Stories of Erskine Caldwell (84 page)

He smiled at her and turned his face as close to hers as he could. She bent over and placed her mouth against his while he kissed her. Her eyes closed slowly while he kissed her hungrily. She did not move for a long time.

“Did you ask Mr. Gene for the piece of fat-bacon?” he said after a while.

She nodded her head.

“Wouldn’t he let you have it?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“He said we’d have to wait until Saturday before he could let us have anything. He said we ought to make out with what he lets us have once a week.”

Roy could feel himself trying with all his mind to make his body move. He felt as though he had been strapped hand and foot with iron bands. Every time he strained to raise his hands he felt as though some force were beating him over the head and face with heavy chains.

“I don’t care if he did say that; that’s not fair at all,” he said as loud as he could. “You work for him by the day just like anybody else works, and he ought to give you enough to eat, besides the house rent.”

Nora fell across his chest, her arms squeezing him tightly. He could feel her breast jerk with sobs, but she did not make any sounds. He closed his eyes and tried to think of something he could do. It was driving him mad to have to lie there and see her suffer like that. Presently she stopped crying and sat up.

“I’ll go cook some corn bread and make the coffee,” she said. She stood up, but her hands were still on his face. “I’ll hurry and cook us something to eat, Roy.”

He let her go without saying anything more. He could hear her bare feet on the kitchen floor, and he could hear the frail house shake and tremble each time she took a step.

It was dark by then. The twilight had gone quickly, lasting, it seemed, only a few minutes.

Out on the steps he heard somebody knock.

“Who’s that?” he called through the door.

“Ernest.”

“Come in, Ernest,” he said.

Roy could not see the Negro in the dark, except for a moment when he passed through the door. When he got there, he sat down on the floor, his back against the wall.

“What have you been doing today, Ernest?” Roy asked him.

“Chopping cotton like everybody else,” Ernest said.

“Be finished soon?”

“Maybe Friday night, in that field, maybe Saturday noon.”

“That’s what Nora thought, too,” Roy said.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Presently Ernest shuffled his feet on the floor, but he did not get up.

“I heard Miss Nora ask the white-boss for a piece of fat-bacon tonight,” Ernest said, “I sure felt something or other, too.”

“Mr. Gene wouldn’t let us have a piece,” Roy said. “He told Nora we’d have to wait till Saturday.”

“I know it,” Ernest said. “I was standing right there and I heard it all. I never felt like doing something more in all my life, either. I sure had a feeling come over me.”

Nora could be heard opening the oven door and sliding the bread pan inside.

“I reckon you know all about the way the white-boss goes to church every Sunday morning down at that church on Swift Creek, don’t you?” Ernest said.

“I used to see him down there sometimes,” Roy said. “Before I got hurt.”

“They tell me he’s the biggest-talking man in the church now. They say he talks the loudest, prays the loudest, sings the loudest, and makes the most noise when he puts money in the collection box.”

“That’s the way I remember him,” Roy said. “He makes a big to-do about going to church. He always was a religious man. He told me once I was going to hell for sure because I didn’t go to church like him.”

Ernest shuffled his feet on the floor some more.

“He’s all that religious-acting, but he won’t give his tenants a little piece of fat-bacon until Saturday afternoon.”

Roy lay still for a while. He was hungry, hungry as could be. He could smell the coffee boiling, and he could hear Nora taking the pan of hot corn bread from the oven, but he was so hungry for a little piece of meat he felt as though he would be willing to cut a slice out of his numb legs if he dared. He had never thought of doing that before, and he wondered what would happen to him if he did. He did not believe he would feel any pain. He had not been able to feel anything at all in his arms and legs for eight months. The blood, if there was any, could be stopped by tying a piece of cloth tightly around it. He wondered what Nora would do — he would not be able to eat any himself if she refused to. But he would not have to tell her where it came from. She could think Ernest, or one of the other Negro tenants, gave it to him. His mind felt as if it was racing like a bird in flight. His own hunger pained him, but he knew that Nora’s, after she had been working day after day in the fields doing a man’s work, was even greater than his. If he could only feed her, he would be able to lie there day after day without straining to do something but feeling as helpless as a man bound hand and foot with iron bands.

In the midst of it, he heard Ernest saying something. He listened with one ear.

“You white-folks call him Mr. Gene,” Ernest said, “but do you know what I call that white-boss?”

“What?” Roy said.

“I call him Mr. Jesus. When he’s not around to hear me. That’s it. Mr. Jesus.”

Something struck Roy’s mind like a pinprick. He could see Mr. Gene — Mr. Jesus now — standing up in Swift Creek Church and shouting out a prayer. He could see him taking the preacher home to dinner and sitting down to a table piled high with chicken and pork and sweet potatoes and white bread. He could see his own self lying there in bed with a knife slicing off pieces of his leg. He could see —

Nora had come in and sat down on the bed beside him. He felt her hand on his forehead, cool and soft.

“Did you bring a knife to cut the corn bread with?” he asked her.

“No, Roy,” she said in surprise. “Do you want me to get a knife?”

He was thinking that he could keep the knife beside him in bed until the next day, when she would be away chopping cotton in the field.

“You never wanted a knife before, Roy. Do you want me to get one now?”

“The sharpest knife,” he said. “The sharpest knife to cut the corn bread with.”

The moment she took her hand from his forehead he could remember nothing. He closed his eyes and lay there waiting for her to come back. He did not know how he would ever again be able to let her leave him, even for so short a time as a second or two.

(First published in
Direction
)

E
VERYTHING THAT
L
UTHER
Branch touched was wont to crumble in his hands like so much desiccated clay. It had always been like that. He was barely able to keep himself alive, and his clothes were always in rags. But no man could truthfully say that Luther had not tried and was not still trying to make a decent living. He worked harder, day in and day out, than any other man in town.

Several years before, one of his efforts to get ahead had been selling fire insurance to storekeepers and house owners. He failed in that just as he did in everything else he tried to do. It looked as though it were impossible for him to make a dollar.

Once, while he was trying his best to sell insurance, somebody came right out and told Luther that he was not suited to that line of work.

“Luther,” the man said, “I can’t buy fire protection from you. You don’t look like an insurance man.”

There was nothing Luther could say, because he knew he did not look like the other men who sold insurance. And, for that matter, he knew he did not look like anyone else in town.

“That’s the whole trouble, Luther. You don’t look like an insurance man ought to look.”

“What do I look like, then?” Luther asked.

“I’ll be jumped if I know, Luther. If I could see you in the right job, I’d know for sure; but to save my life I can’t figure you out. I suppose you just look like yourself.”

Luther Branch did look like himself. Everybody had been saying that since he was a boy, and now that he was past forty, that was all there was to it.

He went into Ben Howard’s grocery store early one morning to have a word with Ben. He had been going in there for the past ten or fifteen years to see if Ben had anything to tell him. Ben told him that he ought to start out that same hour and try every kind of known way there was to make money, and to jump from one to the other just as fast as he discovered that he was not suited to a particular line of work.

“It’s the only way I know to tell you how to do,” Ben said. “I’ve known you all my life, and we live on the same street, and go to the same church every Sunday, and I want to do everything possible to help you. I’ve always tried to be your friend. That’s why I say the best thing to do is to try everything there is until you find the work you were cut out for. If I could think of a better scheme, I’d certainly tell you about it the minute I heard about it.”

“I guess I’ll try selling fruit from door to door,” Luther said. “It might just as well be that as anything else. It’s one line I haven’t tried yet. I’ll sell fruit.”

He went home and got out a pushcart from under the shed and bought it full of oranges and tangerines and grapefruit. He started out trying to sell fruit.

At the first house he stopped he hesitated for a moment at the door before ringing the bell. He had suddenly had a feeling that fruit-selling was not his life-work, either. He started to turn around and go back home without even making an effort to sell anything. He would take the fruit back to the store where he had got it on credit and turn it all back.

“Good morning, Mr. Branch,” somebody said.

He was half-way down the steps when he heard the woman speaking to him. He stopped and looked around at her standing in the doorway.

“What have you for sale today, Mr. Branch?” she asked pleasantly.

“Fruit, Mrs. Todd,” he answered.

“What kind of fruit? Citrus?”

Luther knew by the tone of Mrs. Todd’s voice that she was in the market for citrus fruit. He felt better then, because he was certain he would be able to make a sale. He ran out to the street and brought back several baskets and set them down in front of her on the porch. He stepped back, taking off his hat, and waited for her to select the fruit she wished to buy.

“The oranges are nice-looking,” Mrs. Todd said, rolling one in her hand. “And I’ve been looking for some large juicy grapefruit. How much are they, Mr. Branch?”

“The grapefruit are . . .”

She looked up at Luther then, waiting for him to quote prices to her. Their eyes met for a second, and Luther choked on something in his throat. He coughed and rubbed his neck, but he could not force a single word from his lips after that. Mrs. Todd had averted her eyes, but she looked up into his face again. He knew at that moment that it was hopeless. It had always been like that. It did not matter whether it was insurance, fruit, soap, china doorknobs, or second-hand automobiles that he was attempting to sell. When people stopped and looked at him, the deal was off. He had never yet looked like the thing he was trying to sell.

There was a long period of silence when nothing was said. Mrs. Todd stepped back towards the door, glancing at Luther. Luther picked up the baskets and backed down the steps in the direction of the pushcart in the street. By the time he had reached it, the woman had gone into the house and had closed the door behind her.

On the way home with the empty cart, after having returned the unsold fruit to the store, Luther felt as if there was not any use in his trying to make a living any longer. The best thing for him to do, he told himself, was to apply for admittance to the county poor farm. That was all that was left for him to do. He was ready to quit after almost a lifetime of trying to make a living.

The next day he stopped at Ben Howard’s store for a moment. Ben was busy at the time, but he motioned to Luther to wait until he was free. Luther waited until the customer had left the store, and Ben came up to him in front of the candy counter.

“How did you make out selling oranges and grapefruit yesterday, Luther?”

Luther shook his head, allowing it to fall forward until his eyes were staring at the oiled floor at Ben’s feet.

He was getting ready to tell Ben that he had decided to go to the county poor farm when Ben slapped him heavily on the shoulder, causing him to forget what he had in mind to say.

“Now, Luther, you might think it was none of my business again, but I’m your friend and I want to help. This is what I’ve got to say, Luther. I’ve thought of something else for you to try. Go get yourself a —”

Somebody burst through the door, throwing it wide open, and ran up to the counter where Ben and Luther were standing.

“What’s the trouble, Henry?” Ben asked as soon as he could see who it was. “You ran in here like something was after you behind. What’s the matter?”

“I’ve got to find somebody quick to butcher a hog for me, Ben. One of my five-hundred-pounders broke out of the barn and got run over in the street by a truck just a few minutes ago. I’ve got to find somebody to butcher it for me right away. The weather’s too hot for me to waste any time over it. Who can I get to help me?”

“Why don’t you get Jim Hall, down at the market, to do it for you, Henry?” Ben said. “That’s his trade.”

“I just now spoke to Jim, but he’s all alone in the market today, and he can’t close up. I’ve got to find somebody else. I’ve got to have a man in a hurry. He needn’t be a finished butcher, because I can help do some of the work myself. But I need somebody to pitch in right away!”

Luther started for the door, leaving them both silent while they searched their minds for a butcher. Just as he got to the door, Ben caught up with him.

“Looks like you ought to know somebody in town, Luther, who could help Henry with his hog.”

Henry came forward and stared Luther in the face. His mouth hung open for several moments while he stared. Ben, too, had begun to stare at Luther by that time. Luther looked from one to the other bewilderedly. He thought they were going to accuse him of having run down the fattening hog and killed it.