Stories of Erskine Caldwell

  The Stories of Erskine Caldwell

  Erskine Caldwell

  Contents

  Country Full of Swedes

  Man and Woman

  Candy-Man Beechum

  Saturday Afternoon

  The Strawberry Season

  Maud Island

  Warm River

  Snacker

  The Empty Room

  The Day the Presidential Candidate Came to Ciudad Tamaulipas

  Over the Green Mountains

  The People’s Choice

  Return to Lavinia

  After-Image

  Squire Dinwiddy

  Picking Cotton

  The Girl Ellen

  A Woman in the House

  The Automobile That Wouldn’t Run

  The Negro in the Well

  Carnival

  The Windfall

  John the Indian and George Hopkins

  Yellow Girl

  The First Autumn

  Savannah River Payday

  Here and Today

  Horse Thief

  Dorothy

  The Medicine Man

  Back on the Road

  Daughter

  The Lonely Day

  Nine Dollars’ Worth of Mumble

  The Cold Winter

  The Growing Season

  The End of Christy Tucker

  Rachel

  The Midwinter Guest

  Blue Boy

  Evelyn and the Rest of Us

  It Happened Like This

  Wild Flowers

  Uncle Henry’s Love Nest

  Thunderstorm

  Meddlesome Jack

  Molly Cotton-Tail

  The Courting of Susie Brown

  The Picture

  Memorandum

  Balm of Gilead

  A Very Late Spring

  Joe Craddock’s Old Woman

  An Evening in Nuevo Leon

  Ten Thousand Blueberry Crates

  New Cabin

  Mamma’s Little Girl

  Honeymoon

  The Grass Fire

  Where the Girls Were Different

  The Sunfield

  The Sick Horse

  The Rumor

  August Afternoon

  Masses of Men

  The Corduroy Pants

  Crown-Fire

  Runaway

  The People v. Abe Lathan, Colored

  The Dream

  A Small Day

  Indian Summer

  A Swell-Looking Girl

  Uncle Jeff

  The Visitor

  Handy

  An Autumn Courtship

  Midsummer Passion

  A Day’s Wooing

  Summer Accident

  The Walnut Hunt

  Priming the Well

  The Shooting

  The Fly in the Coffin

  Slow Death

  Hamrick’s Polar Bear

  We Are Looking at You, Agnes

  A Knife to Cut the Corn Bread With

  The Man Who Looked Like Himself

  The Mating of Marjorie

  Martha Jean

  Big Buck

  Kneel to the Rising Sun

  A Biography of Erskine Caldwell

  Country Full of Swedes

  THERE I WAS, standing in the middle of the chamber, trembling like I was coming down with the flu, and still not knowing what God-awful something had happened. In all my days in the Back Kingdom, I never heard such noises so early in the forenoon.

  It was about half an hour after sunrise, and a gun went off like a cofferdam breaking up under ice at twenty below, and I’d swear it sounded like it wasn’t any farther away than my feet are from my head. That gun shot off, pitching me six-seven inches off the bed, and, before I could come down out of the air, there was another roar like somebody coughing through a megaphone, with a two-weeks cold, right in my ear. God-helping, I hope I never get waked up like that again until I can get myself home to the Back Kingdom where I rightfully belong to stay.

  I must have stood there ten-fifteen minutes shivering in my nightshirt, my heart pounding inside of me like a ramrod working on a plugged-up bore, and listening for that gun again, if it was going to shoot some more. A man never knows what’s going to happen next in the State of Maine; that’s why I wish sometimes I’d never left the Back Kingdom to begin with. I was making sixty a month, with the best of bed and board, back there in the intervale; but like a God-damn fool I had to jerk loose and came down here near the Bay. I’m going back where I came from, God-helping; I’ve never had a purely calm and peaceful day since I got here three-four years ago. This is the damnedest country for the unexpected raising of all kinds of unlooked-for hell a man is apt to run across in a lifetime of traveling. If a man’s born and raised in the Back Kingdom, he ought to stay there where he belongs; that’s what I’d done if I’d had the sense to stay out of this down-country near the Bay, where you don’t ever know, God-helping, what’s going to happen next, where, or when.

  But there I was, standing in the middle of the upstairs chamber, shaking like a ragweed in an August windstorm, and not knowing what minute, maybe right at me, that gun was going to shoot off again, for all I knew. Just then, though, I heard Jim and Mrs. Frost trip-trapping around downstairs in their bare feet. Even if I didn’t know what God-awful something had happened, I knew things around the place weren’t calm and peaceful, like they generally were of a Sunday morning in May, because it took a stiff mixture of heaven and hell to get Jim and Mrs. Frost up and out of a warm bed before six of a forenoon, any of the days of the week.

  I ran to the window and stuck my head out as far as I could get it, to hear what the trouble was. Everything out there was as quiet and peaceful as midnight on a back road in middlemost winter. But I knew something was up, because Jim and Mrs. Frost didn’t make a practice of getting up and out of a warm bed that time of forenoon in the chillish Maytime.

  There wasn’t any sense in me standing there in the cold air shivering in my nightshirt, so I put on my clothes, whistling all the time through my teeth to drive away the chill, and trying to figure out what God-damn fool was around so early shooting off a gun of a Sunday morning. Just then I heard the downstairs door open, and up the steps, two at a time, came Jim in his breeches and his shirttail flying out behind him.

  He wasn’t long in coming up the stairs, for a man sixty-seven, but before he reached the door to my room, that gun went off again: BOOM! Just like that; and the echo came rolling back through the open window from the hills: Boom! Boom! Like fireworks going off with your eyes shut. Jim had busted through the door already, but when he heard that Boom! sound he sort of spun around, like a cockeyed weathervane, five-six times, and ran out of the door again like he had been shot in the hind parts with a moose gun. That Boom! so early in the forenoon was enough to scare the daylights out of any man, and Jim wasn’t any different from me or anybody else in the town of East Joloppi. He just turned around and jumped through the door to the first tread on the stairway like his mind was made up to go somewhere else in a hurry, and no fooling around at the start.

  I’d been hired to Jim and Mrs. Frost for all of three-four years, and I was near about as much of a Frost, excepting name, as Jim himself was. Jim and me got along first-rate together, doing chores and haying and farm work in general, because neither one of us was ever trying to make the other do more of the work. We were hitched to make a fine team, and I never had a kick coming, and Jim said he didn’t either. Jim had the name of Frost, to be sure, but I wouldn’t ever hold that against a man.

  The echo of that gunshot was still rolling around in the hills and coming in through the window, when all at once that God-awful coughlike whoop throug
h a megaphone sounded again right there in the room and everywhere else, like it might have been, in the whole town of East Joloppi. The man or beast or whatever animal he was who hollered like that ought to be locked up to keep him from scaring all the women and children to death, and it wasn’t any stomach-comforting sound for a grown man who’s used to the peaceful calm of the Back Kingdom all his life to hear so early of a Sunday forenoon, either.

  I jumped to the door where Jim, just a minute before, leaped through. He didn’t stop till he got clear to the bottom of the stairs. He stood there, looking up at me like a wild-eyed cow moose surprised in the sheriff’s corn field.

  “Who fired that God-awful shot, Jim?” I yelled at him, leaping down the stairs quicker than a man of my years ought to let himself do.

  “Good God!” Jim said, his voice hoarse, and falling all to pieces like a stump of punkwood. “The Swedes! The Swedes are shooting, Stan!”

  “What Swedes, Jim — those Swedes who own the farm and buildings across the road over there?” I said, trying to find the buttonholes in my shirt. “Have they come back here to live on that farm?”

  “Good God, yes!” he said, his voice croaking deep down in his throat, like he had swallowed too much water. “The Swedes are all over the place. They’re everywhere you can see, there’s that many of them.”

  “What’s their name, Jim?” I asked him. “You and Mrs. Frost never told me what their name is.”

  “Good God, I don’t know. I never heard them called anything but Swedes, and that’s what it is, I guess. It ought to be that, if it ain’t.”

  I ran across the hall to look out a window, but it was on the wrong side of the house, and I couldn’t see a thing. Mrs. Frost was stepping around in the downstairs chamber, locking things up in the drawers and closet and forgetting where she was hiding the keys. I could see her through the open door, and she was more scared-looking than Jim was. She was so scared of the Swedes she didn’t know what she was doing, none of the time.

  “What made those Swedes come back for, Jim?” I said to him. “I thought you said they were gone for good, this time.”

  “Good God, Stan,” he said, “I don’t know what they came back for. I guess hard times are bringing everybody back to the land, and the Swedes are always in the front rush of everything. I don’t know what brought them back, but they’re all over the place, shooting and yelling and raising hell. There are thirty-forty of them, looks like to me, counting everything with heads.”

  “What are they doing now, Jim, except yelling and shooting?”

  “Good God,” Jim said, looking behind him to see what Mrs. Frost was doing with his things in the downstairs chamber. “I don’t know what they’re not doing. But I can hear them, Stan! You hurry out right now and lock up all the tools in the barn and bring in the cows and tie them up in the stalls. I’ve got to hurry out now and bring in all of those new cedar fence posts across the front of the yard before they start pulling them up and carrying them off. Good God, Stan, the Swedes are everywhere you look outdoors! We’ve got to make haste, Stan!”

  Jim ran to the side door and out the back of the house, but I took my time about going. I wasn’t scared of the Swedes, like Jim and Mrs. Frost were, and I didn’t aim to have Jim putting me to doing tasks and chores, or anything else, before breakfast and the proper time. I wasn’t any more scared of the Swedes than I was of the Finns and Portuguese, anyway. It’s a God-awful shame for Americans to let Swedes and Finns and the Portuguese scare the daylights out of them. God-helping, they are no different than us, and you never see a Finn or a Swede scared of an American. But people like Jim and Mrs. Frost are scared to death of Swedes and other people from the old countries; Jim and Mrs. Frost and people like that never stop to think that all of us Americans came over from the old countries, one time or another, to begin with.

  But there wasn’t any sense in trying to argue with Jim and Mrs. Frost right then, when the Swedes, like a fired nest of yellow-headed bumblebees, were swarming all over the place as far as the eye could see, and when Mrs. Frost was scared to death that they were coming into the house and carry out all of her and Jim’s furniture and household goods. So while Mrs. Frost was tying her and Jim’s shoes in pillowcases and putting them out of sight in closets and behind beds, I went to the kitchen window and looked out to see what was going on around that tall yellow house across the road.

  Jim and Mrs. Frost both were right about there being Swedes all over the place. God-helping, there were Swedes all over the country, near about all over the whole town of East Joloppi, for what I could see out of the window. They were as thick around the barn and pump and the woodpile as if they had been a nest of yellow-headed bumblebees strewn over the countryside. There were Swedes everywhere a man could see, and the ones that couldn’t be seen could be heard yelling their heads off inside the yellow clapboarded house across the road. There wasn’t any mistake about there being Swedes there, either; because I’ve never yet seen a man who mistakes a Swede or a Finn for an American. Once you see a Finn or a Swede you know, God-helping, that he is a Swede or a Finn, and not a Portuguese or an American.

  There was a Swede everywhere a man could look. Some of them were little Swedes, and women Swedes, to be sure; but little Swedes, in the end, and women Swedes too, near about, grow up as big as any of them. When you come right down to it, there’s no sense in counting out the little Swedes and the women Swedes.

  Out in the road in front of their house were seven-eight autos and trucks loaded down with furniture and household goods. All around, everything was Swedes. The Swedes were yelling and shouting at one another, the little Swedes and the women Swedes just as loud as the big Swedes, and it looked like none of them knew what all the shouting and yelling was for, and when they found out, they didn’t give a damn about it. That was because all of them were Swedes. It didn’t make any difference what a Swede was yelling about; just as long as he had leave to open his mouth, he was tickled to death about it.

  I have never seen the like of so much yelling and shouting anywhere else before; but down here in the State of Maine, in the down-country on the Bay, there’s no sense in being taken back at the sights to be seen, because anything on God’s green earth is likely and liable to happen between day and night, and the other way around, too.

  Now, you take the Finns; there’s any God’s number of them around in the woods, where you least expect to see them, logging and such. When a Finn crew breaks a woods camp, it looks like there’s a Finn for every tree in the whole State, but you don’t see them going around making the noise that Swedes do, with all their yelling and shouting and shooting off guns. Finns are quiet about their hell-raising. The Portuguese are quiet, too; you see them tramping around, minding their own business, and working hard on a river dam or something, but you never hear them shouting and yelling and shooting off guns at five-six of a Sunday morning. There’s no known likeness to the noise that a houseful of Swedes can make when they get to yelling and shouting at one another early in the forenoon.

  I was standing there all that time, looking out the window at the Swedes across the road, when Jim came into the kitchen with an armful of wood and threw it into the wood box behind the range.

  “Good God, Stan,” Jim said, “the Swedes are everywhere you can look outdoors. They’re not going to get that armful of wood, anyway, though.”

  Mrs. Frost came to the door and stood looking like she didn’t know it was her business to cook breakfast for Jim and me. I made a fire in the range and put on a pan of water to boil for the coffee. Jim kept running to the window to look out, and there wasn’t much use in expecting Mrs. Frost to start cooking unless somebody set her to it, in the shape she was in, with all the Swedes around the place. She was so upset, it was a downright pity to look at her. But Jim and me had to eat, and I went and took her by the arm and brought her to the range and left her standing there so close she would get burned if she didn’t stir around and make breakfast.

  “
Good God, Stan,” Jim said, “those Swedes are into everything. They’re in the barn, and in the pasture running the cows, and I don’t know what else they’ve been into since I looked last. They’ll take the tools and the horses and cows, and the cedar posts, too, if we don’t get out there and put everything under lock and key.”

  “Now, hold on, Jim,” I said, looking out the window. “Them you see are little Swedes out there, and they’re not going to make off with anything of yours and Mrs. Frost’s. The big Swedes are busy carrying in furniture and household goods. Those Swedes aren’t going to tamper with anything of yours and Mrs. Frost’s. They’re people just like us. They don’t go around stealing everything in sight. Now, let’s just sit here by the window and watch them while Mrs. Frost is getting breakfast ready.”

  “Good God, Stan, they’re Swedes,” Jim said, “and they’re moving into the house across the road. I’ve got to put everything under lock and key before —”

  “Hold on, Jim,” I told him. “It’s their house they’re moving into. God-helping, they’re not moving into your and Jim’s house, are they, Mrs. Frost?”

  “Jim,” Mrs. Frost said, shaking her finger at him and looking at me wild-eyed and sort of flustered-like, “Jim, don’t you sit there and let Stanley stop you from saving the stock and tools. Stanley doesn’t know the Swedes like we do. Stanley came down here from the Back Kingdom, and he doesn’t know anything about Swedes.”

  Mrs. Frost was partly right, because I’ve never seen the things in my whole life that I’ve seen down here near the Bay; but there wasn’t any sense in Americans like Jim and Mrs. Frost being scared of Swedes. I’ve seen enough Finns and Portuguese in my time in the Back Kingdom, up in the intervale, to know that Americans are no different from the others.

  “Now, you hold on a while, Jim,” I said. “Swedes are no different than Finns. Finns don’t go around stealing another man’s stock and tools. Up in the Back Kingdom the Finns are the finest kind of neighbors.”

  “That may be so up in the Back Kingdom, Stan,” Jim said, “but Swedes down here near the Bay are nothing like anything that’s ever been before or since. Those Swedes over there across the road work in a pulp mill over to Waterville three-four years, and when they’ve got enough money saved up, or when they lose it all, as the case may be, they all move back here to East Joloppi on this farm of theirs for two-three years at a time. That’s what they do. And they’ve been doing it for the past thirty-forty years, ever since I can remember, and they haven’t changed none in all that time. I can recall the first time they came to East Joloppi; they built that house across the road then, and if you’ve ever seen a sight like Swedes building a house in a hurry, you haven’t got much else to live for. Why! Stan, those Swedes built that house in four-five days — just like that! I’ve never seen the equal of it. Of course now, Stan, it’s the damnedest-looking house a man ever saw, because it’s not a farmhouse, and it’s not a city house, and it’s no kind of a house an American would erect. Why! Those Swedes threw that house together in four-five days — just like that! But whoever saw a house like that before, with three stories to it, and only six rooms in the whole building! And painted yellow, too; Good God, Stan, white is the only color to paint a house, and those Swedes went and painted it yellow. Then on top of that, they went and painted the barn red. And of all of the shouting and yelling, at all times of the day and night, a man never saw or heard before. Those Swedes acted like they were purely crazy for the whole of four-five days, and they were, and they still are. But what gets me is the painting of it yellow, and the making of it three stories high, with only six rooms in the whole building. Nobody but Swedes would go and do a thing like that; an American would have built a farmhouse, here in the country, resting square on the ground, with one story, maybe a story and a half, and then painted it lead-white. But Good God, Stan, those fool Swedes had to put up three stories, to hold six rooms, and then went and painted the building yellow.”