Chapter Thirteen

The day was like a crystal fish-globe, crammed with light. On all sides the horizon had a transparency. At noon, when there were no shadows, it was like lying at the bottom of the transparency, munching thick, white bread that you had to tear because it was cut twice as deep as your teeth. It was like the most perfect kind of drowning imaginable. It was like the piece Dora Tarkington recited so shyly Friday afternoons from the school-platform, her skirts maneuvered constantly between her thumbs and forefingers:

Anyway, if it wasn’t like that—it reminded you vaguely—of a sep-ul-chre by the sea. No, not that! This drowning of the long afternoon was in a sea of blue and silky air that jammed the enormous fish-bowl with the nicest kind of universe.

If you slitted your eyes and lay on your stomach, down on the green floor of the bowl were the backs of the grazing sheep. Dirty foam. And no shadows. Just light. Light. Light. Light was grand. You wished you were made of chicken-wire. That was to be all light.

And Teddy, while you lay with your eyes closed, panting short and quick and hot at your side, and taking sudden rough licks at your hands or wallowing on his back, so that without opening your eyes you could hear the nice noise his rough coat made against the nibbled grass.

The days were as long and as slow and as big as the eternity they sang about in the hymn-books of Sunday mornings in the vestry-room where you “had” Miss Lare in Sunday-school. Eternity was full of God. What was God full of? The hymn didn’t tell that. Henry would know. Yet, somehow, that was the one question of all you would not ask Henry. God was something private. He wasn’t quite that way to Henry. Not that Henry had ever said so. It was something you just kind of knew.

Henry’s World’s Almanac, face-down, rustled when his flung-out hand fiddled with the leaves. Earth pressing warmly into one’s face made it difficult to even delve into its panorama that helped so to while away the hours. The Territories. Descriptive. Hawaii—Territory of. Area 6,449 square miles. Capital, Honolulu.—The crossroads of the Pacific—Henry’s map showed the mountains and the volcanoes. Hawaii had not the right of statehood—Henry said—the right of statehood?—the brain reeled lazily—life was just a swinging foam of the dirty backs of the sheep. Of the World’s Almanac. Of a blur of last night’s impressions of Magellan skirting the fringed edges of the Philippine Islands, to the guiding waggle of Henry’s long forefinger across the page. Of Lincoln on the rostrum, delivering the Gettysburg Speech that hung framed over Henry’s mantelpiece. Lincoln’s face was the shape of the bottom of a foot. Lincoln made it grand to have a face the shape of the bottom of a foot.

Long, dozy high-noons of munching the deep bread, with your eyes closed, and high-noon lapping over into afternoon. Teddy squatting himself flat on your chest, and the two of you, for the briefest moment while Grime kept watch, dozing off, nose to nose, eye to eye, breath to breath.

It was in the middle of one of these June-drenched afternoons of perfect, drowning peace, that Teddy, who was a terror for detecting sounds, leaped off of Davey’s chest and ran down barking toward the spring-house.

Once before he had routed out Stevey and Claire, who had been seated down there without Davey ever having perceived their coming. They must have strolled along by the creek-banks, where trees, skirting South Meadow, blotted out a brief moment of sky-line.

That was the time Davey had lain on his stomach at the top of the slope and shouted to them while Teddy whizzed downhill.

Poor Davey, in the unwonted excitement of having human figures walk into the lull of one of those long afternoons, had tried to lure them, with cat-call and shouts, to the top of his slope. But Stevey and Claire had hurried away so strangely, and not friendly at all, into the concealment of the bush that lined the creek. And, presently, there were their silhouettes once more, hurrying homeward.

Now Teddy had found them out again. You could see Stevey’s head coming cautiously out from the other side of the spring-house and the yellow that showed beside him was the edge of Claire’s skirt. Stevey was stooping as if for a stone—surely not—

“Stevey! Claire! You—hoo—come on up. Stevey—come on up—not hot up here. Come on—up—’s me—Dave!”

Foolish whirligig of Teddy wanting to leap and yap and dash himself against these friends whom he recognized—pulling at the yellow of Claire’s skirt—hurling his body against Stevey—yelping....

What was Stevey—what was Stevey—doing? No. No. No!

But it was then that there crashed through the brain of Davey, shouting from his hilltop, a sort of an insanity. Something locked his breathing so that it could not get through. A paralysis. Sight became a blur. Pain became a devil.

Stevey was kicking Teddy. Body-blows. The yelps that leaped out were kicked out. At first, under the rain of blows, Teddy had started to run, bellying to the ground, bewildered, full of pain. But Stevey had followed him up. With terrible, terrifying, careening strides, that zig-zagged crazily, and now Teddy was lying on his side against a salt-rock, pinioned there by one of Stevey’s boots, while the other was kicking that soft spot above Teddy’s ribs that made the yelps leap out. And the world was gashed with those yelps and the dancing horror of Stevey’s foot, and the yelps ran into you and then out of you like blood, and Claire was beating with her futile girl’s fists at Stevey’s shoulders and still Stevey, with his teeth bared back, was kicking—kicking—

Teddy’s eyes were being kicked, and the yelps were out of his eyes—that was how it seemed to Dave in the midst of the insanity of seeing black.

Twice as he tore screaming and strangling down the slope, he fell as if into the spinning yelps and the spinning insanity that gave him speed.

How Claire screamed! In high, harsh sleigh bells, and by now the yelps were like a shower of red-hot butcher-knives that leaped out of the dog and into one’s breathing. And breathing became a delirium that pulled and roared and exploded in blasts, and you were plunging through high waters—tears—and Teddy down there, in a crouch beside the salt-rock, was being kicked into and kicked into.

Then, as he tore up and threw himself across that small crouch of his dog, one of the kicks intended for Teddy went into David’s thigh, so that, with Teddy in his arms, he went down flat, winded, gagging, the color of chalk for the moment, jerking Stevey to his senses with a suddenness that seemed to make him, too, the color of chalk.

There were only the wheezing noises Stevey made as he stood looking down at the sprawl of Dave, with Teddy in his arms, and the small sound of Claire as she began to cry, with her face in her hands.

The horrible, pain-riddled afternoon, where before there had been just the peaceful translucence of a goldfish bowl filled with niceness of universe. Stevey, with sweat making his white face glisten with the strange pallor of an arc-light, continuing to stare sickishly down at the sprawl of Davey. His lips kept twitching so, as though they could crawl along through his cheeks and on—away—

Teddy whimpering as though the very yelps had been bruised. That was what kept the insanity boiling, even after the wind had been knocked from Dave. Teddy trying to lick his hands, between bruises of whimpers. Incredible pain of that. It made him leap to his feet. It made him beat with his fists, claw with his nails, batter with his palms against the rather dreadful pallor of Stevey’s face, which felt sticky and sickening, with a clammy kind of sweat that was cold. It made Dave, with Teddy swooped up into his arms, run hiccoughing and strangling through the red-speckled, hot afternoon; run blindly, with dust caking his tongue and his tears, and making the world a slime of horror and pain.

The destination of Bek was instinct rather than impulse. Somewhere, in the terror of things, she must be waiting calm and true and cool. Out of the pain and the chaos, out of the hurt world full of the red specks and yelps from a kicked dog, there was Bek! It was like lugging a sheep, his long legs dangling, his head lolling so, that from the open mouth the saliva spun off the tongue in flying rills. There was that red, wet spot against Teddy’s side, that kept Dave’s hands sticky. It was a pain-crazy world. Crazy world of Teddy’s dangling head, as if he were fainting as he whimpered. Crazy world of stones that bit up into bare feet. Of up hill and down dale, through strangulation of rage and horror. Fields that had flowed so placidly about him, all his life, now seemed to rise up, to throw him, to cut him with lurking stones, to stretch and to stretch endlessly between him and the haven of Bek.

Dave wanted Bek. Through the strangling passion, the first he had ever known, that seemed washing away the roots of his small heart, Dave wanted Bek.[22]

As luck had it, she was striding along the cinder-path to the house from just having superintended the loading of six calves up an incline and onto a truck that was to carry them to Centralia Junction for shipment.

At the scuttling sound Davey made tearing through the cinders, and the low whimpering of Teddy, she turned in time to catch them as they hurled against her skirts, foamy saliva streaming from the pair of them.

“Why, Dave!”

She had never seen passion before. She had never seen tears lash at a face, and that a child’s face, and leave it so rigid and bony. He was a knot of strangulation; and, for the moment, the fear smote her, what if his breathing should get too clogged!... “David! What?”

“He—he—he!” screamed David, “He—he——”

“He what, boy? He—who—what? Davey!”

“He—he—he——”

“Stop it! You’ll choke! He what——”

“He hurted him,” shrieked David. “He hurted him.” And thrust out the body of his dog so that the side which panted and was moist and red from having been kicked in, was between them. “I’ll—I’ll run him through with a pitchfork from the barn—I’ll get a pitchfork after him——”

The screaming, childish voice. There was that constant fear that his breathing could not get through. The mounting hysteria of his rage. The tear-lashed face streaked with runnels of mud.

“Dave! Hush, do you hear? Hush, I say!”

“He—he—he—he——”

“Who, Davey?”

“Steve.”

“Steve what?” said Bek and closed her hand over her throat. “Steve what, Dave?”

“Kicked him! I’ll pitchfork him,” screamed Davey and lunged again, this time into his sister’s arms, so that she caught and shook him until his small, square teeth rattled.

“David, behave!”

“I—yi—yi.”

“Quiet. Not another sound.”

“Old Teddy——”

“Lay him out. There, on the grass. Quit your crying. Do you hear? Quit it! Get me one of those window-sponges under the porch. Dip it first. Teddy, good dog. Don’t snap, old fellow—I’m going to hurt a little bit—good old Ted.”

The long, even strokes of the sponge were enough to set him yelping, and then gamely to subside, with his forelegs held out as stiff as sticks.

“Dip the sponge again. Wash your own face there at the hydrant. Hold it under. There—old Teddy—patience——”

“Is he, Bek—to death—”

“No. Broken rib, I think. Flesh-wounds.”

“He hurted him, Bek—with kicks—”

“Sh-h-h! Get me fresh water.”

Stevey had done this unmentionable thing. Stevey had kicked in the side of a dog until a bloody tatter of his flank hung down. Stevey, who was supposed to be surveying up around North Dam had been somewhere around South Meadow instead, and had kicked in the side of a dog. And Davey, whose heart was as good as kicked in too, had seen him do it. Had not only seen his dog kicked, but had seen him kicked by Stevey!

The terrible Stevey must have done that! The terrible, secret Stevey who must be kept from the knowledge of Winslow and of the family, of the community, of Davey, must be at large again. Stevey, drunk, must have done this atrocity!

“David, run into the house and fetch me my first-aid bag from the hall-closet. And, David, you won’t mind if Teddy hollers a little. Looks like I have to yank this bad old rib into place.”

“I won’t mind, Bek,” said Dave, with a smear of pain across his face and started running toward the house.

Between them they held Teddy, while Bek poked at the rib with a forefinger, and Teddy moaned and quivered; and with the dog’s head locked down between David’s small knees, Bek started winding the gauze. On the first tightening pressure, the frantic muzzle of Teddy slipped Davey’s hold and sank teeth into Bek’s arm, above the wrist. A long ooze of blood appeared slowly.

“Hold firmly, Dave. Don’t move. Teddy didn’t mean that. He thought he was biting the pain. Don’t mind the blood, Dave.”

“I—won’t.”

“Hold him firmly.”

“I—will.”

“If you faint or do anything silly, you’ll mess things up for Teddy, now that I’m getting him in his splint all righty.”

“I—won’t—”

“Try not to mind his yelping, Davey. No, No. No. Hold him firmly by the hind-legs—it’s got to hurt.”

“I will.”

Finally, he was bound and laid under the porch on an old horse blanket used for covering bulbs in autumn.

Without talk. Then there was Bek’s wrist and arm to be bound. It was hard to hold the bottle of peroxide properly above the wound and pour it on and see it bubble in with the blood, and not begin to feel squeamish all over again. The bottle kept seeming to rise up and down and the blood to be all running through one’s eyeballs in threads—except—the shame of feeling squeamish before Bek—one dared not—before—Bek—

“Now, Davey!”

“I’m all right, Bek.”

“A little more here. His teeth got snagged, you see.” Finally, the blessed relief of the gauze clamping down. The almost instantaneous spat of blood against the white made it hard for the moment, but then the winding covered that—the winding—the winding—and through the winding, the insistent impulse to slip somehow underneath the somnolent afternoon that was suddenly so slashed with the yelps of the kicked dog and the red bands of blood. Then, too, was the sickening background consciousness of forty-eight sheep with only Grime for guard.

And through the swinging sickness of it all, there suddenly was Stevey, with his face like a pat of dough before Mathilda flattened it out beneath her rolling-pin. Stevey standing beside his mother and leaning against a rain-barrel because he had to sway. It must have been the dizziness—the wanting to slip underneath it all that made Stevey seem to sway so.

Just the same, sight of him brought the old impulse back to batter, except that Bek’s hurt arm was trembling, and one must keep on winding—winding through all the red impulse——

“You’re drunk, Steve,” said Bek, without the pretense of even so much as turning her face away from Dave hearing. It couldn’t matter—now. It was the only way to explain to him that the Steve who had kicked a rib broken, was a Steve outside of himself. Evenly, and with a cold manner of appraisal, Bek repeated it, regarding her son teetering beside the rain-barrel.

There was something of enormous and omniscient calm about Bek, so casual about her gauze-bound arm, with the red spot widening, skirts tucked into boots, feet spread, strong black hair with the bluish light over it, and the enormous levelness of her eyes—the prairie-flatness; the un-undulating squareness of Bek’s gaze, pouring against the bloodshot, watering eyes of Steve. It seemed almost to grip him into standing erect, as something loose and boneless can be grabbed by the back of the neck and pulled to its feet.

Steve looked like that. Boneless.

“You’re disgustingly, bestially drunk. You’ve done a cruel terrible thing to a child and to a dog!”

“You—bad devil you,” cried David, and began to dance on his toes and make lunging, hysterical throws of his body toward Stevey—“you bad devil you——”

“Sorry—didn’t hurt him, Davey—didn’t mean to, Davey,” said Steve, trying to fasten his watering gaze upon the white-faced boy. “Sorry, Davey—shorry, Dave——”

“You bad devil——”

“Davey—go, do you hear? Stay with Teddy beneath the porch. Go!” Finally he had to be dragged there by Bek, who lifted him by the underneath of his arms. “Dave, stay with Teddy.” She left him, a silent huddle beside the silent dog, his lips still sucked back against his teeth and the flanges of his nose sea-green. And Stevey, watching her retrace her steps toward him, wavered as she came, tottering a little, like a scarecrow in a wind-swept field.

“You’re a drunken—sot, Steve.”

“Well—so was Cæsar—the Julius one—many a time. Excuse me, Mother—didn’t mean—that——”

Her throat ached for him. His young, flawed handsomeness. The black bang of his hair, down over his eyes. Soft shirt open at the throat. Legs slim in puttees as he had worn them on the campus at Agricultural College.

Olive pallor. Gray eyes, with black flecks like his grandfather Schuyler’s, behind the too-quick batting of black lashes. A slim, handsome, insolent drunkenness. A fastidiousness to Steve, even in his cups.

“Where did you get—it?”

“The stuff? For God’s sake, Mother, don’t catechize me like a revivalist. Where did I get the filthy stuff? Ha! The gin mills have got your fair-haired boy. The dens of vice. The cesspools of iniquity. Dens of vice and cesspools of iniquity. Where is my wandering boy tonight—oh, Lord——”

“I can’t fight it alone much longer, Steve. Your father will have to know. The family, too. It is getting beyond me single-handed.”

“What they don’t know, old-dear Mother, won’t hurt them. They’re safe in sobriety. They’re so damn safe in sobriety.”

“Where did you get it, Steve? You promised to come to me when—when you had to have it.”

“Yah—yah—with my throat on fire, with the lining of me on fire—begging a thimbleful from the bar of the holier-than-thou.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Em’s.”

“You mean—Claire—gave it to you?”

“Yes, I mean Claire.”

“You got Claire—innocent, unsuspecting Claire to dole you out drink from her mother’s cellarette?”

“Betrayed the hand that quenched me,” cried Steve, and threw out a mock gesture.

“Steve, look at me. You and your cousin have been meeting clandestinely for a month. Ever since you’re home.”

“Interesting way to meet. Hadn’t thought of it that way before. Clandeshly—clandesthly—clandesh—ly——”

Suddenly Bek’s hand leaped out. The one with the red-stained gauze.

“Hurt your hand, Mother? Been indulging in one of your feminine pastimes like hay-forking, I take it. Poor old Mum’s hand.” He started to carry it to his lips on a grand over-balanced bow—and teetered.

“Steve! Steve! Pull yourself together. For God’s sake, Steve—poor little Claire—you like this——”

“What do you mean, poor darling? She’s as fine and as sweet as gold—if gold is as sweet as I think it is, seeing’s I’ve never been on close terms with enough of it. What do you mean, poor?”

“I mean, Stevey—I’ve seen it happening day by day. You two. Grown-up and cousins!”

“What do you suspect, my dear mother Bek?”

“Suspect?”

“Yes, old dear—you have been suspecting—now haven’t you?”

“Change your manner to me.”

“Sorry, Mother. But you have been suspecting?”

“Only with my eyes. Not with my heart.”

“Well, she’s a darling!”

“Steve!”

“Yes, I’ve been meeting her. Actually seeing my own cousin—how would you call it in movie lingo—er—ah yes, clandeshtinely. Safternoon. Many safternoons. Yessir—when everybody in the world, except the canniest person in the world, known as my mother, thought I was at the dam, and that Claire was at her this-ing or that-ing, or whatever it is small-town, young-lady school-teachers do with their late afternoons. We, we—the darling—guess I’m pretty drunk for admitting it——”

“Guess you are, Steve.”

“Guess I’m pretty damn drunk for saying so.”

“Guess you are pretty—damn drunk——”

“Well, I like her. She likes me. Dammit, a fellow’s got no right to stay sober. Makes a mollycoddle out of him. Saps his courage. But I’m not afraid. Of you. Of the family. I’ll march her up to Thanksgiving dinner in the House on Sycamore Street and face the whole battalion of you. I’ll tell the family. I’ll tell the world. She’s a darling—even if she does come from the horse-faced Millikens. She’s a darling. I want her!”

“Steve,” said Bek, in her foggy voice, and went up to him and took hold of his teetering shoulders to steady them, and tried to pinion his eyes with her own. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m drunk enough to have the courage to say what I’m afraid to say when I’m sober. I want her. She wants me!”

“You’re drunk, I tell you. Listen, Steve, Mother understands.”

“Mother doesn’t. Mother’s too damn strong to understand.”

“Steve!”

“Mother’s not human. I am. Claire is. Mother’s noble. From the too-damned-noble, deliver me. Sorry, Mother. Excuse. Mother’s always shielding. Mother-the-shielder. Nobody’s got to be shielded from me. If Father’s going to have hydrophobia over me, let him have it. If Gramp is going to yell—let him yell! Won’t be the first time. If the whole holier-than-thou house of Schuyler has got to be protected from me, dammit, I’m not going to do the protecting. To hell with this salt-of-the-earth stuff. Where does it get you? Suppressions. Repressions. Listen, world, I’m in love with my cousin, my first-cousin, even if it gives Father hydrophobia and Gramp the screaming yammers. It’s a grand idea, Mother, walking through life and keeping it as calm as Dickery-dickery-dock, the mouse ran up the clock, for the whole family. Grand, if you want to make yourself the go-between—and take the buffs for the whole clan. Strong. Strong. Noble. But here’s one blow the family’s got to take square in the solar plexus. I’m in love with my first-cousin. She wants me. I want her.”

Bek took hold of her son’s arm with her own blood-stained one and shook him until his teeth clicked. “You’re a drunken fool!”

“Tell me that again, darling. Didn’t hear it the first time. Claire knows it too. That’s part of the infernal glory of a woman in love. She cannot help forgiving. Mother-love. Sex-love ... both pretty much alike, when it comes to the quality of mershy.”

“Steve!”

“’Course. Forgot. Sex is unmentionable in a respectable world that has been created by sex.”

“You and Claire wouldn’t dare to do a thing like that to the family. Your silly little yellow-haired cousin. Of course she thinks she’s in love with you. Always has. I’ve known it, only don’t you fool yourself, she’s too much of a Schuyler to be guilty of——”

“Guilty of what?”

“Guilty of dangerous social behavior like marrying your own cousin. That’s—almost what the Bible would call——”

“That’s vice! I know it all before you say it. You’re in the intellectual backwoods, same as the others. You’re no different except in strength. Intermarriage of cousins. That old myth went out of date with antimacassars. Ask Henry! Everybody who’s even half-abreast with the times knows that the horrible thing we used to call inbreeding needn’t be horrible at all. You’ve seen it among your own cattle. Can even strengthen the breed. Ask any biologist. Pff! That for the first-cousin myth. If I marry Claire, you let biology, not the family, worry about progeny.”

When Bek spoke next, standing with her feet in their wide plant, her hurt arm gripping her son’s, her face almost touching his so that he could feel the shape of her low, intense words in breath against his face, it was as if, through her son’s fogged brain, her force were blasting itself and staggering him sober. “Biology, piffle. Isms! Sophomore-twaddle. You’re not dry yet behind your ears!”

“I won’t be made ridiculous!”

“Too late. You’re already very that. Biology. It may be all right theoretically, and from the laboratory of the guinea-pig. I don’t pretend to know even your half-baked science. What I do know is that there are too many examples of its wrongness right here in this town. You know Jean——”

“Yes, yes, I know. She’d have had imbecile offspring if she’d married all of Harvard College.”

“All of which is beside the point. The point is now, that you’re drunk. You’re standing there reeling in the way of my life-long ambition for my family, in this community, in this state, in this country. But so far as I have anything to say, this family is going to remain the salt of the earth, clean straight through.”

“What you going to do with the salt? Sprinkle it on a sheep’s tail?”

“No, I’m only going to maintain the traditions that those two old people in the House on Sycamore Street have started for us. Your grandmother and your grandfather literally worked the earth you are standing on, teetering on, to make it fit and fruitful for you.”

“Yah——”

“Yah! And your aunts and your uncles represent the decent, law-abiding, upstanding citizenry of this country. We have that heritage to carry on. And you!”

“Heritage of middle class.”

“Heritage of decency! Decencies that you, as you stand here before me now—a drunk—are dragging down. As you inveigle a sweet girl, your cousin, into clandestine meetings with you, because you dare not be open and aboveboard. Because you know the wrongness of it. You’re loafing on your job! Betraying my confidence in you. You, insulting by your dishonor, your grandmother and your grandfather. You, imperilling your father’s health. And lowest of the low, you kicking dumb brutes. Offending every decency, and then, when there are none left, you turn beast yourself.”

“Mother——”

“I’ve lied for you. I’ve protected you against the punishment of your father and the terrible wrath of your grandfather. If you haven’t any decency left for me, then, for God’s sake, have it for them. For your Uncle Henry. For your Uncle Phil. Your aunts.”

He began to cry a little, licking off tears with the tip of his tongue as they straggled loosely toward his lips.

“That child over there. He’s handicapped as it is, growing up down there by himself years and years away from the companionship of brothers and sisters of his own age. I want this great big growing family of ours to be the finest imaginable for a child like that to grow into. He deserves it. You can’t smash his heritage. Not while I’m your mother and his sister.”

The crumpling-up of Steve was more of a collapse than a faint. Perhaps a little of both. His mother caught him as he tottered.

“Steve. Please. Sh-h-h. There’s your father coming up from the orchard. He’s been painting. He must not see you this way. Steve, I want you to walk! Erect! Up to your room. With me. With Mother—Steve—don’t you dare to stagger——”

“I——I——can’t——make it——”

“You will. You must.”

“I will—I must——”

With the support of her left arm against him, as the figure of Winslow came up above the rim of slope that led from the orchard, they walked up the steps, across the verandah, unwaveringly, into the house and on up to Steve’s room underneath the eaves.

One hour and forty minutes later, Bek came out again. Alone.

“Where’ve you been, Bek?” asked Winslow, who was working away at his pipe-stems with “cleaners” she kept him supplied with by mail-order.

“Putting my house in order, Winslow,” she said.

FOOTNOTES: