“It’s burned up,” she said. “You’ll have to get some more popcorn, Nancy.”
“Did you put all of it in?” Nancy said.
“Yes,” Caddy said. Nancy looked at Caddy. Then she took the popper and opened it and poured the cinders into her apron and began to sort the grains, her hands long and brown, and we watching her.
“Haven’t you got any more?” Caddy said.
“Yes,” Nancy said; “yes. Look. This here ain’t burnt. All we need to do is—”
“I want to go home,” Jason said. “I’m going to tell.”
“Hush,” Caddy said. We all listened. Nancy’s head was already turned toward the barred door, her eyes filled with red lamplight. “Somebody is coming,” Caddy said.
Then Nancy began to make that sound again, not loud, sitting there above the fire, her long hands dangling between her knees; all of a sudden water began to come out on her face in big drops, running down her face, carrying in each one a little turning ball of firelight like a spark until it dropped off her chin. “She’s not crying,” I said.
“I ain’t crying,” Nancy said. Her eyes were closed. “I ain’t crying. Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” Caddy said. She went to the door and looked out. “We’ve got to go now,” she said. “Here comes father.”
“I’m going to tell,” Jason said. “Yawl made me come.”
The water still ran down Nancy’s face. She turned in her chair. “Listen. Tell him. Tell him we going to have fun. Tell him I take good care of yawl until in the morning. Tell him to let me come home with yawl and sleep on the floor. Tell him I won’t need no pallet. We’ll have fun. You member last time how we had so much fun?”
“I didn’t have fun,” Jason said. “You hurt me. You put smoke in my eyes. I’m going to tell.”
V
Father came in. He looked at us. Nancy did not get up.
“Tell him,” she said.
“Caddy made us come down here,” Jason said. “I didn’t want to.”
Father came to the fire. Nancy looked up at him. “Can’t you go to Aunt Rachel’s and stay?” he said. Nancy looked up at father, her hands between her knees. “He’s not here,” father said. “I would have seen him. There’s not a soul in sight.”
“He in the ditch,” Nancy said. “He waiting in the ditch yonder.”
“Nonsense,” father said. He looked at Nancy. “Do you know he’s there?”
“I got the sign,” Nancy said.
“What sign?”
“I got it. It was on the table when I come in. It was a hogbone, with blood meat still on it, laying by the lamp. He’s out there. When yawl walk out that door, I gone.”
“Gone where, Nancy?” Caddy said.
“I’m not a tattletale,” Jason said.
“Nonsense,” father said.
“He out there,” Nancy said. “He looking through that window this minute, waiting for yawl to go. Then I gone.”
“Nonsense,” father said. “Lock up your house and we’ll take you on to Aunt Rachel’s.”
“‘Twont do no good,” Nancy said. She didn’t look at father now, but he looked down at her, at her long, limp, moving hands. “Putting it off wont do no good.”
“Then what do you want to do?” father said.
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I can’t do nothing. Just put it off. And that don’t do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain’t no more than mine.”
“Get what?” Caddy said. “What’s yours?”
“Nothing,” father said. “You all must get to bed.”
“Caddy made me come,” Jason said.
“Go on to Aunt Rachel’s,” father said.
“It won’t do no good,” Nancy said. She sat before the fire, her elbows on her knees, her long hands between her knees. “When even your own kitchen wouldn’t do no good. When even if I was sleeping on the floor in the room with your chillen, and the next morning there I am, and blood—”
“Hush,” father said. “Lock the door and put out the lamp and go to bed.”
“I scared of the dark,” Nancy said. “I scared for it to happen in the dark.”
“You mean you’re going to sit right here with the lamp lighted?” father said. Then Nancy began to make the sound again, sitting before the fire, her long hands between her knees. “Ah, damnation,” father said. “Come along, chillen. It’s past bedtime.”
“When yawl go home, I gone,” Nancy said. She talked quieter now, and her face looked quiet, like her hands. “Anyway, I got my coffin money saved up with Mr. Lovelady.” Mr. Lovelady was a short, dirty man who collected the Negro insurance, coming around to the cabins or the kitchens every Saturday morning, to collect fifteen cents. He and his wife lived at the hotel.
One morning his wife committed suicide. They had a child, a little girl. He and the child went away. After a week or two he came back alone. We would see him going along the lanes and the back streets on Saturday mornings.
“Nonsense,” father said. “You’ll be the first thing I’ll see in the kitchen tomorrow morning.”
“You’ll see what you’ll see, I reckon,” Nancy said. “But it will take the Lord to say what that will be.”
VI
We left her sitting before the fire.
“Come and put the bar up,” father said. But she didn’t move. She didn’t look at us again, sitting quietly there between the lamp and the fire. From some distance down the lane we could look back and see her through the open door.
“What, Father?” Caddy said. “What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing,” father said. Jason was on father’s back, so Jason was the tallest of all of us. We went down into the ditch. I looked at it, quiet. I couldn’t see much where the moonlight and the shadows tangled.
“If Jesus is hid here, he can see us, cant he?” Caddy said.
“He’s not there,” father said. “He went away a long time ago.”
“You made me come,” Jason said, high; against the sky it looked like father had two heads, a little one and a big one. “I didn’t want to.”
We went up out of the ditch. We could still see Nancy’s house and the open door, but we couldn’t see Nancy now, sitting before the fire with the door open, because she was tired. “I just done got tired,” she said. “I just a nigger. It ain’t no fault of mine.”
But we could hear her, because she began just after we came up out of the ditch, the sound that was not singing and not unsinging. “Who will do our washing now, Father?” I said.
“I’m not a nigger,” Jason said, high and close above father’s head.
“You’re worse,” Caddy said, “you are a tattletale. If something was to jump out, you’d be scairder than a nigger.”
“I wouldn’t,” Jason said.
“You’d cry,” Caddy said.
“Caddy,” father said.
“I wouldn’t!” Jason said.
“Scairy cat,” Caddy said.
“Candace!” father said.
The End
