Journeyman, Page 3

  Leaving Dene, he ran down the steps. By the time he reached the road, Sugar and Semon were coming into the yard. He walked along beside them until they reached the house.

  “Now, let’s stop right here,” Clay said, getting in front of Semon. “This is just about far aplenty.”

  Semon laid a hand on Clay’s shoulder and looked down into his face.

  “You wouldn’t stand in the way of a fellow’s good times, would you, coz?”

  “That all depends,” Clay said. “But too far is far enough.”

  Sugar started backing away, but Semon grabbed her. She could not struggle much in a grip like Semon’s.

  “White-folks, I don’t want to mess around none. You sure did get all mixed up about me.”

  “Now, now,” Semon said, “don’t start talking like that, Sugar. Just keep quiet and I’ll straighten things out.”

  Sugar showed no signs of obeying him.

  “You’re a preacher, ain’t you, Mr. Semon?” she asked.

  “I am,” he said.

  “Then you oughtn’t be out worrying colored girls like this. If you’ll just turn me loose, I’ll be much obliged.”

  “Don’t try to put me off, Sugar.”

  “Now, I was thinking,” Clay said, stepping in, “if we would only—”

  Semon reached an arm around Sugar and began patting her. She looked from Clay to Semon.

  Clay had to stop talking and watch what was taking place. He had never seen anything to equal it before in all his life. Up on the porch Dene got up out of her chair, and she came as far as the top step to watch.

  “Mr. Semon, you’re the most devilish white man I ever saw in all my life,” Sugar said.

  Semon winked at Clay in the half-light, drawing shut one of the slits in his face and opening it again. He patted Sugar’s buttocks while Clay watched speechless. Before Clay realized it, Semon was drawing Sugar closer to the house. They were at the steps before he caught up with them.

  “Now, let’s just hold on here a minute,” Clay began. “If I know the first thing about anything, I know—”

  Semon and Sugar mounted the steps and crossed the porch to the door. Clay leaped up the steps behind them.

  When he got to the door, he could do nothing. Semon and Sugar had gone inside; he was left standing in the doorway with Dene.

  He turned and looked at Dene, staring at her when she continued to look inside. He gave her a shove.

  “He’s the strangest man,” she said.

  He shoved her again, pushing her back on the porch, and went inside to find out where Semon was going.

  Chapter IV

  INSIDE THE DARK HOUSE Clay managed to find a lamp. He lit it hurriedly and ran to Semon’s room. He got there before Semon had a chance to shut the door.

  “Now, I’m as open-minded as the next one to come along,” Clay began, “but when it comes to bringing darky girls—”

  “Set the lamp on the table, Horey,” Semon ordered. He waited for Clay to obey.

  “When you drove up here today,” Clay said, “I was mighty glad to welcome you, but—”

  Semon took out his revolver and laid it on the table by the lamp. It was the first time Clay had seen it, and he was too surprised to learn that Semon carried a gun to say anything more.

  The pistol was a six-shooter with a spring trigger. It was a dangerous-looking gun to find on a man like Semon Dye. Clay blinked at it in the lamplight.

  “You don’t have to stay, Horey,” Semon said, motioning him towards the door. “You can get out.”

  “Well, now,” Clay said, “I don’t want you to think I ain’t as hospitable as the next one, but—”

  “Coz,” Semon said, “I hate to disappoint you, but it ain’t in my nature to play second-fiddle. You’ll just have to go outside and wait.”

  He went to Sugar and began stroking her.

  There was nothing Clay could do after that, and he backed from the room into the hall. He stood there looking inside until Semon slammed the door shut. He walked unsteadily through the hall to the porch.

  Dene was standing at the door.

  “He’s the funniest man,” she said.

  Clay looked at her a moment, and then he shoved her away from the door.

  “Shut up, Dene, doggone it all,” he said.

  When he sat down, Dene came to the chair beside him and sat down on the edge of the seat.

  “I’ll be doggone if I ever heard tell of a preacher like him before in all my born days,” he said. “He’s Semon Dye, all right, but he don’t act like a preacher no more than me or Tom Rhodes.”

  He stopped talking and stared at the red glow in the sky over the ridge.

  “He’s the potentest man,” Dene said, rocking a little.

  “Shut up, Dene, doggone it all,” he said.

  There was a sound in the yard like somebody scraping shoe-leather on hard sand. Clay jumped in his seat, straining his eyes in the darkness. Dene clutched his arm, but he paid no attention to her. He moved to the edge of his seat, pulling himself forward with hands gripped on the railing.

  Once he thought he caught a glimpse of a dark face in the path from the road. He was a little uneasy when he realized that the only person who might be out there was Hardy.

  “Who’s that?” Clay asked.

  “It’s me, Mr. Clay,” Hardy said, coming closer to the porch.

  “What do you want, Hardy?”

  “I’m up here looking for Sugar, Mr. Clay. I wouldn’t be bothering you if it wasn’t for that.”

  “What makes you think she’s up here?” Clay said.

  “Mr. Clay,” Hardy said, “please don’t go trying to put me off. I know you ain’t that kind.”

  “Are you looking for Sugar?”

  “Mr. Clay, you know good and well I’m looking for her. Please don’t go trying to put me off, Mr. Clay.”

  Hardy came to the foot of the steps. From where he stood he could see through the open door into the hall. There was no light anywhere except in Semon’s room.

  “Did Sugar tell you she was coming up here, Hardy?” Clay asked him.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what makes you think she’s up here?”

  “Mr. Clay, don’t go trying to put me off. That white man told her to come up here.”

  “Did Sugar tell you he said that?”

  “No, sir.”

  Clay listened for a while. Once he thought he heard Semon, but he was not certain. There was so much going on inside his head it was hard to fix his mind on one thing and keep it there.

  “What’re you aiming to do, Hardy?” Clay said.

  “I came up here to get Sugar,” Hardy said firmly. Clay could feel the determination in his voice.

  Hardy was a yellow Negro, and Clay knew he could not handle him in the same way a black Negro was handled.

  “Now, Mr. Clay,” he said, “there ain’t no use in trying to put me off no longer. I don’t have no hard feelings against you, and I don’t want to have none. But I came up here to get Sugar and take her home. That’s what I’m standing here for now, Mr. Clay.”

  Clay could feel Dene moving on the edge of her chair beside him. He did not have to look at her to know that she was watching Hardy.

  “I scarcely know what to say to you, Hardy,” Clay began uneasily. “Semon Dye, the traveling preacher, came here to stay today, and he’s got Sugar in the house, there, now. I reckon you knew that all the time, anyway.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Clay,” Hardy said, coming up the steps. “I don’t want to make no trouble. I ain’t that kind at all.”

  He stopped when he reached the top step.

  “It’s white-folks’ fault,” Hardy said. “I don’t blame it on Sugar none. That white man got her to come up here, and she wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t told her to. It’s the white-folks who always make trouble for the colored.”

  “What’re you aiming to do about it, Hardy?” Clay asked uneasily.

  “I came to take Sugar home.�
��

  Hardy crossed the porch to the door. Clay jumped up and beat him to the threshold.

  “I wouldn’t raise no rumpus in your house, Mr. Clay,” Hardy told him.

  “I’ll go tell Sugar you came to get her,” Clay said.

  He left the door and walked into the dark hall without waiting to hear what Hardy said. He went to Semon’s door, turned the knob easily, and stepped inside. Not until he was already inside the room did he realize that Hardy had followed him and was standing behind him.

  He crossed the room and turned up the lamp.

  Semon saw only Hardy. He reached for his revolver on the table beside the bed. In a leap he was on his feet and standing in front of them cocking the pistol with his stiff thumb.

  “Don’t point that thing at me, Mr. Semon,” Hardy said angrily. “I can’t stand that.”

  “Shut your mouth and get out of the house,” Semon shouted at him. “I don’t take no fooling from niggers. Get out of here, coon!”

  Semon was an entirely different-looking man then. When he had arrived that afternoon, wearing his black dust-stained suit and hat, and the stringy black bow tie, he looked exactly like an itinerant minister climbing out of his car to stop and rest after a long and tiresome trip across the country. Now, in the kerosene light, against the background of yellow pitch-stained pine walls, he looked like a wild man stalking an animal in the woods.

  “We’d better settle this thing peacefully,” Clay said thinly, watching the gun in Semon’s hand.

  He was ignored. Hardy refused to back away. He came forward a few steps, watching the lamp on the table.

  “Keep back, or I’ll shoot you down to start with,” Semon threatened. “You can’t fool with me, I know how to handle yellow niggers like you.”

  Clay saw what was going to happen. He leaped towards the side of the room.

  Hardy plunged forward, attempting to reach either the lamp on the table or the pistol in Semon’s hands. He failed to get his hands on either one. When he was an arm’s length away, Semon fired his revolver at him. The explosion in the chamber of the short bulldog pistol shook the frail house to its foundations. Dust fell in chunks from the cracks in the ceiling, and chips and splinters rolled from the cracks in the pine-boarded walls.

  Clay was trying to make up his mind whether to try to take the pistol away from Semon, or whether to stay where he was. He stood his ground.

  Hardy had fallen on his hands and knees. He remained there on all fours at Semon’s feet, his head hanging downward until it almost touched the floor.

  Semon was cocking the pistol again with his big stiff thumb. When the hammer was drawn back, the trigger clicked, and Semon aimed it once more at Hardy. Before he could fire it, Sugar fell across Hardy, flinging her body between them.

  Semon was undecided for a minute.

  “Get up and get out of here, both of you!” he said at last. “If I have to shoot again, it’ll be through both of you at the same time.”

  Sugar was trying to lift Hardy. She soon saw she would not be able to carry him out, so she managed to drag him to the door. Semon watched them until they were in the darkness of the hall. They left the house by the back door, and not another sound was heard from them after that.

  Clay knew he would not see Hardy again until either his wound had healed or his dead body was found. He and Sugar would go to the woods and not come back until that time.

  It was all over then. Semon sat down in a chair, his hands shaking too much to hold the revolver any longer. He tossed it on the bed and looked down at the floor where Hardy had fallen.

  There was a rank odor of burned powder in the room, mingling with the cloud of yellow dust that had been shaken from the walls and ceiling and had not had time to settle on the floor and furniture.

  “I don’t mind seeing a dead darky once in a while,” Clay said, “but I sure do hate to see one of my hands passing away on me right at this time. It’s planting time, and no other. If Hardy was to die, I’d have to get out and do some of the work myself. I sure would hate to see him pass on.”

  Dene had been standing outside the door in the dark, and she looked inside the room. Neither Clay nor Semon saw her, and she came inside and stood near the door with her back to the wall.

  “What kind of treatment do you call this for a visitor in your house, Horey?” Semon said, turning his head to one side and glaring at Clay. “Looks like you would be on the lookout to take care of the people who come to stay with you.”

  Dene could not keep her eyes from going back and forth to Semon. He was a strange-looking sight to see in the lamplight, sitting hunched forward in the little chair, his underwear looking as if it had shrunk a dozen sizes since he first put it on.

  “He’s the queerest man,” Dene said, giggling a little.

  Clay looked up at her, not knowing she had come into the room. Semon did not move.

  “I don’t see why you think I was due to look out for you so much,” Clay said. “Looks like you was the one who wouldn’t ask no advice.”

  “He’s one of those God-damn yellow niggers,” Semon said. “That the whole trouble. You ought to have told me he was that kind. I can handle the black ones, but it’s dangerous to get tangled up with those yellow sons of bitches. They act like they’re just as good as a white man.”

  Clay moved across the room, his shadow covering Dene.

  “Looks to me like a man of your sense would have known Sugar’s man was yellow like herself,” Clay said. “Yellow girls don’t do much mixing with the black ones. They nearly always pick out a man with the lightest color.”

  Chapter V

  IT WAS LATE when Clay got up the next morning. Usually he was out of bed by five. There was never much for him to do, except to see that the darkies got started to the fields on time. Some mornings he walked down the road as far as the bridge, and turned around and came back; by seven, at the latest, he was ready to sit on the front porch and put his feet on the railing.

  This morning the sun was two hours high when he opened his eyes. He lay on his side wondering why he had slept so late. It was not long before he remembered what had happened in the next room.

  Clay jumped out of bed, hurrying into his pants and shirt, and went to the kitchen. Sugar was not there, but Dene had breakfast ready. He sat down at the table and ate quickly.

  When he had finished, he spoke to Dene for the first time that morning. She had already eaten, and she was clearing the table.

  “Where’s Semon Dye?” he asked her, pushing back his chair. “You haven’t seen him this morning?”

  Dene made a trip to the stove and back before she answered him.

  “He hasn’t been out here. I suppose he’s still in bed asleep,” she said. “He’s the queerest thing.”

  Clay went to the front porch, passing the closed door of Semon’s room without noticing it. At the threshold of the outside door he stopped. Semon’s old car was still there, standing in the green shade of the magnolia tree where he had left it. While he was standing there wondering, Semon’s door opened, and out he stepped, straightening his stringy black tie and flicking dust from his coat.

  Clay waited for him to come to the porch.

  “I didn’t know where you were,” Clay said. “I was looking everywhere for you. Somehow, I didn’t think you’d get up and fly off into the night.”

  “I feel fresh as a daisy,” Semon said, beaming upon Clay. “I never felt better in my life. You take an April morning and a man like me, and the combination can’t be beat. We feel like a young rooster.”

  “That’s good,” Clay nodded. “I had been thinking that maybe last night sort of did you up.”

  Semon looked down-upon Clay, laughing.

  “Things like that never upset me, Horey,” he explained, rubbing his hands together. “I’ve never let little things like that set me bottom side up. I’ve got accustomed to knocking about from pillar to post. For the past twenty years I’ve been first here, next there, and then someplace
else.”

  “Things like shooting darkies never upset you none?”

  Semon shook his head firmly.

  “You’re used to winging them?” Clay said.

  “Yes and no,” he said; “I am and I ain’t.”

  “Now look here,” Clay said, squinting up at the tall man. “If I was to ask you if you was Semon Dye, would you say that, too?”

  “Coz, don’t let anybody tell you different. I am Semon Dye. And don’t you forget it.”

  “I don’t reckon I’ll be apt to forget it,” Clay said. “I’ve always heard there was such a creature as Semon Dye, but I never looked for him down here in Rocky Comfort.”

  Semon sniffed the air in the hall. He turned and looked through the house to the back porch.

  “I always like to eat a little something in the morning,” Semon said. “Reckon you could fix me up?”

  “Doggone my hide,” Clay said, “I forgot all about you eating. Here, just walk out to the kitchen and Dene will set you a plate. I’ve done had mine.”

  Semon walked down the hall, shaking the timbers of the frail house with his long heavy strides. Just as he was about to step out on the back porch, he stopped and whispered back to Clay:

  “Sugar’s not cooking this morning, is she?”

  “No,” Clay said. “I ain’t seen Sugar all morning. Nor Hardy, either. Dene’s cooking now. I don’t know when Sugar will show up again.”

  Semon nodded and went out on the porch and looked into the kitchen. Clay could see him standing there, sticking his head through the door. He waited until Semon had gone inside, and then he found his chair on the front porch and sat down with his feet on the railing to smoke his pipe.

  Up the road he could see Vearl and three or four Negro children playing with an old automobile tire in front of the cabins. They were rolling it as if it were a hoop, and it was so large and so heavy that it took two or three of them to move it. He watched Vearl playing in the sand and dust. Vearl’s clothes were a little ragged, he noticed, but they were clean enough. Susan washed them every day. The three youngest pickaninnies were naked. They did not wear clothes at all from April to September. They were about three or four years old, and coal-black. They looked, surrounding Vearl, like crows hopping around a basket of cotton.