Stories of Erskine Caldwell (40 page)

Phelps took his feet out of the new snow and put them on the sheet of newspaper Orland’s wife had spread for him. He made no effort to move or to thank Orland for permitting him to stay for the night. He just sat and stared at the snow falling against the window. He was an old man, much older than Orland. He looked to be at least eighty years old. His hair was almost white, but his body was firm and muscular. If he had been less than six feet tall, he would have appeared to be overweight.

Presently Emma came back into the room and carried out the bowl of melting snow and the damp newspaper, and then she handed the old man a clean bath towel. He dried his hands and feet and put his socks and boots on again.

“Show me the place to sleep, and good night,” he said wearily.

“Guess you will want the use of the spare chamber,” Orland said, scowling at the old man. “Well, you’re going to get it. Could give you some blankets and put you on the carpet, but I’m not. Am giving you the use of the spare chamber. My wife will fix you a plate of breakfast in the morning, if you are in here on time. Nobody eats a breakfast in my house after six-thirty.”

Emma lit a lamp and showed the old man to the spare chamber. When she returned, Orland had begun reading the paper and he had nothing to say to her.

Just before he got up to go to bed, Orland called his wife.

“Give that man who said his name was Phelps a helping of beans and potatoes for breakfast,” he said, “but don’t give him but one plateful. Don’t want to be the cause of prolonging the lives of people who walk through the snow and frost to New Hampshire in dead of winter.”

Orland went to bed then, leaving Emma to clean the room and to set the chairs against the wall. He was asleep long before she had finished her work.

When Orland got up and lit the lamp the next morning at five-thirty, he listened for several minutes before calling Emma. He went to the wall that separated their room from the spare chamber and listened for a sound of the old man. The only sound that he could hear anywhere in the house was the breathing of Emma.

After calling his wife, Orland went to the kitchen range and opened the drafts and shook down the ashes. The firebox was ablaze in a minute or two, and he went to the next room and replenished the fire in the heater. Outside, it had stopped snowing during the night, and there were deep drifts of new snow.

Breakfast was ready at six-thirty, and Emma set the dishes aside on the range to wait until the old man came into the next room. She knew that Orland would call for his breakfast at almost any minute, but she delayed placing it on the table as long as she could.

“It’s time for breakfast, Emma,” Orland said. “Why haven’t you got it ready?”

“Am putting it on the table right away,” she said. “Maybe you had best go call Mr. Phelps while I’m doing it.”

“Will be damned if I go call him,” Orland said. “Told the old fool last evening what time breakfast was ready, and if he doesn’t get up when it’s ready, then I’m not going to wear out my shoes running to call him. Sit down and let’s eat, Emma.”

Emma sat down without a word.

After they had finished, Orland filled his pipe. He took a match from his coat pocket, but he waited a minute or longer before striking it.

“Clear away the dishes, Emma,” he said.

Orland’s wife carried out the dishes and plates to the kitchen. She placed the dish of beans on the range to keep them warm a while longer.

When she came back into the room for the rest of the tableware, Orland motioned to her to listen to him. “That old fool from the eastern country and going to New Hampshire to help his brother peel pulpwood had better be setting out toward the high mountains. He’s already missed the breakfast we had for him. Will give him another ten minutes, and if he’s not out of the house by then, I’ll throw him out, leather breeches and all.”

Emma went back into the kitchen to wash the dishes while Orland filled the heater with maple chunks. One look at Orland’s face was enough to frighten her out of the room.

Orland waited longer than ten minutes, and each second that passed made him more angry. It was almost eight o’clock then, an hour after breakfast was over. Orland got up and opened the house door and the storm door. His face was aflame and his motions were quick and jerky.

“Take care, woman,” he said to Emma. “Take care!”

Emma came to the kitchen door and stood waiting to see what Orland was going to do. She did not know what on earth to do when Orland became as angry as he was then.

Stand back, Emma,” he said. “Stand back out of my way.”

He began running around the room, looking as if he himself did not know what he was likely to do that minute or the next.

“Orland —” Emma said, standing in the kitchen door where she could get out of his way if he should turn toward her.

“Take care, woman,” he shouted at her. “Take care!”

Orland was piling all the furniture in the corner of the room beside the heater. He jerked up the carpet and the rugs, pulled down the curtains, and carried all the old newspapers and magazines to the fire. He was acting strangely, Emma knew, but she did not know what on earth he was going to do nor how to stop him. She had never seen Orland act like that before in all her life, and she had lived with him for almost fifty years.

“Orland —” she said again, glancing backward to the outside kitchen door to make certain of escape.

“Take care, woman,” Orland said. “Take care!”

The furniture, rugs and carpet, and newspapers were blazing like a May grass fire within a few minutes. Smoke and flame rose to the ceiling and flowed down the walls. Just when Emma thought surely that Orland would be burned alive in the fire, he ran out of the door and into the yard. She ran screaming through the other door.

Emma’s first thought when she saw the house burning, was where would they live now. Then she remembered their other house, the ten-room brick house down the road near the village. Orland would not live in it because he had said that the frame house would have to be worn out before they could go to live in their brick house. He had been saying that for twenty years, and during all of that time the fine brick house of ten rooms had been standing at waste. Now, at last, they could live in it.

There were no people passing along the road so early in the morning, but John White saw the smoke and flame from his house across the flats, and he came running over with a bucket of water. By the time he got there, all the water had splashed out of the bucket, and he set it down and looked at the fire.

“Am sorry to see that, Orland,” he said.

“Save your pity for some who are in need of it,” Orland said.

“Well, you’ve got good insurance on it, anyway,” John said. “That will help a lot. When you collect the insurance money, you can go and live in your brick house in style and good comfort.”

“Not going to collect the insurance,” Orland said.

“You’re not! Why won’t you collect it?”

“Because I set fire to the house myself.”

“Set fire to it yourself! Good God, Orland, you must have lost your mind and reason!”

“Had a blamed good reason for doing it.”

John White walked away and turned around and came back where Orland was standing. He looked at Orland and then at the burning house and at Orland again.

Orland began telling John about the old man who had said his name was Phelps. He started at the beginning, when Phelps knocked on the storm door at mealtime. Then he told John about giving the old man permission to spend the night in the house after he had walked in unbidden.

“But I told him to get up in time for breakfast at six-thirty,” Orland said. “I told him that, and the old fool heard me, too. When this morning came, I waited five, ten minutes for him to come and eat. He didn’t even get up out of bed. He just stayed there, sleeping. Then I sat and waited a whole hour for him to get up, but he still just stayed in the spare chamber and slept. Am not the kind to allow the country to get cluttered up with men with no more sense than to start out walking to New Hampshire in dead of winter to peel pulpwood. That old fool said he started out from somewhere in the eastern country to walk over there through the snow and frost, and he hadn’t even got as far as the high mountains. If I hadn’t stopped him here, he’d have gone to some town and couldn’t go further. Then he’d have been a burden on the state, because there’s not a town down-Maine that would have claimed him, not even a town in the eastern country would have given him citizenship.”

Suddenly, Emma screamed and fell down on her back. Orland ran to see what the matter with her was.

While he was away attending to Emma, John White saw something move behind one of the windows in the spare chamber. Before he could go closer to see what it was, the roof over that part of the building fell in, sending up a shower of sparks and fragments of black embers.

Orland came back beside John and stood watching the house as it sank lower and lower to the ground.

“Lived in this town a long time,” John said, “almost any man’s lifetime, I guess, but I never before saw a man burn his house down just for durn meanness. Don’t guess you’d have done it, if it wasn’t for the fact that you own a brick house that’s a lot better shelter than this frame one was.”

“That old fool said he was on his way to New Hampshire to help his brother peel —”

“Well, all I’ve got to say is that it looks to me like you could have asked him just once to get up out of bed and clear out of the house. Doesn’t appear to me like a man ought to set fire to and burn down a good frame house just because a guest won’t get out of bed in time for breakfast.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have done it,” Orland said, “but after I had thought all night about it, there wasn’t any other way to treat him. Why, that old fool who said his name was Phelps opened my door and come in without my bidding, right when I was sitting at the table at mealtime. You don’t guess I’d have gone and asked him to get out of bed, do you, after he had done a thing like that?”

“Guess you would have gone and told him to get up, all right, if you hadn’t been trying for nearly twenty years to find a way to move into your brick house. This frame house was just about worn out, anyway. Orland. Wasn’t no sense in burning him up just to get the house down and out of your way.”

“Couldn’t take the risk,” Orland said. “This house has always been cussed mean. It was just hardheaded enough to have stood in good repair right up to the day I took ill and died.”

(First published in
Story
)

T
WO HOURS AFTER
dinner they were still sitting in the airtight, overheated parlor. A dull haze of tobacco smoke was packed in layers from the table-top to the ceiling, and around the chairs hovered the smell of dried perspiration and stale perfume. The New Year’s Day turkey-and-hog dinner had made the women droopy and dull-eyed; the men were stretched out in their chairs with their legs spread out and their heads thrown back, looking as if around each swollen belly a hundred feet of stuffed sausage-casing had been wound.

Grady Walters sat up, rubbed his red-veined face, and looked at his guests. After a while he went to the door and called for one of his Negro servants. He sent the Negro on the run for Blue Boy.

After he had closed the door tightly, Grady walked back towards his chair, looking at the drowsy men and women through the haze of blue tobacco smoke. It had been more than an hour since anyone had felt like saying anything.

“What time of day is it getting to be, Grady?” Rob Howard asked, rubbing first his eyes and then his belly.

“Time to have a little fun,” Grady said.

Blue Boy came through the back door and shuffled down the hall to the parlor where the people were. He dragged his feet sideways over the floor, making a sound like soy beans being poured into a wooden barrel.

“We been waiting here all afternoon for you to come in here and show the folks some fun, Blue Boy,” Grady said. “All my visitors are just itching to laugh. Reckon you can make them shake their sides, Blue Boy?”

Blue Boy grinned at the roomful of men and women. He dug his hands into his overall pockets and made some kind of unintelligible sound in his throat.

Rob Howard asked Grady what Blue Boy could do. Several of the women sat up and began rubbing powder into the pores of their skin.

The colored boy grinned some more, stretching his neck in a semicircle.

“Blue Boy,” Grady said, “show these white-folks how you caught that shoat the other day and bit him to death. Go on, Blue Boy! Let’s see how you chewed that shoat to death with your teeth.”

For several moments the boy’s lips moved like eyelids a-flutter, and he made a dash for the door. Grady caught him by the shoulder and tossed him back into the center of the room.

“All right, Blue Boy,” Grady shouted at him. “Do what I told you to do. Show the white-folks how you bit that pig to death.”

Blue Boy made deeper sounds in his throat. What he said sounded more unintelligible than Gullah. Nobody but Grady could understand what he was trying to say.

“It don’t make no difference if you ain’t got a shoat here to kill,” Grady answered him. “Go on and show the white-folks how you killed one the other day for me.”

Blue Boy dropped on his hands and knees, making sounds as if he were trying to protest. Grady nudged him with his foot, prodding him on.

The Negro boy suddenly began to snarl and bite, acting as if he himself had been turned into a snarling, biting shoat. He grabbed into the air, throwing his arms around an imaginary young hog, and began to tear its throat with his sharp white teeth. The Howards and Hannafords crowded closer, trying to see the idiot go through the actions of a bloodthirsty maniac.

Down on the floor, Blue Boy’s face was contorted and swollen. His eyes glistened, and his mouth drooled. He was doing all he could to please Grady Walters.

When he had finished, the Howards and Hannafords fell back, fanning their faces and wiping the backs of their hands with their handkerchiefs. Even Grady fanned his flushed face when Blue Boy stopped and rolled over on the floor exhausted.