When it is almost time for Cletus to come home from school the dog squeezes herself under the gates and trots off up the road to the mailboxes, where she settles down in a place that she has made for herself in the high grass with her chin resting on her four paws. These mailboxes too are on posts and look like wading birds.
In the very few years since my father disposed of the horse and carriage, there has been a change in the landscape. It is now like a tabletop, the trees mostly gone, the hedges uprooted in favor of barbed wire—resulting in more land under cultivation, more money in the bank, but also in a total exposure. Anyone can see what used to be reserved for the eye of the hawk as it wheeled in slow circles.
If a farm wagon or a Model T Ford goes by, the dog follows it with her eyes but she does not raise her head. She is expecting a boy on a bicycle.
The tenant farmers whose names are on those mailboxes where the dog lies waiting for Cletus to come home from school apply the words of the Scriptures to their own lives, insofar as they are able. Including the commandment to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And they cling together when they are in town largely because they cannot imagine a situation in which the people they see in the stores or on the sidewalk (and who do not appear to see them) could possibly need their help. It is different in the country.
The bicycle is painted a bright blue, and Cletus has only had it for three months. When he first saw it, beside the Christmas tree, his heart almost stopped beating. On rainy days he walks to school rather than have it get old and rusty like the other bikes in the wooden rack at the side of the one-room schoolhouse. With the dog loping along beside him he pedals for dear life over the final stretch of road. The dog waits each time until he has closed the gate and then she miles around, but none of those others would have been waiting in absolute stillness for Cletus to come home from school, or have seemed like all his heart desired when he walks in out of the cold.
When Cletus stands by the pasture fence, an old white workhorse comes, expecting a lump of sugar and possibly hoping to be loved. Anyway, Cletus loves him. And, rounding up the cows, rides him in preference to any of the other horses. And when he has tears to shed he does it with his forehead against the horse's silky neck.
In the daytime the sky is an inverted bowl over the prairie. On a clear night it is sometimes powdered with stars.
Coming home from school Cletus often sees Mrs. Wilson and the two little boys out by the clothesline. Risking a fall he takes both hands off the handlebars and waves, and they wave back.
It is not by accident that Cletus is often in the Wilsons' buggy when the two families drive off to church together or to town to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July. They are his second family. If his mother sends him to the Wilsons' because she has suddenly discovered that she is out of vanilla or allspice, there is a good chance that A4rs. Wilson will cut a slice off a loaf of bread that has just come out of the oven and spread butter and jam on it and give it to him. He likes her apart from that, though; he likes her because she is always the same.
When it was time for him to go to school the Wilson girls showed him the shortcut through the fields to the other road and the one-room schoolhouse, and Hazel had to tell the teacher his name. With all those strange boys and girls staring at him he lost the power of speech. The teacher was young and pretty and showed him how to hold the colored crayon.
If Cletus wants to know something and his father isn't there to show him, he goes looking for Mr. Wilson. Who doesn't lose patience with him if he fails to get it right on the first try. When Mr. Wilson says to Cletus's father, "I saw a cock pheasant crossing the road this morning, I don't suppose you feel like taking the afternoon off to go hunting," it is understood that, providing it isn't a school day, Cletus will go with them. His mother was afraid and wanted him to wait until he was older but Mr. Wilson said, "Better for him to learn now, while he hasn't got a lot of other things in his mind. . .
Here, boy. You hold it like this. With the stock against your right shoulder. And you keep both eyes open and sight along the barrel to that bead. If you obey the rules that your father tells you and don't go out with some fool who's never had a shotgun in his hand before, you can't get into trouble."
Sometimes he rests his hand on Cletus's shoulder while he is talking. At such moments Cletus feels that no matter what he might do, even if it was something quite bad that he had to go to jail for, Mr. Wilson would see a reason for it. And stand by him. Not that his father wouldn't also, but Mr. Wilson is somebody Cletus isn't even related to.
In that flat landscape a man cursing at his horses somewhere off in the fields can be heard a long way. All sounds carry: the dinner bell, wheels crossing a cattle guard, the clatter of farm machinery. When the gasoline engine sputters and dies or the blades of the mowing machine jam, Cletus knows that Mr. Wilson, a quarter of a mile away, has heard it and is waiting for the sound of the engine or the mowing machine to start up again. If it doesn't, he leaves his own work and comes across the pasture to see what the trouble is. With their heads almost touching, his father and Mr. Wilson study the difficulty. Wrenches and pliers pass back and forth between them with as much familiarity as if they owned their four hands in common.
In midsummer, with thunderheads blotting out more and more of the blue sky, it could be his father's hay that they are tossing up onto the wain or it could be Mr. Wilson's. They know, of course, but it is beside the point. When the haymakers no longer cast a shadow it means that the sun has gone under a huge, ominous, dark grey cloud. A breeze springs up and they work faster. They don't even so much as glance at the sky. They don't need to. The precariously balanced load grows higher and higher. When the wagon won't hold any more they climb up onto it and race for the barn, and with the first raindrops pattering on the oak leaves they congratulate themselves on getting the hay under cover in time. This happens not just once but year after year.
So far as Clarence Smith was concerned, no other man had ever shown a concern so genuine or so dependable, and he did his best to pay it back in kind. When Lloyd Wilson had a sick calf, instead of calling the vet he got Clarence to come and look at it, and Clarence stayed up all night doctoring the animal and keeping it warm with blankets. In the morning Cletus woke up early and threw the covers off and dressed and ran all the way to the barn where they were, and got there in time to see the calf struggle to his feet. His father said, "I guess that's that," and brushed Mr. Wilson's thanks aside, and they went home.
And when his father gets behind in his spring plowing because of the rains, Mr. Wilson joins him after supper with his horse and plow and together they turn over the soil in the lower forty by moonlight.
Cletus thinks of it as their lower forty; actually, it is someone else's. Land, barns, sheds, farmhouse—everything but livestock and machinery—belong to Colonel Dowling, whose snub-nosed Franklin is often parked by the entrance to the lane. The crops that are planted and the price at which they are sold await his decision. The lightning rods on the roof of the house and both barns are his idea. It is right, of course, to put your trust in the Lord. But in moderation. Things that people can manage without His help He shouldn't be asked to take care of. After the time the Franklin got so badly mired in the lane that his tenant had to come with a team and pull him out, Colonel Dowling doesn't put his entire trust in the Franklin either, but tells himself it is just as easy to leave the car by the side of the road and walk in.
He is a self-made man. His father was a hod carrier who drank more than was good for him, and fell off a scaffolding and broke his neck, leaving his widow with six children to bring up. She did it by taking in washing. As Ed Dowling fought his way up in the world, he married a woman with money and made himself into a gentleman. It was no small accomplishment, but it cut him off somewhat from his brothers and sisters, who are not above making fun of him behind his back.
A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the hous
e of someone with an income comparable to his own. He never enters the farmhouse without knocking. Even though it is legally his. And he remembers to wipe the spring mud off his shoes. He also makes a point of asking Cletus's mother if she is satisfied with the present arrangements, and this could lead to, if she thinks the kitchen needs repainting, his offering to supply the paint. He is always courteous to her and he knows the boys' names. If that is all he knows about them, it is not greatly to be wondered at. One farm boy is very much like another. The cat has invariably got their tongue.
Satisfied that his tenant's wife is a good housekeeper, he shows no interest in the second floor, and therefore doesn't know about the broken-backed copy of Tom Swift and. His Flying Machine that is lying open, with the pages to the floor, in the fluff under the bed in the small room on the right at the head of the stairs.
Colonel Dowling is older than Cletus's father, and has snow-white hair, and Cletus finds it natural that when they stand talking by the pump or when they walk over the fields together his father calls the older man "Colonel" and Colonel Dowling calls his father "Clarence." But sometimes the Colonel brings a friend with him, somebody from town who doesn't know the first thing about farming, and with Cletus's father standing right there he will say "my corn" or "my oats" or "my drainage ditch." If he says it often enough, Cletus drops behind out of earshot. Even if his father, after working these acres for twelve years, doesn't feel the emotion of ownership, Cletus does.
Another card, from that same pack: his brother Wayne, who is eight years younger than he is. Wayne and Cletus are as different as day and night, people say. Or, to put it differently, as different as the oldest child and the second one often are.
Watching his mother as she holds Wayne's chin in her hand and parts his hair with a wet comb, Cletus remembers that she used to do this to him.
All the way home from school there are clouds racing across the sky and the air is warm and humid. Wayne is sitting on the porch steps when Cletus rides into the yard. He has pulled a strawberry box apart and is making an airplane with the pieces of thin wood. As Cletus steps over him he bends down and tries to take it from him in order to make an improvement, but Wayne jerks it back.
"Aunt Jenny is here," he says. "Somebody gave her a ride out from town. And we're having strawberry shortcake for supper."
Except for Jenny Evans, who is her mother's sister, Fern Smith has no living relatives. Her mother died when she was three and her father gave her to Aunt Jenny to bring up and went out West, where he found a job on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. From time to time he sent money, never very much. Now he is dead too. So is Tom Evans, Jenny's husband.
As people get older they get more alike in character and appearance and could all be leading the same life. Or almost. Shut up in the little house opposite the fairgrounds, Aunt Jenny talks to the hot-water faucet that drips, and the kitchen drawer that has a tendency to stick. She also sings, hymns mostly, in a high quavering voice: "That Old Rugged Cross" and "Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Sad" and "How glorious must the mansions be / Where thy redeemed shall dwell with thee. . . ." Without meaning to, she has grown heavy but she eats so little that short of starving to death there doesn't seem much she can do about it. Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well.
The face that passes in and out of the small unframed mirror over the kitchen sink is that of an old woman whose chin has hairs on it, whose teeth spent the night in a glass of water, whose glasses are bifocal, causing her to step down into space if she isn't careful. She is full of fears, which are nursed by the catastrophes she reads about in the paper. The front and back doors are locked day and night against bad boys, a man with a mask over the lower part of his face, pneumonia, a fall. There is, even so, something buoyant in her nature that makes people pleased to see her coming toward them on the street, and usually they stop to talk to her and hear about the catastrophes. She winds up the conversation by saying cheerfully, "Life is no joke." What sensible person wouldn't agree with her.
The house is her one great accomplishment. Against all odds she has managed to hang on to it. "It's a poor man's house," she loves to say, "and not much to look at." It doesn't do to brag about your possessions, especially to people who have less. The mortgage is paid off and she doesn't have to take in roomers. It is all hers—meaning the pollarded catalpa tree by the front sidewalk, the woodshed around in back, the outside sloping cellar door, and the porch light that doesn't turn on. Meaning also the white net curtains that have turned grey and are about ready for the ragbag, the nine-by-twelve linoleum rug in the front room, with the design worn completely away in places, the ugly golden-oak furniture that could be duplicated in any secondhand store, "Sir Galahad" and "The Dickey Bird," and the smell of the kerosene heater. The two upstairs rooms are hot in summer and expensive to heat in winter, and so she doesn't use them. The big double bed all but blocking the front door makes the front room look queer, but she has stopped caring what people think. She means to die here, in her own house, in this very bed.
Meanwhile, she is not alone in the world. From the fairgrounds to the first fence post of the farm is a little over a mile, and when Aunt Jenny is feeling blue she puts on her hat and coat and, armed with grape jelly or a jar of pickles, pays them a visit. She tries not to come too often and she is careful never to take sides between husband and wife. Blessed is the peacemaker for he shall—inherit the kingdom of heaven? ... see God? She can't remember, offhand, and keeps meaning to open the Bible to Matthew 5, and see which it is. Clarence is kind to her and brings her fruit and vegetables that she cans and lives on all winter. Fern is in the habit of leaving Wayne with her when she goes to the stores. And used to do the same thing with Cletus when he was small.
"Come and give your old auntie a kiss," she says now when Cletus appears in the doorway. "I know you don't like to kiss people but it won't kill you, not this once."
"It's going to rain," he says, and either his mother doesn't hear him or else she failed to connect what he has just said with the washing on the line. He goes on upstairs and takes off his school clothes and hangs them on an already overcrowded hook. The room gets progressively darker as the rainstorm that is moving across the prairie approaches.
Even in the dead of winter, the only heat there ever is in this room comes through the ventilator in the floor. Voices also are carried by it. Though he can hear the conversation in the room below, he manages not to understand it. What sounds like somebody moving furniture around is the first thunder, faint and far away.
The water in the china pitcher comes from the cistern and is rainwater and rust-colored. He fills the bowl and the water immediately turns cloudy from the soap and dirt on his hands. From the room below he hears "Fortunately I have witnesses."
Him, among others. She has—his mother has fits of weeping in the night. The walls are thin. Lying awake, he hears threats he tries not to believe and accusations he doesn't understand. And envies the dog, who can put her head on her paws and go to sleep when she doesn't like the way things are.
Raindrops spatter against the windowpane and he turns and looks out. The tops of the trees are swaying in the wind. The sky behind the windmill is a greenish almost-black, and his mother and Aunt Jenny, with their coats over their heads, are yanking the sheets from the line. There is a flash of lightning that makes everything in sight turn pale, and then deep rolling thunder.
He goes on soaping his hands slowly, lost in a daydream about a motorcycle he has seen in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue.
As Aunt Jenny is drawn toward the farm, so the hired man, Victor Jensen, feels the pull of town. Bright and early on the morning of Decoration Day he gets dressed up fit to kill and starts off down the highway. The same thing happens on the Fourth of July a
nd Labor Day. Though they know what he is heading for, they do not make any effort to stop him. It is his reward for not belonging to anybody and not having anybody who belongs to him. He isn't home by milking time, and they know then that he won't come home at all. In the morning when they go to his room in the barn his bed has not been slept in. Various neighbors report that they have seen him in town—during the parade, or on the courthouse square, or at the band concert, reeling. Two days later, a buggy drives up the lane and stops. Cletus comes to the door and Lloyd Wilson says, "I passed Victor on the road just now. He was headed in this direction and I tried to get him to climb in with me but he wouldn't. I thought you'd like to know." Cletus and his father go out looking for the hired man and find him lying in a ditch a quarter of a mile from home, and put him to bed in his room in the barn. Except for the stench of alcohol on his breath and the dried vomit on his clothes, it is like undressing a child. The next day he is up in time to help with the chores. He is deathly pale and his hands shake. Nobody mentions his absence and he is not apologetic—just withdrawn. As if he had answered a summons and is in no way responsible for what followed.
Another card: the cats run to greet Cletus when he walks into the barn. His father is already there, milking Flossie, and Victor is milking the new cow. "Sorry I'm late," Cletus says and picks up a milk bucket and a stool and sits down beside Old Bess, and then there are three of them going squirt-squirt, in approximately the same rhythm. He isn't as good a milker as his father, but nobody is. When his father was Cletus's age he was milking fifteen cows morning and night. The level of the milk rises slowly in the pails, and Old Bess manages to hit him in the eye with her tail, as usual.
So Long, See You Tomorrow Page 6
