Elizabeth Spencer, page 1
ELIZABETH SPENCER
NOVELS & STORIES
The Voice at the Back Door
The Light in the Piazza
Knights and Dragons
Selected Stories
Michael Gorra, editor
LIBRARY OF AMERICA E-BOOK CLASSICS
ELIZABETH SPENCER: NOVELS & STORIES
Volume compilation and back matter copyright © 2021 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Published in the United States by Library of America.
Visit our website at www.loa.org.
The Voice at the Backdoor copyright © 1956, 1984 by Elizabeth Spencer. The Light in the Piazza copyright © 1960, 1988 by Elizabeth Spencer. Knights and Dragons copyright © 1965 by Elizabeth Spencer. “First Dark,” “A Southern Landscape,” “The White Azalea,” “Ship Island,” “The Bufords,” “Sharon,” “A Christian Education,” “The Girl Who Loved Horses,” “The Cousins,” “Jack of Diamonds,” “The Business Venture,” “The Legacy,” “The Runaways,” “The Master of Shongalo,” “First Child,” “Return Trip,” “On the Hill,” “The Wedding Visitor” copyright © 1959, 1960, 1964, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1979, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2009, 2013 by Elizabeth Spencer. All novels and stories published by arrangement with the author.
Distributed to the trade in the United States by Penguin Random House Inc. and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Ltd.
ISBN 978–1–59853–686–7
eISBN 978-1-59853-687-4
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories
is published and kept in print in honor of
REBA WHITE WILLIAMS
in recognition of her dedication and support
for authors of Southern literature
with a gift from her husband
DAVE WILLIAMS
to the Guardians of American Letters Fund
established by the Library of America
to ensure that every volume in the series
will be permanently available.
Contents
THE VOICE AT THE BACK DOOR
THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA
KNIGHTS AND DRAGONS
SELECTED STORIES
First Dark
Marilee Stories
A Southern Landscape
Sharon
Indian Summer
The White Azalea
Ship Island
The Bufords
A Christian Education
The Girl Who Loved Horses
The Cousins
Jack of Diamonds
The Business Venture
The Legacy
Edward Glenn Stories
The Runaways
The Master of Shongalo
Return Trip
First Child
On the Hill
The Wedding Visitor
Chronology
Note on the Texts
Notes
THE VOICE AT THE BACK DOOR
To David and Justine Clay
PART ONE
1 A Speeding Car
* * *
ON A winter afternoon, unseasonably warm, a car was racing over country roads toward town. Dust, gushing from the back wheels, ran together behind in a dense whirl. On the headlands, the sun cast its thin glare above the sagebrush; it shot through the little trees, the pin oaks and the new reedy pines, and its touch pained the eye.
A large rock of gravel leaped from the wheels and whanged a mailbox. A terrapin, off on a hundred years’ journey, missed death by half an inch. The car stitched a shallow curve and plunged downward, shivering: the descent was steep as a broom handle. But though the back wheels swayed, the car held the safe track, the ridges between the ruts, no broader than the edge of a nickel.
The hill emptied into a red road, quiet with sand and clay. Red clay gullies towered around, or fell away from the roadsides. No growth was on them, and some were deep enough to throw the church in. This was where the old-timers said the world was held together. Through this scarlet silence the car darted small and flat; then it ripped over a wooden bridge and was instantly swallowed in the trees of a Negro settlement.
Dogs leaped silent out of nowhere at the flying wheels and raced in pack for a way, yelping. They were mongrel hound and feist, the kind called “nigger dogs.” Before the road curved, the oldest dog sat down to scratch his flea, and a young Negro woman, barefoot, stepped out on the front porch, set her hands on her hips, and stared, her eyes, like the road, growing emptier every minute.
One thing about the car: it knew the road. A country car, after a few months of driving have loosened every joint and axle and worn the shock absorbers tender and given every part a special cry of its own, pushes very fine the barrier that divides it from horses and mules. The road it knows, it navigates: dodges the washouts, straddles the ruts, nicks the bumps on the easy corner, and strikes, just at the point of balance, the loose plank in the bridge.
Five miles ahead along the road the car was traveling, an iron overhead bridge spans a brown creek with an Indian name, Pettico-cow, and a scant mile beyond that, three Negro men were quitting their work at the tie plant, shaking the sawdust out of their shoes, gathering up the lunch buckets and the work jackets. The sun had lowered into the dust line and reddened, staining the dense horizon. The three Negro men moved toward the road. The one who walked off to the side was singing to himself.
“Quitting time done got sooner
Most ever-ry day.
Got to lay off two-three more niggers
’Fo the end of the week.”
The other two Negroes exchanged a glance. Their mouths were thick and hung slightly open.
“You going to lay somebody off, Mister Beck?” the younger one asked.
The one who had sung moved on steadily. “Lay somebody off? I ain’t said a word about laying anybody off.”
“You wasn’t saying it, but you sho was singing it.”
“Oh, singing. That’s different. You think everything a man sings he got to go and do?”
“I ain’t studying do nor singing neither. But if somebody going to lay me off work I wants to know hit.”
The third Negro was older than the first. He knew by now that another Negro is the hardest kind of boss to have. “Brer Beck ain’t said nothing about firing you, boy. Brer Beck just talking to hisself. Ain’t that right, Brer Beck?”
The singer ignored his question. “You niggers ain’t got good sense. Did, you’d be in line for some other kind of job.”
“They pays good,” said the young Negro.
“They pay all right, but you ain’t getting noplace. Everything you do, you do because somebody else tells you to. Me, I tell you.”
“Yeah, and you got somebody else telling you.”
“In a general way I have. But it’s me that cuts the big orders down to the little folks. That’s you. You don’t do nothing but grunt and sweat. And how much money do you get? Not half as much as me.”
“That’s right, Brer Beck,” the older Negro said, softly and with sweetness, but the younger one said, “I could quit this job tonight if I wanted to, and leave you shorthanded.”
“Go on and quit then,” the foreman answered. “There’s plenty more just like you where you came from.”
“I ain’t going to quit,” the young Negro said, “because it ain’t but Wednesday. I thinks more of my three days pay than I does of you. Fact, I thinks more of a nickel than I does of you.”
“Y’all hush,” said the old Negro. “Hit’s too hot to qua’l.”
“Hush,” said the foreman in another tone, and stopped still, listening.
From back up the road they all heard the iron bridge over Pettico-cow shake out a sound like a small foundry. From the deep points of the curves they could hear the gravel tear.
“Traveling,” the older Negro said.
They had reached the edge of the road, and for the first time the three of them drew together.
When the car passed, the weeds along the road shook violently and the three Negroes were momentarily blotted out in the whirl of dust. They climbed up to the road.
“It was the sheriff,” said the youngest.
“Sho was,” said the oldest.
“The High Sheriff,” said the foreman.
“How come him driving that fast?” asked the youngest.
“I seen his two great big old hands, laying up side by side on the steering wheel,” said the oldest.
“I seen his red hair,” said the youngest; “it was all slid down to his ears.”
“I saw his license plates,” the foreman said.
When they reached the crossroads, the young Negro turned to the foreman. “You reckon anything done happened?” he asked.
“You know as much as me, boy,” the foreman said, and left them there, taking his own road for home, moving perhaps a little faster than usual.
By that time the dusty car had gained the highway, entering it at the point near a large roadhou
“You hear that car?”
“Somebody in a hurry.”
“It was Travis Brevard, coming in from off the Beat Two road. Heading for town.”
“Travis, huh?”
“I never saw him go that fast before. You best run into town after while, Jimmy.”
“It’s none of our business, Bud. Whatever it is.”
“Just the same, I think you best run into town.”
“Look, Bud. I’m always telling you. The best way to stay out of anything is not to get curious.”
“It never hurts to know.”
“It never hurts not to know. Haven’t you ever heard that what you don’t know don’t hurt you? I thought everybody—”
“God damn it, Jimmy. Do you go into town or do I have to go myself?”
“Go yourself? Then I’d only have to go anyway, to get you safe back home. Okay, okay. I’m practically there.”
He had never dreamed of not going, from the time he heard the car wheels scream onto the pavement.
But Travis Brevard, the sheriff, having reached Lacey, did nothing but slow to a tame fifteen miles an hour and circle the courthouse square. In pavement and telephone wires, bare trees, and an overcast of dust, the town, beautiful to anyone in the green seasons, now seemed shrunken and drab. But Travis Brevard took his time around the square and looked at everything closely. He was dying and he knew it; it had seemed very important to him to reach Lacey alive.
He chose to stop on the square before a small store front—one glass window and a door. Lettering on the old brick façade above read: HARPER & BRO. GRO.
He alighted from the car, a man strikingly tall, and rested one large copper-haired hand for a moment, perhaps to steady himself, against the warm hood of the car.
Then he advanced on the store.
2 The Sheriff’s Advice
* * *
THE NEGRO delivery boy saw him first. The boy, whose name was W.B., was sitting in the far corner of the store, cross-legged on a sack of chicken feed. Duncan Harper, the proprietor, was behind the counter filling the delivery basket with items from the shelves. He first knew that something out of the ordinary was happening when he caught the white flash from the boy’s eyes, and saw the rest of him grow rigid as an idol. The storekeeper turned toward the door.
The sheriff had sagged against the door frame, but nevertheless he filled the opening. At his size and the suggestion that his weight was about to land somewhere, the store seemed to withdraw and shrink; to the grocer his property had never looked so small. Drunk, was all he thought.
“Come on in, Travis,” he said. “Drag up a chair.” But he noticed the reel in the sheriff’s step and how riskily he lowered himself to sit down. His face was the color of a red-hot stove. Below the long thin strands of copper hair, the flesh blazed. The hair was wringing wet.
“Duncan,” he said hoarsely, “I’m hot as a fox. Cut out that damn gas and give me a cold Coke.”
“Sure,” said the grocer, thinking that if it were whisky he would surely have smelled it by now. He pried the cap from the bottle and offered it doubtfully. “Travis, you don’t look good. Let me just ring and see if Doc’s in his office.”
“No, you’re not,” said the sheriff, and poured the Coca-cola down in one tilt of the bottle. He let out a long sigh and the deep red color faded visibly. “Give me another one,” he demanded.
This second bottle he sipped from. “No, Duncan, no doctor. I’ll have it my way. I’m to the point, you understand, where anything I do will be wrong, so I might as well do what I want to. I knew the next one of these attacks would be the last. I only wanted to live to get home to Lacey. Would you pick a Beat Two gully for the last sight your eyes looked on? But I made it back and made my choice.”
“You ought to be in bed,” said the young grocer. “I’ll take you home and call Doc—”
The other lifted a large hand. “I had my choice, like I said, and I said I would not go home to Miss Ada. She would spread me out on a pink bedspread and stick a thermometer in my mouth and get so scared she would forget her own name. I tell you for a fact, Duncan, I been married to Miss Ada for thirty-odd year, but I couldn’t ever age her. She’s nothing but a little girl and, God forgive me, but I’d rather die in a gully than on her bedspread.” His breath came with difficulty, filling with a noise like a cold wind the long bellows-case of his lungs. “Then,” he went on, “there was Ida Belle. Her house is a place where I could go out quiet as a match. She’s been my nigger woman for fifteen years and everybody knows it, but it would likely embarrass her to have my corpse on her hands. You can’t tell what they’re liable to do to a nigger. She might have to leave town.”
“Travis, all this talk of dying—”
“Don’t butt in on me. Maybe I should have gone to the office just now, but I didn’t. Maybe I’ve just got the big head, thinking I’m going to die, but I don’t think so.” He settled back, relaxing his long limbs. His breath came more easily. “Duncan, remember when you used to play football?”
“I remember.”
“I used to go all the way up to the university on weekends to see you play. I went over to Baton Rouge too and down to New Orleans more than once. We would all go see you play. Then we would come home and read about it in the paper. They called you the fastest running back of the year. They named you ‘Happy’ Harper.”
The groceryman winced. “The newspapers made that up,” he said. “Nobody ever called me that. I didn’t care for it, but they did it anyway.”
The sheriff’s gaze was concentrated on the young man’s face, the serious blond features so devoid of any nerve play that a whip snapping in his face would probably not have made him shy. However, there was another dimension in his eyes. They were light brown, the color of walnut just split open. They kept a watch which missed little, and their calm did not come cheap.
“Yes, you used to bring us up, Duncan. I’ve seen forty thousand people stand up and yell when you began to run. I used to think I knew how you felt when the last white stripe went past.”
“Not much different from winning an election maybe,” said the other. “Though maybe it doesn’t last as long. Not being so important.”
“I don’t know. Winning anything is good. I still remember how good I felt the day I won Miss Ada. You never did much in the war.”
It was an accusation. The storekeeper laughed. “I did a great job in the war, Travis. I kept every juke box in Camp Shelby running with music and neon rainbows. I was so good at it they sent me out to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to do more of the same.”
“Never overseas, never an officer, let Jimmy Tallant come home from England with a hatful of medals. Now Jimmy’s running that bootleg joint on the highway and paying me protection money. It’s a crying shame. Once we wanted to put up a sign: ‘Lacey: Home of Duncan “Happy” Harper.’ Then we started to put one up: ‘Lacey: Home of Jimmy Tallant.’ But then you turned into a juke box engineer and now a groceryman, and Tallant went into bootlegging. Looks like we’ll never get to point with pride.”
“When I was in the Army,” Duncan said, “they lost my papers twice. I should have gone to OCS, but the papers stayed lost for two years.”
“Then you lost your girl,” said Travis.
Had this been said? The young man seemed uncertain as to whether anger was expected of him. Then he answered, “Yes, I did.”
Travis lolled back in the chair. “And now you’re a family man, running your daddy’s little grocery store.”
“If you think I couldn’t have gone anywhere else and done better, you’re mistaken. Even after the war, there were plenty of people over the state that remembered me. The fact is I decided to stay in Lacey because I wanted to. My wife likes it here, and I like it. There’s always been a Harper on the town square. You know yourself I’ve got property around here and there—the grocery isn’t everything. The people I grew up with are all here, and all my father’s friends that are left alive. I want my children to grow up here. I don’t see anything wrong with that.” His face gentled suddenly. A certain anxiousness in his own defense dropped away, and he said, smiling, “For a man who claims to be dying, you’ve sure got a nerve.”
