Time's End

THAT year the high river in early July took a good part of the corn crop. We have a saying: ‘The river gets one crop in three.’ We expect a high river. But we didn’t look for the unseasonal rains of August and September. We looked for bright hot days of blue and sun, full of clouds blown up like heaped baskets of cotton, and still hot nights when a sheet to keep mosquitoes off is too much covering. But in that year the rains came in July, and in August, and in September. It was the third bad year for cotton.

The seed sprouted in the opened boll. The sheeptail locks were beaten out of the bolls until the crop lay on the ground, matted with the dirt of the ground and matted with bits of stalk and drying leaves. It was a sorry crop — the cotton gone all to weed first, and then the little fruit of it lying, yellowmouldy, on the ground when the sun came out again in October.

It was like the end of a time. Especially to me was it like the end of a time. For I felt that I knew when the time had begun to end. It began to end ten years before, when Grandaddy Lipscomb died. It began to end because he had been patriarch to all of us — white and black. He had been the grand old gentleman of Lipscomb’s Beat; and he had done all the things that the enlegended gentleman of the Southland is supposed to do. And he had done something more: he had lived out his days upon the land, praying to his atheistic inwardness that the day of the land would return in his own time, and knowing, as he prayed, that the day was far. When he died, the time that he had fashioned began to end. The family spread like the beads of a broken necklace; and the Negroes spread in the same way.

Even old Mub’s many-generationed family disintegrated, though for a time she struggled to hold them there on the land. Old Mub was the oldest Negro in Lipscomb’s Beat; and, after the death of Grandaddy, old Mub was the oldest of all — white and black.

Ramon was the first of old Mub’s to leave the farm. I didn’t blame him. There was little hope of increase on any acre of the plantation, certainly none at all on the lower end, near the river, where Mub had been for seventy years. So when Ramon left I couldn’t blame him. But old Mub did. She hitched up a mule to her one-horse wagon, took her shotgun, and went into town, hunting Ramon. She found him at the fertilizer plant, where he had got a job; and she brought him home, back to the land.

Mub didn’t go after Ramon the second time. She didn’t go after Damon, nor Lena, nor Robelia — nor any of the others. Finally they were all gone — all except Glow. And Glow was the oldest of the ‘chilluns.’ She was the mother of Ramon and Damon. She herself was an old woman, though she would never, it seemed, be as old as Mub.

In the tenth year after Grandaddy died, old Mub and Glow were still on the place. The year was one of rains and sorry crops. It was the year when the time of Grandaddy Lipscomb, running down at last, came toward a beaten, washed, and moulded end.

Yet, even as men who sit up with the dead have thoughts very distant from death, so, in that autumn sorriness, we didn’t think always about the things lost. There was no way to quit. Year after year the earth grew warm; there was seed to drop. And there was always something in certain men that would not let them rest from seeing the ground grow green, from hoping against the rain or for it, from laboring n the sun and gathering whatever harvest came.

So we decided to turn the whole of the homeland into pasture, except for the part that would grow corn, and decided to do our cotton farming on the Granmere place just on the edge of town. We rented this cottonland under a long lease. It was some of the best in the county. It was rich red-brown dirt, the kind that grows fields heavy-white with long sheeptail locks of cotton. We moved all the tenants except Mub and Glow up to the Granmere place. November went by, and most of December. Still my father had not moved old Mub. I knew that he was waiting because he didn’t know how to tell old Mub. And I waited for the day when he would tell me to go and see old Mub and tell her how good the acres were on the Granmere place. He waited and I waited — into December.

Late of a December afternoon I turned my car out of the highway and into the field road that wandered, after a long time, to old Mub’s shack. The afternoon was hazy with fog and with smoke from woods fires. Where the land sloped downward toward the river, the evening deepened until there was a sadness about it that suited the quality of the time. I hunched my shoulders as I drove. The weather was not cold, but there was a chill in the air. It was making for the usual Christmas drizzle, I guessed.

Mub was on the porch of her shack when I drove into the little unworked spot around the house that was called ‘yard.’ Seeing Mub there, seeing her sitting there in her short-legged, hidebottomed chair, seeing the voluminous checkered gingham about her little bony body, seeing her wrinkled and now ageless face, I was struck with the unchangingness of her. It seemed there had been no change in Mub for as long as I could remember. And I could remember as far back as when I, rompered and barefooted, came and played in the yard with Ramon and Damon. Now, in the same toothless mumble with which she used to say, ‘Ain’ you ‘shame’, wettin’ yo’ new britches? Whyn’t you say?’ — with the same old pink-gummed chewing of words she said to me, ‘ Whut you doin’ in ‘is low-life swamp, suh?’

I got out of the car. I got out very slowly. I said, ‘No reason, Mub. No reason. Nothing in particular. Just riding about.’ I laughed as I reached the porch. Then I propped one foot on the porch, masterfully, the way I had seen Grandaddy and my father do many a time.

Mub pushed her lips together until they stuck away from her face like two thick stubby tongues. She chewed her gums. We used to say that she was ‘mubbing’ her words against her gums before she said them, because when she said words it was as if she had ‘mubbed’ them over before saying them. Finally she said, ’Cain’ tell me, cain’ tell ol’ Mub! Ain’ nobody go’ no bizniss ‘way down in ‘is swamp, not now. Use’ to have, though. Lotta bizniss.’ She ended her words in thin high cackling laughter. Her laughter stopped. Her face resumed its sunken quietness.

I said, ‘Where’s Glow?’

Mub looked away into the house, and then said, ‘Fixin’ us a little somepin’ t’eat. You come to see Glow?’

‘No, I was just riding about and had a little something to tell you.’

‘Tell me?’

‘Yes.’

I took out my knife, opened it, and began to whet the blade on my boot.

‘Ain’ takin’ no knife t’ ol’ Mub, I hopes.’

She laughed the high cackle.

I said, ‘Yeah, sure,’ in such a way she’d know I didn’t mean it. I dropped the knife, point first, toward the floor of the porch. The point went into the gray boarding; and the board was so loose that it shook with the knife in it.

‘You goin’ to teah up ol’ Mub’s house, if you don’t min’ out theah, suh.’

I laughed and pulled the knife loose and looked at the point of it.

‘Whut you come to tell ol’ Mub?’

I sat down on the porch and leaned against one of the two-by-four scantlings that supported the porch roof. I did not look at old Mub. I looked across the fields toward the river, where, in the low places, it was already almost night. I said, ‘Nearly about everybody on this plantation has moved up on the Granmere place, up near town.’

I did not look at Mub. She said, ‘White folks ain’ move’ out t’ big house, is they? Ain’ yawl still livin’ theah?’

I laughed quietly. ‘Oh sure . . . sure.’

I waited.

Mub said, ‘I thought yawl still in the big house.’

She waited.

I looked around at her and saw that she had been looking into the low places near the river the way I had. Her eyes shifted slowly until they were looking at me. They were big and globular, like animal eyes. They blinked once at me; then they closed. Mub still waited.

I said, ‘Good land on that Granmere place, Mub, good land. It’ll beat this land around here, going and coming.’ I laughed, and waved my hand toward the low dark acres. ‘Take ten acres of this stuff to raise a good fight. Not fit for cotton — corn either, most of it.’

I watched Mub’s eyes. They flickered like a chicken’s eyes, but they did not open. I was glad. I said, ‘Good little house up on the Granmere place, Mub. Heap better’n this house.’ Mub leaned forward and put her chin in her pinkbrown palms. She chewed a long time. Her eyes were still shut. She said, ‘What yawl aim to do wi’ this place?’

I hrew my feet to the ground, and as I did I dropped my knife. It fell into the little valley that years and years of raindrops, falling from the eaves, had fashioned. I picked up the knife. I said, vigorously, ‘This land ‘ll make a fine pasture. I can just see a herd of white-face’ stuff out yonder, deep in good clover.’

I made a bleating sound like a calf. Then I laughed and said, ‘Hear ‘em?’

I looked at Mub. She was looking across the fields, trying to see the white-faced stuff, not seeing it.

‘Yo’ paw say us got to move?’

I said, ‘Why, you and Glow will get rich up on that, good cottonland!’

‘When yo’ paw say us got to move?’

I flicked my knife downward. The point plunged into the gray dirt. Still stooping to retrieve the knife, I grunted, ‘Papa said he could get Curtis Roper to haul you next Friday morning — early.’

I sliced the ground. The metal and dirt made a gritty sound on each other.

I said, ‘You can tell this land’s soured. Too many rivers over it, too many high rivers.’

Mub mumbled deeply, ‘High water come one time in duh spring, run me out. Spent t’ night in ‘at big water oak yonner. Long time ago, when Ramon and Damon wuz chillun. Me’n’ Glow yonner all night in ‘at big tree, huh wi’ Damon an’ me wi’ Ramon. But us made a crop ‘at year.’

While I listened to her, I became suddenly aware of Glow. I did not know how long she had been standing in the shadow of the doorway, listening.

I said, ‘Evening, Glow.’

She came two steps out upon the porch. She said, ‘Evenin’, Mist’ John.’

Mub turned her head. ‘I thought you cookin’ us somepin’ t’ eat.’

Glow was as old as my father, but she was not old. She was tall and bronzen and proud. She lifted herself slightly in herself and said to Mub, ‘It ready.'

Her voice did not go with her angle of head. She looked from Mub to me, and said, ‘You comin’ wi’ that Curtis Roper? ‘

Mub said quickly, ‘Co’se he comin’ wi’ Mist’ Curt, Glow. Now you lemme talk.’

Glow said, ‘Hunh,’ in a thick way that did not go with her long brown face and tall proudness. She stepped backward toward the door. Her eyes were on something behind and beyond me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the great-boughed oak where Glow and Mub had stayed the night a long time ago.

I said, ‘You never told me about that high water, Mub, the one that ran you into the tree — like a monkey.’ I laughed.

Glow didn’t laugh, nor Mub. Mub said, ‘Lot I ain’ tol’ you, Mist’ John. Lot ‘at nobody ‘cept me and dead folks don’ know.’

From the doorway Glow said, ‘Glow ain’ dead! Glow know all you know.’

‘Hush up yo’ mouf, woman! Go on in ‘at house to yo’ kitchen!’

Glow said, ‘Hunh!’ again. But she left the doorway; and there was no way of knowing whether she was still in the shadows, because, even if she had gone into the kitchen, her bare feet would have made only a whishing sound that we should not have heard. So I looked for Mub’s feet and saw that she was barefooted, too. Her feet, like fiveheaded flat things frightened of me, were almost hidden under the great gingham skirt. The toes were broad and were hard-shelled with big gray-pink nails.

Mub said, ‘Yeah, Mist’ John, lot I done seen since I bin heah. I bin heah so long hit seem lak I owns dis lan’. Hit seem lak I bin heah turr’ble long, plantin’ an’ wukkin’ an’ takin’ in, walkin’ dem furr’s, tennin’ dis lan’. ‘Clah, hit seem lak I bin heah fuhevuh!’

Both of us were quiet under the sombre tones that had been her own speaking. It seemed that while we were silent the evening drew deep shadows out of the riverland and pulled them around the house and around us.

I said, ‘I better be getting on back, Mub.’

She said, ‘Dis low-life swamp no place fuh folks after night come on.’

I said, ‘I bet you’ll be glad to get out of it.’

She didn’t answer. I moved in the deep twilight toward my car. I heard her getting to her feet laboriously, agedly. Then she said, ‘You bettah be sho’ an’ come wi’ dat. Mist’ Curt. He ain’ no man to git on right, wi’ nigger folks.’

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to. She knew I’d come with Curtis. She knew I’d be there early Friday morning, helping Curtis move her out of the low-life swamp and into the high red-brown cottonland.

The last of night and first of morning had a strange brooding quality in it when Curtis and I turned out of the highway and into the field road that would wander until it came to Mub’s cabin. In the east, toward which we rode, there were some stars, curiously near and bright against the soft sky. The air was moist and chilled. It had a sharp quality that burned in the lungs.

Curtis found a cigarette in the pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Got a match?’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Have a cigarette?’ Curtis said.

‘Nope — just had,’ I said.

The big truck bumped over the field road. Its pointing headlights swept in a huge arc as we turned at a section corner and started southward down a land line. The fields were drab and dead under the white light.

I said, ‘Lot of difference in land between December and April.’

Curt laughed harshly. He struck the match I had given him. The flaring flame boxed in the cab with light, boxed it in from the half-light in the world around. I glanced at Curt; saw his sharp features, the tight certainty of mouth, the little dark eyes, the thin beakish nose; saw the things about him that had always made me hate him a little; saw again the expression that to me was cruelty.

Then the match went out, and the world spread away in dawn before us again.

Curt said, ‘Damn the land and farming and all that’s tied up in it. Gimme a good truck and a load to haul.’ He laughed again, and then dragged deeply at his cigarette.

I said, ‘I guess we’ve been over that enough. I know what you like: something brainless, something that doesn’t grow and hasn’t got any feeling, something like a hunk of machinery to push up and down a highway all day long, something that don’t ever change in a natural sort of way.’

Curt puffed a huge cloud of smoke into the cab. ‘Aw hell, John! You sound like Grandaddy Lipscomb!’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Hell, hell! Skip it!’

We dropped into a sudden strained silence that was yet full of the rumbling of the truck.

Then the lights of the truck pictured the box cabin sharply as we came down the field road toward it. The gray weathered boards, the yellow clay-stone chimney and pillars, the well box near the back, the wooden-shuttered windows, the shingled roof with the shingles dry and curling away like old, old feathers.

Curtis laughed shortly, harshly, in a grunting of air.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I was thinking — the difference between that shack and the one on the Granmere place. They’ll have to get use’ to it. It’ll be like movin’ into the big house.’ He laughed again.

I said, ‘Yeah, there’s a big difference.’

The truck rolled to a stop in the little yard. Curt looked about.

‘Tryin’ to figger how to back up to that porch. Ain’t much turning room.’

He pulled forward until the front bumper of the truck approached the bole of the ancient chinaberry tree. The cab top scraped in the lower limbs, cracked one of them with a sharp explosive sound.

Curt laughed. ‘Wreck the damn’ joint, won’t we?’

The truck moved backward on the little house until finally the body ground with a scraping, then a crunching sound against the porch.

‘You needn’t tear it up,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ Curt laughed. ‘This baby would push that matchbox right over.’

I reached down in the dimness and turned the switch key. ‘Think you’re a damned tank unit?’ I said.

‘Aw, go to hell, John,’ he grumbled.

We got out.

The morning was velvet-soft and quiet about us, now that the motor was stilled. The east was beginning to take shape in dimness.

They had come out upon the porch — Mub and Glow. They were dark shadows, watchful, mysterious.

Curt spoke first. ‘Betcha ain’t got half a load, Mub.’

They said nothing. Their silence was cutting and impious to Curt.

‘Ain’t you two damn’ niggers awake yet? Good morning,’ he said, commandingly.

They mumbled in low sullen tones.

Curt said to me, ‘Them niggers better not mess with old Curt.’

He climbed onto the porch; snapped on his flashlight, switched the beam of light about as if it were a pointing, imperious finger; strode past the two women, and went into the shack. His booted feet made loose boards rattle.

I climbed onto the porch. Glow took a step forward. ‘Mist’ John?’

Mub turned on her. ‘You, Glow, hush!’

Glow didn’t shrink away. But she was silent.

Curt is came out upon the porch again. ‘No more stuff than they got, John, we could knock down the house an’ carry it along, too. Let’s get it loaded.’

He flashed the beam of light aimlessly around the yard and the porch. Then he said, ‘One of you hold this light for us.’

He stepped toward Glows shoved the light at her. He was watching Mub. I was watching Glow. For a moment I thought she would brain him with that heavy light. I tensed inside myself, almost jumped to catch her hand.

Then it was over. The moment was gone. I said, ‘It’s getting so light out here we don’t need much of a light.’

Curt said, ‘It’s blacker ‘n the inside of a cow in there. Well, let’s go, Johnnie. I ain’t got the whole damn’ day, you know.’

It seemed that, for a long stretching moment, the four of us were there upon that little porch in the freshness and the half-light of early morning, listening, all four of us, to the heavy nothingness of the time and the place.

Then, a cautious touch was on my arm. I turned. Mub, shrunken and old, looked up at me.

‘Mist’ John?’

‘What?’ I said, a curious tightness in my throat.

‘Hit look lak I jes’ cain’ do it nohow.’ ‘What?’

‘ Seem lak I bin heah too long — done growed roots — an’ cain’ pull loose.’

Her eyes were wide and wondering.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I jes’ cain’ leave dis heah place, Mist’ John, not noway. Got to stay heah till I dies. Hit seem lak I bawn to live an’ die heah, right heah.’

Curtis’s short rough laugh rocked jarringly against the calm deep tones of her voice. I looked at him and said suddenly, ‘Shut up!’ He hushed.

Glow opened her mouth to add words. But Mub put up bony brown fingers. ‘Lemme talk, hon.’

I said, ‘ You mean you’re going to stay in this place — starving, losing out, making failures — when you got ten acres of the Granmere place waiting?’

Her gums showed, pinkish-dark and old. She said, ‘Seem lak I bin heah so long I owns dis lan’. Hit seem lak I b’longs heah. I been heah so turr’ble long.’

Curtis’s booted feet took heavy steps toward us. He stood directly before me. ’You mean you’re goin’ to stand up there and let that black nigger witch tell you what she’s goin’ to do and ain’t goin’ to do?’

His voice grated against the early part of the day; and the masterful way his thumb hung in his belt angered me. I hated him now as much as I had ever hated him, as much as when we were twelve and thirteen and he was the bully among all of us cousins, all of us grandsons and granddaughters of the one man called Lipscomb. I hated him too for being a truck driver who made more money at truck driving than I did at farming.

I said, ‘Keep your mouth shut, or take that damned truck and get it off this place!’

He looked at me in surprise — and silence. His thin mouth opened slightly.

At my elbow Mub said, ‘I di’n’t mean no harm! I di’n’t mean no harm! Hit jes’ heah in my soul. Cain’ lea’ dis place.’ In her voice was strange puzzlement at her own certainty of feeling.

Curtis, crouched in front of me, was saying, ‘Maybe you want to put me and my damned truck off. Hunh?'

Mub’s breath jumped into her. ‘Oh, Lawd, Lawd! Don’t yawl fight heah on ol’ Mub’s porch! Oh, Lawd!’ She pulled at my arm. I shook her loose.

A new feeling was in me: I felt that there was strength enough in me to put him off. I hated him enough for that.

Mub wailed, ‘Ol’ Mub’ll leave heah! Ol’ Mub’ll lea’ dis place, if yawl’ll quit yawl’s fightin’.’

‘Glow ain’ leavin’. Glow stayin’.’

The voice of the tall bronze woman was hard and prideful. All of us looked at her.

Mub said, ‘Glow, chile!’ There was fear in Mub’s voice.

Curtis stepped toward Glow. ‘Gimme that flashlight!’

‘I’ll gi’ it to you side yo’ head.’

I said, ‘Glow!’

She didn’t look at me.

All three of us sprang together at Glow. Curtis reached her. A swift movement of his hand — he wrenched the light from her, struck at her. She raised an arm. The light glanced off it. Curtis stepped back.

‘White-blooded—!’ he said.

She stood away from him, taller than he was, prouder than he. Her lips curled as in a smile. But there was no smile in her voice. She said, ‘Maybe I whiteblood’, maybe I -. But I mo’ Lips-

comb than you.'

I caught his arm as it went up. I said, ‘Don’t hit my niggers, Curtis!’

He whirled, jerked loose, made for me. I swung. And I felt the thing I had always wanted to feel: the hard gristly grinding of my knuckles into the giving flesh of his face. I struck again with my right, and caught the descending flashlight on my left forearm. The arm went dead. But I swung again with my right; saw him stagger down the loose boards of the porch toward the edge, and hit him again as he fell away from me toward the ground.

He reached for his knife as he got up. Swiftly I brought my own out, heard the metallic click of the blade, saw the momentary flash of moving light on the shiny steel. I waited for him to come toward the porch.

He stood there in the yard, blood showing around his mouth. When he spoke the blood in his mouth made him blubber as if he were crying. But he wasn’t crying. He said, ‘Don’t come at me, Johnnie. I’ll cut you’ th’oat — like a pig.’

He backed away from the house. He said, ‘You can get some nigger-lover to move ‘em, but not me.’

He spat blood onto the ground.

None of us said anything to him. We watched him leave. The throbbing motor of the truck beat against us like a huge mechanical heart. Then, after we had waited, silent, long enough, the truck was gone, bumping up the field.

I stepped down to the ground. I said, ‘Dammit, Mub, I guess you’ll have to stay here and starve and climb trees to get out of high water. Being as you’re so hell-bent on it, I don’t give a damn. Papa won’t either. He’ll hope you drown.’

I looked up at Mub. Her ageless crinkled face smiled foolishly on me. ‘Yassah, Mist’ John, hit purty turr’ble in ‘is low-life swamp — purty turr’ble.’

I picked up a splintered piece of the porch and began to whittle at it. I didn’t look at Glow, or say anything to her. I had only the impression of her, quiet, tall, bronze, standing behind old Mub.

I said, ‘I’ll get on back,’ and turned, and started walking across the yard toward the field road.

The road went up a slope, and on each side of the road were the brown dead fields of December. In the sorriness of the fields there was the end of a time. But as I went up the slope the day broadened and was liquid pale over the land, and the east reddened toward sunrise. And there was a feeling in me that there was a something which would not die, even when December was in the land and spring was far through frost and desolation from us. This was time’s end; but the end was a bitter, fighting end. And there would remain something enough to reclaim the land and make of it earth again.

At the top of the slope I turned and looked back toward the house of Mub and Glow. I saw them go slowly from the porch into the house — the tall woman first; the little ageless one last: both of them old and going toward death there on the land that was theirs because they had lived out their days upon it.

And I was glad. For I was young and full of strength, and the morning was bright in the land.