“Boss,” Hubert said, his lips twitching, “we ain’t aiming to have no trouble today, is we?”
Vic cursed him.
Willie and Floyd moved down a step without loosening their embrace.
“Who is that yellow-headed sapsucker, anyhow?” Vic said. “I’ll be dad-burned if he ain’t got a lot of nerve—coming here and fooling with Willie.”
“You wouldn’t do nothing to cause trouble, would you, Mr. Vic? I surely don’t want to have no trouble today, Mr. Vic.”
Vic glanced at the eleven-inch knife Floyd had stuck into the step at his feet. It stood on its tip, twenty-two inches high, while the sun was reflected against the bright blade and made a streak of light on Floyd’s pants leg.
“Go over there and take that knife away from him and bring it to me,” Vic said. “Don’t be scared of him.”
“Mr. Vic, I surely hate to disappoint you, but if you want that white-folk’s knife, you’ll just have to get it your own self. I don’t aim to have myself all carved up with that thing. Mr. Vic, I surely can’t accommodate you this time. If you want that white-folk’s knife, you’ll just be bound to get it your own self, Mr. Vic.”
Vic cursed him.
Hubert backed away until he was at the end of the porch. He kept looking behind him all the time, looking to be certain of the exact location of the sycamore stump that was between him and the pine grove on the other side of the cotton field.
Vic called to Hubert and told him to come back. Hubert came slowly around the corner of the porch and stood a few feet from the quilt where Vic was sitting. His lips quivered and the whites of his eyes grew larger. Vic motioned for him to come closer, but he would not come an inch farther.
“How old are you?” Floyd asked Willie.
“Fifteen.”
Floyd jerked the knife out of the wood and thrust it deeper into the same place.
“How old are you?” she asked him.
“About twenty-seven.”
“Are you married?”
“Not now,” he said. “How long have you been?”
“About three months,” Willie said.
“How do you like it?”
“Pretty good so far.”
“How about another kiss?”
“You just had one.”
“I’d like another one now.”
“I ought not to let you kiss me again.”
“Why not?”
“Men don’t like girls who kiss too much.”
“I’m not that kind.”
“What kind are you?”
“I’d like to kiss you a lot.”
“But after I let you do that, you’d go away.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll stay for something else.”
“What?”
“To get the rest of you.”
“You might hurt me.”
“It won’t hurt.”
“It might.”
“Let’s go inside for a drink and I’ll show you.”
“We’ll have to go to the spring for fresh water.”
“Where’s the spring?”
“Just across the field in the grove.”
“All right,” Floyd said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
He bent down and pulled the knife out of the wood. Willie ran down the steps and across the yard. When Floyd saw that she was not going to wait for him, he ran after her, holding the knives in his pocket with one hand. She led him across the cotton field to the spring in the pine grove. Just before they got there, Floyd caught her by the arm and ran beside her the rest of the way.
“Boss,” Hubert said, his voice trembling, “we ain’t aiming to have no trouble today, is we?”
Vic cursed him.
“I don’t want to get messed up with a heap of trouble and maybe get my belly slit open with that big hairy knife. If you ain’t got objections, I reckon I’ll mosey on home now and cut me a little firewood for the cook-stove.”
“Come back here!” Vic said. “You stay where you are and stop making moves to go off.”
“What is we aiming to do, Mr. Vic?”
Vic eased himself off the porch and walked across the yard to the water oak. He looked down at the ground where Floyd had been sitting, and then he looked at the porch steps where Willie had been. The noonday heat beat down through the thin leaves overhead and he could feel his mouth and throat burn with the hot air he breathed.
“Have you got a gun, Hubert?”
“No, sir, boss,” Hubert said.
“Why haven’t you?” he said. “Right when I need a gun, you haven’t got it. Why don’t you keep a gun?”
“Mr. Vic, I ain’t got no use for a gun. I used to keep one to shoot rabbits and squirrels with, but I got to thinking hard one day, and I traded it off the first chance I got. I reckon it was a good thing I traded, too. If I had kept it, you’d be asking for it like you did just now.”
Vic went back to the porch and picked up the steelyard and hammered the porch with it. After he had hit the porch four or five times, he dropped it and started out in the direction of the spring. He walked as far as the edge of the shade and stopped. He stood listening for a while.
Willie and Floyd could be heard down near the spring. Floyd said something to Willie, and Willie laughed loudly. There was silence again for several minutes, and then Willie laughed again. Vic could not tell whether she was crying or laughing. He was getting ready to turn and go back to the porch when he heard her cry out. It sounded like a scream, but it was not exactly that; it sounded like a shriek, but it wasn’t that, either; it sounded more like someone laughing and crying simultaneously in a high-pitched, excited voice.
“Where did Miss Willie come from, Mr. Vic?” Hubert asked. “Where did you bring her from?”
“Down below here a little way,” he said.
Hubert listened to the sounds that were coming from the pine grove.
“Boss,” he said after a little while, “it appears to me like you didn’t go far enough away.”
“I went far enough,” Vic said. “If I had gone any farther, I’d have been in Florida.”
The colored man hunched his shoulders forward several times while he smoothed the white sand with his broad-soled shoes.
“Mr. Vic, if I was you, the next time I’d surely go that far, maybe farther.”
“What do you mean, the next time?”
“I was figuring that maybe you wouldn’t be keeping her much longer than now, Mr. Vic.”
Vic cursed him.
Hubert raised his head several times and attempted to see down into the pine grove over the top of the growing cotton.
“Shut up and mind your own business,” Vic said. “I’m going to keep her till the cows come home. Where else do you reckon I’d find a better-looking girl than Willie?”
“Boss, I wasn’t thinking of how she looks — I was thinking of how she acts. That white man came here and sat down and it wasn’t no time before she had his pecker up.”
“She acts that way because she ain’t old enough yet to know who to fool with. She’ll catch on in time.”
Hubert followed Vic across the yard. While Vic went towards the porch, Hubert stopped and leaned against the water oak where he could almost see over the cotton field into the pine grove. Vic went up on the porch and stretched out on the quilt. He took off his shoes and flung them aside.
“I surely God knowed something was going to happen when he whittled that stick down to nothing,” Hubert was saying to himself. “White-folks take a long time to whittle a little piece of wood, but when they whittle it down to nothing, they’re going to be up and doing before the time ain’t long.”
Presently Vic sat upright on the quilt.
“Listen here, Hubert —”
“Yes, sir, boss!”
“You keep your eye on that stillyerd so it will stay right where it is now, and when they come back up the path, you wake me up in a hurry.”
“Yes, sir, boss,” Hubert said. “Are you aiming to
take a little nap now?”
“Yes, I am. And if you don’t wake me up when they come back, I’ll break your neck for you when I do wake up.”
Vic lay down again on the quilt and turned over on his side to shut out the blinding glare of the early afternoon sun that was reflected upon the porch from the hard white sand in the yard.
Hubert scratched his head and sat down against the water oak, facing the path from the spring. He could hear Vic snoring on the porch above the sounds that came at intervals from the pine grove across the field. He sat staring down the path, drowsy, singing under his breath. It was a long time until sundown.
(First published in Esquire)
Masses of Men
HUGH MILLER WORKED for the street-railway company. Hugh had a silver button, a gold button, a bronze watch fob made like a trolley car, and a small tin disk with the numeral 7 almost worn off. He had worked for the company for twenty-six years repairing tracks, and the company had once told him that some day he would be retired with a comfortable pension.
After all those years, Hugh was still trying to get along in the world. He still hoped to be made superintendent of construction. For some reason, though, he had never got far. He was still repairing tracks, replacing switch frogs, and jacking up the rails to put in new crossties.
Even though there were other men who were stepped ahead when the time came to fill up the ranks, Hugh kept his job as a laborer, repairing the tracks year after year, and hoped he would be made superintendent of construction before he got too old to work any longer.
“I’ll get it yet,” he told himself. “I’ll get it as sure as shooting. They’ve got to promote me some day, and I’ve been working long enough now to get it. I’ll get it as sure as shooting.”
Hugh had put off marrying Cora until he was promoted. Cora told him that she did not mind waiting a little longer, because she was working herself then in a store in town and earning as much as Hugh himself was. But after the twelfth year, Hugh decided that if he ever was going to get married, he ought to do it without further delay. He was growing old and though Cora was still as youthful in appearance as she was when they became engaged, she was beginning to complain of the long hours she had to stand on her feet behind the counter in the variety store.
“We’ll get married right now,” Hugh told her one Saturday night while they were riding home from downtown on his company pass. “There’s no sense in waiting any longer. If you are ready, we’ll be married next week. I’ve been thinking about it a long time, and there’s no sense in waiting till I get promoted.”
“I’d love to, Hugh,” she said, clutching his arm in the crowded car. “I think it’s silly to put it off any longer. I’ve been hoping for it to happen for I don’t know how long. We don’t have to wait until you get promoted. It would be all the nicer to have the promotion come while we are married.”
They got off the car at the boulevard stop and walked home slowly. They lived next door to each other, in boardinghouses, and there was no hurry since it was Saturday night.
That was the beginning. They walked slowly down the dark street talking about next week, and Hugh kept saying to himself under his breath that he would surely get promoted the next time the company filled up the ranks. He was certain of it. He told Cora he was. She believed him.
After they were married, Hugh rented a five-room house not far from the carbarn. It was just a step down the alley from the tree-lined street where the trolleys passed all day and most of the night. It was a good house, for the money, and it was comfortable. Having their doorstep in an alley did not really matter much after all. They did not mind that. The house was almost on the corner, and the upstairs windows looked out over the tree-lined street. They could step out the front door, walk a few steps, and be in the street. It was not a bad place to live, and Cora liked it.
First there was a girl; they named her Pearl. Later there was a boy, John; after another year there was another girl, and they named her Ruby.
Hugh still looked forward to the time when he would be made superintendent of construction for the street-railway company, but after Ruby was born, he did not think about it any more. He somehow got out of the habit of thinking about it. Cora had stopped working in the variety store downtown; she stayed at home and attended to the house and cared for the children. She was beginning to wonder what she could do to her skin to keep it from turning so dark; in the meantime she hid her face when people came to the door for some reason or other. She knew there was nothing wrong with her skin; it was merely becoming darker and darker every day. But she wished she knew what to do about it. Her hair already had a wide streak of gray in it.
She never mentioned it to Hugh, but Hugh never talked any more, anyway. When he came home from work, he ate his supper and went to bed. She did not have a chance to tell Hugh anything like that. He was too tired to listen to her.
When Pearl, the oldest girl, was nine, Hugh was knocked down by an automobile one day, while he was jacking up a rail to replace a rotten crosstie, and run over and killed. The company sent his body home that evening, when the rest of the workers got off at five o’clock, and Cora did not know what to do. After she had put the children to bed, she went out and walked down the street until she met a policeman. She told him what had happened to Hugh, and he said he would have the body taken away early the next morning. She went back home and looked at Hugh, but she could not notice any difference in him; at home, Hugh was always asleep.
Cora knew there would be a little money coming in from the company. She was certain there would be something, but she was afraid it would not be enough for them to live on until she could find work of some kind. When she thought about it more, she was afraid there would not even be enough to pay for Hugh’s funeral and burial.
The policeman had the body taken away the next morning, and it was buried somewhere. Cora did not know where, but she did know there was nothing else to do about it. The children had to have food, and they had to have a little heat in the house.
She waited a month for the money to come from the street-railway company, and it still did not come. After that she went to the office and asked for it. There was no one there who seemed to know anything about the matter. Nobody in the big brick building had ever heard of Hugh Miller, and when they looked up the name in their records, no one was certain which Hugh Miller she was inquiring about, Cora stayed there all day, but when the people in the building went home at dark, she did not know what else to do except to go home, too.
After that she did not bother the people at the street-railway company any more. She did not have time to go there, for one thing, and she had a lot to do at home. The three children had to be taken care of, and she had to go out every day and find enough food to keep them from being hungry. Sometimes it took her all day long to get enough to feed them for just one small meal; other times she could find nothing at all for them to eat, but she kept on walking because the children had to be fed. Pearl was going on ten. She was the oldest, and Ruby was still just a baby. But Pearl was growing up. She had long yellow hair and a blue gingham dress, and she tried to help her mother all she could. She cared for the other children while Cora was out trying to get some food, and at night she helped her mother put them to bed. After they were asleep, Cora would tell her about her father, Hugh.
“Your father worked for the street-railway company,” she told Pearl. “The company would help us out, but they are so busy up there they can’t seem to find time to do anything about it now. They would help us if they could get all the Hugh Millers who have worked for them straight in their minds. Your father was just one of them, and it’s hard for the company to tell them apart.”
“I can work,” Pearl told her mother. “I’m old enough now. I’ll see if I can find something to do. You take me with you, Mamma, and I’ll ask about it. John and Ruby can take care of each other if we lock them in a room before we go out.”
“You’re not very big for your age,” Cora sai
d. “People wouldn’t believe you when you told them you were going on ten.”
“But I can work. I’ll show them how much I can do.”
“Hugh worked for the street-railway company, Pearl. He was your father. Some day the company will help us out. They’re busy right now. I don’t like to bother them so much when they act like they are so busy.”
Pearl went to bed telling her mother that she was old enough to work. Cora did not say anything else to her, but she could not think of any kind of work that Pearl was capable of doing.
The next morning John and Ruby went out early to bring back some wood for the stove. They had no shoes to wear, and their coats were not warm enough. It was midwinter, but the ground was bare of snow. When they came back that afternoon, their feet were bleeding around the toes and their heels had cracked open in several places.
“Where’s the firewood, John?” Cora asked him.
“We couldn’t find any.”
Cora put on her cloak, pulling it up around her head and shoulders, and went out into the alley. There was no wood of any kind there, but up at the other end there was a coal bin that sometimes overflowed into the narrow way. She filled her apron with coal and ran back to the house. The children huddled around the stove, shivering and whimpering, while she kindled the fire.
“I’m hungry, Mamma,” Ruby said.
“I’ll get you something to eat,” Cora promised her.
“When are we going to have something to eat again?” John asked her.
“I’ll bring you something when I come back.”
Cora put on her cloak and went out into the alley. She ran to the street and stood there indecisively for several moments until she could make up her mind which direction she would take. She turned down the street this time, instead of going up it.
After she had run and walked for five or six blocks, she came to a cluster of one-story suburban stores. There were several men standing at the curb in front of the buildings. They were waiting for a streetcar to take them downtown. The men turned and looked at Cora when they saw that she was running towards them.