They Came Like Swallows

by William Maxwell

  One time when Aunt Clara was away at a meeting of the Ladies Aid, he took the screws out and discovered that there was nothing behind it but the wall. Only the metal screen wouldn’t go back on again. He tried all afternoon until his mother came to get him, and still he couldn’t make the screws stay in. But it was all right, because his mother told Aunt Clara to have a man come out and fix it, and she’d pay for it. And on the way home she wasn’t even angry with him. For years, she said, she’d been wanting to do the very same thing.

  For his part, Robert liked things to be whatever they were. And he liked them to work. Having reached that conclusion, he went and stood before the bookcase, helplessly interested by all the curious objects that he saw there, and that he was never allowed to touch—the coral, the starfish, the shells, the peacock feather, the parrot eggs, the ocarina, the colored stones. When he could not bear to look at them any longer, he turned away to the dining-room and the front hall. It was nearly ten. He waited in front of the cuckoo clock until the little wooden door flew open and the wooden bird fell out, gasping the hour. Then he went on, still searching for a place to put his soldiers.

  At the top of the stairs, in the narrow hall, Robert was confronted by the framed high school and college diplomas of Aunt Clara and Uncle Wilfred, and the Morison coat of arms, and a picture of Grandfather Morison in his casket with all the funeral flowers. To the left were the Spare Room and Aunt Clara’s and Uncle Wilfred’s bedroom, which looked as if it were never slept in, though it was, every night. To the right was Grandmother Morison’s room. He stopped at the door and looked in. Grandmother Morison was in her rocking-chair by the window, and Bunny on the big mahogany bed with a blanket thrown over him. Neither one of them knew that Robert was there. The room was littered with dress-patterns, quilting-pieces, chalk, ribbon, old letters, spools, boxes and baskets and bags. Come in if you’re going to come in, she always said. Or stay out if you’re going to stay out. … He sniffed (there was a faint odor of camphor) and passed on down the hall to Uncle Wilfred’s study—a narrow dark little room with a cot and a wardrobe and two chairs, a roll-top desk, a typewriter table, and a place in the middle to walk among them. The state agents of the Eureka Fire Insurance Company looked down at Robert from their oval frame, and stared him out of countenance. The wallpaper was brown and like a sickly sweet taste on his tongue. But the wardrobe was exactly what he had been looking for.

  He put the soldiers on top of it, back and hidden from sight. As he turned to go out of the room he was stopped by the sound of a train whistle: two long, two short, and then a mournful very long … Robert listened until he heard it again. Two long … two short … And knew all in one miserable second that his father and mother were on that train; that they had gone away and left him in this house which was not a comfortable kind of house, with people who were not the kind of people he liked; and that he would not see them again for a long time, if ever.

  9

  Grandmother Morison could not remember the names of people, or where she put things. “James,” she would say to Robert—“Morison—Robert” she would say; “have you seen my glasses?” And they would be on her forehead all the time.

  When she had pulled them down, she would talk to Robert in a comfortable way about the Luisitania, or the assassination of President Garfield, or the Bombardment of Fort Sumter. And about his Great-uncle Martin, who owned a cotton plantation in Mississippi. And how if the Southern people had only been nice to the darkies and called them mister and missus there would never have been any war. And about St. Paul. And about Christ, who was immersed in spite of what anybody said to the contrary, because he went down under the water and he came up out of the water.

  So long as Robert did not get up on the bed with his shoes on, or ask questions when she was involved in her crocheting, he could play with anything that he liked. And by trial and error he discovered that Grandmother Morison’s room was the one place in the house where he was safe. Everywhere else a voice said Robert the minute he touched anything. If he grew restless (as he invariably did) and wandered into the Spare Room, or downstairs, it was only a matter of time before he was impaled by Aunt Clara’s voice saying Robert, I thought I told you not to play with Uncle Wilfred’s scrap-book…. That darning egg, Robert, belonged to your Great-grandmother Burnett. I don’t believe I’d play catch with it, if I were you…. Robert, do you really think that’s a nice kind of a song for you to be singing? … Until he was afraid to do or say anything, so he sat in the front hall folding and unfolding his hands. Or stood with his nose to the front window, watching the children pass—running, sliding, pushing each other on the icy walks.

  He knew all of them by name. The boys who dragged sleds after them, and the little girls who made angels in the snow. He knew what marbles some of the older boys had in their pockets. But if they looked up and saw him, there was no flash of recognition. Nothing but wonder, as though they were looking at a Chinaman. He was cut off from them, estranged. Their mothers had not gone to Decatur to have a baby.

  When there was nothing out-of-doors to interest him, Robert would turn and wait for the cuckoo clock to strike. The wooden door flew open, and the noisy little bird fell out, and that restored his interest in living. Also it reminded him of how he let his mother into the room where Bunny was—a thing he would rather not have remembered. When he had managed to forget it again, he was still aware vaguely that there was something he had been worrying about.

  One day became for him hopelessly like another. Even Thanksgiving, because Aunt Clara had roast chicken instead of turkey, which was sixty cents a pound. But on the Saturday after Thanksgiving he made a discovery; something that he had overlooked. Under the table in the living-room was an unabridged dictionary, and on top of it seven or eight other big books arranged according to size. He took them all off at once, in such a way that he could put them back again the instant he heard Aunt Clara coming.

  Finding the wrong kinds of words in the dictionary was not a crime. They couldn’t put him in jail for it. But it was a thing he would not want to be caught doing, especially by Aunt Clara. It was like telling lies or listening to people who didn’t know he was there.

  The best way was to pick a letter (like C), close his eyes, and turn to whatever page he came to: chilblain … child … childbearing … childbed … childbirth … He had gone past what he was looking for. “With child,” people said. A woman was with child (chïld) n.; pl. children (chǐldrěn)… I. An unborn or recently born human being; fetus; infant; baby … A young person of either sex, esp. one between infancy and youth; hence, one who exhibits the characteristics of a very young person, as innocence….

  Robert flushed. He looked around at the empty chairs in the sitting-room and was on the verge of closing the dictionary. Then he thought better of it.

  obedience, trustfulness, limited understanding, etc…. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child. …” His skin felt warm, under his clothing. He had gone too far again: fetus was the word … fetter … fettle, fettle … fettling … fetus, foetus (fē’tŭs), n. a bringing forth, brood, offspring, young ones; akin to L. fetus fruitful, fructified, that which is or was filled with young … the young or embryo of an animal in the womb…. Bunny came up behind him, so quietly that Robert did not even know he was in the room. Bunny waited a moment, and then made a slight noise. Robert slammed the book together, in panic.

  “If she catches you,” Bunny said, “if she finds out you’ve been using her dictionary, you’ll get Hail Columbia!”

  “She won’t find out.”

  “What’ll you do if she does?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why are you so red in the face, then?” “I’m not.” “You are, too.”

  “I’m not, either. For cryin’ out loud, Bunny, go play somewhere!”

  “I will,” Bunny said, hopefully, “if you’ll let me have your good soldiers?”

  “Nothing doing.”

  The page was crea
sed where Robert had been reading. He put it back carefully. It might be some time before Aunt Clara used the dictionary, and then she might not be looking for a word that began with C … The young, he read, or embryo of an animal in the womb….

  Bunny went out of the room, leaving Robert free to thumb through the W’s … wolves … wolvish … woman … woman’s rights … womb … The belly … The abdomen … “Transgressors from the womb”—Cowper … Any cavity like a womb in containing and enveloping. … Robert read and reread, skipping the brackets and the abbreviations but with never a glimpse of the meaning. The meaning was there, but he could not get at it. It was inside the words.

  What Robert wanted, suddenly, was to be outdoors in a vacant field, running. He wanted to be running hard, and with a football against his ribs; to be tackled and thrown on something hard like the ground. With a sigh, he closed the dictionary and put the other books on top of it. Then he went to the front door to see if the mail had come. It had, and there was a letter for Aunt Clara, in his father’s handwriting. Robert took it to her and waited, with his heart pounding inside his shirt.

  “It’s from your father,” she said, as she wiped her hands on the roller towel in the kitchen. “I say it’s a letter from your father.” She opened the letter and read it from beginning to end, slowly. When she had finished, she put it back in the envelope and the envelope in the pocket of her kitchen apron.

  “Has the baby come?” Robert asked.

  “No.”

  “Does he say how my mother is?”

  “Your mother is fine—getting along as well as can be expected, he says.”

  Robert looked at her. “Is that all he says?”

  “Yes, that’s all….”

  But it wasn’t, Robert assured himself on his way upstairs. He could tell by her eyes. There was something in that letter which Aunt Clara hadn’t told him. He might go to the phone and call Dr. Macgregor, perhaps, and find out how things were. But his mother said not to bother him unless it was something important and this might not be.

  But then again, Robert said to himself as he reached the head of the stairs, it might. He turned down the hall and saw at once that Bunny was trying to get at his soldiers. Bunny had pulled Uncle Wilfred’s swivel-chair across the study and was teetering on it, in front of the wardrobe.

  “Hey!”

  Bunny turned a frightened face upon him and lost his balance. The soldiers fell with him, all the way to the floor.

  “I didn’t go to … really I didn’t!”

  Robert brushed past him without a word. There were his Cossacks with arms broken off, and heads, and rifles, and the legs of their white horses. His mouth twisted in pity. There were his lancers.

  “Damn you,” he said. “Damn you, Bunny … Damn you!”

  10

  With glue and matches, wire, toothpicks, and pieces of thread Robert worked over his broken soldiers all Sunday morning. Fortunately the legs of certain horses were all in one piece. He could make those legs stay on. And if the horses wouldn’t stand up afterward, he could always pretend that they were lame. Arms could be fastened on with wire, and heads with matches. So that anyone standing off at a distance from them could hardly tell that the soldiers were mended. The trouble was that Robert didn’t play with them standing off at a distance.

  Bunny wanted to help, but Aunt Clara said no, Robert didn’t deserve any help after speaking to his brother like that—which was all right with Robert. When Bunny got big enough so that they were both grown up and the same size, he was going to take Bunny out in the back yard and clean up on him. That might not put any soldiers back together again, he told himself (and Bunny) but it would certainly make him feel a lot better. Because every so often, with the soldiers spread around him on the sitting-room floor—an arm here and part of a sword or a helmet there—he would suddenly decide it was too long a time to wait until Bunny grew up, and that something could be done right then and there. Uncle Wilfred was sitting in the big chair, with the Sunday paper, and so nothing was.

  At five minutes to one, Aunt Clara called Robert and Bunny to come wash their hands for dinner. Bunny got to the kitchen sink first and took so long that it was time to sit down before Robert had his turn at the soap. He did not feel obliged, therefore, to wash with any great thoroughness or be too particular about not leaving any dirt on the roller towel Besides, he said to himself as he sat down and unfolded his napkin, he was hungry.

  At home it wasn’t considered cheating if he started in on his salad before everyone else had been served. But no sooner did he commence than Aunt Clara spoke to him in a hushed voice.

  “Robert, you’ve forgotten something.”

  He glanced up in surprise and saw that they were all looking at him—Aunt Clara, Uncle Wilfred, Grandmother Morison, and Bunny. He put down his salad fork and bowed his head. Uncle Wilfred in a disapproving voice said, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts….”

  Even after the blessing had been asked and they were free to receive it, Uncle Wilfred was not restored to a good humor. So far as Robert could make out, he was not responsible. It was the health officer, who had requested that for the duration of the epidemic the Christian Church (together with all the other churches) close its doors. To Uncle Wilfred’s mind, there was no need for such action.

  “It’s one thing,” he said, passing over the wing, which was Robert’s favorite piece of chicken and giving him the drumstick, which he never ate if he could help it; “it is one thing to close the bowling-alley and the pool-halls. But to close the church of Jesus Christ is something else again. Anybody would think that church gatherings are unhealthy—that they’re particularly conducive to the spread of disease.”

  Aunt Clara said, “It’s true that there’s lots of sickness about. I say that much is true.”

  “Church,” Uncle Wilfred said, “is of so little importance that they can afford to suspend it at the slightest pretext…. There’s no reason that I can see why people who come together for an hour on Sunday should be any more exposed to disease than they are all day long in stores and offices.”

  Robert was not hungry now. While Uncle Wilfred was talking, all desire for food left him.

  “It’s cold in here,” he said, not expecting that Aunt Clara would get up and go look at the thermometer.

  “I declare … seventy-six. Don’t you feel well, Robert?”

  He was all right. Perfectly. There was no reason why they should all be staring at him that way.

  “Your eyes look bloodshot.”

  Robert pushed his chair back from the table. “No,” he said, “I just thought it was cold in here.” And before he could get upstairs to the bathroom, he was vomiting.

  Aunt Clara undressed him, as much as he would let her; and pulled the covers back so that he could get into bed. In a little while, Dr. Macgregor came and took his temperature and asked him questions—all from too great a distance to be of any help. Robert was glad that Dr. Macgregor had come, and sorry when he went away. But there was nothing that he could do about it. He was cut loose. He was adrift utterly in his own sickness.

  For three days and three nights it was like that.

  Aunt Clara appeared every two hours—now fully dressed, and now in a long white nightgown with her hair in braids down her back. Sometimes her coming was so slight an interruption that he could not be sure afterwards whether she had been there at all. Again she stood beside his bed for an indefinite time, with two white tablets in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Robert awoke from a sound sleep and knew that he was better. He knew also that there was something that he had to find out, as soon as he could remember what it was. Aunt Clara appeared with his breakfast tray.

  “Good-morning,” she said. “How do you feel? I say how are you feeling, Robert?”

  “Better.”

  His voice sounded weak and like the voice of somebody else.

  “I think I’ll get up, Aunt Clara.�
�

  “You’ll do no such thing. You’ve been a sick boy, Robert. A mighty sick …”

  The letter … Quite suddenly it came to him. Aunt Clara got a letter and she wouldn’t tell him what was in it. He was going to call Dr. Macgregor and find out how things were. And when Dr. Macgregor came, he was too sick to remember it.

  “Aunt Clara, can you tell me how my mother

  is?”

  “She’s getting along about as well as can be expected, the doctor says. And she’s in the hospital, where she’ll get very good care.”

  Robert was not at all satisfied. As soon as she went out of the room, he turned his back to the wall, so that he would not have to look at the insurance agents, and slept. At noon Aunt Clara awakened him to give him his medicine. He asked her the same question and got a similar answer. He closed his eyes and slept and woke up again and slept again until he had disposed of the greater part of a winter afternoon. The street lamp shone in squares upon the ceiling. Turning then, Robert saw, distantly, as through the wrong end of opera glasses, things that had taken place a month before. The last Sunday in October they wedged themselves into the car, among fishing-poles, baskets of food, skillets, automobile robes, water-bottles, and the can of worms. Then they drove out into the country until they came to a special gate. After that they had to crawl through a barbed-wire fence and lug all they had brought with them to a clearing on the banks of a creek.