O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Various

V >> Various >> O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921

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They sat opposite each other, in as matter-of-fact fashion as if they
had been married for years. They were young and exceedingly hungry,
and hunger destroys self-consciousness.

The china was very old--white plates with a curving pattern of blue
leaves and yellow berries. The knives and forks were polished steel
with horn handles. The spoons were silver; old handmade rat-tail
spoons they were, with the mark of the smith's mallet still upon them
and the initials W.D. cut in uneven letters.

"Those were my great-granddad's," said Wesley. "Same name as mine. He
had 'em made out of silver money by a man down in Frederick. They must
be nearly a hundred years old. My great-granddad, he was the man that
bought this land and began to clear it. He wanted to be away off from
everybody."

"Why?" asked Annie, interested in the story.

The vein on Wesley's forehead seemed to grow larger and darker as he
answered:

"Oh, he got into trouble--knocked a man down, and the fellow struck
his head on a stone and died. It didn't come to trial--it really was
an accident--but it didn't make granddad popular. Not that he cared.
He was a hard-headed, hard-fisted old son of a gun, if there ever was
one, according to the stories they tell about him."

"What were they fighting about?"

"Oh, I dunno--granddad was high-tempered, and this fellow was sort of
smart Aleck; give him some lip about something and dared him to touch
him. And quick's a wink granddad punched him. At least that's the way
I always heard it. Prob'ly they'd both been taking too much hard
cider. Bring me another dumplin', Aunt Dolcey, please."

As the old woman entered, bringing the dumpling, Annie fancied there
were both warning and sympathy in her eyes. Why, she couldn't imagine.
In a moment she forgot it, for Wesley was looking at her hard.

"It's funny," he said, "to think I only saw you yesterday, and that we
got married this morning. Seems as if you'd been here for years and
years. Does it seem awful strange to you, honey?"

"No," said Annie. "No, it doesn't. It is queer, but all the way here,
and when I come into the house, I had a sense of having been here
before sometime; kind of as if it was my home all along and I hadn't
known about it."

"So it was--and if I hadn't ever met you I'd been an old bach all my
life."

"Yes, you would."

"Yes, I wouldn't."

They were both laughing now. He got up and stretched himself.

"Well, Mrs. Dean," he said, "I gotta go out and fix my disker, and you
gotta come along. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You might
fly off somewhere, and I'd never find you again."

"Don't you worry about that. You couldn't lose me if you tried."

They went through the kitchen, and there a tall gaunt old coloured man
rose and bowed respectfully. He and Aunt Dolcey were having their own
dinner at the kitchen table.

"This here's Unc' Zenas," said Wesley. "He's Aunt Dolcey's husband,
and helps me on the place."

And again Annie saw, this time in the old man's eyes, the flicker of
sympathy and apprehension that she had marked in Aunt Dolcey's.

"And right glad to welcome y', Missy," said Unc' Zenas. "We didn'
'spect Marse Wes to bring home a wife whenas he lef', but that ain' no
sign that it ain' a mighty fine thing."

They went out into the mellow spring day. Wesley Dean, now in his blue
overalls and working shirt, became a king in his own domain, a part of
the fair primitiveness about them. It was as if he had sprung from
this dark fertile soil, was made of its elements, at one with it. Here
he belonged, and the very spring of the earth beneath his feet was
repeated in the measured beating of his blood. The land could not warp
or break him, as it does so many, for he belonged to it as essentially
and as completely as it belonged to him. Dimly the little town girl
beside him felt this, and dimly she hoped that she, too, might prove
to be of the same mould.

"Look at the barn, and the stables, and the corncrib," he was saying.
"See how they're all built? Hand-hewn logs chinked with plaster.
Great-granddad built them all, helped by his two slaves. That's all
the slaves he had, just two and one of 'em was Unc' Zenas's
grandfather. Everything's strong and sound as the day he finished it."

"That one looks newer," said Annie, pointing.

Wesley looked a little shamefaced, as does every typical Anglo-Saxon
discovered in sentiment.

"I built that," he confessed. "It's a chicken house. Somehow I didn't
want to go down to the sawmill and get planks and build with 'em
'mongst all these old log things. So I got the logs out in the woods
and build same as great-granddad. Maybe it was foolish, but I couldn't
help it."

"It wasn't foolish; it was nice," she affirmed.

She perched on the tongue of a wagon while he mended the disker,
dividing her attention between him and the live things of the
barnyard. A string of decorative white ducks marched in single file
about the edge of the cow pound. Beyond them a proud red-wattled cock
paraded and purred among his harem of trim hens, now and then
disturbed in his dignity by the darting nervousness of a pair of
malicious guineas, acknowledged brigands of the feathered tribes. Trim
iridescent pigeons toddled about on their coral feet, looking for
leftovers from the chickens' table.

"Say, Wes, I should think you'd have a dog," she said suddenly. "A
nice big dog lazying round here would sort of complete it."

He bent suddenly over his disker and gave the nut he was working on a
mighty twist, but he had tossed aside his hat, and she could see the
sudden jump and darkening of his menacing vein.

"I had a dog," he said in a low voice, "but he died."

A curious restraint fell on them, and for the first time Annie felt
herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores.
She shivered in the light wind.

"You cold? You better go in the house and get something round you,"
Wes said to her.

"I guess I'd better." And she left him hammering.

In the house she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living
room. She had just finished remaking the bed--an old maple
four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful
against the white quilt, the lace-edged pillow slips.

"I put on clean sheets," said Aunt Dolcey as Annie hesitated on the
threshold. "Yes'm, I put on everything clean, an' the bes'. I know
what's fitten. My chile, dish yer de third bridal bed I made up for
wives of de Dean men."

Something caught in Annie's throat, terrified her. This old black
woman, with her remoteness, her pitying wise eyes, what did she mean?
Annie wanted terribly to ask her. But how begin? How get through this
wall of inscrutability which the black and yellow races have raised
for their protection?

She fluttered nearer to the old woman.

"Look," she began tremulously--"look--it's all right, isn't it, my
marrying him so quick? I haven't got any folks, and--and I suppose I
haven't got much sense; but there was something about him that just
made me trust him and--and want him. But it was all so quick, and--now
I'm here it seems like maybe--there was--something----Oh, you'd tell
me, wouldn't you? It is all right, isn't it?"

The old woman considered. "It's all right ef you're all right," she
pronounced at length.

"But--but what do you mean? And--and look here--Aunt Dolcey--tell
me--what'd he do to that dog he had?"

"What you know 'bout any dog?"

"I don't know--anything; but when I asked him why he didn't have a
dog--he was queer. It scared me."

"Doan be skeered. They ain' nuffin' to be skeered of 'bout Marse Wes.
Eve'ything all right ef you got patience, an' ef you got sense, an' ef
you got haht enough. Sperrit an' sense go far, but the haht gwine
carry you froo. Now I said my say"--her tone mellowed into unctuous
kindness--"what you want, Missy? Som'n Aun' Dolcey c'n fotch you?
Temme what it is, f'r I got to be up an' erbout my wuk. I got er
weddin' cake to mek yit this ebenin'. Yes, ma'am--I gwi' mek you
weddin' cake fill de bigges' pan in de kitchen."

She helped Annie rummage in her trunk and get out the sweater she had
come in for, and it was not until the girl was running back to the
barns that she realized Aunt Dolcey had not answered her question. But
the old woman's words had steadied her, reassured her.

And Wes received her gayly. His repairs were done, his team in
harness, ready to start.

"It's a shame," he said. "We ought to go off down to town and play
round and have a big time, but I'm so behind with my disking, Annie,
honey. You see I had to stay over a day in Baltimore. Fact. Important
business." He winked at her jocosely. "So I've got to work rest of the
day. That's what comes of marrying a farmer. Farm work don't even wait
on a bride, not even the prettiest bride in the world."

He stooped to kiss her, and she held tight to his arm.

"I don't mind. You go on about your business and I'll get all unpacked
and settled. But don't be late to supper--Aunt Dolcey's making us a
wedding cake."

She watched him as he drove down the lane and turned into the field
and steadied the first straining rush of his team. Again she felt her
abandonment, her utter forlornity, her distance from everything she
had known and been accustomed to. But once more she proved herself an
adventurer and a philosopher.

Shrugging her shoulders, she turned back to the house.

"It may be a funny way to get married; but everything's all right
until it stops being all right, and--and I like it here."

* * * * *

She had been married a week now, and the week had been the fairest of
fair weather, indoors as well as out. Now she sat at the clumsy old
secretary desk to write a letter to Miss Tolman.

... For all you said, and hought I was crazy, I am just as happy as I
can be. Wes is kind and full of fun, and he works very hard. This farm
is a pretty place, and the house is ten times as big as your shop. I
am learning to cook and churn butter, and Aunt Dolcey, the old
coloured woman, teaches me and doesn't laugh when I am dumb. She says,
and Wes does, too, that I am a born farmer's wife, and I think maybe I
am, for I like it in the country more than I ever thought I'd like any
place, and I don't get a bit lonely. You ought to see our wheat--it's
like green satin, only prettier.

I hope the rheumatism in your hands is better, and that you have got
somebody good in my place. Cousin Lorena, I am a very lucky girl to
fall in love with such a nice man, with a piece of property and a
flivver, even if it is an old one; but better than all that he has is
Wes himself, for you never saw a better, kinder man. He is not rough
and does not chew tobacco as you thought maybe he did, only smokes a
pipe once in a while. I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he
said it was the best he ever tasted. He says I must not do anything
that is too hard for me, but I am going to drop seed corn. We have
been down to town once, and went to the movies and bought some candy,
and he wanted to buy me a new hat, but I wouldn't let him. He is so
kind....

* * * * *

She had written in a glow of happiness, trying to tell everything and
finding it hard to get it into words that would allay Cousin Lorena's
forebodings and impress her properly. Annie frowned at the paper. How
inform a bilious, middle-aged prophet of evil that she had not only
wedded prosperity and industry but also a glorious young demigod whose
tenderness and goodness passed belief?

Suddenly she heard a voice, loud, angry, incoherent. She dropped the
pen and ran out to the kitchen door.

Wes stood there, confronting Uncle Zenas--a Wes she had never dreamed
could exist. The vein on his forehead was black and swollen; indeed
his whole face was distorted with rage.

"You damned old liar--don't you tell me again you put that pitchfork
away when I found it myself in the stable behind the mare's stall.
Pretty business if she'd knocked it down and run one of the tines into
her."

"Marse Wes, you haddat pitchfo'k dere yo'se'f dis mawnin'; I ain't
nevah touch dat pitchfo'k." Unc' Zenas's voice was low and even.

Behind Wes's back Aunt Dolcey made signs to her husband for silence.

"I tell you you're a liar, and by rights I ought to cut your lying
tongue out of your head! I haven't even seen that pitchfork for three
days, and when I went to look for it just now I found it in the stable
where you'd had it cleaning out the stalls. Now shut up and get out
about your work! Don't let me hear another word out of you!"

Unc' Zenas turned away and Wes, without a word or look at the two
women, strode after him. Annie, shaken, caught Aunt Dolcey's arm.

"Oh, Aunt Dolcey," she breathed, "what on earth was the matter?"

Aunt Dolcey drew her into the kitchen.

"Nuffin' but Marse Wes flyin' int' one his bad Dean temper fits,
honey," said the old woman "No use to min' him. No use payin' any
'tention. Dat why I waggle my head at Zenas to say nuffin' back. Talk
back to Marse Wes when he's high-flyin' on'y meks things worse."

Annie beheld an abyss yawning beneath her feet.

"Yes, but, Aunt Dolcey--what's the sense in talking that way? It
wasn't anything, just a pitchfork out of place. And he went on so. And
he looked so dreadful."

Aunt Dolcey rattled her pans.

"I been dreadin' dis moment, whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his
anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong
he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k--I seed Marse
Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while
he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike
some-buddy--but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at
oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean
fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just got to
stan' it."

"But does he--does he get over it quick?"

The old negress shook her head.

"He'll be mighty quiet come suppeh-time, not talkin' much, lookin'
dahk. Walk light, an' don't say nuffin' rile him up, eve'ything all
right. T'-morrow mawnin' come, he's outer it." Her voice rose into a
minor cadence, almost a chant. "Chile, it's a dahk shadder on all de
Deans--dey all mahked wid dat frown on deir foreheads, an' dey all got
dahk hours come to um. Marse Wes's maw she fade out an' die caze she
cain' stan' no such. His grammaw, she leave his grampaw. An' so on
back. Ontell some ooman marry a Dean who kin chase dat debbil outer
him, jes so long de Dean men lib in de shadder. I tole you, ain' I, de
day you come, sperrit an' sense carry you fur, but it's de haht gwine
carry you froo. Now you un'stan'."

Yes, Annie understood, imperfectly. So might Red Riding Hood have
understood when the wolf suddenly appeared beside her peaceful
pathway. She asked one more question, "Does he get mad often?" and
waited, trembling, for the answer.

Aunt Dolcey stuck out her underlip. "Sometime he do, en den again,
sometime he doan'. Mos' giner'ly he do."

Annie walked back to her letter, and looked at its last phrase. She
picked up the pen, but did not write.

Then with a quick intake of breath she took her first conscious step
in the path of loyal wifehood.

She added, writing fast: "He is the best man that ever lived, I do
believe," and signed her name, folded the letter and sealed it in its
envelope as quickly as she could.

At supper she watched Wes. He was, as Aunt Dolcey had predicted, very
silent; the vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the
pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them
disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and
smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she
knew not what.

But nothing happened. Presently he came in, announced that he was
tired and had a hard day before him to-morrow, and thought he'd go to
bed.

Long after he had fallen into immobile slumber Annie lay beside him,
awake, marvelling how suddenly he had become a stranger, almost an
ogre. Yet she loved him and yearned to him. The impulse that had made
her finish the letter to Cousin Lorena in the same spirit in which she
had begun it called her to pity and help him. She must conceal his
weakness from their world. She listened to his deep, regular
breathing, she put her hand against his hard palm.

"I'm his wife," thought Annie Dean with inarticulate tenderness. "I'm
going to try to be everything a wife ought to be."

The next morning he was his old self again, laughing, joking, teasing
her as usual. The scene of yesterday seemed to have gone utterly from
his memory, though he must have known that she had seen and heard it.
But he made no allusion to it, nor did she. The farm work was
pressing; the warm spring days foretold an early season.

As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc'
Zenas with familiar friendliness:

"How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?"

Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances.
The old woman's said, "You see--what I told you was true"; and the
young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to
see it through."

But something in her youth had definitely vanished, as it always does
when responsibility lays its heavy hand on us. She went about her new
life questioningly eager for understanding. There was so much for her
to see and learn--the erratic ways of setting hens, the care of
foolish little baby chicks; the spring house, cool and damp and
gray-walled, with its trickle of cold water forever eddying about the
crocks of cream-topped milk; the garden making, left to her and Aunt
Dolcey after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be
prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and
fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she
marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit,
seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields
that so engrossed and commanded Wes.

But through it all, beneath it all, she found herself waiting, with
dread, for another outburst. Against whom would it be this time--Unc'
Zenas again--Aunt Dolcey--one of the animals--or perhaps herself? She
wondered if she could bear it if he turned on her.

She was working in the spring house mixing cream with curd for cottage
cheese, very busy and anxious over it, for this was her first essay
alone, when she heard Wes again in anger. She dropped her spoon, but
did not go to look, only concentrated herself to listen.

This time he was cursing one of his horses, and she could hear the
stinging whish of a whip, a wicked and sinister emphasis to the
beast's snorting and frenzied thumping of hoofs. Her blue eyes dilated
with fear; she knew in what pain and fright the horse must be lunging
under those blows. And Wes, raucous, violent, his mouth foul with
unclean words--only this morning he had told her that when Sunday came
they'd go into the woods and find a wild clematis to plant beside the
front door. Wild clematis! She could have laughed at the irony of it.

At last she could bear it no longer; she put her hands to her ears to
shut out the hideousness of it. After an interminable wait she took
them down. He had stopped--there was silence--but she heard footsteps
outside, and she literally cowered into the darkest corner of the
spring house. But it was only Aunt Dolcey, her lips set in a line of
endurance.

"I was lookin' erbout foh you, honey," she said reassuringly. "I di'n'
know where you was, en den I remembah you come off down heah. Let Aunt
Dolcey finish up dat cheese."

"What--what started him?" asked Annie piteously.

"I doan' jes' know--sound' like one de big team di'n' go inter his
right stall, er som'n like dat. It's always som'n triflin', en no
'count. But land, he'll be ovah it come night. Doan' look so white en
skeer, chile."

"But--but I been thinking--what if he might turn on me--what if he'd
strike me? Aunt Dolcey--did he ever strike you?"

"Oncet."

"Oh, Aunt Dolcey, what did you do?"

Something flared in Aunt Dolcey's eyes that was as old as her race.
She looked past Annie as if she saw something she rather relished;
just so her ancestors must have looked when they were dancing before a
bloodstained Congo fetish.

"You see dat big white scar on Marse Wes' lef' wris'? When he struck
me I mahk him dere wid my hot flatiron. Am' no man eveh gwine lif' his
hand to Dolcey, no matter who."

A shrewd question came to Annie:

"Aunt Dolcey, did he ever strike you again?"

"No, ma'am, no 'ndeedy, he didn'. Wil' Marse Wes may be, but he ain'
no crazy man. It's dat ole debbil in his nature, Miss Annie, honey. En
ef ever once som'n tremenjus happen to Marse Wes, dat debbil'll be
cas' out. But hit's got to be stronger en mo' pow'ful dan he is. Not
'ligion, fer 'ligion goes f'm de outside in. Som'n got to come from
inside Marse Wes out befo' dat ole debbil is laid."

This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive
psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come
again the darkening of a fear, fear that was to be her devil, no less
terrible because his presence was for the most part veiled.

But again she steeled her courage. "I won't let him spoil everything;
I won't let him make me afraid of him," she vowed, seeing Wes in his
silent mood that night. "I won't be afraid of him. I wish I could cut
that old vein out of his forehead. I hate it--it's just as if it was
the thing that starts him. Never seems as if it was part of the real
Wes, my Wes."

In the depths of the woods, on Sunday, she stood by while he dug up
the wild clematis--stood so he could not see her lips quiver--and she
put her clenched hands behind her for fear they, too, would betray
her.

"Wes," she asked, "what made you get so mad last Thursday and beat old
Pomp so?"

He turned toward her in genuine surprise.

"I wasn't mad; not much, that is. And all I laid on Pomp's tough old
hide couldn't hurt him. He's as mean as a mule, that old scoundrel.
Gets me riled every once in a while."

"I wish you wouldn't ever do it again. It scared me almost to death."

"Scared you!" he laughed. "Oh, Annie, you little silly--you aren't
scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing--trying to kid
me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a
couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never
know it's not at home."

"Yes, but, Wes--I wish you'd promise me something."

"Promise you anything."

"Then--promise me not to get mad and beat the horses any more or
holler at Unc' Zenas. I don't like it."

"Annie, you little simp--what's the matter with you? A fellow's got to
let off steam once in a while, and if you'd been pestered like I have
with Unc' Zenas's ornery trifling spells and old Pomp's general
cussedness, you'd wonder that I don't get mad and stay mad every
minute. Don't let's talk any more about it. Say, look there--there's a
scarlet tanager! Ain't it pretty? Shyest bird there is, but up here in
the woods there's a couple pairs 'most every year. Pull that old
newspaper up round the earth a little, so's I can get a better holt of
it. That's the girl. Gee, I never knew what fun it'd be to have a wife
who'd be so darn chummy as you are. How d'you like your husband, Mrs.
Dean? Ain't it about time you said something nice to the poor feller
instead of scolding his lights and liver out of place on a nice
peaceful Sabbath day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

She pushed back the fear devil and answered his smile.

'No, sir, I'm not going to say anything nice to my husband. I'll tell
you a secret about him--he's awful stuck on himself now."

"Why shouldn't he be? Look who he picked out to marry."

Who could stand against such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw
his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in her
thwarting.

But she said no more; and they planted the wild clematis with its
black woods earth beneath at the side of the front door, and Annie
twisted its pliable green stems round one of the posts of the little
benched entrance.

Her hands moved deftly, and Wes, who had finished firming the earth
about the plant, watched them.

"Your little paws are gettin' awful brown," he said. "I remember that
first day, in the shop, how white they were--and how quick they moved.
You wrapped up them aprons like somethin' was after you, and I was
trying to get my nerve up to speak to you."

"Tryin' to get up your nerve! I reckon it wasn't much effort. There,
don't that vine look's if it grew there of itself?"

"Yeh--it looks fine." He sat down on the bench and pulled her down
beside him, his arm about her. "Annie, baby, are y' happy?"

She put her cheek against his shoulder and shut her eyes.

"I'm so happy I wouldn't darst be any happier."

"You're not sorry you picked up with me so quick? You don't wish't
you'd stayed down in Balt'mer and got you a city beau?"

"I'd rather be with you--here--than any place in the world. And,
Wes--I think you're the best and kindest man that ever lived. I
wouldn't have you changed, any way, one little bit."

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