by Peter Taylor
At the foot of the porch steps, Dwight was listening hopefully for the sound of Kitty’s footsteps on the stairs inside. He remained there for perhaps two or three minutes, with his eyes fixed in a trancelike gaze upon the mass of broad-leaved forget-me-nots. (They were forget-me-nots, he had decided.) Presently he saw out of the corner of his eye, without really looking, that Dad Parker had produced the morning paper from somewhere and was offering him half of it, holding it out toward him without saying a word. At the same moment, out in the rock pump house, the pump’s electric motor came on with a wheeze and a whine. Someone had flushed the toilet upstairs. It was the first flush since Dwight came downstairs, and so he knew that Kitty and the children would not be along for some minutes yet. There would have to be one more flush.
As he went up to the porch to receive a section of the paper, the pump continued to run, making a noise like a muffled siren. That was its good sound. It wasn’t thumping, which was its bad sound and meant trouble. Probably the low ebb in understanding between Kitty and her mother this summer had been during the second dry spell in July. Kitty had come to the mountain with the intention of relieving her mother of the laundry, as well as of all cooking and dishwashing. Those were the things that Mother Parker had hated about the mountain when Kitty was growing up. She had missed her good colored servants in Nashville and couldn’t stand the mountain “help” that was available. But it seemed that Kitty didn’t understand how to operate her mother’s new washing machine economically—with reference to water, that is. During that dry spell, Mother Parker took to hiding the table linen and bedsheets, and the old lady would rise in the morning before Kitty did, and run them through the washer herself. No real water crisis ever developed, but, realizing that Dad Parker would be helpless to deal with it if it did, Dwight got hold of the old manual that had come with the pump, when it was installed a dozen years before, and believed that he understood how to prime it, or even to “pull the pipe” in an emergency. Having learned from the manual that every flush of the toilet used five gallons of water, he estimated that during a dry spell it wasn’t safe to flush it more than three times in one day. And as a result of this knowledge it became necessary for him to put a padlock on the bathroom door so as to prevent Dwight, Jr., aged four, from sneaking upstairs and flushing the toilet just for kicks.
It seemed that the pump, like everybody else, was trying to make only its polite noises this morning. But just as Dwight was accepting his half of the newspaper, the pump gave one ominous, threatening thump. Dwight went tense all over. There had been no rain for nearly three weeks. There might yet be a crisis with the pump. In such case, brother Henry would be no more help than Dad Parker. It could, conceivably, delay Dwight’s departure a whole day. If that happened, it might entail his pretending to get off a telegram to the chairman of his department. Moreover, he would have to do this before the eyes of brother Henry, in whom Kitty, in a weak moment, had confided the desperate measure they had taken to bring the summer visit to an end. It was Henry, lurking there in the shadows, who really depressed him. It seemed to him that Henry had come up for weekends this summer just to lurk in the shadows. Had he joined in one single game of croquet? He had not. And each time Dwight produced his miniature chess set, Henry had made excuses and put him off.
Dwight looked into Dad Parker’s eyes to see if the thump had registered with him. But of course it hadn’t registered. And when the motor went off peacefully, and when everything was all right again, that of course didn’t register, either. To Dwight’s searching look Dad Parker responded merely by knitting his shaggy brows and putting one hand up to his polka-dot bow tie to make out if anything was wrong there. Everything was fine with the judge’s tie, as it always was. He gave Dwight a baffled, pitying glance and then disappeared behind his half of the morning paper.
II. THE GARDEN HOUSE
Dwight sat down on a little cane-bottomed chair and tilted it on its back legs. He opened his half of the paper. His was the second section, with the sports and the funnies. He had learned early in the summer to pretend he preferred to read that section first. Dad Parker had been delighted with this, naturally, but even so he hadn’t been able to conceal his astonishment—to put it mildly—that a grown man could have such a preference. To the judge it seemed the duty of all educated, responsible gentlemen to read the national and international news before breakfast every morning. He liked to have something important—and controversial, if possible—for the talk at the breakfast table.
Dwight, tilting back in his chair and hiding behind his paper, was listening for the pump to come on again. He felt positively panicky at the prospect of staying another day, or half day. One more flush of the toilet and he would be free. To think that five gallons of water might stand between him and his return to his own way of life! He found that he could not concentrate on the baseball scores, and he didn’t even try to read “Pogo.” Then, at last, the pump did come on, and it was all right. And again it went off with a single thump, which, as a matter of fact, it nearly always went off with.
Dwight sat wondering at his own keyed-up foolishness, but still he found it irksome that Dad Parker could sit over there calmly reading the paper, unaware even that there was such a thing as an electric pump on the place. It seemed that once the pump had been installed, the judge had deafened his ears to it and put it forever out of his mind. This was just the way he had behaved during the worst dry spell. But Dwight understood fully why no water shortage could ever be a problem for Dad Parker. To begin with, he watered his flowers only with rain water that he brought in a bucket from the old cistern—water that was no longer considered safe for drinking. And Dad Parker, personally, still used the garden house.
The garden house! Dwight was alarmed again. The garden house? Was there any reason for the thought of it to disturb him? There must be. His subconscious mind had sent up a warning. The garden house was connected with some imminent threat to his well-being, possibly even to his departure this morning. Quickly, he began trying to trace it down, forming a mental image of the edifice itself, which was located a hundred yards to the east of the cottage, along the ridge of the mountain. This structure was, without question, the sturdiest and most imposing on the Parkers’ summer property. “Large, light, and airy, it is most commodious”—that was how Dad Parker had described the building to Dwight when he and Kitty were first married and before Dwight had yet seen the family’s summer place. And Dwight had never since heard him speak of the building except in similar lyrical terms. Like the pump house, it was built of native rock, quarried on the mountainside just three or four miles away; but it had been built a half century back, when masonry work done on the mountain was of a good deal higher order than it was nowadays. Family tradition had it that one spring soon after Kitty’s grandfather had had their cottage built, the men of a local mountain family had constructed the garden house for the grandfather free of charge and entirely on their own initiative. It was standing there to surprise “the Old Judge,” as the grandfather was still remembered and spoken of locally, when he and the family came up to the mountain that July. The Old Judge had not actually been a judge at all, but an unusually influential and a tolerably rich lawyer, at Nashville, and he had befriended this mountain family sometime previously by representing them in a court action brought against one of their number for disturbing the peace. They had repaid him by constructing a garden house that was unique in the whole region. Its spacious interior was lighted by rows of transom windows, set high in three of the four walls. Below these windows, at comfortable intervals, were accommodations for eight persons, and underneath was a seemingly bottomless pit. Best of all, the building was so situated that when the door was not closed, its open doorway commanded a view of the valley that was unmatched anywhere on the mountain . . . It was there that Dad Parker usually went to read the first section of the paper, before breakfast every morning. And frequently he read the second section there, after breakfast. Suddenly a bell rang in Dwi
ght’s conscious mind, and the message came through. Dad Parker had, this morning, already read the first section of the paper once! From the east dormer window, half an hour before, Dwight had seen him returning from the garden house, paper in hand. It was extremely odd, to say the least, for him to sit there poring over the news a second time. Usually, when he had read the paper once, he knew it by heart and never needed to glance at it again—not even to prove a point in an argument. What was he up to? First he had hidden behind the banisters, now behind the paper.
Involuntarily, almost, Dwight tilted his chair still farther back, to get a look at Dad Parker’s face. The chair creaked under his weight. Remembering he had already broken one of these chairs this summer, he quickly brought it back to all fours. Another broken chair might somehow delay their getting off! The chair wasn’t damaged this time, but the glimpse Dwight had had of Dad Parker left him stunned. The old gentleman’s face was as red as a beet, and he was reading something in the paper, something that made his eyes, normally set deep in their sockets, seem about to pop out of his head.
By the time the front legs of Dwight’s chair hit the floor, the judge had already closed the paper and begun folding it. As he tucked it safely under his arm, he looked at Dwight and gave him a grin that was clearly sheepish—guilty, even.
But deep in the old man’s eyes was a look of firm resolve. A resolve, Dwight felt certain, that he, Dwight, should not under any circumstances see the front section of the paper before setting off this morning. Dwight couldn’t imagine what the article might be. He had but one clue. He had observed, without thinking about it, that the judge had had the paper open to the inside of the last page. That was where society news was printed, and it was one page that the judge seldom read. Dwight realized now that Dad Parker had given him the second section as a kind of peace offering. And while going through the first section again he had stumbled on something awful.
From inside the cottage there came the sound of Kitty’s and the children’s footsteps on the stairs.
III. AN OLD BACHELOR BROTHER
Henry Parker, just inside the screen door, heard Kitty and her children start downstairs. He pushed the door open and went out on the porch. Through the screen he had been watching his father and his brother-in-law, hiding from each other behind their papers. He believed he knew precisely what thoughts were troubling the two men. He had refrained from joining them because ever since he arrived from Nashville last night he had sensed that his own presence only aggravated their present suffering. Each of them was suffering from an acute awareness that he was practicing a stupid deception upon the other, as well as from a fear that he might be discovered. His brother-in-law was leaving the mountain under the pretense that he had been called back to his university. The judge was concealing the fact that there was a party of house guests expected to arrive from Nashville this very day—almost as soon as the Clarks were out of the house—and that an elaborate garden party was planned for Monday, which would be Labor Day. Each man knew that Henry knew about his deception, and each wished, with Henry, that Henry could have stayed on in Nashville this one weekend. Henry couldn’t stay in Nashville, however—for good and sufficient reasons—and just now he couldn’t remain inside the screen door any longer. Kitty was on the stairs, and his mother was coming up the hall from the kitchen. His lingering there would be interpreted by them as peculiar.
Just as Henry made his appearance on the porch, Dwight and the judge came to their feet. They, too, had heard the footsteps of the women and children. It was time for breakfast. Henry walked over to his father and said casually, “Wonder if I could have a glance at the paper?” The judge glared at him as though his simple request were a personal insult.
“The paper,” Henry repeated, reaching out a hand toward the newspaper, which the judge now clutched under his upper arm. The judge continued to glare, and Henry continued to hold out his hand. Henry’s hands were of the same graceful and manly proportions as his father’s, but, unlike the judge, he didn’t “use” his hands and make them “speak.” He also had his father’s same deep-set eyes, and the same high forehead—even higher, since his hair, unlike his father’s was beginning to recede. He glared back at his father, half in fun, supposing the refusal to be some kind of joke. Finally, he took hold of the paper and tried to pull it free. But the judge held on.
“May I just glance at the headlines?” Henry said sharply, dropping his hand.
“No, you may not,” said the judge. “We are all going in to breakfast now.”
Dwight stepped forward, smiling, and silently offered his section of the paper to Henry. Henry accepted it, but his heart sank when he looked into Dwight’s face. Dwight’s face, this morning, was the face of an appeaser. Only now did Henry realize that both men imagined he might, out of malice or stupidity, spill their beans at the breakfast table. The judge, it seemed, meant to bluff and badger him into silence; Dwight intended to appease him.
Henry took the paper over to the edge of the porch, leaned against the banister, and lit a cigarette. His mother and sister were standing together in the doorway now, and his father had set out in their direction.
“Breakfast, everybody,” said his mother. By “everybody,” he knew, she meant him, because he was the only one who had ignored her appearance there. He glanced up from the paper, smiled at her and nodded, then returned his eyes to the paper, which he held carelessly on his knee.
“Henry has taken a notion to read the newspaper at this point,” he heard his father say just before he marched inside the cottage.
His brother-in-law lingered a moment. There seemed to be something Dwight wanted to say to Henry. But Henry didn’t look up; he couldn’t bear to. Dwight moved off toward the doorway without speaking.
“Don’t be difficult, Henry,” his sister Kitty said cheerfully. Then she and her mother went inside, with Dwight following them.
Henry heard them go back through the cottage to the screened porch in the rear. He knew he would have to join them there presently. He supposed that, whether they knew it or not, they needed him. They were so weary of their own differences that any addition to their company would be welcome, even someone who knew too much.
And how much too much he knew!—about them, about himself, about everybody. That was the trouble with him, of course. He could have told them beforehand how this summer would turn out. But they had known, really, how it would turn out, and had gone ahead with it anyway; and that was the difference between him and them, and that was the story of his bachelorhood, the story of his life. He flicked his cigarette out onto the lawn and folded the paper neatly over the banister. No, it wasn’t quite so simple as that, he thought—the real difference, the real story wasn’t. But he had learned to think of himself sometimes as others thought of him, and to play the role he was assigned. It was an easy way to avoid thinking of how things really were with him. Here he was, so it appeared, an old-fashioned old bachelor son, without any other life of his own, pouting because his father had been rude to him on the veranda of their summer cottage on a bright September morning. Henry Parker was a man capable even of thinking inside this role assigned him, and not, for the time being, as a man whose other life was so much more real and so much more complicated that there were certain moments in his summer weekends at this familiar cottage when he had to remind himself who these people about him were. For thirteen years, “life” to him had meant his life with Nora McLarnen, his love affair with a woman tied to another man through her children, tied to a husband who, like her, was a Roman Catholic and who, though they had been separated all those years, would not give her a divorce except on the most humiliating terms. Henry had learned how to think, on certain occasions with the family, as the fond old bachelor son. And he knew that presently he, the old bachelor, must get over his peeve and begin to have generous thoughts again about his father, and about the others, too.
It had been a wretched summer for all four of them, and they had got into the mess mere
ly because they wanted to keep up the family ties. His mother was to be pitied most. His mother had finally arranged her summers at the cottage so that they were not all drudgery for her, the way they used to be when she had two small children, or even two big children, in the days when their cottage was not even wired for electricity and when, of course, she had no electric stove or refrigerator or washing machine and dryer. But in making their plans for this visit Dwight and Kitty had completely failed to understand this. Kitty had moved in and taken over where no taking over was needed. Not only that. Because Dwight had to do his writing—for ten years now they had been hearing about that book of his—and because Dwight and Kitty so disdained the social life that Mother and Dad had with the other summer residents, she had forgone almost all summer social life. Henry had it from his mother that the party on Monday was supposed to make it up to Dad’s and her friends for their peculiar behavior this summer, and was not really intended as a celebration of their daughter’s departure. To have concealed their plans was silly of them, but Mother had been afraid of how it might sound to Dwight and Kitty.