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S. Young
ePub
A4Chương 22
C
hapter 221
On the Trask place Adam drew into himself. The unfinished Sanchez house lay open to wind and rain,
and the new floorboards buckled and warped with moisture. The laid-out vegetable gardens rioted with
weeds.
Adam seemed clothed in a viscosity that slowed his movements and held his thoughts down. He
saw the world through gray water. Now and then his mind fought its way upward, and when the light
broke in it brought him only a sickness of the mind, and he retired into the grayness again. He was
aware of the twins because he heard them cry and laugh, but he felt only a thin distaste for them. To
Adam they were symbols of his loss. His neighbors drove up into his little valley, and every one of
them would have understood anger or sorrow—and so helped him. But they could do nothing with the
cloud that hung over him. Adam did not resist them. He simply did not see them, and before long the
neighbors stopped driving up the road under the oaks.
For a time Lee tried to stimulate Adam to awareness, but Lee was a busy man. He cooked and
washed, he bathed the twins and fed them. Through his hard and constant work he grew fond of the
two little boys. He talked to them in Cantonese, and Chinese words were the first they recognized and
tried to repeat.
Samuel Hamilton went back twice to try to wedge Adam up and out of his shock. Then Liza
stepped in.
“I want you to stay away from there,” she said. “You come back a changed man. Samuel, you don’t
change him. He changes you. I can see the look of him in your face.”
“Have you thought of the two little boys, Liza?” he asked.
“I’ve thought of your own family,” she said snappishly. “You lay a crepe on us for days after.”
“All right, Mother,” he said, but it saddened him because Samuel could not mind his own business
when there was pain in any man. It was no easy thing for him to abandon Adam to his desolation.
Adam had paid him for his work, had even paid him for the windmill parts and did not want the
windmills. Samuel sold the equipment and sent Adam the money. He had no answer.
He became aware of an anger at Adam Trask. It seemed to Samuel that Adam might be pleasuring
himself with sadness. But there was little leisure to brood. Joe was off to college—to that school
Leland Stanford had built on his farm near Palo Alto. Tom worried his father, for Tom grew deeper
and deeper into books. He did his work well enough, but Samuel felt that Tom had not joy enough.
Will and George were doing well in business, and Joe was writing letters home in rhymed verse
and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.
Samuel wrote to Joe, saying, “I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read
pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you’d take a cookie
on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your
mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are
many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our
civilization down to a stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven’t
even got a shovel yet.”
Liza was getting old. Samuel saw it in her face, and he could not feel old himself, white beard or
no. But Liza was living backwards, and that’s the proof.
There was a time when she looked on his plans and prophecies as the crazy shoutings of a child.
Now she felt that they were unseemly in a grown man. They three, Liza and Tom and Samuel, were
alone on the ranch. Una was married to a stranger and gone away. Dessie had her dressmaking
business in Salinas. Olive had married her young man, and Mollie was married and living, believe it
or not, in an apartment in San Francisco. There was perfume, and a white bearskin rug in the bedroom
in front of the fireplace, and Mollie smoked a gold-tipped cigarette—Violet Milo—with her coffee
after dinner.
One day Samuel strained his back lifting a bale of hay, and it hurt his feelings more than his back,
for he could not imagine a life in which Sam Hamilton was not privileged to lift a bale of hay. He felt
insulted by his back, almost as he would have been if one of his children had been dishonest.
In King City, Dr. Tilson felt him over. The doctor grew more testy with his overworked years.
“You sprained your back.”
“That I did,” said Samuel.
“And you drove all the way in to have me tell you that you sprained your back and charge you two
dollars?”
“Here’s your two dollars.”
“And you want to know what to do about it?”
“Sure I do.”
“Don’t sprain it any more. Now take your money back. You’re not a fool, Samuel, unless you’re
getting childish.”
“But it hurts.”
“Of course it hurts. How would you know it was strained if it didn’t?”
Samuel laughed. “You’re good for me,” he said. “You’re more than two dollars good for me. Keep
the money.”
The doctor looked closely at him. “I think you’re telling the truth, Samuel. I’ll keep the money.”
Samuel went in to see Will in his fine new store. He hardly knew his son, for Will was getting fat
and prosperous and he wore a coat and vest and a gold ring on his little finger.
“I’ve got a package made up for Mother,” Will said. “Some little cans of things from France.
Mushrooms and liver paste and sardines so little you can hardly see them.”
“She’ll just send them to Joe,” said Samuel.
“Can’t you make her eat them?”
“No,” said his father. “But she’ll enjoy sending them to Joe.”
Lee came into the store and his eyes lighted up. “How do, Missy,” he said.
“Hello, Lee. How are the boys?”
“Boys fine.”
Samuel said, “I’m going to have a glass of beer next door, Lee. Be glad to have you join me.”
Lee and Samuel sat at the little round table in the barroom and Samuel drew figures on the
scrubbed wood with the moisture of his beer glass. “I’ve wanted to go to see you and Adam but I
didn’t think I could do any good.”
“Well, you can’t do any harm. I thought he’d get over it. But he still walks around like a ghost.”
“It’s over a year, isn’t it?” Samuel asked.
“Three months over.”
“Well, what do you think I can do?”
“I don’t know,” said Lee. “Maybe you could shock him out of it. Nothing else has worked.”
“I’m not good at shocking. I’d probably end up by shocking myself. By the way, what did he name
the twins?”
“They don’t have any names.”
“You’re making a joke, Lee.”
“I am not making jokes.”
“What does he call them?”
“He calls them ‘they.’ ”
“I mean when he speaks to them.”
“When he speaks to them he calls them ‘you,’ one or both.”
“This is nonsense,” Samuel said angrily. “What kind of fool is the man?”
“I’ve meant to come and tell you. He’s a dead man unless you can wake him up.”
Samuel said, “I’ll come. I’ll bring a horse whip. No names! You’re damn right I’ll come Lee.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll kill a chicken,” said Lee. “You’ll like the twins, Mr. Hamilton. They’re fine-looking boys. I
won’t tell Mr. Trask you’re coming.”
2
Shyly Samuel told his wife he wanted to visit the Trask place. He thought she would pile up strong
walls of objection, and for one of the few times in his life he would disobey her wish no matter how
strong her objection. It gave him a sad feeling in the stomach to think of disobeying his wife. He
explained his purpose almost as though he were confessing. Liza put her hands on her hips during the
telling and his heart sank. When he was finished she continued to look at him, he thought, coldly.
Finally she said, “Samuel, do you think you can move this rock of a man?”
“Why, I don’t know, Mother.” He had not expected this. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think it is such an important matter that those babies have names right now?”
“Well, it seemed so to me,” he said lamely.
“Samuel, do you think why you want to go? Is it your natural incurable nosiness? Is it your black
inability to mind your own business?”
“Now, Liza, I know my failings pretty well. I thought it might be more than that.”
“It had better be more than that,” she said. “This man has not admitted that his sons live. He has
cut them off mid-air.”
“That’s the way it seems to me, Liza.”
“If he tells you to mind your own business—what then?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
Her jaw snapped shut and her teeth clicked. “If you do not get those boys named, there’ll be no
warm place in this house for you. Don’t you dare come whining back, saying he wouldn’t do it or he
wouldn’t listen. If you do I’ll have to go myself.”
“I’ll give him the back of my hand,” Samuel said.
“No, that you won’t do. You fall short in savagery, Samuel. I know you. You’ll give him sweetsounding
words and you’ll come dragging back and try to make me forget you ever went.”
“I’ll beat his brains out,” Samuel shouted.
He slammed into the bedroom, and Liza smiled at the panels.
He came out soon in his black suit and his hard shiny shirt and collar. He stooped down to her
while she tied his black string tie. His white beard was brushed to shining.
“You’d best take a swab at your shoes with a blacking brush,” she said.
In the midst of painting the blacking on his worn shoes he looked sideways up at her. “Could I take
the Bible along?” he asked. “There’s no place for getting a good name like the Bible.”
“I don’t much like it out of the house,” she said uneasily. “And if you’re late coming home,
what’ll I have for my reading? And the children’s names are in it.” She saw his face fall. She went into
the bedroom and came back with a small Bible, worn and scuffed, its cover held on by brown paper
and glue. “Take this one,” she said.
“But that’s your mother’s.”
“She wouldn’t mind. And all the names but one in here have two dates.”
“I’ll wrap it so it won’t get hurt,” said Samuel.
Liza spoke sharply. “What my mother would mind is what I mind, and I’ll tell you what I mind.
You’re never satisfied to let the Testament alone. You’re forever picking at it and questioning it. You
turn it over the way a ’coon turns over a wet rock, and it angers me.”
“I’m just trying to understand it, Mother.”
“What is there to understand? Just read it. There it is in black and white. Who wants you to
understand it? If the Lord God wanted you to understand it He’d have given you to understand or He’d
have set it down different.”
“But, Mother—”
“Samuel,” she said, “you’re the most contentious man this world has ever seen.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Don’t agree with me all the time. It hints of insincerity. Speak up for yourself.”
She looked after his dark figure in the buggy as he drove away. “He’s a sweet husband,” she said
aloud, “but contentious.”
And Samuel was thinking with wonder, Just when I think I know her she does a thing like that.
3
On the last half-mile, turning out of the Salinas Valley and driving up the unscraped road under the
great oak trees, Samuel tried to plait a rage to take care of his embarrassment. He said heroic words to
himself.
Adam was more gaunt than Samuel remembered. His eyes were dull, as though he did not use
them much for seeing. It took a little time for Adam to become aware that Samuel was standing before
him. A grimace of displeasure drew down his mouth.
Samuel said, “I feel small now—coming uninvited as I have.”
Adam said, “What do you want? Didn’t I pay you?”
“Pay?” Samuel asked. “Yes, you did. Yes, by God, you did. And I’ll tell you that pay has been
more than I’ve merited by the nature of it.”
“What? What are you trying to say?”
Samuel’s anger grew and put out leaves. “A man, his whole life, matches himself against pay. And
how, if it’s my whole life’s work to find my worth, can you, sad man, write me down instant in a
ledger?”
Adam exclaimed, “I’ll pay. I tell you I’ll pay. How much? I’ll pay.”
“You have, but not to me.”
“Why did you come then? Go away!”
“You once invited me.”
“I don’t invite you now.”
Samuel put his hands on his hips and leaned forward. “I’ll tell you now, quiet. In a bitter night, a
mustard night that was last night, a good thought came and the dark was sweetened when the day sat
down. And this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of the first light—that
our betters spoke of. So I invite myself.”
“You are not welcome.”
Samuel said, “I’m told that out of some singular glory your loins got twins.”
“What business is that of yours?”
A kind of joy lighted Samuel’s eyes at the rudeness. He saw Lee lurking inside the house and
peeking out at him. “Don’t, for the love of God, put violence on me. I’m a man hopes there’ll be a
picture of peace on my hatchments.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“How could you? Adam Trask, a dog wolf with a pair of cubs, a scrubby rooster with sweet
paternity for a fertilized egg! A dirty clod!”
A darkness covered Adam’s cheeks and for the first time his eyes seemed to see. Samuel joyously
felt hot rage in his stomach. He cried, “Oh, my friend, retreat from me! Please, I beg of you!” The
saliva dampened the corners of his mouth. “Please!” he cried. “For the love of any holy thing you can
remember, step back from me. I feel murder nudging my gizzard.”
Adam said, “Get off my place. Go on—get off. You’re acting crazy. Get off. This is my place. I
bought it.”
“You bought your eyes and nose,” Samuel jeered. “You bought your uprightness. You bought your
thumb on sideways. Listen to me, because I’m like to kill you after. You bought! You bought out of
some sweet inheritance. Think now—do you deserve your children, man?”
“Deserve them? They’re here—I guess. I don’t understand you.”
Samuel wailed, “God save me, Liza! It’s not the way you think, Adam! Listen to me before my
thumb finds the bad place at your throat. The precious twins—untried, unnoticed, undirected—and I
say it quiet with my hands down—undiscovered.”
“Get off,” said Adam hoarsely. “Lee, bring a gun! This man is crazy. Lee!”
Then Samuel’s hands were on Adam’s throat, pressing the throbbing up to his temples, swelling
his eyes with blood. And Samuel was snarling at him. “Tear away with your jelly fingers. You have
not bought these boys, nor stolen them, nor passed any bit for them. You have them by some strange
and lovely dispensation.” Suddenly he plucked his hard thumbs out of his neighbor’s throat.
Adam stood panting. He felt his throat where the blacksmith hands had been. “What is it you want
of me?”
“You have no love.”
“I had—enough to kill me.”
“No one ever had enough. The stone orchard celebrates too little, not too much.”
“Stay away from me. I can fight back. Don’t think I can’t defend myself.”
“You have two weapons, and they not named.”
“I’ll fight you, old man. You are an old man.”
Samuel said, “I can’t think in my mind of a dull man picking up a rock, who before evening would
not put a name to it—like Peter. And you—for a year you’ve lived with your heart’s draining and
you’ve not even laid a number to the boys.”
Adam said, “What I do is my own business.”
Samuel struck him with a work-heavy fist, and Adam sprawled out in the dust. Samuel asked him
to rise, and when Adam accepted struck him again, and this time Adam did not get up. He looked
stonily at the menacing old man.
The fire went out of Samuel’s eyes and he said quietly, “Your sons have no names.”
Adam replied, “Their mother left them motherless.”
“And you have left them fatherless. Can’t you feel the cold at night of a lone child? What warm is
there, what bird song, what possible morning can be good? Don’t you remember, Adam, how it was,
even a little?”
“I didn’t do it,” Adam said.
“Have you undone it? Your boys have no names.” He stooped down and put his arms around
Adam’s shoulders and helped him to his feet. “We’ll give them names,” he said. “We’ll think long and
find good names to clothe them.” He whipped the dust from Adam’s shirt with his hands.
Adam wore a faraway yet intent look, as though he were listening to some wind-carried music, but
his eyes were not dead as they had been. He said, “It’s hard to imagine I’d thank a man for insults and
for shaking me out like a rug. But I’m grateful. It’s a hurty thanks, but it’s thanks.”
Samuel smiled, crinkle-eyed. “Did it seem natural? Did I do it right?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in a way I promised my wife I’d do it. She didn’t believe I would. I’m not a fighting man,
you see. The last time I clobbered a human soul it was over a red-nosed girl and a Schoolbook in
County Derry.”
Adam stared at Samuel, but in his mind he saw and felt his brother Charles, black and murderous,
and that sight switched to Cathy and the quality of her eyes over the gun barrel. “There wasn’t any fear
in it,” Adam said. “It was more like a weariness.”
“I guess I was not angry enough.”
“Samuel, I’ll ask just once and then no more. Have you heard anything? Has there been any news
of her—any news at all?”
“I’ve heard nothing.”
“It’s almost a relief,” said Adam.
“Do you have hatred?”
“No. No—only a kind of sinking in the heart. Maybe later I’ll sort it out to hatred. There was no
interval from loveliness to horror, you see. I’m confused, confused.”
Samuel said, “One day we’ll sit and you’ll lay it out on the table, neat like a solitaire deck, but
now—why, you can’t find all the cards.”
From behind the shed there came the indignant shrieking of an outraged chicken and then a dull
thump.
“There’s something at the hens,” said Adam.
A second shrieking started. “It’s Lee at the hens,” said Samuel. “You know, if chickens had
government and church and history, they would take a distant and distasteful view of human joy. Let
any gay and hopeful thing happen to a man, and some chicken goes howling to the block.”
Now the two men were silent, breaking it only with small false courtesies—meaningless inquiries
about health and weather, with answers unlistened to. And this might have continued until they were
angry at each other again if Lee had not interfered.
Lee brought out a table and two chairs and set the chairs facing each other. He made another trip
for a pint of whisky and two glasses and set a glass on the table in front of each chair. Then he carried
out the twins, one under each arm, and put them on the ground beside the table and gave each boy a
stick for his hand to shake and make shadows with.
The boys sat solemnly and looked about, stared at Samuel’s beard and searched for Lee. The
strange thing about them was their clothing, for the boys were dressed in the straight trousers and the
frogged and braided jackets of the Chinese. One was in turquoise blue and the other in a faded rose
pink, and the frogs and braid were black. On their heads sat round black silken hats, each with a bright
red button on its flat top.
Samuel asked, “Where in the world did you get those clothes, Lee?”
“I didn’t get them,” Lee said testily. “I had them. The only other clothes they have I made myself,
out of sail cloth. A boy should be well dressed on his naming day.”
“You’ve dropped the pidgin, Lee.”
“I hope for good. Of course I use it in King City.” He addressed a few short sung syllables to the
boys on the ground, and they both smiled up at him and waved their sticks in the air. Lee said, “I’ll
pour you a drink. It’s some that was here.”
“It’s some you bought yesterday in King City,” said Samuel.
Now that Samuel and Adam were seated together and the barriers were down, a curtain of shyness
fell on Samuel. What he had beaten in with his fists he could not supplement easily. He thought of the
virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on. His
mind grinned inward at itself.
The two sat looking at the twin boys in their strange bright-colored clothes. Samuel thought,
Sometimes your opponent can help you more than your friend. He lifted his eyes to Adam.
“It’s hard to start,” he said. “And it’s like a put-off letter that gathers difficulties to itself out of
the minutes. Could you give me a hand?”
Adam looked up for a moment and then back at the boys on the ground. “There’s a crashing in my
head,” he said. “Like sounds you hear under water. I’m having to dig myself out of a year.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me how it was and that will get us started.”
Adam tossed down his drink and poured another and rolled the glass at an angle in his hand. The
amber whisky moved high on the side and the pungent fruit odor of its warming filled the air. “It’s
hard to remember,” he said. “It was not agony but a dullness. But no—there were needles in it. You
said I had not all the cards in the deck—and I was thinking of that. Maybe I’ll never have all the
cards.”
“Is it herself trying to come out? When a man says he does not want to speak of something he
usually means he can think of nothing else.”
“Maybe it’s that. She’s all mixed up with the dullness, and I can’t remember much except the last
picture drawn in fire.”
“She did shoot you, didn’t she, Adam?”
His lips grew thin and his eyes black.
Samuel said, “There’s no need to answer.”
“There’s no reason not to,” Adam replied. “Yes, she did.”
“Did she mean to kill you?”
“I’ve thought of that more than anything else. No, I don’t think she meant to kill me. She didn’t
allow me that dignity. There was no hatred in her, no passion at all. I learned about that in the army. If
you want to kill a man, you shoot at head or heart or stomach. No, she hit me where she intended. I can
see the gun barrel moving over. I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had wanted my death.
That would have been a kind of love. But I was an annoyance, not an enemy.”
“You’ve given it a lot of thought,” said Samuel.
“I’ve had lots of time for it. I want to ask you something. I can’t remember behind the last ugly
thing. Was she very beautiful, Samuel?”
“To you she was because you built her. I don’t think you ever saw her—only your own creation.”
Adam mused aloud, “I wonder who she was—what she was. I was content not to know.”
“And now you want to?”
Adam dropped his eyes. “It’s not curiosity. But I would like to know what kind of blood is in my
boys. When they grow up—won’t I be looking for something in them?”
“Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in
them. They will be what you expect of them.”
“But their blood—”
“I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his
children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”
“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”
“No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”
“No one hereabouts would agree with you. I think even Mrs. Hamilton would not.”
“That’s exactly right. She most of all would disagree, and so I would not say it to her and let loose
the thunder of her disagreement. She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction
that a difference of opinion is a personal affront. She’s a fine woman, but you have to learn to feel
your way with her. Let’s speak of the boys.”
“Will you have another drink?”
“That I will, thank you. Names are a great mystery. I’ve never known whether the name is molded
by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this—whenever a human has a
nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong. How do you favor the standard names—
John or James or Charles?”
Adam was looking at the twins and suddenly with the mention of the name he saw his brother
peering out of the eyes of one of the boys. He leaned forward.
“What is it?” Samuel asked.
“Why,” Adam cried, “these boys are not alike! They don’t look alike.”
“Of course they don’t. They’re not identical twins.”
“That one—that one looks like my brother. I just saw it. I wonder if the other looks like me.”
“Both of them do. A face has everything in it right back to the beginning.”
“It’s not so much now,” said Adam. “But for a moment I thought I was seeing a ghost.”
“Maybe that’s what ghosts are,” Samuel observed.
Lee brought dishes out and put them on the table.
“Do you have Chinese ghosts?” Samuel asked.
“Millions,” said Lee. “We have more ghosts than anything else. I guess nothing in China ever dies.
It’s very crowded. Anyway, that’s the feeling I got when I was there.”
Samuel said, “Sit down, Lee. We’re trying to think of names.”
“I’ve got chicken frying. It will be ready pretty soon.”
Adam looked up from the twins and his eyes were warmed and softened. “Will you have a drink,
Lee?”
“I’m nipping at the og-ka-py in the kitchen,” said Lee and went back to the house.
Samuel leaned down and gathered up one of the boys and held him on his lap. “Take that one up,”
he said to Adam. “We ought to see whether there’s something that draws names to them.”
Adam held the other child awkwardly on his knee. “They look some alike,” he said, “but not when
you look close. This one has rounder eyes than that one.”
“Yes, and a rounder head and bigger ears,” Samuel added. “But this one is more like—like a
bullet. This one might go farther but not so high. And this one is going to be darker in the hair and
skin. This one will be shrewd, I think, and shrewdness is a limitation on the mind. Shrewdness tells
you what you must not do because it would not be shrewd. See how this one supports himself! He’s
farther along than that one—better developed. Isn’t it strange how different they are when you look
close?”
Adam’s face was changing as though he had opened and come out on his surface. He held up his
finger, and the child made a lunge for it and missed and nearly fell off his lap. “Whoa!” said Adam.
“Take it easy. Do you want to fall?”
“It would be a mistake to name them for qualities we think they have,” Samuel said. “We might be
wrong—so wrong. Maybe it would be good to give them a high mark to shoot at—a name to live up
to. The man I’m named for had his name called clear by the Lord God, and I’ve been listening all my
life. And once or twice I’ve thought I heard my name called—but not clear, not clear.”
Adam, holding the child by his upper arm, leaned over and poured whisky in both glasses. “I thank
you for coming, Samuel,” he said. “I even thank you for hitting me. That’s a strange thing to say.”
“It was a strange thing for me to do. Liza will never believe it, and so I’ll never tell her. An
unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth
unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion. I haven’t the
courage for that.”
Adam said, “I’ve wondered why a man of your knowledge would work a desert hill place.”
“It’s because I haven’t courage,” said Samuel. “I could never quite take the responsibility. When
the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called His name—but I did not. There you have the
difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease. But it’s nice for a
mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
“I’d think there are degrees of greatness,” Adam said.
“I don’t think so,” said Samuel. “That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe
when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side
you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other—cold, lonely
greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward
might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He’s
suffering over the choosing right now. It’s a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him
to say yes. Isn’t that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that
must be.”
Adam chuckled. “This naming is no simple business, I see.”
“Did you think it would be?”
“I didn’t know it could be so pleasant,” said Adam.
Lee came out with a platter of fried chicken, a bowl of smoking boiled potatoes, and a deep dish of
pickled beets, all carried on a pastry board. “I don’t know how good it will be,” he said. “The hens are
a little old. We don’t have any pullets. The weasels got the baby chicks this year.”
“Pull up,” said Samuel.
“Wait until I get my ng-ka-py,” said Lee.
While he was gone Adam said, “It’s strange to me—he used to speak differently.”
“He trusts you now,” Samuel said. “He has a gift of resigned loyalty without -hope of reward. He’s
maybe a much better man than either of us could dream of being.”
Lee came back and took his seat at the end of the table. “Just put the boys on the ground,” he said.
The twins protested when they were set down. Lee spoke to them sharply in Cantonese and they
were silent.
The men ate quietly as nearly all country people do. Suddenly Lee got up and hurried into the
house. He came back with a jug of red wine. “I forgot it,” he said. “I found it in the house.”
Adam laughed. “I remember drinking wine here before I bought the place. Maybe I bought the
place because of the wine. The chicken’s good, Lee. I don’t think I’ve been aware of the taste of food
for a long time.”
“You’re getting well,” Samuel said. “Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness
to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.”
4
Lee cleared the table and gave each of the boys a clean drumstick. They sat solemnly holding their
greasy batons and alternately inspecting and sucking them. The wine and the glasses stayed on the
table.
“We’d best get on with the naming,” Samuel said. “I can feel a little tightening on my halter from
Liza.”
“I can’t think what to name them,” Adam said.
“You have no family name you want—no inviting trap for a rich relative, no proud name to recreate?”
“No, I’d like them to start fresh, insofar as that is possible.”
Samuel knocked his forehead with his knuckles. “What a shame,” he said. “What a shame it is that
the proper names for them they cannot have.”
“What do you mean?” Adam asked.
“Freshness, you said. I thought last night—” He paused. “Have you thought of your own name?”
“Mine?”
“Of course. Your first-born—Cain and Abel.”
Adam said, “Oh, no. No, we can’t do that.”
“I know we can’t. That would be tempting whatever fate there is. But isn’t it odd that Cain is
maybe the best-known name in the whole world and as far as I know only one man has ever borne it?”
Lee said, “Maybe that’s why the name has never changed its emphasis.”
Adam looked into the ink-red wine in his glass. “I got a shiver when you mentioned it,” he said.
“Two stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning,” Samuel said. “We carry them
along with us like invisible tails—the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel. And I don’t
understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all but I feel them. Liza gets angry with me. She
says I should not try to understand them. She says why should we try to explain a verity. Maybe she’s
right—maybe she’s right. Lee, Liza says you’re a Presbyterian—do you understand the Garden of
Eden and Cain and Abel?”
“She thought I should be something, and I went to Sunday School long ago in San Francisco.
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”
Adam said, “He asked you if you understood.”
“I think I understand the Fall. I could perhaps feel that in myself. But the brother murder—no.
Well, maybe I don’t remember the details very well.”
Samuel said, “Most people don’t read the details. It’s the details that astonish me. And Abel had
no children.” He looked up at the sky. “Lord, how the day passes! It’s like a life—so quickly when we
don’t watch it and so slowly when we do. No,” he said, “I’m having enjoyment. And I made a promise
to myself that I would not consider enjoyment a sin. I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I’ve
never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me
that I can never see the far side of the moon.”
“I don’t have a Bible,” Adam said. “I left the family one in Connecticut.”
“I have,” said Lee. “I’ll get it.”
“No need,” said Samuel. “Liza let me take her mother’s. It’s here in my pocket.” He took out the
package and unwrapped the battered book. “This one has been scraped and gnawed at,” he said. “I
wonder what agonies have settled here. Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you
about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers. Liza wears a Bible down
evenly. Here we are—this oldest story. If it troubles us it must be that we find the trouble in
ourselves.”
“I haven’t heard it since I was a child,” said Adam.
“You think it’s long then, and it’s very short,” said Samuel. “I’ll read it through and then we’ll go
back. Give me a little wine, my throat’s dried out with wine. Here it is—such a little story to have
made so deep a wound.” He looked down at the ground. “See!” he said. “The boys have gone to their
sleep, there in the dust.”
Lee got up. “I’ll cover them,” he said.
“The dust is warm,” said Samuel. “Now it goes this way. ‘And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she
conceived, and bare Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” ’ ”
Adam started to speak and Samuel looked up at him and he was silent and covered his eyes with
his hand. Samuel read, “ ‘And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but
Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the
fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock
and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his
offering he had not respect.’ ”
Lee said, “Now there—no, go on, go on. We’ll come back.”
Samuel read, “ ‘And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain,
“Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou
shalt rule over him.”
“ ‘And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that
Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel thy
brother?” And he said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And he said, “What hast thou done?
The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the
earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest
the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be
in the earth.” And Cain said unto the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou
hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth, and from thy face shall I be hid. And I shall be a
fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay
me.” And the Lord said unto him, “Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on
him sevenfold.” And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain
went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.’ ”
Samuel closed the loose cover of the book almost with weariness. “There it is,” he said. “Sixteen
verses, no more. And oh, Lord! I had forgotten how dreadful it is—no single tone of encouragement.
Maybe Liza’s right. There’s nothing to understand.”
Adam sighed deeply. “It’s not a comforting story, is it?”
Lee poured a tumbler full of dark liquor from his round stone bottle and sipped it and opened his
mouth to get the double taste on the back of his tongue. “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we
feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!”
Samuel said to Adam, “And you have tried to take it all.”
Lee said, “So do I, so does everyone. We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious
stuff. It must be that we want it that way.”
Aron broke in, “It makes me feel better, not worse.”
“How do you mean?” Samuel asked.
“Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about
it. But sin is our own designing.”
“Yes, I see. But how does this story make it better?”
“Because,” Adam said excitedly, “we are descended from this. This is our father. Some of our guilt
is absorbed in our ancestry. What chance did we have? We are the children of our father. It means we
aren’t the first. It’s an excuse, and there aren’t enough excuses in the world.”
“Not convincing ones anyway,” said Lee. “Else we would long ago have wiped out guilt, and the
world would not be filled with sad, punished people.”
Samuel said, “But do you think of another frame to this picture? Excuse or not, we are snapped
back to our ancestry. We have guilt.”
Adam said, “I remember being a little outraged at God. Both Cain and Abel gave what they had,
and God accepted Abel and rejected Cain. I never thought that was a just thing. I never understood it.
Do you?”
“Maybe we think out of a different background,” said Lee. “I remember that this story was written
by and for a shepherd people. They were not farmers. Wouldn’t the god of shepherds find a fat lamb
more valuable than a sheaf of barley? A sacrifice must be the best and most valuable.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Samuel. “And Lee, let me caution you about bringing your Oriental
reasoning to Liza’s attention.”
Adam was excited. “Yes, but why did God condemn Cain? That’s an injustice.”
Samuel said, “There’s an advantage to listening to the words. God did not condemn Cain at all.
Even God can have a preference, can’t he? Let’s suppose God liked lamb better than vegetables. I
think I do myself. Cain brought him a bunch of carrots maybe. And God said, ‘I don’t like this. Try
again. Bring me something I like and I’ll set you up alongside your brother.’ But Cain got mad. His
feelings were hurt. And when a man’s feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something, and Abel was
in the way of his anger.”
Lee said, “St. Paul says to the Hebrews that Abel had faith.”
“There’s no reference to it in Genesis,” Samuel said. “No faith or lack of faith. Only a hint of
Cain’s temper.”
Lee asked, “How does Mrs. Hamilton feel about the paradoxes of the Bible?”
“Why, she does not feel anything because she does not admit they are there.”
“But—”
“Hush, man. Ask her. And you’ll come out of it older but not less confused.”
Adam said, “You two have studied this. I only got it through my skin and not much of it stuck.
Then Cain was driven out for murder?”
“That’s right—for murder.”
“And God branded him?”
“Did you listen? Cain bore the mark not to destroy him but to save him. And there’s a curse called
down on any man who shall kill him. It was a preserving mark.”
Adam said, “I can’t get over a feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick.”
“Maybe he did,” said Samuel. “But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story.
We are Cain’s children. And isn’t it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many
thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened in King City yesterday and hadn’t
come up for trial?”
One of the twins awakened and yawned and looked at Lee and went to sleep again.
Lee said, “Remember, Mr. Hamilton, I told you I was trying to translate some old Chinese poetry
into English? No, don’t worry. I won’t read it. Doing it, I found some of the old things as fresh and
clear as this morning. And I wondered why. And, of course, people are interested only in themselves.
If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is
about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal
and familiar.”
Samuel said, “Apply that to the Cain-Abel story.”
And Adam said, “I didn’t kill my brother—” Suddenly he stopped and his mind went reeling back
in time.
“I think I can,” Lee answered Samuel. “I think this is the best-known story in the world because it
is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now—don’t
jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection
is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with
rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the
crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human
would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would
not be many jails. It is all there—the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks
the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third
conquers the world—and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty
animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the
soul—the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you
remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and
Abel? And what do you think of my Oriental patter, Mr. Hamilton? You know I am no more Oriental
than you are.”
Samuel had leaned his elbows on the table and his hands covered his eyes and his forehead. “I
want to think,” he said. “Damn you, I want to think. I’ll want to take this off alone where I can pick it
apart and see. Maybe you’ve tumbled a world for me. And I don’t know what I can build in my
world’s place.”
Lee said softly, “Couldn’t a world be built around accepted truth? Couldn’t some pains and
insanities be rooted out if the causes were known?”
“I don’t know, damn you. You’ve disturbed my pretty universe. You’ve taken a contentious game
and made an answer of it. Let me alone—let me think! Your damned bitch is having pups in my brain
already. Oh, I wonder what my Tom will think of this! He’ll cradle it in the palm of his mind. He’ll
turn it slow in his brain like a roast of pork before the fire. Adam, come out now. You’ve been long
enough in whatever memory it was.”
Adam started. He sighed deeply. “Isn’t it too simple?” he asked. “I’m always afraid of simple
things.”
“It isn’t simple at all,” said Lee. “It’s desperately complicated. But at the end there’s light.”
“There’s not going to be light long,” Samuel said. “We’ve sat and let the evening come. I drove
over to help name the twins and they’re not named. We’ve swung ourselves on a pole. Lee, you better
keep your complications out of the machinery of the set-up churches or there might be a Chinese with
nails in his hands and feet. They like complications but they like their own. I’ll have to be driving
home.”
Adam said desperately, “Name me some names.”
“From the Bible?”
“From anyplace.”
“Well, let’s see. Of all the people who started out of Egypt only two came to the Promised Land.
Would you like them for a symbol?”
“Who?”
“Caleb and Joshua.”
“Joshua was a soldier—a general. I don’t like soldiering.”
“Well, Caleb was a captain.”
“But not a general. I kind of like Caleb—Caleb Trask.”
One of the twins woke up and without interval began to wail.
“You called his name,” said Samuel. “You don’t like Joshua, and Caleb’s named. He’s the smart
one—the dark one. See, the other one is awake too. Well, Aaron I’ve always liked, but he didn’t make
it to the Promised Land.”
The second boy almost joyfully began to cry.
“That’s good enough,” said Adam.
Suddenly Samuel laughed. “In two minutes,” he said, “and after a waterfall of words. Caleb and
Aaron—now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.”
Lee took the boys up under his arms. “Have you got them straight?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Adam. “That one is Caleb and you are Aaron.”
Lee lugged the yelling twins toward the house in the dusk.
“Yesterday I couldn’t tell them apart,” said Adam. “Aaron and Caleb.”
“Thank the good Lord we had produce from our patient thought,” Samuel said. “Liza would have
preferred Joshua. She loves the crashing walls of Jericho. But she likes Aaron too, so I guess it’s all
right. I’ll go and hitch up my rig.”
Adam walked to the shed with him. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “There’s a weight off me.”
Samuel slipped the bit in Doxology’s reluctant mouth, set the brow band, and buckled the
throatlatch. “Maybe you’ll now be thinking of the garden in the flat land,” he said. “I can see it there
the way you planned it.”
Adam was long in answering. At last he said, “I think that kind of energy is gone out of me. I can’t
feel the pull of it. I have money enough to live. I never wanted it for myself. I have no one to show a
garden to.”
Samuel wheeled on him and his eyes were filled with tears. “Don’t think it will ever die,” he cried.
“Don’t expect it. Are you better than other men? I tell you it won’t ever die until you do.” He stood
panting for a moment and then he climbed into the rig and whipped Doxology and he drove away, his
shoulders hunched, without saying good-by.
