Stories of Erskine Caldwell (88 page)

He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. He wiped off the red-and-yellow oilcloth with his coat sleeve and reached to the cookstove for a skillet full of pout-mouthed perch. While he was getting the fish with one hand, he reached the other one over and picked up the coffeepot and poured himself a cupful. When that was done, he reached into the oven and got himself a handful of hot biscuits. All the time he was doing that, Singing Sal just stood and looked like she had just woke up out of a long sleep.

“You sure is a fine cook, honey,” Big Buck said. “My, oh, my! I’d go courting every night if I could find good eating like these pout-mouthed perches and them hot biscuits.”

After Big Buck had taken a bite of fish in one gulp and a whole biscuit in another, Singing Sal shook herself and reached down on the floor for the shotgun she dropped when she shot it off the first time. She brought it up and leveled it off at Big Buck and squeezed one eye shut. Big Buck cut his eyes around at her and took another big bite of perch.

“Honey, shut that door and keep the chilly night air out,” he told her, pouring another cup of coffee. “I don’t like to feel a draft down the back of my neck when I’m setting and eating.”

Singing Sal raised one ear to hear what he was saying, and then she sighted some more down the barrel of the shotgun, but by then it was waving like she couldn’t draw a bead any more. She was shaking so she couldn’t hold it at all, and so she stood it on its end. After she had rested a minute, she clicked the hammer until it was uncocked, and put the shotgun back under the bed.

“Where’d you come from, anyhow?” she asked Big Buck.

“Honey, I done told you I come from back in the swamp where I cut them cypress trees all week long,” he said. “If I had known how fine it is here, I wouldn’t have waited for Saturday to come. I’d have gone and been here a long time back before this, honey.”

He took another helping of fish and poured himself some more hot black coffee. All the biscuits were gone, the whole bread pan full. He felt on the oilcloth and tried to find some crumbs with his fingers.

Singing Sal walked behind his chair and looked him over good from head to toe. He didn’t pay no attention to her at all. He didn’t even say another word until he finished eating all the fried fish he wanted.

Then he pushed the table away from him, wiped his mouth, and swung a long arm around behind him. His arm caught Singing Sal around the middle and brought her up beside him. He spread open his legs and stood her between them. Then he took another good look at her from top to bottom.

“You look as good as them pout-mouthed perch and hot biscuits I done ate, honey,” he said to her. “My, oh, my!”

He reached up and set her down on his lap. Then he reached out and kissed her hard on the mouth.

Singing Sal swung her nearest arm, and her hand landed square on Big Buck’s face. He laughed right back at her. She swung her other arm, but her fist just bounced off his face like it had been a rubber ball.

He reached out to grab her to him, and she let go with both fists, both knees, and the iron lid cover from the top of the skillet. Big Buck went down on the floor when the iron lid hit him, and Singing Sal landed on top of him swinging both the iron lid and the iron water kettle with all her might. The kettle broke, and pieces of it flew all over the room. Big Buck pushed along the floor, and she hit him with the skillet, the coffeepot, and the top of the table. That looked like it was enough to do him in, but he still had courting on his mind. He reached out to grab her to him, and she hit him over the head with the oven door.

Singing Sal had been stirring around as busy as a cat with fur on fire, and she was out of breath. She sort of wobbled backward and rested against the foot of the bed, all undone.

She was panting and blowing, and she didn’t know what to pick up next to hit him with. It looked to her like it didn’t do no good to hit him at all, because things bounced off him like they would have against a brick wall. She hadn’t ever seen a man like him before in all her life. She didn’t know before that there was a man made like him at all.

“Honey,” Big Buck said, “you sure is full of fire. You is my kind of gal to court. My, oh, my!”

He reached up and grabbed her. She didn’t move much, and he tugged again. She acted like she was a post in a posthole, she was that solid when he tried to budge her. He grabbed her again, and she went down on top of him like a sack of corn. She rolled off on the floor, and her arms and legs thrashed around like she was trying to beat off bees and hornets. Big Buck got a grip on her and she rolled over on her back and lay there quiet, acting like she hadn’t ever tussled with him at all. Her eyes looked up into his, and if she had been a kitten she would have purred.

“How did you like my fried fish and hot biscuits, Big Buck?” she asked, lazy and slow. “How was they, Big Buck?”

“The cooking’s mighty good,” he said. “I ain’t never had nothing as good as that was before.”

The wind blew the door almost shut. There was only a little narrow crack left. Jimson and Moses stood up and looked at the yellow lamplight shining through the crack. After that they went to the gap in the fence and made their way to the big road. Every once in a while they could hear Singing Sal laugh out loud. They sat down in the ditch and waited. There wasn’t anything else they could do.

They had to wait a long time before Big Buck came out of the house. The moon had come up and moved halfway across the sky, and the dew had settled so heavy on them that they shivered as bad as if they had fallen in the creek.

They jumped up when Big Buck came stumbling over the woodpile and through the gap in the fence.

From the door of the house a long shaft of yellow lamplight shone across the yard. Singing Sal was crouched behind the door with only her head sticking out.

“What you boys hanging around here for?” Big Buck said. “Come on and get going.”

They started down the hill, Big Buck striking out in front and Jimson and Moses running along beside him to keep up with him.

They were halfway down the hill, and Big Buck hadn’t said a word since they left the front of the house. Jimson and Moses ran along, trying to keep up with him, so they would hear anything he said about courting Singing Sal. Any man who had gone and courted Singing Sal right in her own house ought to be full of things to say.

They hung on, hoping he would say something any minute. It wasn’t so bad trying to keep up with him going downhill.

When they got to the bottom of the hill where the road crossed the creek, Big Buck stopped and turned around. He looked back up at the top of the hill where Singing Sal lived, and drew in a long deep breath. Jimson and Moses crowded around him to hear if he said anything.

“Them was the finest pout-mouthed perches I ever ate in all my life,” Big Buck said slowly. “My, oh, my! Them fried fish, and all them hot biscuits was the best eating I ever done. My, oh, my! That colored gal sure can cook!”

Big Buck hitched up his pants and started across the bridge. It was a long way back to the swamp, and the sun was getting ready to come up.

“My, oh, my!” he said, swinging into his stride.

Jimson and Moses ran along beside him, doing their best to keep up.

(First published in
College Humor
)

A
SHIVER WENT
through Lonnie. He drew his hand away from his sharp chin, remembering what Clem had said. It made him feel now as if he were committing a crime by standing in Arch Gunnard’s presence and allowing his face to be seen.

He and Clem had been walking up the road together that afternoon on their way to the filling station when he told Clem how much he needed rations. Clem stopped a moment to kick a rock out of the road, and said that if you worked for Arch Gunnard long enough, your face would be sharp enough to split the boards for your own coffin.

As Lonnie turned away to sit down on an empty box beside the gasoline pump, he could not help wishing that he could be as unafraid of Arch Gunnard as Clem was. Even if Clem was a Negro, he never hesitated to ask for rations when he needed something to eat; and when he and his family did not get enough, Clem came right out and told Arch so. Arch stood for that, but he swore that he was going to run Clem out of the country the first chance he got.

Lonnie knew without turning around that Clem was standing at the corner of the filling station with two or three other Negroes and looking at him, but for some reason he was unable to meet Clem’s eyes.

Arch Gunnard was sitting in the sun, honing his jackknife blade on his boot top. He glanced once or twice at Lonnie’s hound, Nancy, who was lying in the middle of the road waiting for Lonnie to go home.

“That your dog, Lonnie?”

Jumping with fear, Lonnie’s hand went to his chin to hide the lean face that would accuse Arch of short-rationing.

Arch snapped his fingers and the hound stood up, wagging her tail. She waited to be called.

“Mr. Arch, I —”

Arch called the dog. She began crawling towards them on her belly, wagging her tail a little faster each time Arch’s fingers snapped. When she was several feet away, she turned over on her back and lay on the ground with her four paws in the air.

Dudley Smith and Jim Weaver, who were lounging around the filling station, laughed. They had been leaning against the side of the building, but they straightened up to see what Arch was up to.

Arch spat some more tobacco juice on his boot top and whetted the jackknife blade some more.

“What kind of a hound dog is that, anyway, Lonnie?” Arch said. “Looks like to me it might be a ketch hound.”

Lonnie could feel Clem Henry’s eyes boring into the back of his head. He wondered what Clem would do if it had been his dog Arch Gunnard was snapping his fingers at and calling like that.

“His tail’s way too long for a coon hound or a bird dog, ain’t it, Arch?” somebody behind Lonnie said, laughing out loud,

Everybody laughed then, including Arch. They looked at Lonnie, waiting to hear what he was going to say to Arch.

“Is he a ketch hound, Lonnie?” Arch said, snapping his finger again.

“Mr. Arch, I —”

“Don’t be ashamed of him, Lonnie, if he don’t show signs of turning out to be a bird dog or a foxhound. Everybody needs a hound around the house that can go out and catch pigs and rabbits when you are in a hurry for them. A ketch hound is a mighty respectable animal. I’ve known the time when I was mighty proud to own one.”

Everybody laughed.

Arch Gunnard was getting ready to grab Nancy by the tail. Lonnie sat up, twisting his neck until he, caught a glimpse of Clem Henry at the other corner of the filling station. Clem was staring at him with unmistakable meaning, with the same look in his eyes he had had that afternoon when he said that nobody who worked for Arch Gunnard ought to stand for short-rationing. Lonnie lowered his eyes. He could not figure out how a Negro could be braver than he was. There were a lot of times like that when he would have given anything he had to be able to jump into Clem’s shoes and change places with him.

“The trouble with this hound of yours, Lonnie, is that he’s too heavy on his feet. Don’t you reckon it would be a pretty slick little trick to lighten the load some, being as how he’s a ketch hound to begin with?”

Lonnie remembered then what Clem Henry had said he would do if Arch Gunnard ever tried to cut off his dog’s tail. Lonnie knew, and Clem knew, and everybody else knew, that that would give Arch the chance he was waiting for. All Arch asked, he had said, was for Clem Henry to overstep his place just one little half inch, or to talk back to him with just one little short word, and he would do the rest. Everybody knew what Arch meant by that, especially if Clem did not turn and run. And Clem had not been known to run from anybody, after fifteen years in the country.

Arch reached down and grabbed Nancy’s tail while Lonnie was wondering about Clem. Nancy acted as if she thought Arch were playing some kind of a game with her. She turned her head around until she could reach Arch’s hand to lick it. He cracked her on the bridge of the nose with the end of the jackknife.

“He’s a mighty playful dog, Lonnie,” Arch said, catching up a shorter grip on the tail, “but his wagpole is way too long for a dog his size, especially when he wants to be a ketch hound.”

Lonnie swallowed hard.

“Mr. Arch, she’s a mighty fine rabbit tracker. I —”

“Shucks, Lonnie,” Arch said, whetting the knife blade on the dog’s tail, “I ain’t ever seen a hound in all my life that needed a tail that long to hunt rabbits with. It’s way too long for just a common, ordinary, everyday ketch hound.”

Lonnie looked up hopefully at Dudley Smith and the others. None of them offered any help. It was useless for him to try to stop Arch, because Arch Gunnard would let nothing stand in his way when once he had set his head on what he wished to do. Lonnie knew that if he should let himself show any anger or resentment, Arch would drive him off the farm before sundown that night. Clem Henry was the only person there who would help him, but Clem . . .

The white men and the Negroes at both corners of the filling station waited to see what Lonnie was going to do about it. All of them hoped he would put up a fight for his hound. If anyone ever had the nerve to stop Arch Gunnard from cutting off a dog’s tail, it might put an end to it. It was plain, though, that Lonnie, who was one of Arch’s share croppers, was afraid to speak up. Clem Henry might; Clem was the only one who might try to stop Arch, even if it meant trouble. And all of them knew that Arch would insist on running Clem out of the country, or filling him full of lead.

“I reckon it’s all right with you, ain’t it, Lonnie?” Arch said. “I don’t seem to hear no objections.”

Clem Henry stepped forward several paces, and stopped.

Arch laughed, watching Lonnie’s face, and jerked Nancy to her feet. The hound cried out in pain and surprise, but Arch made her be quiet by kicking her in the belly.

Lonnie winced. He could hardly bear to see anybody kick his dog like that.