Stories of Erskine Caldwell (46 page)

The jack slowed down and ran into the hitching yard behind the brick bank. When Hod saw that the jack had stopped, he stopped running and tried to regain his breath. Both he and Amos were panting and sweating. The August sun shone down on the dry baked clay in the oval where the town was and remained there until sunset.

Hod and Amos sat down in the shade of the depot and fanned themselves with their hats. The jack was standing calmly behind the bank, switching flies with his tail.

“Give me back my fifty cents, Amos,” Hod said. “You can have that God-damn jack. I don’t want him.”

“I couldn’t do that, Mr. Hod,” Amos pleaded. “We done made the trade, and I can’t break it now. You’ll just have to keep that jack. He’s yours now. If you want to get shed of him, go sell him to somebody else. I don’t want that jack. I’d heap rather have my old dollar watch back again. I wish I’d never seen that jack in all my life. I can do without him.”

Hod said nothing. He looked at the brick bank and saw RB looking out across the railroad tracks towards the stores where the men were sitting on upturned Coca-Cola crates in the water-oak shade.

“Sit here and wait,” Hod said, getting up. “I’ve just thought of something. You sit here and keep your eyes on that jack till I come back.”

“You won’t be gone long, will you, Mr. Hod? I don’t mind watching your animal for you, but I’d sure hate to have to look at that jack any more than I’m compelled to. He don’t like my looks, and I sure don’t like his. That’s the ugliest-looking creature that’s ever been in this country.”

“Wait here till I get back,” Hod said, crossing the tracks and walking towards the brick bank.

RB saw Hod coming, and he went back inside and stood behind his cashier’s cage.

Hod walked in, took off his hat and leaned his arm on the little shelf in front of the cage.

“Hello, RB,” he said. “It’s hot today, ain’t it?”

“Do you want to deposit money, or make a loan?”

Hod fanned himself and spat into the cuspidor.

“Miss it?” RB asked, trying to see through the grill.

“Not quite,” Hod said.

RB spat into his own cuspidor at his feet.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“Well, I’ll tell you, RB,” Hod said. “It’s like this. You’ve got all this money here in the bank and it ain’t doing you much good where it is. And here I come with all my money tied up in livestock. There ain’t but one answer to that, is there?”

“When did you get some livestock, Hod?” he asked. “I didn’t know you had anything but that old mare and that gray mule.”

“I made a trade today,” Hod said, “and now just when my money is all tied up in livestock, I find a man who’s willing to let me in on a timber deal. I need fifty dollars to swing my share. There ain’t no use trying to farm these days, RB. That’s why I’m going in for livestock and timber.”

“How many head of stock do you own?”

“Well, I’ve got that mare, Ida, out there at my place, but I ain’t counting her. And likewise that old mule.”

“How many others do you own?”

“I purchased a high-class stud animal this morning, RB, and I paid out all my ready cash in the deal.”

“A bull?”

“No, not exactly a bull, RB.”

“What was it then?”

“A jackass, RB.”

“A jackass!”

“That’s right.”

“Who in hell wants to own a jackass, Hod? I can’t lend the bank’s money on a jackass.”

“You’re in the moneylending business, RB, and I’ve got an animal to mortgage. What else do you want? I’m putting up my jack, and you’re putting up your money. That’s business, RB. That’s good business.”

“Yes, but suppose you force me to foreclose the mortgage — I’d have the jack, and then maybe I couldn’t find a buyer. Jackass buyers are pretty scarce customers, Hod. I don’t recall ever seeing one.”

“Anybody would give you a hundred dollars for a good high-class jack, RB. If you knew as much about farming and stock-raising as you do about banking, you’d recognize that without me having to tell you.”

“What does a jackass look like?”

“A jack don’t look so good to the eye, RB, but that’s not a jack’s high point. When a jack brays —”

RB came running around from behind his cage and caught Hod by the arm. He was so excited that he was trembling.

“Is that what I heard last night, Hod?”

“What?”

“A jackass braying.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if you did. Amos was out exercising him last night, and he said the jack brayed almost all night long.”

“Come back here with me,” RB said, still shaking. “I’m going to let you have that loan, and take a mortgage on that jack. I want to have a hand in it. If I’ll let you have the loan, will you let me take the jack home and keep him at my house for about a week, Hod?”

“You’re more than welcome to him, RB. You can keep him all the time if you want to. But why do you want to keep a jack at your house? You don’t breed mules, do you?”

RB had Hod sign the papers before he replied. He then counted out five ten-dollar bills and put them into Hod’s hand.

“This is just between me and you, Hod,” he said. “Me and my wife haven’t been on speaking terms for more than a month now. She cooks my meals and does her housework, but she’s been mad at me about something and she won’t say a word or have anything to do with me. But last night, sometime after midnight, we were lying there in the bed, she as far on her side as she could get without falling out, and all at once I heard the damnedest yell I ever heard in all my life. It was that jackass braying. I know now what it was, but I didn’t know then. That jack was somewhere out in the sedge, and when he brayed, the first thing I knew, my wife was all over me, she was that scared, or something. That sounds like a lie, after I have told you about her not speaking to me for more than a month, and sleeping as far on her side of the bed as she could get without falling on the floor, but it’s the truth if I know what the truth is. That jack brayed just once, and the first thing I knew, my wife was all over me, hugging me and begging me not to leave her. This morning she took up her old ways again, and that’s why I want to stable that jack at my house for a week or two. He’ll break up that streak of not talking and not having anything to do with me. That jack is what I am in need of, Hod.”

Hod took the money and walked out of the bank towards the depot where Amos was.

“Where’s the jack, Hod?” RB said, running after him.

“Our there behind your bank,” Hod said. “You can take him home with you tonight when you close up.”

Amos got up to meet Hod.

“Come on, Amos,” Hod said. “We’re going home.”

Amos looked back over his shoulder at the jack behind the bank, watching him until he was out of sight. They walked through the broom sedge, circling the big gully, on the way home.

When they reached the front yard, Hod saw Sam sitting under a chinaberry tree. Sam got up and stood leaning against the trunk.

“What are you doing here?” Hod asked him. “What are you hanging around here for? Go on home, Sam.”

Sam came forward a step, and stepped backward two.

“Miss Daisy told me to tell you something for her,” Sam said, chewing the words.

“She said what?”

“Mr. Hod, Miss Daisy and Mr. Shaw went off down the road while you was chasing that jack. Mr. Shaw said he was taking Miss Daisy with him back to the navy yard, and Miss Daisy said she was going off and never coming back.”

Hod went to the front porch and sat down in the shade. His feet hung over the edge of the porch, almost touching the ground.

Amos walked across the yard and sat down on the steps. He looked at Hod for several minutes before he said anything.

“Mr. Hod,” he said, chewing the words worse than his son had before him, “I reckon you’d better go back to Folger and get your jack. Looks like that jack has a powerful way of fretting the womenfolks, and you’d better get him to turn one in your direction.”

(First published in
We Are the Living
)

M
Y AUNT HAD COME
down South to visit us and we were all sitting around the fireplace talking. Aunt Nellie did most of the talking and my mother the rest of it. My father came in occasionally for a few minutes at a time and then went out again to walk around the house and sit in the barnyard. He and Aunt Nellie did not get along together at all. Aunt Nellie was sure she was smarter than anybody else and my father did not want to get into an argument with her and lose his temper.

Aunt Nellie’s husband had gone down to Florida on a hunting trip and she came as far as Carolina to see us while he was away. My uncle was crazy about hunting and spent all his spare time away from home gunning for game.

“Bess,” Aunt Nellie asked my mother, “does Johnny like to hunt?” She nodded impersonally toward me where I sat by the fireplace.

My mother said I did not. And that was true. I like to catch rabbits and squirrels for pets but I did not want to kill them. I had a pet hen right then; she had been run over by a buggy wheel when she was growing up and one of her legs was broken. I hid her in the barn so my father would not know about her. She stayed there about two weeks and when the leg had healed I let her out in the yard with the other chickens. When my father did find her he said she would not have to be killed if I would take care of her and feed her because she could not scratch for worms like the other chickens. Her leg healed all right, but it was crooked and she limped every step she took.

“Well,” Aunt Nellie said to my mother, “that is a shame. If he doesn’t like to hunt he won’t grow up to be a real Southern gentleman.”

“But, Nellie,” my mother protested for me, “Johnny does not like to kill things.”

“Nonsense,” Aunt Nellie said derisively. “Any man who is a real Southern gentleman likes to hunt. The Lord only knows what he will turn out to be.”

My father would have taken up for me too if he had been in the room just then. My father did not like to kill things either.

“I’m disappointed in having a nephew who is not a real Southern gentleman. He will never be one if he never goes hunting,” Aunt Nellie always talked a long time about the same thing once she got started.

I was not greatly interested in being a real Southern gentleman when I grew up, but I did not want her to talk about me that way. Every summer she wrote my mother a letter inviting me up to her home in Maryland, and I wanted to go again this year.

My father heard what she said and went out in the backyard and threw pebbles against the barn side.

I went into the dining room where the shotgun was kept and took it off the rack. The gun was fired off to scare crows when they came down in the spring to pull up the corn sprouts in the new ground. My father never aimed to kill the crows: he merely fired off the shotgun to make the crows so gun-shy they would not come back to the cornfield.

Taking the shotgun and half a dozen shells I went out the front door without anybody seeing me leave. I went down the road towards the schoolhouse at the crossroads. I had seen dozens of rabbits down at the first creek every time I went to school and came home. They were large rabbits with gray backs and white undercoats. All of them had long thin ears and a ball of white fur on their tails. I liked them a lot.

At the first creek I stopped on the bridge and rested against the railing. In a few minutes I saw two rabbits hop across the road ahead. Picking up the gun I started after them. A hundred yards from the bridge the road had been cut down into the hill and the banks on each side were fifteen and twenty feet high. At this time of year when there was nearly always a heavy frost each morning the bank facing the south was the warmer because the sun shone against it most of the day. I had seen several rabbits sitting in holes in the bank and I was sure that was where these rabbits were going now.

Sure enough when I got there a large gray-furred rabbit was sitting on the sunny bank backed into a hole. When I saw the rabbit I raised the shotgun to my shoulder and took good aim. The rabbit blinked her eyes and chewed a piece of grass she had found under a log somewhere. I was then only ten or twelve feet away but I thought I had better get closer so I should be certain to kill her. I would take the rabbit home and show my aunt. I wanted her to invite me to spend the summer at her house again.

I edged closer and closer to the rabbit until I stood in the drain ditch only three feet from her. She blinked her eyes and chewed on the grass. I hated to kill her because she looked as if she wanted to live and sit on the sunny bank chewing grass always. But my Aunt Nellie thought a boy should be a sportsman and kill everything in sight.

There was nothing else I could do. I would have to shoot the poor rabbit and take her back for my aunt to see.

I took steady aim along the center of the double-barreled shotgun, shut both eyes, and pulled the triggers one after the other. When I opened my eyes the rabbit was still sitting there looking at me. I was so glad after the gun went off that the rabbit was not dead that I dropped the gun and crawled up the bank and caught the rabbit by her long ears. I lifted her in my arms and held her tightly so she could not run away. She was so frightened by the gunshots she was trembling all over like a whipped dog. When I put her in my arms she snuggled her nose against my sweater and stopped quivering while I stroked her fur.

Holding the rabbit tight in my right arm I picked up the shotgun and ran home as fast as I could.

My father was still sitting in the back yard when I got there.

“What’s that you’ve got under your arm?” he asked.

“A rabbit,” I told him.

“How did you catch it?”

“I shot at her and missed her. Then I caught her by the ears and brought her home.”

“Look here, Johnny,” he said to me. “You didn’t shoot at that rabbit while it was sitting down, did you?”

“I guess I did,” I admitted; adding hastily, “but I didn’t hit her, anyway.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t hit it. A good sportsman never shoots at a rabbit while it is sitting down. A good sportsman never shoots at a bird until it flies. A real sportsman always gives the game he is after a chance for its life.”