Stories of Erskine Caldwell (49 page)

It’s always hot down here in Georgia though.

“Lazy-Bones,” of course, was a nickname. Everybody, however, who knew him called him that. His weekly paycheck from the gas company was made out to the order of “Lazy-Bones.” And when he went to the bank to cash it he scrawled “Lazy-Bones” on the back. I am not at all sure that Lazy-Bones remembered either his surname or his christened name.

Lazy-Bones worked for the local gaslight company. For twenty-three years he sacked coke. Many men of much greater stability would have walked out and joined the Navy or something of the sort. But not Lazy-Bones. Lazy-Bones loved his job.

Then one morning he was given a raise of two dollars a week and a bicycle and the job of delivering bills. He was proud of his promotion and of the increase in salary, and he lost no time in letting each and all of his friends know of his good fortune. Several times he told me, on each occasion proclaiming that his job was without exception the best in town. He said he liked it because he never had to hurry. When he sacked coke it was more or less a duty to fill at least ten or fifteen bags a day, but now he had an entire month of thirty days — he chuckled to himself — in which to deliver a handful of bills.

Lazy-Bones had a soft job.

And even though he was required to be at the office every day, he never worked — if anything Lazy-Bones ever did could be called work — more than a day or two in the week. He would take two or three bills Monday or Tuesday, or Wednesday or Thursday — never Friday or Saturday — stuff them somewhere in his breeches, then get out his wheel and roll it down the street two or three blocks before attempting to stride it. After he had perched himself precariously on the saddle he would finally get the bicycle straightened out and pedal and coast sluggishly around town.

And Lazy-Bones loved to dillydally along the way.

Occasionally he delivered a bill or two in our building. He would come perhaps two or three times in a year: invariably worming up the circular stairway instead of shooting up the elevator. When he slouched in to see me — and my office was on the seventh floor — he would be as fresh of breath after the backbreaking climb as I was after riding up the elevator. Lazy-Bones climbed stairways like an old, old man climbing a long ladder.

How could I ever forget the afternoon I stumbled over Lazy-Bones on the steps in front of the city hall? He was drooping on the stone steps, staring across the street, with those immobile eyes of his in stagnant study. I say “immobile” because he never moved his eyes: if he was compelled to change his gaze he merely moved his head an inch or so in that direction.

“Hello, Lazy-Bones,” I called in friendly greeting.

Before he responded I had time to read through the headlines of the afternoon newspaper.

“Heh,” he exhaled languidly without looking up.

“This has certainly been a hot day, Lazy-Bones, hasn’t it?” I asked, moving into the shade of the building.

“Yeh,” he drawled, after I had given up hope of hearing him speak again that afternoon. “Sure is a good old hot day.”

I offered him a cigarette from my supply, but he declined at great length after muttering some pointed remarks on the sex of tailor-made smokes. When I had almost finished smoking, he took from his breeches’ pocket a soiled little sack of tobacco and balanced it cautiously on his bony knee. After much trouble he found a packet of crumpled cigarette papers in another of his breeches’ pockets and extracted them from the pocket one by one. I had finished my work for the day and was glad of the opportunity to stand in the shade of the city hall and feel the slight southeast breeze filtering through my clothing.

After replacing each paper in the crumbling packet he chose one and placed it between his lips while he returned the packet to his pocket. When that had been accomplished he held the mouth of the dirty little sack over the paper and allowed a few crumbs and flakes to dribble on the tissue.

I fanned my perspiring face with my straw. The sun would not go down for another hour yet. Lazy-Bones carelessly dangled the yellow drawstrings of the sack over his lips until one of them finally became fastened between his teeth. This success pleased him greatly. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye and smiled broadly.

“Sure is a good old hot day,” he drawled again as though he loved the sound of the words. “Ain’t it?”

“One of the hottest of the summer,” I stated emphatically.

“You know, I like it when it’s good and hot,” he declared enthusiastically, the words punctuated with dabs at the tissue with the tip of his tongue.

Later he mined a soiled match. Apathetically he tested it on the seat of his breeches. He studied the purple tip and greenish base lovingly. Then he picked up one of his feet in his hand and critically examined the worn sole of his shoe. It was evident that its condition pleased him, because he drew the head of the match across its area several times, smiling from ear to ear. The match-head was damp. It crumbled to the steps with the first stroke, but Lazy-Bones did not know of the catastrophe until I burst out with the news in annoyance. Lazy-Bones was irritating at times.

I snatched a box of matches from my pocket and with a swift, continuous sweep of the hand lit one for him.

“Here! Lazy-Bones!” I called roughly. “Here’s a light!”

Lazy-Bones motioned me aside with assurance.

“I’ve got a match somewhere what’ll light up,” he explained, chuckling.

In five minutes he found it and with magical operations was able to blaze its tip. However, he had to lick the cigarette paper again and while he was preoccupied with the tissue and his tongue the flame scorched his fingers. Of course he had to throw the match to the ground.

“Christ!” I mumbled under my breath.

Lazy-Bones at last, however, had what he would call a cigarette aglow.

“Sure is a good old hot day,” he announced as though never before in all his life had he made the observation.

I lit another cigarette.

“Ain’t it?” he demanded with explosive enthusiasm.

I smiled at Lazy-Bones, nodding with conviction.

He rubbed the ash from his cigarette and fixed his gaze on some insignificant object across the street. I loved the indolent fellow more than ever. He knew how to live, and he thoroughly enjoyed every hour of his sluggish existence.

Lazy-Bones presently got to his feet and stretched his arms and legs with an accompaniment of groans and grunts.

“Yes, sir,” he yawned, “this sure has been a good old hot day.”

Again I nodded, but nonetheless there came once more that familiar explosion from the depths of his body:

“Ain’t it?”

Lazy-Bones lifted his bicycle from the pavement where several hours previously it had fallen when he slouched away from it. I waved farewell and started homeward. He motioned me to a stop.

“Well,” he smiled with his eyes, his ears, his nose, his chin, and his yellowed teeth, “I’m going home now and drink a pint of gin and go to bed and dream about this good old hot day.”

I smiled back at him, and with a wave of the hand started home once more.

“Sure has been a good old hot day. . . . Ain’t it!”

I left him dillydallying with his wheel.

But that was a long, long time ago. . . .

When I finally got my car stopped I jumped out and pulled poor old Lazy-Bones’s mangled body from the axle. I pulled him from under the car and prayed while I pulled that he wasn’t dead. I picked his head up in my arms, thinning the gore on his white face with the perspiration running in streams down my forehead, and wiped away the blood with my white linen coat. I called his name, begging him to answer me.

“Lazy-Bones! Lazy-Bones!”

He did not answer. His head slipped through my fingers to the hot, sticky asphalt. Somebody jerked me away.

“Lazy-Bones!
Lazy-Bones!”

An undertaker bore him away. His pink sports page, now a wet, red rag, was wrapped around his head.

As long as I live I shall remember Lazy-Bones. Knowing the sunny nature of the poor fellow as I did it seems incredible, but nonetheless in my hands, through his matted hair, his head had felt like a bag of freshly cracked ice.

(First published in
American Earth
)

B
ACK IN
J
ANUARY,
about the middle of the first week, Ned Jones received a letter from the fire insurance agent’s office in Bangor. The letter said that the company, effective January 1st, last, had discontinued allowing a discount on premiums covering farmhouses and barns which were equipped with lightning rods. Therefore, the letter said, the cost for protection on his buildings would be raised to twenty-two-fifty from twenty-fifty.

However, the letter went on, if the rods were already installed on the building, a lightning-rod expert would call and inspect the terminals, ground wires, brads, and so forth, and if the expert found them in first-class condition, the discount would be reinstated. The charge for all of this, the letter concluded, would be three dollars for the inspector’s time.

“Thunderation,” Ned said when he had finished reading the letter the third time, “Hell and thunderation!”

It did not take him long to figure out that he would save a dollar by not having the lightning rods inspected, but even so he could see that it was going to cost him two dollars a year more to keep his buildings covered by insurance.

“That’s thunderation,” he said.

His wife, Betty, was silent about the whole matter. She always froze up inside whenever something came up like that and threatened to cost an extra penny.

The insurance premium was not due and payable until February 1st, but a week before that time Ned got ready to make a trip to Bangor and pay a call at the insurance agent’s office.

He and his wife started out to Bangor after breakfast, driving the old car slowly along the black-top road, taking care to stay as far on the right-hand side of the road as possible. The law was that a car owner would not have to carry liability and property-damage insurance as long as he did not have a mishap. Ned was set on not having that first accident on the highways that would force him to pay insurance premiums for the right to drive his car. It was an old car anyway, about twelve years old, and he did not intend buying another one when it was worn out.

They got to Bangor just before ten o’clock in the forenoon, and, after finding a safe place to park and leave the automobile, Ned and his wife went straight to the agent’s office.

They sat down on a bench in the hall and waited for several minutes, and then a girl took them to see Mr. Harmsworth.

“Now, about that insurance on my stand of buildings out at Gaylord,” Ned said, shaking his head and his finger at the agent.

“I take it you’re upset about the new lightning-rod clause, effective January 1st, last,” Mr. Harmsworth said, smiling at Ned and his wife. “You see, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones, the company at the home office in New Hampshire rewrites the contracts, and we agents have nothing whatever to do with the terms the company dictates.”

“What do people in New Hampshire know about lightning rods anyway?” Ned said. “Now let me tell you. I once knew a man in New Hampshire who —”

“Let’s not get off the subject, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones,” Mr. Harmsworth said. “After all, both my parents were born and raised in New Hampshire, and I’m sure there is a New Hampshire connection somewhere in your family, too.”

He smiled at Mrs. Jones, beaming upon her all the force of what he knew was a sunny smile. Betty refused to be disarmed. She was frozen up inside, and she intended to remain unthawed as long as the insurance company refused to make an adjustment that would not cost them an extra penny.

“Now, I’ve lived down here in the State of Maine for all my life,” Ned said, “and I’m sixty and more right now, and lightning rods are the only things in the world that’ll keep lightning from striking and setting fire to the house or barn. All my life I’ve seen lightning strike a spire and run down the cable into the ground without even so much as smoking up the roof and clapboards. If it wasn’t for lightning rods —”

“Are you sure lightning runs down lightning rods, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Jones?” Mr. Harmsworth said. “I was under the impression it ran up the rods, or rather made contact on the point of the spire. However —”

“Lightning is lightning, whether it runs up or down, or slantwise, if it has a mind to,” Ned said, rising up.

“I see you know a lot more about such things than I do,” Mr. Harmsworth laughed, beaming upon Mrs. Jones. “I was raised here in the city, and I never had a chance to observe how lightning behaves when it comes in contact with a rod-equipped building. But, just the same, there’s nothing either you or I can do about this here clause, because the home office rewrote the contract and sent us the printed forms, and I’m merely their representative. I carry out their orders, but I have no authority to alter a clause in a contract.”

Ned looked at his wife, and she shook her head. That was all he wanted to know. No insurance company, with a home office in New Hampshire, run by New Hampshire people, was going to tell him whether they thought lightning rods were protection or not. He looked at his wife again, and shook his head. Betty tightened her mouth, freezing tighter inside, and nodded at Ned.

Mr. Harmsworth shuffled some papers on his desk, and, bringing one out with much crinkling and creasing, laid it before Ned.

“This is your bill for fire-protection coverage, due February 1st,” he said, glancing quickly at Ned, but not looking at Mrs. Jones.

Ned pushed it back at him.

“Now, about this Balm of Gilead,” Ned said, edging forward in his chair.

“What Balm of Gilead?” Mr. Harmsworth asked, startled. “What’s that?”

Ned looked at his wife, and Betty nodded. That was what he wanted to know from her. He pulled his chair closer to the desk.

“My Balm of Gilead,” he said. “I’ve got one in my dooryard, fourteen feet from the west wall of my dwelling house, and twenty-two feet from the east wall of my barn.”

“What’s a Balm of Gilead?” Mr. Harmsworth asked, still startled. “Wasn’t that something in the Bible? How’d you get something that was in the Bible?”