Collected Stories

  “Get them wet clothes off,” maw said.

  “I don’t know as I will or not,” pap said. “I been publicly notified that I ain’t fitten to associate with white folks, so I publicly notify them same white folks and Methodists, too, not to try to associate with me, or the devil can have the hindmost.”

  But maw hadn’t even listened. When she come back with a pan of water and a towel and the liniment bottle, pap was already in his nightshirt.

  “I don’t want none of that neither,” he said. “If my head wasn’t worth busting, it ain’t worth patching.” But she never paid no mind to that neither. She washed his head off and dried it and put the bandage on and went out again, and pap went and got into bed.

  “Hand me my snuff; then you get out of here and stay out too,” he said.

  But before I could do that maw come back. She had a glass of hot toddy, and she went to the bed and stood there with it, and pap turned his head and looked at it.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  But maw never answered, and then he set up in bed and drawed a long, shuddering breath—we could hear it—and after a minute he put out his hand for the toddy and set there holding it and drawing his breath, and then he taken a sip of it.

  “I Godfrey, if him and all of them put together think they can keep me from working on my own church like ary other man, he better be a good man to try it.” He taken another sip of the toddy. Then he taken a long one. “Arsonist,” he said. “Work units. Dog units. And now arsonist. I Godfrey, what a day!”

  The Tall Men

  THEY PASSED THE DARK bulk of the cotton gin. Then they saw the lamplit house and the other car, the doctor’s coupé, just stopping at the gate, and they could hear the hound baying.

  “Here we are,” the old deputy marshal said.

  “What’s that other car?” the younger man said, the stranger, the state draft investigator.

  “Doctor Schofield’s,” the marshal said. “Lee McCallum asked me to send him out when I telephoned we were coming.”

  “You mean you warned them?” the investigator said. “You telephoned ahead that I was coming out with a warrant for these two evaders? Is this how you carry out the orders of the United States Government?”

  The marshal was a lean, clean old man who chewed tobacco, who had been born and lived in the county all his life.

  “I understood all you wanted was to arrest these two McCallum boys and bring them back to town,” he said.

  “It was!” the investigator said. “And now you have warned them, given them a chance to run. Possibly put the Government to the expense of hunting them down with troops. Have you forgotten that you are under a bond yourself?”

  “I ain’t forgot it,” the marshal said. “And ever since we left Jefferson I been trying to tell you something for you not to forget. But I reckon it will take these McCallums to impress that on you.… Pull in behind the other car. We’ll try to find out first just how sick whoever it is that is sick is.”

  The investigator drew up behind the other car and switched off and blacked out his lights. “These people,” he said. Then he thought, But this doddering, tobacco-chewing old man is one of them, too, despite the honor and pride of his office, which should have made him different. So he didn’t speak it aloud, removing the keys and getting out of the car, and then locking the car itself, rolling the windows up first, thinking, These people who lie about and conceal the ownership of land and property in order to hold relief jobs which they have no intention of performing, standing on their constitutional rights against having to work, who jeopardize the very job itself through petty and transparent subterfuge to acquire a free mattress which they intend to attempt to sell; who would relinquish even the job, if by so doing they could receive free food and a place, any rathole, in town to sleep in; who, as farmers, make false statements to get seed loans which they will later misuse, and then react in loud vituperative outrage and astonishment when caught at it. And then, when at long last a suffering and threatened Government asks one thing of them in return, one thing simply, which is to put their names down on a selective-service list, they refuse to do it.

  The old marshal had gone on. The investigator followed, through a stout paintless gate in a picket fence, up a broad brick walk between two rows of old shabby cedars, toward the rambling and likewise paintless sprawl of the two-story house in the open hall of which the soft lamplight glowed and the lower story of which, as the investigator now perceived, was of logs.

  He saw a hall full of soft lamplight beyond a stout paintless gallery running across the log front, from beneath which the same dog which they had heard, a big hound, came booming again, to stand foursquare facing them in the walk, bellowing, until a man’s voice spoke to it from the house. He followed the marshal up the steps onto the gallery. Then he saw the man standing in the door, waiting for them to approach—a man of about forty-five, not tall, but blocky, with a brown, still face and horseman’s hands, who looked at him once, brief and hard, and then no more, speaking to the marshal, “Howdy, Mr. Gombault. Come in.”

  “Howdy, Rafe,” the marshal said. “Who’s sick?”

  “Buddy,” the other said. “Slipped and caught his leg in the hammer mill this afternoon.”

  “Is it bad?” the marshal said.

  “It looks bad to me,” the other said. “That’s why we sent for the doctor instead of bringing him in to town. We couldn’t get the bleeding stopped.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the marshal said. “This is Mr. Pearson.” Once more the investigator found the other looking at him, the brown eyes still, courteous enough in the brown face, the hand he offered hard enough, but the clasp quite limp, quite cold. The marshal was still speaking. “From Jackson. From the draft board.” Then he said, and the investigator could discern no change whatever in his tone: “He’s got a warrant for the boys.”

  The investigator could discern no change whatever anywhere. The limp hard hand merely withdrew from his, the still face now looking at the marshal. “You mean we have declared war?”

  “No,” the marshal said.

  “That’s not the question, Mr. McCallum,” the investigator said. “All required of them was to register. Their numbers might not even be drawn this time; under the law of averages, they probably would not be. But they refused—failed, anyway—to register.”

  “I see,” the other said. He was not looking at the investigator. The investigator couldn’t tell certainly if he was even looking at the marshal, although he spoke to him, “You want to see Buddy? The doctor’s with him now.”

  “Wait,” the investigator said. “I’m sorry about your brother’s accident, but I——” The marshal glanced back at him for a moment, his shaggy gray brows beetling, with something at once courteous yet a little impatient about the glance, so that during the instant the investigator sensed from the old marshal the same quality which had been in the other’s brief look. The investigator was a man of better than average intelligence; he was already becoming aware of something a little different here from what he had expected. But he had been in relief work in the state several years, dealing almost exclusively with country people, so he still believed he knew them. So he looked at the old marshal, thinking, Yes. The same sort of people, despite the office, the authority and responsibility which should have changed him. Thinking again, These people. These people. “I intend to take the night train back to Jackson,” he said. “My reservation is already made. Serve the warrant and we will——”

  “Come along,” the old marshal said. “We are going to have plenty of time.”

  So he followed—there was nothing else to do—fuming and seething, attempting in the short length of the hall to regain control of himself in order to control the situation, because he realized now that if the situation were controlled, it would devolve upon him to control it; that if their departure with their prisoners were expedited, it must be himself and not the old marshal who would expedite it. He had been right. The
doddering old officer was not only at bottom one of these people, he had apparently been corrupted anew to his old, inherent, shiftless sloth and unreliability merely by entering the house. So he followed in turn, down the hall and into a bedroom; whereupon he looked about him not only with amazement but with something very like terror. The room was a big room, with a bare unpainted floor, and besides the bed, it contained only a chair or two and one other piece of old-fashioned furniture. Yet to the investigator it seemed so filled with tremendous men cast in the same mold as the man who had met them that the very walls themselves must bulge. Yet they were not big, not tall, and it was not vitality, exuberance, because they made no sound, merely looking quietly at him where he stood in the door, with faces bearing an almost identical stamp of kinship—a thin, almost frail old man of about seventy, slightly taller than the others; a second one, white-haired, too, but otherwise identical with the man who had met them at the door; a third one about the same age as the man who had met them, but with something delicate in his face and something tragic and dark and wild in the same dark eyes; the two absolutely identical blue-eyed youths; and lastly the blue-eyed man on the bed over which the doctor, who might have been any city doctor, in his neat city suit, leaned—all of them turning to look quietly at him and the marshal as they entered. And he saw, past the doctor, the slit trousers of the man on the bed and the exposed, bloody, mangled leg, and he turned sick, stopping just inside the door under that quiet, steady regard while the marshal went up to the man who lay on the bed, smoking a cob pipe, a big, old-fashioned, wicker-covered demijohn, such as the investigator’s grandfather had kept his whisky in, on the table beside him.

  “Well, Buddy,” the marshal said, “this is bad.”

  “Ah, it was my own damn fault,” the man on the bed said. “Stuart kept warning me about that frame I was using.”

  “That’s correct,” the second old one said.

  Still the others said nothing. They just looked steadily and quietly at the investigator until the marshal turned slightly and said, “This is Mr. Pearson. From Jackson. He’s got a warrant for the boys.”

  Then the man on the bed said, “What for?”

  “That draft business, Buddy,” the marshal said.

  “We’re not at war now,” the man on the bed said.

  “No,” the marshal said. “It’s that new law. They didn’t register.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “It’s a warrant, Buddy. Swore out.”

  “That means jail.”

  “It’s a warrant,” the old marshal said. Then the investigator saw that the man on the bed was watching him, puffing steadily at the pipe.

  “Pour me some whisky, Jackson,” he said.

  “No,” the doctor said. “He’s had too much already.”

  “Pour me some whisky, Jackson,” the man on the bed said. He puffed steadily at the pipe, looking at the investigator. “You come from the Government?” he said.

  “Yes,” the investigator said. “They should have registered. That’s all required of them yet. They did not——” His voice ceased, while the seven pairs of eyes contemplated him, and the man on the bed puffed steadily.

  “We would have still been here,” the man on the bed said. “We wasn’t going to run.” He turned his head. The two youths were standing side by side at the foot of the bed. “Anse, Lucius,” he said.

  To the investigator it sounded as if they answered as one, “Yes, father.”

  “This gentleman has come all the way from Jackson to say the Government is ready for you. I reckon the quickest place to enlist will be Memphis. Go upstairs and pack.”

  The investigator started, moved forward. “Wait!” he cried.

  But Jackson, the eldest, had forestalled him. He said, “Wait,” also, and now they were not looking at the investigator. They were looking at the doctor.

  “What about his leg?” Jackson said.

  “Look at it,” the doctor said. “He almost amputated it himself. It won’t wait. And he can’t be moved now. I’ll need my nurse to help me, and some ether, provided he hasn’t had too much whisky to stand the anesthetic too. One of you can drive to town in my car. I’ll telephone——”

  “Ether?” the man on the bed said. “What for? You just said yourself it’s pretty near off now. I could whet up one of Jackson’s butcher knives and finish it myself, with another drink or two. Go on. Finish it.”

  “You couldn’t stand any more shock,” the doctor said. “This is whisky talking now.”

  “Shucks,” the other said. “One day in France we was running through a wheat field and I saw the machine gun, coming across the wheat, and I tried to jump it like you would jump a fence rail somebody was swinging at your middle, only I never made it. And I was on the ground then, and along toward dark that begun to hurt, only about that time something went whang on the back of my helmet, like when you hit a anvil, so I never knowed nothing else until I woke up. There was a heap of us racked up along a bank outside a field dressing station, only it took a long time for the doctor to get around to all of us, and by that time it was hurting bad. This here ain’t hurt none to speak of since I got a-holt of this johnny-jug. You go on and finish it. If it’s help you need, Stuart and Rafe will help you.… Pour me a drink, Jackson.”

  This time the doctor raised the demijohn and examined the level of the liquor. “There’s a good quart gone,” he said. “If you’ve drunk a quart of whisky since four o’clock, I doubt if you could stand the anesthetic. Do you think you could stand it if I finished it now?”

  “Yes, finish it. I’ve ruined it; I want to get shut of it.”

  The doctor looked about at the others, at the still, identical faces watching him. “If I had him in town, in the hospital, with a nurse to watch him, I’d probably wait until he got over this first shock and got the whisky out of his system. But he can’t be moved now, and I can’t stop the bleeding like this, and even if I had ether or a local anesthetic——”

  “Shucks,” the man on the bed said. “God never made no better local nor general comfort or anesthetic neither than what’s in this johnny-jug. And this ain’t Jackson’s leg nor Stuart’s nor Rafe’s nor Lee’s. It’s mine. I done started it; I reckon I can finish cutting it off any way I want to.”

  But the doctor was still looking at Jackson. “Well, Mr. McCallum?” he said. “You’re the oldest.”

  But it was Stuart who answered. “Yes,” he said. “Finish it. What do you want? Hot water, I reckon.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “Some clean sheets. Have you got a big table you can move in here?”

  “The kitchen table,” the man who had met them at the door said. “Me and the boys——”

  “Wait,” the man on the bed said. “The boys won’t have time to help you.” He looked at them again. “Anse, Lucius,” he said.

  Again it seemed to the investigator that they answered as one, “Yes, father.”

  “This gentleman yonder is beginning to look impatient. You better start. Come to think of it, you won’t need to pack. You will have uniforms in a day or two. Take the truck. There won’t be nobody to drive you to Memphis and bring the truck back, so you can leave it at the Gayoso Feed Company until we can send for it. I’d like for you to enlist into the old Sixth Infantry, where I used to be. But I reckon that’s too much to hope, and you’ll just have to chance where they send you. But it likely won’t matter, once you are in. The Government done right by me in my day, and it will do right by you. You just enlist wherever they want to send you, need you, and obey your sergeants and officers until you find out how to be soldiers. Obey them, but remember your name and don’t take nothing from no man. You can go now.”

  “Wait!” the investigator cried again; again he started, moved forward into the center of the room. “I protest this! I’m sorry about Mr. McCallum’s accident. I’m sorry about the whole business. But it’s out of my hands and out of his hands now. This charge, failure to register according
to law, has been made and the warrant issued. It cannot be evaded this way. The course of the action must be completed before any other step can be taken. They should have thought of this when these boys failed to register. If Mr. Gombault refuses to serve this warrant, I will serve it myself and take these men back to Jefferson with me to answer this charge as made. And I must warn Mr. Gombault that he will be cited for contempt!”

  The old marshal turned, his shaggy eyebrows beetling again, speaking down to the investigator as if he were a child, “Ain’t you found out yet that me or you neither ain’t going nowhere for a while?”

  “What?” the investigator cried. He looked about at the grave faces once more contemplating him with that remote and speculative regard. “Am I being threatened?” he cried.

  “Ain’t anybody paying any attention to you at all,” the marshal said. “Now you just be quiet for a while, and you will be all right, and after a while we can go back to town.”

  So he stopped again and stood while the grave, contemplative faces freed him once more of that impersonal and unbearable regard, and saw the two youths approach the bed and bend down in turn and kiss their father on the mouth, and then turn as one and leave the room, passing him without even looking at him. And sitting in the lamplit hall beside the old marshal, the bedroom door closed now, he heard the truck start up and back and turn and go down the road, the sound of it dying away, ceasing, leaving the still, hot night—the Mississippi Indian summer, which had already outlasted half of November—filled with the loud last shrilling of the summer’s cicadas, as though they, too, were aware of the imminent season of cold weather and of death.

  “I remember old Anse,” the marshal said pleasantly, chattily, in that tone in which an adult addresses a strange child. “He’s been dead fifteen-sixteen years now. He was about sixteen when the old war broke out, and he walked all the way to Virginia to get into it. He could have enlisted and fought right here at home, but his ma was a Carter, so wouldn’t nothing do him but to go all the way back to Virginia to do his fighting, even though he hadn’t never seen Virginia before himself; walked all the way back to a land he hadn’t never even seen before and enlisted in Stonewall Jackson’s army and stayed in it all through the Valley, and right up to Chancellorsville, where them Carolina boys shot Jackson by mistake, and right on up to that morning in ’Sixty-five when Sheridan’s cavalry blocked the road from Appomattox to the Valley, where they might have got away again. And he walked back to Mississippi with just about what he had carried away with him when he left, and he got married and built the first story of this house—this here log story we’re in right now—and started getting them boys—Jackson and Stuart and Raphael and Lee and Buddy.