Stories of Erskine Caldwell (43 page)

He bent down and saw that her lips were bloodless and that her face was whiter than he had ever seen anyone’s face. While he watched her, her body became tense and she bit her mouth to keep from screaming with pain.

Vern jumped up and ran to the road, looking up it and down it. The night had come down so quickly that he could not tell whether there were any fields or cleared ground there as an indication of somebody’s living near. There were no signs of a house or people anywhere.

He ran back to Nellie.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“If I could go to sleep,” she said, “I think I would be all right for a while.”

He got down beside her and put his arms around her.

“If I thought you wouldn’t be afraid, I’d go up the road until I found a house and get a car or something to carry you. I can’t let you stay here all night on the ground.”

“You might not get back — in time!” she cried frantically.

“I’d hurry as fast as I could,” he said. “I’ll run until I find somebody.”

“If you’ll come back in two or three hours,” she said, “I’d be able to stand it, I think. I couldn’t stand it any longer than that alone, though.”

He got up.

“I’m going,” he said.

He ran up the road as fast as he could, remembering how he had pleaded to be allowed to stay in the house a little longer so Nellie would not have to go like that. The only answer he had got, even after he had explained about Nellie, was a shake of the head. There was no use in begging after that. He was being put out, and he could not do anything about it. He was certain there should have been some money due him for his crop that fall, even a few dollars, but he knew there was no use in trying to argue about that, either. He had gone home the night before, knowing they would have to leave. He stumbled, falling heavily, headlong, on the road.

When he picked himself up, he saw a light ahead. It was only a pale ray from a board window that had been closed tightly. But it was a house, and somebody lived in it. He ran toward it as fast as he could.

When he got to the place, a dog under the house barked, but he paid no attention to it. He ran up to the door and pounded on it with both fists.

“Let me in!” he yelled. “Open the door!”

Somebody inside shouted, and several chairs were knocked over. The dog ran out from under the house and began snapping at Vern’s legs. He tried to kick the dog away, but the dog was just as determined as he was, and came back at him more savagely than before. Finally he pushed the door open, breaking a button lock.

Several Negroes were hiding in the room. He could see heads and feet under the bed and behind a trunk and under a table.

“Don’t be scared of me,” he said as calmly as he could. “I came for help. My wife’s down the road, sick. I’ve got to get her into a house somewhere. She’s lying on the ground.”

The oldest man in the room, a gray-haired Negro who looked about fifty, crawled from under the bed.

“I’ll help you, boss,” he said. “I didn’t know what you wanted when you came shouting and yelling like that. That’s why I didn’t open the door and let you in.”

“Have you got a cart, or something like that?” Vern asked.

“I’ve got a one-horse cart,” the man said. “George, you and Pete go hitch up the mule to the cart. Hurry and do it.”

Two Negro boys came from their hiding places and ran out the back door.

“We’ll need a mattress, or something like that to put her on,” Vern said.

The Negro woman began stripping the covers from the bed, and Vern picked up the mattress and carried it out the front door to the road. While he waited for the boys to drive the cart out, he walked up and down, trying to assure himself that Nellie would be all right.

When the cart was ready, they all got in and drove down the road as fast as the mule could go. It took less than half an hour for them to reach the grove where he had left Nellie, and by then he realized he had been gone three hours or longer.

Vern jumped to the ground, calling her. She did not answer. He ran up the bank and fell on his knees beside her on the ground.

“Nellie!” he said, shaking her. “Wake up, Nellie! This is Vern, Nellie!”

He could not make her answer. Putting his face down against hers, he felt her cold cheek. He put his hands on her forehead, and that was cold, too. Then he found her wrists and held them in his fingers while he pressed his ear tightly against her breast.

The Negro man finally succeeded in pulling him backward. For a while he did not know where he was or what had happened. It seemed as if his mind had gone completely blank.

The Negro was trying to talk to him, but Vern could not hear a word he was saying. He did know that something had happened, and that Nellie’s face and hands were cold, and that he could not feel her heart beat. He knew, but he could not make himself believe that it was really true.

He fell down on the ground, his face pressed against the pine needles, while his fingers dug into the soft damp earth. He could hear voices above him, and he could hear the words the voices said, but nothing had any meaning. Sometime — a long time away — he would ask about their baby — about Nellie’s — about their baby. He knew it would be a long time before he could ask anything like that, though. It would be a long time before words would have any meaning in them again.

(First published in
Southways
)

A
UNT
J
ENNY WAS
waiting at the front door, the letter crackling in her trembling hand, when Uncle Henry got off the street car at the corner that night and came up to the gate. The hinges squeaked a little more loudly than they ever had before when he came into the yard. Aunt Jenny stood stiffer and straighter than she ever had before in her life as she watched every step he took towards the house.

“Evening, Jenny,” Uncle Henry said. He shut the gate, latched it, and came up the walk to the front door. “I didn’t think I was late for supper. I’m a little earlier than usual, if anything.”

Aunt Jenny still did not say anything. She stepped back a foot or two in order to give him plenty of room in which to pass by her.

The rest of us kept our seats around the living-room stove and tried not to make a sound. None of us knew what the letter was about, but it was easy to see that it had made Aunt Jenny madder than we had ever seen her about anything.

Uncle Henry came in, laid his hat and coat down, and stood by the stove, warming his hands. He nodded to all of us, and most of us said what we said every night: “Hello, Uncle Henry.”

Aunt Jenny slammed the front door and strode through the room. When she got to the kitchen door, she stopped and told Uncle Henry she wanted to speak to him.

“I want to see you in the kitchen, Henry,” she said, still stiff and straight. “Right away.”

They went into the kitchen and shut the door. There was not much to hear for a while, and then we crept up to the door where we could listen. From the way it sounded to us, Uncle Henry must have sat down in the chair by the kitchen stove while Aunt Jenny stood up in front of him.

“Henry, I want you to tell me the meaning of this letter,” she said in the same way she talked to us when we had done something she did not like.

“Well, what’s the letter about, Jenny?” he said.

“Read it, and then you tell me what it’s about.”

There was not a thing to hear for a long time. After that, Uncle Henry’s chair scraped a little, and then he laughed out loud. As soon as he did that, we could hear Aunt Jenny’s foot tapping on the linoleum.

“What have you got to say for yourself, Henry?” she asked him.

“Nothing, Jenny. What is there to say about a thing like that? It’s just a mistake. What else could it be? I haven’t been on Centre Street in over a year.”

“It’s mighty funny, Henry, that this letter was addressed to you and a Mrs., when everybody in town knows where I live. I’ve never lived on Centre Street with you in my life.”

From the way things sounded, Uncle Henry did not know what to say next. Aunt Jenny was doing all the talking, or most of it, anyway.

“No department store,” she said, “is going to send out a letter thanking a customer for buying a suite of furniture unless somebody bought the furniture. And when the letter is addressed to you and a Mrs., and the post office forwards the letter addressed to Centre Street to my house here, it’s time for you to do some explaining. How long has this been going on, Henry? Who are you living with, in your spare time, on Centre Street? What does she look like? How old is she?”

Uncle Henry did not say anything for a while. That made Aunt Jenny impatient.

“It would have been different if you had bought me a suite of furniture,” she said evenly, “but the last stick of furniture you bought me was that dining-room table, and that was all of eight years ago.”

“We’ll call up the department store tomorrow and straighten this thing out,” Uncle Henry said. “It’s all a clerical mistake. All business offices make mistakes once in a while. It’s a thing that can’t be one hundred per cent perfect, Jenny.”

“I wouldn’t believe it if they did tell me it was a mistake,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about the way you have been acting lately, anyway. It looks to me like you have been spending entirely too much time away from home, especially at night when you said you were going to a meeting.”

“What in the name of common sense would I be doing with another — place?” he asked her. “I’m too old for a thing like that.”

“That excuse won’t do for me,” Aunt Jenny said. “You will never be too old to go off and live with somebody younger and prettier than me, and leave me all alone.”

It sounded for a minute as if Aunt Jenny was crying. We could hear Uncle Henry get up and take a few steps, and it sounded like he was trying to pat her on the back, or something.

“I’ve given you the best years of my life,” she said, so low it was hard to hear what she was saying. “And all the thanks I get is this. I never thought you would leave me all alone in the world and go off to live with a younger and prettier woman, Henry.”

“Now, Jenny,” he told her, “you’re just upset, that’s all. Let’s eat supper. You’ll feel better then.”

There was another long silence, and we thought it was time to get away from the door. Just when we got ready to leave, Aunt Jenny said something else.

“Is she a good cook, Henry?”

Uncle Henry laughed out loud. He laughed so loud he could be heard all over the house.

“Not as good as you are, Jenny,” he said. “Not nearly as good.”

We ran back to the stove and sat down and tried to act as if nothing had ever happened.

In another minute or two Aunt Jenny opened the kitchen door and began putting supper on the table. Uncle Henry helped her. We had never seen him do that before.

When it was time to go to the table, we all walked in and sat down without looking at either one of them. Uncle Henry started in talking like he always did, and we tried not to laugh at the funny things he said.

Every once in a while Aunt Jenny would tell one of us to pass Uncle Henry something, and she was getting up every few minutes to take him something herself. She had never done that before, especially when all of us were there to pass things.

“I have some good strawberry jam put away, Henry,” she said. “I know you’d like some.”

“No thanks, Jenny,” he said. “I’ve had all I want now.”

“But it’s the best strawberry jam I ever made,” she said. She got up and went to the closet and brought him a dishful. “I know you’ll like it, Henry.”

He ate a little and pushed the rest aside.

“I’ve got some fresh raisin bread, too,” Aunt Jenny said. “I was saving it for Sunday, but you’d like it with strawberry jam, Henry.”

Uncle Henry looked full to the limit. He pushed his plate back a little, shaking his head until she sat down again.

After we had all finished eating, Aunt Jenny nodded for us to leave the table while they drank their coffee. She sent us for the evening paper. When we brought it back from the porch, Aunt Jenny took it herself and got up and handed it to Uncle Henry. She even unfolded it and stood the paper up in front of his plate for him. We had never seen her do anything like that before, either.

Aunt Jenny almost choked when she saw the headline. She had to catch onto the chair to support herself for a moment. Uncle Henry, holding his coffee cup up to his mouth, dropped it, and coffee splashed over everything, and the cup rolled onto the floor.

The headline across the front page of the paper read: WIFE RAIDS LOVE NEST.

We did not know what was happening, but we thought we ought to go out into the yard and play awhile before dark.

(First published in the
Sunday Worker
)

S
UNDAY AFTERNOON CAME
, and it was hotter than ever. If the heat kept up much longer, there would not be a blade of grass or stalk of corn alive in the whole country.

Will Tannet went to the front porch and looked at the thermometer. It was 105 degrees in the shade.

“People can’t stand this much longer,” he said.

He walked to the edge of the porch and looked at the sky. There was not a cloud to be seen anywhere.

His wife, Annie, came to the door behind him.

“Any sign of rain yet, Will?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head.

When he turned around, she had gone.

“It’s going to drive people crazy — or something,” he said, looking up at the pale, faded blue sky. He unbuttoned his shirt another button, wiped his face, neck, and arms, and went to the barn to give the stock as much water as he could spare.

The girls, Nancy and Florabelle, were in their room changing their clothes. No matter how hot it got, they always had company on Sunday afternoons. Evans Waller had been there every Sunday afternoon for the past five or six months, to see Nancy, and two or three others generally came to call on Florabelle. Nancy and Evans were engaged, but they were keeping it a secret from Nancy’s father until the drought was broken. They knew better than to say anything to Will until it rained.