Stories of Erskine Caldwell (35 page)

The old woman snatched the pail of berries from her hands and began eating the fruit. Katherine went to her room and closed the door. She stood beside her bed trembling with excitement, remembering what she had seen and heard down at the stream in the sheep pasture. She ran from window to window trying to see through the wet mists. If only there had been no mists, she knew she could have seen the men and girls in the pasture. But she could see no further than the windows. The mists covered everything outside.

While the old woman sat in the kitchen eating the berries, Katherine slipped quietly from the front of the house and ran towards the stream. As she ran down the hillside she tried to hear the things the men and girls were saying. She wanted to run, just as they were, into their midst and throw herself on the grass beside them. She wanted to laugh and dive into the stream and splash water over everybody.

Running wildly towards the stream, she suddenly saw that the men and girls were not there. They had taken their clothes and gone back to the automobile to dress, and by now they were probably several miles away. Now there was nothing she could do. She did not want to stay at the stream alone. She wanted to be with someone, with men and girls who laughed and splashed water. Alone, she stood crying by the stream.

The wet mists chilled her body and she began to shiver. The warm tears fell cold and hard on her arms and hands.

Slowly she turned and walked up the hillside towards the house. She repeated over and over the words she thought she had heard as she was running so happily to the stream a few minutes before.

The old woman had not missed her. She still sat in the kitchen eating from the pail the berries Katherine had picked that morning.

Katherine sat on the bed in her room crying. She fell backward and crushed a pillow over her face so the old woman could not hear her.

Later in the afternoon she got up. She walked around the room, stopping at a window and trying to penetrate the gray mists that hung over the earth. There was no one to see her, there were no men and girls she could see. It was not what had happened in the sheep pasture that morning, when the gray mists were filled with laughter and the stream with splashing water. It was not the same thing. And she could not laugh aloud.

After supper, when the old woman had gone to bed, Katherine stole out of the house and ran through the wet dark night towards the pasture. When she reached the stream, she could see nothing, not even the grass at her feet. All about her she felt the clinging wet clouds of vapor. The black mists covered everything. Over the hill she thought she heard an automobile speed along the road towards the Provinces. She tried again, but she could not laugh aloud in the wet mists.

She ran across the berry field until she reached the road where the automobiles passed. When she got there, she stood in the road and waited. It was then after midnight. She waited but no car came from either direction.

While she stood in the center of the road she distinctly heard in the distance the same laughter that had made her so excited that afternoon. Clearly she heard a girl’s voice. Someone was calling, “You can’t catch me, Jimmy!” Almost immediately the voice of a man could be heard out in the far darkness somewhere. And then, all around her, men and girls were shouting and laughing, just as she had heard them that afternoon in the pasture. From the music of their voices she knew they were splashing water in a stream and lying naked on the grassy banks beside the water. But they were so far away she knew she could never find them while everything was so black and misty.

She waited and listened for an automobile to come up or down the road. But there was none. She wanted to stand in the center of the road and have the men and women see her.

The first light of day broke through the mists and found her lying in the road, her body made lifeless by an automobile that had shot through the darkness an hour before. She was without motion, but she was naked, and a smile that was the beginning of laughter made her the most beautiful woman that tourists speeding to the Provinces had ever seen.

(First published in
American Earth
)

Y
OU COULDN’T SEE
no stars, you couldn’t see no moon, you couldn’t see nothing much but a measly handful of sparks on the chimney spout. It was a mighty poor beginning for a courting on a ten o’clock night. Hollering didn’t do a bit of good, and stomping up and down did less.

Youster swung the meal sack from his right shoulder to his left. Carrying around a couple of hobbled rabbits wasn’t much fun. They kicked and they squealed, and they kept his mind from working on a way to get into that house where Sis was.

He stooped ’way down and felt around on the road for a handful of rocks. When he found enough, he pitched them at the house where they would make the most noise.

“Go away from here and stop pestering us, Youster Brown,” that old pinch-faced woman said through the door. “I’ve got Sis right where my eyes can see her, and that’s where she’s going to stay. You go on and get yourself away from here, Youster Brown.”

“Woman,” Youster shouted, “you shut your big mouth and open up that door! I reckon you must be so pinched-faced, you scared of the nighttime.”

“The nighttime is one time when I ain’t scared, even when you’re in it, Youster Brown. Now, go yourself on off somewhere and stop worrying Sis and me.”

“Old pinched-faced woman, why you scared to open the door and let me see Sis?” he asked, creeping up closer to the house.

“Because Sis is saving up for a man her worth. She can’t be wasting herself on no half-Jim nigger like you. Now, go on off, Youster Brown, and leave us be.”

Youster crept a little closer to the door, feeling his way up the path from the road. All he wanted was to see that door unlatch just one little inch, and he would get his way in.

“I’ve got a little eating-present here for Sis,” he said when he got to the doorstep. He waited to hear if that old pinched-faced Matty would come close to the door. “It’ll make some mighty good eating, I’m telling you.”

“Don’t you go bringing no white-folks’ stole chickens around here, Youster Brown,” she said. “I don’t have nothing to do with white-folks’ stole chickens, and you know I don’t.”

“Woman, these here ain’t chickens. They ain’t nothing like chickens. They ain’t even got feathers on them. These here is plump rabbits I gummed in my own cotton patch.”

“Lay them on the doorsill, and then back off to the big road,” she said. “I wouldn’t leave you get a chance to come in that door for a big white mansion on easy street, Youster Brown.”

“What you got so heavy against me, Matty?” he asked her. “What’s eating on you, anyhow?”

There was no sight or sound for longer than he could hold his breath. When Matty wasn’t at the hearth to poke the fire, the sparks stopped coming out the chimney.

“If you so set on knowing what’s the matter, you go ask Sally Lucky. She’ll tell you in no time.”

“Sally Lucky done give me a charm on Sis,” Youster said. “I handed over and paid her three dollars and six bits only last week. I’m already sunk seven dollars in Sally Lucky, and all the good she ever done me was to say to come see Sis on every black night there was. That’s why I’m standing out here now like I am, because it’s a black night, and Sally Lucky says to come when it’s like it is now.”

“You go give Sally Lucky two dollars more right now, and see what happens, Youster Brown. For all that money you’ll have a lot coming to you. But you won’t never find out nothing standing around here. Sally Lucky’ll tell you, so you’ll be told for all time.”

Youster laid the sack with the two hobbled rabbits in it on the doorstep. Then he backed out to the road. It wasn’t long before the door opened a crack, then a foot. Matty’s long thin arm reached out, felt around, grabbed the meal sack, and jerked it inside. When she closed the door and latched it, the night was again as black as ever.

He waited around for a while, feeling the wind, and smelling the chimney smoke. He couldn’t see why Sis had to grow up and live with an old pinched-faced woman like Matty.

When he got to thinking about Matty, he remembered what she said. He cut across the field toward Sally Lucky’s. It didn’t take him long when he had no time to lose. When he got to the creek, he crossed it on the log and jogged up the hollow to Sally Lucky’s shack.

“Who’s that?” Sally Lucky said, when he pounded on the door.

“Youster Brown,” he said as loud as he could.

“What you want, Youster?”

“I want a working charm on Sis, or something bad on that old pinched-faced Matty. I done paid you seven, all told, dollars, and it ain’t worked for me none yet. It’s time it worked, too. If I give you two more dollars, will you make the charm work, and put something bad on Matty, too?”

The shriveled-up old Sally Lucky opened the door and stuck her head out on her thin neck. She squinted at him in the dark, and felt to see if he had a gun or knife in his pockets. She had been putting up her hair for the night, and half was up on one side of her head, and half down on the other. She looked all wore out.

“You sure look like you is the right somebody to put things on folks,” Youster said, gulping and shaking. “If you is, now’s the time to prove it to me. Man alive, I’m needing things on folks, if ever I did.”

“Let me see your money, Youster,” she said, taking him inside and sitting down in her chair on the hearth. “What kind of money you got on you?”

He took out all the money he had in the world — four half-dollar pieces — and put it on the fingers of her hand.

“I’m getting dog-tired of handing you over all my money, and not getting no action for it,” Youster said. “Look here, now, woman, is you able to do things or ain’t you?”

“You know Ham Beaver, don’t you?”

“I reckon I know Ham. I saw him day before yesterday. What about him?”

“I gave him a charm on a yellow girl six miles down the creek, and he went and got her all for himself before the week was over.”

“Maybe so,” Youster said. “But I paid you seven dollars, all told, before now, for a charm on Sis, and I ain’t got no sign of action for it. That old pinched-faced woman Matty just locks up the door and won’t let me in when I want in.”

“What you need is a curse on Matty,” Sally Lucky said. “A curse is what you want, and for nine dollars, all told, you appear to be due one, Youster.”

“It won’t get me in no trouble with the law, will it?” he asked, shaking. “The law is one thing I don’t want no trouble with no more at all.”

“All my charms and curses are private dealings,” she said, shaking her finger at him until he trembled more than ever. “As long as you do like I tell you, and keep your mouth shut, you won’t have no trouble with the law. I see to that.”

“I has bought charms before, and they didn’t make no trouble for me. But I ain’t never before in my life bought a curse on nobody. I just want to make sure I ain’t going to get in no trouble with the law. I’m positive about that.”

He studied the hickory-log fire for a while, and spat on an ember. He couldn’t be afraid of the law as long as he had Sally Lucky on his side. And he figured nine dollars’ worth was plenty to keep her on his side.

Sally Lucky picked up her poker and began sticking it into the fire. Sparks swirled in the fireplace and disappeared out of sight up the chimney. Youster watched her, sitting on the edge of his chair. He was in a big hurry, and he hoped it wouldn’t take her long this time to see what she was looking for in the fire.

All at once she began to mutter to herself, saying things so fast that Youster could not understand what the words were. He got down on his hands and knees and peered into the blazing fire, trying to see with his own eyes what Sally Lucky saw. While he was looking so hard, Sally Lucky started saying things faster and faster. He knew then that she was talking to Matty, and putting the curse on her.

He was as trembly as Sally Lucky was by then. He crept so close to the fire that he could barely keep his eyes open in the heat. Then as suddenly as she had begun, Sally Lucky picked up a rusty tomato can partly filled with water, and dashed it into the fire. The water sizzled, and the logs smoked and hissed, and a sharp black face could be seen in the fire.

Youster got back on his chair and waited. Sally Lucky kept on mumbling to herself, but the double talk was dying down, and before long no sound came through her jerking lips.

“You sure must be real sure enough conjur, Sally Lucky,” Youster said weakly.

She put a small tin snuff can into his hand, closing her fingers over it. He could feel that it was heavy, heavier than a can of snuff. It rattled, too, like it had been partly filled with BB shot.

Sally Lucky didn’t say another thing until she took him to the door. There she pushed him outside, and said:

“Whenever you think the curse ain’t working like it ought to, just take out that snuff can, Youster, and shake it a little.”

“Like it was dice?”

“Just exactly like it was dice.”

She shut the door and barred it.

Youster put the can into his pocket, and kept his hand in there with it so he wouldn’t have a chance in the world to lose it. He ran down the creek as fast as he could, crossed it on the log, and cut across the field toward the big road where Sis and Matty lived.

There still was no light anywhere in the night. When he got closer to the house, he could see a handful of sparks come out the chimney spout every once in a while when Matty poked the hickory-log fire.

He strode up to the front door as big as a bill collector. There wasn’t nothing to make him scared of that old pinched-faced Matty no more.

“Open up,” he said, pounding on the door.

“That you, Youster Brown, again?” Matty said on the inside.

“I reckon it is,” Youster said. “It ain’t nobody else. Open this here door up, woman, before I take it off its hinges. I ain’t got no time to lose.”

“You sure do talk big for a half-Jim nigger, Youster Brown. Ain’t you got no sense? Don’t you know that big talk don’t scare me none at all?”