The Morning and the Evening (21 page)

He thought of robbing a house off somewhere. In summer he could do it. But in winter people stayed home, kept their windows closed tight and were liable to lock their doors when they left. Still, that seemed the only possibility, a house off by itself somewhere. He thought of robbing Miss Loma's store, right there on the main road of town, and he thought he'd cream his pants standing in his own house, it made him so afraid. He could not do it. Who lived off? He thought of Mister Metcalf, and he thought of his collection of rifles that was famous the whole county and more, and he gave up that idea. If only he could find out somebody who was going up to Memphis for a day's Christmas shopping, he would have it made. For once, it was convenient to be colored; he would wear dark clothes and no one would see him even if the moon came full.

He would not carry the gun; it was too risky. If he got caught later, and it was known he had carried a gun, no one would want to believe it had been a toy. They would want to make it out as bad as they could. He was not in any particular favor in town right now anyway. For the heck of it only, he had not long ago referred to a white man, in public, by his first name. A white man, overhearing, had said, “Boy, I believe you mean Mister Bill, don't you?”

“Yes, suh, I believe I do,” he had said, without malice.

Later on Bald Dave had said, “You got rocks in your head? You want to get us all in Dutch?” And in her store one day, Miss Loma said casually, with a hint of warning, “Little T., you need a job to keep your mind occupied.”

He had not observed any particular unfriendliness in town, only a certain air of watchfulness. He knew what people said was, “If ever there is any trouble here, Little T.'ll be one of the ones that starts it.”

Today, after his noon dinner, he started off to town to get some coffee, a supply he had forgotten to lay by. When he had not gone far, he heard behind him the crackling of dry winter branches on the ground and, turning, saw Stump, his friend who had had three fingers shot off in a dynamite accident, coming along with a gun and a brace of quail over his shoulder.

“Wait on me,” Stump called.

When he came up, Little T. said, “Boy, what you doing sneaking around?”

“Sneaking?” Stump said. “I was just walking like I walk. What's the matter with you? You jumped like you been shot when you heard me.”

“Just got something on my mind,” Little T. said. He looked at the birds. “Where you been? I ain't heard no shooting this morning.”

“I been way on through the bottom and clear to the other side,” Stump said. “Some good shooting.” They came out of the bottom and reached the road, and indicating his old truck pulled to one side, Stump said, “Hop in. I'll give you a ride.”

“Much obliged,” Little T. said. He pulled himself up to the running board and got in. The truck was a Model A, with seating benches built opposite each other in its open bed. Everyone called it The Whoopee. The floorboard on Little T.'s side was missing. He had to balance one foot the best he could; the other he put out on the running board. He braced himself in the truck by holding on to the windshield frame. He looked down at the road speeding by where his feet should have been, and when gravel flew up, he threw it back again. Cold rushed around his head and stung his eyes, blistered his ears. Conversation was impossible until they stopped in front of Miss Loma's. Then, feeling his fingers frozen into their bent position around the windshield frame, Little T. said, “Cold.”

“Good bird weather,” Stump said.

Little T. got down and said again, “Much obliged.”

“Come see us,” Stump said, and drove off. He looked for a moment into the rear-view mirror and waved, and Little T. waved back.

Miss Loma was nowhere to be seen; her daughter was tending store. When Little T. entered, she was talking to another woman, and it was as if he had not come in at all. She kept right on talking, though the other woman had completed her purchases. She was holding a large grocery bag and looked as if she had been trying for some time to edge her way out of the store. Frances, having just learned she and Billy were to have another baby, was bitter. “I'm telling you thirty-one years old's too old to have another baby.”

“Oh, go on, Frances,” the other woman said. “You got years to have two or three more kids.”

“That's what you think,” Frances said, slowly, as if she would kill her with words, thrown like knives, if she could.

Little T. had stood in the background, waiting, patient, his eyes averted; now he glanced up in surprise, her voice was so harsh, so full of a hateful sound. She caught him looking and said, “You want something, boy?”

“Yes, ma'm, pound o'percolatin'.”

“Credit, I guess,” she said. She moved along behind the counter and took down the coffee.

“Yes, 'um.”

She did not look at him but wrote his name in a book, and he took the can from the counter. Meanwhile the other woman had edged her way all the way to the door, and now she said, “Well, you just got to make the best of it, Frances. It'll be over before you know it.”

“Oh yes, just six years after it's finally born and it'll be off to school. I can hardly wait.”

“Well, I got to run along,” the other woman said hurriedly, opening the door. Before closing it she looked around and said, “Still seems funny in here without Jake sitting by the stove.”

“Lonesome in here,” Frances said. The mention of Jake's name made her start, as if the life in her had already quickened.

“You reckon he'll come back to town in the spring?” the woman said.

“I don't know,” Frances said. She did not want to talk about Jake and showed it; it made her feel the same as the morning sickness she had had earlier.

“Bye-bye,” the woman said.

“Come back to see us,” Frances said. The woman closed the door, and Frances looked at Little T. and said, “You want something else?”

“No'm, I was just looking at that lure,” he said. He indicated his coffee and said, “I thank you.” He went to the door and opened it. “Miss Loma sick?”

“Got a cold,” Frances said. She had gone back along the counter to her chair near the cash register. She sat down and picked up her knitting.

“Oh,” Little T. said. He started to close the door.

“Come back to see us,” Frances said, automatically.

“I thank you,” Little T. said. He closed the door.

The loony man. Why hadn't he thought of him? Little T. stood on the store porch breathing in the crisp, cold day. Even that white man would have at least seventy-five cents to his name laying around. They'd dragged him off so quick, his house was liable to be just as he'd left it. It would be easy to rob. And he was away. Man, that man was gone and had been for a month or more. Nobody watched his house. There it was, just sitting out there by itself, a house to rob if ever there was a house. Cold went right through Little T. as if he had on no clothes at all. But he thought he could do it. There seemed so little risk. He began to plan.

At eight o'clock he came again out of the bottom, braced with coffee, wide awake, trembling. A car went by just as he reached the road and he fell to the bank and hugged it far beyond a reasonable length of time, until he was thoroughly chilled and knew that tomorrow he would have a sore throat; he could already feel the first faint scratchy tickle way down; he swallowed two or three times.

He thought he could still hear music from the car's radio floating across the countryside, but the car had been gone too long. It was fear, only fear that he heard louder than the music ever had been. Cautiously he went up the bank and peeped over into the road, and from the treetops on the other side the moon peeped back. Go home, it said. It was white and full: too full. He could see everything as clearly as if it were dawn. The road ahead, the gravel, the little cabins of cedar-wood were white as chalk. Washing machines on their porches were great white hulks. He left the main gravel road, crossed a moon-washed field and entered a soft dust road, the dust shooting ahead of him in soft white puffs, that would take him a back way. He saw families inside their cabins, and it gave him a great sickening feeling that he was so alone here in this white and silent world, even in the real world. He had never realized before how alone he was. Who had chosen his lonely way? Not him; he would not have chosen it for anything in the world.

He came to a pond and skirted it and could see his figure, elongated and wavery, as he did so. He heard frogs croaking deep in their bellies. Too bad he didn't have a shotgun.
Blam
. There was nothing he liked better than frog legs so fresh they were still hopping in the skillet. Why had he never thought of hunting frogs here before? Perhaps it was premonition that told him he never would now, that he would never see this pond again.

His feet echoed hollowly against the cold wood of the man's front porch. The unlocked door creaked open on cold hinges. He entered and saw a kerosene lamp burning so low it was no more than a waver. It was sitting on a rickety table. Beside it was a white plate, an unfinished meal on it. The man sat in a chair beside the table and looked at it. Why, Little T. wondered, hadn't anybody told him the man was home again. It seemed everybody in the world had ganged up to play one giant mean trick on him, and his feelings were hurt; he wanted to cry.

The man turned and looked at him and something crossed his face. Perhaps it was surprise; it was not fear, and Little T. was sorry that it was not. For his own fear was in the room, as large, as ominous as the world. He hardly knew what to do with it. He took a step forward, and he took two steps back. He felt that whatever had guided him wrongly along life was going to guide him now. If it took him to the door, he would open it and leave. Otherwise, he would stay. Now he was rooted to the spot.

Around the flickering wick the room was a cavern of darkness. The room beyond was also a great dark cave, with a tiny candle burning in a saucer on a bureau. Suddenly Little T. was walking toward it. He brushed right by the man, doing so. The man did not even turn. He merely continued to look at what was before him: the table, the lamp, the unfinished food on the white plate. It was as if he knew full well now that whatever was his was not.

Little T. began to search the bureau drawers, but he could see nothing. When he picked up the saucer, tallow dripped onto his hand and burned it; it was a nuisance to hold the saucer while he searched. He looked around the room and found a kerosene lamp without a shade sitting in a corner of the room. It was full of coal oil, and he set it on top of the bureau and lighted it from the candle. He searched again and found nothing. All of the drawers stuck, and he had to slam them to shut them again. Two of them were empty. One contained old clothes that seemed to have belonged to a woman. One held candle ends and rubber bands and all sorts of odds and ends. He was just going through the bottom drawer—there were some boxes in it and he was opening those—when he heard someone behind him. He whirled around, overwhelmed by fear, even when he saw it was only Jake. The man was older than he, but much taller; perhaps he was powerful; Little T. didn't know. At the moment of his turning, he kicked the drawer to. The lamp slid backward and off the bureau and down the wall, spilling kerosene and igniting it. The wallpaper had long been browned and stained and torn, but once the pattern had been clusters of pink roses and trailing ivy. It was dusty and ignited quickly. Dust was everywhere, catching fire. Fire ran helter-skelter, igniting curtains, a bedspread, a rag rug—the entire room. In a few moments, they could barely breathe. Tears burst from Little T.'s eyes: tears from the fire, but tears of rage and sorrow. He opened his mouth to yell at Jake and found he could not talk. Fumes from the fire rushed down his gullet. Smoke choked him. He was finally able to cry, “Git out.
Git!
”

But Jake would not move. Little T. beat on him with his fists, never thinking of leaving him. Jake only stared, and Little T. was so close he could see the flames reflected, leaping, in his eyes. He gasped again, begging, “Git!”

Jake turned and started for the door. Little T. watched him slowly sink down, feather-light, and stretch out full-length, overcome. There was something of disbelief, still, on his face.

Little T. started forward and found himself on fire. He cried out horribly, terribly, and fell on the floor and rolled, beating upon himself until his hands were torture. The flames went out but the pain, he knew, was more than he could bear. He made his way to Jake and caught his suspenders between his teeth. He put one scorched arm across his back and fitted a hand beneath his armpit; his other hand he fitted beneath Jake's nearer armpit. Somehow, on one hip, drawing his legs up into a position of cramp, then straightening them, he dragged them both out of the room, into the next, where the air was better, and so on out the front door. Once they were on the porch, with superhuman effort he gave Jake a shove that sent him rolling off the porch. He fell the short distance to the ground, rolled a little, and was clear of the fire—at least, Little T. thought, and prayed that he was not already dead.

He sent himself the same way and rolled a short distance away from Jake. Then he lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes again, he first saw the great fire. He knew he was dead and in Hell. “Man, I'm humble,” he whispered.

Then he turned his head and saw the moon, peaceful and calm, smiling down at him. He had to go home. That was all he knew, that he had to go home.

He knew that he had been hot, very hot. But now he felt frozen. Far away, there was a dull ache to his body. He stood up and walked a few yards in complete possession of himself, then he collapsed and knew he was hurt and sick and could not walk again as he had just done. But he had to go home.

He heard in the distance a bell ringing. He dragged himself in a fashion like a snake across the cold ground. He heard screams and a great many voices in the distance. He had to go home.