Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  “I wanted to get away. … Damn her, she used to say she’d find me wherever I went. That’s why I couldn’t come back home. Thought I was safe here. How’d she know? I haven’t stirred out. I haven’t seen anybody.”

  “She heard somehow.” He did not ask of the child.

  “I’ve got to go away now.”

  “But why are you afraid of her, Frank?”

  “I’m not afraid of her—she’s only a whore. You can’t understand.”

  “Then what are you afraid of, Frank? I could help, you know. I’ll think of some way to help.”

  “You can’t help—you don’t know.” He began picking at the old tufted quilt he had put over his knees. “You—I’m not afraid of her—it’s myself—you can’t understand. I’m spoiled, see? I’m afraid of—wanting to go back to her. I—I’m not decent. I—want her—a woman like her. You don’t know. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I make myself sick. I want her and then I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick when I remember her—other women like her—but I want her. It’s the only kind I can—can want. I can’t get away from it—I want to get away, but I can’t.”

  But he did not speak of the child. He did not know of the child. He must never know about the child. … “Me in a coal mine, Joan, wanting to fly!”

  “Jo!” Bart’s voice shouted up the stairs. “Time to eat!”

  “You shall get away—poor Frank, you shall get away!” she promised. Somehow, she could do it, she said to herself fiercely. She could do what ought to be done.

  She rode over them all. Bart, astonished, cried, “But you don’t know how to even get around in the city! You’ll get lost—and I can’t go with you right now. We’re butchering this week—don’t know if Sam could go, even.”

  “I don’t want anybody. Frank knows the way there and I can get back.”

  She forced her own will ruthlessly.

  “You’re near your time. You might be took,” Bart’s mother said. New York! It was a hundred miles away. She knew all about it and she wouldn’t go there for anything, and never had. Things happened there. You could read about it in the newspaper. Everybody said—

  “I’ll be all right,” said Joan. “I have more than three weeks to go.”

  “You can’t tell so near,” the woman fretted.

  “Dr. Crabbe says so,” she answered with composure.

  “How can he tell? Can’t anybody tell exactly when a woman takes.”

  She did not answer. She went on wiping the table, putting away dishes, sweeping the crumbs, planning. She was going with Frank herself. She was going to find Roger Bair herself this time and tell him about Frank. She could do it.

  “It’s not decent for a woman in your fix to go among a lot of men strangers.” Bart’s mother was watching her from the stove.

  She turned on her. “You mean it’s a shame for a woman to have a child?”

  “No,” the other woman said, embarrassed. She was wiping out the zinc-lined sink and she did not look up. “It’s not shame—not after the birth. But before, a decent woman doesn’t show herself.”

  “I do,” said Joan. “I don’t care—I’m proud.” She was triumphant over this house now, triumphant over their silence, over their stubbornness.

  “You going to New York?” said Bart’s father at the dinner table. He shot his eyebrows over his eyes at her.

  “Yes, I’m going,” Joan cried.

  He grunted and filled his mouth with bread.

  “Bring me back something, Sis,” said Sam, grinning. He had finished his food and was picking at his black nails with the tines of his fork.

  She saw Francis look at him and then stare down into his plate. He ate doggedly, saying nothing. But after the meal he hung about her as she worked. “Don’t come,” he muttered. “It doesn’t matter about me. I’ll find something. There are lots of fellows like me—I’ll go on away again.”

  “We’re going tomorrow,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve always wanted to see New York.”

  But of New York she never remembered anything. She stayed by Francis closely, getting off the train, going down into subways, going up into elevated trains, walking along the streets that were swaying with crowds. He seemed to know his way, going on with certainty from one place to another. She looked at the faces flying past her, a glimpse at this face, a glimpse at another, before they passed. It was as though they were all whirling about her and Francis, and only they two seemed to have direction.

  Or were they lost, too? Once in a subway, deep underground, he took her hand. “Don’t you get lost,” he said.

  “I shan’t lose you,” she promised him, holding fast.

  They climbed at last into a bus. “Now,” said Francis, “we are nearly there.” He sat down beside her. “There isn’t any hope, you know, Joan. It’s nonsense. He won’t remember me—he doesn’t know you.” His face was bleak in the early morning.

  “Are you sure this is the time he will be there?” she asked. She did not answer his despair. She would do anything. All these houses and people—she was not afraid of any of them.

  “Yeah,” he said listlessly. “I looked up the plane schedule. He comes the same time he used to. I was always there to see him come in and take off. He’ll be there unless he’s dead. He’s nuts about his plane.”

  “Then I’ll see him,” she said tranquilly. “I brought enough money along. Even if I have to buy a ticket and ride somewhere in his plane, I’ll see him.”

  The flying field was as big as the whole farm laid smooth. She had never seen so wide and smooth a place. She had never seen a plane before, except as it flew, a bird among birds, in the sky. But then it was impossible, gazing at that far shape as she stood alone upon a hillside, impossible to believe that it contained in its body human beings. Only its purposefulness seemed guided and human. Birds fluttered and swerved, dipped and soared and drifted in dreaming circles. But a plane went straight to its desire.

  They were walking across the level field.

  “Here’s his plane,” said Francis.

  She forgot to look at Francis—she did not hear the eagerness of his voice. She was staring at the great plane. It was enormous, more huge than her imagination of it. She gazed at it, forgetting everything else, herself, her life. All her wonder was held in this shining shape of silvery metal, seeming to touch the earth so delicately, seeming to spurn it, its wings forever outspread ready for instant flight, its never-folding wings.

  But out of the wonder someone was speaking to her. “What do you see?” She looked up at a man taller even than she was—it was strange to look higher than herself—she was always taller than everybody. He looked down at her, a man in a khaki shirt and breeches, a visored cap on his head. Under the cap his face was lean and hewn, the cheeks flat, the eyes bold and blue.

  “It’s the plane,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful before. It’s—it’s concentration—the clean shape—it’s the very shape of flight—it’s motion put into shape.”

  She turned her head. She stared at the plane dreamily in ecstasy. She was thinking. I’m glad I saw this before my baby is born. I’m glad I have this to go into his last making.

  She was recalled again by the man’s voice. “Are you a passenger? Are you going?”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I couldn’t—I have to go home—I came here with my brother. He wants to fly.” She looked around for Francis and saw him standing a little way off, twisting his hat in his hands. “There he is! Wait—perhaps you could tell us where to find Roger Bair. He’s the pilot.”

  Francis came up to her and caught her words.

  “But, Joan,” he whispered.

  The man smiled. “I’m Roger Bair!”

  “Are you?” she cried, and laughed aloud. When she looked at his face now she saw very clearly the straight brow and nose, the deep lines from mouth to chin, the brown weathered skin. It was impossible to tell how old he was from his face, and the cap hid his hair. But his eyes were blue, a
clear imperial blue. Looking up in the morning light she seemed to be looking through his face to the sky, his eyes were so blue.

  A young man in overalls came up panting. “All right, sir—she’s ready.”

  “All right—I’m ready. Look here”—his eyes came back to Joan’s face—“what’s this about your brother?”

  “I’ve always wanted to fly, sir!” Francis said quickly.

  “I seem to remember your face,” the man said, looking at him.

  “I worked here a little while.”

  “Ground crew?”

  “No, sir. I never got that far. I was just a sort of extra. Then they cut down their men. It was after an accident, I guess, and they took off some planes.”

  Roger Bair looked from one to the other of them. They were both beseeching him. “Look here,” he said hurriedly to Francis, “I’m not a potentate. I don’t know what I can do about jobs. But—you feel about this plane like she does?” He looked at Francis and nodded toward Joan.

  “Yes, sir,” said Francis. He wet his dry lips and looked steadfastly back at this god who could deliver him.

  “All right. Show up here two days from now at this same time and I’ll see what I can do. Now I must go—” He turned to Joan and his face wrinkled deeply into the warmest smile she had ever seen. “Some day you’ll fly with me.”

  “Shall I?” She smiled back at him. It was impossible, seeing him, not to let her smile respond to his, and not to believe him.

  “Yes!” he shouted confidently. He was already running. Now he was in the plane, and she could not see him.

  The steps were drawn away, the door closed, and the great roaring creature moved to mount into the air with the heavy lightness of an eagle. She stood, not knowing that any soul was near, watching him fly higher and higher to disappear into the far mists of the morning. He was gone. Without a word she followed Francis and he put her on the train.

  “You’ll be all right now,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

  She was going back, alone again. But she had those words, like a token, like a flower left in her hands. “Some day you’ll fly with me.” Anything was possible, as long as life lasted. Her heart flew dancing out of her breast and gamboled among the shining clouds, following him merrily. I believe I shall, she thought. She held the corners of her mouth into a smile, because she could have laughed in sheer exaltation and delight. Beauty! The world was full of it. Her face lit and sparkled, but she said nothing at all. She let her pure pleasure flow through fields and villages. She thought of him in purest pleasure, remembering him, shaping the memory, holding fast in her mind the movement of his body, the lines of his face, the color of his eyes. And there was, for life in the image, the memory of his smile.

  The house was dark and close. To come back to this house, its closed windows, its empty rooms, the small huddled dining room, the kitchen where the men washed, where the food was prepared, where they sat more and more about the iron range now that winter was closing in, was to burrow into the earth. She could never forget, so long as she lived, that wide smooth field, the light of the rising sun, the shining silvery lifted plane. And Roger Bair was a part of it, the embodiment of that morning, just as Bart was the embodiment of these backbreaking fields, this earthy life filled with nothing but the work for food to eat, food forced from the earth, washed, cooked, eaten.

  For here they spent their days in getting and eating the food. They went to bed early, exhausted, and slept like beasts, soddenly, heavily. They rose at dawn to get their food again. And they thanked God for this. It was the life of moles, burrowing through the sullen earth. They never lifted their eyes from earth to sky. The seasons were for the fruitation of their crops for food. Snow might fall but there was no beauty in it. It was a cause for anger if it fell too long; if it fell too lightly, the wheat suffered. Spring was measured not by bloodroot in the woods and arbutus under the brown leaves around the roots of an old oak, but by the frost upon the fruit trees, and summer was cursed by insects on the potatoes and the beans, by storms too harsh for corn and ripening grain, and autumn was gloomy with a harvest too scanty. They were bound into the earth, mind and body, and their souls were never lifted. When the old man prayed, he pulled God down to earth.

  But sometimes she heard a far rushing sound and then she ran out, though the wind were bitter from the north, and looked up into the clouds to search in that distance for the diving shining shape. Sometimes she found it, glittering like a daytime shooting star. Sometimes it was lost in cloud and she would only hear it passing. But she could always imagine it was the plane beside which she had stood, into which he had climbed. She could imagine it, and so make it a light in her darkness, and he was there, a companion in her loneliness. And, she argued to excuse her dreaming, if she thought about him the baby might grow a little like him perhaps. Surely dreams were not wrong, not if there was nothing else, especially not if her hands went on doing their duty day after day.

  She came, as winter drew near, to spend more and more time in the attic, high among the treetops. She sat there often while the swift evening fell, gazing out of the gabled window, hearing the city branches crack as they swayed about her. Was the plane flying, she wondered, through these frosty clouds? … Francis had his job, he wrote her.

  Roger Bair had been very kind. He was going to be taught to fly some day. He was learning everything about the plane. If he got there early in the morning, Roger Bair taught him things. He always was there early and he always was there when Roger Bair came in … She sat in the stillness of the attic. Francis was safe now. She could take her mind from Francis. Down in the earth, in this house, buried among these hills, she could remember the sky and that clean springing soaring shaft of flight into the sky.

  When the attic grew dark, as it did early these days, she curled for warmth into the quilts where Francis had slept. She had left his bed as it was, and now it was a place for her. For she could not sleep with Bart now. She was restless with him, and it was no slight restlessness of the body. This was a restlessness which fell upon her like a sickness that first night of her return. She was afraid of this increasing restlessness. In the night she drew far from him, lest she touch him, even inadvertently. At first she lay far from him, grateful for the width of the old bed, so that in his sleep he might not fling his heavy arm unknowingly upon her. Then one night she crept in the darkness to the attic bed, and there alone fell instantly into deep sleep. He found her there, astonished, angry. She woke the second time to see him in the doorway in the woolen underwear he wore at night as well as in the day.

  “What’d you come up here for?” he cried resentfully, staring at her over the lighted candle he held. “What’s the matter with you anyway these days?”

  “I’m restless,” she answered. “The baby’s so near.” Her conscience stirred. She would have been restless without the baby. This was another restlessness. Then her courage welled up strongly. She would make a life. She was not afraid of Bart. She went on calmly, her heart thudding, “I shall sleep here as often as I like, Bart. I’m going to do whatever is best for the baby now. I’ve got to think of him.”

  He stared at her over the candle. The upward light threw into relief his thick stubborn jaw, his wide coarse dry lips, the broad base of his nose. The forehead and the small grayish eyes receded into shadow.

  “I have my rights,” he muttered. “You got to give me my rights.”

  “I’m staying here,” she said. She must speak very plainly to him. He understood nothing else but the straightest, plainest speech. “I’m staying here as long as it’s best for the baby.” She turned over and closed her eyes. Her heart was beating very hard and she must still it. This sickness, this fearful repulsion, must not go into the making of her baby. She must think of other things, lovely things. She would think of the sky and of the driving silver stars. She lay waiting until she heard him stumble down the stairs and until she heard the door slam. Then she leaped f
rom her bed and searched the sky. But there were no stars. Outside was the deep darkness.

  She went on the day she had promised toward the bend of the road where she was to meet Fanny. It was a sullen day, the snow drifting from smooth, frigid gray clouds. She had brought some money. For the present she would bring a little money each week, but soon she must think of some way to earn more. She held it in her hand, the precious stuff. It could not be more precious to Fanny than it was to her. She would tell Fanny she had only a very little and her own child coming. But Fanny was not there. She waited a while, gazing over the bleak hills, not daring to leave too soon. She walked up and down until she was cold, so cold that the child within her felt still and cold, and she grew afraid for him. Troubled, she resolved she would come again the next week, on the same day. She searched the whitening landscape, the bitter wind tearing at her coat, at her hair. But there was no living creature in sight. The road wound emptily into the distance. She turned and went back to the house.

  Before the week was gone, on Christmas Eve, her child was born. She had made this year no mockery of preparation for Christmas. Her mother was three years dead. She remembered and put away the memory. Another year there would be a reason for Christmas, a little child for whom to make gifts and cut a tree and trim it. And then in the twilight, the birth began.

  But she had the child so easily that it was like a gift. She had been ready for any pain. She remembered scraps of whispers here and there through her years of girlhood—her mother, hurrying in sometimes in the early morning, pale but cheerful, to be at the breakfast table, “Yes, dear, I am a little tired. I was at the Watsons’ most of the night. They have a dear little baby girl.” Later, neighbors running in, she could hear, when she was dusting in the hall, her mother’s lowered voice. “Dr. Crabbe sent for me. No, things didn’t go just right, but she pulled through. It’s a miracle the child was saved. What? Yes, she suffered agonies! If only the child is all right—you know what I mean. You never can tell—”

  Once Hannah said primly, “I’ve never married, but there are rewards. I’ve been spared some agonies, anyway.”