Stories of Erskine Caldwell (13 page)

“Well, yes; but the shift-law says that the woman has to — ”

“Never mind about explaining it to me,” Jake said. “If the shift-law is on the statute books, then that’s the law I married her with.”

(First published in
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G
US WAS LEANING
against the fount in the drugstore Saturday morning when Ed Wright, one of the elders, came in and told Gus that the church had made him a deacon. Laying aside the election itself, that was the first of the blunders that were made between then and noon Sunday; Ed Wright should have had the sense not to notify Gus of the election until about midnight Saturday, or better still, until just before preaching time Sunday morning. All the blame for what took place cannot be put off on Ed, though; Gus Streetman should be held just as responsible for what happened as anyone else in town.

After Ed had told Gus about the church election, Gus just stood there looking at Ed and at the boy behind the fount for several minutes. He was feeling so good about it, he didn’t know what to say. He was as pleased about it as he ever was when he heard the county returns on election night.

“You’re a deacon now, Gus,” Ed said, leaning against the fount and waiting for Gus to set him up. “Don’t let the boys in the back seats slip any suspender buttons over on you.”

“You know, Ed,” he said, “I’d rather be elected deacon in the church than to get any other office in the county — except tax assessor. By George, it’s a big thing to be a deacon in the church.”

Gus was the county tax assessor. He had held the office against all opposition for the past ten or fifteen years, and, from the way things looked then, he would continue being the assessor as long as men went to the polls and saw Gus Streetman’s name printed on the ballot.

“Well, Gus,” Ed said, “everybody’s glad about it, too. There wasn’t any doubt about you being elected after your name was put up. It was unanimous, too.”

Gus was feeling so good he didn’t know what to say. He waited for Ed to tell him more about the election, when the minister and all the elders voted for him; but Ed was licking the corners of his mouth for a drink.

“Let’s have a drink, Gus,” he suggested.

“Oh, sure, sure!” Gus said, waking up. “What’ll you have, Ed?”

“Make mine a lime Coke,” he told the boy behind the fount.

“Give me another Coke, son,” Gus said, “with three big squirts of ammonia.”

That was the fifth Coke-and-ammonia Gus had drunk since eight-thirty that morning, and it was still two hours until noon.

He and Ed stood at the fount drinking their Coca-Colas silently. Gus was busy thinking about his election as a deacon, and he was too busy thinking about it to say anything. After a while, Ed said he had to hurry back to the hardware store to see if any customers had come in, and he left Gus leaning against the fount drinking his Coke-and-ammonia.

“You’ll have to help take up the collection tomorrow morning, Gus,” Ed said at the door. “You’d better wear some shoes that don’t squeak so much, because everybody will be looking at you.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” Gus said. “I’ll be there all right. I’m a deacon now.”

Gus was so busy thinking about his being a deacon in the church that he hardly knew what he was saying, or what Ed was talking about. He was busy thinking about celebrating in some way, too. He had never won an election yet that he hadn’t celebrated, and he was just as proud of being a deacon as he was of being county tax assessor. He walked out of the drugstore and started for the barbershop.

In the back room of the barbershop there was a little closet where he kept some of his corn and gin. He intended making the celebration this time as big as, or bigger than, any he had ever undertaken before. Usually, he had the chance to celebrate only each four years, when he was re-elected tax assessor, and this was an extra time, like an unexpected holiday.

People said that Gus Streetman was as big-hearted as a man can be, and that a man just couldn’t help liking him. You could walk up to Gus on the street on a Saturday afternoon and ask Gus for anything you wished, and Gus would give it to you if he had it or if he knew where he could lay his hands on it. You could ask Gus to lend you his new automobile to take a ride out to the country in, and Gus would slap his hand on your shoulder, just as if you were doing him a big favor, and say: “Oh, sure, sure! Go ahead and use it, Joe. Why, by George, all I’ve got in the world is yours for the asking. Sure, go ahead and drive it all you want, Joe.”

After you had thanked Gus for the use of his new automobile, he would silence you and say: “Now, don’t start talking like that, Joe. You make me think I ain’t doing enough for you. Drive down to the filling station and fill her up with gas, and charge it to me. Just tell Dick I said to make out a ticket for whatever you want, and I’ll come by and take it up the first of the week.”

That’s how Gus Streetman was about everything. It never mattered to him what a man wished. If you thought you would like to have something, all you had to do was to ask Gus, and if he had it, or knew where he could lay his hands on it, it was yours until you got good and ready to hand it back to him. Sometimes people took advantage of Gus, but not often. Nearly everyone knew where to draw the line, and he had so many friends to look out for him that he was taken care of. In the spring of that year Vance Young had stopped Gus one morning and said he was going up to Atlanta that week-end on a short business trip and that he would like to take Gus’s wife along for company. Gus told him to go ahead and take her along, and he meant it, too; but just before train time somebody broke down and told Gus that Vance was only fooling, and it turned out to be a joke the barbershop crowd was playing on him.

That was one of the main reasons why Gus got re-elected tax assessor time after time. He had been tax assessor for about fifteen years already, and no man who had ever tried to run against Gus in the primaries had a dog’s chance of taking the office away from him. Just before a primary, Gus would load his automobile up with three or four dozen of those big Senator Watson watermelons, and start out electioneering. He would come to a house beside the road, stop, and get out carrying two of those big melons under his arms. When he reached the front porch, he would roll the Senator Watsons up to the door and take out his pearl-handled pocket-knife and rap on the boards until somebody came out.

“Well, how’s everything, Harry?” Gus would say, thumping the Senator Watsons with his knuckles, and cocking his head sideways to hear the
thump! thump!
“How are you satisfied with your tax assessment, Harry?”

Nobody was ever satisfied, of course, and that was all there would be to Gus getting another vote for the primary. Being a Democrat, he never had to worry about the Republicans at election time. The Lily-whites never bothered with county politics; the mail carriers knew perfectly well which side their bread was buttered on.

“Reckon we can get the assessment changed, Gus?” the man would say.

Gus would never answer that question, because by that time he was always busy splitting open one of those big Senator Watsons. When he had got the heart cut out, and had passed it around, he would wipe the blade of his pearl-handled knife on his pants leg and shake hands all around.

“We need a little rain, don’t we?” Gus would say, starting back to the road where his car was. “Maybe we’ll get a shower before sundown.”

That’s how Gus got elected county tax assessor the first time, and that’s how he was re-elected every four years following. He never made any promises; therefore he never violated any. But he got the votes, nearly all there were in the whole county.

When Gus had first started out to be elected deacon, he went about his campaign the same way he did when he was running for political office. He filled up the minister on those big Senator Watsons, day after day, and all the elders, too. When the church election was held during the last week in July, Gus’s name was the first one put up for deacon, and there was only one ballot taken. Gus got all the votes.

But when Gus wasn’t canvassing for votes, political or otherwise, and when he wasn’t out in some part of the county assessing property, he was usually drinking corn and gin. He kept a store of it in the back room of the barbershop, another supply in the garage at home where his wife wouldn’t be likely to find it, and a third one at the courthouse, in the coal box in his office, where he could reach it at any time of the day or night.

Gus never got too drunk to walk; that is to say, Fred Jones, the marshal, never had to lock him up. Gus was always on his feet, no matter how much he had been drinking, or for how long a time. He could hold his corn and gin with never an outward sign of drunkenness, unless you happened to look him in his eyes, or to measure his stride.

That Saturday morning, though, after Ed Wright had notified him of the election, Gus went down to the barbershop and cleaned out all his liquor there, and then he walked over to the courthouse and started on the bottles he kept in the coal box in his office on the second floor.

Nobody saw much of him again that day, until a little after eight o’clock that night when he came out of the courthouse and walked across the square for another Coke-and-ammonia at the fount in the drugstore. Even then nobody paid much attention to Gus, because he was walking in fairly even strides, and he wasn’t talking unduly loud for a Saturday night. The marshal watched Gus for a few minutes, and then left the square and went back down the alley to pick up a few more drunks in front of the Negro fish houses for the lockup.

There had been a traveling carnival in town all that week, and nearly everyone went to the show grounds that night to see the carnival close up and move off to the next town. Gus started out there with two or three of his friends at about ten-thirty or eleven. All of them were well liquored, and Gus was shining. When they got to the show grounds, Gus started out to wind up his celebration. He let loose that Saturday night. He took in all the side shows, and he had a big crowd of men and boys following him around the grounds, whooping it up with him.

Just before midnight, when the carnival was getting ready to close and move on to the next town down the road, Gus saw a show he had missed. It was a little tent off to itself, with a big red-painted picture of a girl, pretty much naked, dancing on it. There was no name on the show, as there were on the others, but down in one corner of the big red picture, just under the girl’s feet, was a little sign that said:
For Men Only.

As soon as somebody told Gus it was a hoochie-coochie show, he dashed for it, pushing people out of his way right and left. He ran up to the ticket seller, bought three or four dozen tickets, and waved his arms at everybody who wished to go in with him and see the show. After they had crowded inside, the show went to pieces so quickly that no one knew what had happened.

Nobody yet tells exactly what Gus said or did when he got inside with the hoochie-coochie girl, but whatever it was, the show was a complete wreck inside of two minutes. It might have been Gus who jerked out the center pole, bringing the tent down on top of everybody, and it might not have been Gus who grabbed the girl around her waist and made her yell as though she were being squeezed to death by a maniac. But anyway, the tent came down; the dancer yelled and screamed, first for help, next for mercy; the ticket seller shouted for the stake drivers; and some fool down under the tent struck a match to the canvas. When the crowd got the blazing tent off the girl and the bunch of men, they found her and Gus down on the bottom of the pile struggling with each other. Fred Jones, the marshal, came running up just then all excited, deputizing citizens right and left, and got everybody herded out of the show grounds and closed up the carnival.

What happened to Gus after that, nobody knows exactly, because some of his friends pried him loose from the little dark-skinned hoochie-coochie dancer, and carried him away in an automobile to cool off. Later that night they brought him back to town and locked him in the barbershop so he couldn’t get out where the marshal was certain to get him if he showed himself on the street again that night.

Gus didn’t go home to his wife that night, because he was in the back room of the barbershop pulling on two or three new bottles at three o’clock when the rest of the crowd decided it was time to call it a night and to go home and get some sleep. They locked Gus in the back room to sleep it off.

Early the next morning, Clyde Young, the barber, went down and shaved Gus and patched up his clothes a little; and at about eleven-fifty, ten or fifteen minutes before the sermon at the church was due to end, Gus walked in and sat down in a rear pew.

Gus was supposed to be there, all right, because he was a deacon then, and it was his duty to help take up the morning offering. But Gus was not supposed to be there in the shape he was in, all liquored up again fresh that morning in the barbershop. Clyde Young had brought Gus an eye opener when he went down to shave him and to get him ready to take up collection at the church.

Nobody paid much attention to Gus when he walked into the church and took a seat in the back. The minister saw Gus, and likewise a dozen or more of the congregation who turned around to see who was coming to church so late. But nobody knew the condition Gus was in. He did not show it any more than he ever did. He looked to be as sober as the minister himself.

Gus sat still and quiet in the back of the church until the sermon was over. It was then time to take up the morning offering. It was customary for the deacons to walk down to the front of the pulpit, pick up the collection baskets, take up the money, and then to march back down the aisles while one of the women in the choir sang a solo.

Gus went down and got his basket all right, and took up all the money on his side of the aisle without missing a dime. Then, when all the deacons had got to the rear of the church, they began marching in step, slowly, down the aisles towards the pulpit where the minister was waiting to say a prayer over the money and to pronounce the benediction. The girl singing the solo was supposed to time herself so she would get to the end of the piece just as the deacons laid the collection baskets on the table in front of the pulpit.