Home Place

by Wright Morris

  I stopped in Howell’s drug store to buy a card showing the Platte River bridge, the north end of it, where a boy named PeeWee had once nose-dived in the sand. He didn’t break anything, as I remember, but there was gravel in his hair for the rest of the summer.

  “Those cards are three for a dime,” said the girl, and stopped chewing her gum to spin the card rack. Her head spun with it, silently, like a record about to play. “One is five cents,” she said, thinking I’d missed the point. “If you buy three you get one for nothing.”

  She was young enough, still in her teens, but she had the soft hanging flesh you see on the arms of middle-aged light housekeepers. I always seem to see those arms folded, like a machine in the resting position, waiting for someone to press a lever, or a button, and start it again. Looking at her reminded me not so much why boys leave home, as the fact that they had been leaving it, now, for a good many years. You can’t produce a girl like that overnight. It takes breeding to produce a very bad egg, as well as a good one, and the chickens left behind were getting inbred, a breed in itself. If you want to skim off the cream every night you’ve got to have the whole-milk every morning—Lone Tree didn’t have it, what she had was skimmed milk. Life in the woods was not what it used to be. The fountains spring up and the birds sing down, but everybody else took a train for the east, for New York or Chicago, or took a jalopy to Hollywood. A fine place, naturally, for the cream of the crop. I know why it is they leave Lone Tree, as I left it myself, and I’d leave it again, but it makes you wonder what the hell we’re coming to. This girl was further from the farm, from the old man and the home place, than the half million kids with the firm flesh, and the high pollen count, behind the counters and the windows of New York.

  “You want that card?” she said.

  I dropped a nickel on the counter.

  “You tell him they were three for ten?” The voice came from behind the half-door at the rear, and it swung open on a man in a candy-striped shirt. He was wearing a high starched collar and a black satin vest with several pencils, indelible pencils, over his heart. He began to roll a sleeve.

  “I told him three or four times,” she said. “About all I did was tell him.”

  “You show him the others?”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  The man stopped rolling his sleeve, opened a drawer beneath the counter and held up, half exposed, a picture card. As I watched, the lady’s fat bottom began to roll. He came forward three steps and said, “I can let you have them five for a dollar.”

  “Or a quarter a piece,” said the girl.

  “No thanks,” I said. “Not this time.”

  “What did I tell you?” the girl said, but he was already gone, the mirror on the door flashing the street light around the store.

  I came out with the card in my hand, and without thinking what I was doing I crossed the street, walked around the barber pole, and opened the screen. As I did, the chirping shears and the talking stopped. I looked through the door at a towheaded boy, his ears like handles on a tub, seated on the cushioned board across the chair arms. A small grey man, with a comb behind his ear, and spectacles the color of flecked isinglass, dropped them down on his nose to peer over the rims at me. He gave the boy three shots of the sweet smelling water, the color of a soft drink called Green River, then he put the bottle down, raked the comb through the boy’s short clipped hair. “Now you stand right there,” he said, and he turned for a good look at me in the mirror. He tapped the comb on his sleeve, slipped it behind his ear, and said—“You’re an Osborn. That’s what you are. You’re an Osborn.”

  “No—” I said, “I’m a Muney.”

  “That’s your name,” he said, “but you’re an Osborn. You got Will’s hair—what’s left of it,” he said, “but you’re Grace Osborn’s boy.” Although he’d already doused the boy, he gave him another three shots of the water, mussed his hair, then combed it straight again. I could see he was pretty well pleased with himself. As I say, I’m always a good deal cooler when I know the other fellow is a little excited—

  “You cutting that boy’s hair,” I said, “or you sprinkling it so it will grow?” That was good. He slapped the boy’s head as if it was the top of a fence post. Then he stepped back, squinting, as if he saw a loose hair. “And if I were you,” I said, following up my advantage, “I wouldn’t let the old man hear you talking like that.” I crossed the room and hung my straw on the hat tree. A dark-haired young fellow, in a white grocer’s apron, was sitting on the bench.

  “Freddy—” Eddie Cahow said, “you think I got any business takin’ money away from a man with as little hair as that?”

  “It ain’t legal,” Freddy said, “but I suppose you got to make a livin’.”

  “It lays heavy on me, now and then,” Eddie Cahow said, he turned the boy around to face the mirror and had another peck at me, to see if I could take it. As it happens, I can take that stuff pretty well.

  “People with high foreheads,” I said, “can’t help being the object of envy. Some people don’t have any. Their hair grows right out of their eyes.” Was that me talking? It sounded quite a bit like somebody else. I’ve got a pretty good car, and offhand I would say that the old man was taking quite a beating. “It’s eyebrows, these people have,” I said, “it isn’t nice wavy hair.”

  “When I looked up and saw him,” said Eddie Cahow, “I said B-O-Y, Boy! There goes an Osborn. Now I don’t know. Sounds quite a bit like somebody else.”

  “If I were you—” I said, “I wouldn’t let the old man hear me say that either.” I said ee-ther, though I think I’ve said eye-ther for the last fifteen years.

  “Funny as a crutch,” said Eddie Cahow, and unpinned the cloth from the boy’s neck. “There you are, Willie,” he said. “A genu-wine G-I Joe.”

  The boy sat there, looking at his knobby new head in the mirror. There was a short brush of hair at the front, like you find on a used doormat, otherwise he looked quite a bit like he’d been scalped.

  “It’ll grow back, won’t it?” the boy said.

  “It’ll grow in curly,” said Eddie Cahow, “if you pull the white hair from a marc’s tail.”

  “That ain’t the way I heard it,” I said.

  “How’d you hear it?”

  “You put the white hairs in a can of sand, and the can in a barrel of rain water. Fresh rain water,” I said.

  “What’ll you get?” said the boy.

  “Garter snakes,” I said.

  “That’s the truth,” said Freddy. “That’s the way I heard it.” I looked at him, and he nodded his head, soberly. He had a kind of drawl in his voice, with a blurred jews-harp nasal twang about it. I liked him. “How many good live snakes you average?” he said.

  “I used to get four or five green striped ones for every long white hair,” I said. “But it had to be white. These grayish lookin’ hairs gave me pollywogs.”

  “A good red hair,” he said, “will give you some mighty nice fat crawdads. But who wants crawdads?”

  “Not me,” I said.

  The towheaded kid got out of the chair and felt the top of his head, tenderly. He took the piece of wadded gum from behind his ear, sniffed it, put it in his mouth. “Tell your Daddy that’s sixty-five cents,” said Eddie Cahow. “It’s up a nickel. You tell him that.” The boy put a penny in the gum machine, got a pink ball. He put it in his mouth and stood facing Freddy and me, his eyes rolling. He had a twitch in his check that put quite a wiggle in his right car.

  “You better watch that,” said Freddy, “or one of these days you’ll just take off. Boy with cars like that is wastin’ his time on the ground.”

  “That’s because my hair’s short,” said the boy.

  “It’s what?” said Freddy.

  “It’s gone,” said the boy, and picked up his straw, from the pile of magazines, and went out.

  Eddie Cahow got a broom from the corner and swept up the boy’s yellow hair, left it in a pile with the broom on top of it
.

  “You in a hurry, Mr. Osborn?” he said.

  “I’m just holding a place for the kids,” I said. “I’ve got two kids. The old man will bring them along.”

  Eddie Cahow sat himself down in his chair and cranked it around so he faced the street.

  “I see you only got one chair now?” I said.

  “Fool kids—” he said, feeling for the brake, “made a merry-go-round out of it. Tried everything. Only way to stop it was take it out.” He looked where the chair had been and said, “How’s your daddy?”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “He marry again?” I nodded. “Was there issue from that union?”

  “No—” I said, and Eddie Cahow cranked around for a look at me. “You mind my askin’ a personal question?”

  “Why, no,” I said.

  “You comin’ back, or you just passin’ through?”

  I raised my hand and felt the scar, a long crease in my forehead, that I’ve had, now, for some thirty years. A privy door fell open and cracked me there, one Halloween. As Eddie Cahow was facing me I looked through the screen, spotted with flies, just as a farmer with a new straw stepped inside.

  “Howdy,” he said, absently, and hung his hat on top of my own. He raised his hand to his face and made a rasping sound in his beard.

  “Mr. Applegate,” said Eddie Cahow, “man here ahead of you is Mr. Osborn.” Mr. Applegate nodded his head, tipped over the cuspidor to spit. Then he straightened up and faced the mirror across the room.

  “Mr. Who?” he said.

  “Osborn—” said Eddie Cahow. Mr. Applegate crossed the room and sat down in the barber chair. Eddie Cahow tipped him back and spread the peppered cloth on his front, wiped the juice from his chin with the towel he held in his hand. “Says his name is Muncy,” Eddie Cahow said, “but his mother was an Osborn. When your mother’s an Osborn that’s what you are.” He wet the towel and packed it around Mr. Applegate’s face. “There was five of them girls,” he said. “Seems to me it was Will who married the young one. There was Violet, Marian, Mabel, Winona—” Eddie Cahow stopped to work up a lather.

  “Grace—” said Mr. Applegate, glowing through the towel. “Think he married Grace.”

  “Think he did,” said Eddie Cahow. “Thought of it myself.” He unwrapped the towel and said, “B-O-Y Boy! My she was pretty.”

  “They was all pretty girls,” Mr. Applegate said.

  “She sat right over there,” said Eddie Cahow, “right where you’re sittin’. No. No, she didn’t. She sat over there where she could look out—and you could look in.” Mr. Applegate raised his head, his face covered with lather, but Eddie Cahow put out his hand, pushed it down. “I suppose you had a look at the farm?” he said.

  “No—” I said, “not yet.” Then I said, “We no more than just got here. We’re staying out with the old man now.” Eddie Cahow slowly stropped his blade on the heel of his hand. Facing the mirror, he said—

  “It was such a nice place folks used to drive by just to look at it.”

  “That where they had the hedges,” Freddy said, “cut to look like birds and bees?” Mr. Applegate started up again but Eddie Cahow pushed him down. He tipped his head back and slowly shaved his neck.

  “John—” he said, “you wouldn’t happen to know who’s farmin’ the place now?” Mr. Applegate rolled his head to the side, pursed his lips, spit through the lather. He rolled it back without saying anything. “Makes a big difference,” Eddie Cahow said, “whether you know the people or not. If you know the people you get the feeling they’re still on the place.” he faced the mirror and said, “What you hear from the girls, Mr. Osborn? Now Winona was a fine girl—what you hear from her?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t write too often,” I said

  “But she’s well?” I nodded. “She ever get married?”

  “As far as I know Winona never got married,” I said. I cleared my throat and said, “No, she never got married. Think she took care of Grandpa till four, five years ago.”

  “She was a fine girl—” said Eddie Cahow, “but a little proud. A little God Almighty. I sometimes wondered if that had something to do with it.”

  “I think it did. When she got to know better it was too late.”

  “I just wondered if that was what happened,” Eddie Cahow said.

  He wet the towel and washed off Mr. Applegate’s face. He rubbed some bay rum between his hands and worked carefully on Mr. Applegate’s jowls, squeezing out a ribbon of tobacco juice, which he wiped off. “I always wondered,” he said, “if Winona got around to getting married. But I can see she wouldn’t. She probably passed the right man up right here.”

  “She all but said as much,” I said.

  Mr. Applegate raised his head and Eddie Cahow unpinned the cloth. He shook it out on the floor while Mr. Applegate looked at his face, front and side, then wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. Pushing up, he wiped the back of that hand on the seat of his pants. They were still dark in the seat, but fading light on the calves and thighs, and his watch made a pale full moon in his denim bib. He faced the mirror to put his new straw on, level, with both hands.

  “Pride goeth before the fall,” said Eddie Cahow. “The old man used to say that. He was quite a preacher.”

  “He was a God-fearin’ man,” Mr. Applegate said. We waited for him to go on but he turned and slipped his right hand into his pocket, took out a coin purse, with brass clips, and shook some change into his palm. He put a dime and three nickels into Eddie Cahow’s hand. Three two-penny nails he left out and put in the pocket of his shirt. It was ironed flat, and he had to pick at it.

  “Thirty-five now, John,” Eddie Cahow said, and pointed at the writing on the mirror. “Corn’s two dollars a bushel and a good shave is thirty-five.”

  Mr. Applegate had put away his purse. He blinked his eyes.

  “Say you give it to me next time,” Eddie Cahow said, and Mr. Applegate walked to the screen and raised his right hand to the man who was waving from the passing caboose. Then he opened the screen, stepped out, and walked away.

  “Where’s them kids of your’n?” Eddie Cahow said.

  I got to my feet and looked through the screen in the direction of the general store. A small crowd of people were standing around the old man. I thought he was just showing off—I could see the taffy colored head of Peggy—before I heard her long, swallowed whimper. The way she cries.

  “You go on with Fred, here,” I said, and pushed through the screen, tried to keep myself from running. If anything happened to that baby of hers, on a jaunt like this, there would be hell to pay. I hurried up and said, “Uncle Harry, anything I can do?” before I got close enough for a look at the kids. Then the old man turned, and I saw they were both covered with flypaper.

  When you’ve been spraying your screens with DDT, you’re apt to forget about the world where they cover the cookies and the cracker barrels with flypaper. More than likely, the kids thought it was something to eat. As I remember, I did, but I’d managed to keep the stuff on the front of my rompers, and out of my hair. Peggy’s soft brushed curls were full of it. There may have been an argument of some kind, as she had found it necessary to put her hand, covered with the stickum, smack in the middle of the boy’s head. The old man was trying to pull it loose. He was not tickled. When he looked at me his face was flushed.

  “These your kids?” he said. I nodded. “When kids as grown up as these never heard of flypaper,” he said, “they ain’t mine. They ain’t Muncys.”

  “They never saw the stuff before,” I said; “how do you expect them to know what it is?”

  “All I’m sayin’ is,” he said, “they’re your kids. They ain’t mine.” He folded his arms on his chest, forgetting about the dam flypaper. His hands were stuck beneath his arms. “Now what am I going to do?” he said.

  “All I know is,” I said, “they’re your hands, they’re not mine.” At that everybody laughed but the old man himself. He s
tood there, blinking. I got Peggy’s hand out of the boy’s hair, and my own pretty well covered, then I held the kids apart, one on each side of me.

  “You got ’em apart,” the old man said, “by stickin’ you all together.” He spit in the dust. “Now what you goin’ to do?”

  What I usually do, at times like this, is turn things over to my wife. I looked at the kids, with their matted hair, then I looked down the street where Eddie Cahow, standing at the screen, was waving at me. If it hadn’t been for that, the old man would have had me stumped. I left him there and crossed the street, dragging the kids, as I was in a hurry, and Eddie Cahow held the screen open for us. I dragged them in and said, “Mr. Cahow, if I remember correctly, you’re the man who can do something about this.”

  “Like ‘em shaved—or the clippers?” he said. The idea of Peggy with a shaved head—the idea of her mother, that is—made me lose my nerve. I just stood there. “Think it’ll be clippers,” Eddie Cahow said. “Seems I remember your head was pretty knobby.” he began to whistle as he took them out of the drawer.