“Pay him, Mom,” Clytie whispered. “We have tu have ice. It’s so hot in here everthing’ull ruin.”
Gertie went to her coat for another dollar bill, while the man stood in the door and filled the alley with his mighty belching roars of “Ice. Coal.” As he took the money, his glance rolled slowly, appraisingly over her face. “Any t’ing else yu want? Coal?”
She shook her head, but he continued to study her face, his tongue reflectively licking his back teeth made a bulge in a jaw, “Yu wanta—chance? Yu wanta make money, yu gotta take a chance. Yu know—yu wanta slip?”
“Slip?” and when he continued silent, tongue rubbing cheek, Gertie nodded toward Maggie’s bit of cardboard on a kitchen shelf. “Like that? I’ve already got one—tu help th good sisters.”
He glanced at the pink card, then studied her face a moment longer. He slowly shook his head, “Naw,” he said, the sound rising in his stomach, falling down his nose. He went, then, crying “Ice” into the snow.
The dusk had deepened until the flickering steel-mill lights made a bloody brightness on the windows, when there came another banging on the door. Clovis. He looked peaked, she thought, but hardly had a chance to look at him before the children came swarming over him, so crowding the tiny kitchen that she backed against the icebox, watching. Clytie was almost crying, and even Amos, little as he was, remembered his daddy as if he’d never been away.
She felt a sharp thrust of guilt. It was in truth like her mother said: the children had a right to live with their father. Seemed like sometimes they loved him better than her, especially Enoch and Clytie. But then she’d always been the one to give them the work and the scoldings. Clovis had brought the fun—trips in the coal truck, the river in summer, grape hunting in the fall. She’d never had the time.
In a moment he looked across their heads and smiled. “Supper ready, Gert? I’m starved fer some a yer good cooken. I ain’t had a bite a fried meat, seems like, since I got up here.”
“I ain’t got no fried meat,” she said, “but I’ve got supper.”
“I’m figgeren on some good eaten. You ought tu have a heap a ration points. You never used none at home.”
They pulled the table out from the wall, and there was room for Clovis and the older children to squeeze into their chairs, with space enough left at the corners for Amos and Cassie to stand. Gertie never sat down, but, as she had often done at home, stood between table and stove waiting on them all. Clovis, she saw, was displeased with the food. He looked resigned and disgusted as he had used to be when she left eggs out of the corn bread in order to have a few more to sell. Some of Sophronie’s beans were left, and they were good, better than her own scrambled eggs and corn bread. The eggs had stuck for lack of grease and the bread, badly baked to begin with, was dry and hard and lifeless, as the meal that had gone into it.
He chirked up when Clytie praised the new dishes, and Enoch started carrying on about the wonders of the radio, and Cassie admired his new work clothing. Gertie, sorry that after he had bought so many things for them she didn’t have a better kind of supper, said, trying hard to act pleased, “You’ve done good, real good, Clovis, to buy so much stuff, an send us th truck money besides.”
He looked at her with a great showing of surprise. “Law, woman, you shorely don’t think I’ve paid fer all this. Up here everbody buys everthing on time.”
She had fixed herself a plate of corn bread and beans, set it on the rim of the sink, and started to eat, standing up. But now she turned away from the food, asking, “How much we owe, Clovis?”
“Gert, don’t start a worryen. Jist git it into yer head that I’m a maken big money. I ain’t no sweeper maken th lowest. I done what I aimed to do, got on as a machine repair man. An it shore took some tall talken, an a heap a white lies. But it was worth it. I git in a heap a overtime, too. Do you know what my pay check-ull be this week?” he went on, laying down his knife and fork and twisting about in his chair to look at her, “Why, better’n a hundred dollars.”
She heard the admiring gasp of Reuben, hurt and sullen as he still was from his attempts to borrow kindling. Big as he was, he’d worked many a day for seventy-five cents. Clytie, her voice all jerky with surprise and delight, was exclaiming, “Oh, Pop—why we’re rich. That’s way more’n a schoolteacher makes back home in a month.”
“I don’t make it ever week,” Clovis explained, “an recollect that’s afore hospitalization, an union dues, an OAB, an taxes. An right now, with everything tu buy, it ain’t no fortune. It took saven to git a down payment on all this an on a car, too.”
Gertie backed against the sink, heard her plate of beans and corn bread flop off the rim into the dishwater, but did not look around, “But Clovis,” she began haltingly, not wanting to darken the family joy, “if’n you’ve already run intu debt ’fore me an th youngens comes, why how can you manage with us? An we cain’t, jist cain’t keep on a liven in this little hole. Cain’t you git along without a car?”
He pushed his plate away. “Gert, we ain’t hardly seen each other ’fore you start a quarrelen about money an th place I got fer ye. What was you expecten—a castle in Grosse Pointe where them rich dagoes lives? I was lucky, mighty lucky, tu git this. They ain’t hardly standen room in Detroit—I’d meant tu surprise th youngens with a ride when th weather was fitten.” He held out his cup for more coffee. “But I’ve already got me a car. It’s in th parken place now. A body cain’t git along in this town thout a car.”
The delighted squeals of the children, all save Reuben, only subsided under his animated discussion of the car, especially the sweetness of the motor’s running, now that he had worked on it. Gertie had heard little past the words “got me a car.” She turned and looked down at the gray dishwater. If just for one minute she could walk outside, go to the barn, the spring, somewhere—walk, see her father, get away from the gas smell, the water smell, the steamy heat, the hard white light beating into her eyeballs. She turned toward the outside door. A corner of the pulled out table barred her way. She looked toward the passway. Clovis’s chair was there. Her empty hands found the dishrag. Somehow she washed the dishes. Hemmed in, shut down, by all this—and debts.
The evening in the hot, overcrowded, noise-laden place seemed endless. She answered questions about back home, learned that Sophronie’s man, Whit Meanwell, worked in the same Flint plant as Clovis, though on a different job and shift. She wanted to ask Clovis questions: how much did they owe, how much was the interest on the debts for the car and the house plunder, where was the school, and how far away? But the radio was on, and she talked but little.
As soon as the children were asleep, Clovis had no thought for answering questions. Amos had been put to bed on the cot in the middle room, so that Gertie and Clovis were alone in the room beside the kitchen. Still, she was conscious of the restless sleep of the children on the other side of the thin walls. They were all so close together it didn’t seem decent. The whole place wasn’t as big as either of the two main rooms at the Tipton Place.
She shut her eyes and tried to think that she was there when Clovis fell quickly into a deep, satisfied sleep. She drowsed and dreamed of pines talking. The talking rose, became the roar of a fast through train, its screeching whistle rising above the roar as it neared the through street. This was followed at once by the tumultuous sound of its passing, so close it seemed in the very house. Amos and Cassie screamed out in fright, then as the sounds subsided they sank gradually into a whimpering half-sleep. There remained only the quiverings—the windows, the steel springs of the bed, the dishes, a chair touching the wall.
There came at last a silence so complete she could hear the ticking of the clock under the bed, and the snoring of Sophronie’s children behind the wall of the girls’ bedroom. The feeling that had followed her at times since she had got on the train came back in the silence—she had forgotten something, something very important. But what? She was sorting out the things she’d left behind when she found herse
lf lifted on one elbow, listening.
Someone was moving about on the other side of the wall. She heard running water, the soft thud of a pot going over the gas flame, the creak and slam of an icebox door—breakfast getting sounds. Soon she heard the opening and closing of the outside door, and whoever it was did not come back. He had not taken time to eat his breakfast. He was most likely the husband of that Sophronie in the sleazy nightgown. She was too lazy to get up and cook breakfast.
She drowsed, but sleep enough never came to drown the strangeness of the bed or the closeness of the air. It seemed only a little while before she found herself listening again. A singing it was in the alley now. Tipsy he was, and a tenor, “They’ll be pie in a sky—” A woman’s voice cut him off, something like the girl Maggie’s, but near crying, “Please, Joseph, please. Du neighbors—”
“Quitcha tucken,” the man said, and a door on the other side of the alley slammed.
“Tucken.” What was “tucken,” she wondered. Then the door next her own was opened quietly, but slammed shut so loudly that Clovis turned in his sleep. She heard the opening of the oven door, the little whoosh of the lighting gas, then the opening and closing of the icebox door. A chair was pulled out followed by the hissing sound of the cap jerked off a bottle of something fizzy like pop. She heard a chair tip back against the wall, so close through the thinness seemed like she could feel it. She could see the man’s chair leaning against the wall, his cold feet warming in the oven, as he drank from the bottle. She heard the soft clink of glass on steel as he put it down. But where had he been and why, at this time of night? She sat straight up in bed with wonder and surprise when the voice came, low, more like a sigh than a voice, “Oh, Lord, that moven line,” for the voice was a woman’s voice, Sophronie’s.
The sounds on the other side of the wall or her own abrupt movement awakened Clovis enough that he mumbled sleepily: “Don’t be afeared, Gert. Th doors locks good.”
“Oh, I ain’t afeared,” she whispered. “It’s that Sophronie. Why, she’s jist got in home.”
He clamped one ear against the pillow, put an arm over the other. “When else would a woman on th three-tu-twelve shift git home?”
THIRTEEN
EAT YER OATS, CASSIE—YOU’LL git mighty hungry in school.” But Cassie only gagged and stared at Gertie with frightened, beseeching eyes.
“I don’t want to go—to …”
“Kindergarten,” Clytie put in briskly. “An Pop said you had to go. All th other little youngens goes. You’ll like it, Cassie.”
And later Gertie repeated, “You’ll like it, Cassie,” as she got the child along with the others into what seemed the numberless pieces of clothing Clovis had bought for them all, when, after some cross questioning, he learned she still had left from the Henley money and what she had got from the sale of her stock and little store of molasses, corn, and potatoes, better than two hundred dollars.
Struggling now with the heavy woolen pants of Cassie’s new snowsuit, she thought again of the money. She didn’t begrudge the children clothes—boots, scarves, more underclothing, snowsuits for everybody but Reuben, boots for herself, and a woolen head rag. But most of the money she had meant to keep for getting a start of livestock when they went back home was gone. Only the money for land was left, the secret money gathered through the years. She had told Clovis of Henley’s gift, knowing he would learn of it from the children, who had learned from her mother, but the new coat carried the secret of her savings as well as the old.
She roused to call to Enoch, who, all eagerness to see the fine new school, was dashing outside. It was only a few minutes past eight, and Sophronie had told them that school children were supposed to leave home between eight-twenty and eight-thirty, not a minute sooner or a minute later, else the safety-patrol boys would be gone. But now, just as she started to open the door to remind Enoch of the time, he turned and screamed, “Mom, Mom, we’ll be late. Maggie’s brothers an a lot more youngens is already a goen,” and without waiting for an answer he ran into the little crowd of children, hurrying down the alley.
“Less’n this clock’s wrong er that woman’s mistook, it’s a way too soon.”
Enoch paid her no mind but walked on, following a few steps behind the children. Though no one of them turned to speak to him, some whispering, giggling talk went between them, and a little girl with long black curls turned and walked backward the better to see him, giggling all the while. Suddenly, as if by a signal, they all stopped and turned and looked at him. Gertie saw, even in the smoky early-morning light, the red flush rise on Enoch’s cheeks. He hesitated an instant, then came on, but more slowly now, up to the watching children.
She watched Maggie’s redheaded brother, the biggest one, bigger by far than Enoch, step out from the others. Then, so quick she hardly saw it, was the fist swung hard on Enoch’s shoulder, and the expertly tripping foot that sent him sprawling on the alley ice. A smaller one, the boy who had thrown the Coca-Cola bottle, grabbed Enoch’s fallen-off cap, new, with ear muffs, and flung it into the trash can, crying over his shoulder as he ran after the others: “Go to yu public school, yu hillbilly heathen, youse. We don’t have to go to school with niggers an Jews an hillbillies.”
She started down the steps, but hid again behind the storm door when Enoch got slowly to his feet. She watched him brush the black snow from his clothing, take his cap from the trash can, and then, with a smear of dirt on his cheek and limping a little, come back to his own walk, where he stopped and gave a quick suspicious glance all around, as if to make certain none had seen his humiliation.
She wanted to ask if they had hurt him much, but did not. Enoch would rather have her belief that he could take care of himself than her sympathy.
Clytie called to remind her that it was fifteen minutes past eight. She gave Enoch one last pitying glance, and hurried back to the job of getting the younger ones into the strange seeming outdoor clothing, sending each child, as soon as it was booted, buckled, and zipped, outside to wait with Enoch. Then there was nothing to do but the thing she had dreaded since coming, and dreaded still more after watching Enoch in the alley—put on her own outdoor clothing, take the birth certificates and the shot papers from County Health as Sophronie had told her to do, and go to the strange school with the children. She pulled on the great knee-high boots Clovis had bought for her, but stood an instant longer in the kitchen. The Josiah basket, under the table because there seemed no room any place else for it, caught her eye. She picked it up, dropped the papers into it, and as she went out the familiar feel of the basket dangling from her arm was a comforting thing.
The children stood waiting in a silent little huddle against the coalhouse, which gave some shelter from the keen-fingered north wind. Clytie frowned on the basket, whispering, “Mom, I don’t think people up here carries baskets.” But Gertie only pressed the basket against her as she stood by the telephone pole and looked about her. The sky, unlike the skies back home, told her nothing. Was it the even gray of clouds, of smoke, a cloudy dawn, or a cloudy sunset? It seemed early, very early, more like milking time than school time.
She heard a train, the clank and hissing roar of the steel mill, and sounds of traffic on the through street, one row of houses away, but there was no sight nor sound of people. She had a sudden distrust of the clock; maybe it was night still. She looked at the shivering, frightened children. Even Enoch was afraid, his cap twisting in his hand, an old-man look on him as he stared straight ahead.
Then he and the others looked up eagerly as a half starved sheep when the Meanwell door next their own was flung open and Sophronie’s Claude Jean and Gilbert ran down the steps. Enoch looked toward them but did not move. Claude Jean, the smaller, a pale-eyed, white-headed boy of about his size, ran a little distance down the alley then stopped suddenly and called back, “C’mon, kids, ain’tcha goen to school?”
Enoch’s smile was a warming thing to see. He ran after them at once, followed a moment later by Clytie,
with Reuben going last and more slowly. Gertie was leading Cassie and Amos into the slippery alley when the Meanwell door was flung open again, and Sophronie, shrouded in clouds of steam, came onto the stoop with a freshly washed sheet in her hands, a cigarette in one corner of her mouth, a clothespin bag over her arm, and calling, “Hey, you.”
The golden peacocks fluttered about her feet, as with one eye squinted against the cigarette smoke she began to hang the sheet on the clothesline, pushing down pins with sharp, swift jabs, fighting to get the sheet hung before it froze. “Leave that little youngen uth me,” she said, when one hand was free and she could take the cigarette from her mouth. “No needa draggen him all thataway through this cold.” Her still blue eyes went to Amos, smiled. “Don’t-cha wanta play uth Wheateye? You uns can have th best time.” The last pin in, she turned, pulled open her door, gave Amos a little push as she called, “Wheateye, they’s a little boy come to see you.”
Gertie had a glimpse of checked linoleum, flowerdy curtains in a kitchen so crammed with a washing machine and other furniture that there seemed no room for a woman of even Sophronie’s size. She was considering trying to explain that Amos might cry with a stranger when the closing storm door for an instant framed Sophronie’s face, blowing smoke, whispering, “He’ll be all right.”
Gertie tried to find Amos through the steam-blanketed glass, and failing, turned to the puzzled Cassie. “It don’t seem right leaven your little brother thisaway with a stranger woman, but we ain’t got time to argue.”
Cassie only shivered and said nothing as Gertie hurried away, realizing the others were out of sight and that with no one to show her she had not the least notion of how to find the school. However, when she and Cassie had turned into the big alley by the railroad fence they found themselves at once in a swarm of children all headed for the through street.
They walked on what, Gertie thought, must be a cement sidewalk under the layers of snow tramped into ice. The through street by which they walked was clean of snow, though great banks of dirty ice and snow from the snow plows overflowed onto the sidewalk. Broad as the street was, it was crowded with cars and trucks and busses, with many flashing by so close the children were splattered from the piled-up slush.