Herbert Rowbarge

by Natalie Babbitt

  It was a golden morning, but Mrs. Mink ignored this feature, and so did Herbert and Otto. The latter were preoccupied with hunger, the former with duty, and none of the three was inclined to be distracted. Arriving at the foot of the hill where the Home stood, Mrs. Mink did not pause to look up and admire the sunstruck windows or the slate roof basking in the warmth. She did not pause to remember that it was the handsomest Home in the state, or to grieve for the shabbiness, inside, of furnishings and inmates alike. Instead, she urged her horse firmly up the driveway, reined in at the wide veranda, and, grasping an angry red infant under each arm, marched up the steps to the door. Here, having no hand free to ring the bell, she kicked vigorously at a lower panel with one large, booted foot until at last the door was opened.

  A child of eleven, a girl, in a much-mended dress and bare feet, was doing service as butler and downstairs maid that morning. She clutched a feather duster in one grubby hand, and when she saw Herbert and Otto, an expression of deep annoyance crossed her face. She shook the duster and said, emphatically, “Goddamn it!”

  “Never mind,” said Mrs. Mink. “Where’s Matron?”

  “She’s in her office,” said the child, pointing reluctantly. “In there.”

  Mrs. Mink knew the office well from previous visits. She strode up to its door and, again, having no hand free to knock, kicked, while the girl stood by, scowling at Herbert and Otto.

  After a moment the door opened and the matron of the Children’s Home emerged.

  “Morning, Mrs. Frate,” said Mrs. Mink. “Here’s two more.”

  Mrs. Frate was a thin, kindly woman of fifty, pale with the pallor of one who yearns only for peace in this world but, knowing she is unlikely to get any, struggles to be grateful without it. When she saw Herbert and Otto, the struggle intensified. Her face went even paler and she gasped, “Oh, no, Mrs. Mink! We can’t!”

  “You got to,” said Mrs. Mink.

  “But we have too many already! And Cook will raise the roof! All that milk to warm and food to mash …”

  “Cook’ll manage,” said Mrs. Mink. “You don’t expect me to keep ‘em, do you? Here, take ’em. I got to get back—I got work to do.”

  The girl standing by said, again, “Goddamn it!”

  “Hush, Clarissa,” said Mrs. Frate. She received the babies into her own arms, shaking her head resignedly, and asked, “Do they have names?”

  “Herbert and Otto,” said Mrs. Mink.

  “Which is which?”

  “It don’t matter,” said Mrs. Mink. “You can’t tell ’em apart anyways. Ugly, ain’t they?”

  At this point the babies, now seriously hungry, began to wail again, waving purple fists helplessly and exposing wide stretches of gum. Mrs. Mink, raising her voice over the racket, said, “Well, I got to get back.” And with a flurry of relief, she disappeared.

  Clarissa banged the big front door shut behind her and once more brandished the duster. “We gonna have to take care of ’em?” she demanded.

  “It looks that way,” said Mrs. Frate. She straightened her shoulders, adjusting the double burden. “It’s our duty, Clarissa.”

  “Goddamn it!” said Clarissa.

  One morning in early September, a wagon arrived at the Children’s Home, and soon, in Mrs. Frate’s sitting room, Herbert and Otto were displayed to Mr. and Mrs. Emil Schwimmbeck, a solemn young farmer and his eager wife.

  “This all you got?” said the farmer severely. “They look kinda puny to me.”

  “Oh, no, Emil!” said his wife. “They’re sweet! What are their names?”

  “Herbert and Otto,” said Mrs. Frate. She laid the pair down side by side on the sofa, where they peered upward vaguely, folding and unfolding fists which were no longer purple but had turned quite pink and normal. They were quiet now, having just been fed by the still-indignant Clarissa. “They’re three months old,” said Mrs. Frate, with thinly veiled hope, “and very strong and healthy.”

  “Here’s the way it is,” said Emil Schwimmbeck. “We’re headed north, up near Sandusky. Got some land waiting. I need a good boy to help with the work and I’d sure rather have a growed one than something like this. Thing is”—he lowered his voice —“we just lost a baby of our own and Doc says we’d better not try again, but Mabel here’s still got her heart set on a little one, so …”

  “I understand,” said Mrs. Frate. “It’s only natural.”

  “Which is which?” asked Mabel. She had knelt on the floor before the sofa and was offering a finger to each baby.

  “The one with the ribbon on his wrist is Otto,” said Mrs. Frate. “We put it there so we could tell them apart. They’re so very much alike otherwise.”

  “Oh, Emil, couldn’t we take them both?” said the young woman. “It would be so nice to have twins.”

  “No,” said Emil. “We can’t take but the one. So make up your mind which. We got a long ride ahead of us and we can’t waste no more time.”

  “Well …” said his wife. And then the decision was made for her. A bubble of gas pressed somewhere inside Herbert and, stiffening, he began to yell.

  “Not that one,” said Emil Schwimmbeck.

  Within the hour, Otto was bouncing north in his new mother’s arms. No papers had been signed, but in those simpler days, signings were not always required. This was not an adoption. It was, rather, an acquisition, and therefore far less formal.

  Herbert, returned alone to his crib, continued to yell, though the fateful bubble of gas had long since passed away. He was miserable without knowing why, and he yelled until at last Clarissa, appearing suddenly, loomed over the crib and shouted, “Quit that!” Stunned, Herbert paused and blinked. And then, exhausted, he fell asleep abruptly.

  Clarissa was so pleased by her newly discovered power that she turned at once maternal. She moved the baby from the side of the crib, where he had huddled, into the center, and spread an unnecessary blanket over him. “There, sweetheart, see? You can have the whole thing to yourself now,” she cooed.

  But in less than ten minutes Herbert had managed in his sleep to inch himself back to his own side again. He had no conception of middles, and did not know, then or ever afterward, that he was whole all by himself, instead of half of a single unit.

  Wednesday, May 21, 1952

  Babe and Louisa sit side by side, with Babe at the wheel, in Aunt Opal’s Oldsmobile. They have dropped Aunt Opal off for her regular Wednesday bridge and now they are going to Bell Fountain, the only town of any size near Mussel Point. They are wearing today, by prearrangement, their little green print with the kick pleat. Why “little” should pertain, neither of them knows, especially since, in the size they take, the yardage is substantial; but that’s what the Higbee’s ad in the Sunday Plain Dealer said it was—they always get a Cleveland paper on Sundays. The ad called it “an important little print,” and, easily convinced, they ordered two. By telephone. They seldom go in person up to Cleveland; a trip to Bell Fountain, twelve miles away, is quite enough of an adventure.

  The Oldsmobile is long and black and looks official, and so it was once, in a way. It belonged at first to their uncle, Dr. Stuart Loose; was new, in fact, two months before he died; a sleek and costly car, thanks to the volatile health of the Mussel Point community. He barely got out of it, that day five years ago, in time to have his ringingly decisive heart attack. Right there on the flagstones leading to his own front door, beside the winter-brown azaleas with their curled-up leaves, he curled up, himself, and went down for the count, his medical bag with its useful clutter, though no use at all in this instance, intact at his side when they found him.

  The Oldsmobile is Aunt Opal’s now, unrestricted. She likes it much better than the Studebaker that was hers when Stuart died, because it has “fluid drive” and she doesn’t have to shift. She gave the Studebaker to Walter right after the funeral, but now it is someone else’s. Walter traded it in at once. It had a peculiar shape and the color—gray—didn’t suit him. It looked, he said, “too mu
ch like Mother,” adding hastily that he only meant it looked like something only a mother would own.

  Babe drives cautiously out of Mussel Point, and turns southeast toward Bell Fountain. “This car scares me to death,” she confesses to Louisa. “The hood’s so different from Daddy’s Lincoln, it’s hard to judge how wide it is.”

  “I know,” says Louisa. “And it’s funny not to have to shift.”

  “That’s the thing,” says Babe. “I never know what to do with my other foot.”

  “Want me to drive?” Louisa offers.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll just go slow, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” says Louisa comfortably. “Go as slow as you want. I’m just glad to get out of the house.”

  A mile beyond Mussel Point, Babe says, “There’s the greenhouse.”

  “There it is,” agrees Louisa.

  Off to the left, behind a roomy gravel turnaround, stands a long, low, fragile-looking building made of glass, fronted by a small clapboard showroom. A friendly sign above the door announces that this is Festeen’s Nursery, and another sign on a banner in a window says: Festeen’s for Greens.

  “Mr. Festeen’s in the hospital again,” says Babe.

  “I know,” says Louisa. “Daddy said something about it at breakfast.”

  Mr. Festeen is their father’s oldest friend, a partner for years at the Pleasure Dome but now long retired and living with his son on the farm that rolls away behind the greenhouse.

  “Maybe we should have asked Daddy if he wanted to go along to Bell Fountain,” says Babe. “We could have run him over to the hospital for a visit.”

  “Babe, I did ask him,” says Louisa, “and you know what he said? He said, ‘Dick’s got so old and tottery it makes me sick to look at him.’”

  “Oh, Louisa, he didn’t! That’s a terrible thing to say about your best friend!”

  “Well, it’s just what I was telling you yesterday, Babe. He’s so touchy this last day or two, I’m almost afraid to speak to him.”

  The greenhouse drops away behind as they think this over. Babe negotiates a chicken who, the proverb notwithstanding, is not trying to cross the road but merely wishes to investigate the berm. Still, chickens are unpredictable. The pass accomplished, Babe says, “Well, there’s no excuse for it. After all, Mr. Festeen is almost eighty. Daddy ought to be glad he’s still around. Why, they’ve been friends forever!”

  Louisa says, “Not so much the last few years, though.”

  Babe slows, takes a hand from the wheel, and rolls down her window to the light May air. “Is he still acting funny?” she asks.

  “He said he had a headache this morning,” Louisa reports. “And he’s still squinting with that one eye. I don’t think he looks well at all.”

  “Glasses,” Babe suggests. “Maybe he’s gotten to the point he needs his glasses changed.”

  “That could be it,” says Louisa. “We’d better make him an appointment.” She lifts the hem of the little green print and flaps it up and down, revealing plump knees that are mottled from the pressure of taut-stretched nylons and early heat. “Whew!” she says. “I’m roasting. Did you ask Aunt Opal about the surprise party?”

  “Yes,” says Babe, “and she said she thought he’d hate it. And then she said, ‘Don’t you girls know by now your father hates everything he’s not in charge of?’”

  “Oh, dear,” says Louisa.

  “Well, they never did get along very well,” says Babe.

  “I know, but you’d think for his birthday …”

  “Oh,” says Babe, “she doesn’t mind giving the dinner. She just thinks a surprise would be silly.”

  “Well, I suppose maybe he wouldn’t like it,” says Louisa with a sigh.

  “Probably not,” says Babe. “Well, never mind. Where shall we look first when we get to Bell Fountain?”

  “I don’t know,” says Louisa. “Daddy’s the hardest person I know to buy presents for. There’s never anything he needs.”

  They think this over also, as they must twice a year. It is a problem so immense that every Christmas, every birthday, is blighted by it.

  The car rolls smoothly between the shabby farms softened now with late spring bloom, and then Louisa says, “Look—look at that billboard.”

  There is a sign ahead plastered with a poster that cries COLE BROTHERS CIRCUS in huge red letters, and adds in orange: Coming Soon. Below this is a picture of a lion leaping toward them through a hoop of flame, leaping right out of the sign, almost, his terrible jaws wide open on a roar. The blazing tropical colors of the sign eclipse the May of the countryside, the great exotic head of the lion with his glittering fangs implies that nothing ever happens in Ohio.

  Babe says, “Not after last year.” And with no more than these four words she acknowledges the fondness Herbert Rowbarge has for lions—not real ones, perhaps, but certainly the pair on the merry-go-round at the Pleasure Dome—and reminds Louisa that, the year before, they gave him for his birthday a little gold lion for his watch chain, a real gold charm to replace the one he’s always worn there, a wooden one so paintless and thumbed and blunt that it scarcely looks like a lion at all any more. He has put the gold one away somewhere and continues to wear the wooden one—a measure of their usual success in giving him presents.

  “I guess you’re right,” says Louisa, and they leave the billboard—and Africa’s advantages—behind.

  The signs are thicker suddenly, making a noise on both sides of the road. Amid the clamor of announcements of products available ahead, one sign declares with pride: Highest Point in the State—1549 Feet above Sea Level. And another demands that they Visit Zane Caverns. They have never been to the sea and have no interest in its level as compared to their own. Nor have they seen Zane Caverns, which sound all damp and full of bats. But the products announced are delightful, and so is the small, more modest sign at a crossroads: Bell Fountain 2 Miles.

  “Oh, good,” says Babe. “Look, let’s order some flowers for Mr. Festeen, and then go have a soda. I’m so dry I could …”

  “Spit rust,” they say together, and laugh.

  “What about Daddy, though?” Louisa reminds her.

  “Well,” says Babe, “maybe a bathrobe or something.”

  “All right,” says Louisa, relieved. “He won’t like what we give him, anyway.”

  “No,” Babe agrees. “But it’s not our fault. There’s nothing in the world he needs.”

  Summer 1882

  For Herbert, the second year of life was full of events. In May, two of his three daily playmates, Anna and Charles, were acquired and taken away. In July, the other playmate, Lizzie, turned six and was absorbed into the older girls’ activities. His world remained solitary, except for Clarissa, for a period of several weeks, and then, all on the same day in August, a box of used toys arrived from Gaitsburg, a new boy was brought to the Home, and Clarissa of the blasphemous tongue, Clarissa the domineering nursemaid, Clarissa at the age of thirteen disappeared.

  Though Herbert did not know it, Clarissa had run away, and no one had been able to find her. By eluding the Gaits County sheriff and escaping thereby the terrible punishment meted out to returned runaways, she became a kind of hero to the other children. But Herbert at the time knew only that Clarissa was not there in the morning, and that later, after a long, cranky day alone in the nursery, he was given his supper by someone new. And it was this new boy who opened the box of secondhand toys at bedtime and brought forth a Noah’s Ark.

  When Herbert saw the Noah’s Ark, when it was put into his hands, he forgot Clarissa at once. Poor Clarissa! Running, stumbling, running again along the dark banks of the Ohio all through the August night! To be forgotten for a wooden Noah’s Ark!

  Poor Clarissa? Nonsense. She stowed away on a riverboat, stole a handsome little dress and shoes right out of a sleeping young passenger’s cabin, slipped off in St. Louis, and found work as a maid in a rich man’s house where later she wooed and won the ri
ch man’s nephew and moved to Wichita to live in style with a housemaid of her own. No love lost either way: she had forgotten little Herbert on the very first night, somewhere between Portsmouth and Cincinnati.

  The new boy’s name was Dick Festeen, and he took an immediate shine to Herbert. He was a simple boy with simple needs, and he needed Herbert quite simply to save his sanity.

  Early in the spring, the flood-swollen waters of Possum Creek, snarling down to the Ohio southwest of Gaitsburg, had crested suddenly and snatched a thin old bridge right out from under the wagon in which were riding Dick and his mother and father and his little brother, Frank. All were swept away and drowned except for Dick and the horse, and since that accident, which had taken place in March, Dick—and the horse—had been boarding with friends of the family. But as summer came to an end, the friends found themselves unable to see how they could provide winter food and clothing for an extra child. With regret and relief, they delivered Dick to the Children’s Home and went away sighing. They did, however, find themselves able to keep the horse.

  Dick Festeen missed his father and mother deeply, but his real anguish was for the loss of his brother, Frank. It was an act of God, the family friends had said—to soothe him—and at one level he was able to accept this explanation. Still, it was hard, sometimes, to understand why God had seen fit to tumble such a little child away under the wild brown water while Dick, so clearly flailing and thrashing to save him, was so clearly praying that the little child be spared.

  It was very hard, and Dick was sore of soul on the evening he was brought to the Children’s Home. He had not smiled since March, and his ten-year-old body, lately so rosy and strapping, was visibly dwindling. But Mrs. Frate, on hearing his story from the family friends, was wise. She sent him at once to the nursery. The skills he had acquired through caring for his brother were needed there, anyway—Clarissa had run away the night before.