Stories of Erskine Caldwell

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Book: Stories of Erskine Caldwell Read Online Free PDF
Author: Erskine Caldwell
biscuits. These were put on the table in front of her, and then the woman poured a cup of hot coffee and set it beside the plate.
    Ruth began to eat as quickly as she could, sipping the hot black coffee and chewing the potatoes and bread while the brown-faced woman stood behind her at the door, where she could watch Ring and her by turns.
    Twice Ruth managed to slip pieces of bread into her blouse, and finally she got half a potato into the pocket of her skirt. The woman eyed her suspiciously when she was not watching Ring in the yard outside. “Going far?” the woman asked. “Yes,” Ruth answered. “Come far?” the woman asked. “Yes,” Ruth said. “Who is that man with you 1 ?”
    “He’s my husband,” Ruth told her.
    The woman looked out into the yard again, then back at Ruth. She did not say anything more for a while.
    Ruth tried to put another piece of potato into her skirt pocket, but by then the woman was watching her more closely than ever.
    “I don’t believe he is your husband,” the woman said.
    “Well,” Ruth answered, “he is.”
    “I wouldn’t call him much of a husband to let you walk through the country begging food like you did just a little while ago.”
    “He’s been sick,” Ruth said quickly, turning in the chair to face the woman. “He was sick in bed for five weeks before we started out.”
    “Why didn’t you stay where you were, instead of making tramps out of yourselves? Can’t he hold a job, or don’t he want to work?”
    Ruth got up, dropping the bread in her hand.
    “Thank you for the breakfast,” she said. “I am going now.”
    “If you take my advice,” the woman said, “you’ll leave that man the first chance you get. If he won’t work at a job, you’ll be a fool —”
    “He had a job, but he got sick with a kind of fever.”
    “I don’t believe you. I’d put you down for lying about him.”
    Ruth went to the door, opened it herself, and went outside. She turned around on the porch and looked at the woman who had given her something to eat.
    “If he was sick in bed, like you said,” the woman asked, following her past the door, “why did he get up and start tramping like this with nothing for you and him to eat?”
    Ruth saw Ring sitting on the bench under the tree, and she was not going to answer the woman, but she could not keep from saying something.
    “The reason we started out walking like this was because my sister wrote and told me that our baby had died. When my husband first got sick, I sent the baby to my sister’s. Now we’re going to see the grave where she’s buried.”
    She ran down the steps and walked across the yard as rapidly as she could. When she reached the corner of the house, Ring got up and followed her to the road. Neither of them said anything, but she could not keep from looking back at the house, where the woman was watching them through the crack in the door.
    After they had gone a hundred feet or more, Ruth unfastened her blouse and pulled out the pieces of bread she had carried there. Ring took them from her without a word. When he had eaten all there was, she gave him the potato. He ate it hungrily, talking to her with his eyes while he chewed and swallowed.
    They had walked for nearly half an hour before either of them spoke again.
    “She was a mean old woman,” Ruth said. “If it hadn’t been for the food, I’d have got up and left before I ate what she gave me.”
    Ring did not say anything for a long time. They had reached the bottom of the valley and were beginning to go up the grade on the other side before he spoke again. “Maybe if she had known where we were going, she might not have been so mean to you,” Ring said.
    Ruth choked back a sob.
    “How much farther is it, Ring?”
    “About thirty or forty miles.”
    “Will we get there tomorrow?”
    He shook his head.
    “The day after?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Maybe if we get a ride, we might get there tonight?” she asked, unable to hold back
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