God's Little Acre (17 page)

Griselda shook her head at Ty Ty disapprovingly.

“Now, Pa,” she said, looking up at him, “please don’t start that now. You promised not to say that anymore, too.”

Ty Ty put one foot inside the room and leaned against the door frame. He watched her roll and unroll her stockings and hang them over the back of the chair. She got up quickly and stood at the foot of the bed.

“You wouldn’t begrudge me a little thing like that, now would you, Griselda?”

“Aw, now, Pa,” she said.

Griselda waited for him to leave so she could finish undressing and put on her nightgown. Ty Ty waited in the doorway, one foot inside the room, admiring her. She finally began to unfasten her dress, glancing at him each moment. When she had unpinned it, she slipped her arms from the sleeves, holding it against her. With her other hand she put the nightgown over her head. Dexterously, she allowed the dress to drop to the floor while the nightgown slipped down over her shoulders and hips, but in the fraction of a second Ty Ty opened his eyes wider to see that there had been at least several inches between the top of the dress and the hem of the gown when they both slipped downward. He rubbed his eyes to see what had happened.

“Dog-gone my hide,” he said, walking away into the dark hall. “Dog-gone it!”

Griselda blew out the light and jumped into bed.

I
T LOOKED TO
Ty Ty as if there would be trouble before evening. Since early that morning when they had started to work in the big hole beside the house, Buck had been uttering threats at Will, and Will had sat sullen and alone on the porch cursing Buck under his breath. All of them were digging, including Black Sam and Uncle Felix; everyone was working except Will, and he still refused to go down into the hole and shovel sand and clay in the hot sun.

Buck was in an ugly temper, and the increasing heat of midday in the hole, where there was not a breath of fresh air, made his anger more and more dangerous. All morning Ty Ty had done his best to keep Buck down there.

“I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch,” Buck said for the fourth several time.

“Will ain’t going to bother Griselda, Buck,” Ty Ty told him. “Now go on and dig and leave him out of your mind.”

Buck was not impressed by Ty Ty’s assurances, even if he did remain quiet for a while. Ty Ty climbed out of the hole to cool off a little. He got on top of the ground and looked around for Will, just to make sure that he was sitting peacefully on the front porch, cursing Buck under his breath.

Down in the crater. Dave was working with the rest. Ty Ty had come to the conclusion that the albino boy could be of greater service for the present if he would help dig. He had already divined the lode for Ty Ty, and Ty Ty thought it would be a good idea to let him help them strike it. The shotgun had been replaced on the rack in the dining-room, and he was no longer under guard. Uncle Felix had been singing that morning for the first time since Dave had been brought from the swamp. The colored man was glad to have the responsibility off his mind and to be allowed to dig with the rest of them.

When Ty Ty’told Dave that he was not to be kept under guard any longer, the boy had acted as though he were afraid that Ty Ty would tell him to leave. When he was told to get down into the hole with Buck and Shaw, however, he was delighted. He had hoped that Darling Jill would come and talk to him, but she had not appeared. Dave was beginning to fear by that time that she was not going to have anything more to do with him. If she still cared for him, he believed she would have come to the crater and at least smiled at him.

“Will,” Ty Ty said, sitting down and fanning himself with his straw hat, “what in the pluperfect hell do you boys want to scrap about, anyhow? That ain’t no way for a family like us to be doing. I’m ashamed of the way you and Buck act.”

“Listen,” he answered quickly. “You tell him to keep his mouth shut, and you won’t hear another word out of me. The only reason why I’ve ever said anything to him was because he’s always calling me a lint-head, and saying he’s going to kill me. Tell him to keep his mouth shut, and you won’t be able to kick about what I say.”

Ty Ty sat and thought a while. The mystery of human life was not nearly so obscure to him as it was to most men, and he wondered why everyone could not see as he did. Will Thompson probably came as close to understanding the secrets of the mind and body as he himself understood them, but Will was not the kind of man to tell what he knew. He went about his life keeping his thoughts to himself, and acting, when the time came, without revealing, save through his actions, the secrets of his knowledge. Ty Ty knew that the whole trouble between Will and Buck was over Griselda, and Buck was undoubtedly justified in being suspicious of Will’s intentions. Griselda was certainly not to blame for anything; she had never made an advance toward Will during the whole time she had been in the house. She always appeared to be trying so hard to keep Will away from her, and to make Buck believe that she cared only for him. Ty Ty knew she had had ample opportunity to deceive Buck if she had wished to; the truth was that she did not wish to deceive him. But she could not keep men from admiring her and being drawn to her and from trying to take her away from her husband. Ty Ty wondered what could be done about it.

“If there’s one thing I’ve tried all my life to do, it’s to keep peace in the family,” he told Will. “I reckon I’d just fold up and die away if I saw blood spilled on my land. I’d never be able to get over the sight of it. I’d die to keep that from happening. I couldn’t stand to see blood on my land.”

“There’s not going to be blood spilt, if Buck keeps his mouth shut and minds his own business. I’ve never tried to pick a fight with him. He always starts it, just like he started it this morning. I never even went close enough to him to say anything. He just came up and looked mean and started calling me a son-of-a-bitch and a lint-head, and the rest. That’s all right with me. I don’t intend to fight your boys for a little thing like that. But he keeps it up, rubbing it in all the time, and there’s where the trouble is going to really start. If he’d say what it is he’s got to say, and let it go with that, then it would be all right with me. But he hangs around saying it all day long. Tell him to shut up, if you don’t want to see blood spilt on your land.”

Ty Ty cocked his ears and listened. An automobile was slowing down to turn into the yard. Pluto Swint drove in and stopped under the shade of one of the live-oak trees. He got out laboriously, compressing his big round belly with the palms of his hands so he could squeeze himself between the door and the steering wheel.

“I’m glad to see you, Pluto,” Ty Ty said. He remained beside Will on the steps and waited for Pluto to come over and sit down. “I sure am glad to see you, Pluto. You got here just when I like to see you most. Somehow, it seems like you sort of bring a calming influence when you come. I can sit here now and feel satisfied that there won’t be nothing to cause harm to me or mine.”

Pluto blew and puffed and wiped his face free of perspiration, taking a seat on the steps. He looked at Will, nodding his head. Will spoke to him.

“Counted many votes today, so far?” Ty Ty asked.

“Not yet,” Pluto answered, still blowing and puffing. “I couldn’t get an early start today, and this is all the distance I’ve gone.”

“Ain’t it hot?”

“It’s sizzling today,” Pluto said. “And that’s a fact.”

Will took out his pocketknife and broke off a splinter on the steps and began whittling it. He could hear Buck saying something about him down in the hole around the house, but he was not interested in what he was saying.

“Me and Rosamond have got to go home today.”

Ty Ty looked at him quickly, on the verge of protesting, but he held his tongue after a moment’s thought. He wished to have Will there to help them dig, but Will would not dig, and he was of no help. That being the case, Ty Ty reasoned that it would be better for Will and Rosamond to go back to Scottsville. As long as Will remained there, Buck was going to make threats, and Will might not be so reasonable after another day. The safest and wisest course, Ty Ty said to himself, would be to let Will and Rosamond go home.

“I reckon we could have taken you last night when we were in Augusta,” he said, “but it was pretty late, for one thing, and everybody wanted to come back and go to bed.”

“I’ll get Darling Jill to take us to Marion and we’ll catch a bus. I’ve got to get back before night.”

Ty Ty was relieved to think that perhaps there would be no trouble between Buck and Will after all. If they left soon, Buck would not have a chance to challenge Will.

“I’ll go tell Darling Jill to get ready and drive you and Rosamond into town,” he said rising.

“Sit down,” Will told him, “and let’s wait a while. There’s no hurry. It’s only about eleven o’clock now. We’ll wait till after dinner.”

Ty Ty sat down uneasily. The best he could hope for was that Will and Buck would not meet before then.

“How’s politics now, Pluto?” he asked, trying to take his mind off such an unpleasant subject.

“Getting hot,” Pluto said. “The candidates ain’t content to count a vote once any longer; they’re going out now and counting them over again to make sure they ain’t lost them to somebody else. This running around all over the country has got me worn to a frazzle already. I don’t see how I can keep up the chase like this for another six weeks.”

“Now Pluto,” Ty Ty said confidently, “you know you’ll win in a walk. Every man I’ve talked with since New Year’s Day has told me he was going to vote for you.”

“Saying he’s going to vote for me and doing it when the time comes is as far apart as the land and the sky. I don’t put any trust in politics. I’ve been mixed up in them since I was twenty-two years old, and I know.”

Ty Ty studied the smooth white sand in the yard, his eyes following the line of small round pebbles under the eaves of the porch where the water drained to the ground.

“I was just thinking, Pluto, that maybe you’d like to drive a little trip today.”

“Where to?”

“Taking Will and Rosamond over to Horse Creek Valley in your car. I know the girls would be tickled to death to ride over there and back with you.”

“I’ve got to be getting on down the road to count votes,” Pluto protested. “And that’s a fact.”

“Now, you know you’d be pleased to ride over there and back, Pluto, carrying such fine-looking girls in your car. You ain’t going to count votes sitting here in the yard, anyhow.”

“I’ve got to get out and count votes all day long.”

Ty Ty got up and went into the house, leaving Will and Pluto on the steps. Will rolled a cigarette and borrowed a match from Pluto. The sound of the pick striking the hard clay in the bottom of the crater around the house rose and fell in their ears to the rhythm of Uncle Felix’s work-song. Pluto would have liked to have gone to the hole and looked down into it to see how deep it had been dug, but it was too much of an exertion for him to get up. He sat listening to the sound of the picks, trying to determine from the sound how deep the hole was. After he had thought about it a while, he was glad he had not gone around the house to look into it. He did not particularly care how deep it was, anyway, and, on top of that, if he had gone, the sight of seeing Buck and Shaw, the two darkies, and Dave sweating in the air-tight hole would have made him much hotter than he was already.

He looked up to see Darling Jill standing beside him. She was freshly dressed, swinging a wide-brimmed hat in her hands. She looked as if she were getting ready to go somewhere without consulting him. Will moved over a little and she sat down between them, putting her arm through Pluto’s and placing her cheek against his shoulder.

“Pa said you were going to take Griselda and me for a ride to Scottsville,” she smiled. “I didn’t know anything about it until he came just now and told me.”

Will laughed, leaning forward to see Pluto’s face. “I can’t do that,” Pluto protested.

“Now, Pluto, if you loved me a little you would.”

“Well, I do that, anyway.”

“Then you’ll take us over with you when you take Will and Rosamond home.”

“I’ve got to get out and count some votes,” he said.

She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Pluto beamed. He leaned closer so she would do it again.

“You can’t be wasting your time canvassing for votes today, Pluto.”

“I don’t reckon I can,” he said. “Can’t you do that another time?”

“Once before we leave, and once before we start back,” she promised.

“I sure can’t get elected like this,” Pluto said. “And that’s a fact.”

“There’ll be plenty of time after today, Pluto.”

She allowed his hand to rest on her knees, and watched him closely while he lifted her skirt and slipped his fingers under her garter.

“You’re nothing but a big overgrown baby, Pluto. You’re always wanting something you can’t have.”

“What do you say to getting married, Darling Jill?” he asked, his face flushing.

“It’s not time yet.”

“Why isn’t it time yet?”

“Because I’d have to be a few months gone before I’d do that.”

“It won’t be long then,” Will said, winking at Pluto.

Pluto was slow to understand what Darling Jill meant. He started to ask her, but he was silenced by Darling Jill’s and Will’s laughter.

“It won’t be long if that fellow from the swamp stays here another week or so,” Will said.

“Dave?” Darling Jill asked, making a face. “He’s nothing. I wouldn’t hurt Pa’s little white-haired boy.”

Pluto smiled contentedly when he heard her dismiss the albino so completely.

“Well, if you’re going to forget him,” Will said, “was I something, or wasn’t I?”

“To tell the truth,” she confessed, “you’ve got me worried.”

“You ought to be. When I drive a nail into a plank, it stays driven.”

“What’s that you’re talking about got to do with getting married, Darling Jill?” Pluto asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied, winking at Will. “Will was just counting the daisies he picked.”

“Well, I’m ready to get married,” Pluto said.