Delwood Reese let them have their fun. Inwardly, he smiled at the fact he’d already become pleasantly acquainted with Baker’s and Tuttle’s wives. Del, as he liked to be called, considered how Juniper’s wife, Mercy, kept mostly to herself, although he suspected she had to know there was some hanky-panky going on. He’d always wondered how it might be with a colored woman. Best as he could tell, she was a lot younger than ole Juniper. For all his luck with the opposite sex, he’d yet to have such an encounter, but he dreamed of it. Now, with them other two, it had started off innocent enough. He’d come here after the farm he’d worked at for a couple years failed and the family was forced to move in with relatives somewhere in Virginia. Since the big crash back in ’29, farms were going bust all over the countryside with crop prices dropping so it was near about impossible for anyone to make a living, much less pay their bills.
Del had come to Sutton’s farm with two dollars, the clothes on his back, a couple cans of Vienna sausages, his rifle, and Melody, the harmonica that had been his granddaddy’s. He’d bundled all of it together using his extra pants and shirt, with a stick stuck through the tied knot, a real hobo-looking getup. He didn’t need much nohow. He was a man of simple means, always had been. Besides, he was glad, considering the times, he didn’t have a family to provide for. Moe Sutton grew acres upon acres of tobacco, alongside vast cornfields. Del had gazed across the fields, saw the sharecropper shacks and the sharecropper wives tending their small kitchen gardens, hanging out the Monday wash, caring for a passel of young’uns running around barefoot, and thought maybe he could stay here awhile. It was peaceful enough, the scenery not so bad. Moe Sutton seemed like he was doing all right despite the country’s circumstances. Maybe it would work out fine.
It wasn’t long after he’d been hired on, a day or two at the most, Baker’s wife, Sarah, smiled kindly at him and invited him to eat after seeing him sitting in the doorway of his little abode, all by his lonesome, puffing a soft sweet tune on Melody. The Bakers were right beside him, each family taking one of the shanty houses set in a row facing the cornfields.
Sarah said, “Come have some supper.”
It was the standard poor man’s meal—fried potatoes, hot dogs, and biscuits—but they also had some fresh corn and tomatoes. She served the food on mismatched, chipped dishes, and when she set a plate in front of him, she turned it to hide the imperfection. She sure was easy on the eyes. Her fingertips brushed Del’s as she passed what was meant to be butter, but they all knew was really lard tinted yellow with salt added. Sarah Baker had a pouty mouth and large breasts that jiggled without the benefit of an undergarment beneath the flour sack material of her homespun dress. He caught her staring at him several times, always dropping her eyes when he glanced her way. The two children, a boy of four, and another baby boy, gawked at him with big blue orbs clear as the summer sky. Del winked, and the older boy giggled.
Next day he’d seen Tuttle’s wife, Bertice. She was fine-boned, quite timid in nature. A thin woman with a thin mouth. She carried a baby boy about on her hips while another child, a boy too, clung to her apron.
She poured Tuttle a cup of chicory coffee out on the porch, and as Del made his way by, Tuttle called out, “Come have you a cup, Del.”
“Thankee kindly.”
He climbed the steps and sat across from the man who constantly held a toothpick in the corner of his mouth and had a tendency to make odd pt, pt, pt sounds like he was trying to spit something out. Bertice generally kept her eyes averted, but her reserved nature didn’t last long, not when Del began to work his charm, because if there was any woman anywhere within eyesight of him, it was as if he couldn’t help himself. He had to know, what was she like?
Soon, she was inviting him over as often as Sarah, because, as she put it, “A man ought not have to eat alone.”
It went on from there, insignificant, innocent conversations he’d have with one or the other that became more animated, more flirty, and then there came timid touching, progressing to brave banter and greedy grabbing. Del thought of it as a naturally occurring thing, that next step. If they were willing, well, so was he. He never went after them. He eased himself into their lives and let the chips fall where they may. If it happened, it happened. If not, it wasn’t of any consequence. More often than not opportunistic moments came, and he snatched them up along with the faithfulness of their husbands. Swift couplings over kitchen tables while the man of the house went to use the privy. The shooing of older kids outside to play, babies nestled in a drawer bed with a sugar tit, chubby little hands waving freely while their mamas hastened to push aside the dishes. There among the scent of ham, biscuits, string beans simmering, sweaty effort lingered on in the crude, dusty shacks outside the cornfields.
Sometimes it would happen behind an outhouse, or by the side of a tobacco barn that faced dense pines, or way, way back in a field of tall, almost to the sky corn, the only witnesses, the sun overhead or the occasional squirrel sitting on a branch. Opportunities arose regular as night turning to day, and he had to be careful one didn’t find out about the other. There was danger in it. Excitement. Close calls. They were addicted to him, tender toward him, most important of all, protective of him, swearing everlasting loyalties. They seemed needy for something only he could give, and he was willing.
Baker and Tuttle continued to poke and joke. To hint maybe he was, you know, funny in that kind of way. They’d sometimes seem suspicious when Sarah or Bertice stared at him a mite too long. Del didn’t mind the trivial witticisms about his nature. He had it real good here, almost enjoying himself, though he was tired most of the time. Meanwhile, Juniper’s wife, Mercy, remained aloof, undiscovered territory, like when he’d venture into a new county and everything was fresh and new to the eye.
One afternoon he was behind one of those tobacco barns with Sarah, and he spotted her, Mercy. There he was, red-faced and perspiring like he was hand-picking corn of a summer day, giving Sarah his all—again—for the third time this week. Sarah couldn’t see a thing with her dress flung over her head. Mercy sat tucked away on her small porch, partially hidden under a pink crepe myrtle, looking like she wasn’t looking, but maybe she was. She sat there, a bowl in her lap, shelling peas. He kept his gaze on her the entire time, fantasizing, and only paused a second when Sarah’s head accidentally banged into the side of the tobacco barn, so wrapped up in the moment was he.
“Ow!” she said. “Slow down!”
Right after she spoke, Mercy went inside and firmly shut the door. Del tilted his head back, stared at the clouds floating by as he finished his mission. Damn, but he was curious about that one.
Then, he met Moe’s wife, Myra. Myra was a large woman, almost as tall as Moe. She stood on the back porch of their house, a two-story, columned affair that could easily fit all of their tiny shacks inside of it and then some. Yes, Moe Sutton had done good for himself, considering not only the economic situation, but with respect to his wife. Moe was not a handsome man, but Myra? Myra’s hair was the color of a brand-new penny, her skin pink and smooth. Del imagined her like a bowl of peaches and cream, and his typical curiosity went to an even higher peak with regard to her.
He’d come to the big house to work a different field and stood at the bottom of the first step waiting on Moe. Those steps led to the porch, where the fetching vision that was Myra stared down at him as he twirled his straw hat.
“Who’re you?” She had a lace hanky and waved it in front of her face in a vain attempt to cool off.
“Name’s Del, ma’am.”
He caught the scent of her, lilacs and lust.
“You new, ain’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Been here about a month.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever your husband tells me.”
Moe came out, glared at her, and she scooted back inside and slammed the door shut. Afterward, it seemed to Del she was all over the place. Strolling about the yard as he and the others walked by on their way to a tobacco or cornfield. Pointing out something to be done to one of the help. Glancing his way a little too often. One evening she showed up as he sat on the steps of his shanty and asked his advice about a poorly mule.
He said, “What makes you think I know anything about mules?”