O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Various

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

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She defied her fears and that mocking, twitching vein with the words.

"Same here. Made to order for me, you were. First minute I looked in
those round blue eyes of yours I knew it."

"It isn't possible," she thought. "It isn't possible that he can get
so mad and be so dreadful. Maybe if I can make him think he's awful
good and kind"--oh, simple subtlety--"believe he is, too, and he'll
stop getting such spells. Oh, if he would always be just like this!"

But it was only two days later when she called him to help her; there
was a hen that was possessed to brood, and Aunt Dolcey had declared
that it was too late, that summer chickens never thrived.

"I can't get her out, Wes," said Annie. "She's 'way in under the
stable, and she pecks at me so mean. You got longer arms'n me--you
reach in and grab her."

He came, smiling. He reached in and grabbed, and the incensed biddy
pecked viciously.

In a flash his anger was on him. He snatched again, and this time
brought out the creature and dropped her with wrung neck, a mass of
quivering feathers and horribly jerking feet, before Annie.

"I reckon that'll learn the old crow!" he snarled, and strode away.

"We might's well have soup for supper," remarked Aunt Dolcey, coming
on the scene a moment later. "Dere, chile, what's a chicken, anyway?"

"It's not that," said Annie briefly; "but he makes me afraid of him.
If I get too afraid of him I'll stop caring anything about him. I
don't want to do that."

"Den," answered Aunt Dolcey with equal brevity, "you got think up some
manner er means to dribe his debbil out. Like I done tol' you."

"Yes, but----"

Aunt Dolcey paused, holding the carcass of the chicken in her hands,
and faced her.

"Dishyer ain' nuthin'. Wait tell he gits one his still spells, whenas
he doan' speak ter nobody an' doan' do no work. Why ain' we got no
seed potaters? Marse Wes he took a contrairy spell an' he wouldn't dig
'em, an' he wouldn't let Zenas tech 'em needer. Me, I went out
moonlight nights an' dug some to eat an' hid 'em in de cellar. Miss
Annie, you doan' know nuffin' erbout de Dean temper yit."

They went silently to the house. Aunt Dolcey stopped in the kitchen
and Annie went on into the living room. There on the walls hung the
pictures of Wes's father and mother, cabinet photographs framed square
in light wood. Annie looked at those pictured faces in accusing
inquiry. Why had they bequeathed Wes such a legacy? In his father's
face, despite the beard that was the fashion of those days, there was
the same unmistakable pride and passion of Wes to-day. And his mother
was a meek woman who could not live and endure the Dean temper. Well,
Annie was not going to be meek. She thought with satisfaction of Aunt
Dolcey and the hot flatiron. The fact that he had never lifted finger
to Aunt Dolcey again proved that if one person could thus conquer him,
so might another. Was she, his wife, to be less resourceful, less
self-respecting than that old Negro woman? Was she to endure what Aunt
Dolcey would not?

Suddenly she snatched out the little old family album from its place
in the top of the desk secretary, an old-fashioned affair bound in
shabby brown leather with two gilt clasps. Here were more pictures of
the Dean line--his grandfather, more bearded than his father, his Dean
vein even more prominent; his grandmother, another meek woman.

"Probably the old wretch beat her," thought Annie angrily.

Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age,
his picture--a faded daguerreotype--showing him in his Sunday best,
but plainly in no Sunday mood. "Looks like a pirate," was Annie's
comment. There was no picture of great-grandmother. "Probably he
killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture
taken." And Annie's eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit. She
shook her brown little fist at him. "You started all this," she said
aloud. "You began it. If you'd had a wife who'd've stood up to you
you'd never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn't have left
your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads,
looking perfectly unChristian. I just wish I had you here, you old
scoundrel! I'll bet I'd tell you something that'd make your ears
smart."

She banged to the album and put it in its place.

"Well, not me!" said Annie. "Not me! I'm not going to be bullied and
scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time
Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I'm going to raise
Cain, two to his one. I won't be scared! I won't be a little gump and
take such actions off any man. We'll see!"

It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture. It
is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it
arises. But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband's one,
and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that
particular crop--why, that is quite a different thing.

Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his
next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty
creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for
food.

"You two Janes all by your lonesome here?" he asked, stepping in.

Wes had come into the house for another shirt--he had split the one he
was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe--and he entered the
kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words.

He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and
himself outside on the grass of the drying yard. The tramp was a burly
man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight. He
might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed.

"What you doin' way up here, you lousy loafer?" demanded Wes between
blows. "Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve,
comin' into my house and scarin' women. I've a great mind to get my
gun and blow you full of holes."

In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road,
followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could
reach him. After twenty minutes or so the victor came back. His eyes
were red with rage that possessed him. He did not stop to speak, but
hurried out his rackety little car and was gone. Later they found out
he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and
then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him
committed to jail.

But the encounter left him strange and silent for a week, and his Dean
mark twitched and leaped in triumph. During that time the only notice
he took of Annie was to teach her to use his rifle.

"Another tramp comes round, shoot him," he commanded.

"En in de meantime," counselled Aunt Dolcey, "it'll come in mighty
handy fer you to kill off some deseyer chicken hawks what makin' so
free wid our nex' crap br'ilers."

But beyond the learning how to use the gun Annie had learned something
more: she added it to her knowledge that Aunt Dolcey had once outfaced
that tyrant. It was this--that Wes's rage was the same, whether the
cause of it was real or imaginary.

* * * * *

The advancing summer, with its sultriness, its sudden evening storms
shot through with flaming lightning and reverberant with the drums of
thunder, brought to Annie a cessation of her purpose. She was languid,
subject to whimsical desires and appetites, at times a prey to sudden
nervous tears. The household work slipped back into Aunt Dolcey's
faithful hands, save now and then when Annie felt more buoyant and
instinct with life and energy than she had ever felt before. Then she
would weed her garden or churn and print a dozen rolls of butter with
a keen and vivid delight in her activity.

In the evening she and Wes walked down the long lane and looked at the
wheat, wide level green plains already turning yellow; or at the corn,
regiments of tall soldiers, each shako tipped with a feathery tassel.
Beyond lay the woods--dark, mysterious. Little dim plants of the soil
bloomed and shed faint scent along the pathway in the dewy twilight.
Sometimes they sat under the wild clematis, flowering now, and that,
too, was perfumed, a wild and tangy scent that did not cloy. They did
not talk very much, but he was tender with her, and his fits of anger
seemed forgotten.

When they did talk it was usually about the crops--the wheat. It was
wonderful heavy wheat. It was the best wheat in all the neighbourhood.
Occasionally they took out the little coffeepot and drove through the
country and looked at other wheat, but there was none so fine as
theirs.

And with the money it would bring--the golden wheat turned into
gold--they would---- And now came endless dreams.

"I thought we'd sell the old coffeepot to the junkman and get a
brand-new car, a good one, but now----" This was Wes.

"I think we ought to save, too. A boy'll need so many things."

"Girls don't need anything much, I suppose--oh, no!" He touched her
cheek with gentle fingers.

"It's not going to be a girl."

"How d'you know?"

"I know."

So went their talk, over and over, an endless garland of happy
conjectures, plans, air castles. Cousin Lorena sent little patterns
and thin scraps of material, tiny laces, blue ribbons.

"I told her blue--blue's for boys," said Annie. And Wes laughed at
her. It was all a blessed interlude of peace and expectancy.

The wheat was ready for harvest. From her place under the clematis
vine, where she sat with her sewing, Annie could see the fields of
pale gold, ready for the reaper. Wes had taken the coffeepot and gone
down to the valley to see when the threshers would be able to come. In
the morning he would begin to cut. Annie cocked a questioning eye at
the sky, for she had already learned to watch the farmer's greatest
ally and enemy--weather.

"If this good spell of weather only holds until he gets it all cut!"
She remembered stories he had told her of sudden storms that flattened
the ripe grain to the ground, beyond saving; of long-continued rains
that mildewed it as it stood in the shocks. But if the good weather
held! And there was not a cloud in the sky, nor any of those faint
signs by which changing winds or clouds are forecast.

She heard the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up
the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he
came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round
for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously.
Something in his attitude warned her, and she felt the old
almost-forgotten devil of her fear leap to clutch her heart.

Presently he came round the house, and she hardly dared to look at
him; she could not ask. But there was no need. He flung his hat on the
ground before her with a gesture of frantic violence. When he spoke
the words came in a ferment of fury:

"That skunk of a Harrison says he won't bring the thresher up here
this year; claims the road's too rough and bridges are too weak for
the engine."

"Oh, Wes--what'll you do?"

"Do! I'm not going to do anything! I'm not going to haul my wheat down
to him--I'll see him in hell and back again before I will."

"But our wheat!"

"The wheat can rot in the fields! I won't be bossed and blackguarded
by any dirty little runt that thinks because he owns the only
threshing outfit in the neighbourhood that he can run my affairs."

He raged up and down, adding invective, vituperation.

"But you can't, Wes--you can't let the wheat go to waste." For Annie
had absorbed the sound creed of the country, that to waste foodstuff
is a crime as heinous as murder.

"Can't I? Well, we'll see about that!"

She recognized from his tone that she had been wrong to protest; she
had confirmed him in his purpose. She picked up her sewing and tried
with unsteady fingers to go on with it, but she could not see the
stitches for her tears. He couldn't mean it--and yet, what if he
should? She looked up and out toward those still fields of precious
ore, dimming under the purple shadows of twilight, and saw them a
black tangle of wanton desolation. The story Aunt Dolcey had told her
about the potatoes of last year was ominous in her mind.

He was sitting opposite her now, his head in his hands, brooding,
sullen, the implacable vein in his forehead swollen with triumph,
something brutish and hard dimming his clean and gallant youth.

"That's the way he's going to look as he gets older," thought Annie
with a touch of prescience. "He's going to change into somebody
else--little by little. This is the worst spell he's ever had. And all
this mean blood's going to live again in my child. It goes on and on
and on."

She leaned against the porch seat and struggled against the sickness
of it.

"I might stand it for myself," she thought. "I might stand it for
myself; but I'm not going to stand it for my baby. I'll do
something--I'll take him away."

Her thoughts ran on hysterically, round and round in a coil that had
no end and no beginning.

The silent fit was on Wes now. Presently, she knew, he would get up
and stalk away to bed without a word. And in the morning----

It was as she expected. Without a word to her he got up and went
inside, and she heard him going up the stairs. She sat then a little
longer, for the night was still and warm and beautiful, the stars very
near, and the soft hush-h of the country solitude comforting to her
distress.

Then she heard Unc' Zenas and Dolcey talking at the kitchen door,
their voices a faint cadenced murmur; and this reminded her that she
was not quite alone. She slipped round to them.

"Unc' Zenas, Wes says he's not going to cut the wheat; he'll let it
rot in the fields. Seems Harrison won't send his thresher up this far;
wants us to haul to him instead."

"Marse Wes say he ain' gwine cut dat good wheat? Oh, no Miss Annie, he
cain' mean dat, sholy, sholy!"

"He said it. He's got an awful spell this time. Unc'
Zenas--look--couldn't you ride the reaper if he wouldn't? Couldn't
you? Once the wheat gets cut there's some chance."

"Befo' my God, Miss Annie, wid deseyer wuffless ole han's I cain'
ha'dly hol' one hawss, let alone three. Oh, if I had back my stren'th
lak I useter!"

The three fell into hopeless silence.

"Are the bridges so bad? Is it too hard to get the thresher up here?"
asked Annie at last. "Or was that just Harrison's excuse?"

"No, ma'am; he's got de rights. Dem ole bridges might go down mos' any
time. An' dishyer road up yere, it mighty hard to navigate foh er
grea' big hebby contraption lak er threshin' machine en er engine.
Mos' eve'y year he gits stuck. Las' year tuk er day en er ha'f to git
him out. No'm; he's got de rights."

"Yes, but, Unc' Zenas, that wheat mustn't be left go to waste."

Aunt Dolcey spoke up. "Miss Annie, honey, go git your res'--mawnin'
brings light. Maybe Marse Wes'll come to his solid senses een de
mawnin'. You cain' do nuffin' ternight noway."

"No, that's so." She sighed hopelessly. "Unc' Zenas, maybe we could
hire somebody else to cut the wheat if he won't."

"Miss Annie, honey, eve'ybody busy wid his own wheat--an', moreover,
Marse Wes ain' gwi' let any stranger come on dis place an' cut his
wheat--you know he ain'."

There seemed nothing more to say. In the darkness tears were slowly
trickling down Annie's cheeks, and she could not stop them.

"Well--good-night."

"Good-night, my lamb, good-night. I gwi' name you en your tribulations
in my prayers dis night."

She had never felt so abandoned, so alone. She could not even make the
effort to force herself to believe that Wes would not commit this
crime against all Nature; instead, she had a vivid and complete
certainty that he would. She went over it and over it, lying in
stubborn troubled wakefulness. She put it in clear if simple terms. If
Wes persisted in his petty childish anger and wasted this wheat, it
meant that they could not save the money that they had intended for
the child that was coming. They would have, in fact, hardly more than
their bare living left them. The ridiculous futility of it swept her
from one mood to another, from courage to utter hopelessness. She
remembered the first time that she had seen Wes angry, and how she had
lain awake then and wondered, and dreaded. She remembered how, later,
she had planned to manage him, to control him. And she had done
nothing. Now it had come to this, that her child would be born in
needless impoverishment; and, worse, born with the Dean curse full
upon him. She clenched and unclenched her hands. The poverty she might
bear, but the other was beyond her power to endure. Sleep came to her
at last as a blessed anodyne.

In the first moment of the sunlit morning she forgot her trouble, but
instantly she remembered, and she dressed in an agony of apprehension
and wonder. Wes was gone, as was usual, for he got up before she did,
to feed his cattle. She hurried into her clothes and came down, to
find him stamping in to breakfast, and with the first glance at him
her hope fell like a plummet.

He did mean it--he did! He did not mean to cut that wheat. She watched
him as he ate, and that fine-spun desperation that comes when courage
alone is not enough, that purpose that does the impossible, took hold
of her.

When he had finished his silent meal he went leisurely out to the
little front porch and sat down. She followed him. "Wes Dean, you
going to cut that wheat?" she demanded; and she did not know the sound
of her own voice, so high and shrill it was.

The vein in his forehead leered at her. What was she to pit her
strength against a mood like this? He did not answer, did not even
look at her.

"Do you mean to say you'd be so wicked--such a fool?" she went on.

Now he looked up at her with furious, threatening eyes.

"Shut your mouth and go in!" he said.

She did not move. "If you ain't going to cut it--then I am!"

She turned and started through the house, and he leaped up and
followed her. In the kitchen he overtook her.

"You stay where you are! You don't go out of this house this day!" He
laid a rough, restraining hand on her shoulder.

At that touch--the first harshness she had ever felt from
him--something hot and flaming leaped through her. She whirled away
from him and caught up Aunt Dolcey's big sharp butcher knife lying on
the table; lifted it.

"You put your hands on me like that again and I'll kill you!" Her
voice was not high and shrill now; she did not even raise it. "You and
your getting mad! You and your rotten, filthy temper! You'd waste that
wheat because you haven't got enough sense to see what a big fool you
are."

She dropped the knife and walked past him, out of the kitchen, to the
barn.

"Unc' Zenas," she called, "you hitch up the horses to the reaper. I'm
going to cut that near field to-day myself."

"But, Miss Annie----" began the old man.

"You hitch up that team," she said. "If there ain't any men round this
place, I don't know's it makes so much difference."

She waited while the three big horses were brought out and hitched to
the reaper, and then she mounted grimly to the seat. She did not even
look around to see if Wes might be watching. She did not answer when
Unc' Zenas offered a word of direction.

"Let dat nigh horse swing round de cornahs by hisse'f, Miss Annie. He
knows. An' look--here's how you drop de knife. I'll let down de bars
an' foller you."

Behind her back he made frantic gestures to Dolcey to come to him,
and she ran, shuffling, shaken. Together they followed the little
figure in the blue calico dress, perched high on the rattling,
clacking reaper. Her hair shone in the sun like the wheat.

The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was
Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with
the knife, but it dropped into place, and the first of the golden
harvest fell before it squarely, cleanly; the stubble was even behind
it. She watched the broad backs of her team, a woman in a dream. She
did not know how she drove them; the lines were heavy in her hands,
dragged at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead.
She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet.

Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into
compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this
field of amazing conflict.

And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened
himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was
justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and
dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the
tall grain.

Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes,
but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked
when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand
on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it.

"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over
to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it
kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on.

She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her
back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut,
and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every
bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop
her--if he dared!

And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or
might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If
only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her
arms didn't ache so!

After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the
old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off
her own head and handed it up to her.

"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she
went on.

"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey.
Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted
chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en shine one dese days. Holler at Marse
Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!"

"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his
shoulder.

"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man
may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a
ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never
heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line.

"Dat chile might kill he'se'f."

"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo',"
replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better.

But she watched Annie anxiously.

The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her
excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh
from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her
eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out
the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone;
her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and
round the field, and the two bent old figures followed.

And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or
care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them
noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly,
slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with
unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms
that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in
the driver's seat. But he was there.

It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by
the endless repetition of one question alone; they cannot bear the
pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured
rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally
impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to
vault the low stone wall and approach it.

Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look
at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary
circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed.
He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team.

Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger.

"What you want?" she asked coldly.

He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you
down off there." He held out his arms.

She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the
thresher?"

"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in
the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid
you'll hurt--him some way."

Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that
acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper."

Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away
forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhood came
into his face; his twitching, sinister vein was still. Surrender
choked him, but he managed to get it out:

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