Stories of Erskine Caldwell

by Erskine Caldwell

  “Because Sis is saving up for a man her worth. She can’t be wasting herself on no half-Jim nigger like you. Now, go on off, Youster Brown, and leave us be.”

  Youster crept a little closer to the door, feeling his way up the path from the road. All he wanted was to see that door unlatch just one little inch, and he would get his way in.

  “I’ve got a little eating-present here for Sis,” he said when he got to the doorstep. He waited to hear if that old pinched-faced Matty would come close to the door. “It’ll make some mighty good eating, I’m telling you.”

  “Don’t you go bringing no white-folks’ stole chickens around here, Youster Brown,” she said. “I don’t have nothing to do with white-folks’ stole chickens, and you know I don’t.”

  “Woman, these here ain’t chickens. They ain’t nothing like chickens. They ain’t even got feathers on them. These here is plump rabbits I gummed in my own cotton patch.”

  “Lay them on the doorsill, and then back off to the big road,” she said. “I wouldn’t leave you get a chance to come in that door for a big white mansion on easy street, Youster Brown.”

  “What you got so heavy against me, Matty?” he asked her. “What’s eating on you, anyhow?”

  There was no sight or sound for longer than he could hold his breath. When Matty wasn’t at the hearth to poke the fire, the sparks stopped coming out the chimney.

  “If you so set on knowing what’s the matter, you go ask Sally Lucky. She’ll tell you in no time.”

  “Sally Lucky done give me a charm on Sis,” Youster said. “I handed over and paid her three dollars and six bits only last week. I’m already sunk seven dollars in Sally Lucky, and all the good she ever done me was to say to come see Sis on every black night there was. That’s why I’m standing out here now like I am, because it’s a black night, and Sally Lucky says to come when it’s like it is now.”

  “You go give Sally Lucky two dollars more right now, and see what happens, Youster Brown. For all that money you’ll have a lot coming to you. But you won’t never find out nothing standing around here. Sally Lucky’ll tell you, so you’ll be told for all time.”

  Youster laid the sack with the two hobbled rabbits in it on the doorstep. Then he backed out to the road. It wasn’t long before the door opened a crack, then a foot. Matty’s long thin arm reached out, felt around, grabbed the meal sack, and jerked it inside. When she closed the door and latched it, the night was again as black as ever.

  He waited around for a while, feeling the wind, and smelling the chimney smoke. He couldn’t see why Sis had to grow up and live with an old pinched-faced woman like Matty.

  When he got to thinking about Matty, he remembered what she said. He cut across the field toward Sally Lucky’s. It didn’t take him long when he had no time to lose. When he got to the creek, he crossed it on the log and jogged up the hollow to Sally Lucky’s shack.

  “Who’s that?” Sally Lucky said, when he pounded on the door.

  “Youster Brown,” he said as loud as he could.

  “What you want, Youster?”

  “I want a working charm on Sis, or something bad on that old pinched-faced Matty. I done paid you seven, all told, dollars, and it ain’t worked for me none yet. It’s time it worked, too. If I give you two more dollars, will you make the charm work, and put something bad on Matty, too?”

  The shriveled-up old Sally Lucky opened the door and stuck her head out on her thin neck. She squinted at him in the dark, and felt to see if he had a gun or knife in his pockets. She had been putting up her hair for the night, and half was up on one side of her head, and half down on the other. She looked all wore out.

  “You sure look like you is the right somebody to put things on folks,” Youster said, gulping and shaking. “If you is, now’s the time to prove it to me. Man alive, I’m needing things on folks, if ever I did.”

  “Let me see your money, Youster,” she said, taking him inside and sitting down in her chair on the hearth. “What kind of money you got on you?”

  He took out all the money he had in the world — four half-dollar pieces — and put it on the fingers of her hand.

  “I’m getting dog-tired of handing you over all my money, and not getting no action for it,” Youster said. “Look here, now, woman, is you able to do things or ain’t you?”

  “You know Ham Beaver, don’t you?”

  “I reckon I know Ham. I saw him day before yesterday. What about him?”

  “I gave him a charm on a yellow girl six miles down the creek, and he went and got her all for himself before the week was over.”

  “Maybe so,” Youster said. “But I paid you seven dollars, all told, before now, for a charm on Sis, and I ain’t got no sign of action for it. That old pinched-faced woman Matty just locks up the door and won’t let me in when I want in.”

  “What you need is a curse on Matty,” Sally Lucky said. “A curse is what you want, and for nine dollars, all told, you appear to be due one, Youster.”

  “It won’t get me in no trouble with the law, will it?” he asked, shaking. “The law is one thing I don’t want no trouble with no more at all.”

  “All my charms and curses are private dealings,” she said, shaking her finger at him until he trembled more than ever. “As long as you do like I tell you, and keep your mouth shut, you won’t have no trouble with the law. I see to that.”

  “I has bought charms before, and they didn’t make no trouble for me. But I ain’t never before in my life bought a curse on nobody. I just want to make sure I ain’t going to get in no trouble with the law. I’m positive about that.”

  He studied the hickory-log fire for a while, and spat on an ember. He couldn’t be afraid of the law as long as he had Sally Lucky on his side. And he figured nine dollars’ worth was plenty to keep her on his side.

  Sally Lucky picked up her poker and began sticking it into the fire. Sparks swirled in the fireplace and disappeared out of sight up the chimney. Youster watched her, sitting on the edge of his chair. He was in a big hurry, and he hoped it wouldn’t take her long this time to see what she was looking for in the fire.

  All at once she began to mutter to herself, saying things so fast that Youster could not understand what the words were. He got down on his hands and knees and peered into the blazing fire, trying to see with his own eyes what Sally Lucky saw. While he was looking so hard, Sally Lucky started saying things faster and faster. He knew then that she was talking to Matty, and putting the curse on her.

  He was as trembly as Sally Lucky was by then. He crept so close to the fire that he could barely keep his eyes open in the heat. Then as suddenly as she had begun, Sally Lucky picked up a rusty tomato can partly filled with water, and dashed it into the fire. The water sizzled, and the logs smoked and hissed, and a sharp black face could be seen in the fire.

  Youster got back on his chair and waited. Sally Lucky kept on mumbling to herself, but the double talk was dying down, and before long no sound came through her jerking lips.

  “You sure must be real sure enough conjur, Sally Lucky,” Youster said weakly.

  She put a small tin snuff can into his hand, closing her fingers over it. He could feel that it was heavy, heavier than a can of snuff. It rattled, too, like it had been partly filled with BB shot.

  Sally Lucky didn’t say another thing until she took him to the door. There she pushed him outside, and said:

  “Whenever you think the curse ain’t working like it ought to, just take out that snuff can, Youster, and shake it a little.”

  “Like it was dice?”

  “Just exactly like it was dice.”

  She shut the door and barred it.

  Youster put the can into his pocket, and kept his hand in there with it so he wouldn’t have a chance in the world to lose it. He ran down the creek as fast as he could, crossed it on the log, and cut across the field toward the big road where Sis and Matty lived.

  There still was no light anywhere in the night. When he got
closer to the house, he could see a handful of sparks come out the chimney spout every once in a while when Matty poked the hickory-log fire.

  He strode up to the front door as big as a bill collector. There wasn’t nothing to make him scared of that old pinched-faced Matty no more.

  “Open up,” he said, pounding on the door.

  “That you, Youster Brown, again?” Matty said on the inside.

  “I reckon it is,” Youster said. “It ain’t nobody else. Open this here door up, woman, before I take it off its hinges. I ain’t got no time to lose.”

  “You sure do talk big for a half-Jim nigger, Youster Brown. Ain’t you got no sense? Don’t you know that big talk don’t scare me none at all?”

  “The talk maybe don’t, but the conjur do,” Youster said. “Woman, I got a curse on you.”

  “You is?”

  “Don’t you feel it none?”

  “I don’t feel nothing but a draft on my back.”

  Youster took the snuff can out of his pocket and shook it in his hand. He shook it like it was a pair of dice.

  “Come on, can, do your work,” he said to the snuffbox in his hand. “Get down on your knees and do your nine dollars’ worth!”

  While he waited for the can to put the curse into action, he listened through the door. There was no sound in there, except the occasional squeak of Matty’s rocking chair on the hearth.

  “I don’t hear Sis in there,” Youster said. “Where you at, Sis?”

  “Sis is minding her own business,” Matty told him. “You go on off somewhere and mind yours. Sis ain’t studying about you, anyhow.”

  “Why ain’t she?” Youster shouted. “Sis is my woman, and my woman ought to be studying about me all the time.”

  “You sure do talk like all the big-headed half-Jim niggers I ever knew,” Matty said. “Just because you paid seven dollars to Sally Lucky for a charm on Sis, you get the notion in the head that Sis’s your woman. Nigger, if I had only your sense, I wouldn’t know which end to stand on.”

  “That talk don’t fool me none,” Youster told her, “The way that gal cut her eyes at me last Sunday showed me the way to go home. I reckon I know when the best is yet to come.”

  Youster rubbed the snuffbox in his hands, feeling its slick surface and good warmth. He held his breath while he listened through the door.

  “I can afford to put off getting her for a while,” he said through the cracks, “being as how this curse is going to be working on you.”

  “What curse?” Matty said.

  “The curse I just a while ago got Sally Lucky to put on you for me, that’s what. I paid her two dollars for it. That makes nine, all told, dollars I’ve paid out. All I don’t feel right about is that I waited all this time before I got a curse put on you. I ought to have had it working on you all this past summer and fall.”

  “If you paid nine dollars to Sally Lucky for putting something on me, Youster Brown, all you got was just nine dollars’ worth of mumble.”

  “How come?” Youster said.

  “Because I paid Sally Lucky three dollars for a curse on you the first time I ever saw you, that’s how come,” Matty said. “And that’s how come all your big talk about getting a charm on Sis and a curse on me won’t never come to nothing. Charms and curses won’t cross, Youster Brown, because it’s the one that’s taken out first that does the work, and that’s how come the curse I took out on you took, and the ones you took out on Sis and me won’t take. I saw you coming, Youster Brown, and I didn’t lose no time taking out the curse on you.”

  Youster sat down on the step. He looked down the path toward the road and across the field toward Sally Lucky’s. He fingered the snuff can for a while.

  There came a squeak from the chair through the door, but there was no other sound. The black night was pulling down all around him. He couldn’t see nothing, nowhere. There wasn’t no sense in night being black like the bottom of a hole. After a while he got up and went off down the road. He was trying his best to think of some way to get his nine dollars back. Nine dollars was a lot of money to pay for mumble.

  (First published in Harper’s Bazaar)

  The Cold Winter

  AFTER I HAD BEEN in town a week, I began going early in the evening to the room I had rented, to lie awake under the warmth of the blanket.

  Out on the streets, when night fell, it was always cold. There was usually a chill wet wind from the river, and from the bare uplands the February winter descended hour after hour, freezing and raw. Even men with overcoats hurried through the icy streets with lowered heads fighting the cold, hurrying towards heated homes.

  It was cold in the unheated room I had rented, but the warmth of the blanket was like the clinging arms of a girl.

  By the third night of the week I had got accustomed to the unheated house. At first I could not sleep. But on that evening I took off my shoes as soon as I had reached the room and got into bed immediately. For the next five or six hours I lay awake, warm under the blanket, while frost on the windowpanes formed slowly and precisely into fragile designs of cold beauty.

  Out in the hall I could hear people passing quickly from room to room, hurrying through the cold corridor while the contracted boards of the floor creaked under their feet.

  After a while I became conscious of warm air flowing through the cracks in the wall. A young woman and her small daughter lived in the room next to mine, on the right, and the heat they had was escaping into my room. I could smell the scorched air and the burned gas of their heater. I lay awake then, listening to the movements in the next room, while their slowly formed picture was melted into my memory. Towards midnight I fell asleep, remembering only that in the next room the young woman moved lightly when she walked and that the small girl spoke to her mother softly and lovingly.

  After that night I began coming home much earlier in the evening to cover myself with the warmth of the blanket and to lie awake in the darkness listening to all that happened in the next-door room. The young woman prepared supper for the girl and herself, and then they sat at the small table by the window and ate slowly, laughing and talking. The little girl was about eight, and her mother was almost as young as she when they laughed and talked.

  The cold of the unheated room was not so hard to bear as it had been before I came to know them.

  I knew by the end of that second week how each of them looked even though I had never seen either of them. Through the thin plaster wall I could hear everything they said and did, and I followed the motions of their hands and the expressions on their faces from second to second, hour after hour. The young woman was not working, either; she remained in the room most of the day, going out only in the morning for half an hour to walk with the girl to school, and again in the afternoon to walk home with her. The rest of the day she sat in the room, by the window, looking out over the red-painted tin roof across the way, and waiting for midafternoon to come so she could walk to the school for her daughter.

  There were other people in the house, many of them. The three floors of the building were rented, room by room, to men and women who came and went during all hours. Some of them worked during the day, some at night, and many had no jobs at all. But even though there were many people in the house, no one ever came to my door, and no one ever went to the young woman’s door next to mine. Sometimes there would be the sound of a man walking heavily, coming hurriedly down the hall, and the young woman would jump from her chair by the window and run frantically to the door, leaning against it while her fingers held the key in the lock and listening to the sound of the man’s stride. After he had passed, she went slowly back to her chair and sat down once more to look out over the red-painted tin roof across the way.

  Into the month of February it became colder and colder, but I was warm when I lay under the blanket and listened to the sounds that came through the thin plaster wall.

  It was not until I had become aware of her running to the door each time the sound of a man’s footst
ep rang through the rooms that I realized something was about to happen. I did not know what the happening was to be, nor when, but each morning before leaving my room I waited and listened for several minutes to hear if she were standing against her door or sitting in her chair. When I came back in the evening, I pressed my ear against the cold wall to listen again.

  That evening, after I had listened for nearly half an hour, I knew something was about to happen; and for the first time in my life, while I stood there shivering in the cold, I had the desire to be the father of a child. I did not stop to turn on the light, but climbed straightway into bed without even taking off my shoes. I lay tensely awake upon the bed for a long time listening to the movements on the other side of the wall. The young woman was quick and nervous, and her face was white and drawn. The little girl was put to bed as soon as they had finished eating supper and, without a word being spoken, the young woman went to her chair by the window to sit and wait. She sat silently, not even rocking, for a long time. I had raised my head from the pillow, and my neck was stiff and cold after the strain of holding my head horizontally without support.

  It was eleven o’clock before I heard another sound in the room next to mine. During the three hours that I had lain awake on the bed waiting, she had not moved from her chair. But at eleven o’clock she got up and drank a glass of water and covered the girl with another blanket. When she had finished, she moved to her chair for a moment, and then she carried it to the door and sat down. She sat and waited. Before another hour had passed, a man came down the hall, walking heavily on the contracted boards of the floor. We both heard him coming, and we both jumped to our feet. I ran to the wall and pressed my ear against the cold white plaster and waited. The young woman leaned against the door, her fingers gripped around the key, and listened with bated breath. The little girl was sound asleep in bed.

  After I had been standing for several minutes I felt the cold of the unheated room wither my hands and feet. Under the warmth of the blanket I had forgotten how cold it was, and the blood had raced through me while I waited still and tense and listened to the sounds in the building. But standing in the unheated room, with my face and ear pressed against the cold white plaster, I was shaking as though with a chill.