There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Frank’s hands unclenched. He was sorry that he was not to knock this hateful boy down. Then he was baffled. “A Mick?” he repeated.

  “Yeh. A dirty Mick.” Herman waited. Frank still stared at him, perplexed. Herman added, impatiently: “You know: a Cat.”

  Frank was silent with bewilderment. Herman was elated. “Aw, you don’t know nothin’, you bloody, bloomin’ Englishman! He don’t know what a Mick or a Cat is,” he informed his faithful followers with scorn, glancing over his heavy-set shoulder at them. The children laughed loudly, triumphantly. Frank looked at them, more and more perplexed. Then he saw one little girl and one little boy, their faces pink with embarrassment, drifting away from the group about him. They disappeared behind one of the furnaces.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Frank, with new anger. “What’s a Mick or a Cat?”

  Herman bellowed with brute laughter. “A dirty Pope-lover. That’s what a Mick and a Cat is. They’ll kill you soon’s look at you. You’re dumb, you bloody, bloomin’ Englishman. Don’t they have Micks and Cats in your country?”

  Frank considered. He had never heard of people who made it a point of going about killing their neighbors. He said: “The bobbies wouldn’t let Micks and Cats kill us.” He was curious. “What do they look like?”

  Herman and his friends bellowed with fresh laughter. Herman looked about him. “Hey, vere’s Tom Murphy and Mary Flynn? They vas here. Vell, they ain’t now.” He returned to Frank. “They got black hearts, and they’re Pope-lovers, and they’ll kill soon’s look at you. We gotta kill ’em first.”

  Frank was alarmed. What a frightful place this must be, when one had to defend himself to the death! It was strange that his parents had never warned him of this dangerous contingency.

  Herman asked: “Are you a Protusunt?”

  Again, Frank was bewildered. “A Protusunt?” he asked. “What’s that?”

  Herman banged his breast mightily, while the children howled with mirth. “I’m a Protusunt, you dumb ox. Like all these other kids. Well, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed Frank. “I never heard of Protusunts. Perhaps we don’t have them in England.”

  Herman glowered at him. A red, kindling spark appeared in his eyes. “Veren’t you efer baptized, you dumb ox?”

  Here was another word unfamiliar to young Frank Clair. He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never heard of it.”

  Herman could not believe his delighted ears. The red spark brightened between his short yellow eyelashes. He shouted.

  He pointed his finger at Frank, while the children, entranced, stared.

  “Then, you ain’t only a bloody, bloomin’ Englishman, you’re a dirty kike, too!” he shrieked.

  The children clapped their hands, jumped up and down. “A dirty kike! A dirty kike!” they chanted, overcome with ecstasy.

  Herman grinned. “Vat’s you real name, kikey?” he asked. “Levy?”

  Frank was silent. Again, rage was rushing up through him like a torrent. He could feel it beating, burning, in his arms, through all his flesh, and rising to his head in a resistless wave of hate. He took a step towards Herman. Herman became suddenly quiet; he licked his lips. He tugged at his trousers. The children, sensing drama, became still and watchful.

  “Aw, you can’t be a kike,” said Herman, in a conciliatory tone, watching Frank with some nervousness. “Kikes don’t fight. Listen, dumb ox, I don’t want no fight wid you. Look, what church you go to?”

  The rage still palpitated in Frank. All his muscles were tense with lust for combat. He took another step towards Herman, who backed away. “Look,” said the German boy, “I don’t want no fight wid you. Don’t you know what church you go to?”

  Frank stopped. Now his curiosity temporarily overcame his fury. “It’s none of your affair,” he answered scornfully. “But I don’t mind telling you, you dirty thing. I went to High Church with my papa, in England, but my mother went to the Baptist chapel. What does it matter? What has it got to do with you?”

  Herman was relieved. He did not like Frank’s expression, nor the sight of those doubled fists. He said, in a whining and more conciliatory tone: “Aw, well. Then you’re a Protusunt, too, like me, and the other kids. You ain’t a Cat or a kike. I’m a Luthern.” He paused hopefully. “Know what a Luthern is?”

  “No, and I don’t want to know,” said Frank angrily. “If you’re a Protusunt, I don’t want to be one. I won’t be one.”

  He waited for a few moments. But Herman did not answer. Only cowardly and furtive hatred blinked in his eyes. Then Frank, with scorn, turned away and went upstairs to his classroom.

  This was his first encounter with prejudice and ugly hatred in the free and noble Republic which had been founded by Englishmen on the premise that all men are equal in the sight of God, that all men are privileged to live within its borders in tolerant safety and justice.

  And it was his first, and most exhilarating, awareness of the power that lived in himself, a power that could arouse respect in others. He had felt his first pure rage and disgust, his first recognition that brutal cowardice can be halted by the scorn and indignation of clean men. He knew the answer lay in his own indomitable heart.

  Even when the children followed him home every day, screaming: “Bloody, bloomin’ Englishman!” even when they threw stones at him, and leered at him, and swore at him, in their childish, unthinking hate, he was not afraid. He had learned what oppression and persecution are, and he never forgot. He had learned the answer to them: Scorn and courage.

  He never agreed with friends, later in his life, that the answer to oppression, ignorance, hatred and persecution was “education.” For he knew that education cannot enter brute and subhuman minds, that these minds are impervious to gentleness and knowledge. No, the answer must always be scorn and courage, armed strength if necessary, and an unrelenting pride.

  CHAPTER 14

  Maybelle looked at the bank book in her hands. Francis stood over her, smiling with satisfaction. “Another fifteen dollars—three pound,” he said. “At this rate, we’ll soon have a fortune.”

  Maybelle smoothed the small pages with a reverent hand. The book had become the book of life to her. She looked at the many blank pages following. She could see them, filled up, rich with promise and hope. She turned to the last page. Oh, surely to God, when that was filled and totalled at the bottom, they could go home! But how long would it take? The first four entries filled such a little space. She concentrated again on the last page. When that was filled up! Her eyes burned with tears.

  “I want to go home just as much as you do,” said Francis, defensively, knowing her thoughts. “I’ll promise you: when the book is full, we can go.”

  “It’ll take years,” said Maybelle, mournfully.

  “Not at this rate. We don’t spend a penny unnecessarily. We can sacrifice. That’s why I was so vexed when you wanted to buy the lad an extra pair of boots. Kids grow fast. One pair at a time is enough. No use wasting money buying extra things and luxuries. I still regret spending that one dollar and fifty cents last Saturday at Crescent Park. We could’ve put it in the bank.”

  “We’ve got to have a little change sometimes,” said Maybelle, with sad spirit and regret.

  “Well, you don’t always look ahead,” Francis reproached her. “Many a mickle makes a muckle, as the Scotch say. Little leaks sink big ships. A penny in the bank is worth two in the pocket. Look ahead. Sacrifice. Save.”

  Maybelle turned the book over and over in fingers that were suddenly clammy and trembling. She was helpless. She could do nothing. They must save money. But what if something happened, and they couldn’t continue to save? Maybelle well knew the unforeseeable vicissitudes of life. If they could not save as much as they hoped, then they would be exiled forever.

  Young Frank was in the kitchen, reading one of the books which Miss Jones had lent him. He felt something strident, something terrifying, in the atmosph
ere. He looked up. But nothing seemed wrong. His mother and father had been writing out the weekly budget on the kitchen table, and now they had a little gray book in their hands. Everything was quiet and peaceful. No one was speaking. Yet, something most terribly wrong was in the air, something cowering and fearful and frightening.

  He always remembered that cool dim April evening. Was it then that his parents began to change perceptibly? Or had the change been coming on for weeks before? When had he begun to smell fear in those dreadful rooms over a grocery store on Vermont Street? When had it begun to permeate the lives of his parents and to make their days hideous? When had it started to corrode their average English characters and to deteriorate them, so that they became vicious and cruel, hysterical and intolerant, hateful, not only to each other, but to him who was still so young and helpless?

  He never knew. He knew only that his mother had once been fond of him, in England, and during the first weeks in America, that she had defended him against his often irritable and peevish father, that she had delighted in his progress at school, and had listened to his evening prayers with tenderness. He remembered that in England she had been given to singing in a rather pleasant voice, that she had laughed frequently, and that often she had had little surprises for him in the way of toffy or a picnic or a gay visit to the shops. He remembered that his father had sometimes laughed and had been playful, teaching the boy checkers in the firelight, and taking him for walks in the country and helping him gather the first wild flowers in English fields. In England, there had been comfort and some solid, middle-class pleasures.

  Frank recalled that in England he had frequently been thrashed, but it was a brief, healthy thrashing, and he admitted, honestly, that he must have been a hard child to understand. But now the thrashings he received seemed less in punishment for a childish crime than a sadistic catharsis for the fear that dogged his parents. Francis was beginning to pinch, to pull the ears of the boy, sometimes to punch him, his tongue stuck, animal-like, out of his mouth, his teeth clenched on it. Sometimes, for the mere misdemeanor of lingering over his dinner, he hammered Frank about the head with his fists, with obscene grunts of pleasure. Sometimes, for the slight sin of spilling tea on his blouse, Maybelle literally tore his hair from his head, scratched him, gashed him with her nails, her eyes sparkling with cruelty.

  “They must have been mad,” he would say in later years. “Mad with fear. Nothing but fear could have made them so murderously brutal to a child, whatever his crimes.”

  Was it in those early days that their fear began to cover all things in their lives with a gray and stinking fog? Frank knew only that they soon began to fear everything, a knock at the door, a certain note in Mrs. Watson’s voice, a strange letter which later turned out to be an advertising leaflet, the neighbors, the people on the streets. And inevitably the fear became hatred, hatred of everything, hatred of the “Yankees,” Mr. Farley, the weather, the house, the money which they had to spend for bare subsistence, Mrs. Clair, the sun in the streets, the snow in the winter. And, even more inevitably, each other.

  It must have been Frank’s strangeness, of which they were increasingly aware, which so infuriated them. Had he echoed their own fears, had he trembled at an unaccustomed footstep, had he evinced an interest in saving the rare pennies that came to him, they would have recognized him as their own, and, seeing themselves mirrored in him, would have loved him.

  Had he screamed when they attacked him with such monstrous and demented fury, had he yelled and cried, it would have made his life easier, for they feared “the neighbors” with an unreasoning terror. But he made no outcry, and so they could torture him with impunity, leaving him bruised, breathless and panting.

  It seemed incredible to him, in later years, that such madness could have come upon two formerly average and undistinguished people. When he spoke of this madness, not in anger but in perplexity, to others, they looked at him incredulously. But then, not many people are so beset by insane fear as were Francis and Maybelle.

  Frank would not have been human had he not sought to protect himself from his parents. He knew that the slightest infringement of any small rule, the slightest complaint of a neighbor against him, the slightest annoyance which some adult might display towards him, would result in a dreadful beating. If Maybelle sent him to the gorcery store, and he returned with a penny short, she would assault him madly. So Frank, in self-defense, became a liar.

  He never forgave his parents for that. Out of his understanding, he could forgive them their craven fears. But he could not forgive them for forcing him to soil his young life with lies. He could not forgive them for darkening his existence by the necessity for falsehood.

  Miss Emily Jones was increasingly worried about Frank Clair. He had passed from her schoolroom in June, 1908, and had gone to the indifferent mercies of Miss Leona Burkholz. The latter teacher did not like children, and had tolerance only for those who caused her the least trouble. Frank was not one of these happy ones. He was inattentive, inert and extremely dull when a subject did not interest him, and was given to scrawling odd faces, triangles and other irrelevancies in the midst of an arithmetic or grammar or spelling lesson. So far as the arithmetic was concerned, it was still cabalism to him, though occasionally, purely by luck, he believed, he hit upon the right answer. He could read and write brilliantly; correct grammar came to him instinctively, and it was not necessary for him to study spelling. In consequence, his mind wandered off into fog and dreams during these lessons which Miss Leona persistently forced into the heads of the other children.

  He thought Miss Leona of no importance, for her voice was without accent or richness, her ways lackadaisical, her interest in her subjects completely absent. He never remembered her face or her figure. She was a vast boredom to him. He was still young enough to betray his opinion frankly. Moreover, the other children no longer frightened him, nor was he docile among them. Their initial antagonism had increased. He returned it with contempt, and not infrequently was the party of the first part in a brawl.

  His clothing became shabby, too small for his quickly growing body, and was patched. This was because of Maybelle’s growing penuriousness and his father’s emotional refusal to spend “an unnecessary penny.” Also, Maybelle was beginning to show a veritable genius for ferreting out cheap shops where discarded and unfashionable clothing was for sale. The few garments bought for Frank were peculiar, badly cut, poorly made, and ill-fitting. These things aroused the other children’s risibilities, and nothing could have delighted them more than the occasion when Frank appeared at school in a pair of extraordinary shoes which possessed toes and heels of brilliant “patent” leather and tops of gray cloth with black buttons. The shoes had been made for a youth several years older than Frank, and were of a style of some ten years previous, having “toothpick” toes of a triangular shape. Maybelle had thriftily stuffed the vacant two inches above Frank’s big toe with wads of cotton-batting. Even Miss Burkholz smiled broadly at the sight of them. No one but Miss Jones suspected that these shoes tormented Frank with intense mental and physical anguish, for not only did everyone stare and grin at them but their very shape distorted and twisted the boy’s feet in a veritable agony.

  Worst of all, to Miss Jones, was another change that was becoming evident in Frank. Added to his growing dreaminess and absorption in some subjective universe of his own was a disquieting and extreme tenseness and nervous instability. He had always been pale. Now his color was almost ghastly, and there were mauve circles under his eyes. His hands trembled at the least excitement. His lips were dry and parched, and had a bitten look. His eyes, always large, were now too brilliant, too alert.

  She was too astute, too sensitive, to believe that all this was caused solely by the hostility of the other children. Some other chronic misery had come upon the boy. She made discreet inquiries, and learned that Frank was the only child of his parents, and that his father was a chemist of no small salary. Why then these atrocious clothe
s? Why then this expression of acute anxiety and nervousness? She had never met Frank’s parents, and knew no way to call upon them without a reasonable explanation.

  She managed to arrange with Frank that he come into her room after school hours. She would talk with him affectionately, sometimes holding his hand. She borrowed books for him, and was touched and amazed at his eagerness and understanding, for his appetite for reading seemed insatiable, and he was no longer satisfied with fairy tales and stories of childish adventure. When in her presence, when talking to her, the taut stiffness of his young face would relax, the abnormal brightness of his eyes would lessen, and sometimes he would laugh. He spoke to her eagerly and listened to her words almost with hunger.

  The boy haunted her. She would manage a few words with him in the corridors. She would bring him candy, which he devoured with such avidity that she was sickened. When he suddenly developed a tendency to stammer, she would gently turn her head aside and refrain from looking at him. To the end of her life she could hear that pathetic stammering and see the look of helpless and suffering suffocation on his face as he struggled to speak.

  In November, 1908, she missed him. She made inquiries of Miss Burkholz, who said, indifferently, that the boy had been absent for several days. “He can stay away forever, as far as I am concerned,” said the teacher spitefully. “Of all the mean, stupid, contrary, bad-tempered young ones, he is the worst! He ought to be in a home for the feeble-minded.”

  Miss Jones bought five suckers, three oranges, two bananas, and armed herself with several books from the library. She went to call upon Frank and his mother.

  The neighborhood was poor, she saw. But not so poor as many homes in which healthy and happy children lived and thrived. The dark stairs leading up to the Clair rooms were, she noted with approval, clean and scrubbed. She knocked on the upper door. She waited. She heard stealthy footsteps within, then silence. She knocked again, more vigorously. There was no sound, but, mysteriously, she felt alarm and wariness behind that shut door, and she was positive that she heard sharp breathing, as of someone in stress and fear. Anxious now, she knocked once more, and called out: “Is anyone home?”