The Farmer's Wife

by EMMETT GOWEN

THIS fellow, I lived on his place thar. Best durned fellow I ever cropped for. But he and his wife was in a trouble and mess. That was at the bottom of it all.

One morning Dee and I were out thar in the barn puttin’ the harness on the mules and I heared a noise up in the loft over my head.

I said, “You hear that, Dee? What the devil’s making that racket up thar?”

“Sounds right scairy,” Dee said.

And I just stepped out thar and looked up where I could see in the barn loft, and he was comin’ out of thar.

“Mr. Henry,” I said, “what the hell are you doing up thar in that hay this time of morning?” “John, I slept there.”

Then he owned up to it. Been sleeping thar for the longest. Did you ever hear the beat of that? That good man sleeping up in a barn like a tramp. And Lord knows what he’d been doing for vittles. I said, “Mr. Henry, you had any breakfast?” Said he hadn’t.

So I hollered to the house and said, “ Dovey, you-all cook up Mr. Henry some breakfast.”

After that, he et with us all the time. Beatinest durn thing ever I seed in my life. Him with them two big farms, and half a dozen houses on them for his tenants, and his house a big fine brick one — and him sleeping in a barn! And that land was all rich river-bottom ground, grew everything you could think of — we had the best garden there we ever had on any place I ever worked on — and fruit. Dovey had a hundred cans of fruit. That was worth the most of anything we had when the house burned down.

He was the beatinest and the eatinest durn man I ever seed. Dovey’d make up biscuits and after she’d cut them out she’d just wad the balance of the dough up and pat it out and that’d make a big old biscuit, as big as my two fists. He’d call it “the grandma.” Would say, “Dovey, pass me the grandma.” He’d butter that. He’d eat a pound of butter a meal. Well, he’d put a half a pound in this big old biscuit and lay it down beside his plate for the butter to melt. Then, when he’d et a big meal for anybody, he’d put the grandma on his plate and take and eat it with a knife and fork.

He’d a eat us out of everything except he was the best durn fellow I ever seed in my life. He was so fair with us that we could make enough cropping his place to afford to feed him, you see.

Why, he was always pulling a dollar out his pants to pay for something he seen Dovey needed. Or just as apt he’d give twenty-five dollars to Louise. She was fourteen then. She just loved him. We all liked him. You never seen a finer fellow.

He had a jealous nature. That was the main cause of that mess he was in with his wife. The way the trouble started, his girl — I reckon she was about seventeen and just the age to want to go to dances and such — one night she said she wanted to go down the road to a neighbor’s house, about half a mile, thar, and borrow a book she needed in her studying. She was a great one for books and such, just like her mammy, but Henry he never did even read a newspaper, I reckon. He could read, but wouldn’t — not like me, I’d read if I knew how. Believe a man can learn a lot that way, but when I was a boy I had to be always in the crop and never did learn to read and write. This is how he was: he never moved by thinking. Done everything he done by the way he felt. In his mind he went through this life like a blind man groping along.

He didn’t want ‘em to go after that book. Said, “I reckon we are folks. If we want something, we can send after it.”

Miz Bedeen she said, “Well, I reckon Ella is big enough that if she wants to go git a book, she can go. And I’m a-goin’ with her!”

So they went off down the road. Rectly it got time for them to be back and they wasn’t back, so he went after them. He was so jealous he couldn t stand for either one of them to be out of his sight. They was both pretty. Miz Bedeen was the mother of nelly-grown children, but she was as pretty as aira girl you ever seen. The kind of woman, you’ve seen them — a man can look at ‘em and slobber like a dog looking at meat.

Well, sir, he went down the road thar and them neighbors had done gone to bed. He went up and down that road, and there wasn’t a house with lamps lit whar they might be visiting.

So he went home and got his shotgun and set out thar on the front porch waiting. They’d been to a dance. Slipped off and met Dave Childers, and he’d taken ‘em to a dance, but he didn’t drive right up to the house when he brought them home. Let them out down the road a piece.

So they walked up the driveway and thar he set with the shotgun.

She said, “Henry, what you doing, setting out here with a shotgun?”

“I aim to kill the man you been unfaithful to me with in the presence of my daughter,” was what he said. “And ruined my daughter in the presence of her mother.”

And she said, “Why, you fool, how dare you name a thing like that to us! Don’t you think a nelly-grown girl has a right to go to a dance some time?”

She taken that shotgun away from him and whipped him with it. Run him out of the house. Her a ordinary-size woman, and him a great big fellow. About my size, I reckon, and I’m six-footfour. Except he was a cripple. One foot kind of turned in, and that, leg short. That had been on his mind all his life, and he never knew he was as good as anybody else, because he started out thinking folks that didn’t have one leg shorter than the other was better than him.

So she whipped him with that shotgun like you’d whip a young’un with a switch. He wouldn’t lay hands in violence on a woman, you see. So that little-biddy woman could whip him.

She ran him off and that’s how come he slept in that old barn on them fertilizer sacks. Slept there till we cut the hay, and then in the hay till we caught him at it, and then we made him a bed in our house — just an old tenant house.

They was having trouble and about to have bad trouble.

2

I’LL tell you the kind of fellow he was. He was a man that didn’t care for anything. A barn door would fall down, and it just would never come into his mind to have it put back up. Before he would even move it out of the way, he’d lead a hoss over it to get in the barn. Or take the night he left the crib door open and the cows got in there and et up corn all night.

Next morning Dovey she said, ‘Mr. Henry, did you leave that crib door open last night?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Apt as not I did.”

“1 know you did,” Dovey she said, “because I seen the COWTS coming out of it this morning.”

But he didn’t give a damn.

He’d give a young’un five dollars in place of a nickel, and twenty-five dollars for what anybody else would give a quarter for. He loved children. That shows he was a good man, or does it? Come to business, he’d bargain with you like a stock trader. Had two old cows down there on my place.

“John,” he said one day, “what’ll you give me for them two cows?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Henry. What’ll you take?”

He’d taken to living in town with his sister while his wife was suing him. (Yessir, it wasn’t enough to whip him with a shotgun. She sued him, too.) But Sundays he’d take the day with us.

After dinner he’d go out thar under a big old chinquapin tree, and take him a pillow and sleep on the grass awhile. So them old cows got to grazing might’ nigh on top of him, and one of ‘em was just fixing to eat his panama hat, and he woke and said, “Huey! Huey! Gol durn ye!”

Mad at the old cow, you see, so he said, “What’ll you give me for them two durn ole cows, John?’

“What’ll you take?” I ast him.

Said, “I’ll tell you what I ll do, John. I’ll take twenty-three dollars for both of ‘em, if you’ll buy ‘em right now.”

“Mr. Henry,” I said, “I’ll give you twenty.”

“No. Twenty-three, and you can have them both, but I wouldn’t take that tomorrow.”

You see? He was a businessman like them town stores. Offering a bargain today. Wait! Them cows had to do with that bad trouble that was fixing to happen with his wife. Wait!

I didn’t know if them cows was going to be fresh, and I didn’t want ‘em if they wasn’t. Didn’t want to feed ‘em. Come in my mind, I recollect, “He’s got too many cows that won’t give milk.” Teechk, teechk, teechk, teechk.

“Mr. Henry,” I says — said — “is them cows going to be fresh?”

“I don’t know, John. If I knew they was, I wouldn’t sell ‘em.”

And me settin’ thar thinkin’ he didn’t know any more about his cows than he did his wife, but looks he could have kept up with his cows on that question.

Well, if they wasn’t going to be fresh, they wasn’t worth more than the twenty, and that wasn’t known, so we couldn’t trade.

Dovey and me, we worried and worried about it, couldn’t ease our mind. If they was going to be fresh, we needed them cows. We even went up thar to the barn one day, and durned if I don’t believe we was trying to see through them in the sun, we wanted to know so bad.

Well, we was standing thar watching ‘em, and rectly I seen something knock in her side. That was all I wanted to know. We went on back down the path to the house. Next time I seed him, I said, “Mr. Ilenry, you still take twenty-three dollars for them cows?”

“No.”

“Well, name your price, and I’ll buy that best cow,” I told him.

“You named twenty dollars for both of ‘em. I’ll take twenty for that one.”

I knowed she was going to be fresh, so I said, “Mr. Henry, I’ll just take you up on that!”

Went in the house and got the twenty dollars out of the sewing machine. Handed it to him. Didn’t have but twenty dollars. That’s why I couldn’t give him twenty-three for both of ‘em that day they nelly et his hat. Didn’t want to go in debt. Always have been that-a-way. Soon as he had the money, then that made her my cow, and so I said, “Mr. Henry, that cow’s going to come fresh.”

“She is?” he said, surprised. “If I’d of known that I wouldn’t of taken forty for her.” Said, “I’d Want her for Cornelia to have the milk.” See? But wait.

When the cow come fresh, he give me forty for her back. Told me to keep the calf, and put it to suck with one of my cows and take that cow up to the Big House on the Big Place, and give her to Cornelia.

Dovey and me and the chillen we drove the cow up thar, and told her Mr. Henry said she could have the cow. Miss Cornelia she said, there by the gate, “Well, it’s about time he saw to it that we have some milk around here.”

That’s the mouth word she sent him for thanks. And her already taken his farm, the one he had paid for.

But he wanted her back. Had no more pride than to admit it. Said, “You know the old saying, ‘If you want a hen to lay, you must put up with her cackling. ‘”

3

WANTED her back. That was what it was all about.

Came to Dovey and me, and wanted us to go up thar and beg her to take him back. We told him we didn’t want to get in that mess. But he got to crying, and so we taken pity on him and went. Hitched up a cotton mule to that old buggy we had then, and drove up thar. That was such a big fine house we was bashful to drive up to the front, and we drove on around, us in that old rickety buggy, ragged po’ folks, buttin’ into that high-class lady’s business. I felt a pure fool.

Well, Miss Cornelia come out. That woman, with grown chillen, she was still the kind of woman makes a man catch his breath to look at her. And sweet-talkin’, when she wanted to be. She was like a bee. Honey in its mouth, but a stinger in its tail. First thing she said was, “I know what you-all come for and who sent you.” Said, “Henry Bedeen is down to you-all’s house.”

She was laughing. No. She was crying. No, the way it was, she was laughing first, and then she was crying.

She loved him, too. You could tell that. But they just got to fightin’ some way or other, and couldn’t quit. Her as pretty as a girl, and him as ugly as the Lord can make a man and still have him not look like some other kind of animal, but the best durn fellow I ever seed in my life.

She said, “I’m in a tight to get my cotton picked.” Said, “When the court gave me my place, he taken all the hands off it and put them on that other place just to put pressure on me.” He done that. It wan’t like him but he done it. He had the screws on her there. So she said, “Tell him if he’ll have the cotton picked out on my place, I’ll live with him. But only as a stranger. You tell him not to set foot here until my cotton is picked and in the gin.”

See how she whipped him every time?

He was the one that paid the hands, and so she would get her cotton picked for nothing. Well, he picked her cotton. Had it done. Taken her the check and said, “Cornelia, honey, I’ve come back. I kept my part of the bargain, and here I am.”

Well, she smiled that sweet way she could smile, till she got the check in her hand. She reached out and taken it, and folded it up and put it in her bosom, so that he couldn’t get it back without doing her violence — taking advantage of his principles, you see? Then she said, “Now, get on down the road, I don’t want to see you no more! Just get on down the line! My daughter has a beau, and I don’t want you settin’ up fur him with a shotgun.”

That’s what she said. Henry he told me. That’s the way she kept her word, and him a man that if ever he made a promise, couldn’t nothing shake him from keeping it. A man of his word, and yet he was a fellow didn’t care for nothing. Just as soon go around in rags, or sleep in a barn — and done both, except he would wear fine clothes because he thought she wanted him to.

He was the kind of man that didn’t give a damn. Wasn’t always trying to git something. Would enjoy life, if he could. Why, he’d stop all the hands on the place and all go fishing. One day plowing thar by the river, running eight or ten plows thar in the corn, and Mr. Henry he pushed down through the hoss weeds thar by the river bank; them weeds higher than a man’s head thar in that rich river-bottom land, and he come back and said, “Boys, the river’s just right. It’s rained up the river somewhere. And it’s coming dowm a loblolly. And the catfeesh will be out like at night.”

We took out the teams, and one fellow rode his mule to the house to get the net. And we caught ‘em that day! Some driving, some pulling the net. White men and niggers, having fun like a picnic together. I never was agin niggers, nohow. These white folks that set up in church of a Sunday, and then mistreat a nigger on a weekday, when they die, they’ll go to hell before their ears get cold. Mr. Henry was for the nigger, too. We’d run the net up in them water weeds in water about thigh deep, and you’d see one’s fin cut the water. Pull up and the net would be just a-thrashin’ with catfeesh, and ever" one of ‘em as long as your arm nelly. The next day we was all so full of feesh we pooched out!

Everybody else I ever cropped for — he’d be after you to keep you at it from can to caint, but Mr. Henry would stop the work to take you feeshin’. He sho loved to feesh.

He’d a got rich and stayed as rich as any of them, too, hadn’t been fur this trouble with his wife. But maybe that trouble was just the thing to keep him down. Hadn’t been that, it would of been something else. He wasn’t like the balance of his class of people, and she wanted him to be. Wanted him to drive us hands, and not be common as us, like he was. But he could be good to us and still make, because ever’ hand that worked for him would watch out for his interest like it was their own, instead of just trying to tear up and waste, like a cropper will do if he don’t like the man he works for.

It was his wife done him out of what we made for him. That’s the way it was. Wait!

When he couldn’t take from the place he had paid for, to pay out on the one he still owed on, he got to where he couldn’t meet the payments and was going to lose it.

4

THAT was when he got after me to burn the house down. If he could get the insurance to make the payment he was in a tight about, then when the crop come in he could meet some more notes for a spell and that way he might come out.

I told him I wouldn’t do it. I kind of wanted to, to help him out, but I couldn’t set no house afar.

“Mr. Henry,” I told him, “if I done that I’d have bad luck the rest of my life, and I ain’t gonna do it.”

Got after Dovey about it. She wanted to help him out too, but she said, “I ain’t never set no house afar; I just couldn’t do it.”

“No harder than lighting a far in the farplace,” Mr. Henry said.

Dovey she said, “I just couldn’t burn down something somebody worked to build. Couldn’t burn down a house when there are folks needing houses.”

“Why,” he said, “it’s easy!” Said, “If you just can’t set a match to it, I’ll tell you how you can do it without even you ever knowing you done it.”

“You can tell me, Mr. Henry, but I can’t do it.”

“Just take a ball of binder twine and a bottle of turpentine, and soak the twine in it. Just lay the ball of twine on the shelf up over the stove — that old wallpaper is loose and coming off—and just accidentally let the end of the twine dangle on the stove when you go out to gather the eggs.”

But Dovey said, “Why, I could set a match to it with less guilt than all that mess not to.”

He told Dovey, “If you’ll do that for me, I’ll build you a brand-new house, and replace everything you lose with the same thing brand-new and better than your cheap one was when it was new, and I’ll give you a new hundred-dollar bill.”

Dovey wanted to, but she just couldn’t do it.

Well, sir, she went out to where he had his buggy thar in the barn hall, and thar set a jug of turpentine and a ball of twine. Like the devil settin’ temptations around to work without words.

He even got after Louise to do it, and her not but fourteen at the time. Told her if she’d catch her mammy and daddy off some’eres and set the house afar, he’d give her a hundred-dollar bill.

Much as I liked him, I got mad at him for that. I didn’t like it a bit, naming a thing like that, a crime, you might say, to just a child. Well, I told him, I said, “Henry, we ain’t a-gonna do it, so you might just as well to leave us alone about it.” I told him, “Why, you can get some town scallywag to burn this house down for five dollars, if you want to, but I ain’t a-gonna do it for no money. We’ll move and let you get it burnt down for five dollars.”

“But that wouldn’t do,” he said. Said, “Somebody has to be living in it to keep them from being suspicious, and you-all are the only ones I can trust. Just leave everything in the house, and let yourselves be burnt plumb out.” Said, “If Dovey can’t stand to lose that hundred Mason jars of fruit, you can take that out and hide it in a cave some’eres.”

“Henry, we ain’t a-gonna do it.”

Well, next time he brought it up, I was workin’ in the field, and he come out and fair begged me to. Said, “I lost my other place, and now I’m going to lose this one. I lost that one because my wife wouldn’t stick with me, and now I’m going to lose this one because my friends won’t.”

“Well, we won’t,” I told him.

He thought a minute, and he said, “Well, I’ll tell you this — I don’t believe you would ever tell on me, but I’ll say this: Before I will let my creditors suffer, I’ll be the one to suffer, and go to the pen, too, if I have to!”

With that he walked off across the new-plowed ground toward the fence. His buggy hitched there. I knew what he meant, so I called him. Said, “Wait a minute, there, Henry.”

He just walked on, like he hadn’t heard me. I hollered loud, then.

“Wait a minute, Henry! Stop!”

He waited and I left the plow and the mules and went to him. “Henry,” I said, “if you burn that house down, you’ll just go to the pen. You’ll sho do it. I mean that!”

And I did mean it, too. I felt about him like he was my brother but I done made up my mind. You couldn’t just let your brother commit a crime without turning against him. Your brother especially!

5

I KNOWED he was going to burn it down. Or have it done. Being a cripple, he couldn’t be running around in the woods at night to burn a house down. It worried the hell out of us. We was scaired it might burn with us in it.

Got to where any little sound would wake us up in the night.

Dovey, she heared it, the first night they come.

She woke me up and said, “Wake up, John. I hear ‘em. They’re here. Sounds like somebody tipping around outside.”

I got up and pulled on my britches, and I didn’t put on no shoes, and got my old shotgun. I cocked it, pulled both hammers back. Went to the front door. That gun ready to shoot. There was a hawthorn bush out there. Just good shooting distance. And I was ready in my mind to shoot that man out there, be it Henry himself. But I couldn’t, see nothing. Something told me somebody was behind the hawthorn bush. Ought to have just shot into the bush. But stead of that, I went to the back door, to peep out. The door drug a little and made a racket, and it was Henry out there, all right, because he knew by the sound which door I opened. He run when he heared it. From behind the hawthorn bush.

Dovey heared him. Hollered, “He’s out front, John!” But he was gone before I could get back to the front door.

Well, next was a little after that. Still spring of the year. Dovey she was cleaning up after supper. The ducks roosted there in the chimney corner. You ever notice how ducks will make a racket at night if there’s anything unusual going on?

The cat, too. There was a rock fallen out of the chimney. Left a hole there between the farplace and the wall big enough for the cat to go in and out of. We just left it, so we wouldn’t have to open the door ever’ time the cat wanted to go in and out. Well, sir, when the ducks made that racket I heared the cat jump up on the wall. It’s so quiet, way off the highway in a tenant house.

I thought they might have come, so I got my gun and went out thar, but I didn’t see nothing. It was sure dark that night, I come on back in and we went to bed. But it was in our mind that this would be the night they would come.

Apt as not, when the ducks hollered, they was fixing to set far to it. then, before we went to bed. For I don’t think Henry would have wanted to risk burning us up. But maybe he did. He’d know we couldn’t tell it, then.

And I had threatened to report him if he done it.

Well, that cat just wouldn’t stay out. Scaired. They was out there prowling around, that’s what it was.

Rectly I dozed off and then Dovey woke up and seen a light in the kitchen, just like at night when there’s a farplace going in another room.

She woke me up and said, “John! John, the house is afar!”

I had just bought me a new pair of Friendly Fives. You know what they are? Don’t sell ‘em any more, but they were real good shoes. Cost five dollars. Called ‘em Friendly Fives. Well, what you reckon was the first thing I done? Put on my shoes? No, sir. I picked up them shoes and threw them out across the yard out of reach of the far. Them new shoes was the first thing that come into my mind to save. Could have saved ‘em just as well if I’d slipped ‘em on, and not burnt my bare feet on hot sparks running around barefooted!

But no. First I done something else. Wait!

I run, and looked in there and the flames was just a-swirling all around the room, over and over. Just a-whipping up the wall and across the ceiling and down the other wall. The first thing I done was to light a lantern and set it down in the middle of the floor. I be dog! That fire lighting up the country for miles around, and I lit the lantern and set it down in the middle of the floor. Never did think to put on any shoes. Woke the chillen up and told Louise — she was fifteen by then — to keep the least ones away from the danger, while we tried to get things out.

But Dovey’s fruit — hit was done gone. You could hear the jars just a-popping, like rifles shooting. Louise she saved the porch swing. I bought it in a good year. She liked to set and swing in it, so that was what she thought of to save.

Well, I made a mess getting things out of thar. I taken the clock out, real careful not to break it. Then I throwed the bed out on top of it and busted that clock all to pieces. And the bed I didn’t get far enough away, and it burnt up!

Never even thought about my gun, till I was standing out there watching the house burn up and the gun went off. Boom! First one barrel, then the other. Then I thought, “And I’ll need a gun, too, now Henry believes I’ll turn him in to the law if I live.” Thought, “A man will get to where he will burn a house down for the insurance, might let himself go to the next step, too.”

Well, after that we just taken up in another tenant house. They was near-'bout all empty by then, because folks could tell Henry was losing out and they had got to looking for other places to crop on.

It wasn’t till two or three days later that Ilenry come in. He walked in and WTC had company, and he said, “John, I don’t think you done me right, not notifying me about my tenant house burning down.”

I just look him right in the face, and I told him right in front of all those people, said, “Mr. Ilenry, you know more about that than I do.”

Notified him we was going to move on. At first I was scaired he might try to put me out of the way. Then I seen he was a beaten man. I was sorry for him, but things never could be the same, with me having that on him. He was friendly and asked us to stay, but I knew7 we wouldn’t have any luck with him.

Said he would trust us with his life, and T had a mind to say, “You done already trusted somebody with your life that you couldn’t trust.” But I didn’t say it.

We moved on and I didn’t tell on him. Thought I ought to, but decided I wouldn’t unless they asked me, and they never did ask. He got his insurance.

Just the same, he lost the place. Sold for debt, and— Miss Cornelia bought it at auction. Got it dirt cheap, too. Claimed she wanted it for her children. But couldn’t the children had it without her turning him out? They was his children, too.

Well, he went on down to the bottom after that. Got down to rags, and beggin’ for something to eat, though he left here out of pride. Starved to death out in Nevada. I didn’t see him after he got: to be an old tramp, but I know that’s what he done. Because he was a tramp already, when he was sleeping in the barn when we first moved there, although he still owned the barn, then.

Yes, a woman made a tramp of him. Just took him a while to wear out his fine clothes and lose all the ways that a man can git a dollar. Like a thing changes and then it takes a while to show that it has changed.

But he’s dead now, and I can tell what he done and it not matter. He was a good man, no matter what he done. He might have done what they would put him in the pen for, and ought to be put in, too, but he was good. Best durn fellow I ever worked fur in my life.