Stories of Erskine Caldwell (65 page)

I did not know what to say. I did not mind so much the whipping he would give me as I did my father’s knowledge of what I had done to her. I did not know what to do. I was afraid to release her arm, and I was afraid to continue holding her.

“I’m going to tell your father on you, Sidney,” she kept on saying. “You just wait and see if I don’t. I’m going to tell him what you did to me in the road.”

When we reached the churchyard where the path was that made a short cut to Irene’s house, we both stopped. It had become darker, and the reflection of the fires against the sky was so bright I could even see the tears in Irene’s eyes when she turned her head towards me. Both of us stood in the churchyard trembling, and looking at the red sky and at each other.

“Why did you do that, Sidney?” she asked.

“When I went to the road to wait for you, Irene, I didn’t think of doing anything like that. I only wanted to see you and walk home with you. But — when I caught you — I couldn’t keep from touching you. I had to. I just had to hold you.”

The fires on the ridge drew her gaze towards them once more. She could not keep from looking at the smoke and flame and at the dull red glow overhead.

Suddenly she turned and looked directly at me.

“Sidney, if you don’t let me go,” she said, “I’ll scream. I’ll scream until everybody hears me.”

At any other time I would have put my hand over her mouth; this time I clutched her in my arms, holding her more desperately than I had the first time. She did not move. She stood still, looking backward at the fires on the ridge. The night was almost light as day by that time. The shadows were long and gray, and the air was filled with blue woodsmoke. We stood in the churchyard path, waiting.

Wind on the ridge had risen, and the flames were leaping higher into the night. While we watched them, we could see the flames climbing into the treetops and burning the pine needles. A little later, the fire in the underbrush and in the grass had almost died out; but in the tops of the pines it burned faster and brighter than ever.

“It’s a crown-fire now,” Irene said. “Look — the pine tops are burning!”

The sight we saw made us tremble. We were standing close to each other, holding each other. Irene’s face was more flushed than ever, and her bosom rose and fell faster than it had in the road when I sprang at her from the tall grass.

“A crown-fire can’t be stopped until it burns itself out,” she said. “I’m afraid of crown-fires.”

She placed her hands over my hands and pressed them tightly against her. Then she leaned against me, and I could feel the soft warmth of her body touching mine. Her heart beat so madly that I could feel with my hands its throb through her body, and her breath came so quickly that, even though I held her firmly, her breasts trembled as her lips were doing.

I did not know for how long a time I had held my face against the soft warmth of her throat when she suddenly raised my head and kissed my lips and tore herself out of my arms. It was much later though, because the crown-fire had burned off into the distance, almost out of sight.

“I’ve got to go home now, Sidney,” she said; “if I don’t go now, they’ll be coming after me.”

I ran after her, and stopped. We were then on the other side of the churchyard, at the end of the path. Through the trees I could see the lights of her house.

“Will you let me walk home with you tomorrow evening, Irene, and every evening?” I asked.

She stopped a moment and looked back at me. I waited, shaking all over, to hear her reply. I was afraid that she would say she would not allow me to come with her again.

While I waited, clutching at a tree beside me, she looked off into the distance towards the ridge where the fire had been. There was no light in the sky then, and the air was clearing of woodsmoke. I went a step nearer, gripping the rough bark of the pine tree between my fingers.

“Will you, Irene?”

Without a word, she turned and ran through the grove towards the lights in her home. After she had gone, I stood beside the tree listening. I had hoped so much that she would promise to let me come with her again the next evening, and every evening after that, that I could not believe she had gone away without an answer.

Later I walked back through the dark churchyard, out of the path, and up the road past the tall grass where I had lain that afternoon. There was no longer a light in the sky over the ridge. The crown-fire had burned itself out at the edge of the cleared field. Until there was again fire on the ridge, perhaps not again until the next summer, I knew she would run away from me each time I tried to stop her. Every day when I wanted to see her, I should have to hide in the tall roadside grass and look at her while she passed. I knew I could never again catch her as I had done that evening, because ever after she would be on guard against me, and if I should spring from the tall grass and succeed in catching her, she would surely tell my father of what I had done to her.

Long before I reached home I had made up my mind to catch her again some day and to hold her as I had done for nearly an hour that night. I knew I should never again be happy until I held her again and could feel her soft warm lips kiss mine; I should never again be happy until she pressed my hands against her to hold tighter the trembling of her breasts. Some day, that year or the years following, there would again be a crown-fire on the ridge. New pines would spring up to take the places of the burned ones, and someone would drop lighted matches in the dry underbrush.

(First published in
Lion and Crown
)

M
RS.
G
ARLEY WAS
seated at the head of the table drinking coffee and reading the paper after breakfast when she heard a plate fall and break on the kitchen floor. The boarders had eaten and left, and she was alone in the room. Garley had left the house too.

When she ran to the kitchen door, threw it open, and looked inside at Lessie, the little Negro girl was cringing in the corner behind the range.

“So you broke another one of my dishes, did you?” Mrs. Garley said evenly. Her anger was slowly rising; the longer she stood and looked at Lessie, the madder she could become. “That makes two you’ve broken this month, Lessie. And that’s two too many for me to stand for.”

The nine-year-old colored girl moved inch by inch farther into the corner. She never knew what Mrs. Garley might do to her next.

“You come out here in the middle of this floor, Lessie,” the woman said. “Come this minute when I speak to you!”

The girl came several steps, watching Mrs. Garley and trembling all over. When she was halfway to the center of the room, Mrs. Garley ran to her and slapped her on both sides of her face. The blows made her so dizzy she did not know where she was or what she was doing. She threw her arms around her head protectingly.

“You stinking little nigger!” Mrs. Garley shouted at her.

Before Lessie could run back to the corner behind the stove, Mrs. Garley snatched up the broom and began beating her with it, striking her as hard as she could over the head, shoulders, and on her back. The girl began to cry, and fell on the floor. Mrs. Garley struck her while she lay there screaming and writhing.

“Now, you get up from there and get to work cleaning this house,” she told Lessie, putting the broom away. “I want every room in this house as clean as a pin by twelve o’clock.”

She left the kitchen and went into the front of the house.

II

Lessie had complained about the work. She had complained about washing so many dishes and cleaning so many rooms in the boardinghouse. She said she was too tired to finish them every day. Mrs. Garley had slapped her for every word she uttered.

“If that nigger has run away,” she told her husband, “I’ll whip her until there’s nothing left of her.”

“You can’t expect too much of her,” Garley said. “She’s not big enough to do much heavy work.”

“You talk like you’re taking up for her,” his wife said. “I feed her, give her clothes, and keep her. If she won’t be grateful of her own accord, I’ll make her be grateful.”

Lessie had run away, and Mrs. Garley knew she had. Mrs. Garley had been expecting it to happen for some time, but she believed she had frightened the girl enough to keep her there. Lessie had been brought into town from the country when she was four years old, and for the past three years she had done all the housework.

“It’s about time to let her go, anyway,” Garley said. “You wouldn’t be able to keep her much longer without paying her something.”

“There you go, taking up for her again! I pay her with her meals and bed. That’s all she should have. I wouldn’t give her a red cent besides that.”

Garley shook his head, still not convinced. For one thing, he was afraid there might be trouble if they kept her any longer. Everybody in town knew they kept Lessie there to do the work, and somebody might want to make trouble for them. His wife worked the girl harder than a grown person.

“Well, I want Lessie back, and I want you to bring her back,” his wife said. “I want her back by tomorrow morning at breakfast time.”

Garley looked at his wife but said nothing. He depended upon her for his living. Without her and the boardinghouse, he did not know what he could do. She ran the boardinghouse and paid all the bills. When she told him to do something, he could not say he would not do it. He got up and went through the house to the back porch.

There was a small room behind the kitchen, only long enough and wide enough for a cot that had been cut in half for Lessie. There never had been much in the room, except the bed, and now there was nothing else there. Even the two or three dresses his wife had made for Lessie by cutting down some of her old clothes were gone. Garley looked under the cot, and found nothing there. Lessie had run away, and there was nothing to show that she might have intended coming back. She had taken all she possessed.

When Garley saw his wife half an hour later, she stopped him in the hall, hands on hips.

“Well?” she said. “Do you expect to find her hiding under a chair somewhere in the house?”

“Where can I look?” he asked. “How do I know which way she went?”

“How do I know?” Mrs. Garley said. “If I knew, I’d go there and find her myself. You find Lessie and bring her back here by breakfast time tomorrow morning, if you know what’s good for you. If you don’t . . . if you don’t . . .”

Garley found his hat and went out the front door. He turned down the street in the direction of the Negro quarter of town. That was the only likely place for Lessie to be hiding, unless she had gone to the country.

III

As soon as he passed the first Negro house in the quarter, Garley had a feeling that everybody in the neighborhood was watching him from behind doors, windows, and corners of buildings. He turned, jerking his head around quickly, and tried to catch somebody looking at him. There was nobody to be seen anywhere. The place looked completely deserted.

“Lessie wouldn’t know any of these darkies,” he said to himself. “She never left home, and nobody ever came there to see her. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody knew she was alive, except my wife and me. Lessie wouldn’t come down here among strangers when she ran away.”

He walked on, trying to think where he could look for her. He decided she would not have gone to the country, because she would have been too afraid to do that. The only other place for her to be hiding, after all, was in the quarter. If he did find her, he believed he would come across her hiding behind some Negro woman who had taken her in.

Garley had half made up his mind to go back home and tell his wife he had looked through every house in the quarter without finding Lessie. But when he stopped and started back, he began to think what his wife would say and do. She might even take it into her head to turn him out of house and home if he went back without Lessie, or word of her.

Turning down an alley, he picked out a house at random. The door and the windows were open, but there was no sign of anyone’s being there. There was not even smoke in the chimney.

Garley hesitated, and then went to the house next door.

He knocked and listened. There was no sound anywhere, even though there was a fire under a washpot in the yard. He stepped into the doorway and looked inside. In the corner of the room sat a large Negro woman, rocking unconcernedly to and fro in a chair. On her lap, all but hidden in the folds of her breasts, sat Lessie. The girl was clinging to the woman and burying her head deeper and deeper under the woman’s arms.

“Hello, Aunt Gracie,” Garley said, staring at them.

“What do you want down here, Mr. Garley?” Aunt Gracie asked stiffly.

“Just looking around,” Garley said.

“Just looking around for what?” the woman asked.

“Well, Lessie, I guess.”

“It won’t do you a bit of good,” Aunt Grade said. “You’ll just be wasting your time talking about it.”

“I didn’t know where she was, to tell the truth,” he said.

“And it won’t do you no good to know where she is, either,” Aunt Gracie said, “because you can go tell that wife of yours that she’s going to stay where she is at.”

Garley sat down in a chair by the door. The Negro woman hugged Lessie all the tighter and rocked her back and forth. Lessie had not looked at him.

“To tell the truth,” Garley said, “my wife has been pretty hard on Lessie for the past three or four years. She’s been a little harder than she ought to have been, I guess.”

“She won’t be again,” Aunt Gracie said. “Because the child’s going to stay right here with me from now on. You white people ought to be ashamed of yourselves for treating darkies like you do. You know good and well it couldn’t be right to make Lessie work for you all the time and not give her something more than a few old rags made over from your wife’s clothes when she is done with them, and what scraps get left over from the kitchen.”

Garley hoped Aunt Gracie would not begin next about the way his wife had slapped and beat Lessie with the broom. He hoped nobody knew about that.

“When you get home,” Aunt Gracie said, “tell your wife I’ve got Lessie, and that I’m going to keep her. Tell her to come down here herself after her, if she dares to, but I don’t reckon she will, because she knows what I’ll say to her will make her ears burn red.”