Old Powder Man (23 page)

The proprietor's golden face was even brighter, pleased; he gave Son two full bags. In the car, Winston put his away. “Old man, you better eat that candy I put out two bits for,” Son said.

“I never said I wanted no damn Chinese peanut brittle,” Winston said. Son cursed him, arguing. Winston laughed. “Don't everbody have to do the way Dynamite wants,” he said, but only when Winston got mad too did Son stop urging. Eating his own candy in disappointed silence, he drove on through the country he loved, the Delta, where everything seemed shimmery, shiny, silver, like coins tossed into the day: roof tops, silvery bark of brooding cedars, poplar leaves and cascading willows; even the rich dark earth after its fallow winter, now being turned open to the spring sun, flashed whitely, as did bits of mules' harnesses and slick plows, seed and fertilizer, thrown as if waywardly upon the wind; only figures sowing or following in the new furrows behind the plows were dark against the bright and dancing day, going in the same slow ritualistic measured steps that men had since first they began to woo the earth. Minnows of Your Choice, read a large sign, an equal indication of spring, and keeping the pedal to the floorboard, Son sped them on wondering how you chose among the wiggly things, what standard you used. In the noon sun and after, cows sought shady places to nestle; in swamps covered with scum as bright yellow-green as moss, as thick and lush, stark grey shells of trees stood as if they were the aftermath of some terrible destruction. Clarksdale to Tunica they went and straight up the highway toward Delton, the pavement interminably ahead flat and bright, the sun reflected there reflected on the windshield too, so that Son saw three white balls yet could not look away, for his seared eyes hurt worse to turn in their sockets. And it was just spring; he thought what summer would be like; those three white balls would burn even whiter, brighter, hotter, from pavement, windshield, heaven; the hot dry air would rush past, welcome, because when the car stopped, it stopped, and there would be no air at all, just heat like a heavy, hooded coat slipped over you, the day shimmering and wavering while you stood with sweat like tears, blinking, trying to see, thinking Jesus Christ, it couldn't be like this everywhere, that if you just moved from one spot to another, got under the shade of a tree, went somewhere else it would be different; but it wasn't, it was just the same every single place. He started to mention to Winston what spring would turn into, what was ahead for at least four months, summer was always that long; did Winston remember one year to the next what it was like? Then he thought, Hell, he was making money; he couldn't complain. Kate, those women she played bridge with put a washtub with a block of ice in the room, let a fan blow across that. Kate wanted to sleep that way; he wouldn't let her, said it would do her good to sweat some. She said he just liked to be mean.

That spring he went as far north as St. Louis and south below Natchez, averaged selling about a thousand pounds of powder a month. Everywhere his reputation went ahead. He began to charge for blasting; it was on his own time and he pocketed the money, told American Powder it was his own little side business and he named it The Agricultural Blasting Company. Putting money straight into his pocket that way made him see the possibility of getting ahead, taught him one thing quick: you'd never get anywhere working for the other fellow. People said how good things were and he took some of that money out of his pocket and bought another gold mine stock. All the wild speculating going on around him went against his grain. Still he could not shake himself free of his young man's dream of finding gold. Rocky Mountain was the mine's name. That day, too, he felt like a boy with his hand in the cookie jar going to the bank to put the big gold-rimmed certificate into the lock box with his other things. At home, Kate said, “More stock! Frank, I hardly have enough clothes. The walls are bare. I need to buy some things for the baby.” She named them.

“Hell, bathe the baby in a bucket. You don't need to buy a tub. If you got to have something stuck on the wall, buy it out of your savings,” he said.

“What savings?” she said.

He said, “Woman, don't tell me you spend all the money I put in that account each month.”

He had not told her to save. He said he thought any woman had that much sense. What had she done with all that money? She had bought a second set of dishes. They had dishes! She said these were for company. She showed him a damask tablecloth with fringe. He said it looked like something Mrs. Astor's horse ought to wear. Christ on a crutch; she wasn't going to waste any more of his money. Kate said her friends bought nice things. He said how much did they have in the bank if anything happened to them? She said, “We can't live just thinking of the future.”

“I can,” he said.

The next day he closed out Kate's account. Buzz said he ought to let Kate have money she could feel was her own. She had her chance, Son said. From then on, he gave her a weekly allowance.

Kate said it was embarrassing not to be able to write a check; and she had to hide the cash about the house each week. There wasn't any second time, he said, when it came to not saving money.

By summer, steel and automobiles were off; he thought maybe putting money into gold wasn't such a bad idea. Agricultural prices declined and he said again folks didn't appreciate what the farmers were up against. In July there was rain in Central Arkansas heavy enough to damage cotton and overflow the river in several places. When the river rose at all fear stood on the faces of people still trying to recover from the flood of '27. Going to levee camps in Arkansas that summer he passed through towns where men huddled on street corners discussing the weather; in every cafe he stopped, the radio was on; everyone talked about the rain and the river until the weather report came on, then they hushed. Contractors were behind because of the bad weather; farmers had no money. He drove about all summer not only trying to sell dynamite but to collect bills, soon saw people figured the dynamite man was the easiest person to avoid paying; there was nothing he could take back. Standing, they would shake their heads, saying they just didn't know when they'd be able to pay for that dynamite, as if Son had sold them smoke that had drifted off and they could not quite remember its ever having been there. He adopted then a lifetime resolution, without exception for friends, hardships, weather, any excuse ever offered. Call him hard; folks did. Words rolled off him just as easy as water off a duck's back, just as ee——sy as that, he would say. His bills got paid on time; he needed money to pay them; he wouldn't listen to any conversation. At the end of every month, his books were going to balance. He gave a man thirty days to pay his bill, then called on him. Kate said he was too rough. Rough? How else were you going to get ahead.

That was the reason, he told her, he wasn't in as bad shape as some folks when fall came and Mr. Hoover let the stock market go straight to hell. But first, Laurel was born. He had spent some time in another camp in Arkansas, near Will's, had crossed the bridge at Helena, and driven on into Mississippi, had worked his way half across the state and the night Laurel was born hit Columbia City, dead-tired. That was one of the things he remembered most afterward, how tired he was. He had checked into the town's best hotel; otherwise in these little burgs you didn't put your feet on the floor, even with your socks on. In the lobby he bought several newspapers and was going up the stairs when the boy bringing his grip said, “You want to meet a girl?”

He had thought he was too tired, hadn't even been thinking about it, but having it offered, it sounded like a good idea. He said give him time to take a bath and shave. The boy said someone would knock at his door and Son gave him a dollar. First thing in the room he took off the bedcovers and spread the newspapers over the bed and put the sheets back on. He did this as a matter of course now, having inspected beds in too many little towns, seen nothing and lost sleep when newspapers would keep bed bugs away.

When the knock came, he opened the door to see a red-headed woman standing there, not half-bad. He invited her out to eat. They ran into friends of hers, got to drinking, and later thinking about those newspapers rattling, he said, Let's go to your place. He came back to the hotel at eight o'clock the next morning, packed, and was leaving when he saw the telegram beneath the rug's edge. He thought it was from the office, had not thought much about the baby. Just sometimes, driving along, he had thought how he would toughen the little sucker up. He read the telegram and sat down, hearing the newspapers rattle. It was from Cecilia, saying his daughter had been born the night before and they had tried to call him.

He had wanted a little sucker to toughen up, had not thought about a girl. He sent Kate a telegram signed, Daddy: hoped she and his baby were doing fine, then got in the car and started home, stopping to see a few customers along the way, arrived at the hospital that evening with a box of candy. First thing, Kate started out asking where he had been all night. It never occurred to him to think up an excuse. He said it was his business. She said they had called and called and left the number and when he did not call back, Cecilia sent the telegram. Kate said again, Where was he all night? He had already said it was his business, could not think of anything else to say and said nothing.

Soon after Kate came home, he saw the candy box and opened it; the candy was gone. Inside were the baby's hospital identification bracelet and his telegram. He said, “What's all this?” Kate said, “Some things to remember.” He said, “What else you going to put in there?”

“Nothing so far,” she said.

In another month the country went to hell in a bucket except right there along the river where he was. From everywhere, people came because of the government work: contractors, tractor drivers, ditch diggers, bondsmen, insurance salesmen, peddlers of everything connected to building with dirt, all with the same story; there was no work being let anywhere else. The Southerners never got over Yankees coming, taking away jobs; they made money, too, and never left the South again. What the Yankees never got over was the Southerners' way of doing business. Will, Son, Buzz, the men they knew, never wrote a contract on paper; to conclude a deal, they might spit together over a far crack in the road or merely shake hands.

During the Depression, Son was told to cut expenses; he needed only a telephone, someone to answer it, and moved his desk to Buzz's office; they would share Buzz's secretary, a boy named Holston. Son guessed letting Scottie go was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. Still, he had not expected her to blubber. He thought maybe she was short of money, took fifty dollars out of his own pocket to add to the company's bonus. But she shoved it back. She had another job; it was not that. He never did figure it out. Once she called up just to talk and said, “Old soandso, you got the key to the sweetest music, B natural. Always keep it.”

He said, “Well, lemme hear from you before you get married twice,” and hung up. He heard afterward Scottie had started hitting the bottle. He guessed it must have been whisky talk, not knowing what other kind of talk it could have been. But she sure had been able to cuss good.

When the crash came, people said the bottom had dropped out; they did not expect things to get any worse. But two years later Son would say, everyone he knew was looking for money harder than ever. During these years, by five in the afternoon, the levee camps were jammed with salesmen—peddlers, the levee camp people called anybody selling anything; they came purposefully late, looking for free meals and a place to sleep. Will told Son he was tired of feeding folks; but some of them, if they didn't eat with him, wouldn't eat at all. Son had one meal in an unexpected place. He had left home so early one morning he did not even make Kate get up and fix his breakfast; he ate in a greasy spoon on the way and soon regretted it. Flying along a rutted back road, he got cramps. In sight was one Negro cabin and nothing else but cotton fields picked nearly clean with a sky reaching toward winter coming down close around them. He went up on the porch and saw a Negro woman inside, cooking. “Aunty,” he said, “could I use your outhouse?”

“Yes suh, Cap'n,” she said. When he came back, he stood at the screen door and said, “What you got cooking smells so good?”

“Menfolks' dinner,” she said. “You want something to eat?”

“I'm not putting any more restaurant food in my stomach today,” he said. He came inside. From the warming oven she took a plate already filled with food; while Son ate, she sat in the cabin's other room. Finished, he put a dollar under the plate and said, “I guess I'm going to live. Much obliged.”

“Take care,” she said and watched his car fly across the flat land, until he reached the horizon.

From a slight rise in the road, he came down toward camp feeling as always that flush of gladness as if he had come home. The blue misty look rose over green tents; there was the wood smoke smell and one of cooking; rain puddles still steaming dry in shady washed-out places caused a smell like flood, a crawfishy smell of something old, moist and mysterious. He went toward the commissary, filled as always with Negroes. They opened a path across the porch, speaking to him, and he spoke to them by name; he knew everyone now. Inside, Martha and Carter were knee-deep in mail. “What's going on?” Son said.

“Sears catalogue day,” Martha said. “They all come at the same time.” Carter, struggling to move a pile of catalogues, said, “Why can't a few get catalogues and pass them around?”

“Lord, you got to have your own to read all fall or spring,” Martha said and held up hers, gladly.

Son said, “Why in the dickens don't you get a road out to here?”

Carter said, “We did. The boys worked on it all week.”

“Damn, if that's so,” Son said. “I give that little old Ford buggy the gun saying, Go, and I give it the gun saying, Go, and it still like not to made it.”