Stories of Erskine Caldwell (19 page)

Max’s farm and buildings were on the eastern slope of the intervale, and Elam Stairs’ were on the western slope. Between them was the Yorkfield town road. The only advantage Elam had, Max admitted, was longer sunlight in winter. The sun set on Max’s house by two o’clock in midwinter, while Elam had an hour’s longer sun. But Max was well enough pleased with his place, because he knew that his eastern slope grew better green peas. His land was well watered the year around; in midsummer, Elam’s fields became dry.

For the rest of the afternoon and far into the evening, Max could not get off his mind Elam’s trip. He did not envy him the week end in Lewiston, because he knew exactly how much it would cost, but he did not wish for Elam to slip off as he did three or four times a year. It upset his carefully planned living. He could do nothing while Elam was absent from home. He had become accustomed to seeing Elam somewhere about his farm at almost any hour of the day when he looked over at the western slope, and when Elam was not there, Max was at a loss to know how to continue doing his work. And, besides that, when Elam was away, there was always the possibility that he would not come back alone. He knew he could never get over Elam’s bringing home somebody with him.

They had talked such things over many times. Each time Elam went to Lewiston, he came home talking about the women he had seen on the streets and in the lodginghouses. That was one reason why Max did not like for Elam to go there. Sooner or later, he knew Elam would bring home a woman.

“The women aren’t suited to our lives, Elam,” Max told him once. “You on your western slope, and me on my eastern slope, live as people ought to live. Just as soon as a man brings home a woman, his house is too small a space for him to live in, eight rooms or twelve rooms. Married, or housekeeper, there’s no difference. It’s a woman, and there’s always trouble under a roof when you mix the two sexes. I wish to stay just as I am. I wish to live peacefully, and my wish is to die the same way.”

“Can’t somehow always agree with you, Max,” Elam said, shaking his head. “You’ve got a lot of sense; good, sane, horse sense, Max. But God was required to make woman. Why! do you know that before there were any women, the men were fixing to tear the world to pieces unless women were provided?”

“Why?” Max asked.

“Why?” Elam said, “Why! because the men wouldn’t stand for it any longer, that’s why. They had to have housekeepers, or if they couldn’t be had, just wives. There’s a world of difference between the two, but at bottom they both are women, and that’s what man had to have. Otherwise, us men would have to do all the sewing and cooking.”

“Have always got along fairly well doing my own labor,” Max said. “Never had a woman to do my work for me. I don’t wish to have one in the house to cause trouble.”

“Well,” Elam said, “they may cause some trouble, I’m willing to grant you that. But taking all in all, their good points pretty well overbalance the bad ones. God was compelled to make them, and I don’t aim to disuse anything that is provided. Guess I wish to get all there is in this life to make use of. No sense in letting it go to waste, or to have somebody else take my share, and his too. I wish to have all of everything that’s due me.”

Max was not convinced then, and he was still firm in his belief that a man could live more happily and peacefully in his house alone. None of the times when Elam tried to make Max admit that women were a necessary part of existence did he succeed. Max was steadfast in his determination to live his life apart from women,

Now that Elam had gone away on another of his quarterly trips to Lewiston, Max was afraid once again that he would bring home a housekeeper. On each occasion before, he had been on edge the whole time Elam was away, and he was never able to calm himself until he could go over and see that Elam had not brought back a housekeeper. He would not even take Elam’s word for it. He would first ask Elam if he came home alone, and then he would go from room to room, looking behind doors and into closets, until he was satisfied in his own mind that there was no woman in the house. After that, he would feel better. He could then go back to his own house with a calm mind.

But Elam was away again for the week end, and Max could not sit still. He could not eat his meals, and he could not sleep. He sat beside his window looking across to the western slope, his window raised several inches in case there should be the sound of an automobile in the intervale. He sat by the window all day Saturday, Saturday evening, and Sunday.

Late Sunday afternoon, when Max knew it was time for Elam to come back home, he heard Elam’s automobile coming up the intervale. He knew it was Elam’s car, and he knew he could not sit there another minute. He jumped up and found his hat and coat and started down the front doorstep.

The road was not within sight of Max’s house, as there was a grove of birch trees down there, and he could not see the automobile. He heard Elam drive into his lane, however, and he waited and listened until the sound of the motor stopped abruptly in the barn.

There was something about the abruptness of the sound’s stopping that caused him to pause on the doorstep. The motor was shut off the moment the car entered the barn, and then there was complete silence again in the intervale. Not even the rumbling sound of Elam closing the barn doors could be heard, Max wondered if Elam could be in such a hurry to get into his house that he had not waited to close the barn doors. He could not think of any reason to explain that. A man who was in such a great hurry to get into his house would certainly have something of importance coming up. Max thought about that, but he could think of no reason why a man would fail to close the barn doors.

He sat down on the doorstep and waited. He turned his head from side to side, allowing each ear to try to detect some sound in the intervale. Surely, he thought to himself, Elam had not gone and lost his mind. But he could think of no other reason for Elam’s failure to close the barn doors. A man who drove his automobile into the barn and then left the doors open would certainly be foolish, and Elam had not been known theretofore as a foolish man. Elam knew better than to leave the barn doors open when evening was coming.

The sun in the intervale was dim and gray. A bank of gray clouds had risen in the northwest, and before long there would be no more sunshine. It was after three o’clock then, and the sun had already set on the western slope. Max had become accustomed to two o’clock sunsets on the eastern slope of the intervale, but when it set before three o’clock on the western slope, he was unprepared for it.

During all the time that he had been sitting on his doorstep, Max had hoped that Elam would come over to see him and tell him about the trip to Lewiston. Elam had always done that. Each time Elam had gone away for the week end in Lewiston, he had come home Sunday afternoon, had slammed shut the barn doors, and then had walked down the lane, and up the slope and told Max what he had seen and what he had done in Lewiston. It was long past the time for him to come, and he had not even closed the barn doors. Max could not sit still and wait for Elam any longer. He got up and started down the slope towards the road.

When he reached the road, he stopped a moment and looked up towards Elam’s farm and buildings. The barn door was wide open, and the automobile stood there exposed to the weather. There was no one to be seen about the house, but the shades had been opened, and the entrance door was ajar. Something was wrong, Max thought. Something had happened to Elam this time on his trip to Lewiston.

Standing beside Elam’s mail box, Max looked up the slope towards the house. It was only a few hundred yards away, and he could see everything as plainly as if he had been standing on the doorstep. The white paint was whiter than ever in the gray twilight of the intervale, and the green trim was brighter than the grass in midsummer. Max stood looking at the place, waiting.

He had been staring at the house for ten minutes without seeing a single sign of Elam, when suddenly Elam appeared at one of the windows. He raised the window with a single thrust of his arm, and stuck out his head. Immediately another window was raised, on the opposite corner of the house, and a woman stuck out her head. They looked at each other for a moment, and then both withdrew their heads and the windows were lowered so quickly that Max was certain that the glass had been cracked. For a few seconds he did not believe what his eyes had seen. He would not believe that he had actually seen a woman in Elam’s house. But slowly the realization came to him that he had seen a woman there, a young woman with a full body and yellow hair, and he stepped backward off Elam’s land into the public road.

After what he had seen, Max did not know whether to stand there looking at the house, or whether to turn and go back up the slope to his own place. He knew he would never again set foot on Elam’s land, however; he had already made up his mind never to have anything more to do with Elam Stairs. He did not even wish to speak to him again. He could never forgive Elam for having brought home a woman from Lewiston.

While he stood in the road trying to make up his mind about what he was going to do, the woman he had first seen in the window came running around the corner of the house. Max stared unbelievingly. Then a moment later came Elam, running faster than Max thought it possible for anyone to run. He was overtaking the yellow-haired young woman, two strides to her one, and if they had not turned the other corner of the house at that moment, he would have seen Elam grab her. Elam had his coat off, and the woman’s dress was open down her back all the way to her waist. The woman was laughing, but Elam was not.

Max waited another five minutes, wishing to be there in case they again ran around the house. Then he turned and walked slowly up the eastern slope of the intervale. The sight of a woman at Elam’s house made him wish to go over there and drive her out of the intervale, but he knew he could never do that. Elam would not allow him to run her away. Elam would protect her, and send him back across the road.

By the time that Max had reached his own house, he had definitely made up his mind about what he was going to do. He was going to take a trip himself the following week end. He was going down to Lewiston Saturday morning and stay there until Sunday afternoon. And while he was there he would do the same things that Elam had done.

“Elam Stairs isn’t the only man in the intervale who can bring home a woman,” he said, taking his seat beside the window and looking over at the western slope where the sun had set. He raised the window several inches so that he might hear any sound that was audible in the intervale. “Will hire me a housekeeper in Lewiston and bring her back here, too. Elam Stairs has an hour’s more sunshine because his farm and buildings are on the western slope, and he thinks he can have even more advantage with a housekeeper. But he shan’t. I’ll show him that I can go to Lewiston and maybe get a finer-looking housekeeper than he’s got.”

Max hitched his chair closer to the window.

“Guess I’ll chase mine thrice around the house when I bring her here,” he said. “And it might be a good plan to wait till she gets right in the middle of changing her clothes to start chasing her, instead of starting after her like Elam did when she only had her dress unfastened down her back. Guess Elam Stairs will see as how I made a pretty smart deal, when he looks out his window some fine day and sees me chasing a naked housekeeper, and gaining on her three strides to her one. He chased his woman once around the house, so I’ll chase mine thrice around, with maybe an extra time to show him what I can do when I get good and started.”

Max paused to look out across the intervale. While he watched Elam’s house, he began going through the motions of washing his hands.

“Don’t guess Elam’s idea was so bad, after all. Can’t think of much to quarrel about with a Lewiston young woman in the house, and not having to pay her five-ten dollars for her bed over the week end.”

(First published in
We Are the Living
)

M
AL
A
NDERSON MADE
himself comfortable beside his dog on the back seat of the automobile and tuned up his banjo. Signe sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of the Penobscot Hotel listening to the music Mal made. It was midsummer and the weather was hot. It looked as if a thunderstorm might come from the west before the afternoon was over. Occasionally a gust of wind did come from that direction, blowing the dust down the street in balls like little yellow balloons.

Mal had a job in the spool mill in summer but he did not like to work the year ’round. He went into the woods in winter and did not come out until spring. In the summer he wanted to live in his shack with the dog and play his banjo when Signe sat on the hotel porch.

Mal strummed away on his banjo. Signe sat on the porch rocking faster and faster.

Plunkety plunk
. . .
plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plink!

Mal, who was called by everybody who did not like him “that damn Swede,” was a fine woodsman. In the spool mill, though, he was not such a good workman. He did not like to work in the mill in summer. The mill made spools for electric wires, and Mal was supposed to be there now, checking the squares before they went through the turning-machines; but he did not like to work the year ’round.

Signe ran the Penobscot Hotel. It was a woodsman’s hotel. The men used it when they came to town to spend the money they made up in the woods. Signe ran the hotel without help. She did not need any.

Plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plunk . . . plunkety plink!

Mal played his banjo for Signe. Neither of them ever spoke to the other. Mal might just as well have been born without the power of speech, for all the use he made of it. A man could talk to him an hour and he would not say a word.

Signe went to the kitchen and brought back a bone for Mal’s dog. Mal opened the door and the dog jumped out after the bone and hopped in again. The dog curled up on the seat beside Mal and licked the bone. Mal played a tune on his banjo for Signe.