by Jerry
Outside a distant building, a flurry of dust suddenly rose and died. After a moment an olive-colored military car came flying up, and a tall, gentlemanly colonel got out.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Doctor Hanray,” he said, shaking hands. “If you had let us know you were coming, we’d have been all ready for you. Just the same, if you can give me a few minutes, I’ll take you around.”
“Thank you,” the scientist said bleakly, “but it’s not an official visit. Just a personal one. I’m not working right now. In fact, I have been laid up a bit. You may know that I was raised here at Stone Church. I’d like to visit my parents’ graves and look around. By myself. I’m sure you’ll understand.”
The colonel’s face fell a little. “Certainly. If that’s what you want, sir, I’ll have my chauffeur drive you around.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go in alone.”
The colonel’s face looked gravely unhappy. “I understand, sir. Unfortunately, the regulations are very strict, as you know. Visitors are required to have guides, even the most distinguished ones. Something might blow up or you might get lost. Even men who lived in the valley all their lives come back to work here and get confused. Everything’s been changed around. I’m sure, though, that if I phoned Washington——”
“No, that’s all right,” the physicist said wearily. “I’ll take a guide. But ask him to stay as far behind me as he can. If I can’t go in that way, I don’t want to go in at all. When I stop, tell him to stop behind me and wait. I hope you have a patient man. I may stand looking at nothing, so far as he’s concerned, for a long time.”
Well, he told himself, as he drove quietly through the steel fence, the valley had certainly changed. As the colonel had warned him, he hardly knew where he was any more. The rambling Army buildings, the absence of familiar landmarks confused him. Now whose barn had stood here at this pile of stones, and where was the house? A few of the old houses could still be seen, but surely that paintless, boarded-up box couldn’t be the Foster house, where he had once enjoyed such good times.
He stopped, motioning for the jeep behind him to drive abreast of his car.
“I’m trying to find out where I am. Where’s the road that used to come down over Penny Hill?”
“Oh, there’s no road up there any more. The Government didn’t want it. They bulldozed it out.”
Hanray felt a sense of loss and bereavement. He had loved that Penny Hill road, used to walk it as a boy.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps you can tell me whose house this used to be over here?”
But the guard did not know who had lived there. “Whoever they were,” he added, “they kicked about getting out. You can bet on that.”
“What did they kick about?”
“Anything and everything. First they said they didn’t have enough time.”
“How much time did they have?”
“Everybody on the reservation had the same notice. Three days to get their money from the Government and move out. But they weren’t satisfied. They came back afterward and tried to buy back some of the stuff they’d sold with their property. Like their bathtubs, those that had them. Their sinks and corncribs and sheds. They claimed the new places they bought didn’t have them and they couldn’t buy any new plumbing or lumber on account of priorities.”
“Well, the Government didn’t need their old bathtubs and corncribs.”
“No, they had to bum up the old lumber and throw the sinks and bathtubs on the junk pile. The colonel said it would cost twenty-five to fifty dollars in red tape to get every sink or bathtub through Washington. And it would take weeks be sides. The colonel told them to forget it. They were just casualties of the war.”
The scientist winced. “Here too,” he murmured to himself.
“Oh, four or five of your neighbors here were tough babies. They stuck on their places and wouldn’t get off. The last one to give up was an old woman. She stopped by the gate with her house goods and told the guard all her troubles, how her father and grandfather farmed the farm before her, and their folks before that, way back to the Revolution. The guard listened till he was tired. Then he said, ‘Well, now you know how the Indians felt when you ran them off.’ ” The uniformed man in the jeep laughed, but the physicist didn’t laugh.
“I’m afraid that old lady didn’t run off any Indians,” he said, very low.
“Well, maybe not. But the contractors had to come in. We had to start getting out things for the men at the front to fight with. Like your A-bomb. They made plenty stuff for it right here. I guess you know that.”
The scientist winced again.
The guard went on admiringly, “I guess that was the greatest thing ever invented. Just think, something that wiped out a whole city and a hundred thousand of those rats at one crack. And I hear that’s nothing to what you can do now.”
Hanray sat at the wheel, very still. He felt the old nausea and shell-like feeling coming over him. Then he drove slowly on.
Well, he told himself after a little, they hadn’t destroyed the road that ran down by Jarretts’ farm anyway. This must be it he was passing, looking strangely narrower and shorter than it used to. How many times had he walked that road with one of the Jarrett girls after church or choir practice! But where were Jarretts’ woods in which the preacher’s boys had hidden one night to scare him?
How much faster you went in a car than he used to in a buggy. This was Stone Church already, or Deckertown as some called it, with half the houses gone and the rest reduced to windowless boxes. Tillbury’s store had vanished, as had Hulsizer’s blacksmith shop and red stable. And now suddenly, as he reached the comer where one road used to turn off to Maple Hill and the other to Alvira, he saw the old stone church before him, the doors, windows and belfry all blinded with boards.
Beyond this, he knew, lay his father’s house. He got out of the car slowly and walked over. Sight of the place shook him a little. Could this be his boyhood home whose idyllic picture he had carried in his mind all these years? The paint was gone, the porches tom away, the picket fence vanished, the great sugar maples cut down. It was just a bare box, a two-and-a-half-story shack stripped of every vestige of ornament and comfort. The doors and windows he so well knew had been closed with rough lumber. Not a splinter was left of stable or orchard. From where he used to pick up Baldwin and Smokehouse apples, he could see the raw industrial strip of buildings of the XYT explosive line, and beyond, the reach of ugly stacks and tanks against the autumn-sunset sky.
He couldn’t stand looking at it long, but retreated to the cemetery. Only here was it as it had always been; a few more graves perhaps, but otherwise as he remembered. He had heard reports how well the Army had taken care of the dead left in its reservations. The graves looked even better kept than formerly, the grass clipped, the black iron fence intact, the white stones erect arid recently cleaned. He read again the line FAITHFUL PHYSICIAN carved on his father’s stone—and in fine italics at the bottom, He went about doing good. His mother had done that. As a young scientist he had disliked to see it the next time he came home. But today the simple words filled him with emotion and curious envy. He had once thought, he told himself, that he had far outdistanced his father, but now he knew it was his father’s life that had outdistanced his. Standing here by his parents’ graves, his back turned on the boarded-up houses and church, on the scarred earth and ugly munitions buildings, he could almost believe that it was all a dream. The air blew from over South Mountain as it always had. Crows cawed in the old unused fields up on Penny Hill, whose huge rounded head looked golden in the setting sun.
It was as if vestiges of the peaceful life he knew as a boy still remained up there, and he found himself seeking them, stepping over the iron fence, passing through Kellys’ little woods and climbing the strong flanks of Penny Hill.
Presently he came to a halt. In a little hollow high up on the slope, he had come on a vestige of the old Penny Hill road. Farther down arou
nd the bend, he knew, it had been completely destroyed. Farther up around the next bend or two, it must run futilely into the steel fence. But here for a short distance it lay untouched and utterly unchanged, the same yellow shale and curious narrowness, the same weathered rail fence and dried grasses. It even smelled as it used to. Since leaving here he had been over the entire country and most of the world besides. He had found no place with that certain sweet smell of Rose Valley. The three black cherry trees, now older and fatter, still stood by the fence, and he was glad to lean against one of them in the faintness that had come over him since the climb.
The longer he stood there in the growing dusk, the less it seemed that he had ever been away. Nothing here had changed. He could almost believe that he was still a boy and that the valley behind him still lay intact and unharmed. Why, this had been his favorite route from school in town. So often had he passed this spot, he thought there must remain in the road some faint impress of his feet. Just at this season, with darkness coming on, he used to tramp along here from town with his schoolbooks under his arm, the scent of life in his nostrils and the world his oyster. Standing here now, peering through the growing dusk, he could almost feel himself as a boy swinging along the road bound for the lamplit window at home.
His nerves tautened. Did he only imagine it or was something actually coming up there in the dusk? Yes, it was moving down the road. He could make it out now, straining his eyes through the early obscurity, a figure rounding the shale banks, a shadowy boy in knee breeches carrying a book satchel. The strangest feeling ran over him. He must be really ill, he told himself, for there was no road above for the boy to have come from and none below for him to pass over. Besides, boys today did not wear knee pants. Yet he could plainly hear the sound of the boy’s shoes on the road. He told himself now that it must be a real boy, someone who lived today on the reservation, who knew this short cut and whom the guards let through. Then, as the boy came almost abreast, he recognized, with a feeling that made all adult sensations seem tame, the familiar red-ribbed sweater that had been his own, the certain look of its stout coarse weave. He even remembered the peculiar smell of warm dye when he used to pull it over his head.
The boy was shying to the farther side of the road at sight of a stranger. Speak to him—speak to him before he is gone, the man cried to himself. But when he did so, his voice sounded harsh and croaking, “Are you acquainted around here, boy?”
“Why, yes,” the boy said, stopping, but he did not come any closer.
“Is there a doctor around?”
“There’s two in town and one at the Stone Church.”
“Do you know the doctor’s name at the Stone Church?”
“It’s Hanray—Dr. John Hanray.”
“And your name?” he asked.
“Peter Hanray,” the boy told him shortly, and started away.
“Wait, I want to go with you!” the man said, as soon as he was able.
They made a curious pair going down the shale road in the dimness, the boy hurrying tirelessly ahead, the man following heavily after. At every moment the latter looked for the road to peter out, expected to see, below, the cold hard electric lights of the Army barracks and XYT-line buildings. But all that lay around them was the soft dim blur of the unwired country dusk. There were the faint glow of a lantern in Bomboys’ red barn as they passed, and early lights in the Peysher house and Hauser log cabin. At Shaffers’ yellow house and Klines’ unpainted one, children played and shouted in the yard. Here the Penny Hill road joined the other road as it always had, while ahead Jarretts’ woods loomed up in its old, dark and mysterious way. Tramping down the village road he could smell the old-time aroma of wood smoke, raw-fried potatoes and valley-cured ham. Hulsizer’s blacksmith shop still stood open. A flame of red fire glowed in the darkness, and a great hulking beast waited in the gloom outside.
And now the scientist breathed faster, for they were rounding the comer. He could glimpse late sky shining as usual through the open belfry and the white paling fence standing unbroken around his father’s house. Soft golden lamplight came from a side window. That was the kitchen window, he knew, and a sudden fear touched him that those two he wanted most to see wouldn’t be there.
The boy ran ahead of him through the side gate and up the steps. He burst in through the door, and the man behind him saw the kitchen as he had always remembered it, with the water bucket on the stand, the wood stove steaming with pots and pans, and hurrying in from the pump on the back porch his mother, more real than he had imagined her, in dress and apron that were part and parcel of his youth. Something in him wanted to ran to her, but her smile and anxious scrutiny were all for the boy.
“He was up on Penny Hill,” the boy said. “He wants to see papa.”
His mother’s smile left, and she put on the grave face she showed to the outside world. “Will you come in?” she bade him politely, as to a stranger.
Hardly could he control his emotion as he stepped into that well-known room. The table was set as always when he used to come home from town: the dishes he had long since forgotten, with pink flowers and which had come in cereal packages, the blue glass butter dish and the plated silverware worn softly black along the edges. He could smell the savor of baked beans from the oven, shot through with the scent of the stove.
He noticed that his mother watched him intently. For a moment his heart stood still, thinking she must know him. But she still spoke as to a visitor. “Do you want to come in the office? Or you can wait in the parlor if you’d rather. Peter will light the lamp for you. The doctor said he’d be back right away. He’s just over on the ridge road.”
Hanray dared not speak. He let himself be led into the parlor. He would get hold of himself in here, he told himself, once he was left alone. Why, he knew all these poor shabby furnishings better than any of the rich things in his fine Midwest home. The old green tassels still hung from the table cover; the haircloth sofa stood by the door; faded blue flowers bloomed in the wallpaper, and the same spots were still worn in the ingrain carpet. His Grandfather and Grandmother Ainsley hung on the wall, and a few photographs stood on organ and table, but none of his father, mother or self. That would have been unforgivable vanity or pride, to flaunt one of your immediate family in your own parlor. He heard the same old rings on the telephone from the exchange at Maple Hill. All that was missing now, besides his father, was Doxy, the stem, black-and-brown, long-haired shepherd dog.
He sat very still. The rattle of buggy wheels came around the house, the steps of the boy sent out to unhitch, then the unmistakable sound of his father coming up to the side door. A minute more and he came forward, a man in a brown beard and clothes like a farmer, with a doctor’s worn bag in his hand. He looked tired. Likely he had been up all last night with some shiftless mountain patient. Sight of him brought back the feeling he had had as a boy for his father, a kind of shame that he wasn’t rich and successful like Doctors Grove and Hereward in town; that he seldom charged enough or collected what he did charge; and especially that he never carried himself with the professional dignity of the town doctors. They were men of science above such inferior things as humility and religion. His father, on the other hand, attended church like some simple, unlearned countryman, even acted as superintendent of the Sunday school when he could, greeting perfect strangers with the brotherly and overfriendly way of a preacher. That, as a boy, he used to resent the most—that his father showed the same warmth and affection for a stranger as for his own family. But today, now that he was only a stranger himself, an unspeakable gratitude welled up in him for his father’s warm greeting and for the kind brown eyes that searched his face.
“How are you?” he said, grasping his hand and holding it in the manner he always did when he tried to recall a name. “I feel I should know you. I know your face, but I can’t call your name. Do you live around here?”
“I used to,” the visitor said.
“Has it been a long time?”
&nbs
p; “A very long time.”
“You have come far perhaps?”
“Farther than I can tell you.”
“I’d have been here before,” his father apologized, “but I was over at Berrys’ on the ridge road. Maybe you remember them. Old Mr. Berry is pretty feeble. There is little a doctor can do for him any more except pray.”
Into the scientist’s mind came the memory of his father’s prayers, so unlike a man of medicine and science, his friendly, hopeful voice, a voice that now seemed very near God. Oh, father, he thought, if only you would pray for me. But he said nothing of that, just followed his father into the familiar bare office, smelling of carbolic acid and iodoform.
His father closed the door. “Now you can sit down and tell me your trouble,” he said kindly.
The scientist thought he would give a great deal if he could feel his father’s gentle and skillful hands go over him. But what he had to say was something else.
“I’ve come to see you about your boy.”
“About Peter!” His father was surprised.
“About him and his future. I understand he’s only fourteen, he’s already well along in high school and he’s thinking of taking up physics and chemistry in college. I’ve come to you to beg him to change his mind. What he must do is prepare for a life like yours.”
He saw that his father was staring at him.
“I don’t know how you know this or who told you. I can talk to him again, but I’m afraid there isn’t much use. I don’t think I’ve been much of an example to him. He says he’s seen too much doctoring from the inside. He doesn’t want to starve and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with death and dying.”
The scientist shrank.
His father went on, “Peter’s more interested in science. All he talks about is the great opportunity for public service in being a scientist. He says that he wants to do only good in the world.”
The scientist winced again. He leaned forward desperately. “You must change his mind for him then!” he begged. “Make him see the great opportunity in medicine, the salvation of going around doing good like you.”
