Clyde got up before daylight, not because things were pressing but because he wasn’t sleeping very well. He milked the cow and brought the pail into the kitchen. He wolfed down a few cold biscuits and went to the lot to get the mule.
Then he had second thoughts.
Emma looks so peaceful it’s a shame to put her in front of a plow on a hot Saturday, he thought.
So, he picked up a hoe and walked slowly through the field of ripe tobacco. There was no need to inspect the tobacco barn and check the woodpile again, but he did so anyway. From there he took the hoe into the field and began chopping the few weeds that had grown up between the tobacco stalks.
Clyde was a slender, raw-boned five-ten, which made him a bit taller than most men in the area. He had narrow shoulders and his long arms ended in wide, strong hands. The hair under his straw hat was sandy, and the pale blue eyes squinted through a face reddened by steady exposure to the Carolina sun. He wore a blue broadcloth shirt, overalls and heavy work shoes.
The heat was building steadily on a day when the mercury would reach at least a hundred. It was ten o’clock when he impulsively quit with the hoe in the middle of a row.
Why am I doing this, he asked himself, when I just busted the middles the other day?
The reason he had not been sleeping well, he finally admitted, was his dread of the next few weeks. For three days each week would be spent gathering tobacco and putting it into the wooden barns and curing it with wood fires, two of the days on neighboring farms and one on his own.
The physical side of all this did not bother him, but in these days there was the pressure brought on by a labor shortage – many of the young men had enlisted or had been drafted, others had gone to take the high-paying jobs in the Charleston Navy Yard.
And even when the labor was done and the weed was put into the barns there was the drudgery of tending the around-the-clock fires at his own curing barn. This would take time and attention and interfere with sleep, and it was hard on the family.
But that don’t start till Monday, he thought, and this might be his last free Saturday for a while.
He headed toward the house, his step a bit more lively now.
Instead of entering the house he rapped on the floor of the front porch with his knuckles.
“Ada?”
Ada did not appear, but yelled, respectfully, “Yes?”
“Me and the boys is going down to the creek this morning…going and coming will take us a hour…that give you time to get your bath before dinner?”
“Yes, it will…already got some water hot…”
“Good. Get the boys some towels and soap…and send a pair of socks and a pair of old britches and a undershirt for me…”
Momentarily, the two boys, Andy, 10, and Junior, 7, eagerly joined him in the mule lot. The three of them then headed through a patch of woods for a half-mile walk to the creek.
Andy said, “Why we going so early, Pa?”
“Just so…they say you ain’t suppose to swim right after dinner. Thought we go wash up now…then eat and take it easy a while.”
At the creek they stripped and soaped themselves in the water that was warmed by the June sunlight. After a leisurely wallow, they toweled off. Clyde put on the clothes he had brought; the boys put on the overalls they had already worn.
When they returned to their cottage the air was heavy with the smells of the dinner on the wood stove.
Clyde said to the boys, “Ada must be in her room, but she’ll have us something to eat in a minute…Now look: after we eat I want to sit on the porch and read the paper, maybe take a nap. Can you fellows stay out of trouble for a couple of hours?”
The boys nodded.
“And look…we went to the creek to get clean…don’t go doing something that will get you all dirty again…and we’ll go to Crawford bout four…All right?”
The grinning boys responded an “all right” in unison.
In a few moments, Ada called them in for the noon meal. She had the fresh look and smell of one who had had a bath, but she still wore a shabby housedress.
Clyde and the boys took their seats at a table covered with checkered oilcloth. Ada put the bowls of hot food on the table and took her seat. Clyde said Grace and then Ada served the plates of the boys before serving her own plate. Clyde served himself.
Even with Ada admonishing the boys, they ate rapidly and were up from the table in a few minutes. When Ada finished her food, she rose, gathered the empty plates and took them to a sideboard before getting Clyde a cup of coffee.
As Ada was busy in the kitchen, Clyde went into his bedroom to change. He took off the old pair of trousers and put on clean drawers and a set of khaki shirt and trousers. He left his heavy brogans by the bed.
On his front porch, he sat in a cane rocker, lit a corncob pipe and unfolded the morning paper, starting with the comics section. He finished neither the pipe nor the comics before his heavy eyelids closed on him. He abandoned the rocker and stretched out on the bare floor for a snooze, using the folded newspaper for a pillow.
He woke to the sound of an automobile pulling up into his yard. At first Clyde didn’t recognize the man getting out of a car that was strange to him. The man was of medium height and build and had a country face, but he was dressed in an off-white shirt and surge trousers over wing-tip shoes. And his haircut was of the kind given in city barbershops.
” ‘lo, Clyde.”
Then Clyde saw clearly that this was Henry Lloyd, a childhood friend who had until a year ago been a sharecropper just like Clyde.
Clyde got up from the floor. “Hi, Henry…come on up…”
“Don’t mind if I do…”
“Ain’t seen you in a coon’s age…what brings you to these parts?”
“Oh, Velma…she up and left me…took Little L with her…staying here with her Aunt Molly…come to get her…take her back…”
As Henry and Clyde were taking seats in rockers, Clyde said, “That’s too bad…I heard she come back…how long she been left you?”
“Three-four weeks…I figure that’s enough…her and the boy oughta be ready to come back by now…”
“Why don’t I get Ada to fix us some coffee?”
“Nah, too hot for that…But I thought I’d stop by and talk to you a little…”
Clyde almost shuddered – Henry always ended up talking about the same thing.
“Well now, Clyde, how’s things going with you?”
“Good, Henry. Well, even better than good…”
“How’s that, Clyde?”
“To begin with, Old Man Witherspoon wanted me to build him a barn…took all winter, so I made me enough money so I didn’t have to borry none this spring…seeds and fertilizer…nothing. Ain’t even had to charge none yet at Crawford’s…I almost got enough to pay the hands when we start putting in next week…the tobacco looks good, real good…and we expect prices to be better this year…the war and all…”
“But, Clyde…look at you! You past thirty…and still farming on shares…Half of what you make goes to Prosser…Boy, I’ve did that myself for years…but not no more…You know, I never knew they paid so good at the Navy Yard…”
Clyde sat silently.
“Why, Clyde, you could do good down there. I could get you in to see some people. Hell, they begging for men at the Navy Yard…so many fellows is been drafted. They even hiring women as welders…that’s how hard up they is! Why don’t you come down and look things over?”
“Henry, I got a crop in the field…might be the best crop I ever had…Same is true about the garden…we gonna eat good…”
“I can understand that…you can’t leave right now…But how bout when you get this tobacco to market? Before you trade with Prosser for another year? Look at that car out there. Nice, huh?”
He pointed to a light blue 1938 Ford coupe that was dentless under a professional wax job.
“And we got a house the government built…got lights and a electric ice box…and we got a flush toilet inside…Hell, I know Velma’ll be ready to go back to Charleston with me…she loved that ice box…”
“Henry, I got three kids…”
“I know, Clyde, but there’s Ada…what’s she? Twelve? Bet she keeps house pretty good…”
“Yes, she does.”
“So there! You work and bring in good money, she takes care of the house…you home ever night…and they is places to go…they is picture shows, drug stores, all kind of things…I don’t know how I stood it all the years around here… I mean, where can you go to have a good time?”
“Well, me and the boys went to the creek a while ago…then in a while we going down to Crawford…”
“To Crawford? What in the hell is there? You got his store and a church and a cotton gin. That’s what you going to?”
“Yeah, we have a good time there…the kids like it cause they is other kids there…and since I ain’t so broke no more, I let the kids fill up on moon pies and RC’s. And I get to sit with some of the men and chew the fat. Then when we get home, we listen to the radio…I go one that works on a battery…”
“A trip to the store and then listen to the radio…when you could be making a killing in Charleston? And with enough money to do all kind of things?”
“Look, now, Henry, when we here, I know where the kids is at. I don’t know about a place like Charleston…No, I’d be scared of such a place…Here I can keep them busy and they satisfied with what we got …and Ada’s doing real good in school…”
“But you still farming somebody else’s land…”
“But this is where I belong…”
The conversation went on in the same vein for a few more minutes before Henry left, disappointed.
Ada stepped out on the porch. “What was Mr. Lloyd talking about so long?”
“The usual.”
“You mean how good it is in Charleston?”
“Yeah, Electric ice box and all…
“Didn’t Mr. Prosser say we would get electric before long?”
“He’s been saying that ever since we moved here…”
She had hardly gone inside before another vehicle drove up, a well-worn pickup truck this time. A familiar form got out of the truck. It was Ellis Todd, a fifty-year-old sharecropper who lived a mile away.
Since his youth, Clyde had called him Uncle Ellis because he was such a good friend of his late father. And even now there was an avuncular feeling between Ellis and Clyde.
“Clyde, ride down the road a piece with me…got something to tell you…”
“Ain’t got no shoes on. Can’t you tell me here?”
The man stepped up onto the porch and whispered to Clyde, “Something you might not want the kids to hear…”
“All right, then…”
Clyde got into the truck without his shoes, more annoyed than curious about whatever it was that Ellis thought important enough to hide from the children.
Ellis drove away, then stopped the truck around the first bend and turned the motor off.
“Clyde, Mary Alice is back!”
“He come with her?”
“No. They say he’s staying in Charleston.”
“She just here for a visit?”
“That’s not what they say.”
“Then he must of throwed her out.”
“Don’t know about that, one way or the other, but she’s staying with her folks over by Crawford’s store…”
“Got to think on this. Take me back to the house, Ellis…”
Ellis cranked the truck and turned it around. “I just thought I ought to tell you…”
“You done right, Ellis. I appreciate it…But I got to do some thinking…see what she’s up to…decide how to handle it…”
As he got out of the truck and watched it drive away, his most immediate fear was Ada. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he had no intention of telling her what Ellis had just told him.
The boys were on the porch with eager, inquisitive expressions.
Junior blurted out, “When we going, Daddy?”
“I thought we might feed up around four…get away from here about five…Come to think of it, we might not go to Crawford tonight…”
“Not go?”
“Might go somewheres else for a change…”
“Where, Daddy?”
“Maybe I might surprise you…now let’s keep this a secret from Ada…But take it easy now. Ya’ll gonna need another bath before we go?”
They both laughed and ran into the yard. Clyde then put on his work shoes and went through the mule lot to the barn. He was doing nothing in particular, but he was reluctant to face Ada – Ada could not have missed his getting into Ellis’s truck, and she was so prone lately to ask questions he could not answer.
Going to Crawford on this night would not be a good idea, he thought. And he even thought he might come up with an excuse for skipping church in the morning.
It was a little after four when the boys came to the barn after him. And Ada was with them.
“Daddy, they’re telling me we might not go to Crawford tonight…”
Clyde grinned. “They wasn’t supposed to tell you…you fellows let me down…”
“Daddy, you know neither one of them can keep a secret…”
The boys were trying to look ashamed but their smiles broke through.
Clyde tried to ignore the pained expression on Ada’s face. “All right. Let’s feed Emma, slop the hogs, give Bessie some grub…and we’ll see what’s going to happen…And we won’t eat supper…not here, anyway…”
The boys got busy on the chores.
But Ada said, “But Daddy, don’t you remember? We got dinner on the grounds at church tomorrow. I got to get you to kill a hen tonight so I can roast it early in the morning…”
Clyde had forgotten about the traditional Middle-Of-June Dinner.
“Aw, Ada, we all need a little something extra…we in for some hard weeks…Tell you what: I’ll do a hen for you when we get home…Now, go get ready to go…and let’s have a good time…”
It was five-thirty when Ada, in her Saturday frock, got into the cab of the truck, with the boys preferring to ride in the back. Clyde said not a word about his destination.
But since he turned right when a left turn would have led them to Crawford, they perked up.
From the back of the truck, shouts of “Weaver, Weaver” could be heard.
Ada said, “Daddy this really is a surprise. Are we going to do what I think we’re going to do?”
“You figured it out, didn’t you?”
Clyde talked non-stop all through the ten-mile trip to the small town of Weaver. To have stopped talking would have given Ada an opening to ask him again about what Ellis’s visit – so far he had not actually told her a lie, but he dreaded her trying to corner him.
And, of course, when they got to Weaver, there was no time for questions. The first stop was at Smiley’s Hamburgers. Then there was Lillie’s, the ice cream parlor with fifteen flavors. And finally there was Charles Starrett and the Sons of the Pioneers at the Star Theater.
The three children piled into the cab of the truck after the movie and were instantly sound asleep. Clyde did not tell Ada he had sneaked out of the movie to barter for the dressed hen and the block of ice in the back of the truck.
Clyde was almost awake and heavy in dread of the unfolding day when the alarm clock rang a five.
Maybe she don’t go to church no more, he was thinking, hoping. But, then, she did sometime attend church when she had something new to wear.
He got a fire going in the kitchen stove, woke Ada and went out to milk the cow. They let the boys sleep until seven.
After breakfast, he shaved and dressed and then helped the boys dress. At nine-thirty the boys hopped into the back of the truck. Ada sat with her father up front in her Sunday finest and with her Bible and a basket of food in her lap.
Crawford was a crossroads community. The general store faced the cotton gin across the road. This led to several cottages on both sides of the road and then the little brown church stood at the edge of the village.
It was a little before ten when he drove the truck into a lot next to the church. There were more vehicles than usual, including several mule wagons. The boys jumped out of the cab and ran to greet a couple of buddies. Ada got out of the truck in a more ladylike fashion, leaving the basket of food in the truck but carrying her Bible.
Clyde stayed in the truck for a time. He never took part in Sunday School, so he had an hour to kill. Usually he was able to get with three or four other men in a little grove behind the church for a Sunday chat. But he saw none of his pals at the moment, so he sat there and lit his corncob pipe.
He’d been there a half-hour when Henry Lloyd’s blue Ford pulled up near the church. Henry looked disconcerted as he charged out of his car and went through a back door of the church.
Presently Henry came out with his wife Velma. The two of them exchanged some heated words. Velma went back into the church and Henry drove away speedily.
Clyde thought he saw a couple of his cronies approaching the grove. He refilled his pipe and got out of the truck.
She came as if from nowhere, stood in his path, smiling, looking him over. She was wearing a bright multi-colored dress, one that had obviously been bought in Charleston, and one with a higher hemline that any of the other women would have worn. She had a necklace of imitation pearls and coral earrings. Her blue slippers had four-inch spiked heels. The dark blonde hair smacked of a Charleston beauty parlor and her cosmetics were extreme by local standards.
But the eyes were still a clear sky-blue, and the face, with full red lips in a constantly sassy pose, was quite pretty. On her five-foot-four stature she may have added a few pounds around the hips, but the waist was still trim enough to emphasize her full bosom, and the high heels showed her plump legs to full advantage. Indeed, she was a striking thirty-five-year-old.
“Well, ain’t you gonna say nothing?” she said in a teasing tone. “I come back…”
“Lonnie with you?”
“No. I left him. He’s a son of a bitch!”
“Knew that all along.”
“Well, anyway, I left him. I come back…”
Clyde said nothing.
“Cat got your tongue? Ain’t you glad to see me?”
“No. I’m not…”
“You mean after what? Thirteen years? I’m still the best looking thing around here…”
Again, Clyde said nothing.
“Aw, come on now, Clyde. I been gone a year…and I know you missed me…”
“You talking like you want me to take you back.”
“You need me, Clyde.”
“I get along without you.”
“Yeah, but you need me…and the kids need a mother…”
“A mother who run of and left them…one who will run off again next time Lonnie or somebody like him offers to take you honky-tonking…promises to buy you clothes…”
“Now, Clyde, I’m still young. I just wanted to have a little fun…You can’t grudge me that…”
“So now you want to come back? Have fun going to Crawford’s store ever Saturday…listen to the radio…go to church…work the rest of the time and hope we make a crop?”
“Clyde, it don’t have to be that way. Why don’t you and me and the kids move to Charleston? You could make good money there…and there’s places to go…”
“Me and the children is staying here!”
“Well, I could stay here…if you’d just take me out once in a while. They is a place over to Weaver where we could listen to the juke box…I could learn you to dance …You could use a little fun yourself…keep you from getting so dull…”
“No, Mary Alice. I’m dull, and I know it…You just find you somebody else to take you back to Charleston where the fun is…”
“But them is my kids, too. I got a right. And I told you I’d stay if you’d take me out once in a while…”
“No.”
“No? You don’t want me? Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“You got somebody else?”
“Not right now…”
“You been seeing Betty Wise?”
“Betty Wise? Mary Alice, what’s the matter with you? Her husband got killed on some island not six months ago…I ain’t seen her except at church…and she still ain’t got over what happened to George…”
“Oh, so that’s the story? Well, anyway them kids needs a mama…I’ll just take the kids myself…”
“Don’t try it, Mary Alice; you just stir up a mess of trouble…”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I been asking around about this…if you tried to take the children, we’d have to go to a judge…”
“So we go to a judge…Think he’d let you keep the kids away from their mother? You think the kids don’t want their mother back?”
“After you run off and left them? And I don’t think a judge would put much stock in you…but I sure don’t want it to be in no court…that would hurt them something awful…especially Ada…be careful with Ada…”
“Careful?”
“Mary Alice, you hurt that child. You left and she didn’t understand. Then other kids started teasing her…bout her Mama running off and doing all kind of things…”
“Just went to have a little fun…”
“It wasn’t no fun for Ada…give her a few years and she might get over it…but for now, she’s still hurting…Why don’t you just see them a few minutes after church…then go on about your business…”
“You turned into a mean son of a bitch, Clyde…a mean son of a bitch…”
“Call me what you want to! Now, you want to see the kids after church, I’ll get them together…but that’s all you gonna do…You left them…and I got to look out for them…and you try something, then I got to try to put you in your place…”
She broke into tears, but the tears lasted only a moment. A fierce anger took over. She walked off in a huff.
Clyde continued his walk toward the grove of trees. One of the fellows there was Abner Cassaday, who was called Hoppy after a star of some western movies.
“Clyde, you come in your truck, didn’t you?”
Clyde nodded.
“Well, how bout running me down to the river after church…I left some melons in the water to cool off…take me a hour to get them if I go in my wagon, but you could run me down and won’t take a few minutes…”
Clyde agreed to the errand.
During the church service Ada sat with the girls in her Sunday School class, and the boys with their selected buddies. Clyde sat alone in the seldom-used seats up front. He endured Preacher Bostic’s sermon as dutifully as he could. Mary Alice was not there, but he was sure he had not seen the last of her for the day – and she lived only several hundred yards from the church building.
When the service concluded, Clyde and Hoppy got into his truck and headed for the river.
“You putting in tobacco pretty soon, ain’t you, Clyde?”
“Start in the morning…”
“Me too! Dread it…it goes on and on…”
“Yeah. And we short-handed…makes longer days…but they say this gonna be a good year…”
“That’s what I hear…hope I can clear enough to get me a truck this year. Say, you been called up?”
“You mean the army? Yeah, but I got three kids…they don’t want me…not yet, anyhow…”
“I only got the one kid…June is kinda worried…wants me to go to Charleston and get on at the Navy Yard…says they won’t take me away from war work. How about you? Think of going to the Yard?””
Clyde sensed that Hoppy was leading up to asking him about Mary Alice.
“No. Better stay here…”
They reached the fast moving stream. Hoppy had placed half a dozen watermelons behind a tree that had fallen into the stream. The two men loaded them into the truck and sped back toward the church.
Most in the congregation gathered behind the building where tables had been set up. Women had put dishes of food on the tables and there were tubs of soft drinks in ice. Some of the pews had been carried from the church building so the women would have places to sit.
As Clyde was carrying a melon to the tables, he was stopped by a smug Henry Lloyd.
“Damned woman won’t listen to reason…wants to rot out here in the sticks…ain’t the only pebble on the beach…”
Clyde nodded and Henry left.
Then he was stopped by Ada.
“Daddy, Mama’s here!”
“You seen her?”
“Yes. She wants us all to go to Charleston…I told her you wouldn’t go…”
“I spect she knew that already…You want us to go to Charleston?”
“Not unless you want to go…Anyway, I told her I didn’t want to go…then she started saying how she would come back here…”
“Be a big help…with the cooking and things…”
“We don’t need help, Daddy…I take care of you and the boys all right, don’t I?”
“You sure do, Ada…but she is your mother…”
“I know, Daddy…but still…after the way she done us…”
“She seen the boys?”
“Yes…but they were too busy to take any time with her…went with the boys down to the branch…Daddy, you think you going to take Mama back? Tell me, now, true?”
“Ada, I want to do what’s best for you and the boys…and I think we ought to stay here…where we know how things is…”
“But she said she was willing to stay here…”
“She might say that today…but what about tomorrow…what about after we crop tobacco till after dark, then tend to the barn all night, and go on like that week after week…then put all that time grading and tying…and she got nothing but Charleston on her mind…”
Mary Alice interrupted them.
“I got to talk to you, Clyde…”
“All right…let’s go out to my truck…Ada, I see you in a few minutes. All right?”
Ada nodded and walked away as Clyde and Mary Alice made for the truck. Mary Alice got into the cab first and, as Clyde was getting in, she lit a cigarette.
“You son of a bitch, you turned my own children against me!”
“You done that your own self…And you don’t have to holler…”
She lowered her voice somewhat. “What you done to Ada? She talks to me like…like I don’t know…”
“Look, Mary Alice, I told you she was hurt. She was crying ever night when she finally figured you had done gone and left us. She got over it, and now she is the woman of the house. Cooks – don’t even let me in the kitchen. She keeps the place clean, she washes the clothes, even gets up early on Monday to wash them before going to school…her way of forgetting her mama run off!”
“You put all that into her head…even the boys was too busy to take any time with me…”
Clyde said nothing.
“Anyway, what I want to come back to you for? You be a sharecropper the rest of your life. I got better sense than to come back to you. You going to die of old age…not never knowing what the real world is all about…I’m sorry for the kids – having to stay with you…but damned if I ain’t going to have me some more fun before I get too old…”
She leaped out of the truck and shouted, “And I’m going to take Ada with me…Damned if I want her buried here in this hell-hole…”
She was charging toward the crowd.
Ada had been standing unseen by the truck all the while.
“Daddy, think we better go?”
“The boys won’t want to go yet, but tell you what: I’ll go find Ellis and see if he won’t bring them home later on…”
He found Ellis and told him about the situation.
“You go ahead…but fill up some plates for you and Ada…no point in missing all them groceries.”
It was with a sigh of relief that he got back to the truck with two plates of food.
“I didn’t see your mama. You seen her again?”
“No, I haven’t. But maybe we’d better hurry.”
They said hardly a word over the short trip home, but Clyde studied his daughter as well as he could.
Really, he thought, she could have throwed a fit over seeing her mama, but she taken it pretty good.
The two of them ate in a silence that was hardly gloomy. Then Clyde got the Sunday paper and retired to the rocker on the front porch.
Some three hours later, Ellis drove up. Ada came out to gather the roasting pan with the remainder of the hen she had cooked. The boys scampered away.
Ellis said to Clyde, “Why don’t we take a walk…I want to see how your tobacco looks…”
Clyde acceded to this ploy to get away from the house and he followed the older man through rows of tobacco.
“Kind of got scary, there, Uncle Ellis…”
“Yeah. I seen…but I reckon you out of it…for the time being, anyhow…”
“I don’t know…she was mad as a…”
“Oh, I see: you wasn’t there…you don’t know!”
“Don’t know what?”
“She’s gone. Reckon she has went to Charleston…”
“The hell you say! Back to Charleston?”
“Don’t know where else she’d be going…Henry Lloyd in the new car of his’n…took her to her daddy’s house…few minutes she come out with a suitcase…and they drove off…”