flies, so I started out with little extra tackle. The middle of the
morning found me a mile deep in an alder swamp, bog on one side and
piled-up brush on the other. It was what you would call dirty fishing,
and in half an hour I had lost every fly and leader I had with me.
There was nothing to do but put up my rod and go back. In an effort
to strike higher ground I came into what was new country to me. A
trail led up toward where I judged the blueberry ledges would be, and
climbing for a mile or so I suddenly broke through into a clearing and
a wagon road. A grayish house stood beside the road. A thin spiral of
smoke curled out of the chimney. On a split stake, even with the road,
teetered a sign reading:
HAND MADE TROUT FLIES FOR SALE HERE
I attacked the door without mercy. A moment’s knocking brought the
sound of stirring from within, and the door finally creaked open,
displaying the oddest cut of a little man in a wheel chair. He blinked
at me like some great nocturnal bird, and soon there was an intelligent
wag of the head--more at my clothes than at me.
“Come in. Doan’t gin’rally git lady fishermen. Hearn tell they git ’em
down to the harbour lookin’ jes’ as he-ish as the men.” He rolled his
chair backward from the door, beckoning me to follow. I could hear
him repeating the last of his words under his breath as if by way of
confirmation: “Yes, sir, looking jes’ as he-ish as the men.”
He led me into a room that might have been identified even in the
uttermost corner of the world as having been conceived and delivered in
the State of Maine. An airtight stove centred it, and on its pinnacle
stood a nickel-plated moose at bay. There were half a dozen pulled-in
rugs: fruit pulled in; red, yellow, and purple roses pulled in; a
rooster pulled in; and other things that defied the imagination. The
two window sills were gay with geraniums and begonias. Crayon portraits
panelled the walls, and between each portrait hung a hair wreath.
Fronting the door was a shower of coffin plates, strung together
with a fish line. A large coloured print of a clipper hung over the
mantel, while all about hung trophies of the South Seas--strings of
shells and beads and corals. But the most amazing exhibit was the
feathers: peacock, egret, flamingo, pheasant, turkey, and cock tails,
yellowhammer and bluejay wings, breasts, crests and what not. The work
bench was littered with tiny feathers, partridge and guinea fowl,
and spools of bright silk. He brushed all these aside and reached
underneath to a drawer, bringing out a handful of trout flies. It took
no close scrutiny to tell their exquisite workmanship.
“Pick out what ye want. Swamp back yonder jes’ eats ’em up, doan’t it?”
And he smiled an ingratiating, toothless smile.
I made my selections slowly, studying the little man more than the
flies. His head was as bald and pink as a baby’s. His lips were
tremulous, and his eyes showed that pale blue opacity of the very
old or very young. It was his hands that held me confounded. They
were twisted like bird claws. How they could have ever taken wisps
of feather and fine lengths of silk and wound them into the perfect
semblance of tiny aërial creatures was more than I could conceive. He
caught at my wondering and with a burst of crowing laughter he held the
claws closer for inspection. “Handsome, hain’t they? Cal’ate I work ’em
steady as most folks work a good pair. Can’t stand wet nor cold, no
better ’n Gram Perkins could in hern. Good days she was the smartest
knitter in the county.”
So here was another Perkins. I aimed my habitual question at him,
expecting no better results. “Tell me, do you know anything about those
four dreams?”
He sat a moment, motionless, in what one might have termed a
vainglorious silence. He sucked his lips in and out over those vacant
gums as if he found them full of flavour; then he suddenly burst into
the triumphant crow of a chanticleer. “Yes m’am! Cal’ate I do know
them dreams--seein’ I dreamed ’em. I be Zeb Perkins!” He said it with
as sweet an unction as if he had announced himself King of the Hejaz.
In a flash the room stood revealed anew. It spoke aloud of Sara Amanda
Perkins, beloved wife of Benjamin Perkins, sea captain; of his clipper,
of the relics of his voyages, of her handiwork in rugs and wreaths. The
very begonias might be slip grandchildren of the ones she had planted.
Here, indeed, was a stage set for those dreams. Here sat Zeb Perkins,
playwright and stage manager, picking excitedly at his pink head,
eternally ready to ring up his curtain. He caught my eye on the wreaths.
“Them little tow-headed fergit-me-nots belonged to her first son as
died a baby. She set a terrible store by him. The black in them susans
come from her sister Ida, my great-aunt Perkins. See them coffin
plates. Ye’ll see every one of them was copper, nickeled over, every
one but Gram’s. Hers was solid.”
There was a wealth of information conveyed in that last word. I had
been standing until now. One of Zeb’s claws waved itself away from the
coffin plates to a chair: “Set, woan’t ye? Ye’ll see them rockers
under ye are worn as flat as sledge runners. That was Gram’s chair; and
we wore them rockers off luggin’ her ’round. She was all crippled up,
Gram was, same as me; only in them days there warn’t no wheel chairs.”
The chair was all Zeb claimed. There was no more rock to it than to
a dray sledge. From the chair his eyes flew to the crayon portraits.
“Look at them! Look at Marm--then look at Gram. Why, there was nary a
thing Gram couldn’t do, for all her crippled-upness. Bake a pie, fry a
batch o’ doughnuts, clean up the butt’ry. But Marm seems like she was
born fretty and tired. Made ye tired jest to watch her travel from the
sink to the cook stove. She’d handle a batch o’ biscuits like she never
expected to live to see ’em baked. Jes’ lookin’ at ’em, can’ ye make
out a difference?”
I did and I could. In spite of everything the artist had done to
obliterate all human expression he had mastered the single point of
difference. One face sagged utterly, the other looked out with sharp
alert eyes on a world that interested her immensely. There was a grim
humour about the mouth, and a firmness that spoke a challenge even at
the end of a century.
“I tell ye,” Zeb’s eulogy was gathering momentum. “We boys set a
terrible store by Gram. She was cuter and smarter tied to that chair
than Marm was on two good legs--hands to match ’em. Golly! How sick
boys git bein’ whined at. Didn’t make no odds what we done--good or
bad--Marm al’ays whined, but Gram--she stood by like she’d been a boy
herself. She’d beg us off hoein’ fer circus and fair days and slip
us dimes for this or that. Cal’ate she’s slipped us enough nickels
and dimes to stretch clean to the upper pasture. Pasture! Golly! When
we was up thar, hot days, hayin’, she’d al’ays mix us a pitcher o’
somethin’ cool--cream o’ tartar water or lemon and m’lasses. When
she had it ready she’d take a stick and tick-tack on the wind’y. She
could whistle, too; whistle through them crooked fingers o’ hern like
a yaller-hammer. She’d whistle whenever she wanted to be fetched
anywhars; then one of us boys would come runnin’ and heave her to
wheresomever she aimed to go--kitchen to butt’ry--butt’ry to settin’
room--settin’ room to shed.”
Zeb stopped here and illustrated. He put two of his crooked fingers to
his mouth and shrilled out a thin, wailing note as eery as a banshee’s.
“That’s the way she done it,” he continued. “And Marm would fuss and
fret and say she didn’t see why the Lord ’lowed a little crippled-up
body like Gram’s to stay so chuck full o’ spunk. Some days she git sort
o’ vengeful, Marm would, and tell Gram she’d better quiet down decent,
or more’n likely she’d never rest quiet in her grave after she died.”
III
A hush fell on the room. There was a baleful light shimmering through
Zeb’s dull eyes, his claws began a nervous intertwining. “Wall ...”
he broke the silence at last, “Gram died. Night afore she died seems
like she got scairt. She grabbed us boys one after another and made
us all promise we wouldn’t bury her twell we were good and sure she
was dead. ‘Keep me five days--promise me that,’ she kept a-sayin’. And
we promised. Recollect it didn’t seem to me then as how Gram could
die--so full of smartness and spunk. Even after old Doc Coombs come and
pronounced her, seemed like she’d open her eyes any minute and ask us
boys to lug her somewhars. ’Stead o’ that she lay so quiet, seemed like
I could hear Doomsday strike.”
The air about us became suddenly supercharged with something. Was it
that ravenous desire for life that must have consumed Gram Perkins?
Under their glass domes the hair wreaths seemed to move as if fanned by
a breath. The feathers about us swayed. The rooster in the pulled-in
rug seemed to pulse with life and a desire to crow. A crowing shook the
room, but it came from Zeb.
“Hot! Golly, Gram died in the sizzlingest spell, middle of August,
folks can remember. Didn’t embalm in them days, so ’twas ice or
nothing. We drew lots for shifts--us boys. Ben and Ellery drew day; Sam
and me night. Mebbe we didn’t work! Lugged in hunks from the ice house
to the shed; thar we cracked and lugged in dish pans to the settin’
room. Crack--lug--mop--lug--crack. Five days! It’s been a powerful
sight o’ comfort sence to know we kept Gram’s promise. Then come the
funeral--smart one. Slathers o’ flowers and mourners and hacks. Cal’ate
you’ve seen the lot whar we buried her?”
At the mention of burial a sense of enormity made me shudder. I was
beginning to realize that the further Zeb progressed in the matter of
the obsequies of Gram Perkins the more alive she became. At that moment
she possessed the house--every crack and cranny in it. She possessed
Zeb, and she possessed me. I found myself straining my ears for the
rattle of dishes in the butt’ry or the sharp thin note of a whistle.
Zeb’s ear was cocked as well as mine.
“Them dreams,” he said, pulling himself together. “First one come
fifteen years after Gram died. All was gone from the harbour by that
time but me. Ben took the pneumony and died quick. Ellery got liver
complaint, turned yaller as arnicy and thinned out to a straw. Sort o’
blew away he did. Sam--he got trampled on by a horse. That left jes’
me. Night after I buried Marm I come back here and had my first dream.
I was young ag’in. Boys back, Marm back, all of us settin’ thar at
Gram’s funeral. Parson was a-prayin’--had been fur a considerable time.
I could hear Nate French fumblin’ fur his tunin’ fork, so’s to lead the
departin’ hymn when plain as daylight I heard a whistle. Yes, m’am.
Then I heard a tick-tack--like Gram was knockin’ on some wind’y. Kept
hopin’ she’d quiet down when out shot another whistle--clear above the
parson’s prayin’. Nobody but me seemed to notice, so I got up gingerly
and tiptoed over to the coffin and raised the lid.
“Thar she was--fixin’ fur to tick-tack ag’in. I grapped her fingers
quick and shoved ’em back whar they belonged. Then I leaned over and
whispered, loud as I durst, ‘Lay still, Gram. Parson’s nigh through
and we’ll be movin’ along shortly. Folks ’ll be passin’ ’round in a
moment to view the remains. Fur the Lord’s sake, close your eyes and
act sensible.’ Wall ... that fixed her. She give me a wink so’d I know
she’d act right, and I tiptoed back to my place. They was all still
a-prayin’--kept right on a-prayin’ twell I woke up. Three years later,
come November, I had the second.”
Zeb shivered, and so did I. I wanted that second dream and yet I did
not want it. Had I chosen I could no more have stayed it than one could
have held back the second act of a Greek tragedy.
“We was on our way to the cemetery.” Zeb’s voice lifted me free of
all choice in the matter. “I was ridin’ outside the first hack, bein’
the youngest, and I was thinkin’ what a fine day it was fur that time
o’ year. Sort o’ funny, too, fur Gram died in August and here it was
November and we was jes’ gittin’ to bury her. I was lookin’ at the
hearse when it happened. Hearses was different in them days, black
urns at the four top corners with black plumes stickin’ out and a pair
o’ solid wooden doors behind. Above the poundin’ of the horses’ hoofs
I heard a hammerin’ on them solid doors. Bang ... bang ... plain as
daylight. Old Jared Sims was drivin’ and I didn’t want he should hear
so I sung out, ‘Cal’ate they’re shinglin’ the Coomb’s barn.’ He turned
’round in his seat to look, and jes’ that minute thar come a regular
whale of a hammerin’ and the doors of the hearse bust open. Thar was
Gram--top of her own coffin, peekin’ down low at me and beckonin’ fur
me to come and git her.
“Mad! I was as mad as a hornet. I went back to that wink she’d given me
in t’other dream and seemed like she’d gone back on her word--something
Gram had never done livin’. I was off the seat of that hack in a jiffy,
runnin’ aside the hearse. When the goin’ slowed up I stuck my head
inside and hollered, ‘Ye git straight back whar ye b’long! And what’s
more ye stay thar!’ Then I begun to whimper like I couldn’t stand my
feelin’s another minute. ‘Gram,’ says I, ‘hain’t ye got any heart? Do
ye want to disgrace us boys? How’ll ye cal’ate we’ll feel to have the
neighbours thinkin’ we’re tryin’ to bury ye ag’in your will? We give ye
them five days like we promised--can’t ye lay down decent and proper
now?’
“That settled her. She turned, meek as a cow, climbed back into her
coffin and closed the lid down. I went back to the hack and climbed up.
We was still a-goin’ when I woke up.”
IV
An interlude followed. I tried to bring back my mind to the reality
of life as I knew it to be. I fingered my trout flies and did my best
to image the still, deep pool below the swamp where I had been on the
point of casting just as my last leader broke. Half an hour more I
could be back there, casting again. But the pool and the trout faded
into oblivion beside the sterner reality of Gram Perkins. I was on the
hack with young Zeb, my eyes fastened in growing perturbation on a pair
of solid black doors.
“Jes’ started on our January thaw when the next dream took me,” broke
in Zeb. “We’d reached the cemetery. Grave dug, coffin lowered, folks
standin’ ’round fur a final prayer. To all appearances everything
was goin’ first rate. But the sexton hadn’t more than picked up his
shovel, easy-like, when out comes a whistle, clear as a fog horn. I
opened my eyes quick and looked down. Thar was Gram, poppin’ out like
a jack-in-the-box, lid swung wide open and both hands reachin’ fur the
dirt the sexton was shovellin’ in. Yes, m’am! Ye never saw dirt fly in
all your born days the way Gram made it fly. At the rate she was goin’,
I knew we’d be standin’ thar twell Doomsday, gittin’ her buried.
“Everybody else was prayin’ hard along with the parson, and he was
’most to the Resurrection. I knew somethin’ had to be done quick, so
in I jumped. I slapped the dirt out of her hands hard like you would
with a child and says I, ‘Land o’ goodness, Gram, what ails ye? We’ve
fetched ye along to what the Bible calls your last restin’ place. All
we boys is askin’ of ye now is to keep quiet and rest twell Jedgment
Day.’
“The words warn’t more’n out afore I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
She didn’t lay any more store ’bout this eternal restin’ than what ye
would, settin’ thar fingerin’ them flies. She give me the most pitiful
look ye ever saw on a human face. It said, plain as daylight, ‘Zeb, lug
me back home and let me git to work ag’in.’
“Wall ... I took to whimperin’ like a two-year-old. ‘Ef ye woan’t do it
fur the Bible,’ says I, ‘do it fur us boys. Ye’ve al’ays been terrible
proud of us--al’ays wanted we should have jes’ what we wanted, and
thar’s nothin’ in the whole o’ creation we want so much this minute as
to see ye restin’ peaceful. Git back in. Close your eyes, fold your
hands, git that listen fur the last trumpet look on your face. Hurry,
woan’t ye? The sexton’s shovellin’ like sixty.’
“She give me another of them pitiful looks--nigh broke me all up--and
she sort o’ slid back and slammed the lid down on her fur all the
world like one of these cuckoo clocks. I lit out and landed side o’
the parson jes’ as he said ‘Amen.’ ... ‘Amen,’ says I, thankful-like.
‘Amen,’ says the sexton.... ‘Amen,’ says the mourners in a roarin’
chorus like the sea. And then I swear to ye that way under the dirt I
heard Gram sing out Amen! Tell ye I woke in a sweat!”
“Cold sweat?” I asked. It was all I could think of.
“Cold as a clam, dripped with it.”
“That makes three.”
“Three!” Zeb tolled it out like a passing bell. “All bad enough--the
fourth, worst of all. Ye wait.”
I waited.
“Three years I lived comfortable in my mind. Seemed like that last Amen
had settled things. Then May come along. I’d been slippin’ some of them
geraniums to take up to the cemetery Memorial Day. I could still walk
some--slowly, but git about--and I went to bed mighty real happy at the
idea o’ fixin’ up Gram’s grave. Right on top o’ that came the fourth
dream!
“I was swingin’ up the road toward the cemetery, and in one hand
I carried a pot with the slips in, and t’other held my stick I
walked with. Jes’ about reached the lot when up comes a jedge from
Boston--nice feller--and I asked him to come along and see the view
from our place. ‘Most famous in the State,’ says I. ‘Clear days we can
see ’most anything.’
“I fetched him through the iron gates and stood him up close to the
monument and begun pointin’ places out. ‘Thar’s Mount Washington,’
says I. ‘Some days ye can see the whole Presidential Range.... Thar’s
Katahdin ... thar’s....’ But I stopped thar dead. I’d caught something
move in the grass by Gram’s headstone. The next minute out come a
whistle, loudest I ever heard. I swung the jedge clear ’round and
pointed out to sea. ‘Thar’s Mount Desert,’ says I, and ‘thar’s Isle au
Haut. That’s the Rockland boat ye hear whistlin’--consarn it!’
“I looked at Gram. She’d got her head and shoulders clear and she was
whistlin’ ag’in fur dear life. Then she took her fingers out of her
mouth and nodded her head toward out back. Seemed like she was askin’
me fur the last time to take her home. The jedge seemed lost in the
scenery, and I stepped up to Gram and showed her the geranium slips.
‘Look at them,’ says I. ‘Fetched ’em all the way over to decorate your
grave, and here ye be, bustin’ loose and cuttin’ up. Hain’t ye ever
goin’ to give in and rest in peace?’
“Wall, she never said a word, jes’ kept working herself further and
further out. I was terrible scairt the jedge would turn round any
second and ketch her. Stood thar on pins and needles watchin’ Gram rise
from her grave. ‘Have a heart, Gram,’ I begun coaxin’ ag’in. ‘How’d ye
like a city feller like that jedge to ketch a Perkins turnin’ ghost
like?’ ... Never finished what I set out to say. She looked so queer
and upset--so like she wanted to tell me something and didn’t know how.
I stood thar, geraniums in one hand, stick in t’other, tryin’ to make
out what it was Gram wanted to tell me. Then it come over me, all of a
flash. ’Twasn’t she that wanted to git out; ’twas that smart, spunky
body o’ hern. It was drivin’ the sperrit same as a strong wind drives
a cloud afore it. She was ready to rest if that doggoned crippled-up,
pie-bakin’, doughnut-fryin’ body would have let her be. But it
wouldn’t. It was draggin’ her out of her coffin, out of her grave,
turnin’ her loose about the county like no decent sperrit could stand.
“‘I’ll fix it,’ says I, droppin’ the geraniums and grabbin’ the
stick with both hands, ‘I’ll fix it so it’ll let ye rest quiet twell
Doomsday,’ and with that I laid on Gram with that stick. I beat her up
twell thar warn’t nothin’ left but a scatterin’ of dust on the spring
sod. Yes, m’am! I reduced Gram to dust and ashes like the Bible said
had to be.”
A long sigh swept the stillness of the room. The face of Zeb Perkins
underwent a sequence of changes. Triumph had been there, but it
dwindled out and sorrow took its place; and then a fear, a tremulous
commiseration and, finally, bewilderment. He now looked straight at me.
His eyes were dull, fearful. “They doan’t understand, them Perkins to
the harbour. They doan’t think I ever ought to have done that to Gram.”
I gathered up my flies and was halfway to the door before Zeb spoke
again. His voice had now grown querulous: “Wall--what do ye think?”
I gave my answer as I slipped out of doors, into the wide spaces again.
“I think the trout are going to bite,” said I.
THE LITTLE GIRL FROM TOWN
BY RUTH SUCKOW
From _Harper’s_
“I wonder who that is coming here,” Mrs. Sieverson said, looking out of
the kitchen window.
“Somebody coming?” Mr. Sieverson asked from the sink. “Oh, I guess
that’s Dave Lindsay, ain’t it? He said he’d be out.”
“Yes, but he’s got someone with him. Oh! I believe it’s that little
girl from back East somewhere that’s visiting them. Leone! Children!”
Mr. Sieverson went outdoors, and then Mrs. Sieverson, and, by the time
the car stopped, rounding the drive, all four children were on hand
from somewhere. Even Marvin and Clyde, the two boys.
“Anybody home?” Mr. Lindsay called out jovially.
“You bet!”
They were all looking at the little girl in the car beside him. They
had heard about this little girl, and how “cute” she was. Her mother
was some relative of Mrs. Lindsay. Leone and Vila looked at her
eagerly. The boys hung back but they wanted to see her. Mr. Lindsay was
proud. He said:
“Well, sir, I’ve got somebody along with me!”
“I see you have!” Mr. Sieverson answered with shy heavy jocularity and
Mrs. Sieverson asked, “Is this the little girl been visiting you?”
“This is the little girl! But I don’t know whether she’s visiting or
not. I’ve just about made up my mind I’ll keep her!”
They all laughed appreciatively. Leone pulled her mother’s dress. She
wanted her mother to ask if the little girl couldn’t get out and play
with them. “Now, don’t. We’ll see,” Mrs. Sieverson whispered. The
little girl was so pretty sitting there with her soft golden-brown hair
and her cream-white dress that Mr. and Mrs. Sieverson were both shy
of saying anything directly to her. Mr. Sieverson cried, still trying
conscientiously to joke:
“Well, ain’t you going to get out?”
Mr. Lindsay asked, “Well!--shall we, Patricia?”
The little girl looked gravely at the other little girls, and then
nodded.
“All right, sir! Patricia’s the boss! I’ve got to do as she says.”
She consented to smile at that, and the two boys giggled. Mr. Lindsay
lifted her out of the car. She put her arms around his neck, and her
little legs and her feet in their shiny black slippers dangled as he
swung her to the ground. The children felt shy when he set her down
among them. Mr. and Mrs. Sieverson didn’t quite know what to say.
“_There_ she is! This is the first time this little girl has ever been
out to a farm. What do you think of that, Marvin?”
Marvin grinned, and backed off a few steps.
“Yes, sir! But she and Uncle Dave have great times driving round
together, don’t they?”
The little girl looked up at him and then smiled and nodded her head
with a subtle hint of mischief.
“You bet we do! We have great times.”
The Sieversons all stood back in a group shyly grinning and admiring.
Leone’s eyes were as eager as if she were looking at a big doll in a
store window. They had never seen any child as pretty as this one, and
Mr. Lindsay knew it and was brimming with pride. Her short dress of
creamy linen, tied with a red-silk cord at the neck and embroidered
with patches of bright Russian colours, melted its fairness into the
pure lovely pallor of her skin. The sleeves were so short that almost
the whole of her soft, round, tiny arms was bare. Her hair was of fine
gold streaked and overlaid with brown--the colour of a straw stack with
the darker, richer brown on top--but every hair lay fine and perfect,
the thick bangs waved slightly on her forehead, and the long soft bob
curved out like a shining flower bell and shook a little when she
moved her head. Her skin wasn’t one bit sunburned, and so white and
delicately grained that there seemed to Vila, in awe, to be a little
frost upon it ... like the silver bloom on wildflower petals, picked
in cool places, that smudged when she rubbed it with her fingers.
Mr. Lindsay became businesslike now that he was out of the car. “Well,
Henry,” he said, “you got it all figured up and ready to show me? I
think we’ve got Appleton where we can make a deal all right.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s ready.”
While the two men talked, the little girl stood beside Mr. Lindsay,
her hand still in his, with a grave, trustful, wondering look. Leone,
smiling at her, was getting closer. Mr. Lindsay seemed to remember her
then and looked down at her.