The Fires of Spring (3 page)

The two suicides that David found hanging in the barn were such men, and Old Daniel was much afraid of the effect their violent deaths might have upon the boy. “They were so miserable,” Daniel explained, “that they preferred death. That leaves the hall to the rest of us who are happy.” This explanation seemed so simple and correct that David never realized the truth. He did not see that the unhappiness of one lonely old man might bespeak the vast unhappiness of a village, or a city, or a world.

So, insulated by men who loved him, he grew up happy and untouched. He especially liked summer at the poorhouse. Corn grew in the lovely fields of Bucks County, and lima beans climbed on poles. Horses smelled strong and sweaty. Wagons creaked in the early morning and groaned their protests at night. Birds sang, and at every meal green things were served. In summer David went swimming at Edison. There were woods to explore, animals to track, and ripeness riot through all the land.

Autumn was golden and exciting. Then wagons worked overtime bringing in corn and pumpkins. After the first frost, apples were picked. Pears were wrapped in paper and
stored in dark bins. Cider was made at the press, and celery was buried beneath the earth. Hundreds of heads of cabbage were sliced up for sauerkraut, and David helped Toothless Tom wire down the lids of the fermenting barrels. After the baling wire was drawn taut Tom would tap the barrels of kraut approvingly and cry, “Now let ’er fizz!”

But winter was best of all! A pleasing warmth settled over the poorhouse. For one thing, there wasn’t so much work to do. The stars were brighter, and Orion dominated the frozen skies. Like that vast warrior, David too went out to hunt. Day after day he rose at four and went with Toothless Tom along the creeks to see if their traps had snared any muskrats. Night came earlier, too, and on the long hall there was much good talking.

So for three seasons of the year, life was not at all bad in the poorhouse.

On the last Friday in February, David received a shocking jolt. Miss Clapp opened her blue book and continued the story about Achilles and the Trojans. David sat back and smiled. This time he knew that Achilles was not going to meet the second team. Hector was in the field for the Trojans!

As the great story of battle unfolded, David Harper sat transfixed, his mouth open a little, his tousled head tilted to one side. When the inevitability of Hector’s death bore in upon him, his sandy head lowered, not in defeat, but in despair. And when the flaming Trojan was trussed to the victor’s chariot and hauled through the dust, David could do nothing but sit and twist Harry Moomaugh’s pants, which were now his pants.

He did not protest to Miss Clapp. She was a funny woman, but he trusted her. If she read it that way, that’s the way it was. Nor did he blame the book. He had long since learned that books merely tell what happened. No, his despair was greater because it was formless. An evil thing had happened.

When the day ended, he closed his desk, went to the cloakroom in silence, and slipped into his thin coat. Harry Moomaugh punched him in a friendly manner. “You guessed wrong this time,” he joked.

David stopped and looked at Harry across a considerable void. Silently, he turned away from his friend and left the school. When he reached the poorhouse truck he climbed in back and did not speak to the driver. Grimly he reviewed what he had heard. Hector, the peer of them all, was dead. He
was not only dead; he lay disgraced outside the walls of Troy.

At the poorhouse, meals were served in a long, dismal hall, which the women entered by one door and the men by another. Usually the women chattered and argued about seats, while the men were quieter, staring at the kitchen to get a hint of what the food was to be. But this night even the women were quiet, and David had the strange sensation of feeling that as they somberly entered the long hall they were acting out a lamentation over the body of dead Hector. The scene was so lonely and terrible that he had to leave the table, his food untouched.

That night he could not talk to the men on the long hall. He went directly to Door 8 and slammed it behind him. He fell upon his narrow bed and tried to understand what had happened at Troy. Always before he had been able to guess the ending of a story after the first instalment. But this time the story baffled him.

After lights were out Toothless Tom crept into his room with some cheese. David did not want any. “I’m not hungry, Tom,” he said.

“You ain’t et!” Tom insisted.

“I don’t want any,” the boy said dully.

When he found sleep impossible, he crept down the hall to Old Daniel’s room. The wizened man was reading in bed with a candle. “What’s up?” he asked.

“It’s about Hector,” David explained.

“Wrap yourself in those pants. It’s cold.”

“Hector was better than Achilles.”

“Of course he was.”

“Then why did Achilles win?”

Daniel lay in bed with the covers tightly around his thin neck. His delicate hands lay beneath the blankets, and now, as if he were about to say something of great importance, he stuck his left hand out and pointed to his visitor. “David,” he began earnestly. Then he reconsidered and laughed. “Did Miss Clapp finish the story?” he asked.

“Next week,” David explained.

The old man looked at the candle for a long time, so long that David thought he had fallen asleep. Finally he asked, “What do you think will happen next week?”

In the shadows the boy’s face brightened. “Well,” he exploded, “somebody from Troy will kill Achilles and the Greeks will go home.”

Old Daniel chuckled at the eager boy huddled in the blue denim pants. The round face was so pleased, so freckled, so pug-nosed and sure of itself. “That’s what you think will happen?” Daniel asked.

“Sure!” David added. “Troy is the best side.”

Again Daniel started to explain the tragedy that awaited every Hector, and Achilles, and Priam, and each city, whether it be Troy or Carthage or Sparta. But again he stopped. He realized that in every thinking life the moment must come when the bearer of that life must face the inexplicability of things as they are. By and large, the more penetrating the initial blow the better chance a man has of diffusing its meaning over his entire soul and welcoming this savage truth into the heart of his being. Old Daniel saw clearly that within a week this bright, cheery boy would receive his initial blow, for a boy may help to cut down two suicides and miss entirely their meaning, but when a boy grieves abstractly about the death of Hector, and when within a week he must also learn of the perfidy by which Achilles himself died and the foul trick that tumbled the topless towers of Troy, then he is dabbling with the soul’s fire and he must surely be burnt.

“It’s cold,” Daniel said. “Go to bed. Next week tell me how the story ends.”

“Sure!” the shivering little boy replied. “I’ll find out what happened for you.” He hung up Daniel’s pants and crept back to his own room. There, upon his pillow, was a chunk of cheese. Hungrily he ate it in the dark.

As Friday afternoon dragged on, David found himself nervous with anticipation. Finally Miss Clapp picked up the blue book. “This afternoon we are going to say good-bye to our friends the Greeks and the Trojans,” she said. She coughed, waited a moment for that strained silence which delighted her teacher’s heart, and began: “At night the Trojans crept out to get the body of Hector and give it decent burial within the walls.” David gasped when Achilles was tricked to death. Even Achilles should have been allowed to fight. Now the March sunlight crept across the blackboard like the hand of a clock rushing to end the tale. A wooden horse was built, and David chuckled to himself. The Trojans wouldn’t be that dumb!

The sunlight was clear across the board, filling the room like music, and Miss Clapp read on, her voice fraught with suspense. Now the walls of the city were knocked down to admit
the horse. The treacherous beast was hauled into the heart of Troy. Stop them! It’s a trick! Night came on and much feasting. Oh, put a guard there! Trojans, Trojans! To the walls! But the city ignored all of David’s warnings, and from the bowels of the horse came forth a fearful burden. Kill them now! Now! But the city caroused, and in a moment it was aflame, and the proud towers of Troy were gone forever.

This time David could not keep silent. With sunlight flooding the room like the flames of Troy, he rose and asked, “Is that what it says in the book?”

Miss Clapp, who had been working for a crushing finale, was exasperated. “Of course that’s what it says!”

“I don’t believe it!” David blurted out.

“Oh!” Miss Clapp gasped. “You sit down!”

To his own great surprise, David glared at his teacher and cried, “No! It’s a crazy story!” And he dashed into the cloakroom exactly as Gracey Kelley had done. But instead of sobbing or kicking the wall, he grabbed his coat and ran out into the street. He ignored the poorhouse truck and wandered down the hill, down into the fields leading to Edison.

The ground under his feet was still frozen, but he could sense spring fighting for possession of the earth. In places a mild thaw had set in. Here the earth was moist and David’s feet sloshed up and down in rich mud. A path through the woods led him to a sunny spot where jack-in-the-pulpits were growing. Beside him the soft earth was pierced by the glorious leaves of the dogtooth violet.

David’s shoes were now a mess, but his turbulent heart was quieter. When he reached the stream he was fully decided as to what he must do. Miss Clapp could have the story her way. He would have it his way. His fingers were truly burning to get hold of a pencil! “I’ll write a book,” he mumbled defiantly, “that’ll take care of the Greeks!”

There are many reasons why men write books: vanity, a longing for old days, the need of money, a bursting desire to expostulate or to share experience. But in David Harper’s first aching desire to write he struck upon one of the finest and most difficult-to-control of all motivations: he was burning angry, fiery mad, and come gods or schoolteachers or friends or thrashings from his aunt or hunger or poorhouses or the despair of his own heart he would do something about it!

Night fell before he reached the poorhouse. Deep in the west his old friend Orion waved a last farewell. The air was colder now, and the fields were no longer soft beneath his feet. He climbed the last hill and there below him gleamed the lights of the poorhouse.

His heart dancing with energy, he hurried across the remaining fields. He hid in shadows as the old women returned from supper to their own building. He saw one of them stop, sniff at the air and try the ground with her finger. He watched another kick at the earth of the sleeping flower beds. Then Aunt Reba, thin and angry, appeared and hurried the old women to their hall.

The sight of Aunt Reba made him shiver, and he realized that he was both hungry and cold. He would slip in the back way, and Aunt Reba need never know. But there was no such luck. Miss Clapp had already reported him by telephone. The truck was running up and down the road looking for David Harper. In Doylestown the policemen were doing the same. “Here he is!” cried an old woman.

“Catch him!” Aunt Reba yelled. She dashed across the open space between the buildings and grabbed her nephew. “
So
, ve got to run avay from
school
, yet!
Look
at them shoes. Them pants, yet.
Look
at Mr. Smarty!”

Mumbling with rage, she dragged David into the pantry and grabbed a small board from the top of a flour barrel. Stretching the boy across her lap, she did not whip; she beat him. With a fury born of desperation she beat David until, indifferent as he was, he had to scream for mercy.

“Vell!”
the frantic woman cried above his noise. “So it’s trouble in
school
, yet!” And she beat him still harder. On the long hall the men, hearing David’s screams, were ashamed and did not look at one another.

Finally David could bear the pain no longer. He wrenched himself free, and in doing so he stumbled. Like a swift cat, his frenzied aunt was upon him, thrashing him wherever she could land a blow. The board caught him on the head, across his cheek, in the back, on the legs. He scrambled to his feet and dodged the frantic blows until he made his way out of the pantry and up the dark stairs.

“Komm
back
here, you!” his enraged aunt bellowed. But he was safe. He stopped on the dark steps and listened to his aunt puffing. He saw her peer into the stairway, her face flushed and furious. Then she threw the board down and left.

For a long moment David stood in the darkness. He was
ashamed to enter the hall where the men might speak to him. He touched the blood on his cheek and felt sick. Then he hoisted up his pants. Mortified, he entered the hall, and to his great joy there was no one there to watch him. Daniel had herded them to their rooms. They listened as he plodded down to Door 8. They heard him stand for a moment by the threshold of his room and cry defiantly to no one at all: “She can’t hurt me!” The door slammed violently, and the hall was empty.

Inside his barren room David kicked off his muddy clothes and grimly arranged them along the floor. Then he picked up his stubby pencil and sat at the washstand, his tablet of stolen paper before him. He sucked his pencil for a long time and then began to write. A great, inconsolable rage welled up within him. But Aunt Reba had nothing to do with it.

When Toothless brought him a sandwich, he refused to let the old man in. Someone else knocked, probably Daniel, but he too was ignored. When lights went out he lit his candle. All day Saturday he worked, and Sunday, too.

On Wednesday night he finished writing. With a grandiloquent flourish he signed his name and walked to the end of the hall, where Old Daniel and the men were waiting. “You been workin’ a long time,” the mad Dutchman said.

“I’ve been writing,” the little boy said.

“What?” Luther demanded contentiously.

“A poem!” David snapped.

The mad Dutchman nodded. “Writin’ pomes is wery hard,” he said.

Old Daniel took charge. “If it’s a poem,” he said, “it should be read. Would you like me to read it?”