by Erskine Caldwell

WILD FLOWERS

[“Wild Flowers” is undoubtedly one of E. Caldwell's masterpieces. The story being multiordinal the depth of its content opens up to him who can see not only through its rather simple surface plot but through the metaphoric and symbolic layers as well.]

I derive more satisfaction from the writing of stories such as this one than I do from any other.

The mockingbird that had perched on the roof top all night, filling the clear cool air with its music, had flown away when the sun rose. There was silence as deep and mysterious as the flat sandy country that extended mile after mile in every direction. Yesterday's shadows on the white sand began to reassemble under the trees and around the fence posts, spreading on the ground the lacy foliage of the branches and the fuzzy slabs of the wooden fence.

The sun rose in leaps and bounds, jerking itself upward as though it were in a great hurry to rise above the tops of the pines so it could shine down upon the flat country from there to the Gulf.

Inside the house the bedroom was light and warm. Nellie had been awake, ever since the mockingbird had left. She lay on her side with one arm under her head. Her other arm was around the head beside her on the pillow. Her eyelids fluttered. Then for a minute at a time they did not move at all. After that they fluttered again, seven or eight or nine times in quick succession. She waited as patiently as she could for Vern to wake up.

When Vern came home sometime late in the night, he did not wake her. She had stayed awake waiting for him as long as she could, but she had become so sleepy her eyes would not stay open until he came.

The dark head on the pillow beside hers looked tired and worn. Vern's forehead, even in sleep, was wrinkled a little over his nose. Around the corners of his eyes the skin was darker than it was anywhere else on the face. She reached over as carefully as possible and kissed the cheek closest to her. She wanted to put both arms around his head and draw him to her, and to kiss him time after time and hold his dark head tight against her face.

Again her eyelids Muttered uncontrollably.

“Vern,” she whispered softly. “Vern.”

Slowly his eyes opened, then quickly closed again.

“Vern, sweet,” she murmured, her heart beating faster and faster.

Vern turned his face toward her, snuggling his head between her arm and breast, and moving until she could feel his breath on her neck.

“Oh, Vern,” she said, part aloud.

He could feel her kisses on his eyes and cheek and forehead and mouth. He was comfortably awake by then. He found her with his hands and they drew themselves tightly together.

“What did he say, Vern?” she asked at last, unable to wait any longer. “What, Vern?” He opened his eyes and looked at her, fully awake at last.

She could read what he had to say on his face.

“When, Vern?” she said.

“Today,” he said, closing his eyes and snuggling his head into her warmth once more.

Her lips trembled a little when he said it. She could not help herself.

“Where are we going to move to, Vern?” she asked like a little girl, looking closely to his lips for his answer.

He shook his head, pushing it tightly against her breasts and closing his eyes against her body.

They both lay still for a long time. The sun had warmed the room until it was almost like summer again, instead of early fall. Little waves of heat were beginning to rise from the weatherworn window-sill. There would be a little more of summer before winter came.

“Did you tell him –?” Nellie said. She stopped and looked down at Vern's face. “Did you tell him about me, Vern?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

Vern did not answer her. He pushed his head against her breast and held her tighter, as though he were struggling for food that would make his body strong when he got up and stood alone in the bare room.

“Didn't he say anything, Vern?”

“He just said he couldn't help it, or something like that. I don't remember what he said, but I know what he meant.”

“Doesn't he care, Vern?”

“I guess he doesn't, Nellie.”

Nellie stiffened. She trembled for a moment, but her body stiffened as though she had no control over it.

“But you care what happens to me, don't you, Vern?”

“Oh, God, yes!” he said. “That's all I do care about now. If anything happens –.”

For a long time they lay in each other's arms, their minds stirring them wider and wider awake.

Nellie got up first. She was dressed and out of the room before Vern knew how quickly time had passed. He leaped out of bed, dressed, and hurried to the kitchen to make the fire in the cookstove. Nellie was already peeling the potatoes when he got it going.

They did not say much while they ate breakfast. They had to move, and move that day. There was nothing else they could do. The furniture did not belong to them, and they had so few clothes it would not be troublesome to carry them.

Nellie washed the dishes while Vern was getting their things ready. There was nothing to do after that except to tie up his overalls and shirts in a bundle, and Nellie's clothes in another, and to start out.

When they were ready to leave, Nellie stopped at the gate and looked back at the house. She did not mind leaving the place, even though it had been the only home she and Vern had ever had together. The house was so dilapidated that probably it would fall down in a few years more. The roof leaked, one side of the house had slipped off the foundation posts, and the porch sagged all the way to the ground in front.

Vern waited until she was ready to leave. When she turned away from the house, there were tears in her eyes, but she never looked back at it again. After they had gone a mile, they had turned a bend in the road, and the pines hid the place from sight.

“Where are we going, Vern?” she said, looking at him through the tears.

“We'll just have to keep on until we find a place,” he said. He knew that she knew as well as he did that in that country of pines and sand the farms and houses were sometimes ten or fifteen miles apart. “I don't know how far that will be.”

While she trudged along the sandy road, she could smell the fragrance of the last summer flowers all around her. The weeds and scrub hid most of them from sight, but every chance she got she stopped a moment and looked along the side of the ditches for blossoms. Vern did not stop, and she always ran to catch up with him before she could find any.

In the middle of the afternoon they came to a creek where it was cool and shady. Vern found her a place to lie down and, before taking off her shoes to rest her feet, scraped a pile of dry pine needles for her to lie on and pulled an armful of moss from the trees to put under her head. The water he brought her tasted of the leaves and grasses in the creek, and it was cool and clear. She fell asleep as soon as she had drunk some.

It was late afternoon when Vern woke her up.

“You've been asleep two or three hours, Nellie,” he said. “Do you think you could walk a little more before night?”

She sat up and put on her shoes and followed him to the road. She felt a dizziness as soon as she was on her feet. She did not want to say anything to Vern about it, because she did not want him to worry. Every step she took pained her then. It was almost unbearable at times, and she bit her lips and crushed her fingers in her fists, but she walked along behind him, keeping out of his sight so he would not know about it.

At sundown she stopped and sat down by the side of the road. She felt as though she would never be able to take another step again. The pains in her body had drawn the color from her face, and her limbs felt as though they were being pulled from her body. Before she knew it, she had fainted.

When she opened her eyes, Vern was kneeling beside her, fanning her with his hat. She looked up into his face and tried to smile.

“Why didn't you tell me, Nellie?” he said. “I didn't know you were so tired.”

“I don't want to be tired,” she said. “I just couldn't help it, I guess.”

He looked at her for a while, fanning her all the time.

“Do you think it might happen before we get some place?” he asked anxiously. “What do you think, Nellie?”

Nellie closed her eyes and tried not to think. They had not passed a house or farm since they had left that morning. She did not know how much farther it was to a town, and she was afraid to think how far it might be even to the next house. It made her afraid to think about it.

“I thought you said it would be another two weeks –?” Vern said. “Didn't you, Nellie?”

“I thought so,” she said. “But it's going to be different now, walking like this all day.”

His hat fell from his hand, and he looked all around in confusion. He did not know what to do, but he knew he had to do something for Nellie right away.

“I can't stand it,” he said. “I've got to do something.”

He picked her up and carried her across the road. He found a place for her to lie under a pine tree, and he put her down there. Then he untied their bundles and put some of their clothes under her head and some over her feet and legs.

The sun had set, and it was becoming dark. Vern did not know what to do next. He was afraid to leave her there all alone in the woods, but he knew he had to get help for her.

“Vern,” she said, holding out her hand to touch him.

He grasped it in his, squeezing and stroking her fingers and wrist. “What is it, Nellie?”

“I'm afraid it is going to happen... happen... happen right away,” she said weakly, closing her eyes before she could finish.

He bent down and saw that her lips were bloodless and that her face was whiter than he had ever seen anyone's face. While he watched her, her body became tense and she bit her mouth to keep from screaming with pain.

Vern jumped up and ran to the road, looking up it and down it. The night had come down so quickly that he could not tell whether there were any fields or cleared ground there as an indication of somebody's living near. There were no signs of a house or people anywhere.

He ran back to Nellie. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

“If I could go to sleep,” she said. “I think I would be all right for a while.”

He got down beside her and put his arms around her.

“If I thought you wouldn't be afraid, I'd go up the road until I found a house and get a car or something to carry you. I can't let you stay here all night on the ground.”

“You might not get back – in time!” she cried frantically.

“I'd hurry as fast as I could,” he said, “I'll run until I find somebody.”

“If you'll come back in two or three hours,” she said, “I'd be able to stand it, I think. I couldn't stand it any longer than that alone, though.”

He got up.

“I'm going,” he said.

He ran up the road as fast as he could, remembering how he had pleaded to be allowed to stay in the house a little longer so Nellie would not have to go like that. The only answer he had got, even after he had explained about Nellie, was a shake of the head. There was no use in begging after that. He was being put out, and he could not do anything about it. He was certain there should have been some money due him for his crop that fall, even a few dollars, but he knew there was no use in trying to argue about that, either. He had gone home the night before, knowing they would have to leave. He stumbled, falling heavily, headlong, on the road.

When he picked himself up, he saw a light ahead. It was only a pale ray from board window that had been closed tightly. But it was a house, and somebody lived in it. He ran toward it as fast as he could.

When he got to the place, a dog under the house barked, but he paid no attention to it. He ran up to the door and pounded on it with both fists.

“Let me in!” he yelled. “Open the door!”

Somebody inside shouted, and several, chairs were knocked over. The dog ran out from under the house and began snapping at Vern's legs. He tried to kick the dog away, but the dog was just as determined as he was, and came back at him more savagely than before. Finally he pushed the door open, breaking a buttonlock.

Several Negroes were hiding in the room. He could see heads and feet under the bed and behind a trunk and under a table.

“Don't be scared of me,” he said as calmly as he could. “I came for help. My wife's down the road, sick. I've got to get her into a house somewhere. She's lying on the ground.”

The oldest man in the room, a gray-haired Negro who looked about fifty, crawled from under the bed.

“I'll help you, boss,” he said. “I didn't know what you wanted when you came shouting and yelling like that. That's why I didn't open the door and let you in.”

“Have you got a cart, or something like that?” Vern asked.

“I've got a one-horse cart,” the man said. “George, you and Pete go hitch up the mule to the cart. Hurry and do it.”

Two Negro boys came from their hiding-places and ran out the back door.

“We'll need a mattress, or something like that to put her on,” Vern said.

The Negro woman began stripping the covers from the bed, and Vern picked up the mattress and carried it out the front door to the road. While he waited for the boys to drive the cart out, he walked up 'and down, trying to assure himself that Nellie would be all right.

When the cart was ready, they all got in and drove down the road as fast as the mule could go. It took less than half an hour for them to reach the grove where he had left Nellie, and by then he realized he had been gone three hours or longer.

Vern jumped to the ground, calling her. She did not answer. He ran up the bank and fell on his knees beside her on the ground. “Nellie!” he said, shaking her. “Wake up, Nellie! This is Vern, Nellie!”

He could not make her answer. Putting his face down against hers, he felt her cold cheek. He put his hands on her forehead, and that was cold, too. Then he found her wrists and held them in his fingers while he pressed his ear tightly against her breast.

The Negro man finally succeeded in pulling him backward. For a while he did not know where he was or what had happened. It seemed as if his mind had gone completely blank.

The Negro was trying to talk to him, but Vern could not hear a word he was saying. He did know that something had happened, and that Nellie's face and hands were cold, and that he could not feel her heart beat. He knew, but he could not make himself believe that it was really true.

He fell down on the ground, his face pressed against the pine needles, while his fingers dug into the soft damp earth. He could hear voices above him, and he could hear the words the voices said, but nothing had any meaning. Sometime – a long time away – he would ask about their baby – about Nellie's – about their baby. He knew it would be a long time before he could ask anything like that, though. It would be a long time before words would have any meaning in them again.

TASKS

1. Read the story; speak about your first impression of it.

2. Point out the compositional parts: the exposition, the story, the climax, the denouement. Give a title to each part.

3. Reproduce the episode of Nelly waiting for Vern to wake up as well as the dialogue which follows it. Pay attention to how suspense is being gradually worked up. Point out and comment on the words and phrases that depict Nelly's emotional state. Indicate and comment on the meaningfulness of the device of gradation as well as other devices used in this part of the story.

4. Pick out and comment on the sentences that speak of how Vern had been told to leave. How do you account for the fact that the man who had turned them out is never called by name but is referred to as "he"?

5. Find the occurrences of aposiopeses. Observe what they all refer to; speak on their implication.

6. What is the author's attitude towards Vern and Nelly? How is it revealed: in the author's direct, personal evaluation, or, impersonally, through a depiction of the characters' actions and speech? Do the following task by way of substantiating your point. Pick out words and expressions that speak of: 1) The way Nelly stood her ordeal; 2) Vern's and Nelly's relationship; 3) Vern's reaction to Nellie's death. Analyse the words you have picked out from the view-point of their denotations (e. g. verbs of concrete physical actions vs. abstract actions), stylistic reference and emotive charge.

7. Comment on the metaphorical meaning of the story's title. What can you say about the author's attitude to the two characters as regards the emotive quality of the metaphor he has employed.

8. Reproduce Nature descriptions given in the story.

a) Observe the character of the epithets and other tropes used in the descriptions. See how epithets are arranged in sentences. Comment on the rhythmical effect these sentences produce and the causes of such an effect.

b) Indicate that feature of Nature which figures prominent in the exposition and elsewhere in the story.

What is its function as far as the underlying idea of the story is concerned?

9. Reproduce the Negro episode. What of the Negroes' position and of their character has the author managed to show in that short episode? Indicate the word that stands as key-word in the episode.

10. Write a page-long statement on the message the author has conveyed in the story.

(from Сосновская В.Б. Аналитическое чтение. – М.: Высшая школа, 1974. – С. 130-137)

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