Old Powder Man Read Online Free Page B

in it. Now, many had been to school and checked their accounts or paid cash. But Mr. De Witt, the manager, was a step ahead; he had their medical bills juggled; who could estimate what a doctor’s time or medicines were worth? No one was ever free enough of debt to quit the mill. A few men had run away.
    Deal left the store and several ladies came in to spend the morning talking to Poppa and looking at patterns. Son went out for air once, looked past the houses opposite, beyond cotton fields and toward the river where on clear, still days he could hear the Negroes yelling and cursing as they cut and loaded logs; they were put on the Rankin freight train that ran twice a day from Marystown to the river and back. Coming into town, the train stopped to unload mail and supplies for the commissary, then ran on to the river to be loaded with lumber for the mill. Extra logs were dumped into the bayou where they floated all winter long like somnolent brown alligators, bumping each other slightly. Loaded with cut lumber the train returned to Marystown; connections could be made from there anywhere, via Memphis, Delton or St. Louis. One year, the train was made up of a hundred flatcars, half loaded with sixty bales of cotton each, the rest with lumber. Between Marystown and the river were eight little villages; at all of them people came out to see the hundred flatcar train, to wave and yell.
    Two slow passenger trains a day ran the same route, the only ones in this part of Arkansas. Begun by old Mister Jeff, the trains belonged to the Rankins too. Before them, people and logs travelled on the river. Today Son heard only lumber being stacked at the mill with a sound like, Clam. Clam: one plank being stacked on another.
    Throwing away his cigarette, turning back to the store, he glimpsed Cally in their yard. Stooped, she coaxed a fire under the black iron pot where clothes boiled and bubbled like a witch’s brew. As Son watched, she stuck a heavy, black cast iron skillet into the fire, squatted, balancing it. As long as the fire burned, the skillet would stay and by degrees its crinkled stubborn black crust would melt into the fire. Removed finally, the skillet would have the same shiny, blue-black look like coal it had had the day Cally bought it. She recoiled from a sudden spurt of coals, shielded her face, and standing, eased her back by pressing her hands into its center. She went inside and Son jerked open the commissary door, slammed it, and went angrily behind the counter, his face burning as if it had been thrust near the fire. That’s not going to be Lillian, he swore. It’s not going to be Lillian or any kids we ever have. Somehow, things had to be different.
    Like Cally, the knowledge had come too late he should not have quit school when he did. He had quit when he was fourteen years old, after the eighth grade, to run away from home: had done it to spite Cally, he guessed. She had drummed into him from the time he could remember that he had to finish high school. When he got ready to spite her that was the only way he knew how. From the time he was twelve, he worked every summer and Christmas vacation, earning his own way, and she took away most of his pay. One Christmas he had worked for a jewelry store, famous for finding old silver, that had a large mail order business; he worked in the receiving office and felt important because most of the business was with a dealer in San Francisco. At Christmastime the store was so busy he often worked till midnight, spent the night on a little cot the manager set up. At five-thirty he was up again; he was making ten dollars a week, adequate then. Cally said he was a young boy, liable to be reckless with the money; she took it to keep him from spending it. He believed her reason but one day knew she was not going to take his pay anymore. After work he went down to the south part of town and got on a freight train going to Kansas City, where he changed onto another going