Stories of Erskine Caldwell (78 page)

“What’s the matter, Ray?” Church asked.

“Don’t talk so loud,” I told him, pulling him back out of sight of the ditch. “There’s somebody down in there, Church.”

“Where?” he said, looking scared.

I pointed where I had seen somebody.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, trembling a little. “We’d better go back home, hadn’t we?”

I got down on my hands and knees, and Church dropped beside me, keeping as close as he could.

“Wait till I see who it is,” I told him. “I’m going to crawl up there and find out. It’s funny for somebody to be out here lying in the bottom of a ditch like that.”

Church would not follow me until I had got almost to the edge of one ditch. Then he came hurrying up behind me.

“Don’t let anybody see us, Ray,” he said. “They might shoot, or something.”

I crawled slowly to the side, holding my breath, and looked down at one bottom. Annie Dunn was lying on her back on the sand, staring straight up into the blue sky. Her clothes were knotted around her, and he was covered with streaks of red clay that looked like fresh blood in the sunshine. She was as still as the silence all around us then, but she looked as if she had been having a terrible fight with somebody down here.

Annie lived around the block from us, and she was always going somewhere or coming back. She never stayed at home much after her father got killed in the flour mill, and sometimes her mother came to our house to ask if any of us had seen Annie.

Church caught my sleeve and tried to pull me away. I shook my head and pulled away from him. After a while he stopped trying to make me leave and came back to where I was at the edge of the ditch. Annie had not moved an inch since we first saw her.

“Hello, Annie,” I said.

Some pieces of earth broke loose from the side of the ditch and fell tumbling down upon her. She looked straight into our faces.

“What’s the matter, Annie?” Church said, so scared he could hardly be still long enough to look at her.

Annie looked straight at us but did not say a word.

“What are you doing down there in the bottom of that ditch, Annie?” I asked her. “You look like you’ve been fighting somebody down there, Annie.”

Annie closed her eyes, and a moment later her face was as white as a boll of cotton. While we watched her, she doubled up into a knot; then she began kicking the sides of the ditch with her feet. One shoe had come off, and the sole of her stocking on her foot was caked with damp red clay. Church backed off a little, but when Annie screamed, he hurried back to see what the matter was with her.

When she had quieted down again, Church looked at her with his mouth hanging open. “Are you hurt, Annie?” he said. “What’s hurting you to make you scream like that? Why won’t you say anything, Annie?”

“Why don’t you get up from there and go home, Annie?” I asked her.

Annie screamed again, and then she lay still for a while, not making a sound or a motion. Some of the color came back to her face, and she opened her eyes and looked up at us in the same way she had the first time.

“Don’t tell anybody, Ray, you and Church,” she said weakly. “I don’t want anybody to know.”

She sounded so much like someone begging you to do something for her that you could not keep from making a silent promise.

“You’d better get up from there, now,” Church said.

“I can’t,” Annie said. “I can’t get up, Church.”

“Don’t you want to?” Church said.

Annie shook her head as much as she could.

“I’m going to tell your mamma, Annie,” he said. “If you don’t get up from the bottom of that ditch and go home, I’m going straight and tell your mamma.”

Annie’s face suddenly became white again, and she dug her hands into the sides of the ditch, squeezing the moist red clay until it oozed between her fingers. She began screaming again.

“I’m going home,” Church said. “I’m not going to stay here.”

I was scared, too, but I did not think we should go away and leave Annie lying there screaming in the bottom of the ditch. I caught Church’s sleeve and held him.

Some more dirt broke loose under our hands and fell tumbling down onto the ditch upon Annie. She seemed not to notice it at all.

When she stopped screaming and opened her eyes and looked up at us, she did not look like Annie at all. The color had not come back to her cheeks.

“Don’t tell anybody, Ray, you and Church,” she said weakly. “Will you promise?”

“Why not, Annie?” Church said. “Why don’t you want us to tell anybody?”

“I’m having a baby,” she said, closing her eyes.

Church leaned so far forward that a whole armful of clay and sand broke loose and fell down into the ditch. Some of it covered one of her legs.

We backed away from the ditch, not getting up from our hands and knees until we were a dozen yards away.

“Let’s get away from here,” Church said, holding his breath between he words. “I want to go home.”

We ran across the field. When we were halfway across, I happened o think about our walnut sacks that we had left at the drain ditch, but I did not say a word to Church about them. When we reached the grove, Church was all out of breath, and we had to stop a minute and lean against some of the trees to get our wind back.

“Do you think Annie’s going to die, Ray?” he said, holding his breath between the words and almost choking each time he said one of them.

I did not know what to say. I started running again, and Church began crying because he was behind. By the time we had got to the field behind P. G. Howard’s barn, Church was crying so much he could not see where to run. He fell down and tumbled head over heels two or three times, but I did not stop to wait for him to catch up. I kept on running until I got on our front porch.

(First published in
Kneel to the Rising Sun
)

W
HEN
I
WAS A
little fellow my mother, who was half damyankee, used to tell me the story about wooden nutmegs. Even now I can clearly remrember her picturing the early peddlers with pouches of painted nutmegs going from farm to farm along the Potomac, selling the spice with all the solemnity of a Methodist circuit rider. That the nutmegs were easily sold and eagerly bought is beside the story; the wonder is that we Southerners were so dumb we did not know the difference.

For some reason I never fully understood, my mother and father, when I was still quite young, went down East and bought a farm in the Kennebec River Valley. Then, when I was eleven years old and my sister nine, they decided that they would sell the farm and move back to Virginia. This was the easiest phase of the decision, because finding somebody who wanted to invest six thousand dollars in a Maine farm was a problem difficult to solve. Even when we did find a purchaser it as by mere accident that the sale was so easily made.

It was a three-months drought that finally brought a buyer to us. And that was chance, too; because droughts for more than three or four weeks were uncommon where we were.

In the late spring, about four months before the drought came to an end — the last rain fell on the first day of June — there were two men who were very anxious to buy our farm. The price either of them was willing to pay at that time, however, was not much more than one half the figure my father had placed on it. Mr. Geroux, a Frenchman, was one of the prospective purchasers, and Elisha Goodwin the other. Mr. Geroux was a native of New Brunswick, but he had lived in Maine thirty years or longer. He had become unusually prosperous in recent years because of the rising market for seed potatoes, and during all that time he had been acquiring that same cautious mind Elisha Goodwin had inherited from six generations of forefathers. Both of these men, however, realized the value of our farm and both knew it was worth every dollar of six thousand. Neither of them was willing, though, to pay the price asked until he was sure it could not be bought for less. And, as we were told afterwards, Mr. Geroux would have paid almost anything up to ten thousand for the farm, because its improvements, fertility, and location were making it increasingly valuable.

In the month of August, the beginning of the last month of the terrible drought, both Mr. Geroux and Elisha Goodwin came to see my father in regard to purchasing our farm. They did not come together, of course, because each of them wanted to buy it before the other did. At the same time, each of them wanted to close the deal before he was forced to bid against the other. The month of August was the dryest ever to be recorded in the State of Maine. Everyone was certain of that. No rain had fallen since the first of June. The Kennebec River was so low that it was out of the question for the paper mills to float pulpwood, and all of those which were not importing Scandinavian baled pulp had to close down. Even the lakes in the back country were so low that at least fifty per cent of the fish had already died. There was nothing that could be done about the weather, though, and everybody just had to wait for fall to come, bringing rain or snow. Towards the end of the month the water famine was becoming dangerous. The farmers, whose wells had gone dry and who had been drawing water from the river and lakes, were faced with additional danger when the river went completely dry along with most of the lakes. The stock on every farm was dropping dead day and night. There had been no milk in the valley for nearly a month, and the horses, steers, and sheep were hungry and thirsty. The month of August was without exception the most damaging month in the history of the entire Kennebec River Valley.

There was a deep lake on our farm about a mile and a half from the buildings and we were fortunate in having some water for our stock and ourselves. We drew water to the house every day from the lake. Our well had gone dry just as quickly as all the other wells in the valley.

We had been drawing water in three barrels every day from the lake. After six weeks of this my father became tired of having to go to the lake every day. He decided that we would draw twenty-five or thirty barrels one day a week and store it on the farm. This would save us the trouble of having to go every day and give us time to do some other work that was needed. The real problem, however, was where and how to store a week’s supply of water. It would have been foolish to buy twenty-five or thirty barrels, or even half that many, when we could use them at the most only two or three weeks longer. Then they would have to be stored away and they would dry and warp until they were valueless. I believe it was my mother who made the suggestion of storing the water in the well. At least, it was she who said it was the only place she knew about. At first my father was of the opinion that the water would run or seep out of the well faster than we could haul it, but he was willing to try it, anyway. The plan worked, much to my mother’s joy. All of us — my father, my sister, and myself — congratulated her on making such a wise suggestion.

We went to work at once and all that day we drew water from the lake and poured it into the well. By late afternoon we had transferred about thirty or thirty-five barrels of lake water to the well. That evening all we had to do was to lower the bucket and bring up as much water as we needed for the stock. The next day it was the same. The water was still there and apparently none had seeped away. It was a great improvement over the way we had been doing before.

It was by accident that Elisha Goodwin stopped at our house that afternoon. His horse had thrown a shoe and he came up to the barn to draw out the nails so the hoof would not be injured. He came up to the barn where we were at the time.

“Well, Mr. Langley,” he said to my father, “what are we going to do about this here drought? The whole State of Maine will be ruined this keeps up another two weeks. There ain’t a drop of water on my whole farm.”

“The drought is terrible,” my father said. “I won’t have even a peck of potatoes out of the whole farm to sell this year. But, strange to say, I’ve got plenty of water in my well.”

“What?” Mr. Goodwin shouted unbelievingly. “You say you got water in your well?”

“Plenty of it.”

“Well, I don’t believe it. Nobody else has got any water in their wells. How comes it you got water in your’n?”

“I water my stock from it twice a day and we have plenty of water for the kitchen besides. It’s just as full as it’s ever been.”

Elisha Goodwin thought we were joking with him about having plenty of water in the well, but he went over to see for himself just the same. My father sent my sister into the house.

Elisha Goodwin picked up three or four pebbles and leaned far over the well looking down into it and trying to see the water. He dropped one of the pebbles into the well and cocked his head sideways, listening for the
ker-plunk
the stone made when it struck the water. He repeated this as long as his pebbles lasted. Then he stood up and looked at us. By watching his face we could tell that he was getting ready to say something important.

He stood up looking at us and scratching the top of his head with three of his fingers while his hatbrim was held tightly by the other two. His chin-whiskers moved up and down faster than I could count.

“How much is it you’re asking for this place of your’n?”

My father told him how much we were holding it for.

“You haven’t closed a deal with anybody yet, have you?”

“Well, not exactly,” my father stated. “Though Mr. Geroux has asked me to give him a two-month option on the place.”

“Did you let him have it?” Elisha Goodwin asked hurriedly.

“I’m to let him know tomorrow about it,” my father said.

“You come with me to the village,” Elisha Goodwin said. “We’ll fix up a sale before sundown. I’m going to buy your place. It’s the only farm in the whole gol-darned State that’s got any well water on it.”

“Are you sure you want to buy it, Mr. Goodwin?” my father asked him. “You know the price and terms. It’s six thousand dollars cash.”

“I don’t give a gol-darn what your terms are. I’m going to pay you six thousand dollars in cash for it as soon as you go to the village with me and draw up a bill of sale and turn over the deed. I ain’t going to let that good-for-nothing Canuck get his hands on the best farm in the whole gol-darned country. Come on to the village and get it settled right away.”