Place Called Estherville (19 page)

“Just a cold boy, huh!” He released her arms and shoved her roughly. “That’s a hot one. Just a cold boy. Laying around the house where there’s a white woman in it. I know all about these yellow-skin niggers. They’re always after white women like ducks taking to water.” He started toward Kitty again, backing her against the kitchen table. “By God, I was ready to believe you once, but I’m not so sure, no more. I don’t like the looks of it. And, by God, I don’t like to see a white woman take up for a nigger, neither. It don’t sound right to me.” He stopped abruptly and slapped her face, knocking her away from the table. She ran to the other side of the kitchen and got behind one of the chairs. She was no longer crying. She had become angry.

“I don’t have friends like other people and I get lonesome, Levi Kettles. Even the women on this same street won’t have nothing to do with me, because they know we’re not married. I stay here day after day in this god-forsaken house waiting for you to come home, and I want to talk to somebody. I don’t care who it is—white or black, it makes no difference. I can’t stand being lonesome all my life. When I saw Ganus out there selling ice this morning, I just had to talk to him, because there wasn’t nobody else to open my mouth to. You never come home long enough to fix the roof where it leaks and clean up the yard. I even have to go out there and split kindling and stove-wood for myself. You promised to marry me, too, but you never did, you liar you! Ever since you brought me here you’ve treated me like a Savannah whore, and I’m getting tired of it, God damn you. I want to be treated like a lady. That’s what I want. There’s plenty of men who’d treat me like a lady, too, for what I’d do for them, if I gave them the chance. I know how to get next to a man. I could even pick and choose, if I wanted to. And none of them would do like you do, God damn you! They’d treat me nice.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be up there whoring around in that mill-town.”

“If I was, I’d be a lady-whore, by God! I wouldn’t be your kind!”

Levi knocked the chair aside and hit her until she fell in the corner. She lay there whimpering and crying to herself while he stood over her.

“I’ve been wondering about you for a long time,” he told her with a harsh glare. “Maybe you’ve been playing me for a damn fool. How do I know what you do while I’m away from home? How would I know about your kind? Answer me that! I wouldn’t believe you now, noway, even if you swore on a stack of Bibles. The place for your kind is in a whorehouse with all the rest of your kind of whores. And don’t think I wouldn’t put you there, neither. If I say so, that’s where you’re going to find yourself mighty damn quick.”

Kitty sat up and tried to wipe the tears from her face. She was frightened by the threats. She threw her arms around Levi’s legs and held to him desperately.

“Please don’t do that, Levi,” she pleaded tearfully. “For God’s sake, don’t make me go. I want to stay here. I’ll never complain again. Please don’t make me go there.” She sobbed brokenly. “I swear this’s the first time Ganus’s ever been in the house. And nobody else, neither. And he wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t turned so cold outside. I had to take care of somebody. I couldn’t help the feeling. You know how sorry I feel for people sometimes. I just can’t stand to see anybody suffer. It’s the way I am. I can’t help it. I got to feeling sorry for him, seeing him shivering out there in the cold, and it made me go all to pieces. That, and wanting to talk to somebody, too. I had to tell him to come in the kitchen and get warm. He didn’t want to come, because he was scared, but I told him to. That’s the way it was. It wasn’t any other way. I swear it! Don’t make me go where you said. Please, Levi! For God’s sake, don’t do it! God have mercy on me—don’t let him send me off to a whorehouse! I want to stay here with you, Levi! I’ll never leave you!”

Levi kicked his legs free of her grip and walked away. Kitty was on her knees. The stringy blond hair hanging over her face was wet with tears.

“Don’t you believe me, Levi?” she begged. “Please say you do!”

He turned and watched her undecidedly.

“I’m telling you the precious truth, Levi,” she said beseechingly. “You know I don’t lie to you, don’t you, Levi?”

“I don’t know,” he said, subdued, as he walked toward the stove. “But I’ll find out. I’ve got ways.”

He went to the woodbox and selected a heavy stick of oak. Ganus, fearful, watched his actions.

“I’m not through with you, nigger,” he told Ganus. “There’s only one way to learn niggers a lesson when they’re caught hanging around a white woman, but I haven’t got time to fool with you now. I’ll get you one of these days, if somebody else don’t get you first. I don’t forget when I’ve got it in for a nigger. You’ll find that out. Now get out of my house and stay out, but you’d better not try to leave town. You’ve got enough sense to know what happens to niggers who try to run off.” He drew back his arm and hurled the heavy oak stick at Ganus. Ganus tried to dodge it, but it struck him on the chest.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Levi,” he said, clutching at his chest and trying to reach the door without being hit again. “I’m going to do everything you say.”

“Don’t hit him again, Levi!” Kitty cried out. She covered her face with her hands. “Please don’t hurt him, Levi! I can’t stand to see anybody hurt!”

“Shut up!” he shouted at her. “I’m not through with you yet, neither. I’ll get you when I’m finished with him.”

Ganus darted past Levi and got the door open. Before he could reach the yard, however, another stick of wood struck him on the back of the head, and he went tumbling headlong down the steps. He lay on the ground partly stunned while Levi stood in the doorway watching him and cursing. As soon as he could get to his feet, he ran as fast as he could around the house toward the street.

I
T WAS A BRIGHT
and cloudless Sunday afternoon with the low southern sun beaming warmly upon the side of the weathered cabin. Now and then the handful of English sparrows on the fence chirped feebly and wintering robins in the hedges fluttered in quarrelsome outbursts of squabbling. Frosty nights, earlier in November, had shriveled the clumps of violets in the yard and withered the gourd vine over the back porch, but the hardy rose tree, protected from northerly winds and warmed by the brick fireplace chimney, was green and luxuriant, and velvety ruby-red petals were unfolding in the sun. Several young couples, some hand-in-hand and all dressed in Sunday best, had strolled up and down Gwinnet Alley during the past hour. Beyond the yard and over the vacant lots could be seen the stooping ragged figures of a man and a woman gathering small chunks of coal from the railroad right-of-way and carefully putting them into tow-sacks. Farther away could be heard the musical tinkle of a bell on a cow browsing for green shoots in a fencerow.

The tall, awkward brown-skin boy, dressed in freshly creased blue serge trousers, shiny yellow shoes, and gray tweed leisure jacket, put the harmonica back into his pocket. He had played the harmonica several times during the past hour, the tunes first sounding gay and lilting, but afterward becoming mournful and sad and yearning. He was about twenty years old, with bulging work-hardened muscles that made his coat fit snugly across his chest and shoulders. His wiry black hair had been cropped close to his skull.

“Kathyanne—how about—what about—me and you getting ourselves up close?” He gazed at her admiringly and lovingly as though he had yearned all his life for her. “You sure been acting stand-offish with me, Kathyanne. Why you do me like you do? You ain’t never broke down all this time and give me the good word. You know you ain’t the loving mama you ought to be. Ain’t I the right man for you? I sure would treat you right, Kathyanne, if I only had the chance. There’s nothing in this whole big world I wouldn’t do for you. That’s the true truth.”

He could see that even though she continued to give the impression that she was preoccupied with her sewing she did not appear to be displeased. That made him more hopeful, and he slid the rocking chair a little closer with an eager movement of his long muscular body.

“What you say about that, Kathyanne?”

She answered him, sighing a little, after a long wait. “You wouldn’t want to do that, Henry.”

“What makes you say that kind of talk, Kathyanne?” he protested plaintively. In spite of what she had said, he could not keep from gazing at her longingly. The warm bright sun on her golden skin was a dazzling sight for him to see, and made him all the more want to get her into his arms and hug her until she screamed with delight. It was a thrilling experience for him merely to be with her again after a whole week had passed, even though he could only sit there and long for her. He had been waiting all afternoon for a chance to tell her that he would never be satisfied with any other girl. He moved his chair a little closer. “How come you say like you do, Kathyanne? How you know what I would and what I wouldn’t? Tell me that.”

“Because you just wouldn’t, that’s why.”

“That don’t make no sense at all to me.”

“There’s a lots of things you don’t know.”

“What’s it I don’t know? Tell me that.”

“You wait a while and find out, Henry.”

The curtness and finality of her answer hurt him. All that late summer and early fall he had tried his best to court her, and it made him sad to realize that he did not seem to be any closer to winning her now than he had been in the beginning. As he sat there, miserable and discouraged, he had the feeling that for some reason she had become more unattainable than she was when he first began coming to see her on Sunday afternoons.

“Maybe it’s all the truth what I heard talk about,” he said, hoping she would feel badly for having treated him this way. “It sure enough looks like it to me,” he added mysteriously, shaking his head regretfully from side to side as he watched her expression change. “It’s a mighty awful thing. It sure made me sad to hear about it.”

“What did you hear, Henry?”

He leaned forward in the rocking chair and twisted the toe of his shoe into the moist soil, making patterns of cottonfield terracing on the sandy yard. He knew she was looking at him anxiously, and he wanted to take full and complete advantage of her uneasiness of mind. He was not consciously being cruel, but just the same he felt that her distress would eventually help his cause. He studied the tracings in the sand with an absorbed interest. Somebody was riding down Gwinnett Alley on a bicycle and ringing the thumb-bell with a jangling sound. He looked around distractedly.

“Henry Beck, what did you hear about me?” she repeated with harsh persistence. “You tell me.”

Now that he knew he had aroused her interest, he was in no hurry to answer her. He had time to recall all the Sunday afternoons he had spent vainly pleading with her. He told himself that it was enough to make anybody feel resentful, and he hoped she was suffering a little, anyway.

“Henry Beck!” he heard her say sharply.

He leaned back in the rocking chair and looked her straight in the face.

“The same as everybody else in Gwinnett Alley who keeps his ears halfway open, that’s what,” he accused her bluntly. “Maybe it’s the real truth that you won’t pay no mind at all to a black boy and rather go out good-timing white men.” He found that he was angry with her now, and he was glad he had had the courage to speak out. “What you aiming at—to go passing?”

“No! All that’s a big lie! I don’t care who said it. It’s still a mean big lie.”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, watching her with a doubtful expression. He hoped the gossip was not true, but he had heard it so many times lately that he was beginning to believe it now. “There’s been a heap of talk—low-down talk, too,” he stated suspiciously. “Somebody must know something, or you wouldn’t be hearing it spread all around all the time like I do when I come to town. They say nobody’s seen or heard tell of a colored boy making time with you ever since you and Ganus moved to town over a year ago. But they do tell about seeing you ride off in the night to good-time white men, though. Why you do that? Why you good-timing no-account white trash? Ain’t your own color good enough for you? You ain’t all that white your own self, even if you do have got that fancy high-yellow look. You know good and well the white folks ain’t going to stand for you to go passing around this here town. They know how to make it real hard on the colored who don’t stay in their place. Ain’t you got that much sense, gal? You must be clear out of your head. This ain’t no place to be passing. What’s got in you, anyhow, Kathyanne?”

She wanted to say something in defense of herself, even though she knew some of the things he had said were partly true, but while Henry was scolding her, she had seen Clyde Picquet unlatch the front gate and step into the yard. Clyde was carrying a small leather briefcase under his arm and, even though it was Sunday, she knew why he was there. The briefcase did not contain anything of importance, and in fact it was usually empty or stuffed with an old newspaper, but Clyde had found by long experience that it gave him a businesslike appearance and helped to create the impression wherever he went that he was attending to serious matters.

Clyde was a slightly built man whose weight had never exceeded a hundred and twenty pounds. He was forty-seven years old with thinning brown hair and a small carefully trimmed graying mustache. He had studied law in his youth and had passed the bar examinations by the time he was twenty-five, but soon after coming to Estherville to practice he had given up his profession to accept the position of business manager for Sam Verdery. At that time Sam Verdery was the wealthy owner of several cotton plantations, half a dozen gins, and the three largest sawmills in Tallulah County. In addition to all that, he had accumulated a considerable amount of rental property in town. It was not long until Clyde realized that actually his job was that of bookkeeper, secretary, auditor, and general handyman and office boy for Sam, but as the years went by he hesitated more and more to give up, at his age, an assured monthly salary for the precarious practice of law in Estherville. When Sam died at the age of fifty-six from the effects of overeating at a sheriff’s Fourth of July barbecue, his widow, Effie Verdery, who was strong-willed and ruthless concerning money matters, sold the out-of-town properties to settle Sam’s debts and applied to the court for a year’s support, pleading for all the rental property in town. The year’s support law, as it was generally called, had been so worded as to give a widow immediate possession of and clear title to the deceased husband’s property, and this, in effect, provided her with a dowry, and encouraged immediate proposals of marriage that otherwise might not have been forthcoming until the will had been probated. The law was an especially valuable aid to widows who were rapidly aging and a godsend to those who otherwise probably would have found it extremely difficult to remarry if some vindictive or dissatisfied relative contested the provisions of the will and tied up the estate in court for several years of wrangling. Effie had no intention of remarrying, because she had no desire to run the risk of having to support some man who had married her only for her money, but she nevertheless took full advantage of the year’s support law as it was written and interpreted. After that she ordered Clyde Picquet to double the income from rental properties. To carry out Effie’s orders, and thereby to assure himself of his job, Clyde had to find ways to raise rents, and, at the same time, to threaten eviction of tenants whose rents became thirty days past due. More than that, Effie had told him that she was going to hold him personally responsible for every dollar he failed to collect, regardless of the pitiful tales tenants always thought up from time to time. He had little difficulty with collections of payments on store and warehouse leases, but much of the residential property was single-family housing scattered over the south side, which included the Negro quarter of town, and some of the tenants there were in the habit of not making their weekly or monthly payments promptly, and then pleading that the money had to be spent for medicine and other such necessities. Clyde Picquet had become a familiar figure in the south side in recent years and he could be seen every week-day standing doggedly on a front porch until he had knocked long enough and loud enough to convince somebody that it was useless to pretend not to hear him. He had learned to vary the timing of his calls, too, because some of the renters, knowing when to expect him, had developed the annoying practice of going off to visit relatives in the country in order to avoid him.