Cropper's Cabin

by Jim Thompson

  “Well?” she said. And I just shook my head, smiling. I could look down, and see the beginning swell of her breasts. I could see them, actually; the neck of her gown was open, and they began so high up. I could see past them, imagine past, because how can you forget or get over what’s been part of you? I could see the flat stomach and the white, the cream-colored hips, flaring, swelling just enough; and I remember how warm and soft they’d been the night before when we’d ridden with my arms around them…

  “Donna, honey,” I said. “For God’s sake…”

  And I reached for her.

  And she moved back, gripping the front of her gown. And back in the shadows there was a quick slithering sound.

  My hands dropped down to my sides.

  “I came here to tell you I was sorry,” I said. “I was wrong. Pa was wrong. I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you.”

  “You’re appealing to the wrong person,” she said. “After last night, I’ve stopped interfering in Dad’s affairs. I’ve decided he’s a much better judge of people than I am.”

  “Appealing?” I said. “I guess I don’t…”

  “Tell your Pa he’ll have to see my father. Tell him that the influence, which you’ve doubtless boasted of having with me, no longer exists.”

  “But…” I didn’t get it for a minute, and when I did I was kind of stunned. The blood seemed to drain out of my face. “You mean—you mean you think I’d t-try to get you to…”

  “Well,” she hesitated, “you must admit…”

  “I don’t admit anything but what I’ve told you! I’ve been all mixed up and—an’ I wanted to try and get straight again! But if you think I’d—I’d do that! You know I couldn’t do that! Why, the one thing that’s always bothered me is you having so much and—”

  “Wait. Wait a minute, Tom!” She held up a hand. “I don’t think we’d better talk any more tonight. This has been building up for a long time, and it’s not something to be settled in the middle of the night behind a tree. I tried to see you twice today. I needed to see you. But you couldn’t be bothered. You…”

  “I told you…”

  “You felt that you didn’t have to. You could hurt me worse than I’ve ever been hurt, and then when you got good and ready you could come around and I’d fall into your arms. Wait! Perhaps you don’t actually feel that way, but that’s the way things have been and I think it’s gone on long enough. I”—she faltered—“I’m upset, Tom. I can’t be fair to you now. I think you’d better go be-before I—Please, go. Quickly!”

  “Sure, I will,” I said. “Will I see you tomorrow, honey?”

  “I—I d-don’t know. I just can’t…”

  “The next day? There at the usual place?”

  “I”—she shivered. “Oh, Tom, why did you…”

  “I know. I know, honey. I’ll be there every evening until you come, and you just take your time. But won’t you… Send that breed away for a minute, honey.”

  “Well…” She sniffled, and looked over her shoulder. And my arms started to come up, because I didn’t feel like I could wait another second.

  Then her head snapped back around, and what I saw in her face I never want to see in another. Cold white sick. Burning-mad crazy sick.

  But her voice was just a whisper.

  “Breed,” she whispered. “Breed.”

  I said, “Donna, honey, you know I…”

  “It finally came out, didn’t it?” She backed away. “You don’t think much of breeds, do you?” She kept backing away. “That’s why you came here, isn’t it? To finish up the job. Why not? Red meat’s cheap, isn’t it? You know how cheap it is, don’t you? You…”

  “Donna!” I said. And I made a grab for her.

  And she wasn’t there.

  But the Chief was. He was standing between us.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he said, his eyes on me.

  “M-make him go! Take him away! Run him away!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He put two fingers between his teeth and whistled, and back in the trees somewhere there was a nicker. It was one of the plantation’s big bays. All their horses were bays. It came up to the chief and hung its head over his shoulder. He reached back and stroked its muzzle, never looking away from me.

  “You understand me, Chief?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He stepped back, and swung into the saddle.

  “Run him, run him, run him…! ”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I backed up against the shrub. I started backing around it, pushing myself back into the branches. “Y-you try it! You try it, and by God I’ll…”

  The bull whip came off of his shoulder. He let it trail back behind him, then snapped the handle. And there was a cr-aack like a rifle going off. And a red hot iron seemed to jab through the toe of my shoe, searing clear up through my toes and into my ankle.

  I’d known what was going to happen, and I’d set myself for it. I’d told myself I wouldn’t jump or yell; I’d die before I did it. But I didn’t die.

  I jumped. I yelled.

  I threw myself around the shrub, and the whip swung again, cra-ack-cra-ack!, and the hot iron jabbed me in the heels. I threw myself frontwards, and I got another load in the toes. I—

  Backwards, cra-ack-cra-ack!, frontwards, cra-ack-cra-ack!, toes, cra-ack!, heels, cra-ack!

  I leaped backwards away from the shrub, and I stumbled, went down sprawling on my shoulders, and the fire raced through my soles. I rolled over. I went into a running crawl, my eyes filling with blood, my insides pushing up into my throat and—

  Cra-ack-cra-ack!, cra-ack-cra-ack!, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Cra-ack-cra-ack…

  I ran-crawled.

  Cra-aack!

  I screamed and ran, stumbling, blind…

  Cra-aack!

  I fell down, screaming, crawl-running, running, falling and rolling, and—

  Cra-ack, cra-ack, cra-ack, crack…

  Lights had come on. There was a blur of sounds, laughing, shouts, a scream, the same scream over and over. But they were just a blur like the lights. I couldn’t really hear them. I couldn’t really hear myself, what I was yelling. Everything had gone numb inside of me, and there wasn’t any pain any more.

  Or anything else.

  I stood up. I turned around and faced him.

  “Run me!” I yelled. “Try and make me run!”

  Cra-ack, cra-ack!

  “Go on! Run me, goddam…”

  Cra-ack, cra-ack!

  “—you! Run me! Try it, try it, tr…”

  Crraaa-aaack! My ankle. I could feel the dime-sized spot of flesh leap away.

  “Make me, make me, make me!”

  Craaa-ack-a-craa-ack-a-craa-ack-a-craa-aack!

  “Make me…”

  “Cra-Tom, Tom Carver!”

  “Try an’ make…”

  “Carver! Tom! Snap out of it, son!”

  He was shaking me, a man with a bandage over one eye and a strip of courtplaster down his cheek. She was sagged against him, still and white, her head hung back over his arm. She couldn’t see me run now, because her eyes were closed.

  “Tom!” He was holding her with one arm and shaking me with the other. “Are you badly hurt, Tom?”

  “Run me,” I said.

  “Come in with me. I want to talk to you. Will you do that, son? Will you come in with me, Tom? With Donna and me?”

  “Run me,” I said.

  He hesitated. Then, he got his other arm under Donna’s legs, and he lifted her. And her head hung back, eyes closed, and now she couldn’t see me run.

  “You should have known better than this, Chief.”

  “Yes, sir. But Miss Donna said to…”

  “I know, I know,” Matthew Ontime looked at me again. He tried again. “Now, listen to me, Tom—I don’t know how this trouble arose, but I’m sure it can be adjusted. You were in a difficult position last night. I was in an unaccustomed one. My opinion of your foster-father isn’t—
well, we won’t go into that. But as far as you and I are concerned—you and I and Donna, I’m sure, I’m more than willing to try to work something out that…”

  Run me, run me.

  I turned and hobbled off across the grass. And he said, “Take care of him, Chief,” and I saw him going cater-corner toward the house, carrying Donna with her eyes closed so’s she couldn’t see me run.

  The Chief touched my elbow, teetering along at my side in his high-heeled boots. “No hard feelings, boy? You ain’t sore, are you?”

  “You couldn’t make me run,” I said. “No one can make me run.”

  “No, sir, they sure can’t. Ain’t a chance in the world. So you just sit down here, now, and I’ll get a car out and run you home.”

  “No one can run me…”

  “Sure, but…”

  I started running, running by myself because I wanted to, and the last I heard was, “No hard feelings, huh? No sense in…”

  7

  I didn’t run very far, just until I was in the grove and out of sight, until I’d showed ’em that they hadn’t hurt me a bit. I fell against a tree, wrapping my arms around it; and I sank my teeth into the bark to keep from yelling. I hugged it, trying to ease the weight off my feet. Finally, I was able to let go, to stagger on to the next tree. And I got through the grove that way, moving from tree to tree.

  I sat down on the edge of the ditch and scooted myself along sideways with my hands until I came to a little rain pool. I pushed my feet down into it, letting the water come up over my shoe tops and soak down inside.

  I sat that way for quite a spell. It helped some, but I could tell my feet weren’t ever going to soak free. They were swollen into the leather like sausage in a gut. I was glad I didn’t have any socks on.

  I swung around, facing the road, and pulled out the laces. Then I got a good grip on the toe and heel, braced myself and jerked.

  And yelled.

  I jerked and yelled and jerked and yelled. I kept jerking, because it looked like I might have waited too long as it was. Those were the only shoes I had, and I didn’t want to have to dig them off with my knife.

  I got them both off and put my feet back in the ditch. And they still ached like heck, and burned where the hide had come off. But the swelling started going out of them, and they felt a lot better than they had. I began to feel better, too. Some of the craziness seemed to go out of my head with the swelling.

  I got up and hobbled toward home, walking in the mud as much as I could.

  I tried to think back to the point I’d been at earlier in the evening. I mean like, I’d done something pretty bad myself and they were entitled to pay me off. But I was a long way from feeling good enough to come around to that viewpoint.

  Punching a man was one thing. It was something else to take a whip to him, making him cringe and crawl and scream in front of his—in front of a girl, and God knows how many other people. And, now, remembering the voices and the laughter, I reckoned quite a few others must have seen it.

  That was a lot different. It was something you had to fan mighty hard to cool off.

  So, I wasn’t crazy any more. I could see that while I’d probably got a lot worse than I’d asked for, I had been asking for something. I could trace the fault back where it had started to Pa. He’d started it. They finished it. That was the right of the matter. But I could just see that, you know; only see it.

  And until I could accept it, I knew it would be an awfully good idea for me to keep out of their way and them out of mine.

  I had to sit down and rest several times, and it was just short of dawn when I got home. The stars were fading out and the man in the moon was down to a shadow of himself, and the cool-warm breeze that washes the path for the sun was rippling through the cotton stalks. The air had a sweet, clean-dirt smell. I couldn’t hear a rain-crow anywhere. It looked like it could be a pretty nice day.

  I got into the house and into my bedroom without anything happening. I undressed and wiped myself off with the inside of my clothes and tossed them under the bed. I laid out some clean clothes, and slid under the blankets and stretched out. And—

  And Mary was shaking me.

  “Tom! Wake up, now! Breakfast’s ready and waitin’.”

  I tried to pull the covers over my head. It didn’t feel like I’d hardly had time to close my eyes.

  She kept shaking me. “Tom!”

  “Don’t want any breakfast,” I said.

  “Please, Tom! H-he’s waitin’ an’…”

  “Since when did he wait on anyone?”

  “Tom! You just got to! I don’t know what to tell him, an’ he’ll…”

  “All right,” I said, “Get out and let me dress.”

  She left and I got up. I dressed, pulling on a pair of socks but leaving my shoes off. I walked out into the kitchen, making myself not limp.

  He looked up at me over his saucer of coffee, then looked down into it again. “Woke up ahead of yourself, boy,” he said, trying for a joke. “Plumb forgot your shoes.”

  “I didn’t forget them” I said. “I’m going back to bed after breakfast.”

  I thought that would get a rise out of him, but he didn’t seem to be in a rising mood. He couldn’t believe what was happening; he’d had his own way too long. But he knew there’d been a big shift in the situation, and he was moving cautiously until he could shift his sights with it.

  I sat down and put grits and biscuits on my plate. I broke the biscuits in two, poured sorghum on them and began to eat.

  “Going back to bed, eh?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “How come?”

  “How come not?”

  I took a swallow of coffee, set the cup down, and looked at him steadily. He picked up his saucer again.

  “Well… no reason, I guess. Reckon if you’re tired, bed’s the place for you.”

  “That’s the way I figured it,” I said.

  I went on eating. He wanted to ask questions, let him ask ’em.

  “You—uh—you got pretty upset about yesterday? Had a hard time goin’ to sleep?”

  I shrugged.

  “Damn him,” he said. “Damn his black soul to hell.”

  He finished breakfast gulping it down a little slower than usual. He got up, took down his hat and jumper from a wall peg and put them on. He pulled a straw out of the broom and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. He bobbled it up and down, looking partly out the door and partly at me, watching me out of the corner of his eyes.

  “What’d you—what you think we’d better do, son?”

  “What do I think?” I said. “You’re asking me for advice?”

  “Well, now…” He paused. “I thought—I was thinkin’ you an’ me’d kinda scamper around today and look for another place to crop. I was figurin’ we’d better do that.” He paused again. “Don’t land somethin’ pretty soon, they’ll all be spoken for.”

  “That’s right,” I nodded.

  “I thought we’d better do that, son. Awful late now, even, to be lookin’. People that ain’t settin’ tight from last year has already made their jump. Can’t set on a place all winter, an’ then move when the work starts.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “You—uh—you gonna be through eatin’ pretty soon?”

  “When I get filled up. I’m eating while it’s here to eat. I’m not doing any more digging after other people’s leavings.”

  There was a crash, then the ring-rattle-plop a plate makes when it spins on the floor and falls face down. But Pa didn’t say anything to Mary, or even look at her.

  I heard her ease the plate off the floor and slide it into the dish-pan. I thought, That’s the way he’d like to have you. Yeah, and that’s what you’d deserve. Anyone that’s got feet to walk on and arms to swing has got it coming to ’em—if they let it.

  “But—uh—o’ course,” he was saying. “O’ course, if you’re…”

  “That’s right, too,” I
said. “I’m not going.”

  His head snapped around fast, and the broom straw fell out of his mouth. Our eyes met and held; and then he shifted back to the doorway.

  “Damn him!” he gritted. “Damn his black half-breed heart. He ain’t fitten to live!”

  I poured myself more coffee, rattling and scraping the spoon in the cup as I stirred in the sugar.

  “You ain’t heard of anything have you, son? You ain’t heard no one speak of a piece of land that might be open.”

  “Not a thing,” I said. “Like you say, it’s all spoken for by this time.”

  “Well, I guess I better—if a man looks hard enough…”

  “Huh-uh.” I shook my head. “There isn’t any and no one’s going to make a place for you. They don’t want you around, understand? You’re a good farmer, a lot better than the average. But no one wants a tenant who thinks he’s God Almighty. Landlords don’t need to pay a man to fuss and nag at ’em, and call ’em dirty names.”

  I saw his mouth twitch, and he started to turn his head again. But he wouldn’t see the truth yet. He couldn’t give up as long as there was anything to grab at.

  “You’re mighty upset, son. Don’t know as I can rightly fault you much after the way they treated you at school.”

  “No,” I said. “You can’t fault me.”

  “Sure wish I could figure out what to do. Reckon I’ll have to sell our ten here if I can’t do anything else.”

  “To Matthew Ontime? You can’t sell to anyone else. No one’s going to buy a ten-acre plot inside another man’s plantation. It’d cost him more to work than he could take out of it.”

  “But—damn him!” he yelled. “What am I gonna do, hey? A man’s got to live!”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He brushed his mouth with the back of his hand, rubbing it back and forth. “You s’pose I could get a loan? The banks ought to make me a loan on it, hadn’t they?”

  “They probably would,” I said. “They’d know they could turn it to Ontime when you defaulted.”

  “How—how much, son? They ought to treat me pretty good, anyways, hadn’t they? It ain’t just unimproved acreage.”

  “Yes, they’ll treat you good,” I said. “You might even get enough to—well, I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up too high. I might be all wrong, but the way I see it, with all these improvements and all, you might get enough to, uh—uh—Oh, I kind of hate to name a figure. I’ll probably set it too high, and then you’ll be disappointed.”