Stories of Erskine Caldwell (21 page)

Jule straightened up and listened to the running.

“Whoo-way-oh!” he called after the dogs.

That sent them on yelping even louder than before.

“Is that you up there, Mr. Jule?” the voice asked.

Jule bent over the well again, keeping one ear on the dogs on the ridge. He did not want to lose track of them when they were on a live trail like that.

“This is me,” Jule said. “Who’s that?”

“This is only Bokus Bradley, Mr. Jule,” the voice said.

“What you doing down in my well, muddying it up like that, Bokus?”

“It was something like this, Mr. Jule,” Bokus said. “I was coming down the ridge a while ago, trying to keep up with my hounds, and I stumbled over your well cover. I reckon I must have missed the path, somehow or other. Your well cover wouldn’t hold me up, or something, and the first thing I knew, here I was. I’ve been here ever since I fell in. I reckon I’ve been down here most of the night. I hope you ain’t mad at me, Mr. Jule. I just naturally couldn’t help it at all.”

“You’ve muddied up my well water,” Jule said. “I ain’t so doggone pleased about that.”

“I reckon I have, some,” Bokus said, “but I just naturally couldn’t help it none at all.”

“Where’d your dogs go to, Bokus?” Jule asked.

“I don’t know, Mr. Jule. I haven’t heard a sound out of them since I fell in here. They was headed for the creek when I was coming down the ridge behind them. Can you hear them anywhere now, Mr. Jule?”

Several packs of hounds could be heard. Jule’s on the ridge was trailing east, and a pack was trailing down the creek toward town. Over toward the hills several more packs were running, but they were so far away it was not easy to tell to whom they belonged.

“Sounds to me like I hear your dogs down the creek, headed for the swamp,” Jule said.

“Whoo-way-oh!” Bokus called.

The sound from the well struck Jule like a blast out of a megaphone.

“Your dogs can’t hear you from ’way down there, Bokus,” he said.

“I know they can’t, Mr. Jule, and that’s why I sure enough want to get out of here. My poor dogs don’t know which way I want them to trail when they can’t hear me talk to them. Whoo-way-oh!” Bokus shouted. “O Lord, help me now!”

Jule’s dogs sounded as if they were closing in on a fox, and Jule jumped to his feet.

“Whoo-way-oh!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Whoo-way-oh!”

“Is you still up there, Mr. Jule?” Bokus asked. “Please, Mr. Jule, don’t go away and leave me down here in this cold well. I’ll do anything for you if you’ll just only get me out of here. I’ve been standing neck-deep in this cold water near about all night long.”

Jule threw some of the boards over the well.

“What you doing up there, Mr. Jule?”

Jule took off his hat and held the brim like a fan to the side of his head. He could hear the panting of the dogs while they ran.

“How many foxhounds have you got, Bokus?” Jule asked.

“I got me eight,” Bokus said. “They’re mighty fine fox trailers, too, Mr. Jule. But I’d like to get me out of this here well before doing much more talking with you.”

“You could get along somehow with less than that, couldn’t you, Bokus?”

“If I had to, I’d have to,” Bokus said, “but I sure enough would hate to have fewer than my eight dogs, though. Eight is just naturally the right-sized pack for me, Mr. Jule.”

“How are you figuring on getting out of there?” Jule said.

“I just naturally figured on you helping me out, Mr. Jule,” he said. “Leastaways, that’s about the only way I know of getting out of this here well. I tried climbing, but the dirt just naturally crumbles away every time I dig my toes into the sides.”

“You’ve got that well so muddied up it won’t be fit to drink out of for a week or more,” Jule said.

“I’ll do what I can to clean it out for you, Mr. Jule, if I ever get up on top of the solid ground again. Can you hear those hounds of mine trailing now, Mr. Jule?”

“They’re still down the creek. I reckon I could lower the water bucket, and I could pull a little, and you could climb a little, and maybe you’d get out that way.”

“That just naturally would suit me fine, Mr. Jule,” Bokus said eagerly. “Here I is. When is you going to lower that water bucket?”

Jule stood up and listened to his dogs trailing on the ridge. From the way they sounded, it would not be long before they treed the fox they were after.

“It’s only about an hour till daybreak,” Jule said. “I’d better go on up the ridge and see how my hounds are making out. I can’t do much here at the well till the sun comes up.”

“Don’t go away and leave me now, Mr. Jule,” Bokus begged. “Mr. Jule, please, sir, just lower that water bucket down here and help me get out. I just naturally got to get out of here, Mr. Jule. My dogs will get all balled up without me following them. Whoo-way-oh! Whoo-way-oh!”

The pack of fox-trailing hounds was coming up from the creek, headed toward the house. Jule took off his hat and held it beside his ear. He listened to them panting and yelping.

“If I had two more hounds, I’d be mighty pleased,” Jule said, shouting loud enough for Bokus to hear. “Just two is all I need right now.”

“You wouldn’t be wanting two of mine, would you, Mr. Jule?” Bokus asked.

“It’s a good time to make a trade,” Jule said. “It’s a mighty good time, being as how you are down in the well and want to get out.”

“Two, did you say?”

“Two is what I said.”

There was silence in the well for a long time. For nearly five minutes Jule listened to the packs of dogs all around him, some on the ridge, some down the creek, and some in the far-off fields. The barking of the hounds was a sweeter sound to him than anything else in the world. He would lose a night’s sleep any time just to stay up and hear a pack of foxhounds live-trailing.

“Whoo-way-oh!” he called.

“Mr. Jule!” Bokus shouted up from the bottom of the well.

Jule went to the edge and leaned over to hear what the Negro had to say. “How about that there trade now, Bokus?”

“Mr. Jule, I just naturally couldn’t swap off two of my hounds, I just sure enough couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Jule said.

“Because I’d have only just six dogs left, Mr. Jule, and I couldn’t do much fox hunting with just that many.” Jule straightened up and kicked the boards over the top of the well.

“You won’t be following even so few as one hound for a while,” he said, “because I’m going to leave you down in the bottom where you stand now. It’s another hour, almost, till daybreak, and I can’t be wasting that time staying here talking to you. Maybe when I get back you’ll be in a mind to do some trading, Bokus.” Jule kicked the boards on top of the well.

“O Lord, help me now!” Bokus said. “But, O Lord, don’t make me swap off no two hounds for the help I’m asking for.”

Jule stumbled over the water bucket when he turned and started across the yard toward the path up the ridge. Up there he could hear his dogs running again, and when he took off his hat and held it to the side of his head he could hear Polly pant, and Senator snort, and Mary Jane whine, and Sunshine yelp, and the rest of them barking at the head of the trail. He put on his hat, pulled it down hard all around, and hurried up the path to follow them on the ridge. The fox would not be able to hold out much longer.

“Whoo-way-oh!” he called to his hounds. “Whoo-way-oh!”

The echo was a masterful sound to hear.

(First published in the
Atlantic Monthly
)

I
T WAS MORE THAN
she could bear any longer. Bess stumbled out of the pitch-dog stand and felt her way over ropes, pegs, and packing crates to their house-tent. She had told Hutch she wanted to comb her hair, but she knew that he knew as well as she did what the trouble was.

Bess did not cry. It had been a year since she had done anything like that. She had been with Hutch, following the carnival with a pitch-dog stand, for over two years, and it was at least a year since she had cried. She lay down on the cot, breathing heavily.

She could hear Hutch’s voice occasionally above the din and the raucous roar of the midway. No matter how high rose the pitch of screaming voices in the Fun House, or of the metallic grind-music in the Cuban Cabaret, or of the amplified hoarseness of the try-your-luck barkers, Bess could always hear Hutch’s familiar singsong spiel.

“Knock the little doggies off, and take home a brand-new silver dollar, folks!” She had said it so many times herself that Hutch’s voice sounded as if the words were coming from her.

The dust raised by the carnival crowd’s shuffling feet settled over her face and arms as she lay stiffly extended on the cot. The heat, the noise, the incessant glare of light settled on her like a heavy blanket.

“Knock the little doggies off, and take home a brand-new silver dollar, folks, a brand-new silver dollar.”

Hutch’s voice sounded mechanical again. Bess lay back on the cot. Hutch was talking to that girl who had been leaning against the railing in front of the stand for the past half hour. There was always a different ring in Hutch’s voice when he was trying to do two things like that at once. She knew what he was up to as well as he knew himself. He was trying to make a date with the girl. When he succeeded, he would disappear, the girl would disappear, and Bess would not see Hutch again until the next morning. It had been that way so many times during the past two years that she had lost count.

Bess turned over, trying to shut out the glare of the midway lights that filtered through the thin canvas. She did not even know the name of the town they were in. It might have been something like Emporia, Fostoria, Peoria. It was a cotton town somewhere west of Birmingham, and that was about all she knew. Towns had been all the same lately, since Hutch had got into the habit of going off with a strange girl several times a week.

Bess got up, combed her hair, and brushed the dust from her dress. While she was brushing her clothes, she heard Hutch call her. She left the tent and stumbled towards the stand.

“Knock the little doggies off, and take home a brand-new silver dollar, folks!” Hutch said while she climbed under the railing. He turned around and winked at her. “Knock the little doggies off, folks! Only a dime!”

Before she saw Hutch, Bess saw the girl. It was the same girl, the one who had been leaning over the railing and talking to Hutch when she left.

“How about it, Bess?” Hutch began.

Bess turned and looked the girl up and down. She was a plain-looking creature with straight blond hair that needed shampooing. She did not seem much over twenty, but her hands were work-stained and a little wrinkled.

“Her?” Bess asked Hutch, futilely.

“What’s the difference, this time?” he said a little impatiently.

“You seem to be a little less particular each time, Hutch.”

“Now, let’s not fall out, Bess,” Hutch said, rubbing her nervously on her back and shoulders.

Hutch ducked under the railing and disappeared behind the stand. The milling mob of people was churning up a cloud of dust that looked like dense yellow smoke in the glare of lights. Bess could feel particles of dust and flakes of grit settle on her arms and face. She brushed it all away.

The girl looked up at her nervously two or three times. She was gradually receding into the crowd. All at once she turned and pushed her way around the side of the stand out of sight.

A party of men and women pushed up to the railing, filling the vacant space the girl had left. The people stared at Bess as if she were one of the freaks in the sideshow down the midway.

“What’s the game?” one of the men asked her in a loud voice.

Bess stared down into the faces. Each one of them looked like Hutch and his girls.

Almost automatically Bess picked up a handful of battered balls and held them out in front of her.

“Knock the little doggies off, folks, and take home a brand-new silver dollar!”

“That’s fair enough,” one of the men said, handing her a dime.

The man threw the three balls, but knocked off only two of the three stuffed dogs. He turned away to leave.

“Wait a minute, Mister!” Bess cried after him. “I’ll make you a better proposition!”

The man came back.

“I haven’t any more dimes to throw away on a game like that,” he said, shaking his head. “You people have got those dogs rigged up so they all won’t fall off, even if I did hit them.”

Bess leaned over the railing.

“Be a sport, Mister. Here’s your chance of a lifetime. Look! I’m going to give you ten balls. If you knock off all three dogs, you can write your own ticket. Now, how’s that for an offer?”

The man grabbed the balls, heaving them at the dogs. They all fell on the ground.

“You win the setup!” Bess cried, ducking under the railing. “It’s all yours! Go on in there and take it!”

She pushed into the crowd, elbowing her way out of sight. Soon she was blinded by the dust that rose up from the ground, and before she had gone halfway down the midway, she was lost. Pushing her way out of the crowd, she crossed a vacant lot and began walking along a street that looked as if it would lead her out of town. She did not care in what direction she was going, as long as it led away from Emporia, Fostoria, Peoria, or whatever it was.

(First published in
Mid-Week Pictorial
)

W
HEN
W
ALDO
M
URDOCK,
whose trade, when he felt like working at it, was rendering creatures, came into the unexpected inheritance, there had been no commotion in Brighton to equal it since the time when, eleven years before, one of the Perkins brothers, with no more forewarning than a stroke of summer lightning, ran away in broad daylight with the resident minister’s wife.

As for the townspeople, none of them, not even Aunt Susie Shook, who told fortunes by reading tea leaves, or coffee grounds if necessary, had ever had the remotest idea that anything in the nature of sudden wealth would fall into Waldo Murdock’s scrawny lap, while at the same time, of course, people were quick to say that if he had not been sitting down, as usual, instead of being up and doing, there would have been no lap of his for it to fall into; and certainly Waldo himself, even though he daydreamed about almost everything else under the sun, had never entertained such a far-fetched thought in his mind.