The Pact

The big yellow machines stopped their growling and clanging just as the sun touched the treetips at the far end of the clearing across the newly-asphalted road, but the dust hung for nearly an hour after the last of the pickups left, stirred by not even a twitch of a breeze. It was hot, a heavy hot that only those who have lived in the Deep South in August can understand. Some late day birds fluttered among the trees in the yard while some early night birds circled and swooped above.

The old couple sat in their steel lawn chairs, long ago faded from their factory colors, and rocked on spring legs the way they did every evening when the weather permitted, he with a spit can in one hand and a beer in the other, she with a colander of purple-hull peas on her lap, a snuff bottle on the floor beside her.

"This is the last of the peas," she said. "I'm gon' let them that's left hangin' dry and shell'm out later for seeds for next sprang. I don't see no need for a fall garden, much as we've put up so far."

"I rekkin," he said. "Ain't much left worth foolin' with out there. Some okry, but that stuff would thrive in Hell. Tomaters won't set in this heat, but I'll put some in in a couple of weeks for a fall crop. I can't go long without fresh tomaters."

"We still ain't got all them pataters outta the ground."

He leaned and spat across the rail into the petunias. "I got enough hay laid on top of the rows. They'll keep just as good in the ground as they would if we dug'm up, long's as them damn thousand-leg worms stay out of'm. We grow enough food out there to feed a famly of six, so I guess we got enough to spare for the worms."

"When the kids was home, we needed all that. We don't no more."

"We sure don't," he said. "We sure don't."

Most evenings they concentrated on the widening scar of the new development, which, if he was any good at guessing, would be laid out in houses and streets and ball-and-burlapped trees in another year. He turned to her.

"The only thang good that's come out of that crap over there so far is gettin' that road paved. Some folks down at the post office the other day said that they gon' be brangin' community water out here too before long. We gon' go on usin' the well until they make us hook up."

"Progress," she said.

After a long period of silence, he worked the chew of tobacco around in his mouth, fired a long stream across the porch rail, and cleared his throat.

"You can call the kids tonight and tell'm to come on out here Sunday. We need to get the talkin' done."

"Lord, Willard, I ain't sure I'm up to that quite yet."

"Darlin', it's been nearly might near two months now. We gotta brang it up with'm sooner or later."

"I was hopin' to wait till Thanksgivin', maybe Christmas. It might would be easier to get'm to come out here on the holidays."

"Naw, Polly. It's time. Puttin' it off ain't gon' make it any easier.

Call'm and tell'm to come on out Sunday. And go on and tell'm why."

She shifted her enormous body, and the chair groaned under her weight. Her bare feet had made a semicircle pattern in the dust on the paintless boards in front of her chair. "That'll be the only thang'll get them out here, that's for sure."

He sighed. "The onliest thang."

Almost as heavy as the woman, and looking even larger with his wide face and hoglike jowls, the old man turned with difficulty in his chair and pointed to the road.

"If the kids'd had their...