SHEM

BY TOM VAN GEMERT

                                                                                                                                                       I

IT WAS ONE WEEK after the marshal of Sparberry had visited the house when Shem’s mother arranged for her son to borrow one of Baxter’s mules to run an errand. Shem was in the front yard with the miniature toy plane he had gotten for his Birthday. When he looked up to see his mother walking gingerly towards him so as not to stir dust up onto her white leather heeled shoes, the plane dropped from his fingers. He could not remember the last time he had seen his mother in the yard. She had on a hat and one of her many dresses that flowed above the knees. When she reached him, still smiling and squinting from the noon sun, Shem had his lips set ready to tell her how white her skin looked when she was outside but then changed his mind and said she should have worn brown shoes. She handed him the envelope she had been holding and asked him if he could ride one of Baxter’s mules into Sparberry to deliver it.
     “You bet I will,” Shem answered. She bent down a bit with hands on thighs to be closer to his level and smiled at him. It was the same smile Shem had seen her give to the men outside church when they called her Ms. Hemple only she didn’t narrow her eyes.
     She then told him to give the letter to the Negro that worked in the drugstore but not to give it to him until he asked for it. Shem scrunched up his face and asked why he had to wait to give it to him. She squatted down on her haunches, held her knees together, and looked up at him. He watched her silver necklace and how it disappeared between the dark crevasse of her breasts. She smiled again making her painted lips shine and explained that the Negro might be busy.
     “But what if he ain’t workin’? Ken he still be busy then?” Shem said.
     “Yes,” she said “So jest stand nearby ‘til he says he’s ready for hit. Will ya do that for me Shemmy?”
      He nodded and then grinned as she stood up and ruffled his hair carefully so as not to break one of her long painted nails. Then she turned and started back to the house and Shem stood there watching her, noticing how she wasn’t shaking her hips in that funny way she did when they went to church. Then she vanished into the tall house and all was as still as before. Shem blinked and looked down at the sealed envelope in his dirty hands. He raised it to his nose and sniffed the perfume. Then he looked back to the closed door again and to the many windows each with white drapes pulled. He remembered the days when he used to sit for hours under the tree watching those windows and watching the men come and go. And every one of them as they stepped out of that door, looked different than when they had gone in. They had grins on their faces and they walked slower with their hands on their belts. He would ask them what they did in there and they would answer “adult things that you ain’t old enough to understand”.
      Shem knew that ladies lived in the house. He’d see them too, though not as often as the men, driving to and from town in his mother’s car in their colorful dresses and high heels. They were friendlier than the men but whenever he used to ask them what they did in there, the smiles would disappear and they’d turn their heads and look straight forward with a blank, sad look in their eyes. One time the lady with the space between her teeth and the eyebrows like two strips of black thread broke down and began to cry. Shem walked over to her as she bent down to pick up the purse she had dropped and touched her on the shoulder saying “Don’t cry mam. Don’t cry” and she looked up at him with mascara streaking down her cheeks and wailed even louder, snatching up the purse to her chest and sputtering into the house, the dust flying from her heels. And Shem just plopped down wide eyed and began scratching slowly at the dirt with a piece of stick. Ever since then he stopped asking. Like his mother told him many times, he would have to wait until he was older, then he would understand.

                                                     I I

ON THE WAY INTO Sparberry, he checked his trouser pocket many times to make sure the envelope was still there. When he reached the creek and stopped to let the mule drink, there were only two small puddles at the bottom of the bed.
     “Dern heat,” he said and watched the long tongue of the mule lap up a bit of mud and then sputter and spit it oozing down it’s chin.
      When he entered Sparberry the town seemed empty. The few people he saw where sitting on porches, fanning themselves in the shade. The drugstore was set apart from the main line of shops and Shem tethered the mule to a nearby fence under a tree and checked for the envelope once more on his way to the open door.
      Inside the small store it was cool. Patent medicines lined the shelves and an old thin man with only one arm and a long feather tucked over his ear sat behind the counter, holding a spoon over the flame of a small alcohol stove. When he saw Shem, he placed the spoon down carefully and looked at him.
      “You here for ice cream?” he said.
      “You bet. You got a nigger workin’ here now?” Shem said.
      The old man nodded and said “Got him workin’ the ice cream.”
      Shem saw the Negro in the corner washing glasses near the freezer that was set into the counter. He walked over to him and asked for vanilla and fudge. The Negro scratched the back of his head and said “We’s all outta fudge. You jest want nilla?”
      Shem nodded and took the envelope out of his pocket. When the Negro saw the envelope he dropped the scooper he was holding and it clattered on top of the glass counter. When he picked it up again his hand was shaking and he kept sucking in breaths. He handed Shem the glass of ice cream, looked over at the old man and then put the other hand down on the counter palm up with his fingers flicking back towards him. Shem put a dime in the hand and the Negro quickly took it out and set it on the counter, continuing the beckoning motion with the hand, looking nervously at the old man. The old man was back to working his spoon over the flame and didn’t look up.
      “Oh you want this now?” Shem said. The Negro nodded two times real fast, not taking his eyes off the old man who was still working the spoon.
      “You ain’t busy?” Shem said. The Negro shook his head with one quick jerk and whispered through his teeth, “No I ain’t”. Shem looked at him. “Why you whisprin?’” The Negro didn’t answer and continued to flick his fingers back at his wet upturned palm, sucking air in and out of his teeth.
      “You sure you ain’t busy?” Shem said. “Cause my mama....”
      “I’s sho, I’s sho” the Negro said, sucking air. Shem gave him the envelope and he shoved it into his front shirt pocket and began to gasp looking down at the counter. Shem scooped ice cream into his mouth and watched the Negro breath.
      “Turl!” the old man said. The Negro looked up, “Yessuh”. The old man lifted his spoon slightly from the flame and nodded down at it, “Its ready”.
      “Yessuh,” said Turl. He walked over and went behind the counter where the old man sat and reaching up, took a leather belt off a hook. Shem walked over, eating his ice cream. The old man set the spoon down carefully and held his arm out palm up. Then Turl began to wrap the belt tightly around the bicep of the arm. The old man made a fist and watched the belt, with his thin dry lips apart but his teeth together. Then Turl looked back at Shem and tapped the old man on the shoulder. The old man looked up at Turl, his eyes coming into focus. Turl shook his head in the direction of Shem. The old man looked at Shem and then at Turl and nodded faintly. Turl walked over to Shem.
      “You finish the ice cream?” Turl said, “You have to go outside for a minute.”

                                                                 I I I

SHEM SAT on the fence next to the mule and watched the drugstore. Turl walked out and sat down on the front stoop and drank water from a jar. He looked up and, spotting Shem, put down the jar and walked over.
     “What you still doin’ heya?” Turl said. Shem looked at him. “What’s so import’nt bout that letter?”
     “None o’ yo bizness, now git on home.”
     “It is so my bizness. My mama wrote that letter.”
     “It don’t matter to me who written it. It none o’ yo bizness, now git on home.” Turl walked back to the stoop and sat down. He took a sip from the jar and looked at Shem. Then he jerked his arm in a shooing motion and Shem got off the fence, untied the mule and began to lead it down the road. He looked back and Turl made another shooing motion with his hand. Shem led the mule further down the road and when he looked back again Turl had gone inside. He led the mule into a nearby stable, handed the Negro boy working there a dollar and then walked back. Finding a crop of bushes just beyond town in view of the drugstore, he sat down behind it and waited.

                                                                   I V

IT WAS DUSK when Turl walked out of the drugstore again. He closed and locked the door and began walking down the road towards the center of town. Shem followed him. Turl stepped up onto the porch of The Blue Heart Saloon and walked inside. When Shem stepped up on the porch, two men walking out stopped him from going in and laughed. He kicked at the ground and cussed the only dirty word he knew over and over again. Then he saw Turl coming out and quickly ducked under the porch. Turl sat down on the edge and sipped at a bottle of beer with his boots so close that Shem, lying there on his stomach in the dust, could’ve reached out and touched them.
      A minute later another man walked out and stepped off the porch. Shem saw the cane and the white snake skin boots and knew right away it was the marshal. He recognized the hat too, when it dropped to the dust at Turl’s feet.
      “Lemme get dat fo’ ya suh,” Turl said, and when he reached down, the envelope slipped out of his sleeve and into the hat. He picked it up and gave it to the marshal.
      “Stay there,” the marshal said.
      “Yessuh.”
      The marshal put on his hat and started walking down the road slow. He was a tall man with poor posture who, with the help of alcohol through the years, had evolved his slight limp into a sort of half swagger. When he was fifty paces away down the road he stopped. Shem and Turl watched him. He took the hat off, removed the envelope, and read what was inside. Then he raised the envelope to his nose and formed a smile with his glassy teeth. Shem’s stomach started burning when he saw this and he gripped at the dirt, wedging tiny grains deep under his finger nails. The marshal put the letter and envelope in his pocket and walked back. “Be at Stemweller pond at midnight,” he muttered and dropped a folded ten dollar bill next to Turl’s boot without stopping.
      “Yessuh,” Turl said picking up the greenback and watching him walk away down the road. A cat crawled out from under a house and the marshal picked it up. It growled and hissed and kicked off of his arm, landing in the dust. Then it turned around and hissed once more at him before scampering away to the alley across the road. He looked back to catch Turl’s head snapping forward to stare blankly at the store in front of him. When the marshal had turned the corner and gone, Turl remained sitting and Shem listened to him sip at the bottle of beer.

V

ON THE WAY BACK, Shem came upon Baxter on a mule headed towards town.
     “Fore God, you’s given Miz Hemple a fit. Where you been all this time?” Baxter said, kicking his mule back around to ride alongside him.                                                                        “Been waitin’,” Shem said looking forward.
     “Waitin’ fer what?
     “Te find out what’s so import’nt bout that letter I delivered fer mama.”
     “Fore God, if you had a father you’d get a beatin’ every night, fore God.”
      When they reached the house it was dark. Shem put the mules away and as he walked back, Baxter was talking to his mother at the door. They both looked at him and then Baxter nodded his head. His mother walked down the three steps in her bathrobe and bare feet and after scolding him briefly, gave him a hug and told him to eat his supper and go to bed. “I’ll be down to tuck you in, but I’m not readin’ to you t’night cause you’ve been bad.”
      “What’d the letter say?” Shem asked.
      “Now you don’t worry bout that you hear? Go on now.”
     Shem didn’t budge. “What’s the marshal doin’ t’night at the pond?” His mother gasped and held her hand over her mouth. Shem stared back at her wide eyes. Insects chirping in the nearby woods filled the silence. She removed her hand slowly from her mouth, “How did you know that?”
     “I hid under a porch n’ heard the mayor tell the nigger to meet um at the pond.”
     “Fore God,” Baxter said.
     “Did you tell anyone else bout this?” his mother asked.
     “Jest you,” Shem said. She looked at him, slowly scratching her long nails together.               “Now you go to bed and ferget all about the marshal you hear?” Shem looked at her.
     “You hear?” she said again. Shem nodded and headed for the cellar door around back. Just before turning the corner, Shem looked back and saw her talking to Baxter again and him nodding in return.
      In his cellar, he found a plate of cold ham and potatoes on the round wooden table in the corner. As he ate he thought about the marshal and his teeth, and then wasn’t hungry anymore. Then he took off his boots and crawled into his bed. When his mother came down he pretended to be asleep. She kissed him on the forehead and left. He waited a minute and then got out of bed and checked the handle to the door to find it locked.
      “Dern,” he said and started lacing on his boots. He slid the table over to the window and, standing on it, crawled through into the window well. A baked toad crackled under his hand as he popped his head up to see Baxter in the twilight sitting in front of the door on a chair, polishing a saddle.
      “Dern,” Shem thought and looked up at the moon, “bout two hours till midnight.” He went back inside, sat down and waited.
      An hour and a half later he looked out of the well again for the twentieth time. Baxter lay slouched in the chair with his arms folded and his chin tucked into his chest. Over his crossed boots lay the saddle, shining the glint of the bright moon. Shem was across the yard and on the trail in the woods two seconds later.
      When he reached Stemweller pond, Turl was there, sitting on a tree stump on the other side. The air was chilly and a thin mist lay over the water. Soon after, the marshal emerged. He was wearing all black clothes except for the white boots. He clapped Turl on the shoulder and the two walked around the pond twenty yards and then disappeared into a dense trail. Shem followed in on tip toe, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he could hardly hear the frogs and insects chattering. He knew that the trail led to Stemweller’s cabin and that Stemweller wouldn’t be there because he went out at night to hunt possum.
      Where the trail ended at the edge of a small clearing, Shem stopped and watched the two men approach the cabin. A light glowed faintly from somewhere within. “Stemweller’d never leave his light on,” Shem said quietly to himself. They stopped in front of the door and the marshal spoke to Turl. Then he opened the door, shooting a long yellow rectangle upon the yard, and walked inside. Turl stood there with the side of his face to the light, making his eyes and mouth look like deep fissures from a shot gun blast into smooth rock. Then the door closed and Turl sat down on a chair next to it in a strip of shadow.
      Shem remained crouched for a while, figuring what he should do. He looked at the window on the side of the cabin and then slowly began picking his way through the brush around the perimeter of the clearing. It was dark traveling and when he tripped over a stump, he lay there as if he were dead, hearing Turl saying “Who dare?” Then he listened to Turls feet approach, scuffing through the tall grass. He slowed and shortened his breathing and felt his heart shoot pain through his chest and limbs in protest. Turl stopped and Shem heard him breathing through the thick, hollow cheeks of his open mouth, “who dare?”
      When Shem heard Turl begin to enter the brush, he was up and running. He broke into the clearing and sprinted straight for the shack, hearing Turl cry “Jeez Christ!” behind him. His arms and legs felt numb and weak as he swished through the tall grass and his throat was dry as he sucked air through his open mouth.
      He reached the door and burst in. The sight of the figures embraced on the bed engraved itself on his mind, remaining just as vivid with all its color and clarity up to the day he died. Then Turl rushed in, tackling him to the hardwood floor shouting “I’s got ‘im! I’s got ‘im!” and he lay there on his side watching his mother bury her face in a pillow, her hair tousled over bare shoulders. The marshal stood up with a bunched up sheet over himself and looked down at him wildly. Then sitting back down on the bed he put elbows on knees and pushed back on his forehead slowly with his finger tips, looking at the floor. As Turl dragged Shem screaming towards the door, he watched his mothers shoulders as they began to shake. Then, just before Turl had him outside, the marshal looked up at him with his hair glistening at the sides and flashed his glassy teeth. Shem’s eyes bulged and he began flailing his arms at him, feeling Turl’s grip tighten around his throat and chest. Then the marshal tilted his head back and began to laugh with those teeth. That was the last image Shem could remember.

V I

JUST BEFORE DAWN, Shem was out in the window well again peeking over the side to find Baxter asleep in his chair. He got out and letting the chill air clutch at his ribs without shivering, walked slowly through the dew across the field to the stables. He found a knife on a shelf in the storage room and flipped it open, examining the blade. Taking it to a piece of rope, he worked it through the fibers in jerky motions and watched it pass through.                        A moment later he was atop the saddle of a mule, traveling slowly through the wet grass up an embankment to the road. And when he reached the road and had traveled ten yards towards Sparberry, he stopped and looked back at the house. The sun was just beginning to peek out of a horizon obscured by trees. It’s light wouldn’t touch the house for another hour. He stared hard at the windows with their white drapes pulled. A solitary crow fluttered onto the roof top and bobbed its head up and down with its beak gaped open. Shem watched it and then let his eyes fall once more on the drapes. For an instant he had the sensation that not a living creature breathed behind any one of those windows. Then his eyes hardened and he looked down the road ahead. Again he had the temptation to shiver and again he resisted. He kicked his heels into the mule’s ribs and pushed off toward town.

Back To Collected Stories                       E-mail comments about the story