“I leave it alone now. I haven’t been tight since I went to work.”
“I want to believe that’s true.”
Avery felt guilty for lying, but he had learned long ago that it was better to tell his father certain things, whether they were true or not.
“You know how disappointed I was in you the night the sheriff had to bring you home from that bar,” Mr. Broussard said.
“That was a long time ago, Papa. Let’s don’t talk about it.”
“He had to carry you up the front steps.”
“Yes, sir, I know. I told you I was sorry for it.”
“Well, it isn’t worth talking about now. I just don’t want to see you let liquor ruin your life.”
Avery got up. “Batiste and I are going frogging.”
“Will you get rid of that bottle?”
“All right.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
Avery put his dishes on the sideboard and went upstairs to get his flashlight and frog gig.
The next week Mr. Broussard paid the land taxes with Avery’s oil check and took out a second mortgage on the twenty acres. They bought seed, rented a tractor, plowed and planted. They worked hard, six days a week from dawn to nightfall, and Avery became aware of how badly his father had aged. Mr. Broussard was losing weight and his face became more drawn. He would not listen to either Avery or Batiste when they asked him to take things easier. He worked in his long-sleeve undershirt without a hat, and his face and neck became coarsened by the sun, and in the evening he went to bed right after dinner, sometimes with his clothes on. Once he stayed outside and continued working during a rainstorm. He caught a bad cold which almost developed into pneumonia. Three weeks later he was back in the fields. He did more work than Avery thought him capable of. Sometimes he spoke of the good year they were going to have, and how he would repay the bank and possibly improve the farm. Then during the next years they could repair the house (he never once considered living in another house), buy new farm machinery, and rent pasture land for the stock. The summer was hot and the rains were like steam, and the cane grew tall and purple and gold.
In September they began cutting the cane. They were working in the fields behind the house when it happened. Mr. Broussard stepped up on the running board of the truck to get into the cab, then suddenly his face whitened as he tried to hold on to the doorjamb, and fell backwards into the stubble and the broken stalks of sugarcane. He held his hands to his heart and gasped for breath while Avery tried to loosen his collar. Batiste and Avery put him in the cab, and the Negro folded his coat into a pillow. On the way to the house Mr. Broussard’s eyes remained glazed and staring.
That afternoon the doctor and the priest came. Avery stood on the veranda while they were inside. He looked off into the distance at the oil wells. The gas flares were red against the rain-clouded sky. Across the meadow a wrecking crew was tearing down the remains of the old Segura home. The roof was gone and the board planking was being stripped away with crowbars to be stacked in a large pile for burning. Two men were attaching chains to the brick chimney to pull it down with a bulldozer. A new highway was coming through, and a filling station was to be built on the site of the Segura house.
The doctor came out and walked past Avery to his car. Avery went inside and met the priest in the hallway. “Your father died in a state of grace,” the priest said. “He is in heaven now.” Avery went into his father’s bedroom without answering. The room was dark and smelled of dust. His father lay in the big mahogany tester bed with the ruffled and pleated canopy on top. Avery looked at the outline of his body under the sheet. He walked to the bed and pulled back the sheet. Mr. Broussard’s face was gray, and the flesh sagged back from the skull. The skin was tight around the eye sockets. He seemed much smaller in death than in life. Avery turned his head away and pulled the sheet over his father. He sat down in the chair and cried.
It rained the day of the funeral. It rained all that week. The freshly dug earth was piled beside the open grave among the oak trees. Water collected in pools and washed over the side of the grave. Batiste stood bareheaded in his only black suit with the rain streaming down his face. Avery watched the men lower the cloth and pine board casket with the pulleys. The priest read aloud from the book opened in his hands. Both of the gravediggers kept their hats on. The men from the funeral home coughed and sneezed and wanted to get out of the rain. A few people stood on the other side of the grave under umbrellas. Most of them were Negroes who had worked on the Broussard land in the past. The dye in the cloth on the outside of the casket ran in the rainwater.
J.P. WINFIELD
He was twenty-seven years old and he had a seventh-grade education, and he had never been more than sixty miles from his home. J.P. sat in the corridor outside the audition room and smoked cigarettes. The fans were off and he was sweating through his clothes. The Sears, Roebuck suit he wore was light brown, almost the color of canvas, and the sleeves and trousers were thread-worn and too short for him. Some people went by and he put his shoes under the chair so they wouldn’t be noticed. They were unshined and the stitches were broken at the seams. His polka dot clip-on bow tie was at an angle to his shirt collar. He took his guitar out of its case and tuned it again to pass the time. It was the only thing he owned of value. He had paid forty dollars for it in a pawnshop. It had twelve strings, and he kept the dark wood shined with wax. His fingertips were callused from practice.
He looked at the secretary behind the desk. She had on high heels and hose and a white blouse. She held her back very straight and her breasts stood out against the blouse. He thought how he would like to sleep with her. She went inside the audition room and came back out again.
“Mr. Hunnicut will see you now,” she said.
J.P. put out his hand-rolled cigarette under his shoe and placed the guitar back in its case. From the corner of his eye he watched the secretary sit down in her chair. Her skirt creased across the top of her thighs. He went into the audition room and saw a fat sweating man dressed in a white linen suit and candy-striped necktie sitting in a folding chair with a pitcher of ice water by his side. There were some other men standing around whom J.P. didn’t look at. The man in the linen suit filled his glass from the pitcher and swallowed two salt tablets.
“What do you do?” the man said.
“Play twelve-string guitar and sing,” J.P. answered. “I seen your ad in the paper about the talent show.”
“You know there’s an entrance fee of five dollars.”
“I give it to the secretary.”
“All right, go ahead. Sing.”
J.P. felt nervous. The other men were watching him. He thought they were smiling. He put the leather strap around his neck and began. He hit the wrong chords and his voice cracked. One of the men laughed.