Her Father's House (18 page)

“No,” Jim said, adding automatically, “I'm sorry to hear it.”

Perhaps that was why, after suggesting that they exercise the horses together, Kate had changed the hour. As a matter of fact, he had not even seen her on horseback, or anywhere, for at least a week.

Scofield mourned, “Yes, it's disaster. I wonder where they'll go.”

Jim was thinking, I'm wondering where I'll go, then felt a twinge of shame at his selfishness. If he could help them, he gladly would.

“It was nice to see you again, Doctor,” he said. “You were a lifesaver that day. But I have to get back to Laura. I'm late now.”

With the bundle of newspapers lying on the seat beside him, the first thing he had to do was to go and read them.
We will ferret him out,
said Arthur Storm. She was still Mrs. Buzley. But soon, little doubt of it, she would be Mrs. Storm.
Ferret him out.
Small pains quivered in Jim's temples. Let Laura stay later at Jennie's today. If she was there, it meant she was safe. Right now he hadn't the will or the strength to take her back to the cottage. My God, how much of this terror could a man stand?

As much as he had to stand, was the answer, the only answer. So he would stand. Yes.

He had parked his car and was walking to the cottage when he saw Clarence standing alone by the fence. There was something in the man's posture, leaning there with his face turned up to the hills, that caught Jim's attention. Foreclosure, Dr. Scofield had said. Leaving all this and going—where? He with the gentle wife; anyone could see the gentleness in her, especially as Jim had seen it on that single morning when they had stopped to let the horses drink.
God's country,
she had said. And then there was the boy, a scampy little fellow, but sweet, too. Gentle folk. What was to happen to them? And his hand went to the hot, heavy money belt under the loose shirt. There was undeniably a certain comfort in having it there. Clarence, leaning on the fence, would no doubt give anything to own a small portion of this comfort, he thought. And yet, nobody's hunting Clarence

down . . .

Clarence moved closer. “I promised to finish your tour of the farm, and I've never done it.”

“That's all right. No rush. Another time will do.”

“How about now? Come on. I'll show you around.”

He wants to talk, Jim thought in sudden comprehension. He simply needs not to be alone. And he remembered how, only a few weeks ago, he had sat in his car at that crossroad, longing for somebody, for anybody at all, to warm the chill of his loneliness and fear.

“Come on,” he said. Let the newspapers wait. The bad news, if any, would still be there an hour from now.

“This gate's all rotted, you see. One thing we didn't get around to fixing when we did the big overhaul two years ago. Used to raise beef cattle, you see, but I had to quit because Kate hated it. Well, it's true she hated eating beef; she kept thinking about the slaughter, but that's not the real reason I gave up. The real reason was I couldn't afford it. Short of cash. The place needed everything when my dad died, so I went ahead and gave it everything it needed. Or almost everything. Take these two barns for milkers. This one's half empty. Cost a fortune, too. But I didn't know when I bought the herd and built all this stuff that a fellow on the other side of the village has all the business sewn up. He's got about six hundred head. Maybe someday there'll be a rise in demand for milk, but right now there isn't. Sometimes I figure this milk costs me five dollars a bucket. Suppose you know how to milk a cow?”

“No, but I could have learned all those summers when I worked on a farm before—college.” The sudden question had almost thrown Jim off guard. He had almost said “law school.”

“Reason I ask is, you get close to a cow. It's like dogs, or almost. When you have to sell one because it's too old, it kind of makes you sick, you know?”

“I understand,” Jim said gently.

A wire fence stopped the two men. Beyond it lay a fallow field, at least ten acres across, Jim estimated, on which wild grass was bending in the breeze.

“Grazing land for beef cattle, that's what it was. There's more across the creek. I don't know why I'm telling you all this, but I guess I just need somebody to talk to. Sometimes you have to bring your worries out of hiding, or they'll split your head open. I'm sorry, Jim.”

“It's all right. I've had a split head in my time.”

“Kate kind of thought you did, hightailing it around the country with that baby. A man doesn't do that for nothing, she says.”

Jim looked at his watch. At this rate, Clarence would tie up another hour, and this last remark was too personal, anyway.

“I need to get my girl at Jennie Macy's,” he said. “I'm late as it is.”

“Yes, of course. I didn't mean to keep you. The children always come first. Always.” There were tears in Clarence's eyes. “No one knows that better than I do.”

The man was sick, very sick, in more ways than one. And heavyhearted, heavy-footed, Jim walked away. He looked again at his watch. It was almost five, and he had been away from Laura all day. She must be wondering where he was; perhaps she was crying for him. He rushed down the path, around the barn and up the hill, to find her sitting on the grass with Ricky and Kate.

“Jennie took her home when you were late,” Kate said.

“I'm sorry about that. I'll thank her tomorrow. And thank you, too.”

He was about to say that there had been a lot of traffic when Laura interrupted.

“See, Daddy! Duck!”

Ricky, holding a large, flat picture book, explained that it had been his “a long time ago,” but now he read real books, so he was giving this to Laura.

“It's a present from me, even though it's not her birthday,” he announced with some pride.

Jim was touched. “That's so nice of you, Ricky. Can you say thank you, Laura?”

Her eyes, those magical, intense blue eyes of Lillian's, were bright with excitement. She never even cried for “Mia” anymore. So soon do children forget! But somewhere Maria knows that she is happy and loved, he thought. His nerves were so delicate at that moment that he didn't know himself. It wouldn't have taken much to fill his own eyes with tears.

“Say thank you,” he said again, as a proper father should.

“Sank 'oo,” said Laura.

Ricky made another announcement. “I'm going to teach her to read as soon as she's three because I'm a very good reader. Did you know I'm in the fast group?”

“No, I didn't, Ricky. That's wonderful. You'd have to wait awhile, though, because Laura has a few more months to go.”

“Then I'll wait till she's three. Is that a long time?”

“Well, not very long,” Jim said.

Without intending to, he glanced at Kate and glanced away, yet not before she caught him.

“Well, now I suppose you know all about us,” she said.

“I'm not sure—” he began.

“I saw you walking with Clarence, and I'm talking about what he probably told you.”

“He's heartsick. I'm terribly sorry.”

Turning her face and voice away from the children, she said very low, “It is his life. His whole life is here. You'll have to leave here, too, you know, and you didn't get any job today.”

Jim was astonished. “How can you know that?”

“Because you would be saying so. And it would be on your face, anyway.”

She is definitely not the simple woman I believed I met on the train, he thought. She was seated with her hands around her knees. Thinking that he must look stiff as a beanpole standing tall above her, he sat down beside her.

“You won't find a job here,” she said. “You need to be in a city.”

“I don't want a city.”

Then she asked an astonishing question, so astonishing that he stammered when he answered it.

“Who are you, Jim?”

“That's a mighty queer thing to ask a person. What can you possibly mean?”

“I mean that I see you've had more troubles than you want to talk about. You wouldn't be putting your past behind you to start fresh almost a thousand miles from home if you hadn't had them. Anyway, this isn't your kind of place—”

With a stir of anger, he interrupted her. “You don't know the first thing about me, Kate, or about my ‘kind of place.' ”

“The other day, as I was passing the cottage, I heard your music. Men around here don't put Strauss waltzes on their record players.”

“So? It was pretty. It was happy, and I thought it would be good for Laura to hear.”

“You're dodging my question.”

“You haven't asked me a question.”

“Yes, I have. Who are you?”

“Do you really want to know? All right, I'll tell you. I've robbed a bank in Philadelphia, and I have a couple of bombs in my car, so they're hot on my trail.”

Kate smiled. “You had your little girl in the car, too. No, Jim. There's no one out hunting for you. Of your own volition, you're running away. I know you've lost your wife, but there's something else about you that makes me feel sad. And especially sad for Laura.”

This woman was going much too far! Still, her expression was gentle and genuine. . . .

“Clarence is very ill, and that should be enough for you to cope with,” he replied with equal gentleness.

And there came that expression again, the one he had observed, then forgotten and now remembered, when she had sat on the pinto looking out at the hills. It was the expression that gave a momentary beauty to features that were not beautiful, but merely regular and without noticeable fault. One would not turn to single her out of a crowd. Yet she caught your attention.

There's something about you that makes me sad.

Kate stood up. “Well, I need to make supper. Come on to your job, Ricky. The dogs are hungry, and they're waiting for you.”

For a moment Jim watched the two going back to their home. Then, taking Laura's hand, he went up the hill toward the place that was, for this very brief time, their home.

“Duck, Daddy,” Laura babbled, clutching the picture book. “Duck, Daddy.”

“Yes, duck. That's very nice, darling,” he responded, while his mind went racing. The first thing was to prepare her supper, the next to give her a bath, read a short story, and put her to bed. And then—then the long night would come, and he'd lie awake, and his mind would keep racing.

People don't want much, he thought. When you come down to it, what we really need is a fairly simple thing, just not to be afraid of tomorrow morning.

   

A row of cans stood on the roadside with the milk going sour in the heat. It was half-past nine, and Jim, walking back from Jennie Macy's house where he had left Laura for her half day, met Clarence staring at the cans.

“Can you believe it?” he cried. “The bastards overslept and missed the pickup truck. It's the last straw.” With a violent kick, he overturned a can. “Everything! Everything I touch goes wrong!”

Jim set the can straight and said quietly, “Let's carry them back. They'll need to be emptied and scoured. No use in upsetting yourself too much, Clarence. Things happen.”

“Things
don't
just happen! People
let
them happen. Ever since Dad died, we've been going downhill. It isn't my fault, I've tried and tried, but everything I touch is jinxed. Nobody I hire will cooperate. Sometimes I think they're all against me, they want me to fail, they're envious, they soldier on the job, behind my back, they—”

Jim stared at the man's poor face, his mouth distorted as in a tear mask. He was falling apart.

“Come on. Let's start carrying this stuff back to the barn.”

“I don't want to set one foot near the barn. I'll give them a piece of my mind if I see them, and then they'll quit, and then what will I do? What will I do anyway? I'm in this mess with my hands tied and a rope around my neck. Do you understand?”

“Listen to me, Clarence. I'll go send the men down to carry these back. Then you and I will take a walk.”

In the barnyard, two young men were having a smoke when Jim interrupted them.

“We'll be down in a minute,” one said. “What's the matter? He having a fit? Tim's clock didn't go off and the milking was late for once. So what? Old Clarence is losing his—” And with his forefinger, he made the insulting circle at his temple. “Every day he finds something else to bellyache about.”

They had lost respect. They saw weakness, failure, and a sinking ship.

“I don't have time to talk about Mr. Benson.” Jim gave them a cold stare. “And you don't, either. There's plenty of work to be done around here, and you'd better get started on it.”

“There's all this land,” Clarence began when Jim returned. “I could raise hay. As a matter of fact, I did raise hay, but there was so much of it that I wasn't able to sell it all, so there's the land, just lying there eating up tax money.”

The day was one of those rare ones when the temperature is fitted to the comfort of the human anatomy, the sky is an arc of perfect blue over the flourishing land, and a human being should rejoice in simply being alive. Instead, Clarence renewed his pathetic litany of complaints.

“I know I need new machinery. Some of the stuff, unbeknownst to me, was left outside to rust. But a lot of it was old even in Dad's day. It costs a fortune to replace, and I'm already up to my ears in debt. I suppose you heard, it's all over town, but you're a stranger here, so maybe you haven't heard.”

“I have heard something, yes. What are you going to do?”

“That's my trouble. I try to think, but I can't think anymore.”

How well Jim knew. . . . Yet along with his wish to be compassionate, he was feeling impatience.
What if the man had my problem?

“You need to simplify,” he said abruptly. “Your father managed here, and you can, too. The land is rich, but you don't know how to use it.”

Clarence gave him a shy, chastened look. “I told you,” he mumbled, “I wanted to use what I've learned, things my father never knew. I've just had bad luck, that's all.”