Read Online The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams - Free Book Online Page B

then laid them on the drainboard. “Eat from these tomorrow,” she said. She looked back at him, feeling that his eyes had never left her.
    â€œI declare to my soul I don’t,” she said. She picked up her flashlight and tested it. His eyes blinked with the on-and-off of the light. Then she came across the room and began turning down the wick bit by bit. But suddenly she stopped when it was almost out. They were still, looking at each other, their faces shadowed with the wick’s final fluttering. “I don’t want to,” she said, “but I got to.” Then she blew out the wick, and they were alone by the thin light of the candle.
    He knew that now she was going.
    She stood in the doorway and looked back at him. “Get into bed now,” she said. “Blow out that candle.”
    He made no movement, no sign. His arms lay along the table encircling the empty plate, his hands were still. Suddenly the leg bent up under his chair gave an involuntary jerk and straightened out before him with a scrape of his heel. He jumped and ran his thumb under his overall strap, pulling it back up on his shoulder. He stared straight ahead of himself for a while. Then he put his fingers in his plate and slowly began to eat again.
    â€œSomething will happen,” she said, quietly. “Something will happen, Mister Jake.” She stood hesitantly, weighing the flashlight in her hand. “And I tell you,” she said, “I will be over myself to see to yo’ wash.”
    She looked once over her shoulder at the dark, at the direction in which she would go. The sky was lightened a moment by heat and she saw off as far as the persimmon trees. There was no sound in all of the countryside and then she heard him. The sound evoked a rush of her own tears, and she gasped to keep them back for now. She almost went, but then she took one more look at the thin, straightened legs in their dirty, creased overalls, and at the bent shoulders in the once starched shirt so carefully turned at the collar, and she came back into the room. She stood just behind him—in all instinct yearning to touch him again. But this time she did not. She bent low toward his back and whispered in a voice just before sobbing, “It ain’t right. I know that. The Lord knows it too. And if I didn’t know folks, Mister Jake, I’d stay. I would.”
    Then she was gone.
    It was a little while and then he was quiet. He picked up the napkin again and made a stab at his nose. Then he went to bed. Then he got up and came back into the room and blew out the candle. Then he went back to bed again, stumbling in the dark.
    In the morning there was bread and butter and milk again. He ate it. Afterward, he put the dishes in the bucket of water, pulled them out again, and put them on the drainboard. In a little while he went out across the yard to the bathroom and on his way back to the house, he fed the chickens. He was standing in the bedroom, looking down at the dirt covering his pants, when someone came into the room behind him. When he turned around, the man said, “How do, Jake. Earl Metcalf. We uptown decided the thing to do was me to take that cow over to my barn and bring you milk every evenin’. You just ain’t going to be able to take care of no cow.” Then he saw the man go out to the barn and presently walk away, waving the cow before him.
    It was when he had gotten hungry again and eaten all the jelly and crackers that he noticed the dirt again. After a bit, he suddenly sat down and got all his clothes off. Two buttons fell off his shirt onto the floor. He got down on his knees and put his finger on one and pushed it around awhile ; then he was finally able to curl it up under his fingertip and slip it into the palm of his hand. He did that with the other one and wadded his shirt up with the buttons inside it. He found clothes like those he had taken off and he got them on, except for his