“I liked it so much that I was hungry for it. My father used to let me help him after school. Everything must be just so; turned just right; polished like this. No nails must show, just satiny wood. I wanted to be a carpenter, myself.
“But my mother said no. I must be a white-collar worker. I must have some education, and not be almost illiterate like my father. She’d come into the shop and take the hammers away from me, and the saws, and scream at Dad. I was going to be a gentleman, and not work with my hands. And my father would say, ‘What’s wrong with honest labor? It shows.’ But my mother would sniff and make me go back into the house and study. I didn’t want to study. I was never a brain. I went to business school after high school, and learned to be a bookkeeper. I hated it. God, I never knew until now how much I hated it!
“You know? I think women have too much to say these days, and in my days, too, about the future of their children. They all want things to be ‘nice’ for their children, and never soil their hands. They don’t think about the world’s work. They think of paper.
“And too many of the old men I saw today had mothers like mine, silly pretentious women who think they know ‘what is best’ for their sons. That’s why the goods we buy these days, even in the best stores, are mechanical and don’t have any personality. No one is proud of labor any longer. So we were condemned to desks and offices and files, and air-conditioned cubicles, and were never let out into the air. Yes, even in the days when I was young—people began to think that labor was somehow disgraceful.
“But even the factories now and the big shops are depersonalized. Maybe it has to be. I don’t know. Everybody thinks only of ‘gross national product,’ and not the terrible product of men’s minds when they are deprived of personality. They never think of the old-young men sent off to Senior Citizens Centers. To wait for death.”
Bernard felt the weariness in him which was of the mind and not his healthy body.
“Why isn’t some decent provision made for us who want to work? Why can’t the government forget its forms and pension plans and fringe benefits? Why don’t they let us work until we fall at our jobs? Welfare, they call it! A decent old, protected old age, they call it! Well, there are millions of us who don’t want that! We want to work at something we can be proud of, if it’s only handiwork or being a carpenter on your own, or a bricklayer or a plumber! We need to be useful, and not parasites.”
He wanted to weep. “I want to be a carpenter, like my father,” he said. “What’s so shameful about that? Wasn’t Christ a carpenter, working with His adoptive father, Joseph? Was He ashamed of honest work? No. He chose fishermen and carpenters to be His disciples. And they went out into the world, without the benefit of Social Security and paid pensions, and preached to the world, and worked with their hands, and they lived to be very old men, full of years, as the preachers used to say, and full of honors. They worked until the day they died, and went everywhere on foot—old men, and not garbage. No one ever consigned them to Senior Citizens Centers and said, ‘You’ve earned the right to loaf the rest of your life and draw checks.’ No one has ever earned the right to leave the harvest.”
Again he struck the arm of the chair with his fist. “I’m not ready to die! I want to be in on the harvest, too! I want to be useful; I need to be wanted; I want people to say, ‘This is what Bernie Carstairs made for me, or did for me.’ I want to walk home from an honest day’s work done among honest people and not clerks. I want to wash my hands and look at the dirt rolling from them. I want to—sweat. I want to be useful.
“But I’m denied that. They treat us like children, senile children, when we’re full of health and life! They pamper and coddle us and take away from us the little self-respect we have left. They coo at us. It makes me sick right down to the bottom of my feet. Why do they retire us when our life isn’t over? Answer me that!”
He stared at the curtain. “I know. They want us to die quick. They want the space for the young, who will be just like us in a few years. Useless.”
He waited, but there was no answer. However, he felt a loosening in himself as though someone had been listening who understood and sympathized.
“Do you know something?” he said. “Life has become meaningless to everybody now. Who’s responsible? The government, the unions? I don’t know. But we’re all washed and urbanized. Everything is mechanical, and fitted and adjusted. Even amusement. Is that what we really wanted? I don’t think so. Every man has the right to be an individual and to have some meaning in his life. We’ve been deprived of that. No wonder people are losing their minds.
“I don’t want to lose mine. But where shall I go? Tell me, where shall I go?”
He stood up. He had had enough of listening silence. He went to the curtain rapidly and stared at it. He saw the button which informed him that he could see the man behind the curtain if he wished. He touched the button quickly.
The curtains soundlessly parted and a warm glow of light rushed out. He saw the man who had listened to him. He stood and looked and could not have enough of the looking.
He began to smile. “Why. Greetings,” he said. “I’d forgotten all about you, and what you did. You were a carpenter, weren’t you? An honest, hard-working carpenter, like my father. The kind I wanted to be, myself. Your father worked to the day he died, didn’t he? I bet you both built good sound houses and made good sound furniture. I bet you were proud of them, too. I bet your father wasn’t retired on Social Security, and he didn’t end his days in a Senior Citizens Center, either. He was useful until the end of his life. And the men who worked with you—no one ever sent them to a nursing home. They didn’t need it. They were too busy working to be sick or helpless.”
Bernard returned to his chair and sat down, still smiling. His heart rose in his chest and he felt renewed life and vitality. “You know, my doctor said more illnesses are caused by people not having enough to do, or anything to do, than anything else. They rust out; they don’t wear out. That’s supposed to be secular charity. It isn’t. It’s cruel. It’s barbarous. We old guys have a lot to give the world yet, if they’d only let us. But everything’s bound around with rules and regulations and pension plans and fringe benefits. That’s nice to think about, I guess. Nice to think that if you get very sick and old you won’t be thrown into a poorhouse. But only nice to think about if you’re still strong and willing to work. A sort of money-in-the-bank, the kind you don’t use until you are forced to. But why should we be forced to spend the money-in-the-bank when we don’t need it yet?”
He leaned eagerly forward in the chair. “I’ve got it! I’m going to find an independent carpenter who can use me, and teach me to be a real workman! If I can’t find him I’ll set up shop for myself. I’ll hire men my age, who know something about carpentry. No artsy-craftsy stuff. Good honest furniture, made to order, handmade, hand-tooled. If unions try to interfere I’ll say to them, ‘Look, I’m a Senior Citizen, boy, so stand out of my way and let me earn an honest living.’ I’ll turn out work no mechanized factory can turn out. It’ll be lovingly made, as it used to be. Why, I’ll even hire retired upholsterers. There’s no limit—”
His mind, revitalized, raced. He said, “I’ll go back to that Senior Citizens Center place and look around for men like me who really want to work, and forget the paper work they did, or anything else. I’ll pull them up from the graves they’re falling into. I’ll say, “There’s real honest work, real work, for you if you want it. Don’t sit and snooze here until you die and they carry you out. Use your hands and your pride and live again.’”
He stood up, joyous and refreshed. “Thanks, Brother,” he said to the smiling man in the alcove. “You didn’t live long enough to be old in this world. But I bet you know about men like me. I bet you wish we’d spit on our hands and get to work again, and not lie around whining and thinking of the past.
“I bet you wish everyone would work for the harvest, and bring in the fruits again. God knows, there’s plenty of work t
o be done, and what’s that I remember? The laborers are few. Yes, I know that was meant in a more religious sense, but I also remember that my father used to say that to work was to pray, and giving older people a chance at living again and being needed, and proud of themselves, and adding to the treasure of the world, is surely religious in concept, and who knows what harvest and fruits they’ll bring in to everybody?
“Somebody has to start somewhere, and I’m going to start—tomorrow. I’ll get in touch with Senior Citizens Clubs and Centers in other cities, too, and perhaps we can put pressure on our representatives in Congress to do something about the situation, such as getting unions to waive restrictions for men after sixty-five, or even sixty, and let us waive all the fringes, too, while we’re at it so that employers can afford to employ us.
“Let the old who want to vegetate and die, do it. But for those of us who want to live—we shouldn’t be condemned to death. We, too, have a right to pray and to work.”
He smiled at the man who had listened to him so patiently and in that patience had given him life again. “I’m going back to church, too,” he said, “and get acquainted with you all over again. You’ve always been waiting, haven’t you, but you won’t have to wait any longer for me. I’m coming!”
SOUL SEVEN
The Shepherd
“Feed My Sheep.”
SOUL SEVEN
The month of May, the flowering month, the month of the Queen of Heaven. Isn’t that what his friend, Father Moran, called it? Yes. A beautiful month, full of light and promise, gold and green and blossoming, with the heady scent of jubilation and rejoicing. But when did I feel that last? asked the Reverend Mr. Henry Blackstone of himself. I am as old as death, honestly, in these days, though by modern calculation I am only sixty. I’m not with it, as my younger parishioners would say. No, I’m not “with it.” It’s strange; I was always such an optimistic man until the last few years. Now I feel totally despondent; I walk despondently; I think despondently. Who is wrong, the world or I? Am I of the past, hopelessly? I’m so damned confused, so helpless. Once I could “talk” to God but now there is only the darkest and most reproving silence, as if I had committed some terrible sin. But what that sin is I don’t know. Does God think I’m “not with it,” too? I wish, sometimes, that we had a Confessional so I could—but what should I confess? That I’ve fallen behind some place, and am mired behind all the generations, or that something is wrong with modern man, something too terrible to contemplate? When I think that, am I guilty of the sin of pride, that I’m convinced that Harry Blackstone has all the answers? What am I going to do?
He did not wear his clerical collar, not because the younger people smirked at it these days but because he felt unworthy of it. The May day was warm and fair and full of radiance and the scent of the holy earth. So he wore an old sports jacket; it had always felt awkward on his shoulders as did all secular garb. He walked slowly up the gravel path toward what the community laughingly, or reverently, called the Sanctuary. A scandal to some; a pride to others. Old John Godfrey; he wished he had known him. But Godfrey had been dead many years, long before he, the Reverend Blackstone, had come to this city from the lovely small town where he had been born, where he had been ordained, and where he had had his first parish. He paused on the path. Midville. He hadn’t visited Midville for over fifteen years, since his parents had died. He was taken with a sense of nostalgia so intense that his eyes ached and his heart felt sick. Perhaps he should go back, to the peace and harmony and stillness of Midville. Then another thought came to him: Perhaps Midville had changed, too. Perhaps he would feel an anachronism if he returned, just as he felt an anachronism here in this great city. Anachronism. That is what the younger people said of him, and even the middle-aged and his own generation. Something hovered in his mind, but it seemed blasphemous to him and he hastily turned his attention to the beautiful white building he was approaching, and all the innocent colors in the flower beds, the tulips, the daffodils, the lilies-of-the-valley, and, in quiet spots, the bursting lilacs, white and blue and purple. A fountain sparkled and spoke laughingly, and the marble young man within it lifted up his eager face to the sky and was bathed in falling and rainbowed fire. “So lovely, so beautiful,” said the minister, and stopped to watch the eager birds skimming from tree to tree in the sheer excitement of sinless being, in the passionate and simple celebration of life.
Somewhere, he thought, there is the answer. I wish this dim confusion in my mind would lift, that I could be sure again as once I was sure: That there was an answer, not to God who needs no answers, but what is pleasing to Him, and what, in particular, I should do.
He had reached the bronze doors. The brilliant sun shone on the golden letters above them: THE MAN WHO LISTENS. Do you? asked the minister in himself. And what do you say then? Will you have an answer to what is crushing me? Will you tell me why I’ve come to you today? My own despair, my own doubt of myself and of others, my own lostness and uncertainty: Will you explain them? Can you explain them? You see, I have a profound decision to make. I hope you can help me; no one else, not even God, appears to be able to do that. Must we always be alone, but most especially when we are in the deepest need?
He hesitated, then opened the bronze doors. Two elderly women were sitting in silence in the pleasant waiting room, which was filled with lamps but had no windows. Mr. Blackstone looked carefully at the women and was relieved that they were unknown to him. They were leafing through some magazines lifelessly; the glasses of one glinted, and the glint was like the sharpness of pain to the minister and he did not know why. He looked at the women more closely. Did they suffer also? What had brought these undistinguished and ordinary women here, plump and gloved and sedate? Both seemed fairly prosperous if one was to judge by their clothing and their casual attitudes. Yet, some problem had drawn them to this spot, some overwhelming misery. He was suddenly struck with pain again. Had they no ministers in whom to confide, no help from any man? Were there women like these in his congregation, who saw nothing in him, heard nothing in his voice, that they must go to an anonymous psychiatrist? Doctor? Clergyman, like himself? He was ashamed and stricken. Yet he, the shepherd, had come here also. Was he as lost as these?
One of the women glanced up mildly as if she had heard some sound from him, some sound of despair or muffled suffering, or a question. She saw a tall and robust man in his middle-age, with thick gray-brown hair, a full kind face both strong and thoughtful, and brown eyes that drooped at the corners as if he were unbearably tired. She noted that his clothing was ill-fitting and that he did not seem at ease in them, as if they were not his customary garments. But she was so wretched that her silent comments on him wearied her and she returned to thinking of her own problems and to the wonder if the man who waited and listened in the other room could help her at all.
The minister listlessly picked up a current news magazine and looked through it. Was it only his imagination which made the contents seem hectic, flaring too vividly, and screaming so excitedly? Crisis, crisis, crisis! Was it all false, or was it really so avid, so demanding, so scorching, so vehement? Did man need his daily news all in black, capital letters because there was no verve any longer in his soul, or were black, capital letters really an expression of some rushing horror in the world which must be shrieked, as crows shrieked at the sight of an appalling danger? Was it all only a banal scarecrow in a really indifferent landscape, or was it a specter of horror visible even to the dullest eye? Was it only his imagination that today all children appeared to shout incoherently and never spoke calmly? Were all men frequently too breathless, and did they honestly move too fast in such a hurry—to what? Did even older women give the illusion of galloping, of talking too rapidly, of being fevered in spite of their vivacious laughter, their glowing and too-dominant teeth, and their air of being young, young, young, when it was obvious that they were becoming older, older, and older?
Or was the Reverend Mr. Henry Blackstone feeling his own
age and shying like an elderly horse at things which did not exist except in his jostled existence? Was the world always like this? Did merely time and care make a man feel rudely buffeted when in reality all was as it had been and only his own eye had changed? How had it been in his youth, when he had been a very young child before all those wars? He could recall only a sunlit autumn garden heavy with the scent of warm apples and slumbering grass, the tinkle of a distant bicycle bell, the slapping of a screen door, the eager cry of a child, the serene laughter of women, and the striking of the church bell on a languid and unhurried hour. He could remember the swing on which he idled, and the back of the old white house where he had been born and the shine of the sun on the polished kitchen windows. It came back to him so clearly that again he could see the young face of his mother smiling at him as she busied herself at the sink, and her wave across the shadows and the grass. He felt contentment, forgetting, and he smiled tenderly. Forever, now, his mother would be young to him, and sweet and ardent, and forever she would laugh her soft mirth and wait with his father for him.
It had been peaceful, then. But, had it been so peaceful for his parents? Was his only the illusion of childhood, or had it been so in verity? He pursued the quiet days of his early years, and the sound of Saturday afternoon with the lawn mowers and the whistling of boys and the rattling of the skates of the little girls, and the women busily preparing picnic baskets, and the hiss of hoses as men watered their small lawns and the busy barking of happy dogs. Was it possible that children today felt such a deep placidity and contentment, and that children were always children?
Had his parents’ lives been filled with crises as were the lives of almost everyone in this modern world? He sank deeper into thought. His father had been a railroad clerk with a small salary; he had been so proud of his green celluloid eyeshade and the garters on his arms, holding back the striped cleanliness of his shirt. His hours were long and tiring. His wife had had no modern equipment in her big old kitchen. (How he, Harry, could remember, now, the rub-dub-dub of the Monday washboard in the basement as his mother sang and drubbed soiled clothing and splashed water! Was there ever a more consoling sound to remember?) There had been no automobile in the family until his father had been middle-aged, though many neighbors possessed automobiles which they used only on the weekends. There had been the movies, of course, furious wild things which everyone was always condemning, especially the old ministers who thought them “sinful.” But all in all there had been peace. Hadn’t there?
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