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

thighs. I tried to vision what it would be like to even see her smiling. I had been on that plantation over three years and all that time I had never seen her smile once. I had never heard her say anything either—but Aunt Margaret, who worked up there for them, did say she knew how to talk. Aunt Margaret said she would say something softly to her every now and then; or something to little Tite Bonbon, her little girl, every now and then; or something to Bonbon when he was there. But that wasn’t too often. Because when Bonbon wasn’t in the field or hunting in the woods, he was either in Bayonne selling something he had stole from Marshall Hebert or he was down thequarter in Pauline’s bed. So she never said too much to him. And I guess that’s why she never said too much to anyone else either. She just sat there on that gallery and looked at you when you went by, like she wished you would come in there, like she was waiting for you to try.
    “Let’s get
Key to the Highway
,” I said.
    I started plucking it real slow and sad, because now I had forgot about Bonbon or Pauline or Bonbon’s little suffering wife. I was thinking about my own baby now and I wondered where she was and what she was doing. Jobbo picked up the tune after I had gone a couple bars, and if there’s any man can play a sad tune sadder than Jobbo, Lord knows, I never heard him. We went on like that a few minutes—me sad, Jobbo sadder—then I told Jobbo to stop. I couldn’t take it any more.
    “Let’s get something fast and hard, Jobbo,” I said.
    “Right,” Jobbo said. Then he started tapping his feet and popping his fingers, going “One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four …”

11
 
    For the first couple hours in the field the next day, Marcus could hardly straighten his back. He wore a pair of my khaki pants and shirt and the old straw hat I had tried to give him the day before. Since I was bigger than he was, my clothes didn’t help his looks at all. And John and Freddie pitching that corn like they wanted to finish it all in one day wasn’t helping him out either.
    Bonbon showed up an hour earlier than he had done the first day and set the horse right behind Marcus. Marcus kept up with the tractor for a row, then he had to get his sack. He pulled it on the left shoulder because the right shoulder was still sore. Bonbon noticed it but didn’t say anything. He just leaned a little on the pommel of the saddle and squinted his eyes from the hot sun.
    It went on like that for the rest of the week. That white sun didn’t let up any. John and Freddie didn’t let up once, and Bonbon, neither. For my part, I couldn’t do a thing but keep the tractor going at the right speed. I spoke to the Old Man a couple of times, but I’m sure He didn’t hear a word I said. He had quit listening to man a million years ago. Now all He does is play chess by Himself or sit around playing solitary with old cards.
    So man has to do it for himself now. No, he’s not going to win, he can’t ever win; but if he struggle hard and long enough he can ease his pains a little. I mean he can spread it out more and it won’t hurt so much all at once. This is what Marcus did by trying to keep closer to John and Freddie. He didn’t keep up all the way—no, that wasn’t possible; but he did stay a little closer. Every night when he came in, he bathed his hands in salt water to draw out the soreness. By the end of the week his hands and his shoulders had gotten much better.
    But wait, wait, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I jumped to the weekend when I should have stopped at Thursday—because Thursday at twelve o’clock, Marcus saw Pauline Guerin for the first time. He was riding on the tractor beside me—not in the trailer where he had been all those other times—but standing beside me now. He was telling me about the boy he had killed. He said it was over a woman. It happened at a nightclub. The nightclub was packed and hot. There were