on the table at the side of the sagging rope bed.
The flickering yellow light showed bare, unpainted walls, an ancient chifforobe with a cracked and fading mirror, the narrow cot where he slept, the single chair, the splintery wooden table, the black stove—there were few other things lying about, just the Bible with its worn and cracked leather cover, the heavy, hand-pieced quilts Mattie Ruth had given him, the black, cast-iron skillet she let him use, the few clothes folded and put away in the chifforobe, and his shoes beside the bed.
He shivered with the cold and moved to build a fire in the stove, knowing it would be a time before the room would be warm and the heavy, damp chill in the air would be driven away. He kept his coat on and sat down on the narrow cot, thinking of what he would cook for his supper—bacon and eggs, for he was too tired to fool with much more. But it would still be a time before the fire in the stove would be hot enough to cook on.
He stuck one hand in the pocket of his coat and pulled out the few coins that were his pay for the work he had done since he had been on the Whitley place—ten days work, and he held it all in the palm of one hand, minus what had been taken out for the rent on this room, and for the charge he had been forced to run at the store. Doing chores for Mattie Ruth in the few hours he had free from Whitley’s demands had allowed him her home cooking at times; chopping wood for one of Whitley’s sharecroppers had given him eggs in return, butter, and a little flour, but still there had been food to buy, kerosene for the lamp, and thread to patch his overalls with. He had watched his charging carefully, worrying over every penny he knew would have to come from his wages in the end—how hard it had been to decide to part with even one of those few, precious coins, as he had to do today in deciding to place the telephone call to Eason County.
He knew his grandparents would be worried about him, wondering where he was, and if he was still even alive and well, but still it had been hard to part with even that little bit of money, knowing he could instead have put it away toward that dream that still lived inside of him—and it had been harder still, deciding to place the telephone call, when he knew he would have to ask for help, for he had never used a telephone before in all his life.
There had never been a telephone in the house when he had been growing up, such a contraption having been an extravagance far beyond the means of his parents or any of his kin in the County, and he had never had reason to use the one in the little store near their home. But for once in all his life he wished he had paid more attention when other people had been using the one that hung on the back wall in Garrick’s Store in Eason County. He had almost changed his mind, waiting around in Whitley’s store long after his wages had been settled up earlier in the day, wasting time, waiting for all the other farmhands to leave. Whitley himself had already gone back to the big house, having settled up accounts with his people for the past two weeks, and Janson had been left alone in the store with the storekeeper, Mr. Frazier, and with Whitley’s youngest son, Stan. He had continued to wait, hoping the boy would leave as well, but a farm wife had come in to tie up the storekeeper instead, bartering with him in a loud voice over a trade of eggs for corn meal, and Janson had been left with little other choice but to either leave or to ask the boy for his help.
Stan Whitley was fourteen years old, five years Janson’s junior, and, though Janson had seen him about the place over the past two weeks, he had never had any reason to speak to him during that time. The boy stared at him from behind round-rimmed glasses as Janson walked to where he sat on a tall stool pulled up before the counter, and Janson found himself suddenly certain the boy would laugh when he told what he wanted to do and asked him for his help—but Stan did not laugh. Not even a trace of amusement showed on Stan Whitley’s face as he rose and went to the square, black contraption that hung on the rear wall of the store. He angled down the mouthpiece so that he could speak into it better, then picked up the receiver and turned the crank, waiting for a moment for the operator, then placing the call to Eason County.
After a moment Stan placed the receiver back into the cradle and turned to look at him, and Janson moved a few feet away, pretending to look at the tobacco cutter there on the counter as he waited the seemingly endless time it took for the operator to ring back with his call. He was afraid the boy would ask him why he had not written a letter instead of placing the costly telephone call to Eason County, especially since he had found it necessary to ask for help in even doing so—but, to Janson, it was far preferable that he let someone know that he had never used a telephone before, than to let them know that he could only barely read or write.
There had never seemed enough time to learn in his years of growing up, his having been out of school as much as in to help work their land; there had always been work to do in the fields, plowing and planting and chopping the cotton, picking it in the fall—he had attended school faithfully each day he had not been needed at home, from the time he had been barely old enough to be allowed through the school doors, until he had passed his sixteenth birthday; but still he had always seemed so very far behind, with no chance of ever catching up. The teachers had been too overworked, with too many subjects to cover and too many grades to teach in the crowded, two-room schoolhouse—and too many other students in the same situation as he, out of school too often to work the sharecropped and tenanted farms, and too far behind when they did return to ever have any hopes of catching them up.
He and so many others had been left back with the smaller children year after year, or simply passed on out of kindness, or out of a sheer sense of hopelessness at trying to teach the same material to the same pupil time and again. Now, at nineteen, he could read a few words, a few simple sentences; he could sign his name and figure in his head well enough to get by—and that was enough for anybody, he told himself. A man did not need more than that to get by in his life.
But he had sworn long ago that no other man, no other human being, would ever know that he could not read and write just as well as anyone else could. It was a matter of pride, of dignity—if he had nothing else left, he still had that.
The ringing of the black box on the wall broke into his thoughts, and he found Stan Whitley staring at him curiously as he looked up from the tobacco cutter on the counter. After a moment, the boy moved to the telephone and lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Hello—yes, Mrs. Huey, this is Stan—yes, ma’am—yes, all right—” Then the boy held the receiver out to Janson. “It’s your call to Alabama.”
Janson moved to the unfamiliar box, holding the receiver to his ear and leaning close to speak into the mouthpiece Stan had tilted up for him. “This is Janson Sanders—” He wondered suddenly why he was shouting; but it seemed the thing to do, so he continued.
“Go, on, ma’am, I’ve got the other—” an unfamiliar woman’s voice began, but Janson’s grandmother was already talking. She sounded strange, tinny and far off as he leaned toward the telephone; but it was unmistakably Gran’ma—and she was shouting as well.
“Janson—that you boy?” she shouted, making him hold the receiver away from his ear for a moment. “They come t’ th’ house an’ said there was a telephone call at th’ store for me all th’ way from Georgia—you all right, boy? I knowed it had t’ be you; praise th’ Lord that we’re hearin’ from you s’ soon—you been eatin’ good, boy? You stayin’ warm?”
It had been so good to hear her voice, but it had also made him think of home—not this place, with its drafty walls and its window shaking in its frame, but of a white house on rolling red acres, cotton fields as far as he could see, the sound of a sewing machine, the smell of wood smoke, the look of his father’s face—
He closed his fist tightly now on the few coins in his hand, feeling them cut into his flesh—that was all he had now. That, and this room, and a lonely supper. And the cold night outside.
There was the sound of a truck’s engine in the distance, coming up the rough
