an hour ago. She ought to be home by now.”
“Ought she?” I says. “When have you ever seen her before dark?” “She ought to be home,” she says. “When I was a girl. . .”
“You had somebody to make you behave yourself,” I says. “She hasn’t.” “I can’t do anything with her,” she says. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried.”
“And you wont let me, for some reason,” I says, “So you ought to be satisfied.” I went on to my room. I turned the key easy and stood there untilthe knob turned. Then she says,
“Jason.” “What,” I says.
“I just thought something was wrong.”
“Not in here,” I says. “You’ve come to the wrong place.” “I dont mean to worry you,” she says.
“I’mglad to hear that,” I says. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might have been mistaken. Do you want anything?”
After awhile she says, “No. Not any thing.” Then she went away. I took the boxdown and counted out the money and hid the boxagain and unlocked the door and went out. I thought about the camphor, but it would be too late now, anyway. And I’d just have one more round trip. She was at her door, waiting.
“You want anything fromtown?” I says.
“No,” she says. “I dont mean to meddle in your affairs. But I dont know what I’d do if anything happened to you, Jason.”
“I’mallright,” I says. “Just a headache.”
“I wish you’d take some aspirin,” she says. “I know you’re not going to stop using the car.”
“What’s the car got to do with it?” I says. “How can a car give a man a headache?”
“You know gasoline always made you sick,” she says. “Ever since you were a child. I wish you’d take some aspirin.”
“Keep on wishing it,” I says. “It wont hurt you.”
I got in the car and started back to town. I had just turned onto the street when I saw a ford coming helling toward me. All of a sudden it stopped. I could hear the wheels sliding and it slewed around and backed and whirled and just as I was thinking what the hell they were up to, I saw that red tie. Then I recognised her face looking back through the window. It whirled into the alley. I saw it turn again, but when I got to the back street it was just disappearing, running like hell.
I saw red. When I recognised that red tie, after all I had told her, I forgot about everything. I never thought about my head even until I came to the first forks and had to stop. Yet we spend money and spend money on roads and damn if it isn’t like trying to drive over a sheet of corrugated iron roofing. I’d like to know how a man could be expected to keep up with even a wheelbarrow. I think too much of my car; I’mnot going to hammer it to pieces like it was a ford. Chances were they had stolen it, anyway, so why should they give a damn. Like I say blood always tells. If you’ve got blood like that in you, you’ll do anything. I says whatever claimyou believe she has on you has already been discharged; I says from now on you have only
yourself to blame because you know what any sensible person would do. I says if I’ve got to spend half my time being a damn detective, at least I’llgo where I can get paid for it.
So I had to stop there at the forks. Then I remembered it. It felt like somebody was inside with a hammer, beating on it. I says I’ve tried to keep you frombeing worried by her; I says far as I’mconcerned, let her go to hell as fast as she pleases and the sooner the better. I says what else do you expect except every drummer and cheap show that comes to town because even these town jellybeans give her the go-by now. You dont know what goes on I says, you dont hear the talk that I hear and you can just bet I shut themup too. I says my people owned slaves here when you all were running little shirt tail country stores and farming land no nigger would look at on shares.
If they ever farmed it. It’s a good thing the Lord did something for this country; the folks that live on it never have. Friday afternoon, and from right here I could see three miles of land that hadn’t even been broken, and every able bodied man in the county in town at that show. I might have been a stranger starving to death, and there wasn’t a soul in sight to ask which way to town even. And she trying to get me to take aspirin. I says when I eat bread I’ll do it at the table. I says you always talking about how much you give up for us when you could buy ten new dresses a year on the money you spend for those damn patent medicines. It’s not something to cure it I need it’s just an even break not to have to have them but as long as I have to work ten hours a day to support a kitchen full of niggers in the style they’re accustomed to and send them to the show with every other nigger in the county, only he was late already. By the time he got there it would be over.
After awhile he got up to the car and when I finally got it through his head if two people in a ford had passed him, he said yes. So I went on, and when I came to where the wagon road turned off I could see the tire tracks. Ab Russell was in his lot, but I didn’t bother to ask him and I hadn’t got out of sight of his barn hardly when I saw the ford. They had tried to hide it. Done about as well at it as she did at everything else she did. Like I say it’s not that I object to so much; maybe she cant help that, it’s because she hasn’t even got enough consideration for her own family to have any discretion. I’mafraid all the time I’ll run into themright in the middle of the street or under a wagon on the square, like a couple of dogs.
I parked and got out. And now I’d have to go way around and cross a plowed field, the only one I had seen since I left town, with every step like somebody was walking along behind me, hitting me on the head with a club. I kept thinking that when I got across the field at least I’d have something level to walk on, that wouldn’t jolt me every step, but when I got into the woods it was full of underbrush and I had to twist around through it, and then I came to a ditch full of briers. I went along it for awhile, but it got thicker and thicker, and all the time Earl probably telephoning home about where I was and getting Mother allupset again.
When I finally got through I had had to wind around so much that I had to stop and figure out just where the car would be. I knew they wouldn’t be far from it, just under the closest bush, so I turned and worked back toward the road. Then I couldn’t tell just how far I was, so I’d have to stop and listen, and then with my legs not using so much blood, it all would go into my head like it would explode any minute, and the sun getting down just to where it could shine straight into my eyes and my ears ringing so I couldn’t hear anything. I went on, trying to move quiet, then I heard a dog or something and I knew that when he scented me he’d have to come helling up, then it would be alloff.
I had gotten beggar lice and twigs and stuff all over me, inside my clothes and shoes and all, and then I happened to look around and I had my hand right on a bunch of poison oak. The
only thing I couldn’t understand was why it was just poison oak and not a snake or something. So I didn’t even bother to move it. I just stood there untilthe dog went away. Then I went on.
I didn’t have any idea where the car was now. I couldn’t think about anything except my head, and I’d just stand in one place and sort of wonder if I had really seen a ford even, and I didn’t even care much whether I had or not. Like I say, let her lay out all day and all night with everything in town that wears pants, what do I care. I dont owe anything to anybody that has no more consideration for me, that wouldn’t be a damn bit above planting that ford there and making me spend a whole afternoon and Earl taking her back there and showing her the books just because he’s too damn virtuous for this world. I says you’ll have one hell of a time in heaven, without anybody’s business to meddle in only dont you ever let me catch you at it I says, I close my eyes to it because of your grandmother, but just you let me catch you doing it one time on this place, where my mother lives. These damn little slick haired squirts,