Stories of Erskine Caldwell

by Erskine Caldwell

  “I don’t want the case,” he said. “I don’t want to touch it.”

  The boy stared at him helplessly. It was the third lawyer he had gone to see that morning, and all of them had refused to take his father’s case.

  “There’s no money in it,” Ramsey Clark said, still frowning. “I’d never get a dime out of you niggers if I took this case. And, besides, I don’t want to represent any more niggers at court. Better lawyers than me have been ruined that way. I don’t want to get the reputation of being a ‘nigger lawyer.’ ”

  Henry shifted the weight of his body from one foot to the other and bit his lips. He did not know what to say. He stood in the middle of the room trying to think of a way to get help for his father.

  “My father never said he was going to kill Mr. Luther,” Henry protested. “He’s always been on friendly terms with Mr. Luther. None of us ever gave Mr. Luther trouble. Anybody will tell you that. All the other tenants on Mr. Luther’s place will tell you my father has always stood up for Mr. Luther. He never said he was going to try to hurt Mr. Luther.”

  The lawyer waved for him to stop. He had heard all he wanted to listen to.

  “I told you I wouldn’t touch the case,” he said angrily, snatching up some papers and slamming them down on his desk. “I don’t want to go into court and waste my time arguing a case that won’t make any difference one way or the other, anyway. It’s a good thing for you niggers to get a turn on the ’gang every once in a while. It doesn’t make any difference whether Abe Lathan threatened Mr. Bolick, or whether he didn’t threaten him. Abe Lathan said he wasn’t going to move off the farm, didn’t he? Well, that’s enough to convict him in court. When the case comes up for trial, that’s all the judge will want to hear. He’ll be sent to the ’gang quicker than a flea can hop. No lawyer is going to spend a lot of time preparing a case when he knows how it’s going to end. If there was money in it, it might be different. But you niggers don’t have a thin dime to pay me with. No, I don’t want the case. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.” Henry backed out of Ramsey Clark’s office and went to the jail. He secured permission to see his father for five minutes.

  Uncle Abe was sitting on his bunk in the cage looking through the bars when Henry entered. The jailer came and stood behind him at the cage door.

  “Did you see a lawyer and tell him I never said nothing like that to Mr. Luther?” Uncle Abe asked the first thing.

  Henry looked at his father, but it was difficult for him to answer. He shook his head, dropping his gaze until he could see only the floor.

  “You done tried, didn’t you, Henry?” Uncle Abe asked.

  Henry nodded.

  “But when you told the lawyers how I ain’t never said a mean thing about Mr. Luther, or his daddy before him, in all my whole life, didn’t they say they was going to help me get out of jail?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “What did the lawyers say, Henry? When you told them how respectful I’ve always been to Mr. Luther, and how I’ve always worked hard for him all my life, and never mentioned the shares, didn’t they say they would help me then?”

  Henry looked at his father, moving his head sideways in order to see him between the bars of the cage. He had to swallow hard several times before he could speak at all.

  “I’ve already been to see three lawyers,” he said finally. “All three of them said they couldn’t do nothing about it, and to just go ahead and let it come up for trial. They said there wasn’t nothing they could do, because the judge would give you a turn on the ’gang, anyway.”

  He stopped for a moment, looking down at his father’s feet through the bars.

  “If you want me to, I’ll go see if I can find some other lawyers to take the case. But it won’t do much good. They just won’t do anything.”

  Uncle Abe sat down on his bunk and looked at the floor. He could not understand why none of the lawyers would help him. Presently he looked up through the bars at his son. His eyes were fast filling with tears that he could not control.

  “Why did the lawyers say the judge would give me a turn on the ’gang, anyway, Henry?” he asked.

  Henry gripped the bars, thinking about all the years he had seen his father and mother working in the cotton fields for Luther Bolick and being paid in rations, a few clothes, and a house to live in, and nothing more.

  “Why did they say that for, Henry?” his father insisted.

  “I reckon because we is just colored folks,” Henry said at last. “I don’t know why else they would say things like that.”

  The jailer moved up behind Henry, prodding him with his stick. Henry walked down the hall between the rows of cages toward the door that led to the street. He did not look back.

  (First published in Esquire)

  The Dream

  FOR SIX OR SEVEN years Harry had been telling me about a dream. I thought nothing of it, because nearly everyone has dreams; some of them are pleasant, others very disagreeable, but, otherwise, I could never see anything in a dream to become upset about. Each time I dreamed I remembered what happened in the dream for a day or two, and afterwards never thought of it again. But Harry had been having the same dream regularly each month all that time. Exactly the same thing happened on each occasion, the time and place were invariably the same; and the two people had not changed in dress or appearance since the beginning. Harry was one of them; the other was a young girl.

  Harry, while he was at home the winter before, had consulted a psychiatrist. The man had a reputation for correcting and curing practically every case of minor mental disorder he had undertaken, and Harry felt certain that if there was anything wrong with him the psychiatrist could help him. He went, however, to see him only once. Harry explained that the dream was recurrent each month, but the psychiatrist said there wasn’t anything to it. He said it was all utterly silly. He told Harry to forget it.

  Probably that was his method of curing Harry. But, anyway, Harry said he lost all confidence in him after that, and he never went back again. His reason for doubting the ability of the psychiatrist to help him was that the man had said something about the impossibility of a dream’s occurring more than once. But Harry’s dream was recurrent. It came back again the following month, the next, and the next.

  It was late June when I saw Harry the first time that summer, and he had just had his monthly dream. He told me all about it again. It was precisely the same thing he had told me the year before.

  We were at the boathouse and Harry was putting a new coat of green paint on his canoe. While he was retelling the dream I was sitting against a tree. As he neared the close of the dream his paintbrush moved faster and faster, and when he reached the end the brush was moving so swiftly he could not keep enough paint in the bristles to coat the canvas.

  “You finish it for me,” he said, his eyes ablaze and his hands jerking nervously. “There isn’t much more to paint, anyway.”

  I took the brush from him, and before I could reach for the paint bucket he had disappeared in the woods behind the boathouse. I did not see him again that day.

  Harry’s condition worried me more then than it had since he first began dreaming. It seemed to me that there must be something that could be done to help him, and perhaps cure him completely. I did not believe for a moment, however, that he would become insane. Neither did Harry. He had always been normal, and as far as I could see he was still normal. We both looked upon the dream as something temporary that would pass away at any moment.

  We had known each other for ten years. Each summer we came up to Maine with our families and stayed through the season. Our camps were on the same lake, and we saw each other almost every day. We went on fishing trips together, and we went swimming two or three times a day. Once a week we went somewhere to a dance, and more frequently, over to the village to the movies. Whenever we talked about the dream Harry always said it was as bad as ever. He said the fact that he continued having the recurrent dream was what was bad; the
dream itself, however, was very pleasant.

  The intensity of the dream was as memorable as the events of it. Nothing really happened, he said; it was the feeling and lifelike reality that caused him so much worry. He had told me about it so many times I believed I knew how he felt. Each time, he was walking along a lonely road through a forest in northeastern Maine. The moon was out, but a thin veil of grayish clouds darkened everything and left the road and forest in a dull glow like the soft light of a shaded lamp. After he had walked a mile and a half along the road he came to a bridge over a stream. It was a timber bridge, about four and a half feet wide. He had not heard a sound or seen a single living thing until he reached the bridge. But the moment he put his foot on the bridge he heard someone call his name very softly. He looked up, and in front of him, in the center of the gravel road, was a young girl. She was about eighteen. She stood in the road ahead of him, bathed in this dull yellowish light of the clouded moon. He stopped on the bridge and looked at her.

  “What do you want?” he asked her.

  “I am waiting for Harry,” she said.

  Harry said he begged her to tell him her name and where she lived, but she would never answer either question.

  “I’m Harry,” he then told her.

  “Then I’ll turn around and go back.”

  “Let me go with you,” he said to her. “I’m Harry, and if you are looking for me I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” she said. “No, I must go back alone.”

  Harry said he ran after her and nearly killed himself trying to catch her. She was always the same distance ahead of him, no matter how hard he ran to catch her. After they had gone three miles, he suddenly woke up and jumped out of bed. After that, no matter how much he wanted to go back to sleep and recapture the dream, he was always wide awake until morning. Each time this happened he had to get up in the middle of the night, dress, and walk around the camp until daylight. He was never sleepy after the dream, although he usually slept each morning until eight-thirty or nine.

  I saw Harry again the next day, but we did not speak about his dream for almost a month. Then one morning he told me he had had the dream for July. He told me about it again. It was the same as it had always been.

  Then he told me something else. He said that recently, since he had been at camp that summer, he had been having the dream while he was awake. The daytime dream, as he called it, did not come at regular intervals like the one in sleep, but it was the same dream nevertheless. He would be driving his car along the country road to the village, wide awake and singing or whistling, when suddenly he saw this young girl standing in the road. When he was almost upon her, she turned and ran down the road in the direction he was going. He was never able to catch her then either, although once he speeded his car up to eighty miles an hour. She disappeared from sight three miles from the place where he first saw her. Several times he stopped the car, got out, and ran into the woods calling her. He knew that was foolish, but he said the intense attraction she held for him impelled him to go after her.

  “I’m going crazy if I don’t stop seeing her,” he said. “The only thing that will help me now will be catching her or finding her somewhere. I’ve passed the point where I could forget her even if the dream should suddenly stop and never come back again. The only hope I have of remaining normal for the rest of my life is that of possessing her. That doctor said it was nothing to worry about, but I’ve gone beyond that now. I don’t worry any longer. I’ve got to get her. If I don’t I’ll be insane in another year. It’s not too late yet to save myself, because last winter and spring at home I went around with a crowd of boys and girls, had dates, went to dances, and acted perfectly naturally. But as soon as the time came to have another dream I went all to pieces.”

  “Maybe you saw a girl like her once, and she’s your love-ideal,” I said jokingly, trying to make him stop thinking about it so seriously. “You ought to try to find her when you go home this fall.”

  But he would never laugh about the dream. He was always serious about it, as if it were something sacred.

  “There’s no other girl like her. There couldn’t be. No other girl could have such a voice. The sound of it is perfect, and there is a distinct meaning in the musiclike notes.”

  “Just the same,” I said, “if I were you I’d try to find one like her when you go home. You would be all right then. It would be all over. The dream would probably never come back again.”

  Harry walked away without answering me. The expression on his face told me that he believed I could never understand.

  Near the end of August, a few days after the time for him to have the monthly dream, I went over to Harry’s camp early one morning. He was sitting very still in a deep canvas camp chair under the pine trees.

  When he saw me, he jumped up and ran to meet me.

  “I had that dream again the other night,” he said excitedly. His hands were shaking even more than they did the day he was painting the canoe at the boathouse. “The same dream came back again the other night.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “The thing for you to do now is to try every psychiatrist in the country until you are cured. Surely there is one somewhere who can help you.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t want it to stop now. I want it to keep on coming back, because it will turn into reality. I’m going to find that girl. Last night while I was having the dream I saw a signboard nailed to a tree beside the bridge. It was there for the first time. Somebody recently put it up. It was a new sign, freshly painted and lettered. There was a big arrow on it, such as highway signs have, and over that was lettered LOST LAKE — 20 MILES.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means that I will find the girl living at Lost Lake, of course. That is where she lives.”

  “How do you know she lives there?” I was undecided whether he was joking at last about the dream, or if he was really serious and believed that.

  “Because the sign said that lake is twenty miles from the bridge. And Lost Lake is twenty miles from Rangeley, isn’t it? Well, that means that the bridge is near Rangeley too. I’m going up there to find her. I might not find her the first day, but I will before I come back. She’s living in a camp somewhere on Lost Lake. I know that. I’m too certain about it to be wrong.”

  I could not understand how he could believe that girl was up there, at least one that would be enough like her to make him believe she was the same.

  “There is probably more than one lake with that name,” I said. “The one you are looking for may be on the other side of the continent.” He ignored me entirely.

  “I’m not certain where that bridge is, but it is of no importance, because I can start from Rangeley, or from any other direction and get to the lake. You see how that could be, don’t you? The important thing is to get to the lake. Then I’ll start walking around it and ask at each camp for the girl. It may take me a week to go around the lake, because there is no road along the shore, but I won’t be surprised if I find her at the first camp I stop at.”

  I was almost as excited as Harry, in spite of myself. His explanations of the sign on the tree and his interpretations of the dream would have convinced me that the girl was actually alive if my better sense had not told me it was impossible. However, I wanted to go with him, for the adventure.

  “When are you starting, Harry?” I asked him. “I want to go along.”

  “I’m starting in the morning,” he said, “but I can’t take you along. I’m sorry. But you see, as soon as I find her I’m going to marry her. That’s what I’ve been waiting for all these seven years.”

  “Good Lord, Harry,” I said, “you don’t mean to say that you believe you are going to find a girl actually enough like the one in the dream to make you think she is the same one, do you?”

  He took two rings from his pocket and held them in the palm of his hand for me to see. One was a diamond solitaire, the other a wedding ring.

  “I’v
e had these for more than two years,” he said. “I didn’t have the nerve to show them to you before, because I knew you would laugh at me. But since I’ve found her I don’t mind showing them to you.”

  “But you haven’t found her yet, Harry. She may not be at Lost Lake, after all.”

  Harry did not say anything for several minutes. He looked at me as if he were wondering how anyone could doubt that such a girl as he had dreamed of was not alive that moment.

  “If you don’t believe what I’ve told you,” he said, “then why don’t you bet me that I won’t find her?”

  Whatever doubt was then left in my mind was slowly leaving me. Even at that moment I thought I saw her standing up there in the woods, at a camp on the lake, waiting for Harry to come.

  “Do you want to do that?” he insisted.

  “No,” I said, “I’d rather not.”

  (First published in American Earth)

  A Small Day

  GOVERNOR GIL WAS standing astride the path, knocking heads off the weeds, when Walter Lane came up the hill from the spring. A wide circle of wilted weeds lay on the ground around him, and his walking stick was still swinging. It looked as if he had been waiting there for half an hour or longer.

  “It’s been mighty hot today,” Walter said, stopping and lowering the two pails of water to the ground.

  “It’s a small day when the sun don’t shine,” Governor Gil said. “Where’s the rest of your family, and the girl?”

  “My wife and the young ones went over to visit her folks this afternoon,” Walter told him. “They’ll be coming home some time tonight after supper.” He turned around and looked down the path behind. “Daisy’s coming up the path any minute now. She’s down at the spring filling a bucket.”

  Governor Gil looked down the path, but Daisy was not within sight. It was almost a hundred yards from the crown of the slope down to the bottom of the hill, where the spring was.