"Tom, wouldn't you be willing to take over the ranch?" George asked.
"Oh, that's nothing," said Tom. "It's no trouble to run the ranch because the ranch doesn't run--never has."
"Then why don't you agree?"
"I'd find a reluctance to insult my father," Tom said. "He'd know."
"But where's the harm in suggesting it?"
Tom rubbed his ears until he forced the blood out of them and for a moment they were white. "I don't forbid you," he said. "But I can't do it."
George said, "We could write it in a letter--a kind of invitation, full of jokes. And when he got tired of one of us, why, he could go to another. There's years of visiting among the lot of us." And that was how they left it.
3
Tom brought Olive's letter from King City, and because he knew what it contained he waited until he caught Samuel alone before he gave it to him. Samuel was working in the forge and his hands were black. He took the envelope by a tiny corner and put it on the anvil, and then he scrubbed his hands in the half-barrel of black water into which he plunged hot iron. He slit the letter open with the point of a horseshoe nail and went into the sunlight to read it. Tom had the wheels off the buckboard and was buttering the axles with yellow axle grease. He watched his father from the corners of his eyes.
Samuel finished the letter and folded it and put it back in its envelope. He sat down on the bench in front of the shop and stared into space. Then he opened the letter and read it again and folded it again and put it in his blue shirt pocket. Then Tom saw him stand up and walk slowly up the eastern hill, kicking at the flints on the ground.
There had been a little rain and a fuzz of miserly grass had started up. Halfway up the hill Samuel squatted down and took up a handful of the harsh gravelly earth in his palm and spread it with his forefinger, flint and sandstone and bits of shining mica and a frail rootlet and a veined stone. He let it slip from his hand and brushed his palms. He picked a spear of grass and set it between his teeth and stared up the hill to the sky. A gray nervous cloud was scurrying eastward, searching for trees on which to rain.
Samuel stood up and sauntered down the hill. He looked into the tool shed and patted the four-by-four supports. He paused near Tom and spun one of the free-running wheels of the buckboard, and he inspected Tom as though he saw him for the first time. "Why, you're a grown-up man," he said.
"Didn't you know?"
"I guess I did--I guess I did," said Samuel and sauntered on. There was the sardonic look on his face his family knew so well--the joke on himself that made him laugh inwardly. He walked by the sad little garden and all around the house--not a new house any more. Even the last added lean-to bedrooms were old and weathered and the putty around the windowpanes had shrunk away from the glass. At the porch he turned and surveyed the whole home cup of the ranch before he went inside.
Liza was rolling out pie crust on the floury board. She was so expert with the rolling pin that the dough seemed alive. It flattened out and then pulled back a little from tension in itself. Liza lifted the pale sheet of it and laid it over one of the pie tins and trimmed the edges with a knife. The prepared berries lay deep in red juice in a bowl.
Samuel sat down in a kitchen chair and crossed his legs and looked at her. His eyes were smiling.
"Can't you find something to do this time of day?" she asked.
"Oh, I guess I could, Mother, if I wanted to."
"Well, don't sit there and make me nervous. The paper's in the other room if you're feeling day-lazy."
"I've read it," said Samuel.
"All of it?"
"All I want to."
"Samuel, what's the matter with you? You're up to something. I can see it in your face. Now tell it, and let me get on with my pies."
He swung his leg and smiled at her. "Such a little bit of a wife," he said. "Three of her is hardly a bite."
"Samuel, now you stop this. I don't mind a joke in the evening sometimes, but it's not eleven o'clock. Now you go along."
Samuel said, "Liza, do you know the meaning of the English word 'vacation'?"
"Now don't you make jokes in the morning."
"Do you, Liza?"
"Of course I do. Don't play me for a fool."
"What does it mean?"
"Going away for a rest to the sea and the beach. Now, Samuel, get out with your fooling."
"I wonder how you know the word."
"Will you tell me what you're after? Why shouldn't I know?"
"Did you ever have one, Liza?"
"Why, I--" She stopped.
"In fifty years, did you ever have a vacation, you little, silly, half-pint, smidgin of a wife?"
"Samuel, please go out of my kitchen," she said apprehensively.
He took the letter from his pocket and unfolded it. "It's from Ollie," he said. "She wants us to come and visit in Salinas. They've fixed over the upstairs rooms. She wants us to get to know the children. She's got us tickets for the Chautauqua season. Billy Sunday's going to wrestle with the Devil and Bryan is going to make his Cross of Gold speech. I'd like to hear that. It's an old fool of a speech but they say he gives it in a way to break your heart."
Liza rubbed her nose and floured it with her finger. "Is it very costly?" she asked anxiously.
"Costly? Ollie has bought the tickets. They're a present."
"We can't go," said Liza. "Who'd run the ranch?"
"Tom would--what running there is to do in the winter."
"He'd be lonely."
"George would maybe come out and stay a while to go quail hunting. See what's in the letter, Liza."
"What are those?"
"Two tickets to Salinas on the train. Ollie says she doesn't want to give us a single escape."
"You can just turn them in and send her back the money."
"No, I can't. Why, Liza--Mother--now don't. Here--here's a handkerchief."
"That's a dish towel," said Liza.
"Sit here, Mother. There! I guess the shock of taking a rest kind of threw you. Here! I know it's a dish towel. They say that Billy Sunday drives the Devil all over the stage."
"That's a blasphemy," said Liza.
"But I'd like to see it, wouldn't you? What did you say? Hold up your head. I didn't hear you. What did you say?"
"I said yes," said Liza.
Tom was making a drawing when Samuel came in to him. Tom looked at his father with veiled eyes, trying to read the effect of Olive's letter.
Samuel looked at the drawing. "What is it?"
"I'm trying to work out a gate-opener so a man won't have to get out of his rig. Here's the pull-rod to open the latch."
"What's going to open it?"
"I figured a strong spring."
Samuel studied the drawing. "Then what's going to close it?"
"This bar here. It would slip to this spring with the tension the other way."
"I see," said Samuel. "It might work too, if the gate was truly hung. And it would only take twice as much time to make and keep up as twenty years of getting out of the rig and opening the gate."
Tom protested, "Sometimes with a skittish horse--"
"I know," said his father. "But the main reason is that it's fun."
Tom grinned. "Caught me," he said.
"Tom, do you think you could look after the ranch if your mother and I took a little trip?"
"Why, sure," said Tom. "Where do you plan to go?"
"Ollie wants us to stay with her for a while in Salinas."
"Why, that would be fine," said Tom. "Is Mother agreeable?"
"She is, always forgetting the expense."
"That's fine," said Tom. "How long do you plan to be gone?"
Samuel's jeweled, sardonic eyes dwelt on Tom's face until Tom said, "What's the matter, Father?"
"It's the little tone, son--so little that I could barely hear it. But it was there. Tom, my son, if you have a secret with your brothers and sisters, I don't mind. I think that's good."
"I don't know w
hat you mean," said Tom.
"You may thank God you didn't want to be an actor, Tom, because you would have been a very bad one. You worked it out at Thanksgiving, I guess, when you were all together. And it's working smooth as butter. I see Will's hand in this. Don't tell me if you don't want to."
"I wasn't in favor of it," said Tom.
"It doesn't sound like you," his father said. "You'd be for scattering the truth out in the sun for me to see. Don't tell the others I know." He turned away and then came back and put his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Thank you for wanting to honor me with the truth, my son. It's not clever but it's more permanent."
"I'm glad you're going."
Samuel stood in the doorway of the forge and looked at the land. "They say a mother loves best an ugly child," he said, and he shook his head sharply. "Tom, I'll trade you honor for honor. You will please hold this in your dark secret place, nor tell any of your brothers and sisters--I know why I'm going--and, Tom, I know where I'm going, and I am content."
Chapter 24
1
I have wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others. Una's death cut the earth from under Samuel's feet and opened his defended keep and let in old age. On the other hand Liza, who surely loved her family as deeply as did her husband, was not destroyed or warped. Her life continued evenly. She felt sorrow but she survived it.
I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her.
Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick.
To Liza it was simply death--the thing promised and expected. She could go on and in her sorrow put a pot of beans in the oven, bake six pies, and plan to exactness how much food would be necessary properly to feed the funeral guests. And she could in her sorrow see that Samuel had a clean white shirt and that his black broadcloth was brushed and free of spots and his shoes blacked. Perhaps it takes these two kinds to make a good marriage, riveted with several kinds of strengths.
Once Samuel accepted, he could probably go farther than Liza, but the process of accepting tore him to pieces. Liza watched him closely after the decision to go to Salinas. She didn't quite know what he was up to but, like a good and cautious mother, she knew he was up to something. She was a complete realist. Everything else being equal, she was glad to be going to visit her children. She was curious about them and their children. She had no love of places. A place was only a resting stage on the way to Heaven. She did not like work for itself, but she did it because it was there to be done. And she was tired. Increasingly it was more difficult to fight the aches and stiffnesses which tried to keep her in bed in the morning--not that they ever succeeded.
And she looked forward to Heaven as a place where clothes did not get dirty and where food did not have to be cooked and dishes washed. Privately there were some things in Heaven of which she did not quite approve. There was too much singing, and she didn't see how even the Elect could survive for very long the celestial laziness which was promised. She would find something to do in Heaven. There must be something to take up one's time--some clouds to darn, some weary wings to rub with liniment. Maybe the collars of the robes needed turning now and then, and when you come right down to it, she couldn't believe that even in Heaven there would not be cobwebs in some corner to be knocked down with a cloth-covered broom.
She was gay and frightened about the visit to Salinas. She liked the idea so well that she felt there must be something bordering on sin involved in it. And the Chautauqua? Well, she didn't have to go and probably wouldn't. Samuel would run wild--she would have to watch him. She never lost her feeling that he was young and helpless. It was a good thing that she did not know what went on in his mind, and, through his mind, what happened to his body.
Places were very important to Samuel. The ranch was a relative, and when he left it he plunged a knife into a darling. But having made up his mind, Samuel set about doing it well. He made formal calls on all of his neighbors, the old-timers who remembered how it used to be and how it was. And when he drove away from his old friends they knew they would not see him again, although he did not say it. He took to gazing at the mountains and the trees, even at faces, as though to memorize them for eternity.
He saved his visit to the Trask place for last. He had not been there for months. Adam was not a young man any more. The boys were eleven years old, and Lee--well, Lee did not change much. Lee walked to the shed with Samuel.
"I've wanted to talk to you for a long time," said Lee. "But there's so much to do. And I try to get to San Francisco at least once a month."
"You know how it is," Samuel said. "When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him."
"I heard about your daughter. I'm sorry."
"I got your letter, Lee. I have it. You said good things."
"Chinese things," said Lee. "I seem to get more Chinese as I get older."
"There's something changed about you, Lee. What is it?"
"It's my queue, Mr. Hamilton. I've cut off my queue."
"That's it."
"We all did. Haven't you heard? The Dowager Empress is gone. China is free. The Manchus are not overlords and we do not wear queues. It was a proclamation of the new government. There's not a queue left anywhere."
"Does it make adifference, Lee?"
"Not much. It's easier. But there's a kind of looseness on the scalp that makes me uneasy. It's hard to get used to the convenience of it."
"How is Adam?"
"He's all right. But he hasn't changed much. I wonder what he was like before."
"Yes, I've wondered about that. It was a short flowering. The boys must be big."
"They are big. I'm glad I stayed here. I learned a great deal from seeing the boys grow and helping a little."
"Did you teach them Chinese?"
"No. Mr. Trask didn't want me to. And I guess he was right. It would have been a needless complication. But I'm their friend--yes, I'm their friend. They admire their father, but I think they love me. And they're very different. You can't imagine how different."
"In what way, Lee?"
"You'll see when they come home from school. They're like two sides of a medal. Cal is sharp and dark and watchful, and his brother--well, he's a boy you like before he speaks and like more afterwards."
"And you don't like Cal?"
"I find myself defending him--to myself. He's fighting for his life and his brother doesn't have to fight."
"I have the same thing in my brood," said Samuel. "I don't understand it. You'd think with the same training and the same blood they'd be alike, but they're not--not at all."
Later Samuel and Adam walked down the oak-shadowed road to the entrance to the draw where they could look out at the Salinas Valley.
"Will you stay to dinner?" Adam asked.
"I will not be responsible for the murder of more chickens," said Samuel.
"Lee's got a pot roast."
"Well, in that case--"
Adam still carried one shoulder lower than the other from the old hurt. His face was hard and curtained, and his eyes looked at generalities and did not inspect details. The two men stopped in the road and looked out at the valley, green tinged from the early rains.
Samuel said softly, "I wonder you do not feel a shame at leaving that land fallow."
"I had no reason to plant it," Adam said. "We had that out before. You thought I would change. I have not changed."
"Do you take pride in your hurt?" Samuel asked. "Does it make you seem large and tragic?"
"I don't know."
"Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience."
A slight anger came into Adam's voice. "Why do you come to lecture me? I'm glad you've come, but why do you dig into me?"
"To see whether I can raise a little anger in you. I'm a nosy man. But there's all that fallow land, and here beside me is all that fallow man. It seems a waste. And I have a bad feeling about waste because I could never afford it. Is it a good feeling to let life lie fallow?"
"What else could I do?"
"You could try again."
Adam faced him. "I'm afraid to, Samuel," he said. "I'd rather just go about it this way. Maybe I haven't the energy or the courage."
"How about your boys--do you love them?"
"Yes--yes."
"Do you love one more than the other?"
"Why do you say that?"
"I don't know. Something about your tone."
"Let's go back to the house," said Adam. They strolled back under the trees. Suddenly Adam said, "Did you ever hear that Cathy was in Salinas? Did you ever hear such a rumor?"
"Did you?"
"Yes--but I don't believe it. I can't believe it."
Samuel walked silently in the sandy wheel rut of the road. His mind turned sluggishly in the pattern of Adam and almost wearily took up a thought he had hoped was finished. He said at last, "You have never let her go."
"I guess not. But I've let the shooting go. I don't think about it any more."
"I can't tell you how to live your life," Samuel said, "although I do be telling you how to live it. I know that it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world. And while I tell you, I am myself sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining--small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age."
Adam's face was bent down, and his jawbone jutted below his temples from clenching.
Samuel glanced at him. "That's right," he said. "Set your teeth in it. How we do defend a wrongness! Shall I tell you what you do, so you will not think you invented it? When you go to bed and blow out the lamp--then she stands in the doorway with a little light behind her, and you can see her nightgown stir. And she comes sweetly to your bed, and you, hardly breathing, turn back the covers to receive her and move your head over on the pillow to make room for her head beside yours. You can smell the sweetness of her skin, and it smells like no other skin in the world--"
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