He became aware of a peace in this poor place of poor people, a pervading peace that emanated from the walls, from the very worn carpet in the aisles, from the still faces in the pews, from the statues, from the altar. He looked at the crucifix with its great carved corpus. (“Catholics!” his mother had said once. “They worship idols.”) The mysterious peace welled about Guy and he felt a pang of emotion. It was ancient; it was everlasting. There seemed to be a Presence in this place, old beyond time, young as a first crocus, a Presence celebrating joy.
Sam was standing now beside Guy. He whispered, “I’m going to light a candle.” He went down the aisle and Guy did not know why he followed, but he did. He saw Sam drop a coin in a slot and then light a candle, which flared up as crimson as blood in its glass. He touched Sam on the shoulder and mouthed, “For what?”
Sam looked down into the glass. It was a long moment before he answered. Then he whispered, “For the dead.”
Guy felt a moment’s incredulity. What nonsense was this? He felt compassion for Sam. Of course, the candle was for the memory of his wife, dead for several years. How long did the pain of sorrow last, then? Did it never end? Sam was nudging him, and again there was that peculiar insistence in his eyes. “Light one for your father,” he said.
This was absurd. But Guy found a loose coin in his old mended coat, and after he had dropped it in a slot he picked up a large kitchen wooden match from its container and lit a candle. He had done all this out of regard for Sam. He could see his father’s laughing face as the candle spurted into life. He could see that face so vividly that he was startled, for it was his father’s face of his own youth. He was dazed for a moment. In those antic remembered eyes there was a softness as of sadness, and conjecture. The enormous sorrow of loss and yearning opened in Guy as the candle in the glass had opened into flame. He and the flame, for a second or two, were one, and a sense of hopelessness made him physically ill, and again it came to him with disbelief that his father was actually dead, was lost forever, his voice never to be heard again.
The two men left the church, but Guy walked unseeingly. The cold twilit air struck on his face and he shivered. A streetlamp showed his face.
“Look like you seen a ghost,” said Sam, as they buttoned their coats.
Guy tried to smile. “Thought I did, for a minute. Was your candle for your wife?”
They stood on the steps of the church. At first Guy thought Sam had not heard him, for he was silent for several long moments. Then Sam said, “No. Not for my wife. For another woman. She died two months ago. Cancer.”
They walked slowly back to their cars. Sam said, “She was married. A man blinded in the war. She couldn’t leave him. Not even for me. I understood.” He stopped speaking. “Only woman I ever gave a damn for.” He stopped again. “First war, not yours. Finest woman I ever knew. I go to her grave every Sunday.”
He had spoken stolidly, almost without expression, but his pain aged him in the lamplit dark.
Guy, out of his own pain, found himself saying, “And you think she survived death?”
Sam sighed. “I know damn well she did. No priest has to tell me. I know.”
Superstition, thought Guy. But, if it comforts him, what the hell. The hopelessness remained with him all the way to the farm. Queer, thought Guy, as he drove in his cocoon of silence, I never fully realized until now that Pa had gone—out into nothingness, nothing at all. That’s the very worst—I seemed to have had the idea all these weeks that Pa was somewhere, not far away. Now I know, finally, that I will never see him again. The very worst. The irrevocability of death struck him with a sudden horror, and he knew, at last, that the dead can never be replaced but always there will remain in the house of the bereaved an empty room.
The little farmhouse was warm and bright and every room was illuminated by a kerosene lamp, and there were fresh white curtains at the kitchen window and a gay red-and-white-checked cloth on the table, and the few precious sterling pieces had been polished by Sal. Sal herself looked festive in her Sunday frock of black with touches of white lace; her apron was white and stiff with starch. Everything about her glowed, as it had not done for weeks; her tumbling ringlets danced about her pink cheeks and she had added lipstick, and her voluptuous bosom was well defined against the fabric of her dress and her round neck was ornamented by a small string of pearls which Tom had given her. Her dark eyes were saucy and she beamed at Sam and shook his hand and said, “Glad to meet you. It’s good to have a third person in the house again. Sit down, Mr. Kurtz. Beer or whiskey?” She exuded life and exuberance and great kindness, all of which was genuine. Sam was speechless, for he had few social graces and was always embarrassed in the presence of women. But as he and Guy sat near the stove and drank their beer Sam gave Sal quick furtive glances and the tenseness of his long body began to relax. The kitchen was filled with the splendid fragrance of roasting duck and dressing and applesauce and bread, with a vague touch of Sal’s eau de cologne. The big kitchen window was a frame for the stark night with its polished moon and stars.
“I milked the cows, so you don’t have to do it tonight, Jerry,” Sal said, giving him an affectionate look. “After all, we got company.”
“Born on a farm,” Sam offered. “Dad sold it. Depression.”
“This isn’t much of a farm,” said Guy, “as I’ve told you before, Sam. We’ve got a boy from one of the farms who helps with the chores, especially in the summer, but we don’t raise much, only what we need for ourselves.”
“Quiet. Good,” said Sam. When Sal poured him more beer he blushed like a choirboy and said, “Thank you, ma’am,” in a very formal tone. He looked at her breast, which almost touched his shoulder. He stretched out his feet. “Should have changed clothes,” he muttered. Guy was amused, and watching. Sal’s glow seemed to pervade the kitchen with gaiety. She, too, was scrutinizing Sam Kurtz and what she perceived seemed to please her. She almost danced about the stove. “Just a plain country meal,” she said, and Guy was more amused, for he detected a whiff of Tom’s brandy over the duck when Sal opened the oven door. Two lonely people, thought Guy, but who the devil isn’t lonely? For the first time since Tom’s death there was a sense of completion in the house, and no echoing. Sal turned on the radio, so that there was a lilting harmony in the kitchen.
“Maybe we’ll have television next year,” said Sal, critically tasting the gravy she was making. “I saw one in a store in Cranston; everybody standing at the window watching it and staring. Little bitty box. But they say they’ll be bigger next year, and it’ll be like the movies.”
Her voice had a young note in it which had been absent for months.
“Like movies myself,” Sam said, sniffing the delectable odor in the kitchen. “Go three, four times a week.”
“Your wife likes the movies?” asked Sal, delicately.
“Got no wife. Died long ago: Good woman,” Sam added, as if there were an acrid taste in his mouth. “Done her duty, like she always said.”
“Oh,” said Sal, with sympathy, and Guy was even more amused. But Sam relaxed more and more. “Children?” asked Sal.
“No. Thank God,” said Sam, with a vehemence Guy had never heard before. Sal laughed. “That’s why I never got married,” she said. “Never wanted kids, it’s a waste of time.”
Guy said, “There is an ancient Chinese saying, ‘The world is full of loving parents but no loving children.’” Sal gave him a sharp look. “When kids finally realize, it’s too late,” she remarked.
“Most never realize,” said Sam. “You got no money, children don’t care about you. Got money, and they wish you was dead. No percentage.”
“I bet you were a good son, though,” said Guy. Sam glanced at him and the pain was in his eyes again.
“I tried. My mother was left with five kids, no money, when Dad died during the Depression. Ma worked at anything she could find to do. Broke her heart she couldn’t keep us in school.” He gave Sal a sudden stare. “Miz Sal, minds me sh
e looked a lot like you. Never heard a mean word from her. Died of malnutrition, the doctor said. She wouldn’t take relief. But us kids—we didn’t starve, though Ma did.”
Guy had never heard Sam so loquacious before, and his interest grew.
Sal said, “Your mother had her pride, and when it comes down to the quick, pride’s what makes a man different from an animal.”
Sam drank his beer and Sal replenished his glass. Their eyes met. Sam sighed, content, and Sal’s smile was tender and understanding.
The dinner was magnificent. Sal produced some hard cider. Sam actually expanded and once he even laughed, a hoarse uncertain laugh. Once more the house was full and filled with warm and single-hearted pleasure. Then, without warning, Guy was both impatient and restless and a great contempt came to him for these uncomplicated creatures, these meager people of ordinary appetites, who asked nothing of life but to survive as simply as possible and with artless delights. He studied Sal and Sam and a terrible depression came to him, a longing to get up and leave and never come back. He thought of Thoreau, whom his father had often quoted, and Walden Pond, and for the first time in his life he felt a slash of contempt for his father also.
Of what use to anyone, including himself, had Tom’s life been, existing in poverty and bleakness with his books, without desire, without the power of striving, without the wish to excel at anything, without the urgent competition which distinguishes the extraordinary man from a mere human beast? Day-to-day living, staring “eyeless in Gaza,” content with random animal pleasures and surfeits, grateful for a stroking, grateful just for the morning, grateful for warm bread and a bed—was that a life for a man? What had Samuel Butler said? “The majority of mankind licks the platter clean and leaves nothing but a pile of offal.” Perhaps they had their uses, however. They left their “offal” to fertilize the fields of men who were completely men. A turmoil of aversion took Guy as he looked at Sal and Sam, and his derision and abhorrence for them was like a tornado in his mind. His depression was not a passive thing now. It was a fury. He felt choked, and he sweated.
He heard Tom’s voice in his mind: “‘The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desire of the soul, and of which it never tires.’ William Hazlitt.” All very well, thought Guy. But who has time to contemplate “truth and beauty” unless he has money? Once Mary Jerald had said, with unction, “‘A rich man’s wealth is his strong city. Money is the answer to all things.’ The Bible.”
And damned if the Bible isn’t right! thought Guy. Without money you are only the yoked oxen of that Bible. You have no time to live.
He looked at Sal and Sam, who were talking together in low voices over the littered table, and enjoying their coffee. And, he thought, God forgive me, I detest them and all their insignificance. His very soul rose up in rebellion against what they represented—the mindlessness of undemanding beings, the mindless acceptance of life, the lack of stern discipline directed towards a specific goal and excellence. If a man had any reason for existing at all it was to excel, to distinguish himself from the rabble, to mark himself apart, to be singular, to rid himself of the stench of mediocrity, to be more than a pig at the trough.
I have another quotation for you, Pa, thought Guy vengefully. I, too, can quote. Robert Louis Stevenson said, “An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding.” You never had an aim, Pa. You were merely a spectator at the parade. At least you were an intelligent spectator. The others are only the dust which is kicked up. Ma is wiser than you. She had an aim, if it was only a bank account and independence. Without direction, you are only a waterspout, finally subsiding in a river which was never disturbed by you to its depths.
Guy desired, with a savage desiring, to shake off those present as one shakes off fleas who suck at life and die, sucking, and are only parasites at the great feasts, or only shovelers of manure at the great games, after the games are done.
The warm kitchen became an oppressive prison to Guy, a smothering cell, bare, unfurnished. And those in it did not see the walls and did not desire to escape them, did not wish for the freedom only money can give.
Guy did not hear the silence in the room, but he started when Sam said, “What’s eating you, Guy? Look like you want to fight—something.”
Guy said, “I do. But it’s a different fight from yours, Sam.” He could not help himself, and added, “My father was never a fighter. He accepted everything and didn’t give a damn. Imagine what the world would be if everybody was like that!”
Sal looked at him with concern, at the pallor under his dark skin, at the unfamiliar rage in his black eyes, at the tempest that palpably enveloped him, at the clenched fists on the table. He was staring about him like a trapped bull. Sam thoughtfully wiped his mouth with his napkin.
He said, “Maybe we’d have peace in the world if more folks were like your dad.”
“We’d have no arts and no science, no literature, no aspirations.”
Sam said, with a curious obliqueness, “Well, anyways. Somebody has to do the world’s work. We can’t all be painting pretty pictures and saying poetry. Who’d feed them, who’d wash their clothes, who’d do the farming and milk the cows, who’d empty their bedpans when they was sick and build their houses?”
Sal said, “Your pa, Jerry, had a wonderful life.”
Guy looked at them. He stood up, and the mighty wrath he was feeling swelled all through his body. “I’ll look at the pigs,” he said, and they caught no significance in his words. He went out to the pigpen to look at the sleeping animals. Now, to him, they seemed of more value than did Sal and Sam.
The ferocious longing for money, the need for money, was such a hunger in him that he felt ravenous. Lucy Lippincott had become a symbol to him of that, as well as she meant Marlene. He lifted a fist at the sky in defiance. “I’m a man,” he said. “I am content with nothing.”
Sal was helping Sam on with his worn coat. “Don’t mind Jerry, Mr. Kurtz,” she said. “He’s changed.” She thought. “He began to change after he came back from the war. Or maybe before. I don’t know. He took his pa’s death hard.”
“We all change, Miz Sal,” said Sam. “He’s got his life. He’s got to live it himself, and find out for himself.” His surly if kind face smiled. “That was one grand dinner, Miz Sal, and thank you.”
“Come again,” she said, and her heart sang a new song.
Sam met Guy on the doorstep and thanked him, but Guy seeped far away. “That’s a fine woman, that Miz Sal,” said Sam, and Guy hardly heard him. “A fine woman. Not many like her, no, sir.”
“Come again,” Guy said, and went into the house, and Sam looked after him speculatively and shook his head. Well. Bed. Work tomorrow. He went out to his old car and he wondered at the new lightness in his mind and his body. Yes, he would come again. The candle he had lighted illuminated his desolate life and he was lonely no longer.
In his remembering dream Guy not only relived that April day and night but he was given a mysterious insight into the thoughts and actions of others. It was a sort of double vision, a double stamping of a coin. He not only was remembering but was a universal spectator, both an actor and an audience.
He had returned to the house after abruptly leaving Sam outside, and he saw that Sal was simpering like a girl to herself and singing with the radio as she washed the dishes. He tried to be casual and said, “Well, how do you like Sam Kurtz?”
“Oh, there’s one grand man!” said Sal, and then colored.
“My father would be glad to hear you say that.”
Sal immediately became haughty. “I don’t know what you mean, Jerry.”
He could not help smiling. “I forgot to tell you, Sal. I’m going away for a couple of days.” His voice was affectionate as usual but Sal knew she must ask no questions; there was a certain intonation in his words. He continued: “I’ll pack a bag now. I’m taking the nine o’clock train tomorrow out of Cranston.�
� He went into his bedroom and Sal frowned anxiously. Jerry sure had changed! He was no longer the youth of a few years ago, just returned from the war. But—had he really changed? Had it been there all the time?
At breakfast the next day he said very little. His black brows had drawn close together as he thought and ate. Sal was to drive him to the station, and she was ready before he was. “Think I saw the mailman drop something in,” Sal said, and opened the car window and leaned out. She brought in a letter. She glanced at it curiously and then with excitement. “Mr. John Prentice!” she exclaimed. “The man who bought the Geiger farm!” She gave it to Guy and literally panted to hear of the contents. “From Pittsburgh,” she added quite unnecessarily.
Mr. Prentice, whose stationery was discreetly imposing and bore but his own name on the letterhead, had written to “My dear Mr. Jerald.”
“I have recently bought a farm in your vicinity from a Mrs. Lottie Geiger, whom you may know, as her land is adjacent to yours. However, that farm is not quite enough for my private purposes and so I should like to purchase yours. I am prepared to make you an offer and should like to talk with you as soon as possible. I will be in Cranston on April 5th …” He concluded politely, “At your convenience. I will be waiting for your reply, which I hope will be soon.”
Guy crumpled the letter in his hand. He could hardly get his breath. “This changes things a little,” he muttered. Sal had read the letter over his shoulder and she was exclaiming softly, over and over, and with euphoria. “I knew it, Jerry, I knew it! Now, all you have to do—” But he was getting out of the car and running back to the house. She followed him as fast as possible. He was glancing at his watch. “Only eight-thirty. I can’t call him just yet; I must wait until nine at least. I wonder what the hell he does.” He smoothed out the crumpled letter, but it bore only the writer’s name and address and telephone number in Pittsburgh. A banker? A lawyer? A builder, land developer? The very discretion of the letterhead woke up all his suspicions. He could hardly contain himself in his own terrible excitement, and Sal was pacing with him up and down the kitchen, gasping out short and incoherent words. Everything was outlined in a subjective halo of light to Guy, and the light was objective to him, so that every object in the homely kitchen had a palpitating aura. He kept blinking his eyes against it as against the sun. He kept shaking his wrist and looking at his watch. The minute hand crawled. A lifetime passed and he and Sal paced together.
Bright Flows the River Page 22
