Stories of Erskine Caldwell (68 page)

I was almost as excited as Harry, in spite of myself. His explanations of the sign on the tree and his interpretations of the dream would have convinced me that the girl was actually alive if my better sense had not told me it was impossible. However, I wanted to go with him, for the adventure.

“When are you starting, Harry?” I asked him. “I want to go along.”

“I’m starting in the morning,” he said, “but I can’t take you along. I’m sorry. But you see, as soon as I find her I’m going to marry her. That’s what I’ve been waiting for all these seven years.”

“Good Lord, Harry,” I said, “you don’t mean to say that you believe you are going to find a girl actually enough like the one in the dream to make you think she is the same one, do you?”

He took two rings from his pocket and held them in the palm of his hand for me to see. One was a diamond solitaire, the other a wedding ring.

“I’ve had these for more than two years,” he said. “I didn’t have the nerve to show them to you before, because I knew you would laugh at me. But since I’ve found her I don’t mind showing them to you.”

“But you haven’t found her yet, Harry. She may not be at Lost Lake, after all.”

Harry did not say anything for several minutes. He looked at me as if he were wondering how anyone could doubt that such a girl as he had dreamed of was not alive that moment.

“If you don’t believe what I’ve told you,” he said, “then why don’t you bet me that I won’t find her?”

Whatever doubt was then left in my mind was slowly leaving me. Even at that moment I thought I saw her standing up there in the woods, at a camp on the lake, waiting for Harry to come.

“Do you want to do that?” he insisted.

“No,” I said, “I’d rather not.”

(First published in
American Earth
)

G
OVERNOR
G
IL WAS
standing astride the path, knocking heads off the weeds, when Walter Lane came up the hill from the spring. A wide circle of wilted weeds lay on the ground around him, and his walking stick was still swinging. It looked as if he had been waiting there for half an hour or longer.

“It’s been mighty hot today,” Walter said, stopping and lowering the two pails of water to the ground.

“It’s a small day when the sun don’t shine,” Governor Gil said. “Where’s the rest of your family, and the girl?”

“My wife and the young ones went over to visit her folks this afternoon,” Walter told him. “They’ll be coming home some time tonight after supper.” He turned around and looked down the path behind. “Daisy’s coming up the path any minute now. She’s down at the spring filling a bucket.”

Governor Gil looked down the path, but Daisy was not within sight. It was almost a hundred yards from the crown of the slope down to the bottom of the hill, where the spring was.

“I reckon I can wait here,” he said, taking a new grip on his walking stick and bending forward to reach the weeds farthest away. “It’s a small day when I can’t afford to spend a little time waiting.”

Walter watched the heads tumble off the stalks of weeds. Governor Gil went about it as if he were determined not to let a weed in the whole county go to seed that year. Every once in a while he shifted his position a little, stamping down the wilted weeds and reaching for new ones to whack at. Sometimes he started out in the morning, after breakfast, on horseback to see how his cotton and cane crops were growing, but before he got out of sight of home he always got off his horse and started whacking away at the weeds with his walking stick. He hated weeds worse than he did boll weevils or screwworms. However, for some reason or other, he never paid any attention to the weeds that grew in the yard around his house; they were so rank there that sometimes his hunting dogs got lost in the growth and had to backtrack their way out.

“Did you want to see me, Governor Gil, or was it Daisy you asked about?” Walter said, wondering.

Instead of answering, Governor Gil stopped a moment and glanced down the path. He nodded his head in that direction, and returned to swinging his stick at the weeds.

Governor Gil Counts had once, for a term, been governor of the state, about twenty-five or thirty years before, and the title suited him so well that nobody ever thought of calling him anything else. He ran his farm with the help of Walter Lane and several other tenants, and never left it. He had not been out of the county since the day he came home from the governor’s office, and he had said he would never leave home again. He lived a quarter of a mile up the road in a big three-story mansion, from which the white paint had peeled while he was serving his term in office. The once-white, three-story columns rising from the front porch were now as dark and rough as the bark on a pine tree.

“There’s no sense in standing out here in the sun,” Walter said. “Come on to my house and take a seat in the porch shade, Governor Gil. Daisy’ll be along to the house just about as soon as she’ll get here.”

“This’ll do,” he said, stopping and looking down the path. “I haven’t got time to sit down now.”

He went past Walter and started down the path toward the spring. Walter left his pails and followed behind. Heads of weeds tumbled to the right and left of them.

At the crown of the slope they saw Daisy coming up. She was carrying a pail of water in one hand and fanning herself with a willow branch.

“I may as well tell you now, Walter,” Governor Gil said, stopping. “It’s time for your girl to marry. It’s dangerous business to put it off after they get a certain age.”

Walter took half a dozen steps around Governor Gil and stopped where he could see his face.

“Who ought she to marry?” Walter said.

Governor Gil let go at some pigweeds around his knees, whacking his stick at them just under the seed pods. The heads flew in all directions.

“I’ve arranged for that,” he said. “I sent my lawyer a letter today telling him to get a license. It’ll be here in a few days.”

Walter looked again at Governor Gil, and then down the path. Daisy had come over the crown of the slope.

“That might be all right,” Walter said, “but I don’t know if she’ll be tamed. Right now she’s just about as wild as they come. Of course, now, I’m not raising any serious objections. I’m just going over in my mind the drawbacks a man might run into.”

“A year from now there might be plenty of drawbacks,” Governor Gil said. “Right this minute drawbacks don’t count, because she’s reached the marrying age, and nothing else matters. If I had a daughter, Walter, I’d want to do the right thing by her. I’d want her to marry before drawbacks had a chance to spoil her. I’m ready to marry her without an argument.”

“You damned old fool,” Daisy said, dropping her pail, “what put that into your head?”

Governor Gil had drawn back to let go at a clump of weeds swaying in the breeze beside the path, but he never finished the stroke. His stick fell back against his knees and the clump of weeds continued to sway in the wind.

“Now, that’s what I was thinking about,” Walter said. “I had an idea she wouldn’t be willing to be tamed just yet.”

“Why, I’ve been counting on this for a pretty long time,” Governor Gil said excitedly. “I’ve just been biding my time all this while when you were growing up, Daisy. I’ve had my eyes on you for about three years now, just waiting for you to grow up.”

“You damned old fool,” Daisy said, stooping down for her pail and starting around them in the path.

Walter did not try to stop her. He looked at Governor Gil to see what he had to say now.

They watched her for a moment.

“She’ll tame,” Governor Gil said, nodding his head at Walter and following her up the path to the house.

When they got to the back door, Daisy put the pail on the shelf and sat down on the doorstep. She sat and looked at them with her knees drawn up under her elbows and her chin cupped in her hands.

“Maybe if you could just wait —” Walter began. He was waved aside by a sweep of the walking stick.

“I’m going to have the handseling tonight,” Governor Gil said, nodding his head at Daisy and flourishing the stick in the air. “The marrying can wait, but the handseling can’t. The license will be along from my lawyer in a day or two, and that’s just a matter of formality, anyway.”

Walter looked at Daisy, but she only stared more sullenly at them.

“I reckon we ought to wait till my wife gets back from visiting her folks,” Walter said. “She ought to have a little say-so. For one thing, she’ll have to make Daisy some clothes first, because Daisy hasn’t got much to wear except what she’s got on, and that’s so little it wouldn’t be decent if we weren’t homefolks. Just about all she’s got to her name is that little slimsy gingham jumper she’s wearing. My wife will want to make her a petticoat, if nothing else. It would be a sin and a shame for her to get married like she is now. If she had something to wear under what she’s got on, it might be different, but I won’t be in favor of sending her out to get married in just a slimsy jumper between her and the outside world.”

Governor Gil shook his walking stick in the air as if to wave away any possible objection Walter might mention.

“That’s all right for the marriage,” he said, “but that won’t be for a few days yet. Your wife will have plenty of time to make up a petticoat for her if she wants to. But she won’t even have to do that, because I’ll buy her whatever she’ll need after the marriage. And what she’ll need for the handseling won’t be worth mentioning.”

He stopped and turned around to look at the sun. It was already setting behind the pine grove in the west.

“Had your supper yet?” he asked, looking at Walter and nodding at Daisy.

“Not yet,” Walter said. “We didn’t stop work in the cotton until about half an hour ago, and the first thing that needed doing was carrying up the water from the spring. Daisy, you go in the kitchen and start getting something ready to eat. Maybe Governor Gil will stay and eat with us tonight.”

“No,” he said, waving his stick at Daisy, “don’t do that, Daisy. You just come up to my house and get your meal there tonight. There’s no sense in you getting all worn out over a hot stove now. There’s plenty to eat up there.”

He turned to Walter.

“If your wife won’t be home until late tonight, you just come up to my house and go around to the kitchen, and the help will set you out a good meal, Walter.”

He started walking across the yard toward the road. When he got to the corner of the house, he stopped and found that neither Daisy nor her father had made a move to follow him.

“What’s the matter?” he said impatiently.

“Well, now,” Walter said, “I can make Daisy go up to your house, Governor Gil, but I can’t be held responsible for what she does after she gets there. I wish you would wait till my wife came back tonight before you took Daisy off, but if your mind is made up not to wait, then all I can say is you’ll have to charge her yourself after she gets there.”

“She won’t need any charging,” Governor Gil said. “I’ve yet to know the wildest one of them that wouldn’t tame when the time comes to handsel.”

He turned around and started walking toward the road that led to his house, a quarter of a mile away.

Walter looked down at the doorstep, where Daisy still sat sullen and motionless.

“You ought to be tickled to death to have the chance to marry Governor Gil,” he told her. “Who else is there in the county who’ll treat you nice and give you all you want? I’ll bet there’s many a girl who’d jump at the chance to marry him.”

“The damned old fool,” Daisy said.

“Well, you’d better,” he told her. “I’ll bet your mother will make you, if I can’t. She’s no fool, either. She knows how well off you’ll be, not having to go hungry for something to eat, and having enough clothes to cover your nakedness, neither one of which you’ve got now, or ever will have, if you don’t go on up there like you ought to.”

Walter sat down on the bottom step and waited for Daisy to say something. The sun had set, and it would be getting dark soon. If she did not go right away, Governor Gil might get mad and change his mind.

Presently he turned around and looked at her.

“What’s the matter with you, Daisy? You won’t even say anything. What’s got into you, anyway?”

“What does he want me to go up there tonight for?” she asked. “He said the license wouldn’t be here for two or three days.”

“That’s just Governor Gil’s way, Daisy. He makes up his mind to do something, and nothing stops him once it’s made up. He wants to marry you, and he wants to right now. There’s no sense in putting it off, anyway. The best thing for you to do is to start right in before he changes his mind. If you don’t, you’ll live to be sorry, because tomorrow you’ll have to go right back to the field again — tomorrow and every day as long as cotton grows.”

Daisy got up without saying anything and went into the house. She was in her room for ten or fifteen minutes, and when she came to the door it was dark outside. She could barely see her father sitting on the steps at her feet.

“Now, that’s what I call sense,” Walter said. “I thought you’d change your mind after you got to thinking about all these hot days in the sun out there in the cotton.”

She went down the steps past him and crossed the yard without a word. She started up the road in the direction of Governor Gil’s mansion.

After Daisy had gone, Walter began to wonder what his wife would say when she came home. He was certain she would be glad to hear that Governor Gil wanted to marry Daisy, but he was not so sure of what she would say when he told her that the marriage license would not come for another two or three days. He decided it would be best not to say anything about that part to her. Just as long as she knew Governor Gil had come to the house to ask Daisy to marry him, she would be satisfied.

It was pitch-dark when he got up and went into the kitchen, made a light, and looked around for something to eat. He found some bread left over from dinner, and he did not have to build a fire in the cook-stove after all. He sat down at the kitchen table and ate his fill of bread and sorghum.

After he had finished, he blew out the light and went to the front porch to sit and wait for his wife to come home.