Stories of Erskine Caldwell Read Free Page A

Swedes and women Swedes. I’ll swear, those big Swedes sounded like a pastureful of hoarse bulls, near the end of May, mad about the black flies. God-helping, they yelled like they were fixing to kill all the little Swedes and women Swedes they could get their hands on. It didn’t amount to anything, though; because the little Swedes and the women Swedes yelled right back at them just like they had been big Swedes too. The little Swedes and women Swedes couldn’t yell hoarse bull bass, but it was close enough to it to make a man who’s lived most of his life up in the Back Kingdom, in the intervale, think that the whole town of East Joloppi was full of big Swedes.
    Jim was all for getting out after the tools and stock right away, but I pulled him back to the table. I wasn’t going to let Jim and Mrs. Frost set me to doing tasks and chores before breakfast and the regular time. Forty dollars a month isn’t much to pay a man for ten-eleven hours’ work a day, including Sundays, when the stock has to be attended to like any other day, and I set myself that I wasn’t going to work twelve-thirteen hours a day by them, even if I was practically one of the Frosts myself, except in name, by that time.
    “Now, hold on awhile, Jim,” I said. “Let’s just sit here by the window and watch them carry their furniture and household goods inside while Mrs. Frost’s getting the cooking ready to eat. If they start taking off any of you and Mrs. Frost’s things, we can see them just as good from here by the window as we could out there in the yard and road.”
    “Now, Jim, I’m telling you,” Mrs. Frost said, shaking all over, and not even trying to cook us a meal, “don’t you sit there and let Stanley keep you from saving the stock and tools. Stanley doesn’t know the Swedes like we do. He thinks they’re like everybody else.”
    Jim wasn’t for staying in the house when all of his tools were lying around in the yard, and while his cows were in the pasture unprotected, but he saw how it would be better to wait where we could hurry up Mrs. Frost with the cooking, if we were ever going to eat breakfast that forenoon. She was so excited and nervous about the Swedes moving back to East Joloppi from the pulp mill in Waterville that she hadn’t got the beans and brown bread fully heated from the night before, and we had to sit and eat them cold.
    We were sitting there by the window eating the cold beans and brown bread, and watching the Swedes, when two of the little Swedes started running across Jim and Mrs. Frost’s lawn. They were chasing one of their big yellow tomcats they had brought with them from Waterville. The yellow tom was as large as an eight-months collie puppy, and he ran like he was on fire and didn’t know how to put it out. His great big bushy tail stuck straight up in the air behind him, like a flag, and he was leaping over the lawn like a devilish calf, newborn.
    Jim and Mrs. Frost saw the little Swedes and the big yellow tomcat at the same time I did.
    “Good God,” Jim shouted, raising himself part out of the chair. “Here they come now!”
    “Hold on now, Jim,” I said, pulling him back to the table. “They’re only chasing one of their tomcats. They’re not after taking anything that belongs to you and Mrs. Frost. Let’s just sit here and finish eating the beans, and watch them out the window.”
    “My crown in heaven!” Mrs. Frost cried out, running to the window and looking through. “Those Swedes are going to kill every plant on the place. They’ll dig up all the bulbs and pull up all the vines in the flower bed.”
    “Now you just sit and calm yourself, Mrs. Frost,” I told her. “Those little Swedes are just chasing a tomcat. They’re not after doing hurt to your flowers.”
    The big Swedes were unloading the autos and trucks and carrying the furniture and household goods into their three-story yellow clapboarded house. None of them was paying any attention to the little Swedes