The Moonflower Vine

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by Jetta Carleton


  He was right. Aviation did indeed grow, as Ed predicted. Competition increased. Gone were the days when a pilot got by on charm and nerve. He needed special skills now, meteorology, navigation, technical knowledge, which Ed had neglected to get. (Why should he bother? He could fly like a bird! Better than a bird—he could fly upside down!) Moreover, the times were bad. Small banks failed. People had less money and less will to spend it. They were beginning to be frightened. Then the market collapsed and panic crept westward through the country. Times were not good for a gypsy flier.

  Matthew and Callie began to sense through Mathy’s letters that not all was well. No complaints, only joking remarks. But they worried. Early in the spring, Matthew wrote them to come home; they could live on the farm, where they could maintain themselves with a garden and a cow. Mathy wrote back gratefully. It would be nice, she said; she had always loved the farm. But Ed was a flier, this was his life; he would make out somehow. He hoped to get a job soon as a commercial pilot.

  Callie fretted about them, but she held up for Ed. He was a good boy, she kept saying. He would straighten out soon and settle down. Maybe a few setbacks like this were just what he needed.

  But the day came when her faith wavered precariously. Ed went off to California on some wild-goose chase (Matthew’s deduction), leaving Mathy and the child in Texas. He was away for several months. Mathy’s letters did not make clear just what he was doing—he and another flier had teamed up; something about a cargo service; later Ed was working as a mechanic at some small field. She was vague. They got the idea that she didn’t always know herself what he was up to. Then in late spring their anxiety turned to genuine alarm when they learned—through Jessica, who told Leonie, who broke Jessica’s confidence because she thought they ought to know—that Mathy had lost track of Ed. She hadn’t heard from him in more than a month and had taken a job as a waitress to support herself and Peter. Matthew wrote in haste, telling her to come home. He enclosed a check. It came back by return mail with a note from Mathy. Ed had come home, everything was fine.

  They heard no more for several weeks. School ended, and they had moved to the farm for the summer when news of the accident reached them. Ed had gone up in the night, at some Southern celebration, to put on a fireworks display. Mathy went with him to help with the fuses, leaving the little boy with a local mechanic who had helped wire the plane. Everything went fine until they started down. They crashed on landing, in a strange field, in the dark. Ed was badly though not fatally injured. Mathy was killed.

  They stumbled through that day almost in silence, searching each other’s faces for some sign that this was an evil dream, no more than that. “But I prayed!” Callie said, in the voice of a bewildered child. “I prayed all the time!”

  Nonetheless, Mathy was dead, and Matthew went down to bring her home.

  In the hospital Ed lay under heavy sedation and did not waken when Matthew saw him. Matthew stood for a long time looking down on that bandaged inert figure, and he silently said farewell. He was free of Ed now. Ed had done his last mischief. Matthew went away, taking the child.

  He went last to see Mathy. She lay with a little look of brown study, a quizzical half smile on her face, as if she were appraising this new circumstance, plotting coolly what she might do with death. Matthew stood dry-eyed, his grief all but eaten away by the acid of anger—a kind of divine rage that this had happened in spite of him, that Mathy should lie there so wilfully dumb and would not come when called. Then his memory, groping blindly, altered that small face ever so slightly and gave him back the tiny dark-haired child he had looked on first one winter night in a dark farmhouse. His tears began to fall. Good evening, little girl…now, good night.

  9

  A few days after the funeral, a curious silence came over Callie. She had held up bravely, after her first outburst of grief, comforted somewhat by the presence of Jessica and Leonie. All of them sharing the sorrow in common, they made it easier for each other. But then she fell silent. When spoken to she seemed not to hear. She spent long periods reading the Bible. They would find her sitting with her head bent, her fingers moving along the lines. Though they tried to console her, she only looked at them, more often than not, from a great distance, as if they were indistinguishable on her horizon. She wandered about the yard alone, poking at shrubs. Sometimes she went to the garden and stood among the rows, forgetting what she had gone there for.

  All this time they watched her secretly, afraid that she might harm herself. They followed her discreetly. One day she escaped them and was gone a long time before they noticed. Frantically they searched house and barn and struck out in different directions through the woods. Jessica found her at last at the Old Chimney Place, where Mathy used to play. Her mother sat in the shallow depression inside the old foundations, hidden from outside view by the scrub and high weeds that grew around it. She was talking to herself in a low voice.

  “Mama?” Jessica said, soft and timid.

  Callie went on murmuring to herself, and Jessica hesitated, thinking it might be dangerous to interrupt her. She could hear only a word now and then, but it seemed her mother was talking to the Lord, calmly and quite reasonably, pausing now and then as if for an answer, as if she and the Lord were holding a conversation. After several minutes of this, Callie fell silent, hugging her knees and gazing at the ground. Jessica was about to speak when Callie raised her head and said clearly, “I wonder where that old hen was!” And she laughed, a small chuckle of plain amusement. Immediately she stood up, dusted her bottom, and started away. Jessica drew back noiselessly into the brush and let her go un-accosted. She followed her home in dread, sure that her mother had lost her senses.

  Instead, Callie seemed to have regained them. From that moment, a change came on her. Her gaze cleared like the sky after a long cloudy spell, and she was her old self again. Though she spoke tremulously of Mathy and sometimes wept, her grief came out in simple familiar ways and gradually it passed into that fund of calm endurable sorrow that all must bear.

  Matthew never reproached her for allowing that marriage nor for her faith in Ed. There was no need for “I told you so.”

  10

  June passed and July wore on. Peter, now almost three, stopped asking for his mother. Leonie had adjured them not to make him feel self-conscious. “We mustn’t make too much of a fuss over him or cry and carry on. We must just act natural.” Conscientiously they tried. But sometimes in the evenings when the girls were busy with dishes, Callie took him on her lap and murmured him to sleep. “Poor baby, poor little boy.” Then Matthew would carry him upstairs and, if he woke, would sit beside him in the darkness till he slept again. In the mornings he and Peter rose at the same hour, dressed and went downstairs together, built the fire and put the kettle on. They washed their faces at the washstand and combed their hair slick with water. They had long serious chats about pigs and cows and ’coons and angels.

  Mary Jo was six that summer. She and Peter played together happily. Jessica entertained them with stories and games and walks in the woods. Leonie, too, indulged him in her way. In any crisis large or small she was apt to frown thoughtfully and say, “Now what would Mathy do?” and in her earnestness try to do it.

  Jessica went home the first of August. A week later, Leonie left. Matthew and Callie were alone with the children. Soon now they would close up for the winter and move back to town.

  On a coolish morning in late August, Matthew was working in the loft. The children had gone with him. They were noisily turning somersaults in the hay when Callie’s head rose through the hatch.

  “Papa,” she said breathlessly, “he’s come!”

  Matthew stopped, the pitchfork with its bite of hay in mid-air.

  “He wants to see Peter!”

  Matthew deposited the hay and turned back for another load. “Well, take him in.”

  She helped the children down the ladder and climbed up again. “Are you coming in?”

  He swung another
forkful into place before he answered. “I’ll be there directly.”

  Callie looked at him timidly across the loft floor. “Papa, he didn’t mean to do it. He feels bad, too.”

  Matthew made no answer, and she disappeared. He went on with his work, piling up hay for another week. Then he climbed down, washed his itching arms in the horse trough, and walked slowly around to the front of the house, dreading the encounter. But this one only, and he was through.

  “Look, Grandpa, Daddy’s crush!” Peter ran to meet him, dragging an unwieldy object which he thrust into Matthew’s hands. Matthew held it awkwardly, embarrassed by the thing. Somehow he had forgotten that Ed might very well be on crutches.

  Ed sat on the top step, one knee bent, the other held out stiffly, like a stick of wood propped against the porch. “Hello, Prof,” he said with an easy smile.

  “How’re y’, Ed?”

  “Pretty good, thanks. Excuse me if I don’t get up.”

  “Sit still.” Matthew’s tone was polite; the formal courtesy of treaties, the breaking off of relations between countries.

  Ed held out his hand. “I’m glad to see you again.”

  Matthew shook hands in silence, noting the other crutch that lay on the porch. Ed saw his glance. “Looks like I’ll be on all fours for a while.”

  “Not for long, I hope.”

  “I don’t know. The leg’s full of nuts and bolts. Guess it won’t be much use to me now, except to shore me up on the left side.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, I’m getting used to it. I’m still a little shaky, but I’ve learned to drive with the dadblame thing. As long as I can drive, I guess I’m okay.”

  Drive cars and play basketball! “How long since you left the hospital?”

  “Couple of weeks. I’ve been up at Shawano at my sister’s.”

  “She went down there and got him,” Callie said.

  There was a pause. Now he will begin, thought Matthew.

  “I’m getting awful restless,” Ed said. “I think I’m going up to the city in a couple more weeks. I know some guys around Richards Field, maybe they’ll let me work around the hangar or something.”

  Callie said, “You can’t go to work that soon, can you?”

  “I get around pretty well. As soon as my hand steadies, I’ll bet I can overhaul an engine as good as the next guy.”

  “I’ll bet you can too,” she said staunchly.

  “And I’ll bet I’d better try. If I sit around like this much longer, I’ll smoke myself to death. I’ve got to get busy. Anyway,” he added, turning to Matthew, “I’ve got to pay off some debts. I’m much obliged to you, sir, for taking care of those hospital bills…and other expenses.”

  “Well…” Matthew looked away, letting the word hang.

  “I want to pay you back as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “I do, though.” He paused and, dropping his head, went on in a low voice. “I guess I don’t need to tell you how I feel about what happened. I can’t make up for that. But I want to do what I can.”

  Matthew stared stonily at the road, where Ed’s car sat by the mailbox. (Same old car; same old Ed.) Callie blew her nose softly. Along the fencerow the children had planted a crutch in the moist earth, making a wry trellis among the rose bushes. After a moment Ed began to talk of other matters. Is this all? thought Matthew. One little word of remorse? The polite apology for a casual mistake? Was this all—and Mathy dead and gone?

  “I want to get a couple of rooms,” Ed was saying. “Lil says she’ll go up there with me till I get good and settled.”

  “Now isn’t that nice!” said Callie.

  “I thought so. I asked old George if he could stand his own cooking that long. He said he guessed he could handle a can opener as good as Lil! Lil’s not the best cook in the world. She can’t be bothered. She’d rather play bridge or read her movie magazine.”

  He and Callie chatted pleasantly. The children ran back and forth, Mary Jo busy and important, bossing her small nephew about. Peter came over and stood by his father.

  “Daddy, are you going to stay all night with us?”

  Ed laughed, scrubbing his hair. “No, son, I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Daddy has to go back.”

  “Why do you have to go back?”

  “Peter?” said Mary Jo.

  “Why can’t you stay here with us, Daddy?”

  “Well, I just can’t.”

  “Peter, come here!”

  “Can I go home with you?” said Peter.

  “Come here, Peter, I want to show you something!” Mary Jo jumped up and down in little-girl fake excitement.

  Peter backed down the steps and scampered away. Behind him the grownups sat in a charged silence, the point of the visit hovering perilously.

  “I’d like to take him,” Ed said humbly. “I’m lonesome for him.”

  It was in the open at last. Matthew felt a kind of relief.

  Ed looked up, glancing from one to the other of them. “I guess you folks would like to keep him,” he said, “and maybe it would be better that way. But I’d like awful well to have him. I’d take good care of him, you can be sure of that. Lil’s going to help me. And I thought—if it was all right with you folks—I thought I’d take him with me today.”

  Callie sat with her eyes downcast. Matthew stared at the road. Neither of them spoke.

  “Would that be all right?” Ed said. “Do you think he could go with me today? Mrs. Soames?”

  She shook her head, weeping. “It ain’t for me to say, Ed.”

  He turned to Matthew.

  “I can’t let you have him,” said Matthew.

  Ed looked at him for a moment without speaking and dropped his head.

  “Come, children,” said Callie. She herded them around the house to the back yard, leaving the two men alone.

  Ed lighted a cigarette. The smoke drifted Matthew’s way, blue and pungent. By long habit he stiffened, as when his vigilant nostrils, sniffing the schoolhouse air, picked up the odor of transgression.

  “Well,” Ed began, “I thought you might feel this way.”

  “How else could I feel, Ed?”

  “I don’t know, unless—well, I thought if you knew how sorry I was—”

  “The word isn’t big enough,” said Matthew.

  “I know.” Ed smoked for a while in silence. “I’d like to do better now, Mr. Soames. I want to make it up to you—and to him. I’ll try my best. Can’t you believe that, Mr. Soames?”

  “No, Ed, I can’t.”

  “But this time—”

  “I’ve known you too long.”

  Ed looked away with a sad smile. “I guess you have, Prof. But Peter’s my son!” he said.

  “You weren’t much of a father. Did you make a home for him, provide for your family?”

  “Not the way you would have done, maybe.”

  “Nor any responsible man. Dragging around from pillar to post, running off to California and leaving your family behind. She didn’t know where you were half the time!”

  “I know…. I’m sorry for that. I was moving around so much—”

  “Always moving around! Ed, you never could stick with one thing long enough to get it done!”

  “Well, maybe that’s not the worst fault in the world,” Ed said. “Maybe I am the restless kind, and maybe I can’t help it. And maybe she wouldn’t have loved me as much if I could! She loved me, Mr. Soames. Don’t you think she’d want me to have our son?”

  “Do you think you deserve him?”

  “Not for what I’ve done, maybe, but for what I will do.”

  “On that condition,” Matthew said, “in view of your past record, there isn’t a court in the country that would give him to you!”

  For a moment Ed didn’t speak. Then he said quietly, “You’d go that far!”

  “If I have to. It shouldn’t surprise you.”

 
“But I guess it does. You want your revenge, don’t you?”

  “I want what’s best for the boy.”

  “Maybe. But you’re getting even with me, at the same time. Am I that bad, Prof? Have I given you that much trouble?”

  “It’s what you did to her.”

  “She loved me—she was happy!”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Ed looked away. Then he turned to Matthew, pleading. “But it’s you, Mr. Soames—you never liked me, even before. I gave you some trouble, I know, but was I that bad? I never meant any harm. I liked you, Prof, I admired you!” He stopped, and a look of puzzled surprise came into his face. “It couldn’t be Alice, could it—you couldn’t hold that old grudge against me? Not this long!”

  Matthew felt himself turn pale. Old fears, half-forgotten, leaped awake like faulty guards when the siege had already begun and ran helter-skelter through his head with loud alarms. Suddenly not only Alice but all the girls, all the sly smiling girls who had shined up his old vanity, swarmed upon him like avenging furies, and loudest among them Charlotte. The weakness he thought so hidden was exposed. Ed knew.

  “What do you mean?” he said feebly.

  Ed shrugged, still looking at him quizzically. “She told me about it. But she didn’t need to. Everyone knew.”

  “Well, certainly I—I admired her,” Matthew stammered. “We were friendly, as student and teacher. But if she exaggerated the situation, if she—”

  “Ah, go on, Prof!” Ed said with a weary smile. “You always liked the girls.”

  “You can point to nothing!” Matthew cried out. “There is nothing you can say! You can spread rumors, no more than that. My conduct—” His voice dried up in his throat. Ed was smiling at him, an odd calculating smile, and Matthew felt the house of his public life, built with such earnest effort, begin to tremble. One rumor was all it would take. One rumor, the wind of a whisper, could bring his house down around him. Him that is in reputation for wisdom—oh, the stink of a little folly!

 

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