Time Is Noon (23 page)

Across the aisle her eyes fell upon a thick, tall young man. It was the oafish young farmer she had seen at Rose’s wedding. She smiled at him suddenly, brilliantly, wickedly, straight into his small hot brown eyes. He flushed red under his red hair. His huge hands twisted his stiff straw hat around and around upon his bosom. His mouth hung a little open. He moved toward her.

“I’ve wanted to speak to you,” he said. He had a slow thick voice and the words came quickly from his big mouth. His lips were stiff and thick and pale.

“Why don’t you then?” she said willfully. Oh, she wanted to tease, to harass, to vent herself upon someone!

“I didn’t know if you wanted it,” he answered after a moment, staring at her.

“I don’t seem to mind,” she replied, still smiling. At once she hated his thickness, she immediately disliked the raw redness of his skin. But she went on smiling recklessly into his hot brown eyes. She wanted something, anything, to happen.

He took another step toward her. He muttered at her, “If I should come to your house tonight after milking, would you sit a while with me out on the porch?”

“I might,” she replied, laughing.

He nodded and stalked into the aisle. She watched his broad back, his thick upper arms bursting out of the cheap blue suit. Above a stiff white collar his neck was red as beef and his head was straight and unshaped, like a block upon his square huge shoulders. His ears were close to his head. They were thick and rather small. She felt a little sick. But she thought rebelliously, Oh, well—it will be something to do tonight, at least. She was full of willfulness against everything as it was.

To this empty ordered house Bart Pounder brought himself solidly.

She had, without knowing it, come to live in the smoldering stillness, in feeling thought, in long hours alone when she sat with a book in her hands, not reading. The old man lived his angelic, attenuated life alone and she lived her life alone in aborted moods. She lived out of one mood into another, none fully understood. She was not discontented so much as stopped in herself. There was no completion in her. Nothing seemed worth doing for its own sake. Surely everything she had to do ought to lead into some larger reason. But nothing led on. Even though she swept the house and filled the vases, though she filled the old silver sugar bowl with the late red roses and set it upon the hall table before the long mirror, for whom was it done? She had her own instant of ecstasy, cut off and unfulfilled. It was not enough. It was not enough to compel Hannah.

“Hannah, see what I’ve done! Look at the roses!”

“They’ll be dropping before the day’s done—those red roses never have held together—quick to blow and soon to die, always.”

It was not enough to compel her father. “Father, the roses—” His pale eyes searched patiently. “Here, Father, by the mirror—”

“Yes, yes—they are very pretty,” his pale eyes drifting away again.

It was not enough.

To this newcomer she was saying eagerly, “The roses have been lovely, lovely—Only the rose beetles were so troublesome.” He listened, staring at her hard.

“I’ll spray them for you next spring,” he said.

He was staring at her hands, at her throat, her breasts. She felt his hot simple stare and pulled her skirt lower over her knees, not knowing she did, and folded her arms across her bosom.

How did one talk to an oaf? “Have we ever met?” she asked brightly. “Where do you live?”

“Up the road a-ways, west,” he answered. His voice was hard, brassy, and it seemed to come from him ungoverned. He paused between phrases, waiting for the next phrase to shape itself. His lips were stiff and hard, not used to forming words, dry and thick, except when he spoke and then moisture gathered at the corners slightly. He did not wipe it away. “We’ve not met—that is, not spoken. I come to church to see you, though. I’ve come a long time.” He paused, tried to thrust his hands into the pockets of his cheap dark Sunday suit and failed. His thick thighs strained at the seams of the cloth. “Folks go to church over to Chipping Corners. I changed after I seen you once—saw you once when I was driving through town to sell a yearling bull calf.”

“Did you?” She laughed, a little amused. Imagine his coming to church Sunday after Sunday to see her! A wisp of warmth curled into her amusement, a flicker of coquetry. This huge, simple creature was a man, after his sort. He caught the brief laugh and drew nearer to her upon the step where they sat. He fixed his small deep-set eyes upon her hands, clasped about her knees. He moved his own hand and let it lie, as if carelessly, upon the step between them. She could feel his thought—his simple, one thought. Soon he would lay his hand upon hers. Why would he have planned, come to see a girl, except for some simple and direct satisfaction? She warded him off. She did not move, but she threw gaiety into her voice, she let mockery fly into her eyes, bitterness in her laughter. “And I didn’t know! All that faithfulness—wasted!”

He waited, immovable while she laughed, and when she was silent, he said, “I figure it wasn’t wasted. It was only the beginning of something I’d set myself to do. I figured someday I’d sit on the porch like this with you. And here I am.”

He sat in vast waiting. She looked at him now, afraid. “I figured,” he went on in his slow stiff-lipped way, “the day would be when I’d lay my hand on your hands—like this.” She watched his enormous hand move and motionless she watched it descend and cover her two clasped hands. “Like this,” he said again.

She felt his hand hard and stiff against her tender flesh. She looked at his hand. It was broad and thick, the fingers thick to their tips, the palm meaty. The little finger was sharply bent as though it had been broken.

“Did you break your little finger?” she asked aloud. Why did she ask when she did not care? The hand filled her with repulsion.

“No,” he said. He did not remove his hand. He held it there, thickly covering her hands, heavy as a stone upon her two hands. “It’s work that’s done it—nothing but work. This other one’s the same.” He held up his other hand to show her and she saw it in its hugeness. She could see even in the dim light the large freckles upon the forearm, where his sleeve was too short, the rough red hair upon the flesh. Upon the back of his hand there was this wild red hair. She shrank under the cover of his hand and tried to shake it off. But there it clung, pressing down.

“Take your hand away,” she said violently. “I don’t like to be touched.” He waited an instant, and then he took it away without reply. She felt him waiting. He took it away, but he was waiting. He would surely put it there again. She stood up abruptly. “I must go in now,” she said quickly. “I have some things to do.”

He rose clumsily, his body huge and thick, taller even than she was. He stared at her stubbornly, and for a moment again she was afraid of him. But he said calmly enough, “Good night, then. I’ll come again—if you say so.”

“Good night,” she said, already at the door. “Good night—”

She ran to her room without looking back. She would never say he was to come back, never! It was good to be back in the house, in this lonely house. Where was her father? She ran downstairs again and knocked at his door.

“Yes?” he called. “Come in.”

She went in quickly. “Father?”

“Yes,” he replied. He was sitting in his old Morris chair by a small dying wood fire, his hands folded in his lap. He had on his old patched plum-colored study gown, and above his thin face his white hair stood a little disordered, so that she knew he had just finished his evening prayer. He turned his mystic eyes toward her.

“Father,” she said, “I just—I suddenly felt a little lonely.”

She had never said such a thing before and he looked at her uncomfortably. … She looked like her mother, he thought in alarm. Mary had been used, when she was younger, to come running into his study like this at night after he supposed she was in bed and asleep. “Paul, Paul—I’m so lonely.” “Lonely? But I am here, Mary.” “I can’t feel you near me, Paul. You seem somewhere else. You live away from me so.” “I must be about my Father’s business, Mary.” … He felt his daughter’s hand on his arm and he was very uncomfortable. It was a light touch, but it had the hot shaking quality that Mary’s had sometimes—especially when she was young.

“Are you ill, Joan?”

To his horror she fell upon her knees and placed her face upon his arm. He did not move. He felt her shake her head. “Lonely, lonely,” he heard her whisper. He must, he felt, do something. Diffidently he put up his other hand and touched her hair once. It sprang warm and curled about his fingers and he took his hand away quickly. He must think of something to say.

“Would you—do you think you’d like to help me at the mission? It would give you something to do.”

But who could ever understand women? She lifted her head sharply and gave him a long look, and then she began to laugh, so long, so loud, until tears were in her eyes. He waited, pained. He had wanted to help her. At last she stopped laughing and wiped her eyes.

“I’ll help you,” she said. “Yes, perhaps it will give me something to do. … Good night, poor dear.”

She bent and kissed him, a touch upon his pale high forehead, and went away. She was better, he felt happily. The laughter had done her good, though he could not understand it. But it had done her good—he believed he had once heard a doctor say that laughter was medicinal. But why “poor dear”?

What was it Martin had promised and never given, what had he touched in her and not taken from her, what stirred in her and was not completed? Something now bloomed in her, lonely as a vivid flower in a field, solitary of its kind. She came to a sort of maturity, and this man who beset her doggedly had no more to do with it than a bee, stumbling upon a vivid flower, forcing its petals into a troubled readiness, because the hour was come. For he made no secret of why he came. He came each Sunday, doggedly, now without asking. Each Sunday, she perceived, he came with his plan of one more step he would take toward her. Having touched her hands at first, he took her hand the next time and held it. This, his way said, he had a right to do. Having held her hand, the next time he put his hand upon her waist. She drew away, sick, yet stirred by each fresh movement.

If she grew angry at him, and she was always angry at him for each fresh outrage of her, he waited or he made his answer through stiff, unmoving lips. “Don’t touch me like that, Bart Pounder!” she cried at him, her voice low. Of course her father would not hear in the study, who never heard anything.

“No?” Bart answered, and did not move. Then she would seize his great hand and throw his arm from her as though it were a snake. He let her throw it, but before he went away it would be about her again. And then, feeling the heavy dogged clasp, she might be silent, she might sit shuddering and stirred within the clasp. So one night he would touch her breast. So one night he would kiss her lips. She knew the way, but not the end. When he had kissed her, then what was the end?

In the night when he was gone she awoke, cold and hot, to ask herself the end. She was afraid in the night, in the empty house, with only the old man lying lightly asleep, to be near. Rose and Francis and her mother—they were all as though they had never been. She was alone and there was no one near—no one to whom heart could cling. She wanted her own. Oh, where were her own? Around her life was deep, tremendous, remote, silent. She moved alone in all the silence, she who loved warmth and nearness and the safety of human closeness. She would grow older and older, like Miss Kinney, waiting … waiting. Old people lived forever while the young waited. She was wicked. She was not waiting for her father to die. She loved this house, the village, the people she had always known. Oh, but they had never known her. They had seen her growing up, a tall child. “How you grow, Joan! My, you’re going to be a big girl!” Yes, she had grown and grown beyond them all. They knew her no more. They lived on in their little houses contentedly but she wanted everything. What could be the end?

Then came November. She could not stay within the confines of the house. The house was full of herself. In whatever room she sat, it became full and bursting with herself, and she could not stay for her restlessness. The dreaming of the autumn was over. The dying heat of Indian summer was finished in the still evenings.

And she could not stay in the confines of the garden. The garden she had cultivated was dead and finished and in the November sunshine the shadow of the church steeple, fell sharp across the frost-gray grass. But abroad in the woods along the road, there was wild beauty. There was madness in the woods, there was fullness in the red apples and in the dark wild grapes upon the stone walls, and in falling nuts and late yellow pears. In the energy of every color edged in the sharp clear cold she was whipped into intense restlessness.

She went to her father. “Give me the work you wanted me to have. I’m ready. I want something to do.” She seized the excuse to get away into the fields, to walk miles along the dusty gorgeous roadsides to South End. “I need help with the young people,” her father said. He spoke with gentle excitement. …

He would not of course tell Joan, but this was an answer to prayer. He would not tell her because once when his son Francis was little more than a child, and he had said when he did something—he had forgotten now what it was—“It is an answer to prayer,” the child had answered violently, “Then I won’t do it.” The young were so difficult to understand. And they had been such a problem to him at the mission—those large dark young men and the dark painted girls. He was helpless before their singing. They could take a hymn straight away from him, as they did “Oh, Beulah Land” the other day, and so with the singing of it that it ceased to be a hymn. They became stamping feet and clapping hands. There was one girl especially who snapped her fingers like a horsewhip at every intensified beat. Once she had leaped to her feet and had begun to sing alone a song he had not announced or had not even heard of. “Singin’ with a sword in mah hand, Oh, Lawd.” She sang it with her hands on her hips, swaying as though she were dancing. He had pronounced the benediction hastily and come away. “The Lord is not pleased.” But perhaps if Joan came, God would use her. He looked toward her with sudden dependence. She was so large, so strong. The young were so strong. He felt he would like to put out his hand and touch her arm. But he had never done that sort of thing and so he did not. He merely smiled delicately, without quite meeting her eyes.