Читать книгу A Breath of Prairie and other stories - Will Lillibridge - Страница 6

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Dense darkness of early morning wrapped all things within and without a square, story-and-a-half prairie farm-house. Silence, all-pervading, dense as the darkness, its companion, needed but a human ear to become painfully noticeable.

Up-stairs in the half-story attic was Life. From one corner of the room deep, regular breathing marked the unvarying time of healthy physical life asleep. Nearby a clock beat loud automatic time, with a brassy resonance––healthy mechanical life awake. Man and machine, side by side, punctuated the passage of time.

Alone in the darkness the mechanical mind of the clock conceived a bit of fiendish pleasantry. 14 With violent, shocking clamor, its deafening alarm suddenly shattered the stillness.

The two victims of the outrage sat up in bed and blinked sleepily at the dark. The younger, in a voice of wrath, relieved his feelings with a vigorously expressed opinion of the applied uses of things in general, and of alarm-clocks and milk pans in particular. He thereupon yawned prodigiously, and promptly began snoring away again, as though nothing had interrupted.

The other man made one final effort, and came down hard upon the middle of the floor. Rough it was, uncarpeted, cold with the damp chill of early morning. He groped for a match, and dressed rapidly in the dim light, his teeth chattering a diminishing accompaniment until the last piece was on.

Deep, regular breathing still came from the bed. The man listened a moment, irresolutely; then with a smile on his face he drew a feather from a pillow, and, rolling back the bed-clothes, he applied the feather’s tip to the sleeper’s bare soles, where experience had demonstrated it to 15 be the most effective. Dodging the ensuing kick, he remarked simply, “I’ll leave the light, Jim. Better hurry––this is going to be a busy day.”

Outside, a reddish light in the sky marked east, but over all else there lay only starlight, as, lantern in hand, he swung down the frozen path. With the opening barn door there came a puff of warm animal breath. As the first rays of light entered, the stock stood up with many a sleepy groan, and bright eyes shining in the half-light swayed back and forth in the narrow stalls, while their owners waited patiently for the feed they knew was coming.

Jim, still sleepy, appeared presently; together the two went through the routine of chores, as they had done hundreds of times before. They worked mechanically, being still stiff and sore from the previous day’s work, but swiftly, in the way mechanical work is sometimes done.

Side by side, with singing milk pails between their knees, Jim stopped long enough to ask, “Made up your mind yet what you’ll do, Guy?” 16

The older brother answered without a break in the swish of milk through foam:

“No, I haven’t, Jim. If it wasn’t for you and father and mother and––” he diverted with a redoubled clatter of milk on tin.

“Be honest, Guy,” was the reproachful caution.

“––and Faith,” added the older brother simply.

The reddish glow in the east had spread and lit up the earth; so they put out the lantern, and, bending under the weight of steaming milk pails, walked single file toward the house and breakfast. Far in the distance a thin jet of steam spreading broadly in the frosty air marked the location of a threshing crew. The whistle,––thin, brassy,––spoke the one word “Come!” over miles of level prairie, to the scattered neighbors.

Four people, rough, homely, sat down to a breakfast of coarse, plain cookery, and talked of common, homely things.

“I see you didn’t get so much milk as usual this morning, Jim,” said the mother. 17

“No, the line-backed heifer kicked over a half-pailful.”

“Goin’ to finish shuckin’ that west field this week, Guy?” asked the father.

“Yes. We’ll cross over before night.”

Nothing more was said. They were all hungry, and in the following silence the jangle of iron on coarse queensware, and the aspiration of beverages steaming still though undergoing the cooling medium of saucers, filled in all lulls that might otherwise have seemed to require conversation.

Not until the boys got up to go to work did the family bond draw tight enough to show. Then the mother, tenderly as a surgeon, dressed the chafed spots on her boys’ hands, saying low in words that spoke volumes, “I’ll be so glad when the corn’s all husked”; and the father followed them out onto the little porch to add, “Better quit early so’s to hear the speakin’ to-night, Guy.”

“How are you feeling to-day, father?” asked the young man, in a tone he attempted to make honestly interested, but which an infinite 18 number of repetitions had made almost automatic.

The father hesitated, and a look of sadness crept over his weathered face.

“No better, Guy.” He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, looking down into the frank blue eyes with a tenderness that made his rough features almost beautiful.

“It all depends upon you now, Guy, my boy.” Unconsciously his voice took on the incomparable pathos of age displaced. “I’m out of the race,” he finished simply.

The heavy, weather-painted lumber wagon turned at the farm-yard, and rumbled down a country road, bound hard as asphalt in the fall frosts. The air cut sharply at the ears of the man in the box, as he held the lines in either hand alternately, swinging its mate with vigor. The sun was just peeping from the broad lap of the prairie, casting the beauty of color and of sparkle over all things. Ahead of the wagon coveys of quail broke and ran swiftly in the track until tired, when, with a side movement the tall grass by the border absorbed them. Flocks of prairie-chickens, frightened by the 19 clatter, sprang winging from the roadside, and together sailed away on spread wings. The man in the wagon looked about him and forgetting all else in the quick-flowing blood of morning, smiled gladly.

He stopped at the edge of the field, tying the reins loosely and building up the sideboards, gradually shorter, each above the other, pyramid-like, until they reached higher than his own head as he stood in the wagon-box. Stiff from the jolting and inactivity of the drive, he jumped out upon the uneven surface of the corn-field.

Slowly at first, as sore fingers rebelled against the roughness of husks, he began work, touching the frosty ears gingerly; then as he warmed to the task, stopping at nothing. The frost, dense, all-covering, shook from the stalks as he moved, coloring the rusty blue of his overalls white, and melting ice-cold, wet him through to the skin on arms and shoulders and knees. Swiftly, two motions to the ear, he kept up a tapping like the regular blows of a hammer, as the ears struck the sideboard. Fifteen 20 taps to the minute, you would have counted; a goodly man’s record.

This morning, though, Landers’ mind was not upon his work. The vague, uncertain restlessness that marked the birth of a desire for broader things than he had known heretofore, was taking form in his brain. He himself could not have told what he wanted, what he planned; he simply felt a distaste for the things of Now; an unrest that prevented his sitting quiet; that took him up very early at morning; that made him husk more bushels of corn, and toss more bundles of grain into the self-feed of a threshing machine than any other man he knew; that kept him awake thinking at night until the discordant snores of the family sent him to bed, with the covers over his ears in self-defence.

A vague wonder that such thoughts were in his mind at all was upon him. He was the son of his parents; his life so far had been their life: why should he not be as content as they?

He could not answer, yet the distaste grew. Irresistibly he had acquired a habit of seeing unpleasant things: the meanness and the smallness of his surroundings; the uncouth furnishings 21 of his home; the lack of grace in his parents and acquaintances; the trifling incidents that required so many hours of discussion; and in all things the absence of that sense of humor and appreciation of the lighter side of life which, from reading, he had learned to recognize.

Try as he might, he could not recollect even the faint flash of a poor pun coming originally from his parents. Was he to be as they? A feeling of intense repugnance swept over him at the thought––a repugnance unaccountable, and of which he felt much ashamed.

Self-suspicion followed. Was it well for him to read the books and think the thoughts of the past year? He could not escape except by brutally tearing himself by the roots from his parents’ lives. It was all so hopelessly selfish on his part!

“True,” answered the hot spirit of resentment, “but is it not right that you should think first of Self? Is not individual advancement the first law of Nature? If there is something better, why should you not secure it?”

The innate spirit of independence, the intense passion of pride and equality inborn with 22 the true country-bred, surged warmly through his body until he fairly tingled.

Why should others have things, think thoughts, enjoy pleasures of which he was to remain in ignorance? The mood of rebellion was upon him and he swore he would be as they. Of the best the world contained, he, Guy Landers, would partake.

With the decision came an exultant consciousness of the graceful play of his own muscles in rapid action. The self-confidence of the splendid animal was his. He would work and advance himself. The world must move, and he would help. He would do things, great things, of which he and the world would be proud.

Unconsciously he worked faster and faster as thought travelled. The other wagons dropped behind, the tapping of corn ears on their sideboards making faint music in the clear air.

The sun rose swiftly, warming and drying the earth. Instead of frost the dust of weathered husks fell thickly over him. Overflowing with life and physical power, he worked through 23 the long rows to the end, then mounted the wagon and looked around. Silently he noted the gain over the other workers, and a smile lit up the sturdy lines of his face.

Evening was approaching. The rough lumber wagon, heavily loaded from the afternoon’s work, groaned loudly over the uneven ground. Instead of the east, the west was now red, glorious. High up in the sky, surrounding the glow, a part of it as well, narrow luminous sun-dogs presaged uncertain weather to follow.

Guy Landers mounted the wagon wearily, and looked ahead. The end of the two loaded corn-rows which he was robbing was in sight, and he returned doggedly to his task. The ardor of the morning had succumbed to the steady grind of physical toil, and he worked with the impassive perseverance of a machine.

Night and the stillness thereof settled fast. The world darkened so swiftly that the change could almost be distinguished. The rows ahead grew shadowy, and in their midst, by contrast, the corn-ears stood out white and distinct. The whole world seemed to draw more closely together. The low vibrant hum that marked the 24 location of the distant threshing crew, sounded now almost as near as the voice of a friend. A flock of prairie-chickens flew low overhead, their flatly spread wings cutting the air with a sound like whips. They settled nearby, and out of the twilight came anon the confused murmur of their voices.

Landers stopped the impatient horses at the end of the field, and shook level the irregular, golden heap in the wagon-box. Slowly he drew on coat and top-coat, and mounted the full load, sitting sideways with legs hanging over the bulging wagon-box. It was dark now, but he was not alone. Other wagons were groaning homeward as well. Suddenly, thin and brassy, out of the distance came the sound of a steam whistle; and when it was again silent the hum of the thresher had ceased. From a field by the roadside, a solitary prairie-rooster gave once, twice, its lone, restless call.

The man stretched back full length on the corn bed and looked up where the stars sparkled clear and bright. It all appealed to him, and a moisture formed in his eyes. A new side to the problem of the morning came to him. These 25 sounds––he realized now how he loved them. Verily they were a part of his life. Mid them he had been bred; of them as of food he had grown. That whistle, thin and unmusical; that elusive, indescribable call of prairie male; all these homely sounds that meant so much to him––could he leave them?

The moisture in his eyes deepened and a tightness gripped his throat. Slowly two great tears fought their way down through the dust on his face, and dropped lingeringly, one after the other amid the corn-ears.