are you, Mitch?”
He stopped. “Sore at you? What for?” It must have been years since he had even seen Prentiss.
“You know—about Sewell, on the radio. You got mad at me.”
“Oh,” he said, suddenly remembering. “No. Of course not. It don’t matter now.”
“I saw the team out there, and thought maybe I’d unhitch and feed the stock for you. What with the trouble and all . . .”
Mitch stood still for a moment in the gathering darkness. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks, Prentiss. You had any supper yet?”
“Well, no. I was just on my way home.”
“We’ll see if we can fix something. Did you see Jessie?”
“Just for a minute.” Prentiss stopped, and then went on with an awkward and embarrassed tenderness in his voice, “She’s all tore up about it, Mitch.”
“Yes,” Mitch said. “I know.” They went into the kitchen. Jessie had the lamps lighted and was starting to build a fire in the cookstove. She was putting paper into the firebox and stopped suddenly, reaching into it for the scraps of the picture. Mitch watched her holding them in her hand, and when she looked up and met his gaze he shook his head.
“It ain’t nothing, Jessie,” he said. “Burn it.”
She shook her head slowly and went on fitting the four pieces loosely together in the palm of her left hand. Then, abruptly, she changed her mind and dropped them back into the firebox with an infinite and defeated weariness and put a match to the paper.
Mitch looked at her, so small and beaten there in the lamplight, and felt the twisting of pity inside him. “Don’t take it so hard, Jessie,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
Then, for the first time, she spoke. “She never had a chance! Nobody ever gave her a chance!” she cried out brokenly. “Sewell didn’t. And you— I hope you feel the way you ought to, after the things you did to her!”
“I didn’t, Jessie! I tell you, I didn’t do anything to her. Maybe she said I did, but you never did ask me!”
“Oh, stop it! When she’s dead now and can’t say anything—”
Mitch stopped, realizing the futility of it. Even if Jessie would believe him, it wasn’t a thing he would want to do.
They ate supper in silence, both the men watching Jessie anxiously but leaving her alone. Cass had not returned.
When Prentiss got up to leave, Mitch asked, “Where’s Cal?”
Prentiss looked embarrassed. “Why, at home, I reckon.”
“You tell him I want to see him.”
“All right,” Prentiss said hesitantly. “I’ll tell him.”
Mitch saw the doubt in his face. “I ain’t going to do anything. I just want to tell him something.”
“All right.”
After Jessie had gone to bed he walked the twelve miles to town in the dark. Sewell had died on the way to town, they said at the hospital, but they let him go in for a minute. Sewell’s face was very white except for the large brown freckles, and it looked peaceful and still now with all the violence gone. After a while he went back out and sat on the courthouse steps all night smoking cigarettes and waiting for morning to find out about claiming the body for burial.
Nobody seemed to know what had become of Cass.
Twenty-seven
On the clay hillside, drying now and baking in the sun, they lowered the crude box into the ground. Jessie turned away as the first clods fell with their hollow sound, and walked silently through the small scattering of neighbors and the idly curious who had gathered for the funeral.
Mitch swung around and followed her, still-backed and austere in his clean, faded overalls, and helped her climb into the wagon. She said nothing, nor did he as lie climbed up and took the lines. If she’d just cry, he thought. If she’d only cry, it would help her.
Joy’s family had come from Louisiana to claim her body. Sewell’s funeral was done now, and Cass had not come. Maybe he didn’t know, Mitch thought. Wherever he is, maybe he didn’t hear about it.
He gathered up the lines and prepared to shake the sad-eared and drowsing mules awake when Cal Jimerson walked over from the gathering.
“Maybe Jessie’d like to ride back with us in the car, Mitch,” he said. “It’s a long ride in the wagon.”
Mitch turned to her. “You want to, Jessie?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “But thanks, Cal. It was nice of you.”
“Thanks for offering,” Mitch said. He continued to look down at Cal with his eyes stern, but said nothing.
The other’s face began to redden under the scrutiny, “I hear you wanted to see me about something,” he said lamely, with a touch of defiance in his voice.
“That’s right,” Mitch said. “This ain’t the place for it, but I’ll tell you anyway.”
“All right,” Cal said uncomfortably. “Let’s have it.”
“Don’t you ever come on my place again when you’re drunk. You boys are always welcome, but I ain’t going to have any prowling around when you’re tanked up coming home from a dance. The next time you pull somebody out of a window it might be me.”
Cal shifted his feet with embarrassment and his face grew darker. “I reckon I just had a little too much. It happens to people.”
“Well, it’s past and done. I ain’t going to write no book about it. I just wanted it understood, then we’ll drop it.”
Cal looked up. “O.K., Mitch,” he said. “It was too bad about Sewell.”
“Yes,” Mitch said. “But that’s past and done too.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll see you.” Mitch gathered up the lines.
The mules leaned forward and the wheels turned, cutting the drying clay. Jessie sat very quietly beside him as they swung past the little church and started out toward the road.
“Mitch.”
He turned. “What is it, Jessie?” She’s growing up fast, he thought. She looks like a woman now, with her hair combed like that and wearing her Sunday dress.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. And then the dam broke and all of it let go in her at once. He put the lines down in the wagon bed under his foot and held her while she cried. The mules swung out on the road and started toward home without guidance, forgotten while he supported the small, shaking body with his arm until all the storm had passed.
She straightened up after a while and he held out the clean bandanna. “Here, Jessie,” he said gruffly, feeling the constriction in his throat and all the old inarticulate and thorn-protected love for her he would never be able to express in words. I reckon she knows, though, he thought.
“I—I guess I believed it, Mitch,” she said hesitantly, “I don’t know why.”
“It’s all right, Jessie. It don’t make no difference now.”
She was silent for a moment. “Why do you suppose she did it? Why, Mitch?”
“I don’t know. But she’s dead now. Let’s don’t talk about it.”
Her shoulders shook just once more, while she twisted the handkerchief helplessly in her hands and cried out the ending of the whole chapter of Joy, “But she
Mitch said nothing. Maybe she’s right, he thought. I guess I don’t know nothing about ‘em. I was worried about Jessie going off with her, but I reckon actually it wouldn’t have made no difference. Jessie was more growed
