A cool sweat broke out on Guy’s forehead. “All right, Ma, tell me. I could use something wonderful.”
“The bank—I took the rents to the bank today. And, you’ll never guess. One of the managers, he comes up to me and asks me to walk with him to his desk, right near the cages. Such a nice old gentleman! And he asks me real nice how I was doing, and he asked if you were living out on that awful old farm—” She had to stop, for she was breathing too violently.
Guy waited. He glanced at Sal, who was standing near his elbow, trying to listen. They exchanged glances. Sal nodded with exultant delight. “All right, Ma, go on,” said Guy. “A real nice old gent, wasn’t he? What else did he say?”
“You’ll never believe it, Guy! He offered—he really offered—three thousand dollars for that farm, that isn’t worth anything! I bet you don’t believe it!”
Guy smiled darkly. “Three thousand dollars, eh? Now, I call that very kind of him.”
“I do, too!” Mary breathed with a rapture she had never known in her life before. “Get down there first thing in the morning, son, and get their check.”
“The bank’s check?”
“Who else’s?”
“What do they want the farm for, Ma?”
“Oh, Guy, who cares? They want it; don’t know why. You go down there tomorrow and get the check for us, for our farm.”
When Guy did not answer, she said, with his own impatience, “Oh, I suppose you’re just as surprised as I was, but I tell you it is true, Guy. Get down there when the bank opens before they change their mind and get the check for our farm. Three thousand dollars! Half for you, half for me.”
Then Guy said, “No, Ma.”
The incredulous silence that followed sounded to Guy more dramatic than a thunderbolt. He could see his mother’s protruding eyes, her flaring nostrils, her gaping mouth, and the way the tendons were standing out on her neck like dark ropes. He could see her clenched knuckles, her haggard staring expression. Then she screamed, “What did you say?”
“I said no, Ma. It is my farm, not yours. I’m not selling it to the bank or to anyone else, just now. It may surprise you to know that a couple of days ago I was offered over four thousand for my farm, my farm, not yours, by the bank.”
Again that disbelieving silence, that dazed silence. Then Guy heard his mother’s voice again, awestruck, trembling with reverence. “Over four thousand dollars.” It was as if she were quoting from Holy Writ. “Over four thousand dollars! Guy, you are right to say no to that three thousand dollars. I didn’t know. So go to the bank and get their check for—over four thousand dollars! Why, what were they thinking of to ask me to sell the farm for only three thousand? I think that’s outrageous.”
“Ma,” said Guy, and with rare malice, “you know very well that the bank knows that you don’t own that farm. I do. We’ve been over that before. I wonder why they got after you? Did they think you could influence me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Guy. This is fiddle-faddle. What’s yours is mine—I’m your mother.”
“Is yours mine, Ma?”
“When I die, yes. Maybe, unless I leave it to the missions.” He could feel her struggling with her confusion, her disbelief. She was staggered. Then she said, “You go right down to the bank tomorrow and get that check, Guy Jerald. Wait. I’ll be there, too. What time do you plan on reaching the bank?”
“When they offer me one hundred thousand dollars for my farm—my farm—and I probably won’t take it even then, Ma. Perhaps I’ll ask for more.”
But his mother cried, “It’s my farm! I am your father’s widow! As his widow, I’m entitled to his property, first above all.”
“Tell that to Pa,” said Guy. “It’ll probably amuse him, even now.”
He hung up, smiling with pleasure, and turned to Sal. But she was regarding him gravely, and was unsmiling. “Was it necessary to talk so cruel to your mother like that, Jerry?”
Guy stopped smiling and contemplated Sal and his hard black eyes began to soften. Here was a woman who had been maligned, insulted, slandered, by his mother, spoken of with contempt and loathing and disgust, ridiculed, called a whore, assigned a special place in hell for her “sins.” Yet never once had Sal uttered a condemning or taunting or scornful word of Mary Jerald, though doubtless she knew all about her. Tom had never been reticent concerning his wife, but if not reticent, neither had he been harsh or bitter for all the life she had led him for several years. Guy took Sal by the arm, and tightened his hand when she tried to draw away.
“Sal,” he said, “I’ve just realized my mother is a thoroughly bad woman. She never, probably, broke any of the Commandments willingly or knowingly, or by what Pa called a direct consent of the will. Except for the other Commandments, such as charity and kindness and mercy. She broke them all her life. I have never heard her speak gently and lovingly of anyone or to anyone. A bad woman.” He smiled and shuddered elaborately.
“You’re getting to be a tough man, Jerry,” she said, and she sounded frightened. “Your father was never a tough man. He was the best person I ever knew.”
“She made my father’s life hell, and coming down to it, she made my life hell, too, Sal.”
“Not deliberately.”
“Sal,” he said with impatience, “the subject of my mother interests me not at all. I have thinking to do.”
She went back to the stove. Guy walked up and down the room very rapidly, forgetting that devoted woman, and his mind exploded with firecrackers and fireworks of plans, and his exultation made his breath short and fast. He said, “So, they are desperately trying to get this land.”
He forgot everything but his exultation. He would be free. And there was Lucy Lippincott—Marlene. He did not think of his satiric father, who would have said, “‘Take what you want,’ says God. ‘But pay for it.’ It’s your life, kiddo. And remember that somewhat silly poem—how does it go?
“For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking:
’Tis heaven alone that is given away,
’Tis only God may be had for the asking.
“Yes.” Guy, of course, did not go to the bank the next morning. His mother waited for a long time, then went away, looking old and shriveled and starving, her hands, in the cheap black cotton goods, held in a grasping position, clutching each other, as if something sacred had been snatched from them, and for which she was mortally grieving and inconsolable.
“I think it was something I said about banks,” James remarked to Emil at lunch. “But I can’t be sure, you know. It could have been anything.”
“Well, his father-in-law owned a bank in Cranston, or at least was the president of one or two,” said Emil. “Perhaps he was thinking of William Lippincott. The bank was about to fail when Guy took it over, quite a while after he married Lippincott’s daughter. That is what I was told. But what could have stirred Guy about his father-in-law, who was not an intellectual giant, I heard, or much of a banker, either?”
“Well, I do seem to be a sort of catalyst,” said James.
PART TWO
The talent for money making is unpredictable.—Anon.
11
Out of the black and scarlet chaos of his mind Guy Jerald had a rational dream for the first time in months. It was hardly a dream. It was a memory and he did not suspect he was dreaming, for he was living it again in all its original vividness.
It was April 1949, and the long snows had almost left the land and a diffused pale smudge of sun dappled the gray-white cloud cover. The bawling winds of the past week or two had lessened to a cold and nimble breeze. Guy was not a young man to enjoy the association of those whose minds and conversation were limited, and so at this period he had taken his black lunch box to sit on a step of the mill to eat it there, alone. Too, his newly restless mind was seething with thoughts and plans and wild impatience. Four weeks had passed and no one had called or written him, except his mother.
Only Sal’s pleading had prevented him from approaching the bank again or inquiring concerning Mr. Prentice.
As he sat there, frowning and hardly tasting the good lunch Sal had prepared for him, he was aware of the endless grind of machinery behind him, the pungent and somehow nostalgic scent of sawdust and oil, the voices of men nearby. He looked at the river, gray and quickening as if with an eagerness to reach the sea, and the broken segments of ice it carried, sweating under the sun. He could see the barge waiting for the cut wood near the wharf and, beyond the river and the brown land, the rise of the burning sepia foothills slashed here and there by new green, and beyond the foothills the dusky mountains leaning over the shoulders of the hills. He chewed and thought and frowned, always conscious of the dull throb of grief in his mind, the empty room in which his father had lived. What the hell would you have done, Pa? he asked of that jaunty wraith.
He was startled by the clarity of the reply in the echoing cavern of his brain: “What, son, would I do? Well, if it was me I wouldn’t do one damned thing. If they want in, they’ll come for it. If they don’t, they won’t. Lie low, as Sal tells you.” “For how long?” Guy asked the memory of his father. “Until you outwait them, kiddo. Now, what’s that you’re plotting?”
Guy already knew. It was merely a matter of adjusting the pattern. He knew the taste of iron resolution in his mouth. The hell with waiting. He would make his first tentative move in a day or two. He would ask Sam Kurtz, the head foreman, to permit him to take part of his vacation beginning tomorrow. As if he had been called, the head foreman himself came out of the mill and stood on the step on which Guy sat. He said, “Spring’s almost here, and that was one goddamned winter, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was,” said Guy. He looked up at Sam Kurtz, a slight tall man of middle age, who had a face which was oddly both surly and kind, and tired and absent. His once brown hair had faded to a dun color on his long lean skull, and his small brown eyes had an expression of musing pain. He was, by nature, a taciturn man, a man so deft that he often appeared uninterested in his work yet could accomplish more than any of his men by a sort of force of spirit rather than muscle or physical drive. His shoulders were thin but broad and somewhat bent, his features lugubrious in repose. He never raised his voice yet he spoke with a quiet authority which few dared challenge. There were times when he gave the impression of profound weariness, but he had never been ill a day in his life and had worked in this mill since he had been fifteen years old. His hands were scoured with work; still, they had a look of repose at all times. A deep friendship had matured between the man of twenty-seven and the older man, and there was a paternal-filial relationship between them. They respected each other. Guy knew that Sam was more than merely a simple man; he was wise in a perspicacious if somewhat unlearned way. He was never loquacious, and his remarks and observations were short and to the point. Careful of speech; he was capable of a sharp and oblique humor, which could be obscene but was never cruel. He hated sloth and dowdiness of character, meanness and slyness. Guy had often thought that his father would have appreciated Sam Kurtz, who was as sound as an acorn.
Sam sat down on the step beside Guy, whose lunch box was open. Guy remembered that Sam was a widower of a number of years and that he lived alone in a comfortable old house in Cranston not far from the house of Mary Jerald, though in a somewhat better neighborhood. He was, as Mary would have said of him, “saving.” He saw no reason to sell his house and buy a more modern one. His car was old, but he also saw no reason to buy a newer one as long as the present one would run. He had Teutonic thrift and hatred for mendicancy.
He once said to Guy, “No man ever got himself in trouble by keeping both his mouth and his pants shut.” Which, Guy would think, neatly summed up Sam Kurtz. He was assured and seasoned and had a curious air of strength.
Guy said, noticing that Sam was furtively inspecting the lunch box with his small brown eyes, “Have a sandwich and a piece of cake, Sam. Sal always gives me too much.” In silence and with a nod of thanks, Sam picked up a liverwurst sandwich and helped himself to a piece of chocolate cake. “Sal still with you?” he asked. He had never met Sal but Guy had often spoken of her. Guy nodded. They ate together and looked at the river.
“I’d like a couple of days off, beginning tomorrow, Sam.”
Sam licked the chocolate from a scarred finger. He ruminated. Then he said, “Pretty busy this time of the year.”
“I know. I won’t be away for long. Matter of business.”
Sam studied him. “Guess it’s important, hey?”
“Yes. To me. If I’m ever going to amount to anything I’d better start now.”
“Don’t think you want to spend the rest of your life in a mill?”
Guy hesitated. He knew that since the death of Sam’s wife the mill had been his deepest focus, for he had no children. On holidays he often came to the mill and walked about it, sniffing. Guy said, “I have other plans.”
“You young guys out of the war never want to stay put these days.”
“Did you, when you were my age?”
Sam looked at the river and gave his rare reluctant smile. “Well, as they had a song when I was seventeen, eighteen, I’d seen Paree, in the first war. Got ideas, too. The world was bigger’n Cranston, where I come from, and the girls a damned sight more sprightly and prettier Over There. The hell with Cranston, I said to myself. I’d work back in the mill and save all I could and then I’d get the hell out.”
“But you didn’t.”
Sam shrugged, scraped up the remnants of cake from the box. “Know what, Guy? I found out it don’t matter where you live.”
“You sound like my father.” Guy concealed his impatience with a smile.
“Great old guy, from what you told me. Yes, sir, it don’t matter where you live, what you do. World’s pretty much the same everywhere, and people, too.”
I’ve heard that stupid aphorism too many times, Guy thought. “Still, I’d like to see more of it, and I’d like more.”
Sam nodded. “Me, I’m contented with my work and what I’ve saved. You’re different, Guy. You always was, since you was a kid. You got to live your own life.”
(“It’s your life, kiddo,” Guy could hear his father say.)
“You never wanted to be rich, Sam?”
“Now, why the hell why? My mother had an old Dutch saying, ‘How much land does a man need? Six feet by three.’ She was right. I like my newspapers, and my radio, playing horseshoes on Sundays, beer, poker, a couple friends, a good sleep at night, my health, my money in the bank. But you’re different, Guy.”
I hope so, thought Guy, and he saw the face of Marlene and there was a wilder urge in him now. But he said, “How about my taking two or three days off?”
“You’ll be docked,” said Sam, as if this was a very serious matter and not to be shrugged away lightly.
“That’s all right. I’ll save my vacation for the summer, when the farm’s busy.”
“Ever thought of selling it and moving to town?”
“No,” said Guy. At least not yet, he said to himself.
“Well, go ahead. Take your days off. I’ll get along.” He studied Guy shrewdly, and his eyes had a peculiar way of seeming to see more than the obvious. “Planning to get rich?”
“If I can.”
“Well, good luck. Never hurt a man to be ambitious, I reckon.”
In his own turn Guy studied the older man. He saw a lonely look in the other’s eyes and saw the pain for the first time. He said, “How about coming home with me to the farm tonight and eating one of Sal’s good dinners? We always have beer on hand, too, and we can play a little pinochle. Or poker.”
Sam usually considered everything twice before he accepted a proposal. He said, with caution, “Sure it won’t be any trouble? How’ll Sal take it, bringing home someone she never met?”
“It won’t be trouble, and Sal is a cheerful soul and it gets lonesome for her out there alone all the time. She’l
l be pleased.”
“Well, better call her first.” The whistle blew and the two men rose and went into the mill.
When Guy called the farm Sal was happy to hear the news of a visitor. “I know you like that Sam Kurtz, and I’ve got a fat duck ready for the oven, and the last of the apples.”
When five o’clock came Sam said, “Better take my own car. I’ll follow you. No use you hauling me back to town.” He paused. “Got to stop for a minute or two before we go to the farm. On Griener Street. St. Anthony’s Church.”
“Today? It’s not Sunday.”
Sam gave him a strange smile. “My church’s open more’n Sundays.”
For some shapeless reason Guy thought of his father.
They stopped before the church. It did not look prosperous, and was built of sifting brown stone and had a squat steeple with an unusually large cross upon it. It was shabby and aged. A few people were wandering in and out in the dusk of twilight. “Come on in,” said Sam. “Won’t hurt you.”
They went in together. Guy was surprised at the warmth, the candles, the soft lights on the walls with their Stations of the Cross, the statues, the high altar at the rear with its extraordinarily beautiful crucifix, and the flowers before the altar. There was an aromatic odor in the air, both poignant and haunting. It was incense, for there had been a funeral in the morning, and the ghostly scent lingered. Guy stood in the aisle as Sam genuflected. Sam had produced a cheap rosary and he knelt in the pew and seemed to forget Guy, who watched him with curiosity. The distant candlelight and the muted lamplight hovered over his face, and Guy saw an expression of fervid devotion and suffering on his features. Guy was both embarrassed and touched. He knew that Sam had forgotten him. He did not know whether to sit down himself or remain standing. There were a few other men and women in the pews, all kneeling and praying. At a distance stood a rack of flickering candles in red glasses. It was all very alien to Guy.
Bright Flows the River Page 21