Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  She went to Mr. Winters, who was an elder, in the evening after store hours. He was there alone, searching over his shelves for something someone had wanted in the day and he could not find. It was his usual evening occupation. “If you can just wait till tomorrow, I can find it,” he said a dozen times a day. Upon bits of paper he scrawled, “Mrs. Parsons—ink eraser”—“a spool of sixty white for Mrs. Bradley”—“Billings a chipping knife.” When she came in tonight she could hear him muttering mildly, “Now where in tuck did I put that?”

  “Mr. Winters, will you please tell them I shall be leaving the manse right away?”

  He left off muttering and turned to her, kind, protesting. “Now don’t you let them hurry you.”

  “No, but I have made my plans.”

  “Going away?”

  “Yes, I’m going away.”

  Next morning Mrs. Winters came bustling up the steps. “Joan, I came right over. Mr. Winters told me. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going away, Mrs. Winters.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m not a child, you know. I’m grown up. I have my plans. I’ll write you.”

  Mrs. Winters could not help. No one could really help. It was better to be silent, to make her own life. She would not forget that only by death was her father saved from these people.

  But when she said good-bye to Hannah, she clung to her a moment. Hannah said, patting her back briskly, “Did you write me that little letter, Joan, so’s if I don’t make it with this new minister’s wife, I could go and try some of the summer folks over at Piney Cove?” Joan released her instantly. “Yes, Hannah.” She opened her bag and took out the letter. This is to introduce Hannah Jackson, our general servant for more than twenty years. We have always found her clean, honest—

  “It’s hard on a body,” said Hannah fretfully, “at this age to be having to find a new place and I haven’t chick nor child.”

  “Yes, it’s hard,” said Joan quietly. “It’s hard at any age.”

  There could not be, of course, any white satin nor any of that dreaming. White satin would have sat strangely upon her with Bart standing by her in his bursting blue suit. So she put on her old orange wool dress and her brown coat and the small brown felt hat and she and Bart stood before the county clerk, repeating his words. He was a small, wry-faced man with big loose lips in a wizened face. The day was cold with November and his thin-curved nose was damp and red, and he wiped his hand across it often. “You can sign there,” he said, pointing with his nail-bitten forefinger.

  She signed her name steadily, “Joan Pounder.” Steadily she forced her hand to the name she had taken for her own, shaping its unfamiliar letters for the first time. She stood and watched Bart hold the pen clumsily like a farm tool in his great hand. He wrote his name in a childish angular scrawl beside her neat small script. She stood for an instant looking at the two names. Then she said, “Take me home, Bart.”

  “Giddap there!” he shouted at his two horses. He clacked the reins across their backs and they began to trot briskly, their rustbrown coats shining in the wintry sun.

  “I’ll get a car one of these days,” he said. “But I’ve got to get ahead a little. And a car’s no good for plowing. Got to have horses on a farm, car or no car.” He turned to grin at her. A look she was beginning to know came over his face. His nostrils thickened a little, his lips parted and loosened. “I don’t know if we could sit so close in a car though, my girl,” he whispered heavily. He had small yellowish soft-looking teeth set in gums too wide and pale. She looked away quickly.

  They were moving out of the country she knew into a rugged hilly land, whose valleys were dark with woods. Between the rough fields were stone walls piled of the stones from the land. Everywhere the last colors of autumn were subsiding into dun and gray. Only the oak trees still burned dully red, but a few more nights of frost would strip them, too. Then it would be winter. She was glad for Bart, she told herself, gazing straightly into the dying landscape. If it had not been for Bart she would have been quite alone and winter was coming. In so short a time had she been left quite alone.

  Then at a bend of the narrow earth road rose a big frame house with green blinds, an oblong of white against the land. A few great maple trees stood about it, their skeleton limbs not hiding it.

  “There’s the house,” said Bart, pointing with his whip. “The folks will be expecting us. Don’t you mind my mother.”

  He had never mentioned his home before except to say shortly, “I live with my folks. I’m to have the place if I stay with them—so I’m staying.”

  They drew up and the door opened and now she was near enough to see them, his father, his mother, his brother. They came out, one by one, his mother last, and stood waiting for her. Her heart rushed eagerly toward them; she peered through the dusk to see them—father, mother, brother. But she liked the house, so cleanly white and green, she liked the maples. Under their bare limbs the unraked leaves lay in a carpet of ashy gold.

  She wanted to like everything. Here was to be her home. She was glad they were all to live together. She did not want to live alone with Bart. A tag end of Scripture flew into her mind: “And the lonely he hath set into families.”

  She jumped out of the buggy and ran across the dry frostbitten grass and through the rustling fallen leaves toward the three waiting figures. She ran toward the woman, holding out her hands. She put her arms about the stiff body, and smelled a faint soapy cleanness upon the cheek beneath her lips. “I’m Joan,” she said. She wanted very much to have them love her. She would make them love her.

  “Well!” said Bart’s mother. “Well, I’m sure—” Under her lips Joan felt the passive plump cold cheek.

  “Here’s the old man,” said Bart. “And this here’s Sam—my kid brother.”

  She put out her hand quickly and felt it taken twice by huge stiff hands, the same except that the old man’s hand was cold and the young man’s hot and damp in the palm, and did not quickly let hers drop. The old man did not speak. “Pleased,” Sam muttered. He had small hot brown eyes like Bart’s, under rough hedgy red brows. They stood staring at her, unblinking, out of the twilight, and she stared back at them until the silence was heavy enough to crush her. She must speak and break this deep silence.

  “It’s a lovely house,” she said at last.

  “Won’t you come in?” said Bart’s mother.

  “We’d better go in,” said Bart.

  They turned and tramped in silence into the house, and she followed them into a small square hall from which a staircase rose steeply. There was a hesitation she did not understand. Then the mother said, “Well, use the front stairs for once.” But the two men went through the hall to the kitchen, and Bart said, “Reckon I’ll wash up in the kitchen, too.”

  “Come on up and I’ll show you the room,” said the mother. She mounted the stairs, not touching the rail, stepping carefully, and Joan followed, her bag in her hand. The stairs turned sharply into a narrow hall encircled by closed doors.

  “Here,” said the mother. She opened a door and went in first and Joan followed her. “You’ll find everything handy, I hope.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Joan eagerly, staring about her. There was a maple bureau, a washstand with a pitcher and basin, a rocking chair, a double bed. Upon the bare clean painted floor were bits of old flowered carpet, neatly hemmed.

  “We have a bathroom,” she heard Bart’s mother say. “It’s down the hall. But the men don’t use it. They take the tub to the woodshed when they need to wash. I can’t have the smell of stable in the house. But you can use the bathroom with me, I reckon.”

  Joan did not hear her. There was only this double bed. There she must sleep this night with Bart, this night that was already come down upon her. She had not wanted to think of it. But now the night was here.

  “Well, we’ll be ready to eat as soon as you come down,” continued Bart’s mother. “I’ll just go and stir up the potatoes.” She went o
ut, closing the door, but Joan did not hear her footsteps on the stairs.

  In the dusky room she sat down. She felt as though she had been running too quickly for a long time and now motion was stopped forever. Silence was deep about her. Through the window she saw the endless rolling twilight hills, the dark trees, the faint pale lines of dividing stone walls, the empty shorn fields. There was no other house to be seen. She ran, half afraid, close to the window, but there were no other houses. A great gray barn loomed directly in front of the house. She could see the shadowy figure of Bart’s father moving in the light of the oil lantern he carried. His head was lost in the early darkness but she saw clearly his shapeless legs in overalls, the clump of his hand grasping the handle of the lantern. He slid the barn doors shut and came toward the house, his shadow warped and monstrous upon the dry ground. She stood in the chill darkness, afraid to live. For the moment she passionately envied her mother, safe in her grave, having no more to face the fall of night, the dawn of day. She was afraid of night, afraid of day.

  Then she felt the ring upon her finger. She had forgotten it for a while in her excitement, but now she felt it, strange and stiff upon her flesh. She turned resolutely and found matches beside the oil lamp on the mantelpiece and struck a light and lit the lamp. It was very clean and the chimney shone. The flame licked about the cleanly wiped wick and there was a streak of smoke. She turned it down quickly—but there the black was.

  It didn’t matter—she was relieved with light. She took off her hat and then lifted the pitcher and poured out water to wash her hands. The faint clink of the pitcher was like a crack in the silence. The house was full of silence, the same silence that hung over the hills and the woods. She found herself moving carefully that she might not break the silence again. She opened the door and tiptoed down the carpeted stairs, down the dark narrow hall. There was no voice to guide her, nothing except a vein of light under a door at the end. She opened, it and there they all sat at the table, waiting for her. They did not speak when she came in. She took the empty chair by Bart, trying to smile. No one spoke, but Sam was watching her from under his bushy brows. Bart’s mother rose and went into the kitchen and came back with a dish of smoking boiled potatoes.

  “We’ll eat now,” she said.

  She had known silence before. After her mother’s death there had been silence of a voice no longer heard. There was the increasing silence in the house after Rose had gone and then Francis. There was the silence in which she had lived with her father and in which he had died. There was the silence into which Bart had come, from which he had taken her, the silence of herself, bereft.

  But none of it had been like this silence. They sat down and suddenly in the stillness, in the stillness of field and wood and tree and night sky about the solitary house, Bart’s father said shortly, “We’ll have the blessing—God, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful. Amen.”

  But the prayer did not break the silence. They were crowded about the table in the small crowded room. Beside her sat Bart’s father, his elbows squared. In the silence she could hear him breathing as he ate, helping himself to potatoes, to bread, to cold meat, pouring out skim milk to swallow it down in gulps. Across the table Sam sat, eating, watching her incessantly. Beside her was Bart, beyond, his mother. She did not look at their faces. She kept her eyes on her plate, but around the plate was a circle of hands, their hands, great, warped, clumsy hands, thick and brutal with animal work. She thought suddenly that she never wanted to touch them and pressed the thought down instantly. She must not think such things. They were good people, honest, hardworking. Their faces were decent, honest faces. She belonged to them now. This was the home which was to give her food and shelter the rest of her life—the home she had chosen. She gathered her reasoning thoughts. Her mother would have talked cheerfully, quietly, making friends, and she herself must try. Perhaps they were shy of her, too. She looked up brightly. “I’ve never lived on a farm before,” she said. “I know I’ll like it—I love the country.”

  No one answered. Bart’s father reached for the bread. “Got anything else to eat coming?” he asked his wife.

  “There’s some apples stewed up,” she answered. “Or I could open a can of raspberries.”

  He thought a moment. “Apples,” he said.

  She rose and brought back a bowl and set it on the table. It passed from hand to hand in silence.

  After the meal was over they sat in the small crowded room. She had tried to help clear away, taking out the dishes, searching for the dishpan. “I’ll wash the dishes,” she said. But Bart’s mother poured the water into the pan and tied on an apron. “You can wipe,” she replied. So Joan wiped, and Bart sat in the other room with the men. Now that the men were alone a little talk went on. She could hear the flat toneless voices.

  “You finish that cornfield today, Sam?”

  “Pretty near—tomorrow anyway.”

  “You aiming to take tomorrow off, Bart?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Apples ought to be sorted. Shaler’s comin’ for them the day after.”

  “All right.”

  In the kitchen she searched herself desperately for something to say. What would Bart’s mother like her to say? “This is a nice kitchen—I like a big kitchen.”

  There was no answer for a moment. Bart’s mother swept the cloth about the greasy edge of the pan. “It makes work when you have everything to do yourself,” she answered. Her face did not change its dull worried look.

  “I’ll help you now,” said Joan eagerly. “I want to help all I can.”

  She opened the dish closet and began to put away the dishes she had just finished wiping. “Let me see—the plates here—and these spoons—”

  “They don’t go there—the good spoons I put in the drawer. Those are kitchen things—you’d better let me put them right.”

  She pushed Joan aside and began to sort the dishes and silver.

  “There—”

  “I’ll know tomorrow,” said Joan humbly. She went into the other room. The three men fell silent at once. They sat about the table, set for the next meal and shrouded with a gray-white cloth. She sat down on one of the straight chairs, wondering what was beyond the closed doors. There must be many rooms in this big house. But it was as though there was only this room where they ate, the kitchen, the rooms for sleep upstairs. She sat, afraid to go upstairs, although she was very tired, too tired to try again to talk. Tomorrow in the morning, when the night was over—There was yet the night.

  The father yawned suddenly and enormously. “Got to get to sleep,” he muttered.

  He rose, and opening the cupboard beside the sealed fireplace, he brought out a squarely bound Bible and his spectacles. “Mother!” he called, and Bart’s mother came in, untying her apron as she came. She sat with it across her knees, her hands limply clasped upon it. He opened the Bible and searched slowly for a mark, moving his callused finger from page to page.

  “The thirtieth chapter of Isaiah,” he announced, and began to read slowly, hesitating over the long words, “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord.” It was a long chapter, but he read it to the end. They sat, motionless as stone. Were they listening? She looked from face to face, but she did not know. The mother sat with utter emptiness upon her face, lax with the habit of weariness. It was not possible she heard. Bart sat staring at his great hands. She saw his eyelids droop—he was almost asleep. Sam’s eyes were upon her ankles. She drew them quickly under her chair.

  “Let us pray,” Bart’s father said, closing the book, and they knelt. Now forced to speak sentence upon sentence, the old man’s voice dropped into a mumble. He repeated bits of Scripture, made half-formed petitions, accepted ill fortune with a strange heavy patience. “We know that whatever comes it is from God. We plant but we may not reap. Man soweth but the harvest is with God. Help us to take what comes to us and work at whatever our hand finds to do. Amen.”

  They rose into sile
nce again. Bart’s mother tied her apron about her waist and went back to the kitchen. The father put the book and his spectacles back into the closet and sighed deeply. He turned with heavy abruptness and went to the kitchen. She heard a basin clatter in the zinc-lined sink and heard him dip and pour water. There was the hiss of lather, the dry stroke of a razor against the stubble of his beard. There was the clash of water flowing and of water emptied. Then he walked heavily through the room and up a small back staircase she had not seen.

  “Well,” said Sam, rising, “I guess I’ll go to bed.” He rubbed his great hand through his red hair. She saw him staring at her, at Bart, avid. Secrecy, hot and fierce, was in his eyes. She looked away quickly and he went into the kitchen. His mother was still in the kitchen, moving about, wiping off the top of the stove, putting away pots, filling the kettle.

  “Sam, you get me some wood first thing in the morning,” she said.

  “All right. Where are the apples?”

  “Don’t leave the cores under your bed for me to pick up the way you did this morning.”

  He did not answer. He came into the room where she and Bart sat, and grinned at them. “Well, sweet dreams, you two!” he said, and went up the small back stairs.

  She did not answer. One by one they were forcing the night upon her. The mother was waiting for them to go. In the kitchen she was sitting now on the reed-bottomed chair by the stove, waiting.

  Bart got up suddenly. “Ma always comes up last. We’d better go.”

  “All right, Bart,” she said faintly. She turned to go into the hall to the stairs down which she had come. But he called her abruptly. “Come this way—we use the back stairs every day.”

  “All right, Bart,” she said, and followed him up the steep dark stairway.