Place Called Estherville

by Erskine Caldwell

  Reeves, after the first startling sight of her, had become embarrassed by the bold display of her naked body. He lowered his head and looked down at the ground until she spoke again.

  “Pull your clothes down and cover yourself up,” Burgess told her roughly, trying to snatch at her dress. Eluding him with an agile excited leap, she ran to the other side of Reeves, still holding the green flannelette garment around her neck. Her thin gaunt body looked childish and her small undeveloped breasts clung motionlessly to her chest. “All that sounds to me mighty like another of your big lies,” Burgess accused her suspiciously. “I don’t believe no nigger came nowhere near you.”

  “He did, though,” she spoke up quickly, watching Reeves Houck. “I’ll show you just exactly how he done it, if you don’t believe me. He done it just like this. He was too big and strong for me to try to make him quit. He was the strongest thing. He just kept on and on for the longest time. It was the strangest thing. He acted like he never wanted to quit. I never had nobody want to keep on so long before. I swear to God and hope to die, if that ain’t the truth. You believe me, don’t you, Reeves? Don’t you, now?”

  “What nigger done it?” Reeves asked her, impressed by her eagerness to make him believe her. “What’s his name?”

  “He was a strange nigger, Reeves,” she answered unhesitatingly, looking straight into his eyes as though she were incapable of telling him a falsehood. “He was black all over, but sort of light-colored, too—like a real bright gingerbread nigger—with great big hands and long feet. I never saw him before in my life. I don’t know where he came from. Maybe from somewhere off in another country somewhere. He just crept up behind me when I wasn’t looking and grabbed me and made me keep quiet, and then he started in and done it like this. He was so big and strong I couldn’t make him quit for the longest time. You believe me, Reeves, don’t you, now?”

  “Which way did he go?” Burgess asked her, still not convinced she was telling the truth.

  “Down that way, on the other side of the ridge toward the cypress swamp,” she told him, pointing toward the cotton field. “I saw him go down that way.”

  “Where’s he at now?”

  “He’s hiding out down there somewhere on the other side of the newground, where you and Reeves cut down the trees the last time. He’s hiding out down there this very minute. I saw him go in there with my own eyes. I swear-to-God-as-His-little-lamb and hope to die!”

  “Hell, I don’t know if she’s telling the truth this time or not,” Burgess said doubtfully. “It don’t look to me like no nigger would dare go near my house, and she’s told so many whopping big lies, I don’t know one from another no more. But if she’s telling anywhere near the truth this time, we’ll get the black bastard.” He went to Mozelle, snatched her clothes down, and pushed her away. “Go on home now and lock up all the doors till I get there. Keep your face away from the windows, too. If one black went after you, more’ll get the notion.”

  Looking back at them over her shoulder, and smiling at Reeves, she ran down the wagon road toward home as they picked up their axes and started toward the newground. Neither of them said anything until they got to the edge of the field. Mozelle was out of sight by that time.

  “Reckon she’s lying about it, Burgess?” Reeves asked him earnestly. “Looks like you ought to be able to tell. You ought to know by the way she talks and acts by now. I don’t want to get mixed up in no race trouble, unless it’s something that ought to be done. The rest of the time I’m willing to live and let live. I don’t have no grudges against the blacks like you do. I figure they ought to be left alone to mind their own business, as long as things go all right.”

  “I’ll be God damned if I know if she’s lying this time or telling the truth,” Burgess admitted, shaking his head to himself. “She’s such a big liar I never know. She makes up the damnedest tales sometimes. Nobody could believe half what she says, half the time. But if there’s a nigger hiding out in that thicket, by God, I’ll get him. No black son-of-a-bitching nigger’s going to jump my wife and not pay for it, even if he didn’t do nowhere near what she claims he done to her. Even if all he done was just pass by and look at her hard, that’s all I need to know.”

  Ganus was kneeling on the ground at one of his rabbit boxes when he heard footsteps on the dry brush behind him. He looked around and saw Burgess and Reeves only a few steps away. He saw at once that something was wrong. He jerked off his cap and smiled, but the expression on the faces of both of them remained stern and unrelenting.

  “Howdy, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Reeves,” he said hurriedly. “How’re you all white folks today?” He tried to talk to them in a manner that they would be less likely to find fault with. “You all looking for something?”

  “What you doing, nigger?” Burgess said in a gruff tone.

  “Just looking at my rabbit boxes, that’s all, Mr. Burgess.”

  “Who you think gave you leave to set out rabbit traps all over this part of the country?”

  “Nobody did, Mr. Burgess, but I thought it’d be all right to catch rabbits most anywhere. Mr. Glover Grimball wouldn’t want the cottontails eating up all the crops, would he, Mr. Reeves?”

  “That’s his business, not yours, nigger,” Burgess said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said meekly, frightened by the increasingly hostile attitude of the two men. He wondered if they had seen him standing at the edge of the yard talking to Mozelle. Then, for the first time, he realized that each of the men had an ax gripped by the handle. “Yes, sir, Mr. Burgess,” he said through trembling lips, “if you say so, it sure is right. I don’t have no business at all trapping rabbits around here. I’ll just go on away now and never do it again, please, sir.”

  He scrambled to his feet and started to move away from them.

  “Come back here, nigger!” Burgess shouted.

  Ganus took a few reluctant steps in the direction of the two men, asking, “What do you white folks want with me, please, sir, Mr. Burgess?”

  “What do you reckon?” Reeves Houck said to him.

  “I sure don’t know, Mr. Reeves. I sure enough don’t.”

  Burgess came toward him. “You went in my house a little while ago and jumped my wife, didn’t you, you yellow-skin bastard!”

  “What you say, Mr. Burgess?”

  He began to shake and tremble as the full meaning of what he was being accused of came to him.

  “You heard me, nigger.”

  “Yes, sir, I heard you, but I sure enough don’t know what you’re talking about at all, please, sir, Mr. Burgess.”

  “Like so much hell you don’t know! I know damn well you done it now. You act like it. It’s sticking out all over you. I can tell when a nigger’s lying. I ain’t no fool.”

  “Done—what—what did you say, Mr. Burgess?”

  “You heard me the first time, you goddam coon. You ain’t deaf. You know damn well what you done. You went in my house and jumped my wife. I got the proof. She said you done it. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Who—who—who said I did that, please, sir, Mr. Burgess?”

  “My wife said it, that’s who, and she’s the one who’d know. You wouldn’t call her a liar, would you? She came running over the field a while ago to where me and Reeves was chopping cordwood and told all about how you done it. It’s a damn lucky thing I caught you before you sneaked away. You’d been clean out of the country by dark, if me and Reeves hadn’t caught you in here.”

  “Mr. Burgess, please, sir, I wouldn’t want to dispute any white folks’ word, but that’s sure not the truth about me. Maybe somebody else did what you said, but I sure didn’t. I know better than get myself in that kind of trouble. I’ve got a lot better sense than that. When I went past your house about an hour ago, I just barely stepped on the far corner of your front yard, and I sure didn’t go nowhere near enough to Miss Mozelle to bother her. I’ve got plenty better sense than do something like you said. I’m always out to stay away from that kind o
f trouble. Somebody made a bad mistake about that, Mr. Burgess.”

  “You calling my wife a liar, nigger?”

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t do that, but I just naturally didn’t do anything like what you said. I just didn’t. The Good Man would tell you that’s the real truth. You believe me, don’t you, Mr. Burgess? You know I’m telling the Good Man’s own truth, don’t you, Mr. Reeves? Please say you know it’s all the real truth. Won’t you say it, Mr. Burgess?”

  “Hell, no. I ain’t never seen a nigger yet who wouldn’t try to lie out of something when he’s caught at it.”

  “But I just naturally didn’t nowhere do what you said, Mr. Burgess,” he pleaded. “Miss Mozelle must be all mixed up about something. Please, sir, you go ask her again, and beg her to please tell the real truth about me this time. She ought to do that. If she said what was the truth, that’d prove it, wouldn’t it, Mr. Reeves?”

  “To hell with that, nigger,” Burgess told him. “No son-of-a-bitching black coon tells me what to do. You said yourself you went past my house, and I ain’t taking no chances. There’s been a lot of talk about you around town. You got in some kind of trouble at Charley Singfield’s house and had to quit working there, and Harry Daitch fired you for something you done once when you delivered groceries at a white woman’s house. Everybody says you’re a bad nigger. I heard Levi Kettles tell about coming home not long ago and finding you hiding behind the kitchen stove. He said he was out to get you, but, by God, I’m going to get you first. Maybe you didn’t jump none of those white women, but that ain’t no sign you wouldn’t if you got the chance. And now my wife comes along and swears you done it to her. That’s all I need to know. Once a nigger starts jumping white women, there ain’t but one way to break him of the habit.”

  “But if you’d only ask Miss Mozelle to tell the truth—”

  Burgess raised the ax. Reeves ran to him and tried to wrest it from his grip. He flung Reeves aside.

  “Now hold on, Burgess,” Reeves said, running back and standing between him and Ganus. “Don’t go and do something you can’t undo after it’s too late. The nigger swore all he done was go past your house, and he could be telling the truth. You know that. You’d better go make Mozelle tell you the truth about what happened. I wouldn’t believe her so far, if I was you. You go ask her. I’ll watch this boy and keep him from running off till you get back.”

  “Get out of my way,” Burgess told him, flourishing the ax threateningly. “You talk like a goddam nigger-lover. I know what I’m doing. Now, stay out of my way like I told you!”

  He shoved Reeves aside.

  “What—what—what you fixing to do to me, Mr. Burgess, please, sir!” Ganus pleaded, terrified. “What you fixing to do with that ax, Mr. Burgess!”

  “If you don’t know now, you’ll never know.”

  Ganus was crouching on his knees when he saw Burgess grasp the ax handle with both hands and swing the gleaming, sun-bright blade at him. The ax struck him on the neck just above his shoulder. The force of the blow knocked him sprawling on the ground, and while he lay there looking helplessly at the faces of the two white men standing above him, Burgess hit him again, this time with the flat head of the ax.

  “You shouldn’t have done it, Burgess,” Reeves Houck said as he backed away.

  “I had to protect myself,” Burgess said, breathing hard. “That nigger was getting ready to hit me.”

  “You might get in bad trouble for this, anyhow. You don’t know what’s liable to happen now.”

  “Hell, it’s just another dead nigger.”

  “I ain’t saying so myself, but just the same if I was you, and somebody starts asking questions, I wouldn’t put too much trust in what she’ll say. If she lied to you once about it, she can lie some more, and bigger than ever. She didn’t exactly act like somebody who’d just been raped. Not by a black, anyhow. I wouldn’t want to say what it was, but she acted like she had some kind of scheme in the back of her mind. She could of made up that tale in her own head.”

  “You shut your goddam mouth about my wife, if you want to stay alive. If I thought you’d tell on me, I’d chop your head off right now and be done with it. Maybe I ought to play safe and go on and do it. I don’t like the way she’s been acting around you, anyhow. If I ever catch you eyeing her, I’ll kill you just as quick as I did that nigger.”

  “If you don’t like what goes on, talk to her. She’s the one who’s been doing all the monkeyshining, and you know it.”

  “She won’t no more after this,” Burgess said, turning away. “Not after I get through with her for trying to get that nigger to jump her.”

  Saying nothing after that, Burgess swung the ax over his shoulder and started walking over the field toward home. Reeves followed him as far as the newground clearing, and then watched him until he was out of sight. After that Reeves went back to the grove to finish stacking the cordwood and get it ready to haul to town.

  Chapter 12

  DR. HORATION LOWDEN had been sleeping soundly for several hours when he was awakened by loud persistent blowing of an automobile horn in the graveled driveway just outside his window. He lifted himself to a sitting position on the edge of the double-bed and turned on the light. His wife, Betty, in bed beside him, and accustomed and resigned to his being called from his rest at all hours of the night to attend births, deaths, and common stomach aches, turned over with a fitful groan and went back to sleep.

  He saw by his watch that the time was a few minutes past two o’clock in the morning. As usual, after more than forty years of responding promptly and uncomplainingly to sick calls from white and Negro alike in all sections of Tallulah County, he was fully awake by the time he had turned on the bedside light, and he reached for his bathrobe and slippers and went to the front door.

  When he switched on the porch light, the green sedan, which had been standing in the driveway with engine running, quickly turned around and speeded out of sight down the street before he could get a good look at it. Shivering in the cold December night while he wondered if someone were playing a prank on him, he was about to go back into the house when he saw a large white envelope pinned to the screen-door. He reached for it and looked at it carefully. It was a sealed plain envelope with no identifying marks on it other than the penciled lettering:

  Kathyanne Bazemore,

  Gwinnett Alley.

  Expecting to find some explanation inside, he tore open the flap and saw to his surprise a crisp new hundred-dollar treasury note. The envelope contained nothing else. As he studied the envelope and crinkly bill curiously, the only thought that came to mind was that these days the most likely place in town where a person would ordinarily see a new hundred-dollar bill was in the hands of the cashier of the Estherville State Bank. Chuckling to himself over the implications, and fully intending to joke about it the next time he saw George Swayne, he went back into the house and got dressed to go down to Gwinnett Alley.

  He had no idea why he was being called upon, in such a mysterious manner, and at that time of night, to go to see Kathyanne Bazemore. He had arranged only a few weeks previously, it was true, for Aunt Hazel Teasley to be admitted to the ward for the aged and infirm at the county hospital, so she would be assured of receiving proper medical care as long as she lived, but he could see no connection between the two incidents. He had not seen Kathyanne since the latter part of summer, when he spoke to her on the street one day, and at that time she had appeared to be in normal health and spirits.

  Dr. Plowden was a kindly, benevolent man in his middle sixties, completely gray for the past twelve years and slightly enfeebled with age, but still firm-fleshed and sure of hand, and his greatest fault was that he was more concerned with his medical practice and the health of his patients than he was with his own welfare. He had always been so engrossed in his work that he had neither taken the time to go away on a vacation, nor, as his wife often complained, had he ever had any time of his own to devote to his family. The only activity he had
ever enjoyed, aside from medicine itself, was bird hunting, but he had not fired a shotgun in fifteen years. Betty had for many years tried to persuade him to retire and turn his practice over to a younger man, but he liked the profession of medicine and took pride in it, and he wanted to continue actively as long as he lived. He had often expressed the hope that when he died he would either be on his way to attend some ill person or, else, be returning from attending a patient. He had begun his career as a general practitioner, immediately after graduating from medical college, in the days when country doctors had to keep three or four sturdy horses, one of which was always kept by turn harnessed and standing to a buggy at all hours of the day and night so that there would be no delay in case of an emergency. Since the time when adequate roads were constructed in the county and he could visit his patients in a car, each year he had consistently worn out one automobile after another, and his greatest regret now was that he was not young enough to undertake to pilot a small two-place airplane in responding to emergencies and routine house calls in the country. He was privileged, because of his advanced age and respected standing in the community, to criticize in outspoken candor what he considered unethical conduct on the part of some of the other physicians in Estherville. It was his conviction that most of the younger men, selfishly thinking of their own bodily comfort or their wives’ social engagements, were abusing an honored profession by secretly agreeing among themselves to keep brief office hours during the day and declining to make outside home calls during the night, no matter how serious the emergency. For the others, particularly such men as Dr. Lamar English, who more and more were using the wealth they had accumulated as physicians to become outright money-lenders, he had the utmost contempt. On the way through town from his home on Palmetto Street to Gwinnett Alley, he stopped to drink coffee at the Round-The-Clock Cafe. It was a few days before Christmas and holly wreaths on the cash register and suspended over the windows and doors gave the restaurant a cozy festive atmosphere that was lacking during the other months of the year. In addition to the night cook and the counterman, there were three other men in the restaurant when he went in and sat down on the nearest stool. Being in a hurry, he unbuttoned his heavy gray overcoat but did not take it off. One of the men in the restaurant was Will Hanford, the night patrolman, who admittedly spent very little time walking the streets on winter nights, and the two others were orange-truck drivers from Florida who were playing the jukebox and eating ham and eggs. Will Hanford, swaggering and loudmouthed, walked up to the front of the cafe and clapped his hand familiarly on Dr. Plowden’s shoulder.