Stories of Erskine Caldwell (36 page)

“The talk maybe don’t, but the conjur do,” Youster said. “Woman, I got a curse on you.”

“You is?”

“Don’t you feel it none?”

“I don’t feel nothing but a draft on my back.”

Youster took the snuff can out of his pocket and shook it in his hand. He shook it like it was a pair of dice.

“Come on, can, do your work,” he said to the snuffbox in his hand. “Get down on your knees and do your nine dollars’ worth!”

While he waited for the can to put the curse into action, he listened through the door. There was no sound in there, except the occasional squeak of Matty’s rocking chair on the hearth.

“I don’t hear Sis in there,” Youster said. “Where you at, Sis?”

“Sis is minding her own business,” Matty told him. “You go on off somewhere and mind yours. Sis ain’t studying about you, anyhow.”

“Why ain’t she?” Youster shouted. “Sis is my woman, and my woman ought to be studying about me all the time.”

“You sure do talk like all the big-headed half-Jim niggers I ever knew,” Matty said. “Just because you paid seven dollars to Sally Lucky for a charm on Sis, you get the notion in the head that Sis’s your woman. Nigger, if I had only your sense, I wouldn’t know which end to stand on.”

“That talk don’t fool me none,” Youster told her, “The way that gal cut her eyes at me last Sunday showed me the way to go home. I reckon I know when the best is yet to come.”

Youster rubbed the snuffbox in his hands, feeling its slick surface and good warmth. He held his breath while he listened through the door.

“I can afford to put off getting her for a while,” he said through the cracks, “being as how this curse is going to be working on you.”

“What curse?” Matty said.

“The curse I just a while ago got Sally Lucky to put on you for me, that’s what. I paid her two dollars for it. That makes nine, all told, dollars I’ve paid out. All I don’t feel right about is that I waited all this time before I got a curse put on you. I ought to have had it working on you all this past summer and fall.”

“If you paid nine dollars to Sally Lucky for putting something on me, Youster Brown, all you got was just nine dollars’ worth of mumble.”

“How come?” Youster said.

“Because I paid Sally Lucky three dollars for a curse on you the first time I ever saw you, that’s how come,” Matty said. “And that’s how come all your big talk about getting a charm on Sis and a curse on me won’t never come to nothing. Charms and curses won’t cross, Youster Brown, because it’s the one that’s taken out first that does the work, and that’s how come the curse I took out on you took, and the ones you took out on Sis and me won’t take. I saw you coming, Youster Brown, and I didn’t lose no time taking out the curse on you.”

Youster sat down on the step. He looked down the path toward the road and across the field toward Sally Lucky’s. He fingered the snuff can for a while.

There came a squeak from the chair through the door, but there was no other sound. The black night was pulling down all around him. He couldn’t see nothing, nowhere. There wasn’t no sense in night being black like the bottom of a hole. After a while he got up and went off down the road. He was trying his best to think of some way to get his nine dollars back. Nine dollars was a lot of money to pay for mumble.

(First published in
Harper’s Bazaar
)

A
FTER
I
HAD BEEN
in town a week, I began going early in the evening to the room I had rented, to lie awake under the warmth of the blanket.

Out on the streets, when night fell, it was always cold. There was usually a chill wet wind from the river, and from the bare uplands the February winter descended hour after hour, freezing and raw. Even men with overcoats hurried through the icy streets with lowered heads fighting the cold, hurrying towards heated homes.

It was cold in the unheated room I had rented, but the warmth of the blanket was like the clinging arms of a girl.

By the third night of the week I had got accustomed to the unheated house. At first I could not sleep. But on that evening I took off my shoes as soon as I had reached the room and got into bed immediately. For the next five or six hours I lay awake, warm under the blanket, while frost on the windowpanes formed slowly and precisely into fragile designs of cold beauty.

Out in the hall I could hear people passing quickly from room to room, hurrying through the cold corridor while the contracted boards of the floor creaked under their feet.

After a while I became conscious of warm air flowing through the cracks in the wall. A young woman and her small daughter lived in the room next to mine, on the right, and the heat they had was escaping into my room. I could smell the scorched air and the burned gas of their heater. I lay awake then, listening to the movements in the next room, while their slowly formed picture was melted into my memory. Towards midnight I fell asleep, remembering only that in the next room the young woman moved lightly when she walked and that the small girl spoke to her mother softly and lovingly.

After that night I began coming home much earlier in the evening to cover myself with the warmth of the blanket and to lie awake in the darkness listening to all that happened in the next-door room. The young woman prepared supper for the girl and herself, and then they sat at the small table by the window and ate slowly, laughing and talking. The little girl was about eight, and her mother was almost as young as she when they laughed and talked.

The cold of the unheated room was not so hard to bear as it had been before I came to know them.

I knew by the end of that second week how each of them looked even though I had never seen either of them. Through the thin plaster wall I could hear everything they said and did, and I followed the motions of their hands and the expressions on their faces from second to second, hour after hour. The young woman was not working, either; she remained in the room most of the day, going out only in the morning for half an hour to walk with the girl to school, and again in the afternoon to walk home with her. The rest of the day she sat in the room, by the window, looking out over the red-painted tin roof across the way, and waiting for midafternoon to come so she could walk to the school for her daughter.

There were other people in the house, many of them. The three floors of the building were rented, room by room, to men and women who came and went during all hours. Some of them worked during the day, some at night, and many had no jobs at all. But even though there were many people in the house, no one ever came to my door, and no one ever went to the young woman’s door next to mine. Sometimes there would be the sound of a man walking heavily, coming hurriedly down the hall, and the young woman would jump from her chair by the window and run frantically to the door, leaning against it while her fingers held the key in the lock and listening to the sound of the man’s stride. After he had passed, she went slowly back to her chair and sat down once more to look out over the red-painted tin roof across the way.

Into the month of February it became colder and colder, but I was warm when I lay under the blanket and listened to the sounds that came through the thin plaster wall.

It was not until I had become aware of her running to the door each time the sound of a man’s footstep rang through the rooms that I realized something was about to happen. I did not know what the happening was to be, nor when, but each morning before leaving my room I waited and listened for several minutes to hear if she were standing against her door or sitting in her chair. When I came back in the evening, I pressed my ear against the cold wall to listen again.

That evening, after I had listened for nearly half an hour, I knew something was about to happen; and for the first time in my life, while I stood there shivering in the cold, I had the desire to be the father of a child. I did not stop to turn on the light, but climbed straightway into bed without even taking off my shoes. I lay tensely awake upon the bed for a long time listening to the movements on the other side of the wall. The young woman was quick and nervous, and her face was white and drawn. The little girl was put to bed as soon as they had finished eating supper and, without a word being spoken, the young woman went to her chair by the window to sit and wait. She sat silently, not even rocking, for a long time. I had raised my head from the pillow, and my neck was stiff and cold after the strain of holding my head horizontally without support.

It was eleven o’clock before I heard another sound in the room next to mine. During the three hours that I had lain awake on the bed waiting, she had not moved from her chair. But at eleven o’clock she got up and drank a glass of water and covered the girl with another blanket. When she had finished, she moved to her chair for a moment, and then she carried it to the door and sat down. She sat and waited. Before another hour had passed, a man came down the hall, walking heavily on the contracted boards of the floor. We both heard him coming, and we both jumped to our feet. I ran to the wall and pressed my ear against the cold white plaster and waited. The young woman leaned against the door, her fingers gripped around the key, and listened with bated breath. The little girl was sound asleep in bed.

After I had been standing for several minutes I felt the cold of the unheated room wither my hands and feet. Under the warmth of the blanket I had forgotten how cold it was, and the blood had raced through me while I waited still and tense and listened to the sounds in the building. But standing in the unheated room, with my face and ear pressed against the cold white plaster, I was shaking as though with a chill.

The man came to the door next to mine and stopped. I could hear the woman’s trembling, and the breathing that jerked her body, and each moment I expected to hear her scream.

He knocked on the door once and waited. She did not open it. He turned the knob and shook it. She pressed with all her strength against the door, and held the key in its place with fingers of steel.

“I know you are in there, Eloise,” he said slowly; “open the door and let me in.”

She made no reply. I could hear through the thin wall the strain of her body against the frail door.

“I’m coming in,” he said.

He had barely finished before there was a sudden thrust of his shoulder against the door that burst the lock and threw him inside. Even then there was no sound from her lips. She ran to the bed and threw herself upon it, hugging desperately in her arms the girl who had slept so soundly.

“I didn’t come here to argue with you,” the man said. “I came here to put an end to this mess. Get up off the bed.”

It was then for the first time that evening that I heard the sound of the young woman’s voice. She had sprung to her feet and was facing him. I pressed my face and ear against the cold white plaster and waited.

“She’s as much mine as she is yours. You can’t take her away from me.”

“You took her away from me, didn’t you? Well, it’s my turn now. I’m her father.”

“Henry!” she begged. “Henry, please don’t!”

“Shut up,” he said.

He strode to the bed and lifted the girl in his arms.

“I’ll kill you, Henry, if you take her out of this room,” she said slowly. “I mean that, Henry.”

He walked with the girl to the door and stopped. He was not excited, and his breath was not even audible through the thin wall. But the woman was frantic, and my hands and feet were numbed with the cold and I could not move the muscles of my lips. The young woman had not begun to cry, but through the plaster wall I could hear her breathe, and I could feel the quick movements of her body.

He turned around.

“You’ll do what?” he said.

“I’ll kill you, Henry.”

There was a moment’s silence, complete and still. He stood at the door, the girl lying in his arms waking slowly from sleep, and waited. Each second seemed as though it were an hour long.

“No, you won’t do that,” he said after a while. “I’m going to beat you to it, Eloise.”

Through the thin plaster wall I could hear the smooth slide of his hand into his coat pocket and out again. I could hear everything that was to happen.

When he pointed the pistol at her, she screamed. He waited until she had cried out, and then he pulled the trigger, not taking careful aim, but nevertheless closing one eye as though he were looking down the sights at her.

The echoes of the explosion drowned out the sound of his running down the hall and the creaking of the floor under his feet.

It was several minutes before the ringing in my ears had died out, and by that time there was the sound of people running through the house from top to bottom, flinging open the doors of the heated rooms and of the unheated rooms as they raced towards us on the second floor.

For a long time I lay against the white plastered wall, trembling because I who was the father had allowed without protest the taking away of the girl, and shaking because I was cold in the unheated room.

(First published in
Story
)

T
HE HEAT WAS ENOUGH
to drive anybody crazy.

The wire grass was growing faster than Jesse English could keep it chopped down and covered up. He had been going over the twelve acres of cotton for five days already, and he was just about ready to give up.

At noon when his wife called him to dinner, Jesse unhitched the mule from the scraper and turned him loose. The mule walked unsteadily towards the barn, stumbling over the rows as if he had blindstaggers. Jesse’s eyes were bloodshot by the heat, and he was afraid he was going to get a sunstroke. He got to the house, but he could not eat anything. He stretched out on the porch, his straw hat over his face to shut out the glare of the sun, feeling as if he could never get up again as long as he lived.

Lizzie came to the door and told him to get up and eat the meal she had cooked. Jesse did not answer her, and after a while she went back inside out of sight.

The rattling of the trace chain in the yard woke Jesse up. He raised himself on his elbow and looked out under the chinaberry tree at Fiddler. Fiddler crawled around the tree, winding the chain around the trunk of the chinaberry. When Fiddler had wound the chain as far as he could, he lay down again.