Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  Bart’s father and Bart were struggling together, and Bart’s mother and Sam were clinging to them and pulling at them. Sam was jerking at Bart, and his mother was hanging to the old man. Bart was standing, huge, stolid, warding off his father’s stiff clumsy blows. At the sound of her voice they parted. They were ashamed before her.

  “Sit down!” Bart’s father roared.

  Bart picked up the overturned chair and sat down sullenly. The old man sat, panting, and dusted off his clothes. Bart’s mother dropped into a chair and leaned her elbow on the table. They had not eaten. The table was still covered and there was no smell of cooking food.

  Then she saw the girl, that silly coarse girl, the daughter of the tenant farmer over the next hill. She knew her. They were shiftless and let their cows run dry and the girl came sometimes for milk, not to the house but to the barn where Bart was milking. There she sat. She had painted her face and the paint was all smeared with crying. Her arms were bare and her hands were thick and red, like Bart’s hands. She did not look at Joan. None of them looked at her. But the noise stopped at the sound of her voice.

  “Is Paul all right?” she asked again, sharply.

  Bart’s mother lifted her head. “That’s all you think of!” she cried. “You don’t think of nothing but that dumb child—” Her heavy pale face was spotted with red. “You’ve ruined Bart!”

  The girl began to cry again, foolish loud crying.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Joan. The girl was staring down at her big red hands clenched in the lap of her pink cotton dress. She had seen girls like that. There were many girls like that. They came to Mr. Winters’ store oh Saturday mornings to buy fifty-nine-cent dresses, pink and blue.

  “I’ll tell you what it means!” Bart’s father shouted at her suddenly, turning in his chair at her. “It means we came home from church and found Bart out lying in the hay with this girl! You and your fine ways, thinking you’re too fine for us—too fine to do your duty to Bart—you’ve driven him to it—he’s as good as had no wife for years!”

  She stared at Bart. He sat there, his heavy inert body, his hair awry, his face thick and red, his great hands dangling between his knees. Bart and this girl—she was sick suddenly, her stomach writhing in her with sickness. His horrible thick heavy body. … The girl was wailing on and on. She wiped her hand across her nose on the edge of her sleazy white petticoat.

  “Is Bart in love with this girl?” she asked.

  “I don’t want any hifalutin talk!” Bart’s father shouted. He was panting as though he were still fighting. “If you’d done your duty as a wife—” His voice broke. He drew his sleeve across his forehead. “It’s an awful thing to happen in this house of a Godfearing churchgoing man,” he whispered, panting.

  “Bart’s a good boy,” Bart’s mother began. “Bart’s a real good boy. My boys have been raised to be good boys.”

  Bart coughed and wrapped his hands together and let them drop again. Sam tilted back on his chair. In his church clothes he looked neat and complacent beside Bart. Bart was in his old work shirt and trousers, his feet bare. But this morning when she went away he had on his blue Sunday suit.

  Standing in the doorway, clinging to the door, she looked at them. They were waiting for her. They were all waiting for her, to see what she would do. But she did not know what to do. She looked around at them, and she was struck with their grief. They were grieving, this old man and woman. They were suffering, understanding no cause. They did not understand anything, not any more, really, than Paul did. But then, nobody understood why things happened to them. She could have touched their hands for the first time without repulsion and said, “Let’s be patient with each other because none of us knows why—”

  But it was true. She had been unjust to Bart. She had done wrong to them all. She had come into this house of simple people, good people. Bart was not bad—he was only stupid. Ah, Paul helped her to understand them all—Paul, who was born as he was and not to be blamed.

  “Yes,” she said. “You are right. I’ve done very wrong.” They looked at her astonished. They had not expected her to be gentle. She was not by nature gentle. But Paul had taught her to be gentle—she had learned how to be infinitely gentle.

  Bart began to mumble. “I’m not—”

  “I don’t blame you,” she went on quickly. “Don’t tell me, Bart. You—maybe this girl would have made you happy. I’ve injured you.”

  The girl stopped crying and listened, her look upon Joan’s dusty shoes. Her coarse mouth was swollen and pouting, her small pale eyes were hidden behind their swollen lids. She looked like the girl who had come to the manse to be married, long ago—

  “I won’t have divorce in this house!” said Bart’s father loudly. “That’s worse still. What God’s joined—”

  “Bart and I aren’t joined—we can’t be—if we lived together all our lives we wouldn’t be joined.” They sat stupefied by her quiet voice. They were not able to understand. She turned from one bewildered face to the other. They understood meat, drink, work. But she went on. “I see how difficult I’ve been for you to bear.” She hesitated and went on quickly, forcing herself to smile. She made her voice bright as one makes one’s voice bright to speak pleasantly and resolutely to children. “I see it all so clearly. The only thing I can do for you is to go away. You can live as you did before I came. After a while you will forget I was ever here.”

  Without waiting for them to answer, she ran through the room and up the back stairs to the attic. She must go away at once. She must not wait for Bart to come to her, sheepish, sullen, wanting her back. She must not wait until they laid hold on her to keep her so people would not know. Paul was whimpering for food, but she paid no heed to him. She would go by the cellar and get him some milk as she went out. She began to pack with frantic speed.

  Where could she go in the world? There was no door anywhere hers to open. Then she thought of Mrs. Mark. She could go and stay with her—take care of her. In a week or two she could find something elsewhere. She’d put their clothes into a bundle—it would be easier to carry than a bag. She opened the round topped trunk and found the sandalwood box and took out all her money. That was comfort—it was her own. She put everything she was not able to take into the trunk and locked it. She would send for it. Now she must get away before they knew it. They would not believe she could go so soon. They would not imagine she would go on foot, carrying Paul. But she had her strong good body for servant.

  She put a cap on Paul, picked him up and slipped her arm through the bundle and went softly down the front stairs and out the open door. She went around the porch to the cellar and filled a cup for Paul and put it to his mouth. She listened. Bart’s father was talking on and on. She held Paul to her and let him drink.

  No one came after her. No one called. All about her was the rich silence of the lengthening autumn afternoon. She looked light. The sun was shining through the golden dusty air. An hour ago she had been walking this road, not dreaming of such a thing as she was doing. But now it was the one inevitable end ahead, into the sky. It was a deep empty bowl of pure blue to which life led her. She had been coming unaware down a long path alone and the path stopped at a gate, and she had opened the gate and closed it behind her forever, not knowing what was beyond.

  She plodded steadily eastward. Paul slept again, content. By sunset she would be at Mrs. Mark’s cottage, at least by twilight.

  The sun would swing its way around the world to bring another day. No cry or prayer of hers could stay or hasten the measure of the day and night. She knew it now and accepted all that had been her life. What had happened to her, she accepted. What was to come, she had strength to accept. She went steadily on, in freedom and alone, carrying her own burden.

  IV

  SHE LIFTED THE LATCH very softly, the cottage was dark, a dark small solid shape in the faintly lighter surrounding darkness. Mrs. Mark must be asleep. But she was not. Her voice came cutting small and thin out
of the darkness.

  “Who’s that?”

  “It’s only I—Joan—back again.”

  “What are you back for at this time of night?”

  She heard Mrs. Mark fumbling for matches, and there was a scratch and a flaring light. In it Mrs. Mark’s wizened face peered out, a jumble of lines.

  “My soul, Joan, what have you got there?”

  She stood holding Paul, her bundle on her arm. “I’ve left my—the house—the Pounders’ house. I can’t go back. If I can just stay the night with you—”

  Mrs. Mark was lighting the candle beside her bed. “My soul and body,” she was muttering, “my soul and body! There’s no peace.”

  “He’s a quiet child,” said Joan quickly.

  “I don’t mean him,” said Mrs. Mark. “Come on in. There are sheets in the bureau drawer and quilts in that old box. I don’t know where you can sleep.”

  “I’ll sleep in the other room, on that settee—I’ll manage.”

  She was desperately tired. Paul was so heavy, always inert in her arms. She laid him down on the foot of the bed. Mrs. Mark peered at him.

  “He’s a big child to carry. What did he do—go to sleep?”

  She had better speak at once, tell it definitely and clearly. “He’ll never be right—he’s born wrong.”

  “Oh, my soul,” Mrs. Mark whispered. “Give him to me.”

  Joan lifted Paul and laid him across the dead legs. Mrs. Mark held him in her sticks of arms and stared at him with her small inscrutable eyes, muttering over and over, “Oh, my soul—my soul—” Her face was gathered into a knot of pity.

  Joan sat down on the bed and suddenly the old sobbing began to rise in her, the old dry aching sobbing. But she held it in her throat, choking, dry. No use crying. There was really no use crying. She set her teeth. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” she said. “I can just manage if you don’t feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m not being sorry for you,” Mrs. Mark answered. “What’s the good? Well, get along and fix your bed. It’s late. There ought to be milk and bread in the kitchen. I heard the delivery man leaving them tonight.”

  She lay back and Joan took Paul from her and undressed him for the night. She made the bed upon the couch in the small sitting room and laid him there. Then she went back to Mrs. Mark and took her scrawny yellow hand. “Shall I tell why I left that house? I feel as if I ought to tell you, coming here like this.”

  Mrs. Mark’s hand was like a clutch of wires, thin, stiff, dry.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “I gave up wanting to know why long ago. What happens happens. You came away because you had to, I reckon.”

  “Yes, I had to,” she said.

  “It’s why we all mostly do the way we do. Get along now. I’m ready for my sleep.”

  She blew out the candle and Joan felt her way out of the dark room.

  When she woke in the morning it was light. She woke in light and the small stone house was full of a warm peace. She got up and bathed and dressed Paul freshly and fed him and then when she was dressed she opened the door quietly. But Mrs. Mark was not asleep. She had brushed her hair and tidied her sheets about her and put on her bedsack and was lying with her eyes fixed upon the door.

  “I wasn’t sure I hadn’t dreamed it,” she said in her high small voice. “These days I take to dreaming. There are times when I feel my old man in the house and my girl that died when she was six.”

  “I’m no dream,” said Joan, smiling. No, this morning was real. The sun was streaming in the windows. She felt strong and actual, able for whatever was ahead. “Now your breakfast. I shall bring you hot water and when you’ve washed you shall have a tray. I’ll not ask you what you want—I’ll just bring it.”

  She straightened the bed and put the table to rights. Under the bed Mrs. Mark had had drawers put so that she could reach them, where she kept her things, the clothes she needed, her comb and brush.

  “Not going to give me my choice, eh?” she grunted, her small sad eyes amiable.

  “No,” said Joan cheerfully. “You’re always bossing other folks, you know.”

  She busied herself, fetching the water, turning her back while Mrs. Mark struggled. She heard her panting and dragging at her legs, and she could not bear it. “Why don’t you let me help?” she said. “I took care of my mother so long.”

  “I guess I can still take care of my own two legs,” said Mrs. Mark sharply.

  “I’ll get your tray ready then.”

  In the small kitchen she fed wood into the stove. She tried to realize that she was a woman who had left her husband the day before. Was this how such a woman felt? But she felt as one feels who has stepped out of stumbling through a darkly shadowed wood into a meadow in the morning light. The very sunshine was different. She had so often risen in the cold shadows of that house and gone downstairs into the cold silence. Bart was always there to overpower her spirit. She knew him for what he was, and daily she had determined to be as she would. Yet because he was never changed he could overpower her every mood. She could never be freely happy when he was near. If she was for a moment happy, he was there like the knowledge of Paul—a dark weight.

  But Paul was still her baby. He did not ask anything of her, only to be fed and cared for. Her heart flew out of her in tenderness to Paul, who never asked anything of her, and she dropped the stove lid and ran to fetch him. She propped him with quilts in a corner of the kitchen and made laughter over him, talking to him. This morning she could not be sad. He was her little boy anyhow. The fire was crackling in the wood stove and the bottom of the kettle began to sizzle. The room was full of sunshine.

  If I lived here I’d hang yellow curtains, she thought in the midst of everything. She loved this small, sparsely furnished house. Perhaps Mrs. Mark would let her stay. She could make a garden and buy a cow and then if she could make just a little money … Her mind, freed, was dancing about the house like a beam of light. She could do anything. She could find a way. She would write to Francis. No—she paused and stood still, the bread knife in her hand, pressing into the loaf—she thought of Roger Bair. Even after all these years why shouldn’t she write to Roger Bair and ask him how a woman with little children could make some money? She stopped again above the eggs she was frying, her spoon poised. She hadn’t said a word to Mrs. Mark about Rose—about Rose’s children. She was leaping ahead as she always did without thinking how she was going to do the thing she wanted, seeing it done. She was always seeing things done. She lifted the eggs and put them on a plate with the bacon and ran into the wasted garden and found a spray of small scarlet leaves from the top of a woodbine vine and laid it upon the white cloth of the tray and poured the coffee. It was all ready. “There!” she said, setting it before Mrs. Mark with delight.

  Mrs. Mark looked up at her. She had made herself very neat in a clean high-necked nightgown. Her wrinkled face was like a triangle of cracked old ivory, her small black eyes peering deeply out. She looked at the tray and wet her withered bluish lips.

  “My soul,” she exclaimed, “I don’t eat two eggs. You’d think I could walk ten miles! I’m not going to feed up legs like this that won’t even heave theirselves to the other side of the bed.”

  But she began to eat.

  “Good?” said Joan, watching her, smiling.

  “The toast’s a mite brown,” said Mrs. Mark. She drank a little coffee. “You’re not going away?”

  “No,” said Joan, “not if you will let me stay.”

  “Coffee’s a mite strong,” said Mrs. Mark, gulping it. “It makes my eyes water—I’m not used to it.” Deep in her eyes were scanty tears.

  “I’ll get some hot water to thin it,” said Joan gently.

  It was not possible in this quiet free house to keep from telling Mrs. Mark everything.

  She told her about Rose. “Rose is dead—my little sister.”

  “Don’t tell me!” said Mrs. Mark. “That little thing! She pestered me so trying to be good to me,
reading to me when I wanted to go to sleep—Oh, dear,” she sighed, “and why should she die, a little kind-meaning young thing, and me like this?”

  “She died far away in a city near Tibet—a Chinese city. I’m to have her two children. It’s all I can do for her.”

  “What for?” said Mrs. Mark. “You’re being put upon. That Winters woman’s got a great big house and Winters has the store, and you have nothing.”

  “I want Rose’s children,” said Joan.

  “How are you going to take care of them?”

  “I’ll find some way.”

  Mrs. Mark lay silent for a moment regarding her, her small black eyes winking lidlessly like a bird’s eyes. She grunted at last. “Well, you’re big enough to do what you want. I reckon nobody will gainsay a great thing like you—scared of you—I am myself. I didn’t want those two eggs. But I was scared not to eat them before you.”

  She laughed a dry wheeze of laughter, and Joan let out her own great laugh and was startled by it. She had not laughed recklessly like that since before her mother died. Then she was shy, having laughed so loudly. They were talking about Rose and it was strange laughter. But there was some odd happiness is her, mixed with sorrow. Paul was standing by her knees, his head leaning against her. He raised his head a little and she remembered him.

  “I believe he’s really trying to walk alone,” she said eagerly. They watched him, and laughter died between them. She said sadly, “But I don’t believe he even knows me—see—Paul, Paul—Paul?”

  But Mrs. Mark continued to stare steadily at Paul, watching him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You know him, don’t you? The value of him you’ve got—giving birth, feeding, tending. I think of that a lot with my dead girl. I birthed her and tended her. It was a life, though she died. Paul’s life is a life, too, one kind of a life.”

  “Bart’s mother wanted me to put him away somewhere,” Joan said. Little by little all the bitterness was seeping out of her into words now.