Time Is Noon (47 page)

She stood looking at him, and he looked back at her trustfully, quietly, waiting for her. Did he know what she was to him? She could not tell.

“Where are her other children?”

“Willa’s got a job at the chapel dancing—she’s only fifteen but she looks grown up—and Roberta’s got a fellow to feed her. Roberta’s the oldest.”

He stood looking at her patiently with his lovely mournful dark gaze.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” she said, distraught.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t expect you would. Fanny’s always saying so, too.”

He looked down and scuffed the dead grass a little. Then she saw he was barefoot.

“You haven’t any shoes on,” she cried.

“No.” His voice was acquiescent, mild. “Fanny was going to get me some before snow, she said, but she hasn’t come back.”

He looked at her apologetically.

“I’ll be all right in a year or two, ma’am, when I’m grown enough to get a job somewhere singing. It’s only just now I haven’t anywhere to go.”

He was so uncomplaining, he so took for granted that he was homeless and that he was nowhere wanted, that her heart ached over him. And everywhere about him, like a visible aura, hung an air of Francis. No single feature was quite the same. Francis’ brown hair was here blacker and curlier, his dark eyes were darker and more liquid, his head rounder and his face fuller. But there was the likeness in his look, in his pose, in the way he stood, his weight relaxed upon his right leg, his hands in his pockets. There was even a look of herself—She caught it, hauntingly, like a fleeting glimpse into a distant mirror.

“Come in with me,” she said quietly. The old familiar need to do for her own flooded into her again. In the troubled world there were the few who were her own. She took Frankie into her house and closed the door against the cold.

Inside, David was lying upon the floor reading furiously, his face set as though for a fight, his hands clenched in his hair. Mary was sitting beside him, absorbed with a little doll. In his corner in a pen she had made for him Paul was clinging to the side. He was six now, and he still said not a word. To these three she said calmly and with resolution, “This is Frankie.”

She went into the kitchen at once and quietly began to prepare the supper for them all.

She had not for a long time heard from Roger Bair—not, that is, for weeks. That was a long time. He had asked her to send him a picture of herself and she had none to send him. She had not had a picture taken since she left college. Instead she had written how she looked and what she did, and sent it to him. “Do you see me? Thirty-three years old, hair already a little gray and never cut. Height, five feet nine, weight to correspond, eyes green-blue, tending to be a little stern, maybe? There—I can’t write of myself.”

She also asked David. “David, write down how I look. Someone wants my picture and I haven’t a one.” He stretched himself before the fire with pencil and pad and considered her seriously and wrote hard, for almost an hour, his tongue between his lips, scratching out an occasional word. When it was done he folded it very small and gave it to her.

“Shall I read it?” she asked.

He blushed brilliantly. “I don’t care,” he muttered, and ran out of the house into the spring evening. But she did not read it, telling Roger she had not. “I told my boy David to write you a picture of me.”

She had not heard from him since. She could not forget that she had not. It gnawed in her all day and she remembered at night with a feeling of emptiness that it was a long time since she had seen his handwriting. But she waited. She would wait and if the time went on she would ask Francis. But she read the newspaper carefully each day because she grew a little frightened. Among the headlines of stocks falling headlong and swarming runs upon banks she searched for a news item—
PILOT CRASHES.
But it was not there. It came at last to be almost enough that it was not there.

In her house her life was divided into the four children. David was the warm vivid center about which they moved. He was the one who was always having something happen to him. Every particle of him was adventure. She could go all day with her heart in her mouth because in the afternoon his school team was playing the Clarkville team. He was so little but he would go wherever the big boys went. When he burst into the house shouting for her, shouting, “We beat ’em—we beat ’em!” her heart let down in instant relief. “Oh, David, I’m so glad!” “Yep,” he boasted, “we beat ’em ten to nothing—to nothing, mind you, Joan!” He was strung so high, so fine, suffered in such an abyss of agony, he was so impaled by pain, joy such ecstasy, that the house vibrated with him. She was involved in all his being. He was shy with her for a while until he asked her, “Did you read what I wrote about you?” She shook her head, smiling. “I sent it off just as you folded it.” He was relieved, his shyness fell off him like an awkward garment not his own. He was not naturally shy.

But after a while she saw he had something to say to her and she put herself quietly in his way, that he might speak. “You’re a comfort to me, David. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Remembering the rare precious praise her mother had given her, she was lavish with her own praise to them all. Even to Paul she gave praise. “That’s just fine, Paul—now walk to me, here, Good boy, good boy—” He staggered his few steps industriously, clutching her hand, turning his empty face up to catch her praise.

The warmth in her voice freed David’s tongue. “I just want to tell you,” he said offhandedly, “that I only wrote good things about you.” He was turned away from her, but she saw that his trim close-set ears were crimson. “Thank you, David,” she said composedly, careful not to be tender. He turned over the pages of a book he was reading. “I said,” he added, suffused, “I said I wished you were my real mother.” She wanted to run to him and take him in her arms, to fondle him and adore him. But she knew him. She went on with her sewing. “You are like my own son,” she said. She lifted her eyes and he met them and a deep look passed between them. “Guess I’ll go out a while,” he said quickly.

“Fresh cookies in the jar,” she reminded him. So that was the picture he had given to Roger. It was easier to wait for Roger again.

She had been anxious until she knew what David would feel of Frankie. She was silent while David watched Frankie, weighing him.

“Why is he so brown if he isn’t Chinese?” he asked starkly before them all.

“Frank is American,” she answered. “There are many Americans who are black. Frankie’s mother was dark and his father was white. That’s why he is brown and why his hair is curly and why he has his lovely voice.”

“Sing,” David commanded.

Frankie opened his mouth and began to sing. The song was abominable, musical claptrap, but his voice startled her again. It flowed out of him richly, largely, noble in its volume, dignifying the cheap tune. They listened, even Paul listened, his eyes wandering, searching for the source. Mary stretched out her arms, imperious to be taken and brought near.

“What else do you know?”

“I know a lot of things,” said Frankie. He began to sing again. “Like a river, glorious, is God’s perfect peace.” She listened, remembering her father.

“Who taught you that?” she asked.

“I’ve heard ’em singing it down in South End,” he answered. “Some of the old folks sing it. Fanny sings it sometimes when she’s feeling good.”

Well, she had found a peace, too. And David loved Frankie. “Sing something funny!” he would demand. And Frankie, his great eyes suddenly droll, sang a witty tune, “De farmer say to de weevil.” David listened, laughing. He loved Frankie because Frankie could make him laugh. But Frankie, without knowing it, shaped himself to each one of them. He made David laugh, he fetched and carried for imperious Mary, he lifted Paul to his feet and urged him to stepping. “There now, ’atta boy!” And to Joan he was something she did not understand. But she knew that if she were to grow old and weak, David might be wandering beyond seas, and Mary would be having her own way, and Paul would be as he had been born, but Frankie would come back to see that she had food and shelter. There was faithfulness in him. She could feel it, deep and steadfast in his quiet lovely look.

David and Frankie grew together, sleeping in the same room, going to the same school. But Frankie was far below his grade. David came home one afternoon bleeding, blown with battle.

“Why, David!” cried Joan horrified, hastening for water and bandages.

“Some of the fellows laughed at Frankie,” he said furiously. “They said he was dumb and they called him a nigger, and I socked ’em. He’s just dark, isn’t he, Joan?”

She looked at Frankie and caught his look, full of deep self-realization.

“Let me wash you, David,” she said. “Turn around and let me see you.” He turned, not knowing in his anger that she had not answered. When he had gone clattering upstairs to change his bloody shirt, Frankie spoke to her.

“I know I’m a nigger, ma’am.”

She looked back at him impulsively. But he might at this moment have been Francis, cut in bronze! She leaned to him and quickly kissed his forehead. “You are one of my children,” she said.

He warmed and melted, wavering, longing. But he did not dare to come too near her. He took her hand and held it against his cheek. His cheek was hot and soft beneath her palm. Now she felt this other flesh. It was as sweet, as sound, as any flesh, not strange to her. “There,” she said. “Run along and find David. I’ll spread you both some bread and jam.”

But under this passage of the days there was a stillness. They were very nearly enough, these children. Paul was nearly enough of sorrow. He was there among the others, blind, stumbling, mumbling at his hands, seizing gluttonously upon his food. His placid baby face was changing. The vacancy of his mind was beginning to shape it inexorably and more swiftly than wisdom might have shaped it. He was nearly sorrow enough, but not quite. There might be, she was beginning to know, a sorrow deeper than Paul, even as there was a joy deeper than David’s and Mary’s growing, sweeter than Frankie’s singing. They were not quite enough, all of them, for her sorrow and her joy. Something bright had ceased to weave beneath her, as though Roger were not living. Silence was worse than death. She never could bear silence since she had left Bart’s house. To be alive and silent was more meaningful than death. Day after day went past and he was silent. She came to feel she was living on a far island, out of sight and sound. Above her in the air, around her in the seas, people came and went and moved and struggled. But she heard nothing. Fanny had not come back. Francis did not write. Even in the village there was silence. No one came near her, day after day. Only Mrs. Winters had come twice, to look at the children. “I want them to know their grandmother,” she said. But both times she had stared at Paul.

“My goodness, Joan, you can’t keep a child like that here!”

Joan picked him up and wiped his drooling mouth and made his garments neat. She bore the pain drearily. It must come again and again, David asking sharply, “Why can’t Paul walk?”—Mary snatching Paul’s toys, knowing already he was without defense. Only Frankie was never surprised. “Yes’m, there’s quite a lot of babies in Sound End slow like Paul.” He looked out for Paul, always. He took Paul’s toys gently away from Mary and gave them back to him.

She said quietly to Mrs. Winters, “I think it just as well that they grow used to children like Paul. They’re part of life.”

“If I’d had my health,” said Mrs. Winters, “you’d never have to. Mr. Winters used to be so delicate, and now he’s heavier than me.” She held up her arm. “Remember what round white arms I used to have, Joan?” She looked at her withered yellow arm sadly.

Joan forgot what she had said of Paul. “Have you seen Dr. Crabbe?” she asked.

“Him!” said Mrs. Winters. “I wouldn’t go to him—I don’t put confidence in him—never did. He’s always abetted Mr. Winters against his egg-nog, anyway. Says it doesn’t do any good if he doesn’t want it. It’s contrary to religion, if nothing else. We’ve all got to do what we don’t want to—it’s life.”

Joan smiled. Mrs. Winters was old now. There was no use contradicting the old, whose voices would so soon be stopped. But she knew life only began when one did what one wanted to do. She wanted to see Roger Bair—to speak to him. It was no longer enough to write.

“Well, I’ll be going,” said Mrs. Winters. “David looks peakedy to me. He’s too thin. I saw him on the street yesterday.”

“He’ll never be fat—he burns himself up,” she answered. “Look at Mary!”

They both looked at Mary. She was chewing a rubber doll and when she saw them looking at her she dimpled madly, murmuring. Mrs. Winters capitulated. “Yes, she’s real heavy. You’ve done well by her, Joan. Well, as I was saying—my Ellen was just as healthy and in a week she was dead—pneumonia. You can’t fix your heart, not on anything in this world.” She turned away from Mary.

Joan did not answer. “I will fix my heart,” she said silently. “What is the use of living if you do not fix your heart? It is not living, living only to avoid pain.” And always she waited for Mrs. Winters to complain because she had left Bart

But Mrs. Winters began, “I don’t go to church anymore. I can’t abide the minister’s wife—a cold driving woman, laying down the law, especially in the missionary society. I told her, “Haven’t I got a son that was a missionary and my own daughter-in-law, lying out there martyrs? These children wouldn’t have been motherless if I’d been listened to. Well”—she sighed—“you’d better start David in on cod-liver oil. And if I were you, and I don’t mean to hurt you, Joan, but I’d put that child away. It isn’t right. Now you listen to me.”

She held Paul to her closely for a long time after Mrs. Winters was gone. One could not put sorrow away and have done with it. It lived on as long as one’s heart could beat to feel it.

David burst into the room. “Hello, Joan!” he shouted, and darted toward the kitchen. In a moment Frank would be there. He came and followed David, smiling at her silently. Did he really look as much like his father as she thought? She was frightened sometimes lest someone in the village might see him and see how much he looked like Francis Richards. But who now would remember Francis? No one thought about Francis anymore, no one except herself.