Читать книгу Before the Sun Goes Down - Elizabeth Metzger Howard - Страница 10

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Rufe finished the last word and closed The Scarlet Letter. His face burned. Of course, what the minister and the lady had done was terrible. But maybe they couldn’t help themselves, and why must people who did things they couldn’t help have to suffer? Rufe remembered again what Mr. Yates had said, that no merciful God would torment His children with actual fire, however wicked they had been. Even if that wasn’t true it would be fine if people wouldn’t torment each other, no matter who was right.

Rufe tiptoed down the third-floor stairs, put the book back in Papa’s closet, and tiptoed on down the back steps and outside. Mama was playing the piano—the piece she was always playing lately—but Rufe was making sure she didn’t hear him. She never liked having him go out this time of evening and he simply had to get away, go somewhere, anywhere. He saw his father wandering around the garden, the way he did every Sunday evening, and Gabe Williams, their hired man, and Charlie Raub, the Sargents’ hired man, were coming along the walk on their way to feed the livestock and milk the cows. Before the Sargents’, Uncle Doc was talking to Bert, and Lillian and Prissy were sitting in his buggy.

When he was a little fellow Uncle Doc had taken him on rides all the time. Rufe guessed it must be his own fault Uncle Doc had stopped taking him along, as it might be his own fault that Tom Leonard and Ben Smith and Jack Sturdevant had stopped playing with him. Until not very long ago these boys had stopped by for him often and there’d been plenty of fun swimming and skating and fooling around the livery stable and hotel. And Rufe’d never forget the time Tom asked him to stay for supper. It was the only time Rufe had ever eaten in a hotel dining room. The Leonard family—including, besides Tom, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard and Tom’s older sister, Jean—lived at the hotel, had several rooms on the third floor. After supper they’d all gone up to what they called their private parlor and played card games. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard had seemed to enjoy the games as much as the young people. And there was the time Rufe could never forget either when he’d seen Tom and his father starting out hunting together, laughing and talking like two boys, their guns over their shoulders and the two sleek lean pointers, Rex and Queen, at their heels.... Then suddenly the boys had stopped coming around and Rufe never did know the reason. But it must have been his own fault again, Rufe thought.

He passed Linden Street, his shoulders up. He didn’t intend walking past Mollie Reynard’s house this evening, nor maybe any other evening either. Rufe guessed, though, he might walk up to the hotel and see if Tom and Jack and Ben were around. Approaching the livery stable, Rufe saw the crowd assembled there. (Winters they gathered in the harness room and summers on chairs along the walk.) There was Ralph Pettigrew himself, and Jake Smith, Floyd Shires (just back from Limestone Avenue), and Fat Hubbard, not to mention a number of lesser personages.

Ralph Pettigrew made Rufe quake inwardly. Not, however, because of the Pettigrew antagonism toward the Albrights and Sargents. Ralph Pettigrew reminded Rufe of a bull who’d all but got him once.

In 1880 Ralph Pettigrew was thirty-three years old. He was six feet tall and weighed over two hundred pounds but, as he put it, he was “all beef and not an ounce of fat.” He had black curly hair, a high forehead, beady black eyes, a flat nose, red cheeks, a letter-box mouth, and a square jaw. There was that about his “beef,” though, which made lesser men regard him as a wall of strength. He had an indisputable charm whenever he pleased, and words often rolled from his tongue that made his hearers wonder and doubt and believe. Approaching the livery stable, Rufe heard the Sunday evening calm broken by one of Pettigrew’s bull roars. As Mr. Smith had anticipated, he did split his sides over the story about Sammy Albright.

Rufe crossed the street and walked along to the hotel. The Grand Central was built directly upon the walk, the bar and ladies’ entrance on the right, the office door on the left. Across the front of the office was a huge window behind which the guests, mostly traveling men, sat during the winter. Now in September they lined the benches along the pavement. Inside the office to the left was the stairway, to the right the desk, and a door beyond the desk led to the dining room. Looking through the big window, Rufe saw Jerman Stanwick (who was Shad’s father and the hotel porter) opening the dining-room door, which indicated that supper was ready. As if they had received a telepathic message, the men on the benches arose almost simultaneously, filing through the office into the dining room. Mr. Leonard, who was behind the desk, nodded amiably to each man who passed. Pretty soon Tom and Ben and Jack came out of the dining room (Rufe thought they must have been having early supper for some reason) and went on upstairs. They pretended not to see Rufe standing there looking through the window.

Rufe started down Broad toward Maple. Before the telegraph office Mr. Williams passed him and nodded pleasantly.

“Evening, Mr. Rufe.”

“Evening, Mr. Williams.”

Floyd Shires went by in the hack on the way to the depot. Before he was halfway home Rufe heard the whistle of the evening train at the narrows, and then the rumble of the train coming nearer and nearer, and again the whistle before going into the station.

Rufe thought, I wonder if even Mama would care if I got on that train some night and never came back?

Tom Leonard and Ben Smith were sixteen years old and Jack Sturdevant was fifteen, three months older than Rufe. Tom was a tall, sandy-haired boy who’d honest blue eyes, a freckled nose, and a wide smile. Everybody liked Tom Leonard. Ben Smith was short, plump, with nondescript features, but he kept all the other boys in stitches—he was so funny. Jack Sturdevant was medium height; he’d long lean dark features and a hollow chest, but he was far shrewder than either one of the other boys.

Tom had invited Ben and Jack to supper and they had eaten early because they wanted to be in the dining room before anybody else got there to “have some fun pulling Dolly’s leg.” Belle was all right; any fellow could do anything he wanted to Belle. But Dolly got mad if you even touched her.

Tom had a room of his own on the second floor and, once the boys were there, they began discussing the situation.

“I can’t figure Dolly out,” Jack said. “She’d liked to scratched my eyes out if she could of.”

“She was pretty near crying,” Tom said. “Maybe we better lay off her.”

“Can’t see we’ve laid on her yet,” Ben remarked, and the other two boys went into stitches.

“Did you see Rufe looking through the window?” Tom asked. “Wonder what he wanted.”

“Probably wanted us to play tag.” This, again from Ben, caused considerable laughter.

“The only trouble with Rufe is he ain’t grew up,” Jack explained.

Tom nodded. “That’s right. We used to have a lot of fun playing.”

“Christ sakes!” Ben ejaculated. “We can’t keep on playing all our lives. It’s pretty near time he found out a thing or two. Let’s go hide back the stable door and hear what Ralph Pettigrew’s saying.”

After Bert left the Stoddards’ he strolled over to Red Tatem’s to inspect Duke’s sores and then home. Passing Uncle George’s, Sammy stopped him and asked him to get the loan of a pair of Shad’s overalls. Bert’s room, like Sammy’s, opened onto the back porch, but Bert seldom felt compelled to take advantage of a pole as a means of exit. He guessed, however, he’d better shinny down the pole tomorrow morning because if Mama did happen to catch him going out around four o’clock she’d be sure to ask plenty of questions.

Bert saw Uncle Doc’s rig stopping before their place to let Prissy out. He realized he’d not seen Uncle Doc to have a talk for a long time. In fact he had not seen Uncle Doc since he’d saved the rabbit’s life.

“Hello, Bert,” Uncle Doc was calling.

“Hello, Uncle Doc,” Bert called back, going beside the buggy. Prissy and Lillian were still on the seat and he gave them a significant glance. “Uncle Doc, would you mind letting me tell you something?”

“Of course not, Bert.”

Dan Field crawled from the buggy and took Bert to a spot along the walk where they’d be out of the little girls’ earshot.

“What’s on your mind, Bert?”

“Know sumpin, Uncle Doc? I saved a little rabbit’s life.”

“Good boy. How?”

“See, it was like this. A couple weeks ago Mr. Tatem took me and Shad along potting rabbits. He potted eight. When we got back one was still alive. I could feel its little heart beating. Mr. Tatem said I could keep it and I took the little fellow over to Shad’s house and washed the sore and dug the ball out.”

“And the rabbit lived?” Dan Field asked.

“It lived,” Bert informed. “ ’Cept, it didn’t live for keeps,” he added quickly. “It died the next morning. But I saved its life all right. Don’t you think, Uncle Doc?”

“Of course you saved its life,” Dan Field agreed. “Nothing lives for keeps.”

Bert nodded. “Know sumpin, Uncle Doc? All I had was a nicked paring knife. If I’d had a little real sharp knife mighty likely I’d not hurt the little rabbit at all and maybe it’d lived—wall, it might have lived to be an old, old rabbit.”

Dan Field smiled. “You’re right about the knife. To do a job well one must have the proper instrument.”

Again Bert nodded. “There’s sumpin else I want to tell you, Uncle Doc. I fixed Duke’s sores.”

“How?”

“I washed ’em and put sa’ve on ’em.”

“What kind of salve?”

“Some of the blue sa’ve you give Mama last month.”

The “blue sa’ve” given Lou last month was for a vaginal inflammation. Dan Field chuckled inwardly, imagining Lou’s reaction were she to realize her vaginal jelly was being applied to the scabrous hide of Red Tatem’s hound—and by her Bert.

But Dan Field asked seriously, “How did the salve work, Bert?”

“Not so good,” Bert admitted.

“I tell you what, Bert,” Dan Field said, “drop in the office tomorrow morning and I’ll let you have some salve a dog’s hide might find better to its liking. And another thing, you’ll no doubt be called upon to save a rabbit’s life again one of these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere around the office is a little real sharp knife to spare.”

Across Bert’s face one of the occasional smiles flashed. “Thanks, Uncle Doc.”

He made his way along the walk to the gate. Down the street Rufe was going toward town, and Gabe Williams and Charlie Raub were coming from Mudtown to feed the livestock and milk the cows. Even as Nellie and Maggie, Gabe and Charlie were a part of the Albright and Sargent life. At this time Gabe had been employed by the Albrights and Charlie by the Sargents four and five years respectively. Besides looking after the livestock and milking the cows, Gabe and Charlie kept the lawns, made gardens, and during the winter tended the furnaces and shoveled snow. Bert liked Charlie all right—a short wiry Negro who was about thirty years old—but Bert’s admiration for Gabe was tremendous.

Gabe Williams was twenty-five years old. He was coal-black but his features were more Arab than Negroid. His hair was almost straight, his eyes long and narrow, his nose aquiline, and his lips thin. He was six feet tall and he had the shoulders, arms, and chest of a glorified galley slave. The far fields, where the cows were pastured and the hog sties stood, were remote from the Albright and Sargent houses, and, working there sometimes, Gabe and Charlie would take their shirts off. Charlie was nothing to see; but stripped to the waist, Gabe’s flesh, from the shoulders and arms down the chest to his flat belly looked as smooth and lustrous as black satin, while underneath his mammoth muscles rolled and rippled. In the fall Gabe and Charlie took the Albright and Sargent hogs up the creek to Strock’s Slaughterhouse. Mr. Strock and Lykes Butler, his butcher, were supposed to do the killing but Gabe would pitch in. Once Bert had seen him, stripped to the waist, holding alone a mad, fighting sow with one arm and hand while he slashed her throat with the other hand.

Going toward the house, Bert could hear hog squeals from the far fields and he knew Gabe and Charlie were moving the garbage barrels from their places behind the barns; the hogs evidently were able to smell the swill clear across the fields and gardens because the squealing began the minute the barrels were touched. Charlie always rolled the Sargents’ barrel on a barrow but Gabe lifted the Albrights’ onto a shoulder and carried it along. Remembering, Bert could see Gabe’s great muscles moving under his shining black skin.

When Bert reached the steps Gramma Sargent, like Gramma Albright, was reading her Bible by lamplight in the sitting room, but Rufus and Lou were on the porch.

Seeing Bert, Rufus thought: Lou surely knows exactly where the boy spends every minute of his time. But it’s beyond me. He’s never home.

Lou thought: Of course Rufus wants Bert to be a banker. But he should be a minister. This moment the expression upon his face is positively spiritual.

Bert was thinking: I wonder why Gabe’d want to go laying down in the bushes by the crick with a white slut.

Once Bert had left Mudtown, Ray Stoddard slipped off their porch, around the shanty, across the bridge, and up Broad Street. He was still thinking about the speech Mr. Ralph Pettigrew had made on the May night before the election. Now Ray had gone over town because he knew Pettigrew and his crowd would be gathered before the livery stable, as on every Sunday night, and he wanted to have another close look at him to confirm the opinion made after the speech.

That May night before the election had been the greatest event ever to happen in Ray Stoddard’s young life. Lem and Myrt had had a jugful (Ray guessed it was purchased with part of the five dollars Lem received to vote for Captain George Albright) but neither Pap or Mam—so Ray expressed it—was clean soused and about nine o’clock they’d locked the younger children in the shanty and taken Ray and Harry and Rita over town.

Broad Street was a blaze of torches, the band was playing, and crowds were pushing over walks and streets. A platform had been built in the middle of the road before the hotel, and pretty soon Mr. Ralph Pettigrew leaped upon it. Above the blare of bugles and the rat-a-tat-tat of drums arose a thunder of cheers and applause. Ray Stoddard had quivered, thrilled. Then from the Pettigrew tongue rolled words to make many men wonder and doubt and believe.

“Your forefathers died, your forefathers and mine,” Ralph Pettigrew had begun, “they died to free themselves from the oppression of tyrants. ‘We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,’ our forefathers wrote. The government of these United States was founded by the people for the people. But ...

“Captains of industry promised the people ‘golden harvest fields, whirling spindles, turning wheels, open furnace doors, flaming forges, and chimneys filled with eager fire.’ Prosperity, they meant. Prosperity for themselves.

“Enterprises which should have been a blessing to the people have become a yoke around our necks. The railroads, for instance. The total debt of the Revolutionary War was reckoned well under seventy-five million dollars. By 1872 the federal government had given—given, do you understand?—railroad promoters one hundred and fifty-five million acres of land, an area almost equal to Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, New York, and New Hampshire. The Union Pacific Railroad alone secured a loan of fifty million dollars. In other words, the railroads were given land whose area almost equaled the area of the thirteen original states and a single one of them received a government loan amounting to three quarters of what it cost to free ourselves from England, while it is we, the people, who must pay this debt even as the railroad magnates become millionaires.

“But the railroads are not the only menace to our freedom. Last year oil companies in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Cleveland, Ohio, united in a price-fixing agreement. What this will lead to unless the people take steps to stamp out the evil is evident. There will be price-fixing companies not only for oil but for steel, lumber, clothing, food, and labor. And ...

“In this beautiful little town of Willowspring,” Ralph Pettigrew concluded, “the yoke of the tyrant has ever been upon the necks of the people. George Albright and Rufus Sargent, and their fathers before them, have seen to that. Why should the Albrights and the Sargents, and the twenty other families, more or less, around here who also consider themselves royalty, loll in riches when the great majority of the rest of us must sweat to make a bare living? Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have let them buy your votes. It is as much a sin to buy votes as to steal. But votes will be bought this election, as they have always been, either directly or indirectly, for there will be many, as there have always been, who would be above taking a gold piece but who will be afraid not to vote for George Albright because they owe his bank money. But give yourselves a chance, men. Vote for me and you will have an opportunity of becoming richer and more important than George Albright or Rufus Sargent. I pledge my word that no matter what the conditions in the rest of the country may be, if I, Ralph Pettigrew, am elected mayor of Willowspring, in this town there will be a government of the people for the people.”

If at nine years of age Ray Stoddard had never had a day’s schooling and could not read or write his own name, he could and did form his own opinions. None of the Stoddard children had ever known a minute’s coddling; before each one was old enough to understand a need for affection a new mouth was at Myrtle’s breast. And from the time he could walk the whole family had imposed upon Ray. Not alone from his mother was it, “Ray, do this and, Ray, do that.” Since he was seven, it was Ray who had gone to the woods and found fallen logs, cut the kindling and made the fires in the kitchen stove and under the pot behind the shanty where Myrt boiled her washes; Ray carried the water from the creek—there being no pipe line throughout Mudtown—for the family’s use and to fill the pot; and it was Ray who collected and delivered the washes over town on the little wagon he’d made from a box top and four barrel staves. The only task Ray didn’t do was to make the garden in the springtime when Lem’s green fingers sought the soil. All this was not from lack of spirit upon Ray’s part, however; he just didn’t mind doing the chores and concluded, therefore, that it was senseless trying to dodge them the way Harry and Rita did.

Ray Stoddard had never possessed a store toy and all he knew about picture books was the sight of their covers in Carl’s window. But collecting and delivering the washes, he passed the homes of the rich, and the Albright and Sargent places particularly appealed to him. He’d look at the lovely big graystone houses and their yards and the gardens behind, and at times he’d see at a distance the beautiful ladies and the little girls and Captain George and Mr. Sargent upon the street, and Ray would look at all this as another little boy would turn the pages of a picture book. He’d never darst, so he put it, enter the gates or speak to one of these people unless spoken to first, yet he couldn’t help wondering how it would seem to live in one of the houses, the way Bert Sargent did, and belong to people the likes of them.

The night before the election Ray Stoddard had stood among the crowd, his straight, black, unkempt hair hanging to his shoulders, his face so thin it appeared cadaverous despite the filth, his skinny body covered by rags, his bare toes black and stubbed, his belly so empty it would have ached had it been accustomed to the feel of a square meal. But with his black eyes alert and his bony shoulders square, he missed not a word nor a move on Ralph Pettigrew’s part. Nor was Ray swayed by the eloquence and the glory of such a night as the boy had never known before, what with the torches and the band and the cheering crowd. For after the speech, when the crowd was cheering and the band playing once more, Ray Stoddard was thinking: Maybe this here givern—givern—givernment of the United States was found—foundered by the people fer the people. And maybe if’n the Albrights and Sargents didn’t have no gold fer ter buy votes som’un else’d been mayor of Willerspring long ago. And maybe it is a sin fer ter buy votes. But it’d take a mighty sight more’n Mr. Ralph Pettigrew gittin’ ’lected mayor fer ter make me the likes of Bert Sargent and it’d take a mighty sight more’n Mr. Ralph Pettigrew gittin’ ’lected mayor fer ter make him the likes of Captain George or Mr. Sargent.

Ray’s approach to the livery stable, even as Rufe’s, was preceded by one of the Pettigrew roars and the loud if lesser laughter of the other men, as out of sight behind the stable door Ben Smith and Tom Leonard and Jack Sturdevant were stifling their mirth. Ralph Pettigrew had told a new one about a traveling man and the farmer’s daughter.

Of course Ray knew all the crowd by sight. Besides Pettigrew, Jake Smith, Fat Hubbard, and Floyd Shires, this evening the other followers of Ralph Pettigrew chanced to be Frank Hershberger, the blacksmith, Alex Richard, the harness maker, Lykes Butler, Walt Strock’s butcher, and Pen Sturdevant, the plumber. Fat Hubbard was the only man without an occupation; his tiny, emaciated, nervous, fluttering wife supported him, herself, and their three children by clerking in Miss Gunther’s Ladies’ Emporium. Standing on the edge of the crowd, Ray’s eyes didn’t miss a detail, from the blue stubble on the Pettigrew chin via Jake Smith’s collarless fat neck to the buttons missing on Fat Hubbard’s fly.

Ray was thinking how right he’d been about it taking more than electing Mr. Pettigrew mayor to make him the likes of Captain George or Mr. Sargent. What was more, he furthered his conclusion: Why, the likes of the whole bunch put tail ter tail ain’t as good as the likes of Captain George or Mr. Sargent nohow.

Ralph Pettigrew saw the boy, the filth, the cadaverous face, but he also saw the alert eyes fixed upon him, and the Pettigrew intuition discerned no admiration in those eyes. In spite of his muscle and might, Ralph Pettigrew possessed a sensitive streak and a certain generosity. He never admitted, except to himself, how easily his feelings could be hurt, but he often said his heart was too big for his own good.

“What’s your name, boy?” he asked, not unkindly.

“Ray.”

“Ray what?”

“Ray Stoddard.”

“Him’s one of Lem Stoddard’s up-and-comin’ citizens,” Fat Hubbard informed, confusing his pronoun per habit.

Pettigrew ignored Fat’s remark and spoke to Ray again. “Why don’t you like me, Ray?”

“Who says I don’t like yer?” Ray demanded.

“Looks speak louder than words. And you better like me, Ray. I’m the best friend a boy like you could have in this town. Come here and hold out your hand.”

Ray followed instructions. Pettigrew pulled something from his vest pocket and put it in Ray’s outstretched palm. It was a quarter. Ray looked at the money.

“Now what do you think, Ray?” Pettigrew asked.

“I tell yer what I think,” Ray said. “I think if’n it’s a sin fer ter buy votes it’s a sin fer ter try and buy som’un ter like yer. Thar’s yer money.”

He tossed the quarter at Ralph Pettigrew and shot down the block. Reaching the corner, he slowed his pace, looked over a shoulder to ascertain that no one was pursuing him, and then turned south on Maple Street. He was feeling particularly valiant, although unaware of the word or the emotion. All Ray knew now was he had stuck up for Captain George and Mr. Sargent and right to Mr. Pettigrew’s face, and it made him want to see the big houses, perhaps catch a glimpse of the lovely ladies or little girls or Captain George or Mr. Sargent, again this evening.

Before the new schoolhouse Ray stopped a few minutes, however, wondering, as he always did, what going to school would be like, how it would feel to hold a book in his hands, to move a pencil over a slate. Once someone had given Shad Stanwick a pencil and slate and Shad had let Ray make marks on it. But what Ray wanted was to be able to write words on the slate and read the words. And there was something else Ray wanted to learn, learn more’n anything else in the world—how to do numbers.

Ray knew simple addition and subtraction. But adding and taking away were only the beginning of doing numbers, someone had told him. The someone who had told him was the tramp gentleman Mrs. Tatem run off with. The tramp gentleman had tarried about Mudtown a week before the elopement and he had talked a great deal. Ray was just seven then but he had never forgotten what the tramp gentleman had said about numbers. He had said people who knew about numbers could find out anything they wanted to know in the world—like how far it is around the world, how many miles to a star, where the North Pole is at, or where a ship still in the middle of the ocean would land. And there was something else the tramp gentleman had said anybody who knew enough about numbers could find out, something else Ray wasn’t able to understand at the time, even though he never forgot the words: “If you know enough about numbers it is as easy to measure the depths of a soul as it is to weigh the pounds of a body.”

Ray had never been inside of a church but long before he was seven he knew what a soul is: something which flies out of you when you die and goes to heaven or hell.

Seeing the new schoolhouse, Ray remembered all this and speculated, It’ll mighty likely take me more’n a year fer ter larn everything ’bout numbers.

Moving along, he saw Mr. Doc’s house over the way and Mr. Ackley out front, probably waiting for Mr. Doc. Ray considered Mr. Doc’s house quite equal to the Albright and Sargent places. And Mr. Doc was a fine gentleman like Captain George and Mr. Sargent. Ray also admired Mr. Ackley, now all dressed up in a white coat and pants, although Mr. Ackley never noticed any of Mudtown’s whites. For Mr. Ackley was a Southerner and put on airs plenty among Mudtown’s whites as well as colored. Folks knew Mrs. Gordon’s Bessie and Mrs. Wilbur’s Tom and Mrs. Stanwick’s Willie were Mr. Ackley’s young’uns but Mr. Ackley never did let on. Mr. Stanwick had stopped speaking to Mr. Ackley because he was too uppity to let on Willie was hisn. Still, Ray considered, there was sumpin about Mr. Ackley made him seem different from the likes of the Mudtown niggers, like there was sumpin about Mr. Doc and Captain George and Mr. Sargent made them seem different from the likes of Mr. Ralph Pettigrew and his gang.

Ray stopped and drew his breath. There was the Albright house and there was music coming from it and way back in the yard he could see Captain George walking around the garden. Course, Captain George’d never know how he’d stuck up for him right to Mr. Ralph Pettigrew’s face, but the knowledge of what he had done gave Ray a mighty proud feeling. Then he saw Mr. Doc’s rig stopping at the gate and Lillian Albright hop out of the buggy. Miss Lillian, Ray thought of her. Of course he had seen her often before but never close enough to know how she really looked. But today she passed him so near that if he had put out a hand he could have touched her.

Ray had never seen the inside of a picture book and he didn’t know what a princess is, nor a knight, let alone a dragon. Yet, looking after Lillian Albright, Ray Stoddard was thinking: She’s beautifuler’n a flower. I wisht—I wisht—oh, I wisht the biggest ol’ fightin’ hog’d come after her and I’d throw myself right ’twixt the two of ’em.

Ray had meant to speak to Mr. Doc, now he forgot all about him. And the nocturne was in Dan Field’s ears and he did not notice Ray Stoddard on the edge of the walk.

Nervy started down the street on her own and Dan Field laughed. “Got more sense than I have, haven’t you, Nervy?”

Going the block home, Dan Field remembered how Rufe had not so much as waved on his way toward town. Come to think of it, he’d not seen the boy except at a distance these many days. Used to be the youngster spent half his time playing around the office or going along on calls. What a funny little chap he’d been, insisting on calling him Da-da. But Rufe was growing up, Dan Field speculated. Why, he must have been fifteen on August fifteenth. August fifteenth! That date was never to be forgotten! The look in Pris’s eyes when he had put the baby on her shoulder. Now Rufe was fifteen. And probably going through hell, a worse hell than most boys his age had to endure. He’d always been too sensitive. Rufe, Dan Field thought, Rufe, my son ...

Nervy drew up at the gate. Ackley was waiting. Funny, Dan Field thought, the satisfaction I get out of Ackley in his white coat and his bows and smiles, and my colonial pillars and furniture and the candelabra with their lights flickering across the age-old wood. Life had compensations. Tonight Father Callahan would come and they’d sit upon chairs where long ago crinoline skirts had rustled and they’d drink golden bourbon until they loved each other even as Damon and Pythias, and they’d talk of everything the world had ever known from Aesculapius to the new laboratory at Johns Hopkins, from Faraday to what this odd fellow Edison was up to, from the Ten Commandments chiseled upon a stone to the latest novel Father Callahan had received from its publisher. And just as they were becoming a bit too mellow Ackley would usher them into the dining room and they’d eat fried chicken and spoon bread and apple pie while the lights from the candelabra flowed across linen and plate and silver until Ackley came bearing the pie—which he designated as Yankee shortbread, because no Ackley of Richmond “evah ’bided pie”—and then the candle flames would flicker and dim an instant. Of course Ackley was responsible for the phenomenon but Dan Field had never been able to discover how the feat was accomplished, nor did he question Ackley. It amused him to pretend the spirits of the South’s dead truth blew breath across the lights at the sight of the Yankee shortbread.

When the door opened and Lillian called, Pris kept on playing. But in an instant Lillian was standing by her side alone and Pris lifted her hands from the keys.

“Is that your favorite piece, Mama?” Lillian asked.

“Why, dear?”

“You’re playing it all the time lately.”

Pris nodded. “I suppose it is my favorite piece.”

She turned on the stool and peered at the little girl. How lovely she looked, the twilight gray of the room outlining her fair curls and making her eyes two deep dark pools. Oh, my dear, Pris thought, what will the years hold for you? Whom will you love? Who will love you?

Even as outside on the edge of the walk Ray Stoddard still stood lost in a dream.