Chapter XI: Part 11

"Dot's good. I need help, blease. It's a confusion----"

"I'll come."

"Good night."

"Good night."

The sun was gone. The road back to the city was like a long gray river and the light on the forceps of car tracks had died.

***

The bread. Every noon of that week as you came down from Coronation Point Inn, the smell ran out a little ways to meet you and the treble shouts of the children and once Essie with her pigtails, came flying.

"Bertha's here. Bertha's here."

Why, that was a greeting! The words ran down your spine. Bertha's here.

"Say, oughtta see. Chimmie fell off the counter and shinnied his nose."

"Oh Essie----"

"It bled."

"Oh----"

"Papa couldn't make it stop. Papa can't do nothing. Blood makes him sick."

"Oh, Chimmie, Chimmie. Where is he?"

"There he is, laying out in the road. Get up, you. Papa will get you. Automobile will get you."

"Oh, Chimmie, you got hurt?"

"Chimmie got hurt. Look."

Clank. Clank. There was a great wad of cotton across his nose, held there precariously with strips of adhesive plaster. The brace that made him twice too heavy. And now his shinnied nose. You pulled back the cotton. It stuck and already some of the grime from the smeared little face was under.

There was a long siege of washing with the warm water from the basin that Essie held, and Pete tore off the hem of one of Meyerbogen's clean handkerchiefs and Oscar stood by with the vaseline.

So! The little dressing on Chimmie's nose was neater and flatter and cleaner. It made you glad, the neat little flatness and cleanness.

"Now, Chimmie's well."

"Now, Chimmie's well."

The children ran off. There were the curtains to be hung. They had been washed and ironed the day before and lay out, waiting.

Meyerbogen came around the side of the house with a sack of flour on his back. The white fog made him dim.

"You, Bertha?"

"Yah."

"Dot's good."

"Yah."

"Want lunch?"

"Yah, but I can fix it----"

"No, I'll fix. Veenie sandwich. Baked beans. Corned beef hash with boached egg."

"Beans."

It was pleasant at the little table in the bake shop. The motors spun past and left a little trail of quiet after the whizz. The mat of flies clung to the screen door but could not force in. The bread. The sweet rich smell of it from the ovens beneath. The beans were fragrant too.

Meyerbogen sat down opposite. His knees were very short and very wide apart and his great paunch threw him sway-back, so that he could not see them. Pouf! Out came the little fog of flour when he sat. His spring-tight curls and his eyelashes were all gray with it. Pouf! Out came a little fog when his hand struck the table. A short hand as dainty as a woman's and all bleached and soft from knuckling into the dough.

"It's a heat," he said.

"Yah."

"Want some mustard?"

"Yah----"

"Chimmie shinnied his nose."

"You didn't know how to dress it."

"Blood goes against me----"

"Yah----"

"Want some mustard?"

"I got some."

"You fixed it good."

"What?"

"Chimmie's nose."

"Yah----"

"It takes a woman. I can't keep help in the gountry. Since my woman is--gone, I got only confusion."

"They don't need me no more at Coronation Point."

"If, blease, you could come by us. There is a good room for you upstairs and----"

"By the week, you mean?"

"By the month. By the--always, if you would blease. I can pay...."

"Yah...."

"It ain't easy to find such a woman like you. The children, they like you. There is dot something about you--they know it always first. Children do."

"I can come."

"Dot's good. Oh, dot is very good. The confusion, it's bad. I need a woman. You. We would treat you like one of the family."

"Yah----"

The drone of high noon. The treble of the children. The little shining of the beads of sweat on Meyerbogen's nose.

He began to shamble out. Presently you could see him walking around the side of the house, bent, with a sack of flour on his back.

Family. A snug kind of a word. Like a new reefer that buttoned you in up the front. Only the buttons this time were Chimmie's eyes. Family. A snug kind of a word.

There were the curtains to be hung. They were very starched and stood away from the windows, and more than ever the rooms began to shine.

The dining room was the best. The red tablecloth helped and a potted petunia, revived a bit with watering, stood in the center. The red rooster was a trial. Finally, you had to sit on the floor and shir together a piece of red calico and hang it for a curtain across the lower half of the screen. For some reason the tortoise chose that to cling to now. Four times he had to be returned to his place under the stove. Petey's tortoise was named Pete. Once when Bertha exclaimed at him, for clinging to the new red curtain, Petey himself came running.

"Want me?"

"Not you. I meant Pete under the stove."

"Gimme piece of bread and apple sauce?"

"Here."

"M-m-m-m."

His shaved yellow head. You ran your hand around and around its bristliness and could feel his temples munching.

"Ouch."

"Don't run so hard, Petey."

"Aw quit. What you taking that down for? That's my slate, with my drawing on it. Give me."

"I yoost want to wipe down the wall, Petey, I'll hang it back."

"Give me. Where's my slate pencil?"

"Here."

He curled himself up in a corner. You could hear the soft stalkings of the pencil across the slate. The walls had to be brushed down with a broom with a cloth tied about it. They were very dusty.

"Watch out, Petey."

"M-m-m-m."

"Petey, get out of the dust."

"Lookie. Haw, lookie. Here we are. The whole family. I got you in this time--haw, lookie!"

There they were. The Meyerbogens as Petey had drawn them, only there was something that made your heart catch on its beat.

"Why Petey, that's me, on the end. Why Petey----"

After he had gone like a streak through the door with his bread and his apple sauce, she hung it back on the wall. Carefully. The Meyerbogens.

***

Chimmie had to be dressed and walked up and down the room without his braces and drilled not to curve out his leg. He cried because that hurt, and after she had helped him up and down for a cruel twenty minutes, he fell asleep. Then there was the sink drain pipe to be poked out. Essie was such a little girl and of course she had let the grease clog it up. Squnch. Ugh. It was not so bad if you turned your head....

Meyerbogen was coming up the stairs. You could tell by the little vibrations. They ran up the wall. The dishes shook. He carried a tray of cinnamon buns. You could almost hear their soft hot breath and get the whiff of the currants.

"Bertha, is dot you?"

"Yah...."

"Dot's good," he said, and went into the shop with the tray of hot buns.

The day began to slant. There were potatoes to be dug. The screen snapped as she went out with the dish pan, and the red calico curtain swung. The clayey earth gave forth grudgingly and showed up hard and yellow through the green. But the peas ran up the sticks gayly and there was an arbor that was all spangled with tiny green grapes that were no bigger than buckshot. Presently they would swell and purple and soften. The way to press wine out of grapes was with the feet. The bare, white toes.

Bertha's toes were hurting in her bluchers. The warm clay came burning through to them, making them climb and wriggle. It was easy to kick off the shoes and slide down the stockings. The soft, naked earth. Its warmth ran up her legs in a lightning of gooseflesh. Her toes bit down. White spatulate beauties, she could lift up little dredges of clean dirt with them.

To be bled free of the torments of the ecstasies. To sit there in the wide, westering light with the flat, eager faces of the toes down tasting earth, the good earth, peasantly. Breathers. Suckers in of the little vibratory messages.

Gladnesses here with dimension. The treble shrilling of the children. Pretty leafage of peas up a stick. Clank. Clank. Chimmie must be awake. Meyerbogen disappearing around the house with a sack of flour on his back. The tawny smell of the bread.

THE END

[Transcriber's Notes:

Odd and unusual spellings, contractions, etc., are as printed.

The source book used what looks like a small Viking ship as thought breaks: images/img-ship.jpg. In this ebook's text and HTML files, no attempt was made to replicate this, using three asterisks (***) instead.]