Stories of Erskine Caldwell (64 page)

Abe was putting a new board on the doorstep when Bert came up the road and turned into the yard. Abe glanced around but kept right on working.

Bert waited until Abe had finished planing the board before he said anything.

“How be you, Abe?” he inquired cautiously.

“Hell, I’m always well,” Abe said, without looking up from the step.

Bert was getting ready to ask permission to go into the house. He waited until Abe hammered the twenty-penny into the board.

“I left a pair of corduroys in there, Abe,” he stated preliminarily. “You wouldn’t mind if I went up attic and got them, would you?”

Abe let the hammer drop out of his hands and fall on the step. He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and turned around facing Bert.

“You go in my house and I’ll have the law on you. I don’t give a cuss if you’ve left fifty pair of corduroys up attic. I bought and paid for this place and the buildings on it and I don’t want nobody tracking around here. When I want you to come on my land, I’ll invite you.”

Bert scratched his head and looked up at the attic window. He began to wish he had not been so forgetful when he was moving his belongings down to his other house on the Skowhegan road.

“They won’t do you no good, Abe,” he said. “They are about ten sizes too big for you to wear. And they belong to me, anyway.”

“I’ve already told you what I’m going to do with them corduroys,” Abe replied, going back to work. “I’ve made my plans for them corduroys. I’m going to keep them, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Bert turned around and walked toward the road, glancing over his shoulder at the attic window where his pants were hanging on a rafter. He stopped and looked at Abe several minutes, but Abe was busy hammering twenty-penny nails into the new step he was making and he paid no attention to Bert’s sour looks. Bert went back down the road, wondering how he was going to get along without his other pair of pants.

By the time Bert reached his house he was good and mad. In the first place, he did not like the way Abe Mitchell had ordered him away from his old farm, but most of all he missed his other pair of corduroys. And by bedtime he could not sit still. He walked around the kitchen mumbling to himself and trying to think of some way by which he could get his trousers away from Abe.

“Crusty-faced Democrats never were no good,” he mumbled to himself.

Half an hour later he was walking up the back road toward his old farm. He had waited until he knew Abe was asleep, and now he was going to get into the house and go up attic and bring out the corduroys.

Bert felt in the dark for the loose window in the barn and discovered it could be opened just as he had expected. He had had good intentions of nailing it down, for the past two or three years, and now he was glad he had left it as it was. He went through the barn and the woodshed and into the house.

Abe had gone to bed about nine o’clock, and he was asleep and snoring when Bert listened at the door. Abe’s wife had been stone-deaf for the past twenty years or more.

Bert found the corduroy pants, with no trouble at all. He struck only one match up attic, and the pants were hanging on the first nail he went to. He had taken off his shoes when he climbed through the barn window and he knew his way through the house with his eyes shut. Getting into the house and out again was just as easy as he had thought it would be. And as long as Abe snored, he was safe.

In another minute he was out in the barn again, putting on his shoes and holding his pants under his arm. He had put over a good joke on Abe Mitchell, all right. He went home and got into bed.

The next morning Abe Mitchell drove his car up to the front of Bert’s house and got out. Bert saw him from his window and went to meet Abe at the door. He was wearing the other pair of corduroys, the pair that Abe had said he was going to keep for himself.

“I’ll have you arrested for stealing my pants,” Abe announced as soon as Bert opened the door, “but if you want to give them back to me now I might consider calling off the charges. It’s up to you what you want to do about it.”

“That’s all right by me,” Bert said. “When we get to court I’ll show you that I’m just as big a man as you think you are. I’m not afraid of what you’ll do. Go ahead and have me arrested, but if they lock you up in place of me, don’t come begging me to go your bail for you.”

“Well, if that’s the way you think about it,” Abe said, getting red in the face, “I’ll go ahead with the charges. I’ll swear out a warrant right now and they’ll put you in the county jail before bedtime tonight.”

“They’ll know where to find me,” Bert said, closing the door. “I generally stay pretty close to home.”

Abe went out to his automobile and got inside. He started the engine, and promptly shut it off again.

“Come out here a minute, Bert,” he called.

Bert studied him for several minutes through the crack in the door and then went out into the yard.

“Why don’t you go swear out the warrant? What you waiting for now?”

“Well, I thought I’d tell you something, Bert. It will save you and me both a lot of time and money if you’d go to court right now and save the cost of having a man come out here to serve the warrant on you. If you’ll go to court right now and let me have you arrested there, the cost won’t be as much.”

“You must take me for a cussed fool, Abe Mitchell,” Bert said. “Do I look like a fool to pay ten dollars for a hired car to take me to county jail?”

Abe thought to himself several minutes, glancing sideways at Bert.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Bert,” he proposed. “You get in my car and I’ll take you there and you won’t have to pay ten dollars for a hired car.”

Bert took out his pipe and tobacco. Abe waited while he thought the proposition over thoroughly. Bert could not find a match, so Abe handed him one.

“You’ll do that, won’t you, Bert?” he asked.

“Don’t hurry me — I need plenty of time to think this over in my mind.”

Abe waited, bending nervously toward Bert. The match-head crumbled off and Abe promptly gave Bert another one.

“I guess I can accommodate you that little bit, this time,” he said, at length. “Wait until I lock up my house.”

When Bert came back to the automobile Abe started the engine and turned around in the road toward Skowhegan. Bert sat beside him sucking his pipe. Neither of them had anything to say to each other all the time they were riding. Abe drove as fast as his old car would go, because he was in a hurry to get Bert arrested and the trial started.

When they reached the courthouse, they went inside and Abe swore out the warrant and had it served on Bert. The sheriff took them into the courtroom and told Bert to wait in a seat on the first row of benches. The sheriff said they could push the case ahead and get a hearing some time that same afternoon. Abe found a seat and sat down to wait.

It was an hour before Bert’s case was called to trial. Somebody read out his name and told him to stand up. Abe sat still, waiting until he was called to give his testimony.

Bert stood up while the charge was read to him. When it was over, the judge asked him if he wanted to plead guilty or not guilty.

“Not guilty,” Bert said.

Abe jumped off his seat and waved his arms.

“He’s lying!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “He’s lying — he did steal my pants!”

“Who is that man?” the judge asked somebody.

“That’s the man who swore out the warrant,” the clerk said. “He’s the one who claims the pants were stolen from him.”

“Well, if he yells out like that again,” the judge said, “I’ll swear out a warrant against him for giving me a headache. And I guess somebody had better tell him there’s such a thing as contempt of court. He looks like a Democrat, so I suppose he never heard of anything like that before.”

The judge rapped for order and bent over towards Bert.

“Did you steal a pair of corduroy pants from this man?” he asked.

“They were
my
pants,” Bert explained. “I left them in my house when I sold it to Abe Mitchell and when I asked him for them he wouldn’t turn them over to me. I didn’t steal them. They belonged to me all the time.”

“He’s lying!” Abe shouted again, jumping up and down. “He stole my pants — he’s lying!”

“Ten dollars for contempt of court, whatever your name is,” the judge said, aiming his gavel at Abe, “and case dismissed for lack of evidence.”

Abe’s face sank into his head. He looked first at the judge and then around the courtroom at the strange people.

“You’re not going to make me pay ten dollars, are you?” he demanded angrily.

“No,” the judge said, standing up again. “I made a mistake. I forgot that you are a Democrat. I meant to say
twenty-five dollars.
”

Bert went outside and waited at the automobile until Abe paid his fine. In a quarter of an hour Abe came out of the courthouse.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to give you a ride back home,” he said, getting under the steering wheel and starting the engine. “But what I ought to do is leave you here and let you ride home in a hired car.”

Bert said nothing at all. He sat down beside Abe and they drove out of town toward home.

It was almost dark when Abe stopped the car in front of Bert’s house. Bert got out and slammed shut the door.

“I’m mighty much obliged for the ride,” he said. “I been wanting to take a trip over Skowhegan way for a year or more. I’m glad you asked me to go along with you, Abe, but I don’t see how the trip was worth twenty-five dollars to you.”

Abe shoved his automobile into gear and jerked down the road toward his place. He left Bert standing beside the mailbox rubbing his hands over the legs of his corduroy pants.

“Abe Mitchell ought to have better sense than to be a Democrat,” Bert said, going into his house.

(First published in
Scribner’s
)

W
HEN
I
STOOD UP
the next time, I saw Irene coming around the bend in the road, swinging her wide-brimmed hat beside her. Her face was flushed and her cheeks were the color of ripe oranges. Over her shoulders her long hair fell in waves, rippling like the mane of her father’s sorrel mare pacing along the cowpath in the pasture.

The moment I first saw her, I sat down quickly, trying to hide myself in the tall roadside grass. I was afraid she would see me before she reached the place where I was, and would turn and run across the field before I could speak to her.

Irene was walking slowly, looking backward every few steps at the fires on the eastern ridge. The whole world seemed to have been on fire that day. The air was dense with blue woodsmoke, and, now that evening had come, the flames on the ridge began to color the sky. There had been no rain for almost a month, and the fields and woods were burning night and day. No one tried to stop the fires; only rain could stop the flames from eating over the earth eastward and westward.

I did not know what Irene was going to do when I jumped up and surprised her. I did not want her to run away from me again; each time I had tried to walk home with her in the evening she had run so fast that I could not keep up with her. But I had to see her and to talk with her. I had wished all that summer to be able to walk along the road with her. Once she had said she did not hate me; but no matter what I said to her, she continued to run away from me, leaving me alone in the road.

Just as she reached the place where I was, I pushed aside the tall grass and sprang to the road beside her. I was certain I could hear the beating of her heart; she was so frightened she did not know what to do.

“Please, Irene,” I begged, catching her arm and holding it tightly in my hands, “please let me walk part of the way home with you. Will you? Please let me, Irene.”

She was still too frightened to speak or to move. Her heart was beating as madly as that of a captured rabbit.

“Irene,” I said, trembling until my voice sounded as though it were hundreds of miles away, “please let me, this one time. Will you?”

Her breath was becoming slower. The rise and fall of her bosom was slower and more even, and the trembling of her lips had stopped.

“Please stop holding me, Sidney,” she said.

“Let me walk part of the way home with you, Irene. Please let me, this one time.”

“Why do you ask to do that?”

She continued to look at me while I tried to think of something to tell her. I could think of no reason, except that I wanted to go with her. I had waited all summer for the time to come when she would let me walk with her; but now when she had asked me why I wished to go with her, I did not know what to say.

“I’ve got to go with you, Irene,” I said, clutching her arm tighter. “I’ve got to walk home with you.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she said. “You mustn’t.”

“Why, Irene? Tell me why. Why won’t you let me?”

She turned her head and looked back at the red sky over the ridge. There was no sound of shouting men, no cracking of falling pines; there was only the deepening red of the sky at night.

Because I had been waiting all summer, ever since school was out in June, for the time to come when I might walk along the road with her in the evening — because I had lain awake night after night, staring at the blackness, thinking of her — because I could not keep myself from touching her — I released her arm and pressed my hand over her bosom. There was a period of time, an interval so short I knew of no way of measuring its length, when she did not move. Her head was turned towards the fires on the ridge when I clutched her, and she closed her eyes tightly, and, her lips parting, her breath again came quick. Then as suddenly as I had placed my hand over her breasts, she jerked away from me and ran down the road towards home.

“Please, Irene,” I begged, running after her; “please come back. I didn’t mean to make you run away. Let me go with you.”

She was running swiftly, but not so swiftly as I was. I caught her arm again and pulled her back. I could not force her to stop, and we walked along the road while I held her.

“I’m going to tell your father, Sidney,” she said. “You just wait and see if I don’t. I’m going to tell him what you did to me. You just wait and see if I don’t tell your father.”