One bright, cold day in January she drove out and, not finding me near the house, walked on down through the fields to where I was working in the new ground, cutting and piling logs and downed limbs and burning them.
I was swinging the ax lustily in the thin sunlight of early afternoon. It was cold, only a few degrees above freezing, but I had my shirt off and sweat was glistening on my arms and back. I had forgotten about the soggy and uninspiring cold lunch I had brought from the house this morning and was wrapped up in the acute pleasure I always get out of violent exercise, when I heard an amused voice behind me.
“You look like Thor. And I guess you haven’t got any brains at all.”
I turned around and Mary was standing by the burning logs, smiling at me.
“Hello,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”
She had on a big wrap-around coat and she pulled it closer now, with the collar turned up about her throat, and shivered.
“From town. It’s a place where intelligent people live, with heat and comfortable living rooms. It replaced the Stone Age, but I guess you haven’t heard about it yet.”
I rolled up a short section of log and spread my jacket on it for her to sit on in front of the fire. She stretched her long, silk-clad legs out in front of her and I notice how out of place they looked here and how the sharp heels of her slippers poked into the damp ground.
“For God’s sake, put on your shirt, you idiot,” she said in exasperation. I slipped into it and squatted down on my heels near her. She opened the paper bag she was carrying and brought out a thermos bottle and some sandwiches and a large piece of cake.
“I brought you some lunch. I wish you’d get married, so I wouldn’t have to keep on feeding you.”
She sent me a sly glance as I bit into a sandwich. “By the way, how is Angelina these days?”
It was a little sudden for me, but I think I was completely deadpan and offhand as I said, “Angelina? Oh, she’s all right, I guess. Why?”
“I just wondered if you were seeing much of her. She lives right across the bottom over there, doesn’t she?”
“That’s right,” I said. “The old Eilers’ place.”
I still couldn’t understand what she was driving at. If she suspected there was something going on between Lee and the Harley girl, she wouldn’t be so happy about it.
“Can she cook?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, you need a girl who can cook.”
“Is that right?”
“Are you really serious about her, Bob? Have you been holding out on us?”
“No.” I said. “What started all this, anyway?”
“I heard Lee say something about her one time a couple of weeks ago and the next morning I asked him who she was. He said she was the oldest Harley girl and that you were sort of taken with her.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, he wiggled out of it that time, I thought. “He’s exaggerating, Mary. It’s nothing like that. I’ve just been—oh—helping her with her schoolwork.”
“Helping her with her schoolwork? What’s she studying? Blocking? Or off-tackle plays?”
She went on back to the car after a while and I worked hard the rest of the afternoon trying to get a dead hickory chopped in two so I could roll it into the fire. But I kept thinking about Lee. He still had that girl on his mind, especially when he was drinking. Mary hadn’t said he was drunk when he spilled it, but she didn’t have to; it was obvious.
Eight
It was around the middle of January that I first met Jake. It was around seven of a cold night, with a mist of fine rain, and I was sitting before the fireplace in the back bedroom, whittling out a handle for a grubbing hoe and feeling a little low and alone, when I heard a car pull up in front of the house. I stopped to listen.
“Hello,” came a shout from the front yard.
I went down the dark hall and looked out. There was an old Ford touring car huddled under the bare trees.
“Come on in,” I called out
We went back into the warmth and light of the bedroom and I got a look at him.
“My name’s Hubbard,” he said, grinning. “Jake Hubbard. Yo’re Mr. Crane, ain’t you?”
I liked the grin. “My name’s Crane,” I said. “But it’s Bob Crane, not Mister.”
He laughed and I shoved a chair toward him for him to sit down. He was about my age, maybe a couple of years older, but smaller, and his movements were fast and decisive and there was an easy assurance about his eyes. He had a big chew of tobacco in his right cheek and now he sat down on the very front edge of the chair like a bird poised for flight, held his hands out toward the fire, and spat a brown stream into the ashes.
He had on new overalls and an old leather jacket, patched at the elbows, and a cap of the type that has ear flaps, and he had the flaps pulled down over his ears now. There was a pleasant homeliness about his face, with its oversized bony nose and the stubble of tough black beard and the long sideburns that came down almost to the bottoms of his ears.
“I hear you goin’ to farm this here place,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“It’s good land. Make a half bale to the acre.”
I nodded, waiting. I thought I knew what was on his mind and was trying to size him up.
“I looked her over a couple times,” he went on, rubbing his hands briskly together and holding them out toward the blaze.
“You live around here?” I asked. I had never seen him before,
“Nope. I’m from Gregg County. Jest a-visitin’ kinfolks. The Harperses, down the big road about four mile.”
I lit a cigarette and waited. He refused one, gesturing smilingly toward the swollen lump in his cheek.
“I’m sorta lookin’ around for some land to farm on the halves. Ain’t made a crop now in a couple years. Been doin’ public work mostly, workin’ on the highway over by Mineola, an’ some shingle-mill work, but it ain’t like havin’ a crop somehow. Now, I see you got a good tenant house over acrost the road, leastwise it would be with a little fixin’ up an’ a few window glasses, an’ you got more land than you can work by yourself. I kinda reckoned we might make a dicker.” He stopped and looked at me questioningly.
“Sounds all right to me,” I said. “I’ve been looking around for a tenant. You’ve farmed before, I suppose?”
“All my life except the last couple years. Give me a good pair of mules, ain’t air man I ever seen can plow more ground in a day or do it any better.”
“I think we could make a deal,” I said.
“You got any stock yet? What kind of mules you got?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t bought any yet. Haven’t had much time to look around, and thought I’d wait until I needed them.”
“Fine,” he said. “If’n we get together on this, mebbe I can help you pick ‘em out. I know mules like I know myself, an’ we want good mules with a lot of the old Ned in ‘em. None of them old poky bastards that’s dead from the ass both ways.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
He stood up abruptly. “Well, s’pose I come over tomorrow an’ we work it out. I better hightail now before the Old Lady freezes out there.”
“Good God,” I said. “Is your mother put there? Why didn’t you bring her in?”
“Not Ma,” he laughed. “My wife. I call her the Old Lady. She was kinda bashful about comin’ in, not knowin’ you an’ all.”
“Bring her in, man,” I told him. “I’ll warm up some coffee.”