Chapter 20

Anton and Dyke were loading the Burwell truck for the trip to Louisville. It was late January. They had become familiar with the town since their first excursion six years ago at the beginning of the depression. They had come to know the wholesale section and the waterfront district where the Ohio flowed and where auctions were conducted in the shadow of tobacco warehouses and mills and the newly-operated distilleries, reeking and guarded. Now too, they would manage more than one yearly trip. They found it necessary, in fact, to go many times.

Sam Offut had moved in with Anton the week after Maria went, bringing along his wife Eadie. She was plagued with lumbago and vestiges of various diseases contracted when much younger, and she seemed satisfied to settle with Sam in Mr. Gaddy’s house for as long as she was required. She learned to carry out her duties to his partial satisfaction. She cooked three meals and cleaned occasionally. She was cowed, however, by the Catholic icons, refusing to dust the crucifix or the statuettes or the framed Sacred Heart. “Be careful what you say near the things, Samuel,” she warned, “they be Romish. You know Mr. Gaddy’s not a true Christian like us.” The Offuts would go to the new Holiness Church that had set up a tent on the outskirts of Millville. There folks spoke in strange tongues and preachers would handle rattlesnakes and fire and encourage public confession. Besides being entertained, the Offuts had found an ideal place to express themselves without censure.

This morning Eadie was bringing sandwiches of bread and bacon to the truck. Dyke was gunning the motor and a white smoke streamed from the exhaust. Six fattened shoats, stowed behind the load of corn, grunted and squealed until the machine was set in motion. Then they were lulled, grew sleepy-eyed swaying warm-bodied against each other. “I’m going to get me a piece of cock tonight, Mester Gaddy,” Dyke sang out.

“Do that, boy,” Anton glowered.

“Hey. I like a ooman built like a brick shithouse.” Dyke’s ruddy face shone. Beside the taciturn older man he was feeling debonair and knowing. “Big and soft all o’er. And I know where they’ve got them.” He blew the horn, “Beep. Beep!” A flock of chickens fled squawking into ditches from the carcass of a dog that lay in the frosted road. “Want me to show you where, Mester Gaddy?”

“No. Christ.”

“Setting about the room in wrappers. Nothing underneath. For a fact, now.”

“You’ll get the claps and come home dragging your tail. Hum. Won’t be so horny then, I vow. Best stay away from harlots, boy.”

“Now, there’s one old girl does a trick with a cigarette. You’d ne’er think she could do it.”

“Get your pecker down, boy.” Anton looked out on the frozen fields that waited fallow for spring. “Give not thy strength unto oomen. Mind.”

“Reckon the corn’ll sell high, Mester Gaddy?”

“Prices always come up in late winter. Seems most folks are so strapped for cash in fall, they’ll sell when hit’s cheap.”

The stoutish younger man and the other near sixty were drawn together in the close cab, knitted by the future, unforeseen. The return trip would be different, then the tie would fall away as tomorrow became a routine of familiar chores. Dyke was laughing. “Hey, Mester Gaddy. Saw Butcher Faust last night. He’d just got in a cow carcass. Still had the udder on it. So he sliced off a front teat and let it hang out his fly. Old lady Brenner came in. He took her order, started in to cut her meat for her. Well, she jerked up of a sudden. Says, timid-like, look there, Butcher Faust. And he looked down, says, Oh that damn thing. And lays it on the block, whacks it off with his knife.”

“Haw,” snorted Anton.

“Old lady Brenner near passed out. That Butcher Faust slays me.”

Hog prices had nearly doubled over the fall rate. The men found a buyer for the corn and stopped in at a dingy corner bar for a glass of draught beer before parting company. Then Anton was making his way down Market Street, a bleak wind thrusting at his back, up the sleeves to his mackinaw and ill-fitting black suit. He took a left turn for two blocks, then a right. He swung in at the second house, his stride unaltered. The building was of red brick, one of a series of identical houses. The long hall was unheated and dark, a radio lilted faintly from under a doorway.

I don’t want your sugar sprinkled in my tea Because the gal I’ve got is sweet enough for me

Anton was climbing a staircase, knocking at the door at the head. A shapely woman opened it, her jet-black hair heavy about her sallow-skinned broad face. Anton spoke thickly, “You alone, Rose?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Daddy.” She was turning in a studied careless way. He put a heavy-muscled hand toward the slim curve of her back, withdrew it hastily as if caught between guilt and greed. He closed the door and followed her to the window where she was looking out as if waiting. His hand came upon her insistent, he was pulling her to the bed.

She asked him after a while, “Why don’t you ever kiss me? And you with those big lips.” She was slipping into her wrapper. He followed her with his eyes, made no answer. She took his coat from the chair, explored the inner pocket and brought out a flat box. “Why not, Daddy?” She was deriding, but gentle, for the kind elderly farmer suited her. She had met him a few months ago, knew he was Catholic with a wife committed recently to an institution. She opened the gift box holding a red and blue silk handkerchief. Louisville, Kentucky. The Biggest Wholesale Distributor Of The South. She knotted it softly at her neck, wise that the vivid colors set off her hair. She planned that she would marry Anton. She was preparing supper on a two-burner hot plate, boiling spaghetti, searing ground meat in a frying pan. “Vo-do-do-dee-o-do-o-o! Guess I’ll teach you to dance, Daddy. Okay?”

From the bed he was taking in the figure in the bright kimono that contrasted so completely with the shadow of Maria. He would leave Louisville tomorrow, returning to the farm. But he would be restless and irritable, lonely, his sin again unconfessed. “Come o’er here, Poppet.”

She was going to the bed. He took her to his lap. His sateen shirt was open and she stroked the red hair of his chest. “You’re a comfortable man. You’re strong.”

“Rose, you wait here for me.” He was heated. “Don’t see e’er a man. You hear?”

“I don’t know.” But Rose said it as if she would obey.

“This little grandson of mine had hair would turn pale in summer, like oat straw. Hum.” Rose went back to where the savory odors were steaming. She laid dishes and brought glasses of beer to a low table. Anton drew on his pants, fastening his belt; he pulled his heavy frame erect, began to pace back and forth. His yellowed winter underwear was exposed above the waist. He stopped in his stride as if angry, “Will you do like I say, Rose?”

“Okay, Daddy.” But this time she was amused and said it as though she would not.

The next morning Rose was frying ham and eggs for breakfast. The stale air in the flat was surfeited with the high fat odor. She made her ways soft so the pain of parting would lie in Anton like a hot ball. She was teasing him so he would never be quite sure away from her and would remember her standing by him in the bright-flowered kimono, her hips soft and her city face white. She was forking the food onto his plate. Anton observed the lift of her arm along her breast; he laid his gnarled hand against the pointed shape of it, his mind turning to a morning long years ago.

The girl Penny, who married that fool Dougherty, had worn a flowered dress patterned like Rose’s kimono. She had come to the hay field to bring Anton a drink of water in a stone jar. He was turning the damp clover alone. The girl watched him drink, smiling. “It’s a power hot out here, Mester.” She was lifting her hands to brush back her hair, seeking the breeze. She looked cool from her head to her brown toes that were small as a youngen’s. Something stirred in Anton when her breasts stood out as she raised her arms. He put his hand forward hardly knowing what he did, and cupped one in his palm. “Are you coming in the heat?” he was whispering, hoarse. Penny’s eyes had widened. She was bending for the jug and slipping away. In days to follow he named her “that roaring ooman,” angered with his own calflike ways, despising his moment of weakness. And when his older daughter had picked up the foldilay songs, ever after they would stir his ire.

He spoke dourly to Rose, removing his hand, “The lips of a strange ooman drop honey, says the Book. And her mouth be smoother than oil.”

“Banana oil, Daddy,” said Rose.

Anton met Dyke at the truck parked on Market Street. Hoarfrost had glazed the windows, Dyke was scraping at it with his knife while the engine warmed. The truck backfired and trundled with an effort through early traffic, past the slow gray river, and into the country where smoke was seeping from dunghills and fowl scratched the frozen earth. Anton was restless in his seat, crabbed. Dyke was driving stolidly. The radiator was beginning to boil as they chugged up the Gaddy farm lane. Dyke peered through the cloud above the hood. “Just made the well in time, Mester Gaddy.” He was shouting over the noise of the engine, and cut it. “Hey there, Sam.” He still shouted although the motor had stopped. He lowered his voice in the quiet wintry air, “Did your wife help you milk, Sam?”

“No, I shift for myself at the barn when Mester Gaddy’s off.” There was the hint of home-brew about Sam’s breath. He sighed, “But this here lumbago’s getting me down.”

Anton had descended his side of the truck. Shading his eyes, he was looking at buzzards that wheeled over one of the fields. “What be dead out there, Sam?”

“I don’t know. Could be the dog’s killed him a woodchuck.”

Anton walked to the top of the land, the other two following. “Reckon it’s old Jack himself?”

“Now I recollect, Mester Gaddy, Eadie said she ne’er seen him about yesterday to get his dinner scraps.”

Anton picked up a shovel, walked down the lane alone. A few sluggish bluebottles buzzed up in the sunless air from the dog’s decaying worn-out body, matted with burrs and beggar’s-lice, damp from melted frost. While the man was digging, clay caught in the cuffs of his shiny black pants. From the woods nearby the two notes of the carping bluejays echoed like pieces of crockery being knocked together. The birds were heralding the spring winds. Anton tipped the carcass into the grave with his shovel. A warm stench floated from where maggots quivered. Anton neither smelled nor saw. His disciplined arms were performing efficiently. His mind dwelled apart, jealous, on the woman in Louisville.

part four

Lovers who must say farewell When the road has reached the trees Lovers who have all to tell Where the road runs out of sight In the green beyond the leaves The green cove below the light Lovers who must say farewell When the road has reached the trees Touching hand to hand to speak All their love has ever known Find no words to speak and say Love... O love...