove the pick-up out on the lane. They had not gone far when Will said, “Wait a minute, son. Stop the car.”
Rhodes stopped the car. Will got out and staggered around behind it.
When Will came back, his face was pale and bloodless. His eyes looked tormented.
“There ain’t no way to get away from things, son,” he said at last. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Don’t you ever think there is.”
They rode silently the rest of the way to the farm yard. Rhodes parked the pick-up. Will left the shotgun in the truck. He did not even want to look at it. Rhodes waited until Will was washing his face in the cold water at the well. Rhodes picked up the old shotgun, ejected the shells. He went across the yard, carrying Will’s gun.
Rosanne was in the kitchen. She looked up when Rhodes came through the doorway. There was an expectant look in her eyes. It faded when she saw it was only Rhodes.
“He’s out by the well,” Rhodes said. His voice was strident with his anger. “He’ll be in in a moment.”
Hurt flicked across Rosanne’s eyes. Rhodes kept walking across the kitchen. Rosanne was cooking something. It smelled good, but Rhodes did not care.
“Rhodes,” she said. It was barely more than a whisper.
“Yeah.”
He stopped at the dining room doorway and looked over his shoulder.
Rosanne looked at him a moment, there seemed to be a lot she wanted to say. Her eyes studied him and then she sighed deeply. She didn’t say anything.
Rhodes went on across the dining room. When he reached the hallway he began to hear it. He had heard it often before, and he recognized the sound at once. His mother only cried when things were bad. Rhodes looked about him emptily. Things were bad now. He knew the door to his mother’s room was closed. She was alone with her crying. She would stay in there until she couldn’t cry any more. One time she had stayed in her room without eating for three days. She’d been almost ruined from sitting in one position in her wheelchair for all that time.
Rhodes paused at the foot of the stairs. He wanted to go up to his mother. But he knew there were no words from him that would comfort her. And besides the door was probably locked.
He went slowly into the heat-crackling parlor. Grandpa was staring into the fire. He did not look around when Rhodes replaced the shotgun on the wall.
Rhodes started from the room.
“He didn’t kill nobody?” Grandpa said from his chair.
“No,” Rhodes said. “No. sir.”
His grandfather sighed. “That’s fine. The blame and the blood would have been on him.”
“Yes, sir.”
He heard the backdoor slam. He waited but Will did not come out of the kitchen.
Rhodes walked back there. Will was sitting at the table drinking hot black coffee.
Rosanne was working over the stove. She had her back to Will. Rhodes saw that Will was looking at Rosanne over the top of his coffee. The look in Will’s eyes frightened Rhodes. It was one thing for Will to carry on over Rosanne when he was drinking. But Rhodes knew now that Will was sober. Coldly sober. But his eyes weren’t sober, and they did not move from Rosanne.
Rhodes went into the kitchen. He stood against the table and looked at Will. Will did not take his eyes from Rosanne.
Rhodes said, “Mama is in her room.”
“Yes,” Will said.
“She’s crying.”
“I know.”
“She’ll be sick.”
“Yes.”
“Awful sick. Sicker than she’s ever been before.”
“Yes.”
“You can hear her crying. All the way downstairs.”
Will turned and looked at Rhodes. His eyes were as agonized as they’d been out on the lane. He shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do for her, Rhodes.”
“You could talk to her.”
“There’s nothing I can say.”
Rhodes swallowed, his eyes searching Will’s face. He tried to think how he could say what had to be said.
“You could say something, Will. Anything. What you said wouldn’t have to be the truth.”
“Look, son. Whatever I said would have anger in it. You know that. You’re big enough to know that. You think I could fool your mother?”
“Will, I only know she’s going to be terrible sick. Unless you do something.”
“There’s nothing I can do, boy. Did you see them running over the trees? Did you see them crushing the limbs?”
“What you say to her doesn’t have to be true.”
“I wish I was a good man, son. I wish I was that good. I’m not. There’s nothing I can do for her. She knew what she was doing, and she didn’t care.”
“She’s sick, Will. And she’s scared.”
Will finished off his coffee. He stood up. Rosanne turned from the fire. She looked at him. She said, “Will.”
He shook his head. “I reckon I can’t talk now, Rosanne. I got to see what I can do.”
“I want to talk to you.”
He nodded. “When I can.”
He touched Rhodes’ shoulder and walked out of the kitchen.
Rhodes went on standing by the table.
Rosanne said, “Don’t you feel sorry for him? At all?”
Rhodes shook his head. He swallowed at the knot in his throat. “I reckon you don’t know the way it is,” he said.
Rosanne’s head tilted. “I know how you think it is. Will had nothing. Your mother took him in. Now he has no right to live or think for himself. No right to get tired. No right ever to be wrong.”
Rhodes shook his head slowly.
“No ma’m, Cousin Rosanne. R’s no way like that at all. You see, you don’t know how strong Will is. What a lot of men can’t do, Will can do easy-like.”
“What kind of talk is that?”
“It ain’t just my idea, Cousin Rosanne. Gran’pa says so. He says it’s true. Gran’pa says Will was born to trouble and hard times. Gran’pa says there never was a time when Will didn’t have troubles staring at him. For a couple years after he married my mother, I guess things were as easy for him as ever they’ve been. You know what he did those two years? He cleared another three hundred acres of land. He planted a new grove of young trees. He painted all these buildings. That was because things were easier for him he could do the things he wanted. Then my — my mother got ill. Not just a little illness. But bad, the worst. Looks like she’d have died a lot of times these last five years, but she had Will to take care of her. He — he’s got an — awful lot of strength, Cousin Rosanne, and my — well, my mother she hasn’t got any strength at all. I guess what she has got — is really Will. I reckon if she didn’t have his strength — why, I reckon she’d sit in that room and die — no matter what Gran’pa and me tried to do for her.”
Rosanne nodded. She took Will’s cup from the table and washed it in the sink.
Rhodes went out of the kitchen and upstairs. The door of his mother’s room was ajar. Rhodes stood in the upstairs hallway. He could hear his mother’s voice complaining and accusing, and over it smooth as a satin coverlet was Will’s answers. Gradually his mother grew quieter, and Rhodes turned. He went back downstairs.
• • •
Rhodes was talking with Grandpa in the parlor when Will came down the stairs. Rhodes saw his stepfather pause at the newell post. Will’s shoulders sagged.
Rhodes went out in the hallway. His grandfather went on talking even when Rhodes was no longer in the room.
“She’s sleeping,” Will said.
Rhodes nodded.
“Maybe we better have supper. You hungry, boy?”
Grandpa came hurrying from the parlor. “Who said something about eating?” Grandpa said.
Rosanne had the dining room table set. She had fixed steaks, field peas and a salad. Grandpa and Rhodes sat down and began to eat hungrily.
Rosanne said, “Will. I got to talk to you.”
He nodded. “All right.”
“Tom and me,” she said. “We can’t go on staying here.”
“I’m asking you to.”
She nodded. “And it’s what I want to do. But you got all you can take care of. More. We got no right to stay here. Tom shouldn’t ever have brought me here. I shouldn’t never have come.”
“He had no place else to go.”
“He never will have. Long as somebody will take him in.”
Will said, “Why’d you ever marry him, Rosanne?”
“My paw. He wanted me to. He used to drink with Tom all the time. They worked at the same mill. Tom was making good money, and he came to the house to see me all the time. I ran away one time — to get away from Tom. Paw and Tom found me. Paw told me I was no good, trying to run away. He said I had to marry Tom before I got in bad trouble and disgraced Paw — and the family. There wasn’t anything else I could do.”
“What’d Tom want you for, if he knew how you felt about him?”
“Tom said I’d love him when we’d been married a while. And Paw said so too.”
“You’re all right now.” Will said.
She shook her head. “No. I thought so.” She looked around at Rhodes and Grandpa. Grandpa had stopped eating and was watching her. “When I first walked in, I thought so. But now I know better … She — don’t want me here … I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her at all. It’s the way I’d feel.”
“But you can’t go. You got no place to go.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. You got enough to worry about.”
“I got so much to worry about. A little bit more won’t hurt.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“But I will. You know that.”
She didn’t say anything. Her head jerked up and her gaze flew to Rhodes, frightened.
“When Tom comes,” she said. “?’ll tell him. We got to go.”
“There ain’t a bit of sense in you telling Tom anything,” Grandpa said. “Like every weak man that ever lived, he won’t stand for nobody to tell him nothing.”
Rosanne looked around helplessly. “I can’t stay here.” Her gaze moved back to Will, her eyes begged him to help her. “You know that.”
Will moved his knife around on the table. “I got a place where you can stay,” he said. “It’s not very much. I hate to offer it to you.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care what it’s like.”
“It’s a shack,” Will said. “With two rooms, and outside privy. Its warm and tight, all right, but it ain’t painted. There’s furniture in it, but none of it looks like much.”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“It’s off by itself,” Will said. “I hate to think about you staying there by yourself with Tom gone so much.”
“I’d be all right.”
Will nodded. ‘Yes. You’d be all right.”
There was a long silence. Finally Rosanne said slowly, “Will-she mind?”
“If I let you live in my place?” Will said. “It’s mine, Rosanne. I had it before I ever came here.”
“I — thought you — had nothing.” Rosanne glanced at Rhodes.
“I guess I didn’t, compared to this,” Will said.
Grandpa laughed. “He had the best run little farm in this countryside. Then Chris Burris got ill and hired Will to come over here and help him run this place. And when Chris died, Lena was helpless, had nobody to take care of this farm but me. Will stayed on — and his place just went to dogfennel and beggarweed.”
Rosanne was staring at Rhodes. He looked up once, but he did not meet her eyes.