Stories of Erskine Caldwell (70 page)

“You won’t do anything, so shut up. Hurry and take her clothes off.”

“Are we going to strip her naked?” I said.

“Sure,” Les said. “We’ve got to. We can’t mud-cake her if we don’t strip her, can we?”

“I know that,” I said, “but suppose Old Howes came down and saw us —”

“Old Howes wouldn’t do nothing but spit and slip up in it. Who’s scared of him, anyway? I’m not.”

After we had struggled with Jenny a while longer, and after her underclothes were finally off, Les said he was tired of holding her. He was puffing and blowing as if he had been running five miles without stopping to rest.

I took Jenny’s arms and put my hand over her mouth and sat on her neck. Les picked up a big handful of muck and threw it at her. The muck struck her on the stomach, making a sound like slapping water with a plank. He threw another handful. It splattered all over us.

While Les was running to the creek for another load, I turned Jenny over so he could smear some on her back. She did not struggle any more now, but I was afraid to release my grip on her arms or to take my hand off her mouth. When I had turned her over, she lay motionless on the ground, not even kicking her feet any more.

“This’ll fix her,” Les said, coming back with his hands and arms full of yellow muck. “She’s had it coming to her for a long time. Maybe it’ll stop her from being a tattletale tit.”

He dropped the mass on her back and ran back for some more.

“Rub that in while I’m getting another load, Jack,” he said. “That’s what she needs to make her stop throwing dead limbs into the creek. She won’t tell any more tales about us, either.”

I reached over and with one hand smeared the muck up and down Jenny’s back, on her legs, and over her arms and shoulders. I tried not to get any of it in her hair, because I knew how hard it was to try to wash it out with yellow creek water.

“Turn her over,” Les said, dropping down beside us with a new load of muck. “We’re just getting started on her.”

I turned Jenny over again, and she did not even try to get loose from me. Les had begun to spread the muck over her, rubbing it into her skin. He took a handful and smeared it over her legs and thighs and stomach. Then he took another handful and rubbed it over her shoulders and breasts. Jenny still did not attempt to move, though she squirmed a little when Les rubbed the most tender parts of her body with the mass of rotted leaves and mud. Most of the time she lay as still as if she had been sound asleep.

“That’s funny,” I said.

“What’s funny?” Les asked, looking up.

“She’s not even trying to get loose now.”

“That’s because she’s foxy,” Les said. “She’s just waiting for a good chance to break away. Here, let me hold her awhile.”

Les took my place and I picked up a handful of muck and began spreading it over her. The muck was not sticky any longer, and when I smeared it on her, it felt slick and smooth. When my hands moved over her, I could feel that her body was much softer than mine, and that parts of her were very soft. When I smeared the slick mud over her breasts, it felt so smooth and soft that I was afraid to touch her there again. I glanced at her face, and I saw her looking at me. From the way she looked at me, I could not help thinking that she was not angry with us for treating her like that. I even thought that perhaps if Les had not been there she would have let me mud-cake her as long as I wished to.

“What are you doing, Jack?” Les said. “That’s a funny way to spread muck on her.”

“We’ve got enough on her, Les. Let’s not put any more on her. Let’s let her go home now. She’s had enough.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Les said, scowling. “We’re not half finished with her yet. We’ve got to put another coat of muck on her.”

Jenny looked up when Les said that, and her eyes opened wider. She did not have to speak to tell me what she wished to say.

“That’s enough, Les,” I said. “She’s a girl. That’s enough for a girl.”

I don’t know, but somehow I believed that Les felt the same way I did, only he did not want to admit it. Now that we had stripped her and had smeared her all over with muck, neither of us could forget that Jenny was a girl. We had treated her as though she were a boy, but she remained a girl still.

“If we let you up now, will you promise not to tell?” Les asked her.

Jenny nodded her head, and Les dropped his hand from her mouth.

We both expected to hear her say what she was going to do, and what she was going to tell, because of the way we had treated her; but the moment she was freed she sat up quickly and tried to cover herself with her arms, without once speaking.

As soon as we saw that she was not going to call for Old Howes, Les and I ran to the creek and dived head-on into it. We squatted down until only our heads were showing above the water and began scrubbing the muck off us. Jenny looked at us, covering herself as much as she could.

She still had not said anything to us.

“Let’s get dressed and run for home,” Les said. “Pa would tear me up into little pieces if he caught me down here now, with her like that.”

Jenny covered her eyes while we dashed out of the water and grabbed our clothes. We ran behind the bushes to dress. While we were standing there, we could hear Jenny splashing in the creek, scrubbing the muck from her.

Les had only his shirt and pants to put on, and he was ready to go before I could even straighten out my union suit. He buckled his pants and started backing off with his shirt tail hanging out while he tried to find the right buttons for the buttonholes. I had been in such a hurry to jump in the creek when we first came that I had tangled my union suit, and when I would get the arms straight, the legs would be wrong side out. Les kept backing farther and farther away from me.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Why don’t you hurry?”

“I can’t get this union suit untangled.”

“That’s what you get for wearing underclothes in summer.”

“I can’t help it,” I said, “and you know it.”

“Well it’s not my fault, is it?”

“Aren’t you going to wait for me?”

“I can’t, Jack,” he said, backing away faster. He suddenly turned around and began running. “I’ve got to go home.”

“I thought you said you weren’t scared of Old Howes, or of anybody else!” I yelled after him, but if he heard me, he pretended not to understand what I had said.

After Les had gone, I took my time. There was no need to hurry, because I was certain that no matter what time I got home, Jenny would tell Old Howes what we had done to her, and he would come and tell my folks all about it. I wished to have plenty of time to think of what I was going to say when I had to face everybody and tell the truth.

Jenny had left the creek by the time I was ready to button my shirt, and she had only to slip her underclothes over her head and to put on her dress to be ready to go home. She came through the bushes while I was still fumbling with my shirt buttons.

“What’s the matter, Jack?” she asked, smiling just a little. “Why didn’t you run off with Leslie?”

“I couldn’t get dressed any quicker,” I said.

I was about to tell her how my union suit was so tangled that I had had to spend most of the time struggling with that, but I thought better of saying it.

She came several steps closer, and I started to run from her.

“Where are you going?” she said. “What are you running for?”

I stopped, turned around, and looked at Jenny. Now that she was dressed, she looked the same as she had always looked. She was the same in appearance, but somehow I knew that she was not the same, after what had happened beside the creek. I could not forget the sensation I had felt when my hands, slick with mud, had touched the softness of her body. As I looked at her, I believed I felt it again, because I knew that without the dress and the underclothes she would always remain the same as she was when I had first touched her.

“Why don’t you wait for me, Jack?” she said.

I wanted to run away from her, and I wanted to run to her. I stood still while she came closer.

“But you’re going to tell, aren’t you? Aren’t you going to tell what we did to you?”

She had come to where I stood, and I turned and walked beside her, several feet away. We went through the bushes and out through the woods to the road. There was no one in sight, and we walked together until we reached her house.

Just before we got to the gate I felt my hand touch hers. I don’t know, but somehow, whether it was true or not, I believed she had taken my hand and held it in hers for a moment. When I suddenly looked to see, because I wanted to know if she really had taken my hand and squeezed it, she turned the other way and went through the gate.

I waited in the middle of the road until she walked up the front steps and crossed the porch. She stopped there a moment and brushed her dress with her hands, as if she wanted to be sure that there was no muck clinging to it. When she opened the door and went inside, I was not certain whether she had glanced at me over her shoulder, or whether I merely imagined she had. Anyway, I believed she had, because I felt her looking at me, just as I was sure that she had held my hand for a moment.

“Jenny won’t tell,” I said, running up the road towards home. “Jenny won’t tell,” I kept saying over and over again all the way there.

(First published in
Story
)

N
OTHING MUCH EVER
happened in the upper part of Pine County until Lem Johnson went over into the next county and married a swell-looking girl named Ozzie Hall. About eight or ten years before there had been a shotgun wedding in the lower part of the county, it’s true; but Pine County was so large nobody in the upper part ever took much interest in what those countrymen down there were doing.

Lem Johnson was a farmer. He worked a two-horse crop with a Negro called Dan. Lem lived by himself in a four-room house. The Negro, Dan, lived across the road in a cabin with his wife and half a dozen pickaninnies. Dan, the Negro, worked for Lem on shares.

When Lem went over into the next county and married Ozzie Hall, it was the biggest event that had taken place in the Lucyville section of Pine County since anybody could remember. A man could live a lifetime and never see a thing like that happen again. She was a swell-looking girl, all right.

Before Lem went over and married Ozzie Hall he was the biggest sport in the whole county. He liked to go out with the girls and have a good time. He had always gone somewhere every Saturday night, again all day Sunday, and Sunday night. Sometimes he would drive up in front of a girl’s house and call for her. She would come out and stand by the buggy while Lem sat back with his feet on the dashboard and had a good time with her. Other times he would drive up and ask a girl to go riding with him. All the girls liked that, too.

And all this time Lem was anxious to get married.

When he went to town on Saturday afternoon, he always said something about getting married. The boys teased Lem a lot about wanting to marry a girl.

“I’m a-rearing to get married,” Lem told them.

“Want a woman all-time, eh, Lem?” they teased him.

“That’s right,” he said earnestly, “I don’t want to have to wait all week for Sunday.”

The boys sat in front of the store and wondered what girl Lem was going to marry.

“Say, Lem,” one of them yelled after him down the road as he was leaving, “you ain’t going buggy-riding every night when you get married, are you?”

Everybody whooped and shouted and Lem prodded the mule and drove away blushing.

All the girls in the Lucyville section knew Lem was thinking of getting married, too. But Lem did not ask any of them to marry him. They were not classy enough to suit him. He wanted a swell-looking girl. He had seen pictures of the kind of girl he wanted in the mail-order catalogues.

Lem heard that there was a girl just like he wanted over in the next county. One Saturday morning he hitched up the mule and drove away. It was late in the afternoon when he got there, but sure enough there she was, as classy as any girl he had ever seen in the mail-order catalogues.

Lem got her to marry him right away, and brought her home to Pine County Sunday night.

Ozzie had a lot of fine clothes and silk stockings and she certainly was good-looking. And she had a lot of things just like Lem had seen in the mail-order catalogues, besides some things he had never seen before.

Lem went right out the first thing and told everybody about Ozzie. He told everybody how good-looking she was and how much silk underwear she had.

Right there was where he made the biggest mistake of his life. All the boys began coming around at once to take a look at Ozzie, hoping to get a chance to see some of the things Lem talked about so much. They rode up three in a buggy, two on horseback, and a lot of them walked.

Lem took Ozzie out on the front porch to show her off. The boys had come a long way to see her.

“Well, Lem,” Tom said, “you sure got yourself a swell-looking girl, ain’t you?”

“Listen, Tom,” Lem whispered confidentially, “Ozzie here is the swellest-looking girl in the whole country. You ought to see all the pink little things she’s got.”

Ozzie sat down in a chair and looked at the boys. There were twenty or more sitting on the edge of the porch looking up at her. Some of them said a lot of awfully fresh things when Lem was not listening.

“What kind of pink little things?” Tom asked him.

“All sorts of things, Tom. There’s a lot I ain’t learned the names of yet.”

“I don’t believe it,” Tom stated.

“You don’t believe it?” Lem asked in surprise. “You don’t believe she’s got some of those things on now?”

“Naw, I don’t. The girls in this part of the county don’t wear things like that. City girls do. Country girls like the ones around here don’t. The girls in this part of the county wear underwear made out of ten-cents-a-yard cotton mill-ends.”

“Ozzie don’t!”

“I’ll bet she does, too. All country girls wear mill-end underclothes. They buy the cloth at ten cents a yard.”

“Ozzie don’t!”

“Sure she does. Ain’t she a country girl, too?”