The Dollmaker

  Gertie stepped back from the mail window, tore off the end of the envelope carefully, then pulled out sheets of tablet paper with bills of money folded in their center. She never tried to read for looking at the bills—three twenty-dollar bills. She stared, unbelieving. All that from her mother, and now this. It was enough to get a little start of sheep or maybe a good one-horse turning plow like …

  “Gertie, is he all right? They didn’t git him in th army?”

  She nodded, rousing slowly to Aunt Kate’s question. “He’s all right,” she lied, ashamed to say to her man’s mother that so far she hadn’t read a word, only looked at his money. “He’s in Detroit,” she explained, “so he cain’t be in th army. Wait, I’ll read it to ye,” and slowly she read, following Clovis’s unfamiliar writing with difficulty:

  “‘Dear loved ones,

  “‘Well, Gertie, I passed the army. But they didn’t want me. Not right away. The army said I wud not be called for a right good spell. But that imploymint office told me a long time back to go to a factory. I come to Detroit. It was near as close as coming back home. I got a job that suits me. It pays good. I sold the truck. You know I had not hardly made nothing with it. They won’t be no more coal to haul till the war is done. The truck brang more than I paid. It was them good new tires. I owed Lister sum. And I paid it. I am taking sum. I will send you more when I have a pay day. Now, don’t be stingy, Gertie. Buy what you need. You and the children needs clothes. I want you not to have it so hard. Write to me.’”

  There was a long address, words of love, rows of X marks for kisses for herself and the children. These she did not read aloud; and anyway Aunt Kate was pulling her sleeve, asking like a troubled child: “Gert, you won’t leave us an foller him there? Deetroit’s so fer away—might nigh as bad as bein acrost th waters. He’ll like it there. All that machinery’ull jist suit him—fer a while. It’ll be all over one a these days, an he’ll come back an git him another truck. But if’n you foller him he might never come back.”

  Gertie patted the old woman’s shoulder. “Law, Aunt Kate, you know I’d never go up there. I’ll save jist about everything he sends so’s he can buy him another truck when he gits back. I’ll have Clytie git him a letter off in th next mail to let him know they’ve found Jesse. It’ll …”

  Sue Annie held up a gaudily beflowered apron and cried, “Lookee, lookee, they ain’t fergot their old grandmammie.” She saw Gertie’s letter. “Clovis has took off fer one a them factories, I bet, like he’s been a wanten to. If he stays at work like my boys, th army’ull never bother him agin. He’s so old, an with all them youngens.”

  “He’ll have to stay, that is, fer a spell,” Gertie said. “He’s sold his truck.”

  “You’ll have to be a widder woman like me, Gert,” Ann Liz Cramer said, then added doubtfully, “that is, if Clovis’ull give in to stay away frum you an th youngens. Some men is kinda foolish thataway.”

  “We’ll manage,” Gertie said, giving Sue Annie a worried pitying glance. The old woman had fallen into a brokenhearted weeping over a letter she had just started to read.

  Kate looked at her sister in troubled wonder, for Sue Annie had grandsons, but no sons, in the fighting.

  “Nancy ain’t a comen home to have her baby,” Sue Annie sobbed. “She’s a goen to one a them hospitals,” and she cried on, more sorrowful than indignant. “An allus before I’ve been good enough to bring ever grandchild an great grandchild I’ve got.”

  “Times changes, Sue Annie,” John said, looking up from a letter, one of many he had received. He turned to help Flonnie Belle Keith at the map behind the meat counter, her baby on one arm, her free hand groping over the Pacific Ocean while she asked of the map: “Where’s England? My Loy’s in England.”

  Gertie stood by the mail window, waiting impatiently until Mrs. Hull could get the slip for her to sign. She felt guilty among these tired and troubled ones; she was so strong and glad. Many had finished their letters and were gathering around the map while they waited for the newspapers and packages. They talked in low voices, using at times strange new words and phrases that stood out in the ordinary speech of the people like weeds in a field. “Bombardier—Guam—he’s a trainen in a tank destroyer—Wac—plane carrier—they call em babushkas—waist gunner—V-mail—cargo plane—bazooka—UAWCIO.”

  She turned her back on them all and looked through the door. She felt again the loneliness like an old sorrow. Why couldn’t she cry for Clovis the way Sue Annie cried for her daughter? Why couldn’t Clovis and she have wanted the same things? He’d wanted Detroit since the beginning of the war. She’d seen it in his eyes when he looked at the signs on the pine trees. He’d made his plans to stay away for true while the war lasted. She couldn’t blame him. There wasn’t any work here for a man like Clovis—now. When the war was over he’d come. … Mrs. Hull had put slip and pencil before her. She signed and turned swiftly away, not waiting to see if there be some catalogue or circular.

  She heard as she turned away the whisper of limp bills falling into the split basket; and Mrs. Hull, shoving a package toward Ann Liz Cramer, said: “Take it. If’n you don’t I cain’t ask you to hope us agin, an I’ll need it. You’re about th onliest one not tied down with a baby.” And then her voice, worried, wistful, “You won’t be leaven us, too?”

  “Law, no,” Gertie said, adding, “but I don’t like taken a preacher’s money.”

  She hurried out the door with Cassie running to keep up with her. She wanted to be alone under the stars. Some other time she would sorrow for the war, cry for the ones away, look up at God, and quarrel on the why of Henley, who had died with no sin but no salvation; but not tonight when she was firm on her own land. Henley was dead, but she and her children were alive, with a hearth of her own for them all, and a place for Clovis to come back to when the war was ended. She had an instant’s understanding of why people shouted in church. They saw the things that Moses saw when he looked across the mountains to the Promised Land, or that the thief saw when Christ said, “This day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

  Christ? It was Christ in the block of wood after all. Soon he would rise up out of his long hiding into the firelight, the laughing Christ with hair long and black like Callie Lou’s, but not so curly. Her Christ had to be that way—a body’s mind couldn’t be willed and walled any more than the wind could be willed and walled. Wicked she had maybe been all these years because she could see only Judas in the wood—the Judas she had pitied giving back the silver. Pity, pity. Was pity for a Judas sinful?

  She was somewhere on the graveled road near the schoolhouse before she realized that Cassie was gasping for breath from her efforts to keep up with her, while she herself went with long swift strides and sang at the top of her lungs, joyfully, as if it had been some sinful dance tune, “‘How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord.’” She slackened her pace, but couldn’t stop the song as she smiled at the stars through the pines. Her foundation was not God but what God had promised Moses—land; and she sang on, “‘Is laid for your faith in His excellent word! What more can He say than to you He that said—’” What more, oh, Lord, what more could a woman ask?

  EIGHT

  NOW, DON’T GO A fighten, youngens,” Gertie said in an uninterested, singsong voice unusual for her. She held the knife still above an almost finished ax handle, and looked at the angry Clytie and the stubborn Reuben. “You’ve both worked mighty hard all mornen. Why, by time to go home this evenen we’ll have our place might nigh ready to move into. We’ve already got th kitchen scrubbed an clean,” she went on, making a long thin shaving curve downward from the handle. “I guess if’n I hadn’t a had sich good steady youngens I—we’d never in th world a got us enough together to buy us a place uv our own, an would a gone on a bein renters all our days. Now don’t spoil it all by fussen when we’ve took time out to rest.”

  “But, Mom, curtains, real winder curtains, all white—pure white, four sets fer this room.” Clytie leaned forwar
d across the open borrowed Montgomery Ward catalogue, and spoke in earnest pleading. “It’s not like I was asken fer somethin fine like them fancy ruffled things Ann Liz Cramer bought. But they’d be real curtains, not feed-sack things. I know they won’t hep th farmen none, but”—she sighed, seeing starched curtains by clean windows—“they’d be so pretty. I’d go down to th river an git me some pretty straight canes fer poles. An anyhow Reuben cain’t sow his grass seed now.”

  Gertie smiled as she had smiled at all things on this day. If Clytie didn’t get her curtains this week, she would soon. Clovis would be sending more money, and if he didn’t she’d spare her some egg money. She wouldn’t have to be so stingy ever any more. She had a place of her own, same as had it. Night before last she’d taken cash money to John. As soon as the weather cleared enough, he’d ride to the Valley and there take a bus to Town, where he’d record the deed for her. It was good to do business with Old John. She wouldn’t have to waste a day’s time trailing into Town to see about the deed or lose a minute’s sleep wondering if he’d back out of the deal or lose her money. John didn’t lose money or back out of deals.

  There came a screaming and a banging from the big room on the other side of the fireplace wall. Clytie rushed to the noise, her feet faster than her mother’s slowly rousing mind. “It’s that Cassie,” she called back. “She’s tolled Amos into th cubbyhole by th fireplace an turned th button an run off.”

  When Gertie continued silent, only making another long shaving fall from the ax handle, smiling on it as if it had been gold, Clytie raised her voice in a kind of beseeching scolding: “Cassie Marie, cain’t you behave yourself, a locken up Amos thataway? Are you allus a goen to be this mean in our own home?”

  Cassie laughed. “I didn’t do nothen. It was Callie Lou locked him up, and it warn’t no more’n she ought to ha done. He come in drunk frum Indianee ’thout one cent fer his wife an youngens. He’s spent all his money in an—in a—”

  “It was his pay check in a beer parlor, silly. That’s what Sue Annie said, an it was old Willie Sexton done it. Mom, Mom, Cassie’s tellen lies agin. Cassie, don’t you know it’s sinful to go tellen lies? It’s aginst th Bible.”

  Gertie roused, but spoke without harshness. “‘First cast th beam out of thine own eye; an then shalt thou see clearly to cast out th mote out of thy brother’s eyes.’ Allus recollect, girl, that when you think th Bible’s on your side it’s mebbe on th other feller’s too.” She reached out, and for no reason at all give Clytie, big girl as she was, the warm hard hug she would have given a baby, then asked: “Did you write yer pop a nice long letter? I meant to read it, but hunten ax handles an sled runners out a our woods made me so late there wasn’t time to read an send it to th mail.”

  Clytie nodded. “I told him everything I could think on, Mom.”

  “But not about our place?” she asked quickly.

  Clytie giggled. “No, I done like you said, saved it fer a surprise. Mom, wouldn’t it be fun fer him not to know till he come walken in?”

  “He’d git to like it,” Gertie said. She looked about the large bare room. Its low walls, covered with torn and faded building paper, were straight and solid under the hand-hewn oak rafters that held up the wide thick oak planks of the ceiling which also served as floor for the rooms above. Rafters and ceiling had never known paint or paper, and were weathered to a deep tobacco-colored brown. She considered the four windows; two on the east, one on either side the door in the southern wall. They were small and narrow but unbroken and deeply recessed in the thick long walls, hidden from the hot sun of summer afternoons, but set to catch most of its warmth on the short winter days. Never would the windows get the cold blowing rain from the northwest, no more than would the door. Made of three great oak planks with three cross battens it was a mighty door, big enough for her to step proudly through with the back log on her shoulder, a length of a dead sugar tree above the spring that she and Reuben had sawed down yesterday.

  It flamed now in the fireplace with a good steady heat, and made a warm and rosy-colored light so bright there was at times a flicker of red like a blush on the walls. Outside, the gray November rain came down, not settled yet into a steady down dropping, but in gusts and squalls on the southwest wind that had risen with the red dawn. At each cry of the wind or spatter of rain, Gertie nodded a little and smiled. It was good to hear the wind and rain and never feel it in her house.

  She made another long stroke, then left the knife across her knees, and with both hands grasped the ax handle, and swung it. Her gray eyes gleamed with satisfaction. A gust of wind, louder than the others, leaped against the house, cried in the pines on the hillside. Gertie looked again at the windows, and saw the pale gold of a late hanging poplar leaf plastered against the glass. She turned and studied the fire, and her look of satisfaction broke into a smile as she watched the smoke, untouched by the wind, rise steadily upward. “I knowed this was a mighty good fireplace; the wind’ull never kitch in th chimbley an blow smoke all over creation.”

  Reuben lifted his head from the white oak maul he was making and nodded agreement, and she asked: “How you comen, son? Strange work allus seems hard at first.”

  “I ain’t no hand at whittlen,” he said. “But mebbe I can make a maul.”

  “If’n a maul ain’t balanced jist right it’ll make splitten out chunks fer them shakes twict as hard,” she warned, but added in an encouraging tone, “You mebbe ain’t got th knack a whittlen, but it’s a good thing to learn enough to make yer own sled runners an sich.”

  “Mom, I been thinken,” Reuben said, speaking slowly, straightening the words in his head as always, for poor Reuben had not one bit of his Aunt Sue Annie’s quick tongue. “Clytie ought tu have her curtains. It’s pretty late tu sow grass seed. Come March I’ll have more money. Granpa’s aimen tu pay me fer hopen with th fall work. An this winter I ought tu make a heap frum trappen. They’s nobody much left but me to trap.”

  Clytie roused from her dreams over a page of dishes—willowware that was blue, and poppies in a garden, red and green, and yellow drooping-headed flowers. “Reuben, you go ahead an git yer grass seed right now ’fore it’s too late. I been a thinken—Mamie gives me fifty cents fer ever night I stay with her an help in th work. I was aimen tu save it an buy me a coat, but they ain’t no place to wear it. So’s I don’t need it. Pretty soon I could have me enough saved fer curtains.” She looked down at the catalogue—“an mebbe some dishes, too.”

  Gertie got up quickly, folded the knife, and dropped it into her pocket. When she had hefted the handle it seemed like it needed a little stroke or two more down next the head, but she couldn’t sit still any longer. Dance: her heart wanted to do that. So would her feet, she guessed, if so many people like her mother didn’t think it sinful. To sit by her own fire and burn wood from her own land with no debts like some—all this, and then such children. “Law, youngens,” she said, when she could speak, “they’s no need fer neither a ye tu give in to t’othern. Clytie, you do need a coat. If’n I was you I’d save my money fer clothes a some kind. We’ll have plenty a money. You’re fergitten about th heaten-stove money. You said Angie Tucker when you seed her down at Mamie’s ud give ten dollars cash fer hit. Well, I’m aimen tu put that an five more I think I can spare on furnishens.”

  She wished, watching Clytie’s face, that she could spare twenty-five dollars. “Fifteen dollars ull buy a heap a house plunder. Why don’t you look at the linoleums?” she went on.

  Clytie sprang up and whirled on her toes, then stood still, her eyes sparkling up as she said: “Oh, Mom, we could make this th prettiest room with curtains an linoleum. We could leave th beds out an have what they call a setten room—a front room they mean—like Miz Hull’s, where a body don’t eat ner sleep neither.”

  Gertie chuckled and stroked Clytie’s hair. “Now don’t be a gitten too fine right away, girl. I figgered that linoleum fer th kitchen. It’d save a heap a scrubben. I like them ole beds mighty good, but
some day,” she went on, smiling at Clytie, “fore you’re big enough to have beaux, we’ll make this into a nice front room. On our own land like this where we can keep ever bite we raise an don’t have to be a moven ever year, we can git ahead a sight faster an—”

  A thump, thumping, and smothered cries took her rushing to the stairway in time to catch Cassie as she rolled onto the narrow landing above the little door. She seized her, shook her, blew in her face, then ran with her to a window to see what bones were broken.

  The limp little figure dangled over her arms; the head, with the straggling hair slipped as ever from its braids, flopped backward toward the dangling hand-me-down shoes. Gertie, shaking her, whispering in terror, “Cassie, honey,” blowing breath into the open sagging mouth, remembered guiltily that with all her riches not one new thing had she bought for Cassie, and that in all the hurry to get to the new house before the certain rain promised by the warm, windy, reddening sunrise, she had not even combed Cassie’s hair. “Clytie, git a dipper a cold water—quick!”

  Then the limber arms were flung about her neck, the sagging mouth was laughing, while the too big shoes flew to the far corners of the room as Cassie kicked her heels. “Oh, Mom, you looked so funny. I got tired a this sinful Satan-ridden earth and I went up to heaven.” She sighed and slid from her mother’s arms. “I didn’t like it so good—that Callie, she pulled them gold feathers out uv a big angel’s wings an throwed away her crown. It went a bounden an a bouncen down them golden stairs clean down to this Satan-ridden world.”

  Clytie, her face white with fury, torn from linoleum, willowware, and curtains, threatened to throw the dipper of water into Cassie’s face. But Gertie was too relieved to do more than slap her bottom hard enough, as Clytie pointed out in disgust, to squash a fly, and threaten to beat that Callie Lou till she was pieded black and blue from head to toe.