“Yes, sir, Uncle Ned,” I said, wondering what Ma would say if she heard.
“I’m a grown man, son, and I know good sound advice when I hear it. That’s why I want you to remember what I told you about being a good Stroup. There’s not many folks in the world today who can boast of being a Stroup.”
“All right, Uncle Ned,” I told him. “I’ll remember.”
Ma came to the kitchen door and looked out. She watched while Uncle Ned scraped the plate clean.
“Did you have enough to eat, Ned?” she asked him, her voice sounding a lot like it did sometimes when she spoke to my old man in front of company. “If you are still hungry, I can fill your plate again.”
“That’s mighty nice of you, Martha,” he said, turning around and gazing at her wistfully, “and I sure do appreciate what you done for me. I’ll always think kindly of you, Martha, no matter what happens. You treated me like one Stroup to another.”
Just then I looked across the yard and saw Handsome get up from the woodpile in a hurry and back away towards the barn. I was still wondering why he had got up and left in such a hurry when Ben Simons, the town marshal, stepped around the corner of the house with his pistol held out in front of him. He was pointing it straight at Uncle Ned.
“Throw up your hands, Ned Stroup!” Ben shouted. “And don’t you dare make a move for your gun. If you do, I swear to God I’ll drop you dead in your tracks. I ain’t taking no chances with you fellows who are always breaking out of the pen.”
Uncle Ned did not say a word while Ben came forward a step at a time and jerked the long-barreled pistol from the belt under his overalls. He kept his hands raised high over his head and made no move to try to get away.
“What does this mean, Ben Simons?” Ma said, coming out on the porch. “What on earth?”
“In case Ned failed to tell you, ma’m,” Ben said, “he broke out of the pen three days ago and the warden asked the peace officers in the state to track him down. I figured Ned might be coming here to see his brother and get something to eat and a change of clothes, and sure enough he swung off the afternoon freight about an hour ago. I’ve been watching him ever since. Now it’s time to be going, Ned.”
Uncle Ned let Ben put the handcuffs on him without a word, and then he stood up. He turned around and looked at me before he started off towards town.
“Son,” he said, “you just keep on remembering what I said about the Stroups. There’s so many of us in the world nowadays that one of us is apt to get out of hand every now and then, but that don’t mean that the rest of the Stroups ain’t the finest people God ever made. You just go ahead and be a good Stroup like I told you.”
“Yes, sir, Uncle Ned,” I said, watching him turn and disappear around the corner of the house while Ben Simons kept a tight grip on his arm. “I’ll remember what you said.”
XIV. My Old Man Hasn’t Been the Same Since
WHEN I GOT UP to eat breakfast, my old man was sitting at the kitchen stove, leaning back on two legs of the chair and eating hot biscuits and sorghum molasses for all he was worth. He had put his plate on the apron in front of the firebox as he always did, because he could sit there with the oven door open and reach inside for a hot biscuit without having to get up. My old man was a fool about hot biscuits and sorghum molasses.
He had his mouth full when I went in, and he didn’t say anything at first. He looked up at me, though, and winked.
“Howdy, Pa,” I said, awfully glad to see him.
He had been away for almost a whole week that time.
He didn’t say anything until he reached into the oven and got another biscuit. He broke it open, spread butter on it, and laid it on the plate, open. Then he picked up the molasses jug from the floor and poured a good cupful of it on the bread.
“How’s your copperosticks, son?” he said, squeezing his fingers around my arm.
“All right,” I said.
He felt my muscles.
I sure was glad to see him.
Ma came in then and set my plate at the kitchen table and helped me to bread and molasses and a little bacon. She did not say a word to anybody during the whole time she was fixing my breakfast for me. She stirred around after that, making a lot of noise and racket with the pots and pans. She was as mad as a wet hen.
Pa sat looking across the kitchen, cocking an eye at her every once in a while, waiting for her to say something. Me and him both knew the best thing to do when she was like that was to just wait her out. It only made things worse if we tried to talk to her until she was ready to be talked to. Pa sat in his chair as meek as a tramp asking for a bite to eat.
When I had almost finished eating, she came and stood at the stove, hands on hips, staring Pa down.
“Where have you been this time, Morris Stroup?” she said, suddenly raising her hand and brushing the hair back from her face.
“Now, Martha,” Pa said, ducking his head to one side when he saw her raise her hand, “I haven’t been anywhere much.”
“Going away from home and staying the-Lord-knows-where four or five days at a time may be your idea of not going anywhere much, but it’s not mine. Where have you been?”
“Now, Martha,” he said, “I just went down the country a little way.”
“Where’s that good-for-nothing rooster of yours?” she asked.
“College Boy’s out in the chicken pen,” he said.
“If I ever get my hands on him,” Ma said, stamping her foot, “I’m going to wring his neck off.”
Pa’s fighting cock, College Boy, was the champion of Merryweather County, Georgia. We had had him for about six months, and when Pa brought him home the first time he said the cock was as smart as people with a college education. That’s why Pa named him College Boy. He might have been the champion of the whole nation if Pa could have taken him to all the mains. But Pa didn’t have any money to ride on the trains with, and we didn’t have an automobile to drive, and the only places Pa could go were the ones he could walk to. That was the reason he had to be away from home so much. It sometimes took him several days to walk where there was going to be a cock fight, because they had to keep changing the places from one part of Merryweather County to another so the sheriff couldn’t catch up with Pa and the other men who owned game cocks and pitted them.
Pa hadn’t answered Ma, because we knew better than to say anything that would sound as if we were taking up for College Boy. Ma hated the cock worse than sin.
“If you don’t think I’m asking too big a favor of you,” Ma said, “go down to Mrs. Taylor’s and get her washing—if you’re not ashamed for people to see you bringing home washing for me to do.”
“Now, Martha,” he said, “you know that’s not a proper thing to say. You know I always like to help out.”
She went to the kitchen door and looked out into the backyard to see how the fire was burning under the washpot.
“William,” she said, turning around to me, “go out in the backyard and throw some more pineknots under that washpot.”
I got up and started outside to do what she told me to do. When I got as far as the door, she turned on Pa again.
“And when you see Mrs. Taylor, Morris Stroup, you can tell her, and everybody else in Sycamore, how I break my back taking in washing while you go tramping around the country with a good-for-nothing rooster under your arm.” She stared Pa down some more. “I’d like to get my fingers around that rooster’s neck—and yours, too—just once!”
“Now, Martha—”
“The Lord only knows what would become of us if I didn’t take in washing,” she said. “You haven’t done an honest day’s work in ten years.”
Pa got up and came out in the yard where I was feeding the fire under the pot. He stood and watched me.
“Son,” he said, lowering his voice so Ma couldn’t hear, “do you know where you can find a handful of corn somewhere for College Boy?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer him, because he knew that I kne
w what to do. He went out the back gate and down the street towards Mrs. Taylor’s house three blocks away. After Ma had gone back into the kitchen, I went to the hen house and got an egg out of a nest and put it into my pocket. I knew exactly what Pa wanted me to do, because he always sent me to Mr. Brown’s grocery at the corner when he needed corn for College Boy.
I took the egg to the store and traded it for a poke of corn just like Pa did when I went along with him. Mr. Brown said he had heard that Pa won three dollars at a cocking down near Nortonsville the day before, and he wanted to know why we were trading an egg for the corn instead of paying some of the money Pa had made. I told him I didn’t know anything about that, because Pa hadn’t said a word about how College Boy did at Nortonsville since he got back. Mr. Brown told me to tell Pa that he wanted a chance to see College Boy in a pit the next time they had one near Sycamore. I went back up the street with the poke of corn in my shirt so Ma wouldn’t see it and take it away from me.
Pa was already back from Mrs. Taylor’s with the washing, and he had come out behind the chicken house to see if I had brought the corn. The chicken house was about a hundred and fifty feet from the backyard where Ma was washing, and we could stay out there and be out of sight. But we had to keep from talking loud, though, or she could hear us.
Pa was squatting on the ground holding College Boy and wiping him off with a damp rag. College Boy had lost quite a lot of feathers, and he was pretty well tired out. His right leg was sore where the skin had rubbed off when a spur worked loose. Pa said for a while he was afraid College Boy wasn’t going to be able to come through, on account of the loose spur, but when he found out he couldn’t do any damage with the right one, he went to work with the left one. Pa said it was the closest call College Boy had had since his first pit fight. He said he was going to let College Boy rest until his leg healed up, because he didn’t want to run any risks.
Pa wiped him down good, and he let me help him. When he finished with the damp rag, he let me hold College Boy in my arms. It was the first time he had ever let me touch the cock, and I asked Pa if I could go along with him the next time he went to a pit fight. Pa said he wanted me to wait until I was older, but he said it wouldn’t be long.
“Your Ma would skin me alive if I took you now,” he said. ‘There’s no telling what she wouldn’t do to you and me both.”
I held College Boy in my arms and he sat there just as if he never wanted to leave. He was a fine-looking cock with bright red feathers on his neck and wings and dull yellow feathers underneath. His comb folded over on the right side of his head like a cow-lick. I had never known how little he was until then. He wasn’t a bit bigger than a medium-sized pullet, but you could tell how strong and quick he was by holding him in your arms. Pa said there wasn’t a finer cockalorum in the whole nation.
I handed him back to Pa, and Pa told me to crack the corn. I got a flat piece of iron and a rock and cracked the corn and Pa scooped it up and held it in his hand for College Boy. He ate it as though it were the best thing in the world, and he acted as if he couldn’t get enough. He ate up the corn as fast as I could crack it.
All the time we were out behind the chicken house, Ma was in the backyard boiling the washing. She was doing Mrs. Taylor’s washing then, but there were six or seven others that she did every week, too. It looked as if she washed every day and ironed all night.
We stayed out there a long time watching College Boy. He had a dust-bed in one corner of the run, and he liked to lie there in the shade and flap dust under his feathers with his wings.
I told Pa I hoped he wasn’t going away again soon, because I wanted him to stay at home and let me help him crack corn and feed College Boy every day. He said he wasn’t going anywhere for a while, anyway, because he thought College Boy needed at least a week’s rest.
We sat there on the ground in the shade a long time until noon. Then Ma called to us to come and eat.
When we had finished, she told Pa she wanted him to carry Mrs. Dolan’s washing to her. Mrs. Dolan lived on the other side of town, and it was a long walk over there and back. I asked Ma if I could go along and help carry the washing, and she said I could.
We took the washing right after we finished eating, and I thought we would get back in time to go out and see College Boy again before it was too dark. But it was late when we came through town on our way back, and Pa said he wanted to stop at the post office and talk to some men for a while. We must have stayed there two or three hours, because when we did get home, it was pitch-dark. Ma heard us on the front porch and she came out and asked Pa for the money he had collected for Mrs. Dolan’s washing. Pa gave her the fifty cents and asked her how long before supper would be ready. She said it would be soon, and so we sat down on the porch.
It felt good to be sitting on the front porch with my old man, because he was away from home so much I never had a chance to be with him very often. My old man lighted a cigar stub he had been saving, and we sat there and he puffed on it in the dark, and the smoke drifted across the porch, smelling good in the night breeze.
“Son,” he said after a while, “as soon as you’ve had your breakfast in the morning, I want you to go down to Brown’s grocery. Get another egg out of the chicken house and take it down and swap it for some more corn. As soon as breakfast is over, I’ll want to feed College Boy. He’s pretty well tuckered out, and I want to feed him well so he’ll get his strength back.”
“All right, Pa,” I told him. “I sure will.”
We sat there in the dark thinking about the cock.
Ma called us in a little while and we went inside and sat down at the supper table. There wasn’t much on the table to eat that night, except a big chicken pie. It was in a big deep pan with a thick brown crust over it, and Pa helped me first, and then Ma. After that he took a big helping for himself.
Ma didn’t have much to say, and Pa was scared to talk. He never started in talking much, anyway, until he was sure of his ground. We sat at the table eating the chicken pie and not saying anything much until the pie was all gone. Pa leaned back and looked at me, and it was easy to see that he thought a lot of Ma’s cooking.
It was as quiet as the inside of a church after the congregation had left.
“Morris,” Ma said, laying her knife and fork in a neat row on her plate, “I hope this will be a lesson to you.”
“Hope what will, Martha?” he said.
She looked down at the way she had laid her knife and fork on the plate, moved them just a little, and then looked him straight in the face.
“I hope you’ll never bring another game rooster to this house as long as you live,” she said. “I had to do something desperate—”
“What?” he said, leaning over the table towards her.
“I made this chicken pie out of the one—”
“College Boy!” Pa said, pushing his chair back a little.
Ma nodded her head.
My old man’s face turned white and his hands dropped down beside him. He opened his mouth to say something, but he made no sound. I don’t know how long it was, but it seemed as though it were half the night before anybody moved after that.
Ma was the first one to say anything.
“It was a harsh thing to do, Morris,” she said, “but something drastic had to be done.”
“That was College Boy, Ma,” I said, “you shouldn’t—”
“Be quiet, William,” she said, turning to me.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Martha,” Pa said, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. “Not to College Boy, anyway. He was—”
He did not say anything more after that. The next thing he did was to turn around and go through the house to the front porch.
I got up and went through the house behind him. It was darker than ever on the porch and I couldn’t see anything at all after being where the light was. I felt on all the chairs for him, but he was not there. The cigar stub he had left on the porch railing when we went inside
to supper was still burning, and it smelled just like my old man. I hurried down the steps and ran down the street trying to catch up with him before it was too late to find him in the dark.
A Biography of Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell (1903–1987) was the author of twenty-five novels, numerous short stories, and a dozen nonfiction titles, most depicting the harsh realities of life in the American South during the Great Depression. His books have sold tens of millions of copies, with God’s Little Acre having sold more than fourteen million copies alone. Caldwell’s sometimes graphic realism and unabashedly political themes earned him the scorn of critics and censors early in his career, though by the end of his life he was acknowledged as a giant of American literature.
Caldwell was born in 1903 in Moreland, Georgia. His father was a traveling preacher, and his mother was a teacher. The Caldwell family lived in a number of Southern states throughout Erskine’s childhood. Caldwell’s tour of the South exposed him to cities and rural areas that would eventually serve as backdrops for his novels and stories. After high school, he briefly attended Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, where he played football but did not earn a degree. He also took classes at the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania. During this time, Caldwell began to develop the political sensibilities that would inform much of his writing. A deep concern for economic and social injustice, also partly influenced by his religious upbringing, would become a hallmark of Caldwell’s writing.
Much of Caldwell’s education came from working. In his twenties he played professional sports for a brief time, and was also a mill worker, cotton picker, and held a number of other blue collar jobs. Caldwell married his college sweetheart and the couple began having children. After the family settled in Maine in 1925, Caldwell began placing stories in magazines, eventually publishing his first story collection after F. Scott Fitzgerald recommended his writing to famed editor Maxwell Perkins.