Then There Were Five (4 page)

“Come inside,” said Daphne.

What a place it was! Lofty as a cathedral; full of the gold of hay, and its golden, heady smell. High in the dusky shadows of the roof barn swallows twittered and darted. Still above, from the ridgepole came the soft stutterings of pigeons. Straw was scattered on the floor and among it stepped a rooster with a quivering comb.

“Dave!” called Daphne.

There was no answer. She called again, and a third time.

“Dav-id! We've got company! And they're right here with me!”

There was a sudden rustling and crackling. Between the empty stalls stood the hay wagon, unhitched, and filled to overflowing with its last load. A boy slid down from it suddenly.

“Dave Addison! You heard me all the time.”

The boy grinned. “Sure I did, but I was taking a short nap. What they call a siesta.” He turned to Rush and Randy. “Hello. I've been out in the hayfield all day and, boy, was it hot. I got bushed. What are your names? Mine's David Addison.”

Rush told him and explained their mission. He liked this boy's looks. He seemed to be about twelve or thirteen, and a strong, independent person.

“Sure we've got stuff for you. Come on with me, will you, Rush, and help me carry it.”

Randy and Daphne stood in the barn looking at each other. For some reason the shyness had come back again.

“Ever tried this?” cried Daphne suddenly, and she went up the ladder to the loft quick as a monkey; poised there on the edge like an aerial performer and then suddenly, breathlessly, arched into space, into the golden shafts of sunlight with their golden motes, and landed lightly, softly in the hay wagon far below.

“I have to do that too,” said Randy and up the ladder she went, hardly able to find a place to put her foot the hay bulged out so richly between the rungs.

The hay in the loft was soft and smothery, full of a golden sneezy dust. She sank into it up to her knees with every step. Poised at the edge, she hesitated, drew in her breath.

“Gee whiz, Daphne. It looks about a mile away, that wagon. What if I missed it?”

“You couldn't miss it, Randy, it's big as a boxcar. Come on, jump. It's fun, honestly it is!”

Daphne's little sun-stained face was turned up to her encouragingly, pink as a strawberry. Randy couldn't be a sissy even if she broke her leg not being one.

Take care of me, God, prayed Randy silently and leaped. Oh, what joy. Right out into the air like a bird; free as a bird and as safe. Pouf—bounce! A feathery thump, and there she was lying on her face, laughing in the sweet, scratchy hay.

“Hurry up, Randy, out of the way! I'm coming!” Daphne was standing on the edge of the loft looking down like a youthful angel contemplating the earth.

“Well, wait a minute, hold your horses. Wait till I get down!” commanded Randy. She slid from the wagon, and ran for the ladder. “Hurry up, or I'll catch you,” she cried halfway up. The shyness had vanished from them both.

When they came out of the barn at last, hot and red-cheeked, there were dried clover blossoms in their hair, and bits of leaf and stalk sticking to their clothes. Daphne brushed Randy off, and Randy brushed Daphne.

“What school do you go to?” asked Randy. “I never saw you over at Carthage.”

“Oh, we go to the District School. Over toward Eldred it is. A little white schoolhouse with a bell like a dinner bell. We've always gone there.”

“Hey, Randy, come help!” shouted Rush's voice. He was going toward the surrey with his arms full of wire coat hangers and tin cans. David was following, dragging an old bedspring.

Daphne and Randy ran to their assistance and presently the back of the surrey was heaped with a welter of scrap. Burnt-out pots and pans, flatirons, broken rakes and spades, lead soldiers and toy cars, an ancient coffee grinder, a small old-fashioned radiator, the remains of some cast-iron lawn furniture, and a doorstop in the shape of a Scotty, that Mrs. Addison hated.

There was plenty of room for more, however, and Rush and Randy climbed reluctantly into the front seat to continue their quest.

“You come again real soon now, Randy,” Daphne ordered. “I'll show you how to make gingerbread.”

“You come too, Rush,” said Dave, and they promised eagerly.

As they drove away the scrap clattered and jingled. It was a festive, pleasant sound.

“I feel like a gypsy tin peddler,” Rush said. “It would be kind of a nice life. A wagon, and a horse, and the hardware clashing together over the bumps.”

“No school,” said Randy.

“No haircuts and fingernails,” said Rush.

“No good clothes,” said Randy.

“No worry about being late or early,” said Rush.

They both sighed and were still, imagining a happy, untidy, leisurely life outdoors. Sleeping under hedges. Washing in brooks and streams. Cooking stolen chicken over a campfire. Throwing the bones over your shoulder into the dark …

“No dishes!” Rush began to laugh. “Oh, boy, were we ever wrong about the Addisons, at least this species of Addison. It's the supper dishes for you and me tonight, my friend.”

The next mailbox they came to was in a hollow not far from its house. Jasper Titus was the name printed on it.

“Jasper Titus. Quick, Ran, what does it sound like?”

“Like a tall, cross man; kind of stingy and unforgiving.”

“Check. That's what it sounds like to me. And this time if we're wrong we have to mop the kitchen floor!”

The appearance of the house carried out the general idea. It was an old house, but not old enough, and it sat squarely facing the road. It was tall, with gables and a bay window, and in spite of the wooden lacework dripping from the eaves, it looked narrow and severe. There was a window in the front door set with hard blue and orange panes of glass.

The doorbell had a handle to turn instead of a button to push. They turned it and heard a distant sound like a muffled alarm clock. Nobody came. They waited and before they had screwed up the courage to ring it again they heard a voice calling from somewhere.

“Round to the
back!
Round to the
back!
That door ain't been opened in nine years.”

Randy and Rush walked around the house; around the bridal wreath bushes, and the canna plants, and an old tin washtub with pansies in it. Rush looked at it covetously. “Scrap,” he said. He had been collecting it so passionately that there was a mad gleam in his eye at the sight of any metal. For him the commonest tin can had come to have the luster of silver and the lure of gold.

The back of the house was a pleasant surprise. It was nice and friendly and untidy. Dishcloths lay drying on a box bush, a white duck was wandering to and fro, and three gray kittens tumbled on the grass beside an elderly dog. There was a grapevine straggling over a trellis, a bucket upside down on a post, and a clothesline with nothing on it except some clothespins like birds perched on a telegraph wire. Beyond the strip of grass as far as the barn lay a vegetable garden with bean-pole wigwams. Here and there among the vegetables were planted loud, cheerful flowers.

The back of the house seemed to have nothing to do with the front. It was as if this were its real character while the front was just dressed up to impress visitors or scare marauders.

An old man was sitting on the back steps shelling peas. He was fat and rosy-cheeked and the only thing that kept him from resembling Santa Claus was the absence of a beard. He did have a fine mustache, though, and his hair in the sunshine was blinding white. Over his blue jeans he wore a plaid apron.

“Afternoon, folks,” said he comfortably. “What would be your desire?”

Rush explained, and the old man, Mr. Titus, looked thoughtful. Peas dropped into the basin with the sound of rain.

“Scrap. Let me see now. No cans. I put up all my own stuff in good glass jars. Seems like I got a harrow out back the orchard. Been decayin' there the last nine, ten years. Prob'ly all bound down to the earth with thistles and bindweed by now. I know, though! I got a stove. Yes, sir, got a old coal stove!” He put the basin aside and lumbered to his feet.

“Too fat,” said he contentedly. “Too blame fat. Been years accruin' it.”

He waddled toward the barn still wearing his apron which was tied in a neat bow behind. The duck, the collie, and the kittens followed too.

Mr. Titus broke off a leaf of something, sniffed it and gave it to Randy.

“Lemon verbena,” he said. “I keep it for smellin' purposes.”

He led them to a shed and opened the door. It was full of the kind of things that people can't help collecting when they live for a long time in one place. There was an old-fashioned sewing machine, and dozens of Mason jars, some kerosene cans, and a shelfful of oil lamps with sooty glass chimneys; there was a parrot cage, and two wheelbarrows, flowerpots, watering cans, a hose curled up like a serpent and five calendars on the wall, each for a different year and none for the present one. There was a dressmaker's form, and a workbench with a tool rack and some very old shavings lying on it in dusty curls. There were two oil paintings, one of a man, the other of a woman; they had plain, durable faces and the mole on the lady's chin was painted with loving care. Mr. Titus looked at the pictures thoughtfully.

“My grandparents,” said he. “Fine folks they was, fine folks. But I felt better having 'em out here. In the parlor they kept lookin' at me hard and sayin', ‘Jasper, get on with your chores!'”

He shoved aside the sewing machine and there was the stove. A sturdy, potbellied stove that had seen years of service.

“Gee that's swell, Mr. Titus,” breathed Rush, the look coming into his eye.

“What about old Mrs. Gladstone?” suggested Mr. Titus, giving the dressmaker's form a good hearty spank. “She's got a lot of metal in her. A fine stout metal carcass, and that standard.”

“But—you might need it sometime,” said Rush staring covetously at the dressmaker's form.

Mr. Titus laughed. “Even if I was constructed along the same general lines, I'd still have a hard time wearin' size thirty-eight. No, go on, you take her.”

So they took Mrs. Gladstone, and a moment later the parrot cage. Mr. Titus helped with the stove, and brought part of a clothesline to lash down the cargo in the back of the surrey.

Before they left Rush and Randy learned a lot about Mr. Titus. They learned that he was a bachelor whose only sister had kept house for him until her late marriage nine years before. Up to that time he had been a farmer, but now he rented his barn, meadows, and pastureland and lived contentedly in his own house, with his pets.

“Always was lazy, always will be,” he said. “Never did like heavy chores. Just did 'em 'cause my conscience drove me. Yes, sir, drove me. And then one day it quit, just laid down quiet and gave up the struggle. Since then no more cows! No more hosses! No more blame chickens, only just enough to lay me a soft-boiled egg or two. No more hawgs! Nothin' but small-fry pets to keep me company. No more long rows to hoe! No more corn! Just grow enough garden truck so's when I want a mess of peas for supper I can pick me a mess of peas. Same with all the rest. Always did like fussin' in a kitchen, too. Like to bake. Used to be ashamed of it when I was younger. But I ain't ashamed no more. One of my marble cakes took first prize over to Braxton Fair last year. Yep. That's what I like. Pets, and fussin' in a kitchen, and goin' fishin'. And by golly that's what I do!”

He gave them each a pocketful of cookies when they left and made them promise to return. “You and me'll go fishin',” he told Rush. “I know a pool where there's an old catfish big as a watermelon been lookin' at me mean for the last twenty years. I know another place where the sheepsheads sit right up on their tails and beg to be caught!”

“Could I come too?” pleaded Randy.

“You sure can, you sure can. You come, let me know when, and I'll bake us a cake, three-layer, marshmallow whip on top, coconut cream inside. Or a pie. How'd you like a Boston cream pie that goes down your throat just as easy and docile as anything you ever et?”

He stood smiling at them, lost in blissful reverie at the thought of the pie. Two of the kittens played with his shoelaces and the third he held, letting it nip his finger gently. The duck had tucked its web feet under it and lay on the grass as if on the surface of a pool. The dog, Hambone, lay beside it, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a little pink flag.

They waved good-bye.

“Boston cream pie!” said Randy. “Cake, three layers, marshmallow whip on top! No wonder he's so fat!”

“Happy, though,” Rush said. “It wouldn't suit
me,
but I'd say there's a man whose life fits him just like a good old pair of shoes.”

“What about it, Rush, shall we go home? All that talk of food has made me hungry.”

“Me too. But we still have some room left. We'll stop at the next farm we see.”

They were quiet. Tree shadows lay across the road. There was pink in the sunshine now, and blue in the shadow; it was getting late. The woods were very still.

“Gosh!” said Randy suddenly. “Dishes
and
mopping the floor.”

“That's right. Jasper Titus has the wrong name all right.”

“Look, Rush, there's another mailbox.”

This mailbox was tipped sideways on its post, its door hanging open like a broken jaw. Almost obliterated, the name O. Meeker was printed on its side in crude staggering letters.

To the left a road branched off through the woods. Hardly a road at all. Just a pair of wheel tracks with a tall furry strip of weeds between.

“It looks deserted,” Rush said, as Lorna Doone turned in. She walked slowly there, the weeds knocking against her knees and slipping by, whispering against the wheel spokes. The roadside was crowded with ragweed and blackberry canes all woven together with poison ivy and wild cucumber.