A Place on Earth (Port William) (34 page)

During the meal he has not ceased to study both the young man and
the wife, and he is more than satisfied with what he sees. Everything
about the young man speaks of his decent pride. Though he works for
another man, he has the ways of a man who intends one day to work for
himself. He has resigned himself to nothing inferior. And the husband's
character, it seems to Old Jack, is answered in the character of the wife.

His vision of the morning returns to him. He can see this place passing out of his own good keeping into that of the younger man-can see
him at work and alive here long after he himself will be dead. He turns
to the young man, intending to tell him that he can depend on his goodwill and can trust him-that he will help him to have what he wants. But
he cannot speak. He looks out the window, getting hold of himself, and
then he says: "Son, you're a fine boy. And you've married a fine girl. I'm
going to stick to you."

After he has eaten, the young man gets up from the table and goes to
the barn, leaving Old Jack to eat a second piece of pie. After a little they
hear him going out the lot gate with the team.

Old Jack finishes his pie, scraping the last traces of filling off his
saucer. Getting up, he thanks the wife, complimenting her again at some
length. She tells him she is glad he came, and that he must feel welcome
to come any time. Seeing that she is already busy clearing the table, he
does not detain her with more talk, but tells her good-bye and starts to
the barn. As he crosses the back porch he sees, lying on a shelf beside the
milk buckets, the morning's mail: a newspaper, an advertising circular of
some sort, a post card. The post card is addressed to Elton and Mary
Penn. As soon as he gets to the barn he takes out his notebook and writes
their names in it. He moves the bucket from the well over against the
front wall of the barn, then sits down on it, and goes to sleep.

When he wakes up this time he is not confused, but rested. He can
see from the lengthening of the barn's shadow out into the lot that he
has slept a long nap. The middle of the afternoon has come.

He gets up and walks to the back of the place to look at his steers that have lately been put out on grass. He finds them and spends an hour
watching them graze. They are doing well. There is plenty of grass and
plenty of water. It is the kind of sight a man can look at for pleasure. But
feeling the day going on, he starts back. He cannot remember now what
time Wheeler said he would pick him up, and he does not want to be late.

On the way back he stops on the top of a rise and from that distance
watches the young man and the team go the length of the field-a man
who needs no boss in order to work well, but will require more of himself than another man will be likely to require of him. By the excellence
of the young man they are made free of each other, though that freedom is a bond between them.

It seems to him now that the day is finished, and turning, putting it
behind him, he hastens on to the barn. Not finding Wheeler there, he
does not stop, but goes on through the lot, past the house, down the
long yard to the road, and turns toward town. He is filled with a sense of
loss that now gives no pain. The young man at work behind him, his bed
at the hotel ahead of him, it seems to him that he knows better than he
ever has from how high he is going down.

When Wheeler meets him half an hour or so later he has walked considerably more than a mile.

"Why didn't you wait?" Wheeler asks, leaning across the seat to open
the door for him.

"Why didn't you come on when you was supposed to?" Old Jack says,
guessing from the tone of Wheeler's voice that he must be late.

Wheeler laughs, but says nothing.

Old Jack gets in and arranges himself and slams the door. The car
moves off.

'Aw, Wheeler, I was taking a look at the country. Thought I might see
some old woman about eighteen years old smiling at me as I went by."

They come to a driveway and turn around.

"But none did."

"Well," Wheeler says, "what do you think of Elton Penn?"

"I think he's a good one."

"Uh-huh," Wheeler says.

He has held a high opinion of Elton a long time, but Old Jack would
not take his word.

They go along in silence for a minute, and then Old Jack says, speaking of his daughter and son-in-law: "Wheeler, as soon as I die they'll sell
that farm."

Taken by surprise, Wheeler only nods. He thinks so too.

`And when they sell it, I want you to see that that boy gets a chance to
buy it, if he wants it. I want you to help him get hold of the money, and
stand behind him. Will you do that?"

"I'll do it," Wheeler says.

"Maybe I'll last long enough to help him a little myself."

Mat spent the morning at odd jobs and errands, the endless little tasks of
management that keep him going back and forth between his own land
and Roger Merchant's as the season and the work advance. After dinner
he harnessed a team and spent the second half of the day helping Burley
Coulter work the tobacco ground. The Coulters, in spite of long days
and seven-day weeks, have fallen behind in their work, and Mat has been
giving them odd half days whenever he can. Today, driving the slow
rounds of the field, he was glad to have been needed.

When they quit at dusk, because he will be coming to work there again
tomorrow, Burley stabled his team at Mat's. And as often lately when they
have been together during the afternoon, Mat asked Burley to supper.

Supper has been over a long time now, and the two of them are sitting
in the wicker chairs on the back porch, each smoking one of Mat's cigars.
The dishes washed and put away, the kitchen is dark. The evening is
quiet. Only now and then Mat and Burley can hear down in town a shout
or an outburst of laughter. They are tired, no longer talking. The only
communication between them is the alternate slow glowing and dimming of the cigar ends, the release into the darkness of invisible fragrant
smoke. The sky is clear, filled with brilliant stars; against it can be made
out the massive, faintly stirring tops of the maples and, nearer, the shape
of a hanging flowerpot and the drooping foliage of a begonia. As often
after a day's work, Mat's left shoulder is hurting; he shifts restlessly in his
chair, trying to find a comfortable way to prop his arm. All day he has
carried the thought of loss. His body has grown heavy with the desire to sleep, but he dreads going to bed, afraid that once there he will lie awake,
afraid of the thoughts that will come then. His discipline now is to think
of nothing, to look at the darkness, pleased to be sitting there smoking
with Burley.

Footsteps come back through the house; the screen door opens and
closes quietly.

"Mat?" Margaret says.

"Here we are," Mat says.

Burley gets up. "Here's a chair, Mrs. Feltner."

"No, thank you Burley. Mat," she says, "Hannah's pains have started."

"Have!" Mat gets up. "Well, call the doctor."

"I did. He said to take her on down to the hospital. He'll come as soon
as he can."

"Is she all right?"

"Yes, she's fine. Get the car."

`All right," Mat says. It seems to him there is something else he ought
to ask, but he hears the door open and shut, and Margaret's steps go back
through the hall. He starts off the porch toward the shed where he keeps
the car, Burley following a step or two behind.

Burley has begun to wish he was on his way home. There may have
been a time when he could gracefully have taken his leave, but he does
not know when it was. And so he tags along, a friendly stranger, at what
he hopes is an obviously respectful distance. If Mat would say something-or, better, give him something to do-that would ease him. But
Mat does not say anything, his footsteps hurrying on into the darkness,
and Burley subtracts himself by another couple of steps. Keeping distance between them like a stretcher, they cross the barn lot.

Mat throws open the doors of the shed, and feels his way in between
the wall and the side of the car. The car is an old black coupe, bearing the
marks of use that has been long and casual and hard-not much better
fitted to the occasion, he thinks, than the truck. Turning on the lights, he
hastily sweeps out the dirt, gathering up odds and ends of paper and
clothing and flinging it all into a corner. It seems to him that lately all he
has done is make the rounds from one mess to another, always a little
late. A sort of guilt creeps into him that he has done so little to prepare
for this arrival. But he sees the uselessness of that.

He backs out, turns, and drives out to the road. It is not until he stops
in front of the house that he remembers what it seems he never really
saw: Burley standing in the beam of the headlights, holding the gate open
for him, his hand raised in what might have been blessing or farewell.

The women are waiting. He picks up Hannah's suitcase and takes her
arm. Behind them, Margaret shuts the door.

As they leave the lights of the town behind them, beginning the descent into the river valley, the two women begin to talk. To Mat, though
he does not trust himself to guess what they are feeling, their voices
sound unsure. Glancing down into the light of the dashboard, he sees
that they are holding hands, and his heart labors suddenly with love for
them both.

Coming into Hargrave, they go slowly through the quiet streets, in
and out of the pooled light of the streetlamps, and the sound of the car's
engine, resonant in the silence, reaches ahead into the echoes of itself.

At the hospital Mat lets the two women out near the front door and
goes on to park the car. When he comes into the lobby Margaret is standing alone beside the admissions desk.

"Where's Hannah?"

"They've already taken her to the labor room."

That they have hurried her away before he could even tell her goodbye strikes Mat as outrageous. Because he is tired and afraid-or so, later,
he will explain it-he is suddenly beside himself with sadness and anger.

"God damn it!" he says. "They run this place like a jail."

"Mat?" Margaret says, and he stops, sorry.

Margaret smiles and says, "For Heaven's sake!"

The old nurse sitting there pushes some cards toward him. Her face
wears a look of complacent disgust; her worst suspicions have been confirmed many times, and she is used to it.

"There's a waiting room near the delivery room on the second floor,"
she says as if to the general public. "You may like to wait there."

Except for them the room is empty. Margaret sits down and turns on
the shaded lamp beside her chair. "Mat, you're worn out. Why don't you
go on home now? I'll be fine. As soon as anything happens I'll call you."

"No ma'am," he says. "I'm in this for the duration. What would I do
off by myself? I couldn't sleep."

Margaret takes her embroidery out of her purse, puts on her glasses,
and sets to work. "Well, sit down then, and make yourself at home."

"Shouldn't we call Bess and Wheeler?"

"I don't think so, Mat. Not tonight."

He figured so. She is too practical to call for unnecessary help. All they
have to do is wait, and they can do that by themselves.

"Well. All right."

But he does not make himself at home. It is not in him to yield to this
impersonal place. He shifts about the room, looking at the pictures on
the walls, looking out the windows, rattling the change in his pocket. He
still has his hat on. Because it is, to him, so insistently a waiting room, a
timeless space wedged into time, far from any place where he would be
at home, it seems to exclude some thought that he needs to think. Whatever might be done cannot be done here. He thinks of Hannah suffering
in this alien place, kept apart from them, with such defiant love as makes
him an enemy to all the world but her.

From a door saying DO NOT ENTER a nurse comes into the waiting
room. As Mat turns to question her, she goes through the swinging door
on the opposite side. He wonders if the doctor has come. Surely, he
thinks, if he was here they would have seen him come in. Coming aware
that he is cursing under his breath, realizing what a doubtful hold he has
kept on his feelings, he makes himself sit down. Though he has wished
to be dependable and useful, he has failed even to be quiet. The thought
shames him, reminding him of other times when he has failed of that
steadiness that he most required and expected of himself, and would
most have prided himself in had he been capable of it. The only sounds
now in the silence that has come over them are the cries of nighthawks
flying above the hospital and the town.

Suddenly, without the sound of the approach of footsteps from the
other side, the forbidden door is flung open and Dr. Markman comes in,
looking the same as he always does-hair in his eyes, tie loosened, rumpled suit looking as though the pockets might be filled with wrenches or
fish or garden seed.

"Well," he says, "how the old folks bearing up?"

"Tolerably well," Mat says.

"How're you, Margaret?"

"I'm fine. How's Hannah?"

"She's all right. And going to be all right, too. There is no need to
worry." He looks at his watch. "Well, I'm going to try to nap for a couple
of hours. This is probably going to take a while."

'When do you think it'll be, Doc?"

"Oh, about morning. Hard to say."

He goes back through the door he came out of, and it is quiet again.
Now that the doctor has gone, Mat can think of half a dozen questions
he should have asked. He wishes he had asked to have word sent from
time to time. But that chance is gone now. It could be a long time before
they will hear anything more. He tries to read, but only stares at the blurring print, not seeing it, his mind filled with anxiety in which the cries of
the nighthawks circle and approach and recede like thoughts. Finally he
gives up, and folds his hands. His shoulder is aching again. He is both
painfully tired and wide awake. They are in the midst of what they must
go through.