Stories of Erskine Caldwell (16 page)

“Hurt me — ruin me — kill me!” she whispered. “Look! You won’t have to suffer!”

A thousand lies could be told about the whole thing. I could say I said this-and-that; I could say I did this-that-and-the-other. A thousand things might have happened, but only one did. This only happened. This one thing. That’s why I do not know how it came about. That’s why I can’t repeat, in logical sequence, what was said. Everything was in a hopeless jumble. This second she said one thing, and the next moment something else. Putting the two together made no sense.

I put my hand over her mouth. She had begun to scream. Screams such as I had never before heard pounded against my ears. The scratching at my face and shoulders I could partly endure and partly evade, but the screams had to be stopped. I tied a heavy bath towel over her mouth. What else could I have done? She lay there and scratched me and tried to scream until her face was as discolored as a bruise. She had to scream. It mattered nothing to her that there were three hundred people on the boat. If three hundred people heard her, or if no one heard her, she did not care. If the door were battered down, showing us there, the blood from my face and shoulders dripping upon her white body, she did not care. But I tied a heavy bath towel over her mouth. She tried to jerk it off, but I held it there. If she had torn it away and screamed, I could have forced it into her throat and choked her. She would have stopped breathing then. She wished me to kill her. She had said so. She had begged me to kill her. She had scratched the blood from my face and shoulders, begging me to kill her. But first she wished to be happy. She wished to feel happiness within her body. She wanted to forget herself in happiness. There was a way. We were both covered with my blood by then. It had dripped from my chest and smeared her face and body.

All that was before. Everything seemed to be before anything else. Everything had happened before anything else had. That was why it was such a hopeless jumble. Time, place, and events had neither a beginning nor an end. I actually do not know what the sequence of events was. I am only trying to tell about them. There is no possible way of placing them in the order of their origin. That’s why the thing can’t be told with any order. That’s why I can’t lie about what happened. They will have to be put down just as they are. The things she said will have to be put down as she said them. If she had spoken with order, things would perhaps be clear. And if nothing comes out right in the end, it will be because I tried to put the whole thing down with respect for her. She had said things and done things with no regard for the way they would look and sound when re-enacted and repeated. She didn’t care about that. She wished to be happy, and to feel the happiness within herself, for a few moments.

She had said: “He wanted me to marry him. He begged me to do it. He cried like a baby when I said I wanted to wait a while longer. He cried like a baby. A great big strong man like him cried like a baby.”

She had said: “We lived in a six-room house with a pump on the back porch. We had a collie puppy named Spot. Oh, we were so happy together, all the time, day and night. Don’t look at me when I cry; I can’t help it.”

I don’t know what I said. That is the truth. But what in God’s name could I have said? She did not want me to talk to her. Only to listen now.

“Oh, I loved him so! And we loved each other like nothing else in the world for nearly two years. Then one night he came home and said he was going to leave me. He told me about the other woman. He told me what she looked like and how she wore her clothes. He told me what she looked like when they slept together. Oh, he told me everything about her. He told me of many things I had never heard about before. He said she knew all those things. Then he went away and left me. Someone came and took the baby away from me. They jerked her out of my arms and ran out of the house and out of sight before I could stop them. I did not know how to stop them. I did not know what to do. Then I went up there, where his home was. His sisters and mother had my baby, holding her in their arms. They would not even let me touch her, or kiss her. When I tried to reach for her, they pushed me back and shut the door. They left me standing there on the porch, shutting the door and locking it to keep me out.”

And then about the first week of their marriage. But what was it she said? Something about how they loved each other. The way he had of waking her up in the morning. And something else. What was that? But he loved her then, almost as much as she loved him.

Oh, there were hundreds of things she had said. I remember everything, but I can’t recall the words she used. I can’t repeat them. She uttered them in a jumble of things. They had come from her lips like the jumbled parts of a cutout puzzle. There was no man wise enough or patient enough to put the words in their correct order. If I attempted to put them together, there would be too many “ands” and “buts” and “theys” and thousands of other words left over. They would make no sense in human ears. They were messages from her heart. Only feeling is intelligible there. Sounds that words make never reach that deep. Only feeling reaches those depths. The words from her lips were never intended to be reassembled in the first place. Let them go. Let them resound their poor meanings upon trivial ears.

All that was before. It was before anything had happened. Nothing had yet taken place. All that was to be, was yet to come. There had been words, movements, and glances; but nothing at all had happened. You feel such things. Sounds cannot talk like that. Sounds in ears have only the sensation of loudness and softness. All that is unimportant. It is trivial. What I love and hate is the feeling of things. I felt her. I am not lying about it. I did feel her. And I am going to tell of what I felt. It was the quiver of her heart against my heart.

All that was before those quick movements when she looked at me once more, and left. It was the last of them all. There was nothing more to come afterward. Everything else had been before, and now it had happened. The rail was before us. Her hands were resting on it, then gripping it tightly, so tightly that the tips of her fingers became white. A tightening of her fingers over the varnished rail was the beginning of it all. Nothing had happened until then. I can’t lie about this thing.

The lights on the shore were a long way off. They were farther away than ever. There was no background of land, only the dim lights hanging over the foreside like fireflies caught and pinned to the bare limbs of weather-whipped trees.

She did not say she was going. We knew that. She did not pause to remind me of herself. She did not expect me to think of her as one who was going. That’s all it was. She had been standing beside me this moment, the next she was gone. It was a moment of unhurried simplicity. She leaned over the rail, far over, balancing herself before my eyes. Then with no effort, only the weight of her unbalancing body to carry her, she went over the boatside out of sight.

I could have stopped her. Of course I could have stopped her. I am not denying that. And lies could be told about that, too. But I can’t lie about it. I did not try to stop her. My hands did not move. But who would have wished to stop her? Is there anyone who would have done that? Only a coward would have grasped her, held her, and called for help. But we do not wish to be cowards, I’m sure of that. And I know. I was there. That’s why I’m so certain about it. Only a coward would have caught her and pulled her away from the rail. But we do not want to be cowards. We try our hardest to keep from it. All of us wish to be brave, and we try our best to be above cowardice. We believe we are brave, and we attempt to act the part.

I was brave. I let her go. I stood with my arms within reach of her, watching her go. I even had to move my left arm out of the way so she could go. If I had not moved it out of the way, she would have had to exert herself to get past me. So I stood there, brave, watching her go over the boatside. When she had gone, I began to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven —

What was it she had said about her husband? Something about his hair. Its color. Blond. His hair was blond. She had told me that. But what was the color of her hair? She had not told me that. I had seen it with my own eyes. What was it? Blond? No. Brown? No. Red? No. Black? No. Then what was it! I don’t know. I can’t remember. I’ve forgotten. But it was her color. That was all it should have been. That is enough.

I was counting — forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine —
fifty!
That’s enough. She has gone.
Gone!

What were all those things I could have done? The things I might have done? There were so many I can’t recall most of them now. But it doesn’t matter. But do something! Jump after her? No. Call for help? No. What then? Nothing! I did not want to become a coward. I was not afraid to see a woman die. If she was not afraid to die, why should I be afraid to witness the death? Only the brave can take themselves into death. Life is too precious for the most miserable of us — when we are cowards. Only the brave can walk to death without a blindfold. The cowards fight for the last breath, for the last glimpse, for the final touch. Cowards do not wish to die. But she was not afraid. Then why should I be afraid to witness her death? Am I a coward beside a brave woman? She did not expect me to be a coward. I could not deceive her.

Oh, I might have done many things. I could first of all have stopped her from going. Then what? Notify the Captain? Report it to the police at the dock? Make an effort to reach her husband through the newspapers? Why? Why should I have done anything? The death of a brave woman could not make me become a coward.

The time to act was when she had leaned over the rail. Before she went over. But I didn’t. I wanted her to feel her happiness in the act. We are only happy when we can do the thing we desire above all others. I was not afraid to stand and watch her. I was afraid to be a coward in the presence of a brave woman, a woman who was not afraid to be happy for a few moments.

That was all. And now this doesn’t make much sense. The words are a jumble. The sounds they make are sometimes loud, sometimes soft. None of them is of any importance whatever. Only feeling matters. It is of that which has been told. I have been telling of feeling, the quiver of her heart against my heart.

(First published in
Pagany
)

M
Y WIFE AND
I moved to the country toward the end of June, hopefully looking forward to a long restful summer in the Connecticut hills. But we soon discovered that we had been overly optimistic. It seemed that we were too far back in the hills to interest maids, housemen, or even tree surgeons. Nobody from the agencies wanted to work that distance from Stamford or Bridgeport.

We had been doing our own housework for a week when we looked up one morning while cooking breakfast to see a big shiny black limousine drive up and stop. A Negro man about thirty years old and wearing what appeared to be the remnants of a ragbag after it had been picked over came around to the kitchen door and knocked lightly.

“Good morning, boss,” he said, peering through the door. “How you folks making out?”

My wife was all for sending him away without more ado, but by that time he had opened the screen door and had stepped into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” I replied civilly. “Lost?”

“No, sir, boss,” he said, his lips rolling back from two neat rows of the whitest teeth I had ever seen. “I’m right here. I ain’t lost one bit.”

“What do you want?” my wife asked him.

“I’se come to take hold,” he said.

“Take hold of what?” I asked, concerned.

“Take hold the work, boss,” he answered, grinning.

“Who sent you?” my wife and I asked simultaneously.

“Nobody sent me,” he said. “I just heard about it and come.”

My wife and I looked at each other, each wondering if the other were going to be able to think of something to say. Our attention was drawn back to the Negro when he opened the screen door and shooed a stray fly out of the kitchen.

“What can you do?” my wife asked at last.

“Anything you or the boss wants done, Missy,” he said respectfully. “Eating, drinking, clotheses, driving, laundering — anything at all. Now, you folks just go sit down in comfort at the table and make yourself feel at ease, and I’ll have your breakfast in front of you in no time at all. I’ll fix up my extra special omelette and see how you folks take to it.”

We moved toward the dining room.

“How much do you want in wages?” I asked.

“Would it hurt you to pay fifteen a week, boss?”

“Well,” I said hesitatingly, “maybe we can stand it.”

“I’ll take thirteen and a half,” he said almost obligingly, “if that’ll help you out any.”

We backed through the door.

“What’s your name?” my wife asked.

“Squire,” he said, grinning until his white teeth gleamed from ear to ear. “Squire Dinwiddy.”

When my wife and I reached the hall, we stopped and looked at each other questioningly for a moment. All we could do was to nod our heads.

“Squire,” I called through the door, “now that you’ve got a new job, don’t you think you ought to return that limousine to your former employer —”

“Boss,” he spoke up proudly, “that there’s my machine. I’se the lawful solitary owner.”

We backed carefully into the dining room, watching our step.

All went well until one morning about a week later. It happened to be the Fourth of July. My wife and I had been out late the evening before, and at seven o’clock we were sound asleep. But not for long. There was a terrific explosion on the lawn just outside our window. I rushed from bed, threw open the screen, and looked out. There squatted Squire Dinwiddy, holding a lighted match under the fuse of the biggest firecracker I had ever seen. The fuse began to spew, and Squire dashed away and got behind a tree. The salute went off, charring the grass and blowing a hole in the earth. My wife screamed.

“Squire!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

Squire stuck his head cautiously around the trunk of the tree and looked up at me in the window.