Читать книгу When the Whipoorwill - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Страница 5

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Lige began his celebration at four o’clock in the afternoon. He hurled himself into the house; changed into Sunday clothes without washing or shaving. He slapped into Drenna’s hands the accumulation of bean checks, keeping out one for fifty dollars. His stiff store collar was already wet with sweat. Tousled hair hung damp in his eyes.

“Drenna, if I ain’t fitten tomorrow, you git the ice-truck to take you to Pondland and go to the bank and put these in it. It’s what they calls openin’ a account.”

“You don’t want I should git the cash-money an’ fetch it back an’ hide it?”

“Now, Drenna, you do like I tell you. That’s the ol’-timey way. Don’t nobody hide their money these days.”

He was bounding down the low steps.

“Lige, what you fixin’ to do?”

“Sugar, I’m fixin’ to git so drunk you’ll be ’shamed for me all year, but I got it to do an’ you got it to put up with.”

He waved a long arm and was gone at his loping trot down the road toward the village, where the Brinley boys waited in their old Ford. The earth swayed from under her. She dropped trembling on the rickety stoop. She wanted to run after him, to call him back, but numbness held her. Lige had been so good; with her, so gentle. Year after year, with his bean-crops failing him, he had been patient. Yet violence simmered in him. He had been always like a great kettle of cane juice, ready, at a little too much heat, to boil over.

With her, he had been like a wild thing tamed; a ’coon or ’possum or young panther that had come to enjoy captivity. Now, in his prosperity, he had broken out of the cage and was gone, dangling his ropes behind him. For a moment, he did not seem to belong to her. It was as though a stranger had gone galloping down the road to meet the Brinley boys and get drunk.

She rose from the stoop, told the children to stay in the house, and went to the Widow Sellers.

“Yes,” the old woman said before she could speak, “the grand rascal’s been here an’ gone. Th’owed over his job an’ gone to raise him some hell.”

Drenna stiffened. She lifted her chin.

“If he’s took the notion to git drunk, I reckon he’s got the right to do it.”

The widow gaped. When the young woman turned defiantly for home again, she scurried through town telling that Drenna didn’t give a rap whether Lige got drunk or no. The town buzzed with it.

“I ain’t surprised at Lige, but who’d a-figgered Drenna’d turn out plumb shameless!”

No one came near her that evening. The village was busy waiting for news of Lige’s hilarity to come in piece by piece. Drenna sat in her low rocker, holding the baby. The older child played in and out of the house and at last gave up asking questions. Twilight came, and still she sat, rocking and staring. She put the children to bed and went back to her rocker. The kerosene lamps went unlit. She was chilly and wrapped a patchwork quilt around her. A hoot owl startled her in the pine tree by the window. In the hammock, the first whippoorwill gave his yearning cry.

“When the whippoorwill calls, it’s time for the corn to be in the ground.”

Would Lige bother to plant corn this spring? Would he get drunk every once and again, now he had money? They had planned to repair the leaking shingled roof; to buy hogs and raise peanuts and chufas; there was money in stock, if you could get a start; to have a real mattress for the bed, some more chairs and a new cook-stove; to take a trip to Alabama to visit Drenna’s folks; to be done once and for all with the Widow Sellers; and of course, to lay by money for an increasing acreage of beans.

She listened intently at every sound. A car went by, a nigger riding a mule and singing. A pair of hounds bayed past, trailing ’coon. She was drowsing in her chair when a clatter sounded on the porch and Lige was home.

“ ’Lo, Sugar. I shore done the job.”

She was trembling again. To keep from looking at him, she did not light a lamp. He was knocking into everything. She took his arm and led him into the bedroom.

“Lay down, Lige, an’ leave me take off your shoes an’ breeches.”

He was asleep, puffing and moaning, before she could undress him. She got off his shoes and threw a cover over him. Lying between the babies, she dozed the two or three hours until daylight.

She roused him at breakfast-time to offer a cup of coffee. He took a few swallows and was suddenly sick. He turned over on his side, groaning, and went to sleep again. She shut the door of the room when she saw two women coming up the walk.

People came all morning; women to bring her juicy bits about the drunken night, with Lige and the Brinleys and the Twillers and Tom Parker driving all over the county shouting and treating everybody. Men came to ask, grinning, if she needed any help with Lige; curious, to see how she was taking it; and men and women grabbing for the bean money.

The owner of the crate factory came for his pay. She gave him one of the checks endorsed in Lige’s uneven hand. The storekeeper came for the picking money. The Widow Lykes came whining to borrow whatever she could get. Drenna was bewildered; then resentful.

She was dressed to go to Pondland to the bank when the preacher arrived. It startled her. He had never been in the house before, although she had slipped in and out of church almost every preaching Sunday. He spoke severely on the sin of drunkenness. She braced herself to it. He spoke at last of the desirability, under the shocking circumstances, of tithing the fortune they were squandering, and giving to the Lord. She caught her breath. The parson was after the bean money, too.

Fury took possession of her, like a moccasin swallowing a small gray rabbit. She hated everybody; Lige, crying out now and then behind the closed door in his drunken sickness; the town, with its intruding eyes and waggling tongues; the Widow Sellers; the parson; above everything else, the bean money. She stamped her foot.

“What’s a-goin’ on ain’t nobody’s business. I’ll settle with God when I git straightened out. I got no money for you now, nor maybe never. I’ve give what I could for missions, an’ I always will. But I need what we got now for the chappies an’ things you know nothin’ about. You go on now.”

She drove him from the house, locked the door and plodded furiously down the road to hail the ice-truck. In Pondland, she opened the account at the bank with a boldness foreign to her.

“I want fifty dollars o’ that back in cash money,” she said belligerently.

Her lips moved.

“Jest what Lige takened,” she said to herself.

On the streets of the city again, she found herself dazed. The bills were clutched in her fist. She knew only that she intended to spend them, recklessly, foolishly, wickedly. In the shop windows were dresses for summer; hats and shoes. She smoothed back her soft hair. She had come off without any hat at all. A red chiffon dress caught her eye. She walked in a dream into the shop and pointed out the frock. The saleswomen lifted their eyebrows at one another. They helped her take off her calico dress and put on the red chiffon over her white muslin slip.

“Of course now, with a silk slip, and nice shoes——”

In the long mirror were reflected a white frightened face with gray eyes, pale tight lips, and bare arms and throat above a flaming pile of soft fabric. She nodded. The saleswoman folded the dress in tissue paper and laid it carefully in a box.

“Forty-five dollars.”

She held out the bills.

Bean money. Lige’s fine crop of beans. She saw the six acres, green with gold pendants hung over them. She remembered the pickers moving in with the tall hampers on their shoulders, swaying and singing. The field was empty now, waiting for fall beans. The new bills crackled in her fingers. This was all they had to show for the crop. The rest was in Lige’s tormented belly; and in the strange, impersonal bank, dropped from sight like a stone in a pond.

The bean money had been queer stuff. Checks in writing that everybody scrambled to get at.... Lige acting scandalously.... Her impudence to the preacher.... Now a red dress tempting her to go about like a lewd woman. She shivered.

“I cain’t do it.”

She put the money behind her back.

“I cain’t do it.”

Outside the shop she stuffed the bills inside her blouse. She rode home on the loaded ice-truck.

She walked from the heart of the village out to the house, running the last of the way. The children were playing with chicken feathers in the sandy yard. Lige was lying awake in bed, smoking his pipe. He put his arm over his face in mock shame.

“Say it, Drenna,” he grinned. “I got it comin’. Your ol’ man’s disgraced you, like I tol’ you. But dog take it”—she sat on the bed, and he reached out his arms for her—“it was fine! Jest to turn that ol’ quart bottle topside down an’ let ’er drip!”

She had to laugh at him. They wouldn’t say any more about it. She had very nearly done as wrong as he. She had been wilder, crazier.

She was cooking dinner when the ice-truck lumbered up to the gate. Tim ran up the walk and into the house.

“Drenna! The Pondland bank’s closed down! No more’n a good hour after you-all put your money in. Tainter jest brought the word. Ever’body’s caught.”

He mopped his face and started away again.

“I got to go out back o’ the Creek an’ tell the Philbins.”

At the gate he waved his hand to her and called:

“Tell Lige ever’body says they bet he’ll wish he’d got twicet as drunk!”

He rattled off.

She watched the truck out of sight. She was not astonished. She had not been brought up to consider a bank the place for money.

Her father had always said, “Nothin’ ain’t safe nor sartin excusin’ a iron pot o’ gold or siller, put deep in a place where nobody else cain’t find hit.”

She went into the bedroom to Lige. He was getting his wracked body into clean clothes.

“I heerd him! Oh my God, Drenna!”

Sweat rolled into his bloodshot eyes.

“I’ll kill somebody for this——”

He was unsteady on his feet. He picked up his shotgun from behind the head of the bed.

“Philbin’s ’ll go. Buckshot’s too good for that bank president.”

“Lige,” she said gently.

He stopped. His eyes softened.

“No need to take on so. Banks closes and you cain’t blame nobody special.”

She drew out the fifty dollars from her blouse. The stiff paper was warm from the skin of her breast. He stared. The money was real and tangible.

“Reckon I was jest led to keep it out in cash-money. It’ll git us seed for fall.”

“But, Drenna—all that other gone like as if ’twas stole——”

“Don’t study that-a-way. I figger, we jest lost another bean-crop.”

He replaced the shotgun slowly. He sat down on the side of the bed, his muscular hands closing and unclosing. He pondered. At last he nodded gravely.

“Jest done lost us another crop o’ beans.”