The Living is Easy. Dorothy West

I guess you got a right to feel the same way about a house. In the long run it’s better to be able to call every stick your own than have half your rooms dependent on some outsider’s furniture.”

      She expelled a long breath. “That’s settled then.”

      He thought it prudent to warn her. “We’ll have to economize to the bone while we’re furnishing that house.”

      She rolled her eyes upward. “Well even eat bones if you say so.”

      He answered quietly: “You and the child will never eat less than the best as long as I live. And all my planning is to see to it that you’ll never know want when I’m gone. No one on earth will ever say that I wasn’t a good provider. That’s my pride, Cleo. Don’t hurt it when you don’t have to.”

      “Well, I guess you’re not the worst husband in the world,” she acknowledged softly, and added slowly, “And I guess I’m the kind of wife God made me.” But she did not like the echo of that in her ears. She said quickly, “And you can like it or lump it.”

      Bart took out an impressive roll of bills, peeled off a few of the lesser ones, and laid them on the table. The sight of the bank roll made Cleo sick with envy. There were so many things she could do with it. All Mr. Judson would do with it was buy more bananas.

      She sighed and counted her modest pile. There were only forty-five dollars.

      “It’s five dollars short,” she said frigidly.

      “Yep,” he said complacently. “I figure if this Jack the Ripper wants fifty dollars he’ll take forty-five if he knows he’ll get it every month on the dot. And if he ever goes up five dollars on the rent, we still won’t be paying him any more than he asked for in the first place. In business, Cleo, I’ve learned to stay on my toes. You’ve got to get up with the early birds to get ahead of me.”

CHAPTER 2

      HER EYES FLEW OPEN. The birds were waking in the Carolina woods. Cleo always got up with them. There were never enough hours in a summer day to extract the full joy of being alive. She tumbled out of the big old-fashioned bed. Small Serena stirred, then lay still again on her share of the pillow. At the foot of the bed, Lily and Charity nestled together.

      She stared at her three younger sisters, seeing the defenselessness of their innocent sleep. The bubbling mischief in her made her take one of Lily’s long braids and double knot it with one of Charity’s. She looked back at Serena, who tried so hard to be a big girl and never let anyone help her dress. She picked up Serena’s little drawers and turned one leg inside out.

      She was almost sorry she would be far away when the fun began. She could picture Lily and Charity leaping to the floor from opposite sides of the bed, and their heads snapping back, and banging together. As for Serena, surprise would spread all over her solemn face when she stepped into one leg of her drawers and found the other leg closed to her. She would start all over again, trying her other foot this time, only to find she had stepped into the same kettle of hot water. She would wrassle for fifteen minutes, getting madder and madder. Cleo had to clap her hand to her mouth to hush her giggles.

      She would get a whipping for it. Mama would never see the joke. Mama would say it was mean to tease your sisters. You had to walk a chalkline to please her.

      Sometimes Cleo tried to walk a chalkline, but after a little while, keeping to the strait and narrow made her too nervous. At home, there was nothing to do except stay around. Away from home, there were trees to climb, and boys to fight, and hell to raise with Josie Beauchamp.

      She climbed out of the open window and dropped to the ground at the moment that Josie Beauchamp was quietly creeping down the stairs of her magnificent house. Some day Cleo was going to live in a fine house, too. And maybe some day Josie was going to be as poor as church mice.

      They met by their tree, at the foot of which they had buried their symbols of friendship. Josie had buried her gold ring because she loved it best of everything, and Cleo best of everybody. Cleo had buried Lily’s doll, mostly because it tickled her to tell her timid sister that she had seen a big rat dragging it under the house. Lily had taken a long stick and poked around. But every time it touched something, Lily had jumped a mile.

      Cleo and Josie wandered over the Beauchamp place, their bare feet drinking in the dew, their faces lifted to feel the morning. Only the birds were abroad, their vivid splashes of color, the brilliant outpouring of their waking songs filling the eye and ear with summer’s intoxication.

      They did not talk. They had no words to express their aliveness. They wanted none. Their bodies were their eloquence. Clasping hands, they began to skip, too impatient of meeting the morning to walk toward it any longer. Suddenly Cleo pulled her hand away and tapped Josie on the shoulder. They should have chosen who was to be “It.” But Cleo had no time for counting out. The wildness was in her, the unrestrained joy, the desire to run to the edge of the world and fling her arms around the sun, and rise with it, through time and space, to the center of everywhere.

      She was swift as a deer, as mercury, with Josie running after her, falling back, and back, until Josie broke the magic of the morning with her exhausted cry, “Cleo, I can’t catch you.”

      “Nobody can’t never catch me,” Cleo exulted. But she spun around to wait for Josie. The little sob in Josie’s throat touched the tenderness she always felt toward those who had let her show herself the stronger.

      They wandered back toward Josie’s house, for now the busyness of the birds had quieted to let the human toilers take over the morning. Muted against the white folks’ sleeping, the Negro voices made velvet sounds. The field hands and the house servants diverged toward their separate spheres, the house servants settling their masks in place, the field hands waiting for the overseer’s eye before they stooped to servility.

      Cleo and Josie dawdled before the stables. The riding horses whinnied softly, thrusting their noses to the day. Josie’s pony nuzzled her hand, wanting to hear his name dripping in honey. And Cleo moved away. Anybody could ride an old pony. She wanted to ride General Beauchamp’s roan stallion, who shied at any touch but his master’s.

      She marched back to Josie. “Dare me to ride the red horse,” she challenged. Her eyes were green as they bored into Josie’s, the gray gone under in her passion.

      “No,” said Josie, desperately trying not to flounder in the green sea. “He’d throw you and trample you. He’d kill you dead.”

      “He can’t tromp me! I ain’t ascairt of nothing alive. I dare you to dare me. I double dare you!”

      “I won’t, I won’t! I’m bad, but I’m not wicked.”

      “I’m not wicked neither! I just ain’t a coward.”

      She streaked to the stall and flung open the barrier. The wild horse smelled her wildness. Her green eyes locked with his red-flecked glare. Their wills met, clashed, and would not yield. The roan made a savage sound in his throat, his nostrils flared, his great sides rippled. He lowered his head to lunge. But Cleo was quicker than he was. She grasped his mane, leaped on his broad neck, slid down his back, and dug her heels in his flanks.

      “Giddap, red horse!” she cried.

      He flung back his head, reared, and crashed out of the stall, with Josie screeching and sobbing and sidestepping just in time.

      Cleo hung on for ten minutes, ten minutes of dazzling flight to the sun. She felt no fear, feeling only the power beneath her and the power inside her, and the rush of wind on which she and the roan were riding. When she was finally thrown, she landed unhurt in a clover field. It never occurred to her to feel for broken bones. She never doubted that she had a charmed life. Her sole mishap was a minor one. She had split the seat of her drawers.

      She got up and brushed off her pinafore, in a fever now to get home and brag to her sisters. She knew that she ought to let Josie see that she was still alive. The riderless horse would return, and