3stalwarts (147 page)

What she saw standing in the road was an enormous pair of twelve-foot wheels, connected by an axle eight feet long, made of a tree-trunk. The spokes of a third wheel were fixed into this axle and bore on their ends a monstrous grooved tire coiled with rope. While he watered his horses the young man explained that it was an engine he had invented for pulling stumps. The big wheels were chocked on either side of the stump, a chain was fastened to it and the axle. Then he hitched the horses to the rope that wound around the inner wheel; a simple piece of leverage, he said. The stump came up like pie and the big wheels trundled it off the line.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said to Mary. “I do like buttermilk.”

He took the jug from her hands and drank directly from the lip. His grey eyes surveyed her shyly. Reading their admiration, she smiled back; but she felt no emotion, and in a little while he went along, behind his monstrous wheels, whistling “The Waterman’s Song.”

Dorothy laughed after him.

“A likely boy, Mary. He had an eye at you.” And then she said, “To think of a young man like him inventing anything so large.”

Dorothy was perpetually overcome by the wonderful things men did… .

May came with a growth of green. The pastures bore their grass, and the cows, with the calf tailing them in a kind of wonderment, went out to browse. At night Dorothy put a raw leek beside each place to eat before a person drank, for the taste of the wild onions was strong in the milk. Melville sowed his barley, buckwheat, and corn, and all three spent a day in putting in potatoes.

Mary worked steadily with them. Her senses were close to the earth, and her weariness each night offered her release. Less and less as time went on she seemed to miss Jerry. Some Sundays now he did not return at all, for he was several miles westward, working at Geddes.

The June heat brought fogs out of the marsh; and Dorothy would not allow her to go for the cows any more in the evening, for the mist carried ague.

On one of the latter days of June, Dorothy had said, “It’s nearly time for Mr. Falk to come around.”

“Mr. Falk?” Mary asked listlessly.

“Yes. Harley Falk. He’s shoemaker for us. He generally comes about this time.”

When Mary heard the creak of the wheel out on the summery road, she remembered this. Melville and Dorothy had gone to Fayetteville for buying things long needed at the farm; and Melville considered investing a part of his last year’s earnings in some western land company. Mary had preferred to stay behind; for it was a hot day, without a breath of wind, and dry weather during June had covered the road deep in dust. So she was alone in the cabin. The curtains were drawn across the open windows, dimming the drone of bees in the buttercups and making the cabin cool. But from her stool beside the hearth she could see out through the open door, over the square of sweltering grass, to the road.

At length, through the mullein stalks along the fence, she saw the white ears of a horse, flopping like a mule’s to his shambling walk. He carried his head low. And following after she saw the man upon the wagon seat. He seemed to be drowsing, hunched over his wrists, which rested on his knees. She could see nothing of his face. He wore a wide black hat dusted from the road to a silvery grey, and the shoulders of his old black coat were whitened. She remembered that Dorothy had said of the cobbler, “He’s a queer-appearing man. Robert don’t like him much, I fancy, and he makes me, too, uneasy. And yet he’s real obliging.”

When he came to the end of the fence, Mary had a clear view of the horse, a thin white animal; his uncurried coat was dull and ragged. He walked incredibly slow, with a stiff-kneed step and his muzzle dipping continually close to the road. She could see his nostrils pink as he snuffed of the way. Then he stopped, raised his head, and turned it towards the door; and Mary saw that his eyes were as white as his coat. The horse was blind with cataracts.

The driver raised his head abruptly, glanced at the cabin, and turned in his rig. Once more the wheel emitted tedious creaking; and before Mary had had a chance properly to see the man he had passed out of sight towards the barn. She heard the wheel creak past the house into the farmyard; and when it stopped again, the silence seemed to rise out of the earth like an incredible plant.

But Mary could not move. The white eyes in the white face of the horse seemed to stare at her; with a haunting power, as if somewhere, she could not remember when, she had seen them long ago. While she waited, she heard above the bee-sounds how the man was unhitching. The shafts rattled loosely as the horse stepped out of them; she heard the feet of man and horse treading on the plank walk in the barn; and after a while the man came out and drew a bucket at the well. Then the place was silent for a long time. She listened breathlessly for his footfalls across the yard; but still she could not move.

“Hello inside? Is anybody here to home?”

Mary turned slowly on her stool. She did not move her hands from her lap, but the color rose in her cheeks.

“Good afternoon.”

Her own voice startled her. She had not heard him come, but there he was standing in the door.

“Melvilles are away this afternoon,” she said.

The man had taken off his hat. In the open door he made against the shivering heat a still black silhouette.

“May I come in then?”

He had a pack on one shoulder.

“Are you Mr. Falk?”

He nodded.

“Then you’d better come in,” said Mary. “Both of them have work for you.”

“I will come in.”

He stepped across the sill and closed the door, and in the renewed cool dusk inside the cabin he moved quickly past her to the far side of the hearth and swung his pack down, as if that were an accustomed corner.

She watched him unemotionally. A big man, obviously— he had tremendous shoulders, long arms, and ponderous hands— a strange-appearing man to cobble shoes. When he undid the rawhides binding his pack, a scent of tanned leather was breathed forth. Mary’s nostrils quivered; her cheeks ripened suddenly; she felt a faint stir fingering her.

Falk said, “I’ll just go out and get my last and bench and then I’ll be complete.”

Returning after a moment, he put the last down beside the sack, sat himself upon the bench that held the iron upright, and pulled out his drawer of nails and tools. Then he looked across at Mary.

He saw her face high-colored, her grey eyes wide and fixed on his. There was no fire in the hearth; and the ashes, bluish-white, lay unruffled. A spot of sunshine down the chimney lighted the clay back of the fireplace, put a bright spot on a copper kettle, and covered Mary with a gentle sheen.

She was dressed loosely in cool gingham, a bird’s-eye blue, that draped her sympathetically.

He asked, “When did Melvilles go?”

“Quite a while before noon.”

She could not tell his age. Hunched upon his stool, he made a powerful figure; but his head was small. His cheeks were smooth, as if he had just shaved. His long upper lip nearly overlapped his lower. His nose was straight and pointed; his forehead high and almost transparently white— a strange face for a man. His eyes were brown of an indeterminate sort; when they met the light inside the chimney they showed a green tinge.

Save for the drone of bees beyond the curtains, the cabin harbored utter stillness.

Suddenly he asked, “You don’t know what kind of shoes either one of them would want, do you?”

Mary shook her head. Her eyes were fixed on his; following their wandering up and down her figure; meeting them whenever they found hers.

He said, “That’s too bad. If I knew that, I could begin cutting.” His broad fingers dipped into a drawer and pulled out a knife. The blade looked tiny in his fist; it was curved, whetted along the inside edge.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Mary Fowler.”

“Mary Fowler,” he repeated it after her, his long upper lip caressing the syllables. “Are you a kin of Melvilles?”

“I’m boarding here.”

She felt his eyes reading her body.

“Your husband’s working on the canal?”

“Yes. He’s a foreman for Caleb Hammil.”

“On the locks, then?”

“Yes.”

“He is away?”

“Yes, he’s away.” Her voice was oddly toneless.

“He’s been away for long?”

“For a long time.”

“He ought to be back before so long.”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly the man smiled. His teeth, catching the light, were small, even, and white.

“You get lonesome.”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ve noticed women do. It’s too bad. Some men work hard; they haven’t understanding— well men haven’t.”

Mary was silent. But in her heart a little prick of gratitude was stirred. Little by little her attention was absorbed by his face, gentle and sympathetic. He had turned his eyes away from hers and was staring through the open door. A strange man, she thought— and she felt queerly sorry for him, with his face and body so mismated.

“Have you always been a cobbler, Mr. Falk?”

He started.

“No.”

He bit the word off short.

She said, “Myself, I need a new pair of boots. Would you care to make me one?”

As she turned she saw eagerness in his eyes. They had a peculiar humility, like the dog of a dishonest man.

“I’d be glad to. What kind of a boot, Mrs. Fowler?”

“A regular boot. Not too high. One to use in housework or for walking.”

“I’ve got some especial calfskin. Not too heavy.” He bent over the sack. In a moment his big hands had found the leather he was seeking and he brought it to her.

It was cool in her hands, extraordinarily pliable, and the tanned scent breathed out from it seemed to weight her eyelids.

“It’s nice,” said Mary.

“It’s fine leather. It will wear, and it will shape to meet your foot.”

He bent down before her on one knee and took her foot in his hand. Then his big fingers unlaced the old boot, with its wear, its thin sole, all the voyage from England in it and the miles westward she had traveled. His hands were caressing as he handled it, drawing it off and taking her foot; it followed her ankle downward, cupping the heel and feeling of the arch.

“High arches.”

She shivered distantly, and only by an effort kept her open eyes upon his hand.

“So seldom are there arches built like yours. Not out here. The women’s feet are coarse from working inside heavy boots. They let them down.” His hand held the arch, but suddenly the other hand was taking her toes. Mary was breathless. Against her arch she felt a steady pulse, whether hers or his she did not know, but there was a mounting rhythm in the beat. Yet, when he continued, his voice was steady. “A long second toe is a thing many Albany belles would crave. It makes the natural foot. It is a beauty for a woman.”

He slowly raised his face.

What she saw Mary did not choose to read beyond the humility.

“Can I see it bare?” he asked her. “It isn’t often.”

Mary’s hands obeyed. She swung herself a little to one side and reached inside her skirt. She pulled the stocking to her knee. “Shameless,” she thought; but she was shameless.

He took the rolled edge of brown cotton and slowly bared the leg. She felt the coolness of the cabin strike against the skin, his soft palms and the calloused finger-tips made rough by tack-points. The shivering again possessed her. Her color came into her cheeks; her lips were full, her eyes still. Then he looked at her, and all at once, in the cabin dusk, she felt a chill, and she saw not his eyes but the white, sightless eyes that she remembered in the horse. This was a thing she had not willed to do; her will was not her own. There was an impulse in her like the wind; and she put her hands in her lap to hide them, feeling them like leaves.

But the cobbler was quietly examining the foot. After a while he slipped the stocking on, and to Mary’s ears the dim droning of the bees returned. She saw the mullein stalks beyond the road-fence, the sky burnished blue, with small hot clouds in it.

He finished lacing up the shoe.

It seemed to Mary that the incident was a thing long past. She watched him now impersonally, cutting the leather from memory, bending it in his big hands. He laid out his needle, waxed his threads. The needle caught a bit of light, moving it up and down like quicksilver.

As he worked, they talked.

He said he had been born back east. He did not say why he had left New England, but he told her all the places he had seen.

“It’s as if I had a beast inside me gnawing. I get restless. I haven’t worked a district more than five years ever.”

“Have you worked many?”

“Eight, I mind.”

“You wouldn’t look that old.”

“Generally I don’t dwell five years on one.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not yet forty-five, if you would want to know.”

“How did you come to cobbling, Mr. Falk?”

“It was a way to make a living, when I went out into new country.”

“Oh.”

“People don’t always like me,” he explained. “I don’t know why. The men don’t and some women are af eared.”

He said it quietly. But she caught the sadness and felt sorry for him.

He said he had been eastward.

“They’ve had some trouble with the diggers. Irish and niggers don’t mix. Any man can get a job. There’ve been riots. They pay them part in whiskey. Men together fashion strange ideas.”

She watched his leather taking shape under his big skilled fingers. It was magical. When the Melvilles returned before sunset, old Squirrel dragging the wagon tiredly, Falk’s hammer was tapping. The cabin had grown darker as the light crept up the chimney out to westward. And Mary was quiet with a strange sense of an inner freedom, talking to this man. He listened well, waiting to catch her roundabout allusions; and his understanding eyes would veil themselves at her voice and when she was silent look deeply into her.

“So soon as I heard that hammer,” Dorothy cried, “I said to Robert, ‘Mr. Falk has come.’ I’m glad to see you. Both of us need boots.”

The cobbler smiled over the shoes he made for Mary.

Dorothy stripped off her straw bonnet. Her wispy grey hair looked tight as ever behind her homely face. She turned her eyes searchingly on Mary and made a mouth to herself. Then she looked at the shoes.