Uncle Bill went to see the preacher April had bitten. His cheek had not rotted off at all. The white doctor had fixed it. But it looked queer, for it was drawn up tight like the mouth of a tobacco sack pulled together with draw-strings.
From that day Joy showed no sign of weakness. She shirked nothing, yielded nothing to Leah’s children who gave up being impudent to her face and did their grumbling about her behind her back.
When the stables were cleaned out and the black manure piled out in the corn-field, Joy went out at dawn with the other women, barefooted, scantily dressed, a rough crocus sack made into an apron to hold the stuff, and scattered it all day long, up and down the corn rows, leading the women as they marched abreast, singing, “Follow me—” to their chorus, “We’s a-followin’ on,” and ending, “I’ll lead you gentel-eee home!”
When the cotton was up to a thick stand and ready to be thinned, she tied her skirt up high out of the dew and took her hoe and chopped row for row with the best hoe hands, leaving the stalks one hoe’s width apart and cutting out every grass blade. She hung up eggshells to make the hens lay well, fed them sour dough to make them set, patched the garden fence and filled the rich plot of earth with seed.
She set hens and took them off with broods of biddies and dusted them with ashes to kill the lice. For one so frail-looking, Joy did wonders.
Everybody praised her but Leah’s children, who had naught against her except she had married April, and Big Sue, who kept her distance, pretending that Joy had disgraced her. But Zeda said Big Sue was jealous of Joy’s getting April.
Joy visited few of her neighbors except Maum Hannah and Zeda, and she took no part in the plantation quarrels and disagreements, or in the arguments about what had caused April’s trouble. People asked her a thousand questions, but she was a close-mouthed woman. She didn’t know anything about anything, to hear her tell it, and she listened, mute, dumb, when they came to her, wondering if the death-sheet or the scorched charm or the white folks’ medicine had ruined April? Joy agreed with them that charms were dangerous. But store-bought medicine is not to be trusted either. Leah got herself salivated by taking one lone teaspoonful of a scentless, tasteless white powder. It looked weak as flour, yet it loosened every tooth in her mouth and made them all drop out, whole. If April hadn’t been a mighty faithful man he’d have left Leah altogether right then. Where’s another man would stick? Leah was a fool to prank with things she didn’t understand. April did well ever to look at her again, for no man could be raven about a salivated woman, yet he even took her to town and bought her new teeth. No man could have done more than that. They cost more than a bale of cotton. Leah was ever contrary. Jealous. Maybe it was Leah that had tricked him now. Who could tell? She died too hard to rest easy in her grave. And she never took her eyes off of April while she lived. No doubt her spirit was after him still.
The weather was exactly right for the cotton; mornings wet with dew, noons fever hot; nights still and steamy and stifling. Except for the accursed boll-weevils the crop was most promising. The tender leaves multiplied and widened, and from morning until night they lifted their faces to get every bit of sunshine they could hold. The three-cornered squares clustered on the limbs, but not a blossom showed, for swarms of boll-weevils punctured these buds and made them drop off before a creamy petal could form. Well-nigh every fallen square held a grub. A few days more and they’d be weevils, ready to lay more eggs in new squares, and hatch more weevils. Unless something was done to stop them, the crop might as well be thrown away.
Uncle Bill and Uncle Isaac were upset. What were they to do? They sent every man and woman and child on the plantation to the field to pick the squares and try to catch the weevils, but the squares fell off behind them as fast as they picked those in front, and the pesky weevil fell off the stalks on the ground, too, as soon as anybody came near them. They played dead like ’possums, and they were colored so near like the dirt, the sharpest eyes couldn’t find them.
Uncle Bill walked up and down the rows watching, and frowning darkly. At last he stopped beside Zeda, and asked her where Sherry was. He’d have to come home and poison the cotton or the whole crop was done for. Not enough money would be made on the whole place to buy a pair of rope lines. Sherry would come back if he knew how bad things were. He wouldn’t hold hard feelings against April if he could see him. God had punished April enough to wipe out every sin he had ever done in his life. Sherry must forgive him too, and come back and help fight the weevils. Zeda listened coldly. She looked at Uncle Bill, then at the others.