Stories of Erskine Caldwell (24 page)

Dessie nodded.

“You can’t fool me when I hear such singing as I heard a minute ago, Justine,” she said. “I think it would be a good thing if you and Carl Friend went ahead right away and bought that chamber suite you were speaking to me about this morning.”

She handed Justine the roll of bills and walked around the table to the chair where Waldo sat. Justine looked at the greenbacks in her hand, gripping them tightly before she could bring herself to believe they were real.

“Thank you, Mrs. Murdock!” she said, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. “How did you know?”

“Never mind, Justine,” Dessie said quickly.

Justine began backing toward the kitchen doorway.

“That money never was intended for us in the first place,” Waldo said. “We couldn’t have managed it, even if we had had a smart lawyer to help.” Dessie dropped on her knees beside Waldo, throwing her arms around him again. They both turned and looked toward the door where Blanchard was standing. Without a word he turned, opened the door quickly, and stepped out into the night.

(First published in
Story
)

G
EORGE
H
OPKINS, WHO
was about ninety years old, died just in time to have his grave decorated on Memorial Day. Grace and Jessie, his two daughters, buried him on the hilltop behind the house and had an iron fence put around the plot. Grace Hopkins, who was several years the older, said she wanted the fence painted red. Jessie, the younger one, said it was going to be left just as it was. They argued about the fence for two days, and then Grace lost her temper and called Jessie ugly names and had the iron fence painted red anyway. Jessie took her half of the furniture from the house and moved to another part of town, Grace stayed where she was and had another coat of red paint put on the fence around George Hopkins’s grave.

Nobody in the town paid much attention to what the Hopkins girls were doing, because the whole Hopkins family had been raising the devil for the past twenty years or more.

George Hopkins had been a selectman ever since anybody could remember and he had always scrapped with someone over something.

First it was over the question whether the town should buy a snowplow and keep the main roads open in winter. He had said “No!” the first time, and had kept on saying that at every town meeting.

“Let the snow be!” he shouted. “God melts it every spring and don’t make no charge for it!”

Another time he was scrapping with one of the boys from the village who wanted to come and sit up evenings with one of his daughters.

“You get the hell away from here, Tom Peck’s son,” he told the boy, “and don’t you come back unless you’ve got a marriage license in your pocket.”

George Hopkins had been a mean old scoundrel.

Friday before Memorial Day, Jessie brought her lawn mower and hand scythe and went up the hill to where they had buried her father. She cut the grass with the mower and trimmed the edges of the plot where the grass grew against the fence. When she finished, she stuck a flag in the center of the mound and tied a wreath around the headstone.

Grace heard about Jessie going to the grave, so she got her lawnmower and grass clippers and went up the hill. The plot was in fine shape, but Grace went to work and mowed the grass over again and clipped around the edges where it grew between the iron palings of the fence. She jerked the wreath from the headstone and put one of her own making in its place. She pulled up Jessie’s flag and stuck a larger one near the headstone and a smaller one near the footstone.

By nightfall Jessie had heard about Grace’s going to the grave. She went over at once to John the Indian’s. John lived by himself and wove baskets for sale.

She told John she wanted him to do some work for her and he agreed to help her by the hour. After supper that night he went over to Jessie’s.

She brought John into the house and told him exactly what she wanted him to do. Then they went across the pasture to the hill where George Hopkins was buried. They carried a pick and shovel with them and began to open up the grave as soon as they got there. John worked for nearly two hours before he reached the coffin. George Hopkins had been buried deep so the frost would not reach him that winter.

It was hard work getting at the casket. There was no light to work by and John could not see very well after he had dug three or four feet into the ground. When he did get to the coffin, he said he would have to open it up where it was and lift George Hopkins out. It was the only thing to do. He could not get the casket out of the hole by himself.

John was a strong Indian and he got the body on top of the ground. Then he hoisted it on his shoulder and carried it to Jessie’s house. Jessie came behind, bringing the pick and shovel.

Jessie told John to lay the body down by the icehouse while she looked for a place to dig the new grave. She wanted the grave near the house so she could keep watch over it from her window. She stumbled around in the dark several minutes before deciding where the new grave should be.

“Dig it here,” Jessie said, standing over the place she had decided upon. “Come here, John, and dig it here.”

John spat on his hands and measured off the grave with the pick handle.

“George Hopkins a lot of damn trouble,” he grunted, digging away in the dark.

John dug away in the dark. He worked for nearly an hour and then struck a ledge of rock. It was as deep as he could go without blasting. Jessie found another place for the grave and John started all over again. He dug to about the same depth in the ground and struck the same ledge. Jessie made him begin a third time, and he hit the ledge of rock again. By this time it was getting late. John was tired and Jessie said her feet were wet. She said she was afraid of catching cold and pneumonia. John said he was going home.

“What you do with that?” he asked, pointing toward the icehouse. George Hopkins sat propped up against it.

Jessie said she did not know what to do with it. She asked John what could she do with it.

“I take him home with me tonight and bring him back tomorrow night,” he suggested.

“All right, John,” Jessie said, much relieved. “You take it home with you and bring it back tomorrow evening after supper.”

Jessie went into the house and went to bed.

John lifted the body on his shoulder and started home at a trot. The body was not too heavy for him, but it slipped around on his shoulder. It was difficult for him to keep it there. Whenever he grasped it tighter it slid away under the suit of clothes as if the skin were loose.

John got it home though. He laid it on the floor beside his bed and went to sleep.

The next morning, when he got up, he carried it to the kitchen while he cooked his breakfast.

“Want some fried potatoes for eating, George Hopkins?” John asked the body he had propped up against the wood box.

“Huh, huh,” John chuckled, “George Hopkins, you don’t eat much these days.”

He went about getting his breakfast.

“Maybe you want to smoke your pipe, George Hopkins,” John said. “Huh, huh, George Hopkins, I got fine tobacco.”

Grace went to the hilltop that forenoon to see if Jessie had been back with another wreath of her own. Grace was determined to take them away as fast as Jessie brought them.

When she reached the top of the hill and saw the pile of fresh earth in side the fenced plot, she turned around and ran straight across the town to the village as fast as she could. She went straight for a warrant.

Grace got the warrant and the man to serve it on Jessie. They went in a hurry to Jessie’s house. All the doors and windows were locked tightly and they could not get in. Jessie heard them banging on the door, but she would not come out. Grace and the man found the graves Jessie and John the Indian had started, but they could not find George Hopkins in any of them.

Grace came back again the next day and looked for the body but she could not find it anywhere on the place. Jessie still would not come out of the house.

John was becoming tired of waiting for Jessie to come out of the house so they could bury George Hopkins. He did not know what to do about it. He waited another two days for her to come out and by that time he was sorry he had taken the job to dig a new grave for George Hopkins. John’s house was beginning to have a bad odor.

Early the next morning he went to Jessie’s house and tried to make her open the door and tell him what to do. She did not make a sound. He knew she was inside because once he saw her looking at him from behind a curtain at the window.

John trotted back to his house and carried the body down to the lake and propped it up in a canoe. Then he towed it to the middle of the lake with his other canoe. He had some live bait with him and a fishing-pole.

When he reached the center of the lake he threw the baited fishing-line overboard, tied the pole securely to the canoe George Hopkins was in, and shoved away from it.

John paddled to the shore, leaving George Hopkins sitting up in the canoe salmon-fishing. He looked back just as he reached the shore and saw the canoe shoot down the lake fast as a speedboat. A big bull-headed salmon had hooked the line. The salmon was taking George Hopkins down the lake so fast the wind blew his hat overboard.

John the Indian waited on the shore chuckling to himself until they were out of sight. Then he went home to get himself some breakfast.

(First published in
Pagany
)

N
ELL STOOD AT THE
kitchen window packing the basket of eggs. She arranged eleven white eggs carefully, placing the cottonseed hulls between them and under them so that none would be broken. The last one to be put into the basket was large and brown and a little soiled. She dipped it into the pan of soap and warm water and wiped it dry with a fresh dish towel. Even then she was not pleased with the way it looked, because it was brown; all the other eggs in the basket were as white as September cotton bolls.

Behind her in the room, Myrtie was scouring the two frying pans with soapy water and a cloth dipped in sand. Nell laid down the brown egg and called Myrtie.

“Here’s another of those big brown eggs, Myrtie,” she said, pointing at the egg. “Do you have any idea where they come from? Have you seen any strange hens in the yard? There must be a visiting hen laying eggs in the chicken house.”

Myrtie laid down the frying pan and came over to the little table by the window. She picked up the large brown egg and looked at it. The egg no longer looked brown. Nell looked at the egg again, wondering why in Myrtie’s hands it had apparently changed color.

“Where do these brown eggs come from, Myrtie?” she asked. “There was one last week, and now today there’s this. It was in the basket Mr. Willis brought in from the chicken house, but he said he forgot to notice which nest he took it from.”

Myrtie turned the egg over in her hands, feeling the weight of it and measuring its enormous circumference with her fingers.

“Don’t ask me, Miss Nell,” Myrtie said, staring at the egg. “I’ve never seen a flock of Leghorns yet, though, that didn’t lay a few brown eggs, sometime or other. Looks like it just can’t be helped.”

“What do you mean, Myrtie? What on earth are you talking about? Of course Leghorns lay white eggs; this is a brown egg.”

“I’m not saying the Leghorns lay them, Miss Nell, and I’m not saying they don’t. Those old Buff Orpingtons and Plymouth Rocks and Domineckers lay funny-looking eggs, too, sometimes. I wouldn’t take on so much about finding one measly brown egg, though. I’ve never seen anybody yet, white or colored, who knew how such things happen. But I wouldn’t worry about it, Miss Nell. Brown eggs are just as good as white eggs, to my way of tasting.”

Nell turned her back on Myrtie and looked out the window until the girl had returned to the other side of the kitchen. Nell disliked to talk to Myrtie, because Myrtie pretended never to know the truth about anything. Even if she did know, she would invariably evade a straightforward answer. Myrtie would begin talking, and talk about everything under the sun from morning to night, but she would never answer a question that she could evade. Nell always forgave her, though; she knew Myrtie was not consciously evading the truth.

While the girl was scouring the pans, Nell picked up the egg again and looked at it closely. Mrs. Farrington had a flock of Dominique chickens, and she gathered in her chicken house eggs of all sizes, shapes, and colors. But that was to be expected, Mrs. Farrington had said, because she had two old roosters that were of no known name or breed. Nell had told Mrs. Farrington that some of her Dominiques were mixed-bred, and consequently they produced eggs of varying sizes, shapes, and colors; but Mrs. Farrington continued to lay all the blame on her two roosters, because, she said, they were a mixture of all breeds.

Once more Nell dipped the brown egg into the pan of water and wiped it with the fresh dish towel, but the egg remained as brown as it was at first. The egg was clean by then, but soap and water would not alter its size or change its color. It was a brown egg, and it would remain brown. Nell gave up, finally; she realized that she could never change it in any way. If she had had another egg to put into the basket in its place, she would have laid it aside and substituted a white one; but she only had a dozen, counting the brown one, and she wished to have enough to make an even exchange with Mrs. Farrington when she went over after some green garden peas.

Before she finally placed the egg in the basket with the others she glanced out the window to see where Willis was. He was sitting in the crib door shelling red seed corn into an old wooden lard pail.

“I’m going over to Mrs. Farrington’s now to exchange these eggs for some peas,” she told Myrtie. “Keep the fire going good, and put on a pan of water to boil. I’ll be back in a little while.”

She turned around and looked at Myrtie.

“Suppose you mash the potatoes today, for a change, Myrtie. Mr. Willis likes them that way.”

“Are you going to take that big egg, Miss Nell?” Myrtie asked, looking down at it in the basket with the eleven white Leghorns.