Stories of Erskine Caldwell (8 page)

Aunt Sophie jammed her hands on her hips a little harder and motioned to us with her head. We followed her into the house.

“We’re going to have a house cleaning around this place,” she said. “James, you bring the brooms. Milton, you go start a fire under the washpot in the back yard and heat it full of water. When you get it going good, come in here and sweep down the cobwebs off the ceilings.”

Aunt Sophie went from room to room, slamming doors behind her. She began ripping curtains down from the windows and pulling the rugs from the floor. A little later we could hear the swish of her broom, and presently a dense cloud of dust began blowing through the windows.

(First published in the
Brooklyn Eagle
)

T
HE DRIVER STOPPED
at the suspended footbridge and pointed out to me the house across the river. I paid him the quarter fare for the ride from the station two miles away and stepped from the car. After he had gone I was alone with the chill night and the star-pointed lights twinkling in the valley and the broad green river flowing warm below me. All around me the mountains rose like black clouds in the night, and only by looking straight heavenward could I see anything of the dim afterglow of sunset.

The creaking footbridge swayed with the rhythm of my stride and the momentum of its swing soon overcame my pace. Only by walking faster and faster could I cling to the pendulum as it swung in its wide arc over the river. When at last I could see the other side, where the mountain came down abruptly and slid under the warm water, I gripped my handbag tighter and ran with all my might.

Even then, even after my feet had crunched upon the gravel path, I was afraid. I knew that by day I might walk the bridge without fear; but at night, in a strange country, with dark mountains towering all around me and a broad green river flowing beneath me, I could not keep my hands from trembling and my heart from pounding against my chest.

I found the house easily, and laughed at myself for having run from the river. The house was the first one to come upon after leaving the footbridge, and even if I should have missed it, Gretchen would have called me. She was there on the steps of the porch waiting for me. When I heard her familiar voice calling my name, I was ashamed of myself for having been frightened by the mountains and the broad river flowing below.

She ran down the gravel path to meet me.

“Did the footbridge frighten you, Richard?” she asked excitedly, holding my arm with both of her hands and guiding me up the path to the house.

“I think it did, Gretchen,” I said; “but I hope I outran it.”

“Everyone tries to do that at first, but after going over it once, it’s like walking a tightrope. I used to walk tightropes when I was small — didn’t you do that, too, Richard? We had a rope stretched across the floor of our barn to practice on.”

“I did, too, but it’s been so long ago I’ve forgotten how to do it now.”

We reached the steps and went up to the porch. Gretchen took me to the door. Someone inside the house was bringing a lamp into the hall, and with the coming of the light I saw Gretchen’s two sisters standing just inside the open door.

“This is my little sister, Anne,” Gretchen said. “And this is Mary.”

I spoke to them in the semidarkness, and we went on into the hall. Gretchen’s father was standing beside a table holding the lamp a little to one side so that he could see my face. I had not met him before.

“This is my father,” Gretchen said. “He was afraid you wouldn’t be able to find our house in the dark.”

“I wanted to bring a light down to the bridge and meet you, but Gretchen said you would get here without any trouble. Did you get lost? I could have brought a lantern down with no trouble at all.”

I shook hands with him and told him how easily I had found the place.

“The hack driver pointed out to me the house from the other side of the river, and I never once took my eyes from the light. If I had lost sight of the light, I’d probably be stumbling around somewhere now in the dark down there getting ready to fall into the water.”

He laughed at me for being afraid of the river.

“You wouldn’t have minded it. The river is warm. Even in winter, when there is ice and snow underfoot, the river is as warm as a comfortable room. All of us here love the water down there.”

“No, Richard, you wouldn’t have fallen in,” Gretchen said, laying her hand in mine. “I saw you the moment you got out of the hack, and if you had gone a step in the wrong direction, I was ready to run to you.”

I wished to thank Gretchen for saying that, but already she was going to the stairs to the floor above, and calling me. I went with her, lifting my handbag in front of me. There was a shaded lamp, lighted but turned low, on the table at the end of the upper hall, and she picked it up and went ahead into one of the front rooms.

We stood for a moment looking at each other, and silent.

“There is fresh water in the pitcher, Richard. If there is anything else you would like to have, please tell me. I tried not to overlook anything.”

“Don’t worry, Gretchen,” I told her. “I couldn’t wish for anything more. It’s enough just to be here with you, anyway. There’s nothing else I care for.”

She looked at me quickly, and then she lowered her eyes. We stood silently for several minutes, while neither of us could think of anything to say. I wanted to tell her how glad I was to be with her, even if it was only for one night, but I knew I could say that to her later. Gretchen knew why I had come.

“I’ll leave the lamp for you, Richard, and I’ll wait downstairs for you on the porch. Come as soon as you are ready.”

She had left before I could offer to carry the light to the stairhead for her to see the way down. By the time I had picked up the lamp, she was out of sight down the stairs.

I walked back into the room and closed the door and bathed my face and hands, scrubbing the train dust with brush and soap. There was a row of hand-embroidered towels on the rack, and I took one and dried my face and hands. After that I combed my hair, and found a fresh handkerchief in the handbag. Then I opened the door and went downstairs to find Gretchen.

Her father was on the porch with her. When I walked through the doorway, he got up and gave me a chair between them. Gretchen pulled her chair closer to mine, touching my arm with her hand.

“Is this the first time you have been up here in the mountains, Richard?” her father asked me, turning in his chair towards me.

“I’ve never been within a hundred miles of here before, sir. It’s a different country up here, but I suppose you would think the same about the coast, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, but Father used to live in Norfolk,” Gretchen said. “Didn’t you, Father?”

“I lived there for nearly three years.”

There was something else he would say, and both of us waited for him to continue.

“Father is a master mechanic,” Gretchen whispered to me. “He works in the railroad shops.”

“Yes,” he said after a while, “I’ve lived in many places, but here is where I wish to stay.”

My first thought was to ask him why he preferred the mountains to other sections, but suddenly I was aware that both he and Gretchen were strangely silent. Between them, I sat wondering about it.

After a while he spoke again, not to me and not to Gretchen, but as though he were speaking to someone else on the porch, a fourth person whom I had failed to see in the darkness. I waited, tense and excited, for him to continue.

Gretchen moved her chair a few inches closer to mine, her motions gentle and without sound. The warmth of the river came up and covered us like a blanket on a chill night.

“After Gretchen and the other two girls lost their mother,” he said, almost inaudibly, bending forward over his knees and gazing out across the broad green river, “after we lost their mother, I came back to the mountains to live. I couldn’t stay in Norfolk, and I couldn’t stand it in Baltimore. This was the only place on earth where I could find peace. Gretchen remembers her mother, but neither of you can yet understand how it is with me. Her mother and I were born here in the mountains, and we lived here together for almost twenty years. Then after she left us, I moved away, foolishly believing that I could forget. But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. A man can’t forget the mother of his children, even though he knows he will never see her again.”

Gretchen leaned closer to me, and I could not keep my eyes from her darkly framed profile beside me. The river below us made no sound; but the warmth of its vapor would not let me forget that it was still there.

Her father had bent farther forward in his chair until his arms were resting on his knees, and he seemed to be trying to see someone on the other side of the river, high on the mountain top above it. His eyes strained, and the shaft of light that came through the open doorway fell upon them and glistened there. Tears fell from his face like fragments of stars, burning into his quivering hands until they were out of sight.

Presently, still in silence, he got up and moved through the doorway. His huge shadow fell upon Gretchen and me as he stood there momentarily before going inside. I turned and looked towards him but, even though he was passing from sight, I could not keep my eyes upon him.

Gretchen leaned closer against me, squeezing her fingers into the hollow of my hand and touching my shoulder with her cheeks as though she were trying to wipe something from them. Her father’s footsteps grew fainter, and at last we could no longer hear him.

Somewhere below us, along the bank of the river, an express train crashed down the valley, creaking and screaming through the night. Occasionally its lights flashed through the openings in the darkness, dancing on the broad green river like polar lights in the north, and the metallic echo of its steel rumbled against the high walls of the mountains.

Gretchen clasped her hands tightly over my hand, trembling to her fingertips.

“Richard, why did you come to see me?”

Her voice was mingled with the screaming metallic echo of the train that now seemed far off.

I had expected to find her looking up into my face, but when I turned to her, I saw that she was gazing far down into the valley, down into the warm waters of the river. She knew why I had come, but she did not wish to hear me say why I had.

I do not know why I had come to see her, now. I had liked Gretchen, and I had desired her above anyone else I knew. But I could not tell her that I loved her, after having heard her father speak of love. I was sorry I had come, now after having heard him speak of Gretchen’s mother as he did. I knew Gretchen would give herself to me, because she loved me; but I had nothing to give her in return. She was beautiful, very beautiful, and I had desired her. That was before. Now, I knew that I could never again think of her as I had come prepared.

“Why did you come, Richard?”

“Why?”

“Yes, Richard; why?”

My eyes closed, and what I felt was the memory of the star-pointed lights twinkling down in the valley and the warmth of the river flowing below and the caress of her fingers as she touched my arm.

“Richard, please tell me why you came.”

“I don’t know why I came, Gretchen.”

“If you only loved me as I love you, Richard, you would know why.”

Her fingers trembled in my hand. I knew she loved me. There had been no doubt in my mind from the first. Gretchen loved me.

“Perhaps I should not have come,” I said. “I made a mistake, Gretchen. I should have stayed away.”

“But you will be here only for tonight, Richard. You are leaving early in the morning. You aren’t sorry that you came for just this short time, are you, Richard?”

“I’m not sorry that I am here, Gretchen, but I should not have come. I didn’t know what I was doing. I haven’t any right to come here. People who love each other are the only ones —”

“But you do love me just a little, don’t you, Richard? You couldn’t possibly love me nearly so much as I love you, but can’t you tell me that you do love me just a little? I’ll feel much happier after you have gone, Richard.”

“I don’t know,” I said, trembling.

“Richard, please —”

With her hands in mine I held her tightly. Suddenly I felt something coming over me, a thing that stabbed my body with its quickness. It was as if the words her father had uttered were becoming clear to me. I had not realized before that there was such a love as he had spoken of. I had believed that men never loved women in the same way that a woman loved a man, but now I knew there could be no difference.

We sat silently, holding each other’s hands for a long time. It was long past midnight, because the lights in the valley below were being turned out; but time did not matter.

Gretchen clung softly to me, looking up into my face and laying her cheek against my shoulder. She was as much mine as a woman ever belongs to a man, but I knew then that I could never force myself to take advantage of her love, and to go away knowing that I had not loved her as she loved me. I had not believed any such thing when I came. I had traveled all that distance to hold her in my arms for a few hours, and then to forget her, perhaps forever.

When it was time for us to go into the house, I got up and put my arms around her. She trembled when I touched her, but she clung to me as tightly as I held her, and the hammering of her heart drove into me, stroke after stroke, like an expanding wedge, the spears of her breasts.

“Richard, kiss me before you go,” she said.

She ran to the door, holding it open for me. She picked up the lamp from the table and walked ahead up the stairs to the floor above.

At my door she waited until I could light her lamp, and then she handed me mine.

“Good night, Gretchen,” I said.

“Good night, Richard.”

I turned down the wick of her lamp to keep it from smoking, and then she went across the hall towards her room.

“I’ll call you in the morning in time for you to catch your train, Richard.”

“All right, Gretchen. Don’t let me oversleep, because it leaves the station at seven-thirty.”