The Morning and the Evening (7 page)

When the kitchen had grown dark, he moved his chair out onto the old lean-to porch where there was still light enough to see a little ahead of himself. His hands hung down empty and still between his knees, and he wondered if it was time for him to go to bed.

A flashlight suddenly shone on and off at the bottom of the steps like a giant mosquito. Then a voice said through the dark, “It's Jurldeane, Mister Jake.” He heard her approach, and presently she was right by him and had turned the flashlight on underneath her chin. “See,” she said. “Jurldeane. Your momma's wash girl.”

She flashed the light around inside the kitchen. He watched it bounce ball-like from one wall to another; then it lit on the lamp. “Come on inside, Mister Jake, and let's get us some light,” she said. He followed her and stood quietly while she lit it. In the dark he could smell on her clothes Clorox and a clean starchy smell; when she moved he smelled her body, warm with the effort of her walk; then, with the sudden yellow light making dark hollows in her face as she bent over to turn up the wick, he smelled kerosene. “You eat supper, I see,” she said, looking down at his used dishes. He followed her glance and looked down at them too. Then when she raised her eyes, he raised his and they looked at each other across the lamplight. “I knew they wouldn't be here now,” she said. Her full bottom lip, opening, was shiny with snuff. “Here you are. Here I am. Where are they?” she said. “Leaving you all alone the first night they took her away.” Her mouth closed with a clamp, and she sat down heavily in the rickety kitchen chair. “Po' thing,” she said, watching his face as he sat down opposite. Suddenly she leaned out and brought his plate across the table toward her. “What's this? Choc'late cake? Whose, you reckon?” She licked her finger, then slid it across the plate where the cake had been and licked it again. “Not Miss Mary Margaret's.” She considered, running her tongue all around her lips. “Don't recognize that,” she said, finally. “Is they mo'?” she said.

He followed her arm as it motioned the plate about. “Mo'?” she said.

The plate rested on the table again and she tapped it with a large forefinger. “Cake?” He looked up and met the eyes that asked him something. The woman looked back at him for some seconds, her head cocked to one side. “Hmm-um,” she said, finally. “Po' thing,” and put her hands on the table and pushed herself up. She looked behind the old curtain covering the shelves on one side of the room and then crossed over to the cupboard and opened that. She turned grinning at him, the cake plate in her hand. “Here it is,” she said, coming back to the table. “We going to have us some cake eatin' now, Mister Jake. It going to be me and you.” She pushed his plate back to him and set one down in front of herself. She cut two large pieces and placed one on each plate; then she broke off a piece of hers with her fingers and ate it. Her tongue curled around each fingertip afterward, licking it. Jake watched, and when she said, “Eat that cake up,” he began to eat. She smiled at him when he licked his fingers, and he opened his mouth wide showing his teeth. Once she stopped chewing and said, “Huh, oleo,” and then began to chew again. Jake finished first, and she cut him a thin sliver to eat on while she finished. He did not understand at first, and the woman said again, “Go 'head.” He ate, and when they had both finished, she put slices on their plates again. She got up once and went into the next room; he sat without chewing, thinking she had gone; then she reappeared, a pitcher of milk in her hand, and poured them glasses full. They sat back in their chairs, alternately eating and licking and drinking, with no other light in the house, and no other sound save that of the clock. Her face was shining and dark in the pale light, and he did not once take his eyes from it. Whenever she looked at him, she smiled or refilled his glass or his plate. She caught a lightning bug in her hand, then released it for him to see; they watched it flicker away into the dark of the house beyond them. “No noise. No light. Nuthin',” Jurldeane said. She was quiet a moment, listening. Jake stopped chewing, watching her. “I use to pass by on the road upside this house some evenin's,” she said. He watched as a sweat bead slid from her forehead down the side of her face, watched as she leaned over and lowered the wick of the lamp. “And we would wonder what goes on inside that house when night comes. What does he do. It always so quiet, so still like. Only sometime we see your momma passing up and down before the light, going from one room to another. Never did see you, Mister Jake. We would wonder—do he go to bed soon as dark comes, or do he set around and make some kind of talk with his momma so she have some company?” She was quiet a moment, thinking back; then she looked up at him, her eyes wide and wet. “Now I know,” she said. “Now I know.”

She sat back, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. “We all got some kind of cross to bear,” she said. “Your momma had hers. But what I don't see, though the Lord has His ways, is who else going to take it up now.”

By the low light of the lamp her eyes looked deep in their bright, white sockets. He watched them, listening to the soft singsong of her voice. And suddenly she was saying, “Oh Lord, hush now. Hush, Lamb of God.”

She came around the table and pressed his head against her skirt. Once again, and for the last time, he had the warm body smell of a woman's lap for his head.

She held him until he was spent, murmuring, “Po' thing, po' old man child,” and finally lifted his head and said, “Now blow your nose.” And he took the paper napkin she handed him and tried to do it.

“I don't know what you going to do, Mister Jake, I declare to my soul I don't.” She stood looking down into the lamp as if it might hold an answer. Then she looked at him and said, “You know how to light this thing? Turn it down and blow it out?” He looked at her eagerly, silently, his mouth hung open. “You don't any more know what I'm talking 'bout than the cat flies,” she said. “Here.” From the curtained shelves she took a box of old candle ends, lit one and let it drip into a saucer. Then she secured the candle in the hot tallow and put it on the table before him. “You know how to blow that out?” she said. He leaned forward and did it with a little puff of spit. “Now I'm going to light it again,” she said, “and when you get into bed, you be sure and blow it out, you hear? Can you nod your head if you hear?” He did that.

“I got to go now,” she said. “It's on about nine o'clock.” She collected the dishes from the table and rinsed them in a bucket of water sitting in the sink, then laid them on the drainboard. “Eat from these tomorrow,” she said. She looked back at him, feeling that his eyes had never left her.

“I declare to my soul I don't,” she said. She picked up her flashlight and tested it. His eyes blinked with the on-and-off of the light. Then she came across the room and began turning down the wick bit by bit. But suddenly she stopped when it was almost out. They were still, looking at each other, their faces shadowed with the wick's final fluttering. “I don't want to,” she said, “but I got to.” Then she blew out the wick, and they were alone by the thin light of the candle.

He knew that now she was going.

She stood in the doorway and looked back at him. “Get into bed now,” she said. “Blow out that candle.”

He made no movement, no sign. His arms lay along the table encircling the empty plate, his hands were still. Suddenly the leg bent up under his chair gave an involuntary jerk and straightened out before him with a scrape of his heel. He jumped and ran his thumb under his overall strap, pulling it back up on his shoulder. He stared straight ahead of himself for a while. Then he put his fingers in his plate and slowly began to eat again.

“Something will happen,” she said, quietly. “Something will happen, Mister Jake.” She stood hesitantly, weighing the flashlight in her hand. “And I tell you,” she said, “I will be over myself to see to yo' wash.”

She looked once over her shoulder at the dark, at the direction in which she would go. The sky was lightened a moment by heat and she saw off as far as the persimmon trees. There was no sound in all of the countryside and then she heard him. The sound evoked a rush of her own tears, and she gasped to keep them back for now. She almost went, but then she took one more look at the thin, straightened legs in their dirty, creased overalls, and at the bent shoulders in the once starched shirt so carefully turned at the collar, and she came back into the room. She stood just behind him—in all instinct yearning to touch him again. But this time she did not. She bent low toward his back and whispered in a voice just before sobbing, “It ain't right. I know that. The Lord knows it too. And if I didn't know folks, Mister Jake, I'd stay. I would.”

Then she was gone.

It was a little while and then he was quiet. He picked up the napkin again and made a stab at his nose. Then he went to bed. Then he got up and came back into the room and blew out the candle. Then he went back to bed again, stumbling in the dark.

In the morning there was bread and butter and milk again. He ate it. Afterward, he put the dishes in the bucket of water, pulled them out again, and put them on the drainboard. In a little while he went out across the yard to the bathroom and on his way back to the house, he fed the chickens. He was standing in the bedroom, looking down at the dirt covering his pants, when someone came into the room behind him. When he turned around, the man said, “How do, Jake. Earl Metcalf. We uptown decided the thing to do was me to take that cow over to my barn and bring you milk every evenin'. You just ain't going to be able to take care of no cow.” Then he saw the man go out to the barn and presently walk away, waving the cow before him.

It was when he had gotten hungry again and eaten all the jelly and crackers that he noticed the dirt again. After a bit, he suddenly sat down and got all his clothes off. Two buttons fell off his shirt onto the floor. He got down on his knees and put his finger on one and pushed it around awhile
;
then he was finally able to curl it up under his fingertip and slip it into the palm of his hand. He did that with the other one and wadded his shirt up with the buttons inside it. He found clothes like those he had taken off and he got them on, except for his shirttail, which trailed out. Then he started uptown, the wadded-up shirt carefully beneath his arm. He walked slowly at first, but by the time he entered town he had again hit his high, loping stride. When someone spoke to him, he made some sort of sound in return, opened his mouth wide and grinned.

When he entered the store, the woman said, “We were talking 'bout you just now, Jake. Come on in.” Someone near the Coke case handed him a cold bottle. “I got a boy that's going to bring you down some groceries every week for fifteen cents,” Miss Loma said. “Then I'll send a little bill up to the bank in Senatobia every week, and they'll pay me out of the little money your momma left.”

“He don't understand all that talk,” said a man sucking on a toothpick.

“I know it,” the woman said. “But I feel like I ought to speak it out in public in case there's ever any question about the money. You know how the government is.”

“That's right,” said another lady. She handed Jake a package of Nabs. “And somebody will be taking him a little cooked something now and then. I declare, look at him. He's got on clean clothes and looks almost decent as she kept him.”

“What's that—a shirt? What's he want?” said the man, wiggling his toothpick to the other side.

He offered it again; this time the woman noticed it. “You reckon he wants it washed?” Miss Loma said. She took it and opened it, and the buttons fell on the floor. He began to nod his head. “Look, you reckon it's the buttons?” she said. She picked them up and said, “You want the buttons back on, Jake?” She looked at the others. “Yes, I believe that's what he wants. I'll do 'em and wash it,” she said. “You come back for it in a few days.”

“Now, can you beat that?” the other lady said. “Jake, you got any more sewing, you bring it in. We in the Baptist Thursday Club can all take turns doing it.”

One by one those who came to the store left again. He sat for a long time on a nail keg near the door. He ate what was given to him and grinned at those who spoke to him. Occasionally someone would say, “You ain't crazy, are you, Jake? But you ain't far from it!” and then they would slap him on the back, and he would grin very wide at them. They would say then, “You're all right, boy!”

Miss Loma said, “Closing time, Jake. Early on Wednesdays.” He went out the screen door when she held it open. There was hardly anyone in town when he walked through, but those who were there all spoke to him. The filling station was still open, but the last car drove away as he passed by, and the owner disappeared into his house next door. A chicken ran ahead of him in the middle of the road, and he
whoosed
at it; from out of sight someone called, “You git him, Jake.”

Then he was turning off the main road and going down the road that led past all houses and on into the silence of the countryside and finally to his own gate. He came up to it and looked ahead at the quiet house. When he entered it, no one was there. No one came all afternoon. When the chickens began to make a racket in the yard, he went out and fed them and then he came in and ate on the baloney and the bread Miss Loma had given him. He found a little pail of milk on the table, and he drank that.

It was not long before he noticed the day had lessened; the sun had spread out into long, runny streaks of red and gold, and the persimmon trees begun to darken against the horizon. He took his chair out onto the lean-to and propped in it up against the house, his feet hooked into the rungs. He waited for dark, the candle already in his hand, the match laid carefully by. He knew how to give it one good strike and afterward stick it in the bucket of water. It was almost time to light it when he saw the birds again, hovering over the line of trees before they settled in them out of sight. In the garden the weeds had grown, and dark came early in the tall grass. Once he thought he saw movement there, and he leaned forward quietly looking—he thought it might be a dog—but he never saw anything again, and he settled back in his same position.