From the door of the house a long shaft of yellow lamplight shone across the yard. Singing Sal was crouched behind the door with only her head sticking out.
“What you boys hanging around here for?” Big Buck said. “Come on and get going.”
They started down the hill, Big Buck striking out in front and Jimson and Moses running along beside him to keep up with him.
They were halfway down the hill, and Big Buck hadn’t said a word since they left the front of the house. Jimson and Moses ran along, trying to keep up with him, so they would hear anything he said about courting Singing Sal. Any man who had gone and courted Singing Sal right in her own house ought to be full of things to say.
They hung on, hoping he would say something any minute. It wasn’t so bad trying to keep up with him going downhill.
When they got to the bottom of the hill where the road crossed the creek, Big Buck stopped and turned around. He looked back up at the top of the hill where Singing Sal lived, and drew in a long deep breath. Jimson and Moses crowded around him to hear if he said anything.
“Them was the finest pout-mouthed perches I ever ate in all my life,” Big Buck said slowly. “My, oh, my! Them fried fish, and all them hot biscuits was the best eating I ever done. My, oh, my! That colored gal sure can cook!”
Big Buck hitched up his pants and started across the bridge. It was a long way back to the swamp, and the sun was getting ready to come up.
“My, oh, my!” he said, swinging into his stride.
Jimson and Moses ran along beside him, doing their best to keep up.
(First published in College Humor)
Kneel to the Rising Sun
A SHIVER WENT through Lonnie. He drew his hand away from his sharp chin, remembering what Clem had said. It made him feel now as if he were committing a crime by standing in Arch Gunnard’s presence and allowing his face to be seen.
He and Clem had been walking up the road together that afternoon on their way to the filling station when he told Clem how much he needed rations. Clem stopped a moment to kick a rock out of the road, and said that if you worked for Arch Gunnard long enough, your face would be sharp enough to split the boards for your own coffin.
As Lonnie turned away to sit down on an empty box beside the gasoline pump, he could not help wishing that he could be as unafraid of Arch Gunnard as Clem was. Even if Clem was a Negro, he never hesitated to ask for rations when he needed something to eat; and when he and his family did not get enough, Clem came right out and told Arch so. Arch stood for that, but he swore that he was going to run Clem out of the country the first chance he got.
Lonnie knew without turning around that Clem was standing at the corner of the filling station with two or three other Negroes and looking at him, but for some reason he was unable to meet Clem’s eyes.
Arch Gunnard was sitting in the sun, honing his jackknife blade on his boot top. He glanced once or twice at Lonnie’s hound, Nancy, who was lying in the middle of the road waiting for Lonnie to go home.
“That your dog, Lonnie?”
Jumping with fear, Lonnie’s hand went to his chin to hide the lean face that would accuse Arch of short-rationing.
Arch snapped his fingers and the hound stood up, wagging her tail. She waited to be called.
“Mr. Arch, I —”
Arch called the dog. She began crawling towards them on her belly, wagging her tail a little faster each time Arch’s fingers snapped. When she was several feet away, she turned over on her back and lay on the ground with her four paws in the air.
Dudley Smith and Jim Weaver, who were lounging around the filling station, laughed. They had been leaning against the side of the building, but they straightened up to see what Arch was up to.
Arch spat some more tobacco juice on his boot top and whetted the jackknife blade some more.
“What kind of a hound dog is that, anyway, Lonnie?” Arch said. “Looks like to me it might be a ketch hound.”
Lonnie could feel Clem Henry’s eyes boring into the back of his head. He wondered what Clem would do if it had been his dog Arch Gunnard was snapping his fingers at and calling like that.
“His tail’s way too long for a coon hound or a bird dog, ain’t it, Arch?” somebody behind Lonnie said, laughing out loud,
Everybody laughed then, including Arch. They looked at Lonnie, waiting to hear what he was going to say to Arch.
“Is he a ketch hound, Lonnie?” Arch said, snapping his finger again.
“Mr. Arch, I —”
“Don’t be ashamed of him, Lonnie, if he don’t show signs of turning out to be a bird dog or a foxhound. Everybody needs a hound around the house that can go out and catch pigs and rabbits when you are in a hurry for them. A ketch hound is a mighty respectable animal. I’ve known the time when I was mighty proud to own one.”
Everybody laughed.
Arch Gunnard was getting ready to grab Nancy by the tail. Lonnie sat up, twisting his neck until he, caught a glimpse of Clem Henry at the other corner of the filling station. Clem was staring at him with unmistakable meaning, with the same look in his eyes he had had that afternoon when he said that nobody who worked for Arch Gunnard ought to stand for short-rationing. Lonnie lowered his eyes. He could not figure out how a Negro could be braver than he was. There were a lot of times like that when he would have given anything he had to be able to jump into Clem’s shoes and change places with him.
“The trouble with this hound of yours, Lonnie, is that he’s too heavy on his feet. Don’t you reckon it would be a pretty slick little trick to lighten the load some, being as how he’s a ketch hound to begin with?”
Lonnie remembered then what Clem Henry had said he would do if Arch Gunnard ever tried to cut off his dog’s tail. Lonnie knew, and Clem knew, and everybody else knew, that that would give Arch the chance he was waiting for. All Arch asked, he had said, was for Clem Henry to overstep his place just one little half inch, or to talk back to him with just one little short word, and he would do the rest. Everybody knew what Arch meant by that, especially if Clem did not turn and run. And Clem had not been known to run from anybody, after fifteen years in the country.
Arch reached down and grabbed Nancy’s tail while Lonnie was wondering about Clem. Nancy acted as if she thought Arch were playing some kind of a game with her. She turned her head around until she could reach Arch’s hand to lick it. He cracked her on the bridge of the nose with the end of the jackknife.
“He’s a mighty playful dog, Lonnie,” Arch said, catching up a shorter grip on the tail, “but his wagpole is way too long for a dog his size, especially when he wants to be a ketch hound.”
Lonnie swallowed hard.
“Mr. Arch, she’s a mighty fine rabbit tracker. I —”
“Shucks, Lonnie,” Arch said, whetting the knife blade on the dog’s tail, “I ain’t ever seen a hound in all my life that needed a tail that long to hunt rabbits with. It’s way too long for just a common, ordinary, everyday ketch hound.”
Lonnie looked up hopefully at Dudley Smith and the others. None of them offered any help. It was useless for him to try to stop Arch, because Arch Gunnard would let nothing stand in his way when once he had set his head on what he wished to do. Lonnie knew that if he should let himself show any anger or resentment, Arch would drive him off the farm before sundown that night. Clem Henry was the only person there who would help him, but Clem . . .
The white men and the Negroes at both corners of the filling station waited to see what Lonnie was going to do about it. All of them hoped he would put up a fight for his hound. If anyone ever had the nerve to stop Arch Gunnard from cutting off a dog’s tail, it might put an end to it. It was plain, though, that Lonnie, who was one of Arch’s share croppers, was afraid to speak up. Clem Henry might; Clem was the only one who might try to stop Arch, even if it meant trouble. And all of them knew that Arch would insist on running Clem out of the country, or filling him full of lead.
“I reckon it’s all right with
you, ain’t it, Lonnie?” Arch said. “I don’t seem to hear no objections.”
Clem Henry stepped forward several paces, and stopped.
Arch laughed, watching Lonnie’s face, and jerked Nancy to her feet. The hound cried out in pain and surprise, but Arch made her be quiet by kicking her in the belly.
Lonnie winced. He could hardly bear to see anybody kick his dog like that.
“Mr. Arch, I . . .”
A contraction in his throat almost choked him for several moments, and he had to open his mouth wide and fight for breath. The other white men around him were silent. Nobody liked to see a dog kicked in the belly like that.
Lonnie could see the other end of the filling station from the corner of his eye. He saw a couple of Negroes go up behind Clem and grasp his overalls. Clem spat on the ground, between outspread feet, but he did not try to break away from them.
“Being as how I don’t hear no objections, I reckon it’s all right to go ahead and cut it off,” Arch said, spitting.
Lonnie’s head went forward and all he could see of Nancy was her hind feet. He had come to ask for a slab of sowbelly and some molasses, or something. Now he did not know if he could ever bring himself to ask for rations, no matter how much hungrier they became at home.
“I always make it a habit of asking a man first,” Arch said. “I wouldn’t want to go ahead and cut off a tail if a man had any objections. That wouldn’t be right. No, sir, it just wouldn’t be fair and square.”
Arch caught a shorter grip on the hound’s tail and placed the knife blade on it two or three inches from the rump. It looked to those who were watching as if his mouth were watering, because tobacco juice began to trickle down the corners of his lips. He brought up the back of his hand and wiped his mouth.
A noisy automobile came plowing down the road through the deep red dust. Everyone looked up as it passed in order to see who was in it.
Lonnie glanced at it, but he could not keep his eyes raised. His head fell downward once more until he could feel his sharp chin cutting into his chest. He wondered then if Arch had noticed how lean his face was.
“I keep two or three ketch hounds around my place,” Arch said, honing the blade on the tail of the dog as if it were a razor strop until his actions brought smiles to the faces of the men grouped around him, “but I never could see the sense of a ketch hound having a long tail. It only gets in their way when I send them out to catch a pig or a rabbit for my supper.”
Pulling with his left hand and pushing with his right, Arch Gunnard docked the hound’s tail as quickly and as easily as if he were cutting a willow switch in the pasture to drive the cows home with. The dog sprang forward with the release of her tail until she was far beyond Arch’s reach, and began howling so loud she could be heard half a mile away. Nancy stopped once and looked back at Arch, and then she sprang to the middle of the road and began leaping and twisting in circles. All that time she was yelping and biting at the bleeding stub of her tail.
Arch leaned backward and twirled the severed tail in one hand while he wiped the jackknife blade on his boot sole. He watched Lonnie’s dog chasing herself around in circles in the red dust.
Nobody had anything to say then. Lonnie tried not to watch his dog’s agony, and he forced himself to keep from looking at Clem Henry. Then, with his eyes shut, he wondered why he had remained on Arch Gunnard’s plantation all those past years, sharecropping for a mere living on short rations, and becoming leaner and leaner all the time. He knew then how true it was what Clem had said about Arch’s sharecroppers’ faces becoming sharp enough to hew their own coffins. His hands went to his chin before he knew what he was doing. His hand dropped when he had felt the bones of jaw and the exposed tendons of his cheeks.
As hungry as he was, he knew that even if Arch did give him some rations then, there would not be nearly enough for them to eat for the following week. Hatty, his wife, was already broken down from hunger and work in the fields, and his father, Mark Newsome, stone-deaf for the past twenty years, was always asking him why there was never enough food in the house for them to have a solid meal. Lonnie’s head fell forward a little more, and he could feel his eyes becoming damp. The pressure of his sharp chin against his chest made him so uncomfortable that he had to raise his head at last in order to ease the pain of it.
The first thing he saw when he looked up was Arch Gunnard twirling Nancy’s tail in his left hand. Arch Gunnard had a trunk full of dogs’ tails at home. He had been cutting off tails ever since anyone could remember, and during all those years he had accumulated a collection of which he was so proud that he kept the trunk locked and the key tied around his neck on a string. On Sunday afternoons when the preacher came to visit, or when a crowd was there to loll on the front porch and swap stories, Arch showed them off, naming each tail from memory just as well as if he had had a tag on it.
Clem Henry had left the filling station and was walking alone down the road towards the plantation. Clem Henry’s house was in a cluster of Negro cabins below Arch’s big house, and he had to pass Lonnie’s house to get there. Lonnie was on the verge of getting up and leaving when he saw Arch looking at him. He did not know whether Arch was looking at his lean face, or whether he was watching to see if he were going to get up and go down the road with Clem.
The thought of leaving reminded him of his reason for being there. He had to have some rations before suppertime that night, no matter how short they were,
“Mr. Arch, I . . .”
Arch stared at him for a moment, appearing as if he had turned to listen to some strange sound unheard of before that moment.
Lonnie bit his lips, wondering if Arch was going to say anything about how lean and hungry he looked. But Arch was thinking about something else. He slapped his hand on his leg and laughed out loud.
“I sometimes wish niggers had tails,” Arch said, coiling Nancy’s tail into a ball and putting it into his pocket. “I’d a heap rather cut off nigger tails than dog tails. There’d be more to cut, for one thing.”
Dudley Smith and somebody else behind them laughed for a brief moment. The laughter died out almost as suddenly as it had risen.
The Negroes who had heard Arch shuffled their feet in the dust and moved backwards. It was only a few minutes until not one was left at the filling station. They went up the road behind the red wooden building until they were out of sight.
Arch got up and stretched. The sun was getting low, and it was no longer comfortable in the October air. “Well, I reckon I’ll be getting on home to get me some supper,” he said.
He walked slowly to the middle of the road and stopped to look at Nancy retreating along the ditch.
“Nobody going my way?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you, Lonnie? Going home to supper, ain’t you?”
“Mr. Arch, I . . .”
Lonnie found himself jumping to his feet. His first thought was to ask for the sowbelly and molasses, and maybe some corn meal; but when he opened his mouth, the words refused to come out. He took several steps forward and shook his head. He did not know what Arch might say or do if he said “No.”
“Hatty’ll be looking for you,” Arch said, turning his back and walking off.
He reached into his hip pocket and took out Nancy’s tail. He began twirling it as he walked down the road towards the big house in the distance.
Dudley Smith went inside the filling station, and the others walked away.
After Arch had gone several hundred yards, Lonnie sat down heavily on the box beside the gas pump from which he had got up when Arch spoke to him. He sat down heavily, his shoulders drooping, his arms falling between his outspread legs.
Lonnie did not know how long his eyes had been closed, but when he opened them, he saw Nancy lying between his feet, licking the docked tail. While he watched her, he felt the sharp point of his chin cutting into his chest again. Presently the door behind him was slammed shut, and a minute later he could hear Dudley Smith walking away from the filling
station on his way home.
II
Lonnie had been sleeping fitfully for several hours when he suddenly found himself wide awake. Hatty shook him again. He raised himself on his elbow and tried to see into the darkness of the room. Without knowing what time it was, he was able to determine that it was still nearly two hours until sunrise.
“Lonnie,” Hatty said again, trembling in the cold night air, “Lonnie, your pa ain’t in the house.”
Lonnie sat upright in bed.
“How do you know he ain’t?” he said.
“I’ve been lying here wide awake ever since I got in bed, and I heard him when he went out. He’s been gone all that time.”
“Maybe he just stepped out for a while,” Lonnie said, turning and trying to see through the bedroom window.
“I know what I’m saying, Lonnie,” Hatty insisted. “Your pa’s been gone a heap too long.”
Both of them sat without a sound for several minutes while they listened for Mark Newsome.
Lonnie got up and lit a lamp. He shivered while he was putting on his shirt, overalls, and shoes. He tied his shoelaces in hard knots because he couldn’t see in the faint light. Outside the window it was almost pitch-dark, and Lonnie could feel the damp October air blowing against his face.
“I’ll go help look,” Hatty said, throwing the covers off and starting to get up.
Lonnie went to the bed and drew the covers back over her and pushed her back into place.
“You try to get some sleep, Hatty,” he said; “you can’t stay awake the whole night. I’ll go bring Pa back.”
He left Hatty, blowing out the lamp, and stumbled through the dark hall, feeling his way to the front porch by touching the wall with his hands. When he got to the porch, he could still barely see any distance ahead, but his eyes were becoming more accustomed to the darkness. He waited a minute, listening.
Feeling his way down the steps into the yard, he walked around the corner of the house and stopped to listen again before calling his father. “Oh, Pa!” he said loudly. “Oh, Pa!”
Stories of Erskine Caldwell Page 70