The driver was shaking his head. “Boy, if that thing fell it would flatten out all a Merry Hill.”
“Merry Hill?” Gertie asked, looking round her.
“This is it. Them houses is all Merry Hill, and if u sign’s right we go back toward u railroad tracks an u steel-mill fence.” He nodded toward a battered sign on a gray pole, holding no words, only rows of numbers.
Gertie for the first time really looked at the rows of little shed-like buildings, their low roofs covered with snow, the walls of some strange gray-green stuff that seemed neither brick, wood, nor stone. She had glimpsed them briefly when they turned into the side road, but had never thought of them as homes. She had hardly thought of them at all, they were so little and so still against the quivering crimson light, under the roaring airplane, so low after the giant smokestacks.
Clytie, after one long look, gave a quivering sigh of disappointment; then in a moment she was Clytie again, forever looking at the best. “They ain’t got no porches or fenced yards, but they’re long. They’ll be plenty big fer us.”
“Fuyu an five more families—count u doors. Youses lucky to git a good place like this. Town’s full u people sleeping twelve tu u room, in shifts three to u bed, an—” The driver was laughing so hard as he turned into a narrow alley that he scraped a tipsily leaning trash can, spilling tin cans and cindery ashes onto the snow.
A few feet farther on, the car stopped, but Gertie, thinking the driver was still searching, did not move. She stared straight ahead past the dirty alley snow, littered with blowing bits of paper, tin cans, trampled banana skins, and orange peels, at a high board fence. Past the fence she saw what looked to be an empty, brush-grown field; but while she looked a train rushed past. Everything was blotted out in the waves of smoke and steam that blew down; tiny cinders whirled with the snow against the windshield, and the smell and taste of smoke choked her. The noise subsided enough that she could hear the driver say, “Well, this is it.”
The children, who had been gaping at the train, turned and looked, and like Gertie sat silent, looking. A few feet away across a strip of soot-blackened snow were four steps leading to a door with a glass top, set under low, icicle-fringed eaves. There was on either side the door a little window; in front of one was a gray coal shed; in front of the other a telephone pole, and by it a gray short-armed cross. The door was one in a row of six, one other door between it and the railroad tracks. Gertie turned sharply away, and across the alley her glance met another door exactly like her own.
TWELVE
GERTIE STOOD, HER OUTSPREAD hands pressed against the door, closed behind her. She realized she stood in the kitchen of her new home, but it seemed more like a large closet with rows of uncurtained shelves above a sink, and smotheringly crowded with curious contrivances. A few feet in front of her was a door-less doorway into a small hall-like living room. In this room, no more than a dozen feet past the doorway, was another outside door, exactly opposite and exactly like the one behind her. The place seemed all halls and walls and doors and windows.
“It’s so little, Mom. We cain’t never cook an eat an—” Clytie’s voice wavered, then died as she stared at a large black heating stove in a corner by the doorway.
Gertie continued to stand a moment longer, staring, choking, swallowing hard to prove to herself that she was not choking. “I figger,” she said in a moment, “that it’s about twenty-five feet frum inside to outside. If it jist wasn’t broke up so, but we can—” Clytie, she realized, had disappeared like the rest of the children. She heard their cries and comments of exploration behind the kitchen walls. She drew a deep breath, then took the few steps to the other outside door. She opened the inner door, and scraped a hole in the dirt and frost on the outer door. She saw across a narrow strip of soot-blackened snow another building exactly like her own, telephone wires and poles, smoke, steel-mill light, and steam. She suddenly bent close to the glass, smiling. Quickly, she scraped the hole larger, then looked again; dim it had been through the steam and the smoke, and far away on the other side of the railroad fence, but it was a hill. She turned away; when seen more clearly the hill had become a great pile of coal.
She struck her shin bone against a chair as she closed the door. She bent to rub the pain, sharp in her half numb leg, and in bending her hips struck a corner of the low head of a cot-like bed. There was between the door and wall room for the head of the narrow bed, and on the other side of the door almost room for a chair. Touching the chair was a sofa, holding three cushions of some slippery, rubbery material. The wood of the sofa, like that of the chair, was a pale but shiny oak.
She stood a moment, her hands clenched by her sides, then carefully walked through the narrow space between bed and sofa. Two halls, scarce wider than her shoulders, led to the bathroom and the three bedrooms. Two of these were big enough for a double bed and four chairs each. The other was smaller still, but into it two single beds were jammed so close together there was no room to walk between them.
Clytie bumped her as she turned away. “Mom, they ain’t no dressers, an no looken glass, but I bet they’s twenty chairs, all alike. An jist one table fer all our cooken an eaten.”
Clytie’s voice had grown closer and closer to sobs, and Gertie patted her shoulder. “I recken th gover’ment thinks people won’t be a doen much in their houses but setten an sleepen. An anyhow it won’t be fer long an—” she was comforting when Enoch’s laughter and Amos’s frightened scream came from the other side of the kitchen. She bumped into the stove as she whirled toward the sound. Amos, water dripping from his hair, came running, with Enoch behind him, explaining between giggles, “He clumb into a little box uv a thing, Mom, an turned a round thing an water squirted all over.”
Cassie trailed behind them, whimpering, “Th water stinks, Mom.”
“It’s city water, silly,” Clytie explained. “It’s purified like in th health books, and that thing in th bathroom, it’s a shower, like in th catalogue.”
Gertie tried a glass of water, but after one taste emptied it into the sink with a suspicious frown. “They’s somethen in it besides water. It’s worse’n that on th train.”
Enoch was holding a match he had found above the kitchen sink and begging: “Light th gas, Mom. It’ll warm up Amos, an we’re all freezen.”
Gertie turned to consider the little cooking stove in a corner of the kitchen. The top was hardly a fourth as big as that of her range cookstove back home, and no warming oven at all. Enoch climbed on the edge of the sink to watch, pointed out the knobs she must turn, while Clytie warned, “Watch out, Mom. Vadie Tucker—recollect she’d been in Cincinnati—said a body had to be mighty careful a gas.”
Gertie struck a match, and held it waveringly, looking first at the row of small black handles, then at the blank wall behind. “It ain’t got no pipe. Mebbe it ain’t ready to light.”
“I’ll bet gas stoves don’t need pipes. Go on, turn one,” Enoch urged.
“I don’t know which is which,” Gertie said in a whimpering voice, new to her.
Enoch turned a knob just as her match went out. She reached for another, while Enoch cried: “Hurry up, Mom. I’m turnen em all on.”
She struck the match and held it toward the burners, all hissing now. Flames leaped at her; the corner of the kitchen seemed a wall of flame. She, like the children, jumped away, but her head struck a corner of the row of open shelves across from the stove. She saw stars and whirling lights, smelled smoke, and heard the screams of the children. Then Reuben was slapping her forehead. Clytie was throwing a glass of water on her, and Enoch was laughing. “Mom, you look so funny. Your hair’s all swinged.”
Gertie was silent, rubbing the back of her aching head while she stared at the stove top, where four circles of flame flickered and leaped with a faint singing. Enoch reached for another match. “Lemme light th oven thing, Mom. I’ll strike th match an hold it by th holes ’fore I turn it.”
“I ain’t a wanten you burned up alive,”
she said, and took the match and squatted by the open oven door. She bent, searching, until her hips touched the opposite side of the cubbyhole and her hair brushed the floor, and saw at last a ring of little holes. She told the children to get a safe distance away, struck the match, and held it under the holes, while with her other hand she tried to turn the knob marked “Oven.”
Her fingers pulled and twisted, but the knob would not move. The match went out; she lighted another and tried the knob again. Still the shiny bit of plastic would not yield. Two more matches, two more tries that made even her tough fingers ache, but the little thing was her master still. She stared at it a moment, then got slowly to her feet. “I cain’t do nothen with it, youngens. I’ll build us a fire quick in the heaten stove an git th place warm.”
A large bucket that had once held paint stood by the stove, filled with coal. Gertie looked about for kindling. All over the place there was sign of Clovis—the bed with new sheets and blankets in which he had slept, his battered tool chest in a corner, new dishes and a coffeepot, groceries—but no kindling.
Reuben went out to the shed, but after what seemed a long while came back empty-handed and shivering. The little woodshed by the coalhouse had been so covered with snow he could hardly find the door, and when he had found it and clawed the snow away there had been nothing in it but beer bottles.
The tired, hungry, shivering children looked at Gertie, their eyes asking and expecting of her the warmth and food she had always given. She stood helplessly staring, first at the little knob marked “Oven,” then at the cold heating stove. “Jump around a little,” she advised at last. That’ll kind a warm you up. I’ll find—” Right behind her, seemed like, sounded a thumping, bumping thud, and then a child’s scream. She whirled, thinking one of her own was hurt, but they were all looking as she looked, toward the wall of their bedroom by the kitchen.
They were all silent, listening, staring at the wall until the screams subsided. “If we can hear them thet away, they can hear us, everthing we do an say,” Clytie whispered at last.
Gertie turned again to the heating stove. “Whatever they are, they’re people.” She got a starched apron of brightly be-flowered feed sacking from the trunk, and said as she tied it tightly about her waist, I’m aimen tu try tu borrie some kindlen frum them—strangers er no.”
Clytie looked at her mother’s singed and wind-tangled hair, the smear of gas soot on one cheek. “I’ll go, Mom. Nobody ud shorely mind loanen a little kindlen.”
Gertie frowned over Clytie’s bare legs, smoothed her own tangled hair, and at last turned to Reuben. “Son, couldn’t you go? You’re better fixed fer th weather than she is.”
The sullen look on Reuben deepened, but after a moment’s hesitation he went out through the ice-struck creaking kitchen door. Gertie, with Clytie helping, began to unpack the boxes and baskets. She had got a quilt and put the three younger ones under it on the bed in the room across from the bathroom, when Reuben came back. She saw that he had no kindling, and watched worriedly as he closed the door, and stood a moment with his back to the room. Then, with no glance at her, and stumbling over the things scattered on the floor, he rushed into the little living room like a chased wild animal, hunting a place to hide.
He pressed his face against the glass of the other outside door, and stood there for what seemed a long while. Gertie followed him and patted his shoulder, and at last he was able to tell her in a choked and halting voice what had happened. He had gone first to the door on the side where the child had cried. The blind was pulled on the door, but all the same he had knocked. Finally, after he had knocked a second time, a little girl some bigger than Cassie had come and lifted up the blind and looked at him. She’d frowned and shaken her head, and then gone off again without ever opening the door.
He had gone next to the door on the other side. Memories of what had happened there caused him to choke and clench his hands in anger. “Mom, I hadn’t knocked real loud, but before I was through a funny-talken man yelled somethen, like strange swear words, an he sounded madder’n a hornet when I hadn’t done a thing but knock. An all th time that same little old youngen that watched us when we come in, why he was a watchen me, a grinnen, an when I turned around to come home, he throwed a snowball right in my face, an then run off.”
“Now, now, honey,” Gertie said, “it won’t allus be like this. Recollect we’ll mebbe not be here no time atall. But anyhow pretty soon you’ll be goen to a big fine school like Meg’s youngens has got. Now, chirk up. You’ll have th little uns a feelen bad.” She looked around, her sad gray eyes a little brightened when she heard Amos’s loud laughter as Enoch with a great spluttering, whooshing, and banging of chairs drove one of the big trucks he had just seen. She heard the creaking of the bed. Cassie knew she mustn’t jump on the bed, but this once would warm her up, and she was happy now, calling with the little gurgle like the old Cassie: “Look out, big truck, look out. They’s a red light.”
The sounds of the children were suddenly swallowed in a mighty thumping on the wall by the bed, while a voice boomed: “Shut off u racket, kids. I gotta sleep.”
The children scuttled out, bumping into Gertie as she rushed to the bedroom. Cassie gave one last terrified glance toward the wall that had roared, then buried her face in her mother’s apron. Enoch, defiant, wanted to know, though in a whisper, why any man would be sleeping in the daytime, and Reuben, his voice hoarse with anger, explained: “That’s him, Mom. Th man that yelled at me.”
Gertie picked up Cassie and Amos and went into the living room, since it like the kitchen was in the middle, farthest from the listening walls. She sat with the children on the sofa, the older ones gathered round her, even Enoch was meek as a sheep, and silent. Rueben continued to stand by the front door, but was turned about now, looking at her. Even in the pallid light there was something worse than anger in his eyes. Pleasure? Did he want to say, smiling, “It serves you right for not buying the Tipton Place?”
A gust of wind cried in the telephone wires, then shrieked in the chimney, and Cassie snuggled against her, begging: “Let’s go back home, Mom, please. It’s cold.”
Clytie, already troubled and half frightened by Reuben’s story, suddenly flopped down onto the cot, and dissolved into sniffling sobs, while Amos screwed up his face and got ready to break into his lusty bawl. Gertie knew it was a sin to waste any kind of light in the daytime, but maybe some light would make the cold gray place warmer. She pulled the cord hanging from an unshaded bulb in the middle of the ceiling, and at once the hard white light fell over them, and their shadows lay sharp and cold on the bare floor. The cardboard walls shone smooth and dull, of some pale gray-green that made her think of a potato sprout that had never seen the sun. In the light the stove seemed even bigger, colder, and uglier with its short bent pipe and strange rusty tin skirt.
She sprang up, a child on either arm, and turned back toward the bedroom. “I’m aimen to put you youngens back in th bed. You’ve got yer shoes off an you’ll freeze. I’m aimen to git some kindlen—somehow.”
Her voice had dropped to a whisper as she entered the bedroom and slid Cassie to the bed. “Now be real quiet,” she whispered, giving Cassie, who still clung to her arm, a little push, and at the same time sliding Amos down with her other arm. “You uns don’t want that man to—” Cassie’s hands had tightened on her arm, and Amos had begun to scream, “I’m afeared, I—”
The fist—she knew it was a fist, and a big one, bigger than her own—banged again until it seemed the thin cardboard wall must crack, and the voice roared: “Can it, kids. Can it, now. I calla cops. I gotta sleep.”
Amos screamed more loudly than ever, and the fist banged again. Gertie, with the two of them in her arms, started back toward the living room. Suddenly she turned short about and looked at the wall, still trembling from its blows. “They’re afeared an they’re cold,” she cried, her voice so loud Clytie began a worried shushing. She heard the creak of a bed, a windy sigh. “Don’t b
e allatime scaren li’l kids, ’sbad—build um a fire,” the voice roared back at her.
“I cain’t find no kindlen,” she cried.
More sighs, then a knocking, low now as if to call attention to his presence. “Dey’s boards in mu shed. Butcha gotta split um.”
“I’d be much obliged,” Gertie said, knowing more from the tone of his voice than his words that he offered what she needed. She shook her head in wonder over the “Hokay” that followed, but whispered to the children, now more mystified than frightened, to be still and let the sick man sleep.
She took from his shed that adjoined her own, three good-sized, strangely shaped chunks of maple wood, harder and finer-grained than any she had ever seen. She got the hatchet from Clovis’s tool chest, and went out to do the splitting.
She had just finished one of the chunks when she realized that the same redheaded child who had watched their coming in now stood bare-headed and coatless as he watched her over a bottle of Coca-Cola tilted to his mouth. His blue marble-like eyes were accusing as he said, taking the bottle from his mouth: “Yu got dat outa Victor’s shed. He’ll gitcha.”
“He knows,” she said, annoyed by this new business of being watched. “I’ve got to git my youngens warm.”
“Maw keeps her oven on when her ain’t got no coal.”
“I couldn’t,” she said.
He finished the dirt-colored liquid, then looked about for a bit of wind-swept sidewalk. He found a bare spot, and flung the bottle hard against it. He did not smile, but something like satisfaction glittered in his eyes as he looked from the sharp-edged fragments to Gertie, staring at the glass with her mouth open, the hatchet uplifted. “Won’t burn,” he said, now studying the wood that was damp. “Hillbilly,” he went on, looking again at Gertie, unsmiling, nodding a little like a child who has just got the right answer to a problem in arithmetic. “But I’ll tell Maggie youses cold,” he said, running away.