Time Is Noon (31 page)

But she was jealous of Bart. As the days passed, as the child moved in her and grew, she wanted it to be all her own. Bart’s part in its creation was so little, so unconscious, so accidental.

And Bart could not be a father when he was only a boy. He was longing for a car now, exactly as a boy longs. She listened to him. “Jo, I just got to get me a car. I got seventy dollars in cash now and my share of the pigs and pullets. I got a good notion to go on and get me a car.” He was excited by the thought, pleading for her agreement. “Don’t you think we ought to have a car? It’s so slow these days not to have one. Every fellow my age drives his own car, and it looks foolish to go to church or town in that old surrey, hitched to the plow horses. If Pop wasn’t so old-fashioned—he’s got money in the bank—I know he has.”

She smiled in secret triumph. This great boy the father of her son! She smiled tolerantly. “Why, yes, Bart. Why not?”

“I could get me a used car,” he said in excitement. “I could paint it up all new. Say, do you like red or blue? Maybe a nice green. I’m partial to green.”

He went off, planning. She said to herself, “Let him have his car. It will mean more to him than the child. I can have the child to myself.”

The next Saturday, when he came home in an old car, she went out and admired it. The owner said loudly, “He’s the quickest fellow to learn to drive I’ve ever seen. I told him a few things and he’s got the hang already.” Bart said, “Move over and let me see.” He shoved himself into the driver’s seat and studied the gears. “Let’s see—” The car moved slowly. His face grew solemnly ecstatic.

She smiled, content. Her child was her own. It was more easy now to be pleasant, to be kind. She was very kind to them all, these days.

But she wanted someone to whom to talk. If her mother had been alive she would have run to her. “Mother, I am going to have my child!” She could see her mother’s dark eyes go joyous in that brightness, as though an inner light had been turned on, like windows shining in the night. “Oh, my
darling
!” She could feel the quick warm arms about her. And she yearned for Rose and Francis. It had been so long—how had they grown so separate? She wanted to see him again. As if an answer to her longing, a letter came from Rose. Rose’s child was born, a little delicate boy, so delicate they had not dared to hope to keep him alive, but he lived. He had been born on a warm April day in a Chinese city, a fair little boy who looked like Rob. Rose had no milk for him. Her round breasts were useless, for the nipples were too small. They would not rise and the boy could not grasp them in his lips, or he was too feeble to try. So they had hired a Chinese wet nurse, a peasant woman whose baby was a girl. She was willing for money to take the girl’s milk for Rose’s little boy. “We feel only our prayers have kept him alive,” Rose wrote. Joan, reading the letter closely, longed for the frail child. She looked at her own swelling breasts proudly. If the children had been together, I believe I could have fed them both, she thought in triumph. I shall have so much—far more than enough.

Bart’s mother said, “Reckon I can help you when your time comes. And Mrs. Potter over at Clarktown is a midwife, if anything seems out of the way.”

But Joan said, “I’ve made my plans. I shall have Dr. Crabbe.”

“It doesn’t seem as if you had to have a real doctor,” Bart’s mother objected. She was peeling potatoes and she looked at Joan reproachfully. “It ain’t like a sickness.”

“He knows me,” Joan answered tranquilly.

She was ironing a small, plain white dress she had just finished—six little dresses. Bart’s mother had said, “There’s some of Sam’s old baby clothes in the attic.”

“No,” said Joan quickly. “No, I don’t need them.” She could not have Sam’s old garments on her little tender-fleshed son. The thought revolted her. She could not bear to touch Sam even in accidental passing. But she opened the round-topped trunk and searched over the baby dresses, the little petticoats and shoes, and the red jackets Francis had worn. They were old and much washed but still dainty, because her mother had made them so fine of good lasting stuff and with small embroidery and tiny worked buttonholes and narrow laces.

One day in late October she hitched an idle horse to the buggy and drove to Middlehope to see Dr. Crabbe. She chose a Monday, when people would be busy and she might meet no one. Bart said proudly, “I’ll drive you in the car if you’ll wait till the work’s done.” But she could not trust her son to his slow-witted driving. She said quietly, “I’d better go earlier, thank you, Bart.”

So she had driven gladly alone through the still October sunshine. She had made it habit now to choose things for her son’s life. I choose these colors, she thought happily, that red vine in that oak, that yellow white-barked birch, that little gay chipmunk. Together they would see all these things, and soon, in only a year or two, they could talk about them. Then there would always be someone with whom to talk. She must watch and find out all she could, see all she could, with which to enrich his life. These hills should not imprison him, nor should the woods seem dark or frightening. He must never feel lonely in this silence. She must be always there.

She drove into the quiet sunlit street, and past the churchyard, the church, the manse. Upon the manse steps sat two small children, a boy and a girl, eating slices of bread, staring at her as she passed. She heard a woman’s brisk voice calling, “Mollie, where’s Donny?”

“We’re here,” the little girl piped back.

“Take good care of him,” the voice answered. In the garden she saw a youngish man raking leaves, bareheaded and a little bald. It was the new minister. Monday was his holiday as it had been her father’s. But her father never raked leaves—he spent the whole day in his study, reading books he had not time for on other days or making parish calls. The new minister? He was no longer new. He was the minister now, his the house and children. It was impossible to believe that the two small children were not the ghosts of herself and Francis, so short the time was since they had sat on the steps eating bread and sugar. She could hear her mother’s voice: “Joan, where’s Francis?”

“We’re here, Mother!”

“All right, darling.”

She must find Francis, she thought ardently. She took her mind from her errand to think of him, troubled, her conscience stirring. She ought not have let him go so long. But he did not write and she had no way to find him. She must send letters, many letters, send them out like arrows, until one found him and brought him home to her again. …

In Dr. Crabbe’s office she waited, and then in a moment he was there, his hair a curly white rim about his bald crown, his blue eyes dim and rheumy, his hands shaking.

“My goodness, it’s you, Joan Richards! Why on earth haven’t you—Where’s that Godforsaken hole you hide in, anyway? I’ve been driving all round that country seeing sick folks and never see hide nor hair of you!”

She found her lips trembling. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cry and cry and tell Dr. Crabbe everything, to be the little girl again, to catch for a moment the warm old circle about her. But she steadied herself. No use trying to go back.

She laughed and took his hands, feeling their shaking.

“Dr. Crabbe, I’m going to have my baby—and I want you to help me.”

“Well, well, well—I keep on living and living. Your mother came to me with those very words. Let’s see—sit down, child—I want to ask you a few things. Let me look at you.” She gave her body over to his hands gratefully, confidently. He peered and puffed as she remembered he always did, breathing hard as he grew absorbed.

“There—you’ve got a glorious body, Joan—sound as an apple—no trouble at all—everything’s just beautiful. God, I like to see a good body!”

He washed contentedly, talking cheerfully. “Old Mrs. Kinney’s not dead yet, Joan—had pneumonia last winter and I had to pull her through it, damn her! She thought sure she’d go. You know how scary she is of everything—won’t even ride in an automobile. But she got well. I swear I’m going to live to bury her. You heard Netta and Ned married, didn’t you? They’re going to have a baby next month, but she’s a different story—slack built sort of female—I don’t know what’s going to happen there—I’m dubious, that’s all, I’m dubious!”

He asked no more questions of her until she went outside. Then he shot his white eyebrows over his eyes at her and said sharply, “You happy, Joan?”

She smiled at him. “Why not? I’m going to have my baby.”

And jogging home alone she began to sing. She hadn’t sung in months. Now she thought she could, if she had a little time, make a song of her own again. The tight dark isolation of her heart was over. Yes, actually, there was a song in her mouth. She held it lightly on her lips, waiting for it to shape. Here was a phrase, and here. When she reached home she went straight to the attic and found a bit of paper and put down the two lines and then a third.

But although she waited, the end would not come. The song hung there, unfinished, and she let it be. It was a song written to a child not yet born. The end would come in its own time.

Waiting for her baby in overflowing tenderness, she wrote to Rose more warmly than she ever had. “Tell me all about little David, I feel he is mine, too.” She tried to see the little fragile fair baby, nursed by a brown woman. She wondered about his home and the Chinese landscape. If only Rose would tell her more—she couldn’t see anything of Rose’s life. When she tried, she saw a static picture of a church, shining among dark vague temple shapes, and a stream of brown people leaving the temples, pouring into the church. But that could not be life. The work was going well, Rose said. Little David had had a fever—malaria, they thought, but he was better again. The Lord blessed them and they were receiving nearly fifty new members this year. Rob was opening new territory. The people were hostile and he went in danger of his life among them, but they were not afraid. They persisted steadily in God’s work, preaching the Gospel to unwilling ears, trusting to God for the harvest. She hoped Joan would bear her child more easily than she did. David interfered a good deal with her classes, but he would soon be older.

I wish I had him, Joan thought, folding the pages. I could take care of him easily. I believe he bothers Rose. I can’t think of her holding a baby and bathing him and dressing him.

But Francis never answered her letters. She thought about him while she was waiting, worrying about him because he never wrote. She seemed to see him now always as he had been when he was a small boy in a little red sweater, his eyes very black above round scarlet cheeks and his black hair curling a little at the ends. … “Joan, take Frankie with you if you are going to the Winters’ to play.” … “All right, Mother—come on, Frankie!”

If sometimes she was impatient with his short steps and his constant tagging, one look at his face and chubby body softened her. None of the girls had a little brother so pretty. What if she’d had a pale-eyed weazened little runt like Netta’s Jackie? She was always proud to walk along the street with Frank. They might meet a stranger who would surely, say, “What a beautiful little boy!” Then she could always reply proudly. “He’s my little brother!”

But he never wrote to her.

Then one clear frosty morning when she was doing the Monday’s wash under the elm tree in the yard she looked up and saw him walking down the road to the house, a small suitcase in his hand. She could not believe it was he, but she knew the way he walked. And it was like him to come suddenly, without a word. She straightened herself above suds and ran, clumsy with her child, to meet him and take him in her arms.

“Oh Frank!” she cried, laughing and wanting to cry. “I’ve been thinking about you so much. Why haven’t you answered my letters? I’ve written and written!”

Ah, it was good to have her arms warmly about someone!

He had grown. He was taller than she now, he was handsomer than ever. But so thin! Her eyes took him all in at once—that was the same blue suit he had when he went away. Now it was worn and gray at the wrists and elbows, and he had turned the cuffs of the trousers inward. But it was his face at which she looked. His rosy boyish color was gone. His face was sharp-boned, sunken at the jaws and the temples. He looked tired enough to die.

“I only got two letters,” he said. “It’s taken me a while to come—to get here.”

“It’s home,” she said quickly. “Where I am is always home for you.”

He did not answer. He walked beside her to the house, and followed her in. She took him to the dining room, the only room that was warm, and the day was chilly with autumn. Then she did not know where to take him. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll ask Bart’s mother.”

In the kitchen she said, “My brother has come.” She paused, “May he—What room shall I put him in?”

Bart’s mother looked up from the stove, astonished. “How long’ll he be here?” she asked after a while. No one had ever come here to stay.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I haven’t had a chance to talk.”

Bart’s mother lifted the lid of the stove and pushed in a knotty stick of wood. The lid would not fit down and she clattered at it.

“He can sleep with Sam, or in that old bed in the attic. We used to have a hired man up there when times was good, but nobody’s slept there for a long time. It’s all right as long as it’s not summer. There’s some quilts in that old chest under the eaves.”

She went back to the dining room and took his hand. It was callused and hard, so hard that she looked at it quickly. It was grimed with so deep a grime that it looked as though it could never be clean. “What have you been doing?” she cried. His hands had been slender, the joints supple. It was still a slender hand, it would always be slender, but the skin was scarred and the nails black and broken.

“Been in machine shops,” he said, “and this last six months I’ve been in West Virginia in a coal mine.”

“In a mine!” she said, astonished. “I thought you wanted to fly.”

“I do,” he said. “I lost my job—nobody can hold a job these rotten days—and I went south with my pal. We heard there were jobs in the mines.” He made a grunt of laughter. “Do you see me in a mine, Joan, wanting to fly?” He sat down and put his grimy slender hands through his too long heavy black hair and leaned upon them.