The Handsome Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

it didn’t do any good.
    “We better get indoors, ma,” she said slowly.
    She guided her mother into the kitchen. There on the table was the hot corn-pone, with the dish of rice and collards steaming. Her father was already there. He sat in a chair by the stove, his head down on his chest and his hands swinging between his knees.
    But as they came in he got up, groggily, as though he had just had a knock on the head, and he said to Mrs. Upjohn, “You better sit yourself down here, honey.”
    Watching them, Corrie May thought she could understand for the first time why it was her mother had always loved him and been so patient with his trifling ways. He was so tender with her, rubbing her hands between his own and getting down on his knees so he could lift her apron and dry her tears. He talked to her softly, in the tone one would use to a child. His words were beautiful, some of them lines like music out of Scripture, about how her children had been washed in the blood of the Lamb and walked the golden streets by the river of God.
    Corrie May walked out and sat on the stoop, for he knew better what to do than she did. Presently the house was full of neighbors, for those who had no loss of their own came eagerly to comfort the rest. Corrie May was glad she had victuals on the table. Though her mother could eat only a little, for all their urgings that she must keep her strength up, the others were glad to take refreshment when it was offered.
    Budge came over the next morning. He had gone to live in his cabin on his piece of ground and had only just heard the news. He asked if he could help. Corrie May was glad to see him, for she had realized that anything that had to be done she would have to do. Her mother was too stricken, and nobody but old man Upjohn was any comfort to her.
    Well, said Budge, he was glad he had come. He’d go down and pick out the bodies and bring them home so the boys could have a good funeral.
    “I’ll go with you,” said Corrie May.
    “Now say, honey, you don’t have to.”
    “I reckon I’d better.”
    “It ain’t no business for a girl,” Budge urged protectively.
    “I expect,” said Corrie May, “I thought more of my brothers than to let a stranger go look out for their corpses.”
    “I ain’t no stranger,” Budge protested. “Besides, sugar, that air spell of fever might not be over, you know.”
    “Supposing it ain’t,” she flared. “Ain’t it better to be dead and gone to heaven than worrying along seeing men kill theirselves when they’s just trying to make a living?”
    Budge ceased arguing with her. He let her get into the wagon with him and they rode out of town, down the road, and turned on the bumpy trail that led to the swamp. The cypresses grew thick, with the frantic way things had of growing in the warm damp air when they were not checked by the hands of men. The trees were so close that the swamp lay in perpetual twilight. It was quiet in the swamp, a quietness that lulled not only the ears but the eyes—gray water, silver trees, moss like rags on the branches, dull green cypress leaves, lavender bayou-hyacinths—and in the hot swimming air the landscape looked thin as though it had but two dimensions. Down here the heat was strange, not like the heat higher up where the town was, but wet and thick, so that sweat didn’t dry on you but ran down your back and between your legs and over your forehead to drip from your eyes like tears.
    The bodies were in a tent near the road. Far away the rest of the loggers were cutting at the white trunks that stood out in the gray-green dimness. The man in charge was very polite, and told them it was too bad the young fellows had died. There hadn’t been very much fever. Just a little, but too bad it had to be at all. He asked Corrie May if she was related to the dead men, and when she said she was their sister he gave her a paper. “Give that to your ma and pa,” he said, “and tell them to take it to the office on