Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  The flickering yellow light showed bare, unpainted walls, an ancient chifforobe with a cracked and fading mirror, the narrow cot where he slept, the single chair, the splintery wooden table, the black stove—there were few other things lying about, just the Bible with its worn and cracked leather cover, the heavy, hand-pieced quilts Mattie Ruth had given him, the black, cast-iron skillet she let him use, the few clothes folded and put away in the chifforobe, and his shoes beside the bed.

  He shivered with the cold and moved to build a fire in the stove, knowing it would be a time before the room would be warm and the heavy, damp chill in the air would be driven away. He kept his coat on and sat down on the narrow cot, thinking of what he would cook for his supper—bacon and eggs, for he was too tired to fool with much more. But it would still be a time before the fire in the stove would be hot enough to cook on.

  He stuck one hand in the pocket of his coat and pulled out the few coins that were his pay for the work he had done since he had been on the Whitley place—ten days work, and he held it all in the palm of one hand, minus what had been taken out for the rent on this room, and for the charge he had been forced to run at the store. Doing chores for Mattie Ruth in the few hours he had free from Whitley’s demands had allowed him her home cooking at times; chopping wood for one of Whitley’s sharecroppers had given him eggs in return, butter, and a little flour, but still there had been food to buy, kerosene for the lamp, and thread to patch his overalls with. He had watched his charging carefully, worrying over every penny he knew would have to come from his wages in the end—how hard it had been to decide to part with even one of those few, precious coins, as he had to do today in deciding to place the telephone call to Eason County.

  He knew his grandparents would be worried about him, wondering where he was, and if he was still even alive and well, but still it had been hard to part with even that little bit of money, knowing he could instead have put it away toward that dream that still lived inside of him—and it had been harder still, deciding to place the telephone call, when he knew he would have to ask for help, for he had never used a telephone before in all his life.

  There had never been a telephone in the house when he had been growing up, such a contraption having been an extravagance far beyond the means of his parents or any of his kin in the County, and he had never had reason to use the one in the little store near their home. But for once in all his life he wished he had paid more attention when other people had been using the one that hung on the back wall in Garrick’s Store in Eason County. He had almost changed his mind, waiting around in Whitley’s store long after his wages had been settled up earlier in the day, wasting time, waiting for all the other farmhands to leave. Whitley himself had already gone back to the big house, having settled up accounts with his people for the past two weeks, and Janson had been left alone in the store with the storekeeper, Mr. Frazier, and with Whitley’s youngest son, Stan. He had continued to wait, hoping the boy would leave as well, but a farm wife had come in to tie up the storekeeper instead, bartering with him in a loud voice over a trade of eggs for corn meal, and Janson had been left with little other choice but to either leave or to ask the boy for his help.

  Stan Whitley was fourteen years old, five years Janson’s junior, and, though Janson had seen him about the place over the past two weeks, he had never had any reason to speak to him during that time. The boy stared at him from behind round-rimmed glasses as Janson walked to where he sat on a tall stool pulled up before the counter, and Janson found himself suddenly certain the boy would laugh when he told what he wanted to do and asked him for his help—but Stan did not laugh. Not even a trace of amusement showed on Stan Whitley’s face as he rose and went to the square, black contraption that hung on the rear wall of the store. He angled down the mouthpiece so that he could speak into it better, then picked up the receiver and turned the crank, waiting for a moment for the operator, then placing the call to Eason County.

  After a moment Stan placed the receiver back into the cradle and turned to look at him, and Janson moved a few feet away, pretending to look at the tobacco cutter there on the counter as he waited the seemingly endless time it took for the operator to ring back with his call. He was afraid the boy would ask him why he had not written a letter instead of placing the costly telephone call to Eason County, especially since he had found it necessary to ask for help in even doing so—but, to Janson, it was far preferable that he let someone know that he had never used a telephone before, than to let them know that he could only barely read or write.

  There had never seemed enough time to learn in his years of growing up, his having been out of school as much as in to help work their land; there had always been work to do in the fields, plowing and planting and chopping the cotton, picking it in the fall—he had attended school faithfully each day he had not been needed at home, from the time he had been barely old enough to be allowed through the school doors, until he had passed his sixteenth birthday; but still he had always seemed so very far behind, with no chance of ever catching up. The teachers had been too overworked, with too many subjects to cover and too many grades to teach in the crowded, two-room schoolhouse—and too many other students in the same situation as he, out of school too often to work the sharecropped and tenanted farms, and too far behind when they did return to ever have any hopes of catching them up.

  He and so many others had been left back with the smaller children year after year, or simply passed on out of kindness, or out of a sheer sense of hopelessness at trying to teach the same material to the same pupil time and again. Now, at nineteen, he could read a few words, a few simple sentences; he could sign his name and figure in his head well enough to get by—and that was enough for anybody, he told himself. A man did not need more than that to get by in his life.

  But he had sworn long ago that no other man, no other human being, would ever know that he could not read and write just as well as anyone else could. It was a matter of pride, of dignity—if he had nothing else left, he still had that.

  The ringing of the black box on the wall broke into his thoughts, and he found Stan Whitley staring at him curiously as he looked up from the tobacco cutter on the counter. After a moment, the boy moved to the telephone and lifted the receiver to his ear.

  “Hello—yes, Mrs. Huey, this is Stan—yes, ma’am—yes, all right—” Then the boy held the receiver out to Janson. “It’s your call to Alabama.”

  Janson moved to the unfamiliar box, holding the receiver to his ear and leaning close to speak into the mouthpiece Stan had tilted up for him. “This is Janson Sanders—” He wondered suddenly why he was shouting; but it seemed the thing to do, so he continued.

  “Go, on, ma’am, I’ve got the other—” an unfamiliar woman’s voice began, but Janson’s grandmother was already talking. She sounded strange, tinny and far off as he leaned toward the telephone; but it was unmistakably Gran’ma—and she was shouting as well.

  “Janson—that you boy?” she shouted, making him hold the receiver away from his ear for a moment. “They come t’ th’ house an’ said there was a telephone call at th’ store for me all th’ way from Georgia—you all right, boy? I knowed it had t’ be you; praise th’ Lord that we’re hearin’ from you s’ soon—you been eatin’ good, boy? You stayin’ warm?”

  It had been so good to hear her voice, but it had also made him think of home—not this place, with its drafty walls and its window shaking in its frame, but of a white house on rolling red acres, cotton fields as far as he could see, the sound of a sewing machine, the smell of wood smoke, the look of his father’s face—

  He closed his fist tightly now on the few coins in his hand, feeling them cut into his flesh—that was all he had now. That, and this room, and a lonely supper. And the cold night outside.

  There was the sound of a truck’s engine in the distance, coming up the rough road that ran before the barn, but Janson paid little attention
. He shoved the money back into the pocket of his coat and got up from the cot to check the black stove, wetting a finger to touch to its surface, feeling warmth, but not hearing the accompanying sizzle that would mean the fire was hot enough to cook on. The chill in the room was just beginning to lessen now, but it would still be a time before he would be able to prepare supper—it was just as well, he told himself; he was not that hungry anymore. His mind was too filled with thoughts of Eason County, of home, of people he would not see again for a very long time, and of that red land he would have back only after many years of hard work and saving.

  The sound was growing closer, drawing his attention, the truck cutting across country now and coming toward the barn. Janson thought he could discern individual voices, loud obscenities, and laughter from several men on the truck. Gilbert Baskin’s voice could be heard well above the rest, his words louder, more obscene, being shouted well over the voices of the other men. Baskin was one of Whitley’s hired hands, but the man did not do farm work; what he did for Whitley, Janson did not know, and he had enough common sense to realize he would probably be better off not to find out. Baskin was an unpredictable sort, liking his drinking and his pleasuring a little too much—what a man like Gilbert Baskin could be doing out in this direction so late on a Saturday night Janson did not know. What he did know was that, whatever it was, he did not like it.

  He went outside into the darkness, seeing the weaving headlamps of the truck as it jounced over the rough terrain of the winter-dead cotton field nearest the barn. The voices yelled even louder as it came closer, and Janson heard his name called, but had little time to figure out what was being yelled at or about him as the truck veered to the right and seemed suddenly headed straight for him. He swore under his breath and jumped out of the way of the front wheels, hearing the truck come to a grinding halt only inches away, red dust being kicked up into a thick cloud around him by the sudden stop. He stared up at Gilbert Baskin where the man sat behind the wheel of the vehicle, Gilbert coughing on the red dust that now filled the air, but paying little attention to the threats and curses of the men on the back of the truck, men who had almost been tossed free of the vehicle by the abrupt stop.

  “Damn it, Gilbert—you near ran me over!”

  But Gilbert Baskin only laughed in response. “You sure jumped awful quick, boy,” he said, and Janson realized he was drunk; they were all drunk. The truck almost reeked with the smell of liquor. “You got your wages today, just like the rest of us—we thought you might want t’ go int’ town for a little socializin’ tonight, boy. We got the best looking women in all the South right here in Endicott County, and the best corn liquor, and plenty of both—here, boy, take a taste of this; you’ll see what I mean—” Gilbert reached to wave an open fruit jar out the window of the truck, sloshing some of its contents out into the red dirt at Janson’s feet. “Go on, boy. That ain’t no busthead whiskey right there; that’s good corn, some of the best made for three counties around—”

  Janson stared at him for a moment, realizing the man was in no condition to be the judge of anything, much less of the quality of corn liquor. Janson had heard too much of busthead whiskey to not be wary of it, the poisonous corn liquor turned out by some of the back-country moonshiners, and by many of the new bootleggers who had gone into production since Prohibition had made bootlegging such a lucrative profession. Such men often condensed their whiskey through automobile radiators, used potash in the making, or did not strain it properly—at the very least, busthead whiskey, or popskull as many of the country people called it, well earned its name, causing violent headaches that often made the drinker pray for death. At the very worst, that death often came.

  Gilbert waved the jar at him again, sloshing out more of the whiskey onto the ground. “Go on, boy. It ain’t gonna hurt you. That’s good corn liquor, made in one of the finest stills around here—go on, boy—”

  Janson accepted the jar at last, looking past it and to Gilbert again. He was no stranger to corn liquor, the red hills where he had grown up having had their fair share of stills as well. Most young men in Eason County had their first taste of corn well before they entered their teens, and many were hardened drinkers by the time they had reached Janson’s age—but Janson was not. On his own he seldom drank—corn liquor cost money, and money could be put to better uses.

  He tilted the jar up and drank, then wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and handed the jar back.

  “See, just like I told you,” Gilbert said. “Hop on the back, boy; we’re gonna take you int’ town and show you some of the prettiest women in these parts—”

  Several of the men on the rear of the truck shouted their approval, eager to get into town now as they passed a jar of corn liquor among themselves as well. Janson took a step forward, and then hesitated. “Wait a minute,” he said, and then turned to go back into his room. He came back out only a second later, his shoes and socks held in one hand.

  He jumped up onto the rear of the truck, and was almost tossed back out as the vehicle jerked into motion. He settled down between two men he recognized as farmhands he had worked with clearing land days before, and took a moment to pull on his socks and shoes, then accepted the jar of corn liquor as it was passed to him.

  It was not long before he was not cold anymore.

  The bricked, downtown section of Main Street in Goodwin seemed lit almost as brightly as day when they reached town. There were cars still parked along the street, in front of the billiard parlor at one end of downtown, and near the drugstore at the other, as well as before the moving picture theatre that sat almost dead-center of town between the two. The wide double doors to the billiard hall were flung open to the cold night air as the truck drove past, and Janson could see the men inside through the blue haze of cigar and cigarette smoke that hung in the room, men who spent most every Saturday night there, playing billiards, discussing politics, avoiding their wives—and enjoying corn liquor and good bootleg whiskey in the back rooms, as well as the company of women who were somewhat less than ladies, so Janson had heard.

  The street was brightly lit, with white globes of electric light sitting atop tall poles on one side of the street, the globes lighting the brick-fronted store buildings and sidewalks as Janson had never seen before. Pretty girls who looked almost like flappers moved along the sidewalk, going from the movie theatre to Dobbins’ Drugstore at the far end of downtown, girls in straight coats and cloche hats, with short skirts and uneven hemlines and their hair bobbed off short like modern girls were apt to do. Janson watched them, admiring the slender calves beneath the knee-length skirts, finding himself surprised as one of the other men on the back of the truck began to call out things to the girls that he would never have dared to say to any woman, lady or not. He opened his mouth to tell the man to shut up, that he could not talk to a woman like that, but got only a few words out before the truck came to a sudden and unexpected halt before the drugstore, the brakes screeching in protest as Janson and several other of the hands were thrown against the rear of the cab with the suddenness of the stop. The men cursed and shoved against him and each other, threatening Gilbert as they got down from the rear of the vehicle and made their way into the drugstore, leaving the truck parked there alongside the street with one wheel up on the sidewalk.

  After a moment, Janson jumped down from the back of the truck as well, feeling the effects of the corn liquor himself now. He made his way into the drugstore alone and found a stool to sit down on at the soda fountain, knowing the other men had forgotten his presence altogether. He watched as they settled in at stools and tables throughout the fountain area at the front of the store. Gilbert already had an arm around a blonde girl who had been sitting at a table alone, and several other of the Whitley hands were already similarly occupied, but Janson did nothing more than just sit and watch, feeling suddenly very out of place.

  Flat-chested flappers moved from the tables to the sto
ols at the soda fountain, girls wearing short skirts and bobbed hair, with Kissproof lipstick and rouge on their faces, and rolled silk stockings down to their knees. They laughed and they talked and they flirted with the other men, loudly popping the gum in their mouths, or speaking so that half the room could hear:

  “It’s just like the one Clara Bow had on in her last picture . . .”

  “. . . it was a brand new Lincoln, and he banged up the whole right side . . .”

  “A talking picture show—can you imagine that! Radio in the movies; I’ll believe it when I see . . .”

  “. . . and she was wearing knickers, imagine that! Knickers, just like a man—”

  The soda jerk picked at a pimple on his chin as he moved toward Janson to ask what he would have, but a short man with a paunch and a disagreeable expression stepped behind the counter instead, laying a hand on the boy’s arm and nodding him toward another customer sitting not far distant. The man stepped up to Janson, wrinkling his nose as if there were a disagreeable odor in the place.

  “What y’ want, boy?” he demanded, staring at Janson, giving him the clear impression that he had to be the owner of the drugstore, Mr. Dobbins.

  Janson stuck one hand in his pocket and pulled out his wages, staring at the little money in his hand for a moment as he debated on whether to spend even one of the few, precious coins and order a lemon phosphate, or whether to risk being thrown out of the drugstore as a loiterer instead. Dobbins pursed his thick lips together and nodded his head, as if he had received the answer he had expected, then started to speak—but, before he could tell Janson to leave, there was a shriek from a girl across the room, and the sound of a slap, setting Dobbins in motion around the end of the counter and toward the girl’s table, making him forget all about Janson; and another of the Whitley hands was tossed out of the place instead.