a minute with a lot passing us. Lem Toplady come by, his girl on his
arm, and a nice, sheepish grin for his mother. Jimmy Sturgis, Jr., and
Hugh Merriman and Mis’ Uppers’s boy and two-three more of that crowd,
with boys’ eyes in brown faces, and nice, manly ways to their shoulders.
Everybody was walking round between tunes. And everywhere, in and out,
under foot, went the children, eight, ten, twelve years apiece to ’em,
and couldn’t be left home because they wasn’t anybody to leave ’em with.
And there they was, waiting to be Friendship Village when the rest of us
should get out of the market square for good; and there was Friendship
Village, over beyond the arc light, waiting to be their town.
“Eppleby,” I says, “why don’t you run against Threat, and mayor this
town like it ought to be?”
“Because,” Silas spoke up for him, “Eppleby belongs to the party.”
“You _do_?” says I to Eppleby. “Well, if Threat, that would like to see
the world run backwards, and you, that’s a-pushing some on the west side
like the Lord meant--if you two belongs to the same party, I bet the
party’s about ready to come in two pieces anyhow. Why don’t you leave it
go, and get denominated on your own hook, Eppleby?” I ask’ him.
“I’m going to if ’Lish gets put up,” he says low, to me. But out loud he
says, careless: “I couldn’t beat the saloon folks. They’re solid for
Threat.”
“But ain’t we more folks to this town than them?” Mame asks.
“Yes,” says Eppleby, “but they don’t vote. Half the best men won’t touch
the city hall with a clothes prop. The business men can’t vote
much--they’ve got too mixed a trade, both sides eatin’ groceries and
wearin’ clothes. And election time comes when them out towards the city
limits is doing Spring plowin’ and won’t bother to come in town. (We’d
took in most of the surrounding country in our efforts to beat out Red
Barns in population.) And the _Evening Daily_ was give to understand six
months ago that the brewery ad. would come out if Threat wa’n’t their
ticket. Anybody that runs against him is beat before the polls open.”
“Among ’em all, what about the town?” says I.
Mis’ Sykes spoke up, majestic. “The town,” says she, “is as good as any
town. I’m sure we’ve got as many nice residences and well-kep’ yards,
and as many modern improvements as most towns our size. _My_ part, I’m
too patriotic to be all the time askin’ for more.”
“I wonder, Mis’ Sykes,” I couldn’t help saying, “you ain’t too religious
ever to pray about yourself.”
The band always plays “America” to go home on, not so much out of
patriotism, I guess, as to let folks know it’s time to go home. And just
as they was tuning up, Mis’ Toplady leaned over to me, brooding.
“I wouldn’t care so much,” she says, “if it wasn’t Lem’s first vote. Lem
was twenty-one in the spring, and it’s his first vote. I just can’t bear
to think of his voting for Threat or ’Lish, to cut his voting teeth on.”
“I know,” I says. “So it is Hugh Merriman’s first vote--and Mis’
Uppers’s boy and Jimmy Sturgis’s, Jr. Don’t it seem too bad?”
Mis’ Toplady looked at the men. “Couldn’t you do something to your
election day that you own so personal?” she snaps. “Couldn’t you make it
a day that is a day? A day that would make folks want to vote decent,
and be some kitterin’-minded about votin’ bad?”
“Like what?” says Timothy, blank.
“Oh--I dunno,” says Mis’ Toplady, restless. “Somethin’ that’ll roust
folks up and give ’em to see their town like a wagon to be pulled and
not one to be rode in. Exercises, mebbe----”
“_Exercises!_” says Silas Sykes, explosive. “You’ll be wantin’ the
stores closed election day, next thing.”
“I mean that now,” says Mis’ Toplady. “Exercises,” she went on, “that’ll
show ’em what’s being done for ’em in the world--and the universe--and I
dunno but other places. Exercises that’ll make ’em think ahead and out,
and up and in the air instead of just down into their pocketbooks. I
dunno. Exercises that’ll make ’em see the state like a state, _their_
state----”
“My dum, woman,” says Silas, “election day ain’t no Fourth of July
proceedings.”
“Ain’t it?” says Mis’ Toplady. “That’s what I dunno. It kind of seems to
me as if it was.”
Then the band jabbed into “America” abundant, and the men took off their
hats, patriotic as pictures. And I stood there, kind of looking at us
all while we listened. I see all them hundreds of us out of the stores
and houses of Friendship Village that was laying over behind us there in
the dark, waiting for us to keep on a-making it; and I see Lem Toplady
and the rest of ’em going to do their first move public towards the
making. And while the band was playing and everybody humming their
country’s air, negligent in their throats, I started to slip off--I
couldn’t help it--and to go home by the back street, like I didn’t want
to meet the village face to face.
But I hadn’t got very far when the band done a thing it’s been doing
lately--ever since the new leader come that’s some kind of a foreigner
up to the round-house. It run off into some kind of a French piece with
a wonderful tang to it. The children have been singing it in school,
with some different words to it, and when the band begun it now, they
all kind of hummed it, all over the square. The Marseilles, I think they
call it--like a kind of cloth. When I hear it, it always makes me want
to go and start something. It done that now. And I says to myself:
“What you slinkin’ off home for, actin’ like the ‘best’ people that
can’t look their town in the face at election time? Go on down Daphne
Street like a citizen, that you are one.”
And I did, and walked along the little watching streets with all the
rest of us, and that march music in my heels. And listening to it, and
seeing us all streaming to our homes, I could ’most have felt like we
was real folks living in a real town, like towns was meant to be.
But I lost the feeling two days after, when ’Lish got the other
denomination, and begun swaggering around similar to Threat, peddling
promises. When ’Lish done that, though, Eppleby done like he said and
come out to run interdependent; only he done it real halfhearted, and
them that signed his petition was mostly out of business or retired or
working for the Government or ministers or like that, and everybody
thought they was about the only ones that would be to the polls for him.
Because the rest was already engaged in uttering the same old fear that
voting for Eppleby now would be throwing their vote away. And they
allowed that Threat was a little better than ’Lish, or that ’Lish was a
little nobler than Threat, and they laid to vote according.
“If only the town could get rousted up somehow,” Mis’ Toplady kep’
saying, grieving. “It seems as if, if there was something to roust
folks, they’d do something. And if they’d only do something, they’d get
rousted. It’s like a snake with its tail in its mouth. It seems as if,
if we could have some doin’s on election day--oh, I wish’t we was a real
human being,” she says, again and again, “I wish’t we was. I bet we’d
wind this town up, and we wouldn’t set it by Threat’s watch nor by
’Lish’s, either. We’d set it by the sun.”
But we see we couldn’t take no part. And the town settled down on its
oars restful, waiting for election day that looked like it wasn’t going
to do nothing but shake up the town feather-bed and lay it back on
springs that sagged in the same old place.
* * * * *
Three days before election it happened I was up early to mix my bread.
The clock showed half-past six just as I got through with my breakfast,
and the sun come in so nice and slanting acrost my kitchen floor that I
stepped to the open door to get the smell of it. All outside lay sweet
and surprised, like the first notes of something being played. Before I
knew it, I went out and down the path, between the things that hadn’t
come up yet--ain’t it like all outdoors was friendly and elbow near, the
way it keeps pulling at you to be out there with it? Before I knew it I
was out my back gate and acrost the vacant lot and off down the old
trail road, my hands wrapped up in my apron and me being just selfish
glad I was alive.
With outdoors all around you, just waiting to be paid attention to; with
friends set here and there in the world, near like planets, high and
single like stars, or grouped like constellations; and with a spirit
inside us--the same spirit--trying to say something--and trying to say
the same thing--ain’t life rich? Ain’t it rich?
Sometimes I try to think what could make it richer. And I can never get
any farther than the growing of those three foundation things: Outdoors
and friends and the spirit. For life will be richer when the outdoors
gets done--the floods tamed, the roads built, the forests tended, the
deserts risen from the dead and the cities and towns and villages tamed
and built and trained and tended and risen from the dead of dirt and
ugliness to be real bodies for the souls stirring and beating in them
now--and trying to speak. And life will be richer when friends come
true--not just this planet, and that star, and these
constellations,--but when the whole great company of friends, in homes,
in churches, in mines, in prisons, in factories, in brothels, shall be
known to us, and set free to be real bodies for the souls stirring and
beating in them now--and trying to speak. And not till then will that
spirit in outdoors and in cities and in us--the same spirit, trying to
say the same thing--not till then can that spirit ever get it said.
“Oh,” I thought, “on a morning like this, if somebody could only think
of the right word, maybe the whole thing might come true.”
And almost I knew what that word was--like you do.
I remember I wasn’t thinking of anything but wonder, when away acrost
the Pump pasture I see a thing. It wasn’t a tent or it wasn’t a wagon or
it wasn’t a farm machine of any kind. I looked at it a minute and I
couldn’t formulate nothing. And as you could drive through the Pump
pasture fence ’most anywheres, I went through and started right over to
whatever was there.
’Most anybody can tell you how it looked, for by nine o’clock the whole
village was out to it. But I’ll never be able to tell much about the
feel of the minute when I see the two great silk wings and the airy
wire, and knew I was coming close up to a flying-machine, setting there
on the ground, like a god that had stopped on a knoll to tie his shoe.
A man was down on his hands and knees, doing something to an underneath
part of it, but I guess at first I hardly see him. The machine was the
thing, the machine that could go up in the air, the machine that _had
done it at last_!
“Good morning,” says the man, all of a sudden. “Am I trespassing?”
He stood there with his cap in his hand, clean-muscled, youngish,
easy-acting, and as casual as if he’d just come out of a doorway instead
of out of the sky.
I says, “Ain’t it wonderful? Ain’t it wonderful?” Which is just exactly
what I’d said about Mis’ Toplady’s crocheted bed-spread. It’s terrible
to try to talk with nothing but the dictionary back of you.
“Yes,” he says, “it is. Then I’m not trespassing?”
“No more’n the eagles of the Lord,” I says to him. “Are you broke down?”
“There’s a little something wrong with the balance,” he says. “I’m going
to lie over here a day or so, providing the eagle of the Lord figure
holds for the town. What place will this be?” he asks.
“Friendship Village,” I says.
“Friendship Village,” he says it after me, and looked off at it. And I
stood for a minute looking at it, too.
Beyond the trees north of the pasture it lay, with little lifts of smoke
curling up from folks’s cook-stoves. There was a look to it of
breakfasts a-getting and stores being opened and the day rousting up.
Right while we looked, the big, bass seven o’clock whistle blew over to
the round-house, and the little peepy one chimed in up at the
brick-yard, and I could hear the town clock in the engine-house
striking, kind of old-fashioned and sweet-toned. And all around the
country lay quiet-seeming, down to the flats and out acrost the tracks
and clear to the city limits that we couldn’t see, where the life of the
little fields was going on. And in that nice, cozy, seven-o’clock minute
I see it all as I do sometimes, almost like a person sitting there, with
its face turned towards me, expectant, waiting to see what I’m going to
do for it.
“Jove,” says the man, “look at it! Look at it. It looks like the family
sitting down to breakfast.”
I glanced up at him quick. Not many sees villages that way. The most
sees them like cats asleep in the sun. But I always like to think of ’em
like a room--a little room in the house, full of its family, real busy
getting the room-work done up in time.
“From here,” I says, “it does most look like a real town.”
“More folks live in the little towns of the United States than in the
big cities of it,” he said, absent.
“They _do_?” I says.
“By count,” he answers, nodding, and stood a minute looking over at the
roofs and the water tower. “You feel that,” he says, “when you see them
the way I do. From up high. I keep seeing them skimming under me,
little places whose names don’t show. And it always seems that way--like
the family at breakfast--or working--or sitting around the arc lamp.
You’re splendid--you little towns. What you do is what the world does.”
A kind of shiver took me in the back of my head.
“It looks as if such nice things were going on over there--in Friendship
Village,” he says, his voice sort of wrapping about the name.
“Election day is going on,” I says, “day after to-morrow. But it won’t
be so very nice.”
“No,” he says, “they aren’t very nice--yet.”
That made me think of something. “Have you been in many cities and
dropped down into many towns?” I ask’ him.
“Several,” says he,--sort of rueful.
“On election day?” I says.
“Sometimes,” he answered.
“Well, then,” I says, “maybe you can tell me what they do on election
day in cities. Don’t they ever have exercises?”
“Exercises?” he says over, blank.
“Why, yes,” I says, “though I dunno just how I mean that. But don’t they
ever open up the city hall and have singing and speeches--not political
speeches, but ones about folks and about living? I should think they
must do that somewheres--‘most anybody would of thought of that. And
have the young folks there, and have them that’s going to vote sort
of--well, _commenced_, like college. Don’t they do that, places?”
When he shook his head I was worried for fear he’d think I was crazy.
“No,” he says, “I never heard of their doing that anywhere--yet.”
But when he says that “yet” I wasn’t worried any more. And I burst right
out and told him about our trouble in Friendship Village, and about the
“best” people never voting, and the city limits folks not coming in for
it, and about our two candidates, and about Eppleby, that hadn’t a ghost
of a show.
“Us ladies,” I wound up, “wanted to have a kind of an all-together
campaign--with mass meetings of folks to kind of talk over the town,
mutual. And we wanted to get up some exercises to make election day a
real true day, and to roust folks up to being not so very far from the
way things was meant to be. But the men folks said it wasn’t never done
so. They give us that reason.”
The bird-man looked at me, and nodded. “I fancy it isn’t,” he says,
“--yet.”
But he didn’t say anything else, and I thought he thought I was
woman-foolish; so to cover up, I says, hasty:
“_Could_ you leave me hear you talk a little about it? I mean about
flying. It’s old to you, but it’s after-I-die to me. I never shall do
it. So far I’ve never seen it. But oh, I like to hear about it. It seems
the freest-feeling thing we’ve ever done.”
“To do,” he says, “it’s coldish. And it’s largely acrobatics--yet. But
to see--yes, I fancy it is about the freest-feeling thing we’ve ever
done. A thing,” he says my words over, smiling a little, “that makes you
think you’re a step nearer to the way things were meant to be.” Then he
stood still a minute, looking down at me meditative. “Has there ever
been a flying-machine in Friendship Village?” he ask’ me.
“Never,” I says--and my heart stood still at what it thought of.
“And day after to-morrow is your election day?” he says over.
“Yes,” I says--and my head begun to beat like my heart wasn’t.
“The machine will be in shape by then,” he said. “Would--would you care
to have me make a flight on election-day morning? Free, you know. It
wouldn’t be much; but it might,” he says, with his little smile, “it
might pull in a few votes from the edge of town.”
“Oh, my land--oh, my land a-living!” I says--and couldn’t say another
word.
But I knew he knew what I meant. It was a dream like I hadn’t ever
dreamed of dreaming. It seems it was his own machine--he was on his own
hook, a-pleasuring. And it seemed as if he just had come like an eagle
of the Lord, same as I said.
We settled where I was to let him know, and then I headed for Mis’
Toplady’s, walking some on the ground and some in the air. For I sensed
the thing, whole and clear, so be we could get enough to pitch in. And
Mis’ Toplady left her breakfast dishes setting, like I had mine, and
away we went. And I see Mis’ Toplady’s ideas was occupying her whole
face.
We went straight to the mothers--Mis’ Uppers and Mis’ Merriman and Mis’
Sturgis and the others that had sons that was going to vote, this year
or in ten years or in twenty years. I dunno whether it was the mother in
them, or just the straight human being in them--but they see, the most
of ’em, what it was we meant. Of course some of them just see the lark,
and some of them just didn’t want to refuse us, and some of them just
joined in because they’re the joining-in kind. But oh, some of them see
what we see--and it was something shining and real and far off, and it
made us willing to go ahead like wild, and I dunno but like mad. Ain’t
it wonderful how when a plan is born into the world, it grows on air? On
air--and a little pitching in to work?
All but Mis’ Silas Sykes. When we went to see her, Mis’ Sykes was like
that much adamant.
“Pshaw,” says Mis’ Sykes, “you ladies don’t understand politics. In
politics you can’t fly up this way and imagine out vain things. You got
to do ’em like they’ve been done. As I understand it, they’s two
parties. One is for the good of the country and one ain’t. And anything
you dicker up outside them two gets the public all upset and steps on
the Constitution. And Silas says you’ve got to handle the Constitution
like so many eggs, or else where does the United States come in?”
“It don’t seem to me that all makes real good sense,” says Mis’ Toplady,
troubled.
“No,” says Mis’ Sykes, serene, “the people as a whole never do see
sense. It’s always a few that has to do the seeing.”
“I know,” says Mis’ Toplady, “I know. But what I think is this: _Which
few?_”
“Why, them that best supports the party measures,” says Mis’ Sykes,
superior.
But Mis’ Toplady, she shook her head.
“It don’t follow out,” she says, firm. “Legs ain’t the only things they
is to a chair.”
Nor, as us ladies saw it, the polls ain’t all there is to election day.
And we done what we could, steadfast and quick and together, up to the
very night before the day that was the day.
On election-day morning, I woke up before daylight and tried to tell if
the sun was going to shine. The sky wasn’t up there yet--nothing was but
the airful of dark. But acrost the street I see a light in a kitchen--it
was at the station agent’s that had come home to the hot breakfast his
wife had been up getting for him. One of ’em come out to the well for a
bucket of water, and the pulleys squeaked, and somebody’s dog woke up
and barked. Back on the trail road somebody’s baby was crying. Down
acrost the draw the way-freight whistled and come rumbling in. And there
was Friendship Village, laying still, being a town in the dark with
nobody looking, just like it was being one all day long, with people
looking on but never sensing what they saw.
It seemed, though, as if they must get it through their heads that day
that the town was being a town right before their face and eyes--having
a kind of a performance to do, like digestion, or thinking, or working;
and having something anxious and fluttered inside of it, waiting to know
what was going to become of it. I could almost sense this at six
o’clock, when Mis’ Toplady and I hurried down to the market square. Yes,
sir, six o’clock in the morning it was. We had engineered it that the
flight of the flying-machine should be at seven o’clock, so’s everybody
could have a chance to see it on their way to work, and so’s they should
be at the market-square doings before they went to the polls.
The sun _was_ shining like mad, and the place looked all expectant and
with that ready-to-nod look that anything got ready beforehand will
always put on. Only this seemed sort of a special nod. We’d had a few
board seats put up, and a platform that ’most everybody had the idea the
airship was going up from. The machine itself was over in the corner of
the square near the wood-yard under a wagon-shed they’d made over for
it. And to a stand near the platform the Friendship Married Ladies’
Cemetery Improvement Sodality had advertised to serve hot coffee and hot
griddle-cakes and sausages. And we begun on the coffee and the sausages
long enough ahead so’s by the time folks was in the high midst of
arriving, the place smelled like a kitchen with savory things a-doing on
the cook-stove.
And I tell you, folks done some arriving. Us ladies had seen to it to
have the flight advertised big them two nights. The paper done it
willing enough, being the bird-man was so generous and all. Then
everybody’s little boy had been posted off as far as the city limits
with hand-bills and posters, advertising the flight, and the breakfast
on election day. And it seemed to me that outside the place we’d roped
off, and in wagons in the streets, was ’most everybody in Friendship
Village that I ever knew or saw. The folks from the little city-limit
farms, the folks that ordinarily didn’t have time to vote nor to take a
holiday, even folks from the country and from other towns, “best” people
and all--they was all there to see the sky-wagon.
The bird-man had to dicker away quite a little at his machine. A man had
run out from the city to help him, and out there with them was Lem
Toplady and Jimmy Sturgis and Hugh Merriman, and two-three more of those
boys, that had got acquainted with the bird-man. And while they was
getting ready, the band was playing gay over in the bandstand, and we
was serving breakfasts as fast as we could hand them out. Mis’ Sturgis
was doing the coffee, I was sizzling sausages that the smell floated up
and down Daphne Street delicious, and Mis’ Toplady was frying the
pancakes because she’s had such a big family to fry for she’s lightning
in the right wrist.
Everybody was talking and laughing and waiting their turn, and acting as
if they liked it. Them that was up around the breakfast stand didn’t
seem to be saying much about politics. Us ladies mentioned to one
another that Threat nor ’Lish didn’t seem to be anywhere around. But we
was mostly all thinking just about the flying-machine, and how nice it
was to be having it, and about the socialness of it all--like the family
was having breakfast....
Just as the big, bass seven-o’clock whistle trailed out from the
round-house--the brick-yard one didn’t blow because the men was all at
the market square--the thing happened that we’d arranged for. Down
Daphne Street, hurrying some because they was late, with irregular
marching and a good deal of laughing, come the public-school teachers
with the school children. We’d give out that they’d be easier managed
so, and not so much under foot; but what we really wanted was that they
should come in just like this, together, and set together, because we
wanted something of them after a while.
They sat down on the place we’d left for ’em, on the seats and the grass
in front of everybody, and them that could sing we put on the platform,
lots of rows deep, so’s they all covered it. They was big boys and
little, and little girls and big, good-dressed and poor-dressed; with
honest fathers, and with them that didn’t know honest when they see it
nor miss it when they didn’t--and all of them was the Friendship Village
that’s going to be some time, when the market square is emptied of us
others, for good and all.
“Where’s Threat and ’Lish?” I says to Eppleby, that was helping keep the
children in order.
“Dustin’ the mayor’s office out ready, I s’pose,” he says, wrinkling his
eyes at the corners.
“Mebbe they’ve abducted each other,” Mis’ Toplady suggests, soothing.
Mis’ Sykes looked over from filling the syrup pitchers--she’d boiled the
brown sugar down for that, and it added its thick, golden smell unto the
general inviting mixture.
“I don’t think,” she says serious, “that you’d ought to speak
disrespectful of _any_body that’s going to be your mayor. Public
officials,” said she, “had ought to be paid respect to, or else the law
won’t be carried out.”