Place Called Estherville (17 page)

“Turn this apparatus around, Roy,” Joe told him, chewing on the cigar stump.

He was planning to go to the fishing camp ten miles from town and he wanted to get there as quickly as possible. “Why, Joe?” he asked, slowing down.

“We’ve got to go back to the hotel and get some wet bottles, Roy. Ernie’s sucked this one dry.”

The empty bottle sailed past his head and through the open window. It crashed in a shower of glass on the pavement. Roy turned the car around in the middle of the block and drove back to the Pineland, carefully avoiding Peachtree Street and going through the alleys. The last thing he wanted to happen was for somebody to see him driving through town on a Saturday night with a mulatto girl in his car. He stopped at the rear of the hotel where the street was unlighted and switched off the engine while Joe went up to the room and got two more bottles of bourbon.

He was sitting there slumped in the seat, wondering what his wife would say if she ever found out what he had done, when Ernie hit him a jarring blow on the shoulder.

“Roy, bud, you’re a dream out of a bellyful of whipped cream,” Ernie said, shaking him. “I never thought you’d get up a decent party for us tonight. Why didn’t you tell me what was coming up? I couldn’t have got up a better party if I’d been doing it myself. But you sure had me and Joe worried sick all this time. And now you come through like a gentleman. I’ll bet you had this planned a month ago—didn’t he, Kathyanne? You had it all figured out in advance that two peckers like me and Joe would rather get our toes turned down on a Saturday night than have to go to your house for Sunday dinner and watch our talk in front of your wife. You’re one hell of a smart oil-and-meal operator, Blount. You know what? Well, I’ll tell you. You’ll end up owning that goddam cottonseed grinder out there one of these days. Believe me, it’s the smart boys like you who know how to climb that old tough titty of a ladder to success. You’re on your way up, bud, old pal, and I’m proud to know you. You can teach me a thing or two about getting ahead in this cockeyed world.” He jarred Roy again with his fist. “If it wasn’t for the wonderful people like you in it, the oil-and-meal business wouldn’t have no more romance than a virgin stuck in a zipper. Ain’t that right, brother?”

“I guess so, Ernie,” Roy said, slumping deeper into the seat.

S
INCE A FEW MINUTES
before eight that chilly autumn morning, Ganus had been trudging behind the creaking pushcart, hopefully stopping at house after house to ring the big brass dinner bell, and, when noon came, he was almost at the end of Woodbine Street in the west side of town.

The pavement had ended several blocks behind him, and a short distance ahead, where ragged brown stalks of the past summer’s cotton stood lifeless in the red clay earth, the country began. With the last house in sight, he bent over once more and wearily pushed the heavy cart down the street.

When he stopped, he reached for the brass bell in the cart and began ringing it in a mournful tolling rhythm. There he stood in the middle of the street shivering and shaking as the cold damp wind from the Piedmont in the north, sweeping over the low clay hills and sandy ridges under the leaden sky, flapped his faded patched overalls against his legs.

“I-c-y-m-i-s-s-y!” he called out in a doleful voice. “Here’s your i-c-y-m-i-s-s-y!”

Squeezing his arms against his body for warmth, he watched the dilapidated weather-gray dwelling expectantly to see if anybody would come to the door. It was a one-story shingle-roof breezeway of five rooms, with dusty-leaf Spanish bayonets, stunted and curled for want of care, standing gauntly at each side of the front steps. Blue wood-smoke was drifting southward from the kitchen chimney on the ell-side of the dogtrot, but there was no other sign of life about the place, and he wondered if Mrs. Kettles was at home to hear the bell. After a while the sound of the mournful tolling gradually died away as he put the bell back into the cart.

Walking as far as the gate, he cupped his hands around his mouth and called out again in the same doleful sing-song voice.

“I-c-y-m-i-s-s-y! Here’s your i-c-y-m-i-s-s-y!” He waited several moments, cocking his ear to hear the sound of the slightest movement inside the house, and then resumed the chant. “I-c-y-m-i-s-s-y! Here’s your i-c-y-m-i-s-s-y!”

He was heartened to see the flutter of a curtain as it was pulled aside at one of the windows, and then he caught a glimpse of a woman’s face. He unlatched the gate, stepped into the yard, and called with renewed persistence.

“I-c-y-m-i-s-s-y! Here’s your i-c-y-m-i-s-s-y!”

Just as he finished, the door opened several inches and he saw Mrs. Kettles looking out at him. Kitty was a young woman, not yet twenty-three, and of medium height; and as usual, in winter and summer alike, she was carelessly dressed. In the hot summer months she went about the house wearing a wrap-around apron and a flimsy pink brassiere. It now being the beginning of the cold months, she had already made a seasonal change. She had on a wrinkled mauve petticoat and, instead of a brassiere, a close-fitting emerald-green sweater that bulged conspicuously with her remarkably prominent breasts. She rarely left the house, but when she did go downtown, many men, unaccustomed to such a display, and seeing her for the first time as she walked along the street, had been startled speechless by her extraordinary appearance; other men, suddenly remembering important business in the post office or at the drug store she patronized, followed her in order to convince themselves that her unique appearance was a natural development. During such trips downtown, Kitty invariably lost her temper completely and, in a language not often heard in Estherville, cursed at the small boys who ran along beside her gawking at such an unusual sight. The reaction of most of the wives, upon hearing Kitty Kettles described by their husbands, was either outright skeptical or bitterly sarcastic. Her straight, pale, blond hair always looked uncombed and, unless she were going out, she rarely bothered to keep it brushed back from her face.

Kitty was alone most of the time, because Levi Kettles was usually away from home hauling baled cotton on his trailer-truck to spinning mills in Augusta and Clearwater, and she sprawled in bed and read love-story and confession magazines hour after hour. Levi had seen her in a company town one day while he was trucking baled cotton to the mill and, after unloading, he drove back to the house to see if he had been daydreaming or if he had actually seen what he thought he had. He was amazed when he walked up the steps and had had a good look at her. Kitty liked his looks, too, and his bold manner, and it had been easy to persuade her to leave. After half an hour of his bantering talk and free promises, she had packed her best clothes in a suitcase, left word with a neighbor so her parents would not worry about her, got into the truck cab, and ridden away with Levi. They had been living together for about two years, and, although she had begged him many times to keep his promise, Levi was in no hurry to get married. He always told her that there was plenty of time to go to all that trouble later. Levi, a large burly man of thirty, was rough and loud-talking and accustomed to having his own way with women. Kitty had decided, from the first, that no matter how Levi treated her, she would be much better off staying with him than going back home and having to return to work in the spinning mill tending bobbins. Her parents had sent her to work when she was thirteen and she had been waiting for an opportunity to escape from mill life and the company town since she was eighteen. She considered herself lucky to have attracted Levi’s attention and to have made him want her enough to take her away with him. However she was lonely, and she cried in bed several times a day.

“I-c-y-m-i-s-s-y! Here’s your i-c-y-m-i-s-s-y!” Ganus chanted urgently as he watched Kitty in the doorway.

She opened the door a little wider.

“What in the world are you selling, Ganus?” she asked.

“I’m trying to sell folks some ice, Miss Kitty.”

“In this ungodly weather?”

“I reckon so,” he admitted dolefully. “Nobody wants to buy it, though, it looks like. You wouldn’t happen to want to buy some, would you, Miss Kitty?”

“Jesus Christ, I should say not, in this god-awful weather! Can’t you find something else to sell, Ganus?”

“I dug a big bucket of fishing worms in our backyard and tried to sell bait, but since cold weather started in nobody’s been going fishing much lately, it looks like. I scooped out a big hole and put them all back in the ground so they’d be there next year.”

He could see her whole body shake as a blast of cold wind struck the side of the house and went whistling through the dogtrot. He hugged his chest with both arms.

“Jesus Christ, Ganus, you look half-frozen,” she remarked with a sympathetic shaking of her head. “I hate to see anybody look so forlorn and cold on a god-awful day like this. This weather’d hang an icicle on a rich man’s pokey. Don’t you even have no gloves to put on?”

“No, ma’m,” he said, with a convulsive shiver shaking him all over. He expected her to close the door at any moment and to leave him with no choice but to turn the heavy cart around and start pushing it homeward. “It sure enough is a mighty cold day, Miss Kitty,” he said, with another pathetic spasm of shaking and trembling. “I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so cold before. It’s got down inside my bones, too.”

Kitty opened the door a little wider and carefully looked up the street toward town to see if anyone were coming from that direction. Ganus had been the only person on the street during the past hour.

“How’ve you been lately, Miss Kitty?” he asked, hoping to keep her engaged in conversation so she would not shut the door. “Have you been staying well lately?”

She looked at him for a moment before answering. “I’ve been pretty well, Ganus,” she told him. “This goddam weather’s enough to kill off the rich and poor alike, though.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “It sure might do just that.”

Once more she looked up Woodbine Street toward town. Ganus felt his teeth begin to chatter.

“I don’t want no part of that damn ice, Ganus,” she said quickly, “but you can come in the kitchen and get warm if you want to. It’s colder out here than the backside of a privy on top of a hill in a snowstorm.”

“I sure would appreciate that, Miss Kitty—but—”

“But what but?” she asked impatiently, her arms hugging her huge protruding breasts to protect herself from the cold piercing wind. “What’s the matter with you, Ganus? Looks like you’d trip over your pole for a chance to get out of that god-awful cold.”

His teeth were chattering uncontrollably as he stared at her in the tight green sweater.

“Yes, ma’m, but—but—”

“Oh, stop that fidgeting around like that out there in the cold, Ganus,” she said scoldingly. “For Christ’s sake, hitch up the slack in the seat of your pants and come on in the house and get your nubbin warm. It gives me the shivers just to look at you.”

He moved his head from side to side resolutely.

“I sure would like to get warm, Miss Kitty, but—but I sure don’t want to get in trouble. I’ve done had my share of that already, and I don’t want no more of it. I wouldn’t say it’s your fault, Miss Kitty, but it looks like something always comes along and gets me in trouble, when I don’t take care. That’s the Good Man’s own truth, Miss Kitty.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, provoked with him. “I’m only trying to let you get warm, Ganus. I can’t stand to see anybody look so cold and miserable. It’s a goddam shame any human has to be out on a day like this.”

“Would you want to buy a little piece of ice then, Miss Kitty?”

“Good God, no!” She beckoned to him with her hand. “Come on around to the kitchen door, Ganus. I’ll let you in.”

“You reckon it’ll be all right, Miss Kitty?” he asked doubtfully. “I mean, couldn’t nothing go wrong, could it?”

“Oh, quit gabbling, Ganus, and come on in.”

“Yes, ma’m,” he said obediently.

As soon as she had closed the front door, he looked up the street. Seeing no one within sight, he then trotted around the corner of the house to the kitchen.

He was standing at the door before she could get there to open it, and he waited on the step and rubbed his numb fingers together and tried to keep his teeth from chattering. When she opened the door, he stooped over, his hands and knees almost touching the floor, and got past her into the warm kitchen with a nimble movement that enabled him to keep from touching the green sweater in the narrow passage. He could feel the sensation of the chill leaving his body as soon as the warmth of the stove reached him through the thin clothing.

“Now, stand there by the stove and get yourself thawed out, Ganus,” she spoke as though scolding him for having come out in such weather. “Go on and do like I tell you. You’d better get yourself some gloves, and a big overcoat, too, if you’re going out in this god-awful weather again.”

“Yes, ma’m,” he said.

He watched her from the corners of his eyes as she opened the fire-box and shoved sticks of wood inside. Hunching his shoulders, he crouched over the hot stove and rubbed the warmth into his hands. When she had finished replenishing the fire, she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. He looked straight ahead and tried to keep from glancing in her direction after he had noticed the careless way she had pulled up the tight mauve petticoat and crossed her leg over her knee.

“Jesus only knows how sorry I felt for you out there in the street,” she said sympathetically, watching him with concern. “I said to myself, “That poor boy’s liable to get frostbitten—nubbin and all.’ I just can’t stand seeing people suffer. It does something to me, deep down inside where it hurts the worst. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been big-hearted, to the rich and poor alike, when I see somebody I can do something for. Some folks say it’s hell to be so big-hearted, but I like it. It makes me feel good to give somebody what they want real bad. Rich or poor, I’ll do it every chance I get. If a stranger walked in that door right now, I wouldn’t be satisfied till I’d been big-hearted to him. See how it is with me, Ganus?”