car and the old Model T, and up onto the front porch. He knew he would be disturbing dinner with his late arrival, especially with company in the house, but he could not stop now. He could not go back to the land, to the house, for one more day, one more night, knowing it was no longer his. He turned the doorknob smoothly in his hand and pushed the door open, not bothering to knock, for he knew there was little need for anyone to knock at this door.
His cousin Sissy sat in a rocker in the warmth before the fireplace in the front room of the sharecropper house as he entered, the girl rocking a homemade ragdoll in her arms, her gentle face calm and happy. She looked up as he closed the door behind himself, smiling as she saw him, then quickly motioning for his silence, warning with a look that the doll-child in her arms was asleep. Janson smiled and nodded his understanding, then stood watching her for a moment, remarking again to himself how lovely she already was at twelve, her long blond hair hanging in curls down her back, her blue eyes large and expressive; she was already becoming a young woman—but her mind would forever be that of a child, as everyone in the family but Sissy herself already knew. He nodded again to her, saying goodbye in his own way, while taking care not to disturb the sleep of the carefully mothered doll in her arms.
He passed through the middle room of the house, glancing at the old iron bedstead that had sat there in the same position against the whitewashed far wall for as long as he could remember, a hand-pieced quilt neatly drawn over its corn shuck mattress, a chamber pot visible beneath the foot of the bed. Ahead, through the open door to the kitchen, he could hear the preacher’s voice and his grandfather’s, both raised in some religious discussion as they sat on wooden benches pulled up to either side of the eating table, the soft voices of the women in the kitchen almost drowned out by his gran’pa as he told the preacher for the second time that book learning did not necessarily mean that a man knew the ways of the Lord. Brother Harmon started to respond, a holding-forth tone in his voice that Janson recognized from long Sunday mornings seated in his sermons, but Gran’pa cut him off mid-sentence as Janson entered the room.
“Hello, boy, we missed you in church this mornin’—”
The kitchen smelled warmly of home: fresh-baked biscuits, country ham, and fried chicken, collard greens cooking in a black pot on the back of the stove, wood smoke, strong black coffee. There were deep dishes of good food on the table, black-eyed peas cooked with ham, potatoes yellow with fresh-churned butter, rich candied yams, and syrup cakes stacked with dried apples for dessert. The men sat on benches pulled up to either side of the table, enjoying his grandmother’s and his Aunt Rachel’s cooking, the preacher sitting across from his grandfather, Uncle Wayne and his three boys, Aunt Olive’s husband Cyrus and their son Daniel. The younger people and the children were out back of the house, and Janson could hear their voices clearly through the windows and doors closed against the winter chill—they would be the last to eat, after the men, and then the women, were finished, and tempers were running high, and voices growing louder, as their empty stomachs growled and the minutes crawled by.
The women stood or sat at the edges of the room, seeing that the bowls and platters of food on the table remained full, or simply waiting. Sister Harmon, the preacher’s wife, sat in a straight, split-bottomed chair away from the overpowering heat of the wood stove, her spine not once touching the seat back, her legs encased in thick cotton stockings, crossed primly at the ankles, and tucked away behind one of the chair legs as she talked in quiet tones to Janson’s Aunt Olive. His Aunt Belle and Aunt Maggie sat only a few feet away, Belle with her arms folded beneath her large bosom, and Maggie with hers folded beneath her rather flat one, both pointedly ignoring the preacher’s wife for some slight imagined in church long weeks before.
Gran’ma and Aunt Rachel stood near the wood stove, seeing to it that the men’s plates never grew empty, and that no slight in hospitality should occur, as they discussed children or households, canning or kinfolks, or whatever else it might be that women discussed at such gatherings. Janson returned his grandfather’s greeting, but did not take the time to explain why he had not been in church that morning, then he looked toward his gran’ma—she was staring at him, staring at him with a sad, rather-resigned expression on her gentle face. Her brown eyes did not shift to take in the shoes slung over his shoulder, or the portmanteau held in his right hand, and he realized suddenly that they did not have to—she had known all along he would leave, that he would have no other choice.
“When you wasn’t in church this mornin’, I knowed it’d be t’day—” she said quietly, staring at him. “I figured it’d be soon—you know yet where you’re goin’, boy?”
“I don’t reckon’ it much matters. I guess t’ just wherever it is th’ first train takes me—” They both knew he would not have money to pay for the fare, but that he would have to hop the train instead, waiting until it was picking up speed pulling out of the depot, then running to swing himself and his few belongings on board the first empty boxcar he might find—they both knew, but they also knew there was no way around it, just as there was no way for anyone to offer him money to pay for the fare instead. They both knew he would not take it.
“You’ll let us know where it is you wind up?” she asked.
“Soon as I can—”
Gran’pa rose from the table, stepping around the end of the bench and coming toward him. “For once I was hopin’ your gran’ma’d be wrong—why don’t you stay on here, boy, an’ help me crop this place?” But Janson knew his grandfather did not need him to help sharecrop the small farm. His Uncle Wayne had the next place over, and together he and Gran’pa, and Wayne and Rachel’s three boys, worked the two sharecropped farms as one, splitting the work, and splitting the little annual return there was from the portion of the crops that did not go for use of the land. Janson knew his grandparents did not need another mouth to feed, more kin than there already was crowded into the small house, just as he also knew they would take him in anyway if he wanted to stay—but he could not stay. There was the land—his own land—and he could never forget that.
“Won’t you stay on, boy?”
Janson shook his head. “I cain’t—” he said, but explained no further. His grandfather looked at him for a long moment, then reached out to take Janson’s hand in a firm handshake.
“If it’s what you got t’ do, boy.”
Janson nodded. There was nothing else he could say.
He went to his grandmother, stopping for a moment to drop his shoes and the portmanteau on the bare wood floor at her feet before putting his arms around her. He hugged her briefly, and kissed the softness of her cheek, then looked down into the kind brown eyes, finding them now filled with tears.
“I’ll be back in a couple ’a years,” he said. “Soon as I—” He did not have to finish.
She nodded, placing a work-rough hand on his cheek as she stared up at him. “You may look like your ma, but you’re just like Henry—”
And Janson understood.
She turned back to the wood stove, putting her mind to the worry that his stomach be filled, rather than that her favorite grandchild was leaving her. She fussed with the lid covering a black pot, lifting it with a folded pad of quilted material, then lowering it back into place without ever having looked inside. “You better eat somethin’ before you go—”
“I ain’t hungry. I made myself a big breakfast before I left th’ house,” he lied, knowing all the while that she knew he lied. His stomach was in knots, and he knew he would not be able to eat anything, not even if he had to.
She nodded again, then reached up to lower the door of the warming oven above the stove, reaching inside to take out something
