Stories of Erskine Caldwell (47 page)

“But Aunt Nellie said I had to kill something and she didn’t say not to kill things standing still.”

“You stop paying any attention to your Aunt Nellie. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about anyway.”

I let my father hold the rabbit while I fixed a box to keep her in. When I was ready I put her in it and shut her up tight. “What are you going to do with the rabbit?” he asked me.

“Keep her.”

“I wouldn’t put it in a box,” he said with a queer look on his face. “If it wants to stay it won’t run off. And if it doesn’t want to stay it will worry itself to death in that box all the time. Turn it loose and let’s see what it will do.”

I was afraid to turn my rabbit loose because I did not want her to run away. But my father knew a lot more about rabbits than I did. Just then Aunt Nellie and my mother came out on the back porch.

“What have you got there in the box?” Aunt Nellie asked me.

“A rabbit,” I said.

“Where did you get it?”

“I shot at her with the gun but I didn’t hit her and she didn’t run away so I brought her home.”

My aunt turned to my mother in disgust.

“There you are, Bess! What did I tell you?”

I did not hear what my mother said. But my father got up and went down to the barn. Aunt Nellie went into the house and slammed shut the door behind her. My mother stood looking at me for several minutes as if I had done the right thing after all.

Taking the rabbit out of the box I went down to the barn where my father was. He was sitting against the barn side shelling an ear of corn for half a dozen chickens around him. I sat down beside him and turned the rabbit loose. The rabbit hopped around and around and then sat down and looked at us.

“Why don’t you name it Molly Cotton-Tail?” my father suggested, throwing a handful of shelled corn to the chickens.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“There are two kinds of rabbits around here: jack rabbits and molly cotton-tails. That one has a cotton-tail — see the ball of white fur on its tail that looks like a boll of cotton?”

The rabbit hopped around and around again and sat down on her cotton-tail. The chickens were not afraid of her. They went right up to where she sat and scratched for corn just as if she had been a chicken too.

“Why don’t you go into the garden and get a head of lettuce for it? Get a good tender one out of the hot-bed. All rabbits like lettuce,” he said.

I got the lettuce and gave it to my rabbit. She hopped up to where we sat against the barn side, asking for more. I gave her all I had and she ate out of my hand.

“If you had killed that rabbit with the gun you would be sorry now,” my father said. Anybody could see that he was beginning to like my rabbit a lot.

She hopped around and around in front of us, playing with the chickens. The chickens liked her, too.

“I’d lots rather have her living than dead,” I said, suddenly realizing how much I liked her myself.

Molly hopped up between us and nibbled at my father’s hand. He reached to stroke her fur with his hand but she hopped away.

“Whoa there, sooky,” he soothed, reaching for our rabbit.

(First published in
American Earth
)

H
ALF AN HOUR AFTER
the sun went down on the far side of the Mississippi, Sampson Jones was hurrying along the dusty road to Elbow Creek where Susie Brown lived all alone in her house behind the levee. Every once in a while he shifted the heavy shoe box from one arm to the other, easing the burden he was carrying.

When he jogged over the last rise of ground before reaching the levee, he saw the flickering light in Susie’s window, and the sight that met his eyes made him hurry faster than ever.

Susie was inside her house, putting away the supper dishes. She was singing a little and brushing away the miller moths that swarmed around the light in the room.

Sampson rattled the rusty latch on the gate and hitched up his pants. Susie had never looked so good to him before.

“You look sweeter than a suck of sugar, baby,” he shouted to her through the open window.

Susie spun around on her heels. The tin pan she was drying sailed out of her hands and clattered against the cookstove.

“What you want here again, Sampson Jones!” she cried, startled out of her wits. “What you doing down here off the high land!”

She had to stop and fan herself before she could get her breath back.

“You done found that out the first time, honey,” he said, lifting the heavy shoe box and laying it before her eyes on the window sill. “Now why don’t you just give up? Ain’t no use spoiling it by playing you don’t know why I come.”

Susie studied the shoe box, wondering what it could hold. The sight of it made her hesitate. The last three times Sampson had come to court her, he had not brought her a single thing.

“I ain’t got no time to waste on no sorry, measly-weight, trifling man,” she said finally, turning her back on the shoe box.

“My trifling days is all over, honey,” he said quickly. “I ain’t trifling around no more.”

Susie swung the dish towel on the line behind the cookstove and stole a quick glance at herself in the mirror over the shelf. Then she moved slowly across the room, watching Sampson and his shoe box suspiciously. “When I get set and ready for a man, I’m going to get me a good one,” she said, inspecting him disdainfully. “I ain’t aiming to waste my good self on no short-weight plowboy.”

Sampson grinned confidently at the scowling brown-skinned girl.

“Baby,” he said, “what do you reckon I done?”

“What?” she asked, her interest mounting.

“I weighed myself at exactly two hundred and ten pounds just a little while ago previously.”

He started to swing his legs through the window opening, but Susie gave him a shove that sent him dropping to the ground.

“I weigh my men on my own scales,” Susie said stiffly. “I wouldn’t take your weighing in any quicker than I would the next one who comes bragging along.”

“What makes you think I’m lying about myself to you, honey?” he asked unhappily. “Why you crave to go and talk like that?”

“Because you don’t weigh nowhere near two hundred pounds, that’s why,” she said sharply. “I done made up my mind over the kind of man I want when I get myself ready to want him, and you ain’t the one I’m thinking about. It don’t make no difference at all what you brings me in a shoe box, neither.” She paused for a moment, getting her breath. “You hear what I say, Sampson Jones?”

“I hear you, honey,” he said. “But it would make me downright awful sad if you was to make a bad mistake for yourself.”

Susie leaned out the window and stared down at the box under his arm.

“Maybe if you was to find out what I brung you,” he said, “you’d swing around to the other kind of talk. I sure has got a pretty thing for you, honey. I brung it all the way from Mr. Bob Bell’s store at the big crossroads.”

Susie glanced at the box, and then she straightened up and looked Sampson all over from head to toe. The white shoe box was tied tightly with heavy yellow twine. It gleamed enticingly before her eyes in the moonlight, only an arm’s length away.

“How much you say you really sure enough weigh?” she asked continuing to look him up and down.

“I done told you two hundred ten, honey,” he said hopefully. “Why you think I ain’t telling you the whole lawful truth?”

Sampson watched her for a while, wondering if she were going to believe him this time. He had been coming down from the high land to see her for six months, trying his best every minute of the time he was there to court her into marrying him. Sometimes he succeeded in getting his arms around her for a little while, hugging her some around the waist and a little around the neck, but usually she kept him at a distance by making him stay outside on the ground while she sat on the porch, talking to him through the window.

No matter how well he argued with her, Susie had always said that the man she was going to take up with had to weigh two hundred pounds, or better. Sampson had never weighed more than a hundred and sixty pounds in his whole life, until he began courting her. Now he had managed to put on thirty additional pounds in six months’ time after eating all the beans and fat pork he could put his hands on. But during the past month he had discovered that no matter how much he ate, he was not able to increase his weight a single pound over one hundred and ninety. And to make matters worse, his worry over that was causing him to lose weight every day. He had become desperate.

While he was standing there on the ground outside her window, Susie had moved away. Sampson hurried around to the front of the house, Susie had seated herself on the rocker on the porch, and she was sitting there placidly fanning her face.

Sampson set one foot on the bottom step hopefully.

“Don’t you dare come one single more inch, Sampson Jones!” Susie said sharply. “I ain’t satisfied in my mind with the weighing you said you done to yourself.”

Sampson patted his expanded stomach and slapped his heavy thighs with his great brown hands.

“Woman,” he said crossly, “you sure is one aggravating creature. Here I is with all this man-sized weight on my frame, and you act like you don’t even see it at all. What’s the matter with you, anyhow?”

He slammed the shoe box on the second step from the bottom, threw out his chest and thrust out his arms to show his bulging muscles.

“Why don’t you get some scales and let me weigh you then, if you’re all that sure?” she said. “You ain’t scared to let me weigh you in, is you?”

Sampson stopped and thought it over carefully. After a while, he looked up at Susie.

“I’d be tickled to have you weigh me in, Susie,” he said, “only I ain’t got no scales to do it on. Has you?”

Before she could reply, he stooped down quickly and picked up the heavy shoe box.

“Drop that box, Sampson Jones!” she said sharply. “I know what you’re up to. You’re trying to trick me with that heavy box you’ve got there.”

“No, I ain’t, Susie,” he said, startled. Sheepishly he put the box down on the step. “What makes you think a sorry thing like that about me?”

“Well,” Susie said, rocking some more, “if you ain’t lying in your talk, maybe you’ll weigh in on my stillyerd.”

Sampson’s face fell.

“Has you got a stillyerd here, Susie, sure enough?” Susie stood up.

“You stand right where you is now, and I’ll bring it,” she told him. “I’m getting all tired out from hearing all your boasting. The weighing in will settle it.” She moved toward the door. “That is, if you ain’t scared to show me your true weight.”

“I ain’t scared one bit, Susie,” he said fearfully.

When she had gone out of sight into the house, Sampson ran out into the yard and began picking up all the rocks and stones he could put his hands on. He filled both hip pockets with the largest ones, and then began scooping up fistfuls of gravel and filling all his other pockets. Susie still had not returned, and so he hastily untied his shoes and stuffed them with all the sand he could get into them. He straightened up, trembling all over, when he heard Susie come toward him through the house. He was certain he had not succeeded in loading himself with the necessary ten pounds of stone, sand, and gravel. At the last moment, he found another stone and put it into his mouth.

Susie brought the weighing steelyard to the porch and hung it on a rafter. Then she looked around for Sampson.

Sampson went up the steps carrying the heavy shoe box under one arm. He thrust his other arm through the loop of rope dangling from the steelyard.

“Set the box on the floor,” she ordered firmly.

He looked at her, pleadingly, for a few moments, but recognizing the determined expression on Susie’s face, he dropped it.

“I been plowing hard all day in the cotton field, from sunrise to sunset,” he began. “I wouldn’t be taken back at all if I’d lost a heap of pounds, Susie.”

“We’ll see,” she said harshly. “Hitch yourself up on that stillyerd.”

Sampson thrust his arm through the loop and painfully swung himself clear of the floor. While he hung there, knowing his fate was in the balance, Susie stepped over and slid the weighing ball along the steel arm.

He tried to twist his head back to order to watch the weighing, but he was in such a cramped position that it was impossible for him to see anything overhead. He gave up and hung there by one arm, praying with every breath.

By the time Susie had satisfied herself that her weighing of him was accurate, Sampson was dizzy from strain and worry. He barely knew what he was doing when he heard Susie’s voice tell him to set himself on his feet.

When his feet touched the floor, his knees began to sag, and he found himself staggering across the porch. He reached the wall and dug his fingernails into the rough weatherboarding in an effort to find support. Susie still had not said anything since she told him to get down from the steelyard, and he was too weak to ask her anything about it.

Presently he felt Susie’s arms around his neck. The next moment he felt himself sliding downward to the floor.

When he regained his senses, Susie was kneeling beside him, hugging him with all her might. He struggled free of her grip and got his breath back. The stone he had been holding in his mouth was gone. He could not tell whether it had fallen out, or whether he had swallowed it. He was uneasy.

“Honey,” Susie was saying to him, “I sure am happy about the big way you weighed in. Looks like you’d have done it for me sooner, instead of waiting all this long time.”

“How much did I weigh in at, Susie?” he asked.

“Honey, you weighed exactly two hundred and fifteen pounds,” she said delightedly. “And only a little while ago you said it was only two-ten. My, oh, my!”

Sampson closed his eyes.

When he looked up again, he saw Susie busily opening the heavy shoe box. She untied the string and took off the lid. Then she lifted out the ten-pound sadiron he had brought her with the hope that when he weighed for her he would be able to keep the box under his arm.

“It’s the finest present I ever had in all my life, honey,” she said sweetly, running the palm of her hand over the smooth surface.