had never heard anybody harrumph before, and was surprised at how intimidating a sound it is.
“Young man,” he said, frowning at me like those two brothers on the cough drop box. “How many children have you begotten in these years of your marriage?”
“None.”
“None!” He almost squealed his astonishment. It affected his levitation, too; his feet were about two inches off the ground. I decided not to bother him with it just then. He looked like he had enough on his mind. He cradled his chin deep in his cupped hand. I thought of Daddy Warbucks with a beard.
His next question threw me for a minute.
“Is my great-great-granddaughter subject to a lot of headaches? My wife was frequently plagued with them.”
“No,” I said, still puzzled about where the conversation was going. “She hasn’t had a headache in over a year that I know about.”
“Harrumph!” he said. “The family blood must be running thin, if she’s all that virtuous.”
It clicked. I knew what he meant. “We have a very satisfactory sexual relationship,” I said. He shuddered at the word “sexual.”
“Then is one of you unable to have children?” he said.
“As far as we know we’re both able,” I said.
“Then the Law of Averages must be out of kilter.” I could see by his puzzled frown he might feel sorry for us. I hit him with birth control.
“We have prevented children,” I said.
“How, abstinence? It’s not good for a young man.”
“No, not abstinence. Several years ago scientists invented a pill that interrupts conception. It works—”
“Don’t bother to explain the process. It’s unnatural." He was two feet off the ground now.
“Unnatural? Perhaps; it sure beats abstinence, though.”
“I suppose it does. Abstinence weakens a man. I was a strong man, despite Jennie’s headaches.” He winked a Victorian wink. “Children are great fun, though, young man. The womenfolk get all the bother. You really shouldn’t deny your wife the joys of motherhood. That’s what women are for.”
“I don’t deny her,” I said. “She’s the one that doesn’t want children."
That stopped him cold. He sank up to his shins in the ground, and his luminescence turned icy blue. I could see the utter inability to accept the idea all over his face. I let him struggle with it.
“What does she do all day while you’re out in the fields? Fancy work?”
“I don’t work in the fields. I’m a poet.”
“A what!” He shot ten feet into the air, efflorescing livid chartreuse, and then sank into the ground up to his waist.
“A poet,” I said, in as soothing a voice as I could manage.
“Thunderation!” His eyebrows sparkled fire. “How do you eat?”
“With a knife, fork, and spoon, or chopsticks, if we send out for Chinese.” I deliberately misunderstood him. I have a few touchy points myself, so Molly Ann tells me.
He harrumphed menacingly. “I meant, how do you make your living?” He frowned ferociously. He might have scared me a little if I hadn’t remembered how he had looked sitting in the buzzard. I decided the best thing to do was to keep him off balance.
“Molly Ann makes the living. She works in the City, in San Francisco.”
“Great God!” He seemed close to weeping. “For a woman of my blood—” he choked. “For one of my blood to—to walk the streets—” he choked again.
I saw where his thoughts were. I thought it was time to be a little rough. After all, a man has to maintain his wife’s honor, especially with his ancestral spirits-in-law.
“Your imputation, sir, is calumnious, sir, and wholly false, sir, and unbecoming a gentleman, sir, let alone an ancestral spirit, sir! I am no pimp, sir, neither a gigolo, sir, to live off the Prostitution of my wife, sir. If you were not already dead, sir, I should kill you, sir, ancestor-in-law that you are, sir!”
He was backing up and sinking into the ground at the same time. When I stopped talking, I put my fists up in a John L. Sullivan pose (I must confess I am sometimes a bit hammy). He came to a halt with his head resting on a eucalyptus root. He was glowing an embarrassed shade of pinkish-red. He spread his hands out to placate me. I saw the glow spread out underground about a foot under the eucalyptus root.
“Yes?” I asked menacingly.
“It’s—How—how does she make money?”
“She’s a secretary. It’s quite respectable. Millions of women do office work, and other kinds of jobs, as well.” I was softening a little. Sampson was the color of potassium chromate in aqueous solution, which is the sickest yellow color I ever saw, and the main reason I gave up chemistry after the first semester.
“In my time,” he said, “no decent woman left home to work. Girls who went to the city wound up on the stage, or in the dance halls, or on the streets, all of which amounted to the same thing. I didn’t know what else to think. And you write poems?”
“Yes.”
“How do you do at that?”
"I think I write very good poems.”
“Does anyone pay you for it? Do you do as well as Lord Tennyson?”
“‘I write better poems than Lord Tennyson wrote, and I’ve had two published. I was paid a complimentary copy of the magazine.”
“In other words you’ve earned exactly two magazines with your poems.”
“No. One magazine, with two of my poems in it.”
“Incredible. Do you do anything else to make money?”
“I was a clergyman for a while. Sometimes I fill a pulpit.”
“My father-in-law was a preacher. He had eyes like two pins when he was angry, or when anyone came courting his daughters. He never saved much money, though.”
“I’ve read the family records about him,” I said. “Isn’t he the unstable one who planted an orchard, built a house and barn, then moved on after a couple of years and started all over again?”
“Unsteady? Maybe you could call him that. He always kept his family fed and housed. A very moral man, and faithful to the Scripture. He was fruitful and multiplied and replenished the earth thirteen times, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve read that. No wonder there are too many people today.” Sampson ignored me.
“There is another Scripture you should have read,” he said. “Go thou, and do likewise.” I was silent, looking for a reply to his new attack. Muddled as the spirit of Sampson was about many things like levitation, I had the hunch that the family tendency to cling stubbornly to an idea was a part of his character, also.
“I was sent here to give you some information about rearing a descendant of mine who isn’t even born yet, though he should be five years old. Are you ready to do your duty as a man, get a job, conceive this child, and fulfill the Law of Compensation?” Sampson’s questions sounded very final and very solemn.
“If I got a job, Molly Ann wouldn’t quit. Even if I wanted a child, she doesn’t.” I heard the petulance in my voice, and silently castigated my weakness. I started loading wood into the child’s wagon I used to haul it across the road to our mobile home.
“It is essential for the rest of my soul that you two beget a child. Go and get Molly Ann. I’ll persuade her.” Sampson was irritating me.
“She’s in the City right now,” I said, still loading wood. “She comes home every evening. Bus service makes that possible. I doubt she’ll come out to the grove to see an ancestral spirit. It looks like it might rain before midnight. You can come to the house if you want to talk to her.”
“It’s not that, easy; I can’t just come along.” He sighed. “I haven’t learned much about forward motion yet.”
“Well, when you figure it out, our place is over that way.” I pointed, and set out, pulling my wagon load of wood. I was cold, and the fog was beginning to drip off the eucalyptus leaves. The sun was almost down.
“I need
something to center on,” he pleaded. It got to me. He wasn’t my ancestor. Maybe he deserved his chance at Molly Ann. Maybe she deserved to meet him. I don't entirely agree with her about parenthood.
“What sort of something?” I asked him.
“Something that belonged to me when I was alive. A book, or pen or even a paper flower, not that I ever had any paper flowers.”
“There’s a hair wreath over our mantel.”
“That was never mine. The womenfolk braided that thing from their own hair. Something else.”
“What about your portrait?”
“That would be excellent. You have that? Why didn’t that go to the eldest son?”
“The eldest son didn’t want it; the youngest daughter did.”
“It was the only one I ever had made. Jennie thought it a good likeness.”
“It is. That’s how I recognized you for an ancestor-in-law.” Actually it made him look much more imposing than he did in the ectoplasm. Perhaps that was the fault of his materializing abilities. I couldn’t judge; he was my first materialized ancestor-in-law.
“I’ll center on that,” he was dissolving into the fog and the night. “I’ll meet you at your house.” The last thing to go was
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