“All right, all right,” the woman cried. “You, you run up to the place and get a coupla chickens. You women get somebody to start running back to town to get a doctor. Hurry, hurry. We haven’t got a minute to lose.”
“But what can we do now for the child?” one of the women asked.
“I’ll show you,” the woman said.
She knelt down beside the little girl and looked at the wound. The place was swollen big now. Without a moment’s hesitation the woman bent over and sunk her mouth against the wound. She sucked and sucked, letting up every few seconds and spitting out a mouthful of fluid. There were only a few children left and one of the teachers. They stared with horrified fascination and admiration. The child’s face turned the color of chalk and she fainted. The woman spat out mouthfuls of saliva mixed with the poison. Finally she got up and ran to the stream. Rinsing her mouth out with the water, she gurgled furiously.
The children with the chickens arrived. Three big fat hens. The woman grabbed one of them by the legs, and with the aid of a jackknife ripped it open, the hot blood running over everything. “The blood draws what poison there is left, out,” she explained.
When that chicken had turned green she ripped open another and placed it against the child’s wound.
“Come on now,” she said. “Get hold of her and carry her up to the store. We’ll wait there until the doctor comes.
The children ran eagerly forward and with their combined efforts, managed to carry her comfortably. They were crossing the bridge when the school teacher said, “Really, I don’t know how we can ever thank you. It was so, it was—”
The woman pushed her aside and hurried on up the bridge. The ulcers were burning like mad from the poison, and she felt sick all over when she thought of what she had done.
Hilda
“Hilda—Hilda Weber, will you please come here a moment?”
Quickly she went to the front of the room and stood next to Miss Armstrong’s desk.
“Hilda,” Miss Armstrong said quietly, “Mr. York would like to see you after dismissal.”
Hilda stared questioningly for a moment, then she shook her head, her long black hair swinging from side to side and partly covering her pleasant face.
“Are you sure it’s me, Miss Armstrong? I haven’t done anything.” Her voice was frightened but very mature for a sixteen-year-old girl.
Miss Armstrong seemed annoyed. “I can only tell you what this note says.” She handed the tall girl a slip of white paper.
Hilda Weber—office—3:30.
Mr. York, Principal.
Hilda went slowly back to her desk. The sun shone brightly through the window and she blinked her eyes. Why was she being summoned to the office? It was the first time she had ever been called to see the principal, and she had been going to Mount Hope High for almost two years.
II
Somewhere in the back of her mind there was a vague fear. She had a feeling that she knew what it was the principal wanted to see her for—but no, that couldn’t be it—no one knew, no one even suspected. She was Hilda Weber—hard working, studious, shy, and unassuming. No one knew. How could they?
She felt a little comforted. It must be something else that Mr. York wanted to see her about. Perhaps he wanted her to be on the committee for the Prom. She smiled feebly and picked up her big green Latin book.
When the dismissal bell rang, Hilda went directly to Mr. York’s office. She presented the note to the complacent secretary in the outer office. When she was told to go in, she thought her legs were going to crumple beneath her. She shook with nervousness and excitement.
Hilda had seen Mr. York in the school corridors and had heard him speak at school assemblies but she could never remember having actually spoken with him personally. He was a tall man with a thin face topped with a great spray of red hair. His eyes were sea-pale and, at the moment, extremely pleasant.
Hilda came into the small, modestly furnished office with troubled eyes and a pale face.
III
“You are Hilda Weber?” The words were more a statement than a question. Mr. York’s voice was grave and pleasant.
“Yes, Sir, I am.” Hilda was surprised at her own calm voice. Inside she was cold and jittery and her hands clasped her books so tightly that she could feel the warm sweat. There was something terrible and frightening about seeing a principal, but his friendly eyes disarmed her.
“I see by your record here,” he picked up a big yellow card, “that you are an honor student, that you came here from a boarding school in Ohio, and that you are at present a Junior here at Mount Hope High School. Is that correct?” he asked.
She nodded her head and watched him intently.
“Tell me, Hilda, what are you most interested in?”
“In what way, Sir?” She must be on her guard.
“Why, pertaining to a future career in life.” He had picked up a gold key chain from his desk and was twirling it around.
“Well I don’t know, Sir. I thought I would like to be an actress. I’ve always had a great interest in dramatics.” She smiled, and dropped her gaze from his thin face to the whirling blur of chain.
“I see,” he said. “I ask this only because I would like to understand you. It’s quite important that I understand you.” He turned his chair around and sat up straight to the desk. “Yes, quite important.” She noticed that his air of informality had dropped.
IV
She fidgeted with her books nervously. He hadn’t said anything yet to accuse her, but she knew that her face was flushed; she felt very hot all over. Suddenly the closeness of the room was unbearable.
He laid down the chain. He was fixing to speak, she knew because she heard his sharp intake of breath, but she didn’t dare look up at him because she knew what he was going to say.
“Hilda, I suppose you know there has been a great deal of thieving going on here in the girls’ lockers.” He paused a moment. “It’s been going on for some time now—but we haven’t been able to lay our hands on the girl who would steal from her class mates.” He was stern and deliberate. “There is no place in this high school for a thief!” he said earnestly.
Hilda stared down at her books. She could feel her chin trembling and she bit her lips. Mr. York half rose from his seat and then sat down again. They sat in a tense, strained silence. Finally he reached in his desk drawer and pulled out a small blue box and emptied the contents on the desk. Two gold rings, a charm bracelet, and some coins.
“Do you recognize these?” he asked.
She stared at them for a long time. Fully forty-five seconds. They blurred in front of her eyes.
“But I didn’t steal those things, Mr. York, if that’s what you mean!”
V
He sighed. “They were found in your locker, and besides—we’ve had our eye on you for some time!”
“But I didn’t—” she stopped short, it was hopeless.
Finally Mr. York said, “But what I can’t understand is why a child like you would want to do such a thing. You’re bright, and as far as I can find out, you come from a fine family. Frankly, I am completely baffled.”
She still sat silent, fumbling with her books, and feeling as if the walls were close and tight, as if something were trying to smother her.
“Well,” he continued, “if you aren’t going to offer any explanation, I’m afraid there is little I can do for you. Don’t you realize the seriousness of this offense?”
“It’s not that,” she rasped. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you why I stole those things—it’s just that I don’t know how to tell you, because I don’t know myself.” Her slim shoulders shook, she was trembling violently.
He looked at her face—how hard to punish frailty in a child. He was visibly moved, he knew. He walked to the window and adjusted the shade.
The girl got up. She was overcome with a nauseous hate for this office and those bright shining trinkets on the desk. She could hear Mr. York’s voice,
it seemed far and distant.
VI
“This is a very serious matter, I’m afraid I will have to see your parents.”
Her eyes leaped with fear. “You aren’t going to have to tell my—?”
“Of course,” Mr. York answered.
Suddenly she didn’t care anymore about anything except getting out of this little white office with its ugly furnishings and its red-headed occupant and the rings and bracelet and money. She hated them!
“You may go now.”
“Yes, Sir.”
When she left the office, he was occupied with putting the trinkets back in the little blue box. She walked slowly through the outer office and down the long empty corridor and out into the bright sunlight of the April afternoon.
Then, suddenly, she began to run, and she ran faster and faster. Down the high school street, and into the town and down the long main street. She didn’t care if people did stare at her; all she wanted was to get as far away as she could. She ran away to the other side of town and into the park. There were only a few women there with their baby carriages. She collapsed onto one of the empty benches and hugged her aching side. After a while, it stopped hurting. She opened her big green Latin book, and behind its protective covers, began to cry softly, unconsciously fingering the gold key chain in her lap.
Miss Belle Rankin
I was eight the first time I saw Miss Belle Rankin. It was a hot August day. The sun was waning in the scarlet-streaked sky, and the heat was rising dry and vibrant from the earth.
I sat on the steps of the front porch, watching an approaching negress, and wondered how she could ever carry such a huge bundle of laundry on the top of her head. She stopped and in reply to my greeting, laughed, that dark, drawling negro laughter. It was then Miss Belle came walking slowly down the opposite side of the street. The washerwoman saw her, and as if suddenly frightened stopped in the middle of a sentence and moved hurriedly on to her destination.
I stared long and hard at this passing stranger who could cause such odd behavior. She was small and clothed all in black, dusty and streaked—she looked unbelievably old and wrinkled. Thin gray wisps of hair lay across her forehead, wet with perspiration. She walked with her head down and stared at the unpaved sidewalk, almost as if she were looking for something she had lost. An old black and tan hound followed her, moving aimlessly in the traces of his mistress.
I saw her many times afterwards, but that first vision, almost like a dream, will always remain the clearest—Miss Belle, walking soundlessly down the street, little clouds of red dust rising about her feet as she disappeared into the dusk.
A few years later I was sitting in Mr. Joab’s corner drugstore, swigging on one of Mr. Joab’s special milk shakes. I was down at one end of the counter, and up at the other sat two of the town’s well-known drugstore cowboys and a stranger.
This stranger was much more respectable in appearance than the people who usually came into Mr. Joab’s. But it was what he was saying in a slow, husky voice, that caught my attention.
“Do you boys know anybody around here with some nice Japonica trees for sale? I’m collecting some for an Eastern woman building a place over in Natchez.”
The two boys looked at one another, and then one of them, who was fat with huge eyes and fond of taunting me, said, “Well, I tell you, Mister, the only person I know of around here that has some real purty ones is a queer old doll, Miss Belle Rankin—she lives about a half mile out from here in a right weird lookin’ place. It’s old and run down, built sometime before the Civil War. Mighty queer, though, but if Japonicas is what you’re lookin’ for, she’s got the nicest I ever peeked at.”
“Yeah,” piped up the other boy, who was blond and pimply, and the fat boy’s stooge. “She oughta sell them to you. From what I hear she’s starvin’ to death out there—ain’t got nothin’ ’cept an old nigger that lives on the place and hoes around in a weed patch they call the garden. Why, the other day I hear, she walked into the Jitney Jungle market and went around pickin’ out the old spoiled vegetables and makin’ Olie Peterson give ’em to her. Queerest lookin’ witch you ever seen—looks like she might be a hunnerd in the shade. The niggers are so scared of her—”
But the stranger interrupted the boy’s torrent of information and asked, “Well then, you think she might sell?”
“Sure,” said the fat boy, with the smirk of certain knowledge on his face.
The man thanked them and started to walk out, then suddenly turned around and said, “How would you boys like to ride out there and show me where it is? I’ll bring you back afterwards.”
The two loafers quickly assented. That kind was always anxious to be seen in cars, especially with strangers; it made it seem like they had connections, and, anyway, there were the inevitable cigarettes.
—
It was about a week later when I went into Mr. Joab’s again that I heard how it turned out.
The fat one was narrating with much fervor to an audience consisting of Mr. Joab and myself. The more he talked the louder and more dramatic he became.
“I tell you that old witch should be run out of town. She’s crazy as a loon. First of all, when we get out there she tries to run us off the place. Then she sends that queer old hound of hers after us. I’ll bet that thing’s older than she is. Well, anyway, the mutt tried to take a hunk out of me, so I kicked him right square in the teeth—then she starts an awful howl. Finally that old nigger of hers gets her quieted down enough so that we can talk to her. Mr. Ferguson, that was the stranger, explained how he wanted to buy her flowers, you know those old Japonica trees. She says she never heard of such goin’s on; besides, she wouldn’t sell any of her trees because she liked them better than anything else she had. Now, wait till you catch this—Mr. Ferguson offered her two hundred dollars just for one of those trees. Can you tie that—two hundred bucks! That old goat told him to get off the place—so, finally we saw that it was hopeless, so we left. Mr. Ferguson was purty disappointed, too; he was really countin’ on getting them trees. He said they were some of the finest he had ever seen.”
He leaned back and took a deep breath, exhausted by his long recital.
“Damn,” he said, “what does anybody want with those old trees and at two hundred berries a throw? That ain’t corn.”
When I left Mr. Joab’s, I thought about Miss Belle all the way home. I had often wondered about her. She seemed too old to be alive—it must be terrible to be that old. I could not see why she wanted the Japonicas so badly. They were beautiful, but if she was so poor—well, I was young, and she was very old with little left in life. I was so young that I never thought that I would ever be old, that I could ever die.
—
It was the first of February. Dawn had broken dull and gray with streaks of pearl-white across the sky. Outside, it was cold and still with intermittent gusts of hungry wind eating at the gray, leafless limbs of the huge trees surrounding the decaying ruins of the once majestic “Rose Lawn,” where Miss Rankin lived.
The room was cold when she awoke and long tears of ice hung on the eaves of the roof. She shuddered a little as she looked about at the drabness. With an effort she slipped from beneath the gay colored scrap quilt.
Kneeling at the fireplace, she lit the dead branches that Len had gathered the day before. Her small hand, shrunken and yellow, fought with the match and the scraped surface of the limestone block.
After awhile the fire caught; there was the cracking of the wood and the rush of leaping flames, like the rattle of bones. She stood for a moment by the warm blaze and then moved uncertainly towards the frozen wash basin.
When she was dressed, she went to the window. It was beginning to snow, the thin watery snow that falls in a Southern winter. It melted as soon as it hit the ground, but Miss Belle, thinking of her long walk to town that day for food, felt a little dizzy and ill. Then she gasped, for she saw down below that the Japonicas were blooming; they were more beautiful than she had ever
seen them. The vivid red petals were frozen and still.
Once, she could remember, years ago when Lillie was a little girl, she had picked huge baskets of them, and filled the lofty, empty rooms of Rose Lawn with their subtle fragrance and Lillie had stolen them and given them away to the negro children. How mad she had been! But now she smiled as she remembered. It had been at least twelve years since she had seen Lillie.
Poor Lillie, she’s an old woman herself now. I was just nineteen when she was born and I was young and pretty. Jed used to say I was the most beautiful girl he had ever known—but that was so long ago. I can’t remember exactly when I started being like this. I can’t remember when I was first poor—when I started getting old. I guess it was after Jed went away—I wonder what ever happened to him. He just up and said to me that I was ugly and worn and he left, left me all alone except for Lillie—and Lillie was no good—no good—
She put her hands over her face. It still hurt to remember, and yet, almost every day she remembered these same things and sometimes it drove her mad and she would yell and scream, like the time the man came with those two jeering oafs, and wanted to buy her Japonicas; she would not sell them, never. But she was afraid of the man; she was afraid he would steal them and what could she do—people would laugh. And that was why she had screamed at them; that was why she hated them all.
Len came into the room. He was a small negro, old and stooped, with a scar across his forehead.
“Miss Belle,” he asked in a wheezy voice, “were you gwine to town? I wouldn’t go if I was you, Miss Belle. It’s mighty nasty out there today.” When he spoke, a gust of smoky steam came out of his mouth into the cold air.
“Yes, Len, I have to go to town today. I’m goin’ in a little while; I want to be back before it’s dark.”
Outside, the smoke from the ancient chimney rose in lazy curling clouds and hung above the house in a blue fog, as if it were frozen—then was whirled away in a gust of bitter wind!