Stubble Part 12

Joe stood and waited. Directly he heard a sound, and then steps echoed on the walk around the side of the cabin, and then a man came hurrying around the corner, took one step up on the cabin stair, and then fell back with a low cry: "Fo' de Lawd."

It was Zeke. The smoothness of his skin turned an ashen colour and the whites of his eyes were rolling. He pushed back away from the doorway and stared at Joe. Gradually the terror began to fade out of his face and it was superseded by a sickly grin. Joe was watching him closely.

"You plum skeered me to deff," he finally managed to say, his breath coming fast and thick. "Thought you wuz a ghos'." The grin was very weak and it quickly subsided.

Zeke was a gaunt "darky" of that peculiar transparent blackness that looks as though it is put on only one layer deep, and yet is black, not brown. He was thin and shambling, with high and prominent cheekbones and eyes that showed a lot of white at all times. Across one cheek was a long, purplish scar reaching up to the corner of one eye. It gave him a look of cunning from that quarter. But on the whole he was an ineffectual, shiftless looking Negro, with hands that were always dangling and feet that always dragged.

"Ain' seen you fo' a long time, Mist' Joe."

"No. I've been away--down in the city." He paused a moment, considering the best way to begin. "Where were you and Mr. Bushrod last night?" he ventured on a bold stroke.

Zeke's eyes opened wide. "Why, we wusn' no place, Mist' Joe, Mist'

Bushrod, he--I was to bring him--he and I wuz to have a little bisnis ovah to de house, but I couldn' come." His face clouded and took on an anxious look. "Dey ain' no trubbel, is dey, Mist' Joe?"

Joe made no reply and Zeke watched his thoughtful, serious face with growing anxiety. Here was one more avenue of possible solution blocked. Since yesterday afternoon no one had apparently seen him--Uncle Buzz. It was as though the world had swallowed him up. He would have to seek elsewhere. He was on the point of dismissing the matter, of going elsewhere, when a thought suddenly came to him.

"You and he were to have some business last night?" he said, looking at Zeke intently.

Zeke grinned a sheepish grin. "Yessuh, we wuz--we had a little bisnis."

"But you didn't meet him? Sure you didn't meet him?"

"Sho I neveh. I ain' able to git de--I was detain'." Zeke had learned from experience and considerable instinct to hedge his utterances about with much generality. It was a good principle. It meant less to retract.

Joe thought another moment. "Take me," he said suddenly, "to the place where you get the business." There he might find a connecting link in his chain, he felt growingly certain.

"Oveh to Mist' Bushrod's?" The inflection was perfectly nave.

"No. Of course not--out where you get it. Over to Fillmore or wherever it is."

"Now, Mist' Joe," very reproachfully and with a quick, nervous flashing of the eyes.

Joe frowned. "You needn't put on anything with me, Zeke. I'm not going to give you away. Let's go get your car." He stretched out his arm as though to sweep Zeke into doing his bidding and started for the door.

"But I ain' eveh had no bisnis to Fillmo'," Zeke began in a last effort to stem the tide. "They ain' no bisnis theh."

"That's more like it. That may be the truth," said Joe pressing him on. And Zeke reluctantly pa.s.sed out and descended the steps.

As Joe turned to close the front door behind him he caught a look back in the room. Framed in the doorway stood a very small pickaninny, barely reaching to the k.n.o.b. She was barefoot, in a blue calico dress, with her hair done in two kinky braids that stood out in front like diminutive horns. In her arms she held tightly clutched an old corn shock wrapped in a red rag. One hand grasped the doorpost. And she was watching him wide eyed and very gravely.

"That's good advice you gave me," Joe said to her, as he closed the door.

They made their way around a corner to a ramshackle shed, Joe urging on the reluctant Zeke by the menace of an encroaching shoulder. Zeke paused at the entrance. He groped in his pocket and directly pulled forth a key on a very dirty, greasy string. Fumblingly he inserted it in the lock. Then he paused again and lifting his eyes, thoughtfully inspected the sky.

"Look powahful lak rain," he reflected dubiously.

"Get the car out," said the inexorable Joe. "We can put the top up."

Zeke opened the door and went in. For several minutes there was the metallic slip and catch of the crank and Zeke's laboured breathing.

Then there issued forth a reverberating roar as of a monster released in travail, and then slowly there emerged, back end first, a perfect scarecrow of an automobile, mud stained and rust streaked, with an arrangement on the back like a discarded chicken crate, with fenders that were battered and twisted as though torn by some elemental tempest, and with a sagging and flopping top over the front seat that looked as though at any moment it might collapse from sheer decrepitude. Slowly the thing backed out of the shed, in a curve to the road, with much groaning and roaring, and then came to a stop. The whites of two eyes peered out of the shadow of the enveloping bonnet as Joe approached.

He took one more look at the sky before he climbed in. The racing forerunners of storm had in some inexplicable manner vanished and there remained a lowering canopy of gray and black with here and there a patch of grayish green. Over in the west was a thin line of greening yellow, and the shadows were darkening over the back lanes through the trees.

"Let's go," said Joe, climbing in.

With much panting and sputtering and popping the car started slowly forward and they were off. Neither spoke. They came to an intersecting street and Zeke slowed down the car.

"Which way, Mist' Joe?" he asked.

Joe was suddenly irritated. "To Fillmore. You know where I mean.

Wherever you've been going for the stuff."

Zeke made a sudden turn to the left, narrowly escaping the projecting roots of a tree. Joe clung to the top brace for support. Down a darkening street they rolled, with the trees arching, sombre overhead, and on either side, back in the shadows, the darker shapes of houses with here and there the pa.s.sing glow of a lighted lamp. Night descended upon them as they left the town and a few splashes of rain appeared on the dirty gla.s.s of the wind-shield. Joe settled stoically down to wait. There was so much time to be pa.s.sed until he could be of further use and until then there was no need of making any effort. The thought of the morning came back to him. It did not seem possible that the same day was pa.s.sing. Singularly, the idea of Bromley's was the thing that obsessed him rather than the business in hand. It was as though he had been released on furlough. "Grind, grind, grind," said the car. "You will be back at it all to-morrow. This is not real. This is a dream you're having." He shook himself. He was getting sleepy, felt utterly f.a.gged.

And then Mary Louise flashed across his mind. "Come on," she seemed to say. "You're slipping. You're getting behind. They're all getting ahead of you. You're not keeping up. Let's get in a little more--little more--little more." He lurched against the top brace, blinked, and straightened up. Beside him was the shadow bent a little over the wheel. He could see the outline of the peak of the old golf cap and the dim tracing of Zeke's face, about it a faint gleam, and then the flash of an eye. He pondered. Here was Zeke doing his work--playing his part in the scheme of things. _He_ was not bothered by any notions of obligation. _He_ was not concerned with working out his destiny. _He_ played his cards as he got them. "Sometime they roll seven--and sometime they roll two," he remembered the words of a philosopher of the rolling rubes a year ago--or was it a lifetime?

Bromley's! The Golden Rule! Mary Louise! All alike. "Shape yourself to this pattern. Fill this niche. You've got to," said one. "Be like me.

Do as I do. Or get out," said another. "It costs so much to live this way. And you have to. Or it's not worth living," said the third. How about his way of looking at it?

He turned suddenly to the inscrutable face beside him.

"You don't let anybody cramp your style, do you, Zeke?" he said.

Zeke started. The sudden voice for a moment terrified him. "Nossuh, I doesn'," he stammered, anxious to agree.

Joe's voice was kindly encouraging. "Well, don't you let them, ever."

"Nossuh, I won'." And singularly he spoke the truth.

They came to a stretch of sand and the car slowed down appreciably. In addition there was a grade. And then came a flash of lightning over in the west, straight ahead of them, and another, fan-shaped, like the slow opening of a hand. In the momentary glare they saw the outlines of a hill up before them, with the road clipping it in two. A telephone pole on the crest stretched out spectral arms and leaned away. And then darkness again.

Joe decided he had better tell Zeke the object of their mission. It really didn't matter much, but then he wanted to talk.

"Do you reckon Mr. Bushrod's in Fillmore, Zeke?" he began, trying to make it as conversational as possible.

"I dunno. Mist' Joe. He might could." This offered no encouragement.

"He's been gone--ever since last night. Reckon he is in Fillmore?" He caught the gleam of two eyes as Zeke partly turned to look at him.

"I dunno, Mist' Joe. Wheh you reckon he gone?" As yet the import had failed to reach him.

For a short while they rolled along in silence, silence save for the rattling labour of the car. The grade was growing steeper. On both sides of the road the woods were encroaching and the only light was the feeble one cast by the single uncertain lamp of the car. It barely seemed to puncture the black.

"Mist' Bushrod ain' been home?" came Zeke's voice. The idea was beginning to have effect.

"Not since yesterday morning."

For another interval, silence, and then: "Whuh Mist' Bushrod gone?

Reckon he gone to Louisville?" Perhaps the faint stirrings of a cell of conscience. Who can say?