Great Short Stories by American Women

by Candace Ward (Editor)

Jim Hammer settled down to the racking business of waiting until the approaching danger should have passed him by. Soon savory odors seeped in to him and he realized that he was hungry. He wished that Annie Poole would bring him something to eat. Just one biscuit. But she wouldn’t, he knew. Not she. She was a hard one, Obadiah’s mother.

  By and by he fell into a sleep from which he was dragged back by the rumbling sound of wheels in the road outside. For a second, fear clutched so tightly at him that he almost leaped from the suffocating shelter of the bed in order to make some active attempt to escape the horror that his capture meant. There was a spasm at his heart, a pain so sharp, so slashing that he had to suppress an impulse to cry out. He felt himself falling. Down, down, down ... Everything grew dim and very distant in his memory ... Vanished ... Came rushing back.

  Outside there was silence. He strained his ears. Nothing. No footsteps. No voices. They had gone on then. Gone without even stopping to ask Annie Poole if she had seen him pass that way. A sigh of relief slipped from him. His thick lips curled in an ugly, cunning smile. It had been smart of him to think of coming to Obadiah’s mother’s to hide. She was an old demon, but he was safe in her house.

  He lay a short while longer, listening intently, and, hearing nothing, started to get up. But immediately he stopped, his yellow eyes glowing like pale flames. He had heard the unmistakable sound of men coming toward the house. Swiftly he slid back into the heavy, hot stuffiness of the bed and lay listening fearfully.

  The terrifying sounds drew nearer. Slowly. Heavily. Just for a moment he thought they were not coming in — they took so long. But there was a light knock and the noise of a door being opened. His whole body went taut. His feet felt frozen, his hands clammy, his tongue like a weighted, dying thing. His pounding heart made it hard for his straining ears to hear what they were saying out there.

  “Ebenin’, Mistah Lowndes.” Annie Poole’s voice sounded as it always did, sharp and dry.

  There was no answer. Or had he missed it? With slow care he shifted his position, bringing his head nearer the edge of the bed. Still he heard nothing. What were they waiting for? Why didn’t they ask about him?

  Annie Poole, it seemed, was of the same mind. “Ah don’ reckon youall done traipsed ’way out hyah jes’ foh yo’ healf,” she hinted.

  “There’s bad news for you, Annie, I’m ’fraid.” The sheriff’s voice was low and queer.

  Jim Hammer visualized him standing out there — a tall, stooped man, his white tobacco-stained mustache drooping limply at the ends, his nose hooked and sharp, his eyes blue and cold. Bill Lowndes was a hard one too. And white.

  “W’atall bad news, Mistah Lowndes?” The woman put the question quietly, directly.

  “Obadiah — ” the sheriff began — hesitated — began again. “Obadiah — ah — er, he’s outside, Annie. I’m ’fraid — ”

  “Shucks! You done missed. Obadiah, he ain’t done nuffin’, Mistah Lowndes. Obadiah!” she called stridently. “Obadiah! git hyah an’ splain yo‘se’f.”

  But Obadiah didn’t answer, didn’t come in. Other men came in. Came in with steps that dragged and halted. No one spoke. Not even Annie Poole. Something was laid carefully upon the floor.

  “Obadiah, chile,” his mother said softly, “Obadiah, chile.” Then, with sudden alarm, “He ain’t daid, is he? Mistah Lowndes! Obadiah, he ain’t daid?”

  Jim Hammer didn’t catch the answer to that pleading question. A new fear was stealing over him.

  “There was a to-do, Annie,” Bill Lowndes explained gently, “at the garage back o’ the factory. Fellow tryin’ to steal tires. Obadiah heerd a noise an’ run out with two or three others. Scared the rascal, all right. Fired off his gun an’ run. We allow et to be Jim Hammer. Picked up his cap back there. Never was no ‘count. Thievin’ an’ sly. But we’ll git ’im, Annie. We’ll git ’im.”

  The man huddled in the feather bed prayed silently. “Oh, Lawd! Ah didn’t go to do et. Not Obadiah, Lawd. You knows dat. You knows et.” And into his frenzied brain came the thought that it would be better for him to get up and go out to them before Annie Poole gave him away. For he was lost now. With all his great strength he tried to get himself out of the bed. But he couldn’t.

  “Oh, Lawd!” he moaned. “Oh, Lawd!” His thoughts were bitter and they ran through his mind like panic. He knew that it had come to pass as it said somewhere in the Bible about the wicked. The Lord had stretched out his hand and smitten him. He was paralyzed. He couldn’t move hand or foot. He moaned again. It was all there was left for him to do. For in the terror of this new calamity that had come upon him, he had forgotten the waiting danger which was so near out there in the kitchen.

  His hunters, however, didn’t hear him. Bill Lowndes was saying, “We been a-lookin’ for Jim out along the old road. Figured he’d make tracks for Shawboro. You ain’t noticed anybody pass this evenin’, Annie?”

  The reply came promptly, unwaveringly. “No, Ah ain’t sees nobody pass. Not yet.”

  IT

  Jim Hammer caught his breath.

  “Well,” the sheriff concluded, “we’ll be gittin’ along. Obadiah was a mighty fine boy. Ef they was all like him — I’m sorry, Annie. Anything I c’n do, let me know.”

  “Thank you, Mistah Lowndes.”

  With the sound of the door closing on the departing men, power to move came back to the man in the bedroom. He pushed his dirt-caked feet out from the covers and rose up, but crouched down again. He wasn’t cold now, but hot all over and burning. Almost he wished that Bill Lowndes and his men had taken him with them.

  Annie Poole had come into the room.

  It seemed a long time before Obadiah’s mother spoke. When she did there were no tears, no reproaches; but there was a raging fury in her voice as she lashed out. “Git outen mah feather baid, Jim Hammer, an’ outen mah house, an’ don’ nevah stop thankin’ you’ Jesus he done gib you dat black face.”

  1 “Is ... redress?”] loosely based on lines from Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”

  2 “Ce ... affaire.”] “It’s not my business.”

  3 ‘De ... clamavi.’] ‘I called from the depths’ (opening of Psalm 130).

  4 bangeing] regional term meaning lounging around, loafing.

  5 Dieu sait] God knows.

  6 “Bonté!”] “Goodness!”

  7 “J’vous réponds”] “You bet!”

  8 bête noire] literally “black beast”; a person or thing strongly detested or avoided.

  9 mon fils] my son.