Adam said, "Do you remember Samuel Hamilton?--sure you do. When you were a baby he told me I was a bad father. He hit me, knocked me down, to impress it on me."
"That old man?"
"He was a tough old man. And now I know what he meant. I'm the same as my father was. He didn't allow me to be a person, and I haven't seen my sons as people. That's what Samuel meant." He looked right into Cal's eyes and smiled, and Cal ached with affection for him.
Cal said, "We don't think you're a bad father."
"Poor things," said Adam. "How would you know? You've never had any other kind."
"I'm glad I was in jail," said Cal.
"So am I. So am I." He laughed. "We've both been in jail--we can talk together." A gaiety grew in him. "Maybe you can tell me what kind of a boy you are--can you?"
"Yes sir."
"Will you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, tell me. You see, there's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be. What are you like?"
"No joke?" Cal asked shyly.
"No joke--oh, surely, no joke. Tell me about yourself--that is, if you want to."
Cal began, "Well--I'm--" He stopped. "It's not so easy when you try," he said.
"I guess it would be--maybe impossible. Tell me about your brother."
"What do you want to know about him?"
"What you think of him, I guess. That's all you could tell me."
Cal said, "He's good. He doesn't do bad things. He doesn't think bad things."
"Now you're telling about yourself."
"Sir?"
"You're saying you do and think bad things."
Cal's cheeks reddened. "Well, I do."
"Very bad things?"
"Yes, sir. Do you want me to tell?"
"No, Cal. You've told. Your voice tells and your eyes tell you're at war with yourself. But you shouldn't be ashamed. It's awful to be ashamed. Is Aron ever ashamed?"
"He doesn't do anything to be ashamed of."
Adam leaned forward. "Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure."
"Tell me, Cal--do you protect him?"
"How do you mean, sir?"
"I mean like this--if you heard something bad or cruel or ugly, would you keep it from him?"
"I--I think so."
"You think he's too weak to bear things you can bear?"
"It's not that, sir. He's good. He's really good. He never does anyone harm. He never says bad things about anyone. He's not mean and he never complains and he's brave. He doesn't like to fight but he will."
"You love your brother, don't you?"
"Yes, sir. And I do bad things to him. I cheat him and I fool him. Sometimes I hurt him for no reason at all."
"And then you're miserable?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is Aron ever miserable?"
"I don't know. When I didn't want to join the Church he felt bad. And once when Abra got angry and said she hated him he felt awful bad. He was sick. He had a fever. Don't you remember? Lee sent for the doctor."
Adam said with wonder, "I could live with you and not know any of these things! Why was Abra mad?"
Cal said, "I don't know if I ought to tell."
"I don't want you to then."
"It's nothing bad. I guess it's all right. You see, sir, Aron wants to be a minister. Mr. Rolf--well, he likes high church, and Aron liked that, and he thought maybe he would never get married and maybe go to a retreat."
"Like a monk, you mean?"
"Yes, sir."
"And Abra didn't like that?"
"Like it? She got spitting mad. She can get mad sometimes. She took Aron's fountain pen and threw it on the sidewalk and tramped on it. She said she'd wasted half her life on Aron."
Adam laughed. "How old is Abra?"
"Nearly fifteen. But she's--well, more than that some ways."
"I should say she is. What did Aron do?"
"He just got quiet but he felt awful bad."
Adam said, "I guess you could have taken her away from him then."
"Abra is Aron's girl," said Cal.
Adam looked deeply into Cal's eyes. Then he called, "Lee!" There was no answer. "Lee!" he called again. He said, '"I didn't hear him go out. I want some fresh coffee."
Cal jumped up. "I'll make it."
"Say," said Adam, "you should be in school."
"I don't want to go."
"You ought to go. Aron went."
"I'm happy," Cal said. "I want to be with you."
Adam looked down at his hands. "Make the coffee," he said softly and his voice was shy.
When Cal was in the kitchen Adam looked inward at himself with wonder. His nerves and muscles throbbed with an excited hunger. His fingers yearned to grasp, his legs to run. His eyes avidly brought the room into focus. He saw the chairs, the pictures, the red roses on the carpet, and new sharp things--almost people things but friendly things. And in his brain was born sharp appetite for the future--a pleased warm anticipation, as though the coming minutes and weeks must bring delight. He felt a dawn emotion, with a lovely day to slip golden and quiet over him. He laced his fingers behind his head and stretched his legs out stiff.
In the kitchen Cal urged on the water heating in the coffeepot, and yet he was pleased to be waiting. A miracle once it is familiar is no longer a miracle; Cal had lost his wonder at the golden relationship with his father but the pleasure remained. The poison of loneliness and the gnawing envy of the unlonely had gone out of him, and his person was clean and sweet, and he knew it was. He dredged up an old hatred to test himself, and he found the hatred gone. He wanted to serve his father, to give him some great gift, to perform some huge good task in honor of his father.
The coffee boiled over and Cal spent minutes cleaning up the stove. He said to himself, "I wouldn't have done this yesterday."
Adam smiled at him when he carried in the steaming pot. Adam sniffed and said, "That's a smell could raise me out of a concrete grave."
"It boiled over," said Cal.
"It has to boil over to taste good," Adam said. "I wonder where Lee went."
"Maybe in his room. Shall I look?"
"No. He'd have answered."
"Sir, when I finish school, will you let me run the ranch?"
"You're planning early. How about Aron?"
"He wants to go to college. Don't tell him I told you. Let him tell you, and you be surprised."
"Why, that's fine," said Adam. "But don't you want to go to college too?"
"I bet I could make money on the ranch--enough to pay Aron's way through college."
Adam sipped his coffee. "That's a generous thing," he said. "I don't know whether I ought to tell you this but--well, when I asked you earlier what kind of boy Aron was, you defended him so badly I thought you might dislike him or even hate him."
"I have hated him," Cal said vehemently. "And I've hurt him too. But, sir, can I tell you something? I don't hate him now. I won't ever hate him again. I don't think I will hate anyone, not even my mother--" He stopped, astonished at his slip, and his mind froze up tight and helpless.
Adam looked straight ahead. He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Finally he said quietly, "You know about your mother." It was not a question.
"Yes--yes, sir."
"All about her?"
"Yes, sir."
Adam leaned back in his chair. "Does Aron know?"
"Oh, no! No--no, sir. He doesn't know."
"Why do you say it that way?"
"I wouldn't dare to tell him."
"Why not?"
Cal said brokenly, "I don't think he could stand it. He hasn't enough badness in him to stand it." He wanted to continue, "--any more than you could, sir," but he left the last unsaid.
Adam's face looked weary. He moved his head from side to side. "Cal, listen to me. Do you think there's any chance of keeping Aron from knowing? Think carefully."
Cal said, "He doesn't go near places like
that. He's not like me."
"Suppose someone told him?"
"I don't think he would believe it, sir. I think he would lick whoever told him and think it was a lie."
"You've been there?"
"Yes, sir. I had to know." And Cal went on excitedly, "If he went away to college and never lived in this town again--"
Adam nodded. "Yes. That might be. But he has two more years here."
"Maybe I could make him hurry it up and finish in one year. He's smart."
"But you're smarter?"
"A different kind of smart," said Cal.
Adam seemed to grow until he filled one side of the room. His face was stern and his blue eyes sharp and penetrating. "Cal!" he said harshly.
"Sir?"
"I trust you, son," said Adam.
2
Adam's recognition brought a ferment of happiness to Cal. He walked on the balls of his feet. He smiled more often than he frowned, and the secret darkness was seldom on him.
Lee, noticing the change in him, asked quietly, "You haven't found a girl, have you?"
"Girl? No. Who wants a girl?"
"Everybody," said Lee.
And Lee asked Adam, "Do you know what's got into Cal?"
Adam said, "He knows about her."
"Does he?" Lee stayed out of trouble. "Well, you remember I thought you should have told them."
"I didn't tell him. He knew."
"What do you think of that!" said Lee. "But that's not information to make a boy hum when he studies and play catch with his cap when he walks. How about Aron?"
"I'm afraid of that," said Adam. "I don't think I want him to know."
"It might be too late."
"I might have a talk with Aron. Kind of feel around."
Lee considered. "Something's happened to you too."
"Has it? I guess it has," said Adam.
But humming and sailing his cap, driving quickly through his schoolwork, were only the smallest of Cal's activities. In his new joy he appointed himself guardian of his father's content. It was true what he had said about not feeling hatred for his mother. But that did not change the fact that she had been the instrument of Adam's hurt and shame. Cal reasoned that what she could do before, she could do again. He set himself to learn all he could about her. A known enemy is less dangerous, less able to surprise.
At night he was drawn to the house across the tracks. Sometimes in the afternoon he lay hidden in the tall weeds across the street, watching the place. He saw the girls come out, dressed somberly, even severely. They left the house always in pairs, and Cal followed them with his eyes to the corner of Castroville Street, where they turned left toward Main Street. He discovered that if you didn't know where they had come from you couldn't tell what they were. But he was not waiting for the girls to come out. He wanted to see his mother in the light of day. He found that Kate emerged every Monday at one-thirty.
Cal made arrangements in school, by doing extra and excellent work, to make up for his absences on Monday afternoons. To Aron's questions he replied that he was working on a surprise and was duty bound to tell no one. Aron was not much interested anyway. In his self-immersion Aron soon forgot the whole thing.
Cal, after he had followed Kate several times, knew her route. She always went to the same places--first to the Monterey County Bank where she was admitted behind the shining bars that defended the safe-deposit vault. She spent fifteen or twenty minutes there. Then she moved slowly along Main Street, looking in the store windows. She stepped into Porter and Irvine's and looked at dresses and sometimes made a purchase--elastic, safety pins, a veil, a pair of gloves. About two-fifteen she entered Minnie Franken's beauty parlor, stayed an hour, and came out with her hair pinned up in tight curls and a silk scarf around her head and tied under her chin.
At three-thirty she climbed the stairs to the offices over the Farmers' Mercantile and went into the consulting room of Dr. Rosen. When she came down from the doctor's office she stopped for a moment at Bell's candy store and bought a two-pound box of mixed chocolates. She never varied the route. From Bell's she went directly back to Castroville Street and thence to her house.
There was nothing strange about her clothing. She dressed exactly like any well-to-do Salinas woman out shopping on a Monday afternoon--except that she always wore gloves, which was unusual for Salinas.
The gloves made her hands seem puffed and pudgy. She moved as though she were surrounded by a glass shell. She spoke to no one and seemed to see no one. Occasionally a man turned and looked after her and then nervously went about his business. But for the most part she slipped past like an invisible woman.
For a number of weeks Cal followed Kate. He tried not to attract her attention. And since Kate walked always looking straight ahead, he was convinced that she did not notice him.
When Kate entered her own yard Cal strolled casually by and went home by another route. He could not have said exactly why he followed her, except that he wanted to know all about her.
The eighth week he took the route she completed her journey and went into her overgrown yard as usual.
Cal waited a moment, then strolled past the rickety gate.
Kate was standing behind a tall ragged privet. She said to him coldly, "What do you want?"
Cal froze in his steps. He was suspended in time, barely breathing. Then he began a practice he had learned when he was very young. He observed and catalogued details outside his main object. He noticed how the wind from the south bent over the new little leaves of the tall privet bush. He saw the muddy path beaten to black mush by many feet, and Kate's feet standing far to the side out of the mud. He heard a switch engine in the Southern Pacific yards discharging steam in shrill dry spurts. He felt the chill air on the growing fuzz on his cheeks. And all the time he was staring at Kate and she was staring back at him. And he saw in the set and color of her eyes and hair, even in the way she held her shoulders--high in a kind of semi-shrug--that Aron looked very like her. He did not know his own face well enough to recognize her mouth and little teeth and wide cheekbones as his own. They stood thus for the moment, between two gusts of the southern wind.
Kate said, "This isn't the first time you've followed me. What do you want?"
He dipped his head. "Nothing," he said.
"Who told you to do it?" she demanded.
"Nobody--ma'am."
"You won't tell me, will you?"
Cal heard his own next speech with amazement. It was out before he could stop it. "You're my mother and I wanted to see what you're like." It was the exact truth and it had leaped out like the stroke of a snake.
"What? What is this? Who are you?"
"I'm Cal Trask," he said. He felt the delicate change of balance as when a seesaw moves. His was the upper seat now. Although her expression had not changed Cal knew she was on the defensive.
She looked at him closely, observed every feature. A dim remembered picture of Charles leaped into her mind. Suddenly she said, "Come with me!" She turned and walked up the path, keeping well to the side, out of the mud.
Cal hesitated only for a moment before following her up the steps. He remembered the big dim room, but the rest was strange to him. Kate preceded him down a hall and into her room. As she went past the kitchen entrance she called, "Tea. Two cups!"
In her room she seemed to have forgotten him!. She removed her coat, tugging at the sleeves with reluctant fat gloved fingers. Then she went to a new door cut in the wall in the end of the room where her bed stood. She opened the door and went into a new little lean-to. "Come in here!" she said. "Bring that chair with you."
He followed her into a box of a room. It had no windows, no decorations of any kind. Its walls were painted a dark gray. A solid gray carpet covered the floor. The only furniture in the room was a huge chair puffed with gray silk cushions, a tilted reading table, and a floor lamp deeply hooded. Kate pulled the light chain with her gloved hand, holding it deep in the crotch between her thumb and forefinger a
s though her hand were artificial.
"Close the door!" Kate said.
The light threw a circle on the reading table and only diffused dimly through the gray room. Indeed the gray walls seemed to suck up the light and destroy it.
Kate settled herself gingerly among the thick down cushions and slowly removed her gloves. The fingers of both hands were bandaged.
Kate said angrily, "Don't stare. It's arthritis. Oh--so you want to see, do you?" She unwrapped the oily-looking bandage from her right forefinger and stuck the crooked finger under the light. "There--look at it," she said. "It's arthritis." She whined in pain as she tenderly wrapped the bandage loosely. "God, those gloves hurt!" she said. "Sit down."
Cal crouched on the edge of his chair.
"You'll probably get it," Kate said. "My great-aunt had it and my mother was just beginning to get it--" She stopped. The room was very silent.
There was a soft knock on the door. Kate called, "Is that you, Joe? Set the tray down out there. Joe, are you there?"
A mutter came through the door.
Kate said tonelessly, "There's a litter in the parlor. Clean it up. Anne hasn't cleaned her room. Give her one more warning. Tell her it's the last. Eva got smart last night. I'll take care of her. And, Joe, tell the cook if he serves carrots again this week he can pack up. Hear me?"
The mutter came through the door.
"That's all," said Kate. "The dirty pigs!" she muttered. "They'd rot if I didn't watch them. Go out and bring in the tea tray."
The bedroom was empty when Cal opened the door. He carried the tray into the lean-to and set it gingerly on the tilted reading table. It was a large silver tray, and on it were a pewter teapot, two paper-thin white teacups, sugar, cream, and an open box of chocolates.
"Pour the tea," said Kate. "It hurts my hands." She put a chocolate in her mouth. "I saw you looking at this room," she went on when she had swallowed her candy. "The light hurts my eyes. I come in here to rest." She saw Cal's quick glance at her eyes and said with finality, "The light hurts my eyes." She said harshly, "What's the matter? Don't you want tea?"
"No, ma'am," said Cal, "I don't like tea."
She held the thin cup with her bandaged fingers. "All right. What do you want?"
"Nothing, ma'am."
"Just wanted to look at me?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Are you satisfied?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"How do I look?" She smiled crookedly at him and showed her sharp white little teeth.
"All right."
"I might have known you'd cover up. Where's your brother?"