They Came Like Swallows

by William Maxwell

  With the automobile robes spread out on the ground and the food put away, his father went far downstream to cast for pickerel and bass. His mother sat on a high bank where all the sunfish in the creek would come, sooner or later, to be caught by her. Bunny sat near her among the roots of an old tree, and let the fish nibble the bait off his hook while he was dreaming. And Robert went up the creek and over a bridge to a place where he could cast without getting his line caught in the overhanging branches.

  His mother smiled at him foolishly from the opposite bank. And it seemed to him that she was smiling at the sky also, and at the creek, and at the yellow leaves which came down, sometimes by the dozen, and sailed in under the bank and out again.

  11

  When Robert awoke it was quite dark outside, and what Aunt Clara was saying downstairs came up to him distinctly through the register.

  “Yes…. Yes, Amanda….”

  Her voice was pitched for the telephone.

  “I’m pretty well. How are you? … I say I’m pretty well…. Yes … he’s better, I think … I say Robert’s better. Been asleep off and on most of the day…. Yes … in Decatur…. Yes … in spite of every precaution … both of them … James, too….”

  Robert sank back on the pillow. It was his mother and father that they were talking about. Something had happened to his mother and father while he was sick. Or before, maybe. And Aunt Clara wouldn’t tell him. When she came up with his dinner he would say How is my mother? You have to tell me. … But that was not the way that things worked out. Before it was time for his tray, Robert heard the front-door bell ring, and Irene’s voice in the downstairs hall. He sat up in bed feeling very dizzy and not altogether sure that what he heard was not imagined.

  “I don’t know, Irene …”

  Aunt Clara was arguing with her.

  “I say I don’t know whether Robert ought to see anybody or not. He’s still running a temperature and the doctor’s orders are that—”

  Robert could not bear it another second.

  “Irene,” he called, “I’m up here!”

  He heard the sound of high heels upon the stair, and knew beyond all doubt that there was one person in the world who was not afraid of Aunt Clara.

  Irene switched the light on. She was very beautiful as she stood in the doorway. Her eyes were shining and she was all in black, with a black fur around her neck. She came and sat down on the bed, beside him, and Robert could smell her perfume. That was a joke. Everything, suddenly, had become a joke. His hands (which she was holding) and the dun-colored wallpaper, the insurance agents. But most of all, the joke was on Robert himself—for being foolish enough to get sick at Aunt Clara’s house.

  “I’ve been to Chicago,” Irene said, as if that too were foolishness.

  So much had happened since she sat on the stairs with him. He did not ask why she had gone to Chicago. He did not care. When he was little and did something that he shouldn’t—like turning the hose on Aunt Eth, who was starting out to the Friday Bridge Club—he set out for Irene’s as fast as he could go. If he got there, he was safe. Irene would not let anybody come near him. Her eyes blazed and she put him behind her and said, James Morison, don’t you touch a hair of this child’s head!”

  Robert looked at Irene carefully, trying to memorize her face and the buckle on her hat so that he would have something when she was gone. In her handkerchief there was a sponge soaked in face powder, like the one his mother carried. He listened with only a part of his mind to the story that she was telling—how she got lost on the street in Chicago.

  “… When I was sure that I didn’t have the vaguest idea where I was, I went up to a policeman and said Can you please tell me how to get back to the Palmer House? And he said Lady, follow your nose.”

  Robert smiled and spoke her name slowly.

  “Irene …”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a girl who called here a little while ago. Her name is Amanda Matthews.”

  “Yes, Robert.”

  “They talked about my mother, … When I ask Aunt Clara how she is, Aunt Clara always says getting along as well as can be expected.”

  He could not frame the question that was troubling him, but Irene seemed to know anyway. She nodded to him just as if he had spoken it aloud.

  “Turn over,” she said. Then she pulled the covers down and rubbed his back the way she used to do when he was little—rubbed it until he felt drowsy and quiet, far inside of him.

  “Your mother and father both have the flu, and they’re very sick.”

  When he turned around to look at her, she was staring out of the window.

  “Your mother has double pneumonia.”

  Robert turned his back to the wall and closed his eyes. He had found out now what it was that he wanted to know.

  “The baby was born yesterday … is still alive. I talked to the doctor this noon. He said that your mother was slightly improved…. She has an even chance, he said.”

  12

  After Irene had gone, Robert sought in his mind and in his fever for a way to describe the situation. He did not want to use certain words that frightened him. Double pneumonia, Irene had said. And both his father and his mother were in the hospital.

  And there was Aunt Amelia’s husband, for instance. Mr. Shepherd had pneumonia (the plain kind) winter before last and there was something called the crisis. When that was over, he got well. But people didn’t always.

  Miss Harris at school didn’t get well. She had “T.B.” and that was why she was so pale. She taught geography and all the kids used to bring her apples and oranges, and lilacs when they were in bloom. And for her birthday the whole class gave her sweet peas from the greenhouse.

  When she had to stop teaching, Robert and Irish rode out to see her one afternoon on his bicycle. She was in a downstairs room, in bed, and she had changed so much during that short time that they hardly knew her. She coughed when she tried to talk to them. And there was a clock in the room that ticked loudly, and they were not allowed to stay but a minute or two.

  That was several years ago. Before that Robert could remember about his Grandfather Blaney. Out in the country at a place called Gracelands they kept a ferret to drive the rats away. The ferret bit Grandfather Blaney in the ear while he was sleeping. Then he came home and was sick a long time, so that they had to have the Christmas tree upstairs in his bedroom. When the door was opened, Bunny and Agnes rushed in together—Agnes crying See my rocking-horse, and Bunny Oh, see my doll!

  Then Grandfather Blaney died and the door of his room was kept tightly closed. Robert opened it once when there was nobody around, and went inside. They had taken everything out of the room except the furniture. There weren’t even any clothes in the clothes-closet.

  When he went home, he talked to his mother about it. She told him how they thought Grandfather Blaney was dead, and how he opened his eyes and looked at them and said, Heaven is a providing-place. … That was very much like something Mr. Stark read in Sunday school: In my Father’s house are many mansions. The same thing, practically. If people were good, Mr. Stark said, and didn’t break the Ten Commandments, they went straight to Heaven when they died. Cats and dogs, too. Only that wasn’t right. Robert knew that for certain, because Irish’s cat had kittens that had to be killed. And he and Irish buried one of them in a Mason jar with a little water in it. And two weeks later they dug the jar up again.

  There were some things it was better not to think about. Without thinking at all, therefore, Robert lay quietly while moment after moment rose over him and set. Some one came upstairs. He heard the toilet being flushed and the sound of water running in the bathroom. Then there was no sound at all, until Uncle Wilfred brought his dinner up to him.

  He would have liked to talk about his mother, but he didn’t feel that he knew Uncle Wilfred well enough. Uncle Wilfred was kind and all that. He didn’t force medicine down Robert’s throat before he was half awake. And when he turned the light o
n, he always put a piece of paper around it. But on the other hand, Uncle Wilfred wasn’t like other men. He didn’t smoke or drink whisky or tell stories about how there were two Irishmen named Pat and Mike. He didn’t have his hair cut often enough and he didn’t believe in dancing. He wore shoes that turned up at the toe and he went to church three times on Sunday and there wasn’t much of anything that Robert could talk to him about.

  Each of them remained in a separate silence while Robert ate. But the moment Uncle Wilfred went out of the room, Robert was sorry that he had let Uncle Wilfred go, for he remembered, as soon as the light was turned out, that if anything happened to his mother, it would be his fault. He was frightened, then—more so than he had ever been. A terrible kind of fright, as if he were going to cry and be sick at his stomach, both at once. He doubled up his fists and buried his face in the hot pillow. The darkness was suffocating, but he stayed that way until he fell asleep, into a dream canopied with light.

  He had come home.

  He was in the little sewing-room at the head of the stairs.

  It was night.

  Waiting to go to sleep, he heard the stairs creaking.

  And voices on the stairs.

  The voices of his aunts, saying Robert can’t … Robert can’t say … can’t say fewer … Aunt Clara, Aunt Eth, Irene. Their voices elongated in the dark and yet recognizable, saying the same thing one after another.

  It made him uneasy. He turned, clutching the hem of his blanket.

  Feather … Feather …

  He could say it now without any trouble. Light as a … but not when he was little.

  Feather …

  The word snapped conclusively.

  Feather …

  It scraped against the dark side of the house and there was laughter on the stairs.

  Feather …

  The night wind bound him, dark, divided, on his hollow bed. Unwillingly, having premonitions of anguish, he settled farther into sleep.

  In his dream he heard ringing, hoofs clopping, clopping on hard pavement…. He saw Dreyfus with his brown flanks shining. He heard Dreyfus with his harness jigging…. With faces white and intent Boyd and Irene drove past him in a high black carraige. He ran after them, crying Irene! Irene! but they did not hear him. And so he tried to climb on the back end of the carriage, crying

  Irene!

  (wildly)

  As the wheels, turning

  Do you hear me, Irene?

  dragged him …

  Torn bodily, torn by the roots out of his dream, he sat up in the dark. Some one was shaking him.

  Robert darling, wake up!

  It was his mother.

  I am awake.

  You’re not.

  I am, too.

  Then tell me what’s the matter?

  Sighing, he lay back upon the pillow. The bed-springs creaked under his dead weight. He was very tired.

  I don’t know … I was having a bad dream.

  I heard you, clear in my room.

  She bent over him in the dark and brushed the hair back from his forehead.

  It must have been a very bad dream.

  Yes, it was.

  Sleep was still under him, like a pit.

  He could look down….

  If his mother would only stay with him, he would not drop into it immediately and dream that same dream. But he could not ask her to do that. He was too old. Much too old.

  It’s this room, Robert.

  She seemed to have guessed, anyway.

  Without his having to tell her, she went to the window and adjusted the shade so that it wouldn’t snap.

  You’re not used to sleeping in this room.

  She came back then, and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed.

  His head cleared.

  His lungs were no longer expanding and contracting with excitement.

  When he was quite calm inside, he started down…. He was not afraid now. His mother was there, and she was not going away just yet. There was no need to hurry.

  Once he looked back, trying to say good-night to her, but no words came.

  He had gone too far.

  There was a great distance between them.

  At the very bottom, he turned and saw that she was still sitting on the edge of the bed where he had left her.

  13

  Robert was not supposed to get up. Tomorrow, Dr. Macgregor said, if he didn’t have any fever. But it was not hard. So long as Robert braced his arms against the side of the bed, he felt all right. It was only when he stood. Or when he bent over to pull on his stocking. He had to rest a little. And again before he could finish tying his shoe. Then he stood, one-legged and shivering, while he measured the distance across the room to the wardrobe where Aunt Clara had hung his suit. The floor tilted slightly—not any more than he had expected and not enough to make him fall. He drew on his underwear and his shirt. While he was adjusting the straps of his leg, a sparrow came to peck at a grain of paint on the window sill and Robert waved his arms weakly to frighten it away.

  Before he had finished dressing, the telephone rang and Aunt Clara’s voice came up through the register. Robert drew his belt on and buckled it, listening.

  “Hello…. Hello, James, I can’t hear you … I say I can’t hear you very well. Can you hear me? … Yes….”

  At the thought of his father, Robert had to sit down and with both hands cling to the edge of the chair.

  “You don’t mean it, James….” And then a long silence and, “No, but I will … if you want me to.”

  Straining, Robert heard the click of the receiver. The stairs creaked softly.

  “Bunny … Oh, Bunny….”

  Aunt Clara was already at the head of the stairs when Robert pulled his door open. She was neither surprised to see him nor angry.

  “Come in here, Robert,” she said. “I have something to tell you.”

  He followed her into Grandmother Morison’s room. Bunny was there alone. And he was in his pajamas. Aunt Clara sat down in the rocking-chair and gathered Bunny onto her lap.

  “It’s about your mother,” she said.

  Her voice sounded hoarse, as if she had a cold. She began to rock back and forth, back and forth, until her eyes covered over with tears. Robert turned then and went out of the room.

  He did not have to be told what had happened. He knew already. During the night while he was sleeping, she got worse. Then she did not have an even chance, like the doctor said. And she died. His mother was dead.

  Book Three

  UPON A COMPASS-POINT

  1

  If James Morison had come upon himself on the street, he would have thought That poor fellow is done for. … But he walked past the mirror in the front hall without seeing it and did not know how grey his face was, and how, all in a few days, sickness and suffering and grief and despair had aged him.

  It was a shock to step across the threshold of the library and find everything unchanged. The chairs, the white bookcases, the rugs and curtains—even his pipe cleaners on the mantel behind the clock. He had left them there before he went away. He crossed the room and heard his own footsteps echoing. And knew that, now that he was alone, he would go on hearing them as long as he lived.

  Sophie followed him when she had hung his coat and hat in the hall closet. “There’s some letters for you,” she said.

  “Some what?”

  “There’s some letters for you and some bills. They come while you were gone.”

  “Oh,” James said.

  “I put them on the table.”

  He looked at Sophie for the first time and saw that her eyes were red from weeping.

  “I thought I’d tell you,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “In case there might be something important.”

  “Yes, I’ll look at them”—he realized suddenly why she looked so different. It was because she had no teeth. And with her mouth sunken in, Sophie had become an old woman—“after a while.”
r />   “I turned the spread back in your room so you can lay down if you want to, Mr. Morison.”

  She saw that he didn’t hear her and tried again. “Mrs. Hiller telegraphed from Decatur yesterday. She said to come and open the house this morning. And have the guest-room ready for Miss Blaney.”

  “For Miss Blaney? … Oh yes, I forgot about that. Or maybe they didn’t tell me. It’s all right, though. When is she coming?”

  “The telegram didn’t say. It just said to have the guest-room ready for her when she come. And Karl is going away.”

  “Where?”

  “Why, didn’t he tell you, Mr. Morison? He’s going to Germany.”

  “Maybe he did. Yes, I guess so. When?”

  “Right away. In a couple of days.”

  James put his hands over his eyes and felt the relief of darkness. His eyelids were cracked and hard. He had not slept for three nights. It did not seem likely that he would ever sleep again.

  “You must tell Karl to be sure and see me before he goes.”

  Sophie nodded. “He was here early this morning. I had him build a fire in the grate. All you have to do is light a match to it.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “When he comes I’ll tell him you want to see him, Mr. Morison.”

  James took the stack of letters and sat down. Mr. James B. Morison … Mr. James Morison, 553 W. Elm Street, Logan, Illinois … Mr. and Mrs. James B. Morison … He read the envelopes again and again, without having the strength or the will to open them. Mr. and Mrs. James B. Morison…. When he closed his eyes for a moment and sank back, it was more than he could do to raise his head from the cushions.

  “It’s like being drunk,” he said.

  To his surprise, Sophie was still there and answered him.

  “Once when I was a girl in the old country—”

  James did not hear the end of her sentence. If he listened to Sophie, he would have to look at her. He would have to open his eyes.