Place Called Estherville (3 page)

“Ganus—” she said slowly.

“No, ma’m, Miss Stephena—” he told her, shaking his head.

“Just this once, Ganus.”

He tried to say something, but his mouth was so dry that he was unable to make the sound of words. He could only stare at her while he wet his parched lips.

“Only this once, Ganus.”

“Miss Stephena—”

“Please, Ganus.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked weakly.

She was standing so close to him that her body was almost touching his. He waited, unable to move. He could feel numbness creeping through the muscles of his legs. His arms dangled limply at his sides.

They stood there moment after moment facing each other. Then suddenly she grasped his arm and clamped her teeth into his wrist. When she first bit him, he felt no pain whatsoever, but gradually he became conscious of a tingling sensation running up and down his arm, and then all at once the savage bite of her teeth in his flesh made him cry out in agony. He begged and pleaded for her to stop hurting him, but her teeth sank deeper and more painfully into his flesh.

When he could bear it no longer, he made a desperate lunge to get away from her. Instead of freeing himself, however, he stumbled and fell heavily on the floor. An instant later the weight of her body falling on his chest and stomach left him gasping for breath. As the pain increased, his only thought was to do something to make her stop hurting him, and he put his other arm around her neck and drew it as tight as he could. He could feel the tension in her body relax almost immediately, and after a while she released his wrist from the biting grip of her teeth. A watery smear of blood covered his arm, and when he wiped it away, he could see the deep marks of her teeth in the broken skin.

They were still on the floor facing one another and breathing through parted lips when Ganus began sliding cautiously away from her.

“Nothing else’s going to happen,” she said breathlessly as a convulsive tremble shook her body.

Ganus continued to move away from her.

“That’s all I wanted,” she said, shaking her head. “I wanted to know how it would feel to have you put your arm around me. I made you do it. I knew I could if I tried. But that was all I wanted. Now, get away from me—quick!”

Ganus slid backward across the floor until he was almost at the door. Then he hastily got to his feet. He looked back at her only once after that. She had put both hands over her face and she was crying hysterically.

“I made you do it—I knew I could!” she sobbed.

He opened the door and ran from the room, holding his left hand clenched tightly around his throbbing wrist.

I
T WAS
S
ATURDAY AFTERNOON.
A cold spring drizzle had been falling since early morning and few people wanted to come to town on such a dreary day. The red clay county roads were muddy and slippery and most of the farmers and their families, who usually came to Estherville on Saturday to buy staple groceries and shop for piece goods and medicine, had put off the trip until next week or later when the roads would be dry. Down at the barber shop, where four barbers worked on Saturdays and where there were usually eight or ten men waiting to get into a chair, only three customers had come in since noon. Standing in doorways or under dripping awnings, sad-faced merchants gazed forlornly at the deserted, rain-soaked streets. Many of them had advertised special Saturday sales for the country people, in anticipation of a profitable quick turnover of spring merchandise, and now they were left with costly seasonal stock on their hands that probably would be difficult to move when the weather turned warm.

At three o’clock George Swayne set the time-lock on the vault for Monday morning and locked up the bank, where he had been vice president and cashier for twelve years, and got ready to go home. The damp spring weather had made his feet hurt more than ever, but he was feeling good over the prospect of going home and taking off his shoes. His wife, Norma, who did not hesitate to tell George what he could and could not do, since it was her money that had made it possible for George to get into banking in the first place, he having been a clerk in one of the grocery stores when she married him—anyway, his wife would never let him take off his shoes in the house until bedtime; but Norma had gone to Savannah to visit her sister for the weekend, and George was planning to take off his shoes the minute he got home, and to keep them off until he had to open the bank Monday morning. He was looking forward to the most comfortable and carefree weekend of his life.

George backed the car out of the parking lot at the rear of the Estherville State Bank, racing the engine with such loud spurts that the pigeons roosting in the loft behind the drug store were so scared that they flew out into the drizzling rain. After that he drove up Magnolia Street, every once in a while pushing in the clutch and racing the engine of his wife’s green sedan until the vibration made the doorhandles rattle. There often were times when George resented his wife’s stubborn refusal to let him come home in the afternoon after banking hours and sit in his easy chair and listen to the radio in his sock-feet, but after all those years he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He sometimes wondered how different his life would be if Norma had not inherited her father’s wealth and put him in charge of the bank; even now there were times when he yearned to be back in the grocery store selling canned goods and weighing five-pound sacks of rice for customers. Many afternoons after being on his feet in the bank most of the day he would slip off his shoes in the garage and sit there in complete comfort for half an hour or longer before having to put his shoes back on and go into the house. He had always had trouble with his feet, even when he was clerking in the grocery store, and he had to wear specially made shoes that Dr. Lew Broadus had designed for him. However, the only lasting relief he could find was when he could take off his shoes and sit in his sock-feet.

When he reached the red brick house on Holly Street, he turned into the driveway, put the sedan into the garage and, gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes, raced the engine until he could feel the vibration tingling in his cheeks. After that he felt a lot better. It was only a few steps from the garage to the side door and for the first time in more than a year he found himself walking into the house with eager anticipation. He hoped Norma would not wait another whole year to visit her sister in Savannah again.

First turning on the radio as loudly as he pleased, he untied the laces, kicked his shoes with all his might across the room, and then leaned back happily, to listen to the music and wiggle his toes. He chuckled to himself when he tried to imagine what Norma would say and do if she should come home unexpectedly and see him now. He almost wished she would come home just so he could see the expression on her face. The more he thought about it, the happier he became, and he laughed out loud.

He had been sprawled comfortably in the easy chair wondering if there were many other men in the world living in fear of their wives, when, looking up, he saw Kathyanne come into the room. He had forgotten all about the maid until the moment he saw her, but then he remembered hearing Norma say that Kathyanne would take care of the house and cook all his meals for him while she was away. Kathyanne had worked for the Swaynes for the past six or seven months, but George rarely saw her except for a few minutes at breakfast and again when she served supper in the evening. He was surprised to see how eyesome she was, and he wondered why he had not noticed her in that way before. He leaned back and, with an unaccustomed boldness, eyed her closely in her freshly ironed white dress. Norma was a large-boned woman with heavy pendulous buttocks twice the size of his. She always kept herself tightly corseted right up to the last second before she put out the lights and went to bed, and in the mornings she was always up and corseted for the day before he was awake. Kathyanne was a small slender girl with light, golden skin and straight blue-black hair. Without her coloring few would have known, by looking casually at her, that she was a mulatto.

“I heard you come home a little while ago, Mr. George,” she said pleasantly, looking directly at him without embarrassment as he continued to scrutinize her adventurously. It had been so long since he had had an opportunity frankly to ogle another woman that he was astonished to see how alluring a good-looking girl could be. “I just wanted to let you know you could have your supper anytime you wanted it. Just let me know, Mr. George. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

She did not talk like most Negroes he was accustomed to hearing. Her speech was casual and friendly, but not presumptuously so, and it had been a long time since he had heard a Negro, even a mulatto, speak to a white person without hesitating lapses and cautious inflections. He recalled hearing his wife say that Kathyanne and her brother, Ganus, had moved to town the previous summer from the lower part of the county, near Blackburn’s Mill, where they had grown up on a farm and had attended a Negro grade school for several years. For a moment he wondered how much longer she and her brother would be able to continue talking in such a normal manner before some white person, possibly resentful because he had never learned to read and write, or merely because he had been raised in an environment that encouraged hatred of the race, used force or intimidation to cower them into assuming a servile attitude. Every once in a while he heard of a Negro being run out of Tallulah County or beaten for failing to stay in his place and show proper respect for a white man. Many men boasted of being hard on blacks, and said that was the reason the town had so little race trouble.

Kathyanne started to leave the room.

He reached over and turned the radio down.

“What time do we usually have supper, Kathyanne?” he said quickly, sitting up and attempting to appear calm and matter-of-fact. He found himself looking at her legs. She had slender, round ankles and smoothly tapering calves, and, being barelegged, her bright golden skin seemed more alluring than the sheerest stockings. He wondered why he had never noticed before how ideally proportioned she was. He was convinced that he had never seen anyone, white or colored, who possessed such endearing attractiveness. He was in the habit of casually looking at a female customer’s legs when she left the bank after transacting some business, or at girls who walked past the window of the bank, but this was the first time he had been conscious of the fact that Kathyanne had legs. By that time he had come to the conclusion that he had never seen anyone who appealed to him as strongly as she did. When he realized how long he had been staring at her, he felt self-conscious. Clearing his throat, he glanced up. He was sure he saw a knowing smile on her face. “Is there a regular time, Kathyanne? I mean, is there usually a regular time?”

“Miss Norma always wants supper served at six-thirty sharp,” she replied. “But since you are here all by yourself, Mr. George, you can have it at any time.”

“Well, we’ll have it at a different time tonight. Five-thirty, six, seven, seven-thirty. Any time except six-thirty. We don’t have to—to—” He was going to say have to be afraid of changing the supper hour, but he decided it might be better not to say it in Kathyanne’s presence.

Again he thought he saw her smile with a perceptive look as she nodded and turned to leave the room. George moved to the edge of his chair and watched the disturbing movement of her hips and the tantalizing sway of her skirt. He could not recall ever having seen anything like it before. He had been cooped up in the bank so long that he had forgotten what a pretty girl’s effortless grace could do to a man’s sensibilities. As she reached the door, he felt an irresistible urge to keep her from leaving his sight.

“Kathyanne!” he called, much louder than necessary. She stopped and turned around with an expression of startled innocence. For a moment he was afraid she was going to run to the kitchen. He realized that he had called out in a voice that probably could have been heard in the rear of the house. “I was just thinking—Kathyanne,” he said nervously, hoping he had lowered his voice to a normal pitch. As soon as he had spoken, he tried frantically to think what in the world he could say that would not sound ridiculous just then. Moment after moment passed while he stared confusedly at her, and then, finally, he blurted out the first and only thought he could bring to mind. “Kathyanne, I wanted to say—don’t go to too much trouble for me. I don’t think I’m very hungry, anyway.”

“We were going to have fried chicken tonight, Mr. George,” she told him right away. “It’ll be no trouble at all. I wanted to have a nice meal for you tonight, Mr. George.”

“Well, that sounds all right,” he said, disconcerted by her reply. “You go right ahead and fry the chicken, Kathyanne. That really suits me fine. I always was partial to fried chicken. I believe I am getting a little hungry, after all. Fried chicken sounds mighty good.”

She left the room and went to the rear of the house. George sat listening for a while, and then, unable to sit still any longer, jumped up and went to the hall and stood there trying to hear some sound of her in the kitchen. He knew that if Norma had been there he would never have dared to do what he was doing, and it gave him a pleasant unfamiliar sensation to know that he was alone in the house with Kathyanne. He was glad it was rainy and wet outside, because the dampness of the rapidly falling night seemed to make the privacy of the house more secure. He walked back into the living room and stood at the window watching the fading light of the misty afternoon as he thought how lonely he would be in the house without Kathyanne. An automobile came slowly into view, its front wheels splashing cautiously through the puddles on the street, and then it disappeared in the gloom. He was thinking that there went a man home to his wife and children, while here he was childless and married to a woman who would not even let him talk about the possibility of having children. He told himself that a man had a right to do some things in life, especially in his case. Convinced of the righteousness of his reasoning, and unable to wait any longer, George left the window and went straight to the kitchen.