The following chapters of So Curse the Day were excerpted from The Stark House Press Anthology, edited by Rick Ollerman and Greg Shepard (Stark House, 2024), where the complete novel has been published for the first time.
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Long ago and dim distant there’d been a place like this, a quiet sun-warmed place like this… That was before they took my mother away and before my father locked me in the house and went away forever.
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It was an adobe house.
There was an old nanny goat baa-ing her head off in the front yard, advancing on me, long skinny neck out-thrust.
Bright colored clothing flapped on a rusty wire line stretched between two cracked cedar posts.
The little house was in a hollow, flat roofed, dirty brown, a part of the country, grown out of the earth, quiet and sun-soaked and peaceful. Three or four brown hens scratched earth in the yard and a long-eared pup rolled in the dust.
I wanted to lie down, close my eyes, forget, lie down forever.
Long ago and dim distant there’d been a place like this, a quiet sun-warmed place like this, where insects hummed gently in the trees, hummed gently and not too loudly, where chickens scratched in the dust and a dog slept in the sun.
Long ago and dim distant there’d been a place like this, when I’d been small, when I’d stood in a front yard under a chinaberry tree, still and small and happy, with only the humming sounds of insects and the subdued chuckle of the chickens to break the stillness.
That was before they took my mother away and before my father locked me in the house and went away forever. That was before the man in black found me in the house, before the orphanage, before a lot of things.
And now I wanted to lie down and close my eyes.
“Hello, the house!” I called.
Stillness, dead stillness, no answer but the answering hum of insects.
Nobody home.
The door was open, and I went in, blinking in the cool shadow of the room.
A rough pine table, rough pine chairs, a kerosene stove, pots and pans on the wall, a pine bench in the middle of the floor, a sewing machine.
An odor.
The smell of chili, the smell of peppers, the warm smell of people not there.
A Mexican sombrero on the floor, in the corner.
An open doorway, another room, a room with three beds, rudely fashioned from cedar. Clothing hung from the rafters.
A pair of khaki pants, a khaki shirt.
So I changed clothes.
The khakis were clean, freshly washed, a little snug but all right.
It was a fair trade.
Back in the front room, hungry now, I found a can of tomatoes, some cold tamales, some leather-stiff tortillas, some tepid water in a bucket. And I ate my fill, ate until I was tired of chewing, full stomached to the point of sickness.
When I left the house I felt better.
My step was almost springy as I followed a dim rutted trail to somewhere.
CHAPTER I
The sun was just going down when I hit the highway. I was tired, a little hungry again, a little thirsty, a little scared.
It was the middle of nowhere, the exact middle, but it didn’t matter. The highway spelled civilization. Cars whizzed past, trucks lumbered past, and I stood by that strip of asphalt and waved my thumb. Once a car slowed down, almost stopped, and I started running. But the driver looked back over his shoulder and stepped on the gas.
That made me mad.
The sun was going down, almost red, spreading a pinkish tinge to the low-flying clouds, edging them with pink gold and fringing the round swelling hills with soft touches of orange.
You have to remember scenes like that, because artists can’t paint them. So I drank it in, stood there with my mouth open, my face hanging out, and drank it in, etched it on my mind, swallowed it and rubbed it into me so I’d remember it so long as I lived.
Three or four cars hummed by, zoomed by while I was looking. But I didn’t care.
An army jeep rolled up, soft and easy, out of the hazy mist of sundown, pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.
The soldier was a beefy guy, red of face and thick of lip, the kind that leans over to speak in a low voice, as if someone could overhear.
“Want a ride, bud?”
“Sure,” I said, the laughter bubbling inside, boiling inside, almost spilling over.
“Hop in,” he said. “We’re not suppose to pick up anybody, but I can’t leave you out here.”
“I appreciate it,” I said.
“The coyotes might get you,” he said, nudging me with his elbow.
“Don’t scare me.” I said. “I’m terrified of coyotes.”
“Hell,” he said. “I’ve never even seen a coyote. Or rattlesnake either. They tell me rattlesnakes are thick out here but I’ve never seen one of the damned things.”
“They’re not pretty.”
“I’m from Chicago, myself.” he said.
“What are you doing out here?”
“We’ve been looking for a joker.”
“A soldier?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’d he do? Refuse to salute a looey?”
The guy just grunted, so I let it drop.
“Where you headed?” he asked. “To see your girl friend?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s she like?”
“Black eyes. Olive skin. A figure that’ll knock your eyes out.”
“A señorita.”
“Right.”
“Tell me” he said. “I’ve always wondered.”
“It’s true.”
“That I don’t understand. Everybody says Mex girls are hotter, but I don’t know why.”
“The pepper,” I said.
“That wouldn’t do it. I knew a girl in Chicago who ate pepper all the time and she was coldern’n an Eskimo’s ice box.”
Dusk came suddenly, floated in like fog, settled softly.
“How come you’re not in the army?” the soldier asked.
Just the way he said it irked me.
“I’ve been in,” I said. “Got shot up a little.”
“You look okay to me,” he said.
“Have you been shot at?”
“No. but I’ve …”
“You’ve been sitting on your fat behind,” I said. “What Uncle Sam needs is a few less chiefs and more Indians.”
“Can I help it if they haven’t sent me overseas?”
“Have you asked for overseas?”
“Twice.”
I laughed.
“That’s what they all say! Every time you meet a soldier, every damned time, he begins talking about how he begged to be sent overseas!”
“Look, buster,” the soldier said, “how do I know you’ve been overseas? How do I even know you’ve been in the army? You may have been out on some sheep ranch since the war started for all I know.”
“I told you I’d been in the army,” I said. “I told you I’d been overseas. You calling me a liar?”
“Now, wait a minute!” he said, slowing the jeep a little. “Just hold up a little! Don’t get tough with me!”
“Aw, shut up,” I said, the anger fading.
“That does it!” He slammed on the brakes. “Get the hell out! From here in you can walk!”
So I got out, feeling foolish, wishing I had better control of my temper, dreading the walk.
“How far to town?” I asked.
“Five miles. And I hope you walk every step!”
It made me laugh, it was so silly.
The soldier started off, zoomed the jeep a hundred yards down the road, stopped and began to back up. Like I knew he would.
“Get in,” he said, his voice sullen. “I wouldn’t leave a dog out here.”
“Thanks, soldier. Sorry I got mad.”
“Maybe I got out of line,” he said.
“No, I’m a crazy coot. Sometimes I blow up for no reason at all. Most times I’m mad at the world in general, but sometimes I take it out on anybody near me.”
The cool gray dusk was a soft and shimmery veil and we drove the rest of the way in silence. At the edge of a small town, visible from a swelling hill, the soldier pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.
“I can’t let anybody see you in the vehicle,” he said. “It’s not far to town.”
“Thanks a lot. Good luck.”
“Same here.”
He drove away, his tail light blinking, and I hoofed on past the service stations, the honky-tonks, on into the center of the town, the one-streeted town, through the town and out the other side.
It’s no fun to stand beside a road and wait for a ride, wish for a ride, watch the cars whizz past, listen to the humming sound of tires on pavement. It’s no fun. Especially when you don’t know where you’re going. It’s no fun by day and worse by night, because at night you get sleepy and can’t lie down for fear a car will come along.
Here, in this hot-by-day country, it was cold at night. Not really cold, but more cold than cool, too cool for comfort. My eyes felt gritty, raw and gritty, the lids heavy. I wanted to sleep, close my eyes and sleep my way back to another time, another place, another life.
In the night, deep in the night, I hoofed back to the center of town. One café was open. I went in.
The waitress must have been all of six feet tall, bony and mop-haired, lanky and buck-toothed, flat of chest and thin of face.
She was the only person in the place, the only one I could see.
“What’ll it be?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “if you don’t mind … I’d just like to sit here and get warm.”
She glanced at the back of the room. There was an oval-shaped opening there, with a shelf, an opening into the kitchen.
“You broke?” She leaned across the counter
“Flat.”
“Hungry?”
“Starved.”
She glanced at the back again, turned and loped toward the coffee urn, filled a cup and returned.
“Drink this,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I can use that.”
“I think the cook is asleep,” she said. “Or maybe he stepped out.”
She loped toward the back, disappeared through a swinging door.
I heard dishes clattering.
The old girl brought meat and potatoes, green beans and turnips, a roll and a slice of corn bread.
“Eat that,” she said.
“Lady,” I said, “I’d like to marry you.”
“I just happen to have a license in my purse,” she said, giggling a little. “No kidding. I know how it is to be broke.”
“Well, there are worse things.”
“Yeah. What?”
I wolfed the food, sipped the coffee, fumbled in my pocket.
“Here,” the tall girl said, handing me a cigarette.
That made me laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she wanted to know, sullen.
“Not you,” I said. “Me.”
“You don’t look very funny. You look like you need a bath and a shave and some sleep … and some money.”
“Sure I do. That’s what makes it so funny. Here I am, tough and strong, and there you are.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Here I am. My feet hurt and I get thirty lousy bucks a week.”
“You’re working,” I said. “Take me, now. I’m a bum and you’re feeding me.”
She swabbed the counter with a dirty rag, watching me from the corners of her eyes.
“You got a place to sleep tonight?” she asked.
“The ground.”
She swabbed, glancing at me now and then, nervous, breathing fast, lips parted.
Something inside me turned over.
She had a mustache, almost a mustache, and her lips were thin and colorless, her ears too big and her neck skinny and long. Her hair was straggly, mouse colored and straggly.
“I can fix you up on the couch at my place,” she said. “It won’t be the best bed in the world, but it’ll beat sleeping on the ground.”
No thank you.
Not for me.
Some other time, when I’m blind and old and crippled and desperate.
But what could I do?
I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
She must have been a lonely creature, looking like that, lonely and lost and unloved, plodding through life, hoping and wishing and dreaming.
“That’d be swell,” I said. “How do you know I won’t cut your throat!”
“You won’t.”
She was radiant with some inner light from somewhere deep down, deep buried, and for a minute, a moment, half a moment, she was almost pretty.
“We’ll be closing in a few minutes,” she said.
“Good. I could use some sleep.”
“I’ll get you some more coffee.”
She brought some more coffee, went up front, came back with a package of cigarettes.
“These are on the house,” she said.
“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You won’t.”
After about ten minutes she started turning off the lights. I heard a door bang in back, so the cook must have returned. The girl waved her hand at me and I followed her to the door, went out first, waited while she flicked the night latch.
“It’s not far,” she said.
She was tall, toothpick tall, awkward, long legged and awkward and tall, striding like a man beside me, in a hurry to be home.
For a minute, as we walked in silence, I considered bolting. It would have been easy. We’d left the main street, left the lights, and it would have been easy to dart away into the darkness.
Something, maybe pity, kept me walking beside her, uneasy and uncomfortable.
She lived in a tiny frame house, unpainted, old and rickety, down an alley. We walked through a yard darkened by some giant tree, some wide-branched, thick-leaved tree, onto a roofed porch, walked in darkness until I walked by feel rather than sight.
The girl’s breathing was labored, raspy, and the odor of desire hung around her like a perfume, tickled some part of my senses until I, too, breathed hard, prickled, tingled, breathed hard and sweated icy sweat.
Sex is a funny thing, blind as a bat.
A door squeaked. The girl fumbled around, found a light switch, stood there inside the doorway, staring at me, her eyes dilated, her chest rising and falling.
I told my feet to move and they went the wrong way.
It wasn’t much of a place, little more than a dump, but she’d done her best to make it livable. She had a bunch of Mexican blankets, gaily colored, some Mexican pottery and some brightly painted chairs and a table, a bed with fluffy pillows, and at least a hundred dolls. At least a hundred dolls.
The pitiful gimcrackery, the cheap throw rugs and blankets, the pottery and pictures and pillows and dolls couldn’t hide the peeling wall paper, the worn linoleum on the floor, the shabby couch and rickety chairs and table.
Still, it was better than the road.
“How about a beer?” she asked, flirty, eyebrows arched.
“Fine.”
She had one of those old wooden ice boxes that opened at the top. I could see a pan underneath, half full of ice drippings. But the beer was cold.
I sat on the couch, belly full of food and lungs full of smoke, drinking my beer and watching the girl. She was perched on a chair, stiff and straight, drinking beer, closing her eyes when she raised the bottle to her lips.
She twisted and turned, cleared her throat.
“Where you heading?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Don’t you know?”
Well, I didn’t even care. To hell with it. Now was now and yesterday was gone. Tomorrow would be another day.
I shrugged my shoulders, drained my bottle.
“Let’s get some rest,” I said.
CHAPTER II
She didn’t answer. Just slid off the stool and walked to the back of the room, jiggling her rear end…. I was still hungry.
The sun was just coming up when I hit the road, and the night past was a sour taste in my mind. I was anxious to be gone from there, anxious to escape the memory of the night.
It was big out there, lonely and big out there. I could see a million miles, drank in the sharp air, the bitingly sharp air fresh from the night just gone. I felt good, strong and alive, free, but I would have felt better over a cup of coffee.
For some reason I felt confident. I even felt like planning ahead. I found myself wanting to find a small town and settle down, burrow down and stay down, become a part of the town, get to know everybody, get everybody to know me.
A car whooshed by, going fast. A couple of kids waved, peered at me through the rear window, made faces. It didn’t even make me mad, I just laughed.
The sun climbed higher and it got warmer. A road-runner darted across the road, long tail bobbing, and I chunked a rock at it.
A convertible, robin-egg blue, came at a fast clip, giving me just a glimpse of blonde, long hair blowing in the wind. The car passed me and slowed, swerved, and pulled over to the side and stopped.
She had a flat tire.
That tickled me.
Maybe she’d get her pinkies dirty.
No, she wouldn’t. Some jerk would stop and fix her tire for her, some married jerk with five kids at home, some timid jerk hoping he’d get somewhere with the babe in the robin-egg blue convertible.
She got out of the car and walked around it, stooping to look at the tires, kicking them. She wore shorts and she had long legs, flashing legs that looked white in the distance but turned tan as I approached, until finally I could see they were deeply tanned, golden brown tanned, beautifully proportioned, long and lovely.
I walked to the car and stood watching.
The rest of her was lovely, all lovely. Her blouse was high-necked, buttoned at the neck, long sleeved and prim except for its tight fit that proved all of her was lovely. Her face was tanned, too, the lips full and scarlet, wide, bow shaped naturally and not shaped with the scarlet lip stick she wore. Her eyes were blue and slanted, the eyebrows dark and carefully shaped to emphasize the slant of her eyes.
She smiled a dazzling smile, white teeth showing, and even her eyes smiled.
“I’m glad to see you,” she said.
“This is the second time you’ve seen me,” I said. She frowned, wrinkling her brow, looked puzzled, and still smiled.
“Beg pardon?”
“You saw me the first time when you passed me.”
“Oh.”
“I’m afoot,” I said. “My feet hurt. Your car has plenty of room.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’re sorry now. You wouldn’t be sorry if you hadn’t had a flat tire.”
Her laughter gurgled. “You’re right,” she said, “Well, run along. Someone will stop.”
“I’ll fix your tire.”
“Never mind,” she said. Her eyes turned frosty and the smile went away.
“I’ll fix it,” I said.
She stood back and watched as I got the key out of the car, opened the trunk, pulled out the tools. I didn’t talk and she didn’t talk the whole time it took me to change the tire.
When I’d finished putting the tools away the girl had her purse open.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She had a bill in her hand. “I insist,” she said.
“I didn’t fix your tire for money.”
She smiled, shrugged. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
Without another word, without another glance, she got into her car and drove away.
Sometimes the anger boils up black inside me, like a suffocating cloud, slow and easy, until everything is black and angry, and sometimes the anger bursts in a shower of red gold green.
Like now.
And just as suddenly the anger was gone.
I’d see her again.
Someday I’d see her again. I knew it, because it had to be.
She was lovely.
A big truck, a semi, came barreling down the road, and didn’t even bother to lift my thumb. But the truck stopped. Of all the fool luck, the truck stopped. I climbed in the cab and screwed myself into the corner of the seat and the driver let her roll. He was hauling pipe and it was heavy, but he sent that rig across country and the miles fell behind.
We rode until mid-afternoon and by that time I was groggy. My belly rumbled. My mind was a little fuzzy, too. You know how it is when you’re so hungry your belly aches and grumbles and tightens up into a knot as if some big sore was eating away and drawing away and pulling away at your insides. I was that way.
The skinny waitress had been asleep when I left her house, mouth wide open asleep, face wrinkled and sallow and drawn asleep, neck thin and scrawny and corded asleep, ugly as hell asleep.
So I’d left without my breakfast.
The trucker pulled in at one of those stucco places beside the road, all signs and neon, fly specked and dirty, gravel yarded and beer can littered. We went inside and right away I knew it wasn’t the home cooking that caused the driver to stop. A swishy hipped waitress with curly blonde hair, short curly blonde hair, was the attraction. She came over to the booth and leaned down to clean the table. Her type always does. Her two top buttons were unbuttoned, I knew they would be. She leaned over more than was necessary.
I knew she would.
First she leaned toward the trucker, the big greasy trucker with the yellowed teeth, and began wiping the table top. Then she turned my way, giving me an eye full. The trucker didn’t like that.
I didn’t mind, just pulled my eyes away from where they wanted to look and pretended not to notice when the big boy patted the girl’s fanny.
It was food I wanted.
More than anything else.
The dump was the same as a thousand others. Half a dozen booths along one wall, a counter along the other, a juke box and a cigarette machine and the usual number of punch boards, the usual amount of gimcrackery on shelves. Clocks that look like cats, with pendulums for tails. Dolls and knives and key chains. There were signs you’d expect to see. Stuff like WE DON’T TRUST OURSELVES SO WHY SHOULD WE TRUST YOU, and THE BANK WON’T SERVE FOOD IF WE DON’T CASH CHECKS.
“What’ll it be?” the waitress asked.
“Apple pie and coffee,” the trucker said.
“Coffee and doughnut,” I said, wondering what the traffic would bear.
The waitress hovered around, talking to the trucker and eyeing me, but I was enjoying the doughnut and coffee too much to worry about her. I sipped the coffee slowly, took small bites of the doughnut and chewed every ounce of flavor from each bite, made it last. When the coffee was half gone I filled the cup with water, dipped in four heaping spoons of sugar and sipped it slowly. The waitress noticed.
“How about another doughnut?” she asked.
“Thanks, no.”
The trucker finished his pie in about three bites and drank his coffee. He pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lighted up. It smelled good.
“Give me a cigarette, Charlie,” the girl said.
He fished out the pack and handed it over. She took one and tossed it to me, took another for herself, dug matches out of the silly little pocket on her apron and gave me a light.
The trucker didn’t like that, either.
“I gotta roll,” he said. “See you next trip.”
“Hurry back,” the girl said.
Charlie turned to me. “Guess I’ll be dropping you here,” he said.
“How come? I’m going your way.”
He shrugged. “Too close to home. We’re not suppose to pick up hikers.”
“Give the guy a break,” the blonde said, “I’ve seen you haul plenty of hikers past here.”
“Sorry,” the big fellow said. “I got called on the carpet. Can’t take a chance.”
“Forget it,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”
He started walking toward the door.
I was suppose to pay for the snack.
“Hey, Charlie,” the blonde called.
“Yeah?”
He was sucking a toothpick.
“That’ll be fifty cents. I love you and all that, but we can’t dish out free grub.”
I drew a dirty look from Charlie.
“How come fifty cents?” he asked, “I only had pie and coffee.”
“Fifty cents,” the babe said.
Charlie shrugged again, threw me another dirty look and paid up.
I drank my coffee and smoked my cigarette. The blonde sat on a stool, legs crossed and skirt high, leaning back against the counter to get the last fraction of an inch of out-thrust to her breasts, and gave me the eye.
“Thanks for the coffee and doughnut,” I said, just to have something to say.
“Charlie paid,” she said.
“You made him.”
She sighed, a heavy sigh, eyelids fluttery. “Why is it all the nice looking ones are broke?” she asked.
I grinned, careful to show my teeth. “Women take us for all our money,” I said.
“You’re conceited,” she said.
She simpered.
They all do. I could have gone through the whole line, what I’d say and what she’d say.
“My husband owns the joint.”
“Oh.”
She laughed.
“He’s in Colorado,” she said. “On vacation.”
“Oh?”
She laughed again. “Don’t be getting ideas,” she said. “I do what I feel like doing when I want to do it.”
I wished I had another doughnut but I wasn’t going to ask.
“It’s time I hit the road,” I said.
“What’s your hurry?” Her voice was tight, strained. “You in a hurry to get somewhere?”
“Not in a hurry to get somewhere,” I said. “I just always seem to be in a hurry to get away from where I am.”
“That’s why you’re broke.”
“Guess so. Well, it was nice talking to you. Thanks again for the feed.”
She didn’t answer. Just slid off the stool and walked to the back of the room, jiggling her rear end.
Nice.
I was still hungry.
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In addition to So Curse the Day, published in full in The Stark House Anthology, the press has also reprinted Davis’s 1950s novels Midnight Road and One for Hell.
Jada M. Davis was born in 1919 on a West Texas farm, one of eleven children. He knew brutal poverty as a child, often hired out by his father to pick cotton. He worked as an editor of several West Texas newspapers, where his muckracking into city contracts and civil rights abuses made him a controversial figure. He later owned a bookstore with his wife, while writing novels—one them, One For Hell, earned Davis critical notoriety. His agent and editors urged him to move to New York, where he would perfect his skills. With two sons and a mortgage, he opted instead to take an offer to join the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, where he worked as a PR executive until his retirement. Davis died in 1996.
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