“May-e! Gal!” He called her and felt for the pulse in her wrist.
She waited a little before she answered feebly, “Is you call me, July?” and put a blind hand out to feel for him. “My eyes is gone blind, July. Dey can’ see a bit. You done ruined me fo good.”
“Great Gawd, gal. I didn’t mean to hurt you so bad. Le’ me go for Auntie.” But she begged him not to leave her. She wanted him to stay by her. And he did, pleading with her to forgive him, promising her he would never do such a thing again; he was worried and fretted, so he forgot himself. After she was quiet and ready to sleep he sat by the fire a long time, staring at it and studying. Cinder had him conjured, poor fellow. That was his trouble. Cinder’s black hand had him all but out of his mind.
For three days Mary made like she was nearly dead. She stayed in bed, while July waited on her and cooked for her and washed her face and tended to her as though she were a baby. He thought she was crippled, and he could not bear for anybody to know he had done it. Once he wept with grief and shame, but Mary had learned her lesson too. A strong man’s hand can fall heavy, and the best way to deal with strength is to be weak and helpless. She was not able to fight with July. It was better to knuckle to him any day.
Maybe she could get Daddy Cudjoe to put a black hand on Cinder that would get the wicked slut out of July’s way. Mary felt that she would be willing to kill her if it came to the worst. There were ways, plenty of ways. Poison roots and herbs grew in the woods; pleasant-tasting teas could be made out of them. Cinder would drink a swallow or two and then shrivel up and die and nobody but Mary would know why. Still, teas are dangerous and hard to manage. Sometimes the wrong person drinks them.
Mary had strong sharp teeth, set in blue gums. If she could bite Cinder one time, one lone time, that would settle things. But Cinder had gums as blue as her own; Cinder’s teeth were just as sharp; Cinder’s sinews were like wire; and as quick as a whiplash. Mary’s mind milled one plan after another, over and over. None was easy enough to try. Misery was gnawing a hole deep down in her heart, making a dark place where her thoughts stayed most of the time. Her blood got thin, her body weak and her skin grew ashy and pale.
XI
Summer’s time was out, yet it tarried stubbornly on the plantation. The deceitful season had fooled everything into striving for the utmost growth and fruitfulness and now, when harvest-time had come and cooler nights and paler days would bring a gentle ripening, summer hung on, ruining everything it had wrought. The cotton leaves were wilted and hanging limp, no longer able to hide the tight-packed bolls or to shade the tender new squares and late blossoms from the scorching sun. The pleasant rustling of corn blades had changed to a harsh complaining crackling, as the fodder was slowly withered. The roads cast up sullen clouds of red-hot dust to hang between them and the sky, and quiet little shady paths puffed up breaths of dry mold if the lightest footstep were laid on them. Instead of scratching for worms and hunting tender seeds to fatten themselves for the fall laying season, the fowls sprawled under the houses, panting through open beaks, holding their wing feathers far out from the down on their breasts. The birds left the high trees and went to stay near the water streams, singing blithely enough in the dawns but leaving the days silent after the sun swallowed up the dew.
The sky lifted high and far away. The tall pines stood still against it, every needle shining in the sun, and moaning softly with the slightest stir of the hot air. The old oaks shielding the cabins’ roofs from the burning sun must have sunk their roots deep in the ground to reach moisture, for their leaves stayed glossy and green, and the long moss hanging from their branches kept its fresh grayness.
The people in the Quarters gave up sleeping in beds and spread quilts on the floors beside open doors and windows. Even if snakes and bugs and spirits walked in the darkness, the risk must be faced to get whatever coolness the night brought.
The river was shrunken, the lakes were dry, the clouds moved overhead white and empty. The water in the rice-fields lay as smooth as ice and as silent as death as the tides kept it rising and falling. The air drifted in heavy-scented with withered cotton blossoms, shriveled figs and grapes falling off the vines to waste.
Mary was unhappy, restless, disturbed, uncertain what to do. She must make up her mind to do something for she could not go on any longer pretending she did not feel things that were breaking her heart. Even the plantation seemed different. Those hot fields, spread out before her eyes, looked silent and cruel. They offered her no hope for better things, no way of escaping sorrow.
She had been married less than a year, yet cold fear made her heart shiver when she thought of July and the change that had come over him this summer. As soon as first dark came he would go, leaving her alone, sleepless, wretched, to spend the long lagging nights as best she could. Misery dimmed the sunshine, blackened the shade, blighted her pleasure in the flowers and trees and in all the things she loved best.
Today, instead of being noisy and gay with fun,
