The Fires of Spring (7 page)

“David, I don’t want to turn you against your Aunt Reba. She’s not evil. She’s stupid. She has lots of money, and she could buy you clothes and books and pencils. But she won’t do it. She thinks she can save that money and spend it on something better than a human being. What, I ask you? What’s better? I sent four boys to college, and if they knew I was here now I think their hearts would break. But I’ve never told them. They weren’t even my sons. Look! If they spent money on me now it would soon be buried with me. But if they do something good for a boy just growing up, it’ll go on forever.”

When the great pain came, Daniel fought with all his frail strength. He turned and threw his skinny shoulders into the chest of the pain, kicked at it, clutched its gray outlines with his bare hands.

“Oh, David!” the nurse cried again. “Please call me when it
starts!” Her voice broke and she sniffled. “Why doesn’t your goddamned aunt take you out of here? That old bitch!” As if she were angry with David she thrust him violently from the room.

On Sunday Daniel said: “Reading and travel are the two best things besides people. Travel is best, but some books are very great. You should read all the books you can get before you’re twenty. If you don’t need glasses by the time you’re thirty, you can consider your life wasted. Maybe books are best, because you don’t have to have money to read. And there’s this difference, too. A man can travel all over the world and come back the same kind of fool he was when he started. You can’t do that with books.

“But you needn’t spend a great deal on travel, either. Nor do you have to go very far. Just set out for yourself some day and walk to the canal. I’ve been all over the world, and the canal north of New Hope is the best place of all, because there the land is just the way God made it. But in spring, of course, any place is beautiful, because in spring fires leap from your heart, and you can see things that aren’t there.

“And wherever you go on the face of the earth have the humility to think that a thousand years ago someone pretty much like you stood there and a thousand years from now a boy like you will be there. And in two thousand years boys and places and people will have been pretty much the same.

“A lot of nonsense is spoken about work. Some of the finest men I’ve known were the laziest. Never work because it’s expected of you. Find out how much work you must do to live and be happy. Don’t do any more.

“But thinking is something different, altogether! Think always as if the hot hand of hell were grabbing for you. Think to the limit of your mind. Imagine, dream, hope, want things, drive yourself to goodness. Whatever you do, David, do it to the absolute best of your ability. Never take the easy way where thinking is concerned.

“As for churches, they do much more good than harm, but churches where women are in command are often evil places, for no minister can speak honestly there.”

In these days of monologue David sometimes interrupted with strange questions. He was living in a world of ferment. Outside his window a horse-chestnut tree had broken into handsome pyramids of flowers. All day and through the evening bees gossiped among the stately blossoms until the tree seemed like a village store on Saturday night. There was a
glorious ache, a marvelous energy in the world. One night a peach tree would appear frail and green. Next noon it was bedecked with flowers, like a young girl painting her cheeks with abandon in her first attempt.

“Were you ever married?” David asked on the last day.

“Me?” the old man asked, his knees shaking with pain. “Sure I was married.”

“The gypsy girl?”

“No!” the wasted fellow laughed. “No, I married a big woman in Detroit. We had three children. One was a fine boy, like you.”

“Where are they now?”

“I … Well … It’s this way, David. There are many things that can’t be explained. But remember this thing that you can understand. It’s better to marry any woman at all than never to marry. This is what I mean. It would be much better for your withered-up aunt to marry Toothless Tom than to live the way she does. If you tell her that, she’ll fizz up and bust. But it’s true.”

Now sovereign pain gripped at the old man with final fury, for this time there also came the ally death. Daniel must have seen the terrible pair, for he jerked his head back and raised his hands as if to fight once more against them. But now the visitors would not be denied. Shaken in their icy grip, the old man writhed in mortal torment.

David clearly perceived what was happening. He knew that this pain was different from the others. This was all-possessing pain.

“Sam! Sam!” the old man shouted, and the boy wondered: “Who is Sam?”

“Sam! Goddamn you, Sam!” the dying man roared.

Back in some distant passion Old Daniel died. He forgot David, and his pain, and the poorhouse, and all the wonderful things he had seen and read. “Sam!” he pleaded. Then he whispered the word again: “Sam!” Getting no response, he summoned his final energy, raised his gaunt neck and bellowed mightily: “Sam!”

This cry brought the nurse, and David said, “He’s dead.”

“Poor old man,” she said, and methodically she covered up the ancient face.

But the picture of the man was not erased from David’s mind. For a long time he could see his old friend, beset by more than human pain, alone, his children gone from him, lost in a country poorhouse, fighting death to the last wild
cry. David did not clearly reason out what he instinctively knew to be true: Daniel had known something in life that was sweet beyond words; he had never quite described it for the boy, but he had proved its presence in the world.

On the day of Daniel’s burial Mr. Paxson said that he would come by for David on Sunday and take him to Quaker Meeting. When David told the men on the long hall about his good fortune, they were strangely silent. He repeated his message and finally one of them asked bluntly, “What are you going to wear?”

“I’ll wash up, and Tom can mend my shirt.”

“But you can’t go to the Paxsons’ that way!” a man from Solebury said. “Why, the Paxsons …”

David interrupted. “I don’t think Mr. Paxson would mind.”

“But look at you!” the man protested. The men of the poorhouse studied the boy. Old shoes, scuffed beyond repair. Harry Moomaugh’s pants torn on a stone fence. A bedraggled shirt, and a mop of untrimmed hair.

“I’ll tell you what!” Tom said brightly. “Old Daniel gimme somethin’ before he died. Said to spend it on you when you needed it. Looks like now’s the time.” He went to his room and returned with a Bull Durham tobacco pouch. Toothless emptied the pouch into his hand. It contained more than two dollars!

“Won’t be enough for shoes, too,” an old man said.

Tom scratched his chin. “Tell you what, David. You go beg some money from your Aunt Reba.”

“Not me!”

An old man said, “You go, Tom. I’ll cut the boy’s hair.” So Tom left while the men made a stool for David to sit on while experimenting barbers trimmed his long hair. At Aunt Reba’s door Tom said, “ ’Scuse me for buttin’ in, but your boy needs shoes.”

“
He’s
got
shoes!
” Reba snapped.

“He’s got old shoes, Miss Reba. All wore out.”

“I seen ’em the other
day
. Nothin’ wrong with ’em.”

“But Miss Reba!” Tom pleaded. “They ain’t good enough for him to go to church in. And maybe the Paxsons’ll take him to they home atterwards.”

“The
Pax
sons! Them against
Sole
bury?” She flung her thin arms into the air and rushed at Tom. “
You
done
this!
I
know it!
Fillin
’ that boy’s
head
with big
ideas. Makin
’ a poorhouse boy so high and
mighty
.”

Doggedly Tom insisted, “The boy’s just got to have shoes, Miss Reba.”

“No!” she screamed. “And
if
he leave
s this
place
Sunday
I’ll beat him till he can’t sit
down
. Nor lay down,
neither!
”

Tom reported Reba’s decision to the long hall. “We’ll figure some other way,” he said, and next morning he and Luther sneaked David and Daniel’s tobacco pouch into Doylestown. They went to Ely’s and said, “We want a pair of pants for this boy.”

“What size?”

“You kin see ’im! That size.”

The clerk studied David and said, “He’s big enough for a suit.”

“We only want pants,” Tom replied.

“Here, sonny. Try these on.” The clerk handed David a trim pair of boy’s pants, stiff and clean. David started to take his own off. “Not here!” the man said. He opened a cubicle, and when he saw David’s underwear he gasped.

“I told him to wear clean ones!” Tom protested, but David blandly reached for the new pants. He could never understand why people worried about underwear. He had two pairs and this pair had been worn for much less than two months. There were walnut stains, ink stains, green stains from leaves, and other odd marks on the cloth. But they weren’t torn.

“Thank heavens the pants fit!” the clerk said to himself. Aloud he waxed enthusiastic. “Perfect. Turn round in a circle, my little man.” David complied and decided that the view he caught in the mirrors showed a well-dressed chap. The brown pants made his hair look darker, the way he liked it.

“And how much would some shoes be?” Tom asked.

“$1.30,” the clerk replied. Tom and Luther retired to count their money.

“Could I speak to you, please?” Tom asked the clerk.

The two men went to the back of the store, and pretty soon the clerk blew his nose. Then he wiped his glasses and went to the phone. “Wilmer?” he called. “That you, Wilmer? Is there any more money left in that fund?” There was a long silence and then the clerk whispered something. “OK, Wilmer.” He blew his nose again and said, “First! Some underwear.”

“What shall I do with the ones I have on?” David asked.

“Throw them in the corner!” the clerk directed. “No! Don’t! Put them in this bag.” Shoes, stockings, two shirts, a coat to match his pants, four sets of underwear! That’s what Old Daniel’s pouch of dimes and quarters and one bill purchased.

“A pretty neat little man!” the clerk beamed. When the trio left the store the clerk joked, “Now when you grow up, remember where you bought your first suit!” He winked at David and shook hands with him. When David opened his fist there was a bright dime in it.

“What can we get for ten cents?” he asked his cronies. Luther, being a Dutchman, was all for saving the dime. Toothless felt that a celebration was in order, so David led the way to a candy store.

“I like suckers,” Luther said.

“I like marshmallows,” Toothless reported. But there were some jelly beans left over from Easter and the storekeeper gave David two pounds for ten cents. Luther popped a handful in his mouth and started chewing violently, but Tom said he didn’t care for any. David was about to eat a black one, but he looked up at Tom with childish horror. He had forgotten that Tom had no teeth.

“I’ll trade ’em back for some marshmallows,” he insisted.

“I’ll suck one,” Tom said. But to David the candy was sour, and mad Luther ate the whole two pounds.

On Sunday morning they stationed Luther at the roadside to flag down the Paxson car, lest Aunt Reba see it. Then Tom and the other men dressed David in his new clothes and combed his hair. “Remember!” they said. “If you eat dinner at the Paxsons’, say thank you!”

The drive to Solebury that Sunday morning was magnificent. David had never before ridden in the rear seat of a good car. Nor had he ever ridden with a primped and pretty girl. The fields of Bucks County were superb, as if they too were in their Sunday best, and birds sang from every tree.

At the Meeting House the wealthy Quakers of the county stood solemnly on the porch to greet their neighbors. The Paxsons led David and Marcia to a bench and then assumed their own positions as heads of the meeting. Now the spirit of God descended on the place, and there was silence.

After many minutes a woman rose, a housewife from New Hope, and she spoke words David could not understand.
But there was a calm and handsome beauty about her face. When she sat down, no one else spoke.

As the old men had predicted, the Paxsons invited David to Sunday dinner. Mr. Paxson said, “We have some other guests, too. This man’s a famous painter.”

“I have a painting on my wall,” David said. “It’s by Rembrandt.”

“Joe’s no Rembrandt,” Mrs. Paxson laughed.

“Tell me, son,” the painter said. “How do you like the Rembrandt?”

“It’s pretty dark,” David said thoughtfully. “Lots of it he didn’t paint, but where he did, the light shines.” Mr. Paxson and the painter nodded.

Then the painter asked, “How do you like my picture? That one by the fireplace?”

“Why, that’s the canal!” David cried.

“Do you know the canal?” the painter asked.

“I’ve never seen it, but a friend of mine used to work there. He said it was just like that picture!”

“David!” Marcia cried. “Look out here!”

The boy turned abruptly and ran into the yard. There was a swing, a pool for fish, a total world for children to play in. At dinner all the men, and David, had two dishes of ice cream.

On the way home, riding once more in the comfortable car, David tried to recall each joyous moment of the day. Men and women—not old poorhouse people, but men with jobs—had talked with him. There had been a room filled with books. There had been music, and a pond for fish. As the car neared the poorhouse David leaned forward and said, “It was a very nice day. Thank you.”

“Thee sees, Margaret,” Mr. Paxson whispered to his wife. “The boy’s all right. He doesn’t even know he’s living in a poorhouse.”

But this time Mr. Paxson was dead wrong. For when David leaned back after his thank-you’s, Marcia Paxson, black haired and deep eyed, had put her hand in David’s and whispered, “Thee can come to lots of parties now. Harry Moomaugh said thee had no good suit. But thee does.”

Crushed, David did not sneak behind the hedges to escape his aunt. With a great burden of discovery he walked stolidly up the lane where everyone could see him. “A good suit!” he muttered. “Because I didn’t have a good suit I couldn’t go to the parties. Now I have one and I can go!” He thought
with overwhelming bitterness of the music and the good food and the fun he had missed.