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Veteran foruma
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Variety is the spice of life

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Chapter 10

1
When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it. Adam Trask had not been home long before the tensions began to build up. The brothers saw too much of each other and not enough of anyone else.
For a few months they were busy getting Cyrus’s money in order and out at interest. They traveled together to Washington to look at the grave, good stone and on top an iron star with seal and a hole on the top in which to insert the stick for a little flag on Decoration Day. The brothers stood by the grave a long time, then they went away and they didn’t mention Cyrus.
If Cyrus had been dishonest he had done it well. No one asked questions about the money. But the subject was on Charles’ mind.
Back on the farm Adam asked him, “Why don’t you buy some new clothes? You’re a rich man. You act like you’re afraid to spend a penny.”
“I am,” said Charles.
“Why?”
“I might have to give it back.”
“Still harping on that? If there was anything wrong, don’t you think we’d have heard about it by now?”
“I don’t know,” said Charles. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
But that night he brought up the subject again. “There’s one thing bothers me,” he began.
“About the money?”
“Yes, about the money. If you make that much money there’s bound to be a mess.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, papers and account books and bills of sale, notes, figuring--well, we went through Father’s things and there wasn’t none of that.”
“Maybe he burned it up.”
“Maybe he did,” said Charles.
The brothers lived by a routine established by Charles, and he never varied it. Charles awakened on the stroke of four-thirty as surely as though the brass pendulum of the clock had nudged him. He was awake, in fact, a split second before four-thirty. His eyes were open and had blinked once before the high gong struck. For a moment he lay still, looking up into the darkness and scratching his stomach. Then he reached to the table beside his bed and his hand fell exactly on the block of sulphur matches lying there. His fingers pulled a match free and struck it on the side of the block. The sulphur burned its little blue bead before the wood caught. Charles lighted the candle beside his bed. He threw back his blanket and got up. He wore long gray underwear that bagged over his knees and hung loose around his ankles. Yawning, he went to the door, opened it, and called, “Half-past four, Adam. Time to get up. Wake up.”
Adam’s voice was muffled. “Don’t you ever forget?”
“It’s time to get up.” Charles slipped his legs into his pants and hunched them up over his hips. “You don’t have to get up,” he said. “You’re a rich man. You can lay in bed all day.”
“So are you. But we still get up before daylight.”
“You don’t have to get up,” Charles repeated. “But if you’re going to farm, you’d better farm.”
Adam said ruefully, “So we’re going to buy more land so we can do more work.”
“Come off it,” said Charles. “Go back to bed if you want to.”
Adam said, “I bet you couldn’t sleep if you stayed in bed. You know what I bet? I bet you get up because you want to, and then you take credit for it--like taking credit for six fingers.”
Charles went into the kitchen and lighted the lamp. “You can’t lay in bed and run a farm,” he said, and he knocked the ashes through the grate of the stove and tore some paper over the exposed coals and blew until the flames started.
Adam was watching him through the door. “You wouldn’t use a match,” he said.
Charles turned angrily. “You mind your own goddam business. Stop picking at me.”
“All right,” said Adam. “I will. And maybe my business isn’t here.”
“That’s up to you. Any time you want to get out, you go right ahead.”
The quarrel was silly but Adam couldn’t stop it. His voice went on without his willing it, making angry and irritating words. “You’re damn right I’ll go when I want,” he said. “This is my place as much as yours.”
“Then why don’t you do some work on it?”
“Oh, Lord!” Adam said. “What are we fussing about? Let’s not fuss.”
“I don’t want trouble,” said Charles. He scooped lukewarm mush into two bowls and spun them on the table.
The brothers sat down. Charles buttered a slice of bread, gouged out a knifeful of jam, and spread it over the butter. He dug butter for his second slice and left a slop of jam on the butter roll.
“Goddam it, can’t you wipe your knife? Look at that butter!”
Charles laid his knife and the bread on the table and placed his hands palm down on either side. “You better get off the place,” he said.
Adam got up. “I’d rather live in a pigsty,” he said, and he walked out of the house.

2
It was eight months before Charles saw him again. Charles came in from work and found Adam sloshing water on his hair and face from the kitchen bucket.
“Hello,” said Charles. “How are you?”
“Fine,” said Adam.
“Where’d you go?”
“Boston.”
“No place else?”
“No. Just looked at the city.”
The brothers settled back to their old life, but each took precautions against anger. In a way each protected the other and so saved himself. Charles, always the early riser, got breakfast ready before he awakened Adam. And Adam kept the house clean and started a set of books on the farm. In this guarded way they lived for two years before their irritation grew beyond control again.
On a winter evening Adam looked up from his account book. “It’s nice in California,” he said. “It’s nice in the winter. And you can raise anything there.”
“Sure you can raise it. But when you got it, what are you going to do with it?”
“How about wheat? They raise a lot of wheat in California.”
“The rust will get to it,” said Charles.
“What makes you so sure? Look, Charles, things grow so fast in California they say you have to plant and step back quick or you’ll get knocked down.”
Charles said, “Why the hell don’t you go there? I’ll buy you out any time you say.”
Adam was quiet then, but in the morning while he combed his hair and peered in the small mirror he began it again.
“They don’t have any winter in California,” he said. “It’s just like spring all the time.”
“I like the winter,” said Charles.
Adam came toward the stove. “Don’t be cross,” he said.
“Well, stop picking at me. How many eggs?”
“Four,” said Adam.
Charles placed seven eggs on top of the warming oven and built his fire carefully of small pieces of kindling until it burned fiercely. He put the skillet down next to the flame. His sullenness left him as he fried the bacon.
“Adam,” he said, “I don’t know whether you notice it, but it seems like every other word you say is California. Do you really want to go?”
Adam chuckled. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s like getting up in the morning. I don’t want to get up but I don’t want to stay in bed either.”
“You sure make a fuss about it.” said Charles.
Adam went on, “Every morning in the army that damned bugle would sound. And I swore to God if I ever got out I would sleep till noon every day. And here I get up a half-hour before reveille. Will you tell me, Charles, what in hell we’re working for?”
“You can’t lay in bed and run a farm,” said Charles. He stirred the hissing bacon around with a fork.
“Take a look at it,” Adam said earnestly. “Neither one of us has got a chick or a child, let alone a wife. And the way we’re going it don’t look like we ever will. We don’t have time to look around for a wife. And here we’re figuring to add the Clark place to ours if the price is right. What for?”
“It’s a damn fine piece,” said Charles. “The two of them together would make one of the best farms in this section. Say! You thinking of getting married?”
“No. And that’s what I’m talking about. Come a few years and we’ll have the finest farm in this section. Two lonely old farts working our tails off. Then one of us will die off and the fine farm will belong to one lonely old fart, and then he’ll die off--”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Charles demanded. “Fellow can’t get comfortable. You make me itch. Get it out--what’s on your mind?”
“I’m not having any fun,” said Adam. “Or anyway I’m not having enough. I’m working too hard for what I’m getting, and I don’t have to work at all.”
“Well, why don’t you quit?” Charles shouted at him. “Why don’t you get the hell out? I don’t see any guards holding you. Go down to the South Seas and lay in a hammock if that’s what you want.”
“Don’t be cross,” said Adam quietly. “It’s like getting up. I don’t want to get up and I don’t want to stay down. I don’t want to stay here and I don’t want to go away.”
“You make me itch,” said Charles.
“Think about it, Charles. You like it here?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to live here all your life?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus, I wish I had it that easy. What do you suppose is the matter with me?”
“I think you’ve got knocker fever. Come in to the inn tonight and get it cured up.”
“Maybe that’s it,” said Adam. “But I never took much satisfaction in a whore.”
“It’s all the same,” Charles said. “You shut your eyes and you can’t tell the difference.”
“Some of the boys in the regiment used to keep a squaw around. I had one for a while.”
Charles turned to him with interest. “Father would turn in his grave if he knew you was squawing around. How was it?”
“Pretty nice. She’d wash my clothes and mend and do a little cooking.”
“I mean the other--how was that?”
“Good. Yes, good. And kind of sweet--kind of soft and sweet. Kind of gentle and soft.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t put a knife in you while you were asleep.”
“She wouldn’t. She was sweet.”
“You’ve got a funny look in your eye. I guess you were kind of gone on that squaw.”
“I guess I was,” said Adam.
“What happened to her?”
“Smallpox.”
“You didn’t get another one?”
Adam’s eyes were pained. “We piled them up like they were logs, over two hundred, arms and legs sticking out. And we piled brush on top and poured coal oil on.”
“I’ve heard they can’t stand smallpox.”
“It kills them,” said Adam. “You’re burning that bacon.”
Charles turned quickly back to the stove. “It’ll just be crisp,” he said, “I like it crisp.” He shoveled the bacon out on a plate and broke the eggs in the hot grease and they jumped and fluttered their edges to brown lace and made clucking sounds.
“There was a schoolteacher,” Charles said. “Prettiest thing you ever saw. Had little tiny feet. Bought all her clothes in New York. Yellow hair, and you never saw such little feet. Sang too, in the choir. Everybody took to going to church. Damn near stampeded getting into church. That was quite a while ago.”
“ ’Bout the time you wrote about thinking of getting married?”
Charles grinned. “I guess so. I guess there wasn’t a young buck in the county didn’t get the marrying fever.”
“What happened to her?”
“Well, you know how it is. The women got kind of restless with her here. They got together. First thing you knew they had her out. I heard she wore silk underwear. Too hoity toity. School board had her out halfway through the term. Feet no longer than that. Showed her ankles too, like it was an accident. Always showing her ankles.”
“Did you get to know her?” Adam asked.
“No. I only went to church. Couldn’t hardly get in. Girl that pretty’s got no right in a little town. Just makes people uneasy. Causes trouble.”
Adam said, “Remember that Samuels girl? She was real pretty. What happened to her?”
“Same thing. Just caused trouble. She went away. I heard she’s living in Philadelphia. Does dressmaking. I heard she gets ten dollars just for making one dress.”
“Maybe we ought to go away from here,” Adam said.
Charles said, “Still thinking of California?”
“I guess so.”
Charles’ temper tore in two. “I want you out of here!” he shouted. “I want you to get off the place. I’ll buy you or sell you or anything. Get out, you son of a bitch--” He stopped. “I guess I don’t mean that last. But goddam it, you make me nervous.”
“I’ll go,” said Adam.

3
In three months Charles got a colored picture postcard of the bay at Rio, and Adam had written on the back with a splottery pen, “It’s summer here when it’s winter there. Why don’t you come down?”
Six months later there was another card, from Buenos Aires. “Dear Charles--my God this is a big city. They speak French and Spanish both. I’m sending you a book.”
But no book came. Charles looked for it all the following winter and well into the spring. And instead of the book Adam arrived. He was brown and his clothes had a foreign look.
“How are you?” Charles asked.
“Fine. Did you get the book?”
“No.”
“I wonder what happened to it? It had pictures.”
“Going to stay?”
“I guess so. I’ll tell you about that country.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” said Charles.
“Christ, you’re mean,” said Adam.
“I can just see it all over again. You’ll stay around a year or so and then you’ll get restless and you’ll make me restless. We’ll get mad at each other and then we’ll get polite to each other--and that’s worse. Then we’ll blow up and you’ll go away again, and then you’ll come back and we’ll do it all over again.”
Adam asked, “Don’t you want me to stay?”
“Hell, yes,” said Charles. “I miss you when you’re not here. But I can see how it’s going to be just the same.”
And it was just that way. For a while they reviewed old times, for a while they recounted the times when they were apart, and finally they relapsed into the long ugly silences, the hours of speechless work, the guarded courtesy, the flashes of anger. There were no boundaries to time so that it seemed endless passing.
On an evening Adam said, “You know, I’m going to be thirty-seven. That’s half a life.”
“Here it comes,” said Charles. “Wasting your life. Look, Adam, could we not have a fight this time?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if we run true to form we’ll fight for three or four weeks, getting you ready to go away. If you’re getting restless, couldn’t you just go away and save all the trouble?”
Adam laughed and the tension went out of the room. “I’ve got a pretty smart brother.” he said. “Sure, when I get the itch bad enough I’ll go without fighting. Yes, I like that. You’re getting rich, aren’t you, Charles?”
“I’m doing all right. I wouldn’t say rich.”
“You wouldn’t say you bought four buildings and the inn in the village?”
“No, I wouldn’t say it.”
“But you did. Charles, you’ve made this about the prettiest farm anywhere about. Why don’t we build a new house--bathtub and running water and a water closet? We’re not poor people any more. Why, they say you’re nearly the richest man in this section.”
“We don’t need a new house,” Charles said gruffly. “You take your fancy ideas away.”
“It would be nice to go to the toilet without going outside.”
“You take your fancy ideas away.”
Adam was amused. “Maybe I’ll build a pretty little house right over by the woodlot. Say, how would that be? Then we wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves.”
“I don’t want it on the place.”
“The place is half mine.”
“I’ll buy you out.”
“But I don’t have to sell.”
Charles’ eyes blazed. “I’ll burn your goddam house down.”
“I believe you would,” Adam said, suddenly sobered. “I believe you really would. What are you looking like that for?”
Charles said slowly, “I’ve thought about it a lot. And I’ve wanted for you to bring it up. I guess you aren’t ever going to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You remember when you sent me a telegram for a hundred dollars?”
“You bet I do. Saved my life, I guess. Why?”
“You never paid it back.”
“I must have.”
“You didn’t.”
Adam looked down at the old table where Cyrus had sat, knocking on his wooden leg with a stick. And the old oil lamp was hanging over the center of the table, shedding its unstable yellow light from the round Rochester wick.
Adam said slowly, “I’ll pay you in the morning.”
“I gave you plenty of time to offer.”
“Sure you did, Charles. I should have remembered.” He paused, considering, and at last he said, “You don’t know why I needed the money.”
“I never asked.”
“And I never told. Maybe I was ashamed. I was a prisoner, Charles. I broke jail--I escaped.”
Charles’ mouth was open. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to tell you. I was a tramp and I got taken up for vagrancy and put on a road gang--leg irons at night. Got out in six months and picked right up again. That’s how they get their roads built. I served three days less than the second six months and then I escaped--got over the Georgia line, robbed a store for clothes, and sent you the telegram.”
“I don’t believe you,” Charles said. “Yes, I do. You don’t tell lies. Of course I believe you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Maybe I was ashamed. But I’m more ashamed that I didn’t pay you.”
“Oh, forget it,” said Charles. “I don’t know why I mentioned it.”
“Good God, no. I’ll pay you in the morning.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Charles. “My brother a jailbird!”
“You don’t have to look so happy.”
“I don’t know why,” said Charles, “but it makes me kind of proud. My brother a jailbird! Tell me this, Adam--why did you wait till just three days before they let you go to make your break?”
Adam smiled. “Two or three reasons,” he said. “I was afraid if I served out my time, why, they’d pick me up again. And I figured if I waited till the end they wouldn’t expect me to run away.”
“That makes sense,” said Charles. “But you said there was one more reason.”
“I guess the other was the most important,” Adam said, “and it’s the hardest to explain. I figured I owed the state six months. That was the sentence. I didn’t feel right about cheating. I only cheated three days.”
Charles exploded with laughter. “You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” he said with affection. “But you say you robbed a store.”
“I sent the money back with ten per cent interest,” Adam said.
Charles leaned forward. “Tell me about the road gang, Adam.”
“Sure I will, Charles. Sure I will.”
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Veteran foruma
Svedok stvaranja istorije


Variety is the spice of life

Zodijak Aquarius
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Zastava Srbija
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Chapter 11


1
Charles had more respect for Adam after he knew about the prison. He felt the warmth for his brother you can feel only for one who is not perfect and therefore no target for your hatred. Adam took some advantage of it too. He tempted Charles.
“Did you ever think, Charles, that we’ve got enough money to do anything we want to do?”
“All right, what do we want?”
“We could go to Europe, we could walk around Paris.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“I thought I heard someone on the stoop.”
“Probably a cat.”
“I guess so. Have to kill off some of them pretty soon.”
“Charles, we could go to Egypt and walk around the Sphinx.”
“We could stay right here and make some good use of our money. And we could get the hell out to work and make some use of the day. Those goddam cats!” Charles jumped to the door and yanked it open and said, “Get!” Then he was silent, and Adam saw him staring at the steps. He moved beside him.
A dirty bundle of rags and mud was trying to worm its way up the steps. One skinny hand clawed slowly at the stairs. The other dragged helplessly. There was a caked face with cracked lips and eyes peering out of swollen, blackened lids. The forehead was laid open, oozing blood back into the matted hair.
Adam went down the stairs and kneeled beside the figure. “Give me a hand,” he said. “Come on, let’s get her in. Here--look out for that arm. It looks broken.”
She fainted when they carried her in.
“Put her in my bed,” Adam said. “Now I think you better go for the doctor.”
“Don’t you think we better hitch up and take her in?”
“Move her? No. Are you crazy?”
“Maybe not as crazy as you. Think about it a minute.”
“For God’s sake, think about what?”
“Two men living alone and they’ve got this in their house.”
Adam was shocked. “You don’t mean it.”
“I mean it all right. I think we better take her in. It’ll be all over the county in two hours. How do you know what she is? How’d she get here? What happened to her? Adam, you’re taking an awful chance.”
Adam said coldly, “If you don’t go now, I’ll go and leave you here.”
“I think you’re making a mistake. I’ll go, but I tell you we’ll suffer for it.”
“I’ll do the suffering,” said Adam. “You go.”
After Charles left, Adam went to the kitchen and poured hoi water from the teakettle into a basin. In his bedroom he dampened a handkerchief in the water and loosened the caked blood and dirt on the girl’s face. She reeled up to consciousness and her blue eyes glinted at him. His mind went back--it was this room, this bed. His stepmother was standing over him with a damp cloth in her hand, and he could feel the little running pains as the water cut through. And she had said something over and over. He heard it but he could not remember what it was.
“You’ll be all right,” he said to the girl. “We’re getting a doctor. He’ll be here right off.”
Her lips moved a little.
“Don’t try to talk,” he said. “Don’t try to say anything.” As he worked gently with his cloth a huge warmth crept over him. “You can stay here,” he said. “You can stay here as long as you want. I’ll take care of you.” He squeezed out the cloth and sponged her matted hair and lifted it out of the gashes in her scalp.
He could hear himself talking as he worked, almost as though he were a stranger listening. “There, does that hurt? The poor eyes--I’ll put some brown paper over your eyes. You’ll be all right. That’s a bad one on your forehead. I’m afraid you’ll have a scar there. Could you tell me your name? No, don’t try. There’s lots of time. There’s lots of time. Do you hear that? That’s the doctor’s rig. Wasn’t that quick?” He moved to the kitchen door. “In here, Doc. She’s in here,” he called.
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Veteran foruma
Svedok stvaranja istorije


Variety is the spice of life

Zodijak Aquarius
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Zastava Srbija
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Opera 9.00
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2

She was very badly hurt. If there had been X-rays in that time the doctor might have found more injuries than he did. As it was he found enough. Her left arm and three ribs were broken and her jaw was cracked. Her skull was cracked too, and the teeth on the left side were missing. Her scalp was ripped and torn and her forehead laid open to the skull. So much the doctor could see and identify. He set her arm, taped her ribs, and sewed up her scalp. With a pipette and an alcohol flame he bent a glass tube to go through the aperture where a tooth was missing so that she could drink and take liquid food without moving her cracked jaw. He gave her a large shot of morphine, left a bottle of opium pills, washed his hands, and put on his coat. His patient was asleep before he left the room.
In the kitchen he sat down at the table and drank the hot coffee Charles put in front of him.
“All right, what happened to her?” he asked.
“How do we know?” Charles said truculently. “We found her on our porch. If you want to see, go look at the marks on the road where she dragged herself.”
“Know who she is?”
“God, no.”
“You go upstairs at the inn--is she anybody from there?”
“I haven’t been there lately. I couldn’t recognize her in that condition anyway.”
The doctor turned his head toward Adam. “You ever see her before?”
Adam shook his head slowly.
Charles said harshly, “Say, what you mousing around at?”
“I’ll tell you, since you’re interested. That girl didn’t fall under a harrow even if she looks that way. Somebody did that to her, somebody who didn’t like her at all. If you want the truth, somebody tried to kill her.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Charles said.
“She won’t be talking for quite a while. Besides, her skull is cracked, and God knows what that will do to her. What I’m getting at is, should I bring the sheriff into it?”
“No!” Adam spoke so explosively that the two looked at him. “Let her alone. Let her rest.”
“Who’s going to take care of her?”
“I am,” said Adam.
“Now, you look here--” Charles began.
“Keep out of it!”
“It’s my place as much as yours.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Well, I’ll go if she has to go.”
The doctor said, “Steady down. What makes you so interested?”
“I wouldn’t put a hurt dog out.”
“You wouldn’t get mad about it either. Are you holding something back? Did you go out last night? Did you do it?”
“He was here all night,” said Charles. “He snores like a goddam train.”
Adam said, “Why can’t you let her be? Let her get well.”
The doctor stood up and dusted his hands. “Adam,” he said, “your father was one of my oldest friends. I know you and your family. You aren’t stupid. I don’t know why you don’t recognize ordinary facts, but you don’t seem to. Have to talk to you like a baby. That girl was assaulted. I believe whoever did it tried to kill her. If I don’t tell the sheriff about it, I’m breaking the law. I admit I break a few, but not that one.”
“Well, tell him. But don’t let him bother her until she’s better.”
“It’s not my habit to let my patients be bothered,” the doctor said. “You still want to keep her here?”
“Yes.”
“Your funeral. I’ll look in tomorrow. She’ll sleep. Give her water and warm soup through the tube if she wants it.” He stalked out.
Charles turned on his brother. “Adam, for God’s sake, what is this?”
“Let me alone.”
“What’s got into you?”
“Let me alone--you hear? Just let me alone.”
“Christ!” said Charles and spat on the floor and went restlessly and uneasily to work.
Adam was glad he was gone. He moved about the kitchen, washed the breakfast dishes, and swept the floor. When he had put the kitchen to rights he went in and drew a chair up to the bed. The girl snored thickly through the morpnine. The swelling was going down on her face, but the eyes were blackened and swollen. Adam sat very still, looking at her. Her set and splintered arm lay on her stomach, but her right arm lay on top of the coverlet, the fingers curled like a nest. It was a child’s hand, almost ä baby’s hand. Adam touched her wrist with his finger, and her fingers moved a little in reflex. Her wrist was warm. Secretly then, as though he were afraid he might be caught, he straightened her hand and touched the little cushion pads on the fingertips. Her fingers were pink and soft, but the skin on the back of her hand seemed to have an underbloom like a pearl. Adam chuckled with delight. Her breathing stopped and he became electrically alert--then her throat clicked and the rhythmed snoring continued. Gently he worked her hand and arm under the cover before he tiptoed out of the room.
For several days Cathy lay in a cave of shock and opium. Her skin felt like lead, and she moved very little because of the pain. She was aware of movement around her. Gradually her head and her eyes cleared. Two young men were with her, one occasionally and the other a great deal. She knew that another man who came in was the doctor, and there was also a tall lean man, who interested her more than any of the others, and the interest grew out of fear. Perhaps in her drugged sleep she had picked something up and stored it.
Very slowly her mind assembled the last days and rearranged them. She saw the face of Mr. Edwards, saw it lose its placid self-sufficiency and dissolve into murder. She had never been so afraid before in her life, but she had learned fear now. And her mind sniffed about like a rat looking for an escape. Mr. Edwards knew about the fire. Did anyone else? And how did he know? A blind nauseating terror rose in her when she thought of that.
From things she heard she learned that the tall man was the sheriff and wanted to question her, and that the young man named Adam was protecting her from the questioning. Maybe the sheriff knew about the fire.
Raised voices gave her the cue to her method. The sheriff said, “She must have a name. Somebody must know her.”
“How could she answer? Her jaw is broken.” Adam’s voice.
“If she’s right-handed she could spell out answers. Look here, Adam, if somebody tried to kill her I’d better catch him while I can. Just give me a pencil and let me talk to her.”
Adam said, “You heard the doctor say her skull was cracked. How do you know she can remember?”
“Well, you give me paper and pencil and we’ll see.”
“I don’t want you to bother her.”
“Adam, goddam it, it doesn’t matter what you want. I’m telling you I want a paper and pencil.”
Then the other young man’s voice. “What’s the matter with you? You make it sound like it was you who did it. Give him a pencil.”
She had her eyes closed when the three men came quietly into her room.
“She’s asleep,” Adam whispered.
She opened her eyes and looked at them.
The tall man came to the side of the bed. “I don’t want to bother you, Miss. I’m the sheriff. I know you can’t talk, but will you just write some things on this?”
She tried to nod and winced with pain. She blinked her eyes rapidly to indicate assent.
“That’s the girl,” said the sheriff. “You see? She wants to.” He put the tablet on the bed beside her and molded her fingers around the pencil. “There we are. Now. What is your name?”
The three men watched her face. Her mouth grew thin and her eyes squinted. She closed her eyes and the pencil began to move. “I don’t know,” it scrawled in huge letters.
“Here, now there’s a fresh sheet. What do you remember?”
“All black. Can’t think,” the pencil wrote before it went over the edge of the tablet.
“Don’t you remember who you are, where you came from? Think!”
She seemed to go through a great struggle and then her face gave up and became tragic. “No. Mixed up. Help me.”
“Poor child,” the sheriff said. “I thank you for trying anyway. When you get better we’ll try again. No, you don’t have to write any more.”
The pencil wrote, “Thank you,” and fell from her fingers.
She had won the sheriff. He ranged himself with Adam. Only Charles was against her. When the brothers were in her room, and it took two of them to help her on the bedpan without hurting her, she studied Charles’ dark sullenness. He had something in his face that she recognized, that made her uneasy. She saw that he touched the scar on his forehead very often, rubbed it, and drew its outline with his fingers. Once he caught her watching. He looked guiltily at his fingers. Charles said brutally, “Don’t you worry. You’re going to have one like it, maybe even a better one.”
She smiled at him, and he looked away. When Adam came in with her warm soup Charles said, “I’m going in town and drink some beer.”
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Adam couldn’t remember ever having been so happy. It didn’t bother him that he did not know her name. She had said to call her Cathy, and that was enough for him. He cooked for Cathy, going through recipes used by his mother and his stepmother.
Cathy’s vitality was great. She began to recover very quickly. The swelling went out of her cheeks and the prettiness of convalescence came to her face. In a short time she could be helped to a sitting position. She opened and closed her mouth very carefully, and she began to eat soft foods that required little chewing. The bandage was still on her forehead but the rest of her face was little marked except for the hollow cheek on the side where the teeth were missing.
Cathy was in trouble and her mind ranged for a way out of it. She spoke little even when it was not so difficult.
One afternoon she heard someone moving around in the kitchen. She called, “Adam, is it you?”
Charles’ voice answered, “No, it’s me.”
“Would you come in here just a minute, please?”
He stood in the doorway. His eyes were sullen.
“You don’t come in much,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“You don’t like me.”
“I guess that’s right too.”
“Will you tell me why?”
He struggled to find an answer. “I don’t trust you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t believe you lost your memory.”
“But why should I lie?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I don’t trust you. There’s something--I almost recognize.”
“You never saw me in your life.”
“Maybe not. But there’s something that bothers me--that I ought to know. And how do you know I never saw you?”
She was silent, and he moved to leave. “Don’t go,” she said. “What do you intend to do?”
“About what?”
“About me.”
He regarded her with a new interest. “You want the truth?”
“Why else would I ask?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you. I’m going to get you out of here just as soon as I can. My brother’s turned fool, but I’ll bring him around if I have to lick him.”
“Could you do that? He’s a big man.”
“I could do it.”
She regarded him levelly. “Where is Adam?”
“Gone in town to get some more of your goddam medicine.”
“You’re a mean man.”
“You know what I think? I don’t think I’m half as mean as you are under that nice skin. I think you’re a devil.”
She laughed softly. “That makes two of us,” she said. “Charles, how long do I have?”
“For what?”
“How long before you put me out? Tell me truly.”
“All right, I will. About a week or ten days. Soon as you can get around.”
“Suppose I don’t go.”
He regarded her craftily, almost with pleasure at the thought of combat. “All right, I’ll tell you. When you had all that dope you talked a lot, like in your sleep.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He laughed, for he had seen the quick tightening of her mouth. “All right, don’t. And if you just go about your business as soon as you can, I won’t tell. But if you don’t, you’ll know all right, and so will the sheriff.”
“I don’t believe I said anything bad. What could I say?”
“I won’t argue with you. And I’ve got work to do. You asked me and I told you.”
He went outside. Back of the henhouse he leaned over and laughed and slapped his leg. “I thought she was smarter,” he said to himself. And he felt more easy than he had for days.
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Charles had frightened her badly. And if he had recognized her, so had she recognized him. He was the only person she had ever met who played it her way. Cathy followed his thinking, and it did not reassure her. She knew that her tricks would not work with him, and she needed protection and rest. Her money was gone. She had to be sheltered, and would have to be for a long time. She was tired and sick, but her mind went skipping among possibilities.
Adam came back from town with a bottle of Pain Killer. He poured a tablespoonful. “This will taste horrible,” he said. “It’s good stuff though.”
She took it without protest, did not even make much of a face about it. “You’re good to me,” she said. “I wonder why? I’ve brought you trouble.”
“You have not. You’ve brightened up the whole house. Never complain or anything, hurt as bad as you are.”
“You’re so good, so kind.”
“I want to be.”
“Do you have to go out? Couldn’t you stay and talk to me?”
“Sure I could. There’s nothing so important to do.”
“Draw up a chair, Adam, and sit down.”
When he was seated she stretched her right hand toward him, and he took it in both of his. “So good and kind,” she repeated. “Adam, you keep promises, don’t you?”
“I try to. What are you thinking about?”
“I’m alone and I’m afraid,” she cried. “I’m afraid.”
“Can’t I help you?”
“I don’t think anyone can help me.”
“Tell me and let me try.”
“That’s the worst part. I can’t even tell you.”
“Why not? If it’s a secret I won’t tell it.”
“It’s not my secret, don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t.”
Her fingers gripped his hand tightly. “Adam, I didn’t ever lose my memory.”
“Then why did you say--”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Did you love your father, Adam?”
“I guess I revered him more than loved him.”
“Well, if someone you revered were in trouble, wouldn’t you do anything to save him from destruction?”
“Well, sure. I guess I would.”
“Well, that’s how it is with me.”
“But how did you get hurt?”
“That’s part of it. That’s why I can’t tell.”
“Was it your father?”
“Oh, no. But it’s all tied up together.”
“You mean, if you tell me who hurt you, then your father will be in trouble?”
She sighed. He would make up the story himself. “Adam, will you trust me?”
“Of course.”
“It’s an awful thing to ask.”
“No, it isn’t, not if you’re protecting your father.”
“You understand, it’s not my secret. If it were I’d tell you in a minute.”
“Of course I understand. I’d do the same thing myself.”
“Oh, you understand so much.” Tears welled up in her eyes. He leaned down toward her, and she kissed him on the cheek.
“Don’t you worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of you.”
She lay back against the pillow. “I don’t think you can.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, your brother doesn’t like me. He wants me to get out of here.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Oh, no. I can just feel it. He hasn’t your understanding.”
“He has a good heart.”
“I know that, but he doesn’t have your kindness. And when I have to go--the sheriff is going to begin asking questions and I’ll be all alone.”
He stared into space. “My brother can’t make you go. I own half of this farm. I have my own money.”
“If he wanted me to go I would have to. I can’t spoil your life.”
Adam stood up and strode out of the room. He went to the back door and looked out on the afternoon. Far off in the field his brother was lifting stones from a sled and piling them on the stone wall. Adam looked up at the sky. A blanket of herring clouds was rolling in from the east. He sighed deeply and his breath made a tickling, exciting feeling in his chest. His ears seemed suddenly clear, so that he heard the chickens cackling and the east wind blowing over the ground. He heard horses’ hoofs plodding on the road and far-off pounding on wood where a neighbor was shingling a barn. And all these sounds related into a kind of music. His eyes were clear too. Fences and walls and sheds stood staunchly out in the yellow afternoon, and they were related too. There was change in everything. A flight of sparrows dropped into the dust and scrabbled for bits of food and then flew off like a gray scarf twisting in the light. Adam looked back at his brother. He had lost track of time and he did not know how long he had been standing in the doorway.
No time had passed. Charles was still struggling with the same large stone. And Adam had not released the full, held breath he had taken when time stopped.
Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too. He found that he had started to hum a droning little tune. He turned, walked through the kitchen, and stood in the doorway, looking at Cathy. She smiled weakly at him, and he thought. What a child! What a helpless child! and a surge of love filled him.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
Her face tightened and her hand closed convulsively.
“You don’t have to tell me now,” he said. “I want you to think about it. But if you would marry me I could protect you. No one could hurt you again.”
Cathy recovered in an instant. “Come here, Adam. There, sit down. Here, give me your hand. That’s good, that’s right.” She raised his hand and put the back of it against her cheek. “My dear,” she said brokenly. “Oh, my dear. Look, Adam, you have trusted me. Now will you promise me something? Will you promise not to tell your brother you have asked me?”
“Asked you to marry me? Why shouldn’t I?”
“It’s not that. I want this night to think. I’ll want maybe more than this night. Could you let me do that?” She raised her hand to her head. “You know I’m not sure I can think straight. And I want to.”
“Do you think you might marry me?”
“Please, Adam. Let me alone to think. Please, my dear.”
He smiled and said nervously, “Don’t make it long. I’m kind of like a cat up a tree so far he can’t come down.”
“Just let me think. And, Adam--you’re a kind man.”
He went outside and walked toward where his brother was loading stones.
When he was gone Cathy got up from her bed and moved unsteadily to the bureau. She leaned forward and looked at her face. The bandage was still on her forehead. She raised the edge of it enough to see the angry red underneath. She had not only made up her mind to marry Adam but she had so decided before he had asked her. She was afraid. She needed protection and money. Adam could give her both. And she could control him--she knew that. She did not want to be married, but for the time being it was a refuge. Only one thing bothered her. Adam had a warmth toward her which she did not understand since she had none toward him, nor had ever experienced it toward anyone. And Mr. Edwards had really frightened her. That had been the only time in her life she had lost control of a situation. She determined never to let it happen again. She smiled to herself when she thought what Charles would say. She felt a kinship to Charles. She didn’t mind his suspicion of her.
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5

Charles straightened up when Adam approached. He put his palms against the small of his back and massaged the tired muscles. “My God, there’s lots of rocks,” he said.
“Fellow in the army told me there’s valleys in California--miles and miles--and you can’t find a stone, not even a little one.”
“There’ll be something else,” said Charles. “I don’t think there’s any farm without something wrong with it. Out in the Middle West it’s locusts, someplace else it’s tornadoes. What’s a few stones?”
“I guess you’re right. I thought I would give you a hand.”
“That’s nice of you. I thought you’d spend the rest of your life holding hands with that in there. How long is she going to stay?”
Adam was on the point of telling him of his proposal but the tone of Charles’ voice made him change his mind.
“Say,” Charles said, “Alex Platt came by a little while ago. You’d never think what happened to him. He’s found a fortune.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you know the place on his property where that clump of cedars sticks out--you know, right on the county road?”
“I know. What about it?”
“Alex went in between those trees and his stone wall. He was hunting rabbits. He found a suitcase and a man’s clothes, all packed nice. Soaked up with rain though. Looked like it had been there some time. And there was a wooden box with a lock, and when he broke it open there was near four thousand dollars in it. And he found a purse too. There wasn’t anything in it.”
“No name or. anything?”
“That’s the strange part--no name; no name on the clothes, no labels on the suits. It’s just like the fellow didn’t want to be traced.”
“Is Alex going to keep it?”
“He took it in to the sheriff, and the sheriff is going to advertise it, and if nobody answers Alex can keep it.”
“Somebody’s sure to claim it.”
“I guess so. I didn’t tell Alex that. He’s feeling so good about it. That’s funny about no labels--not cut out, just didn’t have any.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Adam said. “Somebody’s bound to claim it.”
“Alex hung around for a while. You know, his wife goes around a lot.” Charles was silent. “Adam,” he said finally, “we got to have a talk. The whole county’s doing plenty of talking.”
“What about? What do you mean?”
“Goddam it, about that--that girl. Two men can’t have a girl living with them. Alex says the women are pretty riled up about it. Adam, we can’t have it. We live here. We’ve got a good name.”
“You want me to throw her out before she’s well?”
“I want you to get rid of her--get her out. I don’t like her.”
“You never have.”
“I know it. I don’t trust her. There’s something--something--I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. When you going to get her out?”
“Tell you what,” Adam said slowly. “Give her one more week and then I’ll do something about her.”
“You promise?”
“Sure I promise.”
“Well, that’s something. I’ll get the word to Alex’s wife. From there on she’ll handle the news. Good Lord, I’ll be glad to have the house to ourselves again. I don’t suppose her memory’s come back?”
“No,” said Adam.
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6

Five days later, when Charles had gone to buy some calf feed, Adam drove the buggy to the kitchen steps. He helped Cathy in, tucked a blanket around her knees, and put another around her shoulders. He drove to the county seat and was married to her by a justice of the peace.
Charles was home when they returned. He looked sourly at them when they came into the kitchen. “I thought you’d took her in to put her on the train.”
“We got married,” Adam said simply.
Cathy smiled at Charles.
“Why? Why did you do it?”
“Why not? Can’t a man get married?”
Cathy went quickly into the bedroom and closed the door.
Charles began to rave. “She’s no damn good, I tell you. She’s a whore.”
“Charles!”
“I tell you, she’s just a two-bit whore. I wouldn’t trust her with a bit piece--why, that bitch, that slut!”
“Charles, stop it! Stop it, I tell you! You keep your filthy mouth shut about my wife!”
“She’s no more a wife than an alley cat.”
Adam said slowly, “I think you’re jealous, Charles. I think you wanted to marry her.”
“Why, you goddam fool! Me jealous? I won’t live in the same house with her!”
Adam said evenly, “You won’t have to. I’m going away. You can buy me out if you want. You can have the farm. You always wanted it. You can stay here and rot.”
Charles’ voice lowered. “Won’t you get rid of her? Please, Adam. Throw her out. She’ll tear you to pieces. She’ll destroy you, Adam, she’ll destroy you!”
“How do you know so much about her?”
Charles’ eyes were bleak. “I don’t,” he said, and his mouth snapped shut.
Adam did not even ask Cathy whether she wanted to come out for dinner. He carried two plates into the bedroom and sat beside her.
“We’re going to go away,” he said. “Let me go away. Please, let me. I don’t want to make you hate your brother. I wonder why he hates me?”
“I think he’s jealous.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Jealous?”
“That’s what it looks like to me. You don’t have to worry. We’re getting out. We’re going to California.”
She said quietly, “I don’t want to go to California.”
“Nonsense. Why, it’s nice there, sun all the time and beautiful.”
“I don’t want to go to California.”
“You are my wife,” he said softly. “I want you to go with me.”
She was silent and did not speak of it again.
They heard Charles slam out the door, and Adam said, “That will be good for him. He’ll get a little drunk and he’ll feel better.”
Cathy modestly looked at her fingers. “Adam, I can’t be a wife to you until I’m well.”
“I know,” he said. “I understand. I’ll wait.”
“But I want you to stay with me. I’m afraid of Charles. He hates me so.”
“I’ll bring my cot in here. Then you can call me if you’re frightened. You can reach out and touch me.”
“You’re so good,” she said. “Could we have some tea?”
“Why, sure, I’d like some myself.” He brought the steaming cups in and went back for the sugar bowl. He settled himself in a chair near her bed. “It’s pretty strong. Is it too strong for you?”
“I like it strong.”
He finished his cup. “Does it taste strange to you? It’s got a funny taste.”.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, let me taste it.” She sipped the dregs. “Adam,” she cried, “you got the wrong cup--that was mine. It had my medicine in it.”
He licked his lips. “I guess it can’t hurt me.”
“No, it can’t.” She laughed softly. “I hope I don’t need to call you in the night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you drank my sleeping medicine. Maybe you wouldn’t wake up easily.”
Adam went down into a heavy opium sleep though he fought to stay awake. “Did the doctor tell you to take this much?” he asked thickly.
“You’re just not used to it,” she said.
Charles came back at eleven o’clock. Cathy heard his tipsy footsteps. He went into his room, flung off his clothes, and got into bed. He grunted and turned, trying to get comfortable, and then he opened his eyes. Cathy was standing by his bed. “What do you want?”
“What do you think? Move over a little.”
“Where’s Adam?”
“He drank my sleeping medicine by mistake. Move over a little.”
He breathed harshly. “I already been with a whore.”
“You’re a pretty strong boy. Move over a little.”
“How about your broken arm?”
“I’ll take care of that. It’s not your worry.”
Suddenly Charles laughed. “The poor bastard,” he said, and he threw back the blanket to receive her.
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Part Two


Chapter 12


You can see how this book has reached a great boundary that was called 1900. Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what had happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to be--more rich and meaningful the farther back it was. In the books of some memories it was the best time that ever sloshed over the world--the old time, the gay time, sweet and simple, as though time were young and fearless. Old men who didn’t know whether they were going to stagger over the boundary of the century looked forward to it with distaste. For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost--good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies any more, and you couldn’t trust a gentleman’s word.
There was a time when people kept their fly buttons fastened. And man’s freedom was boiling off. And even childhood was no good any more--not the way it was. No worry then but how to find a good stone, not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped, to use in a sling pouch cut from a discarded shoe. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity?
A man’s mind vagued up a little, for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them. An elder man might truly recall through water the delicate doctor-testing of little girls, but such a man forgets, and wants to, the acid emotion eating at the spleen so that a boy had to put his face flat down in the young wild oats and drum his fists against the ground and sob “Christ! Christ!” Such a man might say, and did, “What’s that damned kid lying out there in the grass for? He’ll catch a cold.”
Oh, strawberries don’t taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!
And some men eased themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.
History was secreted in the glands of a million historians. We must get out of this banged-up century, some said, out of this cheating, murderous century of riot and secret death, of scrabbling for public lands and damn well getting them by any means at all.
Think back, recall our little nation fringing the oceans, torn with complexities, too big for its britches. Just got going when the British took us on again. We beat them, but it didn’t do us much good. What we had was a burned White House and ten thousand widows on the public pension list.
Then the soldiers went to Mexico and it was a kind of painful picnic. Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home. The Mexican War did two good things though. We got a lot of western land, damn near doubled our size, and besides that it was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murder settled on us the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.
And then the arguments:
Can you keep a slave?
Well if you bought him in good faith, why not?
Next they’ll be saying a man can’t have a horse. Who is it wants to take my property?
And there we were, like a man scratching at his own face and bleeding into his own beard.
Well, that was over and we got slowly up off the bloody ground and started westward.
There came boom and bust, bankruptcy, depression.
Great public thieves came along and picked the pockets of everyone who had a pocket.
To hell with that rotten century!
Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life. A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. It’s a fair thing ahead. There’s no rot on this clean new hundred years. It’s not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years--why, we’ll crucify him head down over a privy.
Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!
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Chapter 13


1
Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then--the glory--so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.
I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.
At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
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2

Adam Trask grew up in grayness, and the curtains of his life were like dusty cobwebs, and his days a slow file of half-sorrows and sick dissatisfactions, and then, through Cathy, the glory came to him.
It doesn’t matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can’t understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?
Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
Whatever Cathy may have been, she set off the glory in Adam. His spirit rose flying and released him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories. The glory lights up the world and changes it the way a star shell changes a battleground. Perhaps Adam did not see Cathy at all, so lighted was she by his eyes. Burned in his mind was an image of beauty and tenderness, a sweet and holy girl, precious beyond thinking, clean and loving, and that image was Cathy to her husband, and nothing Cathy did or said could warp Adam’s Cathy.
She said she did not want to go to California and he did not listen, because his Cathy took his arm and started first. So bright was his glory that he did not notice the sullen pain in his brother, did not see the glinting in his brother’s eyes. He sold his share of the farm to Charles, for less than it was worth, and with that and his half of his father’s money he was free and rich.
The brothers were strangers now. They shook hands at the station, and Charles watched the train pull out and rubbed his scar. He went to the inn, drank four quick whiskies, and climbed the stairs to the top floor. He paid the girl and then could not perform. He cried in her arms until she put him out. He raged at his farm, forced it, added to it, drilled and trimmed, and his boundaries extended. He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.
Adam stopped in New York long enough to buy clothes for himself and Cathy before they climbed on the train which bore them across the continent. How they happened to go to the Salinas Valley is very easy to understand.
In that day the railroads--growing, fighting among themselves, striving to increase and to dominate--used every means to increase their traffic. The companies not only advertised in the newspapers, they issued booklets and broadsides describing and picturing the beauty and richness of the West. No claim was too extravagant--wealth was unlimited. The Southern Pacific Railroad, headed by the wild energy of Leland Stanford, had begun to dominate the Pacific Coast not only in transportation but in politics. Its rails extended down the valleys. New towns sprang up, new sections were opened and populated, for the company had to create customers to get custom.
The long Salinas Valley was part of the exploitation. Adam had seen and studied a fine color broadside which set forth the valley as that region which heaven unsuccessfully imitated. After reading the literature, anyone who did not want to settle in the Salinas Valley was crazy.
Adam did not rush at his purchase. He bought a rig and drove around, meeting the earlier comers, talking of soil and water, climate and crops, prices and facilities. It was not speculation with Adam. He was here to settle, to found a home, a family, perhaps a dynasty.
Adam drove exuberantly from farm to farm, picked up dirt and crumbled it in his fingers, talked and planned and dreamed. The people of the valley liked him and were glad he had come to live there, for they recognized a man of substance.
He had only one worry, and that was for Cathy. She was not well. She rode around the country with him, but she was listless. One morning she complained of feeling ill and stayed in her room in the King City hotel while Adam drove into the country. He returned at about five in the afternoon to find her nearly dead from loss of blood. Luckily Adam found Dr. Tilson at his supper and dragged him from his roast beef. The doctor made a quick examination, inserted a packing, and turned to Adam.
“Why don’t you wait downstairs?” he suggested.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. I’ll call you pretty soon.”
Adam patted Cathy’s shoulder, and she smiled up at him.
Dr. Tilson closed the door behind him and came back to the bed. His face was red with anger. “Why did you do it?”
Cathy’s mouth was a thin tight line.
“Does your husband know you are pregnant?”
Her head moved slowly from side to side.
“What did you do it with?”
She stared up at him.
He looked around the room. He stepped to the bureau and picked up a knitting needle. He shook it in her face. “The old offender--the old criminal,” he said. “You’re a fool. You’ve nearly killed yourself and you haven’t lost your baby. I suppose you took things too, poisoned yourself, inserted camphor, kerosene, red pepper. My God! Some of the things you women do!”
Her eyes were as cold as glass.
He pulled a chair up beside her bed. “Why don’t you want to have the baby?” he asked softly. “You’ve got a good husband. Don’t you love him? Don’t you intend to speak to me at all? Tell me, damn it! Don’t turn mulish.”
Her lips did not move and her eyes did not flicker.
“My dear,” he said, “can’t you see? You must not destroy life. That’s the one thing gets me crazy. God knows I lose patients because I don’t know enough. But I try--I always try. And then I see a deliberate killing.” He talked rapidly on. He dreaded the sick silence between his sentences. This woman puzzled him. There was something inhuman about her. “Have you met Mrs. Laurel? She’s wasting and crying for a baby. Everything she has or can get she would give to have a baby, and you--you try to stab yours with a knitting needle. All right,” he cried, “you won’t speak--you don’t have to. But I’m going to tell you. The baby is safe. Your aim was bad. And I’m telling you this--you’re going to have that baby. Do you know what the law in this state has to say about abortion? You don’t have to answer, but you listen to me! If this happens again, if you lose this baby and I have any reason to suspect monkey business, I will charge you, I will testify against you, and I will see you punished. Now I hope you have sense enough to believe me, because I mean it.”
Cathy moistened her lips with a little pointed tongue. The cold went out of her eyes and a weak sadness took its place. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you don’t understand.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?” His anger disappeared like mist. “Tell me, my dear.”
“It’s hard to tell. Adam is so good, so strong. I am--well, I’m tainted. Epilepsy.”
“Not you!”
“No, but my grandfather and my father--and my brother.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “I couldn’t bring that to my husband.”
“Poor child,” he said. “My poor child. You can’t be certain. It’s more than probable that your baby will be fine and healthy. Will you promise me not to try any more tricks?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. I won’t tell your husband what you did. Now lie back and let me see if the bleeding’s stopped.”
In a few minutes he closed his satchel and put the knitting needle in his pocket. “I’ll look in tomorrow morning,” he said.
Adam swarmed on him as he came down the narrow stairs into the lobby. Dr. Tilson warded off a flurry of “How is she? Is she all right? What caused it? Can I go up?”
“Whoa, hold up--hold up.” And he used his trick, his standard joke. “Your wife is sick.”
“Doctor--”
“She has the only good sickness there is--”
“Doctor--”
“Your wife is going to have a baby.” He brushed past Adam and left him staring. Three men sitting around the stove grinned at him. One of them observed dryly, “If it was me now--why, I’d invite a few, maybe three, friends to have a drink.” His hint was wasted. Adam bolted clumsily up the narrow stairs.
Adam’s attention narrowed to the Bordoni ranch a few miles south of King City, almost equidistant, in fact, between San Lucas and King City.
The Bordonis had nine hundred acres left of a grant of ten thousand acres which had come to Mrs. Bordoni’s great-grandfather from the Spanish crown. The Bordonis were Swiss, but Mrs. Bordoni was the daughter and heiress of a Spanish family that had settled in the Salinas Valley in very early times. And as happened with most of the old families, the land slipped away. Some was lost in gambling, some chipped off for taxes, and some acres torn off like coupons to buy luxuries--a horse, a diamond, or a pretty woman. The nine hundred remaining acres were the core of the original Sanchez grant, and the best of it too. They straddled the river and tucked into the foothills on both sides, for at this point the valley narrows and then opens out again. The original Sanchez house was still usable. Built of adobe, it stood in a tiny opening in the foothills, a miniature valley fed by a precious ever-running spring of sweet water. That of course was why the first Sanchez had built his seat there. Huge live oaks shaded the valley, and the earth had a richness and a greenness foreign to this part of the country. The walls of the low house were four feet thick, and the round pole rafters were tied on with rawhide ropes which had been put on wet. The hide shrank and pulled joist and rafter tight together, and the leather ropes became hard as iron and nearly imperishable. There is only one drawback to this building method. Rats will gnaw at the hide if they are let.
The old house seemed to have grown out of the earth, and it was lovely. Bordoni used it for a cow barn. He was a Swiss, an immigrant, with his national passion for cleanliness. He distrusted the thick mud walls and built a frame house some distance away, and his cows put their heads out the deep recessed windows of the old Sanchez house.
The Bordonis were childless, and when the wife died in ripe years a lonely longing for his Alpine past fell on her husband. He wanted to sell the ranch and go home. Adam Trask refused to buy in a hurry, and Bordoni was asking a big price and using the selling method of pretending not to care whether he sold or not. Bordoni knew Adam was going to buy his land long before Adam knew it.
Where Adam settled he intended to stay and to have his unborn children stay. He was afraid he might buy one place and then see another he liked better, and all the time the Sanchez place was drawing him. With the advent of Cathy, his life extended long and pleasantly ahead of him. But he went through all the motions of carefulness. He drove and rode and walked over every foot of the land. He put a post-hole auger down through the subsoil to test and feel and smell the under earth. He inquired about the small wild plants of field and riverside and hill. In damp places he knelt down and examined the game tracks in the mud, mountain lion and deer, coyote and wild cat, skunk and raccoon, weasel and rabbit, all overlaid with the pattern of quail tracks. He threaded among willows and sycamores and wild blackberry vines in the riverbed, patted the trunks of live oak and scrub oak, madrone, laurel, toyon.
Bordoni watched him with squinting eyes and poured tumblers of red wine squeezed from the grapes of his small hillside vineyard. It was Bordoni’s pleasure to get a little drunk every afternoon. And Adam, who had never tasted wine, began to like it.
Over and over he asked Cathy’s opinion of the place. Did she like it? Would she be happy there? And he didn’t listen to her noncommittal answers. He thought that she linked arms with his enthusiasm. In the lobby of the King City hotel he talked to the men who gathered around the stove and read the papers sent down from San Francisco.
“It’s water I think about,” he said one evening. “I wonder how deep you’d have to go to bring in a well.”
A rancher crossed his denim knees. “You ought to go see Sam Hamilton,” he said. “He knows more about water than anybody around here. He’s a water witch and a well-digger too. He’ll tell you. He’s put down half the wells in this part of the valley.”
His companion chuckled. “Sam’s got a real legitimate reason to be interested in water. Hasn’t got a goddam drop of it on his own place.”
“How do I find him?” Adam asked.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m going out to have him make some angle irons. I’ll take you with me if you want. You’ll like Mr. Hamilton. He’s a fine man.”
“Kind of a comical genius,” his companion said.
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