“We’ll be over to see you soon, Sam,” I said, as he half turned to go.
“Yes, you-all do that. We’ll be lookin’ for you. Good-by. Good-by, Angelina.”
Angelina looked up briefly and said, “Good-by, Papa.”
When he had gone, I asked, “I haven’t been mean to you in a long time, have I?”
“Of course not. Why ask such a silly thing?”
“Don’t let me, ever. I never want to have to listen to you say, ‘Good-by, Bob,’ the way you said that. The poor devil.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it, I guess.”
We went to all the dances, the ones in town and the little country dances that were held now and then on Saturday nights in the surrounding communities, and I took her to the movies about twice a week. I had never cared a lot for pictures, but she liked them and we went. A lot of times all this going seemed a little silly and it would have been much more fun to stay at home, but always I guess there was a fear in the back of my mind that she wouldn’t like living out here if there were too much to remind her of her previous unhappiness. I didn’t want her to continue associating that unhappiness with country life when the truth was that the mere fact that her father was a farmer had had nothing to do with it I wanted her to learn that a girl could live on a farm without being imprisoned and cut off from other people her age and having to wear clothes she hated.
One night after supper, when I suggested a ride into town for a movie, Angelina surprised me by asking if we couldn’t stay at home instead.
“There’s a full moon tonight,” she said. “Let’s stay here on the back porch and just look at it.”
I agreed quickly. “Sounds like a lot more fun to me,” I said. We sat down on the top step and she leaned her head against my shoulder. The moon hadn’t come up yet over the timbered ridge to the east across the bottom, but already we could see the glow of it looking like a far-off forest fire.
“Are you happy, Angelina?” I asked.
“You know I am. More than there’s any way to say.”
“You don’t feel that living on a farm is like being in jail any more?”
“No. I never did, except over there.” She was looking across the bottom toward the glow. “I’ve never felt like that here with you.”
In a moment she laughed a little and said, “You’re funny, Bob, aren’t you? You’ve courted me so hard ever since we’ve been back here that sometimes I wondered if you’d forgotten we’re already married. Goin’ to movies and dances, and swimmin’. It’s sweet of you, but you don’t have to work so hard at it.”
“Well, I didn’t want you ever to feel about this place the way you did over there.”
“I won’t. Even if you’d made a jail out of it. There’s such a thing as still liking the jailer.”
“Fine,” I said. “All this foolishness stops right now. Tomorrow morning I take your shoes away from you and you go out and hoe cotton.”
“You don’t hoe cotton after it’s laid by, silly. You can’t fool a country girl.”
“You see what I mean, Angelina?” I said. “A few months ago you’d have been as sore as a boil if anybody’d called you a country girl. You’d have thought it was an insult.”
“I’d have scratched their eyes out.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You don’t scratch. You double up your little dukes and start throwing punches like a good bantamweight.”
“I guess that’s the only reason you like me, because I fight like a man instead of a girl.”
It wasn’t all play those two months, even though I neglected a lot of things to be with her. Jake and I cut corn tops and shocked them and sawed a lot of wood for the coming winter. But in addition to the work there were always the swimming down in the bottom and the white perch fishing, and the watermelons to be eaten, and the books to be read on the grass under the towering white oaks, and always the ever increasing fun of just being together. That summer was one I would never forget.
Twenty-two
Early in September we started picking cotton in the upper fields, with just a few pickers at first and increasing as the days went by and the bolls began opening faster under the hot sun. It was still dry and little dust devils chased each other across the fields like miniature cyclones and the drone of the dry-weather locusts went on throughout the dusty, sweaty afternoons.
Lee was released from jail a week after we started picking. We were becoming busier then and I didn’t have time to go to town. Jake was running the wagon, hauling the cotton to the gin, and I was doing the weighing for the pickers in the field.
I heard that he was out, though, and that he had gone back to the big house on North Elm and was living there alone. I sent word to him to come out and see us, not much expecting that he would since he had been so sour and unfriendly the times I had gone to the jail to visit him. So I was surprised to see the big roadster drive up late one Saturday afternoon.
He came down the hall and I noticed first that he was sober and that he was looking well. Apparently sixty days in jail and being at least partially cut off from his liquor supply had been good for him. He was dressed in brown tweeds that fitted him the way all his clothes did, and he was wearing that gravely smiling demeanor that had disarmed so many people in his life.
He lounged in the doorway and looked at me and said smilingly, “Hello, yokel. I hear I’m invited to supper.”
Angelina came in from the kitchen and stopped when she saw him. It was the first time they had met since we came back and I supposed all of us were trying not to think of the last time they’d met. At least, I knew Angelina and I were, but no one was ever sure what Lee was thinking.
He stepped forward with that urbane gravity that reminded me so much of the way he used to be when he wanted to put on an act, and said, “Hello, Angelina,” and they shook hands. He might have been a Supreme Court justice greeting his favorite niece.
Angelina said, “Hello, Lee,” and I was proud of her. I hadn’t known there could be so much simple dignity in an eighteen-year-old.
He was quietly courteous to her throughout the meal, never ostentatiously attentive but on the other hand never asking me a question or saying anything to me without turning to include her and to get her view. I was proud of the way he was behaving and happy to see him like this. They were the two people I loved more than anybody else in the world and I wanted that ugly thing that had been between us buried once and for all, and when he casually mentioned tfiat he was thinking of going back to work I was suddenly satisfied with everything in life.
“You know much about hardwood, Bob?” he asked, finishing his coffee. We had lit the kerosene lamp and he looked handsome as the devil himself with his smooth brown head and dark eyes.
“Not much. Why?” _
“Oh, I was just thinking. You know, just before he finally decided to get rid of both his mills, the Major had been looking into the hardwood business. He never did do anything about it, but he had gathered a lot of figures and had some of the best oak and walnut stands spotted, and I’ve been giving it some serious thought lately. I might try to get one of those mills back and start cutting oak. There’s good money in it if you get into a good stand and know how to run the business.”
“Well, you should know enough about it, all those years with the Major,” I said.