Place Called Estherville (13 page)

Kathyanne got up, shaking her head. While she waited before him, she could see his face harden with anger.

“Is that what you want to do—turn me down?”

She nodded.

“Too dumb to know when you’re well off, ain’t you?”

“Dumb—and too good for you.”

Will jumped up, knocking over the wooden crate. “I’ll learn you!” He drew back his fist and hit her.

She fell on the floor. Before she could move, he kicked her with the heel of his shoe. After that she was blinded by the bright beam of light in her eyes.

“Some day you’re going to get paid back for mistreating people the way you do,” she told him.

“I never could stand to be turned down cold by a nigger wench,” he was saying angrily. “I wish I’d let those white boys stay and rough you up like they wanted to. I’m sorry now I chased them off. Five of them would’ve roughed you up good and plenty. You goddam stuck-up nigger wenches never have learned to appreciate what a white man can do for you. Just let some flashy buck nigger come along and you’ll bust your buttons for him. But let some white man, who can do something for you, come along, and you get goody-goody all of a sudden. Looks like there’s no known way to get sense through a thick nigger skull. That’s one reason I never could like a nigger—you can’t learn them nothing.”

“One of these days somebody’s going to shoot you, Mr. Hanford, and I’ll be one of those who’s glad to hear about it.”

Catching her arm in a tight grasp, he jerked her to her feet. “Come on to the jailhouse, nigger. Maybe next time you get a chance to play ball with a white man you’ll have some sense in that nigger head of yours. Maybe you’ll listen next time. When you stand up in court tomorrow morning, you’re going to get the book thrown at you. I’ll see to that, unless some white man comes along and wants to make a deal with me. No stuck-up nigger wench’s going to turn me down cold like you done and get away with it. I’ll make you sorry. Come on!”

He pushed her forward toward the door and she went stumbling helplessly into the alley. When Will caught up with her, he gave another shove and took out his pistol to have it handy in case he wanted to use it.

G
ANUS WAS STRETCHED OUT
on the wooden bench drowsing in the shade of the awning when Harry Daitch came out of the store and shook him awake. It was a sultry August midafternoon, and ordinarily, there were no grocery orders to deliver at that time of day. Most of the housewives in town did their marketing in the early morning hours, especially during the hot summer months; and, since deliveries were usually completed by noon, Ganus, as a rule, was more than apt to find an opportunity to drowse for an hour or two between dinner-time and five o’clock. The hour from five to six, week in and week out, was the busiest time of day at Daitch’s Market, not that the dollar volume or the stock turnover was large then, as actually both were meager, but it was due to the great variety of small everyday household necessities that had been overlooked in the rush and turmoil of morning shopping. This was the time of day when people phoned Harry at the last minute and asked him please to hurry and send Ganus with a loaf of light bread or a bottle of catchup in time for supper. As most families in Estherville ate supper at six or six-thirty, Harry did his best to please his customers by promising that Ganus would get the bread or the catchup to them by the time they sat down at the table. It was not unusual to see Ganus Bazemore pedaling his bicycle at breakneck speed through the streets between five and six o’clock with a bottle of catchup bouncing around in the wire basket on the handlebar and trying to get to the Hunnicuts’ or to the Barksdales’ house in time for them to pour it on  the calf’s liver or the sausage cakes. Some families, such as the Watsons and the Crawfords, liked to spread catchup on their sliced bread before eating a bite of anything else and, if Ganus were late, they were the ones who became the most enraged, threatening to take their trade elsewhere if Harry Daitch ever let it happen again.

Sleepy-headed and with dragging feet, Ganus got up and followed Harry into the store. He stood at the counter beside the cash register rubbing his eyes and yawning while Harry wrapped up the order he had just taken over the telephone, and entered it in the charge-book.

Harry shoved the package across the counter to Ganus.

“Mrs. Vernice Weathersbee wants this loaf of bread and pack of Luckies delivered right away, Ganus. Don’t stop along the street and talk to somebody and forget where to take it, either. She’s in a big hurry, so don’t keep her waiting. I don’t want her to phone back in half an hour and complain that you haven’t even got there yet. You know where she lives up there on Cypress Street in that little yellow bungalow with the green trim. You’ve delivered to her lots of times. Now don’t get all balled up and make a mistake and leave her order at the wrong house. If you’d stop that napping every afternoon, you wouldn’t get so woozy. Now, get yourself wide awake before you leave here so you’ll know where you’re going and what you’re supposed to do.”

Ganus’ mouth had fallen open. His eyes were large and white. “Who—who—who did you say take it to, Mr. Harry?” he asked, coming fully awake at the realization that he had heard Vernice Weathersbee’s name spoken. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Harry—it couldn’t happen to be somebody else, could it, Mr. Harry?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?” Harry said. “I talked to her myself on the phone less than five minutes ago.”

Ganus’ head was bobbing around loosely on his neck. “You don’t mean that white lady up there in that little old yellow bungalow with the fig tree in the backyard—do you, Mr. Harry?”

“How would I know if she’s got a fig tree in her backyard, or up her chimney?” Harry said, becoming provoked. “I don’t snoop around my customers’ backyards to see what kind of trees they’ve got. I’m talking about Mrs. Vernice Weathersbee. The grass widow up there in Cypress Street. You know who I’m talking about. You made a delivery to her the first part of the week.”

Ganus drew a long deep breath. “Yes, sir,” he admitted with a dismal sigh. “I reckon I do know, Mr. Harry.”

“And she said tell you to bring the things in the house and put them on the kitchen table like you used to. She said the last time you dropped everything on the back steps and ran off. Now, I don’t want that to happen again. You hear, Ganus? You knock on her back door and go on in the kitchen like you ought to. Mrs. Weathersbee’s a good buying customer and pays her bills fairly on time—at any rate, she pays a hell of a lot sooner than some folks I could name. I don’t want her taking her trade somewhere else.”

With a fearsome feeling darting through his stomach, Ganus reluctantly picked up the package containing the bread and cigarettes as though it were the last thing on earth he wanted to touch. His lips moved wordlessly several times.

“What’s the matter now?” Harry asked him.

“Mr. Harry,” he said apprehensively, “you don’t happen to know offhand about somebody else who might just accidentally happen to be going up that way past that white lady’s house and might could do us a real big favor and leave off the groceries for her, do you?”

Harry had started to the stock room in the rear of the store. When he heard Ganus, he turned around with a puzzled look. He stood there tugging nervously at his left earlobe.

“What was that, Ganus?” he asked, looking still more puzzled.

Swallowing first, and then in halting speech, Ganus said, “I—I—I thought somebody else—he might could leave them off at her house—if it was all right with you, Mr. Harry. I sure would be mighty much obliged.”

Harry came striding all the way back to the counter.

“Ganus, do you want to quit your job—is that what all this beating around the bush is about?”

“No, sir, Mr. Harry!” Ganus was quick to assure him. “I wouldn’t go and do a downright foolish thing like that. I want to hold on to this job, Mr. Harry. It’s the finest job I ever had in all my life. I wouldn’t let it get away from me for anything in the world. No, sir, Mr. Harry!”

“Then what’s all this talk about not wanting to deliver Mrs. Weathersbee’s order?”

Seeing Harry’s unsympathetic attitude, Ganus began to worry. He was sorry now that he had allowed himself to say anything at all about  Vernice Weathersbee’s order. He clutched the package tightly in both arms as though afraid Harry would snatch it from him and hire another boy to make deliveries. He hastily backed toward the door with it. Harry followed him as far as the middle of the store.

“Now, look here, Ganus—” Harry began threateningly.

“Mr. Harry, I didn’t mean to say anything like that,” he pleaded, his voice rising to a high pitch and quavering with anxiety. “My tongue got slipped up somehow or other, it looks like. I want to hustle these groceries straightway up there to the white lady’s house just like you said. Anytime you want to send something up there, all you have to do is just mention it to me, and I’ll hustle it up there and put it smack-dab on the kitchen table just like you said. Please, sir, don’t go and hire another boy and take away my fine job. I’m always going to do exactly like you tell me every time. Don’t you worry, Mr. Harry. Don’t you worry one whit.”

“You’re the one who’d better start worrying, if I ever hear you talk like that again,” Harry warned him. “There’s plenty of other good boys who want this job. You’d better remember that, Ganus. If you don’t keep on your toes, and watch your talk, you’ll find yourself out of a job so quick it’ll make you dizzy. I’m not fooling, neither.”

Ganus ran out of the store and jumped on his bicycle. He pedaled furiously up Peachtree Street and, cutting the corner recklessly, went down Cypress Street as fast as he could toward the yellow clapboarded bungalow in the middle of the block. It was a small four-room dwelling with a weather-warped shingle roof. Volunteer grass and a rank growth of knee-high weeds covered the untended front yard. Powdery plow-dust drifting in from the country fields had settled on the front porch and blowing rain had hardened it into a reddish crust on the railings and floor. Plantings of camellias and blue iris were struggling valiantly to survive without care. Ganus was out of breath when he rode into the backyard and leaned his bicycle against the fig tree at the bottom of the kitchen steps.

The screen-door was unlatched. He opened it noiselessly and glanced cautiously around the kitchen before going any farther. There was no one within sight, and he tiptoed silently to the kitchen table and carefully laid the package down. After listening for a moment, and still not hearing any sound in the house, he tiptoed back to the door where, acting against his judgment, but remembering Harry’s warning, he knocked lightly one time. Almost instantly there was a stir and a commotion in the adjoining room. While he held his breath, Vernice Weathersbee ran into the kitchen. She was at the screen-door before he could open it and get away. He dared not look directly at her, clearly recalling how she had looked the last time he saw her. The kitchen felt stifling hot, and he pressed his face against the screen and panted for fresh air.

“Oh, it’s you, isn’t it, Ganus?” he heard her saying behind him. He pushed against the screen until his nose felt flattened against his face. “Now, don’t go away, Ganus,” she called out. “I want to be sure you brought everything I ordered from Mr. Daitch.”

Vernice was standing at the table tearing the wrapping paper from the bread and Luckies when he turned around. As he had feared from the beginning, she was wearing only part of a pair of pajamas. She was dressed in the same manner she had been the time he dropped the groceries on the back steps and rode off on his bicycle as fast as he could. She was wearing a pale blue butcherboy pajama jacket with a ruffled yoke and sweetheart neckline and a pair of one-strap high-heeled house slippers. Vernice was blond and tall and in her late twenties. She was far from being strikingly beautiful at first sight, but her features were softly feminine and she did have a slender attractive figure and long well-proportioned legs. She had left the house infrequently that summer, except for going to the post office once a week, but when she did go downtown, her colorful dresses and large hats always attracted attention on the streets. The remainder of the time, wearing a short pajama jacket and slippers, she stayed at home and listened to music on the radio, hour after hour. She had been married to Mike Weathersbee, a dentist, for five years. Mike divorced her when he found out that she had entertained an itinerant sewing-machine salesman during the whole time he was attending a dental clinic in Atlanta, and he moved away to Savannah to start life anew. He had been sending her small weekly alimony payments for the past year, and the money she received from him enabled her to pay the rent and make out a living. She was an orphan and had no known relatives. Vernice had hoped to remarry within a few months after the divorce, but Fred Finley, who had courted her for nearly a month with intentions of marriage, suddenly left town one morning without telling anybody where he was going. When that happened, the neighbors, who were the first to talk, said she had got Fred reeling drunk and hid his clothes and then had tried to make him promise to marry her right away, but that Fred had sobered up in time to realize what was happening and ran down the street wrapped in a red plaid tablecloth. Nothing had been heard from Fred since, except that he had written to the postmaster and asked to have his mail forwarded to general delivery in Birmingham. When Vernice felt discouraged about life, she told herself that she could always go to work in Macon or Augusta as a beauty culturist, which had been her trade when she married Mike Weathersbee, but so far she had stubbornly refused to give up hope of marrying somebody who would support her. She had spent a lonely, miserable summer, nobody having dated her for the past two months, but she hoped the coming of cooler autumn weather would soon bring a change in her fortunes. So far she had endured the loneliness of the hot summer afternoons and evenings by drinking bourbon-and-coke in the parlor and then going to bed to listen to the radio before finally crying herself to sleep. Her closest neighbor, Milton Wheat, who managed a soft-drink bottling plant, frequently heard her sobbing after he went to bed at night and several times he thought of going next door to try to comfort her. But Mrs. Wheat was unsympathetic. She refused to let Milton leave the house after dark unless he promised each time not to go anywhere near Vernice.