The Dollmaker

  It seemed like she had cried back in answer, “She’s mine—mine—I can fend for my own.” Maybe she had not. It didn’t matter; she had been with Cassie. The car, soundlessly running—smooth—smooth—like the door now; and the woman and back there the smooth-faced doctor had all cried out like a ringing in her head, “No—no,” explaining the “No” through endless halls and steps and elevators, all moving past her while she was still.

  Their “no’s” hadn’t mattered, for Cassie was there flying ahead on the cart. They’d mattered only when the other door had come, rising up at the end of a long and windowless hall. Even all whirled about and blown here and yonder as she was by the wave-like bursts of understanding, sucking her under, whirling her away, even through all this she had felt the coldness under the white light in the narrow hall, the coldness rising out of the opening door, touching Cassie on the cart. But she had been able even then to hold the believing, to cry out against the knowing, “No, no—cain’t I take her back with me?”

  “Wait,” they had said. “It’s better,” somebody had told her, the Negro man rolling the car, “to take a little time about such things.” They would keep it till morning. “For free, maybe,” and he had nodded toward the bundle on the cart.

  She had barred the way of the cart into the coldness, repeating, “No, no,” wanting Cassie away from the cold seeping door, for the place was the place in the Bible: “And where the light is as midnight.”

  Then Clovis had come, trembly-handed, white-mouthed, not touching, but somehow seeming to lean on Whit, who was with him; and Whit, like the black man pushing the cart, had said: “They’ll keep her—a little while. Give you uns a chance to look around. When yu lose a kid, them undertakers murders you,” and his beer-drinking smile, the smile that was never mirthful, had played across the cart. “When a body’s all tore up, they’ll go in debt tu spend everthing they’ll ever have an …”

  Gertie for the first time had understood that money would bring Cassie out of this windowless place by the cold seeping door. She had shoved her hand down into the blood-encrusted coat, crying, “Money? Clovis, I’ve got money—all th money—all them years.” And she had laid it in his startled, trembling hands: the old bills, the ones in balls, in tiny squares, the bill with the pinpricks through Lincoln’s eyes, the dominecker-hen money, the molasses money, the man-with-the-star money. She had put it all into his hands.

  One of the policemen, waiting, watching, had at once stepped up and begun a low-toned conversation with Clovis. Whit had put his face close to the policeman’s and listened, his mirthless smile widening, chilling his eyes. Victor had not moved but continued to stand, arms folded, back against the wall, watching, listening, frowning, shaking his head over the loose heaped-up money spilling from Clovis’s hands.

  Gertie, forever being whirled about, losing herself in the rushing winds, the roaring waters tumbling over her, but somehow standing upright, clinging with both hands to the cart that seemed always ready to move, to fly from her, had heard without listening, just as she had seen without perceiving, a wadded bill fall from Clovis’s unwatched hand while he was listening to the one policeman. She saw the other policeman bend quickly under the black man’s watching eyes, and his hand was closing, going toward his pocket when Victor’s great hand, open palm upward, came under the other’s face, and Victor said, “T’anks.”

  “For what?” the policeman said as his closed fist went into his pocket.

  The Negro smiled, a smile like Whit’s, his black eyes for an instant matching Whit’s blue ones.

  The reaching hand, the closed fist, she had seen, but they had had nothing to do with her. She had continued fishing with one hand in her coattail; there must be money—money—and she would have Cassie—hold her. She was impatient with Whit, who was shaking his head, his soft voice imploring Clovis, yet cautious, coming somehow as if he would send it past the policeman under the sound of the wind, but his voice never got past the policemen. The one who had been talking to Clovis said sharply to Whit: “He’sa kid’s father. Wot’s it tuyu?” And his voice was like Mr. Daly’s voice; she remembered Reuben, and was in a great hurry to be home with Cassie, have Reuben again, all of them together. She’d found another bill, a wadded one, low down in the corner, and shoved it at Clovis.

  “Won’t it do—ain’t it enough? We can take her now.”

  She’d wondered if they’d heard. The wind spinning her round and round, the noise, the crashing—they would frighten Cassie; but through it all the policeman’s voice had come, friendly now, urging, “It’s a good place.”

  She had reached for the bundle, but the cart had fled from her in a hissing, crying wind, and she had fled after it down though the rushing, choking halls, past smooth and silent doors; in the car, through dark streets where red lights and green lights and brightly lighted windows had whirled around her. But through it all Cassie had never been her own again. All the money gone, and she had not held her in her arms.

  She stood now by the last door, the smooth door through which she could not follow. Seemed like she’d been by it a long while. Clovis behind her was saying, “It ain’t like back home, Gert.” She turned slowly about, and pushed back her hair with a bended arm. The lie was worn out, torn in pieces; she couldn’t make herself believe that Cassie there behind the door could feel the cold or huddle up in fright at stranger fingers through her hair. This now, it was the then—the then that might have been after the hunting in the dark for Reuben; if the knife had slipped on Amos; it was what came for Henley. What had she told herself then: “And there the weary are at rest”?

  Not that; there was no weariness, only smoothness: the rubber-tired wheels, smooth-running, like the policeman’s voice, the smooth-eyed young doctor back there, too eager to show that a dangling boot, a bit of blood, could not make a rough spot in his smoothness—everything smooth, like the woman now with the white, bluish-tinted hair, nodding slightly toward Gertie, polite, her glance lingering only an instant on the bare feet, the torn and bloodied coat, the tangled hair, smooth-voiced as she said: “You both have had a terrible shock. Tomorrow is time enough for you to select the”—she hesitated delicately, the way Jethro Coffee had used to do when he recited pieces at school, then brought it out softly, but firmly—“the casket and the clothing. You will want to get in touch with the family pri—” She studied Clovis an instant. “Minister.”

  It was early, not much past supper getting time, when Gertie walked from the parking lot down the alley and up her steps. Another train was thundering by, the sky was crimson with a steel-mill pour, and the heavy early-evening traffic made a growling scream on the through street; but Gertie’s alley seemed still. A great gang of children, gathered in the twilight at her coming, made lanes of silence drawn back against the coalhouses as she passed by, and no one, not even a Daly, tittered at her bare feet, though just as she started up her steps the stove wrecker darted from some shadow in the deeper darkness, crying, “I’ve got a little sister at home.” Then some voice was calling, but soft in its calling: “Sh-sh-sh. Come back here, now.”

  Mrs. Anderson opened the door, but Gertie turned quickly about and started down the steps. If she could walk now, walk all night, walk and walk, forever; if she had corn to gather, like for Henley, even a cow to milk, some gentle cow that would let her lean her forehead … Clovis was saying, pushing her a little: “Now, Gert, try to git some rest. An git—cleaned up.”

  Clytie and Enoch, who had been listening to the radio, sprang up. Clytie started toward her but stopped in the doorway and stared at her, then slowly backed away, her mouth open, her eyes wide, unable to leave the twisted, soot-and blood-streaked face that seemed not a face at all, more like a mask such as children wear at Hallowe’en to frighten other children: and out of it blazed the eyes that from being gray and forever calm were black now, glittering, fighting all things, even the children.

  Enoch stood white-faced, peeping at her, frightened, yet somehow curious, as if one of th
e nightmarish creatures, embodiment of murder and theft and torture of which the radio told him, had come alive into the room. Amos, dressed in his nightclothes, looked once around the bedroom door, then shut it quickly. Mrs. Anderson, still by the kitchen table, littered with the dishes and food of a scarcely touched meal, said as if to make some sound in the silence, “Clytie’s girl friend’s mother—Mrs. Ku”—her voice stumbled against the name, stopped altogether, then rushed on—“came when she heard. They live in a private house, lots of room. She suggested that Clytie come for the night.”

  She looked at Gertie for some sign of her having heard, but the black blazing eyes had leaped once at her and then away, and were now hunting back and forth across the living room, leaping about as if they were hands tearing the place to pieces.

  Mrs. Anderson looked beseechingly at Clovis, but he had eyes only for Gertie’s back, and she stood silent, pressed into the corner between table and icebox while her glance searched about the kitchen as if there might be words dangling from the light, or on the uncurtained shelves. She found words under the sink and drew a sharp quick breath. “Max found them, your shoes. Don’t you want your shoes?”

  “Huh?” Gertie asked in a hoarse, guttural voice, choked like that of a swimmer just risen free of a crushing wave, her glance still searching the living room as she repeated “Huh?” the word loud, as if between her and Mrs. Anderson there were long distances filled with walls and waves of tumultuous sound through which voices could not carry.

  “Your shoes,” Mrs. Anderson repeated, almost crying, looking now at the open knife in Gertie’s hand. “Your shoes—don’t you want your shoes?”

  Gertie’s brows drew close together and made a black line, mingling with the soot and the dried blood on her forehead. She did turn and look as Mrs. Anderson pointed, but it was plain she never saw the shoes. She turned swiftly back, asking, “Where is it?” and stared angrily at Mrs. Anderson. “Who took it away?” She shook her head like one flinging water out of her face. “I want tu work awhile. Th wood—where is th block a wood?”

  “We put it back in th bedroom,” Clytie said, shivering, beginning to cry. She shrank back in terror as Gertie strode through the door way, the knife uplifted; but her mother never saw her; in two swift strides she was down the hall and into the bedroom, though for all her haste she closed the door softly, as if somewhere a baby were sleeping.

  The quivering red light seeped through the blind enough that she could see to find the light string. She jerked it, and at once saw the wood back on a chair as it had been when they first came and the boys slept in the room. Quickly, she stacked the chairs on the bed and made room for herself and the wood on the floor together, then kneeling by it, knife in hand, she considered the bowed head.

  She’d known exactly how the back would be, the hair falling down, upcurled at the ends, parted over the neck bones, leaving the neck bare, framed by hair, but not in curls like Callie Lou’s, not at all like Callie Lou’s. All her life she’d needed time for this, and now she had time only, years and years of it to get through; but the man in the wood was strong; he could pull her through the time.

  A train blew with a loud long screeching, and she sprang up. The knife clattered to the floor. Her whole body quivered as if the sound were waves of wind shaking her; and for an instant she was again by the fence, tearing at the boards, screaming, reaching; her arm was long, long; she had reached Cassie.

  Then the train sound was dead, but she was still leaning across the bed, pushing, pulling, fighting the narrow windowsill; behind her one of the piled-up chairs toppled from the bed and fell, clattering in the narrow space. She had turned without taking her hands from the window to stare, wondering at the racket, when the door opened and Mrs. Anderson, trying hard not to show any wonder at the fallen chairs or at Gertie crouched on the bed by the window, held out a glass of what looked to be pinkish water. “Drink this,” she said, and went on with a swift chattering, as if to hide embarrassment. “It’s phenobarbitol—something like what they gave you at the hospital when—lots of women use it. Mrs. Turbi told me about it when I complained that city living made me nervous; she just couldn’t live without it, she said. Even if it doesn’t put you to sleep, it’s like a hot iron smoothing out the wrinkles—everything.”

  Gertie got off the bed and drank the stuff, partly to please the woman, she looked so troubled, but mostly to make her go away. But hardly was she gone before Clovis was in the doorway, peering at her, jabbing her with quick troubled glances as he said, his mouth all a tremble, “Gert—honey, you’d feel better to take a good hot shower—an change clothes.” He hesitated, studying her face and neck, uncertain about the dried blood he saw. Was it her own or Cassie’s? “Looks like you’ve hurt yerself—pretty bad,” he said.

  “Ain’t you goen to work, Clovis?” she asked, after watching him a moment, her forehead puckered, her eyes puzzled as if she made some great effort to understand what he had said.

  “But, Gert, I hadn’t meant to go to work—not tonight.”

  “Your mom would ha worked,” she said, turning toward the block of wood.

  Mrs. Anderson, who seemed to have been listening in the hallway, called Clovis; some talking passed between them, then Clovis was back again, looking at Gertie kneeling again by the block of wood, her knife lifted. “Gert, I guess I will go—you take a shower an change clothes, an git some rest. Tomorrer—” but his voice hoarsened, choked, and would not go past the tomorrow.

  “We ought tu git a early train, so don’t work overtime,” she said, smoothing back her hair with a bended arm; then the lifted hand was still while she, looking upward and slantwise of her eyes, sniffed the blood crusted sleeve so close to her face. She sprang up, looking wildly about her as she lived again the losing battles—all the battles: to have the land, to make Reuben happy, to reach Cassie, and the last big battle—to hold the blood—nothing left to lose.

  Clovis was asking harshly, loudly, his voice almost a crying: “Train? You don’t think we’re goen home?”

  A little of the misery, the brokenness in his voice got through to her and something like pity stirred under the anger, the hatred for herself who had caused it all. “But, Clovis, honey, th money, all that money, recollect, they’s enough to take—take her back amongst her own kin.”

  “Things like—this, costs a heap,” he said, not looking at her. “It ain’t like back home, an—they’d be th train ride there—an back an—”

  “Back? But I couldn’t leave—”

  “They wouldn’t be nothen else we could do. I ain’t got no truck; you wouldn’t have time now to git in so much as a garden—an I’d be losen time frum work—I wisht it was different, Gert,” he turned away, choked up, and soon after she heard the closing of the outside door.

  She was still squatting by the wood, one hand on the bowed head, the knife idle in the other, when Mrs. Anderson came with another glass of pink water, chattering as always. “It’s better here,” she said. “She’d be close—and it’s much—”

  Gertie gave a low whimpering, clutched the block of wood as if it alone could keep her from sinking even lower on the floor. “But—she wouldn’t like it. Back home on my father’s land they’s the family graveyard—all th old uns, an Henley they’ll bring back—sometime. It’s high, an a body can look out an down an see—an see—” She reached for the pink water, drank it, returned the glass, and looked steadily at Mrs. Anderson, “I keep fergetten—th dead, they cain’t see.”

  The man in the wood at first seemed far away, walled off like all other life about her by furious sound of wind and water and the whole earth shaking; the knife fumbled, a lost knife hunting a lost man in the wood; no, not lost, hiding, forever hiding. But gradually the thing in the wood came closer and yielded itself, and chips and shavings fell. The hair grew, taking up the whole world, everything in the world; and there were moments like a drowsing dreaming when she and the wood were alone, alone in her mother’s house, though sometimes she look
ed up, frowning, annoyed by the strange brightness of the lamplight that made the shadow of her moving hand fall blackly on the wood. Then would come the remembering, and the knife would be lost again while she sat helplessly fumbling, once more far from the man in the wood, tossed and whirled about as she was in the ringing, roaring fury.

  Next day more than one person come through the funeral parlors looked curiously at the big woman with the smoothly combed, neatly parted hair above a bruised face and bandaged neck. She sat still and straight in a too small chair; her mouth a bleak straight line of determination under eyes that were bewildered as a lost child’s eyes, some strange child who, even as it begs to find the way home, knows there is no finding the way, for the home and all other things at the end of the way are also lost.

  There were at times murmurings around her and to her: a red-headed woman came and wrung her hand and said, her voice holding faint traces like memories of the voices back home Gertie had known, “S’tough when yu can’t take um home.” Max came and patted her knee and said, “Don’t trytu find no answers, kid, for things like this; they ain’t none,” and brought word from Mrs. Schultz not to worry about her boys. Mrs. Anderson came, opening a box to show a white thin dress, and over it Gertie nodded uncertainly, as if wondering why the dress was there, then said with rough loudness in the smooth still place, “Th shoes—she allus liked pretty shoes.”

  Then it was morning in another day, and she wore a new coat; it kept worrying her, for there was no hole in the pocket; she kept pushing at the skimpy, flimsy pocket while she sat in the car with Clovis and the three children; their faces, like everything else, came to her like the faces she had used to make in the sunset clouds—alive one minute, unreal and far away the next.