Free A Tidewater Morning by William Styron Page A

as late as ten o’clock. That evening Mr. Dabney returned at suppertime, still sullen and fretful but saying little, still plainly distraught and sick over the sheriff’s mandate. He did not himself even pick up a fork. But the supper was one of those ample and blessed meals of Trixie’s I recall so well. Only the bounty of a place like the Tidewater backcountry could provide such a feast for poor people in those hardpressed years: ham with red-eye gravy, grits, collard greens, okra, sweet corn, huge red tomatoes oozing juice in a salad with onions and herbs and vinegar. For dessert there was a delectable bread pudding drowned in fresh cream. Afterward, a farmer and bootlegging colleague from down the road named Mr. Seddon R. Washington arrived in a broken-down pickup truck to join with Mr. Dabney at the only pastime I ever saw him engage in—a game of dominoes. Twilight fell and the oil lanterns were lit. Little Mole and I went back like dull slugs to our obsessive sport, scratching a large circle in the dust beside the porch and crouching down with our crystals and agates in a moth-crazed oblong of lantern light, tiger-yellow and flickering. A full moon rose slowly out of the edge of the woods like an immense, bright, faintly smudged balloon. The clicking of our marbles alternated with the click-click of the dominoes on the porch bench.
    “If you wish to know the plain and simple truth about whose fault it is,” I heard Mr. Dabney explain to Mr. Washington, “you can say it is the fault of your Franklin D-for-Disaster Roosevelt. The Dutchman millionaire. And his so-called New Deal ain’t worth diddley squat. You know how much I made last year—legal, that is?”
    “How much?” said Mr. Washington.
    “I can’t even tell you. It would shame me. They are colored people sellin’ deviled crabs for five cents apiece on the streets in Newport News made more than me. There is an injustice somewhere with this system.” He paused. “Eleanor’s near about as bad as he is.” Another pause. “They say she fools around with colored men and Jews. Preachers mainly.”
    “Things bound to get better,” Mr. Washington said.
    “They can’t get no worse,” said Mr. Dabney. “I can’t get a job anywhere. I’m unqualified. I’m only qualified for making whiskey.”
    Footsteps made a soft slow padding sound across the porch and I looked up and saw Edmonia draw near her father. She parted her lips, hesitated for a moment, then said: “Daddy, I think Shadrach has passed away.”
    Mr. Dabney said nothing, attending to the dominoes with his expression of pinched, absorbed desperation and muffled wrath. Edmonia put her hand lightly on his shoulder. “Daddy, did you hear what I said?”
    “I heard.”
    “I was sitting next to him, holding his hand, and then all of a sudden his head—it just sort of rolled over and he was still and not breathing. And his hand—it just got limp and—well, what I mean, cold.” She paused again. “He never made a sound.”
    Mr. Washington rose with a cough and walked to the far edge of the porch, where he lit a pipe and gazed up at the blazing moon. When again Mr. Dabney made no response, Edmonia lightly stroked the edge of his shoulder and said gently: “Daddy, I’m afraid.”
    “What’re you afraid about?” he replied.
    “I don’t know,” she said with a tremor. “Dying. It scares me. I don’t know what it means—death. I never saw anyone—like that before.”
    “Death ain’t nothin’ to be afraid about,” he blurted in a quick, choked voice. “It’s life that’s fearsome! Life Suddenly he arose from the bench, scattering dominoes to the floor, and when he roared “Life!” again, I saw Trixie emerge from the black hollow of the front door and approach with footfalls that sent a shudder through the porch timbers. “Now, Shoog —” she began.
    “Life is where you’ve got to be terrified!” he cried as the unplugged rage spilled forth. “Sometimes I understand