Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  He hadn’t ever really loved her. He loved his mother and so he knew what he felt for Fanny was not love. He wanted her and hated her, and he longed to be where he could not find her when he wanted her. But she was like earth in him. She was a sediment in him, a clay. If he could run away he would be like clear water, escaping from a muddied pool. Sometimes when he was with her, though he was deep in her, he wished he could rise straight up into the dark sky. At such times when he came home, even after he had bathed and was lying clean in his bed, he thought not of her but of flying in the sky, the clean, clean sky. To rise out of the dark, hot, close earth, away, away, into the emptiness where even big clouds had space enough to pass each other, not touching—Why did he want to be close to Fanny, touched by her hands, to touch her, to bury himself in her, and then come forth himself, loathing her touch, longing to be miles above her, above them all, in the sky?

  He could not forget his mother. He wanted to forget her. But out of the darkness in the wood, out of the deep hot darkness, he saw her face, not angry, not even knowing he saw her, but simply as she had been when she was alive and everyday. And the moment her face came out of the darkness he wanted to get away, up, up, into the clear coolness of the sky, to leave everything he had ever known.

  Joan drew the words out of him. She was always planning, now that Rose had gone away. She couldn’t plan anymore about Rose’s wedding and clothes, and now she was beginning to want to plan for him. She ought to have about six kids to keep her busy. The other night she was sitting on the porch when he came in—that was a night he’d met Fanny—and the old man was in bed. She didn’t ask him where he had been, but she began talking suddenly out of the dark when he sat down on the step to get cool, and because he didn’t want to go to bed yet. He had sworn to himself he would not meet Fanny again, and yet suddenly when he was with the fellows he had to go to her, even though his head cried prudently, “Better not go anymore, now while nobody knows! This is the time to stop, now when nobody knows.”

  But Fanny had her dark hands on him. He could feel the dark deep hold of her in him, and he went. Now it was over. He was back, and as he sat down he saw Joan.

  “You not in bed yet?” he asked making his voice gruff. If he were gruff enough she would not begin asking him anything. He had learned that trick with his mother.

  “It’s hot upstairs,” Joan answered.

  And then suddenly she began talking and her voice changed and sounded just like their mother’s. Queer, he had never noticed it before. But now, not seeing her in the shadow behind the rose vine, it frightened him to hear what seemed his mother’s voice.

  “What do you plan for yourself, Frank? What are you doing with yourself?”

  It was like his mother to throw a clear, direct question at him. He could almost hear the overtone of other words. “What are you doing with yourself—oh, my son!” His palms grew suddenly damp. Gosh, if it were true, what the old man was always saying, that the dead live and know! They had talked about that tonight down at the store. “Way I figure it,” Mr. Pegler said, “we got no call to think that when the chemical combination we call the ‘human body’ is broken up that there’s anything left. It’s all chemistry, that’s what I say.” While they talked he scarcely listened. He was saying he never would go near Fanny again, but already his blood was plotting. He could feel it stirring about his heart. There was something about the still close heat of a summer night that made him think of Fanny. Outside the door of the store he could see the heat dancing above the road. A cicada called. In the back of his brain, underneath his attention to their talk, he felt the shapes that Fanny took, rising, writhing, secret in him, waiting. He had been glad—glad that the dead did not know, because only his mother could have discerned in him that dark stir. Maybe she did know? He had again that instant desire to spring from the earth, to rise, to leap into the sky, away, away.

  “The only thing I really want to do,” he answered Joan passionately out of the dark, “is to be an aviator. I want to fly.”

  “To fly?” Joan repeated, astonished. “But how could we ever get you to where you could?”

  To his relief it was her own voice again. His mother would have answered strongly, “Nonsense! Frank!” And when he persisted she would have said, “Want it bad enough, and you’ll get it.”

  But he had not really thought of being an aviator until this moment. He had only dreamed of being in the cool pure lonely upper air, freed from the earth like a bird. But now he planned instantly. What he had not thought of before came quick and complete in his mind.

  “We could ask Martin Bradley. He was in the air service in the war. He dropped bombs.”

  Joan did not answer for a moment, and when she did her voice came differently again, another voice, small, breathless. “I shouldn’t like to ask anything from him.”

  “Why? I thought you were running around with him. Gosh, I heard fellows laughing about it at Winters’.”

  “You let them laugh at me?” Joan asked, angrily.

  “They didn’t before me,” he answered. “But I heard ’em snickerin’. Town like this everybody knows everything.”

  She did not answer. He rose at length, yawned loudly, and said in the aggrieved way he used to have for his mother, “Well, if you won’t, you won’t.”

  He went indoors and to his room and undressed. The longer he brooded, the more likely it seemed that there was no one to help him except Martin Bradley. And Joan would not ask—changeable, like all women. He thought for a while about women and how changeable they were. Even his mother had been changeable, and he learned to watch her when he wanted something so that he might know whether today were a day in which she was willing or unwilling. Only Fanny did not change—Fanny, steadily there in the wood at night, down by the small pool, down by the fallen tree, where the branches made a tent to cover them. “Sweet boy, don’t you ever leave me. I’ll hunt you everywhere. I’ll drag you down—if ever you go away from me.” He heard her voice always mingled with the rush of the stream, a soft, thick, singing voice. He broke into a sweat. He threw himself upon his face in his bed and felt himself sinking, sinking, into a black abyss. He was lost, he was lost. There was nobody to save him, no one to help him get away.

  Joan, walking alone the next afternoon along the south road, passed the small stone house where Mrs. Mark lived, and heard her name called shrilly from the window.

  She had always liked this little stone house. It stood apart from the village and it had a steady, aged look, its small-paned windows close against wind and storm. There used, Mr. Pegler said, to be several stone houses in Middlehope. All the oldest houses were stone, but in the boom times in the late nineties people got town notions and tore down the good old houses their grandfathers had made and built red brick contraptions. That was when the Bradleys built their big square brick house. The factory was going then and business was good. But Mrs. Mark had paid no attention to red brick and her house stood as it had for over a hundred years. Joan always stopped to look at it, and then to wave at Mrs. Mark’s face at the window and maybe to turn in a minute. Now, hearing her name, she turned into the weedy patch and opened the door. She remembered not to greet Mrs. Mark, since everybody knew Mrs. Mark hated what she called “words withouten meanings to ’em.” “Say what’s to be said and be done with it,” she always replied to a “good morning” or a “good-bye.”

  Now she began abruptly.

  “I’ve waited to make sure and I’m sure. That great big young fellow that’s your brother went down past this house last night and he met a girl same as I was pretty sure he did, but it was none of my business, or so I didn’t hold it to be, until last night he came home late by the moon and it was hot and I had my curtain up and I could see the girl was colored truck. I’ve seen such before, but I don’t hold with white and black mixing. I don’t hold with your pa going down to preach to them nor with his son goin’ to make up with them. Leave them alone!”

  Joan, staring at Mrs. Mark, could
not for the moment understand. Mrs. Mark’s dry voice was harsh in her ears, but she was staring at the lashless lids, at the bony sharpness of the jaw and cheekbones. It was not Mrs. Mark’s face at all, but a strange combination of lines, angles, shadows, planes, and the ears stood out transparent flanges.

  “No use not seeing what’s going on. Then you can handle it. I’ve seen plenty of them go by to South End—grandfather, father, son. They all go. South End is a vessel for this town of Middlehope. I won’t name you no names. But I liked your mother. Get that boy out of this town. You look like your mother, only big as a house, aren’t you? It’s hard on a woman to be as big as you. Well, you’re what you’re born.”

  The angles and planes suddenly resolved themselves into Mrs. Mark’s face again.

  “Are you sure it was Francis?” Joan asked.

  “Don’t I know him since he was a baby?” Mrs. Mark retorted. “Get along now.” She lay back and closed her eyes. “These legs of mine—I’m dead to the hips—inch and a quarter a year dies—I can tell to the month of the year what it’s to be—Dead reckoning, I call it!” She chuckled, her eyes grim, and cut it off and said sharply, “Get along, child! You’ve got your job set out, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Joan.

  Down the long road she walked in great steps, her big feet leaving prints like a man’s in the deep dust. The late heat of the August sun beat down upon her, and her face was red. She could feel the heat shimmering about her flesh. But it did not matter. What could her mother have done for Francis? What was she to do for Francis? Her body shrank, and imagination withdrew … She drew near home, and then turned away again. She could not see Francis—not yet—not until she had thought of something to do for him. He must go away, of course. He said he wanted to fly and she had said she could ask nothing of Martin Bradley.

  She strode westward and turned at the railroad station, where the street was a dead end. The late afternoon train had come and gone, and ahead of her she saw a slight, tall figure. She recognized Martin. What was she doing here? She had turned westward, the thought of his name had carried her feet in the old way. She slackened her steps, panting softly. Francis had said Martin Bradley could help him—only Martin could help him.

  “Martin!” she called loudly. “Martin! Martin Bradley!”

  He stopped, turned, and waited for her, elegant and still. When she came up to him she saw he was smiling a little, and instantly she knew herself dusty and hot. She rushed on with determination. What did it matter how she looked?

  “I—it’s nothing about me. My brother Francis—was wondering if you could tell us how to get him into aviation?”

  He stared at her, surprised. “One never knows what to expect of you, Joan.” His voice was cool, tolerating, a little disdainful. But it did not matter. How did a man work in a city all day and come home without a particle of dust upon his neat dark blue shoulders? Her hands were dirty.

  “It’s not me,” she said doggedly.

  “Not you,” he repeated, slowly. She felt him remembering her, and a sickness rushed upon her. But she stood sturdily, waiting.

  … He had not, he thought, looking at Joan, remembered aviation in a long time. Even when he was in the clouds above the enemy fields, he did not think of flying. He thought only of the machine which he must move with precision, delicately, instantaneously when the moment came, to release those darts of death. Bair in his squadron was always groaning for rain. “God, I can’t see them when there are clouds—I can’t see where they go,” Bair used to cry every day. But he himself had never allowed himself to think beyond that moment of aim, of release. Did the bomb strike the spot he had chosen? Then it was a bull’s-eye. He had no more concern with it. It was like striking a note rightly upon the organ. One struck, heard the proper resonance, and passed on, at once to the next note.

  … “Aviation?” he repeated. “I don’t know anything about aviation now.”

  “You were in the war,” Joan urged. She passionately put from her the picture of herself kissing this man, kissing his hands, his lips, the white sides of his hair. If she thought of this she would be sick. And she did not matter now. It was Francis that mattered. This man looked old, smaller, shrunken. She was taller than he, though surely she had not been. She had not stooped to him. She must have grown. But perhaps she had stooped.

  “But if you knew someone,” she said, “you must know a pilot.”

  “I knew Bair, of course,” he said, considering. “Roger Bair—I flew with him—I don’t know—I believe he’s still flying. But we don’t keep up. Of course I could—”

  “Where could Frank find him?”

  “I don’t know—perhaps—”

  “Where does he fly?”

  “From a field outside New York.”

  “Give me a note to him—for Frank.” She pressed him, ruthless with his diffidence. “He’d remember you—he couldn’t forget. Have you a card? If you’d say, ‘Introducing Francis Richards.’ Couldn’t you say ‘For old times’ sake, anything you do for him would be appreciated?”

  Now that she had asked a little, she could ask much. She compelled him by her asking, her eyes compelling him, her urgent voice, the rush and vigor of her big body. She opened her bag swiftly and found a pencil, short and stubby because she chewed her pencils. It offended him at once.

  “I have a pen, thanks,” he said coldly, and drew from an inner pocket a black fountain pen, bound properly in gold. The pen in his hand moved him to write. He took out his pocketbook, and from it drew a small neat business card. Upon it he wrote in fine script, Introducing Francis Richards. He hesitated. “I don’t like to presume on former acquaintances,” he said.

  But now Joan would have dug out his vitals—let him give her something! He never gave her anything—

  “You can put down ‘highly recommended,’ can’t you? He’s my brother and he’s a very bright boy. Put it down.”

  She was breathing hard over his shoulder. He felt her there, large, implacable in her demand. He wanted to get home, to get away from her, to get home to his supper. She was distasteful to him. He shrank from remembering her. After a moment he wrote down carefully, Recommended. Why had he ever thought her like a lovely boy?

  She was only a woman and he hated women, especially when they had long hair. Besides, she was taller than he.

  She snatched the card from him and ran home. It was in her hand, Frank’s escape. She ran up the steps, shouting for him.

  “He’s in his room, I reckon!” cried Hannah from the kitchen. She ran upstairs and into his room. He was on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his hands under his head, his face flushed and sullen, slack with despair. He turned his eyes toward her.

  “Here,” she cried. “I have it—introduction to Roger Bair, aviator! You can go right away—now!”

  He sat up on the edge of the bed, his whole body lifted up, his face breaking into light. “I can go?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She was suddenly exhausted. She sat down.

  “I haven’t any money,” he said frightened.

  “I have—nearly eighteen dollars. I’ll give it to you—”

  She looked at him and instantly the tears rushed thick into her throat. If she had not found out, what would have happened to him?

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  She stood up, shaking her head. No, she couldn’t tell him she knew. She couldn’t speak. They were too near to speak.

  “Pack your things,” she said. “I want you to go tonight. His plane maybe starts early in the morning. I hear them in the sky in the morning before I get up. I’ll get the money.”

  She climbed the attic stairs quickly and opened the round-topped trunk and found the sandalwood box. It was half full of pennies and nickels and a few dimes, but there was a handful of quarters. The quarters were what she had not put into the missionary collection. Her father had given them to her each month on the day of the meeting. “Your mother
used to give twenty-five cents each month at the ladies’ foreign missionary society. I would like you to continue it.”

  “Yes, Father,” she had replied.

  But she had put the quarters in the box. Six of them had gone for Rose. The rest were now to go for Francis. She saw her mother’s eyes twinkle from the grave.

  What she could do for Francis was not done until he was away. For his sake she must send him as far as she could. He must not stay a night more, not if she could help it. She packed his garments feverishly into her own bag—fresh shirts, his ties, the dark red tie his mother loved, his garments. He came and went, his black hair tumbled, his eyes shining. But he was not gay. He was silent. His face was grave, tense, tightened. The loose sullenness of his red mouth, still full-lipped as a child’s mouth, was gone, changed to some inner determined control. They did not speak. How could she speak, lest she cry out, “How could you do what you have done?” He did not speak because there was no one but himself in his mind. Everyone in the world was below the horizon of his mind. He moved alone in his life, to take his chance of freedom. If she had spoken he would have shouted at her to leave him alone. He was sore with sickness at the tangle he was in. He felt himself sweeping out of it upon wide silver wings, into the sky.

  “There,” said Joan, rising from her knees. “Everything’s in but your toothbrush. Eat your supper and brush your teeth before you go. You can catch the nine o’clock and be in New York at eleven. You go straight to a Y.M.C.A. Tomorrow morning you can go out to the field and find him. You write me a letter how things go—write soon, Frank—tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he muttered. It did not seem possible he was really leaving this room. In this room he had lived so long that it did not seem possible he could sleep in another bed. But this very night he must sleep in some strange unknown bed in the city he had never seen. He’d never even once seen New York and now suddenly tonight he was going to sleep there.