O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 48

He raged up and down, adding invective, vituperation.

"But you can't, Wes--you can't let the wheat go to waste." For Annie had absorbed the sound creed of the country, that to waste foodstuff is a crime as heinous as murder.

"Can't I? Well, we'll see about that!"

She recognized from his tone that she had been wrong to protest; she had confirmed him in his purpose. She picked up her sewing and tried with unsteady fingers to go on with it, but she could not see the st.i.tches for her tears. He couldn't mean it--and yet, what if he should? She looked up and out toward those still fields of precious ore, dimming under the purple shadows of twilight, and saw them a black tangle of wanton desolation. The story Aunt Dolcey had told her about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind.

He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding, sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph, something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth.

"That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie with a touch of prescience. "He's going to change into somebody else--little by little. This is the worst spell he's ever had. And all this mean blood's going to live again in my child. It goes on and on and on."

She leaned against the porch seat and struggled against the sickness of it.

"I might stand it for myself," she thought. "I might stand it for myself; but I'm not going to stand it for my baby. I'll do something--I'll take him away."

Her thoughts ran on hysterically, round and round in a coil that had no end and no beginning.

The silent fit was on Wes now. Presently, she knew, he would get up and stalk away to bed without a word. And in the morning----

It was as she expected. Without a word to her he got up and went inside, and she heard him going up the stairs. She sat then a little longer, for the night was still and warm and beautiful, the stars very near, and the soft hush-h of the country solitude comforting to her distress.

Then she heard Unc' Zenas and Dolcey talking at the kitchen door, their voices a faint cadenced murmur; and this reminded her that she was not quite alone. She slipped round to them.

"Unc' Zenas, Wes says he's not going to cut the wheat; he'll let it rot in the fields. Seems Harrison won't send his thresher up this far; wants us to haul to him instead."

"Ma.r.s.e Wes say he ain' gwine cut dat good wheat? Oh, no Miss Annie, he cain' mean dat, sholy, sholy!"

"He said it. He's got an awful spell this time. Unc'

Zenas--look--couldn't you ride the reaper if he wouldn't? Couldn't you? Once the wheat gets cut there's some chance."

"Befo' my G.o.d, Miss Annie, wid deseyer wuffless ole han's I cain'

ha'dly hol' one hawss, let alone three. Oh, if I had back my stren'th lak I useter!"

The three fell into hopeless silence.

"Are the bridges so bad? Is it too hard to get the thresher up here?"

asked Annie at last. "Or was that just Harrison's excuse?"

"No, ma'am; he's got de rights. Dem ole bridges might go down mos' any time. An' dishyer road up yere, it mighty hard to navigate foh er grea' big hebby contraption lak er thres.h.i.+n' machine en er engine.

Mos' eve'y year he gits stuck. Las' year tuk er day en er ha'f to git him out. No'm; he's got de rights."

"Yes, but, Unc' Zenas, that wheat mustn't be left go to waste."

Aunt Dolcey spoke up. "Miss Annie, honey, go git your res'--mawnin'

brings light. Maybe Ma.r.s.e Wes'll come to his solid senses een de mawnin'. You cain' do nuffin' ternight noway."

"No, that's so." She sighed hopelessly. "Unc' Zenas, maybe we could hire somebody else to cut the wheat if he won't."

"Miss Annie, honey, eve'ybody busy wid his own wheat--an', moreover, Ma.r.s.e Wes ain' gwi' let any stranger come on dis place an' cut his wheat--you know he ain'."

There seemed nothing more to say. In the darkness tears were slowly trickling down Annie's cheeks, and she could not stop them.

"Well--good-night."

"Good-night, my lamb, good-night. I gwi' name you en your tribulations in my prayers dis night."

She had never felt so abandoned, so alone. She could not even make the effort to force herself to believe that Wes would not commit this crime against all Nature; instead, she had a vivid and complete certainty that he would. She went over it and over it, lying in stubborn troubled wakefulness. She put it in clear if simple terms. If Wes persisted in his petty childish anger and wasted this wheat, it meant that they could not save the money that they had intended for the child that was coming. They would have, in fact, hardly more than their bare living left them. The ridiculous futility of it swept her from one mood to another, from courage to utter hopelessness. She remembered the first time that she had seen Wes angry, and how she had lain awake then and wondered, and dreaded. She remembered how, later, she had planned to manage him, to control him. And she had done nothing. Now it had come to this, that her child would be born in needless impoverishment; and, worse, born with the Dean curse full upon him. She clenched and unclenched her hands. The poverty she might bear, but the other was beyond her power to endure. Sleep came to her at last as a blessed anodyne.

In the first moment of the sunlit morning she forgot her trouble, but instantly she remembered, and she dressed in an agony of apprehension and wonder. Wes was gone, as was usual, for he got up before she did, to feed his cattle. She hurried into her clothes and came down, to find him stamping in to breakfast, and with the first glance at him her hope fell like a plummet.

He did mean it--he did! He did not mean to cut that wheat. She watched him as he ate, and that fine-spun desperation that comes when courage alone is not enough, that purpose that does the impossible, took hold of her.

When he had finished his silent meal he went leisurely out to the little front porch and sat down. She followed him. "Wes Dean, you going to cut that wheat?" she demanded; and she did not know the sound of her own voice, so high and shrill it was.

The vein in his forehead leered at her. What was she to pit her strength against a mood like this? He did not answer, did not even look at her.

"Do you mean to say you'd be so wicked--such a fool?" she went on.

Now he looked up at her with furious, threatening eyes.

"Shut your mouth and go in!" he said.

She did not move. "If you ain't going to cut it--then I am!"

She turned and started through the house, and he leaped up and followed her. In the kitchen he overtook her.

"You stay where you are! You don't go out of this house this day!" He laid a rough, restraining hand on her shoulder.

At that touch--the first harshness she had ever felt from him--something hot and flaming leaped through her. She whirled away from him and caught up Aunt Dolcey's big sharp butcher knife lying on the table; lifted it.

"You put your hands on me like that again and I'll kill you!" Her voice was not high and shrill now; she did not even raise it. "You and your getting mad! You and your rotten, filthy temper! You'd waste that wheat because you haven't got enough sense to see what a big fool you are."

She dropped the knife and walked past him, out of the kitchen, to the barn.

"Unc' Zenas," she called, "you hitch up the horses to the reaper. I'm going to cut that near field to-day myself."

"But, Miss Annie----" began the old man.

"You hitch up that team," she said. "If there ain't any men round this place, I don't know's it makes so much difference."

She waited while the three big horses were brought out and hitched to the reaper, and then she mounted grimly to the seat. She did not even look around to see if Wes might be watching. She did not answer when Unc' Zenas offered a word of direction.

"Let dat nigh horse swing round de cornahs by hisse'f, Miss Annie. He knows. An' look--here's how you drop de knife. I'll let down de bars an' foller you."

Behind her back he made frantic gestures to Dolcey to come to him, and she ran, shuffling, shaken. Together they followed the little figure in the blue calico dress, perched high on the rattling, clacking reaper. Her hair shone in the sun like the wheat.

The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with the knife, but it dropped into place, and the first of the golden harvest fell before it squarely, cleanly; the stubble was even behind it. She watched the broad backs of her team, a woman in a dream. She did not know how she drove them; the lines were heavy in her hands, dragged at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead.

She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet.