Bloodline: Five Stories by Ernest J. Gaines

Author:Ernest J. Gaines [Gaines, Ernest J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307830364
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2012-10-30T18:30:00+00:00

Bloodline

1: I figured it was about time she was coming to work, so I went to the door to look out for her. There she was, pushing the gate open and coming in the yard. She had on her long gray dress and the blue gingham apron. The apron was almost long as the dress and almost the same color—she had washed it so many times. She had on her big yellow straw hat, and I could see piece of the white rag on her head sticking out from under the hat. I stood in the shop door with a file and a plowshare and watched ’Malia come up the walk. She walked slow and tired, like any moment she might stop and go back. When she came in the shade of that big pecan tree, she raised her head and looked toward the tool shop. She knowed I’d be standing there.

“Making it on up, huh?” I said.

“Trying to,” she said, and stopped to catch her breath.

Every morning when she came up to the yard like this, she stopped and we had a few words. Sometimes I went out in the yard where she was, sometimes I talked with her from the door. This morning I went out there because I wanted to ask her about that boy. I still had the file and the plowshare in my hand.

“I see Copper didn’t come with you,” I said.

“No,” she said.

“No more than I expected from him,” I thought to myself.

’Malia turned around and looked back toward the gate.

“That little incline getting steeper and steeper,” she said. “It get little steeper every day now, ’Malia,” I said. “Yes, Lord,” she said.

It wasn’t much of a incline. To them children who came to the yard to pick figs and pecans, it wasn’t a incline at all. They could run it just like running on flat ground. But when you got old as she was—she was seventy-two, I was seventy—everything looked like a incline. Even walking downhill looked like a incline.

“Well, I better get on up there,” she said, looking toward the house now. But she still didn’t move, just standing there looking at the house behind the trees. You couldn’t see much of the house for the moss hanging on the trees.

“How is he in there?” I asked her.

“Same,” she said.

“He didn’t come out yesterday.”

“He wasn’t feeling too strong,” she said.

“You think this the last go round, ’Malia?”

“I hope not,” she said. She spoke like she was very, very tired. “If it is, God pity every last one of us.”

“She’ll really let them Cajuns take over, won’t she?”

“Won’t she,” ’Malia said.

“If Copper was white, then this plantation would go to him, not to her,” I was thinking to myself. “But he’s the wrong color to go round claiming plantations.”

“Is Copper coming here at all today?” I asked ’Malia.

“No,” she said.

“You told him Mr. Frank wanted to see him?”

“I told him,” she said, looking up at me. I could see she was worried and scared.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.