"Stop beating your-fool-self about the bush. Where did you git the money fer the corn?"
Times had changed since the day the old man had thrown the whisky bottle at him, had changed the night he tried it again, with a loaded coffee pot, and Shad had hit him hard in the face, knocked him down and out for five minutes. The old man cowered in on himself, whining. "You ain't a-goan like hit, Shad. You just ain't a-goan to, I kin tell. You-"
Shad covered his smile in the darkness and pretended an impatience that he'd long since given up. "You goan come at it sometime tonight?" he demanded. "Or do I got me to listen to 'I ain't goan to' fer the next hour? What did you go and sell this time"
"I couldn't help it, boy. I was just a-sitting here a-rocking and a-waiting fer you to come home and a-tending my own nevermind, and a-rocking-"
"You done said that."
"-and, Shad-Shad, a thirst done come up at me like I'd ben down on my knees a-licking out a tobacco furrow, agoing at me and-"
"And so you went and sold the house to some passing beggar fer a dollar."
The old man became frantic at the suggestion. "No, I didn't, Shad! On my knees to God, I didn't! It was just that book of yourn I seen in on your bed. That one the Culver woman gived you, is all."
"Loant me," Shad amended.
"Well, anyhow, I gived it to Jaff Paulson because he tolt me his boy was learning to read, and he-and he gived me a dollar fer hit."
Shad had to chuckle. "You old fool. You know what that book were? T'were called Ulysses. Hit's a sex book, and Jaff's boy only ten."
"Well-" the old man mumbled in soggy confusion, "well-won't hurt him none, will it?" Abruptly he giggled a low sniggering sound. "Never went to hurt you and me, now did it, Shad?"
Shad went up the steps smiling. "Oh? When did you ever read it? I didn't know you could read, 'cepting fer whisky stickers."
The old man wagged a hand against the dark in protest.
Shad left him and went into the house.
He found a match, scraped his thumb over the head and applied the flame to the lampwick. The expanding saffron glow rammed the corners and angles of the rough room back into brown shadow. There wasn't much to the shanty: a table, two benches, fireplace, two beds, a hutch that was a dismal clutter of pots, pans, cans, and cold garbage. A ragged screen over the open window allowed a steady stream of mosquitoes to make for the oil lamp.
And there was a smell, one that was vaguely familiar. Shad stood still, reaching for the scent with his nose, and finally recognizing it. He shook his head in wondering admiration. That old devil, he said. But he wasn't totally amused. He went back to the rickety screen door.
"Pa." The hunched silhouette trembled, like a man being startled from a doze.
"You done had that girl in here again," Shad accused him. "That Estee."
Sitting there in the dark in his crabbed posture, he reminded Shad of a black beetle caught in a webby corner, not knowing quite where to run for safety.
"Well-well," the old man began. "Well, Shad-" and then the whine came into his voice again, defensive yet with a spark of righteousness, "-got to have me some pleasure from life, ain't I?"
"Not in my bed you ain't."
"I didn't never use your bed!" the old man protested indignantly. "Hit's a lie. Got me my own bed."
"Then why's mine all a-rumpled?"
The old man hesitated as if looking desperately for a last avenue of escape; finding none, he broke down.
"I couldn't help it, Shad. I pure-out couldn't help it. That Estee got her a stubborn streak wide as her black butt. When she come here, we done had us a few belts of corn, and then she plumb jumped in your bed. Oh, I told her to git! I sez to her, 'Estee, you black bitch,' I sez. 'You git quick outn there. That bed belongs to my boy Shad, and he don't hold truck with nigras.' I never seen me such a fool woman. Couldn't reason with her. Nossir! In your bed ner not a-tall."
Shad said nothing for a while. He thought about the Negro prostitute, Estee. She knew he didn't like her, and he knew that in her helpless little excuse for a brain she was striking back at him by sleeping with his pa in his bed. And what could the old man do about it? If she walked out on him, he'd have nothing. He looked down at the old man, feeling a sort of hopeless compassion, thinking, he's so god-awful weak he'd sell me out fer a whore and a jug of corn; and he'd cry about it and hate hisself while he was doing it-but he'd have it to do.
Then he thought about the money he'd found, and immediately it was like he'd lighted a lamp inside him, the way the warm glow of joy swelled his body. Got me to git outn here, he thought. Cain't stick it no longer. Got to ramble on to better things. He didn't really care, only asked out of curiosity. "What else of mine you sell so's to give that girl a dollar?"
The old man started along his whining trail again. Though his conscience secretly bothered him, he couldn't stand the deep holes Shad had dug in his self-esteem. And now he was hurriedly bringing wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of excuses to fill them up.
Shad, ironically amused, leaned on the door frame and looked out at the night, letting the old man take his own evasive time to reach the truth; he'd given Estee Shad's Saturday-night shirt, the blue silk one with the yellow buttons.
That's nice, Shad thought. That shore God is nice. The girl sleeps in my bed, and now she'll be twitching her butt around in my best shirt.
Suddenly he knew he couldn't stand the shanty or the old man another minute. He went out through the screen door and down the steps, saying, "I'm leaving, Pa. I'm going to be my own man."
The old man moved in his rocker, trying to come to an upright position. "What?" he called. "What's that you say? Leaving? Leaving here?"
"That's right." And it had to be fast. He was feeling sad and friendless, and it struck Shad as a funny sort of way for a man with eighty thousand dollars to feel.
The old man waited a bit, his mind wildly rooting down among the dead leaves of his active past for some of his old ferocity. Finding some, he started bellowing.
"You as good to go! Well, git on! Don't let me hamper you – just a poor, sick old man. Go on, walk out! Leave me cold! I don't care. I done took care a me afore you come, and I kin do hit after you gone. Walk right on out on your pa! Don't stop to worry none about him-poor sick old man. Just git. You done walked out on your brother-might as well to walk out on your pa."
For a moment Shad thought he'd blow up-grab the old man, shake him. But he didn't, couldn't.
"I didn't never walk out on my brother," he said quietly. "He's dead. Cain't you understand that, Pa? He's dead. I ben looking fer his body, that's all."
"Hit's a pure-out lie!" the old man cried. "You be Cain'ing your own brother! He's alive-I know he be. I seen him! I done tolt you and tolt you I seen him!"
"You done seen him down the neck of a bottle. Him and pink snakes and fist-size spiders and I don't know whatall trash. You got visitations of the brain from foundering yourfool-self in corn."
"Tain't so! Tain't so! I seen him a-standing one night on the porch, a-looking at me. And I seen him agin one night when I was a-rocking here. Down the road he come likn he always come, and he stopped by the fence to look at me; and when I called, 'Holly, ain't you goan come in?' he turned off and walked back into the swamp. I seen him in the flesh, I tell you! I seen him, and he's a-waiting out there fer you to come git him!"
"And I tell you he ain't alive. Cain't no man live alone in that swamp four years."
The old man shook his head from side to side in dogmatic self-pity. "That's all right, that's all right. Go on, s'git. Leave us both. I kin take care of myself, I reckon- somehow. Go on. Don't think none of us." He gave Shad a sly, covert look; then he shut up and sank himself deep in martyred misery; his silence and posture suggesting that all his life he'd done his best by his family and the world, and that now when he was old and sick the world and his unfeeling son turned against him.