Stories of Erskine Caldwell (44 page)

Florabelle finished dressing and came out on the front porch first. She had on the white organdy dress that made her look cool even on the hottest day.

Her father came around the corner of the house, stopping when he saw her. He glared at her for a while before saying anything.

“What you up to now?” he said finally.

“Nothing, Pa,” Florabelle said. “Nothing at all. Why?”

“I’d better not ever catch you at anything,” he said. “I won’t stand having no daughter of mine running wild. If I ever hear anything about you or Nancy, I’ll thrash the hide off you both, even if you are nearly grown up.”

“Why, Pa!” Florabelle said protestingly. “What on earth are you talking about? Now, you stop saying things like that about Nancy and me.”

“Then remember what I told you,” he said.

Will went into the house for his tobacco and came out again. He stopped at the corner of the house. “Tell your mother I’m going across the field to look at the spring,” he said. He started off, but stopped after a few steps. “And don’t you and your sister forget what I told you, either.”

He went off out of sight around the house, going in the direction of the spring, a mile and a half away. The last time he was there, the spring looked as if it might run dry any day. It had never dried up before during the forty-six years he had lived on the farm; but it had never been so hot before since he could remember, and the land had never been without rain that long, either. It had not rained in that part of the country for seven weeks, and it was beginning to look as if it would never rain again. The earth was parched and cracked, the creek had dried up until there was only a dusty bed left to show for it, and the corn had curled up and dried a long time ago.

Half an hour after Will Tannet had left to look at the spring, Evans Waller drove up to the house in his car. Florabelle could see the dust being blown up in the road half a mile away before he got there, and she ran into the house. She was with Nancy in their room when Evans got out and came up on the porch.

“Hello, Nancy!” he called through the open door of the house. Then he sat down to wait. “Is Florabelle at home?”

Nobody answered him.

Mrs. Tannet came through the hall from the kitchen when she heard Evans’s voice. She went into the room with her daughters.

“Now, Nancy,” she began, “don’t you and Evans drive off and leave Florabelle here by herself again. Every Sunday for the past two months you and Evans have gone for a ride and left her behind. She was here by herself last Sunday for almost two hours before any young man came to see her. I don’t want you treating your sister like that again. You and Evans stay right here until Florabelle has company. Do you hear, Nancy?”

Nancy did not say anything. She went to the porch to see Evans.

“How about a ride?” he asked the first thing. “It’s too hot to sit here.”

“We’ll have to wait until somebody comes to see Florabelle,” Nancy said, sitting down on the bench beside him. “Is anybody coming that you know of? Is Harry coming today? Or Jimmy?”

Evans kicked the chair in front of him.

“Listen,” he said, “why can’t she look after her own self? Why do I have to — ”

“Don’t talk like that, Evans,” Nancy pleaded. “You know how Mama is about Florabelle. It will only be — ”

“I’m pretty tired of it, anyway,” he said. “Every time I come here, I’m expected to sit around and wait for Florabelle to get a date. She can take care of herself, can’t she? What’s wrong with everybody here, anyhow?”

He got up and looked at the thermometer.

“God Almighty, it’s a hundred and five here,” he said, turning around and glaring at Nancy as though it was her fault it was so hot. “I’m going where it’s cooler. Florabelle and you both can go to hell for all I care. I’m not going to sit here in this furnace and sweat myself to death. I have to sweat my hide off in the fields all week long, but I don’t have to sit here and do it on Sunday, too. I’m leaving.”

Evans got to the steps before Nancy caught him by the arm. He was about to jerk free of her when Florabelle came to the door.

“Hello, Evans,” she said. “You look cooler than anybody I’ve seen all week.”

“Hello,” he said. He stood and glared at both of them for a long time. His gaze settled upon her bosom. “Hello,” he said again.

He went back to the bench and sat down.

“Seen Jimmy Barker lately, Evans?” Florabelle said.

“No.”

“Frank Littlefield?”

“No.”

“Harry?”

“No.”

Nancy jumped up and ran to the end of the porch.

“I’ll bet that’s Harry!” she said.

Florabelle smoothed out her dress and looked up the road. Evans got up and went down the steps to the yard.

“Come on, Nancy,” he said. “Let’s go. This is the hottest place in the world. Let’s go somewhere and cool off.”

He and Nancy got into his car and drove off, leaving Florabelle watching the cloud of dust being blown up by the car coming in the opposite direction.

She saw it was not Jimmy as soon as the car turned into the yard. It was Frank Littlefield. She had hoped it was Jimmy.

“Hot, ain’t it?” he said, coming up on the porch and dropping into a chair.

“It must be the same everywhere,” she said. “Or is it cooler on the other side of the ridge?”

“It’s cooler than this place. Anywhere is cooler than it is here. Why does your old man live in a hotbox like this, anyway?”

“Because it’s our farm. We wouldn’t have any place to live if we left here.”

Frank got up and looked at the thermometer. It was still a hundred and five, but it was moving slowly toward a hundred and six. “If it gets any hotter, people are going to start acting like mad dogs,” he said.

Florabelle fanned herself, keeping an eye on the road.

“How about going swimming down at Coulter’s Mill?” Frank said. “That’s what I’d like to do. How about it?”

Florabelle looked quickly in both directions to see if there were any signs of Jimmy Barker’s coming. She began to wonder what she could do in order to make Frank wait a while longer. If Jimmy came, or Harry Cole, she wanted to get out of going with Frank.

“How about going swimming, I said!” he shouted. “Can’t you hear anything — are you deaf?”

“It’s early yet, isn’t it?” she said.

“What’s the matter with you, anyway?” he shouted. “Trying to stall me? I’ve got to go somewhere and cool off. I’ll start foaming at the mouth if I have to sit here in this heat.”

“Don’t talk that way, Frank. You know I don’t mean anything like that at all.”

“If anybody asked me, I’d say you were the worst two-timer that ever lived. I didn’t think I’d ever let myself get two-timed by a wench like you.

Florabelle’s face flushed, but she tried to hide it from him. She turned away, watching the road at the same time.

“Well,” Frank said, standing up in front of her, “if you won’t go with me, you can go to hell.”

He started down the steps. She ran and caught him by the arm in desperation.

“You wouldn’t talk to me like that, Frank, if it wasn’t for the heat. I know you don’t mean what you say. As soon as it rains and turns cooler, you won’t say things like that.”

“It’s never going to rain again,” he said, pulling away from her and going toward his car.

Florabelle was about to run after him when she saw an automobile coming down the road. She was sure it was either Harry or Jimmy Barker.

Frank started the engine and turned his car around. He almost ran head-on into the other car. Jimmy drove into the yard.

“What was Frank Littlefield so mad about?” Jimmy asked her.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Florabelle said. “He just couldn’t stand the heat, I suppose.”

They went up on the porch and sat on the bench.

“How about taking a little walk?” he asked her. “Just me and you off somewhere in the woods. It would be cooler in the woods.”

Florabelle laughed.

“Pa wouldn’t let me do anything like that,” she said, looking shyly up at Jimmy.

“Go ask your mama, then,” he said.

Florabelle’s face flushed a little.

“Pa will be coming back soon,” she said, “and if he didn’t find me here, he’d go looking for me.”

Jimmy stared at the thermometer hanging on the wall,

“It’s too hot to stay here. Let’s go somewhere.”

Florabelle got up and went to him at the steps.

“If we didn’t stay too long, it might be all right,” she said slowly. “Come on,” he said, pulling her down into the yard.

They were halfway across the yard when another automobile came racing up the road. It suddenly slowed down and turned into the yard. Frank Littlefield jumped out.

“Putting me off, weren’t you, just like I said?”

Before Florabelle could answer, Frank had hit Jimmy on the chin. Jimmy fell over backward, but was up on his feet again in a flash.

“Come on out behind the barn where I can do a good job,” Frank said. He strode off in that direction, walking sideways and keeping his eyes on Jimmy. “Come on, if you ain’t yellow.”

Jimmy went after him, trying to catch up. They sparred at each other until they were out of sight behind the barn.

Florabelle did not know what to do. She stood where she was for a while, then she went to the porch and listened to the sounds that came across the yard.

First she could hear Frank’s voice, then Jimmy’s. Next she heard them shouting at the same time, and finally she could not distinguish between them any more. After a while there were no sounds that she could hear.

They had been behind the barn for such a long time that she began to wonder why they did not come back. It seemed to her as if they had been gone at least half an hour. She hoped they would make up and come back to the house before her father came home. She did not know what might happen if he came back and found them fighting out there like that.

Florabelle waited as long as she could. By that time she knew at least an hour had passed since Jimmy and Frank had disappeared from sight.

Just as she was getting ready to go and see what had happened to them, her father came up the path. She sank down into a chair when she saw him.

“That spring won’t last much longer,” he said. “It’ll probably be gone by this time tomorrow. I don’t know what I’m going to do about water when the spring goes dry.”

He looked at the car nearest him in the yard.

“Whose is that?” he asked her.

“It’s Jimmy Barker’s,” she said, trembling with fright.

“Where’s he at?” he asked her.

“He and Frank Littlefield went out behind the barn,” she said. She was unable to sit still any longer. “They’ve been out there an awfully long time, Pa.”

“What did they go out there for?”

“They had an argument.”

Without a word Will Tannet walked toward the barn. He picked up a good-sized stick along the way.

Presently he came around the corner of the barn and motioned to her. She went slowly toward her father. He did not take his eyes from her.

“What’s the matter, Pa?” she asked when she got closer.

“Come here and look, and then maybe you can tell me what’s the matter.”

Florabelle peered cautiously around the corner of the barn. Both Jimmy and Frank were stretched out on the ground, lying motionlessly in the blazing sun. Before she shut her eyes and turned away, she saw the two pitchforks lying between them. She knew without another thought what had happened. She did not remember anything else after that.

When she opened her eyes, there was a thunder in her ears. It sounded as though the whole world was being broken apart. The sky outside was dark, but during the flashes of lightning she could see the outline of the room about her.

“What happened?” she asked.

Her mother was holding her hand, but she was crying so, she could not answer.

When Florabelle closed her eyes, she could hear her father’s voice somewhere in the room. She tried to open her eyes again, but they would not open.

“It hasn’t rained a drop yet,” she heard him say. “With all this thunder and lightning, God would be serving us right if He never let it rain a single drop again.”

She thought she heard other sounds, but she could not understand anything she heard after that. The thunder and lightning was louder than the screams of her mother and the curses of her father.

(First published in
College Humor
)

H
OD
S
HEPPARD WAS
in the kitchen eating breakfast when he heard one of the colored boys yell for him. Before he could get up and look out the window to see what the trouble was, Daisy came running into the room from the garden house in the field looking as if she had been scared out of her wits.

“Hod! Hod!” she screamed at him. “Did you hear it?”

He shook her loose from him and got up from the table. Daisy fell down on the kitchen floor, holding on to his legs with all her might.

“Hear what?” he said. “I heard one of the niggers yelling for me. That’s all I heard. What’s the matter with you, Daisy?”

Just then Sam, the colored boy, called Hod again louder than ever. Both Hod and Daisy ran to the back door and looked out across the field. The only thing out there they could see was the yellow broom sedge and the dead-leafed blackjack.

“What’s all this fuss and racket about, anyway?” Hod said, looking at Daisy.

“I heard something, Hod,” she said, trembling.

“Heard what? What did you hear?”

“I don’t know what it was, but I heard it.”

“What did it sound like — wind, or something?”

“It sounded like — like somebody calling me, Hod.”

“Somebody calling you?”

She nodded her head, holding him tightly.

“Who’s calling you! If I ever find anybody around here calling you out of the house, I’ll butcher him. You’d better not let me see anybody around here after you. I’ll kill him so quick —”

Sam came running around the corner of the house, his overall jumper flying out behind, and his crinkly hair jumping like a boxful of little black springs let loose. His eyes were turning white.

“Hey there, you Sam!” Hod yelled at him. “Quit your running around and come back here!”