People were turning around to look at us. They walked past us and then turned around and stared. Peachtree Street was only around the corner from where we stood. It was a fashionable section.
I don’t know what made me say what I did. I knew where No. 67 Forsyth Street was. I had been there myself only half an hour before. It was an employment agency. They said come in tomorrow morning. They told everybody the same thing — both men and women. It was the dull season. It was July.
I said, “No. 67 is about three blocks down the street, on the other side of the viaduct.” I pointed down there, my arm over her head. She was very small beside me.
She looked down the street to the other side of the viaduct. There were half a dozen cheap hotels down there. They were the cheapest kind. Everybody has seen them. There are some in every city. They charge fifty cents, seventy-five, and a dollar. I thought I was doing right. There was no money in her pocketbook. Not a cent. I saw everything she had in it. I had a quarter and I would have to go all the way to Richmond before I found a job. There were no jobs across the street at No. 67. It was the dull season. Everybody was out of town for the summer. There were no jobs in July. And she was hungry. She had been trying to sleep in railroad stations at night, too. . . . On the other side of the viaduct there were at least seven or eight hotels. The cheap kind. I had seen women in them, running down the corridors in kimonos after midnight. They always had some money, enough to buy something to eat when they were hungry. Everyone knows what it is to be hungry. A man can stand it for a while — a week, ten days, two weeks — but a woman — if you have ever seen the naked body of a starving woman you’ll know why I thought I was doing right.
She had not moved.
“It’s about three blocks down the street, on the other side of the viaduct,” I told her again. She had heard what I said the first time.
She did not move.
She was standing there, looking at the dirty red-brick buildings. She knew the kind they were. Some of them had signs that could be read across the viaduct. HOTEL — 75¢ & $1. She was reading the signs. My hand was in my pocket holding the quarter between the fingers. I don’t know what she could have done with the money. I was ashamed to give it to her — it was only a quarter.
“All right,” she said.
It was as if she was making up her mind about something of great importance, like a decision of life and death. It was as if she had said, “All right, I’ll go.” She was not thanking me for telling her where she could find the number. She knew No. 67 was on this side of the viaduct.
“All right,” she said.
She turned and walked down the street toward the dirty red-brick buildings. The heels of her slippers had worn sideways. She tried to stand erectly on her feet and she had to walk stiffly so her ankles would not turn. If her legs had relaxed for a second she would have sprained her ankles.
She did not look back at me. Her blue flannel skirt was wrinkled far out of shape. It looked as if she had slept in it for several nights, maybe a week. It was covered with specks of dust and lint. Her white silk waist was creased and discolored. The dust had lodged in the folds, and the creases made horizontal smudges across her shoulders. Her hat looked as if it had been in a hard rain for several hours and then dried on a sharp peg of some kind. There was a peak in the crown that drew the whole hat out of shape.
I couldn’t stand there any longer. She had gone almost a block toward the dirty red-brick buildings. I crossed over the street and ran down an alley towards Marietta Street.
I went to a garage on Marietta Street. A mechanic who worked in the garage had told me there was a good chance of getting a ride to Richmond if I would stay around long enough and wait until an automobile came along that was going through.
When I got to the garage, there was a car inside being greased. The man in the garage nodded at me and pointed toward the automobile. It was a big car. I knew it wouldn’t take long to make the trip in a car like that. I asked the man who was driving it if he would take me to Richmond with him. He asked the man in the garage about me. They talked inside the office a while and then he came out and said he would take me up with him. He was leaving right away.
We drove up to Richmond. I started out to find a job somewhere. There’s a wholesale district under the elevated railway tracks between the State Capitol and the river. I had been there before.
But there was something the matter with me. I didn’t have the patience to look up a job. I was nervous. I had to keep moving all the time. I couldn’t stand still.
A few days later I was in Baltimore. I applied for a job in an employment agency. They had plenty of jobs, but they took their time about giving them out. They wanted you to wait a week or two, to see if you would stick. Most everybody went on to Philadelphia. That’s the way it is in summer. Everybody goes up. When the weather begins to get cold they come down again, stopping in Baltimore until the weather catches up, and then they move to the next city. Everybody ends up in New Orleans.
I couldn’t stay in Baltimore. I couldn’t stand still, I went on to Philadelphia like everybody else. From Philadelphia you move over into Jersey. But I didn’t. I stayed in Philadelphia.
Then one day I was standing on Market Street, near the city hall, watching a new skyscraper go up. I saw a young woman on the other side of the street who looked like the girl I had talked to in Atlanta. She was not the same one, of course. But there was a close resemblance.
I could not think about anything else. I stood there all the afternoon thinking about the girl in Atlanta and wondering what I could do. I knew I had to think up some way to get to Atlanta and find her. I had sent her down Forsyth Street, across the viaduct. She knew where she was going, but she would not have gone if it had not been for me. I sent her down there. If I had only pointed across the street to No. 67! She knew where it was. She had been standing in front of it when I first saw her with the folded newspaper, reading the ads. But she knew it would have been useless to go inside. They would have told her to come in again the next morning. That’s what they told everybody. Maybe she thought I would give her some money. I don’t know what she thought, to tell the truth. But she was up against it, just as I was. She was too proud to ask for money to buy something to eat, and yet she thought I might give her some. I had a quarter but I was ashamed to offer it to her, especially after I had sent her down the street toward those hotels. She had tried to find a job somewhere so she could have something to eat and a place to sleep. She knew there was always one way. She knew about Forsyth Street on the other side of the viaduct. Somebody had told her about it. A woman in one of the railroad stations, perhaps. Somebody told her, because she knew all about it.
I didn’t send her there, she would have gone anyway. . . . That’s what I think sometimes — but it’s a lie! I told her to go down the street and cross the viaduct.
(First published in Scribner’s)
The Medicine Man
THERE WAS NOBODY in Rawley who believed that Effie Henderson would ever find a man to marry her, and Effie herself had just about given up hope. But that was before the traveling herb doctor came to town.
Professor Eaton was a tall gaunt-looking man with permanent, sewn-in creases in his trousers and a high celluloid collar around his neck. He may have been ten years older than Effie, or he may have been ten years younger; it was no more easy to judge his age than it was to determine by the accent of his speech from what section of the country he had originally come.
He drove into Rawley one hot dusty morning in mid-August, selling Indian Root Tonic. Indian Root Tonic was a beady, licorice-tasting cure-all in a fancy green-blown bottle. The bottle was wrapped in a black and white label, on which the most prominent feature was the photographic reproduction of a beefy man exhibiting his expanded chest and muscles and his postage-stamp wrestler’s trunks. Professor Eaton declared, and challenged any man alive to deny his statement, that his Indian Root Tonic would cure any ailment known to man, and quite a f
ew known only to women.
Effie Henderson was the first person in town to give him a dollar for a bottle, and the first to come back for the second one.
The stand that Professor Eaton had opened up was the back seat of his mud-spattered touring car. He had paid the mayor ten ragged one-dollar bills for a permit to do business in Rawley, and he had parked his automobile in the middle of the weed-grown vacant lot behind the depot. He sold his medicine over the back seat of his car, lifting the green-blown bottles from a box at his feet as fast as the customers came up and laid down their dollars.
There had been a big crowd standing around in the weed-grown lot the evening before, but there were only a few people standing around him listening to his talk when Effie came back in the morning for her second bottle. Most of the persons there then were Negroes who did not have a dollar among them, but who had been attracted to the lot by the alcoholic fumes around the mud-caked automobile and who were willing to be convinced of Indian Root Tonic’s marvelous curative powers. When Effie came up, the Negroes stepped aside, and stood at a distance watching Professor Eaton get ready to make another sale.
Effie walked up to the folded-down top in front of Professor Eaton and laid down a worn dollar bill that was as limp as a piece of wet cheesecloth.
“I just had to come back this morning for another bottle,” Effie said, smiling up at Professor Eaton. “The one I took last night made me feel better than I have ever felt before in all my life. There’s not another medicine in the whole country like it, and I’ve tried them all, I reckon.”
“Pardon me, madam,” Professor Eaton said. “There are hundreds of preparations on the market today, but there is only one Indian Root Tonic. You will be doing me a great favor if you will hereafter refer to my aid-to-human-life by its true and trade-marked name. Indian Root Tonic is the name of the one and only cure for ailments of any nature. It is particularly good for the mature woman, madam.”
“You shouldn’t call me ‘madam,’ Professor Eaton,” Effie said, lowering her head. “I’m just a young and foolish girl, and I’m not married yet, either.”
Professor Eaton wiped the perspiration from his upper lip and looked down at Effie.
“How utterly stupid of me, my dear young lady,” he said. “Anyone can see by looking at your fresh young face that you are a mere girl. Indian Root Tonic is particularly good for the young maiden.”
Effie turned around to see if any of the Negroes were close enough to hear what Professor Eaton had said. She hoped that some of the women who lived on her street would walk past the corner in time to hear Professor Eaton talk like that about her.
“I never like to talk about myself, but don’t you think I am too young yet to get married, Professor Eaton?”
“My dear young lady,” he continued after having paused long enough to relight his dead cigar, “Indian Root Tonic is particularly good for the unmarried girl. It is the greatest discovery known to medical science since the beginning of mankind. I personally secured the formula for this marvelous medicine from an old Indian chief out in our great and glorious West, and I was compelled to promise him on my bended knee that I would devote the remainder of my life to traveling over this great nation of ours offering Indian Root Tonic to men and women like you who would be helpless invalids without it.”
He had to pause for a moment’s breath. It was then that he looked down over the folded top and for the first time looked at Effie face to face. The evening before in the glare of the gasoline torch, when the lot was crowded with people pushing and shoving to get to the medicine stand before the special introductory offer was withdrawn, he had not had time to look at everyone who came up to hand him a dollar for a bottle. But now when he looked down and saw Effie, he leaned forward to stare at her.
“Oh, Professor Eaton,” Effie said, “you are such a wonderful man! Just to think that you are doing such a great work in the world!”
Professor Eaton continued to stare at Effie. She was as good-looking as the next girl in town, not over thirty, and when she fixed herself up, as she had done for nearly two hours that morning before leaving home, she usually had all the drummers in town for the day staring at her and asking the storekeepers who she was.
After a while Professor Eaton climbed out of the back seat of his car and came around to the rear where she was. He relit his cold cigar, and inspected Effie more closely.
“You know, Professor Eaton, you shouldn’t talk like that to me,” she said, evading his eyes. “You really don’t know me well enough yet to call me ‘dear girl.’ This is the first time we have been alone together, and —”
“Why! I didn’t think that a beautiful young girl like you would seriously object to my honorable admiration,” he said, looking her up and down and screwing up his mouth when she plucked at her blouse. “It’s so seldom that I have the opportunity of seeing such a charming young girl that I must have lost momentarily all sense of discretion. But, now that we are fully acquainted with each other, I’m sure you won’t object to my devoted admiration. Will you?”
“Oh, Professor Eaton,” Effie said excitedly, “do you really and truly think I am beautiful? So many men have told me that before, I’m accustomed to hearing it frequently, but you are the first man to say it so thrillingly!”
She tried to step backward, but she was already standing against the rear of the car. Professor Eaton moved another step closer, and there was no way for her to turn. She would not have minded that if she had not been so anxious to have a moment to look down at her blouse. She knew there must be something wrong, surely something had slipped under the waist, because Professor Eaton had not raised his eyes from her bosom since he got out of the car and came down beside her. She wondered then if she should not have confined herself when she dressed that morning, putting on all the undergarments she wore to church on Sunday morning.
“My dear girl, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind concerning your beauty. In fact, I think you are the most charming young girl it has been my good fortune to encounter during my many travels over this great country of ours — from coast to coast, from the Lakes to the Gulf.”
“You make me feel so young and foolish, Professor Eaton!” Effie said, smoothing her shirtwaist over her bosom. “You make me feel like —”
Professor Eaton turned abruptly and reached into the back seat for a bottle of Indian Root Tonic. He closed his teeth over the cork stopper and popped it out, and, with no further loss of time, handed it to Effie.
“Have this one on me, my dear girl,” he said. “Just drink it down, and then see if it doesn’t make you feel even better still.”
Effie took the green-blown bottle, looking at the picture of the strong young man in wrestler’s trunks.
“I drank the whole bottle I bought last night,” she said. “I drank it just before going to bed, and it made me feel so good I just couldn’t lie still. I had to get up and sit on the back porch and sing awhile.”
“There was never a more beneficial —”
“What particular ailment is the medicine good for, Professor Eaton?”
“Indian Root Tonic is good for whatever ails you. In fact, merely as a general conditioner it is supreme in its field. And then on the other hand, there is no complaint known to medical science that it has yet failed to allevi — to help.”
Effie turned up the bottle and drank down the beady, licorice-tasting fluid, all eight ounces of it. The Negroes standing around the car looked on wistfully while the alcoholic fumes from the opened bottle drifted over the lot. Effie handed the empty bottle to Professor Eaton, after taking one last look at the picture on the label.
“Oh, Professor Eaton,” she said, coming closer, “it makes me feel better already. I feel just like I was going to rise off the ground and fly away somewhere.”
“Perhaps you would allow me —”
“To do what, Professor Eaton? What?”
He flicked the ashes from his cigar with the tip of his little finger.
“Perhaps you would allow me to escort you to your home,” he said. “Now, it’s almost dinnertime, and I was just getting ready to close up my stand until the afternoon, so if you will permit me, I’ll be very glad to drive you home in my automobile. Just tell me how to get there, and we’ll start right away.”
“You talk so romantic, Professor Eaton,” Effie said, touching his arm with her hand. “You make me feel just like a foolish young girl around you.”
“Then you will permit me to see you home?”
“Of course, I will.”
“Step this way, please,” he said, holding open the door and taking her arm firmly in his grasp.
After they had settled themselves in the front seat, Effie turned around and looked at Professor Eaton.
“I’ll bet you have had just lots and lots of love affairs with young girls like me all over the country.”
“On the contrary,” he said, starting the motor, “this is the first time I have ever given my serious consideration to one of your sex. You see, I apply myself faithfully to the promotion, distribution, and sale of Indian Root Tonic. But this occasion, of course, draws me willingly from the cares of business. In fact, I consider your presence in my car a great honor. I have often wished that I might —”
“And am I the first young girl — the first woman you ever courted?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely.”
Professor Eaton drove out of the vacant weed-grown lot and turned the car up the street toward Effie’s house. She lived only two blocks away, and during the time it took them to drive that distance neither of them spoke. Effie was busy looking out to see if people were watching her ride with Professor Eaton in his automobile, and he was busily engaged in steering through the deep white sand in the street. When they got there, Effie told him to park the machine in front of the gate where they could step out and walk directly into the house.
They got out and Effie led the way through the front door and into the parlor. She raised one of the shades a few inches and dusted off the sofa.
Stories of Erskine Caldwell Page 24