SEVENTEEN
GERTIE, BUSIED WITH THE tricky job of getting the part in Clytie’s hair exactly straight, heard Cassie’s laughter from the boys’ bedroom, then her low toned chuckling talk. “Oh, Callie Lou, look what my boot has went an done. Did you ever see such boots, Callie Lou, eaten my shoes this away?” Another boot went on amid more laughter, and then her booted feet were skipping over the floor.
“Mom, I wisht you’d make her quit talken to herself that away; th kids’ull laugh at her.” Clytie, without waiting for Gertie’s opinion, lifted her voice in scolding: “Quit that silly talken to yerself, Cassie Marie, an hurry an git th rest a yer clothes on. You’ll make me late waiten fer you.”
“I ain’t a talken to myself, an I don’t need you to take me to school never no more.” A moment later Cassie came running through the passway, capless and mittenless. It was only when she held the door open, carefully, so that someone smaller than she might pass through that Gertie caught up with her. She was impatiently wiggle-some while her mother pulled the snowsuit hood from under the back of the suit, found one mitten in a pocket, and shoved one bare hand, holding Gertie’s little whittled hen, into the other pocket.
Gertie stood in the open storm door and watched her go. The bare hand holding the hen was out again, and under the muffled roar of the steel mill she heard: “Run fast, Callie Lou, an you won’t git so cold. Look at yer breath, Callie Lou. It’s a cloud, a pure white cloud fallen down on you like Chicken Little. Hurry, mebbe we’ll find that nice bubble-gum boy.” She was looking at the witch child instead of where she went, and bumped hard into a girl in a white scarf, hurrying in the opposite direction. The chicken flew from her hand, and Cassie fell face down in the icy alley.
Gertie ran out, but the bigger girl had already picked her up, and was brushing her off, murmuring, ashamed of having hurt a little one, “I’m awful sorry.”
It was Maggie Daly. Gertie, remembering the fighting in the alley, was silent as she wiped Cassie’s face and then the hen with a corner of her apron. But Maggie smiled, friendly as ever, and seeing the hen, cried, “Lemme see,” and held out her hand. “It’s a chickun. I seen one once at u zoo. I like it better than a toy chickun Mom got for Santa.” She remembered Cassie. “Got for Jimmy’s birthday, I mean. He’s plastic. Yu squash um down an u egg comes out. Where’dju buy this?”
“I whittled it.”
“Whittled?”
“Yes, took a knife an cut it out a wood.”
Maggie looked from the hen to her in wonder. “Yu mean, yu made it?”
Gertie nodded, aware that Mr. Anderson, who she had noticed left for work in suit clothes about the time the children went to school, was on his steps, listening and craning his head to see the hen. Their eyes met. He smiled, lifted his hat, and came on into the alley. His voice matched his neat clothing and hair when he said, “You’re Mrs. Nevels, our new neighbor, I believe.”
She nodded.
“I’m Mr. Anderson, from Indiana—an Indiana farm boy, like my wife.” He disregarded Maggie’s giggle, but went on with the same look in his eyes her mother used to have when she would count the chickens over and over because she couldn’t be certain whether one was missing or not, “And you, I believe, are from Kentucky?”
She nodded.
“Your husband worked in a factory before he came up here?”
She shook her head.
“What part of Kentucky are you from, may I ask?”
“About th middle.”
“I mean, are you from the hills—the southern Appalachians?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. He made her think a little of the man with the star. No, more like Maggie’s Virgin Marys, smooth, with his neat shaven face, his cheeks rosy and plump below a high palish forehead, balding back into smooth, yellowish, oily-looking hair.
“I mean,” he was saying, vexation struggling with the chicken counting look in his pale blue, slightly bulging eyes, as if one chicken were missing, “Are you from east or west Kentucky?”
She considered. “I’d say about th middle.”
Two chickens were gone now, and he was vexed. “But is it hilly?”
“Kentucky, th part I seen on th train, is pretty well hills all across—little hills, I mean.” She gave Cassie a little push. “Run along, honey. Them safety boys’ull be gone an you cain’t cross the streets.” Already the alley was empty of children except for Reuben, who always left last and walked slowly like a tired man going to a hated job. Cassie started away, but stopped and looked uncertainly at her mother when the man reached one pinky white hand for the hen, saying:
“May I see this pretty little thing? Mrs. Ander—Lena said you carved.” He studied the hen, turning it over and over, until Gertie, embarrassed, said:
“It’s jist some whittlen foolishness I made. An when th youngens wanted something fer to sell at the mothers’ club sale at school I sent it. I figgered somebody might pay fifty cents—if anybody comes that likes sich tricks.”
Homer considered an instant longer. “I’ll give you a dollar for it,” he said. “It will make an interesting conversation piece for my desk.” He reached into the breast pocket of his dark blue coat and drew out a wallet. From it he took a dollar bill and handed it to her, easy, as if money for foolishness grew on trees.
Gertie was conscious of Cassie’s troubled eyes on the hen that had been meant for Miss Vashinski. “You’ve already took her th jumpen-jack doll, and I’ll git some cookies er somethin,” she promised as Cassie scuttled away.
“It’s nice to have met you,” Homer said, lifting his hat as he turned back toward his doorway. Mrs. Anderson, with the screaming Judy on her arm, had called to remind him that he’d be late for work. She, too, noticed the hen, and asked for a closer look. Homer handed it to her, frowning at the baby as he did so. “Please, dear, must you spoil her? She must learn to cry it out.”
“But if she cries too long before feeding time, she burps so,” Mrs. Anderson said, looking at the hen, her glance pleased and warm.
Maggie giggled. “You two oughta git together. Mrs. Anderson paints pitchers.”
Mrs. Anderson gave Homer a quick, daggerish kind of look as she shifted the baby to her other arm. “Not any more. There just isn’t time or space—here.”
“Don’t quit,” Gertie said, troubled by the woman’s despair. “Everybody needs a little foolishness a some kind.”
“My painting,” Mrs. Anderson said in a low, tight voice, “wasn’t exactly foolishness.” The last word was almost drowned in a mighty banging clumping. She whirled back into the kitchen crying: “Please, Georgie, don’t—do let the ironing board stand up. Mother must iron.”
Gertie took advantage of the commotion to hurry home. Amos was alone. He might be sticking nails in the wall sockets or trying to light the gas or burning papers in the flame of the gas hot-water heater.
However, Amos was safe in his favorite refuge, the bathroom. There he never tired of running water into the washbasin and sailing the two wooden boats she had made for him, or of flushing the toilet, then leaning, elbows on the toilet seat and watching the water swirl in and out. Then, like one who has achieved great things, he laughed each time he heard the mysterious glug. He was bleached out and thinner than he had used to be. This morning he showed no sign of wanting breakfast, so Gertie suggested, as she often did when it was not too cold, that he play outside awhile like Enoch. But Amos only shook his head as he listened to the gurgle of the filling water closet.
She stood in the narrow space left from the shower, the hot-water heater, and other trappings of the bathroom, and studied him. She asked after a moment, “Amos, honey, you recollect back home?”
“Huh?”
“You recollect back home, th trees, an runnen through th woods with Gyp, an a runnen down th hill to th spring.”
He finally lifted his head from the toilet and looked at her. “Mom, Pop’s goen to show me a boat, a great big boat, a real live boat on a heap a water.”
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“You recollect Gyp?”
A train blew, sharp, hard jabs of sound followed by the roaring rush that rattled the windows and set the house atremble. Amos listened, smiling; and when the sound had swept on, he said, “That train carries people.”
“You’re a learnen your trains, son,” she said, and turned away.
She was picking up the ruckus left by the whirlwind rising and going out of the children when someone knocked. It was Maggie with the two least Dalys and a small paper-wrapped bundle. “Are you awful busy?” she asked, smiling, taking her welcome for granted as she slid the children from her arms.
“Yes an no,” Gertie said. “I’m in th worst kind a business—a tryen to make up my mind.” She fingered Mr. Anderson’s dollar bill in her apron pocket. “This dollar frum th little hen belongs by rights to th school fer th money-raisen sale. Enoch an Clytie wanted to take cookies like th other youngens, but me an that stove ain’t learned to git along. I’m a haten th thought a tryen to bake em, so that I’ve might nigh give in to tryen to buy um frum that—”
“Mr. Zadkiewicz,” Maggie said. “Th easiest way to manage him, Mama’s found out, is to send all yu kids at once. He hates kids allatime messing around, specially little ones. He’ll sell um anything he’s got if enough goes, an yu know, pulls down stuff inu shelves. When our father’s out a cigarettes, Mama sends um all but me. They tell him they can’t go home without cigarettes. They hang around awhile, an pretty soon he finds some. I could go buy yu some cookies,” she went on. “Mama hadda go out, an I hadda stay home with th little kids. For the dollar you could buy more’n three dozen plain sugar cookies. They’d look home baked.”
Gertie pondered. “I mebbe ought to make em.” She looked uneasily at the stove.
“I could make um,” Maggie offered. “It’s not such a job. We could chill the dough in Mrs. Bommarita’s icebox and borrow Mrs. Schultz’s cookie press. And I’ll bet Mrs. Anderson’s got a lot a currants and raisins and stuff left from her fruit cake; they’d do for decoration. She loves to loan things on account u it gives her u excuse to ask questions for Homer. If you gotta buy sugar yu could git a stamp from Mrs. Miller, on account u she works an her kids is so little she don’t use all her ration points.”
“Mebbe,” Gertie said, “we’d better jist buy um, but I’ll go. Yer mama—”
“She wouldn’t mind,” Maggie said. “And p’raps while I’m gone yu could git a line on how to help St. Francis. When I seen how good yu carved th little chickun, I thoughtcha might fix him.” She unwrapped the parcel, explaining: “I saved his pieces, but du kids got into um un broke um up. John, don’t take th woman’s icebox bottom off. She won’t like it. But Mom always liked um, so I saved um.”
John, somewhere between two and three, looked over his shoulder at his sister, then turned again to his job of taking out the little swinging piece of cardboard that hid the drip pan. Gertie examined St. Francis, smiling a little at him or at what part of him was left. Whoever had whittled him had done a pretty good job, and used good wood, dark and fine-grained as the best black walnut root. His face, thin with wrinkles down the cheeks, made her think of Uncle John back home. She liked his high balding forehead, and his beard, long like that of old Amos. One hand was still safely laid against his bosom, but the other, that must have been lifted like that of a preacher giving benediction, was gone; and his legs were broken off at about the knees, she thought. It was hard to say, for, like the blue china doll in Max’s house, he was draped in a long robe. “How was his feet, honey?” she asked.
“He wore sandals that showed his toes; yu know, th way th saints do allatime. Butcha could make um barefooted; or if feet’s too much trouble just let his robe fall down. Mostly I want him so’s he’ll stand up. And his hand—do yu think yukun fix his hand? He was blessing u birds, yu know. He had two birds, but Chris shot um with his BB gun.”
“I can fix him a hand easy. He’s got one left to go by. But his feet? They’d look, I recken, like th ones next door.”
“Oh, no, no, not like that Polish stuff,” Maggie cried, turning toward the door. “Lemme go git th blessed Virgin.”
While she was gone, and the children busied themselves with the icebox, Gertie went into her bedroom and got a narrow, slightly crooked, but thick little board of good black walnut. Back home she had saved it for years against the day when she might want some of it for buttons or the legs of a low three-legged stool she had always aimed to make. She had, when leaving, nailed it onto a crate, planning still on a little stool with legs carved prettily.
She was sawing off the needed piece when Maggie came running back with a china doll with a golden crown and a long robe falling past her feet. “Like this,” Maggie said. Gertie paused in her sawing to study the figure, frowning a little. “Ain’t she pretty?” Maggie asked.
“Yes—but—”
“Don’tcha like her?”
Gertie finished the cut, put the saw away, and considered, studying the figure. “That’s Mary, th mother of Jesus?”
“Of course. Isn’t she beautiful?”
“She looks like them on th Christmas cards,” Gertie said, and added slowly, “Th other Mary, she couldn’t ha been beautiful—at least not much beautiful.” She nodded over the robe, covering the feet. “She never could ha done her work in a long-tailed dress like that. She was a worken woman an allus a goen here an yonder, like into th desert to see her cousin.” She looked at the smooth face. “She seen too much trouble to look that away.”
Maggie was both sorrowful and angry as she asked: “And how would she look, an how would you know? She’s always looked like this.”
Gertie smiled, sorry she had hurt the girl by talking out on such a trifling matter. “Law, I don’t know, honey. I figger,” she went on, bringing out her knife, “Mary would look like—like your mother.”
“My mother!” Maggie’s hurt changed into astonishment which in turn dissolved in giggles as she repeated, “My mother?”
“They both seen a lot a trouble, had a heap a youngens, an worked hard,” Gertie said, annoyed by Maggie’s giggles, but more with herself for letting her tongue run away. The most she’d seen of Maggie’s mother was angry eyes above a broom handle, but she did work hard and keep her children clean.
Maggie was still giggling when she left to get the cookies, and Gertie was left to wrestle with St. Francis and the young children. The baby climbed on the table and helped himself to some gingerbread she had baked the night before. John soon got up from his seat by the icebox and said, “Lookee,” and held out the drain-pan cover as if it had been a gift.
Gertie, unable to think of anything else, said, “Thank you, honey,” and laid it on top of the icebox. John walked slowly around the kitchen, searching for something else loose. He found the swinging panel on the cook-stove below the oven door, and sat by it, working, until it too was off. Then, after finding the heating stove too hot for his work, he leaned on Gertie’s knee and watched her whittle.
St. Francis took kindly to the strange wood, and by the time Maggie came back with three bags of cookies Gertie had the rough work done on his missing knees and feet. These she planned to fasten to the saint in a jagged seam that, once glued and held awhile in a clamp, would seem no more than a lighter band of brown around the robe.
Maggie went home to get lunch. The time had passed so quickly that the part of the morning Gertie dreaded most had come and gone without her knowing it—the moment the mailman passed her door. She would hope up to the moment of his coming. Maybe somebody at home had written her a nice long letter telling about everything and everybody. Each time the mailman walked on, not even looking in her direction, the quick death of her hope would bring a sharp thrust of homesick loneliness that followed her some days for hours. She heard at times from her mother. The letters were long enough, but they dealt chiefly with her mother’s health, and were filled with advice and comments on religion, politics, and the weather.
Today it was noon before sh
e hardly knew it, and time to get Enoch in from his alley play. Cassie came from school, racing ahead of the others to tell her that in school Miss Vashinski had showed all the youngens the jumping-jack doll she had taken yesterday. Miss Vashinski had said it was beautiful, very beautiful, Cassie said; her words the same, her voice like Miss Vashinski’s voice.
Clytie and Enoch were pleased with the cookies. But Reuben, sitting silent as usual, spooning up beans and onions and bread, shook his head. “I don’t want no cookies,” he said.
“But Reuben, don’t you want tu take somethen fer th bake sale? It’d be like not taken er not buyen a pie at a pie supper back home,” Clytie said.
“It ain’t like back home,” Reuben said, his voice husky with feeling. “Back home they ain’t no youngens to giggle ever time I say somethen, an they never was a teacher as hateful as Miz Whittle.”
“But you like some a th teachers,” Gertie said. “I’ve heared you say so.”
“But I’ve got that ole Miz Whittle more’n any uv em,” Reuben said, looking at her with the half accusing, half contemptuous look that had been new the morning her mother came crying on the white saddle mule. But the look was old now.
Reuben was less surly when he came from school in the afternoon, though it was Enoch who came running first with the big news. He’d seen the jumping-jack doll on a table with fancy work when he went at noon recess. There’d been a two-fifty price tag on it. Two dollars and fifty cents for a piece of his mother’s old whittling! He stared at her in mingled shock and admiration.
Then Clytie came excitedly, calling: “Mom, Mom, guess who bought that jumping-jack doll? Mr. Spyros, an did he ever like it. He showed it to us in art class.”