The Handsome Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

ain’t of age, are you?” he asked. “How old are you?”
    “Going on fifteen.”
    “Sorry, miss, but that’s my instructions. Insurance to be paid only to a member of the family who’s of legal age. Ain’t you got a mother that could come for this?”
    Corrie May looked at Budge, but Budge seemed at a loss. She tried to explain.
    “I got a mother and father both, mister, but my mother, she’s all wore out grieving—don’t you see how that is?—and my father—well, I tell you, he ain’t no ’count. He’d go offn his head with a hundred dollars. I thought as how—” she put out her hands, urgently. “I thought it would be a shame, I mean he’d spend it all in about two weeks—”
    Her listener nodded understandingly. “Sure, miss, sure, I see. But it ain’t my money. It’s Mr. Denis Larne’s money and I got to pay it out the way he says.” He thought a moment. “I tell you what you do. You take this paper out to Mr. Larne. You know where Ardeith is?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Well, you get your young man to drive you out there, and I’ll give you a note to give Mr. Larne. And if he writes on the back of this paper that it’s all right for you to have the money then I can pay you. Understand?”
    She nodded and sighed, thinking of that long tiresome way in the sun. But Budge said, “Sho, mister, that’s fine. I’ll ride her out there.”
    The man wrote the note. “And good luck,” he said pleasantly.
    She and Budge got back into the wagon and Budge clucked at the mule. It was hot, and they had had no dinner. Budge bought a couple of bananas on the wharf and they munched as they rode. Corrie May was thinking resentfully how hard rich people made it for you even to get what belonged to you.
    “Say, that man was nice, wa’n’t he?” said Budge.
    “Uh-huh,” said Corrie May.
    “Right pleasant fellow, I’d say. You know, Corrie May, it’s all wrong what your pa says about rich people. They ain’t so mean.”
    “That man in there wasn’t rich. He was just a clerk.”
    “Sho, but I mean the real rich ones. Like this Mr. Larne. Ain’t no law making him give insurance to men on his jobs, is there?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Anyway, it makes me right pleased to think about your ma getting this money. It’ll keep her good, and you and me can get married without wondering how she’ll get along. Not that I wouldn’t be glad to help out your ma if she needed it, but it’s fine of Mr. Larne to be paying this to all the ladies whose men got the fever, and some of them with young uns too.”
    Corrie May turned suddenly on the seat. “Mr. Larne hadn’t ought to sent any men at all down there in the depth of summer. He knowed there would be fever.”
    “Oh now go on, honey, how’d he know it?”
    “Well, there always is. It ain’t right. He shouldn’t have sent them.”
    Budge scratched his head. “Oh now, Corrie May, how you do take on. You was the one told the boys about this job, and I reckon Mr. Larne wasn’t no more thinking of the fever then than you was. Course I know it’s hard on you, your brothers gone and all—”
    “Yes.” Her voice caught in her throat. “I reckon I’m still all cut up with hearing ma wake up at night to cry about them. It just ain’t right.”
    Budge took a hand from the reins and drew her close to him.
    “You po’ little girl,” he murmured. “I know it’s hard on you. You talk all you want and cry if you feel like it. I understand how it is.”
    “No you don’t,” Corrie May said in a low voice, but she leaned on him. They were silent. Budge kept his arm around her as the wagon went on. He was sweet, he was gentle, he was good. But he didn’t understand. He could understand her sorrow, but not her anger. Budge was used to taking things as he found them without reasoning out their causes. Maybe after she married him she would get placid like him.
    They rode past the cottonfields, whitening now, and long fields of cane bright green in the