The Bondboy. George W. Ogden
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me, and understand what I mean,” said Joe. “I could run off and leave you, Isom, if I wanted to, but that’s not my way. Mother made the bargain, I intend to live up to it, and let her have what little benefit there is to be got out of it. But I want you to know what I think of you at the start, and the way I feel about it. I’m here to work for mother, and keep that old roof over her head that’s dearer to her than life, but I’m not your slave nor your servant in any sense of the word.”
“It’s all the same to me,” said Isom, dropping his sham front of placation, lifting his finger to accent his words, “but you’ll work, understand that–you’ll work!”
“Mother told me,” said Joe not in the least disturbed by this glimpse of Isom in his true guise, “that you had that notion in your mind, Isom. She said you told her you could thrash me if you wanted to do it, but I want to tell you––”
“It’s the law,” cut in Isom. “I can do it if I see fit.”
“Well, don’t ever try it,” said Joe, drawing a long breath. “That was the main thing I wanted to say to you, Isom–don’t ever try that!”
“I never intended to take a swingle-tree to you, Joe,” said Isom, forcing his dry face into a grin. “I don’t see that there ever need be any big differences between me and you. You do what’s right by me and I’ll do the same by you.”
Isom spoke with lowered voice, a turning of the eyes toward the kitchen door, as if troubled lest this defiance of his authority might have been heard within, and the seeds of insubordination sown in another bond-slave’s breast.
“I’ll carry out mother’s agreement with you to the best of my ability,” said Joe, moving forward as if ready now to begin.
“Then come on in and eat your breakfast,” said Isom. 28
Isom led the way into the smoky kitchen, inwardly more gratified than displeased over this display of spirit. According to the agreement between them, he had taken under bond-service the Widow Newbolt’s “minor male child,” but it looked to him as if some mistake had been made in the delivery.
“He’s a man!” exulted Isom in his heart, pleased beyond measure that he had bargained better than he had known.
Joe put his lean brown hand into the bosom of his shirt and brought out a queer, fat little book, leather-bound and worn of the corners. This he placed on top of his bundle, then followed Chase into the kitchen where the table was spread for breakfast.
Mrs. Chase was busy straining milk. She did not turn her head, nor give the slightest indication of friendliness or interest in Joe as he took the place pointed out by Chase. Chase said no word of introduction. He turned his plate over with a businesslike flip, took up the platter which contained two fried eggs and a few pieces of bacon, scraped off his portion, and handed the rest to Joe.
In addition to the one egg each, and the fragments of bacon, there were sodden biscuits and a broken-nosed pitcher holding molasses. A cup of roiled coffee stood ready poured beside each plate, and that was the breakfast upon which Joe cast his curious eyes. It seemed absurdly inadequate to the needs of two strong men, accustomed as Joe was to four eggs at a meal, with the stays of life which went with them in proportion.
Mrs. Chase did not sit at the table with them, nor replenish the empty platter, although Joe looked expectantly and hungrily for her to do so. She was carrying pans of milk into the cellar, and did not turn her head once in their direction during the meal. 29
Joe rose from the table hungry, and in that uneasy state of body began his first day’s labor on Isom Chase’s farm. He hoped that dinner might repair the shortcomings of breakfast, and went to the table eagerly when that hour came.
For dinner there was hog-jowl and beans, bitter with salt, yellow with salt, but apparently greatly to the liking of Isom, whose natural food seemed to be the very essence of salt.
“Help yourself, eat plenty,” he invited Joe.
Jowls and beans were cheap; he could afford to be liberal with that meal. Generosity in regard to that five-year-old jowl cost him scarcely a pang.
“Thank you,” said Joe politely. “I’m doing very well.”
A place was laid for Mrs. Chase, as at breakfast, but she did not join them at the table. She was scalding milk crocks and pans, her face was red from the steam. As she bent over the sink the uprising vapor moved her hair upon her temples like a wind.
“Ain’t you goin’ to eat your dinner, Ollie?” inquired Isom with considerable lightness, perhaps inspired by the hope that she was not.
“I don’t feel hungry right now,” she answered, bending over her steaming pan of crocks.
Isom did not press her on the matter. He filled up his plate again with beans and jowl, whacking the grinning jawbone with his knife to free the clinging shreds of meat.
Accustomed as he had been all his life to salt fare, that meal was beyond anything in that particular of seasoning that Joe ever had tasted. The fiery demand of his stomach for liquid dilution of his saline repast made an early drain on his coffee; when he had swallowed the last bean that he was able to force down, his cup was empty. He cast his eyes about inquiringly for more. 30
“We only drink one cup of coffee at a meal here,” explained Isom, a rebuke in his words for the extravagance of those whose loose habits carried them beyond that abstemious limit.
“All right; I guess I can make out on that,” said Joe.
There was a pitcher of water at his hand, upon which he drew heavily, with the entire good-will and approbation of Isom. Then he took his hat from the floor at his feet and went out, leaving Isom hammering again at the jowl, this time with the handle of his fork, in the hope of dislodging a bit of gristle which clung to one end.
Joe’s hope leaped ahead to supper, unjustified as the flight was by the day’s developments. Human creatures could not subsist longer than a meal or two on such fare as that, he argued; there must be a change very soon, of course.
It was a heavy afternoon for Joe. He was weary from the absolute lack of nourishment when the last of the chores was done long after dusk, and Isom announced that they would go to the house for supper.
The supper began with soup, made from the left-over beans and the hog’s jaw of dinner. There it swam, that fleshless, long-toothed, salt-reddened bone, the most hateful piece of animal anatomy that Joe ever fixed his hungry eyes upon. And supper ended as it began; with soup. There was nothing else behind it, save some hard bread to soak in it, and its only savor was salt.
Isom seemed to be satisfied with, even cheered by, his liquid refreshment. His wife came to her place at the table when they were almost through, and sat stirring a bowl of the mixture of bread and thin soup, her eyes set in abstracted stare in the middle of the table, far beyond the work of her hands. She did not speak to Joe; he did not undertake any friendly approaches.
Joe never had seen Mrs. Chase before that day, neighbors 31 though they had been for months. She appeared unusually handsome to Joe, with her fair skin, and hair colored like ripe oats straw. She wore a plait of it as big as his wrist coiled and wound around her head.
For a little while after finishing his unsatisfying meal, Joe sat watching her small hand turning the spoon in her soup. He noted the thinness of her young cheeks, in which there was no marvel, seeing the fare upon which she was forced to live. She seemed to be unconscious of him and Isom. She did not raise her eyes.
Joe got up in a little while and left them, going to the porch to look for his bundle and his book. They were gone. He came back, standing hesitatingly in the door.
“They’re in your room upstairs,” said Mrs. Chase without turning her head to look at him, still leaning forward over her bowl.
“I’ll show you where it is,” Isom offered.
He led the way up the stairs