Tammy out of Time

by Cid Ricketts Sumner

  They had passed through the door when Barbara spoke, careless of who might overhear. “Easy to see how she feels about you, Pete, and Brenton Hall as well.”

  “What? Oh, nonsense, she’s just a child.”

  “Child of nature, and that kind’s dangerous.” Barbara laughed. “Not that I blame her. Feel the same way myself, except when you get these fool ideas. Honestly, Pete——” Her voice was lost as they went on down the hall.

  Slowly Tammy unclenched her hands and bent and picked up the books that had slipped to the floor. Easy to see, was it? The words left her stripped and raw. Only Pete hadn’t believed them. She was just a child to him. Tammy leaned her forehead against the bookcase, her eyes stung by sharp tears. She did not hear Professor Brent until he spoke.

  “Anything wrong, Tammy?” he asked with concern.

  She shook her head and blinked her eyes dry. Then feeling him standing there, silent but kindly, she whirled on him. “Tell me true—” she choked and went on—“could it be that anybody that didn’t know how to talk proper and wanted to terribly could learn the words so people wouldn’t think they was...was funny?”

  Professor Brent rested one foot on the lowest step of the ladder and leaned over, elbow on knee. “I know they could,” he said with earnestness. “That’s one of the things that can be learned. But there’s one thing cannot be learned.”

  “Wh-what’s that? I might as well know.”

  “That is—to have something worth saying, to have some ideas to put into words. That’s a thousand times more important. That’s what you have, Tammy.”

  “You reckon?” She stared at him with parted lips.

  “Reckon?” He straightened up. “I know.” Then as he was going to his chair by the far window, he stopped and sniffed the air. “Nothing subtle about that scent, is there? Which one is it, I wonder? Naughty or Nice, or Dither—such names they have nowadays.”

  “I don’t know what she calls it,” Tammy said, fanning the air with her dustcloth, “but it sure stinks. Hangs on like a spirit, ha’nting some place when the body’s gone.”

  Professor Brent sat down. “Does a spirit hang on?”

  Tammy studied him a moment. He was just talking to cheer her. A goodhearted man, he was. “I reckon it could,” she told him. “Grandpa always says anything could be.”

  “H’m.” Professor Brent laid his book face down on the arm of his chair as if he didn’t really want to read it. “He is always trying to reconcile science and religion, you say—has he any scientific explanation of the idea of the resurrection of the dead, I wonder?”

  “Yes, he’s got that figured out,” Tammy said, glad to take her mind off Pete and Barbara, walking out together, maybe holding hands under the trees. “It’s the Last Trump that does it. Gabriel’s horn.” She dusted briskly as she talked.

  “Indeed? And how?” He slid down in the chair with his legs stretched long before him and looked up at Tammy from over his glasses.

  “He got the idea from a Chautauqua lecture he heard one time. The man said you couldn’t destroy anything, according to science.”

  “The indestructibility of matter—yes, go on.”

  “And he said if you played the right sound on a fiddle you’d make a bell ring or a glass answer as if you had struck it with a spoon.”

  “Sympathetic vibration, yes.”

  “Well, he figgers it this-a-way—I’ve heard him explain it many’s the time. He says when Gabriel blows his horn, he will blow all the sounds there be and for every human critter there is a sound that makes his scattered parts ring back and rise up and draw together just the way they used to be. That’s how they rise.”

  “That theory offers food for thought, certainly. Science has made clear many phenomena as puzzling as any possible resurrection of the dead could be. Eventually everything will be explained. We have only scratched the surface so far.”

  “Then what?”

  Professor Brent blinked. “I don’t know that I have given much thought to that. It is rather remote.”

  “Grandpa says when humans have got it all figured out, they will see that ain’t the point.”

  “Oh?” Professor Brent sat up. He took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. “That is a rather disturbing thought—to a scientist. What is it then, if it’s not the point?”

  “It’s the beside-the-point.”

  “And what’s the point?”

  “Oh, just what the Lord’s been telling us all along, I reckon—to suffer long and be kind.”

  “I see—not the exploration of the nature of matter but the development of man’s spiritual nature.”

  Tammy nodded. “Grandpa says humans have got the serpent by the wrong end.”

  Professor Brent got up and began walking back and forth. “Why did I ever agree to give this new course? Just because I know physics, why must I be supposed to lecture about its implications? Why am I supposed to know about what the world is doing with the results of research? Economics, international relations, human relations, war, peace—what have I got to do with them? All I want is to be left alone in my laboratory.”

  Tammy studied him as he walked back and forth. He wasn’t really talking to her, he was only speaking out the things that had been worrying him, the new things he had to teach at his school. “It must be,” she said after a while, “must be you’ve come out to a kind of end, in your figgering. I reckon it might be the atom bomb is a kind of end, and what upsets you is finding out it ain’t the point—like Grandpa says. There’s still all these other things that ain’t settled yet.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening. “It used to be that a man was safe in his laboratory. A scientist could just dig in and enjoy himself, doing what he liked to do. Now he’s got to know philosophy, government, politics, religion, people—the whole thing’s come tumbling down on his head. And this course—why did I ever say I would give it?” He went and sat down in his big chair at the end of the room. “It’s all very disturbing,” he said, and took up his book with a little groan and settled down to it.

  Tammy finished dusting in silence. Now she had upset Professor Brent, and just when he had been trying to hope her up. It was like Mrs. Brent said—she upset everybody. “I didn’t mean to,” she said, laying the dustcloths neatly over the lower steps of the stepladder. But Professor Brent didn’t seem to hear, so she went slowly out, through the front door, and down the steps. Pete and Barbara were nowhere to be seen. She walked across the yard and looked toward the field. They weren’t there, either. Barbara’d have him off somewhere alone, where she could walk close to him and hold his hand.

  Tammy went on beside the kitchen-garden fence till she came to the corner where she could look over at Pete’s tomatoes in the cold frames, and at the others, the brave venturing ones, already set in the open. They were all beautiful in the warm afternoon sun. She hoped the Lord would keep a close eye on them and let them grow, even if it set Barbara up to get the money. She wanted it to be a sign to Pete that he could make out right here. That was the important thing. She reckoned it didn’t matter so much about herself, though it would be a powerful pleasant thing if the Lord could arrange things. She left it at that and turned away, somehow eased in her heart, now she had put it up to the Lord. Then she went on down the drive to the gate to wait for Ernie.

  12.

  ERNIE’S car tore along in a fury of speed. It went faster than the truck had gone the night of Tammy’s journey to Pete’s house. A cloud of dust whirled up like a cyclone and when they slowed on a curve, the dust enveloped them. The car had sides but no top and there was no getting away from the wind. Tammy sat with her hands clasped tight in her lap and her lips pressed close together. Her hair that she had brushed with such care blew back with their going, the wind tore her breath away. It blew her head empty and scattered her wits with its wildness.

  On the wide paved road cars came toward them and flashed by, sucking in the air like creatures hungry for breath. She could
see the going faces as they passed, strangers’ faces, all wiped out and emptied-seeming or else taut and strained with speed, like people fleeing from the noise of fear. Such a power of people, too, all going hell-bent to get somewheres they weren’t, each one at the wheel holding his life in slippery fingers and in the near moment of passing, holding her and Ernie’s too, that they had no right to. One little turn the wrong way and they’d all pile into kingdom come, strangers ending up close kin in their speedy riddance. It was a fearsome thing to think on.

  It was a new feeling, this being hurled forward by a force outside herself, by a power that was trapped yonder in the front of the car; throbbing and roaring. She felt like something turned loose from the hold of the earth; she knew now how it must be with the suns and the stars in the sky, going their courses as the Lord had set them on their way. The earth was stirring, too, in its circling path. Only the Lord had luckily contrived things so that it seemed to be at rest, hung upon nothing, like the Bible said. Otherwise how could one endure its motion through the firmament?

  The green fields flashed by, the hills carried them up and down. Then Ernie looked round at her for the first time. Quickly he stopped the car at the side of the road. “Say, are you carsick?”

  Tammy let out her breath. She had been holding it for a long time. “Never went so fast in all my born days.”

  “Good Lord, why didn’t you stop me? You poor kid!” He put his arm round her shoulders. “Gosh darn it, I feel like a heel. I was just trying out the motor—had it gone over yesterday. Say, I’m awfully sorry.”

  “That’s all right, Ernie. But it did feel like I had been caused to ride upon the wind. It came nigh to dissolving my substance, for sure.”

  Ernie laughed. “The way you say things!”

  Tammy did not answer. Pete had said she said the damnedest things. She hoped she wasn’t too queer-seeming to Pete. It didn’t matter about Ernie. Or Barbara or the rest.

  “You just lean back and we’ll take it easy from now on.” Ernie started the car again and held it down to a quieter pace. He turned one of the buttons in front of him and after a minute music poured forth to fill the car and overflow on all sides.

  Tammy drew a long breath and relaxed. The music enveloped them. It seemed to bear them along upon itself, keeping them safe from all harm. It swept up and down with a dip and a rise to match the way the road ran. It washed over her, sweet and pure enough to wash away the bitter taste she got when she remembered how Barbara was walking now with Pete.

  “Hawaiian music—like it?” Ernie asked.

  “Hawaiian! Did Pete hear it like this when he was there?”

  Ernie gave her a reproachful glance. “Pete! Does everything have to remind you of Pete?”

  “Yes.” Tammy leaned back against the red-leathered cushioned seat. “This is like riding in Elijah’s chariot of fire—it’s like going up to heaven in a whirlwind.”

  Ernie laughed. “I’m not aiming at heaven just yet, sugar, only at Fairville, population 1650. See the sign. Pop. 1650, it says.”

  Tammy sat bolt upright now, turning her head this way and that, trying to see both sides at once. There were houses set close together with green lawns before and between and flowers blooming. “Goshamighty, but you could send word clean through the town, one end to the other just by word of mouth, this house to the next.” Cars were coming and going and people were walking on a special walk made to keep their feet from dust and mud. “It’s a beautiful city,” she sighed.

  “That should make the chamber of commerce take heart, if they could only hear it.” He slowed the car to let her look the better, pointing out the sights till they came to where the filling stations began and the stores filled all the spaces. Then he turned into an open place with the nose of the car pointing toward a big sign that said, ZEEKER’S DRUGS. Another sign said, HAVE A COKE.

  “How about a soda?” Ernie said and flung the car door open. He came round and opened Tammy’s door for her.

  “Soda?” That was what Grandpa took when he’d et too free, but it might be that coming so fast was enough to give a body need of soda or something. Her own innards were kind of disquieted for a fact, but not that bad. “You got gas, Ernie?” she asked as they crossed the paved walk.

  He glanced back at the car. “Gas? Sure thing. Filled up.” He opened the door of the store and they went in.

  It was a longish room with high stools at one side against a high table and, in the middle, rows of round tables with little spindly chairs where people sat eating. There were glass-enclosed places after the manner of cupboards with pretties spread out to be looked at—clocks and silver spoons and rings in a velvet tray and gold watches, elegant beyond words. On top were things like toothbrushes, hairbrushes and jars of beautifying mixtures and bottles of perfumery, maybe even suchlike as Barbara smelled of. “Where are the drugs, Ernie?”

  “To the back. We’ll walk around and see them too.” Ernie was patient with her wanting to see everything. He was truly kind, besides being so nice-looking she felt a pride at being seen beside him and remembered to smooth down her hair with her hands.

  It was a wonder, how many bottles there were! It must be that living in towns made people sickly. And likely they ate too much, she thought, seeing how many sat eating now when it was not any mealtime but just the middle of the evening with the sun still high in the sky.

  “Let’s sit here.” Ernie pulled out a chair for her at one of the little tables. “I could do with a hot dog and soda. How about it?”

  “For me? No soda, thank you. My stomach’s all right.”

  Ernie blinked. Then a girl in a green dress with a little white apron came and said, “What’s yours?” She paid Tammy’s “Howdy,” no mind at all.

  “Couple of hot dogs, one without. And two chocolate sodas.” As the girl went away, he added, “You’ll like this kind of soda, Tammy.”

  After she had thought about it a minute, Tammy said, “I reckon there’s lots of things I ain’t—I mean, that I’m not rightly acquainted with.” Her eyes fell. “There’d be some as would laugh at me.”

  Ernie leaned toward her across the table. “If there’s ever anybody laughs at you, just let me at him.”

  He looked so fierce that Tammy had to laugh, and now he laughed too. “That’s right, don’t let’s get serious. We’re out for fun, sugar.”

  “Seems almost like you’re afeard of getting serious.”

  Ernie pushed a curly fair lock from his forehead. “Might be,” he said, closing up.

  Tammy studied him, considering how he kept running around having fun. He was like somebody dog-paddling to keep afloat. It might even be that he had a heaviness in his heart, but what it was she could not figger out. “Looks like everybody’s afeard of something.”

  “Does it?”

  Tammy nodded. “Even Mrs. Brent. Keeps her plucking at everything round about her.”

  “Not Mrs. Brent. Most people are scared of her.”

  “It’s dying she’s scairt of.”

  “My Lord!”

  “And Professor Brent’s afeard, too. Of coming out of his laboratory and seeing the world. He’s a fox, dug himself a hole.”

  “And me?”

  But Tammy looked away and would not tell him. If he did have a continual sorrow in him, he would not like to know it was not hid.

  “Say, did you ever eat a hot dog?” Ernie asked, his blue eyes dancing.

  “No, nor a cold one either.”

  “Think you can?”

  “I can if you can.” She looked down at the plate the girl had set before her. There was a long roll with a store-boughten sausage in it. Maybe she could eat it if she didn’t think about dogs too much. She could wash it down with the soda.

  “With, here—without, there,” Ernie said.

  The girl seemed to know what he meant, for she changed the plates, giving Ernie the one she had put down before Tammy.

  “Straws, please” Ernie said.

  “Seems l
ike you speak with foreign tongues, Ernie. Only it’s regular words, not Latin or anything.”

  “What words?”

  “With, without, straws—you can’t eat straws.”

  “Watch.” He took up the long thin papers from the table, opened them and there were the straws, all hollow. Then he showed Tammy how to suck up the soda.

  It was a wonder how good it tasted through a straw. “This here alone would be worth the trip, Ernie, drinking like this, and seeing how they wrap up the straws. That’s something fine. The man that thought that up was smart.”

  “Tickled with a straw,” Ernie said. “Never knew what that meant till now.”

  Tammy reckoned that he thought it too small a thing. But it wasn’t too small to pleasure a body. She ate in silence now, letting her ears take in the sound of voices, letting the feel of people soak into her. She hadn’t been amongst so many since long ago when Grandpa used to preach of a Sunday to the shanty folk. Those she had known. These were strange to her; they pressed in on her with their strangeness.

  “What are you thinking, Tammy?” Ernie asked.

  “People. How it would be to live all the time in their midst, like this. Seems it would rub the edges off, living so, making one like to another. All leaves on the same tree.”

  “Hm-m.” Ernie drank the last of his soda, his eyes upon her as if she was as much a wonder to him as all the sights she was wondering at.

  As they left, Tammy watched how he paid for their eating, and when they were outside, she said, “That cost too much, Ernie. Why, you could get a big sack of meal for that much money—and some side meat too. I wouldn’t have let you if I’d knowed.”

  “It was worth it, sugar. But this is the first time a woman ever complained to me about my spending money on her.”

  “Must be you’ve been going out pleasuring with the horseleach’s daughters.”

  “With the who?”

  “It’s in the Bible. They was always crying, ‘Give, give.’ Don’t you know the Bible?”

  “Had Freshman Bible. Got 65 in it. That’s all I know.”