Erskine Caldwell

DAUGHTER

At sunrise a Negro on his way to the big house to feed the mules had taken the
word to Colonel Henry Maxwell, and Colonel Henry phoned the sheriff. The sheriff
had hustled Jim into town and locked him up in the jail, and then he went home and
ate breakfast.
Jim walked around the empty cellroom while he was buttoning his shirt, and
after that he sat down on the bunk and tied his shoelaces. Everything that morning
had taken place so quickly that he had not even had time to get a drink of water. He
got up and went to the water bucket near the door, but the sheriff had forgotten to put
water into it.
By that time there were several men standing in the jailyard. Jim went to the
window and looked out when he heard them talking. Just then another automobile
drove up, and six or seven men got out. Other men were coming towards the jail from
both directions of the street.
«What was the trouble out at your place this morning, Jim?» somebody said.
Jim stuck his chin between the bars and looked at the faces in the crowd. He
knew everyone there.
While he was trying to figure out how everybody in town had heard about his
being there, somebody else spoke to him.
«It must have been an accident, wasn't it, Jim?»
A colored boy hauling a load of cotton to the gin drove up the street. When the
wagon got in front of the jail, the boy whipped up the mules with the ends of the reins
and made them trot.
«I hate to see the State have a grudge against you, Jim» somebody said.
The sheriff came down the street swinging a tin dinner-pail in his hand. He
pushed through the crowd, unlocked the door, and set the pail inside.
Several men came up behind the sheriff and looked over his shoulder into the
jail.
«Here's your breakfast my wife fixed up for you, Jim. You'd better eat a little,
Jim boy.»
Jim looked at the pail, at the sheriff, at the open jail door, and he shook his
head.
«I don't feel hungry,» he said. «Daughter's been hungry, though- awful
hungry.»
The sheriff backed out the door, his hand going to the handle of his pistol. He
backed out so quickly that he stepped on the toes of the men behind him.
«Now, don't you get careless, Jim boy» he said. «Just sit and calm yourself»
He shut the door and locked it. After he had gone a few steps towards the
street, he stopped and looked into the chamber of his pistol to make sure it had been
loaded.
The crowd outside the window pressed in closer. Some of the men rapped on
the bars until Jim came and looked out. When he saw them, he stuck his chin between
the iron and gripped his hands around it.
 «How come it to happen, Jim?» somebody asked. «It must have been an
accident, wasn't it?»
Jim's long thin face looked as if it would come through the bars. The sheriff
came up to the window to see if everything was all right.
«Now, just take it easy, Jim boy,» he said.
The man who had asked Jim to tell what had happened, elbowed the sheriff out
of the way. The other men crowded closer.
«How come, Jim?» the man said. «Was it an accident?»
«No,» Jim said, his fingers twisting about the bars. «I picked up my shotgun
and done it.»
The sheriff pushed towards the window again.
«Go on, Jim, and tell us what it's all about.»
Jim's face squeezed between the bars until it looked as though only his ears
kept his head from coming through.
«Daughter said she was hungry, and I just couldn't stand it no longer. I just
couldn't stand to hear her say it.»
«Don't get all excited now, Jim boy,» the sheriff said, pushing forward one
moment and being elbowed away the next.
«She waked up in the middle of the night again and said she was hungry. I just
couldn't stand to hear her say it.»
Somebody pushed all the way through the crowd until he got to the window.
«Why, Jim, you could have come and asked me for something for her to eat,
and you know I'd have given you all I got in the world.»
The sheriff pushed forward once more.
«That wasn't the right thing to do,» Jim said. «I've been working all year and I
made enough for all of us to eat.»
He stopped and looked down into the faces on the other side of the bars.
«I made enough working on shares, but they came and took it all away from
me. I couldn't go around begging after I'd made enough to keep us. They just came
and took it all off. Then Daughter woke up again this morning saying she was
hungry, and I just couldn't stand it no longer.»
«You'd better go and get on the bunk now, Jim boy,» the sheriff said.
«It don't seem right that the little girl ought to be shot like that,» somebody
said.
«Daughter said she was hungry,» Jim said. «She'd been saying that for all of
the past month. Daughter'd wake up in the middle of the night and say it. I just
couldn't stand it no longer.»
«You ought to have sent her over to my house, Jim. Me and my wife could
have fed her something, somehow. It don't look right to kill a little girl like her.»
«I'd made enough for all of us,» Jim said. «I just couldn't stand it no longer.
Daughter'd been hungry all the past month.»
«Take it easy, Jim boy,» the sheriff said, trying to push forward.
The crowd swayed from side to side.
«And so you just picked up the gun this morning and shot her?» somebody
asked.
«When she woke up this morning saying she was hungry, I just couldn't stand
it.»
 The crowd pushed closer. Men were coming towards the jail from all
directions, and those who were then arriving pushed forward to hear what Jim had to
say.
«The State has got a grudge against you now, Jim,» somebody said, «but
somehow it don't seem right.»
«I can't help it,» Jim said. «Daughter woke up again this morning that way.»
The jailyard, the street, and the vacant lot on the other side were filled with
men and boys. All of them were pushing forward to hear Jim. Word had spread all
over town by that time that Jim Carlisle had shot and killed his eight-year-old
daughter Clara.
«Who does Jim share-crop for?» somebody asked.
«Colonel Henry Maxwell,» a man in the crowd said. «Colonel Henry has had
Jim out there about nine or ten years.»
«Henry Maxwell didn't have no business coming and taking all the shares. He's
got plenty of his own. It ain't right for Henry Maxwell to come and take Jim's too.»
The sheriff was pushing forward once more.
«The State's got a grudge against Jim now,» somebody said. «Somehow it
don't seem right, though.»
The sheriff pushed his shoulder into the crowd of men and worked his way in
closer.
A man shoved the sheriff away.
«Why did Henry Maxwell come and take your share of the crop, Jim?»
«He said I owed it to him because one of his mules died about a month ago.»
The sheriff got in front of the barred window.
«You ought to go to the bunk now and rest some, Jim boy,» he said. «Take off
your shoes and stretch out, Jim boy.»
He was elbowed out of the way.
«You didn't kill the mule, did you, Jim?»
«The mule dropped dead in the barn,» Jim said. «I wasn't nowhere around. It
just dropped dead.»
The crowd was pushing harder. The men in front were jammed against the jail,
and the men behind were trying to get within earshot Those in the middle were
squeezed against each other so tightly they could not move in any direction.
Everyone was talking louder.
Jim's face pressed between the bars and his fingers gripped the iron until the
knuckles were white.
The milling crowd was moving across the street to the vacant lot. Somebody
was shouting. He climbed up on an automobile and began swearing at the top of his
lungs.
A man in the middle of the crowd pushed his way out and went to his
automobile. He got in and drove off alone.
Jim stood holding to the bars and looking through the window. The sheriff had
his back to the crowd, and he was saying something to Jim. Jim did not hear what he
said.
A man on his way to the gin with a load of cotton stopped to find out what the
trouble was. He looked at the crowd in the vacant lot for a moment, and then he
turned around and looked at Jim behind the bars. The shouting across the street was
growing louder.
«What's the trouble, Jim?»
Somebody on the other side of the street came to the wagon. He put his foot on
a spoke in the wagon wheel and looked up at the man on the cotton while he talked.
«Daughter woke up this morning again saying she was hungry,» Jim said.
The sheriff was the only person who heard him.
The man on the load of cotton jumped to the ground, tied the reins to the
wagon wheel, and pushed through the crowd to the car where all the shouting and
swearing was being done. After listening for a while, he came back to the street,
called a Negro who was standing with several other Negroes on the corner, and
handed him the reins. The Negro drove off with the cotton towards the gin, and the
man went back into the crowd.
Just then the man who had driven off alone in his car came back. He sat for a
moment behind the steering wheel, and then he jumped to the ground. He opened the
rear door and took out a crowbar that was as long as he was tall.
«Pry that jail door open and let Jim out,» somebody said. «It ain't right for him
to be in there.»
The crowd in the vacant lot was moving again. The man who had been
standing on top of the automobile jumped to the ground, and the men moved towards
the street in the direction of the jail.
The first man to reach it jerked six-foot crowbar out of the soft earth where it
had been jabbed.
The sheriff backed off.
«Now, take it easy, Jim boy,» he said.
He turned and started walking rapidly up the street towards his house.