“You see,” his Aunt Mary said, “it’s your grandfather’s graduation present to you, Jeff.”
But Jeffrey was only wondering how keenly it would affect Alf later in the afternoon, because the gift appeared to involve no money.
“Jeff,” his father said, “say ‘Thank you’ to your grandfather.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jeffrey said.
He was thinking about Alf’s song—telegraphing your baby, who’d send ten or twenty maybe, so you wouldn’t have to walk back home.
“You can pay back part by working summers,” his grandfather said. “I’ve been to see Mr. Thompson at the carpet factory. He wants an office boy, and you can start in tomorrow.”
“Oh, Pa,” Aunt Martha said, “can’t he have a week off?”
“If I’m paying for it,” his grandfather said, “he can start in at the carpet factory tomorrow.”
“Jeffrey,” his father said, “say ‘Thank you’ to your grandfather.”
“Thanks,” Jeffrey said, “thanks a lot, Grandpa.”
Jeffrey sometimes tried to recall what he had been like when he was Jim’s age. Jim’s environment was so dissimilar from his own that whenever Jeffrey began that familiar speech, “When I was your age …” it carried no possible conviction. There was only one thing of which he was sure. When he was Jim’s age, life must have conveyed more; his thoughts surely must have been more vivid. When Jeffrey was salutatorian of his graduating class at the Bragg High School, he could not have been as completely callow as Jim.
The Town Hall was a boxlike brick building that stood on a patch of lawn behind a white fence. It had two doors in front and between the doors was a bulletin board with a voters’ list and lost-and-found announcements. The boys and girls of the graduating class stood on a far corner of the lawn watching the audience move into the hall. The girls’ faces were fresh and shining, because even a touch of rouge meant, then, that you were not a nice girl. The boys’ necks looked high and stiff and their hair was plastered unnaturally to their skulls. The class exchanged glazed glances with Jeffrey when he joined the group. Even Summers Harris seemed nervously lost in his own thoughts, although he was known in town as “the King of Bragg High.” Jimmy Ryan stood snapping his knuckles one by one. Milt Rolfe’s wrists hung too far out of the sleeves of his blue serge coat. Mr. Oakley’s bald head and pince-nez glasses glittered in the sun.
“You’ll be toward the head of the line, Wilson,” Mr. Oakley said, “and you’re to walk with Christine Blair. Find Miss Blair, we’ll be starting in a minute.”
It was not difficult to find Christine Blair. Christine’s nose looked pinched and she was biting her lips, but they were still thin and white. Christine was the Class Prophet and she was standing alone and whispering to herself.
“I had a dream the other night,” she was whispering, “and I woke up in an awful fright. I saw the future drifting by, and my classmates of the Old Bragg High.”
It was a great relief that Christine would be his partner, for it might have caused foolish talk if he had walked up the aisle with Louella Barnes; but he was conscious of Louella, although he only stole a glance at her. She was so pretty, with her yellow hair and her gold and purple bow, that he was afraid to look.
“Now, remember,” Mr. Oakley was saying, “it’s a fancy step—first one foot forward and then hesitate with the other, in time to the music. When you reach the stage, the girls go left and the boys right. And Ryan, spit out that gum.”
Everyone looked at Jimmy Ryan but only with detachment because of the approaching crisis. Jeffrey felt in his inside pocket for his paper. The palms of his hands were clammy.
“I saw the future drifting by,” Christine was whispering, “and my classmates of the Old Bragg High.”
The classmates of the Bragg High were already walking dazedly but firmly up the Town Hall steps. A group of small boys stood by the entrance uttering soft catcalls and such personal remarks as Yoo hoo, Christine. Kiss me, Ella.” But the classmates scarcely noticed these mild obscenities as they approached the ordeal before them.
There was a smell of clean linen and of ferns and the piano on the stage was playing. Jeffrey looked straight ahead of him, moving one foot and then the other. It was a strange dragging approach, half a walk and half a slide. He could see backs and heads and flowers on hats rising from the long wooden settles. He could see the School Committee and Mr. Peterson, the Congregational minister, already on the stage. Jeffrey’s place was with them in the front row, and a printed program was resting on his chair. The first item was a prayer by Mr. Peterson, and then came the Class Song, composed by the Class Odist. Then he saw his own name. “SALUTATORY ADDRESS … JEFFREY WILSON.” It was the first time he had ever seen his name in print; his hands felt very moist as he put them across his eyes while Mr. Peterson prayed. Mr. Peterson was asking God to guide the steps of these, the boys and girls from Bragg. He was imploring God, in measured tones, to help them lead upright lives, and Jeffrey hoped that it would last for a long while. Anything was desirable which would stave off his ordeal, but time was moving on inexorably. The class had risen with their programs and they were singing the Class Song.
“The way we take from Old Bragg High is narrow, steep and long …” His mouth felt dry and there was a tremor in his knees. The road through life from Old Bragg High had tribulations and difficulties, but the light of faith and their gratitude to Old Bragg High would lead them, onward and upward. The Class was sitting down.
“The Salutatory Address,” he heard Mr. Oakley say. “Jeffrey Wilson.”
At the sound of his name, unseen hands seemed to jerk Jeffrey out of his chair. He was met by a round of applause as he made his way to the center of the stage and came to a stop by a table that held the stack of diplomas and a large crockery jar full of pink petunias. The faces in front of him were blurred into one face and the applause was dying down, and nothing could put off the moment when he must speak unless he dropped down dead or ran away. He turned with a spasmodic swivel motion toward the elders in their chairs.
“Mr. Oakley,” he said. He was aware of a quaver in his voice and he tried to steady it. “Members of the School Committee—Ladies and Gentlemen.”
He reached slowly toward his breast pocket, but his fingers did not touch the paper. He snatched out his hand and felt in his side pockets, but the paper was not there. The faces in front of him faded to a mist as he thrust his hand for a second time into his inside pocket. The feeling of relief which surged through him when his fingers finally found it must have been shared by his audience, for he became aware of a faint sighing sound, of an uneasy shifting of feet.
“Stand up and take it easy,” he could hear his father saying. “You have lots of time.” But he only had a sense of the whole world’s waiting while he unfolded the paper.
“We, the graduating class of the Bragg High School, greet you. We have learned much. I hope we have learned more than we have forgotten.”
He wanted to remember to do it right, now that he was standing there. “Wait there,” he heard his father saying. “Give them time to laugh.”
He waited, but in front of him there was only dull expectancy. He waited for another moment until it became plain to him that neither he nor his audience was in any mood for literary merriment.
“When we step from this hall we will step into a larger sphere of activity.”
Jeffrey could hear his voice continuing, and he looked up and swallowed.
“And, so, in behalf of the senior class of the Bragg High School, I take the liberty of paraphrasing a little of what the gladiators in ancient Rome used to say when they entered the Colosseum.” Jeffrey swallowed again, and cleared his throat. “We, the senior class of Bragg High School, who are about to go out into the world, salute you.” Jeffrey bowed like a seasick passenger. He was pale and he was shaken, but he was through with it. His knuckles holding the paper were white. He turned his back and retired quickly to his seat in the midst of the applause
.
“And now the Class Prophecy,” Mr. Oakley was saying.
Christine had one advantage; she did not have a pocket, and the prophecy was in her hand. The first words came in a whisper.
“I had a dream the other night, and I woke up in an awful fright. I saw the future drifting by, and my classmates of the Old Bragg High.”
At first Jeffrey could not give the Prophecy his full attention, but gradually the dream of Christine impinged more clearly upon his consciousness. It seemed that a great deal had happened before Christine had awakened. By some odd piece of fortune, there had been revealed to her much of the public and not a little of the private lives of every member of the class as they appeared, of all things, in the distant future of nineteen hundred and thirty-three. Summers Harris was a soldier and a wonder to behold, and he had three lovely children with pompadours so bold. Jimmy Ryan’s butcher shop was always neat and clean and Jimmy never would short-change you, because he wasn’t mean. Jeffrey fidgeted in the chair.
“Jeff Wilson, that great orator, is known the world around.
The bands play, and they wave the flags, when Jeff Wilson comes to town.
Who helps him with his speeches I can very easily see,
Her first name has Lou and Ella in it, and her last begins with B.”
At this moment Jeffrey would have welcomed death. He sat there wondering how he could take up life and go on. It was not so much a misery that concerned himself, for another shared in this libel. He could sense the humiliation which Louella Barnes must have felt to have her name publicly connected with his own. And there was her father on the stage, the chairman of the School Committee, and before they left that stage, they must meet head on—since Mr. Barnes himself was presenting the diplomas. He could never explain to Mr. Barnes that this libel was completely groundless—that he had always been afraid of girls, particularly of Louella, and that he had hardly exchanged a word with her during the entire High School course.
Mr. Barnes was standing up, a tall, pale man handing out the diplomas. The boys and girls were marching forward, and as Jeffrey moved toward the table, Mr. Barnes was holding out his hand.
“That was a fine talk you gave us,” he said. “Congratulations.”
The only explanation Jeffrey could give for it was that Mr. Barnes had not heard.
Then everyone was singing the National Anthem, and it was over. He was walking with the class toward the steps of the stage and he never knew how it happened, except that he could not have been looking, for suddenly he was face to face with Louella Barnes. At first he thought that Louella herself could not have heard the poem, because she smiled at him, and she had never looked so pretty.
“That was a lovely speech. You didn’t act a bit afraid,” she said. She was speaking as though nothing at all had happened. She was still smiling at him. “I didn’t think much of Christine’s poem, did you?”
“No,” Jeffrey said, “not much.”
“Some people are awfully silly, don’t you think?” Louella said.
“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “It was silly.” And he smiled too. She was beyond the jibes and japes of ordinary people. She was too fine, too rare. She was what he had always thought her—unattainable, untouchable.
“Well, good-by,” Louella said.
“Good-by,” Jeffrey answered.
There was a finality in that last word. He would never sit in the same room with her again. He would never hear her recite French. He would never watch for her in the morning at the High School door. They were on the path of life, treading different paths, but she could not stop his loving her. That was the way he felt that summer about Louella Barnes.
15
Now You’ve Found Your Way
In the autumn of 1939 when he was in Boston helping at the try-out of a play which Jesse Fineman was producing, Jeffrey drove out to Bragg. He had not been there since his Aunt Martha’s funeral, after which they had sold the house on Lime Street, for the simple reason that no one wanted it any more. It would have made more sense if he had gone to see his sister Ethel in West Springfield. Somehow it seemed easier to get to Chicago than to West Springfield, and when Jeffrey did get there, it was an effort and one which he did not believe Ethel liked any more than he did. Alf was the only subject they had in common, and you could not talk about Alf indefinitely. He drove out to Bragg because he wanted an excuse to get away from Jesse Fineman’s suite at the Ritz, and away from the show business.
The suite at the Ritz had been filled with that sort of hysteria which was always present at the try-out of a play that was likely to be a flop. It was the moment when anyone connected with such a venture was sorry for himself and was hating everyone else. The doors of all the bedrooms were open and members of the cast were sitting on the beds, and Room Service was bringing up highballs and dry Martinis and milk and three-minute boiled eggs and black coffee and aspirin and all sorts of people kept coming in. Jesse Fineman had a headache and was drinking Bromo-Seltzer. Hazel Harris was in tears and the playwright had passed out on the bed in the next room. For some reason, Jeffrey began to think of Bragg. He thought of Bragg as something solid which might give him the same sort of perspective as a visit to the Art Museum or the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or it may have had something to do with the phrase that was common then about “rededicating oneself.” He knew that all sorts of memories would hurt him, but it hurt him more to stay at the Ritz.
He rented a Drive-Yourself car from a garage near Park Square and drove through Somerville. It was colder, much colder than it ever was in New York at that time of year. Even by the time he reached the Fellsway the trees looked barer than they ever did outside of New York, and there was a grimness in the lead color of the sky, and a damp chill in the air as though winter had come already. It was still light when he reached Bragg, a solemn, dull sort of light. The trees above the houses were black. Leaves had been piled around the cellar walls and there was a smell of wood smoke. The German gun which had been placed in front of the Town Hall after the last war looked as old as the Civil War Soldiers’ monument. His own name was there with the others on the bronze plaque, between the doors of the Town Hall, commemorating the sons of Bragg who had answered their country’s call in nineteen hundred and seventeen, but there was nothing else of him left in Bragg any more. In a way it did not seem decent for him to be there, because he was looking at it as some person from the city might who wanted to see the fine old houses. He did not want to drive through Lime Street, but he drove quite slowly through Center Street where the Barnes house stood.
There had never been much money in Bragg, but they used to talk of Center Street and “the Center Street crowd.” The brick sidewalks were still there and the ornate fences in front of the houses. The Thompson house, which had belonged to the owners of the carpet mill, looked smaller to Jeffrey than it should have. The weeping birch trees in front of it had grown larger but they looked smaller too. The Barnes house itself looked smaller and he could see that it made an ugly interpolation on Center Street, having been built in the days when people had learned that you could do all sorts of things with turning lathes. Its shingles were cut in scallops and it still was painted yellow. There was the same iron fence and the same tar walk leading up to the front steps, and the same maple tree. There was a couch swing on the porch just where the other couch swing had been. Two boys about eleven or twelve, in blue jeans and sweaters, were chasing each other and shouting on the lawn. He remembered the tail ends of autumn afternoons when he was just their age, when you felt that there was nothing left to the day and that it might just as well be dark.
If he had wanted to, he could not have helped stopping. He could almost believe that the idea had been in the back of his mind all the time and that he had come to Bragg for just that purpose. He walked up the tarred walk, looking at the cracks in it, and as he approached the granite steps he had a spasm of innate guilt. There was a certain fine sort of justice to it that was better than the Victorianism of
Locksley Hall, closer to a poem by Yeats. Nobody there preached down a daughter’s heart with a little hoard of maxims. The porch made the familiar drumming sound as he stepped on it, and when he rang the bell there was Louella.
It was not fair, because he had been expecting to see her, but there was nothing except incomprehension on her face. She wore the look that a certain type of woman wears when a Fuller Brush man comes knocking at the door.
“Hello,” he said, “don’t you know me?” And then she knew him.
“Why, Jeff,” she said, “Jeff Wilson.” And then she added something which was hardly true about his not having changed at all.
The little parlor looked as it always had. He faced the same heavy brass fender and high andirons and the same varnished-oak mantelpiece with the beveled mirror and the same sofa with fringes hanging from it. If the old Brussels carpet had worn out, the new one looked just like it. There was even a newspaper lying on the carpet just as though Mr. Barnes had gone out so that the young people could have the parlor to themselves. Only he and Louella had changed. Her hair was darker, and she had put on weight, but she looked the way he knew she would, integrated and comfortable.
“I haven’t seen you since the funeral,” she was saying.
“What funeral?” He asked the question because he was thinking of something else.
“Your Aunt Martha’s funeral,” she said. “I was there.”
“Oh, yes,” Jeffrey said. “Yes, I remember.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You didn’t see me.”
“That’s right,” he said, “I didn’t.” He was thinking that he had not seen her for well over twenty years.
“Are those boys yours out on the lawn, Louella?”
Yes, they were her boys, and he was thinking that they might have been his, and he supposed that she was thinking the same thing. It was getting dusk, and she lighted a lamp on the table. And then she was asking him to tell everything about himself and he told what you might tell anyone, but they never referred to what they must both have been thinking except once.
So Little Time Page 18