Old Powder Man (20 page)

“They figured the floodways to carry an amount of water twenty per cent greater than this flood we just had, in '27,” another man said.

It sounded safe, Son thought. Everyone was satisfied; no local contribution to these projects was required; local interests were to provide the necessary rights of way and maintain the works when completed. Son drove back across the river that May day feeling a lot was about to happen. Later, he saw Buzz who said, “No stopping us now, boy.” All up and down the river people talked of the work to come and of being millionaires. But Son wondered how they expected to get rich and spend the way they did too. In the Delta, even more so in the hill country, he saw farmers who were hurting: bad, he said. It was a bad year for the weevil and though poison was cheap, the farmers did not seem to be able to get ahead. People warned the construction boom was over but since it was not the kind of construction concerning Son or his friends they paid little attention. All that spring and summer Son travelled hard and was beginning to pull ahead; by the end of the summer he had the department store bills almost paid off; another six months and he would be free. Never again would anyone be able to threaten to take him to court for not paying a bill, by God. And by fall, he was lonesome. He decided to buy May a pair of teddies, all soft and shiny, you could see through; five bucks, he said; he showed them around first and took a lot of kidding, but he liked to tell afterward that they had tickled that little country gal to pieces. But somehow, afterward, he felt even more lonesome; maybe he did not want a girl he could give a pair of teddies to after all. When he was away, he had begun to think about Kate. He had gotten use to her being taller than he liked a woman to be; and he had decided she was even prettier than Lillian; the more he thought about her, he decided Kate was one of the prettiest girls he had ever known and she was thin; he never had liked a woman with too much meat on her. One thing, there wasn't any time Kate wasn't ready to pick up and go, go anywhere; though, like Lillian, she was all the time wanting to dance.

That fall, he was able to buy another little piece of stock, some A.T.&T.; it seemed like a good steady thing to him and that was what he was interested in, growth, not getting rich quick. He wanted something to retire on. Stock was expensive but everything seemed to be going nowhere but up. Other fellows kidded him about the kind of safe investments he made. Everyone else was taking flyers, held on to things about as long as a feather in a fire. Buying and selling, that was all anyone talked about, and getting rich quick. He took out waitresses in a couple of little towns and even they were talking about getting rich quick; he tried to tell them they better hold on to some of their money, but no one listened. Others traded, but he was sitting on what he had.

And then that fall day—he didn't know why it was such a pretty day but it was one of the prettiest he could ever remember—he was walking down a side street and there was an office on the ground floor of one of the buildings, the kind that had a new business located there every few months and even so, he stopped and looked at a big ad in the window about buying land down in Coral Gables, Florida, cheap. Next to it was another ad about buying shares in a gold mine in Colorado: Bull Dog Gold Mine, Handy, Colorado; he figured that probably wasn't far from where he'd worked in the timber outfit when he was a boy; maybe that was what sold him. He believed if you could get rich quick it would be through finding oil or gold. Before he could stop himself, he went in and gave the man a check for five shares, about the same as buying his two of A.T.&T. Then he walked back out into that glorious fall day, crisp as apples, and even the buildings and sidewalks shone in the sun and if he didn't feel like something, walking down Main, owning shares in a gold mine!

He went straight to the bank and put the certificate in his lock box. He wasn't even going to tell the boys; he wasn't going to tell anybody. He was just going to let his ship come in.

Later on he did something else he had never expected to do, voted for a Republican. He just could not bring himself to vote for any Catholic, even though Mr. Al Smith's running mate was from right here in this part of the country, Arkansas, and he knew some of his people. Casting his vote, he hoped this Hoover fellow knew what he was talking about. If so, it looked like gravy from here on out, all gravy. But he sure needed to hep the farmers like he promised, Son said. When the election was over he took Kate down to the Andrew Johnson for dinner, at night, so she could get it out of her system about eating by candlelight and listening to some fellow scratch around on a violin; he said he hoped her pain was easy because he couldn't see a damn thing he was eating and this was the last time he was going to eat in the dark. He travelled often to places like Vicksburg, Little Rock, Helena and he had begun to eat in the best places everywhere. He had learned when walking into these fancy ho-tel dining rooms to give the Captain a little something to get a better table. He liked to be able to order anything on the menu he wanted and to think back to the time when he couldn't. But usually he had a well-done steak and this Sunday Kate said, “Why don't you ever order anything different? Something you can't have at home.”

“I like steak,” he said. “But I'm going to have to have me a dozen of these oysters on the half-shell,” he told the waiter. Then he sat back, pleased; he was glad that he knew about oysters and liked to eat them; he knew by the expression on Kate's face she was not sure exactly what they were; he talked her into ordering some. He had learned about seafood on a trip with Buzz to Biloxi, “the Miss'sippi Rivy-era,” Buzz called it. On the way down they had bought whisky from an old man who kept his jugs wrapped in gunny sacks and hidden in the Pearl River, and for a week that's what they had done, drunk whisky, gambled and eaten things he had never eaten before, shrimps, lobster, oysters. Unexpectedly he had sold half a car load of dynamite to the man he had gone along with Buzz to see; that topped off everything. He told Kate about it now, watching as she ate her oysters, swearing she liked them. But he could tell she did not from the way her eyes popped and turned almost the same wettish grey color as the oyster when she swallowed; she ate them because tobacco farmers she knew did not. Son said the next thing he wanted to do was drive on down the Rivy-era and see what New Orleans itself was like. Buzz had told about gal shows in the French Quarter he'd like to see himself. Suddenly he thought of doing everything alone and knew he did not want to. He said through the candlelight, “How about us getting married and going down yonder and seeing all those things on a honeymoon.”

Kate's roommates thought Son the most handsome man they knew; he was wildly jealous of Kate and they had long urged her to marry him. But something in Kate held her back; perhaps because she had felt bitter so long she was not without reservation about anyone; to hide numerous fears, she stayed aloof. She had dreamed of marrying someone of a finer nature than Son but did not believe that someone ever would choose her, so recently a hick. She was twenty-seven years old and did not want to teach as a career. Having imagined every place in the world, she had been nowhere but from Bess, North Carolina, to Delton, Tennessee. She was thrilled by the idea of going to New Orleans and thought it was over getting married. “Yes, let's do,” she said.

To Son, getting married was something people just did and ought to do as early as possible. It was living together for better or worse, like the man said. He worried only about making plans and said, “Well, when?”

Kate said she had always wanted to be a spring bride. He said, “Hell, I can't leave my business in the spring. Mister Will, other folks are started back to work good. We got to do it earlier, slack time.”

Kate said, “We could go for Mardi gras.”

He said, “No, I got to be back earlier than that too.”

They finally agreed on January. Leaving the dining room, Kate thought two things: how pretty the candlelight looked and that she had to go to New Orleans in the dead of winter when nobody else did.

Son meant to tell the news at breakfast but Cally sat alone, drinking tea. “Poppa still asleep?” he said.

“He just fell asleep about dawn,” she said. “Something didn't set right. He was up all night.” Son would be leaving for the week and after breakfast stopped at Poppa's door, then went all the way into the room thinking, nobody just asleep was ever that white, whiter than the sheets. He felt Poppa's breath against his cheek but barely; he could not wake him. He telephoned the doctor who sent an ambulance; Cally rode with Poppa and Son followed in the car. Cecilia had been called and met them at the hospital. Mr. Wynn was in a deep coma, the doctor said; that was all he could say for now. They had known it was coming, hadn't they? He had expected it sooner, with Mr. Wynn's condition.

“Condition? His kidneys?” Cecilia said. She and Son talked to the doctor. Cally had forgotten the cane they had substituted for the mop and was sitting on a bench down the hall. “Kidneys yes,” the doctor said. “But I told Mr. Wynn some time ago he had Bright's disease, that uremic poisoning was liable to set in. Now it has. I had no idea he wouldn't have told you the seriousness.”

“You didn't know Poppa,” Son said.

“He's never wanted to be a bother,” Cecilia said. “But he's going to be all right?”

“I wouldn't want to say that, young lady,” the doctor said.

There was nothing to do but wait out the morning as there was nothing for Poppa to do but wait out his life. But his condition did not change. Son did not leave town, was at the office by eight o'clock every morning, kept in touch with customers by phone. Every day he went around town checking hotel registers to see if any contractors he knew were in Delton; if so, he invited them out to eat, gave them whisky, got up a card game. During visiting hours he went to see Poppa; Kate went with him regularly and willingly and Son never forgot that. Poppa regained consciousness and after a week went home but he could not work again. Son sold the store and invested the money except for what Poppa insisted on using to buy a little insurance: Cecilia's husband sold it. Beyond what he had to carry on his house and car, Son did not believe in insurance, carried none on his life; he'd rather put his money some place it was working for him, he said. Try as he would, he could not cotton up to Cecilia's husband, Joe. Besides being a Catholic and selling in-surance the man didn't touch a drop of whisky and went into the kitchen at night with an apron on and dried the dishes; whew! Son said. When he told Poppa about marrying Kate, Poppa said, “She's a sweet girl. I hope she'll do better by you than Lillian did.”

“It'nt any woman going to do me that way again,” Son said.

Confused, Cally had already made the substitution; Lillian seemed to have slipped from her mind. Cecilia said she was glad, but told Joe privately she wished Brother had picked somebody who didn't go along with his partying so much; and as far as she knew Kate hadn't stepped foot in a church since coming to Delton, but she was dead-set on getting married in one. She and Son couldn't afford a large wedding; her family did not have the means to come; but, clearly, Kate could not separate what her wedding would be from the vision in her head of what it ought to be. Endlessly, she thought of flowers and of what people would wear, even Joe as usher. Fearful of her decisions, she bought a blue suit to be married in then complained over and over afterward she should have chosen a beige one. When she was radiant with final plans, they could find no minister who would marry them because of Son's divorce. Kate's mouth went askew; she said, “I just give up.”

They were married by a Justice of the Peace, the brightest object in the room a brass spittoon he used before the ceremony; all during it tobacco juice dangled like a dancing worm from his chin. Cecilia and Joe attended as witnesses. Afterward Son and Kate went out to the curb, got in the car, and headed for New Orleans. Kate did not complain about the honeymoon. If you were going to do something, do it right, Son felt, and for those few days was not tight with money. They ate everywhere, everything, spinach baked with oysters and fish in a paper bag. Son even drank some of the frothy concoctions Kate discovered there were to drink. They sure saw every nekkid gal there was to see in New Orleans, Son said when they got back.

Before the trip, Son's tenants had moved. He and Kate came back to the house furnished with the odds and ends Lillian had left. Son gave Kate an allowance and money to buy the furniture she could. What he couldn't afford now, they would do without until he could, he said. Kate said why couldn't they buy on credit like everybody else? Goddamn everybody else; there wasn't any store going to have him in the position of owing them money again, he said.

For a long time, when Kate's friends came in the afternoons to play bridge, she turned her eyes in despair toward vacant corners saying, “I just give up. I'll never have anything to fill them.” She had a maid; at three dollars a week almost everyone did. Son would not have let her work; she did not want to. There was nothing to do but play bridge and shop. Then shortly after the honeymoon, she was pregnant. By the middle of February, Will was in camp and others were setting up. One Monday morning, Son got up, packed his grip, and said he would be back Friday. “But I'm having a baby,” Kate said.

“Well, hell, you're not having it today,” he said, got in the car, and was gone.

But Kate had to call him back before Friday. On Thursday Poppa went into his final coma. By Friday afternoon, he was gone. The next day they made the long day's trip back to Vicksville: Cecilia and Joe, Son, Kate and Cally. On Sunday they laid Poppa to rest in the old churchyard next to the parsonage he had left long ago; trees, planted since, winter-stripped now, made the land look about the same as Poppa had always described it, bare, open, endless, the way Mill's Landing had looked with the trees cut, Son thought; he wished again Mammy had left the old man there, who had been doing all right.