The Eighth Day

by Thornton Wilder

  It was reported from house to house that the only son Roger, seventeen and a half, had left Coaltown. It was assumed that he had gone out in the world to make his fortune and to send money home to his mother. The daughters did not return to school in the fall. Their mother tutored them at home. Lily, almost nineteen, and Constance, nine, like their mother did not pass the front gate of “The Elms” for over a year and a half. It was Sophia, fourteen and two months, who did the shopping for the family. She was seen on the main street daily, nodding brightly to her former acquaintances, to all appearance unaware that few of her greetings were returned. Her purchases were reported from house to house—soap, flour, yeast, thread, hairpins, and “mousetrap” cheese.

  The residents at “The Elms” were among the last persons in Coaltown to learn of Ashley’s escape. It was Porky, twenty-one, who brought the news. Porky was Roger’s best friend. Though his family name was O’Hara, he was large part Indian and belonged to the Church of the Covenant community, a religious sect that had drifted into southern Illinois from Kentucky and established itself on Herkomer’s Knob, three miles from Coaltown. Porky’s right foot and shin had been injured at birth, but he was a notable hunter and had taken Roger on many a hunting trip. He repaired the shoes of Coaltown, sitting all day in his little matchbox of a store on the main street. He was highly regarded by all the Ashleys, but he never entered their house by the front door and he firmly refused to sit down to a meal with them. He was taciturn and loyal; the black eyes in his square walnut-colored face were observant. On the morning of July twenty-second he appeared at the back door and uttered his signal, the hoot of an owl. Roger joined him and was told the news.

  “Your mother ought to know. They’ll be here soon.”

  “You tell her, Porky. She’ll want to ask you questions.”

  He followed Roger into the front hall. Mrs. Ashley came down the stairs.

  “Mama, Porky has something to tell you.”

  “Ma’am, Mr. Ashley got away. Some men piled into the car and loosed him.”

  Silence.

  “Was anybody hurt, Porky?”

  “No, ma’am, not that I heard.”

  Beata Ashley put her hand on the newel post to steady herself. She was accustomed to the fact that Indians waste few words. Her eyes asked him if he knew who the rescuers had been. His eyes gave no answer.

  She said, “They’ll be hunting for him.”

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re saying that the men who rescued him gave him a horse. If he’s smart he’ll get to the river.”

  The Ohio is forty miles south of Coaltown, the Mississippi sixty miles west. During the long trial Beata’s voice had acquired a huskiness and her breathing had become constrained.

  “Thank you, Porky. If you learn anything more, will you let me know?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His eyes said, “He’ll get away.”

  There was a sound of feet mounting the front steps, accompanied by angry voices.

  “They’ll be asking you questions,” said Porky. He went into the kitchen and left the grounds through the hedge behind the chicken run.

  There was a pounding on the front door; the bell attached to it jangled furiously. It was flung open. Four men entered the hall, led by Captain Mayhew. The Ashleys’ old friend Woody Leyendecker, the police chief, tried to render himself invisible. He had been pusillanimous—and miserable—throughout the whole trial.

  “Good morning, Mr. Leyendecker,” said Mrs. Ashley.

  “Now, Mrs. Ashley,” said Captain Mayhew, “you’re goin’ to tell us everything you know about this.” He knew that the telegram that was to dismiss him from the police force and to summon him to the capitol for trial was on its way. He knew that he was to be blamed for bringing disgrace and ridicule upon the State of Illinois. He foresaw that he and his family would retire to his wife’s father’s farm, where she would spend the next year weeping, and that his children would be unable to hold up their heads in whatever one-room school they would be attending. He had come to vent his rage and despair upon Mrs. Ashley. “If you hold back one thing that we ought to know, it’s going to go very hard for you. Who were those men that jumped into that car and got your husband away?”

  For half an hour Mrs. Ashley could do nothing but repeat quietly that she knew nothing about any plan to rescue her husband. There were few to believe her—perhaps eleven persons, including one hunted man, hiding that moment in some woods not far away. Captain Mayhew did not believe her; the police chief did not believe her; newspaper readers from New York to San Francisco did not believe her; and least of all was she believed by Colonel Stotz in Springfield. Her daughters crept down the stairs and watched their mother with awe. Roger stood beside her. Finally the investigation was interrupted. A deputy arrived from the Sheriff’s office with a telegram. The men left the house. Beata Ashley went upstairs to her room. She fell on her knees beside their bed and pressed her forehead against the coverlet. No words formed themselves in her mind. She did not weep. She was the doe that hears the huntsmen’s shots across the valley.

  To his sisters Roger said, “Just go about doing what you were doing.”

  “Is Papa safe?” asked Constance.

  “Well, I hope so.”

  “What’s Papa got to eat?”

  “He’ll find something.”

  “Will he come back here when it gets dark?”

  “Come on, Connie,” said Sophia. “Let’s look for something real interesting in the attic.”

  Later in the morning Dr. Gillies dropped in, as though casually. He had been a friend of the family for many years, though the Ashleys had seldom needed him professionally. On the witness stand he had testified that Ashley had been his friend and patient (he had been consulted for a brief laryngitis), that he had held many long conversations of an intimate nature with the accused (they had discussed nothing more intimate than the prevalence of silicosis, tumbles, and tuberculosis among the miners), and that he was convinced that Ashley had harbored no ill-will whatever against the late Mr. Lansing.

  Mrs. Ashley received him in the dismantled living room. There were a table, a sofa, and two chairs. Looking at her, Dr. Gillies thought, as he had so often, of Milton’s words: “Fairest of her daughters, Eve.” He soon became aware of her hoarseness and shortness of breath. As he said to his wife later, her speech was like a “supplication between blows.” He placed a pillbox on the table.

  “Do what it says on the label. You must keep up your strength with all these growing girls in the house. Drop them in a little water. Just some iron.”

  “Thank you.”

  The doctor paused with his eyes on the floor. He raised them abruptly and said, “A very remarkable thing, Mrs. Ashley.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does John know horses?”

  “I think he rode when he was a boy.”

  “Hmmmm. He’ll be going south, I imagine. Does he know any Spanish?”

  “No.”

  “He can’t get into Mexico. Not this year. I expect he knows that. They’re putting out a bulletin about him. They came to me about it asking what scars he had on his body. I said I didn’t know any. They’re putting down that he’s forty. Don’t look thirty-five, if he’s a day. Let’s hope his hair grows fast. He’ll make it, Mrs. Ashley. I’m convinced he’ll make it. Let me know if I can be useful in any way.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Take the hurdles as they come. What’s Roger got a mind to do?”

  “I think he told Sophia that he was planning to go to Chicago.”

  “Yes . . . ? Yes . . . ? Tell him to come and see me tonight at six.”

  “I will.”

  “Mrs. Gillies wants to know if there’s anything you need.”

  “No, thank you. Thank Mrs. Gillies for me.”

  Silence.

  “Extraordinary thing, Mrs. Ashley.”

  “Yes,” she answered faintly. An awe, as in the presence of something unearthly, hung in the air between them.
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  “Good morning, Mrs. Ashley.”

  “Good morning, Doctor.”

  Roger presented himself at the doctor’s office as the clock in the town hall tower struck six. Doctor Gillies was taken aback at the boy’s height. He was struck also by how poorly he was dressed. The Ashleys lived in all the wealth of contentment on very little money. The boy’s clothes were neat and clean and homemade. He looked the country yokel. His sleeves barely reached his wrists; his pants barely reached his ankles. It was a large part of their wealth that they gave little concern to the neighbors’ opinions. Roger was the first student in the high school; he was the captain of the baseball team. He was the little lord in a small town, as his father had been before him. He was solid, level-eyed, and taciturn.

  “Roger, I hear you’re going to Chicago. You’ll find work all right. If worst comes to worst, you carry this letter to an old friend of mine. He’s a doctor in a hospital there. He’ll find you a job as an orderly. That work is very hard. It takes a strong stomach to do the things an orderly has to do, and to see ’em. It pays very little. Don’t do it unless you have to.”

  Roger’s only question was, “Do they give these orderlies meals?”

  “This other letter is a general one. It says that you’re honest and reliable. I haven’t put your name in there yet. I thought maybe you’d want to change your name—not because you’re ashamed of your father, but because it would save you answering a lot of foolish questions. Is there some name that’s always appealed to you?. . . ? I must go and speak to my wife for a moment. Run your eye over the backs of these books. Pick out some names. Combine two names for yourself.”

  Roger weighed them. Huxley and Cook and Humboldt and Holmes . . . ? Robert, Louis, Charles, Frederick. He liked the color red. There was a book bound in red called Tumors of the Brain and Spine by Evarist Trent and another, Law and Society, by Goulding Frazier. Maybe he was going to be a doctor or maybe a lawyer, so he chose a name from both and Dr. Gillies added the name “Trent Frazier” to the letters.

  On the morning of July twenty-sixth Roger left for Chicago. He had not thought it necessary to discuss the project with his mother. The relation between mother and daughters was an orderly landscape—clear and a little cool; the relation between mother and son was a stormy one. He loved her passionately and bore a deep resentment. She knew her fault and reproached herself. She had given all her love to her husband; there was little left over for her children. Mother and son seldom looked into each other’s eyes; each could hear the other think—a relationship that does not necessarily involve tenderness. Each admired the other boundlessly and suffered. Between them had stood John Ashley, who had never been called on to suffer, who had acquired no faculty that could make him aware of suffering about him.

  Sophia watched her brother pack one of two small grips left from the sale. In silence she brought the clothes his mother and Lily had washed and ironed for him and a package of sliced bread, unbuttered, but spread with homemade chestnut paste and applesauce. It was seven in the morning. They walked gravely to a portion of the croquet court hidden from the house. Roger got down on one knee, bringing his face level with hers.

  “Now, Sophie, I don’t want you to get downhearted one minute. I’d hate to hear that. You just stay yourself like you are. It’s up to you and me.”

  Here he gazed at her a moment, his silence freighted with all the unspoken.

  “I’m going to write Mama once a month and send her some money. But I’m not going to give her my new name and address. Do you know why? Because the police are going to open every letter that comes to our house. I don’t want the police to know where I am. That means that Mama won’t be able to write me any letters; but for a whole half year and maybe more I don’t want any letters from her. I’ve got to have my mind all fixed on just one thing, and do you know what that thing is, do you?”

  Sophia murmured, “Money.”

  “Yes. But I’m going to write you once a month, too. I’m going to send your letter to Porky, so that nobody will know. So, listen, Sophie. The first few days after the fifteenth of the month you go down the street past where Porky’s working at his window. You keep your eyes right ahead of you, but out of the corner of your eyes you look and see if he’s hung up that calendar in his window—you know, the one I gave him last Christmas with the pretty girl on it. If that calendar’s in the window, that means there’s a letter for you. Don’t go in then, but go home and get some old shoes and go into his store as if you were a customer. Nobody, nobody, Sophie, must know that Porky’s the person we’re sending letters through. We could get him into trouble, too. This is all his idea. He’s our best friend. Now, every time I write you I’m going to send you an envelope all stamped and addressed to me, and I’ll put a piece of paper in it for you to write me on. So you go out of the house after dark and mail it in the mailbox at Gibson’s corner. That’s quite a long walk, but that’s the way we ought to do it. Now, Sophie, write me everything that’s going on here, and I mean everything. About Mama and how you all are. And write perfectly true—that’s the chief thing I ask you.”

  Sophie nodded quickly.

  “Now, Sophie, remember this: What’s happened about Papa isn’t important. What’s important is what starts right now. You and I. Don’t you change. Don’t you get silly like most girls. We’ll need our wits about us.” He lowered his voice. “We’ve got to be fighters and the fight is all about money. I wouldn’t be afraid to steal to get Mama some money.”

  Sophia again nodded quickly. She understood that. It was less important than what was next on her mind. She said softly: “You’ve got to promise me something, Roger. You’ve got to promise me that you’ll write me what’s perfectly true. Like if you were sick or anything.”

  Roger stood up. “You mustn’t ask me that, Sophie. It’s different with a man. . . . ? But I promise to write pretty truthfully.”

  “No! No! Roger! If you got sick, very sick, or if you got terribly hungry and were alone someplace. Or if something happened to you like what happened to Papa. I won’t promise to write what’s true unless you promise to write what’s true too. You can’t ask somebody to be brave without giving them something to be brave about.”

  There was a struggle of wills. “All right,” he said finally. “I promise. It’s a bargain.”

  Sophia looked up at him with an expression on her face which he was to remember all his life. He was to call it her “Domrémy look.” “Because, Roger I can tell you this: that if there were anything in the world you needed—like money or anything like that—I could get it. I could do anything.”

  “I know it. I know that.” He put his hand in his pocket and brought out five dollars. “Sophie, the night Papa started off on the train he sent me his gold watch. Yesterday I sold it to Mr. Carey for forty dollars. I gave thirty dollars to Mama, and I saved five dollars for myself and five dollars for you. I don’t think Mama’s thinking very clear about money these days. You do the shopping, so you keep that five dollars secret until sometime you may need it.”

  At the same time and without an additional word he gave her his greatest treasure—three Kangaheela arrowheads of green quartz, of chrysoprase.

  “Well, I better get started.”

  “Roger, is Papa going to write us?”

  “That’s what I keep thinking about. I don’t see how he can without getting us into more trouble, and himself too. You know he’s not a citizen any more. After a while—maybe after years—he’ll find a way. I think it’s best just not to think about him for a while. What we’ve got to do is live, that’s all.”

  Sophia nodded, then whispered, “Roger, what are you going to do? I mean: be?” Her question meant what kind of great man was he to be and Roger knew it.

  “I don’t know yet, Sophie.” He looked at her with a faint smile and nodded.

  He did not kiss her. He took her elbows in his hands and pressed them hard. “Now you go in the house and find some way of keeping Mama out of the ki
tchen while I pick up my coat and go out by the chicken run.”

  “Roger, I’m sorry. Roger, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to say goodbye to Mama. You’re the only man we’ve got in the house now.”

  Roger swallowed and squared his shoulders. “All right, Sophie, I will.”

  “She’s in the sitting room sewing, like it was evening.”

  Roger went up the stairs the back way, pretending that he had forgotten something. He descended into the front hall and entered the sitting room.

  “Well, Mama, I’d better be going.”

  His mother rose uncertainly. She knew how he—and all Ashleys—hated to be kissed, hated birthdays and Christmas, and all occasions that strove to bring the unspoken to the surface. Her shortness of breath returned. Her words were barely audible. Beata Kellerman of Hoboken, New Jersey, reverted to the language of her childhood.

  “Gott behüte dich, mein Sohn!”

  “Goodbye, Mama!”

  He left the house. For the first and only time in her life, Beata Ashley fainted.

  Something had hovered unspoken behind the conversation between Sophia and her brother on the croquet court.