Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

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  forgetting that someday I'd be old with nothing to show except that I'd held down a job like millions and millions of other men and made a little money like millions and millions of other menall my life I've been forgetting, Delphand now I can't anymore. It's not as if there was any need. Everybody else takes what they want in this world. Why shouldn't we?" His hands were not against the tree, but around her, and when his storm of words was spent she dropped her head on his shoulder, and stood quiet in his arms with her hands against his breast.

  She never moved or gave a sign she heard when he went on in eager whispers, "Can't you see, Delph? You know and I know we belong to each other. We'd be blind not to know. All we'd ever need would be ourselves and a little earth and a little sky in a land where there's hills something like here. We could live in another state or in Switzerland or France or Italy, any place you'd say.I can always get in any country a job like the one I have nowyou're important when you figure out ways for warbut not when you work out ways to make plants grow and live, but someday we could do that together." He bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, and begged again in rushing, hungry whispers, "DelphI'd never say a word if you belonged herebut you don't. I know. They're shaping you like they'd shape a cedar tree. You were never meant for the ones that love the having of things or the holding. If you were happy, Delphit wouldn't be so hard. I could stand it for myself but. There's my car and there's the road. By night we'd be so far away."

  She lifted her head and looked at him. "We're crazy, Sam," she said in a low toneless voice, "but we'll be all right, give us time. It's just some foolishness mebbe that runs in our blood, for I've heard it said that in th' old days when men heard th' wild geese go flyin' over, they'd start then on their long hunts an' never wait till spring an' summer time. They never thought of such things then, I've heard it said. It was only in th' fall in th' face of a hard cold winter that they wanted to go away.I can see how that would be, crazy they were with th' wild geese callin' an' th' last of th' leaves comin' down.I've always been a little crazy, I guess, but," she smiled a brief sad smile, ''I've always lived by th' laws laid down by th' ones that were sanean' mebbe if I live long enough I'll forget that I ever had one thing in my blood an' another in my head." She caught his

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  coat lapels and shook them a little. "Please, Samgo on, nowit would always be like that. I'd always be lookin' back knowin' an' knowin'it's sinful to talk on such, Sam."

  He shook his head. "There's no sin, Delph, in the wild geese flying over.Maybe one gets penned away or crippled with a broken wing, but when he can he goes with the othershe doesn't stay back.You can't live all your life wanting and wanting; the older you get the smaller this place will be. You'll sicken more of the gossips and the small talk of the neighbors and the always being watched, andLord, how well, I know."

  "You can't tell me. I knowbut I'll live on an' be a part of itlike I was. I'll work so hard I'll never knowI've always worked to fill my daysbe busy so you can't sit still an' wonder or think of th' next twenty yearbe tired so you can go to sleep an' I'll work an' I'll sleep an' I'll sing in churchan' when I'm old." She stopped and whispered the word and looked at him with wide darkening eyes. She choked and then went on after one slow nod of her head, "An' when I'm oldI won't feel or think or wantor wonder thenso much.I won't even remember then that onceeverything hurt th' way it does todaythat talkin' sky an' th' way th' walnuts smell, an' th' grapes, too. All this mornin' while I picked themI thought how it would be to carry them homethis afternoonan' watch th' shadow creep across th' valleyan' sit so still pullin' them off th' stemsbut I can do that, Sam.Oh, I know I can. Oh, Sam." She flung her arms tight about his neck, then jerked them away and rushed toward Solomon's fence.

  He started to follow her but stopped. She stood pressed against the wires, watching him with her wide dark eyes, like some mortally wounded animal, trapped and powerless to fight with anything except its eyes. "You're strong, Delph," he said.

  She shook her head, and kept pushing him away with her eyes. "You're th' strong one, Samif there is such a thing as people bein' weak or strong, or bein' good or bad.I couldn't go with you no more than I could flyan' I can't forget you no more than I can be sorry or ashamed forbut I can forget. I know I can." She clenched her hands and stood with their nails digging into her palms. "Go on, Sam, please. It'll be a lot to know always that there's someone in th' world like you. Goin' after what you want an' takin' it gay an' never tied by."

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  "Gay?" he asked and came a step nearer.

  "Don't wait any longer. Th' neighbors they'll be seein' that car an' comin' But, oh, Sam, please, please I don't want to see you walk away like a whipped dog. An' when you've gone hunt what you want to find, don't stick by that good payin' job just because it's sensiblean' have your funan' listen to music an' dance an' read poetryan' oh do all th' things I'd like to dodon't ever live by your neighbors an' this God like oursplease."

  He caught her wildly beating hands, but she shrank still nearer the fence and begged him with her wild, wounded eyes to go away. He tried to speak, but when she struggled with her hands as with her eyes, he turned and walked rapidly away.

  She stood clinging to the fence and watched him stride across the field, leap into his car and drive away. She continued to stand with her eyes on the road, her mouth open, and her head tilted with listening when the car was hidden by a down dropping curve in the road. But the faint thread of sound kept constantly breaking; and though she leaned farther and farther from the fence with listening, there came a time when other sounds of the road and of the world smothered it.

  She climbed then to the high post on which she had sat and stood upright, but could see nothing more than a cattle truck going down a gray stretch of road. She stood a time staring at the road, and gradually noticed that Caesar was barking, the short loud barks by which he announced day time visitors. He had, she thought, been barking so for a long while.

  She turned slowly on the post, for the top was scarcely larger than her two feet. She saw soon down among the shrubs and grape vines by Solomon's fence, the moving pinkness of a woman's dress. Delph studied the broad fat back as the woman hastily reached for a bunch of grapes; in a moment she knew it for Sadie Huffacre's. She was still a moment, dazed by a sense of loss and a foreboding of some ugliness and misery, greater than any she had ever known; and while she stood Sadie turned and looked at her. She saw her loose wide mouth, too eager, like the mouth of a starved animal, and her greedy pale blue eyes filled with the same mocking silence and the knowing that lived in the sky. Like the sky, her eyes seemed to say, "Always and always I will live with you, Delph, be over you and watch and hold you to the ways of a farmer's wife."

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  She stared at the eyes a moment longer, felt no fear and no shame, only that wild madness at being trapped and tied, bound for a long torture that would end only when she diedmaybe in fifty years. She looked up at the sky, then down at Sadie. She was between the two and so were Marsh and Burr-Head. She drew a long sobbing breath and looked toward the road; Sam would be miles awaynow. It would have been kinder to Marsh had she gone with himand now the two of them would be flying up and down the little hillsand the wind would tumble the hair above his eyes, and he would look at her and smile and say, "There's always something ahead till we die, eh, Delph."

  Sadie came a few steps nearer, and she couldn't think for wanting to be away, out of this trap and away from the ugliness of it all. She had an instant's picture of fat black Emma, laughing she would be and with no time for the gossip of white womenand black Emma was there, not far from the lower side of Solomon's pasture.

  She sprang from the post into the field with no bothering to look where she jumped, or caring to remember that when Caesar barked Solomon had come stalking and lashing his tail to see what Caesar was about, for now as ever he hated the dog. Her feet came hard against a rough steep spot below the fence, she swayed and tried
to right herself but fell sprawling, her hands plowing through the rough ground and a stone grinding into her face. She heard Sadie scream and Caesar bark, and Solomon bellow, just by her head, it seemed.

  She circled away, and Solomon circled, too, his eyes on her bright red apronshe'd felt this morning that she needed to wear a bright red apron over her faded blue dress. She tore at the apron, then stopped. She was wasting her time; she could never get it off.

  Sadie screamed again, and Caesar leaped, snarling and howling against the fence, but Solomon noticed nothing except the bright red apron. She hesitated another moment, and Solomon circled nearer. If she ran, he would be afterit wouldn't be easy to climb the fence here with his horns just by her back; but it was a long run to the lower sideand she might not climb it then.

  Sadie screamed again, she came to sudden life and knew that she must get to the fence near Sadie. Sadie was a human being; she loved Burr-Head; she wouldn't do anything to hurt himand if she could talk to hermake her seeSadie screamed as Solomon leaped for

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  her in a mad plunge. She sprang sideways, heard the tearing sound of her dress on hihorns, circled around him and back toward the fence. The ground was steep, and one of her ankles felt strange as if she had maybe twisted it when she whirled away from Solomon. She ran a step or so and fell, then struggled up again, and heard Solomon's hooves beating beside her, too close to try to climb the fence.

  She circled again, plunged forward and up again and felt the fence wires with the tips of her fingers. Her lungs were filled to bursting, and there was no air in the world. Sadie ran to her, and Caesar crashed against the fence, fighting to climb it with his frantically beating paws. Solomon would kill her if for no other reason than to get to the dog whose head was almost by her own. ''Go awayyou fool," she gasped.

  She tried to climb but Sadie's hands were fluttering behind the wire, pulling at her, lifting, hindering more than they helped. She saw her wide pale eyes, blind with terror. She was still then, knowing there was no use to waste her breath with climbing. "Sadie, if I don'tmake it overdon't tell."

  There was pain and screams like great birds fluttering above her head. She wanted that breath the screams had wasted; she wanted another moment of living more than she had ever wanted anything. She had to tell Sadie that she mustn't tell anyoneevermake her promise not to tell. She didn't want Marsh hurt or Burr-Head hurt; she wanted them safe in the stone houseSadie must run and leave hernever let anyone know that she had heard and seen. She wouldn't scream. She stood upright and clutched the fence, and still the screams flew pastnothing left of her but screams and eyes. Her breasts and stomach were bloody pulp soaking through her dress. She saw the blood, beads on the fence wires and stain on Sadie's hands and Caesar's paws. She tried to whisper, but there wasn't any breath. She felt her body torn and her backbone seemed to grind into the fence. Her head jerked backward and her eyes filled with sky; there must be something more than this in the sky, some sense of victory, some promise of fulfillment, or foretaste of glory, not just blue fading to darkness. Maybe the world was built on hunger, maybe there was no fulfillment, no glory, no greatness, maybe the ones who lived never knew they livedan empty sky above an

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  empty earth and darkness through it all. Oh, but Marsh must be safe and Sam must be gay.

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  Marsh and Burr-Head ate in the little restaurant at the end of Maple Street. The place was filled with its usual Saturday crowd, a gayer crowd than common; corn and tobacco prices were good, the local harvest heavy, and farmers and cattle buyers were glad. They ate and talked and laughed, their noise mingling with the sounds from the men and mule and automobile crowded street. One of Quarrelsome Sexton's boys sat in one corner and played a guitar, and sang with loud tipsy gusto: "Shady Grove my little love, Shady Grove my darlin'," and somewhere up the street blind John Duncan played his fiddle while a little darkie danced. Burr-Head begged to go hear the fiddle play, and Marsh, deep in talk, let him go. Young Riley Lee from over by Salem was at his table wanting to know what Marsh thought of cedar fence postsif it would be better to buy steel and do away with the cost of digging holes. "Cedar's better than steel if you've got th'." Marsh began and stopped, annoyed by the loudness of his voice. His words seemed loud as if he talked against a room full of sound, but the place was quiet, still as if all the closely crowded men were dumb.

  He glanced from Young Riley's face to the door, but it was filled with the heads and shoulders of tall silent men. And many of the men stood with their hats in their hands. The fiddle from up the street came clearly now, two quick cries of shriekin' laughter, and then one little sound like a half note, and the fiddle, too, was silent, and the beating feet of the little darkie tapped once and then were still.

  Marsh turned and looked at young Riley Lee, and though he had not moved, his face seemed far away, and the face was different, looking first at Marsh and then at something behind him in the door, as if the something were a sign or a signal or a dumb man talking with his hands.

  Marsh looked at the door again. The heads and shoulders were drawing away, leaving a lane like an empty road from nothing to him. He waited and tried to think, and in a moment remembered Burr-Head. Something had happened to himhe could never tell

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  Delph. Delph would never forgive him. He sat waiting and the man-bordered lane remained empty, and no man dared come to him. The silence in the room deepened; he heard the heavy breathing of the men, and somewhere a horse neighed and a mule's feet pawed in the street.

  No one moved or spoke and all eyes were kept carefully from his eyes when at last a man came through the door. The man was Poke Easy. He looked very tall and very straight, and he no more than the others would look into Marsh's eyes. Marsh pushed the table from him and arose and asked, "Burr-Head?"

  Poke Easy shook his head, and Marsh could not understand. Dorie's children were never ones to lie. "Come outside, Marsh," Poke Easy said, and he followed past the silent men into the crowded silent street. He saw Roan and Tobe and Perce and Reuben Dick. They were his friends and they were waiting for him. He knew them, knew their faces, but they were strangers now. They looked at him with pity, and no man had ever pitied him.

  He felt a familiarity in the silent pitying faces, and he seemed to have walked backward into his oil field yearsa long way back. He was one in a group of men who stood by a heavy boiler fallen on its side. He and the other men had been moving the piece of machinery, inch by inch with oxen and block and tackle up a steep hill. A cable was broken, and a man lay with his legs up to his thighs under the crushing rim of one heavy iron wheel. It was a moment, the first one, when the man did not scream, had seemed to feel no pain, drowned as it was by the understanding. He knew, lying there, that whether he lived or died he would never be a man, the same again as those who watched him. The man knew that though agony might pass and sorrow and regret, the change from what he had been to what he now was would not pass.

  And now the scene was come again, and Marsh was there, but not one of the men who watched. He looked at Poke Easy and asked, "Delph?" and this time Poke Easy did not shake his head. He wanted to run, he wanted to break something with his hands, he wanted to ask if Delph were in pain, but while he stood, helpless, changed from what he had been, like the man with the cut-off legs, the men who lined the streets made a lane for him, and he walked between the silent people with his eyes on Poke Easy's back. It seemed he walked a long way through the old narrow streets of the town.

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  They passed the square where the fountain played, the drops were silver against the empty sky, and the fountain spray was the only thing that moved or made a sound. The boys playing by the cannon stood open-mouthed and stared at him as he walked by, and the men in the crowded street by the courthouse made way for him in silence. The hill men bared their heads, and in the eyes of a stoop shouldered woman with a fat baby in her arms he saw tears. When he had walked
a space he understood the bared heads of the hill men. He knew that Delph was not in pain.

  They came to the one hospital of the town, and Poke Easy turned and said, "Maw's there. She camewith her. She said to come to her. Don't goto Delph."