Stories of Erskine Caldwell

by Erskine Caldwell

  The next morning I saw Ben and told him about going down to Rosemark the night before. After a while I told him about the way Betty kissed me and how she wanted to sit on my lap under the steering wheel.

  “What!” he said, his eyes wide open.

  I told him about it again, and how she wouldn’t let me stop kissing her and how she put her legs across my lap.

  “Jumping jiggers, that’s funny. None of them ever let me kiss her, and none of them ever sat on my lap.”

  “Gosh, Ben,” I said, “then why did you think they were different?”

  “Jumping jiggers!” he said again, frowning all over. “I don’t know.”

  (First published in American Earth)

  The Sunfield

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in more than an hour a light breeze blew through the open windows of the cottage and whipped the white curtains feebly. Myrtle Lewis ran from the window where she had been gazing vacantly at the treeless horizon and threw herself upon the bed. Even with her eyes pressed tightly against the counterpane, she could still see the countless chains of shimmering heat.

  The phonograph was running endlessly in the last groove of the record. The machine had been wound tightly, and the needle was sharp and new. It sounded like the blare of a muted saxophone.

  Wha whoo wha . . . Wha whoo wha . . . Wha wha wha . . .

  The wail filled the house, every crack and joint of it. It seeped like thin oil into the fiber of the doors, floors, and sills. The sounds that escaped through the open windows floated over the surrounding sunfield, that endless expanse of bare smooth earth, until at last they were driven by the heat into the hard clay.

  Myrtle tried to shut the sound from her ears by locking her arms around her head, but it was not so easy to do as that. The sound was as penetrating as stabs of sharp pain. After passing through her, it moved through the windows, and there she thought she could see it join the waves of heat that zigzagged upward and upward toward the summit of the deep blue sky.

  At the front of the cottage somebody was banging on a door, but Myrtle did not hear the sound in the phonograph’s painful blare. She began tossing from side to side, still holding her arms tightly around her head. It was no use trying to keep herself from crying; she could not stop no matter how hard she tried.

  The phonograph was running down. The needle began to scratch, and the last wail of the saxophone solo was only a thin cry without pain. It made her cry all the more.

  By the time the sound had died out, the banging on the front door had stopped.

  While she rolled from side to side, squeezing her head with the right embrace of her arms, the bedroom door opened and Sid came in. He looked at Myrtle for several moments before closing the door behind him. He went several steps forward.

  “Myrtle,” he called, glancing around the room to make certain no one else was there.

  She made no sign of having heard him, and she continued to toss and roll from one end of the bed to the other. She had begun to cry hysterically, and her white dress was crumpled and damp.

  Sid ran to the side of the bed, knelt on the floor beside her, and tried to take her arms from around her head. She did not know anyone was there until she felt his hands grasping her.

  “Who’s that?” she cried in surprise, choking back the sobs in her throat and trying to pull herself away. “Who’s that?” she asked again.

  She had stopped crying, but she had cried too long to be able to stop altogether. Before Sid could answer her she was crying and sobbing again.

  “It’s Sid, Myrtle,” he said, shaking her a little. “It’s Sid. What’s the matter? What happened?”

  The sun was full on her face, blazing hotly through the window beside the bed, and she could not see anything. After she had recognized Sid’s voice, she stopped trembling except for occasional shudders that she could not control.

  Myrtle opened her eyes a little. When she saw Sid, she threw herself into his arms clutching him frantically. Until she had stopped crying entirely, Sid did not try to make her talk. He held her, stroking her hair, and tried to help her as gently as he could. She clung to him.

  An automobile shot past the house, fifty feet away on the wide hot concrete highway, and the house shook with the vibration of the air. The car was making seventy miles an hour.

  Long after the sound of the speeding automobile had died out, Myrtle opened her eyes and looked up at Sid. He smiled down at her, stroking her heavy brown hair and brushing it away from her forehead with thick rough fingers.

  “Hello, Sid,” she said, smiling happily. “I haven’t seen you in a long time, have I?”

  He shook his head and turned her face toward his. She tried for a moment to turn away, but he held her tightly with his hand against her cheek, and she did not struggle any more after he had begun to kiss her. She closed her eyes until she felt his lips withdrawn from hers. She looked into his face.

  “What were you crying about, Myrtle?”

  “I wasn’t crying, Sid.”

  “You are still crying a little.”

  She sat up and wiped the tears from her face. She pushed her hair back and tried to smile. Sid got up from the floor and sat down on the bed beside her. With her back to him, she ran her fingers over the knuckles of his hand. He caught her and held her.

  “There’s nobody here, is there?” he asked, looking around the room for a second time.

  “No,” she said. “There’s nobody here.”

  “What was wrong? What happened?”

  “Nothing, Sid,” she smiled, her gaze falling away. “Nothing happened.”

  “Then what made you cry, Myrtle?”

  Myrtle turned away from him and looked at the phonograph on the table. It had run down while they were talking, but she could see the needle pointed into the last groove of the record. She got up, went to the table, and closed the top.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me, Myrtle?” Sid insisted.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said, shaking her head. “Honest, there isn’t. I’m just foolish sometimes, I guess. That’s all.”

  Sid got up and stood at the window, holding aside the white curtains. As far as the eye could see, the land was flat and treeless. The summer heat danced in layer after layer, and the air was as motionless as the earth underneath.

  “Did you want something?” Myrtle asked, startling him.

  He turned around and walked toward her at the door that led into the front room. Just before he got to her, she turned and went through the door. He followed her.

  “I was going into town, and I stopped to get a pack of cigarettes,” he said at last. “I knocked for a long time, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I knew,” she said. “I must have been asleep,”

  She laughed before he could say anything.

  Sid laid a quarter on the table, and she gave him the cigarettes and the change.

  “I’d better take a drink, too,” he said, breaking open the pack of cigarettes.

  Myrtle took a bottle of beer from the cooler and opened it. Sid shook his head about the glass.

  “Forget it, will you Sid?” she begged, leaning over the table towards him. “Won’t you, Sid?”

  He gulped down several swallows.

  “Why should I, even if I could?”

  Myrtle sat down on the table.

  “It won’t help anybody for you to remember,” she said, not looking up.

  He drank some more beer.

  “How about moving into town, then?” he asked. “You would do just as well there as you can here, maybe better. Everybody who stops here will look you up in town, Myrtle. You’ve got a lot more friends than you think you have. The boys will look you up no matter where you are. And I know people in town who would rather drop into your place than go anywhere else.”

  “Sure about that, Sid?” she laughed.

  Before he could answer her, she had jumped down from the table and crossed the room to the front door. She stood there looking out across t
he wide white concrete highway. Over there the flat land was broken by a fringe of pines and oaks that bordered a meandering creek. There were no other trees between the horizons.

  “It’s not safe, either,” Sid said, coming up behind her. “I don’t like to say that every time I see you, but it’s true.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Myrtle said. “I’ve never been afraid, Sid. What is there to be afraid of, anyway?”

  She continued to stare at the sunfield; the passing of another automobile, going seventy miles an hour or more, did not draw her gaze from it.

  “Look here, Myrtle,” he said, turning her partly around, “it might be different if you were older, but you’re not twenty-five yet. That makes a big difference.”

  She turned completely around, and for a moment Sid thought she was going to begin crying again. She fought the tears back, biting her lips a little.

  “I swear I’m not going to let anybody else marry you, Myrtle,” he said, his voice trembling. “And you’ve either got to get away from here and go into town where it’s safe, or else . . .”

  She came to him, and he thought by the expression on her face that she was going to say something, but instead she pressed her head upon his chest.

  “Where are you going, Sid?” she asked. “Where had you started when you stopped here?”

  “I’ve got to see a man in town,” he said. “I’ve got a little business to attend to.”

  She stepped back, out of his reach.

  “What do the boys do in town, Sid?” she asked. “You know, the boys who drop in here for cigarettes and beer sometimes.”

  He stepped back a little in order to get a better look at her. She had succeeded in fighting back the tears.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “They don’t do much, I guess.”

  Myrtle ran across the room and stopped behind the table.

  “That’s a lie, Sid Temple!” she cried. “Sid Temple, you know it’s a lie!”

  Sid caught her before she could run from the room.

  “Now, listen here, Myrtle,” he said, shaking her. “You’ve got to get away from here. You’ll go crazy. This is no place for you, staying here by yourself and making a halfway living selling drinks and cigarettes. I’m not going to let you stay.”

  “I wouldn’t marry you or anybody else in the world!” she cried. “I’d die before that. I wanted to once, but it’s different now. Everybody I know is a cheap rat — you too, Sid!”

  They both looked up to see standing in the doorway Jim Lyon and Jack Randlett and two or three others.

  “What’s the matter?” Jim asked, coming inside.

  “Nothing,” Sid said.

  “Was he bothering you, Myrtle?” Jim asked her, coming between them.

  “Why should he?” she laughed.

  Jack Randlett and the others came inside. Everyone looked first at Sid, and then at Myrtle. She crossed the room and stopped at the cooler. Jim followed her and stood beside her at the table. Sid sat down in a chair.

  “What’ll it be this time?” Myrtle asked, smiling at them.

  Nobody said anything then.

  “Don’t be bashful,” she said. “What will you have, Jim? It looks like you’ll have to order for the rest of them this time.”

  “Anything,” Jim said.

  “Beer?”

  “Beer?”

  “Beer?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No beer for me this time. Give me a soda.”

  Myrtle took several bottles from the cooler and put them on the table. While she was opening them, Jim sat down on the table where he could get a good look at her.

  “Was Sid Temple getting in your way?” he whispered.

  “Of course not,” she said, laughing. “We were just having a little argument. It wasn’t anything.”

  “I’m glad I had some business in town today, anyway,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been coming by here.”

  Myrtle looked at him until their eyes met.

  “So you’re going into town on business?” she said.

  “Sure,” he said. “We’re going to pour a concrete dam across a creek over home and make a fish pond. We’re going to have fish all the time. All you’ll have to do will be go out and drop a line in the water and pull one out.”

  Myrtle sat down on the table.

  “And I suppose you’re going into town to buy twenty sacks of cement?”

  “Sure,” he said, “only it will take about twenty-five.”

  Myrtle turned around and looked at Jack Randlett.

  “What are you going into town for, Jack?”

  Jack looked as if he did not know what to say at first. Myrtle had never before asked him what he was going to town for, and he was too surprised to answer.

  “To buy a pair of shoes?” Myrtle said.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said, hesitating. “Do you think I need a new pair?”

  Everybody in the room laughed at Jack and, before he knew it, he was stammering and his face was red.

  Myrtle’s expression changed completely, and she was glaring at Jack and Jim and the others.

  “You’re a liar, Jim! And you’re a liar, Jack Randlett!” She jumped down from the table. “All of you are liars! You’re going into town to spend the evening on St. Mary’s Street!”

  There was no sound or motion in the room. Each person there stared at another, and back again at Myrtle.

  “I didn’t know you knew anything about St. Mary’s Street, Myrtle,” Jim said. “How did you find out anything about — ?”

  “Shut up, Jim,” Jack Randlett said.

  The expression on Myrtle’s face frightened them all.

  “All of you come in here on your way to town and spend a few dimes and say you’ve got some business to attend to, and expect me to believe you. When you leave here, you go straight to St. Mary’s Street and buy hard drinks and start talking to those girls sitting in the windows. Then you come back by here and stop for a soft drink and try to make me believe something else. All of you do that — married, unmarried, or what not. You think you can come in here and buy a pack of cigarettes and make me believe you. You’re all a bunch of cheap rats — every last one of you. I was engaged to one of you once — not anybody in this room, but one of your bunch — and all the time we were engaged he was going into town and spending the night on St. Mary’s Street. Then he’d come back the next day and think I didn’t know. Why shouldn’t I know? You think just because I don’t see you on St. Mary’s Street that I won’t know you were there. Well, go ahead and think what you want to, but don’t expect me to believe it.”

  Sid came across the room to the table where Myrtle was sitting. He stood close to her and looked down into her face.

  “I asked you to marry me, Myrtle,” he said, “and I’m going to do it again, Tell Jack and Jim and the rest of them to go outside so I can talk to you.”

  “They are my customers,” Myrtle said. “Why should I drive them out?”

  “Because I said so.”

  Myrtle laughed.

  “This is a respectable roadhouse; this is no dive. People can come and go as they please, and in broad daylight too. Somebody seems to have got a bad impression of my place,”

  Sid turned around and said something to Jack Randlett, and all of them went outside. Presently Myrtle heard an automobile start, and after it had left, Sid came back into the room.

  “Let’s close up the front so you can lie down and rest some, Myrtle,” Sid said, taking her by the arm. “You need a rest. The heat out here in the middle of this sunfield is enough to get anybody down.”

  She jerked her arm from his fingers and pushed him away from her.

  “You’re a fool, Myrtle,” he said. “Just because the fellow you were engaged to was a cheap rat, that’s no sign everybody else is too. You know that. You’ve got to know it, Myrtle.”

  “Why don’t you go on into town like you started to, on business?” she laughed.

  “Everybody isn’
t like that, Myrtle. I’m not.”

  “You are a liar, Sid. You know you are a liar.”

  “You’ve known me for nearly five years now, Myrtle. In all that time you know good and well I’ve always been just like I am now.”

  “I don’t care what you’ve been, I won’t have anything to do with you.”

  She ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Sid went to the front door and stepped outside. The sun was slanting full in his face, but he did not notice it. Several automobiles raced past the cottage on the hot concrete highway, but he did not hear them. After walking around for a while, he sat down on the running board of his car, holding his head in his hands.

  When he looked up and blinked his eyes in the bright sunshine, he heard Myrtle’s phonograph begin playing. Whatever the name of the piece, it was the only one he had ever heard her play.

  Wha whoo wha . . . Wha whoo wha . . . Wha wha wha . . .

  He sat on the step of the car listening to the music, trying to decide whether to go on into town without trying to see Myrtle until he came back, or whether to go into the house and try to talk to her again then.

  The sound from the phonograph through the open windows seemed to become louder and louder, as though the machine had suddenly been regulated to issue its greatest volume. A speeding automobile passed, but its sound was drowned in the deafening blare from the house.

  He jumped to his feet and ran up the steps to the front door. The door into Myrtle’s room was still closed, and he opened it soundlessly and stepped into the bedroom.

  He expected to find her lying across the bed, rolling and tossing from one end to the other as he had found her earlier in the afternoon. He was sure she would be crying again.

  When he stepped into the room, he saw Myrtle lying motionlessly on the bed. The phonograph blared in his ears until he could not see straight.

  Running to the bed, he saw Myrtle lying on her back with her eyes closed, and in her open hand lay her revolver. There was not even a tear on her cheek.

  He bent over her, calling her name and trying to speak to her. The phonograph ran on and on, the sound filling the house with its grating blare. When he grasped her shoulders, Myrtle opened her eyes and looked straight into his. There was a faint smile on her lips that stayed there after her eyes had closed again. He could not arouse her after that.