Read Stories of Erskine Caldwell for Free Online

policeman put away his gun. Candy-Man tried to get up so he could be getting on down the road. That yellow gal of his was waiting for him at her door, straining on the tips of her toes.
    “White-boss, I sure am sorry you had to go and shoot me down. I never bothered white-folks, and they sure oughtn’t bother me. But there ain’t much use in living if that’s the way it’s going to be. I reckon I’ll just have to blow out the light and fade away. Just reach me a blanket so I can cover my skin and bones.”
    “Shut up, nigger,” the white-boss said. “If you keep on talking with that big mouth of yours, I’ll just have to pull out my gun again and hurry you on.”
    The people drew back to where they wouldn’t be standing too close. The night policeman put his hand on the butt of his gun, where it would be handy, in case.
    “If that’s the way it’s to be, then make way for Candy-Man Beechum, because here I come.”
    (First published in Kneel to the Rising Sun )

Saturday Afternoon
    T OM D ENNY SHOVED the hunk of meat out of his way and stretched out on the meat block. He wanted to lie on his back and rest. The meat block was the only comfortable place in the butcher shop where a man could stretch out and Tom just had to rest every once in a while. He could prop his foot on the edge of the block, swing the other leg across his knee and be fairly comfortable with a hunk of rump steak under his head. The meat was nice and cool just after it came from the icehouse. Tom did that. He wanted to rest himself a while and he had to be comfortable on the meat block. He kicked off his shoes so he could wiggle his toes.
    Tom’s butcher shop did not have a very pleasant smell. Strangers who went in to buy Tom’s meat for the first time were always asking him what it was that had died between the walls. The smell got worse and worse year after year.
    Tom bit off a chew of tobacco and made himself comfortable on the meat block.
    There was a swarm of flies buzzing around the place; those lazy, stinging, fat and greasy flies that lived in Tom’s butcher shop. A screen door at the front kept out some of them that tried to get inside, but if they were used to coming in and filling up on the fresh blood on the meat block they knew how to fly around to the back door where there had never been a screen.
    Everybody ate Tom’s meat, and liked it. There was no other butcher shop in town. You walked in and said, “Hello, Tom. How’s everything today?” “Everything’s slick as a whistle with me, but my old woman’s got the chills and fever again.” Then after Tom had finished telling how it felt to have chills and fever, you said, “I want a pound of pork chops, Tom.” And Tom said, “By gosh, I’ll git it for you right away.” While you stood around waiting for the chops Tom turned the hunk of beef over two or three times businesslike and hacked off a pound of pork for you. If you wanted veal it was all the same to Tom. He slammed the hunk of beef around several times making a great to-do, and got the veal for you. He pleased everybody. Ask Tom for any kind of meat you could name, and Tom had it right there on the meat block waiting to be cut off and weighed.
    Tom brushed the flies off his face and took a little snooze. It was midday. The country people had not yet got to town. It was laying-by season and everybody was working right up to twelve o’clock sun time, which was half an hour slower than railroad time. There was hardly anybody in town at this time of day, even though it was Saturday. All the town people who had wanted some of Tom’s meat for Saturday dinner had already got what they needed, and it was too early in the day to buy Sunday meat. The best time of day to get meat from Tom if it was to be kept over until Sunday was about ten o’clock Saturday night. Then you could take it home and be fairly certain that it would not turn bad before noon the next day — if the weather was not too hot.
    The flies