The Collected Stories of William Humphrey Page 4

  Mr. Forester was taken aback. He smiled uncomfortably. He looked at my father and then at me. I could feel the tragic expression on my face, and the sight of my father’s was enough to make me cry.

  “It just makes my heart ache,” said my mother.

  My father gave a loud sigh. Mr. Forester slowly tapped his finger against the crown of his bowler. At last his face gave up the struggle, fell, and he, too, sighed deeply. I could stand it no longer, and I thrust his stick at him from the umbrella stand.

  He bade us good night and we stood in the door watching until he passed through the light of the street lamp and into the darkness beyond. His stick, I noticed as he walked under the light, now touched the ground with each step.

  My mother closed the door and she and my father turned. They became aware of me and stood looking at me. My father shook his head. My mother sighed her deepest sigh.

  I felt that there was no hope for me in these mean times I had been born into.

  Man with a Family

  I

  SHE LIFTED the lid and peered in the churn to see if the butter had come. Straightening, she saw him round the corner, carrying one of his hands in the other as if he were afraid of spilling it. She dropped the dasher and ran to the door. He thrust out his hands as if she might know what to do with them. She reached for them, then drew back sharply and stood watching the blood fall on the doorsill. What was it now? As bad as the other times? He licked his lips, shook his head, then took his hand over and laid it on the table as if he meant to leave it there while he looked for something to patch it with.

  From the range she brought a kettle of water and filled the washpan, testing it with her finger. As the blood swirled sluggishly through the water she sat tensely, brushing a wisp of hair back into her bun, wishing he would say something. She sighed and went to the bedroom and took a tattered pillowslip from the cedar chest. She bit a start in the cloth and rent it into bandage.

  “Well,” he sighed, “it was like this.”

  She sat down and turned her face up attentively, trying to look as she did when he told some favorite story, as if she had never heard it before, as if this was the first accident he ever had.

  “I was plowing.” He waited a second until she had him placed. He held his hands out, gripping the handles. She had it—there’s Daisy, here’s you and those are the reins around your neck.

  “There was a big stone,” he said, looking at the floor. She looked down at it with a frown. “But I didn’t see it because it was covered. Now who would have thought of a stone in that south twenty?” he wanted to know, bristling a little, giving her a defiant look. She tried to show it was the last thing on earth that would have occurred to her. “In three years I never took more than a bucketful of stones out of that field. And they was all no bigger than your fist.” She made a fist and laid it on the table; she honestly wanted to help him. “Smack!” he cried, trying desperately to steady the handles and straining his neck against the reins. She reached out to catch him and he caught himself a moment to remind her that she was at home churning butter, so she settled back and helplessly watched him flung over the handlebar, shoot out a hand to catch himself and rip it to the bone on the moldboard.

  The story finished, Dan snorted, looking around him for some explanation, some reason for it, and she looked, too, glaring blamefully at the air around her. The story finished, Laura roused herself and realized suddenly that he would never get the cotton planted.

  As he held out his hand for her to wrap Dan said apologetically, “I figure it was that last heavy frost pushed that stone up so high.”

  “I suppose,” Laura sighed.

  He gave a laugh to show how little his fault it was.

  “What is it to laugh about?” she demanded.

  They talked about other things driving home from the doctor’s office but Laura couldn’t help being a little suspicious. Surely he had been more careless than he admitted. In this past winter he had cut one thumb, twisted his knee, broken a rib, sprained an ankle, and got a sliver of steel in his eye. To recall all that, why, who wouldn’t be suspicious, and who wouldn’t be aggravated with him? Of course he didn’t do any of it on purpose and of course he was the one that suffered. When it reached the point where she just had to speak her mind about it, naturally she was not mad at him. But somebody had to insist he be more careful. She took her eyes from the road, trying to harden herself to speak plainly. Then she saw what he was hoping she wouldn’t see, how much pain his hand was giving him and how carefully he was coddling it. She mumbled something about putting it inside his shirt and though he had heard her, he looked at the gasoline gauge and said he thought there was enough to get them home.

  At four o’clock the school bus settled with a crunch before the gate and Harold came stamping in, yelling back from the door to friends and, without looking, flung his books on the table with a splash.

  “What’s he doing home?” He jerked a thumb toward Dan as he rifled the breadbox.

  “He cut his hand,” said Laura in a shooshing tone, trying to look a little respect into him.

  He wanted to see. Laura said it might get infected. She added impressively, “It’s got stitches.”

  “Stitches!” He gave Dan a look of respect. “Did it hurt much?” he asked.

  “Lord, of course it hurt, silly!” Laura cried. “What do you think?”

  He wanted to know how he did it.

  “Oh,” said Dan, “plowing. Hit a stone and fell against the moldboard.” It sounded a little silly to tell it now and Harold looked as if he thought it did, too. “A big stone,” he added.

  “Why didn’t you hold onto the handles?”

  “What do you think I was doing, dancing a jig?”

  “Here,” said Laura. “Now you leave him alone. You go on out and play.”

  Harold drifted to the door and then wandered back. Coming close to Laura he said low, “You mean he’s had another accident?”

  There was rain every day for a week. Dan mended harness and puttered impatiently around the chicken yard. But rain could not have come at a better time, so he was not too downhearted. Laura was glad to have him home once she got used to the idea. She enjoyed shooing him out of the kitchen and showing him how to make fudge that always turned to sugar and had to be given to Daisy and reading the serial in the back numbers of the Country Gentleman aloud to him in the afternoons.

  She finished milking on the third morning while he stood awkwardly by, then he grabbed the pail to take it to the house, took three steps, and a corncob rolled under his foot, twisted his ankle, and turned him end up in a puddle of milk. It was so funny they both rolled on the ground laughing but when he tried to get up she had to help him. But that was funny, too, and as she wrapped it up she said that pretty soon he would look like he had been hit by a truck and would need somebody to lead him around. He hobbled like an old, old man, but when Harold came home it would have been hard to tell he was limping even a little if she had not known it already.

  Catching Harold’s eyes on him, Dan decided to see what he could do with one hand about that old stump at the corner of the chicken yard that he had let stay there so long. He went over to it and spat on his hand, gave it a careless tug, then a heave, then nearly broke his back on it but it wouldn’t budge. He looked around and decided to move that big stone he had let lay there for years, gave it a yank and it came loose. He raised it ’way above his head and threw it over the fence, then went casually back for his jumper, but Harold was gone. He looked back at it and had to admit it was not such a big stone at that.

  II

  Anxious as she was to have him get back, it did seem foolish for a man to think of planting cotton when his wife had to harness the mule. She was about ready to go to the field with him. Thank heaven, at least they were not that bad off yet, for the neighbors to see her walking behind a plow.

  In low places in the fields, Laura thought, the ground would still be muddy. Neighbors who could afford to would
stay home another couple of days; she hoped Dan didn’t feel she was rushing him. She snapped the trace chains and settled Daisy’s collar better. Dan gripped the handles and smiled at her.

  As innocently as possible she said, “Now be careful, Dan,” and he replied without resentment, “I will.”

  Laura might have canned a lot more peas but for looking up between every two she shelled, expecting to see him coming in with a limp or a drag or a stagger. Now that he had already lost so much time she feared he might be overcautious. Like Harold—leave him alone and he brought the milk in without spilling a drop, but just let him spill it once and then tell him to be careful not to, how much it cost and all, and he stumbled with it sure as the world.

  A drummer came to the door and usually she simply couldn’t turn one away, but today, as this one rounded the corner, she kicked over her bucket of pods, scared stiff, and almost slammed the door right in his face, he had given her such a scare. As the day passed she got jumpier. It was silly, she knew, but to think of any more delay in the planting made her run cold all over. Maybe she imagined it, but Harold looked around the place as if it surprised him, too, not to find Dan home with some ailment or other. She sent him out but he moped around the back door. Dan was late and to get Harold to bed and give herself something to do she gave him his supper early. He ate slowly while Laura fretted whether she ought to cook a supper of Dan’s favorite things, or would that seem she was making an occasion of a day that ought to be passed over as nothing out of the ordinary?

  Harold finished and went to the window. It was dark now and he sighed lumpily, “I wonder what happened?” Laura turned to snap something, but he was already in the bedroom and instead she sat down to cry when she heard Dan’s step. If he noticed her red eyes he never let on and probably he didn’t; he was blind tired. His arm was stiff and she guessed he had followed the plow bent double all day, one handle in the crotch of his arm to spare his hand.

  As he got back into shape he came in less tired, able to sit up after supper and read a while, or try to read but not be able for watching Laura, seeing how worried she had been all day and how, through the evening, she tried to accustom herself to the notion that another day had been got past, able to see that something, something he couldn’t just put his finger on, but something peculiar had settled down in his house, and what was even more peculiar, even harder to find words to suit, something that seemed to mean to stay. He felt left out of everything. It was as if he had gone away for a while and come back before he was expected. It was such a queer feeling and it wasn’t helped any by looking up sometimes and seeing Laura and Harold standing together like a photograph he hadn’t got into.

  The way they looked at him! Like they had really had something different in mind, but he had come and they had used him and now they couldn’t send him back. Did they? Maybe he imagined it; he wasn’t feeling good, anyway. Maybe his mind was all tired and bent over, too. But what could you think when your own boy looked at you like a horse somebody was trying to sell too cheap, and when he went to bed was thirstier than ever before and kept having to go to the pot to see if you had managed to keep on your feet once you had him out of sight?

  III

  Laura’s mama came over as soon as she sent word that the washing machine had come. It was Saturday and Dan had gone into town to buy groceries, but Harold was too interested in the machine to go with him. Laura’s mama drove her buggy over early. She loved machinery and was proud of her daughter for owning the shiny, mysterious washing machine and being able to run it. She loved the noise and loved having to yell above it to make herself heard.

  “You might get that thing to churn butter,” she urged in a shout.

  Harold was disgusted but Laura thought it might work and promised herself to try it. Now the grandmother wanted to shut it off and give it a rest and rest herself. She rubbed a finger over it as tenderly as over a sleeping baby.

  “A thing like that must cost a heap of money,” she said.

  Laura swelled with pride. “I should think it does.”

  Her mama stood with her question on her face but the amount was almost too much for Laura to be proud of. She said, “We bought it on the installment plan, of course.”

  “Well,” said her mama, as though she had been taken for some kind of a fool, as though she didn’t know a fine piece of machinery when she saw it, “I never thought you could buy such a thing outright,” and in fact she couldn’t really see how they had made the down payment. “How much was it?” she asked hungrily and cocked her ear around to receive some astounding figure.

  She looked ready not to resent the price but to admire it. Laura couldn’t think of another woman anywhere around whose husband had spent so much money on her at one time, so she told. Her mother flinched as if somebody had suddenly blown in her ear. She had prepared herself for the limit; now her face turned sour and she looked at the washing machine with distaste. She thought she had raised a more sensible daughter and one not nearly so trifling. She had washed work clothes and dirty diapers on her seventy-nine-cent washboard for forty-odd years and it was good enough for anybody. She began to take notice that Laura’s dress had a hole under the arm and that Harold had on pants too small for him and needed a haircut. Well, she never thought she would see the day when Laura would let her family go to seed and put her man in debt for years because she was too lazy to wash his clothes, and she said as much.

  Laura said, “Well, I don’t know as it will keep him in debt all that long.”

  “However long it is, looks like you’ll sure be ragged but clean.”

  “Well,” said Laura, standing sharp, hands on her hips, “if I am it’ll be no change from what I always was at home. Except maybe cleaner,” and she turned the machine on with a clatter and stuffed it with practically every stitch the family owned.

  Grandmother recalled the bag of candy she had brought and fished it out of her purse. She took one herself and called Harold over and gave him one.

  Laura snapped off the washer and said, “Don’t feed him that junk this near dinnertime.”

  “Let him have it,” Grandmother insisted, and with a look at the washer, “I don’t suppose he got much while you was saving up for that thing.”

  “I declare, Mama, I never thought I’d see the day,” said Laura, “when you’d envy your own daughter a little comfort and not like to see her come up in life.”

  “Comfort,” said her mama, “is for them as can afford it.”

  “Well, you just let me worry about affording it. And this is only the first. I mean to have a lot of nice things and I’m looking around now to decide what I’ll get when the crop’s in.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen a new player piano,” her mama sighed, “and a new second-hand car come to our house and seen the men come and take them away when they was half paid for.” She shot the bag of candy at the boy; it was giving her a toothache. “Probably the last you’ll see for some time,” she mumbled.

  Harold looked at his mother to have this denied.

  Laura snapped at him, “I reckon you get enough candy.”

  “I don’t either,” he appealed to his Granny. “I’ve never got enough candy in my whole life.”

  Laura sent him out the door and no buts about it. The old woman called after him, “You just come over to your Granny’s. She’s always got a little candy for her boy.”

  “You better send that thing back,” she said. She was serious now. “You never know what’s going to happen to keep it from getting paid for.”

  “You’re just mad,” said Laura, “that Dan wants me to have a few nice things when Papa never bought anything nice for you.”

  “Never mind that kind of talk. You just better get rid of it.” She clamped her bonnet on and gave the washing machine a scampering look.

  “I was going to say you could bring your wash over and use my new machine,” said Laura, “and to show you how big I can be, you still can.”

  Her mama replied with a lift
of her nose to show that she wouldn’t be caught dead doing it, “No, thank you. Thank you just the same. I’ve come this far without it and I reckon my rub-board will see me the rest of my way. You as much as said I keep a dirty house. Besides we ain’t got as much clothes as all that,” and she gave Laura’s wash pile a look that said as plain as day: But it’s a good deal more than you all have.

  IV

  When the cotton was in the ground they all drew a deep breath. He was only a week or so behind with it, and then he started seeding his corn. That went so well that Dan spoke of taking off to go fishing. Laura looked forward to it and had it on her mind as she carried whey to the chickens. What a pity Harold was in school, she was thinking, when Dan came over the hill on Daisy.

  Laura poured the whey in the trough and went out to meet him. He looked disgusted with something, so the fishing trip fizzled out.

  “What happened?” she asked, holding the reins. Then she stooped under the mule’s neck and she saw where Dan’s leg dangled down and floated stiffly inside his bloody pants. Just above the knee his leg took a sickening jump to one side, like a pencil seen through a glass of water.

  Laura crept out from under Daisy’s head and started to look up, when she fainted. Dan slid off Daisy and got his good leg under him. But there he was stuck. He thought, Daisy might take it into her head any minute to make off for oats in the barn. Then what would he do? The nearest support was a fence post he could never reach. He couldn’t possibly get on her back again. How long would she stand still? How long would it take Laura to come to? How long could he stand the sun without keeling over?

  “Laura!” he shouted and Daisy shied. He licked the sweat from the corner of his mouth and called her more softly. Hanging around Daisy’s neck, he inched his good leg out and gave her a shove, waited a second, and when she didn’t stir he kicked her. Laura, with a groan, rolled over and buried her face in the dirt. Dan could feel himself going and decided it would probably be best to fall a little to his left and forward.