THE flat road that stretched away toward the city was a curious thing to John. Before this the ground had come up to meet his steps, or going down a hill, it had dropped away from beneath them. Now at each step it met his bare feet at the same place. For some reason this tired him out.
“Left! Right!” Granpap said, was the way to walk along a flat road. Sometimes in the army when they marched at night so the enemy wouldn’t know where they were, about half the soldiers would be walking in their sleep. Only that Left! Right! kept the feet going when the head didn’t know whether the feet were stumbling over a rock or toad-frog.
At some places the road crossed the railroad track. Then John looked up and down for the engine. It never came, but there were times when the road led through woods when he heard a rumble and Granpap said that was a train going by on the track. Toward late afternoon they stopped to rest and get water at a station. People were on the platform and there were trunks further down. All seemed to be waiting expectantly like a hunter waits behind bushes for the bear that the pickets are driving that way.
John saw the black man who stood by the trunks on the platform wave his hand. The man called out, “Raa-a Ro-o-de,” in a big strong voice that went up into a peculiar sort of shriek at the end of the words. There was a rumbling on the tracks. Around a curve came the big engine. John knew that it was an engine and there was no need to fear. Yet the huge beast-like thing belched out smoke from its horn so fearsomely, and moved so swiftly upon them, it was hard not to fear. John moved behind Granpap as it came even with them and slowed up. Looking cautiously from behind the old man’s back he saw the great bars go round and round pushing the wheels. The thing breathed like a winded steer until one expected to see its sides move in and out with the breathing.
“Hit’s a fine sight,” Granpap said, looking hard at the engine. The wheels had stopped going round, but it kept on puffing, and little jets of white smoke went up from the top.
“Did hit scare ye?” Granpap asked. “Hit’s safer than those automobiles we saw on the road. Hit runs on a track.”
John came forward and stood just in front of Granpap with his feet apart and his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. Then, to show that he was not frightened of the monster, he went closer, and looked it over from top to bottom. Up in the little room a man in jeans was feeding coal into a red hot mouth. Under the body between the wheels there were many parts mixed in with each other like the inside of an animal. John made another step toward the engine and stooped down to have a look at these. In the beginning he had gone there to show Granpap he wasn’t afraid. Now he was intensely curious about the pipes and bolts and rods. If the thing would stay long enough he would like to get underneath and feel the parts with his hands.
He heard Granpap say very loud, “Look out!” but did not even think that the warning was for him. And almost in the same second a jet of steam hissed into his face from the bowels of the engine. The steam surrounded him so that he thought for a moment that there was no more John left, only a spirit hurrying away somewhere in a cloud. He could see nothing except the white cloud-like steam, and his face burned. Then a hand pulled him out of the cloud, just as another jet of steam came.
“Are ye hurt?” he heard Granpap asking while the white cloud was still around them. “Are ye hurt?”
The engine blew angrily at them before it drew away. He could not see Granpap yet, and he thought the cloud was still around them. Granpap saw when the last car had gone by that the boy had his eyes closed tightly. His face was turning a bright red.
“Open your eyes, Son,” Granpap said and shook John with both hands.
John opened his eyes and saw Granpap’s beard just above.
“Are you all right?” Granpap shook him again, less roughly this time.
John’s face had begun to hurt like a boil.
“Hit burns,” he said.
They crossed the tracks and walked down the road again.
“We’ll find some clay,” Granpap said. “Hit’s cool and healing.”
He watched the boy anxiously, and almost casually he watched the bank that was sometimes high and sometimes low at the side of the road. Presently a streak of gray showed where the clay was near the surface. Granpap dug into the clay and kneaded a handful in his wiry fingers before he plastered it over John’s face.
“Now, you’re a plumb sight,” he said. “If you could just see yourself you would laugh.” He was torn between anxiety about the boy, and the feeling that he must get all right, so they wouldn’t need to go back and miss the reunion. It would be almost a disgrace to be forced back when they had started with so much confidence. And Granpap had something to prove by this trip. He must prove that he was a young man, young enough to walk fifty miles to the city and fifty miles back.
The clay on John’s face was cool, but the sun and air soon dried it out, and they had to look for more. This time John would not let Granpap put it on.
“I’m not any young one,” he said. “I can fix hit.”
“Ye’re a wounded soldier,” Granpap said and this made John feel very fine, because there was approval in the old man’s voice and some admiration, as if John had done something especially fine and outstanding.
Presently, it was necessary to rest. They sat on top of a bank on some pine needles and leaned against a rail fence that marked off somebody’s land there.
“We’ll find a house,” Granpap said. “And maybe they’ll take us in. There must be farms along here off the road, and we’ll get the woman to put some lard or whatever she has that’s best for a scalded shoat . . . . For hit’s what ye look like,” he told John, “a scalded shoat.”
They walked on for a time looking for a road. Then Granpap selected one that led off to the right. It had wagon ruts deep in mud and was so narrow the green trees met overhead.
“Hit looks like a pore man’s road,” he said.
About half a mile up they found a ramshackle farmhouse. A woman came to the door. Her skirts were tucked up about her waist. The first thing she did when she saw them was to let the skirts down hastily.
“This boy got scalded,” Granpap said. “Could ye fix him up with something to ease the pain?”
The woman looked at them. “My man’s out in the fields,” she said. “He’ll be in soon.” She seemed to wish them to feel that there was a man around if they meant any harm.
“If ye don’t want us to come in we won’t,” Granpap told her. “But we’d be glad if you could help.”
“I’ve just come from the fields,” she said, and her face, full of sweat and dirt, showed that she had been somewhere working hard in the sun. “But if you’ll come in, I’ll try to fix the boy.”
The clay was hardened on John’s face and they had to pick it off in pieces. The woman heated some water on the cook stove and washed the face with warm suds. Then she spread on lard with some yellowroot juice mixed in.
There was a sound of feet on the tiny back porch, and a clank and clatter, then another, and two more. John knew that sound. He had made it himself when he dropped the hoe on the cabin floor after a time at weeding the corn patch. He had time to think, “These folks must be rich with four hoes,” before the door opened and they came in. Behind the father came three children, a boy about John’s age and two girls, younger. The father walked heavily across the room. His shoes were thick brogans that made the dust come up from the floor. At first he did not seem to notice at all that there were strangers in the kitchen. He went to the stove, lifted up a lid and spat his tobacco into the fire where it sizzled in the heat. He watched it until the sizzling finished, then turned to face them. The young ones were already watching the strangers. John must have been a queer sight with his face plastered with lard.
“Good evening,” the man said, looking at Granpap and then with a long stare at John.
John knew what a person must do in a stranger’s house. He must explain his errand as soon as possible, to avoid misunderstandings.
“Good evening,” Granpap said to the farmer, and when there was nothing said he added, “I’m a Confederate Veteran and going to the re-union in the city.”
“This your boy?”
“I’m his Granpap.”
The man’s face was blank, almost like a dead face. It made no response.
“The young one got scalded up the road,” Granpap said. “From an engine. We’d like to stay all night, if hit’s convenient.”
The man’s lips opened a little way and he said some words to the woman without looking at her.
“We can put the boy and his Granpap in with John,” the woman said.
John looked up quickly at the woman. “What?” he asked.
“His name is John,” Granpap said, pointing to John.
John looked at the boy who had his name. They stared at each other. He had never before seen a boy with his name. Here were two Johns in the same room and if that was true, then nobody knew how many other boys named John there might be in the world that was getting so big. It was depressing and not exciting any more to get into the world. One could not know where to put his finger and say anything was sure or knowable. It felt as if a big mountain had come and sat upon him.
At supper John ate only hominy and fatback gravy, for he could not chew the meat without pain.
“We’ll have chicken to-morrow,” the woman said, “since it’s Sunday. And I’ll fix you some soup.” She had a bright little voice like a sparrow’s chirp. “We’ve got a few chickens,” she told Granpap.
“I reckon we’ll have t’ leave early in the morning,” Granpap answered her. “The re-union begins on Monday.”
He wanted to tell the woman and man that he had money and could pay, but he didn’t know how they might take it. Perhaps, in the morning, he could just leave money on the table without saying anything.
“Must you go?” The woman asked. Since her husband had accepted them, she was really enjoying the unexpected company.
“I reckon we must,” Granpap told her.
“My Pa was a veteran.”
“Sure enough?”
“Yes, but he’s dead now. But so long as he lived he went to every re-union.”
“Is hit true,” Granpap asked her, “they take ye in and board and lodge ye free?”
“Yes, it’s true. My Pa once stayed with the mayor of the city where they had the re-union. It was a mistake, and he was moved after the first day. But he said the second house was just as good. He died last year and I was broke up, because he had lived with us for his last two years on earth. Before he died he said to me, ‘Don’t grieve, Mary. Just remember, your life’s going on, and you’ve got to live it.’ ”
“Yes,” Granpap said. “Hit’s something we’ve all got to face, sooner or later. Life goes on whether we’re there to see hit go or not.”
Granpap’s voice took on the woman’s tone of sadness, but he spoke the words as if he said them only in politeness, as if he felt, really, that life needed him and he was in it up to the brim.
The woman went on talking. Except for the sadness in her voice when she spoke of her father, her voice kept up its chirp. It was like a twitter of birds, and it said over again, no matter what the words she spoke were, “Well, life’s going on, well, life’s going on . . . chirp-chirp.”
And when she and the two little girls had cleared the table and were washing up in the kitchen, they kept up the sound among them. And it was a good sound, coming from the kitchen into the front room where Granpap, the farmer and the two boys sat.
The woman brought a jug from the kitchen and four cups she had washed clean of coffee grounds. When Granpap saw the jug his eyes lit up. John could see them light up or perhaps it was the way Granpap raised his head as if he was sniffing that made the light from the lamp shine in his eyes. It made John remember what Emma had whispered to him just before they left. “Watch Granpap,” she said, “that he don’t drink too much.” Well, he had shaken off that responsibility very easily. It was not right for Emma to tell him to watch Granpap. John would not take the responsibility Emma had put on him. He would do what Granpap would wish him to do, let well enough alone.
The man poured John a half cup from the jug and his own John a half cup. The two men took theirs straight down, and had more. John swallowed his at one gulp, but the man did not offer him more. Inside his throat the liquor burned him like the scald on his face, and when it reached his belly it burned again; then the burning died away and left a very fine quietness, like sleep.
“You growing cotton?” Granpap asked the farmer, whose name was Mister Sanders.
“What there is of it.”
“A lot of cotton seems to be around these parts.”
“Yes, it’s about the only thing we grow to sell.”
“In the hills we grow corn, mostly.”
“Cotton’s the only thing for farmers in these lowlands. And that is hard come by with little return.”
“Have another?” he asked Granpap.
“No,” Granpap said. Yet when the man still held the jug over his cup he said. “Well, I believe I will.”
The man poured out a full cup for Granpap and another for himself. When he drank he coughed and sent a scattering of drops from his mouth. Some of them came on John’s forehead and touched it near the hair where it was not covered with lard. He wiped them off with his sleeve, and the rough sleeve rubbing against the burns made him uncomfortable so he was roused and heard all the words that were spoken.
“Do ye own?” Granpap asked.
“No,” the farmer said. “I’m a renter. My Pa owned near a hundred acres around here before the war, with about thirty of good low ground near a pond and swamp. Before that my Granpa had owned more land but sold some to a big slave owner. After the war one of these Southern Carpet Baggers got hold of the rest of the land . . . .”
What was a Southern Carpet Bagger? John wanted to ask that question even while the man went on speaking. He wanted Granpap to ask, but Granpap had nodded as if he knew. He tugged at Granpap’s sleeve. “What’s a Southern Carpet Bagger?” he whispered.
“Sh,” Granpap said and kept his eyes on Mister Sanders.
“What does he want?” Mister Sanders asked.
“He wants t’ know what a Southern Carpet Bagger is,” Granpap said, and there was an inviting sound in his voice as if he was asking the man to tell.
“Well, you know what a Northern Carpet Bagger was. Do you?” he asked John.
“No,” John answered him straight out.
“They came down here during Re-construction and made money off the prostrated South. There are two in the Capital now, two brothers named Forbes. They came down and had niggers elected to the legislature and the niggers passed laws that made money for the Carpet Baggers. Those Forbeses are the richest men in this state right now. And there were plenty of Southern whites that joined in with the Northern Carpet Baggers to make money. And they did. And one of them got my Pa’s land by closing a mortgage. Now I’m renting from him.”
There were other things John would have liked to ask, but he knew that for the time he had said enough. And Granpap spoke at once.
“What did ye do to him?” he asked the farmer, and there was an excitement in his voice as if he expected to hear a story of a revenge that suited the crime of taking a man’s land away from him.
“Nothing,” the man said. “There wasn’t anything to do except pay what I owe. I owe him last year’s rent, most of it. Last year we had late rains and early frost. It was a bad year.”
The woman came in from the kitchen with her two girls. They sat down close to the fireplace as if there was a fire there and they were warming themselves, though it was hot and close in the room, and mosquitos that had come through the windows were swooping around whining their little aggravating tunes.
“Hit’s bad when you lose your own land,” Granpap said.
“Well,” the woman joined in, leaning over to rest her back, tired from cooking and working in the fields, “at least we aren’t share-croppers.”
“No,” her husband told her. “But it might be that next.”
“Mostly niggers are share-croppers,” one of the girls piped up in a sparrow voice like her mother’s. She gave her piece of information which she knew to be true from hearing it said so much, and the strangers looked at her. She wanted them to look, to pay her some attention, but when the old man and boy stared she became confused, and hid behind her mother.
John and Granpap got very little sleep that night. After the lamp was out the mosquitoes came in droves, and were not at all bashful about lighting on noses and foreheads and legs. There was a long fight, and it was against John from the first, for the insects could light on his face since the lard was rubbed off on the bedclothes and he could not slap there for it would hurt the burns too much. Granpap in his discomfort let out some curses, and when the other John heard these, he followed Granpap’s curses with some of his own. There were sounds of slapping and whispered cursing in the dark room for a long while. Then, worn out with the fight, they dozed off.
It seemed only a moment to John when he woke up with a bad sickness in his belly. Granpap took him hastily out of doors, so that he might not make too much of a mess in the house of a stranger. It was shameful and disturbing for this to happen.
But it was more disturbing to find that John could not get out of bed the next day. His legs simply would not carry him.
While the Sanders family went to church Granpap sat by John.
“I’ll have t’ carry ye back t’ Emma, if ye don’t get better,” he told John.
He was wishing for Emma, though the woman, Mister Sanders’ wife, had been more than kind. But it was best for the boy to be with Emma, if he was going to be sick. He looked so pale lying flat in the bed, and so thin. There were dark yellowish circles under his eyes. And lying there, with the fair hair off his forehead, and long bone of his face showing up, he looked like Kirk. For the first time Granpap saw that John favored Kirk and was not like Basil who had squarer bones along his jaws.
At dinner time John had some chicken soup and sat up in bed. But when he tried to walk his knees gave out from under him.
Late in the afternoon with two more cups of soup in him, he was able to get up and walk down the road with the others to one of the cotton patches.
The patch was in full blossom, for it had been an early year.
“We planted the last of January, this year,” the farmer said. “And this far it has been a fine crop.”
It looked a fine crop. The cotton plants, full of green leaves, grew straight and healthy in long even rows. They were quite full of blossoms, as if a whole flock of red and yellow butterflies had settled between the green leaves to rest.
“Emma would like this,” Granpap thought. He had been thinking about Emma all day at different moments, and in the night when John was sick. Out loud he said, puffing at his pipe, between puffs, “hit’s right pretty,” because he was thinking of Emma.
“I ought to make two bales out of this and the others,” the farmer told them. “If we can get the weeds out, and there’s not an early frost.”
There were plenty of weeds in places and they looked as healthy as the cotton plants though not so high. Across on the far side of the field the ground was chopped clean of weeds, and there the rows of cotton looked clean and upstanding as if proud of themselves.
The farmer looked at the rows, and anyone could see he felt a pride in the work done. “But,” he said, “by the time we weed one patch the other is grown up again. It takes the whole family, and then we don’t get done what needs to be done.”
“We can do it,” the woman said. “So long as the Lord gives us strength.”
They walked back in the quiet evening on the narrow road. The evening sun came through the leaves overhead and spattered the ground with bright spots and shadows.
Granpap was thinking he would leave some extra money from the belt around his waist for the woman when they left. She had been so kind. And he would make John say “Thank ye” for her kindness. It was only right. He spoke to John who was walking along beside him.
“If your belly has done a-cutting capers,” he said, “we’ll start off at sun-up to-morrow.”
John looked up at Granpap, and for the first time since the accident he was able to stretch his mouth a little. “My belly,” he said, “hit’s done.” His legs felt so much stronger and there was a happy, excited feeling where the pain in his belly had been. He wanted to go on right away toward the city and all the wonders that were promised.