The Other Nineteenth Century (24 page)

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Authors: Avram Davidson

BOOK: The Other Nineteenth Century
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Perhaps an hour or so later when there is something more like quiet once again, Chester Boswell,
“Why,
” he asks, in a trembling voice,
“Why
do all these devilish tragedies always seem to happen when they are twenty-three? Don’t they always seem to happen when—”
Aunt Sarah breaks her silence. Her long, long silence. “Of course,” she says. “That is when the horns begin to grow.”
She leans forward and she begins to talk. And talk.
The “new” family burying-grounds make up part of the original property of twenty-two and a half acres. Some say, it is a bit more than that. A good bit more than that, some say.
It is well known that Avram Davidson read and appreciated the work of H. P. Lovecraft; he made more than passing references to the gentleman from Providence in both his reviews and his fiction. I would like to assert that “Twenty-Three” can be viewed as a Davidson pastiche of Lovecraft—fully as bizarre and original as the pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, “The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach” (in which Davidson also did not imitate the style of the author).
Consider: the rich, eccentric New England family; the agrarian roots of an industrial fortune now in decline; allusions to the daemonic connections of Crossley Sutter, possibly producing bastard children; Cotton Mather’s supernatural writings; a reclusive elderly cousin “whom Chickamauga does not kill nor wolves tear apart;” the knowing helplessness of the Sutter women; the atmosphere of enforced New England rectitude and the abundance of antiquarian detail; and the explanation (almost too terrible to be spoken) in the final paragraphs of the story. Compare, for example, Lovecraft’s stories “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”
—
Henry Wessells
The scene was archetypal. The sweet gray-haired woman was trying to persuade the rugged gray-haired man to let her discard some of his old clothes. “No, I am
not
‘throwing them away,’” she said. “I am giving them to the town church for the annual sale.”
“No, you are
not
‘giving them to the town church for the annual sale,’” he said. “I’ll make a cash contribution instead, but I don’t want a thing gotten rid of—not a thing!”
He was firm, but not angry. Neither was she. They knew each other well. “What, not even—not even,” she groped, came up with several articles of old-fashioned look, “not even these, for goodness’ sake? When was the last time you wore silk socks?—And besides, what cash?” She looked at him with affectionate impatience.
“Never you mind about that, it will be forthcoming when needed; no, not a thing. These old clothes, I can wear around the mill or the garden.”
The room and the rest of its contents were neither new nor rich, but everything held and released the glow of things well made and well taken care of: paneled walls, furniture, bedspread and quilts. Stained-glass windows. Hand-crafted chandelier. Even the shade on the bedside lamp, and the bindings of the books.
“Ohhh, I suppose—” Her voice trailed off, then was renewed as
she lifted her hands. “And the old stockings, will you wear them around the mill and the garden? One is red and—why, they don’t even match! But, I suppose—”
They had had this scene before. She always lost. And she always tried again. “Look at them! I could almost swear that they’ve shrunk.—Anklets,” she murmured, prepared to drop them, and the subject, too.
“Never mind,” he said, also prepared to end it, but not for a few words more. “Never mind. I like things the way they are. No, don’t throw away a thing. Do I tell you to throw away stuff in the kitchen?”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t. And that’s one reason we don’t have to apply for food stamps. Yes, I know. I know all about it. Well. Be on about your business, you—you old master craftsman, you! Going to the kiln?” she asked, as he, with a final grunt, moved toward the door.
He tugged out his old watch, cupped and scanned it. “No, kiln won’t be ready for over an hour.” His rugged face split into a smile. “Man there waiting impatiently, even though I told him they’d have to cool, for gosh sake! ‘I’ve come five hundred miles,’ he says, ‘and I’m not leaving without them soup bowls!’”
The gray-haired woman closed the closet door. “Well, I’m glad there are still some people who want them, big as they are. How long did it take the last batch to sell?” He did not answer, and she did not expect he would. So, “Find out how Sister Ferguson’s arthritis is this morning” were her last words as he left.
A man of his own decade walked slowly along the graveled path, looked up now, and greeted him as “Brother Johnson.”
“The gravel isn’t here ‘just for fancy,’ as the Pennsylvania Dutch put it, no, Brother Washburne. Done with forethought. No mud in the springtime, no dust in the summertime. That is the way we work, here at the Dawnside Place. Forethought is an important Dawnside principle. Sister Johnson thinks the soup bowls may be too big for you,” he said, with a slight quirk of his mouth.
Mr. Washburne’s heavy face sagged. “Too big for me? Why, a soup bowl can’t be too big, way
I
look at it!”
“Way
I
look at it, too—”
“When I want a bowl of soup, I want a
bowl
of it! Not a cup … Keep this place real neat, Brother, I see. Not a fallen leaf, so much as.”
As they walked through the grounds, so carefully taken care of that a stranger might have thought that all the trees and shrubs had been hand-planted instead of—for a large part—being the carefully preserved original plant-cover of the landscape, Brother Johnson explained that not even a leaf was suffered to wither uselessly at the Dawnside Place, nor were they burned—so wasteful! Some went directly into the compost heap and some went there indirectly, after having been of service in the barn. That way Dawnside had to plant less grass for hay and could devote the land saved to other crops. No, of course the cows and goats did not eat leaves; the leaves were spread on the floors of their stalls. There was no “spoiled hay” at Dawnside.
“Nor much of anything else,” he added.
Mr. Washburne was impressed. “Department of Agriculture comes up with some good ideas, sometimes,” he said.
But that was the wrong thing to have said.
The Department of Agriculture had absolutely nothing to do with it, the Master Craftsman of Dawnside Place told him, using a good degree of emphasis. Employing fallen leaves for other purposes was just plain old-fashioned common sense and American knowhow. “Department of Agriculture! Federal Government! People expect the government to do everything for them these days—the Federal Government, I mean. What’s going to become of the good old American get-up-and-go, is what I’d like to know?”
Mr. Washburne said that he agreed with him a hundred percent.
“We
don’t expect some government bureau to do anything for us that we can do for ourselves,” Brother Johnson swept on. “Oh,
this
is not one of your so-called art colonies, subsidized and federalized, no, not one of your factory-in-the-field kind of farms, either! Never let
anyone
do for you what you can do for yourself—oh, that’s a very important Dawnside principle, Brother Washburne. Create your own beauty by your own honest toil is our motto. ‘Whatsoever
thy hands find to do, do it with thy might’—can’t improve on that, can you now?”
Mr. Washburne said that he agreed with him a hundred percent.
“No!” cried the Master Craftsman of the Dawnside Place. “Elbert Hubbard showed us the way. The Shakers had already showed
him
the way. We raise our own food here—well, almost
all
our own food. We mostly make all our own clothes here. We make
all
our own furniture, we dip our own candles, we print our books on presses we have made ourselves, and we make our own pottery and glassware and paper. Some is wallpaper. I lost track of how many prizes our hand-printed wallpaper has won. And some is high-quality paper for our hand-printed books. We cast our own type and do our own engraving and coloring and binding and make our own cardboard and cartons for shipping and—”
Mr. Washburne, whose head had drooped slightly, now said that they were certainly beautiful books, for sure. “Wished I could afford to buy some. And some of your other beautiful stuff, too. Your stuff is kind of expensive, though—oh, mind you, not that I don’t mean to imply, uh, why they are certainly worth every penny of it, and I don’t begrudge the price of them soup plates which I’ve been saving up for, oh, two years now.—Say, how are you folks set up as a business here?” he asked, showing a slight embarrassment and a desire to change the subject.
They were set up as a corporation like any other corporation, the Dawnside leader explained. Receiving certainly no favors as such from the Federal Government. “We craftsmen and craftswomen hold all our stock ourselves, and I am merely the first among equals, as Chairman of the Board of Directors.”
Mr. Washburne asked, “How’s business?”
There was a brief silence. “Slow,” said the Chairman of the Board. “Yes. Business is slow right now. Taxes are too high. People don’t have the money to pay for quality right now.” Nothing was said for a while. Presently they came to a low building of handpressed brick and unpainted timbers; it too had stained-glass windows of birds and flowers and plants.
“I’ll just step into the office for a minute,” said the Master Craftsman.
Mr. Washburne said he’d wait outside and enjoy the air. A large automobile drove up to a halt and two grown-up people and two small children peered out of the windows. “Say, what is this place?” the man asked.
Mr. Washburne straightened up in his seat on the handfashioned bench. “Why, this is the famous Dawnside Place,” he said.
The woman gave a sort of gasp of surprise. “Oh, is this the famous Dawnside Place?” she exclaimed. “Why, I heard about this place when I was just a little girl!”
“I want a hamburger,” said a child.
“I want French fries,” said the other child.
“Say, I thought they’d gone out of business,” the man said. Mr. Washburne laughed at the very idea. “Yeah, sure, I heard they’d gone out of business. Or were going out of business. All that old-fashioned junk they make. Sure. I heard—”
“—hamburger—”
“—French fries—”
The woman asked if they served food here. Mr. Washburne nodded. At the Guest Table, he said. Three times a day. Not now, though. And he was in the midst of advising them that they wait around when the large automobile took off at high speed and was gone in a flurry of gravel and exhaust smoke.
The door opened and the Master Craftsman came out. His ruddy face looked much less than cheerful. “Didn’t even say thank you,” murmured Mr. Washburne.
Brother Johnson grunted. “What did they want—hamburgers? People live on that nowadays. Why, what is the matter with good old-fashioned meat-and-oatmeal-loaf? Good old-fashioned scrapple? With hash? Anything the matter with our old-fashioned-style hash and mashed turnips?”
“Not a thing,” Mr. Washburne said staunchly. “Say, I guess I’m going to take a little rest-up before lunchtime. My soup bowls won’t
be ready for a while yet, I guess.” He had a hopeful, questioning note in his voice.
“Be ready soon as they cool,” the Master Craftsman said firmly. “Well, I got to go to town, do some bank business, so I’ll give you a lift to the Guest House.”
“
’Preciate
that.”
In the car Mr. Washburne said nothing. Brother Johnson clutched the wheel, breathing heavily. “Sister Ferguson,” he said. “Known that woman forty years. For-ty years. Taught her the ancient art of stained glass. The ancient arts of spinning and weaving. Taught her typing and double-entry bookkeeping. Taught her how to look on beauty, clear. Now she wants to sell out. To—sell—
out!
‘Either get one of those Federal grants like everybody else is doing,’ is what she said. ‘Never while I draw
breath.’
I told her, ‘will I ask the Federal Government to do one thing for me which I can do for myself,’ is what I said. Asked her, ‘What? You going soft in your maturity?’”
Mr. Washburne’s mild indeterminate sound might have been sympathy. Or sleepiness. The trees and shrubs and scattered buildings of the place looked rather bare under the gray sky. Brother Johnson made a surprised noise. “What? Gone past the Guest House?” he asked. He looked briefly aside at the other man. “Well, I’ll back up, then. No problem.—Solve our own problems,” he admonished.
He leaned over and opened the door. “Got a good three-quarter hour before the bell rings for lunch. Notice its mellow sound, by the way. Cast that bell
myself,
” he said proudly.
Alone in the car he continued his conversation. “‘Sister, you are not going to sell
out
, are you?’ is what I asked her.
For-ty years,
oh, I saw it coming. I knew. I could tell. ‘Either to Washington or to you or to Tom, Dick, or Harry,’ she had the brass to say. Said, ‘If no Federal grant, then buy my shares out,’ says she. ‘The grant will pay for an apprenticeship program, a lot of young people are interested in learning old arts nowadays, and we can install a new heating system; otherwise
I
am going to Florida and I am not going to spend one more winter shivering before my hand-crafted fireplace!’
“Apprenticeship program! Young people! Hippies! Sister
Fer
guson!” he concluded.
“What’s that, hey, Johnson?” asked the man at the gas station.
“Huh?
Oh
. Oh, just talking to myself. Fill’er up. Regular.”
The man at the gas station said, “Must have money in the bank, talking to yourself that way.”
The Master Craftsman grunted and said, “I’m going to
put
some money in the bank, soon as you put some gas in my tank.”
“Well, good. Guess I’ll be able to deposit that post-dated check you gave me for last month’s bill.” He moved on back to take the cap off the tank. After a while he put it back on, made out the new bill with a small pencil stub, handed it in for the Master of Dawnside to sign. “My brother Bob,” said the man at the gas station, “he draws disability, he draws Social Security, he draws Food Stamps, he don’t have to worry about the oil company trying to force the independent distributors out of business, he don’t have to get out of bed at half past five in the morning.”
The Master of Dawnside handed back pad and pencil. “The day
I
ask the Federal Government to do one single thing which I can do myself,” he said grimly, “is the day I hope to die.”
In town he parked carefully in front of where Snyder’s Grocery used to be—Snyder’s had often bought Dawnside products—and ignored the wide parking lot of the supermarket-which had never bought from Dawnside. He waited in the bank till Mr. Hopkins, the senior cashier, had finished with another customer, then stepped up to his window. Mr. Hopkins’s small face smiled, cheeks as shiny as those on a crisp apple. Very softly he said, peering through his thick glasses, “Oh, good, you can catch up on your taxes, then.” He picked up the deposit slip.

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