by Cave, Hugh
Mulvahey and Jum Peters collected the muck, day up and day down; and Mulvahey's woman sorted it. The pile of charred rags there, underneath where the window should have been but wasn't, because there were no windows—that pile of rags Mulvahey had spent the whole of yesterday getting together. Tomorrow the man with the truck would come and pay ten cents a hundred pounds for it. And the bottles. Long bottles and short, with labels on and with labels off, brown bottles and white and green and without any certain color at all. Jum Peters had put them there, after digging them out from the ashes and papers and old automobile parts and stinking ooze.
It had rained yesterday, and that had made the reclamation all the more difficult, because the rain always sucked all of the dump's slumbering stenches to the surface and made living, clutching, bottomless pitfalls out of dormant piles of gray slag. Jum Peters always cursed the rain. Mulvahey endured it but did not like it.
"Dat woman better hab somepin' good 'n' hot stewin' foh us," Jum Peters muttered now, as he groped laboriously through the deepening dusk and the uncertain stuff underfoot, toward the beetle shanty. "Am' nuttin' much in dis heuh bag gwine get money, an' heuh I been wukkin' mos' all day t'rough. You heuh dat, Mulvahey?"
"Sho'. Cerema, she'm all right. She'm hab somepin'," grunted Mulvahey in return. The sack he was toting over his left shoulder was heavy and full of hard metal stuff that pricked into his back. It was not conducive to empty talk, although it did contain a battered tin box with the word CAKE on it in fancy letters, and that would make Cerema glad. Mulvahey could straighten out the dents in it and polish it with an oily rag and make it look as good as if it came straight from the store people. Cerema would like that, he thought.
The light was going in the shanty, and the radio was squeaking music. Mulvahey felt a brotherly love for the light. Before, it had been only candles which the dump surrendered, and sometimes the candles were full of gritty stuff which made them sputter. Now it was an electric light bulb strung down from the tin ceiling on a length of yellow wire, and it burned steadily, like a light-house saying, "Hullo dar, nigger! Come in heuh an' get yo'sel' comfable!"
Mulvahey had made it out of twenty-six old dry cell batteries which squatted under the stove like twenty-six little men hugging themselves to keep warm. Mulvahey had made the radio, too—out of innumerable unrelated parts and bits of naked wire. "Sometimes it gits somepin' an' sometimes it am' feelin' like gittin' nuttin'—but wen it does git, it sho' is like de Lawd Gawd Hissel'!"
Mulvahey and Jum Peters dropped their sacks outside and went in together. Cerema was standing over the stove, shaking something in an aluminum kettle. She turned with the kettle rigid in her hand and said:
"Heuh you is, huh? Mebbe sometime you-all'll git heuh w'en yuh supper is hot, 'stead waitin' it's been settin' aroun' a-waitin' on you."
The shanty inside was more of the dump yard's propagation. The floor was a club sandwich of four magic layers: on the bottom a web-work of slate, next a three-inch spread of ash siftings, then an expanse of blue-and-yellow oilcloth with flowers creeping along its rim, and now an assortment of discarded mats, one at the threshold, two beneath the square-legged oak table, one before the single bunk, and one beside the great wooden-posted bed where Mulvahey and his woman slept. A shining gilt-framed mirror hung from the inner surface of the door, splintered only in one upper corner. On the wall near the stove was a calendar with three little girl-children leading a puppy dog somewhere on a string.
Salvage, all of it. Mulvahey and Jum Peters and Mulvahey's woman were proud of their abode.
Cerema was Mulvahey's woman. Cerema knew it and was glad of it and wanted it to be so for ever and ever until the Day of Judgment. Mulvahey and Jum Peters were brothers, and that made Cerema's chaste desires the more difficult. For when Jum Peters came home at midday, unknown to Mulvahey, to follow Cerema back and forth across the limited floor, to envelop her in his heavy arms and smother her protests with his unwanted lips and carry her squirming and kicking and fighting to the big bed—Cerema could not then tell Mulvahey.
Mulvahey, if she told him, would turn red like the outside of a tin can, and get rusty and gritty inside like the inside of a tin can, and scream terrible things at Jum Peters and try to kill him. He might even think, too, that Cerema liked Jum Peters—that she wanted him to come creeping back at noonday—that she was anybody's woman! And that was devil's talk.
And if Mulvahey fought Jum Peters, Jum Peters would do the killing. Because Jum Peters was big and thick-jowled and hairy, like a clump of solid inanimate black mud; and Mulvahey was different every way. Mulvahey was thin and soft and had too much temper without anywhere to hold the temper inside him.
Cerema put the food on the table without saying anything of what was in her heart. But she put the china plate in front of Mulvahey and the tin plate in front of Jum Peters, to show Jum Peters what she thought. Jum Peters had come back to the shanty this midday without saying anything to Mulvahey. And Cerema felt guilty—as if she had actually enjoyed having Jum Peters sneak back and possess her. And she didn't.
"Lawd Gawd," she prayed, "You knows deep down in Yuh heart dat I don' wan' dat Jum Peters a-slitherin' in heuh tuh do dat tub me. You knows. I is Mulvahey's woman, I is. Isn't I, Lawd Gawd?"
Mulvahey and Jum Peters ate slowly, as if they would suck the rest and peace and satisfaction out of each morsel of food before they allowed it to escape. They ate canned corn and canned beef and a thick, smelly gruel that Cerema had made out of water and broken bones and moldy cabbage leaves.
They ate noisily, with their mouths close to the table; and Cerema stood tensely beside the stove, staring at them with her eyes. Cerema's eyes were small and dark; they were the most acute accomplishments in a face too yellowish and too ill-proportioned to be pretty. Her hands fidgeted in her cotton dress, seeking a refuge where they might bury themselves and their secret. Her legs extended stiffly under her—thin, woodenish props stuck upright out of the floor, parallel with the wall. But her eyes glowed and smoldered and missed nothing.
Jum Peters, pushing his plate away and licking his mouth, said:
"Fetch dat 'baccer, you Cerema."
Cerema got tobacco from behind the stove and brought it to him. He broke it in his thick fingers and stuffed it slowly and deliberately into a metal-banded pipe with amber stem, and lighted it.
"You, Mulvahey, how much 'baccer you done got lef'?"
"I got 'nough," Mulvahey said. "Washinnun Jeffers, him a-cumin' heuh tuhnight foh tuh make talk wid me 'bout'n sellin' him dem parts f'um dem two auto'bilses out'n de dump. I got 'nough 'baccy foh giv'n him some."
"Look a-heuh, Mulvahey. I'se feelin' right fort'nate tuhnight, an' I'se bettin' dis heuh ledder bel' 'gains' youh 'baccy. Is you willin'?"
Jum Peters stood up with proud disdain and drew back the flaps of his coat, exposing an additional strip of leather encircling his middle, buckled with its glittering brass scab above the canvas belt which habitually supported his khaki lower garment.
"You-all done foun' dat in de dump?" Mulvahey marveled, reaching out to take hold of it and feel its tangibility. "Dat's a gen'wine w'ite folkses bel'!"
"Am' it?" Jum Peters grinned. "Am' it now? Is you willin'?"
"Sho' 'nough I'se willin'! How'm us gonna bet foh it?"
"How much 'baccer you got?" Jum Peters demanded suspiciously. "Dis heuh bel' gwine tek whole lot foh bettin'."
Mulvahey groped into his pockets and brought out his possessions. Four slabs of the black stuff he placed on the table beside his china plate, and his eyes were glued upon the gleaming buckle of Jum Peters' belt in a hypnotic stare. That buckle, even more than the belt itself, was "w'ite folkses." It glittered with the brilliancy of the sunlight on wet pieces of tin; it was full of distance and faraway places. Mulvahey could peer into it and see reflections of the lamp bulb that was hanging there above the table, almost the way he could look into Cerema's eyes sometimes and never see what was behind them. This buckle was someone else's eyes
; it might even be one of God's eyes the way it shone so. Mulvahey would have bet ten times four sticks of tobacco to possess it and wear it around him where he could stare into it whenever he wanted to.
"How'm us gonna bet foh it?" he repeated zealously.
Jum Peters fingered the belt with a cunning smile, unbinding it and placing it on the table beside the tobacco.
"Like country niggers bet down Sout'," he said. "You jus' watch."
Mulvahey watched with fixed eyes. Jum Peters expanded out of his chair and dragged two of the five torpid mats into the middle of the oilcloth floor. He juggled them into position side by side with twelve inches of open floor between them. Then he took hold of his chair and scraped it close, and sat down.
"Git yuh stool," he ordered. "Us'm gonna set heuh an' wait, me heuh an' you dar. W'ichever's mat er wahter-bug runs acrost fust, him git de winnin's."
Mulvahey understood, and grinned. He brought his stool and sat on it beside one of the rugs. Cerema stood watching them from the stove with her bright, scintillating eyes.
"If'n Mulvahey knowed wot I knows," she thought, "him jus' wouldn' be a-settin' dar waitin' foh wahter-bugs. Him ud be fightin' wuss'n de debble hissel'."
She came forward with curious face, albeit timidly enough, and would have stood behind Mulvahey's chair to wait for the decision. It wouldn't be long, she thought. Either a rat or a waterbug, or even a big brown cockroach, would scurry across the floor as soon as the shanty became quiet. It was always like that. Silence would come creeping and seeping through the cracks in the tin walls, and lower itself like a terrible human thing through the crevices in the roof; and then there would be nothing but the hissing of her own breath when she breathed, like rodents' feet scurrying back and forth over the linoleum floor.
The thought made Cerema shudder. When it got like that in the middle of the day, and Mulvahey and Jum Peters were out in the dump where she couldn't call to them, she wanted to pick up her pots and pans and kick open the door and run and run and run and run and never come back. She was even glad then, almost, when Jum Peters sometimes came sneaking in to get her.
She thought about Jum Peters again, while she watched the two men. She began at the beginning and thought it all through to the end, and it was just the same as it always was, because the ideas were unchanging and unchangeable. She hated Jum Peters passionately. Hating him that way, she glared at him until he looked up and caught her at it.
"Git out'n heuh, you," he growled. "How'm you expec' any wahter-bugs gonna come, wid you a-standin' dar fidgitin'? Git!"
Cerema retreated unwillingly and hated him all the more intensely. She went and sat down on the edge of the big bed, and the shanty became entirely still then because neither Mulvahey nor Jum Peters spoke for a long time. They crouched forward, both of them, like men squatting on the rim of a deep hole and peering down. But Mulvahey's eyes shifted constantly and unconsciously to the shining belt buckle on the edge of the table.
After a while there were other sounds, like unseen tongues whispering to each other across the room; but they weren't tongues, they were feet. They were rats' feet, and Cerema shuddered at the sound of them. She heard them at night, every night, and they were spirits talking and muttering and threatening in the darkness. They rustled over the floor and over the bed and up the tin walls and over the tin roof; and then they were like human fingers scratching on the cover of a coffin, trying to get in and trying to get out and all the time bemoaning their fate.
Cerema feared them because they were creatures of nocturnal hours and they were unseen. She was afraid because they were spirits of dead people, telling unintelligible secrets of far-away dreaded places where live folk could never go. Once, more than a whole year ago, she had dug up a human skull out there in the dump, and found the white, rotting bones of a young baby.
Mulvahey and Jum Peters didn't seem to notice or care. They waited and waited and waited. A long, tapering, sleek gray body scuttled across the carpets between them and they sat tense and let it go. Ordinarily they would have hurled something blunt and solid at it and cursed vehemently if it got away; but now they were waiting and waiting and they feared to make a disturbance.
Cerema's nerves were afire. They hurt her and beat against the inside of her head like metal hammers. She wanted to stand up and talk out in a shrill voice, and she didn't dare because they would curse her, too. She heard footsteps kicking through the refuse outside, and it was Washington Jeffers coming, because no one else ever came. Washington Jeffers was the man who bought rags and bottles and chunks of metal and sometimes radio parts and automobile parts; and she wanted to tell Mulvahey that he was coming. But she didn't dare. She didn't dare move.
The waterbugs were out of their hiding places. They came from under the tin walls and under the stove and out of the brown blankets on the big bed. One of them ran across Cerema's shoe, which was untied; and she felt its tremulous legs tickle her foot, but she didn't cry out because she was afraid to. Mulvahey and Jum Peters were sitting as if the spirits had whispered them into wood. Staring and waiting and waiting and staring.
Suddenly the stillness was cracked and shattered. It broke asunder with a booming reverberation and the rasping of Jum Peters' chair as Jum Peters lumbered up.
"You black-face skulkin' nigger, Mulvahey! You done moved a-purpose! Dat wahter-bug 'ud a-run 'crost my rug heuh if'n you hadn' moved! I'se a good mm' tuh brek yuh black haid intuh fohty pieces!"
Then they were fighting because they wanted to fight. Cerema was glad and she was afraid. She was Mulvahey's woman and she wanted Mulvahey to kill Jum Peters, because she hated Jum Peters with a terrible hate. But she feared because Jum Peters was big and sinewy, and Jum Peters was impetuously and violently and hideously angry. Cerema was afraid for Mulvahey. But she was glad that there was a noise.
She stood wide-eyed on her spindle legs, with both arms reaching inflexibly back to the bed surface, holding herself up. She shivered when the table clattered over and cracked into two pieces, and Mulvahey and Jum Peters, straining in each other's arms, fell into the tin wall. The noise was too harsh and too brazen now. The roof quivered and rattled. The walls buckled and unbuckled with a crackling snap. Mulvahey and Jum Peters were grunting and sucking great gulps of breath.
They reeled erect again, and Cerema saw Jum Peters' face under the light. It was sweating and its lips were curled back exposing the broken tooth in the front of its mouth. Cerema shrank back along the bed, away from it, flattening herself against the wall. The face seemed to be glaring directly at her, as if she were to blame. She didn't want to look at it, but she had to look; and so she cringed and stared until her eyes wouldn't close at all, even if she wanted them to.
She knew, suddenly, that Washington Jeffers was pounding on the door outside. She cried out and pointed, but Mulvahey and Jum Peters were fighting among the stuck-up legs of the table, and they were straining hard and breathing like worn-out machines, so they didn't hear her.
The door clapped open then and Washington Jeffers came in with quick, furtive steps. He was a small, barrelly man with a big barrelly face that was very shiny and very black and had hair on it. He looked at Cerema, rigid against the tin wall, and he looked nervously, quickly, at the two men who were struggling like stiff clay animals. Then he strode into them to push them apart.
He strode into a long, thick arm that was jabbing something with a sharp point at Mulvahey's neck. The sharp point entered Washington Jeffers' head until it struck against a bone; then it broke off in Jum Peters' fingers and Washington Jeffers groaned onto the floor. Jum Peters stepped backward very quickly, staring with big, red-rimmed eyes at the knife-handle and the two inches of broken blade and the side of Washington Jeffers' head, where red blood was spitting like crimson water out of a suddenly punctured water-pipe.
"Lawd Gawd!" Jum Peters cried, opening his eyes wide. "I didn' go foh tuh—"
The silence was back again, and his words reeled round and round the shanty like living
things of torment. They jangled back into his own ears, stabbing him. He stared fearfully again at the knife-handle and at the fountain of blood coming out of Washington Jeffers' head. Then he dropped the knife-handle as if it were white-hot and searing the flesh of his fingers. And he stared into Mulvahey's horrified face and into Cerema's awful wide eyes. And he turned and ran.
He ran out into the enveloping darkness of the dump yard. There was no sound behind him and no sound in front of him. He turned toward the unlimited expanse of Mulvahey's "nuttin' Ian'," but its emptiness and graveyard gloom thrust him back with flat hands. Then he jerked about, mumbling and muttering to himself, and stumbled across the dump toward the dirt road on the other side.
And he was in a world of emptiness. There was nothing anywhere but that single needle prick of yellow light behind him—Mulvahey's light, suspended on a wire from the tin roof and glittering out through the open door of the shanty—pointing and always pointing at him no matter which way he turned. And his feet were screaming at him, but they were underneath him and unescapable; if they had been behind him he could have run from them, but they were part of him, accusing and groaning and screeching. They sucked in and out of wet ashes; they crunched devil's talk to him.
"Blood . . . blood . . . blood!" they boomed. And they clinked into empty tin cans, jeering a singsong of mockery. "Washington Jeffers . . . Washington Jeffers!" It was the crack of that murderous knife blade, snapping again and again and again, relentlessly.
He stumbled into black, immovable, jagged shapes that loomed up unexpectedly. His big body caromed into hard piles of twisted metal, and that made another voice. "Thud. Lawd Gawd, I didn't go foh tuh—Thud." The thud of Washington Jeffers' stumpy carcass striking the linoleum floor. Dead!
He was halfway across the dump yard then. The rest of the terrain was a field of ashes. Gray ashes, soaked by the rain yesterday, squishy and gritty and so soft that his shoes sank into them; and that made another sound. "Murrrder . . . Murrrder" at every step. "Murrrder . . . Lawd Gawd, I didn't mean foh tuh—"
