The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  Gertie shivered again, making the fence creak, but did not answer.

  The woman pointed toward the roaring glow. “Lookut ut shine,” she said, and without taking her eyes from the brightness moved her hooded head closer to Gertie, asking: “Yu know why they’s so much light outside—now? They’s a hole, a great big hole inna roof. You know how it come there? They was some snow inna scarp they filled number two with, a little ball of snow,” and she cupped her two gloved hands together to show the smallness of the snow. “It stayed there alla time a turnen into steam while th steel got hotter. They touched—that white steel, that little bita snow—an number two blowed right throughda roof. They ain’t had time to fix it. They never stop. They cain’t stop—war’s gotta have steel, this electric steel. It ain’t enough to be alla time watchen out ferda steel—th juice gits um. I wish he’d never left that open hearth down in Birmingham.”

  “You frum th south?” Gertie asked, not caring. Talking might help take her mind off Reuben.

  “I’m frum all over,” the woman said. “Wherever they’s white-hot steel I’m frum. I was borned and raised in Arkansas, but I ain’t seen none a my people in thirty years. Was it good an quiet tonight? He pours. I wish’t they wouldn’t shut them doors, but when yu work in steel th wind feels mighty cold. Sometimes it don’t wanta go into th ladle an fights back and jumps all over. Sometimes it likes th ladle but don’t wanna go ina molds an pours crooked—an when yu pour yu mustn’t toucha mold. That steel’ull burn a mold right out, an molds is harder to git then men. He’d a had his leg burned off three weeks back but he had his asbestos boots on. An once th hoisten cable broke, but nobody was killed—burned some. Whena ladle fell, that steel, she spattered all over. He came home laughen about it. Was it good tonight?”

  “Good, real good,” Gertie said.

  “But th meaner it is, the better he loves it. An I foller him. Quit it, I says, when th war come. We was in Youngstown. Quit it, I says, yu can make as much in a factory. Let’s go to Detroit, I says, they’ll be factories. He come an they was steel. An I follered—never was a woman follered so.”

  “It’s what a woman’s got to do, I recken,” Gertie said. “Foller—take on a man’s kind a life like Ruth.”

  “Ruth? Ruth who? Some woman in u paper? Paper’s full a pretty stories a women folleren their men up here, hunten houses, gitten lost.”

  “This Ruth lived a long time ago; when her man died she took up with his people.”

  “My man ain’t got no family, but he’s got people here in Detroit. Hunkies they calls em.”

  “Da watchman told me bout da kid.” It was Victor, unnoticed in the noise, come to the gate. “I ain’t seen him,” he said, opening the gate. “He wouldn’t be here; behinda fence kids git chased away.”

  “He’s got to go someplace to keep frum freezen,” she said.

  “Yu’ll freeze yourself,” he said. “Yu kid’s gone back home, back toyuown people. Yu gotta come now an lemme take yu home. You’ll do no good out in this cold. I’ve got mu car; I’ll take yu home.”

  She hesitated by the opened gate. “You cain’t leave yer work.”

  “I’m gonna quit now. It’sa little early, but no more pours on mu shift nohow. Yu kid’s gone; yu gonna kill yourself. Up here yu gotta wear slacks.” His big grimy face, the eyes ringed with clean white where the goggles had fitted, smiled. “If yu got trouble buyen um big enough, yu want I should loan yu some a mine? Come on, da kid’s gone back to his own people.”

  “He didn’t have no money,” she said, coming through the gate. “I counted mine. He knowed where I kept it.”

  They had reached the car, newer and a finer make than Clovis’s, the front seat spread with newspapers neatly placed so that the seat covers might not be touched with grime. “Da kid’ull be all right,” he repeated, “but yu’ll kill yourself.” He opened the door for her, got in on the other side and started the motor, but sat a moment, head bent, listening as Clovis listened. “Cold—but she runs good,” he said, then from his jacket pocket he took a vacuum bottle, poured coffee into the red plastic top, and handed it to her. “Drink ut,” he said. “Max’s good strong coffee do yu good.”

  She drank, and the strong hot coffee after the bitter tearing wind and the noise and scorching heat of the steel made the unlighted car with the windows closed seem a warm and kindly place with Victor, his shoulders broader than her own, filling more than his half of the seat. He rolled his window down a little and listened to the running of the steel mill. The down-bent listening face, with a nose and a chin and a forehead big and ugly as her own, made her think of old Uncle George Keith, the way he used to listen, nodding his head, reading each sound, when he was practicing up the choir for a big revival at Deer Lick. He had worked in one of Old John’s mines, and for the choir practice his face was usually smudged with grime like Victor’s now.

  “She’s runnen good,” he said, and rolled up the window and backed out of his numbered parking place, repeating, “Du kid’ll be all right,” then asking when they had turned into the street, “Yu got mu mudder’s crucifix finished?”

  “All but th face,” she said and added: “But I’m afeared she won’t like it. It ain’t pretty an it ain’t smooth.”

  “Dat’ll be okay,” he said, pleased. “It’ll look genuine hand-carved—mu mudder all a time wanted a genuine hand-carved crucifix. Yu’d better be home carving on it—take yu mind off yu trouble.”

  She never turned to answer for staring through the car windows. Her glance snatched at all things—garbage cans, clothesline poles, cardboard boxes, windblown paper, anything that could somehow change into the shape of Reuben. Her heart quickened as they turned into the alley. Maybe he was home. There was a light in the kitchen.

  She rushed up the steps, thanking Victor with short, absent-minded words, giving no answer to his concerned command not to go off again, but to stay home and if she couldn’t sleep, work on the crucifix. No one came to her first round of quick insistent knocks. Clovis must have gone hunting for Reuben. He wouldn’t go to work and his own child gone.

  “Mrs. Nevels.” It was Mrs. Daly in her kitchen door, her apron steaming as if wet from hot suds. She held a whitish cloth that might have been a diaper as she came down the steps, calling, pitying concern in her voice. “Mrs. Nevels, da kids told me at dark yu boy was gone. Maggie went quick, and over in Our Lady of All Help they’s a candle burnen to St. Jude. Nothen so good as a candle for St. Jude when somebody’s lost. An keep a callen da cops. You’ll hear; I know yu will.”

  Gertie thought of Mr. Daly, and said, “Yes.” She pushed on her kitchen door, for behind the blinds she saw Clytie’s shadow. Clytie was only half awake, but still fully dressed, as if she had dropped to sleep on the couch. Her voice was complaining, disgust on her face as she looked at her mother. “Mom, I thought you never was comen home. You fergot to fix Pop’s lunch fer work. Th cops said wanderen around hunten a boy that age wasn’t no good.”

  “Th cops.”

  And Enoch, fully awakened at once, as was his habit, was running in calling: “Mom, Pop went to th pay station an called th cops. Two come in a car—a special squad, not jist th regular patrol. They’ve broadcast it; all th patrol cars is looken …”

  He fell silent under her hard, accusing stare. “It ain’t somethen you’re a hearen over th radio, Son. It’s your own brother gone.”

  “But, Mom, th cops said boys was allus—all a time runnen away,” Clytie said. “They acted like it wasn’t nothen at all. They was kind a hateful, asken had he done any meanness er been in any trouble, an did he have a gun er a knife.”

  “Git to bed, youngens,” she said, and snapped on the living-room light. Reaching under her coat into her apron pocket, she brought out her knife open and stood, looking toward the kitchen shelf where lay the pieces of wood for the cross and the cross-like Christ, finished save for a face.

  “Mom,” Clytie said, “you’re a shiveren. They’s some coffee left.”

 
; “I don’t need it,” Gertie said, but roused and took off her outdoor clothing.

  Though she lighted the gas in the oven and put her feet there, she was cold still, shivering so that the knife leaped about the dead Christ. After a while of useless trying, she went to the shelves across the end of the little hall and took down the jug of medicine whisky, poured herself half a glass, and drank it slowly, savoring its goodness, its warmth and the memory of old John Sexton, who in spite of new-fangled ways never made anything but good whisky, like in the old days.

  Her hands were steady above the Christ, but still she sat a long time, her knife poised above the blank face. So many faces—a million faces she had seen in Detroit, but no face for Christ—not Victor’s Christ or any Christ. The face of the Christ with the red sweet gum leaves was dim now, changed like a tree from which the leaves have fallen. She got up at last, went back to the shelf, got another drink and the Bible. She opened it and sat by the kitchen table and searched a long time, thumbing through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Once she sat staring at the floor, her forefinger under the words of the other mother to her twelve-year-old son: “Why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” She began searching again through the worn pages, but most often she read: “I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood. … What is that to us? … And he cast down the pieces of silver … and he went away and hanged himself.”

  She read it for maybe the tenth time, each time thumbing away, but always going back. At last she closed the Bible with a quick abrupt motion, shoved it from her, and took her knife and the faceless Christ; and the knife, as if with a mind of its own, gave a tortured, furrowed face to the drooping head.

  The face was finished and the Christ was on the cross with the tiny wooden spikes through his feet and his hands, and Detroit slept the restless growling sleep of the small hours when she heard quick feet up the steps and a key turning in the lock. “Clovis!” She sprang up, her hands shaking again, but the gaiety in his face reassured her before he had time to speak.

  “Gert, we’re awful fools,” he began, jerking off a glove, reaching toward his inside jacket pocket. “Reuben’s all right.” And from his billfold he pulled a piece of ruled paper such as the children used at school. He held it toward her, not so much reading as repeating words he knew by heart:

  “‘Dear Pop: I took $20 to pay my way back. I hope it don’t make you run short. I don’t steel. I will pay it back. Back home I can make some money. I can trap and work for Granpa. I can’t stay here no more. Your ever loving son, Reuben.’ You know,” Clovis went on, gay as if he’d found a fortune, “I never seen it till I went into my billfold fer money to buy some ice cream. I figgered if he took money he’d git it frum you stid uv his old dad, an that if he wrote it ud be to you. He’s took th money an put his note in this mornen when I hung my jacket by th bathroom. What’s th matter? Ain’t you glad?”

  Gertie nodded. “You know—I’m glad. Real glad.”

  “I yelled when I seen it an all th men come crowden round. An that foreman told me to go home when everthing was runnen good—that fool Bunken had got a piece a stock stuck in his press. I got it out, but I have to have a man frum tool and die to put in a new plate. ‘You go home an tell yer woman,’ that foreman says to me. Who’d ha thought a blamed foreman would ha had that much heart?”

  She was silent, staring at the crucifix, and he for the first time noticed what she had done. “Aw, Gert, you’ve set up all night a worken on that thing,” he scolded, his voice disgusted, pitying. “What a you want to take all that trouble to whittle out them logs, when you could ha made th cross flat out a little boards in a third a th time.” He took the Christ from her unresisting hand and considered it, frowning. “An if wasten all that time on th cross wasn’t bad enough, you’ve done worse by given away fifty dollars’ worth a work a whittlen on this Christ. You didn’t haf to make him out a hard maple—an a have him a bowen his head an a showen his back thisaway. You’d ought to ha left him flat an a glued him on, stead a foolen around with these little wooden pins.”

  “You know what you need,” he said, pulling off his jacket, looking at her as she sat, lax-handed, head drooping above the Christ he had flung into her lap, “you oughta have a jig saw. With one a them things a body can cut out anything—Christ, er pieces fer a jumpen-jack doll—it’s all th same to a jig saw.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  VICTOR WAS SO PLEASED with the crucifix that he gave her twenty dollars; and, much to Max’s disgust, he let it hang for some days in the kitchen window where all the alley passing to and fro might see. Some, like Mr. Daly and Maggie, only glanced at it and hurried on, but others, such as Mrs. Anderson and Vegetable Joe, came up short at the first glance, went closer, then stood a time under the kitchen window, looking up at the rough log cross with the drooping figure.

  Many, particularly Mrs. Anderson, complimented Gertie on the fineness of her work; but she always answered only with a slow and painful smile. The crucifix, more than most things, put her thoughts on Reuben. Worry on how a boy so young could travel all alone had let her neither eat nor sleep until a card came, postmarked at the Valley, and written to Clovis to deepen the hurt. “Dear Dad. Got here all right. It is a nice day. I am walking out to Granma’s.”

  Several days passed, and she had again grown half crazy with worry before there came a letter from her mother: two pages of her complaints, little news, no mention of Gertie’s father, the last page and a half given up to Reuben. “Gert, what have you done to Reuben? He looks so peaked. He said you didn’t have much to eat. Poor Clovis is working night and day for you. And you are too stingy to feed and clothe your family.” She stopped, but after a while she read the letter on to the end, then laid it on the kitchen shelf where Clovis found it that evening when he awakened.

  “I wish Reuben had ha gone to my people,” he burst out with a bitterness surprising in him, when he had finished the letter.

  “He’ll hope em git their wood an sich,” Gertie said.

  “It ain’t that,” he said. “Th Hull youngens’ull help Mom, but your mom’ull turn Reuben agin us. She’ll work him like a mule, give him no schoolen like she done you. I’ll bet he never goes to school another day. An then when he’s growed up knowen nothen but how to be a work hand on a backwoods farm, she’ll be ready to git shet a him like she was you soon’s Henley got big enough to work.”

  Gertie flushed. “But, Clovis, I allus thought you liked Mom. You allus got along so good with her.”

  Clovis smiled the way he had used to smile when they were boy and girl in school together, “If I’d ever a got along bad with yer mom, you would ha had a time. Recollect all them years she claimed they couldn’t manage without you on the farm? I got to thinken she’d never give in, an was all set to go job hunten in Cincinnati. It was the first summer Henley was big enough to do most a th plowen. She heard about me leaven an writ right away. Recollect?”

  Gertie turned quickly away, hoping he had not seen her shame and surprise. She had never known about her mother’s letter. But Clovis never noticed. His eyes were on his memories as he said, “She’ll do no better by Reuben than by you.”

  Gertie turned to comfort him. “But Clovis, it won’t be ferever. We’ll be goen back home pretty soon, an—”

  “Back home to what?” He was angry with her now. “I can hear em all a sayen—specially yer mom, ‘Pore Gert, back agin with that tinkeren Clovis, an not a nickel to her name.’ ‘Tinkeren,’” he repeated. “I’ll show em they’s money in tinkeren.”

  “But, Clovis, th war’ll be over, an when it is you’ll be out uv a job, an—” She knew she ought to hush. That was a thing at which he would not look, the future, when men stopped making things to kill other men. She was glad of the knocking that came just then on the kitchen door, and hurried to open it. Maybe no more than some teasing child who knocked and ran away, but whoever it was had stopped her tongue. Instead of a child, she found in the still alley w
here the smoke lay unmoving in the twilight a strange woman on her stoop who asked in halting, broken English if this were the place where crucifixes were made.

  Gertie nodded, and the woman asked how much for a Christ like the one that had been in the window. Gertie hesitated; it was a deal of work, but twenty dollars was a deal of money. “Tell her thirty dollars fer one like that, but that you can make somethen cheaper,” Clovis was whispering behind her.

  The woman heard, and disappointment touched her eyes. Still, she opened her purse, asking, “What for, for ten?”

  Gertie pondered. “All maple—no walnut—plain sawed wood fer th cross—jist a few thorns in the crown. An fer ten dollars,” she went on, conscious of Clovis, “I couldn’t put holes in th hands an th feet an set in little pins—like I done in that other’n. But I could kinda make em look like nails.” She flushed, hating the conversation.

  The woman, after a spell of silent considering, shook her head in disappointment. “But why for because so high? Ten dollar—blessed? Nah. Gold-plated I can buy—blessed.”

  “It’s awful tedjus work,” Gertie said, turning again to the supper getting.

  “Yeah?” the woman wondered, but held out a five-dollar bill. “A deposit,” she said. Gertie took it and thanked her, but the woman’s dark face darkened still more and she continued to stand, frowning, until Clovis said, “She wants a receipt.”

  She gave it, and the woman went away, but Gertie stood looking at the five-dollar bill, new and clean as if fresh from a pay envelope. “Aw, Clovis,” she said at last, thinking on the unpleasant work ahead, “Christ wasn’t nailed on sawed lumber.”

  “Aw, heck, what difference does it make? It ain’t Christ nohow.”

  “I know. But seemed like if I couldn’t make a Christ fer Victor, I ought to make him a right good cross at least.”