Free Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines Page B

time before he turned around and went back down the steps.

18
 
    Twelve o’clock Saturday we were through for the week, and Marcus went to the yard with me. Louise watched him from her gallery when we passed by the house but he still didn’t pay her any mind.
    “I didn’t think you could do it,” I said.
    “I can do anything,” he said.
    “That’s your trouble,” I told him. “You ought to show some humbleness sometime.”
    “For what?” he said.
    “Just so people can like you, Marcus.”
    “People,” he said. “People the cause I’m in the trouble I’m in now.”
    “Not people,” I said. “You put yourself in that trouble. If you hadn’t messed with that woman you wouldn’t have been in it.”
    “If that nigger hadn’t been chickenshit, I wouldn’t have been in it,” he said.
    “That was his woman,” I said. “Don’t you think he had the right?”
    “Any man’s a fool to die over a woman,” he said. “They got too many of ’em.”
    He got down and opened the gate for me; then after I hadgone in the yard and after he had locked the gate, he got back on the tractor.
    “When I get back I’m go’n take a good hot bath and just rest, rest for a while,” he said.
    “I’m going to rest first, then I’ll take a bath,” I said.
    “I can’t rest with dirt on me,” he said.
    “City boy, huh?”
    “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “I like soap and water and I like cologne. You can have some if you want some. Women got to run after you with that stuff smelling.”
    “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick to plain soap and water.”
    “Go on and be country if you want to,” he said.
    I drove up to the crib and parked the tractor. We had just climbed down and gone around the trailer when I saw Bonbon coming across the yard. He raised his hand with one finger sticking up. We stopped to see what he wanted.
    “Made it, huh?” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    Bonbon had on a pair of clean, well-pressed khakis. He wore his white cowboy hat and not the sweat-stained straw hat he wore in the field everyday. He had on a pair of brown shoes and not the cowboy boots he always wore when he rode the horse.
    Bonbon was about six-four or -five, and I must say he was an impressive-looking man. He was handsome—I think very handsome—but nothing pretty or cute. Marcus, I think, was pretty. Young gals would say that Marcus was “dreamy.” Nobody would say Bonbon was dreamy, like nobody would say he was ugly. He was handsome in a rough way. He had a good build—maybe two hundred, two hundred and ten pounds. He had light gray eyes, a long, good-shaped nose, and a dry-shuck-color mustache. His mustache was lighter than his tan face and much lighter than his red neck.
    “Burning up,” he said.
    “Yeah, I’m going to make it on down,” I said. “Paying off about the same time, huh?”
    “Yeah; four, four thirty.”
    “I’ll be back up then,” I said. “Anything else you want me to do?”
    “No, not you,” he said.
    Then I knew why he had stopped us. Marcus didn’t move.
    “You,” he said.
    Marcus waited. I waited, too.
    “Them children we had unloading that corn there all took sick.”
    Marcus didn’t know what Bonbon was getting to. I did.
    “That’s your job this evening,” he said.
    “My job?” Marcus said. “Unload that? Unload all that corn? I load all that corn.”
    Bonbon looked across the yard. He had given his orders; he didn’t think there was any need to carry it any farther.
    Marcus started trembling. I could see his fist tighten and then gradually open. For a second there I thought he was going to act a fool and jump on Bonbon. But Bonbon wasn’t worried at all. And I think that’s what made Marcus so mad. Bonbon gave him an order and forgot all about him.
    “It’s hot,” Bonbon said. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the flat side of his wrist.
    Marcus looked up at Bonbon, who wasn’t paying him any attention; then he leaned against the trailer and