He knocked several times before a woman’s voice answered just behind the door.
“What are you up to this time o’ night?”
“I’ve traveled all day by foot and I’m weary. Could you put me up for the night?” Mr. Pettibone said softly.
“Sorry, old man, never take in strangers.”
“My name is Mr. Pettibone. Now tell me yours and we won’t be strangers. My eyes are full of cement dust.”
The woman behind the door understood cement dust. It had been in her eyes and her food and her mind for a long time.
And the old man’s voice sounded nice and gentle. She set the door ajar.
“Well,” she said, “our name is Evans. I suppose it won’t hurt if you sleep in the kitchen.”
Next morning Mr. Pettibone rose very early and walked around the town. It was the drabbest little place Mr. Pettibone had ever seen. All the houses were the same, looking like nothing but rows and rows of matchboxes. There was only one color in the town, the color of the cement dust. Mr. Pettibone could hardly tell where the ground left off and the house began, where the house left off and the sky began.
Nor was there any relief when he returned to the Evanses’ house for breakfast. The three rooms were plain and unadorned, absolutely empty and colorless. There were no curtains on the windows, no rugs on the floor. And Mr. Pettibone was shocked to see that the inhabitants seemed to reflect the drabness of their surroundings. Mr. Evans, for instance, might have been a fine respectable figure of a man, with bushy eyebrows, dimpled cheeks, handsome shoulders and a good, strong jaw, but it was impossible to really see his face because it was so speckled with cement dust. Mr. Pettibone felt as if he were looking at Mr. Evans through gauze. And Mrs. Evans was just as bad. You couldn’t actually see the specks on her face, but her whole complexion was grey, her hair and her eyes and her skin, so that Mr. Pettibone had to observe to himself that she looked like a drawing done in white chalk. And the two children, little Marilyn and the baby, Peter, Mr. Pettibone felt, were the saddest of all because they still had a little youthful flush to their cheeks, but it looked like the sun trying to peek through on a cloudy day. They had not yet been consumed by cement dust but they were on their way. The frugal morning meal was eaten in silence, butter and bread and cocoa made with water. Finally Mr. Evans kissed his family perfunctorily, shook Mr. Pettibone’s hand halfheartedly and said in a monotone, “Guess I’ll be back for lunch.”
Mr. Pettibone looked after him thoughtfully, and then he said to Mrs. Evans as he helped her clear the table, “I feel very sorry for your husband. There’s precious little dignity around his home.”
“Dignity,” Mrs. Evans scoffed. “There’s plenty more important things we need around here besides dignity.”
“Excuse me for disagreeing,” said Mr. Pettibone. “I know from experience. Once you get dignity, half the battle is over.”
“It’s no use trying to get anything around here,” Mrs. Evans said as she piled the dishes in the sink. “We’ve given up trying a long time ago. When I was still a young girl I had hopes. But we’ve got cement dust in our children’s blood now.”
Mr. Pettibone looked around at the solitary greyness. “I think I know how to bring a little color to this place,” he said. “A bit of dignity as well, perhaps.”
He’s cracked, she thought calmly, but at least he’s different, I’ll say that for him. He’s something to break the monotony of a lonely grey morning, he is.
“I think I know a way,” Mr. Pettibone said. “It won’t take very long. Would you mind if I try?”
“Just make yourself to home,” she said. “You can’t make things any worse.”
So Mr. Pettibone puttered around the place until he found a hammer and some nails and some loose shingles and then he set himself down on the front steps, sneezing now and then when the dust got too far up his nose, but looking quite contented as he kept on hammering away.
Once Mrs. Evans stopped in the middle of her washing and said, “Just whatever are you making, Mr. Pettibone?” But the old man simply smiled to himself and shook his head, “You’ll see. You’ll find out in time. Wait till you see what a change it makes.”
Later in the morning, when Mr. Pettibone had several rectangular boxes lined up in front of him, a company superintendent came by.
“Who are you?” he asked brusquely.
“My name is Pettibone.”
“We don’t like strangers around here.”
“But I’m not a stranger. I’m a friend of the Evanses.”
“Where’s your home?”
“I haven’t got a home.”
“No home, eh?” The superintendent frowned. He didn’t like this. He had orders not to let suspicious-looking characters loiter about.
“Not from the union, are ya?” he asked. He had orders to keep a sharp eye out for labor organizers.
“No,” Mr. Pettibone answered. “I’m just the flower man.”
“Well,” the superintendent growled. “Just don’t try any funny business. I’ve got my eye on you.”
“Please don’t upset yourself on my account,” said Mr. Pettibone.
By the time Mr. Evans came home for lunch, Mr. Pettibone had completed his morning’s chore. He had finished making four oblong boxes, which he was painting white with red borders.
“Those are your flower boxes,” he explained as he began to nail them just outside the windows. “Now, if you don’t mind, I will take the children out beyond the dust line, and we’ll gather up enough good earth to plant the flowers in.”
So Mr. Pettibone took Marilyn by one hand and Peter by the other and they walked far, far beyond the dust area, until they were out into the sunshine again. There little Marilyn pointed toward the hills and said, “They had a big fire over there last year.” And Mr. Pettibone said, “Then we are in luck, Marilyn, because wildflowers always grow best after there’s been a forest fire because then the sun can reach the little seeds and bulbs that the big trees always hide.”
They found wild poppies, big fat orange ones, and tulips, yellow and deep red, and Mr. Pettibone showed them how to lift them gently out of the ground, with enough of their own earth around them to make them feel at home. Then they filled the sack they had brought with the fine warm soil and started back.
When they reached the little house, Mr. Pettibone worked furiously until dark, filling the flower boxes with dirt, tenderly transplanting the flowers from the neighboring hills, and planting among them some of the violet seeds and lupines he had been carrying with him.
The next morning he gathered his things together and began to say good-bye, but Mrs. Evans said, “Where are you rushing off to? Why don’t you stay and see if the flowers grow?” And so Mr. Pettibone stayed, nursing his poppies and tulips and violets and lupines, even though the superintendent growled as he passed him now and then, “This is most irregular, don’t try any funny business, it’s against orders.”
Soon Mr. Pettibone’s labors began to take root. There was great excitement in the Evans household as the bulbs began to burst through and the boxes were filled with the tiny green stems struggling up toward the sun. Marilyn and Peter fought for the honor of watering them, and Mr. and Mrs. Evans were very pleased when Mr. Pettibone counseled them to take turns. And even Mr. Evans, who was always lazy about the house and apt to bark at his wife in his discouragement, began to sneak out and water them himself, and when Mrs. Evans caught him at it red-handed he broke down and confessed, “I suppose it does give a man something to come home to, seeing his own flowers come up that way.” And Mr. Pettibone straightened his faded yellow beard with pride and said, “You see, that is what I mean by dignity, having something in life to be proud of, not stuffed-shirt, three-piece-suit dignity, but simple, earthy dignity, the dignity of your own flower boxes and gardens.”
So the Evanses began to have color in their lives for the first time. Mrs. Evans would call to her neighbors to ask how they liked her red-and-white flower boxes, “D
on’t they set the house off pretty, though?” and Marilyn brought her teacher a lovely yellow tulip, saying “I picked it out of my own garden,” and even Mr. Evans, though he never said much about it, when he was at his work with that sickening cement dust flying all around would think of the fat poppies and the brilliant tulips and the cute dog’s-tooth violets and he’d have to smile, even though he smiled through closed lips so the dust wouldn’t go down his throat.
It wasn’t long before all the wives were telling their husbands about the Evanses’ flower boxes, and after that the men started going by the Evanses’ house on their way to work mornings. And finally the first couple came to call on the Evanses after supper, to find out all about the flower boxes and where the soil came from and where they got the flowers, and Mr. Pettibone got his burlap bag out again, and carefully handed out the seeds and bulbs they needed, and promised to keep an eye on their flower boxes, too.
Then another couple came, and another, and pretty soon, the drab cement town was speckled with flower boxes, all in different colors, and everyone told everyone else what a difference it made in the atmosphere of the place, and Mr. Pettibone became quite the town hero, everybody nodding to him friendly and pleased as he went by, saying, “Good morning, Mr. Pettibone, you haven’t seen my tulip bulbs in two days—they’ve begun to sprout already,” or, “Good evening, Mr. Pettibone, would you like to take a hike in the hills with us, Sunday? We thought we’d look for purple tulips.” And even the superintendent who had been so suspicious would say, “Howdy,” as Mr. Pettibone went by, thinking, Not a bad idea, having him around after all. He’s made ’em a darn sight more content than I’ve ever seen ’em before.
One evening when Mr. Pettibone returned home to the Evanses’ after his sunset walk, he found Mr. Evans digging up the ground in front of his house with a shovel.
“I should think you had enough work for one day, Mr. Evans,” said Mr. Pettibone. “What are you doing with that shovel?”
And Mr. Evans, hardly pausing between shovelfuls, said, “Those flower boxes are nice enough for the women, Mr. Pettibone. But I’ve decided to make myself a regular garden.”
“A wonderful idea, Mr. Evans,” Mr. Pettibone said. “I had thought of suggesting it myself, but I don’t like to seem to be forcing things on folks.”
Then Mr. Evans stared down at his shovel without quite knowing how to go on. “And Mr. Pettibone, I don’t want to hurt your feelings—but would you mind letting me make this garden entirely by myself? It’ll sort of give me a feeling of, well, of …”
“Of dignity,” said Mr. Pettibone with a smile that his wide yellow beard hid completely. “Of course, Mr. Evans. I understand perfectly.”
And so Mr. Evans worked on his garden every day, a few minutes in the morning before breakfast, and every evening from the time he knocked off work until the sun went down. And soon the green sprigs of Mr. Pettibone’s wildflowers began to rise in neat little rows.
After that it seemed to occur to practically every other man in the cement town that life without a little garden of one’s own to cultivate meant very little. Men who usually lolled about the house all day Sunday would be out from morning to night, lugging fresh earth down from the hills, exchanging tips on how best to plant Mr. Pettibone’s seeds, digging down into their front yards as deep as possible to avoid the layer on layer of cement.
Soon the whole town was quilted with little green squares and Mr. Pettibone was busier than ever, walking among the plots, stroking his faded yellow beard thoughtfully as he passed judgment. “Not a very straight row, is it, Mr. Lewis?” or “Better get after those big weeds, Mr. Olivante, they’ll drink up all the water.”
But Mr. Pettibone’s flowers had a much greater enemy than crude care or weeds. Mr. Evans was one of the first victims. One evening when Mr. Pettibone came back from his walk, Mr. Evans held out to him a limp, dead flower. It was one of the original wild tulips Mr. Pettibone had planted in the flower box. Mr. Pettibone examined its head closely and then let it drop back like a corpse over Mr. Evans’s hand.
“I’ve been afraid of this for a long time,” he said, turning away from the dead flower.
“Is it … bad?” Mr. Evans asked anxiously.
Mr. Pettibone nodded. “It’s the dust from the cement, my son.”
Mr. Evans’s fists clenched hard till the bones showed white through the tough skin. “Cement dust! It shortens our lives. It chokes our kids. And now—it even kills our gardens!”
“Please, Mr. Evans,” Mr. Pettibone pleaded. “I don’t believe in hate. Perhaps if we can obtain some fine netting, we can still save the flowers.”
But it soon appeared that there was not nearly enough fine netting in town to save the flowers. The cement-dust blight was spreading through the gardens. Fresh winds were smothering the sprouting plants in chalky dust. And finally one night the wind stormed up from the sea, making the night white with the flying dust, and in the morning when the men hurried out to look, their gardens had completely disappeared under layers of cement dust.
Mr. Pettibone wandered among the ruins. In their homes, the women did their washing with blank faces. In the factory, the men walked mechanically. When the Evans children saw the wasteland outside their house they began to cry, and then they ran to ask Mr. Pettibone, “Why are all our pretty flowers gone?” And Mr. Pettibone wished to say something encouraging, but all he could do was shake his head.
That evening when Mr. Evans came home, Mr. Pettibone was surprised to find ten other men crowding in behind him. They all had the same serious face on, as if they were all possessed with the same idea.
“Put supper off a bit, Mother,” Mr. Evans said. “We have more important matters to settle here tonight.”
Then Mr. Evans turned to Mr. Pettibone. “This here is the Committee,” he explained. “All the boys thought you ought to be in on it, inasmuch as you got us started.”
“Got you started?” Mr. Pettibone said, a little frightened. “On what?”
“You know,” Mr. Evans said. “I can’t exactly put it into words. I mean that dignity stuff. The boys know what I mean. Dignity. Those gardens you got us started with gave us a taste of it. But just when it seems like we’re getting a little joy out of life, a little patch of color for our womenfolk, look what happens, the damned cement dust rolls over us like a tidal wave.”
Then Mr. Olivante took the floor, his Italian blood darkening his dusty complexion. “Mr. Evans he speak the truth. Already ten years ago we should have stood on our feet like men and let them know we will not bury our lives in cement dust. We should have the right to breathe the beautiful California air that reminds me so much of my lovely Sicily.”
And Mr. Lewis, usually so meek and quiet, slapped Mr. Olivante on the back, and pounded his small fist on the table and declared very solemnly, “The old man here has shown us the way. Now it’s our turn to get things done. What do you say, boys? Let’s recommend that we make no more cement till they promise to move our houses out into the open air.”
Then there was a general hullabaloo, the making of motions, the swift seconding, everyone bursting with new ideas, as if the dam of resignation was suddenly broken after all these years, and all the old suppressed resentments were pouring over. One man said that the subject of flower boxes reminded him that none of the houses had enough windows, and another pointed out that the reason they had so little room for their gardens was that all the little houses were too close together, and that reminded someone else that for the amount taken out of their paycheck for rent the houses should be bigger than three rooms, and pretty soon they were all talking at once, making more excitement than this little town had ever had before, and Mr. Pettibone just stood aside and watched, blinking with amazement at what his handful of seeds and bulbs had set off. Finally, after several hours of talk and plans, resolutions and new hope, Mr. Evans turned to him and said, “Well, Mr. Pettibone, what do you think of it?”
And Mr. Pettibone answered promptly, “I c
ouldn’t exactly follow all the details, but I know one thing—if they build your houses on the mountainside where that forest fire was last year you’ll have the finest wildflowers you ever saw.”
This seemed to please the men and they ended the evening with three rousing cheers for Mr. Pettibone, which left the old man very flustered, and incidentally awakened the superintendent.
As if it wasn’t bad enough to upset the superintendent’s sleep, the Committee started the next morning off disastrously for that official by informing him of their determination to hold out for what they called the Pettibone Plan, and by assuring him that it had the backing of the entire community.
When the superintendent reported this in turn to the general manager, his superior turned on him irritably.
“You’re some superintendent, letting an agitator like this Pettibone get a foothold in our town.”
“I figured him for trouble the minute I saw him,” the superintendent insisted. “But then when I talked to him he just seemed to be a harmless old man hipped on flowers.”
“Flowers!” the manager scoffed. “He was just playing dumb—probably their new tactic!”
“I’ll know better next time,” the superintendent assured him.
For days the general manager argued and haggled with Evans and his men but they wouldn’t give in. They insisted that Pettibone’s flower boxes had shown them the way and that they’d never turn back on the road to dignity.
Finally, weary and frightened, the general manager came to the superintendent and said, “It’s no use. We aren’t going to get anywhere until we get rid of Pettibone. See what you can do about him.”
When Mr. Pettibone heard that the superintendent was coming for him, he said he would be very glad to see him and tell him how he happened to have so much success with the flower boxes. But when the superintendent reached the Evans house he found the door blocked by two of the biggest men in the plant. They explained that the Committee had appointed them Mr. Pettibone’s special bodyguards and nobody was going to see him.
Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales Page 28