Stories of Erskine Caldwell (77 page)

Two miles out of town, Stumpy shouted at me. The muffler was disconnected and the cut-down was making so much noise that I could not understand a word he said. I slowed down.

“Turn off the road toward Dean’s Pond,” Stumpy said.

I turned into the lane, and we bumped over the rough road for half a mile. There was not a light to be seen anywhere. When we reached the pond, I shut off the motor and switched off the lights.

“Why don’t you stay away from here?” I heard Verne ask Weathers.

“Who’s going to make me?” Weathers said.

“I’ll make you — won’t I, Stumpy?”

“Shut up, Verne,” Stumpy said. “You’ll make him mad in a minute. Shut up.”

“Well, he came up to the house to see my sister, didn’t he?”

“You ought not to have a sister, and he wouldn’t have bothered her. Look at me. I haven’t got a sister. That’s why he never steps on my toes.”

While they were talking and arguing, I sat down on the running board, and looked out across the pond. I could hear water spilling over a dam, but I could not see a thing. Every minute I stayed there, I became more certain that something was about to happen. I knew it was.

Stumpy and Verne were the ones who wanted to beat up Weathers. I never had wanted to, but they had argued me into helping them, and I had said I would. They did not like Weathers because he had been coming to town since early in the spring and getting dates with every girl he saw. He would drive into town early in the afternoon and hang around the Square, waiting for a chance to make a date for the night. When a girl walked past him, he would turn and look at her. If he liked the way she looked, he would whistle and catch up with her. Most of the girls had given him dates; a few of them had allowed him to see them several times.

Weathers had been beaten up, kicked out of houses, and shot at more times than anyone could remember, but nothing like that had ever stopped him from coming back to town the next time he wanted a date. Whenever he came to town, he boasted that there was not a girl in the whole county worth looking at, if she hadn’t had a date with him. That was what had made Stumpy and Verne so angry. He had a date with Dolly Bennett, and tied her to the sofa in the parlor. Dolly’s father shot at him as he was jumping through the window, but he missed hitting Weathers. After that, Stumpy and Verne said they were going to beat him up. Before they did anything about it, though, Weathers went to see Verne’s sister. As soon as Stumpy found out about it, he said he had seen enough of Weathers loafing in the Square, wearing his orange-striped shirt and smoking a long brown cigar, while he waited for a girl to come along and take up with her. They had made up their minds after that to catch Weathers and beat him up.

Stumpy and Verne were still arguing, with Weathers butting in whenever he had a chance. I got up and walked around to the other side of the cut-down where I couldn’t hear the water.

“Papa said he’d shoot the balls off you, if you ever come back to our house again,” Verne told Weathers.

“Hell, I’m not scared of your old man, or anybody’s old man,” Weathers said. “Bring him out here, if you want to see me hammer him down to size.”

“Shut up, Verne,” Stumpy said, “or else come up here and hold him a while. I’m tired doing all the holding while you sapsuckers do nothing but talk.”

“Hell, you’d be mad, too, if he came to see your sister and threw her own on the floor.”

“I haven’t got a sister,” Stumpy said, “so cut out all the talk and come up here and do your share of holding him for a while.”

“He went into the parlor with her and locked the door and threw the key out the window. Then he took out his knife and split her drawers off. When Papa broke in, he had her naked down on the floor. He didn’t even get up and run, and Papa had to beat him off of her with a chair.”

“I wish you sapsuckers would cut out the arguing,” Stumpy said. “I’m going to turn him loose in a minute, if you don’t. I don’t care what he did to your sister. Shut up.”

“What did you bring him out here for, then?”

“I brought him out here to beat up,” Stumpy said, “but if you don’t shut up, I’m going to turn him loose and let him beat you up. I’m tired of listening to you.”

“Papa had to take her to a doctor the next morning,” Verne said. “The doctor said Papa chased Weathers off just in time.”

“Shut up, you sapsucker,” Stumpy said.

Verne called me.

“Reach in Stumpy’s pocket and hand me that gun, Herb,” he said, “There’s no sense in holding Weathers like this when all we have to do is to point Stumpy’s gun at him and make him stand still.”

I went around to the side where Stumpy was and put my hand on the rusty barrel. It was like picking up a handful of sand; the rust scaled off and I had trouble in holding the barrel.

“No, you don’t!” Stumpy said, hitting me with his knee. “I’m the only one who handles that gun. Get away.”

“Get it, Herb,” Verne said. “Go ahead and get it. Don’t pay any attention to Stumpy.”

“I wish you sapsuckers would hurry and get tired of playing,” Weathers said. “I’ve got a date for eight o’clock.”

“Verne wants the gun, Stumpy,” I said, reaching for it again.

“Grab it, Herb,” Verne said. “Don’t be scared of Stumpy. He can’t turn Weathers loose.”

I reached around Stumpy’s back and caught the barrel again and held on to it with all my might. Stumpy tried to push me away, and he tried to kick me with his knee, but I held the barrel, and slowly I could feel it coming out of his pocket. Just when I thought I had it, Stumpy released Weathers and turned around to take the gun away from me. Verne made a dive for it, too. All three of us twisted and pulled, and fell in a heap on top of Weathers. He yelled when we fell on him.

I never knew how it happened, but the first thing I knew there was an explosion like a stick of dynamite under a tin can. There was a blinding flash of white light, a choking cloud of black smoke, and a moment later somebody was yelling as if he was being killed.

All of us were too stunned to move after the shot was fired, and we lay there on top of Weathers, trying to think what had happened. I could not feel the gun in my hand, but I was certain I had my fingers gripped around it the moment when the shot was fired.

“Get up, Herb,” Stumpy said. “You’re sitting on my foot.”

I crawled away from them, and Verne came behind me. Stumpy got up holding his hand. It was red with blood.

“What happened?” I said.

Verne turned around and looked at Weathers. He jumped to his feet a second later, clutching at Stumpy.

“Look at him!” Verne shouted. “Stumpy, look at him!”

We ran over to where Weathers lay. There was a stream of blood coming from his chest, seeping through the orange-striped shirt that Stumpy hated so much.

Verne got down beside him.

“I didn’t do it, Weathers,” he said. “Honest to God, Weathers, I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me, Weathers. I swear it wasn’t me, Weathers.”

“Shut up, Verne,” Stumpy said. “Somebody did it.”

“I didn’t do it — I swear I didn’t do it, Weathers!” Verne said.

“Shut up, Verne,” Stumpy said.

I crawled over on my hands and knees to where Weathers lay. I could see his eyes open for a moment, and then slowly close.

Stumpy walked around to the other side of him and sat down on the ground. I could still hear water somewhere, but I could not see it.

“What happened?” Weathers asked, his eyes still closed.

Nobody answered.

Verne began looking in the grass for the revolver. It was getting dark, but the white and orange and scarlet red of Weathers’s shirt could be seen at any distance.

“It shot me,” Weathers said.

Stumpy sat up on his knees, looking down into Weathers’s face. Stumpy still did not say anything.

Verne found the revolver. He picked it up, holding it at arm’s length, and walked toward the pond. He was gone for nearly five minutes. When he came back, the revolver was not in his hands. We sat and stared at each other.

Finally, Stumpy got to his feet. Weathers’s eyes had opened again, but they had remained open this time.

Verne waited beside Weathers until Stumpy and I had walked to the other side of the cut-down. A little later he came over to where we were. Without any of us speaking of it, we started walking back to town.

Stumpy started out walking fast.

“We didn’t have any business bothering Weathers,” Verne said. “He wouldn’t be dead if we hadn’t brought him out here to beat up. It’s our fault. We should have let him alone. He wasn’t hurting anybody.”

“Shut up,” Stumpy said, walking ahead.

“I never heard of him really hurting a girl, anyway. He didn’t mean to do any harm to any of them, not even Dolly Bennett or my sister.”

“Shut up,” Stumpy said, walking faster.

“He would be alive now, if we had minded our own business, instead of trying to butt into his. God knows what will happen to us now. Maybe all of us will be electrocuted. That’s what they’ll do to us for killing him.”

I ran and caught up with Stumpy and tried to keep up with him. He was walking faster and faster.

The perspiration began to run down my face, wetting the collar of my shirt. The heat was singing.

“Weathers wasn’t doing anybody any harm,” Verne said. “And maybe the girls didn’t mind it much, because they always gave him dates when he asked for them. Maybe they even liked him, and wanted him to come around. He had a date with some girl for tonight, too. We ought to have let him alone, because they all acted like they were tickled to have him date them. I never heard any of them say she didn’t want Weathers to come to see her. Even my sister never said that, not even after he got her naked in the parlor that time.”

“Shut up, Verne,” Stumpy said, walking faster. “God damn it, shut up!”

(First published in
Contempo
)

W
HEN
C
HURCH CAME
up the street after dinner, he had one of his father’s oat sacks that was large enough to hold a barrelful of walnuts. I had got a forty-eight-pound flour sack, and was waiting for him at the corner.

“We’ll break our backs carrying these big sacks full of walnuts,” I said when Church stopped and showed me his. “Why didn’t you get a smaller one?”

“Why didn’t you?” Church said.

“It’s the only one I could find. We don’t have to get them full, anyway. I’d be satisfied with mine half full this time,”

“Same here,” he said. “Come on. We won’t have time to find even a pocketful if we don’t hurry. I’ll bet somebody’s out there in the woods beating us to them right this minute.”

We went up to the end of the street and crossed the cotton field behind P. G. Howard’s barn bordering the road. The field was about half mile wide, and beyond the field were the woods where we hunted walnuts every fall. There were lots of walnut trees there, but the woods were so large that sometimes it took a long time to find any.

“I hope we get some whoppers this time, Ray,” Church said, running down the cotton rows and jumping over the dried-up stalks. “I’d like to take home enough to fill a wash tub, after they’re hulled and dried out.”

The year before we brought home three or four loads of them, and after they had been hulled and spread out in the sun to ripen, we put away enough to last us almost all winter.

“How about last year?” I said. “If we get that many again, we ought to sell some and make a little money.”

“There’s no fun in that,” Church said, picking up a rock and throwing it ahead of us as far as he could. “I’d rather eat them, any day.”

We crossed one of the lateral drain ditches that ran from the lower end of town to the creek. The ditch was dry at that time of year, because it carried water off only during the winter rains. Down on the sandy bottom of the ditch were a lot of rabbit tracks. From the way if looked, rabbits must have learned to use the ditches when they were going somewhere so they could keep out of sight of the dogs that were always prowling around the cotton and oat fields looking for them.

Church stood on the side of the ditch and kicked some dirt down to the bottom.

“I’ll bet rabbits have a hard time getting out of there when they fall in,” he said. “I’d hate to be a rabbit.”

“They have a better time than we do,” I said. “And, anyway, they have steps and paths they can use when they want to get out.”

Church kicked some more dirt down into the ditch. Like all the drain ditches that had been dug near town, it was about six feet deep and two or three feet wide at the bottom. It was not hard to jump across any of them, but dogs and rabbits fell in sometimes when they were not watching what they were doing.

Church walked backward and got a running start and jumped across, and I followed him. The woods were not far away then, and we did not stop again until we had got there. The oak trees were so tall that they hid all the other trees from sight, and it was hard work looking for walnut trees. After we had gone almost to the other side of the woods, we found a walnut tree, a big one, too; but somebody had beat us to it, and there was not a single one left on the tree or ground. Whoever it was had taken the crop, and they had even hulled some of them there instead of taking them home first.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Church said, throwing down his sack and looking at the hulls on the ground. “But I’d like to know who’s been getting walnuts in these woods, just the same.”

“They couldn’t have found them all,” I said. “I’ll bet there are a hundred more trees all around us.”

I started off, and Church picked up his sack and came behind. It was easy to see that he was angry because we had not come sooner. When we got to the other side of the woods, we had not found a single walnut.

“What do you know about that, Ray?” he said, kicking his father’s oat sack around on the ground.

“Let’s try the grove on the other side of that field,” I told him. “There are bound to be walnuts somewhere.”

Church picked up his sack and came along, dragging it on the ground behind him.

We had gone halfway across the field towards the second grove when we came to another drain ditch. We were about to jump over it then I happened to see somebody lying on the sandy bottom a dozen yards away. I caught Church by the sleeve before he could jump, and pulled him back.