Stories of Erskine Caldwell (34 page)

“What was the trouble out at your place this morning, Jim?” somebody said.

Jim stuck his chin between the bars and looked at the faces in the crowd. He knew everyone there.

While he was trying to figure out how everybody in town had heard about his being there, somebody else spoke to him. “It must have been an accident, wasn’t it, Jim?”

A colored boy hauling a load of cotton to the gin drove up the street. When the wagon got in front of the jail, the boy whipped up the mules with the ends of the reins and made them trot.

“I hate to see the State have a grudge against you, Jim,” somebody said.

The sheriff came down the street swinging a tin dinner pail in his hand. He pushed through the crowd, unlocked the door, and set the pail inside. Several men came up behind the sheriff and looked over his shoulder into the jail.

“Here’s your breakfast my wife fixed up for you, Jim. You’d better eat a little, Jim boy.”

Jim looked at the pail, at the sheriff, at the open jail door, and he shook his head.

“I don’t feel hungry,” he said. “Daughter’s been hungry, though — awful hungry.”

The sheriff backed out the door, his hand going to the handle of his pistol. He backed out so quickly that he stepped on the toes of the men behind him.

“Now, don’t you get careless, Jim boy,” he said. “Just sit and calm yourself.”

He shut the door and locked it. After he had gone a few steps towards the street, he stopped and looked into the chamber of his pistol to make sure it had been loaded.

The crowd outside the window pressed in closer. Some of the men rapped on the bars until Jim came and looked out. When he saw them, he stuck his chin between the iron and gripped his hands around it.

“How come it to happen, Jim?” somebody asked. “It must have been an accident, wasn’t it?”

Jim’s long thin face looked as if it would come through the bars. The sheriff came up to the window to see if everything was all right.

“Now, just take it easy, Jim boy,” he said.

The man who had asked Jim to tell what had happened elbowed the sheriff out of the way. The other men crowded closer.

“How come, Jim?” the man said. “Was it an accident?”

“No,” Jim said, his fingers twisting about the bars. “I picked up my shotgun and done it.”

The sheriff pushed towards the window again. “Go on, Jim, and tell us what it’s all about.”

Jim’s face squeezed between the bars until it looked as though only his ears kept his head from coming through.

“Daughter said she was hungry, and I just couldn’t stand it no longer. I just couldn’t stand to hear her say it.”

“Don’t get all excited now, Jim boy,” the sheriff said, pushing forward one moment and being elbowed away the next.

“She waked up in the middle of the night again and said she was hungry. I just couldn’t stand to hear her say it.”

Somebody pushed all the way through the crowd until he got to the window.

“Why, Jim, you could have come and asked me for something for her to eat, and you know I’d have given you all I got in the world.”

The sheriff pushed forward once more.

“That wasn’t the right thing to do,” Jim said. “I’ve been working all year and I made enough for all of us to eat.”

He stopped and looked down into the faces on the other side of the bars.

“I made enough working on shares, but they came and took it all away from me. I couldn’t go around begging after I’d made enough to keep us. They just came and took it all off. Then Daughter woke up again this morning saying she was hungry, and I just couldn’t stand it no longer.”

“You’d better go and get on the bunk now, Jim boy,” the sheriff said.

“It don’t seem right that the little girl ought to be shot like that,” somebody said.

“Daughter said she was hungry,” Jim said. “She’d been saying that for all of the past month. Daughter’d wake up in the middle of the night and say it. I just couldn’t stand it no longer.”

“You ought to have sent her over to my house, Jim. Me and my wife could have fed her something, somehow. It don’t look right to kill a little girl like her.”

“I’d made enough for all of us,” Jim said. “I just couldn’t stand it no longer. Daughter’d been hungry all the past month.”

“Take it easy, Jim boy,” the sheriff said, trying to push forward.

The crowd swayed from side to side.

“And so you just picked up the gun this morning and shot her?” somebody asked.

“When she woke up this morning saying she was hungry, I just couldn’t stand it.”

The crowd pushed closer. Men were coming towards the jail from all directions, and those who were then arriving pushed forward to hear what Jim had to say.

“The State has got a grudge against you now, Jim,” somebody said, “but somehow it don’t seem right.”

“I can’t help it,” Jim said. “Daughter woke up again this morning that way.”

The jailyard, the street, and the vacant lot on the other side were filled with men and boys. All of them were pushing forward to hear Jim. Word had spread all over town by that time that Jim Carlisle had shot and killed his eight-year-old daughter, Clara.

“Who does Jim sharecrop for?” somebody asked.

“Colonel Henry Maxwell,” a man in the crowd said. “Colonel Henry has had Jim out there about nine or ten years.”

“Henry Maxwell didn’t have no business coming and taking all the shares. He’s got plenty of his own. It ain’t right for Henry Maxwell to come and take Jim’s, too.”

The sheriff was pushing forward once more.

“The State’s got a grudge against Jim now,” somebody said. “Somehow it don’t seem right, though.”

The sheriff pushed his shoulder into the crowd of men and worked his way in closer.

A man shoved the sheriff away.

“Why did Henry Maxwell come and take your share of the crop, Jim?”

“He said I owed it to him because one of his mules died about a month ago.”

The sheriff got in front of the barred window.

“You ought to go to the bunk now and rest some, Jim boy,” he said. “Take off your shoes and stretch out, Jim boy.”

He was elbowed out of the way.

“You didn’t kill the mule, did you, Jim?”

‘The mule dropped dead in the barn,” Jim said. “I wasn’t nowhere around. It just dropped dead.”

The crowd was pushing harder. The men in front were jammed against the jail, and the men behind were trying to get within earshot. Those in the middle were squeezed against each other so tightly they could not move in any direction. Everyone was talking louder.

Jim’s face pressed between the bars and his fingers gripped the iron until the knuckles were white.

The milling crowd was moving across the street to the vacant lot. Somebody was shouting. He climbed up on an automobile and began swearing at the top of his lungs.

A man in the middle of the crowd pushed his way out and went to his automobile. He got in and drove off alone.

Jim stood holding to the bars and looking through the window. The sheriff had his back to the crowd, and he was saying something to Jim. Jim did not hear what he said.

A man on his way to the gin with a load of cotton stopped to find out what the trouble was. He looked at the crowd in the vacant lot for a moment, and then he turned around and looked at Jim behind the bars. The shouting across the street was growing louder.

“What’s the trouble, Jim?”

Somebody on the other side of the street came to the wagon. He put his foot on a spoke in the wagon wheel and looked up at the man on the cotton while he talked.

“Daughter woke up this morning again saying she was hungry,” Jim said.

The sheriff was the only person who heard him.

The man on the load of cotton jumped to the ground, tied the reins to the wagon wheel, and pushed through the crowd to the car where all the shouting and swearing was being done. After listening for a while, he came back to the street, called a Negro who was standing with several other Negroes on the corner, and handed him the reins. The Negro drove off with the cotton towards the gin, and the man went back into the crowd.

Just then the man who had driven off alone in his car came back. He sat for a moment behind the steering wheel, and then he jumped to the ground. He opened the rear door and took out a crowbar that was as long as he was tall.

“Pry that jail door open and let Jim out,” somebody said. “It ain’t right for him to be in there.”

The crowd in the vacant lot was moving again. The man who had been standing on top of the automobile jumped to the ground, and the men moved towards the street in the direction of the jail.

The first man to reach it jerked the six-foot crowbar out of the soft earth where it had been jabbed.

The sheriff backed off.

“Now, take it easy, Jim boy,” he said.

He turned and started walking rapidly up the street towards his house.

(First published in
Anvil
)

F
OR A WEEK THE
wet midsummer mists had been creeping over Maine from the south, from the coast; sheets of low-hanging gray vapor spread over the country like dirty steam and leveled the foothills into smooth fields, while the mountains had been wrapped in wet gray clouds and put away from sight towards the north, towards Canada. Yesterday the mists had lifted over the house top, almost over the tops of the elm trees; but today, Sunday, the lower air was so wet that the meshes of the window screens were filled with panes of opaque water.

Katherine hurried across the wet grass from the garden and went into the house. She opened the kitchen door quietly and closed it slowly as she stood back against it.

The old woman struck at her with the heavy end of the crutch and cursed her.

The girl jumped away and ran to the other side of the kitchen.

The room was wet with the midsummer mists. There were little balls of water in the dusty spider web over the stove and a thin stream of water trickled at intervals down the table legs to the floor.

“Go pick me some berries,” the old woman cried at her.
“Go pick me some berries!”
she shouted. “Do you hear me? You damned little sneak! Bring me a pail of berries before I take this crutch and kill you!”

“All right,” Katherine whimpered. “I’m going.”

“Well, why don’t you run? I’ll break your head if you don’t get out of here after those berries!”

Katherine took the berry pail from the kitchen table and ran outside before the old woman could strike her again. The wet mists clung to her hair as she ran towards the pasture, and tears fell on her dampened cheeks. The berry field was on the other side of the stream, beyond the sheep pasture. Bordering the field was the State road, running north and south.

She gathered the wet berries as quickly as she could. She knew the old woman was even then waiting at the kitchen door to strike her with the crutch because she had not returned sooner. She tried as hard as she could, but she could not pick them any faster.

Several hundred yards away automobiles passed in both directions, going up into the Provinces, coming back into Maine. All around her was the forest, the deep dark forest where men worked in winter, in the white frozen snow, cutting pulpwood. The men who worked there were French from Canada and she could not understand what they said. Now there was nobody near. The closest settlement was forty miles to the south and the only people who came through the woods were tourists, passing but never stopping. She had never gone so far as the road, but when she picked berries she could hear the roar of the speeding automobiles and occasionally the laughter of men and women. The old woman would not let her go near the road.

While she was gathering the wet berries she thought she heard one of the automobiles stop. As she listened, there came shouts and laughter from the direction of the road, but she was too far away to hear what the people said. She bent over the berry bushes and tried to fill the pail as quickly as she could.

It was noon before the pail was full. She ran towards the house where the old woman sat waiting for the berries.

While she ran down the hillside toward the stream in the sheep pasture she heard again the shouts and laughter of several persons. When she reached the footbridge she could see them in dim outline through the mists. There were five or six men and girls farther down the stream toward the lower lake.

Katherine crossed the footbridge and went down the stream where the men and girls were. At first she thought they were fishing, but almost before she knew it, she was within a hundred yards of them; and then she saw that they were swimming and diving into the stream. The low-hanging cloud had cleared along the banks of the stream for a few moments and she saw them plainly only a short distance away.

She stared wild-eyed as she saw one of the men and a girl wade out of the water and stand on the bank a moment before diving in again.

She was so confused by what she saw that she could neither cry out nor run away. Her heart was beating madly and her body trembled with excitement.

While she stood in amazement before the scene, one of the girls climbed to the bank of the stream and ran out across the pasture. The girl turned and called to one of the men.

“You can’t catch me, Jimmy!”

Laughing, the naked girl ran off and disappeared in the heavy mists.

The other men and girls were laughing and splashing water in the stream.

Katherine stood beside the stream, above them. She had never seen anything such as this happen before in her life, and she could barely believe that men and girls could have such a good time together. It was too incredible to be true, but she could hear everything they said and see everything they did. And still the scene was unreal to her. She had never been with men and girls of her own age, and she was bewildered with the strangeness of their behavior.

Her heart was racing so excitedly that she could stand still no longer. She wanted to run as fast as she could and fall in the midst of those men and girls and laugh with them. Then suddenly she felt the weight of the berry pail in her hand, and she turned and ran as quickly as she could to the house where the old woman waited.