The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  “Oh, Law,” Gertie said, remembering the little man. “I wisht he’d got the hen. She was a heap nicer.”

  “An you sold her for jist a dollar,” Enoch chided. “That ole Homer sure made a fast buck on you, Mom.” The admiration in Enoch’s voice was for Homer now.

  Clytie flicked on the radio, and the tearful voice of Nella Nottingham filled the place. This pure, but muchly persecuted one was trying, as she had been trying for the past ten days, to prove that her murdering of a former suitor was a frame-up, framed by a former mother-in-law. Enoch’s special friend, Mike Turbovitch, called him into the alley, and Amos and Cassie went, too.

  The two younger ones, after playing for a little while in the snowy alley, came in, wet and bedraggled, tracking snow over the forever damp floor. Gertie mopped up the floor, and added their wet clothing to the perpetually drying row of snow-soaked mittens, scarves, jackets, and snowpants on the gas pipe across the kitchen. As always, the clothing forced her to be continually ducking her head as she went about the supper getting.

  The steamy, nasty smell of the drying, half rotten reused wool mingled with the gas smell, the chlorine water smell, the supper-getting smell, and became one smell, a stink telling her it was the time of day she had learned to hate most. The time she had loved back home, the ending when the day was below her.

  Stopping over the too low gas stove, frying strange fish she had bought because it was cheap and unrationed, turning it in the scant grease she had been able to spare, she saw herself back home. The red ball of the winter’s sun was going down behind the hills across the river. The cedar trees above the creek whispered among themselves in a rising night wind. The new milk was cooling on the porch shelf. Reuben was in the barn, the younger ones bringing in the wood and water, while Clytie fried fresh pork shoulder in the kitchen. On the stove hearth was a big pan of baked sweet potatoes, and pulled back on the stove where they wouldn’t burn was a skillet of fresh-made hominy and another of late turnip greens. It had been a good fall for the turnips she had planted. She was cutting up the soap she’d made that day from the guts of her big fattened hog. Every once in a while she’d step off the porch and look a little south, but mostly west; that would be above her father’s house, where the new moon showed first. She couldn’t see the moon, not yet, it was too early.

  “Mom, Mom, make Clytie lemme have my turn on th radio. It’s time fer Crime Fighters.” It was Enoch just in from his alley play, bringing in more dirt.

  “But I’m listenen fer current events now. I gotta fer school.”

  “The fifty-third wiped out a tank battalion. The screaming enemy trapped in their exploding—” Gertie tried not to hear, but the voice demanded that she listen as it went on, drooly with horror, like the voice describing the murdered man Nella Nottingham found. The voice was happy over the fine dish of news to be served tonight, loving it like old Battle John Brand loved the hell he made flame in the meeting house. But Battle John’s hell was down in the bowels of the earth, the other side of being dead.

  “Mom, have I gotta listen to that stuff—th ole war?”

  In turning toward the squabbling children, a damp snowpant leg struck her in the face, then slid with seeming slowness, though she was never able to grab it, on down into the skillet of fish. She jerked the snowpants off the fish with one hand, and though she hadn’t meant to do it she slapped Enoch with the other. “‘Th ole war.’ You’re worse’n that fool on th radio. It’s war with men a dyen, not a circus. Now git frum under my feet.”

  Enoch, certain that he would not again be slapped, began sniffling. “But, Mom, what can I do? You won’t let me play out late like the other youngens.”

  “Quit sassen, and git into yer bedroom. Clytie”—she realized her voice was loud, almost a screaming—“turn that racket off. That man ud …”

  A plane came over, drowning the happy, gloating voice. The plane, like the man’s voice, the trains, the heat, the smelly sticking fish, the damp grease-gommed snowpants, seemed inside her, clawing through her head, tearing her into pieces with gripping, many-fingered hands. There came a loud quick knocking on the door, but when she opened it the stoop was empty. Enoch, standing by the heating stove, quarreled: “It’s them Dalys, Mom—a knocken an a runnen away. All th other kids is still out. Cain’t I go back, Mom? It’s early.”

  “Shut up.” She heard the crash of glass on the snow-covered sidewalk—ketchup bottles, beer bottles, everything, glass they had broken on her sidewalk. Enoch, listening, nodded, the same satisfaction, she thought, in his face as was in the news teller’s voice.

  “Mom, lemme go clean it up before Pop gits home.”

  “You’ll jist start a fight,” she said. She pressed her eyes hard down into her hands for a moment’s blackness, peace from the down-beating hard white light that seemed a part of the heat, the noise, the closeness. “It’s jist a excuse to go outside.” She realized she was doing wrong. She’d told him to stay inside. She ought to make him mind; she couldn’t; she was too tired.

  Clovis didn’t come. The fish grew limp and greasy waiting in the oven. The slaw wilted in the bowl; there wasn’t room in the icebox for it.

  Amos whined about being hungry, messed around with some molasses and margarine, and would not touch the strange fish. Clytie, glued to the radio, something now about a robbery, wouldn’t come to the table, saying she wanted to wait until her dad got home. Reuben came, but instead of eating the cooked supper he ate bread and milk. Gertie tried not to watch as he finished an almost full bottle of milk, but when he got up for more milk from the icebox words burst from her, sharp and hard and stingy. “Reuben, cain’t you eat th supper I’ve cooked? It’ll be all to throw out. Tomorrow we’ll be runnen out a milk, and th milkman won’t be comen till Sunday.”

  Reuben shut the icebox door, looked at her, the look she had come to know, and now, as always when it settled on his face, he tramped stonily away.

  She called to him, trying to make herself sound like the mother he had thought she was when they worked in the corn together; “Now, Reuben, come on back an finish yer supper. If’n you don’t like this fish, you know you’re welcome to anything they is. I jist thought …” What had she thought? to save on Reuben’s food?

  She heard laughter, whooping, with trash cans thumping in distant alleys, and went out onto the stoop to see about Enoch. In the shaft of light from the kitchen door she saw the broom fallen slantwise of the snowy steps, pieces of shattered glass, and what at first looked to be blood, but after stepping closer she saw it was a broken ketchup bottle; the Dalys. She called Enoch twice, but instead of Enoch, Clovis was saying from out the darkness, his voice tired, quarrelsome, the kind of voice he brought home most nights now, “Gert, you oughtn’t to be a letten th youngens out this time a night.”

  “I let him out to clean off th walk,” she answered, somewhat shortly, trying not to remember, as always, and hold it against him, that it was he who made her live like this.

  He swore, and said a Sue Annie word, a thing unusual for him, when he stepped into the ketchup and glass; then, hardly glancing at her as he went up the steps, he commanded her to find Enoch and make him clean the walk.

  Gertie had come out without her coat, and after the hot steamy kitchen the cold was beginning to send shivers down between her shoulder blades. But she walked on, now and then calling Enoch, and glad, in spite of the cold, to be out of the house. The always red-tinged twilight was brightening into wavering flickers of red light that sharpened the rows of squat chimney tops between her and the crimson sky above the steel mill. Behind her the snowy roofs grew warmly pink, and it seemed as if the snow must melt, and the red falling flakes hiss as they disappeared into the black alley shadow. She reached an intersection of alleys where no houses blocked the view of the steel mill. She had learned by now that a brightening of the light meant that a pour was being made. She called Enoch again, and then, both fascinated and repelled by the red light boiling up into the sky, stood a moment watching.<
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  A voice, strangely familiar, came out of the darkness in the next alley: “I tink yu kid’s wit da Meanwells watching u pour.” A black shape, seeming too tall, too wide to be a man, was like a thicker darkness in the alley. “Nummer three’s coming off. Dey’ll wait till it’s over, du kids,” the shape said, coming toward her.

  She was half afraid, for she could see no face, only the immense blackness. Still, she asked: “How do I git there, to the steel mill? I’m hunten my boy.”

  “He’ll be awright,” the shape said, close now. “It’s shorter tu go by du tracks, butcha gotta watch out onu tracks. Kids gotta go du long way round bydu fence. Dey’ll be awright. Steel’s pretty when her pours. Kids like to watch.”

  The voice in speaking of the steel had grown warm, yet wary, like that of a man speaking of a beautiful and beloved but deceitful woman. Gertie realized it was Victor, who until now had been mostly a voice behind the wall. She was no longer afraid as he came on to the end of the alley where she stood, but began to realize that she was cold. She hesitated, wondering if she should go on for Enoch, and watching and listening to the steel mill.

  The light rose ever higher. Instead of red, it leaped now white, now blue like lightning, and with it there was a noise like one long roll of hissing, spitting thunder all mixed in with a kind of wordless singing. The leaping light came bright into the meeting of the alleys, so that when Victor stepped into it he became at once a huge man in a peaked cap and strange monstrous gloves and heavy boots that seemed more iron than leather. Staring at the great sooty-faced man, smelling of burned cloth, singed leather, and sulphur, it seemed like one of Battle John’s sermons had come to life and she had gone to hell and met a devil. But his voice was kind as he repeated, looking at her:

  “Yu kid’ull be awright. Yu’ll be sick coming out widouta coat.” But his glance on her hair was brief, as his blue, white-ringed eyes, bright in his sooty face, swung back to the steel mill. The light above the pouring shed was pure white now, so that all around it, in the drop-forge mill, the stripping shed, the other furnaces, the lesser lights, though all shades of quivering red, were dull beside the leaping brightness. Gertie shivered, suddenly determined to run home and get a coat before continuing the hunt for Enoch. “Steel tonight, she behave like a lady,” Victor said, still looking toward the mill.

  Gertie followed him a few steps, but the way seemed strange. She had turned many times in the coming, her mind on finding Enoch instead of noting the way. The black alleys were all exactly alike. All were bordered by the same long low buildings, even the patterns of light on the snow from the government windows were always exactly the same, and though there were numbers above the doors there was among the alleys no sign or name, for all were Merry Hill.

  A great dog, his head lifted higher than her knees, ran growling and barking after Victor, but he walked on as if the dog were not there. Gertie, not having seen the dog on the way, hesitated while the beast circled, snarling, about her. Victor mistook her uncertainty for fear, and stopped and said, “He won’t bite.”

  Gertie answered, feeling foolish and silly: “Oh, I ain’t afeared. I jist ain’t certain this is th way home. I knowed you was my neighbor, and thought that by folleren you I could find where I live.”

  “Hokay,” he said, nodding, waiting for her to come up to him. “All a time people get lost inu alleys—cops, cab drivers, da good sisters. I wanta see yu on some business, but tonight I gotta hurry. S’Max’s night off. I got time off fu to take her tudu dance. Do her good.”

  “Yes,” Gertie said, her mind jumping back to when she was a girl. How would it have been to have danced, and it not have been a sin, danced with a man bigger than she. Then she remembered and asked, “Business?”

  “Sure. Max told me yu carve good, thatcha could carve a crucifix like I been wanting fu my mudder, u genuine hand-carved crucifix.”

  “Crucifix? Christ on a cross?”

  “Sure. Allatime she want u genuine hand-carved crucifix—good wood.”

  “But I don’t know nothen about sich.”

  “Max said yu carve good. I pay good. Fifteen—p’raps twenty dollars for one crucifix, no more danu foot—p’raps u foot anna half—high, good wood.”

  “I’ve got a little walnut.” She tried to measure her piece of walnut, and see a Christ like that in Max’s house. How had he been? “Christ might have tu be in maple. But it’s good maple.”

  “Yu shape him up good, not make um too flat onu wood?”

  “Oh, he’d be all there.”

  They had reached their own alley, but he stopped before turning into the shadow. He looked again at the steel mill, then asked, “Hokay?”

  “Okay. I recken if it ain’t no good you don’t hafta take it.”

  “It’ll be good,” he said. “Tomorrow I give you exact inches.”

  Clytie had set up supper for Clovis when Gertie got back. He was, however, eating more bread and molasses than dried-up fish or wilted slaw. He looked up, tired and angry, and spoke shortly, telling her she oughtn’t to let the children run wild. He interrupted her explanation of why she had come back without Enoch, with a disgusted rising from the table. “Gert, that grub wasn’t fitten fer a dawg.”

  “It ain’t my fault it set two hours,” she answered shortly, annoyed because he, unlike Victor, had not noticed that she was cold and damp.

  He grew even more angry, and his voice rose. “What ud you think I was a doen them two hours? Setten in a beer parlor er a shooten pool like a lot a men? I was worken, gitten overtime pay. I fin’ly git home an th place is in a mess. One youngen off an gone, an nothen fitten to eat. Gertie,” he went on in a kinder tone, “what’s got into yer cooken? I know with all this rationen business an a stove you ain’t used to it ain’t so easy. But you’ve got plenty tu spend, an—”

  “Spend!” she said. “I’ve spent, not counten th milk, better’n twenty-five dollars fer grub this week.”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” he repeated, angry again. “You can’t feed seven a us, all good big eaters, on twenty-five a week. That ain’t four dollars a week apiece. Why, Gertie,” he went on, counting in his head, “that ain’t much more’n fifty cents a day apiece. Millions a men, maken no more’n I’m maken, spend better’n fifty cents a day fer beer an cigarettes.” He bent forward and looked at her, a long and ugly searching look. “Gert, how much have you saved out a th money I been given you since we got up here?”

  She swallowed. “Clovis, I ain’t got enough ahead to pay fer a spell a sickness in one a th youngens, an …”

  “I got hospitalization,” he interrupted. “How much money you got?”

  She saw Clytie listening behind her father, interested, and accusing, too, as if the saving of a dollar were a sin. How much could she lie? She had to have something more than the money she’d saved for land ahead when they went back home. She had to have a mule—a cow and chickens.

  Clovis seemed to read her thoughts. “You’ve still got some a th money your mother give you in bonds. If’n I can’t keep a job up here when th war’s over, it’s enough to move us back an make a down payment on a truck. Anyhow, we’ll git by. We allus have.”

  “I’m tired a allus jist getten by,” she burst out, “an never haven nothen ahead. An pretty soon we’ll be goen back home an …”

  “What have we got to go back to? How much’ve you saved out a my wages?”

  “What’s th use a liven like this if a body cain’t save somethin?”

  “Save.” He was angry now. “That’s all I’ve heard since we’ve been married. Cain’t you git it into yer head that millions an millions a people that make a heap more money than I’ll ever make don’t save? They buy everything on time. They ain’t allus a starven their youngens.”

  “I ain’t a starven nobody, Clovis. I been—”

  “You been a buyen th cheapest grub you could. You know that. An look at this place! Millions an millions a people live in places that ain’t no bigger. Cain’t you git it into your
head you’re in a city? Millions a youngens that has growed up in furnished rooms three floors up ud think a place like this with room fer youngens to play outside an automatic hot water an good furniture was heaven. An here you still ain’t fixed it up none. Shorly you got money fer linoleum.”

  “I bought curtains—an I mean to git more. I wanted to go to Ward’s er some cash store.”

  “How much cash you got, Gertie?”

  “About—about fifty dollars,” she answered in a low voice.

  “You mean,” he said, his tired face bleaching with anger, “you mean, Gertie, you’re a given us all grub like this an a letten this house go like a pigpen …” He looked about the kitchen, at the uncurtained shelves, the bare floor, the few battered saucepans on a shelf by the stove. “Look, Gert,” he cried, his voice a mingling of sorrow and anger, “all our life together I’ve wanted to make more money so’s we could live better, so’s you and th kids could have it kinda nice. I bet now I’m a maken more money than any man back home. An that cookware—look at it. If I recollect right, that’s th same old beat-up aluminum pan yer mom give us when we married to make out with till we could do better.” In one swift stride he was across the kitchen, had grabbed the pan, and was flinging it through the door, almost hitting Enoch as he came up the walk.

  Gertie hurried down the steps, her eyes searching for the shine of the pot in the murky light, and a woman’s voice said: “It’s right here I do believe, on Mrs. Bommarita’s steps. Timmy, is that it?”

  A moment later Timmy was thrusting the pot into her hand.

  The Anderson inside door was open and there was light enough for Gertie to see Mrs. Daly surrounded by her own boys and others. She realized they were all watching her and had seen the pot come sailing out, and that Victor was standing only a few feet away by his coalhouse door, stooping, a coal bucket in his hand. She saw the pot shaking; her hands made it do that.

  She gripped the pot, trying to make it be still, determined to lift her head, straighten her shoulders, walk back into the house, and never let on to these strangers that there was any shame, anger, torment to hide. But she couldn’t look up; she could only stand hunched and shivering. She saw another hand on the pot, small, much smaller than her own, but no child’s hand, wrinkled, pudgy, ugly, red; Mrs. Daly’s hand pulling at the pot, her voice low, kind.