that crowded the roads enough already without restricting the short strip of downtown for their use alone. Janson listened, though he had heard the same comments many times before, not only from his father, but also from many of the neighboring farmers and churchfolk, and he started to say something in agreement, for he considered motor cars a luxury that he could see little need or use for—but a car horn sounded and drew his attention instead, and he looked toward the traffic to see a girl in a dark cloche hat crossing the narrow street toward them, the girl running slightly to avoid a Packard whose driver honked irritably for the second time as he had to slow for her.
The short skirt of the navy-blue dress she wore covered her knees by only a bare few inches, and, as she stepped up onto the sidewalk out of the way of the motor car, Janson fancied he saw for a moment the top of a rolled stocking, and perhaps even a bit of exposed kneecap below the hem of the skirt—he looked away quickly, and then back again; after all, he was almost seventeen and a half now, and not unwise to the ways of the world, having become a man the year before at the hands of a girl from a neighboring farm, a girl who had known much more than any girl her age ought to have known.
The girl in the cloche hat smiled appreciatively at the look in his eyes as she walked past—as bold as a flapper, he told himself, though he was not really certain how bold a flapper might be, for he had never been close to one in all his life. He found it difficult to even imagine a girl as bold and daring and promiscuous as he had heard city flappers to be, girls drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes, dancing and carrying on. The girl had face paint on, rouge and lipstick and face powder, and her hair was bobbed short beneath the cloche hat, curling in at her cheeks in the style some of the town girls had taken to wearing in the past several years, such girls actually visiting barber shops to have their hair cut just as men did.
He glanced around at her as she walked by, admiring the slender calves encased in silk stockings, the dark seams so straight in back below the short skirt, though he knew she was the sort of girl his mother would say was no lady, for he well knew that ladies did not wear face paint and powder, or bob their hair, or roll their stockings down to their knees.
“Janson, boy—” he heard his father say, a note of reprove in his voice, and he started to turn back to go on about the business that had brought them here into town today, so they could go back home to the land and to the barn roof waiting for repair, to the fall garden that needed hoeing, and the bow basket he had been working on earlier, as well as the scrap cotton still left in the fields waiting to be picked and sold for the money they would have Christmas on this year.
And then he saw the car.
It drove by slowly, the old man staring out through the open side at Janson’s father. Janson watched as it slowed even further still, and, after a moment, made a wide U-shaped turn at the far end of Main Street, the other cars there seeming to stop or move out of its way, one driver of a Buick honking his horn loudly before seeming to recognize the car, the driver, and the passenger, then falling silent and inching over to make way for the black, 1915 Cadillac touring car, as did everyone else. They knew that car; everyone in the County knew that car, for, though it was nine years old now, there was not another like it in all of Eason County—and it belonged to Walter Eason.
The car went by, and then pulled over just ahead, in the only empty space among the Model T’s and the Buicks and the Chevrolets, blocking the way to a fire plug as it came to a stop and waited there. After a moment, the old man got out and walked up onto the sidewalk to stand waiting for them, his manner as unyielding as the black suit he wore, and the white shirt with its starched and detachable collar.
Walter Eason remained silent as they approached him, his eyes never once seeming to leave the face of the tall man with the graying reddish-brown hair who walked at Janson’s side, his own face never changing—just the cold, gray eyes moving at last as they flicked for one moment to Janson, and then back again.
“Mornin’, Mr. Eason,” Henry Sanders said as they neared him, nodding his head in greeting, but not tipping or removing the battered old hat he wore, as many men would have done in the presence of the powerful old man. Henry Sanders tipped his hat to no man, as his son well knew.
“Good morning, Henry—young man—” The gray eyes moved to Janson again, and Janson nodded. Walter Eason stared at him for a moment longer, and then turned back to his father. “Doing some shopping, Henry? We don’t see you and the boy in town too often.”
“My wife’s birthday’s comin’ up,” Henry Sanders answered, explaining no further, and the old man nodded.
“It’s good to see you doing your business in Pine; it’s good for all our County people when they do their business here in Eason County,” he said, and Janson knew what was coming, as he had known from the moment the car had first begun to slow, and then had come back to stop before them, hearing the words only a moment later; “I hear you sold your cotton out of the County this year, Henry, over in Mason, to Taylors—”
There was a moment’s silence, so quickly gone Janson was unsure as to whether it had been or not. “Yes, sir, I reckon’ I did.” There was no tone of apology in Henry Sanders’ voice, and none of subservience—he owed Walter Eason nothing, and they both knew that. It had been his crop, grown on his land, with his own seed, and he had sold it where it had brought him the most dollars, though no other of the County farmers sold out of Eason County, though few ever had.
“County farmers usually sell in Eason County,” Walter Eason said. “Most men find it pays to do their business at home.” There was no threat to the old man’s words, just the clear message—Eason County farmers sell in Eason County. There was no room left for compromise.
“Cotton’s bringin’ a better price over in Mason, an’ they’re payin’ a premium for long staple—I got a mortgage t’ pay on my place; I got t’ sell where I can get th’ most money.”
“Money isn’t everything, Henry,” Walter Eason said quietly, staring at Janson’s father.
For a moment Henry Sanders did not speak. “No sir, it sure ain’t,” he said at last, his words quiet.
Janson stood watching the two men, but neither spoke for what seemed to him to be a very long time as they stood staring at each other. Then he found Walter Eason’s gaze on him again.
“The boy takes after his mother, doesn’t he?” Eason remarked after a moment, as if no conversation had gone on between the two men as just had. There was appraisal in the look directed on Janson, a summing up he did not altogether like, and he returned the cold stare without looking away, lifting his chin slightly as he met the old man’s eyes.
“Yeah, he looks a lot like his ma—” Henry Sanders’s hand came to rest on his son’s shoulder, just as it had done so many times in the past, though Janson was fully grown now and as tall almost as any man in the Sanders family. Janson could hear the pride in his father’s voice, the affection inherent in the words, and he looked up at this man who had given him life more than seventeen years before, seeing in him the pride and dignity and determination of a man who wore faded overalls and a patched and remade shirt—then he looked back to Walter Eason, and he found the old man’s gaze now directed at his father as well, something in the gray eyes Janson could not understand.
But his attention was suddenly drawn away, toward the black Cadillac, and the husky young man who had gotten out from behind the wheel of the vehicle. Buddy Eason, the old man’s only grandson, stood now beside the car. He was perhaps a year younger than Janson’s seventeen and a half years, but broader of build, with a square jaw set into an angry and defiant line below slicked-back, wavy brown hair. Buddy Eason was a bad sort, with a quick temper that could be both violent and unpredictable by what Janson had heard in the years of
