1
_On July 1, 1913, Greece delivered an ultimatum to Bulgaria. The
G.A.R. turned out en masse for the bicentennial of the Battle of
Gettysburg. The enfranchised women of Illinois promised a new era
in politics, while deans of co-educational schools raved against
the immorality of the Tango. Big panama hats were all the rage,
with ankle length wrap-around skirts and frilly summer blouses.
Girls ratted their hair and read Ford joke books to boys who sat
beside them in the hammock holding a box of chocolate creams.
Pitcher Brennan of the Phillies socked Manager McGraw of the New
York Giants. The berry market was firm with a strong tone in
swine. In Chicago the coroner promised he would do something about
the crazy joy riders who had killed twenty people in Cook County
during June._
But in the home of Temperance Crandall and her mother nothing else
really mattered because now Temperance had a huge, careless, messy
man to run after and do for.
If you had told her six months before that she would stand for a
man and a cat in her best bedroom Temperance would probably have
tongue-lashed you out of her front door and down the street. But
there they were, sleeping all day and out all night. A scandal and
a caution if you asked Temperance. She wanted to blurt it out to
the whole town but for once she held her tongue.
It was a trial and a tribulation, a plague of boils which would
have tried the patience of Job. The Lord could testify that
Temperance Crandall had the disposition of an angel and the
patience of a saint, but even she could be driven only so far and
not one inch farther.
"He throws his dirty socks and underwear all over the room," she
told her image in the mirror. "He misses the porcelain spittoon a
foot."
She yanked the kid curlers out of her hair with a viciousness which
added a tenth of an inch to the diameter of the bald spot which was
starting on her crown, twisted her hair into a hard knot at the
nape of her neck and punched in hairpins with fury.
The filthy man and his dirty cat in her very best brass bed,
sleeping under her nicest patchwork quilts, dirtying her
monogrammed pillow cases drawn taut and smooth over her finest
goose-down pillows.
"My land-a-living, why do you tolerate the brute?" she asked her
scowling image. "He's the seven plagues of Egypt, and that's a
fact."
Biting her upper lip touched with the lightest possible suggestion
of a black mustache, she pulled upon the pink strings of her corset
until the black enamel eyelets threatened to rip completely out of
the fabric, hastily donned a corset-cover, thrust her legs into a
luxurious pair of lisle hose, snapped on garters hanging from the
corset before and aft, pulled them a bit too tight, added a pair of
stiff white petticoats to her ensemble, then plunged like a swimmer
into the mass of calico, which, when jerked into position over her
gaunt posterior, assumed the general outlines of a dress.
For a moment a buttonhook clicked on the beady jet buttons of her
high shoes; there was a snap as she pinned the chain of her pince
nez to her under-developed bosom. A touch of rose water now and the
effect was complete.
Down the stairs she pattered while the grandfather clock in the
hall boomed five of a bright July morning. Beyond the hall window
the bachelor buttons wore their brightest blue; the four o'clocks
were just closing for the day, but the pastel trumpets of the
morning glories, the sun-loving zinnias and climbing roses were at
their best in a garden which had not changed its general appearance
in forty years.
She banged the hall door at the foot of the stairs with a violence
which shook the light-timbered house and sent down an avalanche of
soot around the parlor stove-pipe, marched out the kitchen door and
down the garden path to the not unromantic privy covered with grape
vines and ivy.
Later as she washed in a graniteware washbowl in the kitchen sink
she ruminated upon the disastrous day she had taken a man into her
house. He had come up the long board walk which led back through
nearly one hundred yards of trees and shrubbery to the hidden
clapboard residence of the Crandall women.
"Heard you had a room to rent," he said, vaguely. "Nice and quiet
back here." He looked about him with a dull but satisfied air and
stroked the big black tom cat in his arms.
"It's three dollars a week, mister," Temperance had said severely.
"That's just for bed and breakfast. I don't do no laundry, and I
don't like cats. Besides there hasn't ever been a man in my house,
and I don't think there ever will be." She banged her feather
duster against the peeling porch rail.
"That's all right," the man said, "Tommy and I ain't particular."
"Oh, so you ain't particular," she mocked. "Well listen here my
good man. You'd better be particular when you crawl into my best
bed."
"I don't want to sleep in your bed. I want to sleep by myself."
"Don't get sassy or I'll bat you over the head with this feather
duster," Temperance warned.
"All right, Sister," the man said. "All right. Are you going to
rent me the room or ain't you?"
"I'll think about it," Temperance said. "Come in and have a chair
but leave that filthy cat out of doors."
"It ain't a filthy cat," the man said. "Maybe in another life this
cat was your grandmother." Temperance shuddered. The man stooped
to come in through the door--his cat still safely in his arms. He
slouched comfortably into a red plush easy chair and put his head
back against the lace doily.
"Three dollars a week in advance," Temperance said. "And mind you
I have a sick mother who mustn't be disturbed. She's bedfast and
hard of hearing, and she'd probably have a relapse if she knew you
was in the downstairs bedroom."
"I get you, Sister."
Why, Temperance Crandall! Whatever are you thinking of? the
good woman asked herself while showing the man to his room. Why
not tell Mother? Evil woman! Nasty woman! She bustled about the
parlor flicking the dust from the gilded cat-tails, ferocious
crayon portraits of her ancestors, and the model of the Washington
Monument made of ground-up paper money.
But if Temperance had any idea she could deceive her mother she
was rudely disillusioned the next morning when she took toast and
poor-man's tea to the invalid.
"Temperance," shouted the old lady. "You've got a man in the house."
"But, Mother. How did you know?"
"Smelled him," said the old lady.
"Smelled him?"
"Tobacco and shaving soap. I'm no ninny."
Luckily her mother wasn't shocked, said that what they needed
around the house was a man. But Temperance on due consideration
decided not to tell the neighbors.
She remembered that Brailsford Junction was one bee-hive of
gossips. They would be sure to suspect the worst and add a few
details of their own. How Temperance hated gossips!
Not that everything wasn't Christian and proper with her mother
there every moment for a chaperon. And not that Temperance would
carry on with her roomer the way Mabel Bentley had done with that
railroad man. Nevertheless some women she knew had evil minds. She
didn't trust them.
She patted the sofa pillows embroidered with "God Bless Our Happy
Home" into an engaging fullness of ripe curves, straightened the
doily on the easy chair, and singing in a lusty off-keyed falsetto
the touching strains of "Blest Be the Tie That Binds," rustled off
to the kitchen to fix her boarder a tray.
My how the morning had flown. Eleven o'clock already. High time he
was up and eating breakfast, the lazy, filthy brute and his dirty
tom cat.
Such a big strange man. Huge, simply huge. And with a ferocious
appetite. She thought he would eat her out of house and home. It
cost more than three dollars a week to feed the big lummox.
"Our hearts in Christian love," warbled the busy woman as she
hastened about the old wainscoted kitchen, banging the spiders and
pots loudly enough to wake the dead. He certainly should be up by
this time. Almost noon, imagine! And Temperance up and busy since
five o'clock.
Three boiled eggs, five slices of toast, a whole pot of coffee that
held at least five cups, oatmeal in a bowl, cream and sugar, and,
well, she might condescend to put one of those rambler roses from
over the back stoop upon his tray. Not that he would appreciate it,
the filthy, lazy thing. He'd better pay his board bill today or
she'd throw him out like dishwater.
There, that tray looked nice. Altogether too nice if you asked
Temperance Crandall. She whisked off her apron, looked into the
kitchen mirror for a second, pushed her hair this way and that,
sneaked a pinch of flour out of the flour bin and dusted it on her
nose with the corner of a dish towel, then assuming the air of
Fox's entire conference of martyrs picked up the tray for prompt
delivery.
2
Joe Valentine was dreaming about a cat he had for a mascot in the
Spanish American War, about the time the little tabby scratched
hell out of the colonel, when the sharp rat-a-tat-tat at his
bedroom door awoke him from his slumber. He pulled the covers up
around his chest for the sake of modesty, thus exposing his large
left foot. He buttoned the two top buttons of his summer underwear.
"Come...."
"It's just me," said Temperance Crandall. "I hope I ain't intruding
upon your privacy." She hesitated a moment on the sill, then boldly
entered the room.
"Just a bite and a sup," said Temperance. She crossed to the bed to
set the tray upon her roomer's unaccustomed lap, then screamed in
terror as the black cat rose out of the covers like a bad dream,
spitting and scratching.
"Horrid thing," she cried. "Evil, nasty thing. You'll be the death
of me yet, you two."
She took in the room with one scornful glance: the bedspread thrown
in one corner, the big shoes on her cedar chest, his clothes in a
heap on the floor, a cigar-stub in her hand-painted porcelain pin
tray.
"Ain't you ashamed to be so messy?" she cried, picking up his
trousers gingerly and hanging them on the closet door-knob, putting
his muddy shoes on the floor and rapidly folding the bedspread,
catching the fold in her teeth but never ceasing to talk.
"All right," said Joe, his mouth full of toast. He pulled a buttery
and delicious central tidbit from the slice of toast and fed it to
the cat.
"Cigar ashes everywhere," Temperance said. "You're just driving
nails in your own coffin with that filthy weed ... nicotine ...
plain poison ... look at the yellow on your fingers."
"All right," said Joe.
"Why don't you be a man?" said Temperance. "You're big enough, the
Lord knows. Why don't you get a job? Gadding about all night."
"Why don't you go do your knitting?" Joe asked, wrapping his large
mouth around an entire boiled egg.
"Well, I like that," said Temperance Crandall, placing her hands on
her hips and glaring at the man in her best bed.
A pretty figure he cut: hair down in his eyes, a two-days' growth
of beard on his face, a nose that went straight for an inch or
two then detoured to the right, large loose lips, big even teeth
stained with tobacco, heavy biceps that were somehow flabby,
shoulders of a tired coal-heaver. The great toe of his large left
foot which was protruding from beneath one of her best quilts
twitched excruciatingly against the second toe of the same foot.
The bottom of the foot was covered with yellow calluses.
"You make me nervous," Joe said. He took another cup of coffee for
a bracer.
"After the way I've slaved for you," said Temperance; "Done all
your washing free, fixed your meals at any hour of the day or night
when all you should get is breakfast. You're just a filthy brute."
"All right," Joe said.
"No appreciation. Never a thank you."
"I didn't ask you," Joe said. He ripped the center out of another
slice of toast and offered it to the cat, then slowly sucked the
butter from each of his fingers.
"Either you pay your board and room today or else ..." she
threatened as she flaunted out of the room, slamming the door
behind her. She found that for the first time in months she was
dangerously near to tears, and she brushed these obvious symbols of
weak, womanly emotion out of her tired eyes with angry knuckles.
She just wasn't herself lately, she observed.
"I ... I'm going through the change of life," she thought, "and
Lydia Pinkham ain't doing me a bit of good."
The thought suddenly came to her, as she slumped down beside the
window unnoticing of the lush summer just beyond the screen, that
there would never be any children for her. And for just a moment
she let herself be sentimental and think of Timothy Halleck, of
sleigh-rides through the frosty starlit nights, of Virginia reels,
and box sociables, of poetry she had written as a girl, and again
of Timothy Halleck, who never knew, and would never know to his
dying day that Temperance Crandall sat by her front window morning
and night to see him pass.
From upstairs she heard the demanding voice of her mother whom she
had taken care of uncomplainingly since her twenty-second birthday.
"Coming," she called.
3
What did you want, Joe Valentine? Where were you going? Wandering
through countless nights, your cat on your shoulder!
The big man slouched through the alley behind Brailsford Junction's
Main Street. He passed the litter of broken boxes, barrels and
piles of rotting fruit in tangled shadows behind the Dingle
Brothers' general store where bats swept low between the wooden
buildings. His feet knew the cinders, and his eyes, like the
cat's, could see in the dark.
He skirted the cubistic mountains of empty beer cases behind the
Golden Glow Saloon, the heap of manure behind the livery stable,
the jumble of wrecked parts and rusting bodies piled at the back
door of the Ford Garage.
A dirty stream bubbled in the ditch that paralleled the alley, and
a huge black rat bloated with young leapt up the ash pile almost
level with his face. The cat stiffened like some electric thing,
lashed his tail and sprang. The rat went back on her hind legs
waving ineffectual little feet exposing her vast soft belly. A
shadowy struggle, a high-pitched squeal of terror. The man laughed
shortly; slouched on.
He passed the Ritz Royal Hotel smelling of hash and strong
disinfectant; the barred back windows of the First National Bank;
the empty ice-cream freezers and cartons behind the Tobacco City
Ice Cream Parlor.
All closed, dark and deserted, no laughter or singing, the player
piano still. From the high clock tower of the old town hall the
chimes spilled the half hour. Far away across the river a train
whistled, rumbled over the railroad bridge, was muffled by the
intervening hills, rushed dangerously upon the town screaming and
clanging, swept westward, died away in a distant whisper of steam
and clicking of wheels which lasted in the imagination long after
the night was once more silent and deserted.
The air was cool now after the long hot day. A breeze from the
river valley to the east of the town swept through the alley
stirring little whirlpools of dust. The air was suddenly filled
with the cool breath of rotting oak leaves, dank river odors, algæ,
fish and flowing water.
He thought of a shack among the willows, a box-car home on the
river bottom; his mother coming home early in the morning, lighting
the fire as though she had not been gone for nearly a month. Her
dancing slippers were covered with mud, her party dress torn. The
big man who was his father turned in his bunk, swore at the woman,
went out banging the sagging screen door.
"Look Mother," Joe whispered, "we got a new kitten while you was
gone."
River smells, fishing catfish down at the narrows, sitting all
night on the sandbar listening to the "tick, tick," far down
underneath the water, the splash of muskrats, the little crying
noises made by raccoons in the cornfield on the hill, the
whip-poor-wills, and the hoarse cry of night birds following the
river.
Oars dipping into the water, boats being pulled up on distant
sandbars, the mosquitoes and the damp chill, the lordly battle with
a sixteen pound catfish in the dark. Bad whiskey, later on a woman.
He breathed the night air wistfully. Never again a woman's arms
about him. Lost, deprived, utterly alone. He was not aware of
these thoughts as words. He did not think in words but in odors,
colors, sounds, and a blind hatred which he could not understand.
Cheated, haunted by some unknown thing, filled with sudden fear at
a footfall, foolhardy in the face of actual danger. A man who could
no longer call himself a man since that knife fight with a nigger
in Rockford, Illinois.
He came at last to the one light burning in the alley, a dim green
globe above a door (three steps down) between two walls of sweating
brick.
The twenty-six legitimate saloons serving the eighteen hundred
inhabitants of Brailsford Junction were closed at this hour. Only
the blind pig offered solace to the Dago section men, the farm
hands making a night of it in town, and Hannah Leary who had spent
half her life looking up at ceilings of empty box-cars on the
siding and at stars above the Brailsford Junction Cemetery.
Joe hesitated at the top of the stairs, drinking in the aroma of
the place: sweat, rot-gut whiskey, women. He ran the tip of his
tongue over his full, loose lips; felt in his pocket for change.
A big man stumbled out of the door at the foot of the stairs,
started forward, saw Joe blocking the way, and roared in a drunken
voice--
"Getahelloutamawayou."
Joe did not move.
The man lunged forward, fell, leapt to his feet and charged up the
stairs--
"Outamawaygodamnya."
Joe tipped him over with a right to the chin. At the bottom of the
stairs once more the man drew a knife and waited his chance. Joe
took a pair of brass knuckles out of his pocket, slipped them onto
his hands, pressed the buttons with his thumbs and little knives
appeared on each knuckle. He slashed at the air breathing deeply
and feeling fine. He pranced on his toes.
"Come on up," he offered.
The other was more careful now, almost sober. He advanced a step at
a time watching his footing, his knife drawn down and back for the
uprip, the belly slash. He stank of whiskey and bad teeth.
Joe let him reach the top of the stairs before he aimed a kick at
the knife arm. The man dropped the knife, howling with pain, his
arm half paralyzed. He threw caution to the winds, swung with his
left, and tried to close. Joyfully, methodically, Joe slashed him
to ribbons with the brass knuckles.
The man went down screaming and writhing while Joe ran lightly up
the alley. He met the cat who sprang up and settled himself in the
crook of Joe's arm. The cat was heavier now and licking his jowls
with contentment. Together they dodged through the dark streets and
alleys, between houses, and through the Crandall garden to the back
door.
"Time we were leaving this dump," Joe told the cat.
A moment now for throwing his clothes and other few belongings into
a knapsack, another moment for mussing up his bed as though he had
been sleeping there all night, back to the kitchen door again where
Temperance Crandall stood in her long white nightgown, a lamp in
her hands.
He reached in his pocket for three dollars and put it on the
kitchen table beside the door.
"Keep it," she said.
"Ain't that what you wanted?"
"I don't want your money."
He left her standing there looking at the three dollars on the
table. He swung off down the dark street with his cat and knapsack,
struck out into the country along the back roads which ran among
the poor hill farms to the northeast. The farmhouses were dark. The
cattle slept in the pastures. Hay was cocked in the fields and the
mingled smells of drying alfalfa, timothy, red clover, and sweet
clover came to his nostrils.
Like that early morning he had come along the country road and
stopped to pump himself a drink at the farmhouse, and the woman had
come out. That was before the fight in Rockford.
He swung along the dark roads talking to his cat, watching the sky
with its sprinkling of large stars. He did not feel so lost since
his fight. He almost remembered what it was he was searching for.
And so he came at last to the deserted hunting lodge on Lake House
Point early in the morning with the sun on the whitecaps of Lake
Koshkonong and the gulls screaming greedily about the cliff.
He looked across the bay to where Stud Brailsford's barns and
growing fields lay sunning under the shoulder of Cottonwood Hill.