A Kiss for Mother Earth

I

EUSÈBE DUHON’S youngest son Willie reminded Eusébe of himself when he was young.

‘Except, of course, me, I had a moustache and it was famous, that whisker of mine, yeh! It gave me trouble. When I use to go see your mamma at her papa’s house there on Bayou Queue de Tortue, whenever she sneeze her whole family run quick to where we’re at to see if I kiss her and my moustache tickle her to sneeze.’

‘Never mind about that, hein, Papa:” Willie begged. ‘Look: what you’re going to do about, these tax, hein?’

Eusèbe’s face slumped from reminiscent pleasure to wrinkled amazement. ‘What I’m going to do?’ he asked blankly. ‘What I’m going to do, Weelay? Metis bon Dieu! You’re the only one in this family making money— unless maybe you got a little brother hid somewhere?’ Jokingly Eusèbe leaned aside to peer under Willie’s chair. It was a big old rocker of satin-gray cypress.

Willie did n’t even smile at the old man’s clowning. He looked out the small window at the flat Louisiana fields for a moment, then glanced back at his papa’s twinkling face.

‘This year I’m not going to pay no tax for you at all, at all, no, Papa,’ he said sombrely. ‘It’s not that I want to be mean, but Papa! You expect me to work in the oil field making money and then give it to you to pay tax on a whole hundred and fifty acre of a no-good farm that ain’t made money since ten year?’

Eusèbe shook his head sadly, cutting off a great chunk of juicy sugar cane to chew. ‘Eh, Wee-lay! You don’t know how good is that dirt, you!’

‘It’s just a notion you got, that’s all.’

Eusèbe was chewing the sugar cane and could not answer. When he had strangled down the last drop and relieved himself of the pulp, he shouted: —

‘Notion, hein, Wee-lay? Notion, hein? What you do over in that oil field where you work at, hein? You dig in the dirt, hein? A little bit deeper than a plough can go, maybe, but you dig in the dirt —’

‘Yeh! Eight thousand feet is a little bit deeper than a plough can go.’

‘Don’t interrupt me, you bad-manner little jackass, you! That dirt — all one hundred and fifty acre of it, every grain — it’s all good dirt, and you’re never going to know how good it is, you hardhead son-of-a-gun, you! Sugarcane grow ten feet tall in that dirt, Wee-lay!’

Willie waved his big palms at his papa. ‘All the same, I’m not going to pay your tax.’

‘I don’t care if you never pay ’um! I don’t care, me, if you never come back to walk on my good dirt again, Weelay Duhon, you hardhead little jackass, you!’ Eusèbe stopped, choking. ‘It’s good dirt I got out there!’ he yelled thunderously.

‘All the same,’ Willie said, his head down, ‘I’m not going to pay your tax because I’m going to get marry with Odile Frilot and that cost me too much money to pay your tax for you too.’

Fury went away from old Eusèbe’s large face. The blood that had been surging purple through his fat cheeks ebbed pleasantly pink, showing off the dark outline of his beard stubble.

‘ Pitié de Dieul ’ His tone had not yet had time to change from anger to full gladness, so it stood curiously between. Willie only dared peep at the fading wrath in his papa’s face. Eusèbe smiled up a little slyly. ‘ Wee-lay, my boy, why you never told me that in the first place, you little fool, you? To let me go on and make a big scene and yell and shout and cuss you out. . . . Mais of course don’t pay no tax! Get marry — go right ahead and get yourself marry with Odile Frilot!’ He turned to address the glistening length of sugar cane in his fist. ‘Well, that’s something for sure now, hein?’ he asked.

Laughter began seething out of Eusèbe’s thin French lips. Laughter boiled raucously in his chest, and as his face relaxed completely from anger his mouth flew wide and the laughter broke out free and mighty, rattling the thintimbered walls of his parlor and setting up a clatter of knickknacks in the cabinet of hand-hewn walnut.

Hélène appeared at the kitchen door, frowning in on Eusèbe’s uproarious laughter and looking accusingly at her son.

‘Wee-lay, you gave your papa something to drink?’ she asked him severely.

‘No.’ Willie shook his head. ‘I just told him some good news.’

‘Oh, you’re going to pay the tax again?’

‘No. I’m going to get marry with Odile Frilot.’

Mamma’s dark eyes opened wide and she rushed into the parlor. ‘ Mais jamais! Wee-lay, my baby, you get marry? It make me so happy to almost cry.‘ She bent over Willie in his chair and kissed him resoundingly.

Eusèbe bellowed, laughing: ‘The last one not marry, and now we got rid of him too!’ He ended in suckling-pig treble. ‘ But can you imagine yourself that, Hélène?’ he sputtered in shrill French. ‘Wee-lay marry with Odile Frilot!’

‘I’m sure glad you’re glad.’ Willie wormed up awkwardly from his chair. ‘Now I got to go see Mr. Donnelson in town there and tell him.’

Mr. Donnelson was Willie’s boss, local manager for the Exploration Oil Company. Whllie was a rig foreman in their oil field fifteen miles west of Eusèbe’s farm.

Letting his fit of laughter leave him as slowly as had his anger, Eusèbe followed his son outdoors and watched while the muddy auto quivered out of sight between great branches of oak, their leaves staunch against the winter. In the black shade of the trees, drab pennants of moss dangled earthward.

II

There was reason for Eusèbe’s joy at the thought of his son’s coming marriage with Odile Frilot. Besides the merry afternoon and night the event was bound to bring, Odile herself was a beautiful girl with a heart so tender her mamma said she could n’t wring a chicken’s neck when they were going to have gumbo. Of course Eusèbe would have howled derision had Hélène professed any such delicate sensibility, but in a young girl like Odile it showed the fineness of her spirit. Eusèbe touched his fat thumb and second finger together, clicked his tongue just thinking of it.

He was taking his joy about Willie’s marriage for a walk outdoors. That was where he took all his joys and sorrows and angers and loves, out to his fields that looked in to-day’s oblique sunlight like the splintery top of an unfinished workbench. The withered stubble of cane fields stretched from his small house all the way to the dark swamp of Turtletail Bayou. The sky was bare and blue overhead, bereft of clouds by a strong northwest wind.

Eusèbe’s thick-soled boots pushed hard into the yielding earth along the fence edge of his fields. How good is that dirt, Willie will never know, him! To-day it was dry enough to plough and Eusèbe ached to be swearing at his mule and breaking the earth into black shining clods. . . . By the way, he ought to go water the poor mule over there.

As he crossed the field toward the pasture, Eusèbe saw Auguste Pellerin hard at work cutting the black earth open into glossy chunks. . . . Well, Auguste had no rheumatism yet. He could work in any weather, even cold as it was to-day. Ah, bon Dieu, it’s sure not the dirt’s fault that my farm can’t even make tax money! It’s just me that’s old, and Willie that would rather work in an oil field than stay here on the farm.

In the pasture Eusèbe found the handle of the large spigot over the trough stuck fast and he had to kick it open. Keen pangs burned through his thigh and knee from the effort. The water gushed thick with rust into the trough and then came clear. That faucet rusted already! ’Crée misère! It was not yet a year since Willie had paid a lot of money to have this artesian well dug and a good faucet, set upon it!

The plough mule sauntered up to the trough, thrust in its nose, and took a noisy draft. Instantly the nose came out again, snorted, while the animal shook its head with distaste.

‘But you’re a finicky mule, you! Not to drink because they got a little bit rust in your water there!’

The rust made the water smell funny, Eusèbe noticed as he shut off the faucet, but only good water could come out of his good dirt, and if the faucet was so no-good as to rust in less than a year’s time, be got-dog if Eusèbe would ever have a pipe laid from this well to the house! For cooking and drinking Hélène used the old pump by the back porch. Eusèbe made a face as his fingers curled with a twinge of rheumatism. He rubbed his hand briskly on his pants to dry it and warm it up.

But for all his aches and pains he could still dance when Odile and Willie had their bal des noces. The violins would play the lively music of ‘Fais Do-Do,’ and for old time’s sake there would be a valse des mariés, maybe even a whole cotillon des mariés! . . . He was remembering his own bal des noces thirty years ago at the home of Hélène’s papa on Bayou Queue de Tortue, when the violins squealed all together and the wine stood on the kitchen table in a huge pitcher with glasses and coffee cups around it. Help yourselves, my friends. Make yourselves at home. Eh, les mariés! Got-dog but it was good to dance for a wedding, yes! Whistling, Eusèbe pulled open the back door of his house.

‘For what you‘re so happy, Eusèbe?’ Hélène called from the parlor, where she was getting ready to serve their eleveno’clock coffee.

‘But for you, Hélène!’ He strode thumpingly across the room and hugged the lithe, strong shoulders of his wife.

‘You forgot about the tax?’ She said it kindly, patting his broad back.

‘Mais non!’ He had, but Hélène could n’t see what a big one he was telling because his face was over her shoulder. He glowered about the parlor of his farmhouse.

There was no mail-order furniture in Eusèbe Duhon’s house. The chairs were hand-hewn from cypress and oak. A cabinet of mottle-grained walnut held the knickknacks his laughter had rattled. The marble-topped table had intricately carved legs. And during the nineteen-twenties people had plagued Eusèbe and Hélène to sell those things for prices that shocked them.

Remembering that as he held Hélène against him, a smile began to creep over the large area of Eusèbe’s face. After all, it was the dirt outdoors that was good; it would be mean to let that splendid dirt lie out there with the sheriff’s hammer hovering over it, while he and Helene took it easy in the old furniture of the house.

He unwound himself from his wife and pushed her aside, gesticulating. ‘Hélène, I got to go to town to find me a secondhand furniture man that will come buy all the stuff we got in the house here.’

‘Eusèbe, you gone crazy?’

‘But no. How else I’m going to pay the tax?’

‘ Eusebe!’

‘How else?’ He held out his arms, full length, and shrugged.

Hélène folded her arms on her breast. ‘Sometime I think, me, thirty year is too long to live with a crazy one like you, yeh, Eusèbe!’

‘Hélène!’ His tone was roaringly reproachful. ‘Is it that you got no faith in the dirt?’

‘Eh, bon Dieu!‘ She put up her hands in a light, helpless gesture. She had heard the tune before and knew it was useless to fight. ‘After to put up with your foolishness for thirty year, Eusèbe, I guess I can live in a house without furniture. I just hope you get enough money.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m too old to farm, but I can still talk, me, and that’s all it’s going to take.’

It was true, and Hélène knew it. Eusèbe put on his big felt hat and his leather coat. He tightened the laces of his boots and strode out of the house yard to the road and down to Auguste Pellerin’s farm, where he found one of the boys only too glad to take him into town in the truck.

In the afternoon Eusèbe came back to his house with a man who prided himself on his sharp dealing. But he had never yet dealt with Eusèbe Duhon, whose sales talk reached the plane of evangelism and surpassed it. He did not merely ‘sell’ the furniture man; he converted him abjectly to an enthusiastic belief in the beauty and worth of the smooth, time-worn wood.

The sale cleared the parlor of everything but the stove. Both bedrooms were stripped of all but mattresses and bedclothes. The kitchen sold out for fifteen dollars flat, and Eusèbe, taking no chances, rode back into town with the furniture dealer to cash his check, pay the taxes at the classic-domed courthouse, have a little drink, and get a ride home with a neighbor he found also refreshing himself at the bar.

III

Had it been summer when Odile Frilot called to see her future in-laws, the whole visit would have taken place outdoors under the chinaberry tree in the yard. In that way Odile would not have seen the hollow little parlor of the Duhon farmhouse and her face would never have twisted with pity at the sight. But the weather was cold the day she came.

Eusèbe kissed her small bright lips at the door and looked enchanted into the tenderness of her eyes. ‘But Odile, I sure wish I had my moustache to make you sneeze and get Hélène jealous!’

It was something of a shock, though, when he drew his face away from the girl to discover that she was about to sneeze anyhow. But no! No, that rumpling of her creamy forehead, that sudden pinched brightness in her soft brown eyes, that quivering of her pretty lips and smooth, delicate chin — all that wasn’t for a sneeze, was it? My God, the girl was about to cry! Eusèbe realized this with horror and pushed Odile hastily into the kitchen, where Hélène was waiting.

‘Come in, come in, Odile! But we arc glad to see you!’ Helene struggled up from the mattress to embrace her future daughter-in-law. The poor girl looked with horror at the mattress lying before the kitchen stove. There was no other furniture in the room at all.

‘But — but . . .’ The wrinkles around Odile’s nose were so sweet Eusèbe fairly ached for a moustache to make her sneeze.

‘You find the house look funny, chère?’ he asked her. ‘Well, I tell you.’ Eusèbe laughed a little, not guessing the blow these barren rooms had dealt to Odile’s sensibilities. ‘We sold all our stuff to pay the tax. It’s Wee-lay that usually pay ’um for me, but this year he say he could n’t do it because he was going to marry with you.’

‘Then it’s my fault . . Odile’s voice was shaking, and Hélène turned a furious face to Eusèbe.

‘But of course not, chère!’ said the older woman. ‘Not at all!’

‘And Wee-lay, how he could be so mean as that?’ Odile asked of the horrified air, blank before her eyes.

‘Mais it’s not mean, Odile-chère, you see . .

‘Oh, I see — I see too well for true!’ Her small hands were clutched together in pity. ‘ If he can be so mean as that to you, he will be too mean for me to marry. Oh no, no, no, no!’ she trilled agonizingly. ‘I can’t marry anyone so mean as that.’

Eusèbe and Hélène looked at each other, Eusèbe’s face slumping with amazement. Hélène’s pressed lips and hardened eyes told him he had better help her get this crazy notion out of Odile’s head. They both talked at once, hurriedly and louder and louder, to the sobbing girl.

Nothing was any use. Odile went home in tears and Eusèbe went outdoors to stomp around his beloved fields and think it all over between swearwords that he had not even dreamed of since the time Hélène told him he had to shave off that moustache.

IV

Days went by in gloomy succession, livened only by a furious visit from Willie in which he told his papa that his fool notion about the value of his hundred and fifty acres of worthless farm land would lead the way to ruin for the entire clan Duhon, not to mention the havoc it would wreak throughout the Cajun population of south Louisiana, nor the pain it would cause the whole state, nor the suffering it would bring to the nation and half the people of the world beside.

Eusèbe told his son what he was at the top of his mountainous voice, and Helene came in and slapped both of them hard, and made Willie say he was sorry and made Eusèbe promise he would do something. Eusèbe promised, because Hélène’s palm was tough and she had it ready to use again if he balked. But what on earth he could possibly do to prove the value of his land to Willie, and at the same time reunite the boy with Odile, he had no idea. However, Eusèbe did not make promises, not even under duress, that he did not mean to keep.

Once more he took his troubles for a walk in the open, studying the earth of his fields for comfort. He had started his ploughing, but if it was n’t the cold it was the dampness that sent him back into the house to hug the kitchen stove. To-day it was heavily damp, and while a little wind did seep out of the northwest, it was too slight to move the rain clouds lolling darkly over the brown stubble and the few black furrows of turned earth.

Eusèbe went to the pasture and observed loweringly that the water had gone low in the trough from evaporation. That damned mule! That miserable rust! Savagely he lifted his booted foot and kicked at the spigot to open it. The handle flew off and a jet of tobaccocolored water shot high in the air, fell dowm before Eusèbe could dodge it. He stumbled backward, swearing and wiping at his face with the back of his hand. When some of the water ran into his mouth he spat it out and shuddered. Salty!

In slow disgust he rubbed about in his mouth with his tongue, and spat time and again. Well, no wonder the poor mule could n’t stand it! The spigot gurgled and gushed, sending the water out through its broken head generously. Eusèbe bent over it and sniffed. He bent closer and tasted again. Then his thoughts clanged together like empty milk cans in the back of a truck.

Look, it was like this: First of all you got dirt to plant in; then there’s water, then salt, then oil. If there was a dome of salt down there, — and there was, — then underneath there must be oil; and where there’s oil under your dirt they pay you thousands and thousands of dollars for it. . . .

‘Eh, bon Dieu!‘ Big feet planted on the earth wide apart, hands clapped together before him, Eusèbe Duhon stood transfixed at the clarification that lay ahead. He was no fool, but when he believed anything there was no space left in his mind for the faintest doubt. His artesian well was salty, and under salt domes lay oil. His new belief found proof enough in that evidence, and certainty sent him on his way to do something about it at once.

Forgetting even to tell Hélène he was going to town, he took off at a ponderous run toward the farm of Auguste PelIerin, where he bargained for a ride into town and back to be paid for when his oil well came in. At the sound of ‘oil well,’ Auguste himself drove Eusèbe into town and sat waiting in the mud-spattered truck on a side street while Eusébe hurried to tire office of the Exploration Oil Company for whom Willie worked.

Without bothering to stop and ask questions, Eusèbe strode through the little pen where Mr. Donnelson kept his stenographer and clerk safe from the raging public and entered the private office, talking at once to the man who frowned up from his desk.

‘You’re Mr. Donnelson, you, hein? Well, it’s you I got to talk with because I’m Eusèbe Duhon and I got a farm, me, that’s in the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter, section sixteen, township nine south, range twelve west, Louisiana meridian; and on that you got to dig a well because there’s salt in my deep-water well, and where they got salt they got oil underneath and you know it.’

‘ We ’ve had your land in mind for some time, Mr. Duhon, but leasing does n’t enter into our plans just now, and certainly not drilling.’

‘I’m not talking about your mind or your plan or your nothing at all, at all! I’m talking about my farm out there in the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter . . .’

‘All right, all right.’

‘No, it’s not all right! It’s all wrong with me, and you got to dig me a well.’ Eusèbe caught his breath. ‘You got to put down a well there, and I give you a lease for three month at nothing at all an acre just so you dig in my dirt and get the oil they got down underneath. You got to go to eight thousand feet deeper than a plough can go,’ — he remembered what Willie said, — ‘and you got to do it quick as you can right away for sure! ’

‘Nowr that’s a very attractive proposition, Mr. Duhon, but we don’t intend to drill anywhere in that vicinity.’

‘You got to go and waste time to intend something before you do it, you? For what good you want to stop and fool around with intending? The oil’s there, and you got to dig for it.’

‘Ah-h-h!’ said Mr. Donnelson, shaking his head so rapidly that his face was a streaked blur to Eusèbe’s eyes. ‘I mean we have no plans to that effect just now! ’ He shouted as loud as Eusèbe.

‘What you want with plans? I‘m the one that’s got plans! If you won’t dig me no well I ’ll let them do it, then! ’

‘Them?’

‘Yeh — them. You not going to do it, hein? All right, I let them come do it.’

‘Who’s “them”?’

Eusèbe grew coy and mysterious. ‘Oh, just some people I know that found salt water in my artesian well and now they want to dig some more to get the oil down there.’

‘ You ’re lying.’ Mr. Donnelson begged to be told lie was right.

‘Mais sure I’m lying! All right, now I tell you the truth. Since thirty year I been knowing the dirt of my farm is good, and I make Wee-lay spend a lot of money to have that deep well dug on my place and now it’s gone an’ turned salty on me. It’s not the first time, no, that my dirt act like it’s no good, but every time it goes to act like that I find out it’s just trying to be better than ever before. Donnelson, I ’m so got-dog sure, me, that they got oil down under my dirt that I give you the whole farm free for nothing if you just go dig a well there and don’t find no oil!’

Mr. Donnelson rubbed his eyebrows energetically, reached for a small pad, and began scratching on it. He calculated rapidly, a little benumbed by Eusèbe’s gush of talk.

‘I’ll send my chemist out to analyze the water from your well,’ he said.

The chemist went home with Eusèbe. Willie was still in the house drinking coffee with Hélène, and he came out to watch and talk while a small bottle was filled with the sulphurous, salty water from the well. With strict orders from Eusèbe that the analysis had to be made instantly, and a message to Donnelson that he would be expected with a lease ready to sign the next morning, the chemist went away.

As far as Eusebe was concerned, the job was finished. He walked back toward his house with Willie, telling the boy to go get hold of Odile Frilot and give her a good kissing.

‘Talk about notions! She’s the one that’s got ’um for true, her! You go get hold of that girl, Wee-lay Duhon, and you tell her you never paid our tax this year so I’d have to go raise hell with Donnelson and make him drill on my land here. Make her think you did it all on purpose to be special sweet to Helene and me.’

‘She’s never going to believe nothing like that!’

‘She’s going to believe anything on the face of the earth if you get hold of her right, Wee-lay! You remind me of when I was young, you, except of course you got no moustache. It was a famous moustache, that whisker of mine, there! Whenever your mamma sneeze, her whole family use to come running.’

Willie left hurriedly and went to get hold of Odile Frilot. Eusèbe reëntered his house and settled down on the mattress before the kitchen stove.

‘I got it all fix now,’ he told Hélène. ‘They’re going to dig for oil in my dirt out there.’

‘Eh, Eusèbe!’ Hélène was pouring him a cup of coffee. ‘Sometime it’s sure hard to tell, yeh, if you’re a magnificent fool or just a plain crazy one.’

‘Hélène!’ Eusèbe reached out for the cup of coffee. ‘Is it that you got no faith in the dirt?’

‘Bon Dieu!’ said Hélène, handing him the sugar.

Late that night Willie came back to the farmhouse whistling. Eusèbe wakened on the mattress in the bedroom, said to himself wisely: ‘Anh-hanh!’ and went back to sleep again. The next morning, however, Willie’s spirits went into a slump as he read over the lease Mr. Donnelson had brought for Eusèbe to sign. It included two peculiar clauses: first, that Willie was to be in charge of drilling operations, and that was just fine; second, that if no oil was found at or above eight thousand feet, Eusèbe’s hundred and fifty acres were to become the property of the Exploration Oil Company.

‘But Papa!’ Willie looked up from the paper, scared. ‘What you’re going to do if . . .’

‘The trouble with you, my boy,’ Eusèbe told him, ‘is that you got no faith in the dirt and you don’t know how good it is like me. And of course, you got no moustache.’

Eusèbe took the lease from his son’s hands and signed it.

v

The well blew in from 7346 feet at twothirty in the morning of the fourteenth day after drilling began. Willie, at ten o’clock of the same morning, tied his wedding tie before the mirror of a lustrous new dresser in his papa’s farmhouse. He waited in the parlor while Eusèbe and Hélène crowded their stout bodies into new-bought finery, and there was no reason, really, for the young man to be uncomfortable in the big plush armchair.

But he rose and trod the thick rug impatiently, fingered a whole array of knickknacks that cluttered the shelves of a walnut cabinet. How his papa had been nervy enough to buy all this stuff on credit a whole week before the well had shown any sign of oil, Willie did not know. But Odile had at once agreed with the old man’s confidence and danced delightedly about the new-furnished rooms, touching shiny wood and soft plush, every now and then kissing Eusèbe and Hélène, almost constantly kissing Willie, and in the end rushing home to work on her wedding clothes.

At church, Hélène observed that one of the snaps had sprung open in the bride’s dress, and that was a sign of good luck. But Eusèbe only thought it was a shame Willie had no moustache to make Odile sneeze when he kissed her right after the ceremony. He himself had made Helene sneeze handsomely thirty years ago, and the whole placket of her wedding dress had sprung open.

But at the bal des noces nothing was lacking. In the Frilot kitchen there were two pitchers of wine and plenty of cups and glasses. In the Frilot parlor there were three violins playing the jaunty music of ‘Fais Do-Do,’ and the wooden house shook on its foundation blocks from the pounding of Eusèbe’s feet as he made the steps of every dance, the waltz of the newlyweds, the cotillion of the newlyweds, and the plain old jogging dances for everybody. ‘Eh, les mariés! ’ he yelled. ‘God bless my good dirt! Eh, les mariés! ’

Wine purged his joints of rheumatism. And when Hélène slapped him for yelling too loud and jumping too hard he scarcely felt it. Slipping into one of the Frilot bedrooms, he pulled a sprig of duck feather from a pillow, thrust it between his upper lip and Odile’s when he kissed the bride for the seventh time, and got the sneeze of the century for a result, as well as another slap from Hélène, who had been watching him closely.

On the way home he did not fall asleep as Hélène expected he would. From the back seat of Willie’s car he looked across his own fields at the lights of the derrick and beyond at the moon-frosted tips of cypress along Bayou Queue de Tortue. Suddenly he told Willie to stop the car. He got out, stepped through the barbedwire strands of his cane-field fence, ran a short way across the furrows, and knelt down.

‘ Bon Dieu! ’ Hélène said, watching. ‘It’s a good thing for sure that you’re the last one, yeh, Wee-lay! It’s only when someone get marry that Eusèbe go to act so crazy.’

‘Look what he’s going to do!’ Odile was laughing a little from Willie’s arms.

Eusèbe had cleared the stubble from a small space of the earth before him, and in the moonlight he bent over and kissed a glistening clod of his own good dirt.