He looked carefully at the jar. The clown’s face seemed to stretch into a wider smile. In gold, upon the side, was minutely written:
To my good friend Toby
From Ysytsfrau
Certainly no one by that name had ever come to Palmerville. And certainly Uncle Toby had never traveled to a land where such a word would be common.
Joe tucked his crutch tighter under his armpit and carefully put the jar back in its place. He could not be sure, but he was afraid the clown had winked at him.
There were other knick-knacks now that he looked. From lord, king, duchess or ladies. And all to their dearest, or respected and admired, Toby or Uncle Toby. There was a perfume container which played music as it sprayed and made rainbows in its mist. There was a little ring which spread a sphere of light. There was an apple which, no matter how often or hard it was bitten or eaten, always remained itself. There was a little golden monkey which did tricks endlessly and wittily and finished up by grinning for applause and then resumed its metallic inanimacy. There was a book which read poetry aloud in a soothing, feminine voice and a little muezzin which called out a strange-tongued phrase and turned ever in a certain direction no matter which way he was set down.
There were other knick-knacks now that he looked. From lord, king, duchess or ladies. And all to their dearest, or respected and admired, Toby or Uncle Toby.
Joe grew tired. He could not be afraid of these things, they were all so cheerful and pleasant. Dazedly he went out to supper and heard not a word that Aunt Cinthia said.
Several days passed before Joe discovered anything further about the room.
He had found that persistence in driving about the country and working was being rewarded at least by gains in his own health for, though nothing could ever cure his twisted leg, sunshine and air could cure his pallor and association with many other people could gradually work away his shyness. He had promised to look again at the pigs he had treated and the second calls had resulted in further calls. Because there seemed to be very little he could do to escape, he found himself gradually coming into possession of Uncle Toby’s wholly unremunerative practice.
As Joe explained it to Aunt Cinthia, “They ask and—well, it would be sort of insulting to Uncle Toby if I said ‘no.’”
He had read and listened to Uncle Toby and had treated livestock himself, so it was not hard to keep up with these simple ailments. The farmers had always had considerable respect for his learning, judging from the correct use he made of speech. And the fact that he was treating living things, seemed to react upon him as though he also treated himself. He could never part with his crutch, but the time came when he did not wince when he walked.
Aunt Cinthia was very quiet these days, her eyes lighting only when a step sounded upon the back porch—to darken when she discovered it was not Uncle Toby. She grew thin and preoccupied and the veins stuck out on her huge red hands and little spots of unnatural color stood high on her cheekbones in sharp contrast to the gray hollows below. Joe began to worry about her for it was very plain to him at least that Aunt Cinthia, inch by inch, was pulling a shroud over herself. But she would not talk very much and his presence did not seem to comfort her. More and more time he spent in Toby’s room while Aunt Cinthia sat listlessly in the kitchen.
It was comforting to Joe to have a place into which he could crawl and where he could quietly think about things. And through the long days of driving and talking he always had a small part of his mind fixed upon the comfort and relief of the dim silence of the room.
With his crutch propped against the desk, Joe would lean back in the unstable chair and gaze at the knick-knacks in the cabinet. He liked to puzzle upon their sources, upon the identities of the kings and lords and princesses and ladies who had so graciously inscribed them, and he began to build faces and manners to fit the names and gifts. It never actually occurred to Joe that he might encounter the sources.
Perhaps he would have gone on pondering the matter for years if, one day, he had not forgotten to tell Aunt Cinthia in passing that Mrs. Barthlomew had said she would send over a cake. Joe had come straight to the room, and closed the door and had seated himself at the desk. And then he remembered.
With a sigh he picked up his crutch again, hauled himself to his feet and went back to the door. He opened it and walked out.
For ten steps at least he was blinded by preoccupation. He did not notice that he was not walking through the parlor until he moved aside to pass the center table. The center table was not there!
The greenish light about him startled him. He looked up and gazed a limitless distance through green water. He looked down and saw that he stood upon current-smoothed coral. He looked around and saw that he was in an undersea garden, where tall green plumes swept gracefully from side to side in slow motion and where gay little fish lurked nervously behind the colorful pinnacles of rock.
In a sudden panic Joe stumped in a half circle and tried to regain the door. It was there. The room was beyond it, clearly visible.
Joe was afraid to breathe. The solidity of the water did not seem to interfere with his return. He gained the door and slammed it shut, standing there with his back against it for a long time, trying to regain his composure.
The curiousness of the situation was a long time in coming to him and then he began to be interested in the defiance of the law of physics. The water had not flowed into this place at all. That heartened him. That made things seem better, somehow. That gave the water a friendly and thoughtful aspect.
Cautiously, Joe opened the door a crack. He peeked out. But no undersea garden was there now. There was the organ, there were the album and the Bible, there were the false flowers under their glass domes and the clock which wouldn’t run. It was the parlor again.
Joe closed the door, waited a moment and again opened it. The parlor was still there.
That night at supper it was on his lips to tell Aunt Cinthia about this singular circumstance, but on considering, he decided that it would only worry her, and so kept his own counsel. Jeb picked his teeth with thoroughness. Aunt Cinthia cleared away the dishes. Nobody said anything.
Jeb finished picking his teeth and went out to admire the night. Joe rubbed his palm thoughtfully against the top of his crutch and listened to the dishes rattling in the sink.
Three nights passed before Joe received any other surprises in Uncle Toby’s room. He had nearly given up hope, for once his initial fear had vanished he had found in himself a considerable thirst for further investigation into that undersea garden. Each evening he had closed the door to quickly open it again. Each evening he had been greeted by the musty staleness of the parlor.
He began to get exasperated.
And then, when his patience was translucent with thinness, he determined that he would not further investigate. On this evening he came into the room, closed the door, eased himself into the chair and placed his crutch against the desk. He took a long breath and let his nerves relax. He looked at the door with a grimace and refused to be lured for he knew that if he again opened it he would find only the parlor, the organ, the album, the Bible and the glass domes over the artificial flowers. He settled himself to think about the strange ailment which had taken possession of Mr. Carmody’s prize stallion and the unanswerable listlessness which had overcome George Stockwell’s cow.
The bottle swept down off the desk top and poured out a glass. Joe ignored it. The monkey went through an exhausting series of convulsions and Joe paid no heed. The book persisted in reading poetry and he dropped it into a drawer from which came out muffled and plaintive tones as soon as it was closed.
He would not be lured and laughed at.
But within a few minutes he was at the door, hand on the knob, pulling it open.
The light, hot and golden, blinded him. He blinked at the smold
ering wastes which stretched rollingly away to a cluster of scrawny palms and at the gas-flame sky from which scorched down a high-noon equatorial sun.
Joe hitched his crutch close into his armpit and went a few steps in the yielding sand. The dunes before him made small mountains and deep valleys and ten thousand glass snakes writhed in a quiet dance.
The door was behind him. It, with its casement, stood all by itself.
Joe went up the side of a dune with great difficulty and stood looking into the depression beyond, not much surprised to see a small party of horsemen there at the head of a laden camel train.
The leader raised his gun in salute and Joe raised his crutch. The horses spurted into a gallop and labored up the slope, sinking to the knee in loose sand at each lunge.
“Hello,” said the leader. He was swarthy and his light blue eyes contrasted weirdly with his complexion. He rested his rifle across the pommel of his silver-worked saddle and threw back the hood of his djellaba.
“Hello,” said Joe.
“Where is Uncle Toby?” said the leader.
“I was going to ask you,” said Joe.
“You mean he is gone somewhere?”
“He has been gone for a long time,” said Joe.
The leader turned to the curtained box which rode the back of a big, white camel. “He says Uncle Toby is gone.”
A pair of eyes, lighter and bluer than the leader’s, looked carefully through a slit in the finely brocaded cloth. “Where did he go?” said a soft, woman’s voice.
“He says he doesn’t know,” stated the leader.
There was a sigh. And then the eyes played with interest on Joe. It was a new experience for Joe to find himself looked at without any trace of pity.
The woman said, “Leave the things, anyway. You, what is his name, Abd?”
“Joe,” said Joe.
“You will be back again, Joe?” said the woman.
“Yes,” said Joe.
“Leave him the things, Abd. Tell him if he sees Uncle Toby to tell him we will miss him.”
“She says that we miss Uncle Toby and she is right,” the leader told Joe.
Three riders swung down and took a small silver box and a red satin bag from the camel packs. They carried these to the door and put them down. They bowed very low to Joe and mounted again.
The leader saluted. The woman waved. The cavalcade moved briskly away.
Joe stood there for a little while with the hot desert wind drying out his skin. Then he went back and picked up the silver box and the red satin bag. He went through the door and closed it behind him.
For a little while he stood looking at the room and thinking about Uncle Toby and then from somewhere came the dinner gong which Aunt Cinthia was ringing for Jeb to come up from the evening chores.
Joe put the silver box on the top of the cabinet. He put his hand into the silken bag and pulled out a heavy weight of coins. He looked at them, jingling them on his palm, not much surprised to find it was perfectly good money.
He put the coins into his pocket and opened the door. The parlor was dim and stale and the crayon portrait of Uncle Toby on the wall looked stiffly at him. Joe could not be sure about the smile he felt had crossed the picture.
When he sat down to the table, Jeb was already eating, with some slight suction. Aunt Cinthia piled mashed potatoes on Joe’s plate and gave him a slab of meat.
Aunt Cinthia, as time flowed onward, drew more and more from her own company until she seemed to wear a cloak of silence through which nothing could penetrate. Methodically and tiredly she went on with her endless tasks, bending her tallness over tubs and sink and stove.
She gradually developed a strange fascination for sunsets, standing on the porch each evening to watch the great globe halve, quarter and vanish behind the prairie rim. There seemed to be considerable satisfaction for her in thus watching the days vanish one by one, to see the changes of winter into spring, spring into summer, summer into fall and fall again into winter. And as time went by, Joe began to notice that the only hope in her eyes shone there in the brief moment of the dying light.
It was not much of a surprise to Joe, then, when he came one dusky winter evening up the road to the house and found Aunt Cinthia sitting relaxed and apparently quite comfortably upon the back porch, oblivious to the severe chill in the wind. He spoke to her and shook her shoulder.
When her head fell back, Joe found himself looking into her peaceful eyes. Aunt Cinthia was dead.
Palmerville and Laudon County had very little to say about it. People went to the funeral and said the properly doleful things to Joe and then for a few Sundays after remarked the clean whiteness of the new cross in the churchyard. Then they forgot about her.
Joe kept on doctoring pigs, driving around the country, speaking pleasantly to everyone and leaning easily upon his crutch. Joe never talked about himself or what he did, but that was all right for other people were too willing to talk about themselves and didn’t notice. Nobody paid Joe. Everyone depended upon him and respected what he said. Nobody had anything to do with a new veterinary from State who tried to hang up a shingle in Palmerville. Joe was part of the community, like the church steeple and the old elm at the end of the bridge.
But things change even in places like Palmerville. Things change and things happen.
Jeb, an old man now, came into town one morning with the news that Joe had vanished.
People were excited about it for a little while and went looking under bushes and culverts and not much work was done for three days.
And then something else happened. Joe’s house, without cause, caught on fire and burned right to the foundation to leave two chimneys sticking up out of charcoal like a pair of self-appointed sentries.
Nobody rebuilt the house. Nobody ever found Joe.
Five or six years later when a farmer, who had gotten rich, decided he had better atone for some things he maybe shouldn’t have done, work was started on a new church to replace the old frame building which had weathered so much petty sin. The work necessitated the moving of a few graves, and among those was that where Aunt Cinthia had been buried.
The workmen very nearly had the coffin buried again when one fellow, more observant than the rest, discovered that the coffin was empty.
People talked about it for a little while and then, because babies were getting born and crops had to be sown and reaped and chores had to be done, forgot about that, also.
He Didn’t Like Cats
He Didn’t Like Cats
A wise man could have told Jacob Findley that vindictiveness is usually synonymous with downfall, even vindictiveness in minute things. But Jacob Findley lived in Washington, DC.
Ordinarily, Jacob took from life all its faults without complaint, for as a civil servant of the United States he was inured to many things and, through practice, quite complaisant in general. But, perhaps, bottling official insults within himself was not wholly possible since common logic tells one that a vessel can be filled just so full, after which it leaks or overflows. Jacob was not the type of man to overflow. Cup by cup he was filled; somewhere along the route from desk to desk in his department he had to have a means of release.
People in official positions quite often pass down in kind what is received from above and Jacob, as a file clerk, was down so low that it was most difficult to find a means of spilling.
So he didn’t like cats.
A more defeated and resigned man would have been difficult to find, for he was a veritable sponge for abuse. His hair was graying, his eyes downcast, his walk a slouch and even his clothes had a tired air.
But he didn’t like cats.
His was not a vindictive nature. In most things he was patiently kind, Joblike enduring. He often gave candy to l
ittle children, quite strangers to him. While it might be said that his generosity was more like the offering of tribute in turn for immunity, it was still generosity.
However—or perhaps, therefore—he did not like cats.
Tonight he was in an average mood. The day had been tedious, monotonous, wearying. And tonight he was on his way to attend a church supper which, because he would be, as usual, forgotten in the midst of many, would be tedious, monotonous, wearying.
Clad in a shiny tuxedo, topped by a rusty derby, swinging his cane in halfhearted imitation of his office chief at the State Department, he walked patiently up Sixteenth Street toward the Lutheran church, pausing obediently at all the lights, absence of cars notwithstanding on the lettered streets. A steady parade of cabs and limousines coursed busily upon his left, discordantly giving forth blasts of radio music, a blast bracketed in silence either side, and yelps or laughter or conversation.
He had just crossed N Street when he met his fa—when he met the cat.
It was not a polite meeting nor a sociable contact, for the cat arrogantly ignored Jacob Findley and issued from an apartment-house shrub to lay its course across the bows of the man.
As cats went, he was at best a second-rate feline in looks, but in the cat world he must have been singularly respected if his tattered and scarred condition was any indication of victories hardly won. He was a huge cat, a dirty cat and a very proud cat. He was missing half his right ear, several of his port whiskers, a third of his right forefoot and about a sixteenth of his tail, to say nothing of patches where fur had been. His air was gladiatorial, for he strutted rather than walked, and there was a vain heft to his brows which bespoke his disdain for cats less proficient in the art of plying claw and tooth and for all humans without any exception. Here was a cat that was tough and proud of it, but which had commingled with that toughness a wary glance for possible enemies and a lewd leer in event he passed any ladies.