VIII

Late in the afternoon, Colonel Norwood sent Cora for their son. The gun had been put away. At least Cora did not see it.

“I want to talk to that boy,” the Colonel said. “Fetch him here.” Damned young fool…bastard…of a nigger….

“What’s he gonna do to my boy?” Cora thought. “Son, be careful,” as she went across the yard and down toward Willie’s cabin to find Bert. “Son, you be careful. I didn’t bear you for no white man to kill. Son, you be careful. You ain’t white, don’t you know that? You be careful. O, Lord God Jesus in heaven! Son, be careful!” Cora was crying when she reached Willie’s door, crying all the way back to the Big House with her son.

“To hell with the old man,” Bert said. “He ain’t no trouble! Old as he is, what can he do to me?”

“Lord have mercy, son, is you crazy? Why don’t you be like Willie? He ain’t never had no fusses with de Colonel.”

“White folks’ nigger,” Bert said.

“Why don’t you talk sense?” Cora begged.

“Why didn’t he keep his promise then and let me go back to school in Atlanta, like my sister? You said if I came home this summer he’d lemme go back to the Institute, didn’t you? Then why didn’t he?”

“Why didn’t you act right, son? Oh-o-o!” Cora moaned. “You can’t get nothin’ from white folks if you don’t act right.”

“Act like Willie, you mean, and the rest of these cotton pickers? Then I don’t want anything.”

They had reached the back door now. It was nearly dark in the kitchen where Livonia was making biscuits.

“Don’t rile him, Bert, child,” Cora said as she took him through the house. “I don’t know what he might do to you. He’s got a gun.”

“Don’t worry ’bout me,” Bert answered.

The setting sun made long paths of golden light across the parlor floor through the tall windows opening on the West. The air was thick and sultry with autumn heat. The Colonel sat, bent and old, near a table where there were whisky and cigars and a half-open drawer. When Bert entered he suddenly straightened up and the old commanding look came into his eyes. He told Cora to go upstairs to her room.

Of course, he never asked Bert to sit down.

The tall mulatto boy stood before his father, the Colonel. The old white man felt the steel of him standing there, like the steel of himself forty years ago. Steel of the Norwoods darkened now by Africa. The old man got up, straight and tall, too, and suddenly shook his fist in the face of the boy.