“No, it’s not there. I’ve looked. You stole it. There jes’ ain’t anybody else who could of. You did it. Where did you put it? Give it back, you got it….give it back!”
“I swear I haven’t got it. I swear it by all the principles I got.”
“You ain’t got no principles. Jake, look me in the eyes and say you hope you get killed if you ain’t got my money.”
Jake turned around. His red hair seemed even redder in the bright morning light, his eyebrows more like thorns. His unshaven chin jutted out, and his yellow teeth showed at the far end of his upturned and twisted mouth.
“I swear that I ain’t got your ten bucks. If I ain’t tellin’ the truth, I hopes that the next time I rides the rail I gets killed.”
“Okay, Jake, I believe you. Only where could my money be? You know I ain’t got it on me. If you ain’t got it, where is it?”
“You ain’t searched the camp yet. Look all ’round. It must be here somewheres. Come on, I’ll help you look. It couldn’ of walked off.”
Tim ran nervously about, repeating: “What if I don’t find it? I can’t go home, I can’t go home lookin’ like this.”
Jake went about the search only half heartedly, his big body bending and looking in the pine needles, in the sack. Tim took off his clothes and stood naked in the middle of the camp, tearing out the seams in his overalls searching for his money.
Near tears, he sat down on a log. “We might as well give it up. It ain’t here. It ain’t nowheres. I can’t go home, and I want to go home. Oh! what will Ma say? Please, Jake, have you got it?”
Damn, you, for the last time NO! The next time you ask me that I’m agoin’ to knock hell out o’ you.”
“Okay, Jake, I guess I’ll just have to bum around with you some more—’till I can get me enough money again to go home on—I can write Ma a card an’ say that they sent me off on a trip already, an’ I can come see her later.”
“I shore ain’t goin’ to have you bummin’ ’round with me anymore. I’m tired of kids like you. You’ll have to go your own way an’ find y’r own pickins.”
Jake mused to himself. “I want the kid to come with me, but I shouldn’. Maybe if I leave him alone, he’ll get wise an’ go home an’ make somethin’ of himself. That’s what he ought to do, go home an’ tell the truth.”
They both sat down on a log. Finally Jake said, “Kid, if you are goin’ you better get started. Come on, get up, it’s about seven already, an’ got to get started.”
Tim picked up his knapsack, and they walked out to the road together. Jake’s big powerful figure looked fatherly beside Tim. It seemed as if he might be protecting a small child. They reached the road and turned to face each other to say goodbye.
Jake looked into Tim’s clear, watery blue eyes. “Well, so long, kid, let’s shake hands an’ part friends.”
Tim extended his tiny hand. Jake wrapped his paw over Tim’s. He gave him a hearty shake—the kid allowed his hand to be moved limply. Jake let go—the kid felt a something in his hand. He opened it, and there lay the ten dollar bill. Jake was hurrying away, and Tim started after him. Perhaps it was just the bright sunlight reflecting on his eyes—and then again—perhaps it really was tears.
Mill Store
The woman gazed out of the back window of the Mill Store, her attention rapt upon the children playing happily in the bright water of the creek. The sky was completely cloudless, and the southern sun was hot on the earth. The woman wiped the sweat off her forehead with a red handkerchief. The water, rushing rapidly over the bright creek bottom pebbles, looked cold and inviting. If those picnickers weren’t down there now, she thought, I swear I’d go and sit in that water and cool myself off. Whew—!
Almost every Saturday people would come from the town on picnic parties and spend the afternoon feasting on the white pebbled shores of Mill Creek, while their children waded in the semi-shallow water. This afternoon, a Saturday late in August, there was a Sunday school picnic in progress. Three elderly women, Sunday school teachers, rushed about the shady spot, anxiously tending their young charges.
The woman, watching from the Mill Store, turned her gaze back into the comparatively dark interior of the store and searched around for a pack of cigarettes. She was a big woman, dark and sunburned. Her black hair was thick but cut short. She was dressed in a cheap calico dress. As she lighted her cigarette she frowned over the smoke. She twisted her mouth and grimaced. That was the only trouble with this damn smoking; it hurt the ulcers in her mouth. She inhaled sharply, the suction easing the stinging sores for the moment.
It must be the water, she thought. I ain’t used to drinkin’ this well water. She had only come to the town three weeks ago, looking for a job. Mr. Benson had given her the job, a chance to work in the Mill Store. She didn’t like it here. It was five miles to the town, and she wasn’t exactly prone to walking. It was too quiet, and at night, when she heard the crickets chirping and the bull frogs croaking their lonely cry, she would get the “jitters.”
She glanced at the cheap alarm clock. It was three-thirty, the loneliest, most interminable hour of the day for her. The store was a stuffy place, smelling of kerosene and fresh cornmeal and stale candies. She leaned back out the window. The August mid-afternoon sun hung hot in the sky.
The store was on a sharp red clay bank that rose straight from the creek. At one side there was a big crumbling mill that no one had used for six or seven years. A rickety, gray wood dam held out the pond waters from the creek which flowed like an opalescent olive ribbon through the woods. The picnickers had to pay a dollar at the store for the use of the grounds and for fishing in the pond above the dam.
One day she had gone fishing at the pond but all she had caught were a couple of skinny, bony cat-fish and two moccasins. How she had screamed when she pulled the snakes up, twisting, flashing their slimy bodies in the sun, their poisonous, cotton mouths sunk into her hook. After the second one, she had dropped her pole and line, rushed back to the store and spent the rest of the humid day consoling herself with movie magazines and a bottle of bourbon.
She thought about it as she looked down at the children splashing in the water. She laughed a little, but just the same she was afraid of the slimy things.
Suddenly a shy young voice behind her said, “Miss—?”
She was startled; she jumped around with a fierce look in her eye. “Ya don’t have to sneak—oh, what d’you want, Kid?”
A little girl pointed to an old fashioned glass show case, filled with cheap candies—jelly beans, gum drops, peppermint sticks, jaw-breakers scattered about the case. As the child pointed to each desired article the woman reached in and threw it in a small, brown paper bag. The woman watched the child intensely as she chose her purchases. She reminded her of someone. It was the child’s eyes. They were bright, like bubbles of blue glass. Such a pale, sky blue. The little girl’s hair dipped in waves almost down to her shoulders. It was fine, honey-colored hair. Her legs and face and arms were dark brown, almost too dark. The woman knew the child must have been out in the sun a great deal. She couldn’t help staring at her.
The little girl looked up from her purchasing and asked shyly, “Is something wrong with me?” She looked around her dress to see if it was torn.
The woman was embarrassed. She looked down quickly and began to roll up the end of the bag. “Why, no—no—not at all.”
“Oh, I thought there was because you was looking at me so funny.” The child seemed reassured.
The woman leaned over the counter as she handed the bag to the little girl and touched her hair. She just had to; it seemed so rich, like sweet yellow butter.
“What’s your name, Kid?” she asked.
The child looked frightened. “Elaine,” she said. She grabbed the bag, laid some hot coins on the counter and hurried quickly out of the store.
“Bye, Elaine,” the woman called, but the little girl was already out of the store and hurrying across the bridge to rejoin her playmates.
That’s a helluva thing, she thought. That kid’s eyes are just like his. Those damned eyes. She sat down in a chair in the corner of the store, took one last drag on the cigarette and crushed it lifeless on the bare floor. She pressed her head into her lap and fell into a hot semi-sleep. God, she thought as she dozed, those eyes and, she moaned, these damned ulcers.
She was awakened by four young boys shaking her shoulders and jumping around the store in a frenzy of excitement. “Wake up,” they yelled. “Wake up.”
She looked at them, bleary-eyed for a moment. Her cheeks were hot all over. The ulcers burned in her mouth. She swept them carelessly with her tongue.
“What’sa matter?” she asked, “What’sa matter?”
“Have
