The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  “I’m waiten fer yer pop,” Gertie said. “Shorely he’ll knock off frum work long enough tu come an meet us. We don’t want tu be gone when he comes.”

  “Pop didn’t sound pime blank certain in his letter like he’d meet us,” Clytie said, and the same eagerness that overflowed Enoch was reflected in her eyes as she insisted, “That’s why he give us th address an told us to git a cab.”

  The children’s eyes were now all upon Gertie, waiting, expecting her to get the baggage that Joe Lee, the ticket agent at the Valley, had taken after putting a ticket on each piece and giving her a ticket to match. She had seen none of it since. Where was it now? Where were the bedclothes, the dishes packed in boxes, and above all the block of wood she had sent by express. These things she had understood were not to come for some days, but were they lost? Was everything lost? She looked wildly about her, fixed her glance at last on Enoch, who was begging: “Give me th tickets an me an Reuben can go. We can carry it all. I seed the people a standen in line.”

  Clytie shoved in front of Enoch. “Let me go, Mom. I’m the biggest.”

  “I can do it good as you can,” Enoch cried, and while he and Clytie argued Gertie laid down the new handbag of her mother’s buying and fumbled in her coat pocket. She had pinned the ticket stubs and baggage checks in one pocket along with what had seemed money enough and to spare for the journey, but now in her confusion all were mixed in the mental map of her pocket. Clytie watched her fumblings with shamed embarrassment and scolded, “Mom, you’d ought to use your new purse.”

  Enoch looked at her and giggled, speaking so shrilly that a drowsing soldier roused enough to look at them and smile. “Mom, you look like a body out a th funny papers, an yer hat’s still crooked.”

  “‘Honor they fath—’” she began. She found the baggage checks. “Git it,” she said, shoving them toward Clytie.

  The three older ones went away after Clytie had pointed out a door near which she was to wait, and brushed aside Gertie’s feeble arguments that maybe they had better wait a little minutes longer for Clovis. Gertie, however, continued for a few minutes longer where Clytie had left her. She craned her head, searching in all directions, but looking longest and most hopefully toward an outside door through which a constant stream of people came and went. At last, with a troubled headshake, she loaded Amos on one arm, the baskets on the other, directed Cassie to hold her coattail, and went to the door by the sign directing people to the cab stand, the one Clytie had pointed out to her.

  She waited near the swinging doors that let the sharp cold in, and where the passing people were constantly knocking against the baskets and bumping the children. Once again she heard, in the sharp, broken-into-pieces language, the word “hillbilly.” A clock above the door told her it was only a little past nine, but it seemed it must be dinnertime before the older children came.

  She took a rope-tied orange crate packed with clothing and cookware onto her hip, and with the baskets on her other arm followed Clytie through the door. Cold winds like snatching hands tore at them.

  Her hat went blowing, rolling in front of her. She grabbed it at last, jammed it hard down into the basket, and strode on. The wind, as if it had fingers, unbuttoned the new coat that billowed first behind her, then whipped about her legs as if in this place all directions were north. All around, sharp and cutting as white sand flying, the snow whirled, making it hard to see as they hurried down a sloping sidewalk. She knew only that all her own were there. Reuben was in front with her mother’s round-topped trunk made of tin pressed into the shapes of roses on his shoulders, Enoch next with Clovis’s old paper suitcase, split down one corner and tied with fishline, then Clytie staggering with the weight of a fruit-jar box of clothing under each arm. Gertie followed with her load, and behind her came the younger children, who tried to shield themselves from the wind and snow by burying their faces in her coattail.

  They stopped at the end of a long line of silent people. They were people who looked much like those she had seen on the train: women like herself, clutching boxes and babies, shivering in huddles of toe-hopping, teeth-chattering children; the girls especially suffered, dressed as they were, like her own girls, in shortish coats and flimsy rayon dresses, their unbooted feet in low shoes and socks. The men and boys with pant legs between them and the cold were somewhat warmer but all seemed, like herself, cold, bewildered, dirty.

  Two slowly moving cabs passed on their way toward the head of the line. But one stopped when a red-jowled man with a small bag and a large stomach ran out the door and down the walk, waving a bill which he seemed to have had ready in his hand. The man who had never waited was taken into the cab and driven away, followed by the angry cries and even curses of many in the line.

  A gust of wind, wild as March and cold as if the sun had died, whirled words and cries away. Gertie put down her load, caught up Cassie and put her under her coat. The skimpy thing would not button over the two of them but she held it together as best she could with her arms crossed widely over her bosom. Her ears that had at first tingled, then hurt, were now so numb she could no longer feel her hair blowing about them.

  She slid Cassie to the ground, and from the Josiah basket took an old woolen baby’s blanket of her mother’s crocheting. She was folding it diddy wise to put on her head when, through a lull in the wind, she heard a shivering sobbing. She looked around and saw, only two people away in the ever-lengthening line, the little-girl mother from Georgia who had wondered on the train if it would be cold up in Grayling where her man was. She was trying to bundle herself and the baby, wrapped only in a sleazy cotton blanket, together under her thin coat, not much longer than a man’s shirttail. Her words to the woman in front of her came in a shivering whimper, “Who’d ha thought it ud be so cold in th fall thisaway?”

  “Here, put this over that youngen,” Gertie called above the wind, and reached the blanket to her. She saw, more than she heard through the wind, the girl’s shivering, “Oh, thank you,” and again, “Thanks.”

  Cabs came slowly in, and the line moved slowly ahead, though soon Gertie’s feet in the new thin shoes and rayon stockings grew so numb it was easier to stand still than to move. Amos and Cassie took turns crying, and even Enoch, who kept insisting it couldn’t be cold because the snow was melting in the street, got so shivery he could hardly talk. Though the early-morning grayness had never lifted from the town, it seemed it must be milking time when at last their turn for a cab came. They were hardly inside before the driver, a little weazened black-eyed man, was asking, “Where to, lady?” He did not look at them again as he pulled away from the curb, steering with a forearm while his hands unscrewed the red top from a vacuum bottle.

  Gertie began another frantic fumbling with numb fingers for the address pinned down in her pocket, but Clytie said, smooth as a preacher, “I89II Merry Hill.”

  “And where is Merry Hill?” the driver asked, able to use one whole hand now for steering. One was enough to hold the vacuum bottle while he drew the stopper with his teeth.

  “It’s clost to where my pop works, an he works at th Flint Plant,” Enoch said.

  “Old man Flint’s got plants all over town, all over th world,” the driver said. He stopped the car, then holding the bottle low, close to his chest with one hand, the red cup in the other, said, “I gotta have a li’l drink u coffee.”

  Then he was unable to pour for the laughter shivering his shoulders when Gertie begged: “Don’t put us out. Somebody must know where is this Merry Hill.”

  “Lady, they’s cops watchen this light,” he answered, the soundless laughter subsiding enough that he could pour.

  Gertie saw the light like a red eye blinking through the whirling snow, and sat silent, mystified. But Enoch, who sat in a strange little seat next to the driver, though backward to him, squirmed around to look, then nodded knowingly. “It’s like the second reader, th red lights an th green. An look, lookee, Mom, they’s two policemen in a car. I’ll bet pretty soon we see
one a standen on a corner like in th story.” And Enoch bounced on his knees with excitement until the driver turned on him in exasperation, reminding him that he was trying to drink coffee. “It don’t steam like hot coffee,” Enoch said, considering the red cup.

  “It’s cold,” the driver said, swallowing coffee, turning to look at the policemen in the nearby car.

  “It don’t smell like coffee,” Enoch said, wrinkling his nose with a sniff.

  “Th smell froze,” the driver said, holding the coffee with one hand, driving under the green light with the other.

  “It’s not cold,” Enoch said, “not real cold. The snow’s melten.”

  The driver’s shoulders quivered again; the laughter so hard it made his head bob close to the steering wheel. Enoch never noticed the shaking shoulders; he was exclaiming, “Lookee, they’s three policemen in that car, but in th second reader they’re a walken a beat er a standen on a corner.”

  “Detroit don’t go by no second reader, bub. You’ll hardly never see one policeman, butcha’ull see a million in Detroit. Since u riots they go mostly in prowl cars, three by threes, sometimes two by twos.”

  “What’s a prowl car?” Enoch wanted to know.

  “It’s u car cops prowls in. Cops gotta prowl.”

  “But what do they prowl after?” Enoch insisted.

  “Mean people, of course,” Clytie said.

  The driver nodded, laughing. “Sure, sure that second reader’s right. Cops, they never go after nothen but mean people.”

  “But didn’t you learn that in th second reader?” Enoch insisted. “Don’t they teach it up here?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the driver said. “When I went through that second reader forty years ago down in Alabam, they didn’t teach us how to live in Detroit like they do little Kentuckians now.”

  Clytie giggled. “How’d you know where we was frum?”

  “I’ve met youse atta station through two world wars. I oughta know.” His mocking eyes searched the mirror in front of him for Gertie’s face. “An I bet youses gonna go back pretty soon with money enough saved futu buy a farm, one a dem big bluegrass farms. Huh?”

  Gertie tried to look away, but the cab windows, except for the bits of the windshield kept clean by the wipers, were so coated with snow and frost that for all the view they gave they might have been steel. She could only stare straight ahead, feeling the eyes on her face, sharp like the cold when Clytie cried: “Mama’s crazy after land uv her own. How’d you know?”

  “Everbody is. Th Japs and u Germans, too. I figger,” he went on, stopping for another light, “that about a million people has come to Detroit, all gonna git rich an buy u little patch a land back home.”

  “I don’t want nothen fancy,” Gertie said, somehow goaded into speech. “I know we can save enough—more than—” The black eyes were laughing, a laughter without mirth, not mean, not making fun of her; more like he laughed at something she could not see—or imagine.

  “That’s fine, lady,” he said when they were moving again. “Keep on knowen youses gonna have land. But if you do forgit, yukun remember land is free in heaven like that pie inu sky.”

  “What’s pie in th sky?” Enoch asked.

  “Gotta keep shut, kid. Th Red Squad would have us both inu clink; me fu propigating un-American doctrines, you fu listening.”

  “What’s th clink?” Enoch asked, and immediately after, “What’s th Red Squad?”

  “Things yu don’t learn about, not even inu sixth reader, an soyu don’t needu know. Now where inu hell is Merry Hill? Inu housing project.” He was driving slowly now, in a great press of cars.

  Gertie shook her head over the strange words, but Clytie nodded, “I recken it’s a great big house like where city people lives, three, four stories high.”

  “An we’ll ride th elevator,” Enoch said, “like in that story about th city children in th third reader.”

  “Yeah,” the driver said, drawling the word, laughing again.

  Gertie looked at him and pressed Cassie more tightly against her. All of them, even Enoch, were silent, staring straight ahead through the snow, where there was little to be seen but the red eyes of cars moving away in the grayness and the yellow eyes of cars coming on. Gertie scratched a hole in the frost on the window, but when the frost had swallowed the hole she did not scratch again.

  She had wanted very much to see the sky, or if not the sky at least some bit of brightness. There should be the warm-looking, lighted windows of stores, and crowds of people. Instead, she saw only a few gray wind-battered shapes hurrying down dirty streets past dead-faced gray buildings. She wished Enoch would hush. He was asking the driver now if airplanes could fly in such weather.

  “Sure, sure,” the driver said, and then asked, “That new home close tudu airport?”

  “Real close, my pop wrote.”

  The driver nodded. “We’re inu right direction, bub. East side. Dey’ve been builden housing projects close tudu airport.”

  “What’s a housen project?” Clytie wanted to know.

  “Houses th gover’ment builds fu war workers that don’t need elevators.”

  “Like coal-camp houses. My aunt Meg lives in one, an it’s not so bad. She’s got a big porch an a pretty good garden, but it’s kind a smoky.”

  The little man considered. “Double th smoke, leave offu porch, halve u house, bury u garden, they’d maybe be about u same. I wouldn’t know.”

  The children fell silent as the driver, after much slow turning and slow driving through the narrow, crowded streets, came at last to a straight wide street, half buried in the ground, bounded by gray cement walls and crowded with cars and monstrous truck-like contraptions such as none of them had ever seen. Here there were no lights to stop them, and they went so fast that Gertie could only sit, shivering, staring straight ahead, or blinking and crouching over Cassie when they shot under bridges carrying more cars, buses, and even trains. The wind pried at the doors and the windows, finding every crack; and as there seemed to be no heat in the cab all of them were as cold, almost, as when they had waited on the sidewalk.

  The unbroken rush past the gray walls and under the bridges ended at last. There followed more turnings down narrow streets, strange streets that, though crowded, seemed set at times in empty fields until one saw a slowly moving switch engine or a mountainous pile of coal blown free of snow. The smoke thickened, and through it came sounds such as they had never heard; sometimes a broken clanking, sometimes a roar, sometimes no more than a murmuring, and once a mighty thudding that seemed more like a trembling of the earth than sound. “Boy, I’d hate to live by one a them big press plants,” the driver said, then asked of them all, “Don’tchas know where youses at? Right in u middle a some a Detroit’s pride and glory—war plants.”

  Enoch kept twisting around to see, but there was little to be seen save blurred shapes through the snow and smoke. The railroad tracks multiplied, and twice jangling bells and red lights swinging in the wind held them still while long freight trains went by with more smoke rolling down and blotting out the world. It seemed suddenly to Gertie as if all the things she had seen—the blurred buildings, the smokestacks, the monstrous pipes wandering high above her, even the trucks, and the trains—as if all these were alive and breathing smoke and steam as in other places under a sky with sun or stars the breath of warm and living people made white clouds in the cold. Here there seemed to be no people, even the cars with their rolled-up windows, frosted over like those of the cab, seemed empty of people, driving themselves through a world not meant for people.

  They drove for a long while through the sounds, the smoke and steam, past great buildings which, though filled with noise, seemed empty of life. They were stopped again on the edge of what looked to be an endless field of railroad tracks, to wait while a long train of flat cars went by. Each car carried one monstrous low-slung, heavy-bodied tank, the tank gray-green, wearing a star, and holding, like the black feelers of some giant insect
reaching for the sky, two guns. Gertie, hoping for something better to see, scratched another hole in the window frost. She was just turning away in disappointment when the whirling snow, the piles of coal, the waiting cars, the dark tanks moving, all seemed to glow with a faint reddish light. The redness trembled like light from a flame, as if somewhere far away a piece of hell had come up from underground.

  She rubbed her eyes, then turned and looked through the windshield, but saw in puzzled wonder the redness still. Then Enoch was crying, all in a jiggle of excitement, “Lookee—they’s a fire.”

  “That’s white-hot steel, bub,” the driver said. “They’re maken a pour. Yu needn’t be in such u hurry to see. I’ll bet that steel mill’s one a yu closest neighbors. We’re gitten close to Merry Hill.”

  “I hope it’s a high hill,” Enoch said, “where I can see all over th country.”

  “Oh, it’ll be a hill all right, covered with cattails an weeping willers.”

  “Weepen willers don’t grow on hills,” Enoch said.

  “Detroit willers grows on Detroit hills,” the driver said.

  They went on again at last, but the red glow followed them. The frost on the car windows was at times a reddish pink, as if bits of blood had frozen with the frost. They crossed another railroad, only two tracks this time, and past the tracks she saw no factories, only the cars moving between what seemed to be snowy fields on either side. The driver turned into a side road, then cursed as the car skidded in the powderlike snow, unmelted here. He rolled the window down, and drove more slowly, looking.

  Gertie looked as he looked, and through the twisting, whirling curtain of smoke and snow she saw across a flat stretch of land flame and red boiling smoke above gray shed-like buildings. Closer were smaller smokes and paler lights about black heaps of rock-like stuff strewn over a gray wasteland of rusty iron and railroad tracks. She jumped, Cassie squealed, and even Enoch ducked his head when there came an instant of loud humming, followed by a bone-shattering, stomach-quivering roar. The plane was big, and seemed no higher than the telephone poles as it circled, fighting for altitude. There were several loud pops, but the roar gradually lessened as the plane climbed higher, then was drowned in the clank and roar of the steel mill.