There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  No, there had been no warning, nothing to hint of the coming calamity. On this August evening, Frank hurried as usual. The last of the evening sun lay in the high tops of the trees like a dying fire. The streets basked, fuming, in a blessed violet shadow. Every verandah creaked with rocking chairs, muttered with the exhausted hushed voices of those resting from the heat. Silent lightning fled and leaped in the east, but the evening star was rising, tranquil and silver, in a rosy western sky.

  Frank wished to talk tonight of the evening courses he was to take in the night school that fall. He had discovered that he would miss the first class, because of the late hour when he would be free. He must have Paul’s advice, he had decided. His coarse blue work shirt was damp under the arms and about the wilted, open collar. His shabby trousers clung to his legs. His feet were slabs of flame. But he was hardly aware of all this in his hurry.

  The little house was blazing with gaslight. This, in itself, was strange, for Edward Hodge was extremely careful about wasting gas. Paul was waiting for him on the stoop. He rose slowly tonight, not with his usual quiet eagerness. Frank dropped down beside him and wiped his face with a dirty handkerchief. “Whew!” he exclaimed. “Was it hot today! I thought I’d cave in before six o’clock.”

  There was a splutter and a crackle in a nearby house, and a man’s shrill and tearing voice emerged from a phonograph: “Come, Josephine, in my flying maching, and it’s up we’ll go, up we’ll go—!”

  Not to be outdone, a phonograph across the street implored some coy female not to use her eyes disastrously, “for they don’t mean what they say!” A child screamed petulantly, an automobile chugged and honked down a neighboring street, a door banged, and shadows crossed and recrossed hot gas-lighted windows. A man’s angry voice sounded from a yard: “And if they think they’re goin’ to drag us into this war, they’d better guess again!” The street darkened, shadows falling like rain over the wan sidewalks and dusty asphalt the lightning leapt and shivered across the shining stars; the trees lifted their heads and murmured a deep question. Now there was a faint rumble of thunder, rising as if from the earth itself.

  Frank watched the lightning; he felt the dry cool breeze on his cheek; he listened to the thunder. He said: “There might be a storm. I hope so.”

  He saw that Paul had not seated himself, and he suggested that his friend do so. “I’ve a lot to talk to you about,” he said.

  Paul said, and his voice was very low: “I want to talk to you, too.”

  There was something in his tone, hesitant, dull and reluctant, which caught Frank’s sensitive ear. But still, he had no foreboding. He was only curious.

  Paul sat down, not with his usual lithe ease, but with heaviness. He clasped his hands on his knees and stared before him.

  “Two weeks ago we had news that Gordon had won a scholarship to a college in a little town down-state. We thought we might be able to get it transferred to a college here in town.” He paused. His hands tightened about each other. “But we couldn’t. Dad thought we might not, so nearly two weeks ago he went down there and got himself a job, just in case. You remember, he was away? I didn’t tell you anything then, Frank, because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to make it come true, even in words. I—I thought it might turn out all right. But it didn’t.”

  He stopped. He did not look at his friend, who had become deathly still.

  “We have to go down there in a hurry. If Dad wants that job, he’ll have to be there day after tomorrow. We are going on the five o’clock train. Tomorrow night.”

  Frank was to hear many calamitous words in his life, but few that struck him as mortally as these. They danced before him, outlined in the fire of acute agony. They were fists beating on his heart. They were blows that made him faint and numb. He felt something, thick and dry and choking in his throat. A coldness ran down his hot arms and legs and ended in a pool of pain in his feet. His hands gripped the splintery wood of the steps on which he sat. He said: “No. You can’t leave me.” The dryness in his throat shut off his breath and he coughed.

  Paul sighed. “Yes. We are going. Tomorrow.”

  The arc light spluttered fiercely and flooded sidewalk and tree with a vicious white blaze. One phonograph begged its honey to squeeze it tight. The thunder deepened its threat, and now a mist blew across the stars. The man in a neighboring yard raised his voice: “Why, if those Heinies ever tried to set foot on one inch of this country, we’d blast ’em off the earth in an hour! As my wife says, we didn’t raise our boy to be a soldier, and we don’t need soldiers. We need just our good ole American stren’th!”

  Then, borne on the rising wind, came the far howl of a passing train, heart-breaking, full of lostness and desolation and grief. It was a cry that spoke of sorrow and despair, of an eternal farewell, of something too terrible to be borne. Frank listened to it; the sound entered his body, tore into his heart, and he suddenly put his hands over his ears, and crouched in motionless torment on the step.

  Paul knew. He said gently: “It’s just a train. We hear it every night.”

  Yes, they had heard it every night, but Frank would never again hear it except with sadness, with misery, with a wild desire for flight. Never again would he hear it without lifting his hands, as if to cover his ears, without shivering. Never again would it come to him without that dreadful pang of bereavement.

  Finally he dropped his hands. There was nothing but the blaze of the arc light He said: “I shan’t see you again, then.”

  He would never dare play truant from that factory, for he would be dismissed. He dared not be dismissed.

  “I guess it’s better for you not to go to the station,” said Paul. He waited. Frank could not speak. Paul went on: “I’ll write. I’ll write every day. We can write to each other.”

  Frank whispered: “You never told me. You ought to have told me before.”

  “But I didn’t know, for sure. I didn’t know until this afternoon.”

  Edward’s voice came through the window: “Paul, son, you’d better finish your packing. We have a lot to do tomorrow, you remember.”

  Packing. Clothes folded into narrow boxes and bags. Clothes folded away with one’s life. A lid closed down like a coffin lid.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do,” Frank whispered. “I don’t know what I’ll do!”

  Paul murmured: “You’ll be going to school at night. You’ll be writing. And you’ll be writing me letters. Then, when you have some money you can go down there to see me.”

  His voice was so quiet, so steady, that Frank felt a sudden convulsive rage in himself. It meant so much less to Paul, this going, than it did to him! His own voice came, thick and stammering: “You—you don’t care! It doesn’t—mean—anything to you! You have your father and your brother, and your school. I—I have nothing!”

  The raw anguish in his words made Paul wince. But he said, bitterly, wonderingly: “How do you know how I feel? How can you tell?”

  Frank was silent. Paul put his hand hesitatingly on his friend’s arm.

  “You’ll send me your poems and stories, won’t you? We’ll write every day.”

  Edward called through the window pleadingly: “Paul! Please come in at once!”

  Gordon, from the depths of the house, shouted: “Come on in, you lazy wretch, and do your share of the work! If you think I’m going to put your dirty clothes in your bags you’re wrong.”

  “Paul,” pleaded Edward.

  “Come in while I pack,” urged Paul, rising.

  Frank stood up. He shook his head. He could not speak again. He looked at Paul’s face, blanched by the arc light. He looked as if he could not take his eyes away. His lips parted, but nothing left them. Then he stumbled down the steps and ran down the street. Paul watched him go. He called: “I’ll write, first thing—”

  Frank did not answer. His tall thin body disappeared in the dark shadows. Paul stood there a long time, watching the pit of darkness into which his friend had fled. Then he w
ent into the house.

  PART II

  “It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

  Turn whereso’er I may,

  By night or day,

  The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

  “The rainbow comes and goes,

  And lovely is the rose;

  The moon doth with delight

  Look round her when the heavens are bare;

  Waters on a starry night

  Are beautiful and fair;

  The sunshine is a glorious birth;

  But yet I know, where’er I go,

  That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.”

  —Wordsworth

  CHAPTER 28

  Long endless days. Silent, motionless days. The wheel of the seasons revolving, and always in grayness. Morning, noon, evening, night. Only paler or brighter shadows. Sounds approaching and receding, like meaningless tides under a dead moon. Faces appearing, falling away, and voices like the voices in a dream. Muteness heavy on the tongue, dryness in the throat, dimness in the eye, nightmare weight on arm and leg. Doors opening and shutting on endless corridors, and weariness a disease in the flesh.

  “I don’t know,” Maybelle said with anxious complaint to Francis, when Frank had gone to bed. “He takes no interest. Have you seen his face, lately? He looks like a corpse. He seldom speaks. He never goes out wandering, the way he did when that Hodge lad was here. He never writes any more, though I’ve tried to encourage him, blessed if I haven’t. It was better than nothing at all. He doesn’t eat a thing; leaves everything mauled around on his plate. Broods.”

  Maybelle’s natural maternal instinct was stirring feebly under her fears and chronic misery. Her newspaper spilled from her lap onto the floor. Francis was reading, but he glanced up irately, coughed deeply and hoarsely, took a sip of beer.

  “Moons around like a love-sick calf,” he said, with rancor. “Though I must say he brings his wages home regular. No complaint there. What about that going to night school that he yawped about so much last summer? Babbling Bill! Did he go? No! It was all talk, as usual. It’s always just talk with him. And you wanted me to send him to college! I know him better than you do. Spoiled.”

  He coughed again, violently, his withered face turning scarlet with the effort. He looked furtively at his handkerchief when he drew it away from his lips. Clear as crystal, there. But everyone in this blasted city had catarrh or bronchitis. Worse than Manchester.

  “You always spoiled him,” Francis continued, and Maybelle, under the accusation, glanced sideways with coy melancholy and an affected meekness. “Books. Dreams. Poems. Be thankful he’s forgotten the whole ruddy thing. He’s bucking up. If you’ll just leave him alone, all will be well. They grow gawky at that age. Like colts.”

  “I don’t know,” said Maybelle, in a sighing and petulant tone. “I’ve done my best. If I had it to do over again, I couldn’t do better. Good food. Good bed. Cleanliness. Yet he looks like a ghost. Takes no interest.”

  “Rot. He’s just growing up. Glad that Hodge lad went away. Bad influence. Always dreaming. Now he’s buckled down, and be thankful for it.”

  Frank sat on the edge of the bed, under the flickering gas-jet. Paul’s last letter lay on his knee. He bent over it, and read it as he had read and reread it a dozen times that day.

  “I don’t like the high school here. Dad is worried about it, because they have very poor teachers. But Gordon likes his college. The country is beautiful. Dad and I take long walks. It’s all hills, and it was wonderful last week when the trees were just coming out and we heard the tree-toads as you and I heard them that other spring. Remember? I try not to be discontented. Dad seems a lot happier here, and if the school were just as good as Lafayette, things would be all right. The people here had a Preparedness Day parade, and it was exciting. Dad says we are sure to get into the war, since Germany keeps right on sinking our ships. But I know he’s worried about Gordon being taken by the Army, if we go to war. I saw pictures of the Preparedness Day parade in Bison, and it, the streets I mean, looked awfully familiar. There was the Teck Theatre on Court Street. Remember when you and I saved our money and went to a vaudeville show there, and eould hardly see or hear anything, up in the gallery? But it was fun, anyway.

  “Dad doesn’t like his job. He gets two dollars less a week than he got in Bison. But he does look a whole lot happier. I suppose that’s because Gordon won that scholarship. We all go on picnics on Sundays, when the weather is good. There is a view from the hill—”

  Frank’s eyes blurred. But he did not move. He stared down at the letter, and the precise and careful writing jumped and danced. He continued to read:

  “In a lot of ways, I like this town better than Bison. It is quieter. There aren’t so many people. Do you think you could come down and visit me this summer? There’s a pretty good hotel near here, cheap—”

  Francis’ voice roared up the stairway, full of ire. “Turn off that blasted light! It’s half-past eleven, and you’ve got to get up in the morning. Think we’re millionaires?”

  Frank reached up and turned off the gas. He sat in darkness, the letter on his knee. The early summer moon lay on the window-sills, filled the coarse lace of the curtains with threads of silver. Trees gave soft voice outside. A couple passed, laughing. A lake steamer bellowed, far out over distant waters. The trees spoke louder in the increasing stillness. Then a train rumbled at a distance, and its long, melancholy howl passed under the stars. Frank bent forward, as if in agony, and covered his ears with his hands. The letter slipped unnoticed to his feet and lay there, blanched by moonlight. But even through his covering hands, Frank could hear the train; he could hear it still, long after it had gone. He fell over sideways on the bed, and lay there, staring blindly into the moonlit darkness, his breath hardly stirring over his lips. He heard his parents go to bed. He heard their door shut, the complaining of the springs of their bed. He lay there a long time until, fully dressed, his feet trailing on the floor, he fell asleep.

  “Of course,” said Mr. Farley (“taking advantage,” as Mrs. Clair grimly commented to herself), “it’s none of my business. But I like the kid. Your grandson, I mean. I didn’t like the look of him today. He’s sixteen, isn’t he?” Mr. Farley shook his head, and rocked slowly on the verandah. The street was awash with Sunday quiet and sunlight. “But he’s too pale and thin, I’m thinking. He never was a hearty kid, but he’s too tall for his age, and he looks sick. I gave Francis a bottle of iron pills for him last week.”

  Mrs. Clair embroidered vigorously. She said: “Growing. That’s all. He always was a burden to his parents. He was never all there, I used to think. It surprises me that he’s held his job in that factory. He gets seven dollars a week now, Francis says, and that’s not to be sneered at. They need the money.”

  Mr. Farley gave her an impatient and contemptuous glance, which she did not see. I pay him forty a week now, he thought. And he’s got most of what I’ve ever paid him in the bank. What for? What’ve they ever got out of living, those two? And they’ve killed something in that poor kid. The clothes he wears ain’t fit for a dog, I’m thinking. I’ve seen beggars better dressed, and him working six days a week in that damn factory. Bright kid, too. You need only look at his eyes. Something there. But you can’t expect these damn people to notice that! Doesn’t look like their kid at all. Wish I could do something for him. He used to like to talk to me, but now he never says a word if he can help it. When I try to speak to him, he shies away. I don’t like his face! I don’t like the look in his eyes. Looks as if he lost somebody, as if somebody had died on him.

  He said, aloud: “That kid ought to be in school, instead of working.”

  Mrs. Clair tightened her lips against her wrath, but she remembered in time that Mr. Farley was her son’s employer and her own star boarder. Yet the creak of her rocker was a sharp protest.

  “We don’t pamper our children, as you do in America,” she said, with hard condescension. �
��We believe in making them get out for themselves. Makes them independent. Puts them on their own bottoms. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. That’s what we always teach our children at home. Young Francis is sixteen. He’s a man. Besides, his parents need the money.”

  She arose with a stately sweep of her skirts. “Time for tea, I am afraid.”

  She sailed into the house and gave the screen door an emphatic slam. Her hair had turned a cold wintry white, but she was still as energetic and competent as ever. Mr. Farley said nothing, but continued to sit on the verandah. A car or two passed in a swirl of dust. Church bells rang a soft and melodious call to vespers. Mr. Farley sighed.

  I’d like to do something for the kid, he thought. But it’s no use talking to his father. He’s money-mad. God damn it! I’d like to do something! Maybe I ought to make a novena for him. I’ll have to ask Father Walsh if you can do that for a Protestant.

  He stood up. If he hurried, he’d be in time for vespers. He hadn’t made his confession for two weeks now. Funny thing, thinking of prayers for a Protestant kid, when he hadn’t made his confession for two weeks! Couldn’t expect God to listen to an unregenerate sinner.

  A gramophone in a neighboring house began to shrill out: “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier!” A child clattered down some stairs. The sky was golden in the west.

  Well, thought Mr. Farley, grimly, maybe you didn’t raise your boy to be a soldier, ma’am, but it looks pretty damn sure, now, that he’ll be a soldier anyway!

  CHAPTER 29