Stories of Erskine Caldwell (79 page)

Instead of driving to the village in the buggy, he and my father went in our automobile. He left his horse and buggy hitched at our barn. They were gone about two hours.

When they came back, they shook hands with each other and Elisha Goodwin drove home at a fast clip. He must have forgotten about his horse throwing a shoe.

My mother came out with my sister and asked us what agreement had been made. My father told her all about it. She smiled a little but did not say anything just then. While I carried water to the stock and while my sister went down into the cellar to get some potatoes for supper, they walked across the pasture talking to themselves about something they did not want us to overhear. When they came back, we all went into the kitchen while supper was cooking.

“Well, we are moving back to Virginia next week,” my father told us, smiling at my mother. “As soon as we can pack everything we want to take with us we’re leaving.”

He called my sister to him and lifted her on his knee. He stroked her curls absent-mindedly several times.

“Louise,” he smiled at her, “tell me: are you a little Virginia girl, or are you a little New Englander?”

My sister answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“I’d rather be a little Virginia lady.”

“But your mother is a damyankee — don’t you want to be like her?”

He always smiled to himself when he called my mother a damyankee.

Before my sister could reply, my mother came over where we were and lifted her to the floor from my father’s lap.

“Louise, you and Tommy run out into the yard and play until supper is ready. Run along, now.”

We left the kitchen and went out on the porch. Hardly before we were down the front steps, we heard two people laughing as though they had just seen the funniest thing in the world. We tiptoed to the kitchen window and looked in to see what was so funny. Both my mother and father were standing in the middle of the kitchen floor holding on to each other and laughing so hard I thought they would burst open if they kept it up much longer.

My sister pulled me by the arm and pointed down the river. The sky down there was the blackest I have ever seen. The black clouds were coming closer and closer all the time, like somebody covering you with a big black blanket at night. Away down the valley we could see the tops of trees bending over so far that many of them broke off and fell to the ground.

“Look!” my sister said, clutching my arm. She was trembling all over. “Look!”

Holding each other tightly by the hand, we ran into the house as fast as we could.

(First published in
American Earth
)

S
OMEBODY FIRED A
pistol two or three times, and the reports shook dust loose from the canned goods on the grocery shelves and woke up some of the flies in the display windows.

There had not been so much excitement in town since the morning three years before when the bloodhounds tracked the post-office robbers he vestry of the Methodist church.

The sound of the pistol shots was still ringing in people’s ears when two or three dozen men and boys burst out of the stores and poolrooms and made a beeline for the center of the square, where they could see what was going on. When they got there, most of them were in such a hurry to see something happen that they began running round in circles trying to find it.

“I’d swear that was a .45 that went off,” somebody said. “But I don’t know a single soul in town who owns anything better than a .38.”

Just then a man ran out of the building between the bank and the barbershop, and some of the boys followed him through the square until he stopped, with his back against the brick wall, in front of the drugstore. The building he had run out of was a walk-up hotel with a lot of dead flies in the front windows.

Either somebody had telephoned him, or else he had heard the shooting all the way at home, because it was not more than three or four mines before Toy Shaw, the town marshal, came running down the street with his suspenders hanging loose.

“It’s still pretty early in the day for anybody to be practicing with a gun, or even playing with it,” somebody said. “I know I never got up after breakfast to do anything like that.”

By that time the housewives who had been downtown doing early shopping were slipping out the back doors of the grocery stores and trying to get home before any more shooting took place. A lot of them always wore boudoir caps when they came down to the stores around nine and ten o’clock to do the buying for the day, and it was a peculiar sight to see them tiptoeing through the back alleyways with a bag of groceries in one hand and their skirts held high with the other.

Toy Shaw ran up to the crowd in the square, pulling out his revolver and pinning his marshal’s badge on his shirt at the same time.

“What’s all this shooting about?” Toy said, puffing and blowing.

Somebody pointed at the man across the square against the drugstore brick wall. Nobody remembered ever seeing him before, but he looked a lot like most of the fruit-tree salesmen who came through the country about that time of the year.

“I don’t know who did the shooting,” the fellow said, “but that’s the one who did the running.”

“Has he got a gun on him?” Toy asked.

Nobody knew about that. They kept on shaking their heads.

“Well, then,” Toy said, putting his gun away and moving his badge to the other side of his shirt. “There’s nothing to be scared about.”

Just then, when the crowd started to follow Toy over to the drugstore, a woman ran down the stairs of the walk-up hotel and dashed into the street.

People everywhere scurried into the buildings. When the barbershop was full, they began crowding into the bank and poolroom.

The woman, who really did not look to be more than an eighteen-year-old girl, had a long-barrel, blue-steel revolver.

Somebody nudged Toy Shaw, and Toy stuck his head out the barbershop door and orderedher to disarm herself.

“Pitch that gun on the ground, lady,” he said, ducking back inside.

The girl leveled the pistol at the wall of the barbershop and fired it stiff-armed, The pistol recoiled so strongly that she almost toppled over backward. After a while she took her finger out of her ear and looked all around to see if she had hit anybody or anything.

“What’s the matter, Toy?” somebody asked him. “You ain’t scared to disarm a woman, are you?”

Toy pulled up his suspenders and looped them over his shoulders.

“That’s one of these gunwomen,” he said, keeping back out of sight.

“Shucks, Toy,” somebody said, “she’s just a girl. She couldn’t hit a barn door.”

Toy stuck his head through the door once more, and drew it back after he had taken a hasty look outside.

“It’s funny the way a woman thinks about a gun before she does anything else when she gets a little peeved about something or other,” he said. “It looks like men would’ve learned by this time that it don’t pay to leave firearms laying around where their womenfolks can lay hold of hem.”

The man across the square had not moved an inch the whole time. He was as motionless as a telephone pole against the drugstore wall.

“What kind of a marshal are you, anyway, Toy,” a fellow said, “if you’re scared to disarm a woman?”

“I don’t remember that being in the bargain,” Toy said. “When I look the oath, it only mentioned armed housebreakers and bankrobbers and other men. It didn’t say a single word about these gunwomen.”

The girl backed across the street, still searching the doorways and windows with her eyes for the man who had run out of the walk-up hotel. When she got to the center of the square, she turned around for he first time and saw the man backed up against the drugstore wall. He looked too scared even to turn and run out of sight.

“Now’s your chance, Toy,” somebody said, shoving him to the door. Go on out there and slip up behind on her, and she’ll never know what grabbed her.”

Toy tried to stay where he was for the present, but the crowd kept on shoving and pushing, and he found himself outside in the street. Somebody slammed the door shut, and unless he turned tail and ran, there was nothing he could do but go in the direction of the girl.

He tiptoed across the street behind her, trying not to make a sound. With every step he took, she took one in the same direction. For a while he did not gain a single inch on her. When she stopped a moment to pull up her stocking, Toy went a little faster.

Just when he was within twenty feet of her, one of the foxhounds lat had been asleep under the water-oak tree woke up, scared to death by all the silence around town, and howled.

The girl was as scared as the hound, or Toy, or anyone else. She turned around to see what had happened.

“Don’t shoot, lady,” Toy begged. “Don’t shoot, whatever you do!”

The girl stuck her finger into her ear and fired in Toy’s direction. The bullet zipped through the leaves and branches of the tree over his head.

“I never shot at a lady in all my life,” Toy said, his voice shaking and thin. “And, lady, I sure don’t want to have to do it now.”

He pointed at his marshal’s badge on his shirt without taking his eyes from her.

“Lady,” he said, “whatever you do do, don’t shoot that gun again. It’s against the ordinance to fire off a gun inside the town limits.”

The girl flared up.

“Shut your mouth!” she cried. “Don’t you try to tell me what to do!”

Toy glanced behind him to see if any of the crowd was close enough to have heard what she said to him.

“Lady,” he said, “I’m just telling you that you’re going to have that thing all shot out in another minute or two, and then what are you going to do?”

The girl turned her back on Toy and ran towards the man in front of the drugstore. Toy went after her, hoping to be able to stop a murder, if he could get there in plenty of time.

The man was too scared to move an inch, even to save his life. He looked as if he would have given anything he had to be able to run, but it was easy to see that he could not move his feet an inch in any direction.

The girl leveled the gun at the trembling man’s chest.

“Don’t shoot him!” Toy yelled at her. “Shoot up in the air!”

The girl pointed the gun into the sky and fired the remaining bullets. When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, she dropped the revolver at her feet.

Toy dashed up and grabbed her around the waist. It looked from the other side of the square as if she sort of swooned in Toy’s arms. He had to hold her up when she gave way all at once.

The man sank to the pavement, beads of perspiration jumping like popcorn on his forehead.

By that time the crowd began pouring out of the stores and running cross the square.

Toy dragged the girl to the wall beside the white-faced man, and set her down gently. She fainted away again with her head on the man’s shoulder.

Somebody ran up and slapped Toy on the back. He jumped to his feet.

“I guess we’ve got a pretty brave marshal, after all,” the fellow said. “There’s not many men who would walk right out in broad daylight and disarm a woman.”

“It wasn’t anything at all,” Toy said, standing back and letting the crowd have a chance to look at him. “It was just as simple as falling off a log.”

The girl began to regain consciousness. She opened her eyes and shrank in fright when she saw the crowd of strange men all around her. She clutched at the fellow beside her, throwing her arms around his neck and squeezing him tightly to her. The fellow swallowed hard.

“Are you hurt, honey?” she asked him, turning his face to hers with her hands.

The fellow swallowed hard again.

Toy pushed his way through the crowd. The men and boys fell back to let him pass through. When he got past them, he ran his thumbs under his suspender straps and threw them off his shoulders.

He knew what was coming, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. Somebody followed him a few steps to the corner.

“You’d better hurry home and rest up awhile now, Toy,” the man said. “I know you must be all wore out after taking a gun away from that thin little girl.”

The crowd broke out in laughter. The men were soon so noisy he could not hear anything more that was said to him. He hurried around the corner as fast as he could.

(First published in
Scribner’s
)

T
HERE WAS POOR
old Dose Muffin, stretched out on the corncrib floor, dead as a frostbitten watermelon vine in November, and a pesky housefly was walking all over his nose.

Let old Dose come alive for just one short minute, maybe two while about it, and you could bet your last sock-toe dollar that pesky fly wouldn’t live to do his ticklish fiddling and stropping on any human’s nose again.

“You, Woodrow, you!” Aunt Marty said. “Go look in that corncrib and take a look if any old flies worrying Dose.”

“Uncle Dose don’t care now,” Woodrow said. “Uncle Dose don’t care about nothing no more.”

“Dead or alive, Dose cares about flies,” Aunt Marty said.

There wasn’t enough room in the house to stretch him out in. The house was full of people, and the people wanted plenty of room to stand around in. There was that banjo-playing fool in there, Hap Conson, and Hap had to have plenty of space when he was around. There was that jigging high-yellow gal everybody called Goodie, and Goodie took all the room there was when she histed up her dress and started shaking things.

Poor old Dose, dead a day and a night, couldn’t say a word: That old fly was crawling all over Dose’s nose, stopping every now and then to strop its wings and fiddle its legs. It had been only a day and a night since Dose had chased a fly right through the buzz saw at the lumber mill. That buzz saw cut Dose just about half in two, and he died mad as heck about the fly getting away all well and alive. It wouldn’t make any difference to Dose, though, if he could wake up for a minute, maybe two while about it. If he could only do that, he would swat that pesky fly so hard there wouldn’t be a flyspeck left.

“You, Woodrow, you!” Aunt Marty said. “Go like I told you do and see if any old flies worrying Dose.”