“It won’t allus be like this.” She stopped. How many times had she said that to Reuben when they worked the corn together, hill by hill, row by row. He had hoed while she had plowed, and they had gathered the corn together, two rows for them, two rows for John. Once, when he was little, he had cried when Silas Kennedy, it was then, had taken half their corn. She had comforted, “It won’t allus be like this.” She rubbed her arm hard across her forehead; his childhood had gone and the “this” was with him still.
Or was it the “this”? The trouble was that he was Reuben the same as she was Gertie. If she had taken her mother’s Christ and Battle John’s God and learned to crochet instead of whittle, and loved the Icy Heart and had never tried to talk to Mrs. Whittle … Keep shut, keep shut, like the tool-and-die man’s rabbit. If she had walked straight down the alley the day the gospel woman came, just watching Mrs. Daly as Mrs. Bommarita had watched, Mr. Daly wouldn’t have been mad at her and have taken it out on Reuben. The sins of the fathers …
She put her hand on his shoulder, and though he buried himself still more deeply under the bed clothing, she bent her face close to him and spoke in a low voice. “Reuben, it’s all your ole fool mammie’s fault like you said. I’ve been stiff-necked an stubborn in the face uv …” What? She couldn’t say God. “Honey, try harder to be like th rest—tu run with th rest—it’s easier, an you’ll be happier in th end—I guess.”
He never answered, but after a little space of silence she struggled on. “Reuben—recollect that creek at home—th one below th cove where you seed th bear? Recollect how them rocks way up high, by th bluff at th beginnens uv th creek, was rough an all shapes an sizes? An recollect th little round rocks down at the mouth by th river? They was mighty nigh all alike an round an smooth. They got that-away abangen agin one another a comen down th creek in th fallovers an …” She choked—she was no rabbit to beget rabbits. She remembered the look of Reuben’s face in the alley, and went on: “Nobody asked them rocks did they want to be smooth an all alike. You might like playen with a toy gun. Try it.”
He plunged still more deeply under the bed covering, jerking back from her until he rolled on Enoch, who muttered and seemed ready to waken.
She left him, closing the door. Though his bedroom door, like the others in the house, would not lock, it was like there was a locked door between them with the key lost.
Next morning when he sat at table, eating little, his slapped lip swollen, he was silent and sullen still behind the wall that more and more she knew that she had made. He went back to his room immediately after breakfast and stayed so long she was afraid he would be late to school. She called to him, trying not to let on to the already suspicious Clytie that she was afraid he would either not answer or else tell her he wouldn’t go to school. However, he came quietly enough in a clean shirt and with his hair combed, more frightened now than sullen as he said, “Mom, could you fix a lunch fer me—jist this onct?”
“Sure, son,” she answered, pleased that she could do for him some little thing, but Clytie cried, “It’s againsa rules, Mom; kids gotta have permission to take lunch.”
She turned to Clytie, an egg for frying in her hand. “What’s wrong with taken a little snack to school? He could eat it outside.”
“It’s againsa rules,” Clytie repeated, adding, “They’s no place to eat it,” in the patient mother-to-ignorant-child tone that more and more she used with Gertie. Then, outside, her girl friend Iva Dean was calling, and she couldn’t stop to argue.
Gertie started to break the egg into the skillet, but stopped, frowning. She whirled and jerked the door open just in time to see Clytie, snowpantless, as she had thought, disappearing into the alley by the railroad fence. She called twice before Clytie turned slowly back. The redheaded girl, also snowpantless, followed, and continued to follow as Clytie came slowly and ever more slowly back as Gertie commanded: “You git back in here an git on some clothes. It ain’t good fer a young girl like you to run around barelegged an no long underwear in all this cold.”
Clytie turned red at her mother’s mention of long underwear. But Iva Dean, who wore a short jacket above a woolen skirt with a goodly length of blue shin beneath, looked sympathetic, her warm brown eyes going from Clytie to Gertie, lingering at last on Gertie as if her sympathies lay there.
Clytie stopped at the end of the walk and said, almost as brash as Enoch: “Clothes, Mama? I’m smothered with so many clothes now.”
“Git in here an git into them snowpants,” Gertie said.
Clytie did not move. “But Mom, I’m th only young—kid in my section that has got to wear snowpants like a little kinnergarden kid.”
“You don’t want to come down with th flu an miss a lot a school,” Gertie said more kindly.
“Minnie Armstrong’s mother—Minnie’s in our section—makes Minnie wear um,” Iva Dean said to Clytie in an encouraging tone. “An my own mom,” she went on reflectively, “cried a couple a times last winter when I run off without th things, an she thought it was cold. It wasn’t till this last cold snap that she give in. G’wan,” she said as if Gertie had not been four feet away, half through the storm door, “if she’s like my mom it’ll take yu a whole winter to learn her yu don’t need th things. G’wan, put um on—no use to hurt her feelens alla time.”
“You people borned an raised up here git used to this weather,” Gertie said, feeling grateful, wishing she could remember the girl’s last name. She’d heard her say it once; it sounded like she’d started to strangle, then changed her mind and coughed.
The girl gave a defiant headshake. “Not me; my pop was, but when Mom got ready to have me she went back to Granma’s in Isham, Tennessee.”
“Oh,” Gertie said, then added, not wanting to be pitied or thought a tyrant: “I don’t want to make Clytie wear snowpants all th time. Like t’other Saturday when you an her went to th movies, it was so warm I wouldn’t ha made her wear pants—but you had em on.”
“I gotta wear blue jeans or snowpants to th movies allatime. Mom makes me but I’d do it anyhow. None a them guys that hangs around u movies ain’t gonna run no hands up no dress tail a mine.”
Gertie said, “Oh,” and let the storm door shut, and was still too startled when snowpanted Clytie swished past her to give a goodbye hug to Cassie running behind her. She glanced at the clock, remembered Reuben’s lunch, and turned up the gas under the frying egg. He called from his bedroom to ask for a molasses and margarine sandwich. The margarine was too hard from the Icy Heart, the molasses too thin from the hot kitchen, so that by the time she had the lunch fixed she heard Clovis coming up the steps. She called to Reuben that it was so late his father was home and if he didn’t hurry he’d be late, but Reuben answered that he had to go to the bathroom.
Clovis took off his jacket and hung it in the hall, and unable to get into the bathroom went into his own room to take off his shoes. A moment later she heard the opening of the bathroom door, but Reuben took his time about coming. She started to scold him for his slow ways, then saw his face, white and strained and frightened. She watched him to the railroad fence, and to the alley’s turning, hoping he would turn just once and wave the way he had always done at home, but he only walked faster than common until the turning of the alley took him away.
She began to get a snack for Clovis. He soon came into the kitchen, grimy-faced and big-eyed; sleepy-headed, but not good sleepy like a man after a day’s work. Fidgety—some part of him never wanting to go to bed because it was morning—and short-worded when he asked why Reuben was so late starting to school. She never knew what to feed him when he got home from work—food that was neither breakfast, dinner, nor supper. Today, she fixed pork chops, eggs, fried potatoes, and toast. He ate right well, though his lunch, when she opened the box, looked as if it had hardly been touched.
Finished with his food, he leaned back smoking a cigarette, and seemed in such good humor that she tried her often asked but seldom answered question, “How was it?”
risking short words, some story of trouble with the foreman or the union steward, or worse, news of a wildcat strike or walkout in some other department that could tomorrow put him out of work. But it was worth the chance that he might tell something of what the people about him had said or done.
Today, though he looked more tired than usual, he smiled at her question and gave a little headshake. “Boy, did I work, an I mean work. A body ud think I broke th danged machines th way that big-headed Polock foreman was allus on my neck. They ain’t made to take that high production quota they put on Monday. An most a th dad-blamed fools that runs em has stood around an done nothen so long they cain’t take it neither. An that dumb Polock foreman must be in Hitler’s pay—th way he fixed th hands around.”
“Wotta yu mean, Pop?” It was Enoch, who, still on the afternoon shift at school, seldom bothered to get out of bed until his friend Mike came calling.
“Oh,” Clovis said, pushing his chair back and crossing his legs, “if he don’t like a feller’s looks he puts him on a job he thinks he cain’t do. He’s like th Dalys an all th rest a these foreigners—he hates everthing an everbody that ain’t just like hissef. An does he hate niggers! Calls em shines, an gives em th meanest jobs. Last night he put a spindly yaller gal, smart-looken too, on one a them bad kind a presses that works with a foot treadle, an they’s allus th chance that if you git too tired er sleepy you’ll tramp that treadle while you’ve got yer hands under.
“So last night when he puts this girl—a body could see she ain’t never been in no factory before, th way she kept a wallen her eyes an acten skittish-like—he knows she won’t last no time atall when he put her on this man-sized press with a foot control. He showed her how. She was smart an caught on real quick. But th stock’s pretty heavy, an it ain’t so easy picken it up, putten it in, taken it out, wipen it off, layen it down on one side, reachen on t’other side, starten all over agin, allus a recollecten that old treadle right under yer foot. He watched her awhile an complains she’s slow.
“That flusters her. Then he tells her she’d better not send out a piece a stock with a couple a her hands smashed in it. That flusters her some more, and she was a shivern an a sweaten. I could see big drops comen off her chin, an a couple a guys on some little presses that was out a stock was watchen her together with a stock boy. All that didn’t do no good. But she didn’t say a word.
“I was a tryen to git th air hose back on that blamed Bunken’s press. I don’t know how he does it, but it’s allus somethen. An he’s sich a fool, an allus so ashamed that a body, not even thet foreman, ain’t got th heart to be much mean to him. This fool, Bunken, goes over to her press soon’s th foreman’s gone—he sells th numbers an it takes a heap a time—an tells her to watch fer th foreman an th steward, an he makes that ole press fly.
“Soon’s I git his hose fixed I goes over to th girl an I says, ‘Lemme see if this press’s runnen right, so I made her fly fer a right good spell. But that blamed gigglen fool uv a gal frum Georgie got her belt off agin—how she does it I don’t know—an I had tu leave th yaller gal. But up steps that big Ukrainian feller I was a tellen you about—him on a little press with nothen to do. He hates everthing, niggers, hillbillies, Jews, Germans, but worse’n anything he hates Poles an that Polock foreman. An he is a good-hearted guy—he made that ole press fly so fast I thought it ud bust. An when th steward come around—that Ukrainian had put her up to it—this new hand, she says to him: ‘This press ain’t doen right. It sticks an I cain’t git the stock out when I go fast,’ she says. It ain’t th steward’s job to test th machinery, but he runs it—pretty fast.
“Anyhow, when that foreman fm’ly does git back frum sellen his numbers there was that yaller gal a leanen by her machine a poppen her gum. ‘What in th hell do you think you’re a bein’ paid fer?’ he says.
“‘I’ve been kinda wonderin,’ she says, poppen her gum some more an looken around easy-like. ‘I run outa stock a long time ago.’
“‘Jee-sus,’ that foreman says, an he whistles, then he’s mad. Th steward’ull be on you fer runnen over production,’ he says, an I thought that old Ponomarenko ad bust hissef a holden in his laughen—an that foreman never did ketch on.”
Clovis, good-humored now, got up stretching, yawning, ready for bed. However, as usual, he was hardly sound asleep before it was school letting out time. Cassie, first today, came banging through the door, shouting, “Mommie, Mommie, I’m goen to wear glasses like Granma. A woman all in white had me a looken at pitchers. I wasn’t skeered a bit. Miz Huffacre pinched my cheek an smiled at me. It’s pinned on my dress,” and she began unzipping, unbooting, unbuttoning all over the house until Clovis groaned his awakening sounds, and Gertie was sharp with Cassie for her noise.
Clovis roused again when Clytie came running in to tell that she hadn’t seen Reuben any place at school. “Ain’t Reuben home?” he called, concern in his voice.
“He took a lunch,” Gertie answered somewhat shortly. “An enyhow, him an Clytie could go a week an never see one another.”
“But gineraly we pass in th hall,” Clytie said.
Gertie declared there was no reason why any of them should see him, as they had no classes together. Still, a growing uneasiness akin to panic laid hold of her, and to hide it she went outside for a bucket of coal. She stood staring up and down the alley until the dishwater spots on her apron froze, and a snow-suited child, drinking pop and eating a sandwich as he walked, started at her in wonder.
All afternoon the uneasiness came and went in waves. One minute she was sweaty-handed, unable to keep her mind on the ironing, scared to death, certain he was not in school, but hiding out somewhere, afraid to face both Mrs. Whittle and the principal. At other times, certain that he was all right, she tried to think up a face for Victor’s Christ. But more and more she listened to Cassie as she talked with Miss Callie Lou. At last her lonesomeness and uneasiness overcame her and she took her whittling and went visiting, knocking on the door of the boys’ room that held the block of wood, asking, “How-do-you-do, ladies. How-do-you-do?”
Cassie, standing very straight and trying not to giggle, opened the door. “Do come in, Miz Golden Shoe, an drink a cup a coffee with me an Miz Callie Lou: our men’s gone off to make tanks fer Old Man Flint and Mr. Griggs, so do come in an set a hear er two.”
And Gertie sat and drank coffee and ate “little cakes with pink icen,” and discussed the weather and the school, never forgetting now and then to hand a bit more coffee and another cake to Callie Lou smiling at them from the block of wood. “An how are your youngens in school, Miz Silver Bell?”
And Cassie’s giggle, smothered in the primping voice of Mrs. Silver Bell: “Fine, jist fine, Miz Golden shoe, but what do you think? My littlest girl has to wear glasses, but then she’ll learn to read, read anything in th whole world. Miz Huffacre, that’s her teacher, says so, an she is th finest teacher in th whole world.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have a very smart child, Miz Silver Bell,” and they visited a long while. The doll grew, and the sun, a little further north each night now in its setting, sent a long finger of yellow light through the window. It brightened the block of wood and made red glints in Cassie’s straight hair. And Gertie thought she had never looked so pretty.
Then Joe was crying in the alley. The party had to end, and Gertie realized it was late, almost time for school to be over, and she was afraid again, thinking of Reuben.
TWENTY-THREE
JOE HELD OUT BANANAS for Gertie’s inspection. “Banana nice—today cheap. Ten cents.”
“They’re frostbit,” Mrs. Daly whispered, adding loudly enough for Joe to hear, “They’s nothing so deceitful as a frostbit banana.”
“Nice,” Joe repeated, not hearing, smiling at Gertie. “Ten cents,” he insisted. “Tomorrow eighteen. Today below OPA.”
Gertie studied the bananas. They looked good, and Reuben loved bananas. She drew a deep breath. “Gimme four—no, make it five pounds,” she said, thi
nking, two apiece all around, and maybe one for Clovis’s lunch left over.
“You’ll be lucky if they’s one pound that’s good,” Mrs. Daly whispered.
And Max, trying hard not to flirt with Joe’s hungry-eyed nephew, said, “Yu can’t buy bargains on account a they ain’t no bargains, kid.”
Gertie paid for the bananas, and hurried into her kitchen, uneasily aware that she alone had bought the bargain bananas. She forgot to examine them when she looked at the clock and saw that school was out. In a minute or so the first wave of children would sweep down the alley. Reuben would, of course, be with them. Clovis called from the passway, asking the time, and she made a great pretense of being so unconcerned she had not noticed. She looked again at the clock before she answered, “Three twenty-six.”
“See any youngens comen home?” he asked.
She looked through the storm door, “A few, jist turnen th corner—th ones that allus runs,” she answered easily enough. But, now unable to turn from the door, she stood and watched the alley. She was aware that Clovis had come up behind her, and that Cassie and Amos, somehow sensing the uneasiness, stood watching the children come home as she and Clovis watched.
Her eagerness to see Reuben, make certain he was all right, maybe even good-humored and happy again, made her want to run wildly down the alley searching. But she moved only to open the door for Enoch, who dashed in crying, “Mom, I ain’t seen Reuben,” and in the next breath, “Mike wants me to come out an play hockey.”