MELLIE’S MAN
By William McLeod Raine
“Why don’t you-all git a man, Mellie?”
Mrs. Chunn waited impatiently for an answer, her potato knife poised in air. She was a sallow lath of a woman, dry and hard, with piercing little black eyes that bored like gimlets. Efficiency of management was the dominant note of the widow. She ruled like an autocrat, a kindly one if people submitted gracefully, but a firm one in any event. Three deceased husbands had endured her sway not unhappily. Each of them had fortunately possessed the requisite sense of humor.
Just now the gimlet eyes were turned on the slim, fair girl who sat shelling peas on the porch steps at her feet. Mellie stirred uneasily, as under compulsion, but offered no answer in words. From her childhood she had been much given to silence, an unconscious refuge from the commonplace world of Cache Bayou that misunderstood her of necessity. A sweet, shy creature with a rare color easily moved to paint charming pictures of maidenly embarrassment, one might well wonder how this daughter of the swamps had come to be endowed with so alien a beauty. She suggested a native refinement foreign alike to her training and her environment.
Her stepmother repeated the question with exactly the same inflection as before.
“Don’t yo’, please,” implored the girl, the color sweeping into her face. Then, as if feeling the futility of protest, she added, “I cayn’t, Maw. Yo’ know I ain’t that-a-way.”
“I reckon yo’ kin if yo’ try. You-all air turned nineteen now. Do yo’ ’low nevah to marry? Trouble is, you-all air so meachin’ an’ touch-me-not. Hit don’t do to be dumb’s a wild hawg the whole enjurin’ time when men folks is ’round. Yo’ got to brisk up an’ be peart.”
The widow’s experience entitled her to speak with authority. “Gittin’ a man” had become almost a habit with her. It spoke volumes for her efficiency that men naturally gravitated her way, despite her lack of feminine graces. Temporarily, by reason of a dispensation of Providence, she happened to be husbandless, but it was a condition she expected to change as soon as she could decide on a suitable successor for the late Shep Chunn. To this selection she was giving her judgment with cool detachment, quite unhampered by the superfluous baggage of sentiment. As a preliminary she purposed to do her duty by her stepdaughter and make her happy whether she wanted to be or not.
“Co’se hit stands to reason that a gyurl’s gotten to git a man or be plumb looked down on,” she continued, a note of finality in her voice. “Yo’ hain’t aimin’ to be a’ ol’ maid, air yo’, Mellie? Well, yo’ shorely air hailed that-a-way. Me’n Dave Wilson was ma’ied befo’ I was sixteen. When he up’n died I mo’ned a fittin’ time and then tuk yo’ paw. I met up with Shep ayfter yo’ po’ paw died. All told I haint be’n a widow more’n fo’ years.” The pardonable complacency of success voiced itself in Mirandy Wilson-Briscoe-Chunn’s recital. “This yere kentry’s full of men an’ taint no trick to make ’em think this yearth won’t turn ’f they-all don’t git you. But yo’ cayn’t do hit by folding yo’ hands in yo’ lap and actin’ like men folks plumb skeer yo’ to death. Yo’ got to show ’em yo’re right smart partial to ’em. An’ yit yo’ got to keep ’em jubious. Naow the’ was Jim Dascom, jes’ possessed to git you-all. He plumb thought the world an’ all of yo’. Him a-comin’ yere an’ a-comin’, slickin’ up to go co’tin’ ever’ last night, an’ yo’ takin’ on like he was p’isen. Consequence is, he up an’ tuk Seliny. ’N she c’udn’t hold a candle to you-all fer looks.”