Stubble.

by George Looms.

PART I

MARY LOUISE

STUBBLE

CHAPTER I

The front gate screaked, a slow, timid, almost furtive sort of screak, and then banged suddenly shut as though it despaired of further concealment. Mary Louise gathered her sewing to her, rose to her feet, and looked out. It was raining. Through the gla.s.s upper half of the door that opened from the sitting room upon the side porch she could see the swelling tendrils of the vines that crawled about the trellis, heavy and beady with the gathering moisture. It was one of those cold, drizzly, early April rains that dares you by its seeming futility to come forth and do weaponless battle and then sends you back discomfited and drenched. A woman was coming up the walk bent in a huddle over a bundle which she carried in her arms. Mary Louise gazed searchingly for a moment and then, as the figure would have pa.s.sed the door, on around to the rear of the house, stepped out on the porch and called:

"Zenie! Zenie! Come in this way. There's n.o.body around there."

Zenie raised her head in mute surprise and then slowly obeyed. She shuffled across the porch, and at the door, which Mary Louise held open for her, paused and looked about her in indecision. She was a buxom creature, of the type that the Negroes about the station would call a "High Brown," but without the poise and aplomb that conscious membership in that cla.s.s usually brings.

"Mis' Susie in?" she ventured, after a careful survey of the room had a.s.sured her that such was not probable. And her care, relaxed for the moment, allowed the corner of the shawl to fall from the bundle in her arms, which forthwith set up a remote wailing, feeble and m.u.f.fled, though determined.

Mary Louise raised a skeptic eyebrow at the discredited Zenie.

"Sshh!" dispa.s.sionately urged the latter, scorning for once public regard and continuing to gaze about the low-ceilinged room for the absent but much-desired Miss Susie.

Such callous indifference baffled Mary Louise, even while it answered her innermost questionings, and for the moment she was voiceless.

"What in the world----!" she said at length and hated herself for the vulgar surprise in her tone.

Zenie turned away from the inspection and, finding herself and appendage the centre of interest, bridled with a timid pleasure, and then poked a ruminative finger into the swaddle of shawl and comforter.

"Yas'm," she began in explanation. "Done brung 'im to show t' Mis'

Susie. Didn' know you wuz home." Her manner had all the affable ease of a conscious equal.

Mary Louise rubbed her eyes. Time was bringing changes; Zenie had once been humble. Her voice rang with an accusing hardness. "I thought you'd shut the door on that worthless Zeke of yours."

Zenie did not raise her head but continued the aimless poking in the bundle, which strangely responded to the treatment and was quiet again. "No'm. He comes roun'. Eve' now an' then. Zeke's got a cah!" A momentary gleam from dark eyes lit like coals into a sudden flare, and Mary Louise was conscious of a pride that was fierce and strong, even if new. She felt suddenly strange, foreign, like an intruder.

Their eyes met, and this time it was Mary Louise's that fell. She felt embarra.s.sed at the question that arose in her. Of course Zeke was the father. Such a question to the emanc.i.p.ated Zenie would be paternally insulting. She countered skillfully:

"What's--his name?"

Zenie shifted the bundle in her arms and then reached over with her toe and thoughtfully pushed the stove door.

"Name Nausea," she replied softly, still regarding the door which refused to shut entirely.

"Name's what?"

Zenie raised her eyes and smiled. It was a sudden unmasking of a battery in a peaceful landscape. "Nausea Zekiel Thompson," Zenie continued, gazing down into the bundle with the simplicity of a great emotion.

For a moment silence descended upon the room. Mary Louise could not trust herself in the customary amenities. She stepped over to Zenie and the younger Thompson and peered into the bundle, conscious as she did so of a slowly opening door beyond them. A tiny weazened face and two beady blinking eyes were all she saw. Zenie was making a curious clucking noise.

"Yas'm," Zenie went on, encouraged into an unwonted garrulity, "Mist'

Joe done give 'im that name. Hit's from de Bible, ain't it?"

"Mister Joe?"

"Yas'm. Mist' Joe Hoopah." There was a cheery ring to Zenie's voice that had been wont to drag so dispiritedly. "He say hit come so unexpeckedly an' all you kin do is make the bes' of it." Her face was suddenly wreathed in an expansive smile. "Mist' Joe done hoorahin'

us--Zeke an' me. Zeke don' min'. Nossuh. He say de baby look lak him."

She held the bundle up and looked at it in rapt contemplation.

Mary Louise's lips shut in a tight line. She turned away from the pair in distaste. But just then a light step sounded and her feeling was diverted. Zenie did not hear the advent of another character upon the scene so absorbed was she in holding the centre of the stage. "Think hit's a pritty name, don' you?"

Receiving no answer she raised her eyes and beheld Miss Susie, whose critical gaze enveloped her sternly. Zenie dropped her eyes again.

"So you've finally decided to show up again, Zenie?" Miss Susie clipped her words off short to everyone. She was a wisp of a woman with little hands as dry and yellow as parchment. Her voice had a quavering falsetto break in it and her laugh, when there was occasion, was dry and withery and short-lived like a piece of thistle-down.

Mary Louise was watching with interest. Zenie struggled for a moment and then turned and faced the inevitable. There was a growing decision in her manner.

"H'do, Mis' Susie! Yas'm. I 'cided I'd drop in on you-all. Show him to his white folks." She looked at Miss Susie and smiled a most uncertain smile.

And then for the first time was the import of the visit brought fully to the visitee.

"So," Miss Susie exploded, "that's where you've been. Out of town!

Humph! You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Zenie looked as though she would like to defend herself, but it was useless.

Miss Susie went on inexorably, "That worthless Zibbie Tuttle has been tearing all my good linen and lace to pieces for the past three weeks.

And now I suppose I'll have to put up with her for a few weeks longer."

"Yas'm," Zenie replied weakly.

"However"--Miss Susie p.r.o.nounced it as though it were one syllable--"I suppose I can't help it. What is it? Boy or girl?"

"Boy," said Zenie, and with growing decision, "but hit ain' him I come to see you-all about. No'm. Thank you jes' as much. I jes' aim to tell you I ain' take in no mo' wash. No'm. Zeke he don' want me to take in no mo' wash. No'm."

"Zeke!" Miss Susie's snort was very ladylike. "Zeke!--and what has Zeke to do with what _you_ want to do?"

"We'se ma'ied, ain' we, Mis' Susie?"

This was irrefutable, but more so the changing viewpoint. Zenie had tasted emanc.i.p.ation. Miss Susie shrugged her shoulders and left the room with short hurried steps.

Zenie turned to Mary Louise. "I'm tiahed of the ol' tub. 'Tain' no use my weahin' myself out fu nuthin'. 'Sides, this heah boy a heap o'

trubbel." She shook her head doubtfully.

Mary Louise disregarded the confidence. "D'you say Mister Joe--Mister Joe Hooper--named your baby? How could he? He's not even home."

"Yas'm. Yas'm, he is. He come in t' see Zeke this mo'nin'. Mist' Joe lookin' mighty fine."