Place Called Estherville

by Erskine Caldwell

  “I would appreciate it, Miss Madgie, but I don’t need clothes. I need the money.”

  “Money!” she exclaimed with a derisive laugh. “You’re trying with your crafty ways to get both out of me—clothes and money. I know how wily and tricky the colored are. Nobody has to tell me. But I might have known what to expect. You don’t fool me one instant, though. I’ve lived with the colored all my life, and I know their deceitful little conniving tricks better than they know them themselves. Every last one of you will try to do something spiteful like this every time you have the slightest chance. Sometimes I think it’s born into every last one of you and will never die out as long as your race lasts. But you’re not fooling me, Kathyanne.”

  “But when I started to work for you—”

  “When you started to work! Just listen to yourself! You’re telling a vile, bald-faced lie of the meanest kind. That’s why nobody can ever believe the colored. There’s never a word of truth in any of you. When you started to work for me, I never agreed to pay you one red cent of money and you know it, too. Money was never mentioned—not once! You said you’d work for me reasonably if I’d give you the job—”

  “But when you agree to work for somebody, it’s understood you’ll be paid in money. Miss Norma always paid me every—”

  “You shut your mouth! I won’t have you talking to me with such impertinence! You’re trying to make it appear that I’m taking advantage of you. That was the only understanding we had, and I’m going to do just exactly what I think is right. I’ve always given my servants clothes like this, and I must say that most of them appreciated what they received and were glad to have them. Very few of them ever showed a spirit like yours, and if they did they lived to regret it. You seem to forget that you’ve been eating three meals a day here for the past month, meals that I provide for you. Altogether, I think I’m being extremely generous. There are not many women in this town who treat a maid as well as I treat you. You’re ungrateful, Kathyanne. Very ungrateful. And I hope you live to regret it. I hope you have to beg off the streets until you learn your lesson. Now, will you take these clothes I’ve offered to give you? Will you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I need fifteen dollars for last month’s rent.”

  Madgie angrily snatched up a baking pan from the table and hurled it with all her might to the floor. The pan clattered noisily across the room to the opposite wall.

  “All you colored are just alike—begging for money all the time. I’ve never known it to fail. The better you’re treated, the more you demand. Well, you won’t get it from me. I wouldn’t hand over as much as a thin dime after seeing your attitude about these lovely clothes I wanted to see you have. You stayed out there in the country till you got a common education, and then you thought you could move to town and demand anything you wanted from white people. Somebody’s got to put you in your place. Somebody’s got to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”

  “The clothes are nice, Miss Madgie, but it’s the rent money—”

  Exasperated, Madgie drew a long deep breath. Presently she forced a smile to her lips.

  “Kathyanne, I don’t want to be hard on you. All my life I’ve believed that we white people should go to the trouble of trying to understand the colored, and help them—show them what’s best for their own welfare—just like you would a child. Every time I heard people talking about ways for the two races to live together harmoniously, I just think to myself how simple it would all be if everybody would only listen to me. I wouldn’t think of scolding one of my children for not having the foresight and the judgment of an adult—I would try to explain to him he should do one thing and not something else. That’s the intelligent thing to do. And I feel exactly the same way about you, Kathyanne, child. I want to be patient and try to help you understand. Now, if you want the clothes, it’s not too late to change your mind. These are very lovely things. Just look at this striped wool dress. Don’t you like it, Kathyanne? It’s a little too warm to wear now, but you could put it away in mothballs until fall. I’d be glad to let you have some mothballs, too.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll just have to quit and find a job somewhere else, Miss Madgie. I don’t like to leave without notice, but I just can’t keep on working for you any longer without real pay.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Madgie cried, her anger returning. She flung the dress on the table. “I never heard such impertinence in all my life! The idea of somebody like you talking to me like this! I’ll not have you leaving and spreading vile lies all over town about me—telling the whole town that I tried to make you take your wages in clothing—saying that you quit because I wouldn’t give you money instead. There are people in this town who’d gloat over such gossip about me—but I won’t have it! I know exactly what you’d like people to say. But I’ll not have that kind of talk spread around about me, by you or anybody else. I have a social standing in Estherville that I intend to keep, and I simply won’t be talked about that way. You’ll stay right here where you are, Kathyanne. You understand?”

  “But please, Miss Madgie—”

  “If you colored people weren’t so everlastingly trifling in your ways, you wouldn’t get behind in the rent and such things. It’s your own fault. And you’re trying to get sympathy out of me for your own shortcomings.”

  Madgie walked to the other side of the kitchen and stood there regarding Kathyanne contemptuously. Her face was flushed with anger and her lips were trembling.

  “I’ve wanted to say this for a long time, and thank God I’ve got the chance at last. If there’s anything in this world I despise,” she said cruelly, “it’s a nasty stinking nigger!”

  There was a long speechless interval, during which the only sound to be heard in the kitchen was the urgent ticking of the clock on the shelf behind the stove.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Madgie,” Kathyanne told her, her voice tensely vibrant, “but I can’t work for you any more after this—after what you’ve said.”

  “You’d better listen to me and do as I tell you if you know what’s good for you. I’m giving you fair warning, Kathyanne Bazemore. If you disobey me and deliberately turn your back on me and walk out of this house now, I’ll tell my husband. Mr. Pugh will see to it that nobody in town hires you after this—ever! I’ll say that you’re dishonest, thieving, lying, and immoral—which’ll be the truth, because all of your race is that, and worse, from beginning to end.” She laughed with a shrill high-pitched tremor in her voice. “When I get through, nobody in town will let you work steady. And it’ll serve you right to have to go around begging for a day’s work every day.”

  Madgie’s face was livid with rage.

  “I’ll have to get along the best I can then,” Kathyanne told her, “because I’m going to leave.” She started walking across the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Miss Madgie, but I have to now. I couldn’t stay after this.” She went to the door and opened it. “I could never work for you for old clothes, or money, either, after this. You’ll have to find somebody else.”

  “I’ve warned you, Kathyanne,” Madgie said, her voice shrill and hysterical. She was trembling all over. “If you ever so much as breathe a word of this to a living soul—if you tell anybody that the reason you left here was because I tried to make you take your pay in old clothes—you’ll never have a decent job in Estherville again. Ill tell my husband to see to that.” She pressed her hands against her face and began to cry. “Please say you won’t tell, Kathyanne—I couldn’t stand to have that kind of gossip going on and on as long as I live! Don’t treat me like this! For God’s sake, promise me you won’t tell, Kathyanne!”

  Closing the door behind her, Kathyanne ran across the porch, down the steps, and then walked away into the bright warm sunshine of the May morning.

  Part Two

  MIDSUMMER

  Chapter 5

  GANUS HAD BEEN WAITING on the sidewalk in front of Claude Hutto’s bicycle shop
since six-thirty that morning, and it was nearly a quarter of nine when Claude, after having stopped at the post office for the mail, came walking leisurely down Peachtree Street, and opened up for the day’s business. It was a warm summer morning in July. Claude was middle-aged and a widower. His only child, Mabel, had married a farmer when she was fifteen and then, later, had left him to live with a barber in Atlanta. Claude kept short hours during the hot summer months when children were not riding bicycles to school and so needed less repair work done. From early June to late August he nearly always closed his shop on Saturdays to go fishing for mud-cat in the Savannah River. His best business months were September, when old bikes were traded in on new models, and December, when many parents, in prosperous cotton years, bought bicycles to give their children for Christmas.

  Claude had noticed a Negro boy, dressed in patched overalls and a faded blue shirt, standing in front of his shop gazing enviously at the three or four new bicycles displayed in the windows, but he had paid little attention to him. After unlocking the door, he went to the rear of the store and put the mail on his desk, and then got the broom to sweep off the sidewalk. When he returned to the front of the shop, Ganus had come inside and was standing entranced before one of the bicycles racked on the floor. It was one of the newest models, dazzlingly enameled in air-cruiser red and metallic gray. It had a coil spring fork, sponge-rubber pedals, and chromium-plated wheel rims. It was not unusual for Negro boys of all ages to come in and stare admiringly at Claude’s stock of bicycles; but he discouraged the practice, because most of the boys were of school age and unable to earn enough money on weekends to pay for a bike. Occasionally, however, a Negro boy of eighteen or nineteen, who had quit school and was working steadily, gave him an opportunity to make a sale. Claude stood just inside the door, broom in hand, and, eyeing Ganus, tried to make up his mind whether or not to tell him to get out of the store. A Negro’s dollar was as good as a white man’s as far as he was concerned; but, as a matter of principle, he kept Negroes out of his store as much as possible when they were not actually buying something they could pay for, since most white people in Estherville shunned stores where it was known that Negroes were permitted to congregate and more than one merchant had been known to go bankrupt for not being more particular about such things. Claude was still trying to decide what to do, when he saw Ganus put his hand on the shiny chromium-plated handlebar. He knew that was a sign for him to take action without further delay; there were white people who would even refuse to buy an article of merchandise if they suspected it had been previously touched by a Negro’s hand.

  “What do you want, boy?” he spoke out roughly.

  Ganus quickly withdrew his hand. “Howdy, Mr. Hutto,” he said, turning around.

  “You know my name?” Claude asked, surprised. “I don’t know you.”

  “My name’s Ganus Bazemore, Mr. Hutto.”

  “That don’t mean a thing to me,” Claude told him, shaking his head. “I never saw you before. Where’re you from, boy?”

  “I’ve been living here in town since late last summer,” Ganus replied.

  “That still don’t mean nothing to me. What do you want here in my store?”

  “I came in here to see about getting a bicycle, Mr. Hutto.”

  “You mean—buy one?”

  “Yes, sir. I sure would like to have one right away. I always did want a fine bicycle like these you’ve got.”

  “Are you working steady?”

  Ganus looked around at the bicycle on the rack for a moment and then shook his head.

  “Not exactly, right this minute, Mr. Hutto. But if I had a bicycle—”

  Claude raised the broom and motioned him toward the street with an authoritative gesture. “No use hanging around here, boy,” he said gruffly. “Now, get out. I don’t want you blacks in here with no real business to transact. I don’t have the time to waste on you, and white people might be coming in any minute, anyhow. If you ever get yourself a steady, paying job, you can come back and talk to me about it. But don’t come back unless you are working steady. Now, get out of my store like I told you.”

  Careful to keep beyond Claude’s reach, Ganus went out to the sidewalk. He stood silently at the curb while Claude swept out the doorway and made a few token sweeps of the broom on the concrete pavement in front of the store.

  As Claude turned to go back into the shop, he saw Ganus following him. “I thought I told you to go on away!” he said angrily. “Why don’t you do what I told you?”

  “Mr. Hutto, I just wanted to ask you something,” Ganus said meekly.

  “There’s no use asking me nothing, boy. I’ve got bicycles to sell, but you don’t have the money to buy one with. Now, stop this loafing around my store like I told you once already. If I have to call the police, you’ll wish you had. They wouldn’t mind at all giving you two or three months on the work gang. They’ve got a lot of road work they want done this summer. Now, get on down the street and stay away from here after this like I’ve been telling you.”

  Ganus started moving away and Claude went back inside. While he was dusting the counter, however, he looked around and saw Ganus standing on the threshold of the door.

  “How much money will it take to get a bike, Mr. Hutto?” he asked Claude.

  “Forty-nine fifty,” Claude said, thinking that would discourage him enough to make him leave without further trouble. “And that’s not counting the extras, neither.”

  “I don’t have that much money,” Ganus said, shaking his head sadly. “But just as soon as I go to work I can pay on it every week, Mr. Hutto.”

  Claude studied him thoughtfully, wondering if he had misjudged Ganus’ ability to pay. He told himself that the boy might be able to buy a bicycle, after all. It had been nearly a month since he had made a sale. He put the broom away and walked up to the front of the shop again.

  “How much money have you got?” he asked Ganus.

  “None at all, right now, Mr. Hutto,” he admitted.

  Claude was disappointed. “You don’t seem to understand how bicycles are sold, boy. You’d have to pay all cash, because you don’t have a steady job. Unless you can pay about half down and make satisfactory arrangements for the balance to be paid off weekly, plus carrying charges and so on. It takes real money to buy things in a store.”

  “What you said is just exactly what I want to do, Mr. Hutto,” Ganus told him with an eager motion of his head. “That’s what I came in here to see you about.”

  “You mean—pay half down?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Claude was confused. “But just a while ago you said you didn’t have no money at all. What are you talking about, anyhow? Is somebody going to advance you enough money for the down payment? Is that what you mean?”

  “Mr. Harry Daitch over there at his grocery store across the street said he’d give me a job delivering groceries for him if I had a bicycle—starting right away, if I hurried. That’s why I’ve been waiting here in front of your store since early in the morning. I want to go to work for Mr. Harry right away.”

  “Is Mr. Daitch going to let you have the money for the down payment? Is that what you mean?”

  Claude was feeling much better, now that he thought he could see the prospect of making a sale. He had a good mark-up on his line of bicycles and his overhead was nothing to worry about. He smiled at Ganus for the first time.

  “No, sir, Mr. Hutto. He didn’t say he would. He just said for me to make my own arrangements my own self, if I wanted the job, because I couldn’t have it unless I had a bike to deliver the groceries with. He said it ought to be brand-new, too, so it wouldn’t always be breaking down and falling apart and making the deliveries late, because folks don’t like to wait for their groceries. That’s why I came in here. That’s what I want to see you about, Mr. Hutto. I sure want that job. It’s been a long time since I worked steady. I’ve been up since five o’clock waiting for you to open up your store so I could see you about gett
ing a bicycle.”

  Claude frowned. “I couldn’t let you take a bike out of here on such terms. That wouldn’t be good business. You’ll have to raise enough money somehow to make the down payment if you want the bike. There just ain’t no other way about it.”

  “But I’ve just got to get me a bicycle, Mr. Hutto,” he said desperately, “because I need to go to work for Mr. Harry Daitch right away. I’ve been out of work since last spring and I’ve just got to have a job. Mr. Harry told me to hurry and be there to go to work just as soon as I could make the arrangements about getting a bicycle. If I don’t hurry, I’m scared he might let somebody else have that job. I sure don’t want that to happen. Nobody needs work as bad as I do.”

  “How about somebody in your family helping you out?” Claude suggested. Now that he had gone that far toward making a sale, he hated to see the opportunity vanish completely. “Could your family make the down payment for you?”

  “My sister hasn’t been working lately, either, and Aunt Hazel can’t work any more at all.”

  “That’s bad,” Claude said coldly. “It’s always bad when nobody in a household is working. You can’t make down payments on a bike that way.”

  “There must be some way to get it done,” Ganus said persistently. “I’ve just got to have a bicycle. I might have to go the rest of the year before I could find another job.”

  “Boy, the trouble with you is that you haven’t lived in town long enough to learn that the colored hardly ever gets what they want. The big trouble is that you still think in your head like the country colored. But you’ll learn in time, if you live long enough.”

  Turning his back on Ganus, he went to the door and looked out into the street for several minutes. He was thinking it might be at least two months before the September buying season began and he might not have another opportunity in the meantime to make a sale. He could find good use for twenty or twenty-five dollars in profit during the weeks to come. He needed a new battery for his automobile before he could go fishing again, too. When he turned around, he saw Ganus moving his hand affectionately over the smooth, bright enameled frame of the bicycle. This time he did not order him to take his hand off.