Stories of Erskine Caldwell (82 page)

When he got to the Barnards’, there was not a person to be seen anywhere. There was no sign of Hamrick’s polar bear, either.

He knocked on the door. Presently he heard Mrs. Barnard move some chairs around, and then she raised a window several inches.

“Where’s that bear, Mrs. Barnard?”

“The good Lord only knows!” she cried out. “Where are my girls?”

The two Barnard sisters, who were between eighteen and twenty, were living at home that year. They had taught school for a year or two, but the fall before they came back home and were trying to get jobs in town.

“Are Nellie and Gussie in the house, or out?”

“They were in here until that bear came,” Mrs. Barnard said. “They were in their room dressing to go to town, when the bear walked in the house. I guess they jumped through the window, they were that scared. Only the good Lord knows what’s become of them!”

Ed went out into the yard to look down the road to see if anybody was coming to help look for the bear. He had forgotten to tell Emma to phone for help, but he thought she would keep enough of her senses to know to do that. He could not see anybody, so he walked around the corner of the house, holding the shotgun ready in case he saw Hamrick’s polar bear.

The whole back yard was covered with white and red chicken feathers. It looked as if somebody had ripped open two or three feather beds and thrown the feathers into the yard. Hamrick’s bear had cleaned out the chicken yard. By the looks of the feathers blowing around the yard, he must have killed and eaten twenty or twenty-five hens and pullets.

Ed found what he believed were bear tracks leading across the cotton field toward a little grove of woods three or four hundred yards away. The ground was soft, and the bear was easy to track.

He had just got to a thicket at the edge of the grove when he heard a rustling of some kind. He threw his gun to his shoulder, ready to take aim the second the bear reared up and showed himself.

“Don’t shoot, Mr. Ed!” somebody yelled at him. “Please don’t shoot me!”

Ed dropped the gun a little.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s me, Mr. Ed! It’s Hunnicut Branch!”

“What’s the matter, Hunnicut?”

“I’m just near about scared to death, Mr. Ed!”

Ed dropped the gun butt on the ground and tried to see Hunnicut through the thicket. The Negro was crouching on his knees in the thicket, holding onto a sapling.

“What scared you?” Ed asked him.

“That great big white polar bear again, Mr. Ed! That polar bear scared me!”

“Where did you see him this time?”

“Right here! Right in here! Here in this thicket, Mr. Ed. I saw him loping across the field from Mr. Barnard’s house, and I ran and hid in this here thicket. First thing I know, he was in here too! He wrestled me!”

“Wrestled you!”

“He sure did! That was the wrestlingest bear I ever heard about. He didn’t appear to be hungry to eat me at all — just playful, like he had been used to it all his life. He came in here and put those long paws around me and made we wrestle. I didn’t want to wrestle a bit, but he made me wrestle!”

“You’re a liar, Hunnicut,” Ed said. “You’re a big black liar.”

“I swear I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Ed,” Hunnicut pleaded. “You know I wouldn’t want to lie to you. That bear made me wrestle with him until he got me down on my back, and then he stood up on his hind legs and held one of his paws up in the air just like the real wrestlers do in town when one of them wins.”

Ed pushed through the thicket until he found where the brush had been flattened down and broken off.

“You go get all the Howards, Hunnicut, and tell Miss Emma at the store to phone everybody she can think of to come help track down that bear.”

When Ed left the thicket, he followed a log road running down the side of the hill. At the edge of the clearing at the bottom was a field house. There was not a sound anywhere about the field house, but he thought he ought to look inside while he was there. He stuck his head inside, and fell back three or four steps before he could catch his balance.

“What’s — who’s—?” he stammered.

Presently the older Barnard girl peeped around the corner of the opening. She drew her head back out of sight.

“Is that you, Nellie?” he asked. “Who’s that with you?”

Gussie peeped around the corner.

“Did the bear chase you girls in there?”

“He certainly did,” Nellie said. “We’d still be running if he hadn’t turned around and gone back into the cornfield.”

“Well, come on out,” Ed told them. “You can go home now. There’s nothing to be scared of. I’m after the bear to shoot him.”

“We can’t,” Nellie said faintly.

“Why can’t you?”

“The bear came in the house while we were dressing, and we didn’t have time to get our clothes on.”

“Well,” he told them, “you’ll either just have to stay here till somebody brings you something to put on, or else go back without anything. I don’t have anything to spare, or I’d share with you.”

He turned and walked across the cornfield, looking in the soft earth for tracks of the bear. When he was a hundred feet away, he glanced back over his shoulder at the field house.

“That field house hasn’t got a sign of a door on it, Nellie,” he called. “And if that polar bear should take it into his head to come back this way, there wouldn’t be a thing to keep him from coming inside.”

He started out across the cornfield again. Suddenly he heard a commotion behind him. Turning, he saw Nellie and Gussie flying around the corner of the field house, running toward the woods. They did not have a stitch of clothes on, except their stockings. Before he could bat his eyes, they were out of sight in the woods.

Part way across the cornfield, he saw the top of a persimmon tree shaking violently. He crept forward, gun raised, watching the tree. When he was fifteen feet away, he saw Hamrick’s polar bear near the top with his forelegs around the tree, shaking it with all his might. The bear acted as if he had climbed up and eaten a green persimmon, and had got so mad he was trying to shake all the green ones down.

Ed leveled his gun, but just then the bear saw him and slid down to the ground a few feet from Ed. Ed found the bead just in time to pull the trigger before the bear could plunge for him.

Nothing happened. Ed pulled the other trigger, and still nothing happened. The bear was on him by then, knocking the gun out of his hands, and locking his forelegs around him. Ed fell to the ground, kicking, yelling, and scratching. The bear was making awful-looking faces, as if he were trying to get the taste of green persimmons out of his mouth.

Just when Ed thought his time had come, he happened to think of Hunnicut. Ed squirmed around on his back, stretching out his arms on the ground. As soon as he did that, the bear rose up on his hind legs and held his right paw high in the air over his head.

The Howards, Walter Hamrick, and a lot of others were running across the cornfield toward him. Ed got to his feet, waving his arms and yelling for them not to shoot. Taking off his belt, Ed looped it around the bear’s neck and led him toward the men.

“All he wanted was somebody to wrestle with him,” Ed said, pushing their guns aside. “He’s a trained, wrestling bear. He won’t hurt anybody. If he’s fed, and wrestled with once in a while, he’ll be as gentle as you please. I reckon he must have been starved for something to eat, and a little wrestling.”

The crowd stared after Ed, not knowing what to say. Ed led the way toward the road with his belt looped around the bear’s neck. Hamrick’s polar bear trotted along beside him, as meek as a kitten.

(First published in
Redbook
)

T
HERE MUST BE A
way to get it over with. If somebody would only say something about it, instead of looking at me all the time as they do, when I am in the room, there wouldn’t be any more days like this one. But no one ever says a word about it. They sit and look at me all the time — like that — but not even Papa says anything.

Why don’t they go ahead and say it — why don’t they do something — They know it; everyone knows it now. Everybody looks at me like that, but nobody ever says a word about it.

Papa knows perfectly well that I never went to business college with the money he sent me. Why doesn’t he say so — He put me on the train and said, Be a good little girl, Agnes. Just before the train left he gave me fifty dollars, and promised to send me the same amount monthly through October. When I reached Birmingham, I went to a beauty-culture school and learned how to be a manicurist with the money he sent me. Everybody at home thought I was studying shorthand at the business college. They thought I was a stenographer in Birmingham, but I was a manicurist in a three-chair barbershop. It was not long until in some way everybody at home found out what I was doing. Why didn’t they tell me then that they knew what I was doing — Why didn’t they say something about it —

Ask me, Papa, why I became a manicurist instead of learning to be a stenographer. After you ask me that, I’ll tell you why I’m not even a manicurist in a three-chair barbershop any longer. But say something about it. Say you know it; say you know what I do; say anything. Please, for God’s sake, don’t sit there all day long and look at me like that without saying something about it. Tell me that you have always known it; tell me anything, Papa.

How can you know what I am by sitting there and looking at me — How do you know I’m not a stenographer— How am I different from everybody else in town —

How did you know I went to Nashville — ask me why I went there, then. Say it; please, Papa, say it. Say anything, but don’t sit there and look at me like that. I can’t stand it another minute. Ask me, and I’ll tell you the truth about everything.

I found a job in a barbershop in Nashville. It was even a cheaper place than the one in Birmingham, where the men came in and put their hands down the neck of my dress and squeezed me; it was the cheapest place I had ever heard about. After that I went to Memphis, and worked in a barbershop there awhile. I was never a stenographer. I can’t read a single line of shorthand. But I know all about manicuring, if I haven’t forgotten it by this time.

After that I went to New Orleans. I wished to work in a fine place like the St. Charles. But they looked at me just like you are doing, and said they didn’t need anyone else in the barbershop. They looked at me, just like Mamma is looking at me now, but they didn’t say anything about it. Nobody ever says anything about it, but everybody looks at me like that.

I had to take a job in a cheap barbershop in New Orleans. It was a cheaper place than the one in Memphis, or the one in Nashville. It was near Canal Street, and the men who came in did the same things the men in Birmingham and Nashville and Memphis had done. The men came in and put their hands down in the neck of my dress and squeezed me, and then they sat down and talked to me about things I had never heard of until I went to Birmingham to be a stenographer. The barbers talked to me, too, but nobody ever said anything about it. They knew it; but no one ever said it. I was soon making more money on the outside after hours than I was at the table. That’s why I left and went to live in a cheap hotel. The room clerk looked at me like that, too, but he didn’t say anything about it. Nobody ever does. Everyone looks at me like that, but there is never a word said about it.

The whole family knows everything I have done since I left home nearly five years ago to attend business college in Birmingham. They sit and look at me, talking about everything else they can think of, but they never ask me what I’m doing for a living. They never ask me what company I work for in Birmingham, and they never ask me how I like stenography. They never mention it. Why don’t you ask me about my boss — But you know I don’t work for a company. You know everything about me, so why don’t you say something to me about it —

If somebody would only say it, I could leave now and never have to come back again once a year at Christmas. I’ve been back once a year for four years now. You’ve known all about it for four years, so why don’t you say something — Say it, and it then will be all over with.

Please ask me how I like my job in Birmingham, Mamma. Mamma, say, Are your hours too long, Agnes — have you a comfortable apartment — is your salary enough for you — Mamma, say something to me. Ask me something; I’ll not tell you a lie. I wish you would ask me something so I could tell you the truth. I’ve got to tell somebody, anybody. Don’t sit there and look at me once a year at Christmas like that. Everyone knows I live in a cheap hotel in New Orleans, and that I’m not a stenographer. I’m not even a manicurist any longer. Ask me what I do for a living, Mamma. Don’t sit there and look at me once a year at Christmas like that and not say it.

Why is everyone afraid to say it — I’ll not be angry; I’ll not even cry. I’ll be so glad to get it over with that I’ll laugh. Please don’t be afraid to say it; please stop looking at me like that once a year at Christmas and go ahead and say it.

Elsie sits all day looking at me without ever asking me if she may come to visit me in Birmingham. Why don’t you ask me, Elsie — I’ll tell you why you can’t. Go ahead and ask if you may visit me in Birmingham. I’ll tell you why. Because if you went back with me you’d go to New Orleans and the men would come in and put their hands down the collar of your frock. That’s why you can’t go back to Birmingham with me. But you do believe I live in Birmingham, don’t you, Elsie — Ask me about the city, then. Ask me what street I live on. Ask me if my window in Birmingham faces the east or west, north or south. Say something, Elsie; isn’t anyone ever going to ask me anything, or say something —

I’m not afraid; I’m a grown woman now. Talk to me as you would to anyone else my age. Just say one little something, and I’ll have the chance to tell you. After that I’ll leave and never come back again once a year at Christmas.

An hour ago Lewis came home and sat down in the parlor, but he didn’t ask me a single question about myself. He didn’t say anything. How does he know — Lewis, can you tell just by looking at me, too — Is that how everyone knows — Please tell me what it is about me that everyone knows. And if everyone knows, why doesn’t someone say something about it — If you would only say it, Lewis, it would be all over with. I’d never have to come home again once a year at Christmas and be made to sit here and have everyone look at me like that but never saying anything about it.