Stories of Erskine Caldwell

by Erskine Caldwell

  The phonograph had run into the last groove on the record. It was running in the circle, the needle screeching a little, and making the same sounds over and over again.

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

  Sid jumped to his feet and knocked the phonograph from the table. It went flying across the room and crashed against the wall. It still ran on and on, making a whir, but the needle was no longer touching the groove on the record.

  He went to the window, pulling the white curtains back, and looked across the sunfield. The heat was as intense as ever, and it seemed to him that the waves that rose in layer after layer each carried the sound of Myrtle’s phonograph when it ran in the last groove in the record, on and on.

  (First published in Southways)

  The Sick Horse

  BENTON CAME RUNNING around the corner of the house yelling for me to come quick. I didn’t have a chance to ask him then what the trouble was, but when we got to the barn, I heard Benton saying that something was the matter with King. I had been looking for that, and I wasn’t a bit surprised. If a man ever got the worst end of a bargain, I sure thought it was Benton the Friday before, when he swapped Jim Dandy for King and a durn rusty mowing machine.

  All I could think of then was that maybe the best thing for the new horse was a stiff dose of medicine. I didn’t have a chance to mention that to Benton until after we got inside and had opened the stall door.

  Benton was blocking the door and I couldn’t see the horse right away.

  “Is he down yet, Benton?” I said, pushing past him.

  Benton jumped aside as if somebody had jabbed him in the ribs.

  “He don’t have to get down for me to know he’s sick, Clyde,” he said. He put his hand on King’s bony rump and stared at the scrawny tail. “I should have had the sense to have found out before I traded if he was taken to sick spells. But somehow I was thinking of something else —”

  Benton stood back and I had a good look at King. I’d seen him in the sunlight the day the trade was made, and I never thought I’d see a worse-looking nag, but when I took a good look at him this time, I knew I’d never seen a bundle of horsehide like that in all my life. King was standing on four legs that looked like they had been — well, to tell the whole truth, that horse looked for all the world like one of those playthings the kids make by sticking match stems into a potato.

  “I reckon we should have kept Jim Dandy,” Benton said, stopping short and looking at the horse. “But I had a feeling at the time —”

  “He needs medicine, Benton,” I said. “He needs it bad.”

  Jim Dandy was the finest horse we’d ever had. I guess Benton was thinking that too, because he kept glancing over to the next stall where Jim Dandy’s halter was still hanging. Benton had made up his mind to swap, though, and he got a mowing machine to boot. I could tell by looking at King that he’d never last long enough to eat the hay that mower cut.

  “Clyde,” Benton said, “what had we better do?”

  “He’s real sick,” I said. “He needs bracing up or something right away.”

  Benton didn’t say anything for a while, and I looked around, and the minute I saw his face I knew what he was thinking. He was standing there looking at King and wondering what the visitors who were always dropping in to see the horses would say about that one. I’d seen ones a lot better-looking than King led off to the boneyard, and so had Benton, too.

  “Better go get the castor oil, Clyde,” Benton said, sitting down on the harness bench.

  He was almost as sick as King was, but there was nothing I could do for him.

  “Maybe we’d better wait and see if he won’t get better first,” I said. “That horse looks now like he might not be able to stand castor oil yet, Benton.”

  “Go get the castor oil like I said, anyway,” Benton told me. I went through the barn door and on into the house where the medicine was kept. When I got back, Benton had got up and gone around to the other side of King, and the horse looked just as sickly on that side as he did from any other direction. I knew that if he ever got rid of him we’d have to make a trade sight unseen.

  I set the medicine on the harness bench. Right then King looked like he’d never live to stomach it.

  “Give it to him, Clyde,” Benton said weakly.

  “Benton,” I said, “I wouldn’t try to force King in the shape he’s in. He looks kind of white around the gills.”

  “Give it to him, anyway. If he won’t get well, I don’t want him standing around here looking like that.”

  Right then and there I had a feeling that the better use of the castor oil was to take it out behind the barn and pour it over the rust on the mowing machine, but there was no way to talk Benton out of giving it to King.

  I went over to the harness room and got the gun and filled it with the castor oil like Benton said to. Benton did not make a move to help me. When I got back and was ready to give it to King, I motioned to Benton, and he came over and helped me get the horse’s head up.

  When it was all over, instead of helping me with the hay, Benton went into the house and sat down. He took a seat by the front window hoping, I guess, to be able to shy visitors away from the barn if any should stop in that afternoon.

  I went on about finishing up my work and didn’t have a chance to see Benton again until late in the afternoon. I had heard one car stop in front of the house, but whoever it was got headed off by Benton at the front gate and didn’t get a chance to come to the barn where the sick horse was.

  About five o’clock I walked around to the front of the barn and sat down to wait for Benton to come out. I knew he would be there before feeding time to look at King, and I did not want to miss seeing if the medicine had helped any. I couldn’t get it out of my head all that time about trading Jim Dandy for King and the rusty mower. It was a fool trade, if there ever was one, and I couldn’t figure out what had made Benton go and do it. Jim Dandy was just about the finest horse a man could hope to own. He was a good height and just about perfect in weight, and he had the finest mane and tail I ever expect to see again on a horse.

  I’d always rubbed him down twice a day, and I had even got so I would rather do that than take a day off and go to town. I’d curry him and brush him until his sides were as shiny as new paint. The cold weather always ruffled up his hide, and when I started in, it would be as fuzzy as a kitten’s. By the time I had finished, he looked like he’d just stepped out of the show ring with a blue ribbon. Then I’d start on his tail and mane and spend another hour working over that. I’d comb him carefully first, and then I’d begin brushing them. His mane was as silky and smooth as a young girl’s hair, and those waves would come out and shine just like they had been put there with a curling iron.

  But it was his tail that showed up the wavy streaks so well. His tail reached all the way down to the ground, and after you’d worked over it three quarters of an hour and stood back to let the sunshine play on it, it looked exactly like a frozen lake that had locked up with the frost when the wind was high. You can see the same thing in November before the snow falls by standing on a hilltop somewhere and looking down a mile or two away and see one of those sheets with the waves locked up in the ice. I tell you, there’s not a prettier sight anywhere than that, and that’s exactly how the curly waves in Jim Dandy’s mane and tail looked.

  I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there in the sun thinking about Jim Dandy when Benton opened the house door and came down toward the barn. Just then a car drove up, but Benton was too busy thinking about something else to hear it; and two men got out and came on down toward the barn where we were.

  Benton had his head down, and I couldn’t motion to him till he got to the barn door, and then it was too late. Henry Trask and Fred Welch were too close to the barn by then to head off. I couldn’t do a thing but just stand there and pray that they would never get inside to see King.

  “Well,” Benton said, “I guess we’d better go t
ake a look.”

  It wasn’t till then that he heard Henry and Fred behind him. Benton jumped like he was trying to get out of his skin.

  “I heard you’ve got a new horse, Benton,” Henry said. “Trying to keep it a secret? Tell Clyde to lead him out and let us get a look at him. And don’t go trying to tell me he’s a better horse than Jim Dandy, Benton.”

  Benton didn’t know what to say then. He knew there was no way to get Henry and Fred away before they saw the horse. They had already got to the door, and nothing in the world could stop them then. They’d come eight miles to take a look at King.

  “Henry,” Benton said, “I wish you and Fred hadn’t come here today.”

  “Why?” Fred asked. “What’s the trouble, Benton? Your wife ailing or something?”

  “My horse is sick,” Benton said, reaching out tor the side of the barn to find support. Nobody could have looked more sick than Benton did right then, but somehow both Henry and Fred failed to notice it.

  “That’s all right, Benton,” Henry said. “You won’t have to lead him out. We’ll go inside and look at him in the stall.”

  We all walked inside and went down through the harness room and opened the door to the stall. Benton stood back. He acted like he never wanted to look at King again. Anyway, he opened the door and stepped back instead of leading the way inside as he usually did when he was proud to show the horse he owned.

  “There’s no horse in here, Benton,” Henry said, coming back through the door. “Is this a joke or something? The stall’s as empty as a Baptist church at blueberrying time.”

  Both me and Benton stepped to the door and looked inside. Sure enough, King wasn’t there. We didn’t know what to think.

  “He was there right after noontime,” Benton said excitedly, “because me and Clyde came in here and gave him a gunful of castor oil, didn’t we, Clyde?”

  “Sure as I’ve got legs to stand on,” I said. “And he couldn’t have got out, because this door has been latched all day long.”

  We ran inside, Benton and me. Then we saw what had happened. The side of the stall next to the areaway had been kicked down. All but the two bottom boards had been smashed to pieces.

  Henry and Fred were standing behind us.

  “That’s the quickest I ever saw a horse get well,” Benton said. “Here I’ve been all day trying to keep people from coming in to see King, and here he goes and gets well and kicks the side of the stall down.”

  Benton was all excited, thinking that King had turned out to be a fine spirited horse, after all, in spite of his looks.

  “Come on,” Benton said, leaping over the splintered boards. “He’s back in the areaway. I know he’s not out, because all the doors stay locked.”

  The four of us ran out into the areaway, where all the harnessing is done, but King wasn’t anywhere in sight. The outside door was shut and latched just like Benton had said it was and just like I knew it was. But King wasn’t in the areaway, either.

  “Maybe he got into another stall or into the grain room,” Henry said.

  We went down toward the other end of the barn.

  “He couldn’t have got into another stall,” Benton said, “because the rest of the stalls are on the other side of the one he was in. There’s no other way for him to go, that I can see. The grain-room door is shut tight.”

  Just the same, to make sure, I opened it and looked around inside, but King wasn’t there and hadn’t been there.

  It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. I was stumped. Benton didn’t know what to do next, either.

  “What’s that door lead into?” Henry said, walking to the door beyond the grain room.

  “Shucks,” Benton said, “there’s no sense opening that door, because that’s just a sort of privy me and Clyde use in the winter when we’re working in the barn.”

  Henry took a couple of steps, and stopped short around the corner of the grain room.

  “There’s no sense in opening the door, all right,” Henry said. “It’s already open.”

  The rest of us ran down so we could see what he was talking about.

  Right then — well, I don’t know what anybody said after that. It was — I had to look three or four times myself before I knew what I was doing, and even then — sometimes I still can’t believe what I saw. Benton — if Benton — but there’s no use in trying to tell what Benton said. The whole thing —

  We all finally got outside the barn someway. Benton sat down on a bench and looked off across the hills. Both Fred and Henry were laughing too much to talk sense any more. First they’d say something about Benton’s new horse, and then they’d look at each other, and then they’d break out laughing all over again.

  “Benton,” Henry said after they had quieted down some, “it was worth your losing a horse just to know that your stock is the smartest in the country, wasn’t it? I’ve seen horses do smart things, but this is the first time I ever saw or heard of one being smart enough to go to the privy when he took sick.”

  Benton got up.

  “But King died in there, though,” he said. “I’ve lost him, Henry.”

  “That’s just it, Benton,” Fred said. “Any horse that had enough sense to back in there and die on the bench proves that even when your horses are nothing to look at, they are still the smartest in the country.”

  Benton could not see it in that light then. He was still worried to think that the tale would hurt his reputation as a horseman. Henry and Fred left soon afterward, still laughing like I knew they would be for the next four or five days, and I didn’t see much of Benton till late in the evening.

  At bedtime Benton came upstairs while I was undressing to pass the night. He walked across the room and back before he said anything.

  “I wouldn’t have had that to happen for anything in the world, Clyde,” he said. “I’d a heap rather have a horse of mine drop dead in the show ring — than that.”

  “I don’t know, Benton,” I said. “It takes a smart animal to do a thing like that. Maybe King figured that he had to make up someway for his lack of looks.”

  Benton came over to the table.

  After a while he looked up at me. A change had come over his face.

  “You’re right, Clyde,” he said. “It just goes to prove what I’ve felt ever since I was ten years old, when I started handling horses, and that is that there’s no bad horses. Some of them have good looks, some have good sense, and the ones that don’t have looks have the other, because all horses have some sense.”

  “Well, King didn’t have any looks, but he sure had horse sense,” I said.

  Benton jumped to his feet.

  “That’s it, Clyde! Horse sense! I knew as well as I knew my name that that fellow I traded with thought he had stung me, and so did you and everybody else; but I could tell by watching King that day that he had what every horse worth his currycomb ought to have. By God, Clyde, King had horse sense!”

  (First published in Esquire)

  The Rumor

  TO GEORGE WILLIAMS went the distinction of being the first to suggest making Sam Billings the new town treasurer. The moment he made the nomination at the annual town meeting there was an enthusiastic chorus of approval that resulted in the first unanimous election in the history of Androscoggin. During the last of the meeting everybody was asking himself why no one had ever thought of Sam Billings before.

  The election of Sam to the office of town treasurer pleased everybody. He was a good businessman and he was honest. Furthermore, the summer-hotel property that he owned and operated on the east shore of Androscoggin Lake paid about a tenth of the town’s total tax assessment, and during the season he gave employment to eighty or ninety people whose homes were in the town. After he was elected everybody wondered why they had been giving the office to crooks and scoundrels for the past twenty years or more when the public money could have been safe and secure with Sam Billings. The retiring treasurer was still unable to account to everybody’s satis
faction for about eighteen hundred dollars of the town’s money, and the one before him had allowed his books to get into such a tangled condition that it cost the town two hundred and fifty dollars to hire an accountant to make them balance.

  Clyde Ballard, one of the selectmen, took George aside to talk to him when the meeting was over. Clyde ran one of the general stores in the village.

  “You did the town a real service today,” he told George. “Sam Billings is the man who should have been treasurer all the time. How did you come to think of him?”

  “Well,” George said, “Sam Billings was one of my dark horses. The next time we need a good selectman I’ll trot another one of them out.”

  “George, there’s nothing wrong with me as a selectman, is there?” Clyde asked anxiously.

  “Well, I’m not saying there is, and I’m not saying there’s not. I’m not ready to make up my mind yet. I’ll wait and see if the town builds me a passable road over my way. I may want to buy me an automobile one of these days and if I do I’ll want a lot of road work done between my place and the village.”

  Clyde nodded his head understandingly. He had heard that George Williams was kicking about his road and saying that the selectmen had better make the road commissioners take more interest in it. He shook hands with George and drove back to the village.

  The summer-hotel-season closed after the first week in September and the guests usually went home to Boston and New York Tuesday or Wednesday after Labor Day. Sam Billings kept his hotel open until the first of October because there were many men who came down over the week-ends to play golf. In October he boarded up the windows and doors and took a good rest after working hard all summer. It was two or three weeks after that before he could find out what his season’s profits were, because he took in a lot of money during July and August.

  That autumn, for the first time in two or three decades, there was no one who spoke uneasily concerning the treasurer or the town’s money. Sam Billings was known to be an honest man, and because he was a good businessman everybody knew that he would keep the books accurately. All the money collected was given to Sam. The receipt of the money was promptly acknowledged, and all bills were paid when presented. It would have been almost impossible to find a complaint to make against the new treasurer.