Stories of Erskine Caldwell

by Erskine Caldwell

  “That doesn’t make any difference,” Jim said.

  “Why doesn’t it?”

  “It just doesn’t, that’s why.”

  “But he calls himself a preacher, just the same.”

  “He doesn’t have to be a preacher now if he doesn’t want to be one. If he told them he was a preacher, they’d all jump up and run and hide from him.”

  Uncle Marvin was still standing against the tree looking at the dark girl, and Graham was a little to one side of him, looking as if he didn’t know what to do next.

  Presently Uncle Marvin jerked himself erect and turned his head in all directions listening for sounds. He looked towards us, but he could not see us. Jim got down on his hands and knees to be out of sight, and I got behind him.

  The three others were laughing and talking, but not Uncle Marvin. He looked at them a while longer, and then he reached down to the top case against the cypress and lifted out another bottle. Graham reached to open it for him, but Uncle Marvin bit his teeth over the cap and popped it off. The beer began to foam right away, but before much of it could run out, Uncle Marvin had turned it up and was drinking it down.

  When the bottle was empty, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took three or four steps towards the dark girl in the hammock. Jean kicked her feet into the air and pulled the sides of the hammock around her. The other girl sat up to watch Uncle Marvin.

  All at once he stopped and looked towards our camp on the other side of the island. There was not a sound anywhere, except the sucking sound in the slough that went on all the time, and the sharp slap of water against the sides of the houseboat. He listened for another moment, cocking his head like a dog getting ready to jump a rabbit, and broke into a run, headed for our camp. Jim and I just barely got there before Uncle Marvin. We were both puffing and blowing after running so fast, but Uncle Marvin was blowing even harder and he did not notice how short our breath was. He stopped and looked down at the dead fire for a while before he spoke to us.

  “Get ready to go home, son, you and Jim,” he said. “We’ve got to leave right now.”

  He started throwing our stuff into a pile and stamping out the ashes at the same time. He turned around and spat some tobacco juice on the live coals and grabbed up an armful of stuff. He did not wait for us to help him, but started for our skiff on the mud flat right away with a big load of stuff in both arms. Jim and I had to hurry to catch up with him so he would not forget and leave us behind.

  He took the oars from us and shoved off without waiting for us to do it for him. When we were out of the mouth of the creek, he took his hat off and threw it on the bottom of the skiff and bent over the oars harder than ever. Jim and I could not do a thing to help, because there were only two oars and he would not turn either one of them loose.

  Nobody said a thing while we were rowing around the slough. When we got within a hundred feet of shore, Uncle Marvin started throwing our stuff into a heap in the stern. We had no more than dragged bottom on shore when he picked up the whole lot and threw the stuff on the dried mud. The pans and buckets rolled in every direction.

  Both of us were scared to say a word to Uncle Marvin because he had never acted like that before. We stood still and watched him while he shoved off into the river and turned the skiff around and headed around the slough. We were scared to death for a while, because we had never seen anybody cut across so close to the slough. He knew where he was all the time, but he did not seem to care how many chances he took of being sucked down into the slough. The last we saw of him was when he went out of sight around Maud Island.

  We picked up our things and started running with them towards home. All the way there we were in too much of a hurry to say anything to each other. It was about a mile and a half home, and upgrade every step of the way, but we ran the whole distance, carrying our heavy stuff on our backs.

  When we reached the front gate, Aunt Sophie ran out on the porch to meet us. She had seen us running up the road from the river, and she was surprised to see us back home so soon. When we left with Uncle Marvin early that morning, we thought we were going to stay a week on Maud Island. Aunt Sophie looked down the road to see if she could see anything of Uncle Marvin.

  Jim dropped his load of stuff and sank down on the porch steps panting and blowing.

  “Where’s your Uncle Marvin, Milton?” Aunt Sophie asked us, standing above me and looking down at us with her hands on her hips. “Where’s Marvin Hutchins?”

  I shook my head the first thing, because I did not know what to say,

  “Where’s your Uncle Marvin, James?” she asked Jim.

  Jim looked at me, and then down again at the steps. He tried to keep Aunt Sophie’s eyes from looking straight into his.

  Aunt Sophie came between us and shook Jim by the shoulder. She shook him until his hair tumbled over his face, and his teeth rattled until they sounded as if they were loose in his mouth.

  “Where is your Uncle Marvin, Milton?” she demanded, coming to me and shaking me worse than she had Jim. “Answer me this minute, Milton!”

  When I saw how close she was to me, I jumped up and ran out into the yard out of her reach. I knew how hard she could shake when she wanted to. It was lots worse than getting a whipping with a peach-tree switch.

  “Has that good-for-nothing scamp gone and taken up with a shantyboat wench again?” she said, running back and forth between Jim and me.

  I had never heard Aunt Sophie talk like that before, and I was so scared I could not make myself say a word. I had never heard her call Uncle Marvin anything like that before, either. As a rule she never paid much attention to him, except when she wanted him to chop some stovewood, or something like that.

  Jim sat up and looked at Aunt Sophie. I could see that he was getting ready to say something about the way she talked about Uncle Marvin. Jim was always taking up for him whenever Aunt Sophie started in on him.

  Jim opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came out.

  “One of you is going to answer me!” Aunt Sophie said. “I’ll give you one more chance to talk, Milton.”

  “He didn’t say where he was going or what he was going to do, Aunt Sophie. Honest, he didn’t!”

  “Milton Hutchins!” she said, stamping her foot.

  “Honest, Aunt Sophie!” I said. “Maybe he went off somewhere to preach.”

  “Preach, my foot!” she cried, jamming her hands on her hips. “Preach! If that good-for-nothing scalawag preached half as many sermons as he makes out like he does, he’d have the whole country saved for God long before now! Preach! Huh! Preach, my foot! That’s his excuse for going off from home whenever he gets the notion to cut-up-jack, but he never fools me. And I can make a mighty good guess where he is this very minute, too. He’s gone chasing off after some shantyboat wench! Preach, my foot!”

  Jim looked at me, and I looked at Jim. To save our life we could not see how Aunt Sophie had found out about the two girls from Evansville on Maud Island.

  Aunt Sophie jammed her hands on her hips a little harder and motioned to us with her head. We followed her into the house.

  “We’re going to have a house cleaning around this place,” she said. “James, you bring the brooms. Milton, you go start a fire under the washpot in the back yard and heat it full of water. When you get it going good, come in here and sweep down the cobwebs off the ceilings.”

  Aunt Sophie went from room to room, slamming doors behind her. She began ripping curtains down from the windows and pulling the rugs from the floor. A little later we could hear the swish of her broom, and presently a dense cloud of dust began blowing through the windows.

  (First published in the Brooklyn Eagle)

  Warm River

  THE DRIVER STOPPED at the suspended footbridge and pointed out to me the house across the river. I paid him the quarter fare for the ride from the station two miles away and stepped from the car. After he had gone I was alone with the chill night and the star-pointed ligh
ts twinkling in the valley and the broad green river flowing warm below me. All around me the mountains rose like black clouds in the night, and only by looking straight heavenward could I see anything of the dim afterglow of sunset.

  The creaking footbridge swayed with the rhythm of my stride and the momentum of its swing soon overcame my pace. Only by walking faster and faster could I cling to the pendulum as it swung in its wide arc over the river. When at last I could see the other side, where the mountain came down abruptly and slid under the warm water, I gripped my handbag tighter and ran with all my might.

  Even then, even after my feet had crunched upon the gravel path, I was afraid. I knew that by day I might walk the bridge without fear; but at night, in a strange country, with dark mountains towering all around me and a broad green river flowing beneath me, I could not keep my hands from trembling and my heart from pounding against my chest.

  I found the house easily, and laughed at myself for having run from the river. The house was the first one to come upon after leaving the footbridge, and even if I should have missed it, Gretchen would have called me. She was there on the steps of the porch waiting for me. When I heard her familiar voice calling my name, I was ashamed of myself for having been frightened by the mountains and the broad river flowing below.

  She ran down the gravel path to meet me.

  “Did the footbridge frighten you, Richard?” she asked excitedly, holding my arm with both of her hands and guiding me up the path to the house.

  “I think it did, Gretchen,” I said; “but I hope I outran it.”

  “Everyone tries to do that at first, but after going over it once, it’s like walking a tightrope. I used to walk tightropes when I was small — didn’t you do that, too, Richard? We had a rope stretched across the floor of our barn to practice on.”

  “I did, too, but it’s been so long ago I’ve forgotten how to do it now.”

  We reached the steps and went up to the porch. Gretchen took me to the door. Someone inside the house was bringing a lamp into the hall, and with the coming of the light I saw Gretchen’s two sisters standing just inside the open door.

  “This is my little sister, Anne,” Gretchen said. “And this is Mary.”

  I spoke to them in the semidarkness, and we went on into the hall. Gretchen’s father was standing beside a table holding the lamp a little to one side so that he could see my face. I had not met him before.

  “This is my father,” Gretchen said. “He was afraid you wouldn’t be able to find our house in the dark.”

  “I wanted to bring a light down to the bridge and meet you, but Gretchen said you would get here without any trouble. Did you get lost? I could have brought a lantern down with no trouble at all.”

  I shook hands with him and told him how easily I had found the place.

  “The hack driver pointed out to me the house from the other side of the river, and I never once took my eyes from the light. If I had lost sight of the light, I’d probably be stumbling around somewhere now in the dark down there getting ready to fall into the water.”

  He laughed at me for being afraid of the river.

  “You wouldn’t have minded it. The river is warm. Even in winter, when there is ice and snow underfoot, the river is as warm as a comfortable room. All of us here love the water down there.”

  “No, Richard, you wouldn’t have fallen in,” Gretchen said, laying her hand in mine. “I saw you the moment you got out of the hack, and if you had gone a step in the wrong direction, I was ready to run to you.”

  I wished to thank Gretchen for saying that, but already she was going to the stairs to the floor above, and calling me. I went with her, lifting my handbag in front of me. There was a shaded lamp, lighted but turned low, on the table at the end of the upper hall, and she picked it up and went ahead into one of the front rooms.

  We stood for a moment looking at each other, and silent.

  “There is fresh water in the pitcher, Richard. If there is anything else you would like to have, please tell me. I tried not to overlook anything.”

  “Don’t worry, Gretchen,” I told her. “I couldn’t wish for anything more. It’s enough just to be here with you, anyway. There’s nothing else I care for.”

  She looked at me quickly, and then she lowered her eyes. We stood silently for several minutes, while neither of us could think of anything to say. I wanted to tell her how glad I was to be with her, even if it was only for one night, but I knew I could say that to her later. Gretchen knew why I had come.

  “I’ll leave the lamp for you, Richard, and I’ll wait downstairs for you on the porch. Come as soon as you are ready.”

  She had left before I could offer to carry the light to the stairhead for her to see the way down. By the time I had picked up the lamp, she was out of sight down the stairs.

  I walked back into the room and closed the door and bathed my face and hands, scrubbing the train dust with brush and soap. There was a row of hand-embroidered towels on the rack, and I took one and dried my face and hands. After that I combed my hair, and found a fresh handkerchief in the handbag. Then I opened the door and went downstairs to find Gretchen.

  Her father was on the porch with her. When I walked through the doorway, he got up and gave me a chair between them. Gretchen pulled her chair closer to mine, touching my arm with her hand.

  “Is this the first time you have been up here in the mountains, Richard?” her father asked me, turning in his chair towards me.

  “I’ve never been within a hundred miles of here before, sir. It’s a different country up here, but I suppose you would think the same about the coast, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, but Father used to live in Norfolk,” Gretchen said. “Didn’t you, Father?”

  “I lived there for nearly three years.”

  There was something else he would say, and both of us waited for him to continue.

  “Father is a master mechanic,” Gretchen whispered to me. “He works in the railroad shops.”

  “Yes,” he said after a while, “I’ve lived in many places, but here is where I wish to stay.”

  My first thought was to ask him why he preferred the mountains to other sections, but suddenly I was aware that both he and Gretchen were strangely silent. Between them, I sat wondering about it.

  After a while he spoke again, not to me and not to Gretchen, but as though he were speaking to someone else on the porch, a fourth person whom I had failed to see in the darkness. I waited, tense and excited, for him to continue.

  Gretchen moved her chair a few inches closer to mine, her motions gentle and without sound. The warmth of the river came up and covered us like a blanket on a chill night.

  “After Gretchen and the other two girls lost their mother,” he said, almost inaudibly, bending forward over his knees and gazing out across the broad green river, “after we lost their mother, I came back to the mountains to live. I couldn’t stay in Norfolk, and I couldn’t stand it in Baltimore. This was the only place on earth where I could find peace. Gretchen remembers her mother, but neither of you can yet understand how it is with me. Her mother and I were born here in the mountains, and we lived here together for almost twenty years. Then after she left us, I moved away, foolishly believing that I could forget. But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. A man can’t forget the mother of his children, even though he knows he will never see her again.”

  Gretchen leaned closer to me, and I could not keep my eyes from her darkly framed profile beside me. The river below us made no sound; but the warmth of its vapor would not let me forget that it was still there.

  Her father had bent farther forward in his chair until his arms were resting on his knees, and he seemed to be trying to see someone on the other side of the river, high on the mountain top above it. His eyes strained, and the shaft of light that came through the open doorway fell upon them and glistened there. Tears fell from his face like fragments of stars, burning into his quivering hands until they were out of sight. />
  Presently, still in silence, he got up and moved through the doorway. His huge shadow fell upon Gretchen and me as he stood there momentarily before going inside. I turned and looked towards him but, even though he was passing from sight, I could not keep my eyes upon him.

  Gretchen leaned closer against me, squeezing her fingers into the hollow of my hand and touching my shoulder with her cheeks as though she were trying to wipe something from them. Her father’s footsteps grew fainter, and at last we could no longer hear him.

  Somewhere below us, along the bank of the river, an express train crashed down the valley, creaking and screaming through the night. Occasionally its lights flashed through the openings in the darkness, dancing on the broad green river like polar lights in the north, and the metallic echo of its steel rumbled against the high walls of the mountains.

  Gretchen clasped her hands tightly over my hand, trembling to her fingertips.

  “Richard, why did you come to see me?”

  Her voice was mingled with the screaming metallic echo of the train that now seemed far off.

  I had expected to find her looking up into my face, but when I turned to her, I saw that she was gazing far down into the valley, down into the warm waters of the river. She knew why I had come, but she did not wish to hear me say why I had.

  I do not know why I had come to see her, now. I had liked Gretchen, and I had desired her above anyone else I knew. But I could not tell her that I loved her, after having heard her father speak of love. I was sorry I had come, now after having heard him speak of Gretchen’s mother as he did. I knew Gretchen would give herself to me, because she loved me; but I had nothing to give her in return. She was beautiful, very beautiful, and I had desired her. That was before. Now, I knew that I could never again think of her as I had come prepared.

  “Why did you come, Richard?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes, Richard; why?”