The Collected Stories of William Humphrey (39 page)

I was to see the Purdoms father and son on the square on Saturday afternoon many times in after years—I would once even see Jewel Purdom lounging against the wall of the bank in the very spot that had once been Finus's old spot; but I heard the name and saw them both for the first time to my knowledge that day; saw them twice. The first time was when, sitting on the curb of the plaza resting from my game of tag, I saw this man stalk past carrying a package wrapped in greasy newspaper and dragging this little boy by the hand. The looks on their faces made me say to myself, “Uh-oh. There's a boy who's fixing to get a whipping.” Not that I felt very sorry for that boy, even so.

The second time I saw the Purdoms was less than five minutes later. I was still catching my breath, still sitting in the same spot, when they came back, the man still dragging the boy and the boy now looking as if he had been beaten almost senseless. Then I did feel sorry for him. He was stumbling blindly along at his father's heels hardly able to lift his feet. Not far from where I sat he suddenly went limp. Feeling him falter, his father lifted him off his feet; otherwise he would surely have pitched to the pavement. As he dangled there by one wrist there passed over his face an expression of dismay followed instantly by no expression whatever, a pallor that almost obliterated his features, weak at best, and then he vomited copiously and at length.

“That boy,” I observed to myself, “has been eating too many hot tamales.”

He was still retching when his father gave him a shake, set him on his unsteady legs, and viciously kicked him.

“Get to the car!” I heard the man hiss. “Don't even look behind you.”

Then my attention was diverted from them. They were going in the opposite direction from the one that other people were going, at a run, all over the square.

On the edge of the crowd, which was impenetrable, I listened to a man tell how Jewel Purdom had first ordered Finus to say how many tamales there were in the package he held out to him, and how Finus, after blinking at him a time or two, had turned his head and looked down at the little boy, staring at him with wonder and consternation. For there had scarcely been time for him to have swallowed, much less chewed, as many hot tamales as were missing now from the baker's dozen he had been given. Finus frowned and shook his head at the boy in remonstrance, perhaps intending also to convey a warning that he was in for an upset stomach, but he failed to effect any change in the increasingly self-preoccupied vacancy of Gilbert's expression.

All of which was taking too long to answer than suited Jewel Purdom in his present mood. “Didn't you hear me?” he asked. “I said, how many hot tamales is this?”

“I heard you,” said Finus, not looking at him. “It's eight.”

“Then you
can
count,” said Jewel Purdom, his voice rising with his rising anger. “You just figured that little boy couldn't. Or is eight as high as you can go?”

Still Finus did not look up but stared on at the little boy, until at last Gilbert, by then feeling very unwell, said to the author of his discomfort, “Old nigger, you.”

Into Finus's face came a look of wild terror. He cried, not to the man menacing him, but to the crowd at large, “Still two for a nickel! Still just two bits a dozen!” No one came to his aid. Falling back against the wall, he began frantically to tear open his shirt, as if his breathing were obstructed, popping off the buttons in his haste. There never was agreement afterwards on what made Finus do that. Some said he wished to show that he was unarmed, the Negro notion of a weapon being a straight razor worn beneath the shirt on a string around the neck. To others he seemed to be baring his chest in defiance, daring the man to do his worst. Still others saw in it a gesture of despair and resignation to his fate.

In any case, the unexpectedness of it stayed Jewel Purdom's advance. At this somebody from the crowd intervened, although the man telling about it was prevented by a cough from identifying the person, somebody who knew Jewel and drew him aside, talking to him all the while, and who might have succeeded in cooling him off and getting him away and nothing more have come of the affair if only Finus had kept his big mouth shut. Instead he had chosen the moment to release his cry, “Molly ot! Hot tamales!” louder even than his usual, and sounding, whether he meant it to or not, taunting, derisive, exultant. It may be that in the pasty face of seven-year-old Gilbert Purdom Finus thought he had recognized at last the doom that had stalked him down the years, and now was giving vent to his fear and his relief. He may just have been trying to clear the atmosphere, break the tension, restore things to normal, and get back to his business of selling hot tamales. Whatever his intentions, his cry had not ceased reverberating when Jewel Purdom sprang, knife in hand.

As I turned away I heard the speaker say, “No, Otis, I didn't. Not a thing, although I was standing not ten feet away right through it all. I was engaged in conversation with a friend of mine and looking the other way. Never knew anything had happened till people came running up. That's all right. Just sorry I can't be of any help to you.”

Otis was Otis Langford, the town constable.

Without their fathers to set them on their shoulders small boys like I was then got to see sights only after their elders had looked their fill. By the time I got near enough to see it the wide pool of blood on the pavement where Finus had fallen was, though still wet, beginning to congeal. An iridescence playing over its surface in waves and slow swirls made it appear to shrink from exposure to the air like a living, that is a dying, thing. The way a fish fresh out of water grows more vivid and lustrous as it struggles and gasps, then fades as it dies, so Finus's blood brightened and shone as I watched, then darkened and lay still beneath a spreading dull film. Just before that final stage, however, came another. Struck by the glare of the sun, the pool of blood became a mirror, and in it I saw reflected—and can see still, though this was long ago and Blossom Prairie now far away—the buildings of the square in sharp perspective, the courthouse tower, the Confederate soldier mounted high on his marble shaft, the steeple of the Methodist church that sat a block away on a hill overlooking the creek.

VI

Our house all day Sunday was as still as a house in mourning. Worried looks passing between my parents hung heavily over my head. Whenever I glanced up they put away their thoughts, but I could see them still, as I could see the tops showing of bottles put on shelves out of my reach.

That afternoon when I was supposed to be napping I heard my mother say to my father, “What do you reckon they will do to the man that did it?”

My father's newspaper rustled. “You are referring, I suppose,” said he, “to yesterday's ruckus on the square, and to the man who—?”

“Well, what on earth else would I be talking about?” my mother cried. Then remembering me: “Ssh!”

“There are other things on earth you might be talking about,” returned my father testily, “and I wish you would. However, to answer your question. What will they do to Jewel Purdom, of that ilk, for knifing on dire provocation a lone, unsurvived darky with a reputation for independence and a voice such that even a white man would have to be careful what he said with it? Well, there were, let's say, three dozen witnesses to the event. If the matter ever comes to a trial one dozen of these will testify that they happened to be looking the other way at the time and never saw a thing until it was all over. Another dozen will produce friends and relations to prove they were somewhere else twenty miles away all day long. And the remaining two dozen—”

“You only had three dozen to start with.”

“That's right. And the remaining two dozen will swear on their Bible oath that the defendant acted in self-defense. Afterwards in Market Square as the jug is passed around the acquitted and the members of the jury—Why do you ask me foolish questions? You've lived here all your life the same as I have.”

“But there were some there who can't be got to say that. Who saw what happened. Yes, I have lived here all my life, and I know there must have been some there who would come forward and—”

“Would you?”

“Me? Why, I wasn't …”

“Well?”

“Well yourself! Would you?”

“No, I wouldn't, if it makes you feel any better.”

“It doesn't make me feel any better.”

“Me neither.”

Later that evening my father came in and sat down on the edge of my bed. Before he could speak I said, “Daddy, I don't want to live here anymore. Let's move away. Let's go somewhere far—”

My father scowled. “Are you still at it?” he snapped. Hearing himself made his voice turn shrill. “Isn't that about enough of this now? How much longer are you going to mope over that damned nigger?”

I started back, drawing my bedcovers up, and stared at my father aghast, frightened at the violence of his outburst. Under my gaze my father reddened. In his eyes I saw a troubled plea for my forgiveness. My father was not angry at me but at the world which was all he could give me and which he was as helpless to cope with as I.

Monday came.

By afternoon my mother had given up trying to occupy or divert me. I sat at the window watching the empty street. The time drew near when down from above had always sounded Finus's cry. In heavy silence the clock on the mantel tolled four. I felt my chin pucker and tremble, my bruised heart swell with pain. My mother cleared her throat to speak but checked herself, fetching a deep breath instead. Then releasing her breath she said, “Oh, honey, don't try any more to hold it all in. Come to Mama and let yourself go and cry.”

For a second I felt myself waver. But I knew the moment was a crucial one for me. It would be a long time before this hour of a weekday afternoon could come without my hearing, wherever I might find myself, the friendly thunder of Finus's voice rolling down from the top of our street; but the time would come. For a while afterwards I would see in the gutter at the curbstone or blown into a corner against a storefront a cornshuck as colorless as if it had been boiled, chewed, sucked dry; but after a time I would not see them anymore. It would take many Saturdays before I could pass that spot on the square where Finus's blood had lain on the sidewalk; but I could not live in my town without passing that spot, so that time too would come.

“What!” I cried, tears for Finus, for myself, for my father, for all the world gushing from my eyes, “me cry over an old nigger?”

“Ssh!” said my mother, drawing me to her own heaving breast. “You mustn't say that, hon. Nice people don't use that word.”

A Home Away from Home

“T
HINK
of it!” said Elgin Floyd to Sybil, his wife. “Just think of it! If they should strike oil we could be millionaires.”

“Mmm,” said Sybil.

“Millionaires!”

“Mmm. Yes, well, don't go spending it all for a while,” said Sybil. “They haven't struck any yet.”

“No, but they struck it on Alvah Clayton's place, just eight miles from here. If they can strike oil on that damn fool's land, why not on mine?”

“Why not? You're as big a damn fool as him any day of the week, ain't you? Now what I want to know is this: how far down do they go without hitting anything before they decide to give up?”

“How's that again?”

“I say, how long do they go on boring before they either strike oil or quit?”

“Oh. Why, it all depends. Where they've got good reason to believe there is oil, why, they'll drill down as much as a mile. Maybe even further.”

“How long does that take them? A mile, I mean.”

“Depends on what they run into. Where there's lots of rock, for instance, that slows things down.”

“In that case I expect they'll be a good while on this one of ours.”

“Now on that well of Alvah's—
Mister
Clayton, I mean to say—they were drilling all spring long. Went down fifty-seven hundred feet. Good thing for the Claytons they did strike oil, too; for Alvah never done a lick of work all spring, out there hanging around that derrick from morn till night and getting in the men's way when he ought to been plowing and plant—”

“How big a crew do you suppose they aim to send out here to drill this one of ours?”

“Eh? Crew? Why, on that one of Alvah's they had about a dozen men, sometimes more. Why?”

“And how do you suppose they aim to feed and house all that many men for maybe as long as three or four months?”

“Don't ask me. That's their problem.”

“It's a problem, all right, out here in the middle of nowhere. And I think I may have the answer to it. Now where do you suppose a person might round up a dozen bedsteads and springs and mattresses in a hurry, hmm?”

“Why, what would a person want with a doz—?”

“Now then, Elgin, up! I want you to stop daydreaming about being J. P. Rockefeller for a minute and get out of that easy chair and go down to the garden with a spading fork. I want to see a dozen rows of fresh ground turned by nightfall, hear? Where's Geraldine? Geraldine!”

“Yes'm? Directly.”

“No, you come here right this minute. Now, Geraldine, how many times do I have to tell you not to go around barefoot? You're going to have feet on you like a pair of flatirons, if it's not too late already. Slip on some shoes now, you're coming with me. I'll let you out at the store, you can walk back. Elgin, give Geraldine a dollar bill. Geraldine, I want you to buy a flat of tomato plants, four packages of string-bean seeds, two of—”

“Mama, what in the world do you want with all that many seeds and plants? We've already got more stuff growing in that garden than we can put up, much less eat.”

“I'm not intending to put them up. I'm expecting company.”