Light in August Read Free Page A

know that his wife is now in the kitchen, not watching now; just waiting. He halts the wagon. “You go on to the house,” he says; he has already descended and the woman is now climbing slowly down, with that inwardlistening deliberation. “When you meet somebody, it will be Martha. I’ll be in when I feed the stock.” He does not watch her cross the lot and go on toward the kitchen. He does not need to. Step by step with her he enters the kitchen door also and comes upon the woman who now watches the kitchen door exactly as she had watched the wagon pass from the front one. ‘I reckon I know exactly what she will say,’ he thinks.
    He takes the team out and waters and stalls and feeds them, and lets the cows in from the pasture. Then he goes to the kitchen. She is still there, the gray woman with a cold, harsh, irascible face, who bore five children in six years and raised them to man- and womanhood. She is not idle. He does not look at her. He goes to the sink and fills a pan from the pail and turns his sleeves back. “Her name is Burch,” he says.“At least that’s what she says the fellow’s name is that she is hunting for. Lucas Burch. Somebody told her back down the road a ways that he is in Jefferson now.” He begins to wash, his back to her. “She come all the way from Alabama, alone and afoot, she says.”
    Mrs Armstid does not look around. She is busy at the table. “She’s going to quit being alone a good while before she sees Alabama again,” she says.
    “Or that fellow Burch either, I reckon.” He is quite busy at the sink, with the soap and water. And he can feel her looking at him, at the back of his head, his shoulders in the shirt of sweatfaded blue. “She says that somebody down at Samson’s told her there is a fellow named Burch or something working at the planing mill in Jefferson.”
    “And she expects to find him there. Waiting. With the house all furnished and all.”
    He cannot tell from her voice if she is watching him or not now. He towels himself with a split floursack. “Maybe she will. If it’s running away from her he’s after, I reckon he’s going to find out he made a bad mistake when he stopped before he put the Mississippi river between them.” And now he knows that she is watching him: the gray woman not plump and not thin, manhard, workhard, in a serviceable gray garment worn savage and brusque, her hands on her hips, her face like those of generals who have been defeated in battle.
    “You men,” she says.
    “What do you want to do about it? Turn her out? let her sleep in the barn maybe?”
    “You men,” she says. “You durn men.”

    They enter the kitchen together, though Mrs Armstid is in front. She goes straight to the stove. Lena stands just within the door. Her head is uncovered now, her hair combed smooth. Even the blue garment looks freshened and rested. She looks on while Mrs Armstid at the stove clashes the metal eyes and handles the sticks of wood with the abrupt savageness of a man. “I would like to help,” Lena says.
    Mrs Armstid does not look around. She clashes the stove savagely. “You stay where you are. You keep off your feet now, and you’ll keep off your back a while longer maybe.”
    “It would be a beholden kindness to let me help.”
    “You stay where you are. I been doing this three times a day for thirty years now. The time when I needed help with it is done passed.” She is busy at the stove, not backlooking. “Armstid says your name is Burch.”
    “Yes,” the other says. Her voice is quite grave now, quite quiet. She sits quite still, her hands motionless upon her lap. And Mrs Armstid does not look around either. She is still busy at the stove. It appears to require an amount of attention out of all proportion to the savage finality with which she built the fire. It appears to engage as much of her attention as if it were an expensive watch.
    “Is your name Burch yet?” Mrs Armstid says.
    The young woman does not answer