Stories of Erskine Caldwell (89 page)

“Mr. Arch, I . . .”

A contraction in his throat almost choked him for several moments, and he had to open his mouth wide and fight for breath. The other white men around him were silent. Nobody liked to see a dog kicked in the belly like that.

Lonnie could see the other end of the filling station from the corner of his eye. He saw a couple of Negroes go up behind Clem and grasp his overalls. Clem spat on the ground, between outspread feet, but he did not try to break away from them.

“Being as how I don’t hear no objections, I reckon it’s all right to go ahead and cut it off,” Arch said, spitting.

Lonnie’s head went forward and all he could see of Nancy was her hind feet. He had come to ask for a slab of sowbelly and some molasses, or something. Now he did not know if he could ever bring himself to ask for rations, no matter how much hungrier they became at home.

“I always make it a habit of asking a man first,” Arch said. “I wouldn’t want to go ahead and cut off a tail if a man had any objections. That wouldn’t be right. No, sir, it just wouldn’t be fair and square.”

Arch caught a shorter grip on the hound’s tail and placed the knife blade on it two or three inches from the rump. It looked to those who were watching as if his mouth were watering, because tobacco juice began to trickle down the corners of his lips. He brought up the back of his hand and wiped his mouth.

A noisy automobile came plowing down the road through the deep red dust. Everyone looked up as it passed in order to see who was in it.

Lonnie glanced at it, but he could not keep his eyes raised. His head fell downward once more until he could feel his sharp chin cutting into his chest. He wondered then if Arch had noticed how lean his face was.

“I keep two or three ketch hounds around my place,” Arch said, honing the blade on the tail of the dog as if it were a razor strop until his actions brought smiles to the faces of the men grouped around him, “but I never could see the sense of a ketch hound having a long tail. It only gets in their way when I send them out to catch a pig or a rabbit for my supper.”

Pulling with his left hand and pushing with his right, Arch Gunnard docked the hound’s tail as quickly and as easily as if he were cutting a willow switch in the pasture to drive the cows home with. The dog sprang forward with the release of her tail until she was far beyond Arch’s reach, and began howling so loud she could be heard half a mile away. Nancy stopped once and looked back at Arch, and then she sprang to the middle of the road and began leaping and twisting in circles. All that time she was yelping and biting at the bleeding stub of her tail.

Arch leaned backward and twirled the severed tail in one hand while he wiped the jackknife blade on his boot sole. He watched Lonnie’s dog chasing herself around in circles in the red dust.

Nobody had anything to say then. Lonnie tried not to watch his dog’s agony, and he forced himself to keep from looking at Clem Henry. Then, with his eyes shut, he wondered why he had remained on Arch Gunnard’s plantation all those past years, sharecropping for a mere living on short rations, and becoming leaner and leaner all the time. He knew then how true it was what Clem had said about Arch’s sharecroppers’ faces becoming sharp enough to hew their own coffins. His hands went to his chin before he knew what he was doing. His hand dropped when he had felt the bones of jaw and the exposed tendons of his cheeks.

As hungry as he was, he knew that even if Arch did give him some rations then, there would not be nearly enough for them to eat for the following week. Hatty, his wife, was already broken down from hunger and work in the fields, and his father, Mark Newsome, stone-deaf for the past twenty years, was always asking him why there was never enough food in the house for them to have a solid meal. Lonnie’s head fell forward a little more, and he could feel his eyes becoming damp. The pressure of his sharp chin against his chest made him so uncomfortable that he had to raise his head at last in order to ease the pain of it.

The first thing he saw when he looked up was Arch Gunnard twirling Nancy’s tail in his left hand. Arch Gunnard had a trunk full of dogs’ tails at home. He had been cutting off tails ever since anyone could remember, and during all those years he had accumulated a collection of which he was so proud that he kept the trunk locked and the key tied around his neck on a string. On Sunday afternoons when the preacher came to visit, or when a crowd was there to loll on the front porch and swap stories, Arch showed them off, naming each tail from memory just as well as if he had had a tag on it.

Clem Henry had left the filling station and was walking alone down the road towards the plantation. Clem Henry’s house was in a cluster of Negro cabins below Arch’s big house, and he had to pass Lonnie’s house to get there. Lonnie was on the verge of getting up and leaving when he saw Arch looking at him. He did not know whether Arch was looking at his lean face, or whether he was watching to see if he were going to get up and go down the road with Clem.

The thought of leaving reminded him of his reason for being there. He had to have some rations before suppertime that night, no matter how short they were,

“Mr. Arch, I . . .”

Arch stared at him for a moment, appearing as if he had turned to listen to some strange sound unheard of before that moment.

Lonnie bit his lips, wondering if Arch was going to say anything about how lean and hungry he looked. But Arch was thinking about something else. He slapped his hand on his leg and laughed out loud.

“I sometimes wish niggers had tails,” Arch said, coiling Nancy’s tail into a ball and putting it into his pocket. “I’d a heap rather cut off nigger tails than dog tails. There’d be more to cut, for one thing.”

Dudley Smith and somebody else behind them laughed for a brief moment. The laughter died out almost as suddenly as it had risen.

The Negroes who had heard Arch shuffled their feet in the dust and moved backwards. It was only a few minutes until not one was left at the filling station. They went up the road behind the red wooden building until they were out of sight.

Arch got up and stretched. The sun was getting low, and it was no longer comfortable in the October air. “Well, I reckon I’ll be getting on home to get me some supper,” he said.

He walked slowly to the middle of the road and stopped to look at Nancy retreating along the ditch.

“Nobody going my way?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you, Lonnie? Going home to supper, ain’t you?”

“Mr. Arch, I . . .”

Lonnie found himself jumping to his feet. His first thought was to ask for the sowbelly and molasses, and maybe some corn meal; but when he opened his mouth, the words refused to come out. He took several steps forward and shook his head. He did not know what Arch might say or do if he said “No.”

“Hatty’ll be looking for you,” Arch said, turning his back and walking off.

He reached into his hip pocket and took out Nancy’s tail. He began twirling it as he walked down the road towards the big house in the distance.

Dudley Smith went inside the filling station, and the others walked away.

After Arch had gone several hundred yards, Lonnie sat down heavily on the box beside the gas pump from which he had got up when Arch spoke to him. He sat down heavily, his shoulders drooping, his arms falling between his outspread legs.

Lonnie did not know how long his eyes had been closed, but when he opened them, he saw Nancy lying between his feet, licking the docked tail. While he watched her, he felt the sharp point of his chin cutting into his chest again. Presently the door behind him was slammed shut, and a minute later he could hear Dudley Smith walking away from the filling station on his way home.

II

Lonnie had been sleeping fitfully for several hours when he suddenly found himself wide awake. Hatty shook him again. He raised himself on his elbow and tried to see into the darkness of the room. Without knowing what time it was, he was able to determine that it was still nearly two hours until sunrise.

“Lonnie,” Hatty said again, trembling in the cold night air, “Lonnie, your pa ain’t in the house.”

Lonnie sat upright in bed.

“How do you know he ain’t?” he said.

“I’ve been lying here wide awake ever since I got in bed, and I heard him when he went out. He’s been gone all that time.”

“Maybe he just stepped out for a while,” Lonnie said, turning and trying to see through the bedroom window.

“I know what I’m saying, Lonnie,” Hatty insisted. “Your pa’s been gone a heap too long.”

Both of them sat without a sound for several minutes while they listened for Mark Newsome.

Lonnie got up and lit a lamp. He shivered while he was putting on his shirt, overalls, and shoes. He tied his shoelaces in hard knots because he couldn’t see in the faint light. Outside the window it was almost pitch-dark, and Lonnie could feel the damp October air blowing against his face.

“I’ll go help look,” Hatty said, throwing the covers off and starting to get up.

Lonnie went to the bed and drew the covers back over her and pushed her back into place.

“You try to get some sleep, Hatty,” he said; “you can’t stay awake the whole night. I’ll go bring Pa back.”

He left Hatty, blowing out the lamp, and stumbled through the dark hall, feeling his way to the front porch by touching the wall with his hands. When he got to the porch, he could still barely see any distance ahead, but his eyes were becoming more accustomed to the darkness. He waited a minute, listening.

Feeling his way down the steps into the yard, he walked around the corner of the house and stopped to listen again before calling his father. “Oh, Pa!” he said loudly. “Oh, Pa!”

He stopped under the bedroom window when he realized what he had been doing.

“Now that’s a fool thing for me to be out here doing,” he said, scolding himself. “Pa couldn’t hear it thunder.” He heard a rustling of the bed.

“He’s been gone long enough to get clear to the crossroads, or more,” Hatty said, calling through the window.

“Now you lay down and try to get a little sleep, Hatty,” Lonnie told her. “I’ll bring him back in no time.”

He could hear Nancy scratching fleas under the house, but he knew she was in no condition to help look for Mark. It would be several days before she recovered from the shock of losing her tail.

“He’s been gone a long time,” Hatty said, unable to keep still.

“That don’t make no difference,” Lonnie said. “I’ll find him sooner or later. Now you go on to sleep like I told you, Hatty.”

Lonnie walked towards the barn, listening for some sound. Over at the big house he could hear the hogs grunting and squealing, and he wished they would be quiet so he could hear other sounds. Arch Gunnard’s dogs were howling occasionally, but they were not making any more noise than they usually did at night, and he was accustomed to their howling.

Lonnie went to the barn, looking inside and out. After walking around the barn, he went into the field as far as the cotton shed. He knew it was useless, but he could not keep from calling his father time after time. “Oh, Pa!” he said, trying to penetrate the darkness. He went farther into the field.

“Now, what in the world could have become of Pa?” he said, stopping and wondering where to look next.

After he had gone back to the front yard, be began to feel uneasy for the first time. Mark had not acted any more strangely during the past week than he ordinarily did, but Lonnie knew he was upset over the way Arch Gunnard was giving out short rations. Mark had even said that, at the rate they were being fed, all of them would starve to death inside another three months.

Lonnie left the yard and went down the road towards the Negro cabins. When he got to Clem’s house, he turned in and walked up the path to the door. He knocked several times and waited. There was no answer, and he rapped louder.

“Who’s that?” he heard Clem say from bed.

“It’s me,” Lonnie said. “I’ve got to see you a minute, Clem. I’m out in the front yard.”

He sat down and waited for Clem to dress and come outside. While he waited, he strained his ears to catch any sound that might be in the air. Over the fields towards the big house he could hear the fattening hogs grunt and squeal.

Clem came out and shut the door. He stood on the doorsill a moment speaking to his wife in bed, telling her he would be back and not to worry.

“Who’s that?” Clem said, coming down into the yard. Lonnie got up and met Clem halfway.

“What’s the trouble?” Clem asked then, buttoning up his overall jumper.

“Pa’s not in his bed,” Lonnie said, “and Hatty says he’s been gone from the house most all night. I went out in the field, and all around the barn, but I couldn’t find a trace of him anywhere.”

Clem then finished buttoning his jumper and began rolling a cigarette. He walked slowly down the path to the road. It was still dark, and it would be at least an hour before dawn made it any lighter.

“Maybe he was too hungry to stay in bed any longer,” Clem said. “When I saw him yesterday, he said he was so shrunk up and weak he didn’t know if he could last much longer. He looked like his skin and bones couldn’t shrivel much more.”

“I asked Arch last night after suppertime for some rations — just a little piece of sowbelly and some molasses. He said he’d get around to letting me have some the first thing this morning.”

“Why don’t you tell him to give you full rations or none?” Clem said. “If you knew you wasn’t going to get none at all, you could move away and find a better man to sharecrop for, couldn’t you?”

“I’ve been loyal to Arch Gunnard for a long time now,” Lonnie said. “I’d hate to haul off and leave him like that.”

Clem looked at Lonnie, but he did not say anything more just then. They turned up the road towards the driveway that led up to the big house. The fattening hogs were still grunting and squealing in the pen, and one of Arch’s hounds came down a cotton row beside the driveway to smell their shoes.

“Them fattening hogs always get enough to eat,” Clem said. “There’s not a one of them that don’t weigh seven hundred pounds right now, and they’re getting bigger every day. Besides taking all that’s thrown to them, they make a lot of meals off the chickens that get in there to peck around.”