While he did this Curly Head methodically picked his teeth with a hen quill he had borrowed from a jar and watched the old man’s proceedings with a puzzled frown. Yellow Hair was whistling again; the tune he whistled was completely flat.
After Preacher had been about his business for a great while, Curly Head cleared his throat and said, “Hope you haven’t forgot that drink of water, Gran’pa. Surely would appreciate it.”
Preacher hobbled to the well bucket hid among the stove’s litter. “Seems lak I can’t remembuh nothin’, Mistuh Jesus. Seems lak I leaves my haid outside when I come in.” He had two gourds and filled them to the brim. When Curly Head finished, he wiped his mouth and said, “Fine and dandy,” and began to rock, letting his boots drag the hearth with a sleepy rhythm.
Preacher’s hands trembled as he tied his quilt, and it required five tries. Then he perched himself on an upended log between the two men, his small legs barely scraping the floor. The torn lips of the golden girl holding the bottle of NE-HI smiled down and the firelight flared an appealing mural on the walls.
Through the open windows could be heard crocheting insects in the weeds and sundry night cadences, familiar in all Preacher’s lifetime. Oh, how beautiful his cabin seemed, how wonderful what he had grown to despise. He had been so wrong! What a doggone fool! He could never leave, now or ever. But there, before him, were four feet wearing four boots and the door well behind them.
“Mistuh Jesus,” he said, careful of his tone, “I’se been turnin’ de whole mattah ovah an’ I’se come to conclude I don’t wants to go wid y’ all.”
Curly Head and Yellow Hair exchanged strange glances and Yellow Hair, rising from the bed, hunched himself above Preacher and said, “What’s the matter, Gran’pa? You got a fever?”
Mortally ashamed, Preacher said, “Please, suh, beggin’ pardon … I don’t wants to go nowhere.”
“Look here, Gran’pa, talk sense,” said Curly Head kindly. “If you’re sick we’ll be glad to get a doctor from town.”
“Ain’t no use,” said Preacher. “If de time’s up, de time’s up.… But I’d be tickled iffen y’all ’ud leave me be.”
“All we want to do is help,” said Yellow Hair.
“Sure is,” said Curly Head and squirted a fat spit into the fire. “You’re being purentee cussed, that’s what I say. It’s not everybody we’d take so much pains to do them a favor, not by a long shot.”
“Thank ya all de same, Mistuh Jesus. I knows I done put y’all to a lota extry trouble.”
“Come on now, Gran’pa,” said Yellow Hair, his voice dropping several notches, “what’s wrong? You in trouble with some gal.”
Curly Head said, “Now don’t joke with Gran’pa. He’s just been sitting in the sun too long, that’s all. Else I never saw a case like it.”
“Me either,” said Yellow Hair. “But you never can tell about these old coons; liable to go off the deep end before you can bat your eyes.”
Preacher sank lower and lower till he was almost curved double and his chin had begun twitching.
“First he runs off like he’d seen the devil himself,” said Yellow Hair, “and now he acts like I don’t know what.”
“Dat ain’t so,” cried Preacher, his eyes alarmingly wide. “I recognize y’all from de Good Book. An’ I’se a good man. I’se as good a man as evah lived … ain’t nevah done wrong to nobody.…”
“Ahhh,” hummed Yellow Hair, “I give up! Gran’pa … you ain’t worth trifling with.”
“That’s a fact,” said Curly Head.
Preacher bowed his head and brushed a squirrel tail away from his cheek. “I knows,” he said. “Yassuh, I does. I’se been a pow’ful big fool and dats de Gospel. But if you leaves me stay put, I’ll yank out all dem weeds in de yard and de field and git back to farmin’ an’ whup dat Anna-Jo ’til she come home an’ care fo’ her Pappy lak she ought.”
Curly Head pulled at his beard and snapped his suspenders. His eyes, very blank and blue, imprisoned Preacher’s face exactly. At length he said, “Can’t seem to figure it out.”
“That’s mighty easy,” said Yellow Hair. “He’s got the devil rattling around inside him.”
“I’se an upstandin’ Baptist,” Preacher reminded, “membuh of de Cypress City Mornin’ Star. An’ I ain’t but seventy yars old.”
“Now, Gran’pa,” said Yellow Hair. “You’re a hundred if you’re a day. Oughtn’t to tell whoppers like that. It all goes down in that big black book upstairs, remember.”
“Miserable sinnuh,” said Preacher; “ain’t I de most miserablest sinnuh?”
“Well,” said Curly Head, “I don’t know.” Then he smiled and stood up and yawned. “Tell you what,” he said, “I speculates I’m hungry enough to eat toadstools. Come on, Jesse, we better get home before the women throw our supper to the hogs.”
Yellow Hair said, “Christamighty, I don’t know whether I can take a step or not; that blister’s on fire,” and to Preacher, “Guess we’ll have to leave you in your misery too, Gran’pa.”
And Preacher grinned so that his four upper teeth and three lower (including the gold cap from Evelina, Christmas 1922) showed. His eyes blinked furiously. Like a wizened and rather peculiar child he fairly danced to the door and insisted upon kissing the men’s hands as they trudged past.
Curly Head bounced down the steps and back and handed Preacher his Bible and cane while Yellow Hair waited in the yard where evening had drawn pale curtains.
“Hang onto these now, Gran’pa,” said Curly Head, “and don’t let us catch you over in the piney woods anymore. An old fellow like you can get into all kinds of trouble. You be good now.”
“Hee hee hee,” giggled Preacher, “I sure ’nuf will an’ thank ya, Mistuh Jesus, an’ you too, Mistuh Saint … thank ya. Even if ain’t nobody gonna believes me iffen I tells ’em.”
They shouldered their rifles and lifted the cateymount. “Best of luck,” said Curly Head; “we’ll be back some other time, for a drink of water, maybe.”
“Long life and a merry one, you old goat,” said Yellow Hair as they moved across the yard towards the road.
Preacher, watching from the porch, suddenly remembered and he called, “Mistuh Jesus … Mistuh Jesus! If you kin see yo’ way clear to do me one mo’ favuh, I’d ’preciate it if you evah gits de time iffen you’d find my ol’ woman … name’s Evelina … an’ say hello from Preacher an’ tells her what a good happy man I is.”
“First thing in the morning, Gran’pa,” said Curly Head, and Yellow Hair burst out laughing.
And their shadows turned up the road and the black-and-tan crept from a gully and trotted after them. Preacher called and waved good-bye. But they were laughing too hard to hear and their laughter drifted back on the wind long after they passed over the ridge where fireflies embroidered small moons on the blue air.
A Tree of Night (1945)
It was winter. A string of naked light bulbs, from which it seemed all warmth had been drained, illuminated the little depot’s cold, windy platform. Earlier in the evening it had rained, and now icicles hung along the station-house eaves like some crystal monster’s vicious teeth. Except for a girl, young and rather tall, the platform was deserted. The girl wore a gray flannel suit, a raincoat, and a plaid scarf. Her hair, parted in the middle and rolled up neatly on the sides, was rich blondish-brown; and, while her face tended to be too thin and narrow, she was, though not extraordinarily so, attractive. In addition to an assortment of magazines and a gray suede purse on which elaborate brass letters spelled Kay, she carried conspicuously a green Western guitar.
When the train, spouting steam and glaring with light, came out of the darkness and rumbled to a halt, Kay assembled her paraphernalia and climbed up into the last coach.
The coach was a relic with a decaying interior of ancient red-plush seats, bald in spots, and peeling iodine-colored woodwork. An old-time copper lamp, attached to the ceiling, looked romantic and out of place. Gloomy dead smoke sailed the air; and the car’s heated closeness accentuated the stale odor of discarded sandwiches, apple cores, and orange hulls: this garbage, including Lily cups, soda-pop bottles, and mangled newspapers, littered the long aisle. From a water cooler, embedded in the wall, a steady stream trickled to the floor. The passengers, who glanced up wearily when Kay entered, were not, it seemed, at all conscious of any discomfort.
Kay resisted a temptation to hold her nose and threaded her way carefully down the aisle, tripping once, without disaster, over a dozing fat man’s protruding leg. Two nondescript men turned an interested eye as she passed; and a kid stood up in his seat squalling, “Hey, Mama, look at de banjo! Hey, lady, lemme play ya banjo!” till a slap from Mama quelled him.
There was only one empty place. She found it at the end of the car in an isolated alcove occupied already by a man and woman who were sitting with their feet settled lazily on the vacant seat opposite. Kay hesitated a second then said, “Would you mind if I sat here?”
The woman’s head snapped up as if she had not been asked a simple question, but stabbed
