Web and the Rock (4 page)

 We must have coolness, dankness, darkness; we need gladed green and gold and rock-bright running waters at the hour of three o'clock.
 We must go down into the coolness of a concrete cellar. We like dark shade, and cool, dark smells, and cool, dark, secret places, at the hour of three o'clock. We like cool, strong smells with some cool staleness at that hour. Man smells are good at three o'clock. We like to remember the smells of all things that were in our father's room: the dank, cool pungency of the plug of apple tobacco on the mantelpiece, bit into at one end, and stuck with a bright red flag; the smell of the old mantel piece, the wooden clock, the old calf bindings of a few old books; the smell of the rocking chair, the rug, the walnut bureau, and the cool, dark smell of clothing in the closet.
 At this hour of the day we like the smell of old unopened rooms, old packing cases, tar, and the smell of the grape vines on the cool side of the house. If we go out, we want to go out in green shade and gladed coolnesses, to lie down on our bellies underneath the maple trees and work our toes down into the thick green grass. If we have to go to town we want to go to places like our uncle's hardware store, where we can smell the cool, dark cleanliness of nails, hammers, saws, tools, T-squares, implements of all sorts; or to a saddle shop where we can get the smell of leather; or to our father's brick and lumber yard where we can get the smells of putty, glass, and clean white pine, the smell of the mule-teams, and the lumber sheds. It is also good to go into the cool glade of the drug store at this hour, to hear the cool, swift slatting of the wooden fans, and to smell the citrus pungency of lemons, limes, and oranges, the sharp and clean excitements of unknown medicines.
 The smell of a street car at this hour of day is also good--a dynamic smell of motors, wood work, rattan seats, worn brass, and steel-bright flanges. It is a smell of drowsy, warm excitement, and a nameless beat ing of the heart; it speaks of going somewhere. If we go anywhere at this hour of day, it is good to go to the baseball game and smell the grandstand, the old wooden bleachers, the green turf of the playing field, the horsehide of the ball, the gloves, the mitts, the clean resilience of the ash-wood bats, the smells of men in shirt-sleeves, and the sweating players.
 And if there is work to do at three o'clock--if we must rouse ourselves from somnolent repose, and from the green-gold drowsy magic of our meditations--for God's sake give us something real to do. Give us great labors, but vouchsafe to us as well the promise of a great accomplishment, the thrill of peril, the hope of high and spirited adventure. For God's sake don't destroy the heart and hope and life and will, the brave and dreaming soul of man, with the common, dull, soul-sickening, mean transactions of these little things!
 Don't break our heart, our hope, our ecstasy, don't shatter irrevocably some brave adventure of the spirit, or some brooding dream, by sending us on errands which any stupid girl, or nigger wench, or soulless underling of life could just as well accomplish. Don't break man's heart, man's life, man's song, the soaring vision of his dream with--"Here, boy, trot around the corner for a loaf of bread,"--or "Here, boy; the telephone company has just called up--you'll have to trot around there.."--Oh, for God's sake, and my sake, please don't say 'trot around'--"... and pay the bill before they cut us off!"
 Or, fretful-wise, be-flusteredlike, all of a twitter, scattered and de moralized, fuming and stewing, complaining, whining, railing against the universe because of things undone you should have done yourself, because of errors you have made yourself, because of debts unpaid you should have paid on time, because of things forgotten you should have remembered--fretting, complaining, galloping off in all directions, unable to get your thoughts together, unable even to call a child by his proper name--as here: "Ed, John, Bob--pshaw, boy! George, I mean!
 Well, then for God's sake, mean it!
 "Why, pshaw!--to think that that fool nigger--I could wring her neck when I think of it--well, as I say now...."
 Then, in God's name, say it!
 "... why, you know..."
 No! I do not know!
 "... here I was dependin' on her--here she told me she would come--and all the work to be done--and here she's sneaked out on me after dinner--and I'm left here in the lurch."
 Yes, of course you are; because you failed to pay the poor wench on Saturday night the three dollars which is her princely emolument for fourteen hours a day of sweaty drudgery seven days a week; because "it slipped your mind," because you couldn't bear to let it go in one gigantic lump--could you?--because you thought you'd hang on to the good green smell of money just a little longer, didn't you?--let it sweat away in your stocking and smell good just a little longer- didn't you?--break the poor brute's heart on Saturday night just when she had her mind all set on fried fish, gin, and f-----g, just because you wanted to hold on to three wadded, soiled, and rumpled greenbacks just a little longer--dole it out to her a dollar at a time--tonight a dollar, Wednesday night a dollar, Friday night the same... and so are left here strapped and stranded and forlorn, where my father would have paid and paid at once, and kept his nigger and his nigger's loyalty. And all because you are a woman, with a woman's niggard smallness about money, a woman's niggard dealing towards her serv ants, a woman's selfishness, her small humanity of feeling for the dumb, the suffering, and afflicted soul of man--and so will fret and fume and fidget now, all flustered and undone, to call me forth with: "Here, boy!--Pshaw, now!--To think that she would play a trick like this!--Why as I say, now---child! child!--I don't know what I shall do--I'm left here all alone--you'll have to trot right down and see if you can find someone at once."
 Aye! to call me forth from coolness, and the gladed sweetness of cool grass to sweat my way through Niggertown in the dreary torpor of the afternoon; to sweat my way up and down that grassless, tree less horror of baked clay; to draw my breath in stench and sourness, breathe in the funky nigger stench, sour wash-pots and branch-sewage, nigger privies and the sour shambles of the nigger shacks; to scar my sight and soul with little snot-nosed nigger children fouled with dung, and so bowed out with rickets that their little legs look like twin sausages of fat, soft rubber; so to hunt, and knock at shack-door, so to wheedle, persuade, and cajole, in order to find some other sullen wench to come and sweat her fourteen hours a day for seven days a week--and for three dollars!
 Or again, perhaps it will be: "Pshaw, boy!--Why to think that he would play me such a trick!--Why, I forgot to put the sign out--but I thought he knew I needed twenty pounds!--If he'd only asked!--but here he drove right by with not so much as by-your-leave, and here there's not a speck of ice in the refrigerator--and ice cream and iced tea to make for supper.--You'll have to trot right down to the ice house and get me a good ten-cent chunk."
 Yes! A good ten-cent chunk tied with a twist of galling twine, that cuts like a razor down into my sweaty palm; that wets my trouser's leg from thigh to buttock; that bangs and rubs and slips and cuts and freezes against my miserable knees until the flesh is worn raw; that trickles freezing drops down my bare and aching legs, that takes all joy from living, that makes me curse my life and all the circumstances of my birth--and all because you failed to "put the sign out," all because you failed to think of twenty pounds of ice!
 Or is it a thimble, or a box of needles, or a spool of thread that you need now! Is it for such as this that I must "trot around" some place for baking powder, salt or sugar, or a pound of butter, or a package of tea!
 For God's sake thimble me no thimbles and spool me no spools!
 If I must go on errands send me out upon man's work, with man's dis patch, as my father used to do! Send me out with one of his niggers upon a wagon load of fragrant pine, monarch above the rumps of two grey mules! Send me for a wagon load of sand down by the river, where I can smell the sultry yellow of the stream, and shout and holler to the boys in swimming! Send me to town to my father's brick and lumber yard, the Square, the sparkling traffic of bright afternoon. Send me for something in the City Market, the smell of fish and oysters, the green, cool growth of vegetables; the cold refrigeration of hung beeves, the butchers cleaving and sawing in straw hats and gouted aprons. Send me out to life and business and the glades of afternoon; for God's sake, do not torture me with spools of thread, or with the sunbaked clay and shambling rickets of black Niggertown!
 "Son, son!... Where has that fool boy got to!... Why, as I say now, boy, you'll have to trot right down to...."
 With baleful, brooding vision he looked towards the house. Say me no says, sweet dame; trot me no trots. The hour is three o'clock, and I would be alone.
 So thinking, feeling, saying, he rolled over on his belly, out of sight, on the "good" side of the tree, dug bare, luxurious toes in cool, green grass, and, chin a-cup in his supporting hands, regarded his small universe of three o'clock.
 "A little child, a limber elf"--twelve years of age, and going on for thirteen next October. So, midway in May now, midway to thirteen, with a whole world to think of. Not large or heavy for his age, but strong and heavy in the shoulders, arms absurdly long, big hands, legs thin, bowed out a little, long, flat feet; small face and features quick with life, the eyes deep-set, their look both quick and still; low brow, wide, stick-out cars, a shock of close-cropped hair, a large head that hangs forward and projects almost too heavily for the short, thin neck- not much to look at, someone's ugly duckling, just a boy.
 And yet--could climb trees like a monkey, spring like a cat; could jump and catch the maple limb four feet above his head--the bark was already worn smooth and slick by his big hands; could be up the tree like a flash; could go places no one else could go; could climb anything, grab hold of anything, dig his toes in anything; could scale the side of a cliff if he had to, could almost climb a sheet of glass; could pick up things with his toes, and hold them, too; could walk on his hands, bend back and touch the ground, stick his head between his legs, or wrap his legs around his neck; could make a hoop out of his body and roll over like a hoop, do hand-springs and cut flips--jump, climb, and leap as no other boy in town could do. He is a grotesque-looking little creature, yet unformed and unmatured, in his make-up some thing between a spider and an ape (the boys, of course, call him "Monk")--and yet with an eye that sees and holds, an car that hears and can remember, a nose that smells out unsuspected pungencies, a spirit swift and mercurial as a flash of light, now soaring like a rocket, wild with ecstasy, outstripping storm and flight itself in the aerial joy of skyey buoyancy; now plunged in nameless, utter, black, unfathomable dejection; now bedded cool in the reposeful grass beneath the maple tree, remote from time and brooding on his world of three o'clock; now catlike on his feet--the soaring rocket of a sudden joy- then catlike spring and catch upon the lowest limb, then like a monkey up the tree, and like a monkey down, now rolling like a furious hoop across the yard--at last, upon his belly in cool grass again, and bedded deep in somnolent repose at three o'clock.
 Now, with chin cupped in his hands and broodingly aware, he meditates the little world before him, the world of one small, modest street, the neighbors, and his uncle's house. For the most part, it is the pleasant world of humble people and small, humble houses, most of them worn, shabby, so familiar: the yards, the porches, swings, and railings, and the rocking chairs; the maple trees, the chestnuts and the oaks; the way a gate leans open, half ajar, the way the grass grows, and the way the flowers are planted; the fences, hedges, bushes, and the honeysuckle vines; the alleyways and all the homely and familiar backyard world of chicken houses, stables, barns, and orchards, and each one with its own familiar hobby, the Potterham's neat back garden, Nebraska Crane's pigeon houses--the whole, small, well-used world of good, small people.
 He sees the near line of eastern hills, with light upon it, the sweet familiarity of massed green. His thought soars westward with a vision of far distances and splendid ranges; his heart turns west with thoughts of unknown men and places and of wandering; but ever his heart turns home to this his own world, to what he knows and likes the best. It is--he feels and senses this obscurely--the place of common man, his father's kind of people. Except for his uncle's raw, new house, the sight of which is a desolation to him, it is the place of the homely, simple houses, and the old, ordinary streets, where the brick layers, plasterers, and masons, the lumber dealers and the stonecutters, the plumbers, hardware merchants, butchers, grocers, and the old, common, native families of the mountains--his mother's people--make their home.
 It is the place of the Springtime orchards, the loamy, dew-wet morning gardens, the peach, cherry, apple blossoms, drifting to the ground at morning in the month of April, the pungent, fragrant, maddening savor of the breakfast smells. It is the place of roses, lilies, and nasturtiums, the vine-covered porches of the houses, the strange, delicious smell of the ripening grapes in August, and the voices--near, strange, haunting, lonely, most familiar--of the people sitting on their porches in the Summer darkness, the voices of the lost people in the darkness as they say good-night. Then boys will hear a screen door slam, the earth grow silent with the vast and brooding ululation of the night, and finally the approach, the grinding screech, the brief halt, the receding loneliness and absence of the last street car going around the corner on the hill, and will wait there in the darkness filled with strangeness, thinking, "I was born here, there's my father, this is I!"
 It is the world of the sun-warm, time-far clucking of the sensual hens in the forenoon strangeness of the spell of time, and the coarse, sweet coolness of Crane's cow along the alleyway; and it is the place of the ice-tongs ringing in the streets, the ice saw droning through the dripping blocks, the sweating negroes, and the pungent, musty, and exotic odors of the grocery wagons, the grocery box piled high with new provisions. It is the place of the forenoon housewives with their shapeless gingham dresses, bare legs, slippers, turbaned heads, bare, bony, labor-toughened hands and arms and elbows, and the fresh, clean, humid smell of houses airing in the morning. It is the place of the heavy midday dinners, the smells of roasts of beef, corn on the cob, the deep-hued savor of the big string beans, cooking morning long into the sweet amity and unction of the fat-streaked pork; and above it all is the clean, hungry, humid smell and the steaming freshness of the turnip greens at noon.