“Mother, Mother, don’t—please. Please don’t cry. It’ll be all right.” Her lids blinked twice. “Yes, yes it will, it will, Mother. I promise.” He leaned to her, laid his head against her knee, patted her gown, trying to communicate to her some measure of childlike reassurance.
When she had quieted, he made himself more comfortable on the stool and again took up the book, his place all marked where he intended to begin. He held the book up for a moment so she could see the title: Fairy Tales of Long Ago. Another chuckle. “Like you said, Mother, once you used to read to us, now it’s the other way around. Well,” he said, a little preamble, and commenced.
“Once upon a time there were some elves who dwelled in a wood, and happening upon a cottage one day, they spied a cradle beside a fire. The mother was nowhere to be seen, so they stole into the cottage and what did they behold in the cradle but a beautiful-looking child. Now the elves were bad and mischievous creatures and they loved nothing so much as doing harm to others. So they took the child from its mother and left in its place a changeling with a big head and staring eyes, an ugly creature of impish countenance like themselves who did nothing but eat and drink—”
An unexpected breeze swept through the window, fluttering the curtain, dropping it, and scurrying to expire in the far corner of the room. Niles sat very still. The only noises to be heard were his own slight, even breathing, the thrum of a beetle at the screen, the disapproving clock pendulum, the fan’s erratic buzz, and the queer-sounding, inarticulate sobs that spilled finally from his mother’s throat as, holding the book so she might enjoy the illustration, he felt her tears dripping like hot wax upon his hand.
Poor Mother, her makeup was running. He felt so sorry for her; she was so pathetic, sitting there in the wheelchair, twisting her hands in her lap, shuddering. She didn’t care for this story. She would rather have Anthony Adverse. But Anthony Adverse, he had discovered, was dull; he didn’t like it at all. She would have to take what he cared to read, not what she wanted to hear. Poor, pathetic, nosy Mother. Curiosity killed the cat, as Holland would say. Poking around in the Chautauqua desk, looking for some old tobacco tin.
What else could Holland have done—what else could anybody have done—except to reach out and push her down the stairs?
Leno Angelini was sure drunk—in the bag, as Uncle George would say. Standing in the passageway beyond the apple cellar, a tool in one hand, silent and unobserved, Niles watched through a partly opened door of the cold-cellar, where the jars of jellies and pickles were stored. Mr. Angelini was helping himself to the wine at the bottom of a small keg sitting on a stone shelf. By the light of a candle he bent over the spigot, holding the copper cup from the pump and waiting while it filled. Well, why not? It was practically Leno’s wine—he had trod it out from the grapes in the arbor just as he used to do in the old country, Niles himself and Holland helping the past couple of years. But look at the way he was drinking it, almost losing his balance, head tilted back, red wine dribbling over his chin; no wonder he was in the bag. Now he was making funny sounds in his throat as he emptied the cup and returned to the keg, wiggling the spigot and waiting for the wine to run. When it failed, he cursed and struck the cask with the heel of his hand. The cask tottered a moment, then tumbled to the floor and rolled hollowly back and forth on the stones. “All gone, finito,” he mumbled, shaking his head and grabbing another keg from a corner. Uncle George would sure be raising hell if he found Leno had opened a new keg. Now that was strange—Mr. Angelini was crying. Cripes! Striking his chest; and hard, too, that big fist doubled up like a hammer head, pounding himself on the chest as though to punish himself for something. Now what? He had picked up the bungstarter, the heavy-headed wooden mallet used to knock the bung out—cripes, now he was slamming the mallet down on the top of the keg, big heavy blows. Mr. Angelini was mad, or hurt, or both. That must be the Latin temperament Ada spoke about sometimes. Wow, he was really letting that old keg top have it, wham, bam! And muttering; no good trying to figure out what, Niles decided, since he couldn’t speak Italian. Holding his breath, he wedged his eye closer to the crack as Mr. Angelini stepped back, his features wild and contorted, lifted the mallet over his head with both hands and struck at the top of the keg. It smashed the thin wooden membrane, the pieces splintering in all directions as the bungstarter plunged into the wine, splashing the red liquid into Mr. Angelini’s blank and surprised face.
Niles pushed the door open and stepped into the room. “Come away, Mr. Angelini,” he said, trying to take the old man’s arm. “Come away.” But Mr. Angelini only stared uncomprehendingly amid a spate of piteous broken Italian.
“What? What are you saying?” the boy asked.
“Da wine, she’s-a go sour,” Mr. Angelini explained with a mournful look at the mutilated cask. “She’s-a da last from last year, now she’s-a go bad.” His arms were crossed over his stomach as if to keep his pain from spilling out like the wine, his head shaking in some bewildered, speechless denial, his eyes hollow, staring as though at a ghost.
“Come, Mr. Angelini, come out of here.”
“No!” Wrenching himself away, he yanked a piece of canvas tarpaulin onto the floor and knelt. “Leno fix, subito. Questo vino è male.” With mighty yanks he tore a square from the canvas and flung it over the open top of the cask. Taking a length of cord he made several turns around the keg and secured the canvas. “There, that’s-a good, eh boy? She’s-a no go bad, this-a wine.” He started as he glanced down at Niles’s hand. “Boy, what you got there?” he demanded with a scowl.
“It’s your saw,” Niles answered, holding up his hand.
“What you gonna do wit’ dat dere saw?”
“Nothing, Mr. Angelini. It’s all done.”
“All done? Den you hang dat saw back in dat shed, eh? Like-a Leno tell you.”
“Yes, sir, I will.” Taking Mr. Angelini’s hand, he pulled him to the door. Upstairs, Niles returned the saw to a nail on the tool shed wall.
“No no no,” Mr. Angelini was shaking his head. “No, boy, the hacksaw, she’s-a go here.” Setting down the copper cup, he moved the tool to the appropriate spot, just above the rubber hip boots Father had worn to the poverty party. Leno chuckled. “You fadder—he’s-a funny man, eh? He’s-a dress up in you’ mudder’ dress for da party—dat’s-a funny man.” He chuckled again, then his smile faded as he gave Niles a long look. “Boy?” he said softly.
“Yes?” Thinking how, with his mournful gaze he had that Tribal Elder Look, waiting as though to offer up a judgment.
Mr. Angelini opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, muttering, “Niente, niente,” and with a long look at the tool shed wall he went out under the breezeway and disappeared around the corner.
Niles picked up the copper cup and went to return it to the pump. He hung it up, pumped enough water to fill the pool under the spout, then crouched over it, put the flat of his hand on the drain to stop it, and waited for the water to become still. He remained motionless for a time, staring back at the face in the water. Then, abruptly, he yanked his hand away. As the water disappeared he stood, flinging the wet drops from his hand onto the gravel. Glancing up at the stairway landing, he saw Ada by the post, watching him. How long had she been there? He didn’t know, and could read nothing in the little hopeful smile she gave to him. Then she went in.
Back under the breezeway again, Niles took out the harmonica and played a few bars on it.
How many miles to Babylon? Threescore miles and ten—
Repeated the phrase.
Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again.
Pretty soon, little by little, in the shadows, almost as though he were the Cheshire Cat, appeared Holland: first the smile, then the shock of hair, then the bright pink that was a shirt, then the rest of him.
The ritual:
“Where’ve you been?”
As it usually did, Holland’s crooked grin widened. “No place,” he answered evenly.
“Been
down to the train tracks?”
“Nope.”
And: Packard Lane? Nope. Talcotts Ferry? Nope. To Babylon? The catechism ended with a shrug from Holland. “Just around,” he said, the usual formula.
Niles offered the harmonica. “This is yours. Ada found it over at Mrs. Rowe’s house.” Where Niles thought to see guilt, Holland’s face was quite expressionless.
“I’m to ask you—”
“What?”
“Ask you—”
Holland was waiting.
“Nothing.”
“You’re crazy.”
Niles saw him returning his look with a level gaze, a half-smile playing about his mouth. As they stopped beside the door of the tool shed Niles whispered something behind his hand.
“Who suspects?”
Ah ha, Niles thought, that would get a rise out of him. “Shh. Ada.”
“Does she?” Today Holland’s face seemed blurred. Why was that?
“Yes. She almost saw—this.” He had reached into his shirt for the tobacco tin and was spilling the blue packet into his palm.
“Angel—if you’d take that shirt off and let me wash it—” That was Winnie, leaving Torrie and the baby in the arbor, on her way back to the kitchen. And to Ada, inside, “Seems like you can’t get Niles to wear another shirt ’ceptin’ that old rag of Holland’s.”
Holland was whispering angrily about the tobacco tin. “Jeeze! Put that away! You want somebody to see it?”
As expected. “I know,” Niles reassured him. “Don’t worry.” Coolly he stepped into the tool shed and after a few moments returned, empty-handed. “I won’t tell.”
“Won’t tell what?”
“You know.” He could be as cryptic as Holland, if he wanted. Wait till Holland looked for Russell’s glasses.
“I hung the lantern in the apple cellar,” Holland was saying by way of conversation.
“What lantern?” Niles whispered.
“The lantern from Mr. Pretty’s truck.”
“You mean you crooked it?” Niles was shocked; turned his back on him; saw Torrie in the arbor, holding her baby. Torrie, sitting in a chair beside the bassinet, the baby cradled in her arms—pretty Torrie, Torrie with her red hair and brown button eyes, fondling her baby, cooing to it, pulling the string on the music box Niles had bought—“Rockabye Baby On the Treetop”—and the little baby hand, reaching for it, pretty Eugenia, he was sure she must be the prettiest baby that ever was born, just look at them: Madonna and Child.
“—and she’s got the littlest fingers you ever saw,” he pointed out to Holland. “Just like a doll’s.”
Holland’s nod was wicked. “Like that doll-lamp you won at the carnival.”
“No. Bigger. And each finger’s got a nail on it.”
“Niles, you’re crazy. That’s the way babies are born.” And then he was gone. Amidst his laughter, just like that, he was gone, and there was nothing Niles could do then to bring him back. He stood there by the pump, digging his toe at the gravel, and wishing and wishing, but Holland was gone.
And Niles felt afraid.
He didn’t know why, or what it was that made him feel that way, but, returning to the granary yard to lob rocks at the empty Richfield gasoline can atop the dump heap, he saw before him not the target at all, but, instead, Holland’s face, and the look on it before he’d gone away: the Asiatic Look.
2
About a month later, just before school opened, the weather turned mean, one last oven blast of summer before the frost which would drop the mercury and turn the trees gold.
One afternoon shortly after Labor Day George Perry had come home early from his golf game. He dumped his clubs in the kitchen, and before supper he and a group of cronies from the American Legion drove merrily off in the REO to Springfield, a distance of almost a hundred miles, to see the night races at Agawam Raceway. It being Friday, Winnie was to visit her sister and left in plenty of time to make the long trolley trek to Babylon.
At suppertime Ada went out to call Niles. Receiving no reply, she went looking for him in the barn. She stood on the threshing floor, certain she could hear laughter somewhere, the twanging of a harmonica playing a nonsense rhyme. It was coming from below, in the apple cellar. She heaved the door up and looked down. Red shadows dyed the whitewashed walls; on the floor lay dark drifts of snow, wine-colored in the light from the kerosene lamp hanging from a hook in the beam under her feet.
“Child, what are you doing down there?”
“Nothing. Playing, is all.” He had a book on his lap, a large volume belonging to her; she wondered how he could make out the pictures. “Come up, please. You know nobody is given to play down there, don’t you? That is why your uncle had Mr. Angelini put that lock on the Slave Door. Why shall you disobey? Just look at you, what is that stuff all over the floor? Cattails, you say? Why, you have got it all over your clothing. Now brush yourself, Winnie will have a fit. I say it is no wonder it is all over the house, that fluff.” She stopped and lifted the lamp, blew it out, replaced it on its hook.
Her crossness made him wonder if the heat hadn’t gotten to her. Or perhaps she was ill—he couldn’t tell. She seemed in some sort of pain.
“Have you a toothache?” he asked as they came through the breezeway, but, “Hush,” was all he got for an answer. Then she became cranky again, her eye spotting what lay in the middle of the drive.
“Why, Leno must have lost his wits to leave this here,” she said, pointing to a new five-gallon Richfield can.
“It’s for the cider press,” Niles explained.
“But here. If your Uncle George comes home tonight in his usual condition, he’ll be sure to hit it.” Grabbing the ball handle, she dragged the can from the gravel to a patch of weeds at the corner where the breezeway attached to the carriage-house. “Shoo! Shoo!” she cried at Chanticleer the rooster. She flapped her skirts at the bird, scratching in the weeds, and hastily pulled Niles up the drive. “Now there’s the phone again,” she muttered, striding ahead of him through the back-entryway.
Niles let the door slam, pausing a moment to survey the sky. Ada always insisted a mackerel sky meant rain, an old New England notion she’d picked up. The sky was clear, but it was going to rain, Niles was certain. The sun was getting ready to set, and high above the fields of Avalon across the river hung the thinnest slice of moon, the quintessential new moon: it looked like Ada’s pin, a perfect crescent, visible up there in the early evening sky, only it was silver instead of gold. The sun and the moon appearing together—a rare sight. Making it both day and night, both a beginning and an ending, at one and the same time. Church bells tolled in the distance. Aloft on the cupola the weathervane was pointing due north, the gilded peregrine casting his amber eye and signaling brightly in the waning sunlight some cryptic message for all to see. An omen of some sort. But who was there to read it?
Meanwhile the sun dropped more swiftly, like a ball of blood.
Aunt Valeria was sitting in the kitchen, listlessly waving a palmetto fan.
“Who rang?” Ada asked her.
“Mrs. Brainard, looking for the doctor. Wondered if he had stopped in to see Zan. I told her no. Mrs. La Fever wants him, her boy’s down with something.” She got up, took a napkin from the drawer, and laid it beside a plate on a tray. “I know we should be using paper napkins,” she said as she carried the food out, “but it’s so hot, and poor Zan—” She left with the tray.
Niles put his book down on a spare chair and went to wash his hands, covertly watching Ada, who stood in a peculiar attitude, hands clasped at her breast. Her face was tired, the bright eyes clouded. Her hands shook, and the little nervous nodding of the head had become more pronounced. Worry seemed to have etched firmer lines into her forehead, the creases around her lids were deeper, he thought, and above her cheeks were dark marks he hadn’t noticed before. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected she was not sleeping well. Her spirit was troubled, he decided.
She smiled wanly as he stoo
d on tiptoe to reach the faucet handles. “You’re growing up, douschka.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t use a chair any more to wash.”
“Winnie told me not to. She said I’m too big.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Why, it’s as hot as Chicago, I do believe,” Aunt Vee said, coming in again. The evening continued sweltering and the room was oppressively sticky. A fan caused a screw of flypaper, black with flies, to sway; otherwise nothing moved. Niles moved his book so his aunt could sit down, and she began picking at the plate of cold salmon and watercress salad Ada had fixed for her.
Near the table stood the bassinet; in it lay Torrie’s baby, the little Eugenia, diaper-clad and uncovered because of the heat. Carefully wiping his hands on his napkin, Niles leaned over and offered his finger to be played with, then tickled the pink stomach. He gave a delighted laugh at the gurgling smile and pulled the string of his music box, hanging at the baby’s head.