There Was a Time

by Taylor Caldwell

  He had shown enough spirit, he had, when she had opened his letters. Came down on her, brutal. Why, she had always opened all letters that came to “the house,” whether they were poor Francis’ or her son’s. How he had carried on! And refused to talk to her about what she had read in the letter, about that stranger asking how to come to Kentucky. Yes, he could be strong enough to carry on, when his poor old mother opened his letters, and he had looked at her vicious. After all her work, and no sympathy. And now he was coughing so that she wouldn’t have a proper talk with him about getting out and getting a job. Well, she’d show him, that she would!

  She pushed open the screen door and stepped heavily onto the verandah, her double chin set belligerently, her eyes sparkling with indignation and malice. The fresh May wind ruffled her untidy masses of hair, which were more gray now than auburn. She rolled her stout arms up in her apron, and marched to her son with a purposeful tread. No nonsense now. She’d put up with enough.

  Frank did not turn toward her. He was staring blankly at the street again.

  “Look you here,” she said roughly. “It’s time you thought about me for a change. There’s nothing wrong with you now, do you hear me? Tomorrow’s Monday. You’ll get out and look for a job, and quick about it. I’m tired of you hanging about, and her after me all the time, asking me when you’re going to lift yourself and do something for your mother.”

  Frank did not reply immediately. His hands were almost transparent in the sunlight. She could see his jawbone under his white skin, the pits about his nostrils. Then, just as she opened her mouth to continue her angry demands, he said quietly: “I’m getting out. In a few days.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Maybelle, with loud firmness.

  Frank said: “I’ll go and get my ticket.”

  Eyes bulging with bewilderment, Maybelle stared at him.

  “I’m going to Kentucky,” continued Frank. His voice had a curious hollowness since he had been ill. “I talked to the doctor on the telephone yesterday, and he said a warmer climate and a change would do me good.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind!” cried Maybelle furiously. “After all I’ve done for you, night after night, with never a word of gratitude from you! You’ll get a job, and you’ll bring the money in—”

  She pulled her hands out from under the apron, and, knotting them into fists, pummelled them together, as if his head were between them. “I’ll give it to you, if you talk that way!” she continued. “You owe me something.”

  “I’ll give you fifty dollars,” said Frank indifferently, his eyes following the slow passing of a dog. “The doctor’s paid, and I don’t owe Grandma anything.”

  “I’ll give you ‘fifty dollars’!” exclaimed Maybelle, outraged. “You cheeky devil. Who do you think you are, talking to me like that, and me slaving over you when you had that bad cold you got from tramping around among strangers, me emptying your dirt, and you carrying on demented like about a tree, or something! You’re daft. You’re a failure. Babbling Bill, like your poor father used to say. Well, I can tell you you’re not going to hang around here, putting it on, and me working day and night—”

  A stout gray old man was turning in towards the verandah. He looked at Frank quickly, then smiled amiably at Maybelle, who was panting.

  He stepped up on the verandah, removed his old brown felt hat, and fanned himself genially. “A lovely day, isn’t it?” he commented. “Nice to be sitting out here, I’m thinking. You look good to me, Frank. Almost as good as new.”

  “That’s just what I told him, Mr. Farley!” exclaimed Maybelle, with a vigorous nod. “You give it to him. Give him a proper talking to, about what he owes his mother.”

  Mr. Farley sat down on the verandah railing, his fat brown thighs spreading comfortably. He still smiled, but his eyes were thoughtful. He waited.

  “I’ve just been telling him he’s got to get out and get a job, and bring some money in,” continued Maybelle irately. “He went off among strangers when his poor pa died, though he was offered a good home here, with his mother and grandmother. But no, off he went, and look what he came to, after I pleaded and pleaded with him that his proper place was with his family. But strangers was better than us, until he came down with something.”

  Mr. Farley looked down at his wide polished boots. He remembered the night that Frank had come to this house, wet, shaking uncontrollably, his eyes already wild and dim with fever. He had come to his mother instinctively, as a sick animal crawls into an old familiar cave to die. Mr. Farley doubted that reason had had anything to do with Frank’s coming. He had acted blindly, out of his instincts, when, if he had thought only a moment, he would not have come.

  Mr. Farley also remembered that he had nursed Frank for the three weeks he had been in bed, with the exception of the few nights when Maybelle had “sat up.” He had found Frank abandoned, delirious. In fact, it had been Frank’s discordant ravings which had brought the tired old man up the stairs to the miserable attic room. He had listened to them for hours; he had heard no footstep above him, no soothing voice. He had gone up, to find Frank uncovered, struggling to get out of bed. Mr. Farley did not like to remember that night. He had remained with Frank until morning, and then had gone quietly away, carrying with him his own sponge and bowl of water, with which he had bathed that burning flesh. But he had left Frank asleep and quiet.

  Night after night, thereafter, he had crept noiselessly up the stairs, bringing his bowl, his sponge and his own towels, holding cool water to the parched lips, murmuring gently, praying, saying his beads with simple faith. No one knew of those weeks of patient and tender nursing, except himself and Frank. No one knew that it was he who had given Frank his medicines, and had brought him hot milk when he could finally swallow, and ice cream from his shop, concealed under his coat. Maybelle, “fagged out,” had left her son each night at eight, and had gone to her own room and bed, where, though she always claimed she “never closed her eyes,” she slept the sound sleep of the just. She labored under the bland misapprehension that Frank doctored himself and slept comfortably during the night, and that his recovery was entirely due to her.

  Mr. Farley said mildly, for he was a gentle and patient man and an understanding one: “Well, he’ll surprise you one of these days, Mrs. Clair, and find himself a good job. He’s just getting better now, aren’t you, Frank?”

  Frank looked at him steadily and smiled a little.

  “Nonsense,” said Maybelle roundly. “He’s jolly well enough now to find a job and bring a bit of money in. You’ve got to give him a proper talking to. He needs a man to stop his cheek. And now he’s talking about going to Kentucky!”

  Mr. Farley raised his reddish eyebrows. “Is that so?” he murmured mendaciously, for Frank had already discussed the matter with him. “Well, we’ll have to talk about it, shan’t we?”

  “Do!” said Maybelle, nodding and throwing her son a satisfied glare from her protuberant eyes. “Perhaps he’ll listen to you.” She went back into the house, and slammed the screen door after her.

  There was silence on the verandah after she had gone. Mr. Farley continued to fan himself nonchalantly with his hat, and regarded the street and the passersby with that amiable and affectionate expression of understanding which had often infuriated Frank. But now little disturbed the young man; nothing broke through his apathy. Sights, sounds, scenes, voices, movements: all approached the extreme periphery of his consciousness but penetrated no farther. Only Mr. Farley, ignorant, unlettered, simple and pious Mr. Farley, understood that Frank’s spirit was in extreme abeyance, that he had reached a dangerous point of negation and mental lassitude.

  Frank, in his delirium, had raved of a tree. Mr. Farley had gathered that the tree had been cut down. What tree, and why? What did that tree represent to Frank? He had known Frank to be sensitive and too vulnerable to environment, but he had also recognized a kind of hard ruthlessness in him and an absence of sentimentality. Mr. Farley, being human, was curious, and
being kind and generous, was anxious. There was more to this tree business than met his eye.

  Now Mr. Farley, apparently engaged only in pleasant contemplation of the street, was wondering about that tree. Intuitively, then, he understood that the tree must have something to do with Frank’s inertia, his prolonged silences, his emptiness of eye.

  Mr. Farley got up and closed the door behind the screen door. He chuckled as he returned to Frank. “Guess we ought to have that ‘proper’ talk your ma spoke about,” he said.

  Frank gave no indication that he had heard. Mr. Farley offered him a cigarette from his battered pack, lit the cigarette for the young man, and one for himself. The smoke curled upward in the brisk mild air. Mr. Farley said: “Two hundred won’t be enough for Kentucky, Frank. Guess you’d better let me lend you another couple of hundred. You don’t want to get down there, broke. Oh, I remember the letters you showed me from that young feller, but young fellers get enthusiastic, and the first thing you know, you’re broke and a million miles from home. Not so good.”

  Frank shook his head. “Thanks. No.” He smiled. “I’m giving my mother fifty. That’ll leave me one hundred and fifty. It’ll be enough. I’m going to live with Tim Cunningham anyway. He has a big tent all to himself, in the mountains.”

  Mr. Farley, artlessly, had a vision of snow-capped peaks and deep green valleys, of clear bright air and health, of pine-scented winds and peace. It would be good for Frank. Pull him out of this. Didn’t the doctor talk ominously of incipient tuberculosis? Nothing like the mountains for that! Mr. Farley’s vision of the Kentucky mountains was only slightly less incorrect than Frank’s own.

  “When do you think you’ll leave?” asked Mr. Farley.

  “Tuesday, at the latest.”

  Mr. Farley frowned. “Sure you can make it? You had a bad time, remember. Kinda weak yet, ain’t you?”

  Frank’s jawbone, so sharp beneath his white skin now, stood out clearly. “I’ll make it. It’s all right.” He paused. “I never thanked you, ‘proper,’ for what you’ve done for me. I’ve been wondering why you did it.”

  Mr. Farley, amazed, stared at him. “You wonder why? Why, Frank, when you talk that way, you make me wonder about you. I thought you knew things better than that. Or, maybe you’ve forgotten. Maybe you’ve forgotten what you knew when you were a kid.”

  He waited, but Frank did not answer. Mr. Farley was greatly perturbed. He had touched the periphery of Frank’s being, and had felt something smooth and hard and cold and unresponsive. Now he was frightened. He leaned towards the young man and said urgently: “You got to tell me, Frank, that you didn’t mean to insult me. You got to tell me that you were just talking—”

  Frank answered with his old quickness: “For God’s sake, Mr. Farley, insulting you is the last thing in my mind! I was just wondering, that’s all, why you bothered. After all, I’m nothing to you.”

  Mr. Farley could only look at him with such misery that Frank felt an uneasy stirring in himself. He quelled the stirring immediately, and smiled with blandness. “Well. I’m truly grateful—and, of course, I understand. I’ll try to make it up to you some day. When Tim’s wells come in, I’ll come back a millionaire.” He laughed, then went into another spasm of coughing. Mr. Farley gently withdrew the cigarette from the thin white fingers and threw it away.

  “You got to promise me,” he said, a little hoarsely, “that you’ll let me know if you need any money. I couldn’t rest easy if I thought you was broke down there.”

  Frank nodded. Now, after the cough, the lassitude in him was too overpowering.

  “You’ll go on writing, won’t you, Frank? You got it in you.”

  Frank rubbed the palm of one hand over the back of the other. Writing? He’d never write again. That was gone forever. He knew it, with complete finality. The ability to write had gone from him with the tree. Where the fever and the bright brilliance had been was only an emptiness, a stillness, dead and filled with stones. He knew. Several times during the past week or so he had tried to write. He had tried to write the poetic drama of Luke. He remembered how he had sat at the table in his room under the eaves, and had put his pen to the paper. But the pen had remained there, its point pressed down on the whiteness. Nothing had come. The dark emptiness in him had spread. Finally he had forced himself to write: “Luke stood before—in front of—the temple, and the elders—the Jewish elders—” Then the sickness had come on him, the horrible nausea and collapse, and he had torn up the paper and had thrown the pen on the floor. There was nothing now. There was only this sick nothingness, this turning away, this horrible flattening of perspective, this draining away of color, this flaccid despair, this complete undesire. Writing! A huge contempt for himself had struck him like a stunning blow. He was nothing at all. Whatever he had had in the past had been an egotistic delusion, a child’s daydreaming, a complete and shameful conceit.

  A failure. That was what he was. His parents had called him a failure; his teachers had despised him; his schoolmates had ridiculed him. Miss Woods had rejected him with scorn. They knew him! Now he knew himself, accepted himself as others saw him. A failure. He had wasted years in his delusions, when he might have been laying the groundwork for a solid future. Bitterly, he looked at himself as in a mirror, and his self-hatred was like the taste of gall in his mouth.

  Frank said listlessly: “I’ll think about it when I’m stronger, Mr. Farley.” He had learned so quickly how to turn aside from the smallest issue, whereas before he had attacked vigorously. Now he wished only to escape the slightest controversy.

  No, he had nothing left, except his desire for money. That was more powerful than ever. Someway, somehow, he must have money, a lot of it, countless thousands of it. There was just one way: the oil fields of Kentucky.

  Mr. Farley saw Frank’s thin and prominent profile, so tense now, so grimly set. He saw the transparent pallor, the dark caves under the narrowed blue eyes. He thought: My God, the poor kid!

  He added rapidly, in his mind, with humility and pleading: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and in the hour of our death—amen—please, Holy Mother, Tower of Ivory, Refuge of Sinners, you got to help this kid—I don’t know why, but he’s just like my own kid, though you know I haven’t any—he’s in pain, dear Blessed Mother, and he needs help—he’s just like he was your own Son, on his own cross, now, only he hasn’t got no faith to help him, and he doesn’t know about you—and he’s down in the pit of himself, fighting there, without no hope—you got to help him—Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee—blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus—I’ll make a novena—I’ll—”

  Even—before—I could write, Frank thought. Even before that damned Sunday, out in the snow. It was hard, but I could write. I could grind out fairly creditable compositions, and even poetry. I could do a workmanlike job. Mason said so. He said I practically had genius. But now I can’t write a thing coherently. There is nothing in my mind, nothing. And I don’t want anything. I want only money.

  He said aloud: “Everything’s got to wait until I make some money. I want to send my mother some.”

  Mr. Farley, coming out of the daze of his fervent prayers, replied: “Your ma said she and your grandmother’re going back to England. Maybe next summer.”

  “Yes.”

  The dinner bell clamored out into the Sunday quiet. Frank stirred. Desperately, Mr. Farley decided he must make haste. He remembered that Maybelle had some twelve thousand dollars now. He had given her a thousand dollars after Francis’ death, and, in explanation, he had mumbled something about “a kind of insurance he carried for his people.” Maybelle did not demur, nor question this entirely fallacious statement. He wished now that he had given the money to Frank, with the lie that Francis had left the “insurance” to his son.

  But there was something more important to be said. The boy was going away. He must not be allowed to go away like this, embittered, inert, turning aside from any k
indness as if he could not bear it, swamped in undesire and despair. Mr. Farley cleared his throat, and slipped down from the porch railing. His words came in a rush, incoherently:

  “Look, Frank, maybe I shan’t see you again, after tomorrow. You’ve kind of been like a son to me, y’know. I’ve kind of had you on my mind, ever since you were a little shaver, when you and your ma and pa used to come here every Sunday for dinner. You got great stuff in you, Frank. You got to believe that, see? You mustn’t ever forget it. And—you’ve got to forget lots of—other things.”

  Frank raised his eyes to his old friend with a faint curiosity. “What must I forget?” he asked, in a tone that humored the vagaries of elderly folk.

  Mr. Farley turned crimson. He rubbed the top of his head, and sweated a little. “Well. Maybe you think I’m pokin’ my nose where it don’t belong. Maybe I am, at that. But you’re kind of like my own kid, if I ever had any. See what I mean? Well. Well, maybe you’ve had a hard sort of life, and things didn’t go right with you. I was a kid once, and it’s a funny thing, but what happens to you when you’re a kid kind of leaves a mark on you, more than it does when you grow up and know all about everything. Folks that’re not so good to a kid when he’s young—he remembers that, and if he ain’t got strength of mind, and a little bit of understanding, he can let those folks ruin the rest of his life, just remembering about them.”

  Frank’s thin face had become slowly narrowed and intent, yet it remained closed as stone. But he listened, not looking away from Mr. Farley.

  “Now, take me,” said Mr. Farley, cursing himself for his inarticulateness, and praying for just a little eloquence: “Take me. I come from Ireland when I was just a shaver of thirteen. Come to an uncle and aunt, and they put me to work right away. That was in Detroit. They took all my wages, and didn’t send me to school, and I had to sleep in an attic. And it was damned cold in the winter, too. Well, I hated ’em, and I hated their kids, all six of ’em. My uncle drank all the time, and my aunt took in washin’. They didn’t give me any sort of kindness at all; I worked in a factory, and brought home my wages, and I saw about ten cents of it a week, and I was making five dollars. So I’d lie up there in my room, and just hate, sometimes, until it was time to get up. Then maybe my Uncle Pat would knock me over the head, just out of mean temper, or my aunt would clout me with the end of her broom. That made me hate ’em even worse. I kind of got so I enjoyed hating them.”