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.
'Sweet Lord,' Shad said. It always seemed to end like this, he thought-them shouting at each other. He couldn't reason with the old man; but he couldn't really blame him for the way he felt. Holly had been his first- born.
'Look here,' he said quietly, 'I didn't mean I was leaving the Landing. Just meant I couldn't stick it here no more. Goan find me a shanty and be my own man. I'll still be looking fer Holly's body. You understand me, Pa?' The old man didn't stir. His head was down.
Shad frowned and tugged one of the bills from his jeans, placed it in the old man's hand. 'Here,' he said embarrassed. 'Don't go to spend it all on corn and that bitch hear? Git you some food fer the shanty.'
The old man's fingers worked on the bill, criniding it, recognizing and liking its tactile quality. He unfolded the bill and held it close to his watery eyes. 'What-what be it, Shad?'
'See if it don't go fer a ten dollar.'
The old man's heart skipped a beat, flagged, choking him, then continued its laboured rhythm. 'A ten dollar?' he echoed incredulously. 'Shad,' he whispered, 'that Culver woman went and gived you more money?'
Shad hesitated, then nodded. 'Yes. But you keep your big mouth shut on it, hear? Don't want it to git around and have no shotgun-toting husband chasing me.'
The old man's hand closed on the bill and he hugged the fist to his withered chest. He rocked slowly, staring out at the yard where the moon sparkled on the bottle that was in the sand.
'See you,' Shad said.
The old man said nothing. He rocked.
4
At an angle from the bend in the road was a darkly shadowed sand road that led through hummock and scrub oak and past the east edge of an orange grove down to another shanty. Shad shuffled along through the sand, his thoughts in tune with the shadows and the melancholy stillness of the road.
A low human sound made a ripple in the surface silence, and the night magic broke for him. He stopped and looked off into the dark thicket. It throbbed toward him again like an echo that comes slowly, hollow and mild; but he caught it. It was a husky, sensual giggle. Then he heard a forcible whisper, implying false anger.
'You want to hurt me?'
Shad frowned, testing the girl-voice in his memory. It just might be Dorry Mears. And instantly a swath of absurd jealousy cut through him, not because Dorry had ever meant anything to him, but because she was young and pretty and full of tease. He listened.
