Stories of Erskine Caldwell (57 page)

“You would go ahead and act like a damn fool, after all, wouldn’t you?” Jake said. “It’s a pity I didn’t let you stay out there and make ashes. They would have been worth more than you are alive. Meat ashes make the finest kind of dressing for any kind of crop.”

Carl sat up and looked through the gap in the stone wall at the smoking hayfield. The fire line had already reached the wood lot, and flame was beginning to shoot from the top of the pines and hemlocks. Two hundred yards farther away were Carl’s buildings. He had a team of horses in the barn, and a cow. There would be no way in the world to save them once the fire had reached the barn and caught the dry hay.

Jake tossed Carl a stick and watched him hobble the best he could down the road towards his house and buildings.

“What are we going to do?” he begged Jake. “We can’t let my stock and buildings burn up, too,”

“What we?” Jake said. “You and who else? You’re not talking to me, because I’m having nothing to do with all this mess. I told you what not to do when you came up here a little while ago, but you were so damn smart I couldn’t get anything through your head. That’s why I’m having nothing at all to do with all this mess.”

Carl protested feebly. He tried to get up and run down the road, but he fell each time he attempted to stand up.

“Why! do you think I’d have people saying that they passed your place and saw me helping you put out a grass fire when nobody with any sense at all would ever have started one in this kind of weather? People in this town know I don’t associate with crazy men. They know me better than that. That’s why I don’t want them to think I’ve lost my mind and gone plumb crazy with you.”

Carl opened his mouth, but Jake had not finished.

“I wouldn’t even spit on a blade of witch grass now if I thought it would help check that fire you started. Why! the townspeople would think I had a hand in starting it, if I went and helped you check it. Nobody would believe me if I tried to tell them I begged you not to fire your field in the beginning, and then went right out and helped you fight it. The townspeople have got better sense than to believe a tale like that. They know I wouldn’t do a fool thing like you went and did. They know that I have better sense than to go out and start a fire in a hayfield when it hasn’t rained yet this spring. I’m no fool, Carl Abbott, even if it does appear that I’m associating with one now.”

“But you can’t let my stock and buildings burn up,” Carl said. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Jake? I’ve been a fair and honest friend of yours all my life, haven’t I, Jake? And didn’t I cast my vote for you when you wanted to be road commissioner?”

“So I can’t, can’t I? Well, you just stand there and watch me try to save your stock and buildings! And this is no time to be talking politics, either. Wouldn’t help you, anyway, not after the way you did there in that hayfield. I told you not to go and fire that field, and you went right ahead like a damn fool and struck a match to it, just as if I had been talking to myself away over in another part of town. No! I’m not going to do anything about it — except talk. When the townspeople ask me how your farm and buildings came to catch on fire and burn up your stock and wood lot, I’ll tell them you fired it.”

Carl found a heavier stick and hobbled down the road towards his house and buildings. The fire had already run through the wood lot by that time, and, as they came around the bend in the road, flame was licking at the house and barn.

Jake walked behind Carl, coming down the road, and led his horse instead of riding in the buggy. He watched Carl try to run, and he thought once of putting him into the buggy, but he did not like the idea of doing that. Townspeople would say he was riding Carl around in his horse and buggy while the stock and buildings burned up.

When they got closer to the house, the roof was ablaze, and the barn was smoking. The hay in there was dry, and it looked as if it would burst into flame any second. Carl hobbled faster when he saw his buildings burning.

“Help me get my stock out, Jake,” he begged. “You won’t let my stock burn up, will you, Jake?”

Jake tied his horse to a tree beside the road and ran across the yard to the barn. He could not stand there and see a team of horses and a cow burn alive, even if they did belong to Carl Abbott. He ran to the barn and jerked open the stall doors.

An explosion of smoke, dust, and flame burst into his face, but the two horses and the cow bounded out the moment the stall doors were thrown open. The horses and cow ran across the yard and leaped over the brush by the roadside and disappeared into the field on the other side.

Jake knew it was a stroke of chance that enabled him to save the stock, because if the horses and cow had been farther in the barn, nothing could have induced them to leave it. The only way they could have been saved would have been to blindfold them and lead them out, and there would have been no time for that. The flame had already begun to reach the stalls.

Carl realized by that time that there was no chance of saving anything else. He saw the smoke and flame leap through the roof of the barn the moment that Jake had opened the stall doors. He felt terribly sick all over.

Jake went over to the tree and untied his horse. He climbed into the buggy and sat down. Carl stood looking at his burning buildings, and he was trying to lean on the big stick he had found up the backroad.

Jake whipped up his horse and started home. Carl turned around and saw him leave, but he had nothing to say.

“Whoa!” Jake said to his horse, pulling on the reins. He turned around in the buggy seat and called to Carl. “Well, I guess you’ll have better sense than to do a thing like that again, won’t you? Next time maybe you will be anxious to take some advice.”

Carl glared at Jake, and turned with nothing to say to stand and watch the fire. Then suddenly he shouted at Jake.

“By God, the hayfield is burned over, ain’t it?” he said, hobbling away. “Well, that’s what I set out to do at the start.”

Jake whipped up his horse and started for home. When he looked back for the last time, he saw Carl whittling on a pole. Carl had cut down a young pine and he was trimming it to replace the peg that had burned off in the hayfield. He wished to make the new one out of oak, but oak was the kind of wood that Jake had told him to use in the first place.

(First published in
We Are the Living
)

N
OBODY COULD EVER
explain exactly why it was, but the girls who lived in all the other parts of Oconee County were different from the ones in our section. All the girls in Woodlawn, which was the name of the town where we lived, were the sassy kind. They were always slapping and biting, too. I suppose all of them were tomboys. That’s about the worst thing you can call a girl when she is growing up. But the girls who lived at Macy’s Mill, and at Bradford, and especially in Rosemark, were a different kind. We used to talk about it a lot, but nobody knew why it was.

“How are the Rosemark girls different?” I asked Ben, when we were talking about it one day.

“Jiggers,” he said, “I don’t know exactly.”

I never went around like Ben and the other boys did, because I had a girl who lived in town and I went to see her two or three times a week, and that was as many nights as my folks would let me go out. They did not believe in letting me go all over the county to see girls. So I stayed at home and went to see Milly pretty often.

But those girls in other parts of the county were not like the ones at home. The other boys used to go off nearly every night to see girls at Bradford and Macy’s Mill and Rosemark, Rosemark especially. I don’t know why that was, either. There was just something about those girls down in Rosemark that made a man act kind of funny.

Ben went down to Rosemark three or four nights every week to see girls. The strange part of it was he rarely went to see the same girl more than once. He had a new girl almost every time he went down there. The other boys did the same way, too. They had a new girl every time. Shucks, I had to stay at home and go to see Milly and nobody else.

I asked Ben in a confidential way what it was about the girls down in Rosemark that made them so different from the ones around home. Ben was my first cousin and I didn’t mind asking him personal questions.

“Jumping jiggers!” he said, “You’ve never been down there to see a Rosemark girl, have you, Fred?”

I told him how it was about Milly. I did not want to go to see her all the time, but I never had a chance to go down to Rosemark like the other boys.

“Well,” he said, “you are a fool to go to see her all the time. She’s just like all the other girls around here. You’ve got to go down to Rosemark and see some real girls. They’re not like these around Woodlawn.”

“What are they like, Ben?” I asked him again. Everybody said they were different, but nobody ever said in what way they were different. “What do they do that’s different?”

“Well, that’s hard to say. They act just like all girls do — but they are different.”

“Tell me about them, Ben.”

“I’ll tell you this,” he said. “You got to be careful down there. Every girl in Rosemark that’s got an old man or a brother is watched pretty close. I guess that’s because they are pretty wild.”

“How are they wild?” I asked him. “What do they do?”

“That’s hard to say, too. You can’t put your finger on it exactly — they are just different. You’ve got to go down there.”

“But how can I get a date with one of them?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “You just go down there some Sunday night and wait outside a church until they come out. Then pick one out and ask her to let you take her home. That’s the way to do it.”

“Can I do that? Would she let me take her home?”

“Sure. That’s one way they are different. You can get any girl you want if you ask her before somebody else does. You go down Sunday night and try it. Jiggers, Fred, you got to see those Rosemark girls! The ones around here aren’t fit to fool with.”

I hated to tell my folks the next Sunday night that I was going to see Milly when I wasn’t, but — gee — I had to go down to see those girls in Rosemark. I drove the old car down and got there just before the churches let out.

I picked out the biggest church I could find and waited outside the door. I figured that the bigger the church the better chance I would have because there would be more girls in it.

Shucks, it wasn’t any trouble at all. I asked the first girl that came out by herself if I could take her home and she said, “Sure,” just as nice. Gee, this was the way to see girls. Up at home the girls acted sassy about letting you take them home. These Rosemark girls were different that way.

“Where do you live?” I asked her.

“About five miles out in the country,” she said. She talked nice and soft like all girls would if they knew what was good for themselves. “Do you want to take me?”

“You bet I do,” I told her. “I don’t care how far it is.” Five miles wasn’t anything. It was fine, because I’d have a longer time to find out about her. I could tell right away she was different.

She showed me the way to go and we started out. The old car was running good, but there was no hurry to get there. “What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Betty,” she said.

No girl up in Woodlawn had a name like that. I was beginning to see why all the boys at home liked to come down to Rosemark.

Gee, she was different! She sat real close to me and sort of hunched her shoulders forward like she was awfully pleased. I had never seen a girl act so nice in all my life. She put her arm through mine and sort of leaned against me a lot and I had a devil of a time trying to keep our old car in the road.

As soon as we got outside of town a little distance another automobile came up behind us real close. I drew over to the side of the road so it could pass, but whoever was running it wouldn’t try to pass. I thought that was funny, because I was driving only about ten miles an hour and making a lot of dust behind, too. The man who was running the other car was crazy not to pass us and go on ahead.

Betty sat closer and closer all the time and was so nice I didn’t know what to make of it.

“The devil,” I said to myself, “I’m going to take a chance and kiss her.”

That was a reckless thing to do, because all the girls I knew up home were pretty particular about things like that and they didn’t mind slapping you good and hard, either.

Gee whiz! I reached down and kissed her and she wouldn’t let me stop. The old car rocked from one side of the road to the other as dizzy as a bat. I couldn’t see to steer it because Betty wouldn’t let me stop kissing her, and I had to wait until we ran into a ditch almost before I knew which way to turn the wheel. Gee whiz! The girls in Rosemark were certainly different, all right.

Finally I got away from her and got back my breath and saw which way to guide the old car.

“Don’t you like to kiss me?” she asked, hunching her shoulders forward again like a girl does when she wants to make you feel funny.

Shucks, I couldn’t let her get away with that! I reached my right arm around her and kissed her as hard as I could. She didn’t mind how rough I was, either. I guess she liked it, because she put both of her arms around my neck and both of her legs across my lap and hugged the life out of me.
Gee whiz!
I didn’t know girls did like that! Ben said the girls down in Rosemark were different, but I didn’t expect anything like this to happen to me. Holy cats! The girl was sitting on my lap under the steering wheel and I was having a devil of a time trying to kiss her for all I was worth and steer the old car at the same time.

Right then I knew I was coming down to Rosemark again as soon as I could get away. Ben sure knew what he was talking about when he said the girls down here were nothing like the ones at home. Shucks, those old girls up at home were not anything.

By this time we had got to the place where she lived and she looked up just at the right moment to tell me where to turn in. Before I could steer the old car into the driveway the automobile that had been behind as all the time beat me to it and I had to jerk on the brakes to keep from running smack into it.