Deep Summer (27 page)

When he came in of an evening she would make him lie on the bed with his head in her lap and she would run her hand over his forehead and tell him how good he was, and how fine for her not to have to tramp the docks any more, and he’d feel less tired. Then she’d bring a pan of water and wash his feet and get them cooled after working all day, and make him rest while she dished up supper. It would be a good supper too, cornbread crisp and hot and not soggy like some women’s cornbread, and molasses, and generally stew-meat. You most generally could hardly eat stew-meat; that was what the butcher shaved off the bones after he’d cut the chops and steaks for rich people, but she was smart about boiling it with bay-leaf till it tasted like something. “You got to have meat in your belly if you tote cottonbales,” Esther said, and she was right too. When she had washed up the pans and covered the fire they’d take a stroll along the bluff where the streets were wide and quiet, or maybe if he’d been lucky at getting work they’d go see a cock-fight, or call in some neighbors and play cards. Or if it was bad weather they’d just sit and talk to each other, and she’d tell him how much happier she was now than she’d ever been and all on account of him.

Oh, they were doing fine, they were, and he loved Esther more all the time. She got nicer, and began to drop the way of tough talking she’d picked up on the docks. There were some words it was all right for men to use but not women, and when he told her so she wouldn’t be mad, she’d just say, “I’m powerful sorry, honey—you know what it’s like on the docks, and pa.” He wondered where her pa was. Not that it mattered, long as he kept away from Esther.

Even after she told him she was standing behind a baby and didn’t feel so peart, Esther got the cooking done all right and kept the place tidy. The baby turned out to be a little girl, and Gideon named her Gardenia for the flowers that smelled so sweet in the park in summertime. It was fun sometimes having the baby around, but sometimes it was bad, like when Gardy had colic in the night and kept him awake, and a man had to have his sleep if he was going to do a job of work. Sometimes of a morning if the baby had been wakeful Esther would be too tired and bothered with it to fix him much breakfast and he’d get cross though he tried not to. By the time he got to the docks he’d be groggy in the head from no sleep.

Days like that, he’d get plumb worn out by dark and it wasn’t as nice going home as it used to be. The room wasn’t so neat, for the baby’s clothes were hanging around to dry and everything was messed up. Not that Esther was lazy, but with Gardy crawling around and pulling things out of place she couldn’t be forever picking up and doing the cooking and washing too. She didn’t scold him, not even when she needed a new wash-pot and he couldn’t get it for her because he’d got tired staying around hearing the baby squall and had spent all his money at a cock-fight. He told her he was sorry, but she just gave him a funny look and said, “Don’t you go feeling bad, honey. I know how it is.”

But that night he woke up and she was crying. He thought maybe the baby was sick again, but little Gardy was in the bed on the other side of Esther sleeping like nothing could wake her but the last trump. Gideon put his arms around Esther, saying, “Don’t be so upset, sugar. I know it’s hard, washing without no good pot, but I’ll get you one.”

“It ain’t the wash-pot,” said Esther. “It’s—it’s—well, everything. I knowed it would be thisaway. Before long you’ll wish you ain’t never set eyes on me.”

“Ah, go on,” said Gideon. “You know I’m crazy about you. Go to sleep and you’ll feel better.”

Esther said, “No.” She sat up. “I’ll go to sleep but I won’t feel better. I’ll quit whining but I won’t feel better.”

“Whatever is the matter with you?” he exclaimed. “You keep me awake like this and then you wonder why I’m fuzzy-headed in the morning.”

“I’m behind a baby again,” said Esther.

“Oh Jesus,” said Gideon. “And her just weaned?” Then he felt ashamed of himself, and he added, “Say, that don’t matter. Anybody to hear you talk would think you weren’t married or something disgraceful.”

“Oh, all right,” said Esther, and lay down again. When they got up the next morning she fixed the baby’s milk and boiled his hominy without saying anything else about it, but she had a look that made him think of somebody that was seeing forty years all at once instead of just one day at a time.

Pretty soon he knew she had been wiser than he, for the water was extra high that spring. Men on the docks dreaded high-water years like the plague. The river got full to bursting and the current was so fast men couldn’t control the boats, and mighty few traders would risk cargoes. There would be days and days when Gideon got hardly any work at all. Esther dragged herself around the stalls, trying to find one where they would give an onion with the rice, but the grocers said with trade held up they couldn’t afford to be giving lagniappe. Some nights they had no supper at all.

He might have asked Cass, Lulie’s husband, for help, though he’d hate to, but Cass was just getting half wages now. Mr. Valcour had put the free laborers on half-time work. When Cass asked how they were doing Gideon stuck out his chest and said: “Oh, we’re doing fine, fine,” because he couldn’t bear to have folks know anything else of him. It was shame more than hunger that hurt him. There were always bad times now and then when you didn’t expect to have everything, but to see his own wife big with child pulling herself around and looking like death, and his own little girl getting thin, that made a man feel terrible.

“If I was you and could walk,” said Esther, “I’d go to them Sheramys and tell them how it is with us.”

“Hush your mouth,” said Gideon. “I swear they wouldn’t do nothing.”

“But why not?” she demanded. “Holy heaven, they still buys things. I see them folks, coming down in painted carriages, scolding because ain’t no boat brought up fancy shoes from New Orleans. They got to have shoes in warm weather even. And that Roger Sheramy own brother to you.”

“Christ almighty,” said Gideon, “the water’ll be down by June.”

“Sure,” said Esther, “and me being delivered before May.”

“I swear to you, Esther,” he argued, “them folks on the bluff don’t know what it’s like for us when the river’s high. My ma lived at Silverwood and she knew. She said when you’ve got plenty you always got something else to worry about.”

“I don’t know what folks worry about when they’ve got plenty,” said Esther wearily.

She nearly died when the second baby was born. Lulie came in and nursed her, and the neighbor women, though they had little enough for their own families, brought rice or pieces of fruit to help Esther get her strength back. The baby was so little and wizened Gideon marveled that he lived at all, for Esther didn’t have any milk. But three other women in the alley who were nursing young babies took turns feeding him at first so he wouldn’t starve. Times like this made you understand how good people were, Gideon thought sometimes; if it wasn’t for bad years and trouble you never would know.

He managed to get some carpentry work. The Purcells were taking advantage of the slow trade to repair the wharf-sheds. It was hard, for he wasn’t used to carpentering and didn’t know much about it. But he thought he was right lucky to be having any work at all when there were so many that didn’t. It seemed the river wouldn’t ever go down, for instead of getting to a peak and breaking out over the plantations it stayed mighty near on a level, not making any really bad floods but too swift for traffic. There never had been such a hard spring for the dock people.

Gideon began to wonder if he could go on at all, working till his back nearabout broke and never getting enough for what his folks needed. Yet tramping the docks was easier than going home, for the room was hot and smelt always of stale cooking and diapers drying, with baby John whining on the bed and little Gardy toddling around all dirty from falling in the mud around the door, and Esther so cross he hardly dared speak to her. Not that he blamed her; God knew it was as hard for her as for him or maybe harder. But he went sure enough crazy one night when he came in and found Esther’s pa was back.

He hadn’t meant to do anything, but when he found the old man there Gideon’s head started to spin. The baby was crying on the bed and Gardy was screaming with terror as the old man shook Esther by the shoulders and shouted that he knew she had a husband making good money and she had to give him some for whiskey. As Gideon opened the door Gardy ran to him for protection and tripped over the old man’s foot. The old man kicked at her. Gideon grabbed Esther’s meat-knife from the table and stuck it into the old man’s throat.

When his head cleared and he looked down at the old man with his face in a puddle of blood on the floor Gideon could not be sorry he had killed him.

But the door was open, and a woman in the alley outside was yelling with horror. She ran to the next door, and in a minute or two the room was full of people. The woman cried out that the two men had been having a fight and the young one had killed the old one. They took Gideon off to the calaboose.

Esther was sure they would let him go when she told the law-men how it happened. Meanwhile she got a neighbor to keep the children and she went back to peddling fruit on the docks.

When they stood Gideon up before the judges she found there was hardly anybody at the court that could even talk plain. They jabbered English and French and Spanish all at once. Gideon had learned Spanish from his mother and Esther had picked up some French on the docks, but the law-men didn’t use words she and Gideon knew. There was one judge who didn’t know a word of English and another who didn’t know any Spanish and there were clerks who kept translating and retranslating until she was so befuddled in the head she didn’t know what any of them were talking about. They wanted Gideon to sign a paper and by that time all he could do was shake his head in bewilderment and try to make them understand he didn’t know how to write his name.

The next thing she knew a long-nosed man was announcing that the person of Gideon Upjohn was re-consigned to the guardhouse and he was to be hanged for the crime of murder. Three men said that in three languages and it was the only statement of the day Esther understood clearly. She cried out and rushed to Gideon, throwing her arms around him and sobbing.

But a man pulled her away, saying, “Now, now, lady, don’t take it so hard.”

Gideon exclaimed, “Say, look ahere, ain’t I told you—” But they told him to be quiet and took him off.

Esther dragged herself home. She sat down on the floor and gathered up her children, but she had hardly strength left to cry over them. While she sat there the rent-man came in. He had to have the rent; it was three days behind now, he said.

“I ain’t got a copper,” Esther told him dully. It was as if all the feeling inside of her was dead.

The man told her he couldn’t wait any more. If she didn’t have the rent she’d have to move out in the morning. Bright and early he’d be around and if she wasn’t out he’d set her and her young uns in the street.

The children were crying for their supper. Esther found some hominy grits in the bottom of a bag and boiled it for them. She got into bed and pulled the children into her arms. So their pa was going to be hanged and they were going to be put into the street. No they weren’t either, Esther said to herself with a blazing resolution. Nobody was going to do such things to her man and her young uns while she was up and around. Gideon could say what he pleased. Tomorrow she was going to Silverwood and they’d have to kill her to keep her from saying to Mr. Sheramy what she wanted to say.

In the morning she got up early. She put her belongings into a bundle and carried it and the children to Lulie’s. When Esther told her she didn’t have a place to stay Lulie said she’d keep the children today. Esther let her think she was going to the calaboose to say goodby again to Gideon.

She started walking the road that led across the bluff to the plantations. The day got scorchingly hot as the sun went higher. Esther had dressed herself as neatly as she could and put on her shoes, but when carriages passed the horses’ hoofs kicked up clouds of dust and before she had gone a mile she was dirty all over. The heat made her head itch and tingle under her sunbonnet.

The plantation country was strange to her, and she called to a Negro turning a wagon into a road through the cotton-fields. “Where is Silverwood?” she asked.

He pointed with his mule-whip. “Up de road.”

“Far?”

“Right far piece, I reckon.”

Esther held her hands together tight. “You ain’t by chance going there, is you? So you could give me a ride?”

“I sho ain’t, white ’oman. I got my work to tend to. I ain’t got no time to be totin’ folks around.”

He struck at the mules, and the wagon lumbered on. Esther sat down on the ground. Her legs ached so she wondered if she could get up again and keep going, but she managed at last to do it.

The road curved past more fields of cotton and a seemingly endless stretch of cane. Then there was a patch of wood and more fields. She asked another Negro she met on the road and he told her these fields belonged to Silverwood, and the next big white house was the manor.

The manor was set away back from the road behind trees and flower-gardens. Esther walked around the gardens to the back door. The house-slaves were working around or taking their ease on the steps of the quarters. Esther went up the back steps and knocked.

“I want to see Mr. Sheramy,” she said to the door-boy who answered.

The door-boy looked at her sweaty face and sticky hands and the dust around her skirt. “He out in de field,” he returned. “What you want wid him?”

“I want to see him,” said Esther. She moved a step back and held to the gallery rail. She was so tired her legs were shaking.

Two or three Negroes lounging about the kitchen-house door surveyed her with indifference. “De missis don’t ’low no beggin’,” said one of them.

Esther wheeled around. “You shut up, you black nigger,” she cried. “I want to see Mr. Roger Sheramy and you can’t make me move till I do see him.” She whirled back to the door-boy. “If he’s in the field where’s the old master? His father?”