Journeyman (2 page)

“Don’t mistake me for kicking yet, coz,” Semon said, patting his shoulder. “I’ve hardly had a chance to do any looking around so far.”

“Well, it’s just like I started out to say,” Clay put in. “Maybe this aint exactly the place you aimed for, because to tell the truth—”

“Don’t let that worry you, Horey. If I can’t get the lay of the land by tomorrow morning, I’ll just pack up and move on. I’ve been traveling and preaching almost all my life, and I can make hay where the next man can’t see nothing but stony ground.”

Clay shook his head, but pulled up a chair for Semon to sit down in.

“It’s going to be pretty rough-going here,” Clay said after thinking a while. “There hasn’t been a preacher of count around here in I don’t know how many years, maybe not for eight or ten of them. The last one I recall about said he did his damnedest, but it wasn’t no use. He said when he left that the folks had gone too far to help any in this life.”

“The sinfuller they are, the better I like it,” Semon said, putting his feet on the railing and leaning back in the chair. “I came here to preach the wickedness out of you people, and what I start, I finish.”

“You’ve got a pretty big order on your hands then. You don’t know the people in Rocky Comfort like I do. I was born among them, and I’m still one of them. When it comes to being sinful, I don’t know nobody else in Georgia that’s in the running. That’s God’s own truth, if I do say it.”

“That’s because they’ve never had the voice of Semon Dye to scare the daylights out of their sinful natures,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve never had a single complaint in all my days of preaching. People all over say I sure know how to get the Devil’s number, and I’ll run the Devil out of this place, if I don’t drop dead before I’m done.”

Clay glanced at Semon’s big hands and feet, and at the six feet and eight inches of him that had bent double in the middle when he propped his feet on the railing.

“I don’t need preaching to as bad as some of the rest of them,” Clay told him. “I’m proud to say that. I’ve been leading a right straight life for the past seven or eight months, or more. I’ve never been so doggone good in all my days before. I don’t know what gets into me, at times. I just don’t ache to be bad no more. I’d a heap rather sit here on my porch, through the spring and summer, than to go out and be bad.”

“Everybody’s wicked,” Semon stated grimly.

“Everybody?” Clay asked, hesitating a moment. “You too?”

Semon laughed a little, mining towards Clay as though he was about to jab him in the ribs again. Clay moved his chair a few more inches.

“I’m Semon Dye,” he said, suddenly becoming stern. “The Lord don’t have to bother about me. He sort of gives me a free rein.”

“I reckon that would come in handy at times,” Clay said.

“Coz,” Semon said, winking one of the slits in his leather-tight face, “you spoke a mouthful.”

There was a noise of some kind just inside one of the windows. Both Semon and Clay turned around when they heard it.

“You don’t live here all by yourself, do you, Horey?” he said.

“Not so you could notice it. I’ve got a wife inside the house, there. I reckon that was her making that noise we just heard. She’s awful curious about strangers, but it’s like dragging an ox by the tail to try to make her be sociable with somebody she never saw hair of before. We’ve been married now only since last fall. Dene’s daddy took sick and died last November, and he didn’t stay dead three days before me and her got married.”

Semon nodded approvingly.

“And then there’s that little Vearl around here somewhere. Vearl’s my former wife’s boy. He don’t stay at the house, here, much. It looks like he’d rather stay down at the quarters with Susan and her raft of pickaninnies.”

Semon nodded some more. He wet his lips with his tongue and dried them with the back of his hand.

“That’s real fine, Horey. A man nowadays ought to have a wife. I always like to visit a man who’s got a wife in the house. I never stay more than a day at a place where a man hasn’t got a wife.”

“I sure do like to just sit here and listen to you talk,” Clay said. “You talk like a real smart man. I’ve heard folks say that Semon Dye was the smartest man in the whole country, but I never thought I’d live to see him ride up and stop at my house. And, come to think of it, I never ran across a man who’d ever even so much as seen Semon Dye. I’ve heard all kinds of tales about you, and I reckon now I’ll have something to talk about, too. When they start talking about Semon Dye, I’ll step right in and tell them a little something that they never heard about before.”

There was a long pause. Clay was getting his breath back, and Semon was listening for sounds in the house.

“How old did you say your wife is, Horey?”

“That’s funny,” Clay said. “I didn’t know as I’d told you her age.”

“Well,” Semon said, “being as how I’m going to put up here a while, I’d like to know what there is to know.”

“Dene’s just turned fifteen,” Clay said. “She’s not really grown up yet, but it don’t make no difference to me because, if there’s anything I like to have around me, it’s a little girl like Dene just catching on how to treat a man the best way. You might say they all catch on, sooner or later, and you’d be wrong. It’s not the same thing in the long run, because it’s in the catching on that pleases a man like me. And I reckon a heap of them never catch on, all the way. Dene knows how to always stay just one jump ahead of me. She somehow knows just what I want her to do for me even before I know it myself. Now, that’s what I’d be prone to call a real fine kind of wife.”

“That’s your wife?”

“That’s Dene,” Clay said proudly, tossing his head.

“I’ll bet a pretty you don’t give her a minute’s rest, coz,” Semon said.

Semon leaned towards Clay and jabbed him in the ribs with his stiff thumb. Clay jumped clear of the chair, yelling as if he had been shot.

“Good God Almighty, man!” he cried. “Don’t never do that again! I just can’t stand to be goosed!”

Semon turned away as if nothing had occurred.

“I know what you mean, Horey,” he said solemnly. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s anticipating. That’s the word! When a girl or woman knows how to anticipate what a man is going to crave the next minute, whether it’s hugging or kissing, or eating or warming, or just good old-fashioned poontang, then that’s the kind of girl a man will get right out and scrap like a pack of bob-cats for.”

“That’s my wife?” Clay asked, leaning forward. “That’s Dene?”

“That’s her,” Semon said, nodding and scratching his leg. “Coz, that’s her all right, all right.”

Clay got up and walked to the steps and back. He stood looking at Semon Dye, his eyes popping.

“I’ll be doggone,” he said, looking at Semon in amazement. “I’ll just be doggone, if I won’t!”

“What’s the matter with you, Horey?”

“You talk real smart, Semon,” Clay said. “I’ll be doggone if you don’t talk just exactly like I feel to myself.”

S
EMON LEANED FORWARD
and thrust a big red hand at Clay that looked like the cured ham of a suckling pig. Clay looked at it and then, not knowing what else to do, he grasped the stiff thumb and shook it from side to side. When he had finished, he tried to turn it loose, but Semon had clasped his fingers around Clay’s hand.

“It seems to me like me and you are just about the same two kind of men,” he said. “Me and you ought to hit it off together in fine style after this. Let’s shake hands on it, Horey.”

Semon shook his hand until Clay could feel very little life left in his arm.

“I don’t seem to catch on to what you’re driving at,” Clay said in a daze, drawing in his hand and rubbing the fingers back to life.

“It takes a girl like what-you-call-her to make a couple of men like us understand one another,” Semon said. “That’s us, coz. When you told me your wife was the anticipating kind, then I just naturally knew that me and you were going to get along together like two peas in a pod.”

“Have you got a wife like her, too?” Clay asked.

“Me?” Semon said. “Well, no. I aint. I lost the last one I had, coz. She went to live in Atlanta three years ago.”

Clay studied the tops of his brogans for several moments. He could not look at Semon then.

“I feel downright sorry for you, Semon,” he said finally. “I sure enough do. But I don’t know what to say about it. It looks like you was kind of figuring on me helping you out, or something. Now, me and Dene, doggone it—”

Semon stretched out his long arm and slapped Clay on the back.

“I came here to preach, Horey,” he said. “The Lord God of us all sent me into Georgia to preach the wickedness out of you people. He said the worst people in the whole world live in Georgia, and I told him I’d do my damnedest with you all.”

“Where did you figure on doing all this preaching?”

“In your church,” Semon said. “I take it you people have got a church.”

“What church?”

“The church you people have here. The Rocky Comfort church. You’ve got a church, haven’t you?”

Clay looked across the road towards the pines.

“You sure have got me up a tree,” he said at last. “If there is such a thing in Rocky Comfort, I sure don’t know which way to turn to find it.”

“Where do the people go to hear preaching, then?”

“Nobody hears it, not that I know about. There used to be a church up the road there, about a mile or more, at the bend of the creek, but it’s been made over into a guano shed. Tom Rhodes, up there, keeps fertilizer in it in the spring. Then, when fall comes, he puts his cottonseed in it. Tom tore out all the pews and the pulpit and split them up for stovewood. That Tom Rhodes might be the one to see about it, but it wouldn’t do no good, because Tom wouldn’t let you use it, anyway.”

“I reckon we’ll have to make use of the schoolhouse, then,” Semon said after several minutes’ silence. “How far away is the schoolhouse?”

“About a mile and a half. It’s up there on the other side of Tom’s place.”

“He didn’t make use of that too, did he?”

“Tom didn’t molest the schoolhouse. They keep school up there three or four months of the year, some years. Tom let that alone.”

“Then I’ll preach in it Sunday. You can spread the word about so the people will know I’m going to preach.”

“Won’t be no sense in doing that,” Clay said. “Everybody’ll know about it, all right. Can’t a doggone thing happen in Rocky Comfort without the news of it spreading like wild-fire.”

Semon held up his hand.

“Shhh!” he whispered. “Who’s that?”

“Where?” Clay asked. “I don’t see a solitary soul nowhere.”

Semon got up and walked softly around Clay’s chair towards the door. When he appeared to be on the verge of running inside, Clay jumped up and beat him to it.

“Now, hold on here, Semon. What you fixing to do?”

“I heard somebody right inside one of these windows,” Semon said. “I wanted to see who it was.”

“Doggone it, this here is my house,” Clay said. “I’ll do the looking if there’s any to be done.”

“Go see who you can find, Horey, and bring them out here,” Semon told him. “I’ll sit right down and wait.”

Clay looked into the hall, waiting for Semon to sit down in the chair. When Semon had seated himself, Clay tip-toed inside.

In a few minutes the sounds of somebody scuffling reached the porch. Semon got up and waited. He was at the door when Clay came through the hall, pulling Dene behind him.

“Now, she’s shy of strangers,” Clay apologized. “Don’t be taken back if she acts scared and tries to run off. She’s just turned fifteen, like I said, and she aint got accustomed to seeing strange folks yet.”

Semon caught her other arm and helped Clay bring her out on the porch. When they were outside, Semon smiled at Dene and patted her lightly on the buttocks. Clay swallowed hard.

“Now wait a minute, here,” he said.

“Don’t get all wrought up, coz,” Semon said. “I’m just trying to pacify her. It’s just like stroking the wildness out of a colt. You can’t do a thing with them until you stroke them some and make them forget their excitement. You being a farmer, you ought to know that.”

Clay stepped forward and gave Semon a shove. Semon did not budge an inch.

“Doggone it, now,” Clay said. “I don’t like that one bit.”

Semon smiled down at Dene, and she looked up at him. He stroked her some more.

“See there, coz?” Semon said, looking at Clay. “What did I tell you? That’s all it takes to tame the wildest colt or the most fidgety woman. Seeing is believing, ain’t it, coz?”

Clay pushed Dene towards a chair. She sat down quickly, looking first at one and then the other. Clay felt relieved when she sat down. He glared across at Semon.

“Dene never got accustomed to a stranger like that before,” he said, “but I don’t reckon it was her fault this time.”

“Now, just sit down and calm yourself, Horey. We’re all of a color here, and there’s no sense in flying off the handle. We don’t want to have a falling out so soon. Especially, when I’m tickled to death to be here. I feel sort of proud to be visiting a man with such a fine-looking wife.”

Dene got up from her chair and tried to leave the porch. Clay grabbed her.

“Where you going now, Dene?” he said.

“To see about supper,” she told him.

“I reckon it is getting on close to the time to eat, at that. You’d better tell Sugar to cook up a company dish for supper. Semon’ll be mighty hungry.”

Dene got up again and ran across the porch. Long after she had disappeared from sight, Semon continued to look after her.

“Who’s Sugar?” he said suddenly.

“Sugar?” Clay said. “Why, Sugar’s the cook.”

“Does she happen to be a colored girl, coz?”

“Sugar’s that, all right, only she’s not black. She’s sort of yellow.”

“High yellow, eh, Horey? Well, well, well!”

Semon studied the outline of the magnolia tree in front of the house, breathing deeply of the odor of the tree.

“You’ve got a right nice little wife, too, Horey,” he said finally, nodding at Clay. “You ought to be pretty well fixed, all in all.”

“Dene’s all a man could beg for, I reckon. I’ve been married three or four or five times so far, and Dene’s my pick of the lot. The one I had just before I married her was fair-to-middling. That was Lorene, whose little boy Vearl is down the road there now. Lorene was one of the finest wives I ever had, but she got so she didn’t seem to give a whoop whether she pleased me or not. Sometimes I’d say she didn’t care whether she stayed a jump behind all the time, or a jump ahead. I couldn’t complain about Dene, though. She’s always that all-fired jump ahead of me.”