Place Called Estherville (15 page)

“No, ma’m,” he managed to say after a while. “And I don’t have no business doing it, neither. A colored boy oughtn’t. I know that. I’ve known it all my life. The Good Man knows I’m telling the truth. I wish the white missies wouldn’t try to make me. They always get colored boys in trouble. I know that. I’m scared, Miss Vernice. I don’t want to get in bad trouble. That’s the worst thing could happen. A colored boy like me—”

He realized that she had been shaking him violently for a long time. He stopped and looked up at her.

“I want you to promise you won’t tell on me, Ganus. Promise me that!”

“Me—tell?” He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “I’d never tell on a white missy, Miss Vernice. I couldn’t do that. No, ma’m!”

“You promise?”

“I sure do! But, Miss Vernice—white missies oughtn’t be bad.”

“Ganus, I’m not bad. It’s just that I’m lonesome. I can’t help it. I’ve tried, but nobody wants me. I can’t stand it any longer. I’ve been so lonely.” There were tears in her eyes. “Maybe some day somebody will want me. There must be somebody!”

He could feel the rim of the glass between his lips, and for the first time he felt as though it would be too much trouble to push it away. He tilted back his head and felt the warm, burning whisky in his throat. He was surprised that he was no longer afraid.

After a while he could hear Vernice talking to him. “When it gets dark, it won’t make any difference, Ganus.” He wondered what she was talking about, but it was too much trouble to think about it. He lay back comfortably and felt his body sinking deeper and deeper into the clinging softness of the divan. All the rest of the world seemed to have gradually receded beyond his consciousness, making it unnecessary for him to worry about anything after that. It was like finding himself in a strange new world without care or worry. “Ganus, just forget you’re a colored boy now,” she was saying in a faraway voice. He could smile effortlessly now, because he no longer had to worry about such things. “It doesn’t matter now, Ganus. You don’t have to be afraid of anything, do you? Nobody will ever know. You’re just like anybody else now. You don’t have to be scared. As long as you stay here, there’s nothing to worry about. Now, doesn’t that feel good, Ganus? Doesn’t it feel awfully good to you?”

He wanted to open his eyes and tell her how good he felt, but as time went on he could think of no reason why it was necessary to go even to that much trouble. It was much nicer to lie there in the deep clinging softness of the divan and for the first time in his life not care what color his skin was.

I
T WAS TWILIGHT
when Roy Blount, the general manager of the Estherville cottonseed oil mill, got back to the Pineland Hotel where Ernie Lumpkin and Joe Morningstar, the two oil-and-meal buyers from Atlanta, had been waiting most of the afternoon. When Roy left them at one o’clock, he had promised to be back by the middle of the afternoon to have some more drinks with them. He had purposely not told Ernie and Joe where he was going or what he was going to do, because all along he had been doubtful of being able to get his wife to consent. Nevertheless, he had gone home to try to persuade Elizabeth to let him invite them to Sunday dinner the next day.

Roy had tried for nearly three hours to convince Elizabeth that it was a matter of business expediency, as well as a personal obligation, to entertain Ernie and Joe. After pleading with her and making all sorts of rash promises, she still flatly refused to let Roy bring his out-of-town business acquaintances into the house. It had always been her greatest disappointment in life that she had not been fortunate enough in her youth to marry a distinguished professional man, preferably a lawyer or a doctor, and she had never reconciled herself to her lot. After all those years, even though the husbands of most of her friends were local merchants and commission men, she still steadfastly refused, as a matter of pride, to associate socially with outsiders connected with such common commercial enterprises as the cottonseed oil business. The sun had set when Roy finally gave up and went back downtown. It was the end of August and the days were steadily becoming shorter. He parked his car in front of the hotel and took the elevator to the fourth floor. He was disappointed, but he had expected Elizabeth to be stubborn, and for the past month he had been thinking of other ways, knowing Ernie and Joe to the extent he did, to entertain them when they came to town.

Ernie Lumpkin, with a drink in his hand, flung open the door as soon as Roy knocked the first time. Joe was propped up on one of the twin beds with his shoes off and with the electric fan whirling full on his perspiring, florid face. Both of them had taken off their coats and rolled up their shirtsleeves. It had been oppressively hot in the hotel room all afternoon and they were restless and uncomfortable.

“Where in the south side of hell have you been since Noah fell off the ark?” Ernie shouted at him.

“Ernie, honest, I didn’t think I’d be gone this long. I’m sorry I’m so late getting back.”

“Me and Joe are getting as drunk as peewees on a perch, waiting in this sweat-box for you. Damn if I’m coming back down here again to this god-forsaken rabbit hole on the backside of a pea field to pay you good money for meal-cake if you think you’re too good to drink my whisky. How about that, Joe? You think we’re going to do business with this peckerwood again?”

“Damn if I know why we should, Ernie,” Joe Morningstar said, shaking his head and puffing out his cheeks. Unlike Ernie Lumpkin, who was a tall thin man with thick black hair, Joe was short and stockily built. He wore a large, flashy diamond ring on his left hand and usually kept the stump of an unlighted cigar in his mouth. He was bald-headed, although both he and Ernie were in their early forties. His genial, round face was lined with a perpetual grin which was difficult for him to hide when he tried to appear stern and disapproving. He and Ernie traveled the cotton states for their company and bought up most of the oil, meal, and hulls produced by the independent cottonseed mills. They usually came to Estherville every summer, late in August, for two or three days, and contracted to buy the output of Roy Blount’s mill for the coming year. “Meal-cake’s the same the country over, they tell me,” Joe remarked for Roy’s benefit, at the same time holding his hand over his face to cover up his grin and trying to make his voice sound gruff. “Why should we come back here again to be insulted? I’d a hell of a lot rather be insulted in Jacksonville or Birmingham. They put nice trimmings on the insults everywhere else. This’s terrible, I’m telling you.”

“I swear I didn’t mean to be gone so long,” Roy tried to speak in a convincing manner. He was not quite sure just how serious they really were. He did not know them well enough to be able to tell, at a time like that, whether they were merely joking or actually offended. He had to be careful not to offend them, because next year’s contract was still in the process of being drawn up. They had agreed earlier to meet at nine o’clock Monday morning in the office of the mill’s attorney and sign the agreement. Roy was well aware that in the meantime he was expected to protect the stockholders’ interests by keeping Ernie and Joe entertained over the weekend, so that they would be in an amicable mood Monday morning. Charley Singfield, the president of the mill, had called him on the phone the day before when he heard that Ernie and Joe were coming to town, and had told Roy to see to it that they were well taken care of over the weekend, and to spare no expense for their entertainment. Roy owned his home out on Chestnut Street near the country club, his children attended senior high school, his wife had just recently been elected president of the College Club for the coming year, and he hated to think of losing his position at the mill and having to move away. He crossed the room and poured himself a drink, prompted by the thought that that would be the best and quickest way to get back on friendly terms with them. He was on the verge of confiding in them the fact that it was his wife’s fault that he was so late, thinking that was something both of them would understand, but on a second hasty thought he decided that it might be better not to mention his wife. “Anyway,” he said, flourishing his glass in a carefree gesture and trying to enliven their spirits, “I’m all clear now and ready for fun.” He tried to get Ernie and Joe to smile with him. Both regarded him with stolid unyielding scowls, as though he had proved to be someone they could never have faith in. “All my chores are taken care of, and I’m as free as the breeze. Here’s to success, boys!”

Ernie, giving the door an ill-tempered kick, walked to the window. He stood there with his back to the room and stared morosely at the lively street below. Electric store signs had been turned on and street lights among the trees twinkled over the tops of the buildings. The usual Saturday night din and clangor of automobile horns, mingling with loud street voices, filled the room.

Presently Ernie turned away from the window, thoroughly ill-humored and disgusted. He looked Roy up and down with a disdainful sweep of the eyes.

“Here it is Saturday night already and nobody’s done a goddam thing for the good of the fraternity,” he addressed Roy accusingly. “I feel like an enoch, or whatever that damn thing is.” He turned his back on Roy and strode to the table. Picking up one of the bottles, he held it upside down over a glass and watched the bourbon gurgle and splash. “I’ll be a sawed-off son-of-a-bitch in a South Carolina post hole if I’m going to stand here like a Foot-Washing Baptist waiting for a dry towel and see a brand-new Saturday night get by me. Where I come from, no Saturday night ever got past me till I could draw a bead and pull the trigger, and I don’t mind telling the world I’ve got one hell of a load tonight.”

He swung around on his heels and glared at Roy Blount.

“Ernie, what would you and Joe like to do tonight?” Roy asked, not for a moment having forgotten what Charley Singfield had said to him on the phone.

“God damn it, Blount, get off that dime and flush a covey out of the piney woods. This’s your town. You know where the best coveys perch after dark. Now, get busy, Blount.”

“I know just what you mean, Ernie,” Roy said, forcing a grin to his face. He put his arm over Ernie’s shoulder in a friendly gesture. “I know exactly. But I want to explain something to you and Joe. This’s a small town. A hell of a small town. It’s not like Atlanta or New Orleans. You know that. You can’t expect too much in a little old place like Estherville. That’s right, isn’t it, Joe?”

Joe Morningstar, placid and chuckling, would not give any indication that he agreed with Roy. He rolled the unlit cigar stump to the other corner of his mouth with a practiced movement of his lips and tongue.

Ernie flung Roy’s arm away. “The hell I can’t expect, bud!” he said. “You don’t know Ernie Lumpkin. I hope you don’t think I’d let my train get sidetracked at a flagstop like this over the weekend just for a fistful of funny money. Me and Joe can always take care of the money angle. What we’re counting on is you taking care of the important things in life. You’re a hell of an oil-and-meal man if you don’t take care of a couple of true-blood friends who only want the best there is. That’s right, ain’t it, Joe? You tell them!”

“Ernie’s never been righter, Roy,” Joe promptly agreed with a wide infectious grin. “All we want is the best in town, and plenty of it on the line. It’s never hurt yet to have some left over for a rainy day, either.”

“There you are, Blount,” Ernie told him with a nod. “Now, count the votes.”

“But wait a minute,” Roy pleaded nervously. “You and Ernie don’t quite understand, Joe. You know I’m a right kind of fellow. I’d do anything for friends like you and Ernie. But when you live in a small town like Estherville, you get in the habit of going home every night and your wife takes care of everything. That’s the way it is in a small town. It’s not like—”

“Ernie, we’d better put in another pitcher,” Joe said. “That bush-leaguer out there can’t find the plate.”

“Yeah!” Ernie agreed. He started shaking a warning finger at Roy, and shouted, “Don’t give me that kind of talk, bud! Your wife might, but mine don’t. Not when she’s a couple of a hundred miles from here.” He continued shaking his finger at Roy. “Like the engineer told the fireman when the girl lost her panties on the track, I’ve got to look out for myself.”

Roy glanced appealingly at Joe on the bed. Joe chewed his cigar stump busily.

To Roy’s surprise, Ernie strolled over to him and put his arm around his neck and smiled friendlily for the first time. “You know what my wife said to me when I left home on this trip, Roy? Well, I’ll tell you. She said, ‘Ernest, if you’re determined to misbehave yourself, for God’s sake get it over with in a hurry every time.’ That’s what she said, bud, and I always obey the little lady. Let’s get going!”

Ernie stooped over and picked up Joe Morningstar’s shoes and threw them at Joe on the bed. Roy began walking nervously up and down the floor.

“Here’s how it is, Ernie,” he said from the other side of the room, not looking at either of them. “Everything’s pretty well spoken for in a place like this. There’s not much leeway. It’s a hell of a closed corporation—a town like this.” He stopped and walked to the foot of Joe’s bed. “It oughtn’t be hard for you to understand that, Joe. It’s logical, now ain’t it? Anybody who’s traveled around the country as much as you and Ernie know’s that’s a fact. I’m not trying to tell you something you don’t already know. I’m not that kind of a fellow.”

“What in hell are you driving at now, Blount?” Ernie demanded suspiciously. “It sounds to me mighty much like you’re trying to beg off.”

“No, I wouldn’t try to do that to you, Ernie,” he tried to speak convincingly. “It’s like this. In a place like Atlanta or New Orleans it wouldn’t hold water, and you’d know I was lying. But here it is true. I’ve lived in Estherville for fifteen years, and I know the place like the inside of my hand. If you were in my place—”

“So what!” Ernie demanded ruthlessly.

Roy looked hopefully at Joe Morningstar on the bed, wanting at least one of them to believe he was truthful and sincere. Joe, in spite of his grin, tried to appear indifferent. He shrugged his shoulders, giving the impression that he was unimpressed by Roy’s explanations.