It was a sort of unspoken convention not to take more than a pipeful at a time. Here old man Falls and old Bayard retired on the old man’s monthly visits and shouted at one another (they were both deaf) for a half hour or so. You could hear them plainly from the street and in the adjoining store on either side.
Old man Falls’ eyes were blue and innocent as a boy’s and his first act was to open the parcel which old Bayard had for him and take out a plug of chewing tobacco, cut off a chew and put it in his mouth, replace the plug and tie the parcel neatly again. Twice a year the parcel contained an entire outfit of clothing, on the other occasions tobacco and a small sack of peppermint candy. He would never cut the string, but always untied it with his stiff, gnarled fingers and tied it back again. He would not accept money.
He sat now in his clean, faded overalls, with the parcel on his knees, telling Bayard about the automobile that had passed him on the road that morning. Old Bayard sat quite still, watching him with his fierce old eyes until he had finished.
“Are you sure who it was?” he asked.
“Hit passed me too fast fer me to tell whether they was anybody in hit a-tall or not. I asked when I fetched town who ’twas. Seems like ever’body but you knows how fast he runs hit.”
Old Bayard sat quietly for a time. Then he raised his voice.
“Byron.”
The door opened and the bookkeeper entered.
“Yes, sir, Colonel,” he said without inflection.
“’Phone out to my house and tell my grandson not to touch that car until I come home.”
“Yes, sir, Colonel.” And he was gone as silently as he appeared.
Bayard slammed around in his swivel chair again and old man Falls leaned forward, peering at his face.
“What’s that ’ere wen you got on yo’ face, Bayard?” he asked.
“What?” Bayard demanded, then he raised his hand to a small spot which the suffusion of his face had brought into relief. “Here? I don’t know what it is. It’s been there about a week. Why?”
“Is it gittin’ bigger?” the other asked. He rose and laid his parcel down and extended his hand. Old Bayard drew his head back.
“It’s nothing,” he said testily. “Let it alone.” But old man Falls put the other’s hand aside and touched the spot with his fingers.
“H’m,” he said. “Hard’s a rock. Hit’ll git bigger, too. I’ll watch hit, and when hit’s right, I’ll take it off. ’Tain’t ripe, yit.” The bookkeeper appeared suddenly and without noise beside them.
“Yo’ cook says him and Miss Jenny is off car-ridin’ somewheres, I left yo’ message.”
“Jenny’s with him, you say?” old Bayard asked. “That’s what yo’ cook says,” the bookkeeper repeated in his inflectionless voice.
“Well. All right.”
The bookkeeper withdrew and old man Falls picked up his parcel. “I’ll be gittin’ on too,” he said. I’ll come in next week and take a look at it. You better let hit alone till I git back.” He followed the bookkeeper from the room, and presently old Bayard rose and stalked through the lobby and tilted his chair in the door.
That afternoon when he arrived home, the car was not in sight nor did his aunt answer his call. He mounted to his room and put on his riding boots and lit a cigar, but when he looked down from his window into the back yard, neither Isom nor the saddled mare was visible.
The old setter sat looking up at his window. When old Bayard’s head appeared there the dog rose and went to the kitchen door and stood there; then it looked up at his window again. Old Bayard tramped down the stairs and on through the house and entered the kitchen, where Caspey sat at the table, eating and talking to Isom and Elnora.
“And one mo’ time me and another boy—” Caspey was saying. Then Isom saw Bayard, and rose from his seat in the wood box corner, and his eyes rolled whitely in his bullet head. Elnora paused also with her broom, but Caspey turned his head without rising, and still chewing steadily, he blinked his eyes at old Bayard in the door.
“I sent you word a week ago to come on out here at once, or not to come at all,” Bayard said. “Did you get it?” Caspey mumbled something, still chewing, and old Bayard came into the room. “Get up from there and saddle my horse.”
Caspey turned his back deliberately and raised his glass of buttermilk. “Git on, Caspey!” Elnora hissed at him. “I ain’t workin’ here.” he answered, just beneath Bayard’s deafness. He turned to Isom. “Whyn’t you go’n git his hoss fer him? Ain’t you workin’ here?”
“Caspey, fer Lawd’s sake!” Elnora implored. “Yes, suh, Cunnel; he’s gwine,” she said loudly.
“Who, me?” Caspey said. “Does I look like it?” He raised the glass steadily to his mouth; then Bayard moved again and Caspey lost his nerve and rose quickly before the other reached him, and crossed the kitchen toward the door, but with sullen insolence in the very shape of his back. As he fumbled with the door Bayard overtook him.
“Are you going to saddle that mare?” he demanded.
“Ain’t gwine skip it, big boy,” Caspey answered, just below Bayard’s deafness.
“What?”
“Oh, Lawd, Caspey!” Elnora moaned. Isom crouched into his corner. Caspey raised his eyes swiftly to Bayard’s face and opened the screen door.
“I says, I ain’t gwine skip it,” he repeated, raising his voice. Simon stood at the foot of the steps beside the setter, gaping his toothless mouth at them, and old Bayard reached a stick of stove wood from the box at his hand and knocked Caspey through the opening door and down the steps at his father’s feet.
“Now, you go saddle that mare,” he said.
Simon helped his son to rise and led him away toward the barn while the setter looked after them, gravely interested. “I kep’ tellin’ you dem new-fangled war notions of yo’n wa’n’t gwine ter work on dis place,” he said angrily. “And you better thank de good Lawd fer makin’ yo’ haid hard ez hit is. You go’n git dat mare, and save dat nigger freedom talk fer town-folks: dey mought stomach it. Whut us niggers want ter be free fer, anyhow? Ain’t we got ez many white folks now ez we kin support?”
That night at supper, old Bayard looked at his grandson across the roast of mutton. “Will Falls told me you passed him on the poorhouse hill today running forty miles an hour.”
“Forty fiddlesticks,” Miss Jenny answered promptly.
“It was fifty-four. I was watching the—what do you call it, Bayard?—speedometer.”
Old Bayard sat with his head bent a little, watching his hands trembling on the carving knife and fork; hearing beneath the napkin tucked into his waistcoat, his heart a little too light and a little too fast; feeling Miss Jenny’s eyes upon his face.
“Bayard,” she said sharply, “what’s that on your cheek?” He rose so suddenly that his chair tipped over backward with a crash, and he tramped blindly from the room.
3
“I know what you want me to do,” Miss Jenny told old Bayard across her newspaper. “You want me to let my housekeeping go to the dogs and spend all my time in that car, that’s what you want. Well, I’m not going to do it. I don’t mind riding with him now and then, but I’ve got too much to do with my time to spend it keeping him from running that car too fast. Neck, too,” she added. She rattled the paper crisply.
She said: “Besides, you ain’t foolish enough to believe he’ll drive slow just because there’s somebody with him, are you? If you do think so, you’d better send Simon along. Lord knows Simon can spare the time. Since you quit using the carriage, if he does anything at all, I don’t know it.” She read the paper again.
Old Bayard’s cigar smoked in his still hand. “I might send Isom,” he said.
Miss Jenny’s paper rattled sharply and she stared at her nephew for a long moment. “God in heaven, man, why don’t you put a block and chain on him and have done with it?”
“Well, didn’t you suggest sending Simon with him, yourself? Simon has his work to do, but all Isom ever does is saddle my horse once a day, and I can do that myself.”
“I was trying to be ironical,” Miss Jenny said. “God knows, I should have learned better by this time. But if you’ve got to invent something new for the niggers to do you let it be Simon. I need Isom to keep a roof over your head and something to eat on the table.” She rattled the paper.
“Why don’t you come right out and tell him not to drive fast? A man that has to spend eight hours a day sitting in a chair in that bank door ought not to have to spend the rest of the afternoon helling around the country in an automobile if he don’t want to.”
“Do you think it would do any good to ask him? There never was a damned one of ’em yet ever paid any attention to my wishes.”
“Ask, the devil,” Miss Jenny
