But it was Crazy Jake that Robert heard, coming down the alley with his wagon and his old white horse. A long time ago, before Robert was born, Crazy Jake was held up by robbers who took his money from him and his watch, and hit him over the head. And because he was never able to think very well after that, he drove through alleys collecting tin cans for people. And he came at all hours. Robert had heard his mother say that lying awake sometimes in the middle of the night, she heard him.
“Hi, Jake!”
That was the thing about being on the roof. Robert could see Crazy Jake, who couldn’t see him. It was like being invisible. Searching steadily, Crazy Jake emptied the Morisons’ ashcan into his wagon. Then with his lips blowing, with his vacant face pressed to the sky, he drove on.
There was still part of the roof for Robert to climb—the upper level which extended out in the shape of a ledge. To reach it he made use of the rain-spout, the window frame, and the iron hook where the screen had been fastened. When he reached the top he was out of breath and a little dizzy with his accomplishment. The distance to the ground was considerable; enough to affect the pit of his stomach. He could reach out if he wanted to. He could almost touch the branches of the box elder. But also he might fall headlong and break every bone in his body. And they would all come running out of the house. His mother … she would cry and take on about him, for a change. But she couldn’t do anything. It would be too late…. Sometimes Robert fell from the roof of the garage, sometimes from the top of the flag-pole at the Chautauqua grounds. But in any case, people came running and took on over him.
At two o’clock Dr. Macgregor’s car drove up before the Morisons’ house. Until he could slip out of the grooves of his day-dream. Robert thought that Dr. Macgregor must be coming up the walk to see him. Then he remembered. It was Bunny who was sick, and this was the second time that Dr. Macgregor had come since morning.
Robert would have called out to him if he had dared. But he was not supposed to climb on this part of the roof, and they might hear him, inside. That was the trouble, he said to himself. Whenever they got into a state, it was always on Bunny’s account. They never had doctors for him. Not since he was run over.
It would be nice if his father read in the paper about a specialist who had discovered a way to make bones grow. Not really, of course. Because there wasn’t any way to make bones grow, after they were once cut off. But just supposing…. They would take him to Chicago to see the specialist. And after looking him over pretty carefully the specialist would tell his father and mother to take him home again and put him to bed in a dark room with the shades pulled down. Only, before they did that they’d better go out to Lincoln Park and see the animals.
After he had been home a week his leg would be put in a special cast, made of elastic plaster. They would have a nurse for him, of course. And nobody else could come into the room unless he asked for them. And maybe for days and days he wouldn’t ask for them. Just lie there and take dark green—no, dark purplish medicine through a glass tube, every hour and a half.
And the nurse’s name would be Miss Walker.
At the end of a week the specialist would come and measure the outside of the cast, which would have expanded maybe the fraction of an inch. His mother would cry, and they’d have to take her out of the room. Or maybe it had better be Irene. Because his mother wasn’t very easily upset. And the specialist would tell them he had to lie flat, that was the main thing. Lie flat on his back and not talk to anybody but Miss Walker (who was starched but not skinny, like the nurse that looked after him when he had his accident). Miss Walker was interested in football, so they talked about that, mostly…. Absorbed in these imaginary matters, Robert sat so still that the sparrows returned to fight with one another above the kitchen chimney…. When his stump began to hurt, they called the specialist by long-distance. He came and measured the cast and said it was all right: the stump was supposed to hurt. It was supposed to hurt now because the knee was forming. Within a month’s time, he said, Robert would have a new knee.
The new medicine was red and thick like cod-liver oil, and the first spoonful made Robert sick. For a while they had to give it to him with orange juice. But then he learned to hold his nose and swallow it right down while Miss Walker said That’s the stuff.
The cast began to get wider as flesh formed about the new bone. And the bone was growing, though it took time. He had to be patient and not think about it, because after a while the stump would begin to hurt again. And when it got to the foot, the specialist said it would hurt most of all.
Everything worked out just that way.
When it came time for them to remove the cast, they took him to the hospital. Dr. Macgregor was there—no, that was not right. There would be several doctors with masks on. Dr. Macgregor would give the anesthetic and the last thing he would remember would be Dr. Macgregor telling him to take deep breaths so they could hurry up and get it over with…. Sections here and there needed polishing, Robert decided. The end, especially, where he woke up and felt with his hand, through the covers. But on the whole it would do. At least until there was time to go over it.
For it was late in the afternoon. The sky all around him had lost its brightness and some of its color. And the heat had gone out of the tin roof, when he put his hands against it. Like an explorer long out of touch with the world, he advanced to the edge and looked down. Irene was there in the garden, alone.
There were signs, he told himself. If Irene had come outside now, it must mean something. Bunny’s fever had broken. Or perhaps, as Dr. Macgregor said, it had gone higher. Slipping and sliding much of the way, Robert went down to find out. When he reached the box elders, Irene turned and started toward the kitchen door. She did not see him, apparently. She was going inside. He opened his mouth to call to her, but some one else did. Some one called her by her name, in a voice that Robert had not heard for years.
“Irene …”
The gate swung open, at the back of the garden, and Boyd Hiller came inside. He passed so close by the box elders that Robert saw grey hair at his temples, and his grey unhappy eyes.
“Irene, I’ve been waiting out there for hours. I couldn’t go away—not without seeing you!”
Robert saw and understood everything, even the queer tightness in his side, which was jealousy. And the tears that sprang into his eyes. Irene had come out into the garden to meet Boyd Hiller, and Boyd Hiller would ask her to go back to him. And if she did that, Robert wouldn’t want to see her again. Not ever, he said to himself as he escaped between the trees and around the corner of the house. Not as long as he lived.
4
After dinner Robert had the library all to himself. His father and mother went upstairs immediately, but he did not join them, for fear of meeting Irene. With no homework to do, he ran his fingers along the top shelf of the bookcase and drew out The Scottish Chiefs. It was an old edition that had belonged to his Grandfather Blaney. The paper had turned yellow around the edges, and the print was small. But it began the way Robert liked books to begin, and by the second page he was submerged. The lamp cord was his only means of contact with the upper air. He clung to that, and shaped the words in silence as he read.
At eight o’clock his mother came downstairs and stood in the doorway a moment, looking at him. He did not know that she was there. Nor did he know when Dr. Macgregor came for the third time since morning. Robert was crossing the bridge at Lanark and saw the rising moon. Committed to him, as the worthiest of Scots, was the iron box which the false Baliol had given to Lord Douglas, and Douglas to Monteith. And he had five long miles to go before he could reach the glen of Ellerslie.
At ten o’clock Irene came and took the book away from him. He was too dazed; he had been too long in another world to remember that he had been avoiding her.
“It’s time for you to go to bed.”
“Who said so?”
“Your ancient and honorable father.”
Robert pulled himself up out
of the chair. If it had been his mother, he could have finished the part he was reading and maybe gone on into the next chapter to see what was happening there. But his father was different.
With men and horses moving beside him, Robert made his way up the stairs to the sewing-room, undressed, and got into bed. For the first time he perceived how still the house was, how full of waiting. When he was little, he used to be afraid of the dark. He used to think that unnamable things were about to spring out at him from behind doors. Sometimes it was merely the house itself, tense and expectant, that frightened him. He was not afraid any longer.
He could hear voices—Irene and Dr. Macgregor and the sound of Irene’s heels striking the stair. While he was waiting for her to come up again, he fell asleep.
It was still dark outside when he awoke. And no way that he could tell how late it was, or how early. Poised between sleep and waking, he got up to go to the bathroom. What he saw then when he hopped out into the hall was like a picture, and remained that way in his mind long afterward. There were lights burning everywhere, in all the rooms. At the head of the stairs Irene and his mother were standing with their backs to him. Because neither of them moved, Robert could not move; until Bunny raised up in bed quite calmly and said, “What time is it?”
Dr. Macgregor appeared from the bedroom across the hall and went into Bunny’s room at once. When he came out again, his face was relaxed and smiling.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “your angel child is going to get well.”
5
The next few days were like a party, it seemed to Robert. There were cut flowers from the greenhouse and callers every afternoon. And Sophie had to spend most of her time running back and forth with the teapot.
All his mother’s friends came to see her—“Aunt” Amelia, “Aunt” Maud, “Aunt” Belle—and stayed often until the stroke of six. Robert could not remember when the library had been so full of women drinking tea and talking about necklines. Or when his mother had been more happy, more like herself.
“Having a baby,” she said to him privately, “is no worse than spring house-cleaning. It isn’t even as bad. You don’t have to take the curtains down.”
He was not allowed to go out of the yard, and Irish couldn’t come there and play. But one way and another (letting him stay up later, having his favorite desserts, listening to what he had to say about the high school football team) his mother made it up to him, so that after a while he didn’t really mind.
What she wanted, apparently, was to make things up to everybody. She paid the paper boy six weeks in advance. And nothing would do but that old Miss Atkins, who came every Saturday with Boston brown bread and potholders (there were stacks of them in the linen closet), must stay to lunch. And the best blue china must be brought out for her.
Sophie alone was red-eyed and disagreeable. Robert and his mother agreed that it was on account of Karl. It was because Karl was going back to Germany.
“What I don’t see,” Robert explained, “is why she doesn’t go to Germany with him.”
“Perhaps she would,” his mother said, “if Karl asked her to.”
“Why does he have to ask her to?”
“For the looks of things.”
“Couldn’t she ask him?”
“She could but she won’t.”
“Then why doesn’t she just go by herself?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Whatever you do, don’t put that idea in her head. It might be years before I could get some one to make as decent pie-crust as Sophie does.”
“No,” Robert said, gloomily, “I won’t.”
“As for our going away, that’s arranged now—everything but the railroad tickets. And I do believe that with the least encouragement your father would go right down and get them. You know how he likes to have everything ready beforehand…. The only thing I have to do is to make sure that the baby is a girl. I don’t care, particularly. I like scissors and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails. But your father has his heart set on a girl. And if it turns out to be another boy, we may have to send it back. There’s no telling…. Irene is going to stay with you and Bunny at night, so that you won’t be alone…. If anything comes up, you’re to call Dr. Macgregor. Only you’re not to bother him unless it’s something important—unless, for example, the house is on fire, or you catch Sophie upstairs trying on my hats. Do you understand? … You’re old enough, Robert, to take on responsibility, the way your father is always saying. And by that I mean it would be a good thing if you’d change your underwear from time to time, and not leave the light burning in the basement…. Also I want you to look after Bunny while we’re gone. See that he goes to bed early even if you have to go when he does. He’s been through such a siege, you know…. And that he eats the things he’s supposed to eat, not just meat and potatoes…. And you’re to write once a week, and brush your teeth night and morning, and not make any more trouble for Irene than you have to…. And while I think of it, how do you like the name Jeanette—Jeanette Morison—for a little girl?”
With his mother Robert was almost never constrained or ill at ease. It seemed easy and natural for her to be talking about whatever it was that was on her mind. She didn’t stop what she was doing. Hardly ever. And that way he felt free to tell her all sorts of things. Because he always knew that she would go right on sorting the sheets and pillowcases.
But with his father it was different. He liked his father and he liked pretty much the same things his father liked. Old clothes, baseball talk, fishing, guns, automobiles, tinkering. When they were out in the country, his father and he turned to look at the same things. His mother liked trees and sunsets, but they liked horses plowing, orchards, and fine barns. They even liked the same kind of food, and put salt on everything, regardless. But if he came up behind his father and started to tell him something, he was always sorry afterward. It was never the way he had hoped it would be.
His father’s comments embarrassed him. I’m glad you told me, son. But now the best thing is to forget that as quick as you can. If you want to grow up to be decent and self-respecting, you haven’t time for any foul-minded talk like that. … Or, out of a clear sky his father would say Remember now, it doesn’t make any difference what kind of trouble you run into; your father will always be right here…. Something that Robert knew perfectly well. And that somehow there was no need for saying.
Or else it was something that he didn’t want to know. Like the time they were alone in the living-room and his father said, “I expect you’ve been wondering, Robert, why your mother has to go all the way to Decatur to have the baby—why she can’t have it here at home. There’s a reason, of course. A very good one.”
Robert had taken it for granted that his father would not talk about that…. And he had not been wondering why they were going to Decatur, because mostly his father and mother didn’t tell him why they did things and so he had long ago stopped wondering.
“When you were born, your mother had a pretty difficult time of it. There were several days when it didn’t look as though she would pull through. And then Bunny came along, and it was the same thing. But there’s a doctor in Decatur, a very fine specialist, who’s developed a new treatment in dealing with childbirth. I could explain it to you, but the upshot is that Dr. Macgregor thinks we ought to take her over there, even at considerable expense.”
“I see.”
When Robert stood up to go his father laid the evening paper aside and stood up also.
“Because it’s a pretty serious thing,” his father said, and put his arm rather awkwardly around Robert’s shoulder.
Together they paced, slowly, and without reason, from one end of the living-room to the other. After a time Robert began to feel the weight of his leg. He had only to say something about it and his father would stop, of course. But that would have meant giving in—admitting that there was something the matter with him.
So far as his mother was concerned, there wasn’t anything the matter wit
h him. If they were out fishing and had to crawl through a barbed-wire fence, his father looked back sometimes. Or called over his shoulder, Can you make it, sport?… But his mother went right on. She was like Irish in that respect.
And the same way with games. His mother took it for granted that he would learn to swim and dive, so he did. And everything that other boys did. And the only time she praised him was when he won the tennis singles at the Scout camp. The Scoutmaster was surprised and said how fine it was—meaning that Robert was handicapped with only one leg. And the news got into the paper, eventually, and his mother wrote: Very nice. Mailed your clean underwear this a.m. Are you getting enough to eat?
They Came Like Swallows Page 7