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hapter 71
Adam spent his next five years doing the things an army uses to keep its men from going insane—
endless polishing of metal and leather, parade and drill and escort, ceremony of bugle and flag, a
ballet of business for men who aren’t doing anything. In 1886 the big packinghouse strike broke out in
Chicago and Adam’s regiment entrained, but the strike was settled before they were needed. In 1888
the Seminóles, who had never signed a peace treaty, stirred restlessly, and the cavalry entrained again;
but the Seminóles retired into their swamps and were quiet, and the dreamlike routine settled on the
troops again.
Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose
that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the
dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with
tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when
you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time
at all.
Adam’s second five years were up before he knew it. It was late in 1890, and he was discharged
with sergeant’s stripes in the Presidio in San Francisco. Letters between Charles and Adam had
become great rarities, but Adam wrote his brother just before his discharge, “This time I’m coming
home,” and that was the last Charles heard of him for over three years.
Adam waited out the winter, wandering up the river to Sacramento, ranging in the valley of the
San Joaquín, and when the spring came Adam had no money. He rolled a blanket and started slowly
eastward, sometimes walking and sometimes with groups of men on the rods under slow-moving
freight cars. At night he jungled up with wandering men in the camping places on the fringes of towns.
He learned to beg, not for money but for food. And before he knew it he was a bindlestiff himself.
Such men are rare now, but in the nineties there were many of them, wandering men, lonely men,
who wanted it that way. Some of them ran from responsibilities and some felt driven out of society by
injustice. They worked a little, but not for long. They stole a little, but only food and occasionally
needed garments from a wash line. They were all kinds of men—literate men and ignorant men, clean
men and dirty men—but all of them had restlessness in common. They followed warmth and avoided
great heat and great cold. As the spring advanced they tracked it eastward, and the first frost drove
them west and south. They were brothers to the coyote which, being wild, lives close to man and his
chickenyards: they were near towns but not in them. Associations with other men were for a week or
for a day and then they drifted apart.
Around the little fires where communal stew bubbled there was all manner of talk and only the
personal was unmentionable. Adam heard of the development of the I.W.W. with its angry angels. He
listened to philosophic discussions, to metaphysics, to esthetics, to impersonal experience. His
companions for the night might be a murderer, an unfrocked priest or one who had unfrocked himself,
a professor forced from his warm berth by a dull faculty, a lone driven man running from memory, a
fallen archangel and a devil in training, and each contributed bits of thought to the fire as each
contributed carrots and potatoes and onions and meat to the stew. He learned the technique of shaving
with broken glass, of judging a house before knocking to ask for a handout. He learned to avoid or get
along with hostile police and to evaluate a woman for her warmth of heart.
Adam took pleasure in the new life. When autumn touched the trees he had got as far as Omaha,
and without question or reason or thought he hurried west and south, fled through the mountains and
arrived with relief in Southern California. He wandered by the sea from the border north as far as San
Luis Obispo, and he learned to pilfer the tide pools for abalones and eels and mussels and perch, to dig
the sandbars for clams, and to trap a rabbit in the dunes with a noose of fishline. And he lay in the sunwarmed
sand, counting the waves.
Spring urged him east again, but more slowly than before. Summer was cool in the mountains, and
the mountain people were kind as lonesome people are kind. Adam took a job on a widow’s outfit near
Denver and shared her table and her bed humbly until the frost drove him south again. He followed the
Rio Grande past Albuquerque and El Paso through the Big Bend, through Laredo to Brownsville. He
learned Spanish words for food and pleasure, and he learned that when people are very poor they still
have something to give and the impulse to give it. He developed a love for poor people he could not
have conceived if he had not been poor himself. And by now he was an expert tramp, using humility as
a working principle. He was lean and sun-darkened, and he could withdraw his own personality until
he made no Stir of anger or jealousy. His voice had grown soft, and he had merged many accents and
dialects into his own speech, so that his speech did not seem foreign anywhere. This was the great
safety of the tramp, a protective veil. He rode the trains very infrequently, for there was a growing
anger against tramps, based on the angry violence of the I.W.W. and aggravated by the fierce reprisals
against them. Adam was picked up for vagrancy. The quick brutality of police and prisoners
frightened him and drove him away from the gatherings of tramps. He traveled alone after that and
made sure that he was shaven and clean.
When spring came again he started north. He felt that his time of rest and peace was over. He
aimed north toward Charles and the weakening memories of his childhood.
Adam moved rapidly across interminable East Texas, through Louisiana and the butt ends of
Mississippi and Alabama, and into the flank of Florida. He felt that he had to move quickly. The
Negroes were poor enough to be kind, but they could not trust any white man no matter how poor, and
the poor white men had a fear of strangers.
Near Tallahassee he was picked up by sheriff’s men, judged vagrant, and put on a road gang.
That’s how the roads were built. His sentence was six months. He was released and instantly picked up
again for a second six months. And now he learned how men can consider other men as beasts and that
the easiest way to get along with such men was to be a beast. A clean face, an open face, an eye raised
to meet an eye—these drew attention and attention drawn brought punishment. Adam thought how a
man doing an ugly or a brutal thing has hurt himself and must punish someone for the hurt. To be
guarded at work by men with shotguns, to be shackled by the ankle at night to a chain, were simple
matters of precaution, but the savage whippings for the least stir of will, for the smallest shred of
dignity or resistance, these seemed to indicate that guards were afraid of prisoners, and Adam knew
from his years in the army that a man afraid is a dangerous animal. And Adam, like anyone in the
world, feared what whipping would do to his body and his spirit. He drew a curtain around himself. He
removed expression from his face, light from his eyes, and silenced his speech. Later he was not so
much astonished that it had happened to him but that he had been able to take it and with a minimum
of pain. It was much more horrible afterward than when it was happening. It is a triumph of selfcontrol
to see a man whipped until the muscles of his back show white and glistening through the cuts
and to give no sign of pity or anger or interest. And Adam learned this.
People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments. During his second sentence on the
roads of Florida, Adam reduced his personality to a minus. He caused no stir, put out no vibration,
became as nearly invisible as it is possible to be. And when the guards could not feel him, they were
not afraid of him. They gave him the jobs of cleaning the camps, of handing out the slops to the
prisoners, of filling the water buckets.
Adam waited until three days before his second release. Right after noon that day he filled the
water buckets and went back to the little river for more. He filled his buckets with stones and sank
them, and then he eased himself into the water and swam a long way downstream, rested and swam
farther down. He kept moving in the water until at dusk he found a place under a bank with bushes for
cover. He did not get out of the water.
Late in the night he heard the hounds go by, covering both sides of the river. He had rubbed his
hair hard with green leaves to cover human odor. He sat in the water with his nose and eyes clear. In
the morning the hounds came back, disinterested, and the men were too tired to beat the banks
properly. When they were gone Adam dug a piece of water-logged fried sowbelly out of his pocket
and ate it.
He had schooled himself against hurry. Most men were caught bolting. It took Adam five days to
cross the short distance into Georgia. He took no chances, held back his impatience with an iron
control. He was astonished at his ability.
On the edge of Valdosta, Georgia, he lay hidden until long after midnight, and he entered the town
like a shadow, crept to the rear of a cheap store, forced a window slowly so that the screws of the lock
were pulled from the sun-rotted wood. Then he replaced the lock but left the window open. He had to
work by moonlight drifting through dirty windows. He stole a pair of cheap trousers, a white shirt,
black shoes, black hat, and an oilskin raincoat, and he tried on each article for fit. He forced himself to
make sure nothing looked disturbed before he climbed out the window. He had taken nothing which
was not heavily stocked. He had not even looked for the cash drawer. He lowered the window carefully
and slipped from shadow to shadow in the moonlight.
He lay hidden during the day and went in search of food at night—turnips, a few ears of corn from
a crib, a few windfall apples—nothing that would be missed. He broke the newness of the shoes with
rubbed sand and kneaded the raincoat to destroy its newness. It was three days before he got the rain
he needed, or in his extreme caution felt he needed.
The rain started late in the afternoon. Adam huddled under his oilskin, waiting for the dark to
come, and when it did he walked through the dripping night into the town of Valdosta. His black hat
was pulled down over his eyes and his yellow oilskin was strapped tight against his throat. He made
his way to the station and peered through a rain-blurred window. The station agent, in green eyeshade
and black alpaca worksleeves, leaned through the ticket window, talking to a friend. It was twenty
minutes before the friend went away. Adam watched him off the platform. He took a deep breath to
calm himself and went inside.
2
Charles received very few letters. Sometimes he did not inquire at the post office for weeks. In
February of 1894 when a thick letter came from a firm of attorneys in Washington the postmaster
thought it might be important. He walked out to the Trask farm, found Charles cutting wood, and gave
him the letter. And since he had taken so much trouble, he waited around to hear what the letter said.
Charles let him wait. Very slowly he read all five pages, went back and read them again, moving
his lips over the words. Then he folded it up and turned toward the house.
The postmaster called after him, “Anything wrong, Mr. Trask?”
“My father is dead,” Charles said, and he walked into the house and closed the door.
“Took it hard,” the postmaster reported in town. “Took it real hard. Quiet man. Don’t talk much.”
In the house Charles lighted the lamp although it was not dark yet. He laid the letter on the table,
and he washed his hands before he sat down to read it again.
There hadn’t been anyone to send him a telegram. The attorneys had found his address among his
father’s papers. They were sorry—offered their condolences. And they were pretty excited too. When
they had made Trask’s will they thought he might have a few hundred dollars to leave his sons. That is
what he looked to be worth. When they inspected his bankbooks they found that he had over ninetythree
thousand dollars in the bank and ten thousand dollars in good securities. They felt very different
about Mr. Trask then. People with that much money were rich. They would never have to worry. It was
enough to start a dynasty. The lawyers congratulated Charles and his brother Adam. Under the will,
they said, it was to be shared equally. After the money they listed the personal effects left by the
deceased: five ceremonial swords presented to Cyrus at various G.A.R. conventions, an olive wood
gavel with a gold plate on it, a Masonic watch charm with a diamond set in the dividers, the gold caps
from the teeth he had out when he got his plates, watch (silver), gold-headed stick, and so forth.
Charles read the letter twice more and cupped his forehead in his hands. He wondered about Adam.
He wanted Adam home.
Charles felt puzzled and dull. He built up the fire and put the frying pan to heat and sliced thick
pieces of salt pork into it. Then he went back to stare at the letter. Suddenly he picked it up and put it
in the drawer of the kitchen table. He decided not to think of the matter at all for a while.
Of course he thought of little else, but it was a dull circular thinking that came back to the starting
point again and again: Where had he gotten it?
When two events have something in common, in their natures or in time or place, we leap happily
to the conclusion that they are similar and from this tendency we create magics and store them for
retelling. Charles had never before had a letter delivered at the farm in his life. Some weeks later a
boy ran out to the farm with a telegram. Charles always connected the letter and the telegram the way
we group two deaths and anticipate a third. He hurried to the village railroad station, carrying the
telegram in his hand.
“Listen to this,” he said to the operator.
“I already read it.”
“You did?”
“It comes over the wire,” said the operator. “I wrote it down.”
“Oh! Yes, sure. ‘Urgent need you telegraph me one hundred dollars. Coming home. Adam.’ ”
“Came collect,” the operator said. “You owe me sixty cents.”
“Valdosta, Georgia—I never heard of it.”
“Neither’d I, but it’s there.”
“Say, Carlton, how do you go about telegraphing money?”
“Well, you bring me a hundred and two dollars and sixty cents and I send a wire telling the
Valdosta operator to pay Adam one hundred dollars. You owe me sixty cents too.”
“I’ll pay—say, how do I know it’s Adam? What’s to stop anybody from collecting it?”
The operator permitted himself a smile of worldliness. “Way we go about it, you give me a
question couldn’t nobody else know the answer. So I send both the question and the answer. Operator
asks this fella the question, and if he can’t answer he don’t get the money.”
“Say, that’s pretty cute. I better think up a good one.”
“You better get the hundred dollars while Old Breen still got the window open.”
Charles was delighted with the game. He came back with the money in his hand. “I got the
question,” he said.
“I hope it ain’t your mother’s middle name. Lot of people don’t remember.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s this. ‘What did you give Father on his birthday just before you went in
the army?’ ”
“It’s a good question but it’s long as hell. Can’t you cut it down to ten words?”
“Who’s paying for it? Answer is, ‘A pup.’ ”
“Wouldn’t nobody guess that,” said Carlton. “Well, it’s you paying, not me.”
“Be funny if he forgot,” said Charles. “He wouldn’t ever get home.”
3
Adam came walking out from the village. His shirt was dirty and the stolen clothes were wrinkled and
soiled from having been slept in for a week. Between the house and the barn he stopped and listened
for his brother, and in a moment he heard him hammering at something in the big new tobacco barn.
“Oh, Charles!” Adam called.
The hammering stopped, and there was silence. Adam felt as though his brother were inspecting
him through the cracks in the barn. Then Charles came out quickly and hurried to Adam and shook
hands.
“How are you?”
“Fine,” said Adam.
“Good God, you’re thin!”
“I guess I am. And I’m years older too.”
Charles inspected him from head to foot. “You don’t look prosperous.”
“I’m not.”
“Where’s your valise?”
“I haven’t got one.”
“Jesus Christ! Where’ve you been?”
“Mostly wandering around all over.”
“Like a hobo?”
“Like a hobo.”
After all the years and the life that had made creased leather out of Charles’ skin and redness in his
dark eyes, Adam knew from remembering that Charles was thinking of two things—the questions and
something else.
“Why didn’t you come home?”
“I just got to wandering. Couldn’t stop. It gets into you. That’s a real bad scar you’ve got there.”
“That’s the one I wrote you about. Gets worse all the time. Why didn’t you write? Are you
hungry?” Charles’ hands itched into his pockets and out and touched his chin and scratched his head.
“It may go away. I saw a man once—bartender—he had one that looked like a cat. It was a
birthmark. His nickname was Cat.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Sure, I guess I am.”
“Plan to stay home now?”
“I—I guess so. Do you want to get to it now?”
“I—I guess so,” Charles echoed him. “Our father is dead.”
“I know.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Station agent told me. How long ago did he die?”
“ ’Bout a month.”
“What of?”
“Pneumonia.”
“Buried here?”
“No. In Washington. I got a letter and newspapers. Carried him on a caisson with a flag over it.
The Vice-President was there and the President sent a wreath. All in the papers. Pictures too—I’ll
show you. I’ve got it all.”
Adam studied his brother’s face until Charles looked away. “Are you mad at something?” Adam
asked.
“What should I be mad at?”
“It just sounded—”
“I’ve got nothing to be mad at. Come on, I’ll get you something to eat.”
“All right. Did he linger long?”
“No. It was galloping pneumonia. Went right out.”
Charles was covering up something. He wanted to tell it but he didn’t know how to go about it. He
kept hiding in words. Adam fell silent. It might be a good thing to be quiet and let Charles sniff and
circle until he came out with it.
“I don’t take much stock in messages from the beyond,” said Charles. “Still, how can you know?
Some people claim they’ve had messages—old Sarah Whitburn. She swore. You just don’t know what
to think. You didn’t get a message, did you? Say, what the hell’s bit off your tongue?”
Adam said, “Just thinking.” And he was thinking with amazement, Why, I’m not afraid of my
brother! I used to be scared to death of him, and I’m not any more. Wonder why not? Could it be the
army? Or the chain gang? Could it be Father’s death? Maybe—but I don’t understand it. With the lack
of fear, he knew he could say anything he wanted to, whereas before he had picked over his words to
avoid trouble. It was a good feeling he had, almost as though he himself had been dead and
resurrected.
They walked into the kitchen he remembered and didn’t remember. It seemed smaller and dingier.
Adam said almost gaily, “Charles, I been listening. You want to tell me something and you’re walking
around it like a terrier around a bush. You better tell before it bites you.”
Charles’ eyes sparked up with anger. He raised his head. His force was gone. He thought with
desolation, I can’t lick him any more. I can’t.
Adam chuckled. “Maybe it’s wrong to feel good when our father’s just died, but you know,
Charles, I never felt better in my whole life. I never felt as good. Spill it, Charles. Don’t let it chew on
you.”
Charles asked, “Did you love our father?”
“I won’t answer you until I know what you’re getting at.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“Tell me.”
The creative free boldness was all through Adam’s bones and brain. “All right, I’ll tell you. No. I
didn’t. Sometimes he scared me. Sometimes—yes, sometimes I admired him, but most of the time I
hated him. Now tell me why you want to know.”
Charles was looking down at his hands. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I just can’t get it through
my head. He loved you more than anything in the world.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to. He liked everything you brought him. He didn’t like me. He didn’t like
anything I gave him. Remember the present I gave him, the pocketknife? I cut and sold a load of wood
to get that knife. Well, he didn’t even take it to Washington with him. It’s right in his bureau right
now. And you gave him a pup. It didn’t cost you a thing. Well, I’ll show you a picture of that pup. It
was at his funeral. A colonel was holding it—it was blind, couldn’t walk. They shot it after the
funeral.”
Adam was puzzled at the fierceness of his brother’s tone. “I don’t see,” he said. “I don’t see what
you’re getting at.”
“I loved him,” said Charles. And for the first time that Adam could remember, Charles began to
cry. He put his head down in his arms and cried.
Adam was about to go to him when a little of the old fear came back. No, he thought, if I touched
him he would try to kill me. He went to the open doorway and stood looking out, and he could hear his
brother’s sniffling behind him.
It was not a pretty farm near the house—never had been. There was litter about it, an unkemptness,
a rundownness, a lack of plan; no flowers, and bits of paper and scraps of wood scattered about on the
ground. The house was not pretty either. It was a well-built shanty for shelter and cooking. It was a
grim farm and a grim house, unloved and unloving. It was no home, no place to long for or to come
back to. Suddenly Adam thought of his stepmother—as unloved as the farm, adequate, clean in her
way, but no more wife than the farm was a home.
His brother’s sobbing had stopped. Adam turned. Charles was looking blankly straight ahead.
Adam said, “Tell me about Mother.”
“She died. I wrote you.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I told you. She died. It’s so long ago. She wasn’t your mother.”
The smile Adam had once caught on her face flashed up in his mind. Her face was projected in
front of him.
Charles’ voice came through the image and exploded it. “Will you tell me one thing—not quick—
think before you tell me, and maybe don’t answer unless it’s true, your answer.”
Charles moved his lips to form the question in advance. “Do you think it would be possible for our
father to be—dishonest?”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t that plain enough? I said it plain. There’s only one meaning to dishonest.”
“I don’t know,” said Adam. “I don’t know. No one ever said it. Look what he got to be. Stayed
overnight in the White House. The Vice-President came to his funeral. Does that sound like a
dishonest man? Come on, Charles,” he begged, “tell me what you’ve been wanting to tell me from the
minute I got here.”
Charles wet his lips. The blood seemed to have gone out of him, and with it energy and all
ferocity. His voice became a monotone. “Father made a will. Left everything equal to me and you.”
Adam laughed. “Well, we can always live on the farm. I guess we won’t starve.”
“It’s over a hundred thousand dollars,” the dull voice went on.
“You’re crazy. More like a hundred dollars. Where would he get it?”
“It’s no mistake. His salary with the G.A.R. was a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month. He paid
his own room and board. He got five cents a mile and hotel expenses when he traveled.”
“Maybe he had it all the time and we never knew.”
“No, he didn’t have it all the time.”
“Well, why don’t we write to the G.A.R. and ask? Someone there might know.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” said Charles.
“Now look! Don’t go off half-cocked. There’s such a thing as speculation. Lots of men struck it
rich. He knew big men. Maybe he got in on a good thing. Think of the men who went to the gold rush
in California and came back rich.”
Charles’ face was desolate. His voice dropped so that Adam had to lean close to hear. It was as
toneless as a report. “Our father went into the Union Army in June 1862. He had three months’
training here in this state. That makes it September. He marched south. October twelfth he was hit in
the leg and sent to the hospital. He came home in January.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
Charles’ words were thin and sallow. “He was not at Chancellorsville. He was not at Gettysburg or
the Wilderness or Richmond or Appomattox.”
“How do you know?”
“His discharge. It came down with his other papers.”
Adam sighed deeply. In his chest, like beating fists, was a surge of joy. He shook his head almost
in disbelief.
Charles said, “How did he get away with it? How in hell did he get away with it? Nobody ever
questioned it. Did you? Did I? Did my mother? Nobody did. Not even in Washington.”
Adam stood up. “What’s in the house to eat? I’m going to warm up something.”
“I killed a chicken last night. I’ll fry it if you can wait.”
“Anything quick?”
“Some salt pork and plenty of eggs.”
“I’ll have that,” said Adam.
They left the question lying there, walked mentally around it, stepped over it. Their words ignored
it but their minds never left it. They wanted to talk about it and could not. Charles fried salt pork,
warmed up a skillet of beans, fried eggs.
“I plowed the pasture,” he said. “Put it in rye.”
“How did it do?”
“Just fine, once I got the rocks out.” He touched his forehead. “I got this damn thing trying to pry
out a stone.”
“You wrote about that,” Adam said. “Don’t know whether I told you your letters meant a lot to
me.”“
You never wrote much what you were doing,” said Charles.
“I guess I didn’t want to think about it. It was pretty bad, most of it.”
“I read about the campaigns in the papers. Did you go on those?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to think about them. Still don’t.”
“Did you kill Injuns?”
“Yes, we killed Injuns.”
“I guess they’re real ornery.”
“I guess so.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
They ate their dinner under the kerosene lamp. “We’d get more light if I would only get around to
washing that lampshade.”
“I’ll do it,” said Adam. “It’s hard to think of everything.”
“It’s going to be fine having you back. How would you like to go to the inn after supper?”
“Well, we’ll see. Maybe I’d like just to sit awhile.”
“I didn’t write about it in a letter, but they’ve got girls at the inn. I didn’t know but you’d like to
go in with me. They change every two weeks. I didn’t know but you’d like to look them over.”
“Girls?”
“Yes, they’re upstairs. Makes it pretty handy. And I thought you just coming home—”
“Not tonight. Maybe later. How much do they charge?”
“A dollar. Pretty nice girls mostly.”
“Maybe later,” said Adam. “I’m surprised they let them come in.”
“I was too at first. But they worked out a system.”
“You go often?”
“Every two or three weeks. It’s pretty lonesome here, a man living alone.”
“You wrote once you were thinking of getting married.”
“Well, I was. Guess I didn’t find the right girl.”
All around the main subject the brothers beat. Now and then they would almost step into it, and
quickly pull away, back into crops and local gossip and politics and health. They knew they would
come back to it sooner or later. Charles was more anxious to strike in deep than Adam was, but then
Charles had had the time to think of it, and to Adam it was a new field of thinking and feeling. He
would have preferred to put it over until another day, and at the same time he knew his brother would
not permit him to.
Once he said openly, “Let’s sleep on that other thing.”
“Sure, if you want to,” said Charles.
Gradually they ran out of escape talk. Every acquaintance was covered and every local event. The
talk lagged and the time went on.
“Feel like turning in?” Adam asked.
“In a little while.”
They were silent, and the night moved restlessly about the house, nudging them and urging them.
“I sure would like to’ve seen that funeral,” said Charles.
“Must have been pretty fancy.”
“Would you care to see the clippings from the papers? I’ve got them all in my room.”
“No. Not tonight.”
Charles squared his chair around and put his elbows on the table. “We’ll have to figure it out,” he
said nervously. “We can put it off all we want, but we goddam well got to figure what we’re going to
do.”
“I know that,” said Adam. “I guess I just wanted some time to think about it.”
“Would that do any good? I’ve had time, lots of time, and I just went in circles. I tried not to think
about it, and I still went in circles. You think time is going to help?”
“I guess not. I guess not. What do you want to talk about first? I guess we might as well get into it.
We’re not thinking about anything else.”
“There’s the money,” said Charles. “Over a hundred thousand dollars—a fortune.”
“What about the money?”
“Well, where did it come from?”
“How do I know? I told you he might have speculated. Somebody might have put him onto a good
thing there in Washington.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t believe anything,” Adam said. “I don’t know, so what can I believe?”
“It’s a lot of money,” said Charles. “It’s a fortune left to us. We can live the rest of our lives on it,
or we can buy a hell of a lot of land and make it pay. Maybe you didn’t think about it, but we’re rich.
We’re richer than anybody hereabouts.”
Adam laughed. “You say it like it was a jail sentence.”
“Where did it come from?”
“What do you care?” Adam asked. “Maybe we should just settle back and enjoy it.”
“He wasn’t at Gettysburg. He wasn’t at any goddam battle in the whole war. He was hit in a
skirmish. Everything he told was lies.”
“What are you getting at?” said Adam.
“I think he stole the money,” Charles said miserably. “You asked me and that’s what I think.”
“Do you know where he stole it?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think he stole it?”
“He told lies about the war.”
“What?”
“I mean, if he lied about the war—why, he could steal.”
“How?”
“He held jobs in the G.A.R.—big jobs. He maybe could have got into the treasury, rigged the
books.”
Adam sighed. “Well, if that’s what you think, why don’t you write to them and tell them? Have
them go over the books. If it’s true we could give back the money.”
Charles’ face was twisted and the scar on his forehead showed dark. “The Vice-President came to
his funeral. The President sent a wreath. There was a line of carriages half a mile long and hundreds of
people on foot. And do you know who the pall bearers were?”
“What are you digging at?”
“ ’Spose we found out he’s a thief. Then it would come out how he never was at Gettysburg or
anyplace else. Then everybody would know he was a liar too, and his whole life was a goddam lie.
Then even if sometimes he did tell the truth, nobody would believe it was the truth.”
Adam sat very still. His eyes were untroubled but he was watchful. “I thought you loved him,” he
said calmly. He felt released and free.
“I did. I do. That’s why I hate this—his whole life gone—all gone. And his grave—they might
even dig him up and throw him out.” His words were ragged with emotion. “Didn’t you love him at
all?” he cried.
“I wasn’t sure until now,” said Adam. “I was all mixed up with how I was supposed to feel. No. I
did not love him.”
“Then you don’t care if his life is spoiled and his poor body rooted up and—oh, my God
almighty!”
Adam’s brain raced, trying to find words for his feeling. “I don’t have to care.”
“No, you don’t,” Charles said bitterly. “Not if you didn’t love him, you don’t. You can help kick
him in the face.”
Adam knew that his brother was no longer dangerous. There was no jealousy to drive him. The
whole weight of his father was on him, but it was his father and no one could take his father away
from him.
“How will you feel, walking in town, after everyone knows?” Charles demanded. “How will you
face anybody?”
“I told you I don’t care. I don’t have to care because I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe what?”
“I don’t believe he stole any money. I believe in the war he did just what he said he did and was
just where he said he was.”
“But the proof—how about the discharge?”
“You haven’t any proof that he stole. You just made that up because you don’t know where the
money came from.”
“His army papers—”
“They could be wrong,” Adam said. “I believe they are wrong. I believe in my father.”
“I don’t see how you can.”
Adam said, “Let me tell you. The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of
people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.”
“But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn’t love him?”
“Maybe that’s the reason,” Adam said slowly, feeling his way. “Maybe if I had loved him I would
have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe—maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it
true that when you love a woman you are never sure—never sure of her because you aren’t sure of
yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love
him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a
sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe
—why, maybe it’s a kind of reverse.”
Charles stared at him. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“I’m trying to,” said Adam. “It’s a new thought to me. I feel good. I feel better maybe than I have
ever felt in my whole life. I’ve got rid of something. Maybe sometime I’ll get what you have, but I
haven’t got it now.”
“I don’t understand,” Charles said again.
“Can you see that I don’t think our father was a thief? I don’t believe he was a liar.”
“But the papers—”
“I won’t look at the papers. Papers are no match at all for my faith in my father.”
Charles was breathing heavily. “Then you would take the money?”
“Of course.”
“Even if he stole it?”
“He did not steal it. He couldn’t have stolen it.”
“I don’t understand,” said Charles.
“You don’t? Well, it does seem that maybe this might be the secret of the whole thing. Look, I’ve
never mentioned this—do you remember when you beat me up just before I went away?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember later? You came back with a hatchet to kill me.”
“I don’t remember very well. I must have been crazy.”
“I didn’t know then, but I know now—you were fighting for your love.”
“Love?”
“Yes,” said Adam. “We’ll use the money well. Maybe we’ll stay here. Maybe we’ll go away—
maybe to California. We’ll have to see what we’ll do. And of course we must set up a monument to
our father—a big one.”
“I couldn’t ever go away from here,” said Charles.
“Well, let’s see how it goes, There’s no hurry. We’ll feel it out.”
Chapter 8
1
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and
horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms,
some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought.
Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.
And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The
face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical
monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be
born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who
loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without
arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them.
Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to
suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since
everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no
visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must
seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a
variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and
forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighted, some gear out of ratio. She was not
like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may learn to utilize his lack so that he
becomes more effective in a limited field than the uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference,
make a painful and bewildering stir in her world.
There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would
have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would
have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. The one thing that may not be forgiven a
witch is her ability to distress people, to make them restless and uneasy and even envious.
As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence. Her hair was gold
and lovely; wide-set hazel eyes with upper lids that drooped made her look mysteriously sleepy. Her
nose was delicate and thin, and her cheekbones high and wide, sweeping down to a small chin so that
her face was heart-shaped. Her mouth was well shaped and well lipped but abnormally small—what
used to be called a rosebud. Her ears were very little, without lobes, and they pressed so close to her
head that even with her hair combed up they made no silhouette. They were thin flaps sealed against
her head.
Cathy always had a child’s figure even after she was grown, slender, delicate arms and hands—
tiny hands. Her breasts never developed very much. Before her puberty the nipples turned inward. Her
mother had to manipulate them out when they became painful in Cathy’s tenth year. Her body was a
boy’s body, narrow-hipped, straight-legged, but her ankles were thin and straight without being
slender. Her feet were small and round and stubby, with fat insteps almost like little hoofs. She was a
pretty child and she became a pretty woman. Her voice was huskily soft, and it could be so sweet as to
be irresistible. But there must have been some steel cord in her throat, for Cathy’s voice could cut like
a file when she wished.
Even as a child she had some quality that made people look at her, then look away, then look back
at her, troubled at something foreign. Something looked out of her eyes, and was never there when one
looked again. She moved quietly and talked little, but she could enter no room without causing
everyone to turn toward her.
She made people uneasy but not so that they wanted to go away from her. Men and women wanted
to inspect her, to be close to her, to try to find what caused the disturbance she distributed so subtly.
And since this had always been so, Cathy did not find it strange.
Cathy was different from other children in many ways, but one thing in particular set her apart.
Most children abhor difference. They want to look, talk, dress, and act exactly like all of the others. If
the style of dress is an absurdity, it is pain and sorrow to a child not to wear that absurdity. If
necklaces of pork chops were accepted, it would be a sad child who could not wear pork chops. And
this slavishness to the group normally extends into every game, every practice, social or otherwise. It
is a protective coloration children utilize for their safety.
Cathy had none of this. She never conformed in dress or conduct. She “wore whatever she wanted
to. The result was that quite often other children imitated her.
As she grew older the group, the herd, which is any collection of children, began to sense what
adults felt, that there was something foreign about Cathy. After a while only one person at a time
associated with her. Groups of boys and girls avoided her as though she carried a nameless danger.
Cathy was a liar, but she did not lie the way most children do. Hers was no daydream lying, when
the thing imagined is told and, to make it seem more real, told as real. That is just ordinary deviation
from external reality. I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the
trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in
it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly
held to, then a writer of stories is a liar—if he is financially fortunate.
Cathy’s lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or
responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what
they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not
forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the
truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also—either to interlard her lies
with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the
truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.
Since Cathy was an only child her mother had no close contrast in the family. She thought all
children were like her own. And since all parents are worriers she was convinced that all her friends
had the same problems.
Cathy’s father was not so sure. He operated a small tannery in a town in Massachusetts, which
made a comfortable, careful living if he worked very hard. Mr. Ames came in contact with other
children away from his home and he felt that Cathy was not like other children. It was a matter more
felt than known. He was uneasy about his daughter but he could not have said why.
Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of selfishness,
lusts just beneath the surface. And most people either hold such things in check or indulge them
secretly. Cathy knew not only these impulses in others but how to use them for her own gain. It is
quite possible that she did not believe in any other tendencies in humans, for while she was
preternaturally alert in some directions she was completely blind in others.
Cathy learned when she was very young that sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains,
jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have. And in that day it was even more
disturbing than it is now, because the subject was unmentionable and unmentioned. Everyone
concealed that little hell in himself, while publicly pretending it did not exist—and when he was
caught up in it he was completely helpless. Cathy learned that by the manipulation and use of this one
part of people she could gain and keep power over nearly everyone. It was at once a weapon and a
threat. It was irresistible. And since the blind helplessness seems never to have fallen on Cathy, it is
probable that she had very little of the impulse herself and indeed felt a contempt for those who did.
And when you think of it in one way, she was right.
What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and
enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one
would not be a human. One would be a monster.
At ten Cathy knew something of the power of the sex impulse and began coldly to experiment with
it. She planned everything coldly, foreseeing difficulties and preparing for them.
The sex play of children has always gone on. Everyone, I guess, who is not abnormal has
foregathered with little girls in some dim leafy place, in the bottom of a manger, under a willow, in a
culvert under a road—or at least has dreamed of doing so. Nearly all parents are faced with the
problem sooner or later, and then the child is lucky if the parent remembers his own childhood. In the
time of Cathy’s childhood, however, it was harder. The parents, denying it in themselves, were
horrified to find it in their children.
2
On a spring morning when with late-surviving dew the young grass bristled under the sun, when the
warmth crept into the ground and pushed the yellow dandelions up, Cathy’s mother finished hanging
the washed clothes on the line. The Ameses lived on the edge of town, and behind their house were
barn and carriage house, vegetable garden and fenced paddock for two horses.
Mrs. Ames remembered having seen Cathy stroll away toward the barn. She called for her, and
when there was no answer she thought she might have been mistaken. She was about to go into the
house when she heard a giggle from the carriage house. “Cathy!” she called. There was no answer. An
uneasiness came over her. She reached back in her mind for the sound of the giggle. It had not been
Cathy’s voice. Cathy was not a giggler.
There is no knowing how or why dread comes on a parent. Of course many times apprehension
arises when there is no reason for it at all. And it comes most often to the parents of only children,
parents who have indulged in black dreams of loss.
Mrs. Ames stood still, listening. She heard soft secret voices and moved quietly toward the
carriage house. The double doors were closed. The murmur of voices came from inside, but she could
not make out Cathy’s voice. She made a quick stride and pulled the doors open and the bright sun
crashed inside. She froze, mouth open, at what she saw. Cathy lay on the floor, her skirts pulled up.
She was naked to the waist, and beside her two boys about fourteen were kneeling. The shock of the
sudden light froze them too. Cathy’s eyes were blank with terror. Mrs. Ames knew the boys, knew
their parents.
Suddenly one of the boys leaped up, darted past Mrs. Ames, and ran around the corner of the
house. The other boy helplessly edged away from the woman and with a cry rushed through the
doorway. Mrs. Ames clutched at him, but her fingers slipped from his jacket and he was gone. She
could hear his running-footsteps outside.
Mrs. Ames tried to speak and her voice was a croaking whisper. “Get up!”
Cathy stared blankly up at her and made no move. Mrs. Ames saw that Cathy’s wrists were tied
with a heavy rope. She screamed and flung herself down and fumbled at the knots. She carried Cathy
into the house and put her to bed.
The family doctor, after he had examined Cathy, could find no evidence that she had been
mistreated. “You can just thank God you got there in time,” he said over and over to Mrs. Ames.
Cathy did not speak for a long time. Shock, the doctor called it. And when she did come out of the
shock Cathy refused to talk. When she was questioned her eyes widened until the whites showed all
around the pupils and her breathing stopped and her body grew rigid and her cheeks reddened from
holding her breath.
The conference with the parents of the boys was attended by Dr. Williams. Mr. Ames was silent
most of the time. He carried the rope which had been around Cathy’s wrists. His eyes were puzzled.
There were things he did not understand, but he did not bring them up.
Mrs. Ames settled down to a steady hysteria. She had been there. She had seen. She was the final
authority. And out of her hysteria a sadistic devil peered. She wanted blood. There was a kind of
pleasure in her demands for punishment. The town, the country, must be protected. She put it on that
basis. She had arrived in time, thank God. But maybe the next time she would not; and how would
other mothers feel? And Cathy was only ten years old.
Punishments were more savage then than they are now. A man truly believed that the whip was an
instrument of virtue. First singly and then together the boys were whipped, whipped-to raw cuts.
Their crime was bad enough, but the lies proved an evil that not even the whip could remove. And
their defense was from the beginning ridiculous. Cathy, they said, had started the whole thing, and
they had each given her five cents. They had not tied her hands. They said they remembered that she
was playing with a rope.
Mrs. Ames said it first and the whole town echoed it. “Do they mean to say she tied her own
hands? A ten-year-old child?”
If the boys had owned up to the crime they might have escaped some of the punishment. Their
refusal brought a torturing rage not only to their fathers, who did the whipping, but to the whole
community. Both boys were sent to a house of correction with the approval of their parents.
“She’s haunted by it,” Mrs. Ames told the neighbors. “If she could only talk about it, maybe she
would get better. But when I ask her about it—it’s like it came right back to her and she goes into
shock again.”
The Ameses never spoke of it to her again. The subject was closed. Mr. Ames very soon forgot his
haunting reservations. He would have felt bad if two boys were in the house of correction for
something they did not do.
After Cathy had fully recovered from her shock, boys and girls watched her from a distance and
then moved closer, fascinated by her. She had no girl crushes, as is usual at twelve and thirteen. Boys
did not want to take the chance of being ragged by their friends for walking home from school with
her. But she exercised a powerful effect on both boys and girls. And if any boy could come on her
alone, he found himself drawn to her by a force he could neither understand nor overcome.
She was dainty and very sweet and her voice was low. She went for long walks by herself, and it
was a rare walk when some boy did not blunder out of a woodlot and come on her by accident. And
while whispers went scurrying about, there is no knowing what Cathy did. If anything happened, only
vague whispers followed, and this in itself was unusual at an age when there are many secrets and
none of them kept long enough to raise a cream.
Cathy developed a little smile, just a hint of a smile. She had a way of looking sideways and down
that hinted to a lone boy of secrets he could share.
In her father’s mind another question stirred, and he shoved it down deep and felt dishonest for
thinking about it at all. Cathy had remarkable luck in finding things—a gold charm, money, a little
silken purse, a silver cross with red stones said to be rubies. She found many things, and when her
father advertised in the weekly Courier about the cross no one ever claimed it.
Mr. William Ames, Cathy’s father, was a covered man. He rarely told the thoughts in his mind. He
wouldn’t have dared so far to expose himself to the gaze of his neighbors. He kept the little flame of
suspicion to himself. It was better if he didn’t know anything, safer, wiser, and much more
comfortable. As for Cathy’s mother, she was so bound and twisted in a cocoon of gauzy half-lies,
warped truth, suggestions, all planted by Cathy, that she would not have known a true thing if it had
come to her.
3
Cathy grew more lovely all the time. The delicate blooming skin, the golden hair, the wide-set,
modest, and yet promising eyes, the little mouth full of sweetness, caught attention and held it. She
finished the eight grades of grammar school with such a good record that her parents entered her in the
small high school, although in that time it was not usual for a girl to go on with her studies. But Cathy
said she wanted to be a teacher, which delighted her mother and father, for this was the one profession
of dignity open to a girl of a good but not well-to-do family. Parents took honor from a daughter who
was a teacher.
Cathy was fourteen when she entered high school. She had always been precious to her parents, but
with her entrance into the rarities of algebra and Latin she climbed into clouds where her parents
could not follow. They had lost her. They felt that she was translated to a higher order.
The teacher of Latin was a pale intense young man who had failed in divinity school and yet had
enough education to teach the inevitable grammar, Caesar, Cicero. He was a quiet young man who
warmed his sense of failure to his bosom. Deep in himself he felt that he had been rejected by God,
and for cause.
For a time it was noticed that a flame leaped in James Grew and some force glowed in his eyes. He
was never seen with Cathy and no relationship was even suspected.
James Grew became a man. He walked on his toes and sang to himself. He wrote letters so
persuasive that the directors of his divinity school looked favorably on readmitting him.
And then the flame went out. His shoulders, held so high and square, folded dejectedly. His eyes
grew feverish and his hands twitched. He was seen in church at night, on his knees, moving his lips
over prayers. He missed school and sent word that he was ill when it was known that he was walking
all alone in the hills beyond the town.
One night, late, he tapped on the door of the Ames house. Mr. Ames complained his way out of
bed, lighted a candle, flung an overcoat over his nightgown, and went to the door. It was a wild and
crazy-looking James Grew who stood before him, his eyes shining and his body one big shudder.
“I’ve got to see you,” he said hoarsely to Mr. Ames.
“It’s after midnight,” Mr. Ames said sternly.
“I’ve got to see you alone. Put on some clothes and come outside. I’ve got to talk to you.”
‘‘Young man, I think you’re drunk or sick. Go home and get some sleep. It’s after midnight.”
“I can’t wait. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Come down to the tannery in the morning,” said Mr. Ames, and he closed the door firmly on the
reeling caller and stood inside, listening. He heard the wailing voice, “I can’t wait. I can’t wait,” and
then the feet dragged slowly down the steps.
Mr. Ames shielded the candlelight away from his eyes with his cupped hand and went back to bed.
He thought he saw Cathy’s door close very silently, but perhaps the leaping candlelight had fooled his
eyes, for a portiere seemed to move too.
“What in the world?” his wife demanded when he came back to the bedside.
Mr. Ames didn’t know why he answered as he did—perhaps to save discussion. “A drunken man,”
he said. “Got the wrong house.”
“I don’t know what the world is coming to,” said Mrs. Ames.
As he lay in the darkness after the light was out he saw the green circle left in his eyes by the
candle flame, and in its whirling, pulsing frame he saw the frantic, beseeching eyes of James Grew. He
didn’t go back to sleep for a long time.
In the morning a rumor ran through the town, distorted here and there, added to, but by afternoon
the story clarified. The sexton had found James Grew stretched on the floor in front of the altar. The
whole top of his head was blown off. Beside him lay a shotgun, and beside it the piece of stick with
which he had pushed the trigger. Near him on the floor was a candlestick from the altar. One of the
three candles was still burning. The other two had not been lighted. And on the floor were two books,
the hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer, one on top of the other. The way the sexton figured it,
James Grew had propped the gun barrel on the books to bring it in line with his temple. The recoil of
the discharge had thrown the shotgun off the books.
A number of people remembered having heard an explosion early in the morning, before daylight.
James Grew left no letter. No one could figure why he had done it.
Mr. Ames’ first impulse was to go to the coroner with his story of the midnight call. Then he
thought, What good would it do? If I knew anything it would be different. But I don’t know a single
thing. He had a sick feeling in his stomach. He told himself over and over that it was not his fault.
How could I have helped it? I don’t even know what he wanted. He felt guilty and miserable.
At dinner his wife talked about the suicide and he couldn’t eat. Cathy sat silent, but no more silent
than usual. She ate with little dainty nips and wiped her mouth often on her napkin.
Mrs. Ames went over the matter of the body and the gun in detail. “There’s one thing I meant to
speak of,” she said. “That drunken man who came to the door last night—could that have been young
Grew?”
“No,” he said quickly.
“Are you sure? Could you see him in the dark?”
“I had a candle,” he said sharply. “Didn’t look anything like, had a big beard.”
“No need to snap at me,” she said. “I just wondered.”
Cathy wiped her mouth, and when she laid the napkin on her lap she was smiling.
Mrs. Ames turned to her daughter. “You saw him every day in school, Cathy. Has he seemed sad
lately? Did you notice anything that might mean—”
Cathy looked down at her plate and then up. “I thought he was sick,” she said. “Yes, he has looked
bad. Everybody was talking in school today. And somebody—I don’t remember who—said that Mr.
Grew was in some kind of trouble in Boston. I didn’t hear what kind of trouble. We all liked Mr.
Grew.” She wiped her lips delicately.
That was Cathy’s method. Before the next day was out everybody in town knew that James Grew
had been in trouble in Boston, and no one could possibly imagine that Cathy had planted the story.
Even Mrs. Ames had forgotten where she heard it.
4
Soon after her sixteenth birthday a change came over Cathy. One morning she did not get up for
school. Her mother went into her room and found her in bed, staring at the ceiling. “Hurry, you’ll be
late. It’s nearly nine.”
“I’m not going.” There was no emphasis in her voice.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Then hurry, get up.”
“I’m not going.”
“You must be sick. You’ve never missed a day.”
“I’m not going to school,” Cathy said calmly. “I’m never going to school again.”
Her mother’s mouth fell open. “What do you mean?”
“Not ever,” said Cathy and continued to stare at the ceiling.
“Well, we’ll just see what your father has to say about that! With all our work and expense, and
two years before you get your certificate!” Then she came close and said softly, “You aren’t thinking
of getting married?”
“No.”
“What’s that book you’re hiding?”
“Here, I’m not hiding it.”
“Oh! Alice in Wonderland. You’re too big for that.”
Cathy said, “I can get to be so little you can’t even see me.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Nobody can find me.”
Her mother said angrily, “Stop making jokes. I don’t know what you’re thinking of. What does
Miss Fancy think she is going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Cathy. “I think I’ll go away.”
“Well, you just lie there, Miss Fancy, and when your father comes home he’ll have a thing or two
to say to you.”
Cathy turned her head very slowly and looked at her mother. Her eyes were expressionless and
cold. And suddenly Mrs. Ames was afraid of her daughter. She went out quietly and closed the door.
In her kitchen she sat down and cupped her hands in her lap and stared out the window at the
weathering carriage house.
Her daughter had become a stranger to her. She felt, as most parents do at one time or another, that
she was losing control, that the bridle put in her hands for the governing of Cathy was slipping through
her fingers. She did not know that she had never had any power over Cathy. She had been used for
Cathy’s purposes always. After a while Mrs. Ames put on a bonnet and went to the tannery. She
wanted to talk to her husband away from the house.
In the afternoon Cathy rose listlessly from her bed and spent a long time in front of the mirror.
That evening Mr. Ames, hating what he had to do, delivered a lecture to his daughter. He spoke of
her duty, her obligation, her natural love for her parents. Toward the end of his speech he was aware
that she was not listening to him. This made him angry and he fell into threats. He spoke of the
authority God had given him over his child and of how this natural authority had been armed by the
state. He had her attention now. She looked him right in the eyes. Her mouth smiled a little, and her
eyes did not seem to blink. Finally he had to look away, and this enraged him further. He ordered her
to stop her nonsense. Vaguely he threatened her with whipping if she did not obey him.
He ended on a note of weakness. “I want you to promise me that you will go to school in the
morning and stop your foolishness.”
Her face was expressionless. The little mouth was straight. “All right,” she said.
Later that night Mr. Ames said to his wife with an assurance he did not feel, “You see, it just needs
a little authority. Maybe we’ve been too lax. But she has been a good child. I guess she just forgot
who’s boss. A little sternness never hurt anybody.” He wished he were as confident as his words.
In the morning she was gone. Her straw traveling basket was gone and the best of her clothing. Her
bed was neatly made. The room was impersonal—nothing to indicate that a girl had grown up in it.
There were no pictures, no mementos, none of the normal clutter of growing. Cathy had never played
with dolls. The room had no Cathy imprint.
In his way Mr. Ames was an intelligent man. He clapped on his derby hat and walked quickly to
the railroad station. The station agent was certain. Cathy had taken the early morning train. She had
bought a ticket for Boston. He helped Mr. Ames write a telegram to the Boston police. Mr. Ames
bought a round-trip ticket and caught the nine-fifty train to Boston. He was a very good man in a
crisis.
That night Mrs. Ames sat in the kitchen with the door closed. She was white and she gripped the
table with her hands to control her shaking. The sound, first of the blows and then of the screaming,
came clearly to her through the closed doors.
Mr. Ames was not good at whipping because he had never done it. He lashed at Cathy’s legs with
the buggy whip, and when she stood quietly staring at him with calm cold eyes he lost his temper. The
first blows were tentative and timid, but when she did not cry he slashed at her sides and shoulders.
The whip licked and cut. In his rage he missed her several times or got too close so that the whip
wrapped around her body.
Cathy learned quickly. She found him out and knew him, and once she had learned she screamed,
she writhed, she cried, she begged, and she had the satisfaction of feeling the blows instantly become
lighter.
Mr. Ames was frightened at the noise and hurt he was creating. He stopped. Cathy dropped back on
the bed, sobbing. And if he had looked, her father would have seen that there were no tears in her eyes,
but rather the muscles of her neck were tight and there were lumps just under her temples where the
jaw muscles knotted.
He said, “Now, will you ever do that again?”
“No, oh, no! Forgive me,” Cathy said. She turned over on the bed so that her father could not see
the coldness in her face.
“See you remember who you are. And don’t forget what I am.”
Cathy’s voice caught. She produced a dry sob. “I won’t forget,” she said.
In the kitchen Mrs. Ames wrestled her hands. Her husband put his fingers on her shoulder.
“I hated to do it,” he said. “I had to. And I think it did her good. She seems like a changed girl to
me. Maybe we haven’t bent the twig enough. We’ve spared the rod. Maybe we were wrong.” And he
knew that although his wife had insisted on the whipping, although she had forced him to whip Cathy,
she hated him for doing it. Despair settled over him.
5
There seemed no doubt that it was what Cathy needed. As Mr. Ames said, “It kind of opened her up.”
She had always been tractable but now she became thoughtful too. In the weeks that followed she
helped her mother in the kitchen and offered to help more than was needed. She started to knit an
afghan for her mother, a large project that would take months. Mrs. Ames told the neighbors about it.
“She has such a fine color sense—rust and yellow. She’s finished three squares already.”
For her father Cathy kept a ready smile. She hung up his hat when he came in and turned his chair
properly under the light to make it easy for him to read.
Even in school she was changed. Always she had been a good student, but now she began to make
plans for the future. She talked to the principal about examinations for her teaching certificate,
perhaps a year early. And the principal looked over her record and thought she might well try it with
hope of success. He called on Mr. Ames at the tannery to discuss it.
“She didn’t tell us any of this,” Mr. Ames said proudly.
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t have told you. I hope I haven’t ruined a surprise.”
Mr. and Mrs. Ames felt that they had blundered on some magic which solved all of their problems.
They put it down to an unconscious wisdom which comes only to parents. “I never saw such a change
in a person in my life,” Mr. Ames said.
“But she was always a good child,” said his wife. “And have you noticed how pretty she’s getting?
Why, she’s almost beautiful. Her cheeks have so much color.”
“I don’t think she’ll be teaching school long with her looks,” said Mr. Ames.
It was true that Cathy glowed. The childlike smile was constantly on her lips while she went about
her preparations. She had all the time in the world. She cleaned the cellar and stuffed papers all around
the edges of the foundation to block the draft. When the kitchen door squeaked she oiled the hinges
and then the lock that turned too hard, and while she had the oil can out she oiled the front-door hinges
too. She made it her duty to keep the lamps filled and their chimneys clean. She invented a way of
dipping the chimneys in a big can of kerosene she had in the basement.
“You’d have to see it to believe it,” her father said. And it wasn’t only at home either. She braved
the smell of the tannery to visit her father. She was just past sixteen and of course he thought of her as
a baby. He was amazed at her questions about business.
“She’s smarter than some men I could name,” he told his foreman. “She might be running the
business someday.”
She was interested not only in the tanning processes but in the business end too. Her father
explained the loans, the payments, the billing, and the payroll. He showed her how to open the safe
and was pleased that after the first try she remembered the combination.
“The way I look at it is this,” he told his wife. “We’ve all of us got a little of the Old Nick in us. I
wouldn’t want a child that didn’t have some gumption. The way I see it, that’s just a kind of energy. If
you just check it and keep it in control, why, it will go in the right direction.”
Cathy mended all of her clothes and put her things in order.
One day in May she came home from school and went directly to her knitting needles. Her mother
was dressed to go out. “I have to go to the Altar Guild,” she said. “It’s about the cake sale next week.
I’m chairman. Your father wondered if you would go by the bank and pick up the money for the
payroll and take it to the tannery. I told him about the cake sale so I can’t do it.”
“I’d like to,” said Cathy.
“They’ll have the money ready for you in a bag,” said Mrs. Ames, and she hurried out.
Cathy worked quickly but without hurry. She put on an old apron to cover her clothes. In the
basement she found a jelly jar with a top and carried it out to the carriage house where the tools were
kept. In the chickenyard she caught a little pullet, took it to the block and chopped its head off, and
held the writhing neck over the jelly jar until it was full of blood. Then she carried the quivering pullet
to the manure pile and buried it deep. Back in the kitchen she took off the apron and put it in the stove
and poked the coals until a flame sprang up on the cloth. She washed her hands and inspected her
shoes and stockings and wiped a dark spot from the toe of her right shoe. She looked at her face in the
mirror. Her cheeks were bright with color and her eyes shone and her mouth turned up in its small
childlike smile. On her way out she hid the jelly jar under the lowest part of the kitchen steps. Her
mother had not been gone even ten minutes.
Cathy walked lightly, almost dancingly around the house and into the street. The trees were
breaking into leaf and a few early dandelions were in yellow flower on the lawns. Cathy walked gaily
toward the center of the town where the bank was. And she was so fresh and pretty that people walking
turned and looked after her when she had passed.
6
The fire broke out at about three o’clock in the morning. It rose, flared, roared, crashed, and crumbled
in on itself almost before anyone noticed it. When the volunteers ran up, pulling their hose cart, there
was nothing for them to do but wet down the roofs of the neighboring houses to keep them from
catching fire.
The Ames house had gone up like a rocket. The volunteers and the ordinary audience fires attract
looked around at the lighted faces, trying to see Mr. and Mrs. Ames and their daughter. It came to
everyone at once that they were not there. People gazed at the broad ember-bed and saw themselves
and their children in there, and hearts rose up and pumped against throats. The volunteers began to
dump water on the fire almost as though they might even so late save some corporeal part of the
family. The frightened talk ran through the town that the whole Ames family had burned.
By sunrise everyone in town was tight-packed about the smoking black pile. Those in front had to
shield their faces against the heat. The volunteers continued to pump water to cool off the charred
mess. By noon the coroner was able to throw wet planks down and probe with a crowbar among the
sodden heaps of charcoal. Enough remained of Mr. and Mrs. Ames to make sure there were two
bodies. Near neighbors pointed out the approximate place where Cathy’s room had been, but although
the coroner and any number of helpers worked over the debris with a garden rake they could find no
tooth or bone.
The chief of the volunteers meanwhile had found the doorknobs and lock of the kitchen door. He
looked at the blackened metal, puzzled, but not quite knowing what puzzled him. He borrowed the
coroner’s rake and worked furiously. He went to the place where the front door had been and raked
until he found that lock, crooked and half melted. By now he had his own small crowd, who
demanded, “What are you looking for, George?” And “What did you find, George?”
Finally the coroner came over to him. “What’s on your mind, George?”
“No keys in the locks,” the chief said uneasily.
“Maybe they fell out.”
“How?”
“Maybe they melted.”
“The locks didn’t melt.”
“Maybe Bill Ames took them out.”
“On the inside?” He held up his trophies. Both bolts stuck out.
Since the owner’s house was burned and the owner ostensibly burned with it, the employees of the
tannery, out of respect, did not go to work. They hung around the burned house, offering to help in any
way they could, feeling official and generally getting in the way.
It wasn’t until afternoon that Joel Robinson, the foreman, went down to the tannery. He found the
safe open and papers scattered all over the floor. A broken window showed how the thief had entered.
Now the whole complexion changed. So, it was not an accident. Fear took the place of excitement
and sorrow, and anger, brother of fear, crept in. The crowd began to spread.
They had not far to go. In the carriage house there was what is called “signs of a struggle”—in this
case a broken box, a shattered carriage lamp, scraped marks in the dust, and straw on the floor. The
onlookers might not have known these as signs of a struggle had there not been a quantity of blood on
the floor.
The constable took control. This was his province. He pushed and herded everyone out of the
carriage house. “Want to gum up all the clues?” he shouted at them. “Now you all stay clear outside
the door.”
He searched the room, picked up something, and in a corner found something else. He came to the
door, holding his discoveries in his hands—a blood-splattered blue hair ribbon and a cross with red
stones. “Anybody recognize these here?” he demanded.
In a small town where everyone knows everyone it is almost impossible to believe that one of your
acquaintance could murder anyone. For that reason, if the signs are not pretty strong in a particular
direction, it must be some dark stranger, some wanderer from the outside world where such things
happen. Then the hobo camps are raided and vagrants brought in and hotel registers scrutinized. Every
man who is not known is automatically suspected. It was May, remember, and the wandering men had
only recently taken to the roads, now that the warming months let them spread their blankets by any
water course. And the gypsies were out too—a whole caravan less than five miles away. And what a
turning out those poor gypsies got!
The ground for miles around was searched for new-turned earth, and likely pools were dragged for
Cathy’s body. “She was so pretty,” everyone said, and they meant that in themselves they could see a
reason for carrying Cathy off. At length a bumbling hairy half-wit was brought in for questioning. He
was a fine candidate for hanging because not only did he have no alibis, he could not remember what
he had done at anytime in his life. His feeble mind sensed that these questioners wanted something of
him and, being a friendly creature, he tried to give it to them. When a baited and set question was
offered to him, he walked happily into the trap and was glad when the constable looked happy. He
tried manfully to please these superior beings. There was something very nice about him. The only
trouble with his confession was that he confessed too much in too many directions. Also, he had
constantly to be reminded of what he was supposed to have done. He was really pleased when he was
indicted by a stern and frightened jury. He felt that at last he amounted to something.
There were, and are, some men who become judges whose love for the law and for its intention of
promoting justice has the quality of love for a woman. Such a man presided at the examination before
plea—a man so pure and good that he canceled out a lot of wickedness with his life. Without the
prompting the culprit was used to, his confession was nonsense. The judge questioned him and found
out that although the suspect was trying to follow instructions he simply could not remember what he
had done, whom he had killed, how or why. The judge sighed wearily and motioned him out of the
courtroom and crooked his fingers at the constable.
“Now look here, Mike,” he said, “you shouldn’t do a thing like that. If that poor fellow had been
just a little smarter you might have got him hanged.”
“He said he did it.” The constable’s feelings were hurt because he was a conscientious man.
“He would have admitted climbing the golden stairs and cutting St. Peter’s throat with a bowling
ball,” the judge said. “Be more careful, Mike. The law was designed to save, not to destroy.”
In all such local tragedies time works like a damp brush on water color. The sharp edges blur, the
ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from the many separated lines a solid gray emerges.
Within a month it was not so necessary to hang someone, and within two months nearly everybody
discovered that there wasn’t any real evidence against anyone. If it had not been for Cathy’s murder,
fire and robbery might have been a coincidence. Then it occurred to people that without Cathy’s body
you couldn’t prove anything even though you thought she was dead.
Cathy left a scent of sweetness behind her.
