Stories of Erskine Caldwell (53 page)

Two days before the crates would be finished, Walt wrote Bullock a letter telling him when they would be ready and asking for shipping instructions.

Bullock drove over from the Falls the same day he received Walt’s letter. He did not know what to do with the crates just then, because the season would be over in another week or two. But he figured that Walt would have only two or three or, at the most, five hundred crates, and he could take them to the Falls and carry them over to the next season and still make a good profit.

When he reached East Liverpool and saw the millyard, he almost had a heart attack. He had never seen so many blueberry crates in all his life, and he had been dealing in them for twenty years.

When he had first talked to Walt about making crates, he had no idea Walt intended making them, at least not in such quantities, and he was certain he had not signed an order for them. But he wanted to continue getting wooden jug handles at the good price Walt had made him. There was no other mill in the whole state that would sell handles to him at that figure. Bullock knew if he told Walt he had not ordered the crates, Walt would be angry about it and perhaps refuse to sell him any more cider-jug handles.

Before Walt came out of the mill, Bullock had a few minutes to think about what he was going to say. He knew it would ruin him to take that many blueberry crates merely to please Walt.

Walt came out of the mill and met Bullock at his car. Bullock was sitting on the running board looking at the crates in the millyard stacked higher than the buildings themselves.

“Well, Bullock,” Walt said, shaking his hand, “they’re ready. The last durn one of them. There’s ten thousand waiting for you.”

“Ten thousand!” Bullock gasped. “Ten thousand what?”

“Crates, man — blueberry crates.”

“Ten thousand blueberry crates?”

“Sure,” Walt said. “When I undertake a job I finish it. I made ten thousand of them for you, and I could get out half that many more by the end of the week if you want them. I’ve got fifteen extra men helping in the mill.”

“Ten thousand,” Bullock said again, still unable to realize that there were that many blueberry crates in the world.

“What’s your shipping instructions? Where do you want them sent — over to the Falls?”

Bullock rose to his feet and supported himself against the side of his automobile.

“Good God,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“What’s the matter?” Walt asked him.

“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” he said. “A pretty bad mistake, too. I guess probably I should have told you about it in the first place, because I’ve found that nearly every mill man in the state makes the same mistake when he undertakes to make blueberry crates. And naturally it’s pretty hard on the mill man.”

“What do you mean? There ain’t no mistake. You said you wanted as many crates as I could make, didn’t you? You said you’d take all I made. There ain’t no mistake on my part.”

“Yes, it’s a bad mistake,” Bullock said, gravely shaking his head from side to side. “You see, your business is in dowels principally, isn’t it? And going back to the bottom of things, you are in the lumber business. That’s your main business. All this kind of work making crates and hoops and jug handles is a sort of side line with you. Well, that show’s you’re not a blueberry-crate man at all. That’s why you didn’t know you were making a mistake. A blueberry-crate man would never have done that.”

“Done what?” Walt begged. “What’s the matter with the crates I made?”

“Your crates are put together. They would have to be knocked down and bundled before they would be of any use to me. Why, man, it would cost a fortune to truck those empty crates to the depot and ship them by freight to my customers all over the state. That many empty crates would take up more space than the railroad has got boxcars to put them in. That’s the mistake. You’ll have to knock them down before I can use them.”

“But this other man said he would haul raspberry crates away just like they stand now, if —”

“Good God, man,” Bullock said, “we’re talking about blueberry crates. I didn’t say anything about raspberry —”

“That’s right,” Walt said. “I just got mixed up in what I was saying.” Walt wished Bullock would go away and leave him alone. He felt very cheap there with Bullock, having all those crates on his hands, whatever kind they were now. But no matter how hard he tried to think his way out of the trouble he was in, he still knew the crates had been thrown back on him. If he hired the men to knock the crates down and bundle them he would lose at least two or three hundred dollars on the deal. He could not afford that. And he knew he could not force Bullock to take them, because there was no signed contract. He remembered about the pile of barrel hoops stacked up in the mill, too. They had been left on his hands because he nailed them together. Instead of nailing the ends together they should have been bundled and shipped flat. And now there was no market for hoops of any kind. Then his mind raced back to the crates. He wished he had asked the man who wanted to buy them for raspberry crates to leave his name and address. He could ask Bullock to put him in touch with the raspberry-crate man, because Bullock would probably know every wooden-products buyer in the State, but Walt didn’t want to do that. The other man had been angry when he left, and he would probably refuse to have anything to do with Walt after being ordered away from the mill.

“Well, I guess I’ll keep them,” Walt said. “I don’t want to knock them down. There wouldn’t be any sense in doing that.”

“Suit yourself,” Bullock said. “But I can’t use them as they are now. They would have to be knocked down and bundled. Now, if I was in the
raspberry-
crate business I could take every one you’ve got. Raspberry crates — ”

“These ain’t raspberry crates,” Walt said stiffly. “Them are blueberry crates.”

Walt went back into the mill. Bullock followed him, saying something about signing an order for fifty gross of cider-jug handles that he wanted added to the first order. Walt brought him an order blank and watched him fill it in and sign it. The moment Bullock finished writing his signature he got into his automobile and started towards the Falls as fast as he could.

When Bullock was out of sight, Walt went to the millyard and looked at the stacks of blueberry crates awhile. Then he went back into the mill and looked at the barrel hoops. He was wondering what Nate Emmonds would say about him this time.

(First published in
American Earth
)

P
ART WAY ACROSS
the swamp, Davi Millard stopped and washed his hands and face in the clear water that trickled in a shallow stream under the log path. Every night when he stopped there on his way home from work, he could see how much smaller the stream had become since the evening before.

Two months before, when he started hewing logs for new cabin, the water rushed down the sandy course with enough force to carry small limbs and chunks of swamp-rotted logs. But since then, the winter rains had stopped and the swamp was once more a mire of soft, depth-less mud, harmless-looking in its covering of tangled vegetation. The green ferns and running vines that grew through the spring and summer covered the mire-holes with the appearance of solid earth.

Davi had lived all his life on the edge of the swamp and he knew almost instinctively how dangerous it was.

After treading his way carefully over the chained logs to the other side of the swamp, Davi began running the rest of the way home. It was no more than a mile from the swamp to old cabin, but the path was crooked and narrow as it wound through the thick growth of turpentine pines.

The moon was shining, and it was almost as bright as day in the woods. When he saw the clearing ahead, he ran faster.

The place was as still and quiet as the pine forest around it. There was not even a thin wisp of smoke coming from the chimney, and if he had not seen the place before, at night, he would have declared it was deserted.

Opening the front door noiselessly, Davi listened for a moment. Through the broken window shutter, a faint ray of moonlight entered the dark room and fell across the foot of the bed. Closing the door behind him, he went silently to the middle of the room. From there he could see the outlines of the table, the chairs, and the bed. In the gloom everything looked as if it were covered with a foot-thick coating of dust,

Davi went to the wood box and fumbled in the dark until he had found a pine lighter. He struck a match to it, the dripping pitch flared up instantly, then he tossed the blazing knot into the fireplace. When he turned around, the whole room was alive with yellow, flickering light. The table, chairs, and bed looked as bright as they were the day he brought them.

Jeanie sat up in bed nervously, the covers falling from her shoulders. Even before she could open her eyes, she was smiling at Davi. He crossed the room and watched her while she brushed the hair from her face.

“How long have you been asleep, Jeanie?” he asked her. She smiled at him, shaking her head.

“I guess I was a little late tonight, again,” he said, appealingly. “The moon came up just at sundown, and I kept on working awhile. I want to finish new cabin as quick as I can.”

Jeanie threw aside the covers and slid to the side of the bed, touching the chilly floor with the tips of her toes.

“I kept the fire going in the stove as long as I could,” she said, “but I was so sleepy I couldn’t stay awake any longer. I’m afraid your supper is cold now, Davi.”

He stood where he was, a grin leaping from the corners of his mouth to all his face, and watched her stand up. When Jeanie took the first step towards the kitchen, Davi picked her up with a sweep of his arms and carried her back to bed. He held her at the side of the bed for a moment; then, hugging her so tightly she could barely breathe, he kissed her on the mouth and dropped her on the bed. She caught her breath when she fell, and she felt as if she were dropping a dozen feet instead of only two.

“Don’t bother about my supper,” Davi said, laughing at her. “I’ll eat it cold.”

He left her and went to the kitchen and felt around in the darkness until he found the bread and potatoes. He brought back a cake of corn bread and a gourd-sized sweet potato and sat down on the side of the bed. Jeanie was wide awake by then.

“Is new cabin pretty near finished now, Davi?” she asked him. “I get awfully lonesome here all day long.”

“It’ll be ready to move into in about a week, or maybe less time than that,” he told her, nodding slowly. “As soon as I can get the floor laid, we’ll move in. The window shutters can wait till after we move. It’ll only take a couple of days to make those, anyway.”

The pine lighter in the fireplace flickered, blazed, and died down. The knot was almost burned up.

Davi carried the potato skins back to the kitchen. When he got back, he undressed quickly and got into bed.

They lay together for a long time not saying anything. Jeanie moved closer to his side several times, and Davi buried his face in her hair.

When he was almost asleep, Jeanie whispered something.

“I can’t hear you,” he said, turning his head a little.

“That meddlesome old Bony King came here again, today,” Jeanie said in a muffled whisper.

Davi turned over and raised himself on his elbow. He looked through the darkness into Jeanie’s face.

“What did he want?”

“I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him, no matter what he wanted.”

“What did he say?”

“I didn’t pay any attention to anything he said. I told him to go away and mind his own business, but he just laughed at me and stayed anyway.”

Davi sank down upon the pillow, jerking his elbow from under him.

“Maybe Bony thinks I’m getting ready to move off and leave you,” Davi said slowly, pausing between each word to draw his breath sharply. “Maybe he thinks I’m building new cabin over on the other side of the swamp for me and a new somebody.”

Jeanie snuggled under his arm, worming her head until her face was pressed tightly against his neck.

“I don’t care what he thinks,” she said, shivering. “I don’t want him coming here every day and sitting and looking at me all the afternoon. It upsets me so, I don’t know what to do sometimes. Today, I felt like picking up a stick and whaling him for all he was worth.”

Davi raised himself on both elbows and stared through the darkness of the room. Jeanie lay silently beside him. He did not say a word until Jeanie shivered again.

“The next time Bony comes here, tell him I said that if he don’t quit bothering you, I’ll tend to him all right, all right.”

“One of the things he says every time he comes is, don’t I feel sorry for myself because I married you instead of him?”

“What do you tell him to that, Jeanie?”

“I told him today that if I couldn’t be married to you, I wouldn’t be married to anybody else in the country.”

Davi put his arms around her and drew her tightly to him. Jeanie whimpered for a while, and then she lay quiet and still. Davi could feel her relax while her breathing became lighter. He pressed his lips against her cheek, closing his eyes.

It was long after midnight when Davi woke up with a sudden consciousness. He was wide awake in a second, wondering what had made him wake up like that. He listened, raising his head from the pillow, but he could hear nothing. Outside the room, the pine barrens extended mile after mile in all directions. Nobody lived closer than twelve miles, and the only sound Davi had ever heard there was the occasional muffled crash of a dead falling tree or the faraway whine of a bobcat. This time he could hear nothing at all.

After a while he lay down again, but he could not go back to sleep. He lay as still as he could so he would not wake Jeanie.

While he lay there, wondering how long it was until dawn, he began to wonder if Bony King had anything to do with his waking up in the middle of the night. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Bony was the cause. He turned over and looked through the crack in the window shutter at the moonlit pines at the edge of the clearing beyond the garden.