A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
Franz Kafka
ePub
A4Chương 9-10
C
hapter 91
Mr. Edwards carried on his business of whoremaster in an orderly and unemotional way. He
maintained his wife and his two well-mannered children in a good house in a good neighborhood in
Boston. The children, two boys, were entered on the books at Groton when they were infants.
Mrs. Edwards kept a dustless house and controlled her servants. There were of course many times
when Mr. Edwards had to be away from home on business, but he managed to live an amazingly
domestic life and to spend more evenings at home than you could imagine. He ran his business with a
public accountant’s neatness and accuracy. He was a large and powerful man, running a little to fat in
his late forties, and yet in surprisingly good condition for a time when a man wanted to be fat if only
to prove he was a success.
He had invented his business—the circuit route through the small towns, the short stay of each
girl, the discipline, the percentages. He felt his way along and made few mistakes. He never sent his
girls into the cities. He could handle the hungry constables of the villages, but he had respect for the
experienced and voracious big city police. His ideal stand was a small town with a mortgaged hotel
and no amusements, one where his only competition came from wives and an occasional wayward
girl. At this time he had ten units. Before he died at sixty-seven of strangulation on a chicken bone, he
had groups of four girls in each of thirty-three small towns in New England. He was better than well
fixed—he was rich; and the manner of his death was in itself symbolic of success and well-being.
At the present time the institution of the whorehouse seems to a certain extent to be dying out.
Scholars have various reasons to give. Some say that the decay of morality among girls has dealt the
whorehouse its deathblow. Others, perhaps more idealistic, maintain that police supervision on an
increased scale is driving the houses out of existence. In the late days of the last century and the early
part of this one, the whorehouse was an accepted if not openly discussed institution. It was said that its
existence protected decent women. An unmarried man could go to one of these houses and evacuate
the sexual energy which was making him uneasy and at the same time maintain the popular attitudes
about the purity and loveliness of women. It was a mystery, but then there are many mysterious things
in our social thinking.
These houses ranged from palaces filled with gold and velvet to the crummiest cribs where the
stench would drive a pig away. Every once in a while a story would start about how young girls were
stolen and enslaved by the controllers of the industry, and perhaps many of the stories were true. But
the great majority of whores drifted into their profession through laziness and stupidity. In the houses
they had no responsibility. They were fed and clothed and taken care of until they were too old, and
then they were kicked out. This ending was no deterrent. No one who is young is ever going to be old.
Now and then a smart girl came into the profession, but she usually moved up to better things. She
got a house of her own or worked successfully at blackmail or married a rich man. There was even a
special name for the smart ones. They were grandly called courtesans.
Mr. Edwards had no trouble either in recruiting or in controlling his girls. If a girl was not
properly stupid, he threw her out. He did not want very pretty girls either. Some local young man
might fall in love with a pretty whore and there would be hell to pay. When any of his girls became
pregnant they had the choice of leaving or of being aborted so brutally that a fair proportion died. In
spite of this the girls usually chose abortion.
It was not always smooth sailing for Mr. Edwards. He did have his problems. At the time of which
I am telling you he had been subjected to a series of misfortunes. A train wreck had killed off two
units of four girls each. Another of his units he lost to conversion when a small-town preacher
suddenly caught fire and began igniting the townsfolk with his sermons. The swelling congregation
had to move out of the church and into the fields. Then, as happens so often, the preacher turned over
his hole-card, the sure-fire card. He predicted the date of the end of the world, and the whole county
moved bleating in on him. Mr. Edwards went to the town, took the heavy quirt from his suitcase, and
whipped the girls unmercifully; instead of seeing the thing his way, the girls begged for more
whipping to wipe out their fancied sins. He gave up in disgust, took their clothes, and went back to
Boston. The girls achieved a certain prominence when they went naked to the camp meeting to confess
and testify. That is how Mr. Edwards happened to be interviewing and recruiting numbers of girls
instead of picking one up here and there. He had three units to rebuild from the ground.
I don’t know how Cathy Ames heard about Mr. Edwards. Perhaps a hack driver told her. The word
got around when a girl really wanted to know. Mr. Edwards had not had a good morning when she
came into his office. The pain in his stomach he ascribed to a halibut chowder his wife had given him
for supper the night before. He had been up all night. The chowder had blown both ways and he still
felt weak and crampy.
For this reason he did not take in all at once the girl who called herself Catherine Amesbury. She
was far too pretty for his business. Her voice was low and throaty, she was slight, almost delicate, and
her skin was lovely. In a word she was not Mr. Edwards’ kind of girl at all. If he had not been weak he
would have rejected her instantly. But while he did not look at her very closely during the routine
questioning, mostly about relatives who might cause trouble, something in Mr. Edwards’ body began
to feel her. Mr. Edwards was not a concupiscent man, and besides he never mixed his professional life
with his private pleasures. His reaction startled him. He looked up, puzzled, at the girl, and her eyelids
dipped sweetly and mysteriously, and there was just a suggestion of a sway on her lightly padded hips.
Her little mouth wore a cat smile. Mr. Edwards leaned forward at his desk, breathing heavily. He
realized that he wanted this one for his own.
“I can’t understand why a girl like you—” he began, and fell right into the oldest conviction in the
world—that the girl you are in love with can’t possibly be anything but true and honest.
“My father is dead,” Catherine said modestly. “Before he died he had let things go to pieces. We
didn’t know he had borrowed money on the farm. And I can’t let the bank take it away from my
mother. The shock would kill her.” Catherine’s eyes dimmed with tears. “I thought maybe I could
make enough to keep up the interest.”
If ever Mr. Edwards had a chance it was now. And indeed a little warning buzz did sound in his
brain, but it was not loud enough. About eighty per cent of the girls who came to him needed money to
pay off a mortgage. And Mr. Edwards made it an unvarying rule not to believe anything his girls said
at any time, beyond what they had for breakfast, and they sometimes lied about that. And here he was,
a big, fat, grown-up whoremaster, leaning his stomach against his desk while his cheeks darkened with
blood and excited chills ran up his legs and thighs.
Mr. Edwards heard himself saying, “Well now, my dear, let’s talk this over. Maybe we can figure
some way for you to get the interest money.” And this to a girl who had simply asked for a job as a
whore—or had she?
2
Mrs. Edwards was persistently if not profoundly religious. She spent a great part of her time with the
mechanics of her church, which did not leave her time for either its background or its effects. To her,
Mr. Edwards was in the importing business, and even if she had known—which she probably did—
what business he was really in, she would not have believed it. And this is another mystery. Her
husband had always been to her a coldly thoughtful man who made few and dutiful physical demands
on her. If he had never been warm, he had never been cruel either. Her dramas and her emotions had to
do with the boys, with the vestry, and with food. She was content with her life and thankful. When her
husband’s disposition began to disintegrate, causing him to be restless and snappish, to sit staring and
then to rush out of the house in a nervous rage, she ascribed it first to his stomach and then to business
reverses. When by accident she came upon him in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet and crying softly
to himself, she knew he was a sick man. He tried quickly to cover his red, brimming eyes from her
scrutiny. When neither herb teas nor physics cured him she was helpless.
If in all the years Mr. Edwards had heard about anyone like himself he would have laughed. For
Mr. Edwards, as cold-blooded a whoremaster as ever lived, had fallen hopelessly, miserably in love
with Catherine Amesbury. He rented a sweet little brick house for her and then gave it to her. He
bought her every imaginable luxury, overdecorated the house, kept it overwarm. The carpeting was too
deep and the walls were crowded with heavy framed pictures.
Mr. Edwards had never experienced such misery. As a matter of business he had learned so much
about women that he did not trust one for a second. And since he deeply loved Catherine and love
requires trust, he was torn to quivering fragments by his emotion. He had to trust her and at the same
time he did not trust her. He tried to buy her loyalty with presents and with money. When he was away
from her, he tortured himself with the thought of other men slipping into her house. He hated to leave
Boston to check up on his units because this would leave Catherine alone. To a certain extent he began
to neglect his business. It was his first experience with this kind of love and it nearly killed him.
One thing Mr. Edwards did not know, and could not know because Catherine would not permit it,
was that she was faithful to him in the sense that she did not receive or visit other men. To Catherine,
Mr. Edwards was as cold a business proposition as his units were to him. And as he had his
techniques, so had she hers. Once she had him, which was very soon, she managed always to seem
slightly dissatisfied. She gave him an impression of restlessness, as though she might take flight at
any moment. When she knew he was going to visit her, she made it a point to be out and to come in
glowing as from some incredible experience. She complained a good deal about the difficulties of
avoiding the lecherous looks and touches of men in the street who could not keep away from her.
Several times she ran frightened into the house, having barely escaped a man who had followed her.
When she would return in the late afternoon and find him waiting for her she would explain, “Why, I
was shopping. I have to go shopping, you know.” And she made it sound like a lie.
In their sexual relations she convinced him that the result was not quite satisfactory to her, that if
he were a better man he could release a flood of unbelievable reaction in her. Her method was to keep
him continually off balance. She saw with satisfaction his nerves begin to go, his hands take to
quivering, his loss of weight, and the wild glazed look in his eyes. And when she delicately sensed the
near approach of insane, punishing rage, she sat in his lap and soothed him and made him believe for a
moment in her innocence. She could convince him.
Catherine wanted money, and she set about getting it as quickly and as easily as she could. When
she had successfully reduced him to a pulp, and Catherine knew exactly when the time had come, she
began to steal from him. She went through his pockets and took any large bills she found. He didn’t
dare accuse her for fear she would go away. The presents of jewelry he gave her disappeared, and
although she said she had lost them he knew they had been sold. She padded the grocery bills, added to
the prices of clothes. He could not bring himself to stop it. She did not sell the house but she
mortgaged it for every penny she could get.
One evening his key did not fit the lock of the front door. She answered his pounding after a long
time. Yes, she had changed the locks because she had lost her key. She was afraid, living alone.
Anyone could get in. She would get him another key—but she never did. He always had to ring the
bell after that, and sometimes it took a long time for her to answer, and at other times his ring was not
answered at all. There was no way for him to know whether she was at home or not. Mr. Edwards had
her followed—and she did not know how often.
Mr. Edwards was essentially a simple man, but even a simple man has complexities which are
dark and twisted. Catherine was clever, but even a clever woman misses some of the strange corridors
in a man.
She made only one bad slip, and she had tried to avoid that one. As was proper, Mr. Edwards had
stocked the pretty little nest with champagne. Catherine had from the first refused to touch it.
“It makes me sick,” she explained. “I’ve tried it and I can’t drink it.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Just have one glass. It can’t hurt you.”
“No, thank you. No. I can’t drink it.”
Mr. Edwards thought of her reluctance as a delicate, a ladylike quality. He had never insisted until
one evening when it occurred to him that he knew nothing about her. Wine might loosen her tongue.
The more he thought of it, the better the idea seemed to him.
“It’s not friendly of you not to have a glass with me.”
“I tell you, it doesn’t agree with me.”
“Nonsense.”
“I tell you I don’t want it.”
“This is silly,” he said. “Do you want me to be angry with you?”
“No.”
“Then drink a glass.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Drink it.” He held a glass for her, and she retreated from it.
“You don’t know. It’s not good for me.”
“Drink it.”
She took the glass and poured it down and stood still, quivering, seeming to listen. The blood
flowed to her cheeks. She poured another glass for herself and another. Her eyes became set and cold.
Mr. Edwards felt a fear of her. Something was happening to her which neither she nor he could
control.
“I didn’t want to do it. Remember that,” she said calmly.
“Maybe you’d better not have any more.”
She laughed and poured herself another glass. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “More won’t
make much difference.”
“It’s nice to have a glass or so,” he said uneasily.
She spoke to him softly. “You fat slug,” she said. “What do you know about me? Do you think I
can’t read every rotten thought you ever had? Want me to tell you? You wonder where a nice girl like
me learned tricks. I’ll tell you. I learned them in cribs—you hear?—cribs. I’ve worked in places you
never even heard of—four years. Sailors brought me little tricks from Port Said. I know every nerve in
your lousy body and I can use them.”
“Catherine,” he protested, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I could see it. You thought I would talk. Well, I’m talking.”
She advanced slowly toward him, and Mr. Edwards overcame his impulse to edge away. He was
afraid of her but he sat still. Directly in front of him she drank the last champagne in her glass,
delicately struck the rim on the table, and jammed the ragged edge against his cheek.
And then he did run from the house and he could hear her laughing as he went.
3
Love to a man like Mr. Edwards is a crippling emotion. It ruined his judgment, canceled his
knowledge, weakened him. He told himself that she was hysterical and tried to believe it, and it was
made easier for him by Catherine. Her outbreak had terrified her, and for a time she made every effort
to restore his sweet picture of her.
A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief. Mr. Edwards wanted with all
his heart to believe in her goodness, but he was forced not to, as much by his own particular devil as
by her outbreak. Almost instinctively he went about learning the truth and at the same time
disbelieved it. He knew, for instance, that she would not put her money in a bank. One of his
employees, using a complicated set of mirrors, found out the place in the cellar of the little brick
house where she did keep it.
One day a clipping came from the agency he employed. It was an old newspaper account of a fire
from a small-town weekly. Mr. Edwards studied it. His chest and stomach turned to molten metal and
a redness glowed in his head behind his eyes. There was real fear mixed up in his love, and the
precipitate from the mixing of these two is cruelty. He staggered dizzily to his office couch and lay
face down, his forehead against the cool black leather. For a time he hung suspended, hardly
breathing. Gradually his brain cleared. His mouth tasted salty, and there was a great ache of anger in
his shoulders. But he was calm and his mind cut its intention through time like the sharp beam of a
searchlight through a dark room. He moved slowly, checking his suitcase just as he always did when
he started out to inspect his units—clean shirts and underwear, a nightgown and slippers, and the
heavy quirt with the lash curving around the end of the suitcase.
He moved heavily up the little garden in front of the brick house and rang the bell.
Catherine answered it immediately. She had on her coat and hat.
“Oh!” she said. “What a shame! I must go out for a while.”
Mr. Edwards put down his suitcase. “No,” he said.
She studied him. Something was changed. He lumbered past her and went down into the cellar.
“Where are you going?” Her voice was shrill.
He did not reply. In a moment he came up again, carrying a small oak box. He opened his suitcase
and put the box inside.
“That’s mine,” she said softly.
“I know.”
“What are you up to?”
“I thought we’d go for a little trip.”
“Where? I can’t go.”
“Little town in Connecticut. I have some business there. You told me once you wanted to work.
You’re going to work.”
“I don’t want to now. You can’t make me. Why, I’ll call the police!”
He smiled so horribly that she stepped back from him. His temples were thudding with blood.
“Maybe you’d rather go to your home town,” he said. “They had a big fire there several years ago. Do
you remember that fire?”
Her eyes probed and searched him, seeking a soft place, but his eyes were flat and hard. “What do
you want me to do?” she asked quietly.
“Just come for a little trip with me. You said you wanted to work.”
She could think of only one plan. She must go along with him and wait for a chance. A man
couldn’t always watch. It would be dangerous to thwart him now—best go along with it and wait. That
always worked. It always had. But his words had given Catherine real fear.
In the small town they got off the train at dusk, walked down its one dark street, and on out into
the country. Catherine was wary and watchful. She had no access to his plan. In her purse she had a
thin-bladed knife.
Mr. Edwards thought he knew what he intended to do. He meant to whip her and put her in one of
the rooms at the inn, whip her and move her to another town, and so on until she was of no use any
more. Then he would throw her out. The local constable would see to it that she did not run away. The
knife did not bother him. He knew about that.
The first thing he did when they stopped in a private place between a stone wall and a fringe of
cedars was to jerk the purse from her hand and throw it over the wall. That took care of the knife. But
he didn’t know about himself, because in all his life he had never been in love with a woman. He
thought he only meant to punish her. After two slashes the quirt was not enough. He dropped it on the
ground and used his fists. His breathing came out in squealing whines.
Catherine did her best not to fall into panic. She tried to duck his threshing fists or at least to make
them ineffective, but at last fear overcame her and she tried to run. He leaped at her and brought her
down, and by then his fists were not enough. His frantic hand found a stone on the ground and his cold
control was burst through with a red roaring wave.
Later he looked down on her beaten face. He listened for her heartbeat and could hear nothing over
the thumping of his own. Two complete and separate thoughts ran in his mind. One said, “Have to
bury her, have to dig a hole and put her in it.” And the other cried like a child, “I can’t stand it. I
couldn’t bear to touch her.” Then the sickness that follows rage overwhelmed him. He ran from the
place, leaving his suitcase, leaving the quirt, leaving the oak box of money. He blundered away in the
dusk, wondering only where he could hide his sickness for a while.
No question was ever asked of him. After a time of sickness to which his wife ministered tenderly,
he went back to his business and never again let the insanity of love come near him. A man who can’t
learn from experience is a fool, he said. Always afterward he had a kind of fearful respect for himself.
He had never known that the impulse to kill was in him.
That he had not killed Catherine was an accident. Every blow had been intended to crush her. She
was a long time unconscious and a long time half-conscious. She realized her arm was broken and that
she must find help if she wanted to live. Wanting to live forced her to drag herself along the dark road,
looking for help. She turned in at a gate and almost made the steps of the house before she fainted.
The roosters were crowing in the chickenhouse and a gray rim of dawn lay on the east.
Chapter 10
1
When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at
each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it. Adam Trask had
not been home long before the tensions began to build up. The brothers saw too much of each other
and not enough of anyone else.
For a few months they were busy getting Cyrus’s money in order and out at interest. They traveled
together to Washington to look at the grave, good stone and on top an iron star with seal and a hole on
the top in which to insert the stick for a little flag on Decoration Day. The brothers stood by the grave
a long time, then they went away and they didn’t mention Cyrus.
If Cyrus had been dishonest he had done it well. No one asked questions about the money. But the
subject was on Charles’ mind.
Back on the farm Adam asked him, “Why don’t you buy some new clothes? You’re a rich man.
You act like you’re afraid to spend a penny.”
“I am,” said Charles.
“Why?”
“I might have to give it back.”
“Still harping on that? If there was anything wrong, don’t you think we’d have heard about it by
now?”
“I don’t know,” said Charles. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
But that night he brought up the subject again. “There’s one thing bothers me,” he began.
“About the money?”
“Yes, about the money. If you make that much money there’s bound to be a mess.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, papers and account books and bills of sale, notes, figuring—well, we went through Father’s
things and there wasn’t none of that.”
“Maybe he burned it up.”
“Maybe he did,” said Charles.
The brothers lived by a routine established by Charles, and he never varied it. Charles awakened
on the stroke of four-thirty as surely as though the brass pendulum of the clock had nudged him. He
was awake, in fact, a split second before four-thirty. His eyes were open and had blinked once before
the high gong struck. For a moment he lay still, looking up into the darkness and scratching his
stomach. Then he reached to the table beside his bed and his hand fell exactly on the block of sulphur
matches lying there. His fingers pulled a match free and struck it on the side of the block. The sulphur
burned its little blue bead before the wood caught. Charles lighted the candle beside his bed. He threw
back his blanket and got up. He wore long gray underwear that bagged over his knees and hung loose
around his ankles. Yawning, he went to the door, opened it, and called, “Half-past four, Adam. Time to
get up. Wake up.”
Adam’s voice was muffled. “Don’t you ever forget?”
“It’s time to get up.” Charles slipped his legs into his pants and hunched them up over his hips.
“You don’t have to get up,” he said. “You’re a rich man. You can lay in bed all day.”
“So are you. But we still get up before daylight.”
“You don’t have to get up,” Charles repeated. “But if you’re going to farm, you’d better farm.”
Adam said ruefully, “So we’re going to buy more land so we can do more work.”
“Come off it,” said Charles. “Go back to bed if you want to.”
Adam said, “I bet you couldn’t sleep if you stayed in bed. You know what I bet? I bet you get up
because you want to, and then you take credit for it—like taking credit for six fingers.”
Charles went into the kitchen and lighted the lamp. “You can’t lay in bed and run a farm,” he said,
and he knocked the ashes through the grate of the stove and tore some paper over the exposed coals
and blew until the flames started.
Adam was watching him through the door. “You wouldn’t use a match,” he said.
Charles turned angrily. “You mind your own goddam business. Stop picking at me.”
“All right,” said Adam. “I will. And maybe my business isn’t here.”
“That’s up to you. Any time you want to get out, you go right ahead.”
The quarrel was silly but Adam couldn’t stop it. His voice went on without his willing it, making
angry and irritating words. “You’re damn right I’ll go when I want,” he said. “This is my place as
much as yours.”
“Then why don’t you do some work on it?”
“Oh, Lord!” Adam said. “What are we fussing about? Let’s not fuss.”
“I don’t want trouble,” said Charles. He scooped lukewarm mush into two bowls and spun them on
the table.
The brothers sat down. Charles buttered a slice of bread, gouged out a knifeful of jam, and spread
it over the butter. He dug butter for his second slice and left a slop of jam on the butter roll.
“Goddam it, can’t you wipe your knife? Look at that butter!”
Charles laid his knife and the bread on the table and placed his hands palm down on either side.
“You better get off the place,” he said.
Adam got up. “I’d rather live in a pigsty,” he said, and he walked out of the house.
2
It was eight months before Charles saw him again. Charles came in from work and found Adam
sloshing water on his hair and face from the kitchen bucket.
“Hello,” said Charles. “How are you?”
“Fine,” said Adam.
“Where’d you go?”
“Boston.”
“No place else?”
“No. Just looked at the city.”
The brothers settled back to their old life, but each took precautions against anger. In a way each
protected the other and so saved himself. Charles, always the early riser, got breakfast ready before he
awakened Adam. And Adam kept the house clean and started a set of books on the farm. In this
guarded way they lived for two years before their irritation grew beyond control again.
On a winter evening Adam looked up from his account book. “It’s nice in California,” he said.
“It’s nice in the winter. And you can raise anything there.”
“Sure you can raise it. But when you got it, what are you going to do with it?”
“How about wheat? They raise a lot of wheat in California.”
“The rust will get to it,” said Charles.
“What makes you so sure? Look, Charles, things grow so fast in California they say you have to
plant and step back quick or you’ll get knocked down.”
Charles said, “Why the hell don’t you go there? I’ll buy you out any time you say.”
Adam was quiet then, but in the morning while he combed his hair and peered in the small mirror
he began it again.
“They don’t have any winter in California,” he said. “It’s just like spring all the time.”
“I like the winter,” said Charles.
Adam came toward the stove. “Don’t be cross,” he said.
“Well, stop picking at me. How many eggs?”
“Four,” said Adam.
Charles placed seven eggs on top of the warming oven and built his fire carefully of small pieces
of kindling until it burned fiercely. He put the skillet down next to the flame. His sullenness left him
as he fried the bacon.
“Adam,” he said, “I don’t know whether you notice it, but it seems like every other word you say
is California. Do you really want to go?”
Adam chuckled. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s like getting up
in the morning. I don’t want to get up but I don’t want to stay in bed either.”
“You sure make a fuss about it.” said Charles.
Adam went on, “Every morning in the army that damned bugle would sound. And I swore to God
if I ever got out I would sleep till noon every day. And here I get up a half-hour before reveille. Will
you tell me, Charles, what in hell we’re working for?”
“You can’t lay in bed and run a farm,” said Charles. He stirred the hissing bacon around with a
fork.
“Take a look at it,” Adam said earnestly. “Neither one of us has got a chick or a child, let alone a
wife. And the way we’re going it don’t look like we ever will. We don’t have time to look around for a
wife. And here we’re figuring to add the Clark place to ours if the price is right. What for?”
“It’s a damn fine piece,” said Charles. “The two of them together would make one of the best
farms in this section. Say! You thinking of getting married?”
“No. And that’s what I’m talking about. Come a few years and we’ll have the finest farm in this
section. Two lonely old farts working our tails off. Then one of us will die off and the fine farm will
belong to one lonely old fart, and then he’ll die off—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Charles demanded. “Fellow can’t get comfortable. You
make me itch. Get it out—what’s on your mind?”
“I’m not having any fun,” said Adam. “Or anyway I’m not having enough. I’m working too hard
for what I’m getting, and I don’t have to work at all.”
“Well, why don’t you quit?” Charles shouted at him. “Why don’t you get the hell out? I don’t see
any guards holding you. Go down to the South Seas and lay in a hammock if that’s what you want.”
“Don’t be cross,” said Adam quietly. “It’s like getting up. I don’t want to get up and I don’t want
to stay down. I don’t want to stay here and I don’t want to go away.”
“You make me itch,” said Charles.
“Think about it, Charles. You like it here?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to live here all your life?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus, I wish I had it that easy. What do you suppose is the matter with me?”
“I think you’ve got knocker fever. Come in to the inn tonight and get it cured up.”
“Maybe that’s it,” said Adam. “But I never took much satisfaction in a whore.”
“It’s all the same,” Charles said. “You shut your eyes and you can’t tell the difference.”
“Some of the boys in the regiment used to keep a squaw around. I had one for a while.”
Charles turned to him with interest. “Father would turn in his grave if he knew you was squawing
around. How was it?”
“Pretty nice. She’d wash my clothes and mend and do a little cooking.”
“I mean the other—how was that?”
“Good. Yes, good. And kind of sweet—kind of soft and sweet. Kind of gentle and soft.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t put a knife in you while you were asleep.”
“She wouldn’t. She was sweet.”
“You’ve got a funny look in your eye. I guess you were kind of gone on that squaw.”
“I guess I was,” said Adam.
“What happened to her?”
“Smallpox.”
“You didn’t get another one?”
Adam’s eyes were pained. “We piled them up like they were logs, over two hundred, arms and legs
sticking out. And we piled brush on top and poured coal oil on.”
“I’ve heard they can’t stand smallpox.”
“It kills them,” said Adam. “You’re burning that bacon.”
Charles turned quickly back to the stove. “It’ll just be crisp,” he said, “I like it crisp.” He shoveled
the bacon out on a plate and broke the eggs in the hot grease and they jumped and fluttered their edges
to brown lace and made clucking sounds.
“There was a schoolteacher,” Charles said. “Prettiest thing you ever saw. Had little tiny feet.
Bought all her clothes in New York. Yellow hair, and you never saw such little feet. Sang too, in the
choir. Everybody took to going to church. Damn near stampeded getting into church. That was quite a
while ago.”
“ ’Bout the time you wrote about thinking of getting married?”
Charles grinned. “I guess so. I guess there wasn’t a young buck in the county didn’t get the
marrying fever.”
“What happened to her?”
“Well, you know how it is. The women got kind of restless with her here. They got together. First
thing you knew they had her out. I heard she wore silk underwear. Too hoity toity. School board had
her out halfway through the term. Feet no longer than that. Showed her ankles too, like it was an
accident. Always showing her ankles.”
“Did you get to know her?” Adam asked.
“No. I only went to church. Couldn’t hardly get in. Girl that pretty’s got no right in a little town.
Just makes people uneasy. Causes trouble.”
Adam said, “Remember that Samuels girl? She was real pretty. What happened to her?”
“Same thing. Just caused trouble. She went away. I heard she’s living in Philadelphia. Does
dressmaking. I heard she gets ten dollars just for making one dress.”
“Maybe we ought to go away from here,” Adam said.
Charles said, “Still thinking of California?”
“I guess so.”
Charles’ temper tore in two. “I want you out of here!” he shouted. “I want you to get off the place.
I’ll buy you or sell you or anything. Get out, you son of a bitch—” He stopped. “I guess I don’t mean
that last. But goddam it, you make me nervous.”
“I’ll go,” said Adam.
3
In three months Charles got a colored picture postcard of the bay at Rio, and Adam had written on the
back with a splottery pen, “It’s summer here when it’s winter there. Why don’t you come down?”
Six months later there was another card, from Buenos Aires. “Dear Charles—my God this is a big
city. They speak French and Spanish both. I’m sending you a book.”
But no book came. Charles looked for it all the following winter and well into the spring. And
instead of the book Adam arrived. He was brown and his clothes had a foreign look.
“How are you?” Charles asked.
“Fine. Did you get the book?”
“No.”
“I wonder what happened to it? It had pictures.”
“Going to stay?”
“I guess so. I’ll tell you about that country.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” said Charles.
“Christ, you’re mean,” said Adam.
“I can just see it all over again. You’ll stay around a year or so and then you’ll get restless and
you’ll make me restless. We’ll get mad at each other and then we’ll get polite to each other—and
that’s worse. Then we’ll blow up and you’ll go away again, and then you’ll come back and we’ll do it
all over again.”
Adam asked, “Don’t you want me to stay?”
“Hell, yes,” said Charles. “I miss you when you’re not here. But I can see how it’s going to be just
the same.”
And it was just that way. For a while they reviewed old times, for a while they recounted the times
when they were apart, and finally they relapsed into the long ugly silences, the hours of speechless
work, the guarded courtesy, the flashes of anger. There were no boundaries to time so that it seemed
endless passing.
On an evening Adam said, “You know, I’m going to be thirty-seven. That’s half a life.”
“Here it comes,” said Charles. “Wasting your life. Look, Adam, could we not have a fight this
time?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if we run true to form we’ll fight for three or four weeks, getting you ready to go away. If
you’re getting restless, couldn’t you just go away and save all the trouble?”
Adam laughed and the tension went out of the room. “I’ve got a pretty smart brother.” he said.
“Sure, when I get the itch bad enough I’ll go without fighting. Yes, I like that. You’re getting rich,
aren’t you, Charles?”
“I’m doing all right. I wouldn’t say rich.”
“You wouldn’t say you bought four buildings and the inn in the village?”
“No, I wouldn’t say it.”
“But you did. Charles, you’ve made this about the prettiest farm anywhere about. Why don’t we
build a new house—bathtub and running water and a water closet? We’re not poor people any more.
Why, they say you’re nearly the richest man in this section.”
“We don’t need a new house,” Charles said gruffly. “You take your fancy ideas away.”
“It would be nice to go to the toilet without going outside.”
“You take your fancy ideas away.”
Adam was amused. “Maybe I’ll build a pretty little house right over by the woodlot. Say, how
would that be? Then we wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves.”
“I don’t want it on the place.”
“The place is half mine.”
“I’ll buy you out.”
“But I don’t have to sell.”
Charles’ eyes blazed. “I’ll burn your goddam house down.”
“I believe you would,” Adam said, suddenly sobered. “I believe you really would. What are you
looking like that for?”
Charles said slowly, “I’ve thought about it a lot. And I’ve wanted for you to bring it up. I guess
you aren’t ever going to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You remember when you sent me a telegram for a hundred dollars?”
“You bet I do. Saved my life, I guess. Why?”
“You never paid it back.”
“I must have.”
“You didn’t.”
Adam looked down at the old table where Cyrus had sat, knocking on his wooden leg with a stick.
And the old oil lamp was hanging over the center of the table, shedding its unstable yellow light from
the round Rochester wick.
Adam said slowly, “I’ll pay you in the morning.”
“I gave you plenty of time to offer.”
“Sure you did, Charles. I should have remembered.” He paused, considering, and at last he said,
“You don’t know why I needed the money.”
“I never asked.”
“And I never told. Maybe I was ashamed. I was a prisoner, Charles. I broke jail—I escaped.”
Charles’ mouth was open. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to tell you. I was a tramp and I got taken up for vagrancy and put on a road gang—leg
irons at night. Got out in six months and picked right up again. That’s how they get their roads built. I
served three days less than the second six months and then I escaped—got over the Georgia line,
robbed a store for clothes, and sent you the telegram.”
“I don’t believe you,” Charles said. “Yes, I do. You don’t tell lies. Of course I believe you. Why
didn’t you tell me?”
“Maybe I was ashamed. But I’m more ashamed that I didn’t pay you.”
“Oh, forget it,” said Charles. “I don’t know why I mentioned it.”
“Good God, no. I’ll pay you in the morning.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Charles. “My brother a jailbird!”
“You don’t have to look so happy.”
“I don’t know why,” said Charles, “but it makes me kind of proud. My brother a jailbird! Tell me
this, Adam—why did you wait till just three days before they let you go to make your break?”
Adam smiled. “Two or three reasons,” he said. “I was afraid if I served out my time, why, they’d
pick me up again. And I figured if I waited till the end they wouldn’t expect me to run away.”
“That makes sense,” said Charles. “But you said there was one more reason.”
“I guess the other was the most important,” Adam said, “and it’s the hardest to explain. I figured I
owed the state six months. That was the sentence. I didn’t feel right about cheating. I only cheated
three days.”
Charles exploded with laughter. “You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” he said with affection. “But you
say you robbed a store.”
“I sent the money back with ten per cent interest,” Adam said.
Charles leaned forward. “Tell me about the road gang, Adam.”
“Sure I will, Charles. Sure I will.”
