The Dollmaker

  They sat in a row; in front of them was the coffin, covered with a white cloth and mounded with flowers. Once, she bent forward and peered at the cloth stretched over the wood; she wished she could see the wood; it ought to be good wood. Vague memories of the money came, so much money; it seemed like she had told Clovis to spend as much as was needed—the cloth above the wood must be firmly woven and lasting.

  Words came down from above the casket, kindly words floating out of a kindly face—the preacher where Clytie and Enoch went to Sunday school. She heard sniffling and looked about her in impatient anger. Why should any of them cry? She, Gertie, had killed her. She turned around and frowned over an oldish woman with tears running down into a handkerchief held under her chin. Who was the woman and why should she cry? By the old one, a younger stared straight ahead, blinking back tears. What right had she to cry? She was a young woman neatly dressed in a dark tailored suit. Chicle—a child reaching and a big painted mouth smiling: this woman belonged to that somehow.

  Then it was over and she was looking at Cassie again; not Cassie either. She had never been so still, so neat, so smooth, her little secrets always showing in her eyes; the smoothness and the neatness now kept well the secret of how she died.

  More riding in the car, through heavy traffic, past thunderous trucks and trains into the still cemetery where between the endlessly winding drives the grass showed green under thin scatterings of April snow. She had wanted very much to see the earth—real earth, something real—but there was a green thing like paper spread over all the good earth. The casket in the cold rays of the broken sunshine looked flimsy and cheap, and under the too shiny cloth the wood was maybe sappy. She wanted to cry out, to tear off the cloth, see the wood, touch the earth; but the preacher was murmuring, and Clytie, watching the coffin go down, was beginning a great weeping. Then everything was drowned, blotted out by an airplane coming in low and loud, for, as Clovis had promised, the cemetery was close to the project. She took a quick step forward. She couldn’t leave her like this—in the cold, with that flimsy little dress—and all this racket.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SHE LIFTED HER GLANCE from a fold of the cloth drawn over the shoulders, and, the knife open in her hand, stared at the window; rain mixed with snow made a moving sheet against it. She watched it, her brows drawn together in puzzlement. Then, the look of wonder deepening, she looked upward, sidewise, an ear turned ceilingward, and listened, frowning, wondering why she could not hear the rain. Then gradually the ceiling drifted into shape, and became the sickly green cardboard, smoke-grimed and darker now at the ending of the winter. The Detroit home shut out the sound of the rain.

  Strange, she hadn’t noticed the rain on the window until now. Back home she would have known it: a spring rain blown in on a red, windy dawn with thunder growling far across the ridges, the pines crying out the warning, and the sugar tree flowers blowing down the hillside all when the poplar blooms were like yellow lilies unfolding. But better than anything had been the sound of the rain on the roof shingles when the early potatoes and peas and lettuce showed, and the early cabbage was set. Tomorrow she would hunt wild greens; wild sweet potato vine would be high by the creek banks, and she would linger, listening, watching the white water—

  A train blew. She shivered, the knife clattered to the floor, but no longer did she go springing toward the window. She only backed away and stood a long moment, her body pressed against the door, her hands pressed hard against her eyes. She was able at last to look again at the window, gray white under the moving sheets of rain. Seemed like the last time she had looked, the window had been a square of quivering red light. It was daylight now—another night was through—and now another day.

  She lay down and stared at the gray sheet; a solid sheet like ice, but never the same sheet, moving, always moving, a slow sliding that wouldn’t stop. The day would be like that—a long gray thing sliding past—tight like a tunnel, but she must somehow squeeze through. A long business, and she was tired. She looked about her at the unmade bed, the shavings on the floor, the rumpled coat, linted from the sheets, a smear of alley mud on the hem. The sheet was grimy black; Amos must have walked on it when she made him stay by her. She ought to change it, maybe even wash it, but she was too tired.

  She realized the light was burning. She switched it off, and lay and watched the window, put all herself into the rain sheet, held herself there, and soon she could hear creek water, the creek below the Tipton Place.

  She sat straight up in a fury of disappointment—always and always they were taking it away. Now it was Clytie, with her head stuck around the door like she expected a bear to jump out and grab her, and her eyes tiptoeing from the bed to the shavings on the floor as she asked, her voice tiptoeing like her eyes, “Mom?” and when Gertie only continued to stare at the window under her lowered lids, she said, her voice trembly troubled now, “Mom, don’t you think you’d better let Pop git a doctor like he wants? You ain’t—well.”

  “No,” Gertie said, without moving her head.

  Clytie continued to stand half in, half out the door, but turned and held a troubled whispering with someone behind her. Gertie remembered, and lifting her head, called wildly, “Amos. Amos.”

  He came at last and put his head around the door, but after one quick peep at Gertie, he, swallowing hard and fighting to keep back tears, turned to Clytie. Gertie called him again, and he buried his face against Clytie’s waist, and broke into a wild frightened crying. Gertie, angered by his strange ways, screamed in a voice unlike her own; “What a you bawlen about? Cause you cain’t go outside? You mustn’t go outside. You’ll git hurt. Stay close to Mommie.”

  He clung all the harder to Clytie, and Gertie with the nimble swiftness she had known in the woods leaned far out of the bed, and jerked him roughly to her, her voice loud now, shrill, rising above his screams. “I didn’t aim it that away. You know I didn’t. I didn’t send her off to be killed. I didn’t aim to kill her when Mom made me come. It was Mom an—” Her voice was an incoherent screaming, and she shook Amos, knowing it was Amos she shook, but unable to stop while thinking of her mother, the Tipton Place, Cassie alive this minute and running down the hill. No, not her mother, herself, herself—only, she couldn’t say it. She ought to have stood up to them all—if she had thrown the shoe sooner; maybe had she tried she could have climbed the fence.

  Words came from the other side of the wall, “Easy, now—yu ain’t done nutten. Yu gotta sleep some. Go tu sleep now.” The sound of the voice more than the words held her and she marveled that Victor had a baby. Her hands dropped from Amos, and he sprang away, but stayed by Clytie, half in, half out the door.

  She glanced at him again to make certain he was safe, then drowsed back into the sleep that seemed less a sleeping than a stupor. She awakened again; maybe it was that morning, maybe some other morning; the rain was gone from the window, but her coat was still on the foot of the bed, and there was the same tiptoeing in Clytie’s voice and eyes as she asked: “Mom, cain’t I bring you somethen to eat? I’ve give th kids their breakfast.”

  Clytie waited, but when her mother neither moved nor answered, she turned away, then stopped at once, eager, hopeful, when Gertie called, “Don’t let it out when you’re openen an shutten th icebox door.”

  “What?” Clytie asked, her eyes widening with fright.

  “That cat—what else?” Gertie answered, her voice rough with weariness and anger. She thought she heard frightened weeping. It didn’t matter. She’d started off through the long tunnel of the day. She had reached a cool and foggy valley when the white light snapped on, leaped against her eyes, and a voice from far out of the bright whiteness called to her:

  “See if you can do it. It comes crooked fer me. You’ll have to set up to do it.” She saw then, just under her elbow, a round and shining thing cut through the middle with a crooked white line. She tried to pull herself together—in pieces seemed like she was, floating every which way in a heaving, bl
owing world.

  She rubbed her eyes, and Sophronie, with a cigarette in her mouth, the brush in one hand, comb in the other, was smiling at her, eyes squinted against her cigarette smoke. “I’m sorry if I woke ye,” she said, “but I cain’t never git this right.” And the round thing became Clytie’s head as she knelt by the bed for her mother to part her hair. Gertie took the comb, and the familiar and trying task of parting Clytie’s hair brought the world somewhat together. She remembered Amos, and called him.

  Sophronie somewhat sharply told her he was in the bathroom, and then said, “Whyn’t you git up, an come out to th kitchen an be a setten up when Clovis gits in—make him feel better.”

  “Is he feelen bad?” Gertie asked, listening now to a sound she hated. “Turn it off. It hurts my head,” she said.

  “What?” Sophronie asked, working on one of Clytie’s side braids.

  “That racket—that clothes-washen thing.”

  “When clothes gits dirty—they gotta be washed.” Sophronie hesitated, then said: “A woman like you with a family, they—well—they jist cain’t lay down an give theirselves up to nothen. Kids gotta have somebody.”

  Gertie flopped over and faced the wall. If she stayed still, real still, they would maybe go away. If she had corn to plant, or wood to split, or a cow to milk.

  But hardly were they gone before Mrs. Anderson was floating over her, carrying another glass of what seemed a million glasses of the pink water. “I do believe you’ve been asleep,” she said, smiling, holding out the glass.

  Gertie drank to make the woman go away, but she stayed chattering a moment, her words blowing in and out, now near, now far, like a wind in April; no, more like a hound dog crying across a hill: Homer had a job; she had to hunt a house, or maybe it was Mrs. Daly had to have a house; seemed she had a baby.

  She left at last, and Gertie snapped off the light, and lay, too tired to move. It seemed only a minute later that the light was on again and Clovis was looking down at her, a little white-wrapped package in his hands, a frightened, backing-away look in his eyes.

  “How’re you a feelen, Gert, old girl?” he asked. “I’m late gitten in,” he went on when she did not answer, “but I thought I’d better see a doctor. I told him—well, how you was—an he had me git this. It’s a goen to hep you a sight, old girl.” He had busied himself unwrapping, and then unscrewing a bottle of red liquid, but now as he sniffed the medicine his face clouded with disappointment. “I swan. It looks an smells like th same kind a stuff Miz Anderson’s been a given you—only,” he sniffed again, puzzled, “a body cain’t git this ’thout a prescription. An this doc,” he went on, his troubled glance on her coat now, “he said you’d ought to come in an let him see ye. Them places on yer neck. They look swoll’ up to me, and they could be a given you a infection, he said, er layen around lifeless this away could be th flu, that doc—”

  Gertie had roused enough to lift on one elbow and glare at him. “Aw, Clovis, spenden good money fer—Money,” she repeated the word slowly, her face twisted with a great effort to remember something. Her wandering glance went about the room, paused on the block of wood, went on, and came at last to her coat; there it stopped. She frowned over the coat an instant, then seized it, and began a frantic searching through the pockets. She found at last the right pocket, the one that would let her hand go deeper, fishing, hunting.

  Her brows were contracted still with the great effort to remember, but the lost thing seemed less a memory of her mind than of her hands, for it was not until she had searched through the coat and stared a moment at her empty hands that she asked, hesitantly, as if she did not wish to speak of it to Clovis, but must, to still some panic rising now in her eyes: “Didn’t you put it back, what was left? They was so much it couldn’t ha tuck it all.” Her words grew thick and struggling. “She’s got to have a marker—right away. So many others—she’ll be lost.”

  “They’s no danger a that,” Clovis said, and it seemed he had been standing there for days, saying this to her, over and over, “but all th same we’ll git a marker.”

  She began the frantic searching through the coat again, frowning, whispering, “I couldn’t ha lost it.” She looked at Clovis, angrily demanding: “Give it back. What’s left; I’ll keep it till we git th marker.”

  Clovis had turned toward the door, his shoulders sagging wearily, but he turned slowly back when her voice rose in an insistent crying: “Give it back, Clovis, what’s left. You might lose it ’fore we git th marker.”

  “Gert—you’re too sick to worry over sich. We’ll manage.”

  She sprang up, caught him by the shoulders, and searched his face as she shook him, demanding: “You ain’t lost it, Clovis? You ain’t?”

  He could not look at her, but tried to back away, his voice discouraged like his eyes as he said, “Whit warned me—an Victor, too; but when Victor had a chanct tu tell me, it was too late; he’d seen one a them cops—Enyhow, them two cops, they see a heap a accidents—an when they see, well—people in trouble like us, they’ve got a place er two they send people like us—you know, not knowen nothen—to—” He licked his dry lips, his soft eyes glittering like her own. At last he drew a deep breath and plunged on. “An ever time they send some dead—some customer—they git a little somethen frum th undertaker. Leastways, that’s what Whit an that tool-an-die man told me. An th places th cops recommends—they ain’t so—good.”

  He backed away from Gertie’s boring eyes. “Ain’t so cheap, I mean. Like I asked th man fer a pretty good casket—like you wanted, nothen cheap an shoddy. He showed me one an told me th price—a th casket; an I told him you didn’t want no fancy funeral with a lot a cars—like you said—jist somethen decent. An he said th funeral allus matched th casket—an he didn’t say no more about th cost. I ought to ha knowed when he asked all about where I worked an how much money I had an how much I made; but he was all smoothy sighs.

  “Enyhow, when it was all over, th cost was twict as much as what he told me th casket ud be. He got real mad when I kinda complained. Half fer th funeral, half fer th casket, he said. You’ve gotta take a kind a fancy funeral with a halfway decent casket; an that doubles it.”

  Gertie had been silent, watching his mouth and his eyes like a deaf person or one other-languaged. But at last bewildered concentration gave place to angry disbelief. “You mean, Clovis—” Still, her hand would not believe, and began again its frantic searching down into the flimsy cloth which she had at some time or other opened with her knife or restless fingers until the pocket was a deep and secret thing hidden in the lining. Her hand was still when she said, “They ain’t nothen left fer a marker? Nothen?”

  He tried to fill his voice with an easy certainty, “We’ll git one pretty soon, that is, th down payment.”

  She was tired, her hand unmoving, her body slumping on the bed, but after a moment she said, still hoping, “You’re lyen, Clovis. You’ve lost th money. People couldn’t be so mean.”

  Clovis picked up the bottle wrappings, “Gert, honey, I didn’t lose it; don’t take it thataway. I recken it’s like th tool-an-die man said—cops don’t make a lot a money less’n they’ve got jobs where they can git shakedowns. But them accident men, all they can git is a little kickback fer senden somebody—”

  She frowned over the strange word. “Kickback?”

  He nodded. “Everbody does it. I’ve heared em say in th shop that these big men that owns these plants, why, they give kickbacks to them gover’ment men that gives em contracts at high prices. An then th men that ain’t so big—well, kind a th size a this McKeckeran—why, they git kickbacks in money er favors frum th people they give a good parts-maken er scrap contract to. Them kickbacks comes outa taxes in th end—they say; but this un—it come out uv us.”

  She looked at him, for an instant the old Gertie. “Oh, Clovis, don’t be a throwen off on people jist cause they’ve got more money than we’ve got. Look at Uncle John—he’s a good honest man.”

  “He’s
worked mighty hard,” Clovis said, and seeing her more like herself, he reached and patted her shoulder, “You’ve saved onct—we can agin—enough to finish payen fer all this an git th marker.” A look of awe came into his eyes. “Jist think, back home when you had all that money, an th money yer mom give you frum Henley together with what I sent, you must ha had six, seven hunnert dollars. Why, that was enough to buy you a little patch a land like you’d allus wanted. I’ve heared say,” he went on, seeing that she was listening, and glad himself to talk about back home, “that John would ha sold th Tipton Place fer less’n that.”

  He backed away from the rage, the torture in her glance her eyes blazing, glittering like those of a trapped wild animal, penned for easy torture. He hesitated, half frightened, but tried again to smile and talk and fix her thoughts on back home. “Why, if I’d ha knowed you’d ha had all that money, I’d said buy a place an wait fer me. I’d ha worked up here jist long enough to git me a pretty good truck, an soon as th war was over I’d come a rollen home an a fixed me up a good road a my own like I’d allus wanted, an never a had to fix up somebody else’s washed-out road no more an—”

  “But you never wanted a farm—Mom didn’t want me to—Oh, Lord.” After the screaming words she dropped back upon the bed and turned her face to the wall.

  He cleared his throat, studied her as she lay with her legs drawn up, her head pulled down as if she would hide herself. “I wanted you to have what you wanted, Gert. It was jist—jist that I didn’t see no way a saven up fer a farm, an I hated to see you an th youngens a worken an a heavin’, allus a given haf a what you made an—” Her unmoving back silenced him, and he stood a long time looking down at her, but reached at last to pick up her coat.