Then he said, “Police it,” himself leading the way to the sink with his plate and utensils and cup and washed them beneath the tap, then stood and watched while the other two followed suit and dried and racked them as he had done. Then he said to Mink: “All right. You going or staying?”
“I got to stay,” Mink said. “I got to have the money.”
“All right,” Goodyhay said. “Kneel down,” and did so first again, the other two following, on the kitchen floor beneath the hard dim glare of the single unshaded low-watt bulb on a ceiling cord, Goodyhay on his knees but no more, his head up, the coldly seething desert-hermit’s eyes not even closed, and said, “Save us, Christ, the poor sons of bitches,” and rose and said, “All right. Lights out. The truck’ll be here at seven o’clock.”
The room was actually a lean-to, a little larger than a closet. It had one small window, a door connecting with the house, a single bulb on a drop cord, a thin mattress on the floor with a tarpaulin cover but no pillows nor sheets, and nothing else, Goodyhay holding the door for them to enter and then closing it. They were alone.
“Go ahead,” Dad said. “Try it.”
“Try what?” Mink said.
“The door. It’s locked. Oh, you can get out any time you want; the window ain’t locked. But that door leads back into the house and he don’t aim to have none of us master-carpenter candidates maybe ramshagging the joint as a farewell gesture on the way out. You’re working for the Lord now, buster, but there’s still a Marine sergeant running the detail.” He yawned. “But at least you will get your two dollars Sunday — three, if he counts today as a day too.
Not to mention hearing him preach. Which may be worth even three dollars. You know: one of them special limited editions they can charge ten prices for because they never printed but two or three of.” He blinked at Mink. “Because why. It ain’t going to last much longer.” He blinked at Mink. “Because they ain’t going to let it.”
“They won’t even pay me two dollars?” Mink said.
“No no,” the other said. “I mean the rest of the folks in the neighbourhood he ain’t converted yet, ain’t going to put up with no such as this. The rest of the folks that already had to put up with that damn war for four-five years now and want to forget about it. That’ve already gone to all that five years of trouble and expense to get shut of it, only just when they are about to get settled back down again, be damned if here ain’t a passel of free-loading government-subsidised exdrafted sons of bitches acting like whatever had caused the war not only actually happened but was still going on, and was going to keep on going on until somebody did something about it.
A passel of mostly non-taxpaying folks that like as not would have voted for Norman Thomas even ahead of Roosevelt, let alone Truman, trying to bring Jesus Christ back alive in the middle of 1946. So it may be worth three dollars just to hear him in the free outside air. Because next time you might have to listen through a set of jail bars.” He yawned again, prodigiously, beginning to remove the battle jacket. “Well, we ain’t got a book to curl up with in here even if we wanted to. So all that leaves is to go to bed.”
Which they did. The lights was off, he lay breathing quietly on his back, his hands folded on his breast. He thought Sholy it will be three dollars. Sholy they will count today too thinking And Sunday will make three days lost because even if I go to Memphis Sunday after we are paid off the stores where I can buy one will still be closed until Monday morning thinking But I reckon I can wait three more days a little wryly now Likely because I can’t jigger out no way to help it and almost immediately was asleep, peacefully, sleeping well because it was daylight when he knew next, lying there peacefully for a little time yet before he realised he was alone.
It seemed to him afterward that he still lay there peaceful and calm, his hand still playing idly with the safety pin it had found lying open on his chest, for the better part of a minute after he knew what had happened; then sitting, surging up, not even needing to see the open window and the dangling screen, his now frantic hand scrabbling from the bib pocket of the overalls the wad of newspaper beneath which the ten-dollar bill had been pinned, his voice making a puny whimpering instead of the cursing he was trying for, beating his fists on the locked door until it jerked open and Goodyhay stood in it, also taking one look at the ravished window.
“So the son of a bitch robbed you,” Goodyhay said.
“It was ten dollars,” Mink said. “I got to ketch him. Let me out.”
“Hold it,” Goodyhay said, still barring the doorway. “You can’t catch him now.”
“I got to,” he said. “I got to have that ten dollars.”
“You mean you’ve got to have ten dollars to get home?”
“Yes!” he said, cursing again. “I can’t do nothing without it. Let me out.”
“How long since you been home?” Goodyhay said.
“Thirty-eight years. Tell me which way you figger he went.”
“Hold it,” Goodyhay said, still not moving. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see you get your ten dollars back Sunday. Can you cook?”
“I can fry eggs and meat,” Mink said.
“All right. You cook breakfast and I’ll load the truck. Come on.” Goodyhay showed him how to light the stove and left him; he filled up last night’s coffee-pot with water as his tradition was until the grounds had lost all flavour and colour too, and sliced the fatback and dusted it with meal into the skillet in his tradition also, and got eggs out to fry, standing for a while with the door in his hand while he looked, mused, at the heavy holstered pistol beneath the helmet, thinking quietly If I jest had that for two days I wouldn’t need no ten dollars thinking I done been robbed in good faith without warning; why ain’t that enough to free me to rob in my turn. Not to mention my need being ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more despaired than ara other man’s need for jest ten dollars thinking quietly peacefully indeed now No. I ain’t never stole. I ain’t never come to that and I won’t never.
When he went to the door to call them, Goodyhay and another man had the truck loaded with intact sections of wall and disassembled planks; he rode on top of the load, once more on the highway toward Memphis; he thought Maybe they’ll even go through Memphis and if I jest had the ten dollars and then quit, just riding, in motion, until the truck turned into a side road; now they were passing, perhaps entering, already on, a big place, domain, plantation — broad cotton fields still white for the pickers; presently they turned into a farm road across a field and came to a willow-grown bayou and another pickup truck and another stack of dismembered walls and a group of three or four men all curiously similar somehow to Goodyhay and the driver of his — their — truck; he, Mink, couldn’t have said how nor why, and not even speculating: remarking without attention another battle jacket, remarking without much attention either a rectangle of taut string between driven stakes in the dimensions of whatever it was they were going to build, where they unloaded the truck and Goodyhay said, “All right. You and Albert go back of another load.”
So he rode in the cab this time, back to the parsonage or whatever it was, where he and Albert loaded the truck and they returned to the bayou, where by this time, with that many folks working — if any of the other four worked half as fast and as hard as Goodyhay did — they would probably have one wall already up. Instead, the other truck and Goodyhay and the stake-and-string rectangle were gone and only three men sat quietly beside the pile of lumber. “Well?” Albert said.
“Yep,” one of the others said. “Somebody changed his mind.”
“Who?” Mink said. “Changed what? I got to get on. I’m already late.”
“Fellow that owns this place,” Albert said. “That gave us permission to put the chapel here. Somebody changed his mind for him. Maybe the bank that holds his mortgage. Maybe the Legion.”
“What Legion?” he said.
“The American Legion. That’s still holding the line at 1918. You never heard of
