Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines Read Free Book Online

said.
    “Him,” I said.
    Marcus still wanted to come across that table at me, but tired and bruised as he was he knew he would have got the worst of it.
    “I don’t know ’bout you, Jim,” he said. “You ain’t no whitemouth—I don’t think so—but I don’t know ’bout you.”
    “I know,” I said. “You better finish eating there and take yourself a good bath and get yourself some rest. Tomorrow is another day, and it won’t be any better.”

10
 
    After I had washed the dishes, I got my guitar from against the wall and went out on the gallery. It was pitch-black out there. The moon had risen but it was still behind the trees. Somebody passed by the gate, going toward the church. I looked up the quarter and I could see the light in the four church windows. Prayer meeting was going on now. It had been going on about a month and it probably would go on another month. The last I heard, they had five candidates for baptism.
    I sat on the steps and started playing my guitar. I thought about Billie Jean and played softly at first, then I tried to forget her and played something fast and hard. But I thought about her again and went back to the soft thing, then I tried to forget her and went back on the hard. After a while Jobbo came up there with his harp. Jobbo lived on the place and he was very good with a harp. He should have gone up North and made his living blowing harp, but he was the kind of nigger who was born to live and die in the South.
    Marcus came out there and sat down with us. He had bathed and changed clothes, and now he looked a little better.
    “Play?” I said.
    “Little bit,” he said.
    “Want try it?”
    “With these hands?”
    “Hands messed up, hunh?” Jobbo said.
    “Yeah,” Marcus said.
    “Soak them in some warm salt water,” Jobbo said.
    “I did that.”
    “They be okay in a week.”
    “Man, this place is black,” Marcus said. “Good Lord.”
    “Yeah, it’s pretty black, all right,” Jobbo said, looking around like he hadn’t seen it dark like this before.
    “That’s a church up there?” Marcus asked.
    “Yeah, that’s one,” Jobbo said.
    “Got any single women hanging round up there?”
    “Couple, I guess,” Jobbo said.
    “I mean selling pussy?” Marcus said.
    “That, I don’t know,” Jobbo said.
    “Think I’ll go up there,” Marcus said.
    “Again, huh?” I said.
    “That hot bath,” Marcus said. “Always happen when I take a hot bath. Can’t keep this thing down.”
    We watched him go out of the yard. After he turned from the gate we couldn’t see him any more for the picket fence.
    “Trying to kill hisself, huh?” Jobbo said.
    “Bonbon won’t let that happen,” I said.
    “No, Bonbon go’n keep him ’live a while,” Jobbo said. “You know, they buried that other boy today.”
    “Did they?”
    “Yeah, they buried him. Jack Claiborn went to Port Allen. Said he heard people talking ’bout it. I feel sorry for people like Marcus.”
    “He doesn’t,” I said.
    “I can see that,” Jobbo said. “It don’t mean a thing to him.”
    Just about then we saw the car lights coming down the quarter. When it went by the gate we saw it wasn’t a car, it was Bonbon in the truck. He was going down to Pauline.
    “Guess he need little piece tonight, too,” Jobbo said.
    “Guess so,” I said.
    “Guess what?” Jobbo said.
    “What?”
    “Bonbon wife looked at Bo today.”
    “Bonbon’s wife’s been looking at niggers ever since I’ve been here,” I said.
    “Look at you, too?”
    “Ain’t she looked at you?”
    “Yeah, but I ain’t crazy,” Jobbo said. “But that might be some pretty good little old stuff, though.”
    “Try it any time you want to,” I told him.
    “No, thanks,” Jobbo said. “I ain’t ready to die yet.”
    I thought about Bonbon’s little yellow-head wife sitting on that gallery looking up every time somebody went by the gate. I tried to vision what it would be like to bounce between those little skinny