CHAPTER TEN

I see it, Lord ,yes!! sees it and seeing it twists my head aside. Couldn't help it; Kate has a good aim, but for that. I moves. Though I meant to keep still, I moves! Anybody but Jesus Christ himself would have moved. I feel like the whole side of my face is smashed clear off. It hits me like hot lead so hot that instead of burning me, it numbs me. I'm laying there on the floor, but inside me I'm running around in circles like a dog with his back broke, and back into that numbness with my tail tucked between my legs. I feels like I don't have no skin on my face no more, only the naked bone. But this is the part I don't understand: more and the pain and numbness I feels relief. Yes, and to get some more of that relief I seems to run out from behind the windbreak again and up to where Kate's standing' with the axe, and I opened my eyes and waits. That's the truth. I wants some more and I waited. I saw her swing it, looking' down on me, and I sees it in the air and I holds my breath, then all of a sudden I sees it stop like somebody done reached down through the roof and caught it, and I saw her face have a spasm and I saw the axe fall, back of her this time, and hit the floor, and Kate spews out some puke and I close my eyes and waits. I can hear her moaning and stumbling out of the door and falling' off the porch into the yard. Then I heard her poking like all her guts is coming up by the roots. Then I looked down and saw blood running all over Mary. It was my blood, my face was bleeding'. That got me moving. I got to up and stumbled out to find Kate, and there she is under the cottonwood tree out there, on her knees, and she was moaning'.

"'What have I done, Lord! What have I done!'

"She's drooling green stuff and got to poking again, and when I went to touch her it got worse. I stood there holding my face and trying to keep the blood from flowing and wondered what on earth was going to m happen. I looked up at the morning sun and expected somehow for it to thunder. But it's already bright and clear and the sun coming up and the birds were chirping and I got more afraid then, than if a bolt of lightning had struck me. I yells, 'Have mercy, Lord! Lord, have mercy!' and waited. And there was nothing but the clear bright morning sun.

"But then nothing happened and I knew then that something worse than anything I ever heard about is in store for me. I must have stood there stark stone still for half an hour. I was still standing there when Kate got off her knees and went back into the house. The blood was running all over my clothes and the flies was after me, and I went back inside to try and stop it.

"When I saw Mary stretched out there, I thought she was dead. Ain't no colour in her face and she ain't hardly breath in'. She gray in the face. I tried to help her but I couldn't do no good and Kate won't speak to me nor look at me even; and I thought maybe she planned to try to kill me again, but she didn't. I'm in such a daze I just sat there the whole time while she bundles up the young'uns and took them down the road to Will Nichols. I could see but I couldn't do nothing.

"And I'm still setting there when she came back with some women to see Mary. "Won't nobody speak to me," though they looked at me like I'm some new kind of cotton-picking machine. I felt bad. I told them how it happened in a dream, but they scorns me. I got plumed out of the house then. I went to see the preacher and even him did't believe me. He told me to get out of his house, that I'm the most wicked man he has ever seen and that I better go confess my sin and make my peace with God. I left trying to pray, but I couldn't. I thought and thought, until I thought my brain was going to bust, about how I'm guilty and how I ain't guilty. I didn't eat nothing and I didn't drink nothing and couldn't sleep at night. Finally, one night, way early in the morning, I looked up and saw the stars and I started singing. I didn't mean to, I didn't think 'bout it, I just started singing. I didn't know what it was, some kind of church song, I guess. All I know is I ends up singing the blues. I sang me some blues that night ain't never been sang before, and while I was singing the blues I made up my mind that I ain't nobody but myself and ain't nothing I could do, but let whatever is going to happen, happen. I made up my mind that I was going back home and face Kate; yeah, and face Mary too.

"When I got here everybody thought I was done running off. There was a heap of women here with Kate and I ran them out. And when I ran them out I sent the young'uns out to play and locks the door and told Kate and Mary about the dream and how I'm sorry, but that what had happened had happened.

"How come you didn't go on away and leave us?" was the first words Kate said to me. 'Ain't you done enough to me and this child?'

" "I can't leave you,' I said. 'I'm a man and man don't leave his family.'

"She said, 'No, you ain't no man. No man would do what you did.'

" "I'm still a man,' I said.

"But what you going to do after it happened? Said Kate.

'After what happened?' I said.

'When your black abomination is birthed to bawl your wicked sin before the eyes of God!' (She must have learned them words from the preacher.)

" 'Birth?' I said. 'Whose birth?'

'Both of us. Me birth and Mary birth. Both of us birth, you dirty lowdown wicked dog!'

"That would killed me. I can understand then why Mary won't look at me and won't speak a word to nobody.

"If you're staying, I'm going over to get Aunt Cloe for both of us,' Kate said. She said, 'I don't aim to birth no sin for folks to look at all the rest of my life, and I don't aim for Mary to neither.'

"You see, Aunt Cloe is a midwife, and even weak as I am from this news, know I don't to want fool her with my womenfolk's. That would have been piling sin up on top of sin. So I told Kate, no, that if Aunt Cloe come near this house I'd kill her, old as she is. I'd done it too. That sinless to it. I walked out of the house and left them there to cry it out between them. I wanted to go off by myself again, but it didn't do no good trying' to run off from something' like that. It follows you wherever you go. Besides, to get right down to the facts, there wasn't nowhere I could go. I didn't have a crying dime!

"Things got to happening right off. The niggas up at the school, came down to chase me off and that made me mad. I went to see the white folks then and they gave me help. That was what didn't understand. I did the worse thing a man could ever do in his family and instead of chasing' me out of the country, they gave more help than they ever given any other coloured man, no manner how good a nigga he was. Except that my wife and daughter won't speak to me, I'm bender off than I ever been before. And even if Kate won't speak to me she took the new clothes I brought her from up in town and now she was genic some eyeglasses made what she been needing for so long. But what I don't understand is how I done the worse thing a man can do in his own family and 'stead of things getting bad, they got better. The niggas up at the school don't like me, but the white folks treats me fine."

HE was some farmer. As I listened I had been so torn between humiliation and fascination that to lessen my sense of shame I had kept my attention riveted upon his intense face. That way I did not have to look at Mr. Leo. But now as the voice ended I sat looking down at Mr. Leo's feet. Out in the yard a woman's hoarse contralto intoned a hymn. Children's voices were raised in playful chatter. I sat bent over, smelling the sharp dry odour of wood burning in the hot sunlight. I stared at the two pairs of shoe before me. Mr. Norton's were white, trimmed with black. They were custom made and there beside the cheap tan brogues of the farmer they had the elegantly slender well-bred appearance of fine gloves.