Herbert Rowbarge

by Natalie Babbitt

  “What you gonna do till you get to twenty-one?” asked Herbert, much impressed.

  “Well, gee, I guess get a job in Gaitsburg, like I was gonna do anyhow, save my money, go out to the farm and see what’s what,” said Dick, his gray eyes large with the wonder of it all. “Bertie, listen, I’ll work real hard and then, when you get out, you’ll come and live with me. Gee, you never lived nowhere but here, you got no idea what it’s like. I can’t hardly remember, myself. Listen, I’ll send you some money, too, to have all your own. And I’ll come and see you all the time. You’re my brother, Bertie, and I’m gonna take real good care of you, see if I don’t.”

  And then, overcome with the sudden gift of a future, and his joy in his plans for sharing it, he put his arms around Herbert, hugged him close, and wept.

  So the two were parted and that night the cot next to Herbert’s was empty. But, instead of feeling lonely, Herbert went to sleep at once and dreamed, not of Dick, but of the boy in the entrance-hall mirror. And this time, as they floated off smiling together to that dim and watery place so far away, he found that he could hear, just barely, all around them, the music of the merry-go-round.

  Saturday, May 24, 1952

  Babe and Louisa, on this wet spring morning, meet by accident in an aisle at Ellison’s Drug Store. Each wears, tied under the chin, a rain hat, a kind of see-through plastic kerchief strewn with painted daisies, to protect the fresh construction done at Miriam’s House of Beauty on the day before. Each carries a yellow umbrella, closed and dangling from a wrist, each wears a rubberized yellow cape designed, by someone clever, to recall the type seen sometimes on policemen. These costumes were intended to be cheerful—they had agreed that yellow was cheerful for stormy days—but the yellow is the yellow of pencils, not butter, and the final effect is violent, the more so for the dim, wet gloom of the morning, which suggests, like church, that something softer would be more respectful.

  It is dark outside, more like twilight than morning, and Mr. Ellison has turned on the lights that hang from the ceiling low over every aisle. This makes the rows and rows of bottles, tubes, and boxes seem intimate and cozy, and Babe and Louisa, wandering among them, don’t see each other—despite the hard brilliance of their rain gear—till, near a rack of corn pads and thick elastic stockings, they meet face to face. It happens very seldom, a chance encounter like this, and so they pause, gasp, and embrace each other delightedly.

  “Oh, Babe, how nice!” Louisa exclaims. “What are you doing here?”

  Babe holds up a list. “I’m doing cough drops, Vicks, and a new thermometer,” she says. “Aunt Opal’s decided to have a cold. How about you?”

  “I’m getting aspirin,” says Louisa. “For Daddy. He takes them all the time now.”

  “He’s still got those headaches?”

  “Yes,” says Louisa, “and this morning he had a sort of dizzy spell.”

  “I’m just sure it’s his eyes,” says Babe. “Remember when Aunt Opal got her bifocals? She was dizzy for a week.”

  “You’re probably right, Babe, but he claims his glasses are fine,” says Louisa. “I don’t know what to do with him.”

  “Leave him alone,” Babe advises. “He’s not so old he can’t take care of himself.”

  “I guess so,” says Louisa. “But, you know, sometimes I wish Uncle Stuart was still around. It used to be so handy having a doctor in the family. I mean, remember how he could always just casually come over and look at Daddy on the sly?”

  “I think Daddy always knew what he was up to, though,” says Babe. “Uncle Stuart wasn’t the subtlest man in the world.”

  At the other end of the aisle, a round little figure appears and flaps an arm. “Hoo hoo—Bleeza!” it calls, and hurries toward them. It is Gracie Hannengraff, nee Rinehouse, and they have known her all their lives. Today they are happy to see her. Thirty years ago, seeing her filled them with despair. For Gracie was the prettiest girl in the class and, by virtue of her name, was always seated next to them, so that all through school they were made to feel thick and plain and clumsy. However, in the intervening years, Gracie has been rising like bread dough and is now completely spherical. She wears a rain cape, too, today, with a floral design, and resembles a toaster in a cozy. But the nice thing is that Gracie is much more comfortable now than she was before. Thin, she had enemies. Fat, she is loved by everyone. “Bleeza!” she explodes, arriving at the corn-pad rack and bouncing with excitement. “Guess what! Oh, you’ll never guess!”

  “What?” they say together. “What?” They drop easily into the wide-eyed eagerness of their girlhood, just as they accept, without thinking, the name “Bleeza,” coined in grammar school by desperate classmates who could never tell them apart and needed a term that meant either or both, to which either or both could answer. It is rather like Boanerges in the Bible; less dramatic, perhaps, but just as handy.

  “Tammie’s engaged!” gasps Gracie, and at once bursts into tears. “My baby! Getting married!”

  “Oh, Gracie,” they say, “that’s wonderful! Who’s she marrying?”

  “Oh, dear,” says Gracie, mopping at her face with a handkerchief which looks as if it had done this service several times already in the last hour. “Excuse my blubbering, I’m just so happy. She’s engaged to Joe Festeen! Can you believe it?”

  “Joe!” says Babe. “How lovely! Is he back from Korea?”

  “He only got back yesterday,” says Gracie, reaching over her alpine bosom to clasp her little hands at her heart. “And he came right over, all spiffed up in his uniform, and—well—first thing I knew, it was all settled.”

  “Oh, Gracie,” says Louisa, “imagine them being old enough! That makes me feel a hundred.”

  “Me, too,” says Gracie, “but isn’t it fun? Thank God he came back in one piece, not like his poor grampa. Well, I got to go—but I’m so glad I ran into you, Bleeza. I knew you’d be happy to hear the news.” And she rolls off down the aisle again and disappears.

  “For goodness’ sake,” says Babe. “Joe Festeen and little Tammie Hannengraff. I can’t believe it.”

  “Gracie’ll be a grandmother one of these days,” says Louisa. “And we’re not even a mother. Or an aunt. You’d think Walter would get married, wouldn’t you,” she adds in exasperation, “instead of larking around the way he does. I would like to be an aunt!”

  “Well,” says Babe, “he certainly won’t do it to please us. Oh, and that reminds me. Guess what he did do. For Daddy’s birthday.”

  “Oh, dear,” says Louisa. “What?”

  “He came over last night for supper,” says Babe, “and he told me he’s hired some man from the airfield down in Dayton to fly over the park and take a picture of it. From above. And he’s going to have it blown up and framed for Daddy’s office. What do you think of that?”

  Louisa’s mouth has dropped slightly open, her eyes are round. “Oh, Babe! How—imaginative! But that’s going to make our bathrobe look sick!”

  “I know,” says Babe grimly.

  They stand for a moment in silence. Outside, there is a sudden blink of lightning and over their heads the long fluorescent bulbs dim briefly and then, with a snick, resume their glaring. “Oh, well,” says Louisa at last. “We did the best we could.”

  Together they walk to the front of the store and pay for their purchases, and then they stand at the door, looking out at the rain. “Gracie’s fatter than ever,” says Louisa.

  “I know it,” says Babe.

  Underneath their rain capes, both suddenly feel thin, and both hearts swell with a love for Gracie that eclipses, for the moment, their annoyance with Walter.

  “It’s so nice for her,” says Louisa. “About Tammie, I mean. I’m really glad.”

  “Me, too,” says Babe. “She looked so happy.”

  “It’s funny,” says Louisa generously. “In some ways she’s just as pretty as ever.”

  “Oh, Louisa,” says Babe with a laugh, “you’re such a good old goose.” She gives h
er sister’s arm a squeeze and then she says, “Come on—we can’t stay in here forever.”

  They push through the door, snap up their yellow umbrellas, kiss, and go their separate ways.

  Fall 1898

  Herbert Rowbarge sat on a bench in the Gaitsburg depot and drummed his fingers on the varnished oak armrest. It was hot for October, and though the stationmaster had propped open the depot’s one door, there was no breeze at all to stir the fullness of cigar smoke and despair that hung in the long room. Herbert did not want to be inside, where the stationmaster, the flies, and the fat man on the bench opposite all seemed too much aware of him. But he didn’t want to be outside, either, where a boy and a girl about his own age were standing on the platform. It was better—no, not better, just not as bad—to be stared at by the fat man than by the two holding hands beside the tracks.

  Herbert hated Gaitsburg. There was nothing about his appearance to single him out as different, as A Boy From The Home, but Gaitsburg still made him feel he was wearing a sign that said, “Orphan Here,” and that was the same thing as a sign that said, “Nobody.” The scowl that came so easily to his face was there now and he shifted his weight restlessly. It was all Dick’s fault that he was sitting here. And what would Dick be like when he got off the train? All Herbert knew from the letter from Washington was that Dick had been wounded at a place called Daiquiri near Santiago, but that he would recover. Recover! Good grief, what did that mean? Dick had been three months in a hospital in Florida, and had scrawled a dozen letters, but the letters were full of longing for his wife and Herbert and the farm, and said nothing about his physical condition except that he was “getting better.” Finally he had written to say they were sending him home; he would arrive on Tuesday, the 7th, or Wednesday.

  It was Wednesday now, Wednesday afternoon. Herbert had come to Gaitsburg five times to meet trains, and Dick had not been on any of them. This one would be the sixth, and it was late, just like all the others. Herbert’s scowl deepened. It was all so dumb. Dumb and unnecessary.

  Dick Festeen had gone back to his family’s farm, and had worked even harder than he’d promised he would. He fixed the leaks in the farmhouse roof, cleared the mess from a field left fallow for years, and planted it to oats and potatoes. All this he accomplished on the very small savings his father had left behind at the Ohio Valley Bank in Gaitsburg. Things had been looking pretty good for Dick, and best of all he fell in love with Lollie Arbogast, a girl he’d known in grammar school, and married her in ’97.

  Then, in April of ’98, just two months before Herbert’s eighteenth birthday, Dick came to see him, on his regular weekly visit, all agog. “Bertie,” he announced, “I’m joinin’ up.”

  “Joinin’ up what?” asked Herbert. They were of a height now, and could look each other in the eye, though Dick, at twenty-five, was still far thicker.

  “Why, there’s a war down in Cuba and a fella over to Portsmouth’s raisin’ a regiment! Didn’t you hear about it?”

  “Nope,” said Herbert. They’d been standing on the steps of the veranda, and now Herbert sat down and stretched his long legs out to the weak spring sun. “We don’t hear nothin’ in this place. You know that.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Dick, sitting down beside him, “I’m goin’. I can’t hardly believe you didn’t know about it. They sunk a big ship of ours down there. The Maine.”

  “Who did?” asked Herbert.

  “Why, Spain, Bertie! Spain!”

  “Oh,” said Herbert. He’d heard of Spain, and he’d heard of Cuba, but they weren’t real places to him, and the notion of going off to war about them seemed silly. “What you gonna do with Lollie?” The notion of Dick with a wife was almost as silly as the notion of Spain and Cuba, but Herbert had had longer to get used to it. He had been allowed to go to the wedding, and though he didn’t think much of Lollie Arbogast, still, there hadn’t been a thing he could do about her. Dick was smitten, and that was that.

  “Well, look, Bertie, here’s what I was thinkin’,” said Dick, leaning toward him earnestly. “You’ll be gettin’ out in a coupla months, and I sure wish I was gonna be here for that day, you know that, but I’ll be in the army, and … well, I was hopin’ you’d go out to the farm and be with Lollie while I’m gone. I mean, that was what we was gonna do anyway, you comin’ to the farm and all, and in case you think just because I’m away you shouldn’t do it for some reason, I wanted to tell you the plan ain’t changed. That farm’s half yours as long as I got breath in my body, and all yours after that, and I’d sure feel better if I knowed you was out there with Lollie while I’m gone.”

  “Sure, I guess so,” said Herbert warily. “I got nothin’ else to do, anyway. You want me to sort of take care of Lollie for you?”

  “Well, yeah, Bertie,” said Dick, stroking his wide jaw thoughtfully. “She don’t want to go home to her mother, but she don’t want to wait it out alone, either. She ain’t too happy about me leavin’. But you’re her brother-in-law, and I figure it’ll be okay if you’re there with her.”

  It had not been okay. For Lollie turned out to be pregnant and was sick almost all the time. Now, in October, she was in her seventh month and was having trouble getting about, for her legs and feet were swollen up like sausages. Herbert had to do everything, and though Lollie was a good sport and didn’t complain, still, her dull eyes, ringed with violet circles, looked so unhappy that Herbert could scarcely bear to look at her. He did not like sickness.

  And he did not like Lollie’s mother, Mrs. Arbogast, either, a stringy, faded woman who was moved to tears by good and ill alike. She wept with equal feeling for Dick’s heroism in joining up, and for his heartless abandonment of Lollie. She wept for the joy of Lollie’s approaching motherhood and for the misery of her “women’s problems.” And she wept for Herbert’s orphaning, and his obvious hatred of her pity. Her floods were as predictable as the river’s, and tried Herbert’s patience, which was slim at best, to the utmost. True, she brought fresh pies, and whole roasted chickens and hams, to the farm every week, and helped with the wash and the cleaning. Without her, and without the assistance of Mr. Arbogast while Dick was off in Cuba, the farm would have foundered and leaned once more toward decay. Herbert knew all this, but he disliked Mrs. Arbogast anyway.

  He disliked the farm even more: the ceaseless demands of the oats and potatoes, the brainless chickens with their fussy footwork and beady-eyed mistrust of him, the unshakable calm of the cow. He burned to get away. But he had promised Dick, and so had had to comfort himself with planning what they would do as soon as Dick returned. Now, however, Dick had been wounded and there was no telling what that might mean. Herbert shifted again on the hard bench. He could almost feel ropes tightening around him, stifling him, holding him forever to Gaitsburg and the farm.

  The thin frame building began, almost imperceptibly, to tremble, and from far down the tracks came a high, faint shriek. The stationmaster sprang out from his cubicle and checked his pocket watch against the big round clock above the door. “Here she comes!” he cried to Herbert and the fat man. He settled his cap more firmly on his head and blew his nose, a nose so large and pocked and red, with nostrils so cavernous, that Herbert turned his eyes away quickly. But the stationmaster didn’t notice. His cheeks were bright with pleasure. “Some dandy sight,” he crowed. “Every durned time!” And he hurried outside to the platform.

  Herbert stood up and followed as far as the doorway. The so-called romance of the rails was in no way romance to him, and he leaned unimpressed against the doorframe as the great iron monster rolled bellowing toward him down the track, snorting steam and gritty black cyclones of smoke. “Thar she blows,” yelled the fat man cheerfully. “’Scuse me, sonny, I got to get by.” Herbert moved to let the fat man out and leaned again, closing his eyes against the grind and screech and the blasts of air as the engine shivered to a halt. From a single coach, hooked in among the boxcars, a conductor swung down importantly and set a footstool on the platfor
m just under the metal steps. Herbert leaned and watched. Maybe this time. He’d better be on it this time.

  A woman with a child climbed down, the conductor gallantly assisting. A drummer with straw hat and sample case. A man in a uniform, a one-legged man, with whom the conductor was solicitous and gentle. Another drummer with … but wait. The one-legged man in the uniform, hunching up the platform on a crutch—he had taken off his hat and was waving it at Herbert. His face was tight and pale, but the bulk of the body, the sheaf of yellow hair, were unmistakable. “Bertie!” cried the one-legged man. “Bertie—thank God!”

  It was Dick.

  “But how’re we gonna manage, Dick, with you all busted up? Good lord, I’m no good at farming! I just don’t see how we’re gonna manage!” Despair clogged Herbert’s throat, and he turned away to pace the little kitchen.

  Dick sat with Lollie at the table, exhaustion, pain, and joy keeping his gray eyes wet. “We’ll manage fine,” he said for the tenth time, with stolid, sweet confidence. “You’re just tired, Bertie, after all the responsibility. You’ll see—when the baby comes, Lollie’ll feel much better, won’t you, honey? And we’ll all pitch in and make this the best ol’ farm in the valley!”

  But Herbert flung the back door open and rushed out into the cool October dark to stand alone, quivering, by the chicken yard. His first thought, at the depot, had been, “Now hell be willing to let the farm go. How can a man with one leg be a farmer?” But now, now, it was plain that Dick loved the farm more than ever—and that Herbert would have to stay, could not even go away alone and leave him to it. There were his plans, he had his plans! Dick must be made to see. But not tonight. Not for a little while yet. It had better be soon, though. He clutched the rumpled chicken wire and wondered how long he could wait.