Читать книгу Behold, this Dreamer - Charlotte Miller - Страница 9

There was as much pride within Janson Sanders as there was in any man in Eason County, though few people saw in him any reason for pride. Pride had no place in patched overalls and calloused hands, in a remade shirt and sunburned skin, or in the mixed blood that showed so clearly in his face and his coloring.

He walked beside his father that gray Saturday morning in late November of 1924, the short, brick-paved downtown section of Main Street in Pine seeming to him choked with traffic and noise such as he was little accustomed to. Black and gawky Model T Fords rattled by, Chevrolets of varying colors, a Packard, an expensive-looking Stutz blatting its horn to get out into traffic—they were all dust covered, red from the Alabama clay, for this was the only paved stretch of road in all of Eason County, other than the short, brick-paved strip of Central Street just in front of the county courthouse in Wylie.

People pushed past Janson and his father on the narrow sidewalk as they made their way from the wagon lot at the far edge of downtown, men in blue serge suits and starched collars, young dandies wearing plus fours and pullover sweaters, Janson meeting the eyes of each who passed with his father’s Irish pride and his mother’s Cherokee dignity, though his own overalls were faded and patched, and the shirt he wore had once belonged to another man. He knew that many people in the County looked down on him for the Cherokee heritage that showed so clearly in his face and his coloring, in the prominent, high cheekbones and the black, straight hair, but there was no shame in him for the man he was, or the past he was a part of. He was proud, as both his parents were proud, and he had been raised to know there was no man alive any better, or any less, than he—and he met the eyes of each who passed with pride and dignity, and with the independence born of his blood.

His father was talking as they walked along, about the recent town ordinance that restricted horse and mule drawn wagons from Main Street any farther down than the wagon lot at the far edge of downtown, past Abernathy’s Feed and Seed and the dry goods store, and about the ugly Model T’s and the Chevrolets that crowded the roads enough already without restricting the short strip of downtown for their use alone. Janson listened, though he had heard the same comments many times before, not only from his father, but also from many of the neighboring farmers and churchfolk, and he started to say something in agreement, for he considered motor cars a luxury that he could see little need or use for—but a car horn sounded and drew his attention instead, and he looked toward the traffic to see a girl in a dark cloche hat crossing the narrow street toward them, the girl running slightly to avoid a Packard whose driver honked irritably for the second time as he had to slow for her.

The short skirt of the navy-blue dress she wore covered her knees by only a bare few inches, and, as she stepped up onto the sidewalk out of the way of the motor car, Janson fancied he saw for a moment the top of a rolled stocking, and perhaps even a bit of exposed kneecap below the hem of the skirt—he looked away quickly, and then back again; after all, he was almost seventeen and a half now, and not unwise to the ways of the world, having become a man the year before at the hands of a girl from a neighboring farm, a girl who had known much more than any girl her age ought to have known.

The girl in the cloche hat smiled appreciatively at the look in his eyes as she walked past—as bold as a flapper, he told himself, though he was not really certain how bold a flapper might be, for he had never been close to one in all his life. He found it difficult to even imagine a girl as bold and daring and promiscuous as he had heard city flappers to be, girls drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes, dancing and carrying on. The girl had face paint on, rouge and lipstick and face powder, and her hair was bobbed short beneath the cloche hat, curling in at her cheeks in the style some of the town girls had taken to wearing in the past several years, such girls actually visiting barber shops to have their hair cut just as men did.

He glanced around at her as she walked by, admiring the slender calves encased in silk stockings, the dark seams so straight in back below the short skirt, though he knew she was the sort of girl his mother would say was no lady, for he well knew that ladies did not wear face paint and powder, or bob their hair, or roll their stockings down to their knees.

“Janson, boy—” he heard his father say, a note of reprove in his voice, and he started to turn back to go on about the business that had brought them here into town today, so they could go back home to the land and to the barn roof waiting for repair, to the fall garden that needed hoeing, and the bow basket he had been working on earlier, as well as the scrap cotton still left in the fields waiting to be picked and sold for the money they would have Christmas on this year.

And then he saw the car.

It drove by slowly, the old man staring out through the open side at Janson’s father. Janson watched as it slowed even further still, and, after a moment, made a wide U-shaped turn at the far end of Main Street, the other cars there seeming to stop or move out of its way, one driver of a Buick honking his horn loudly before seeming to recognize the car, the driver, and the passenger, then falling silent and inching over to make way for the black, 1915 Cadillac touring car, as did everyone else. They knew that car; everyone in the County knew that car, for, though it was nine years old now, there was not another like it in all of Eason County—and it belonged to Walter Eason.

The car went by, and then pulled over just ahead, in the only empty space among the Model T’s and the Buicks and the Chevrolets, blocking the way to a fire plug as it came to a stop and waited there. After a moment, the old man got out and walked up onto the sidewalk to stand waiting for them, his manner as unyielding as the black suit he wore, and the white shirt with its starched and detachable collar.

Walter Eason remained silent as they approached him, his eyes never once seeming to leave the face of the tall man with the graying reddish-brown hair who walked at Janson’s side, his own face never changing—just the cold, gray eyes moving at last as they flicked for one moment to Janson, and then back again.

“Mornin’, Mr. Eason,” Henry Sanders said as they neared him, nodding his head in greeting, but not tipping or removing the battered old hat he wore, as many men would have done in the presence of the powerful old man. Henry Sanders tipped his hat to no man, as his son well knew.

“Good morning, Henry—young man—” The gray eyes moved to Janson again, and Janson nodded. Walter Eason stared at him for a moment longer, and then turned back to his father. “Doing some shopping, Henry? We don’t see you and the boy in town too often.”

“My wife’s birthday’s comin’ up,” Henry Sanders answered, explaining no further, and the old man nodded.

“It’s good to see you doing your business in Pine; it’s good for all our County people when they do their business here in Eason County,” he said, and Janson knew what was coming, as he had known from the moment the car had first begun to slow, and then had come back to stop before them, hearing the words only a moment later; “I hear you sold your cotton out of the County this year, Henry, over in Mason, to Taylors—”

There was a moment’s silence, so quickly gone Janson was unsure as to whether it had been or not. “Yes, sir, I reckon’ I did.” There was no tone of apology in Henry Sanders’ voice, and none of subservience—he owed Walter Eason nothing, and they both knew that. It had been his crop, grown on his land, with his own seed, and he had sold it where it had brought him the most dollars, though no other of the County farmers sold out of Eason County, though few ever had.

“County farmers usually sell in Eason County,” Walter Eason said. “Most men find it pays to do their business at home.” There was no threat to the old man’s words, just the clear message—Eason County farmers sell in Eason County. There was no room left for compromise.

“Cotton’s bringin’ a better price over in Mason, an’ they’re payin’ a premium for long staple—I got a mortgage t’ pay on my place; I got t’ sell where I can get th’ most money.”

“Money isn’t everything, Henry,” Walter Eason said quietly, staring at Janson’s father.

For a moment Henry Sanders did not speak. “No sir, it sure ain’t,” he said at last, his words quiet.

Janson stood watching the two men, but neither spoke for what seemed to him to be a very long time as they stood staring at each other. Then he found Walter Eason’s gaze on him again.

“The boy takes after his mother, doesn’t he?” Eason remarked after a moment, as if no conversation had gone on between the two men as just had. There was appraisal in the look directed on Janson, a summing up he did not altogether like, and he returned the cold stare without looking away, lifting his chin slightly as he met the old man’s eyes.

“Yeah, he looks a lot like his ma—” Henry Sanders’s hand came to rest on his son’s shoulder, just as it had done so many times in the past, though Janson was fully grown now and as tall almost as any man in the Sanders family. Janson could hear the pride in his father’s voice, the affection inherent in the words, and he looked up at this man who had given him life more than seventeen years before, seeing in him the pride and dignity and determination of a man who wore faded overalls and a patched and remade shirt—then he looked back to Walter Eason, and he found the old man’s gaze now directed at his father as well, something in the gray eyes Janson could not understand.

But his attention was suddenly drawn away, toward the black Cadillac, and the husky young man who had gotten out from behind the wheel of the vehicle. Buddy Eason, the old man’s only grandson, stood now beside the car. He was perhaps a year younger than Janson’s seventeen and a half years, but broader of build, with a square jaw set into an angry and defiant line below slicked-back, wavy brown hair. Buddy Eason was a bad sort, with a quick temper that could be both violent and unpredictable by what Janson had heard in the years of growing up in the County, though he himself had been lucky enough to have had few dealings with Buddy Eason in that time.

But Buddy Eason was staring at him now, staring at him with a look that became only angrier as Janson returned the stare, Janson lifting his chin and returning the gaze without once looking away. Buddy shifted with almost restless motion, then again, his hands tightening into fists at his sides, his eyes not leaving Janson’s face until he heard his name spoken, and then Henry Sanders’s reply.

“You know my grandson, Buddy, don’t you?”

“Yeah, how’re you doin’, son?” Henry Sanders asked, and Buddy Eason’s eyes shifted quickly to him, eyes that were suddenly furious, filled with rage it seemed only because he had been spoken to as he had, had been addressed as “son,” and not as “Mr. Buddy” or “Mr. Eason” as Janson knew most of the County folk would have addressed him. Then Buddy’s dark gray eyes moved back to Janson, and Janson realized suddenly this younger man was waiting now for him to speak, waiting for him to ask after his health, to call him “Mr. Buddy” with the respect Buddy believed himself due as an Eason.

Janson Sanders remained silent and returned his stare.

“I’m sure you’ll come to realize before ginning time next year that it’s best for a man to do his business at home, Henry,” Walter Eason was saying, as if they had never once left the subject. Janson brought his eyes back to the old man, finding no doubt written there on the almost unlined face. “We’ll see you at the gin next year,” he said, and then started to turn away.

“Next year’s a long way off, Mr. Eason,” Henry Sanders said, and the old man turned back for a moment to stare at him. There was something in Walter Eason’s eyes that seemed to understand what was being told him, something that for the first time seemed to know the sort of man it was who stood there on the sidewalk before him that day. After a moment, he nodded his head, and said quietly:

“We’ll see, Henry. We’ll see . . .” He turned and started again toward the black touring car, stepping down off the sidewalk without ever once looking back.

Henry Sanders was a man who owed his livelihood to no other man. It had been a decision he had made, a choice taken in long years past before memory could even serve him. He had come into life over fifty-six years before there in Eason County on sharecropped land his parents had worked for more years than they could count, only the third generation removed from an Ireland of tenanted farms, famine, and starvation. He could remember no time in his life when he had not wanted land that was his own, a home no one could ever take from him, and a crop he would not lose half of each year for use of mules and plow and sometimes pitiful earth. Together with his wife, Nell, he had seen that dream a reality, had made it so, with work and sweat and doing without. Their son had been the first Sanders ever born to his own earth, the first Sanders ever to come into life not owing the land he lived on to another man. They had seen to that.

But as the early months of 1924 had come, it had seemed they might be close to losing the land they had worked so hard to have. Eason County existed in cotton, as did most of Alabama and much of the South. Cotton had brought them through slave times and civil war, through carpetbaggers and Reconstruction, and to a South that now stood in mills and villages and company towns. Cotton had helped Henry to buy the land—but now in 1924 Henry could no longer look at a field of cotton without feeling worry. The going price per pound of lint had not been good since the year after the armistice to end the World War had been signed in 1918, and even the sharp rise in price in ’23 had been little felt by the farmers in Eason County. The Easons, as always, seemed to be paying a few cents less per pound of cotton than were any of the cotton merchants buying in the surrounding counties—but Eason County farmers did not sell out of Eason County. They sold their cotton to Walter Eason, as their fathers had done, and their fathers before them, all the way back to the hard years following the war with the North that had ended almost sixty years before. They owed their allegiance to Walter Eason, as fathers and grandfathers long dead had owed allegiance to Walter’s father—few men in the small towns and countryside of Eason County could not credit their livelihoods to Walter Eason, either to the cotton mill, ginning operation, or overall factory; the many sharecropped and tenanted farms he owned; or the businesses he operated from the busy, brick-paved downtown sections of Main Street in Pine, or Central Street up in the County seat of Wylie. And even fewer still could come to doubt his power, or his word. Eason County was his county, and the people his people—few men had dared to go up against Walter Eason in Eason County. It was well known those few had quite often lived to regret their courage.

But Henry Sanders had owed Walter Eason nothing. No man had given him the red land he and his son worked behind mule and plow, the crop they sweated and prayed over. And no one would take it from them now. There was a mortgage to pay on the farm, the credit run at the store, a wife and seventeen-year-old son to see through the winter months ahead. To sell at Eason prices this year would have meant losing the land, losing what he had worked so long to have, losing what he had worked so long to give his son—if Henry Sanders owed anything, he owed his son the pride of walking his own earth; the dream of owning land, and a crop that was all his own; of never being a man worked and owned and sweated into old age by a man such as Walter Eason. And that was a debt Henry Sanders was willing to pay, a debt that had come from generations long past, and dreams that would never die, dreams that were as much a part of his son Janson as life or breath or pride would ever be.

Janson had been reared on those dreams, but, as that cold winter of 1924-25 passed, and the spring months of plowing the red earth and planting the cotton, he knew those dreams were no less in danger than they had been the year before. Cotton prices were falling, and production was up. Many farmers were no longer even getting enough per pound of lint to cover the costs of growing their crops. There would be no more choice this year than there had been the last; the cotton would have to be sold out of the County if they were to hold onto the land.

The fields were lush and green by the time the hot summer weeks of laying by came in 1925, the long, curving rows thick with green cotton plants, leaving little to be done there now but wait. Soon enough the bolls would burst open and the back-breaking work of picking the cotton would begin—until then there were only chores to be done at the house, the garden to tend, the barn to sweep out, or work that could be done for a neighboring farmer at a day’s small wage. Janson soon became restless, bored in those days, unaccustomed to having time on his hands with little or no work that had to be done.

He visited with his kin, walked the green fields just as his pa did, and courted several of the girls from church, but there never seemed enough to do in the days to help make the time pass. He cleared land with his Uncle Wayne and his gran’pa, and wove baskets for sale from white oak splits he prepared himself—bow baskets, egg baskets, cotton baskets; and bottomed chairs for hire—but still laying by that year seemed to pass more slowly than had any other he could ever remember. He knew that soon enough the green fields would turn white with cotton, and that the long hours of dragging a pick sack behind him down the never-ending rows would begin—and also would begin the trouble with Walter Eason, for, sometime between now and the time the cotton was sold in the fall, something would have to happen, something aimed toward preventing them from selling the crop out of the County. Something —one farmer’s rebellion might bring two, two might bring three, until the system that had been in operation in the County since the hard years following the War Between the States might finally come to an end. And Walter Eason could never allow that.

So far there had been few incidents, things for which there was no explanation, but things behind which Janson could see clear meaning—windows broken out at the front of the house, sending shards of broken glass into the old sofa and braided rugs there; several of his pa’s hunting dogs shot through the head and left; a brush fire set near the front of the house. Warnings alone—but the real struggle lay ahead in the fall when the time came again for them to sell out of Eason County. And that was still months away.

On a hot Saturday morning toward the end of laying by that year, Janson started the eight-mile walk toward town, unable to find anything more useful to put his mind or his hands to. It was a warm morning, the hot July sun already baking down on his shoulders through his faded workshirt and the crossed galluses of his overalls as he turned off North Ridge Road and onto the road toward Pine. There would be a long walk ahead of him, and a hot one, but it was a walk he had made many times in the past, and in weather even hotter than the weather of this day. Besides, it was likely someone would stop to offer him a ride before he had gone too far a distance, some passing farmer or one of the churchfolk, for someone almost always did.

There was a little money in his pocket from hired work he had done the day before, and, after several hours debate with himself over the waste, he had decided to treat himself to a phosphate at the soda fountain in the drugstore, and then to some time spent watching girls pass along the street. He would have liked to have gone to the picture show as well, to see the moving picture people he heard so much talk about: Clara Bow, whose photograph he had seen once on the front of a moving picture magazine in the drugstore, Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, Theda Bara; but he knew he would not go. He had been to a movie show only once in his life, on a day he had told his parents he was going elsewhere, only to go to the picture show in town instead. When his mother had found out, his pa had taken him out behind the smokehouse—but Janson had not gotten a whipping that day, or ever again since. His pa had told him he was a man now, and that it was time he learn to choose right from wrong on his own—Janson had never again gone to see a picture show after that, though he still could not see why it was supposed to be wrong, even if the preacher did say it was; any more than he could see why it was supposed to be wrong for a man to curse, if the occasion warranted it; or to drink corn liquor, even if Prohibition had made liquor illegal since five years back; or to dally with a girl who was not a lady, so long as he did not have a wife at home to take care of the things any man needed.

He was thinking on that subject as he walked toward town that morning, of a wife, and of how nice it would be if there were a girl in his bed at night. He was a man now, eighteen years old, with the needs of any man. He knew plenty of nice girls—and a man only married a nice girl—plenty of girls who were pretty, with nice figures and long hair, girls who had been raised to be ladies, who would not let any man see their bare knees until they were married, and then only in the privacy of a bedroom with the door closed behind them, and then maybe only if he was very lucky and all the lamps were blown out. His pa had said ladies did not know much about the sort of things that happened between men and women, and that a man had to be understanding with the girl he married, for ladies were delicate in such matters—there were good girls and there were bad girls, and a man only married a good girl. He was not really supposed to have fun with a bad girl before then, or ever—Janson knew plenty of good girls, and a few bad ones, but he had not found one he could really think of himself being married to.

There was the sound of a motor car coming along the road behind him, headed in the direction of Pine, but Janson paid little attention to it as it drew near. It seemed to have an expensive sound to it, unlike the rattly Model T Fords and the Chevrolets that most people who could afford cars drove, sounding nothing like the sort of car that would stop to give someone like him a ride, someone in patched overalls, and with feet dirty from the walk over the red clay roads—but the car did stop, slowing and then coming to a halt beside him, the door opening after a moment, and a female voice calling out: “Hey, honey, you want a lift or not?” as he continued to walk on.

Janson stopped and turned back, staring with surprise as he saw the car, and then the driver.

Lecia Mae Eason, the oldest of Walter Eason’s two granddaughters, sat staring at him from behind the wheel of the black Cadillac touring car, one eyebrow raised in question. She was perhaps at least a few years older than his eighteen years, with a well-known reputation in the County for being “fast,” as Janson’s mother would have called her—and in that moment she looked to Janson as he thought a “fast” woman would look. Her brown hair was bobbed short in the current style, her face painted with lipstick, powder, and rouge. She was not exactly pretty, with the same square jaw and self-possessed attitude that her brother, Buddy Eason, often wore, but she was pleasant enough to look at, and she seemed almost to have an air of sexuality about her that Janson fancied he could sense even over the distance.

Her eyes seemed to move over him for a moment through the windshield of the Cadillac, her eyebrow raising again, this time in irritation. “Well?”

“Ma’am,” he asked, unsure.

“You want a lift or not?” she asked, her voice rising with impatience.

He never knew later why it was he said yes—or perhaps he did, finding himself seated beside her in the touring car as it headed on toward Pine. He looked around the interior of the Cadillac with curiosity, never once in his life having thought to be inside such a fancy machine—then the girl took his attention away, or the woman, he told himself, for she looked perhaps even a few years older now that he was sitting beside her. She kept glancing at him, and he tried not to stare at her too openly, for her knees were actually visible below the edge of her skirt, her silk stockings rolled right down to them, and, even as he tried not to stare, he knew she noticed, and that she did not seem to mind.

“You like this car?” she asked a moment later, after having secured his name and where it was he was headed.

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

“It’s ten years old now, you know. It’s not mine; it belongs to the Old Man, my grandfather, but I had to borrow it for the day. Had a new Packard myself, that is until I got a bit blotto and ran it into a tree a few weeks back—”

Janson stared at her for a moment, but did not respond, not knowing what to say. He had never before met a woman who drank, much less one who admitted to having done so.

After a moment, she reached and took up a paper sack from the seat between them, pulling down on the top of it with a thumb to reveal the shiny cap of a hip flask. “You want a drink, honey?” she asked, holding the flask out toward him.

“No, ma’am—” he said, staring at her openly now. He had tried corn liquor several times in his life, as had any other young man his age in the County, but had never really acquired a taste for it—besides, she was a woman, even if she was not a lady, and a man never drank in front of a woman, not even a woman who herself might drink.

“You sure?” she asked, bracing the flask between her exposed knees and unscrewing the cap. She tilted it up for a moment, the car almost going off the road as she swallowed a mouthful and then offered it to him again. “It’s good gin, smuggled in off a rumrunner, not any of this bathtub swill—”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure—”

“Stop calling me ma’am,” she snapped. “I’m not any older than you are—” It was a lie, and they both knew it. “My name’s Lecia Mae—”

He looked at her for a moment, surprised at her words, reminding himself again who she was. “Yes, ma’am—I mean, Lecia Mae.”

“Good—” She smiled, glancing at him again. After a moment she asked: “How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m eighteen.”

“Eighteen—” she said, but said nothing more.

Silence fell between them for a time, and she seemed again to appraise him with a side-long glance. He felt that look, and he wondered again if she was thinking the same thing he was thinking—if women, even “fast” women, thought such things.

“You in any particular hurry to get anywhere?” she asked after a moment.

“No, ma’am, not really.”

“Good—” she said, and glanced his way again. He felt the gray eyes moving over him, and he understood. “Good—”

When they reached Pine, she skirted the town, going out through the edge of the mill village, passing through quiet dirt streets that were lined with row upon row of identical, white two-family houses. She drove too fast, paying little attention to the few other cars that were on the road, or even to the children playing near the edges of yards, then she doubled back toward Main Street, going back toward downtown. Janson watched her, a nervousness growing in the pit of his stomach, at the way she was driving, and at more—he was anxious, wondering how much experience she had actually had, for he had never been with anyone like her before in his life. This afternoon, he well knew, would be far different from the times in the hayloft with Lois Dewey. Far different.

She stopped the touring car on Main Street before a large, white two-story house that sat up on a hill not far from the brick-paved section of downtown. She stared out the open side of the car for a moment at the big house on the rise, and at the shining, new green four-door Cadillac that sat in the circular drive before it.

“Dammit—” she swore under her breath, and Janson stared at her for a moment with open surprise, for he had never before heard any woman curse in all his life. “We’ll have to go out back to the coach house. Daddy’s home, and the Old Man’ll be with him—”

Before he could speak, she pulled the car into the drive and on around toward the rear of the house, causing Janson to flinch inwardly at the risk they were taking so close to her father’s home, and to her grandfather. But his unease was quickly replaced by curiosity as he stared past her and out her side of the car toward the big house with its many windows, then at the large kitchen standing separate and apart at the back of the house, connected only by a bricked footpath, and at last at the flower garden with the small, white-painted gazebo at its center. She drove the Cadillac up to a large brick building sitting at a distance beyond the house, the two open archways in its center opening onto a wide hall, and windows above to rooms in a second floor. She pulled the car in through one of the archways and over an oilspot on the bricked floor, parking it beside a new-looking roadster that had been pulled beneath the second archway; then she shut the motor off.

Janson looked around the white walls of the large open space, hearing the car’s engine tick as it began to cool. Lecia Mae took up the hip flask and drank again, then retrieved her lipstick and a small mirror from the handbag at her side, freshening the makeup she wore as she talked absently of things Janson paid little attention to. His eyes came to rest on the narrow flight of stairs that rose from the rear of the hall to the floor above—surely they would go up there, to some room, maybe even to a bed, before they did it, he told himself, feeling the openness of the archways behind him, the presence of the large house beyond.

She was watching him when he brought his eyes back to her.

“You, nervous, honey?” she asked, absently patting her bob with one hand. “Ain’t you ever done it before? You’d relax, you know, if you took a drink—”

But her hand went to his knee, then slid up along the inside of his thigh, and he knew there was nothing that would help him to relax—and he also knew it would happen right here, right where someone could walk in and catch them; and he found that he really did not care anymore.

Her hands were moving over him in ways that he knew should have shocked him, her mouth coming easily to his, tasting of the liquor, her tongue moving over his own. He was aware of the open archways behind them, her father’s house beyond, but for some reason none of that mattered.

There was a sudden, prickly sensation along the back of his neck, an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he tried to take his mouth from hers to look toward the archways, but she would not release him, tightening her hand on him, making him moan instead as he pressed her back against the seat of the touring car—it was safe, he told himself. She would not have brought him here if it was not safe. It was—

“You goddamn—” The car door was suddenly yanked open behind him, and he was hauled off the girl and out of the car, then turned and slammed hard back against its side, the impact driving the breath from his body as he found himself staring into the face of Buddy Eason—the younger man’s face was red with rage as he stared from Janson to his sister, his body shaking as he forced almost unintelligible words through tightly gritted teeth. “You goddamn red-nigger trash with my sister—you goddamn—”

Before Janson knew it was coming, a hard fist to his stomach doubled him over, knocking the breath from his body again, making him gag and choke and fight for air, then a second sent him stumbling backwards, bloodying his nose and sending him reeling back into the open doorway of the touring car. Lecia Mae shoved him away, sliding to his side of the car, yelling something toward her brother, words Janson finally understood, and he looked back at her quickly, seeing the sudden excitement in her eyes at the diversion before her—and Janson realized with a sudden and complete anger that a diversion was all he had been as well, a moment’s diversion for a damned rich girl. She had never wanted him, or even the pleasure, but only the diversion. Only the—

He hauled himself to his feet from where he lay half against the side of the Cadillac, his eyes on Buddy Eason—he might be whipped by an angry brother under such circumstances, but there was no way he would allow the hell to be beaten out of him just to entertain a bunch of rich folks. There was no way—

He began to fight back as Buddy started toward him again, landing a hard blow to Buddy’s jaw that made his knuckles ache, and then another to his midsection that sent the younger man reeling backwards against the red roadster parked nearby—Buddy suddenly seemed to go into a rage, his entire body shaking, the blood rushing to his face to darken it even further, not at what he had found Janson and his sister doing, but simply because Janson was fighting him, was fighting him and whipping him. Buddy screamed and came at Janson again, one hand going to his pocket, then coming up quickly—there was one brief second, a glint of light off metal, and then the hand began to descend—

Janson blocked a sweeping arch of the knife with his free hand, the hard impact of the blow making his arm ache all the way to the shoulder. Buddy stepped away, keeping the knife between them, the cold, gray eyes searching for an opening. Janson watched him, wary, cautious, leaping away as Buddy lunged again, the knife missing him by only a bare few inches, then again, as Lecia Mae urged Buddy on, her legs now out the door of the car and crossed, her skirt now seeming to be hiked well above her thighs.

Buddy lunged at him again, the knife blade slicing into Janson’s hand as he tried to fend it away—for a moment, there was no blood; then it came, running down over his wrist as a burning pain filled his palm. Buddy slashed at him again, missing his cheek by only a bare few inches, then again, and Janson twisted away, stumbling, almost falling, catching himself, starting to turn—then the cold impact of the knife blade hit him, the shock of the metal driving up to the hilt through his right shoulder. For a moment, there was nothing; then a wash of pain swept through him, turning him sick and making the coach house twist about him. His bowels felt suddenly weak, his face cold from the shock, the smells around him intensified—the oily smell of the cars, the odor of gasoline, of Buddy’s sweat, the decidedly sexual scent of the girl. Vomit rose to his throat as he grasped the knife handle in his left hand, a cry finally escaping him as the blade cleared his flesh—he held it in one bloody hand, staring down at it; at the red on its blade, soaking into the knife handle, covering his hand, soaking through his shirt sleeve—blood, his own blood.

A sudden, blind anger engulfed him. His senses were dazed, his mind unclear, making it impossible for him to control the sudden, violent rage that swept through him. He lunged at Buddy, throwing the full force of his weight against the husky younger man, sending him reeling backwards onto the brick flooring—suddenly Janson was kneeling over him, the knife held to Buddy’s throat in one bloody hand. Janson stared down into the younger man’s eyes, shaking with rage, watching the gray eyes widen with fear and self-concern. Perspiration beaded on Buddy’s upper lip as he began to tremble—there was the sudden strong smell of urine, and Janson realized with disgust that the man’s bladder had voided itself. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kill Buddy Eason. Nothing more than to—

He slowly forced himself to his feet, weaving slightly as a wave of light-headedness hit him. Pain throbbed through his right shoulder, a sick feeling in the back of his throat—but he tossed the knife away, and then stood staring down at Buddy Eason where the man lay on the brick floor at his feet, seeing Buddy begin to shake with rage, with fury that Janson had fought and whipped him, and even that he had let him live. Then he turned his eyes toward Lecia Mae where she sat in the open doorway of the touring car, her words stilled now, her eyes never once leaving his face, her hands not attempting to pull down her skirt—he stared at her for a moment longer, then turned and walked away, through the open archways of the coach house and out into the clean summer air, one hand pressed to his bleeding right shoulder.

For a long time he could hear Buddy Eason’s voice yelling after him as he walked away, the same words, over and over again. “I’m gonna kill you, you red-Injun’ nigger! One day, somehow, I’m gonna kill you!”

But Janson Sanders never once looked back.

He never knew exactly how he got home that day, just that someone stopped and picked him up, gave him a ride—how he swore to himself over and over on that trip home that he would never go into town again, never trust another fancied-up modern woman, never risk losing his life for—

His mind was muddled by the time he reached home. There were confused thoughts about the land, about his home, about fields green with plants, white with cotton—then one last clear image as he stumbled from the car, his mother seeing him, dropping the clean wash she had been hanging on the line, running toward him as he stumbled and fell. Then there was only darkness.

The house was quiet those hours later as Nell Sanders sat by the side of the old rope bed in the back bedroom of her home, the softness of her son’s breathing the only sound to be heard in the quiet around her. Dawn would not be long in coming, but sleep was still very far away—she had been sitting here for hours now, throughout the night, just watching as Janson slept, listening to the sound of his breathing, as she had done on so many nights when he had been little more than a baby. Henry sat on the bare wood floor at her feet, much the same as he had done over thirty years before when they had been young together and courting, his hand holding hers, resting on the arm of the rocker, his eyes on their son as well—there had been no sleep that night for either of them, only worry, concern, and prayer, for Janson was their only son, the only child they had given life to, and he had been so badly hurt.

When Janson had arrived home those hours earlier, had gotten out of the car, his face paling beneath the sunburn, the blood soaking his shirt and hands, his steps staggering, Nell had thought her heart would stop within her. She could remember running toward him, catching him somehow as he fell, though she was small and slight and the top of her head did not even reach his shoulders—she knew she must have screamed for Henry, for he had been suddenly there, taking the boy up in his arms and carrying him toward the house, laying him on the old rope bed in the back bedroom, then running out again a moment later, through the pine woods and toward his parents’ home, for they had been unable to stop the bleeding, no matter what they had done.

It had seemed an eternity later when Henry had returned to the house with his mother, an eternity in which Nell had thought she would see her son bleed to death there on that old bed, an eternity in which she watched blood soak into the clean petticoat she pressed to the wound, and into the sheet and linens on the bed, an eternity in which she prayed for sight of her husband and her mother-in-law. Deborah Sanders had not even spoken a word as she had come into the house and to the bed of her grandson, but her presence alone had helped to calm Nell’s fears, for Nell had seen her stop blood so many times before, had seen her draw fire, and cure thrush.

Henry’s mother slept in the next room even now, near in case she should be needed through the night. She said Janson would be all right, that he would live, and that his shoulder would heal, but still there could be no sleep that night for Henry or for Nell. Janson was their only child, and he was all that mattered to either of them, other than each other.

Nell sat now, staring at her son’s worn and calloused hands, a farmer’s hands, where they lay at rest on the pieced quilt, remembering the tiny fingers and toes she had counted and touched those eighteen years before when her body had still hurt even too much to move. She looked at his face, seeing Henry there as well as herself, even with the green eyes now closed in sleep—how they had wanted a child, children; but there had been over thirteen years of wanting and prayer before this one had come. So many nights they had held each other and prayed, wanting to give each other a large family, sons and daughters to share the years ahead, but for so long there had been only the two of them, and they had been happy in each other alone—and then this miracle had come, a child, a son, and their world had been complete. They had the land; they had each other, and they had a son—what more could any man or woman want.

She looked at Henry now, watched him, though his eyes never once left the sleeping young man on the bed, noticing again the white that now liberally streaked the reddish-brown hair she had known for so many years. He would soon be fifty-seven, and she was now already forty-six, but his face seemed just as handsome now, just as loved, as it had on that first day she had ever met him, and she loved him even more—could that really have been almost thirty-two years before. Thirty-two years, over two-thirds of her life, and it seemed now as if it had been only a day.

She had not even been fifteen then, newly come to Alabama with her father because of a job he had been promised in Eason County. Until then she had spent her entire life on the Qualla Boundary reservation of the Cherokee people in North Carolina, very sheltered, over-protected, and greatly loved by a father who had been widowed at her birth. It was only the second time she had ever been away from home, the first having been the few months she had spent at the boarding school on the reservation, the few months that were still marked in her mind by having had her mouth washed out with soap for speaking her native Cherokee and not English—and then her father had died as well, in an accident within days of coming to Eason County, leaving her alone in a place of strangers, where there was not one other person with a face or heritage as her own.

She had been living with a farm family there in Eason County, tending their children, earning the money she would need to return home—and learning the meaning of cruelty for the first time in her less than fifteen years, hearing words she had never thought would be said to her, words spoken by the decent, good folk of the County, people who knew nothing of her, or of the people she had come from, words said simply because her skin was darker, and her heritage different from their own. Many of the people in the church the family attended had been kind to her, accepting her into their homes, looking after her until she could go home again to grandparents and an aunt who would take her in—and it had been at that church that she had met Henry.

He had been staring at her, staring at her long and hard until she could feel it and turned to look at him—but he did not look away, as did so many of the people who stared at her only because they had never seen a person of Cherokee heritage before. He only continued to stare, making her both nervous and at the same time happy, for she had never been stared at by a man so handsome before, so tall, or so good looking.

As soon as church was over, she had wondered who she might ask to find out who he was, and if it were even proper to make such an inquiry—but he had walked up to her before she could do anything, finding her waiting on the church steps for the Parker family, whose children she was tending. He had apologized for staring, had told her his name, and had asked her own. She had thought he might ask to call on her before he walked away that day, thinking that might have been why he had been staring, but had been disappointed as he had tipped his hat to her, and then had left her standing there.

That disappointment had been short-lived. He had shown up at the Parker house the next day with a load of fire wood he said he owed them, and had come almost every day the following week on one pretext or another before he had at last asked to call on her. It was less than a month later that he asked her to marry him, pacing back and forth in the red dirt of the side yard of the Parker’s sharecropped home, telling her his dreams and his plans for red land that already seemed such a part of him, though it was not yet his own. “I ain’t gonna be a sharecropper all my life, Miss Nell. I’m gonna have my own land—th’ old Stilwell place; you know it. It’s good land, and it could make us a good livin’; that is, if you’d be my wife—”

They were married a week later, on the day after her fifteenth birthday, in the little church where they had met, returning to his parents’ home that night where they would live until they could set up housekeeping on their own. There had been long years of hard work ahead of them, a decision they had made to have the land, no matter the cost it might bring to them. There had been a year of sharecropping for old Mr. Aiken, with half a crop lost for use of the land, the other half lost to the store bill; and then years in the mill village, in half a rented house, and long twelve-hour shifts in the mill for Henry—but at last they had the money, enough for them to get started on, and a mortgage for the rest. They had moved into the house Henry had dreamed of for so long, to the rolling red hills and the crop that no one could take from them, the land that was their own—and she had known Henry was at last home. Together they had worked the fields, planting or hoeing or picking the cotton, happy together in this place that had become part of them both.

For so many years there were no babies, and, as the years had passed, they had almost given up hope, though they often still prayed at night as they held each other, each wanting a child, but both knowing that, even then, they could be no happier. Then the miracle had happened, and she had been almost too happy to believe it could be true, and then another month had passed, with no blood as she had always known—Nell had taken the little money she had saved and had gone to see a doctor before telling Henry, not wanting to give him false hope until she knew for certain, for they had been waiting for so long.

After a horrid examination that had left her blushing and wanting to go home, the doctor had told her she was with child—at last, she was with child. She and Henry were to have a baby.

Henry had been in the fields when she had gone to tell him, and somehow that had seemed fitting, for she knew that nothing meant life and birth and continuance more to him than did the land—she was going to have his baby, she told him, their child. He had held her for a long time, not speaking, and, when she had looked up at him, he had been crying. And she had understood.

It had been a difficult pregnancy, a long labor, and a difficult birth. Henry had been banished from the house almost from the moment her pains had begun, told to wait on the porch with his father and his brother, Wayne, while his mother and a granny woman from the church tended Nell. It was his child, he had told them, his wife, and he had a right to be there; but they would have none of it, not even allowing him past the front door, telling him that a birthing was no place for a man to be, that he should find something to do in the fields to make himself useful until the time came when he could see his wife again, and his child.

It had seemed to Nell that the labor would go on forever, the pains continuing into the evening and late into the night, until it seemed to her the child would never come. But the pain had only worsened, coming and going until it seemed a constant, twisting her body with its intensity, making her bite her lips and dig her hands into the straw tick of the bed to keep from crying out—she saw the granny woman shake her head, heard her tell Henry’s mother that Nell should never have conceived, that she was too narrow to give birth, and too frail. But Deborah Sanders had only pushed the granny woman aside, saying she had brought many babies herself over the years, and that she was not about to lose her own daughter-in-law, or her grandchild.

“You push, honey—” she had told Nell, her face already drenched with sweat in the hot room. “You push with everythin’ you got—you an’ that baby’s both Sanders; cain’t nothin’ get th’ best ’a either one ’a you unlest you let it. Now, push! Push like the devil hisself has got a’hold ’a you! Push!”

She had pushed, had thought she would die, had prayed to see Henry one last time, to see the baby born and put into his arms before God took her, just as her mother had seen her put into her father’s arms before she had died—she screamed aloud when the baby finally came, and Henry rushed into the room to see his son born into his mother’s gentle and knowing hands, and to hear that first cry of life as Deborah Sanders lifted him by his ankles to slap him across the bottom. Henry collapsed to his knees by the side of the bed, taking Nell’s hand in his, watching as their son was put into her arms for the first time, the baby screaming, red-faced, and angry at his entry into the world. Henry would not be moved again, staying with her even as they tried to make him go, touching her and their son, keeping her from heaven itself with the very love in his eyes.

As long as she lived, Nell knew she would never forget the feeling of holding that miracle in her arms for the first time, of counting the tiny fingers and toes, and examining the small, perfect body of the son she and Henry had made—and she would never forget the tears in Henry’s eyes, the wetness on his cheeks, as he brushed the sweat-drenched hair back from her face. “We got us a son,” he kept saying to her, over and over again. “We got us a son.”

They named the baby Janson after her father, and Thomas after his, and their world had been complete within the three of them. Henry’s mother said there would be no more babies, but, after the years alone, they had never expected even this one, and they accepted that one miracle was enough for any lifetime. They had each other, they had a son, and they had the land that would be his one day. They could want nothing more.

Janson had grown fast, a handsome young boy with his mother’s dark coloring and his father’s green eyes. He was a loving and happy child, with a bad temper when pushed, and, as his grandmother often said, more stubbornness and pride than was right in any man or boy. He loved the land from the moment he could walk, loved growing things, and the feel of the red earth beneath his feet; loved his parents, his grandparents, and his kin, but the remainder of the world he was often uncomfortable with. He was dark, and he was half Cherokee, and he was proud with a pride the world would deny him—Nell knew he often heard the same things she had heard in the years since she had left the reservation, but, whereas she had fought her battles with silence, and with the dignity her heritage had taught her, she knew her son often fought his with fists, and with a temper that was nothing less than Irish and inherited from his father’s side of the family.

As Janson had grown into a young man, he had kept few friends, often alone it seemed, but never lonely; a young man often silent, but at peace with the earth and the sky and himself. He often reminded Nell of her father, and often of Henry, and often of herself—but Janson was Janson, and often even she could not understand him, though she had almost died to give him life.

There was a sadness within her now as she sat in the rocker by the side of the old bed, looking at the young man who had been stabbed and so badly hurt, remembering the baby she had nursed and held and touched—he was a grown man now, eighteen years old, older than she had been when she had become Henry’s wife. There was a feeling within her that he had already been close with a woman, had already learned things that she and his father had not known until their marriage night—young people grew up so fast now days, she thought, too fast. She knew the stabbing had probably been over a woman—the wrong kind of woman—though Janson had not spoken a word of it, though she knew he would not. He would remain silent if asked, silent, and with that look in his eyes that said there were things in his soul that belonged to him alone—and she knew she would not ask.

He was proud, proud and stubborn and determined, traits that would make his life all the more difficult, even beyond what his coloring and heritage had already deemed that life would be—but she had known that from the start, from the time he had been that baby first learning to walk, slapping her hands away as she tried to catch him, falling, only to push himself to his feet and take a few tottering steps before falling again. She had tried to protect him, to keep him from hurting himself, even as he had learned, but again and again he had pushed her hands away, falling time and again, bruising his chin, hurting his elbow, fighting even as he cried—she had not seen him cry in years now, not since he had been a little boy, beaten bloody by bigger fellows because he would not perform a war dance when they demanded he do so. She had tried to protect him then as well, had tried to get him to tell her the names of the other boys so she could talk to their parents, but he had refused, coming home bloody and beaten day after day until they had at last found more interesting game—even then there had been no shame in him for a fight well fought, no defeat after a hard battle. Those were traits she could see in him now, the same pride, stubbornness and determination, and she knew she could expect nothing less of him, for he was a part of her, and he was a part of Henry.

The door opened quietly and Henry’s mother entered the room—her mother, she thought, for she and Henry were long since the same. Deborah Sanders was dressed in a long cotton nightgown buttoned to the throat and wrists, her brown and gray hair hanging over one shoulder in a thick plait that reached to well past her waist, her round face kind and gentle as she looked at them, knowing they had not slept at all, and knowing it was only what they had to do. She walked to the side of the bed and reached to touch Janson’s forehead lightly, his cheek, and then to check beneath the bandages to the wound that had bled so freely earlier, as Nell and Henry rose to their feet at the side of the bed. Henry reached out and brushed Nell’s hand almost unconsciously, as he often did, and they waited.

Henry’s mother came around the bed to them, placing a gentle hand first on Nell’s cheek, then on Henry’s, as she smiled at them. “He’s gonna be fine, jus’ like I tol’ you,” she whispered. “He’s jus’ got some healin’ t’ do, an’ restin’ t’ get his strength back. It ain’t gonna do him no good, you two gettin’ yourselfs sick. You need t’ get some sleep—”

“We will,” Nell said, looking back to the bed, and to the young man who shifted slightly in his sleep as he lay there. “We will—” But she sat back down in the rocker, and Henry moved to sit again at her feet, lowering himself slowly as he leaned heavily on the arm of the chair, as he had not had to do in years past. He took her hand in his again and held it, intertwining their fingers securely. After a moment, Deborah Sanders shook her head and sighed, knowing there was no use in talking to them further. She turned and crossed the bare wood floor without another word, going out the door and closing it again quietly behind herself, leaving them alone again with their son.

Nell watched as Janson slept, thinking of the baby she and Henry had made, the child she had carried within her, thinking that time had passed too fast, and that the years had been all too quickly gone. She looked down at Henry, remembering the tall and handsome young man who had so tenderly told her about love, and who had even more gently taught her; the same man who sat beside her now, his brownish-red hair streaked with white, the wide shoulders bent from age and work, the once-smooth skin near his eyes lined from years of smiles—but the green eyes just as alive, just as caring, just as full of love now near fifty-seven, as they had been at twenty-five. Life was too short for love, she thought, too brief for commitment; the years all too soon gone, but the love grown only stronger still—surely death could not end that, and life could not begin it. It had to be there, forever, for always. That was what they had taught Janson, and she had to believe it herself now—suddenly, she had to believe it so very strongly herself.

She watched Henry, thinking of how he often spoke now of having grandchildren in the house, of Janson finding the right girl, bringing a bride to the land, giving them grandsons and granddaughters for the years ahead—but, as hard as she tried, Nell could not see that, could not see Henry with babies on his knee, babies with his green eyes and his caring, and that frightened her. There was an ache growing inside of her that would not go away, an ache even though she knew Janson would be all right and that his wound would heal—life seemed too short. So very short. And the sadness would not leave, no matter how hard she tried. She wanted to cry but would not let herself, for there was no reason. No—

Henry’s hand tightened over hers and he looked up at her, and she realized with a start that he had been thinking the same things, feeling the same things, she had been feeling. She tightened her hand on his and smiled, nodding her head to tell him she was all right, and, after a moment, he looked away, back toward the bed, and to their son sleeping quietly there.

Nell turned her eyes toward Janson as well, the tears finally coming, spilling from her eyes and down her cheeks. She knew that, as long as she lived, she would never forget the look she had seen on her husband’s face in that moment. Henry Sanders had been crying.