Graveyard Reader, page 11
Placing one foot before the other with obvious effort, Maw started toward the door. She reached it, opened it, closed it against her bare shank.
“Josiah!” we heard her scream as the foot disappeared.
With a sigh Aunt Ellen rose and waddled after her.
Maw—she was still strong as an ox and could swing an axe like a man—backed through the door after a while, holding Paw under the armpits. Aunt Ellen carried his feet.
“The old fool!” Maw was whimpering. “I knew they’d get him. The old fool. I told him not to stay so late.”
After the funeral—Annette and I boasted at school that the Brown murderers had done for Paw, although a stroke undoubtedly was responsible—the cabin never felt quite like home again. First a deluge of uncles, aunts and cousins descended and insisted we sell the farm and move to town.
“Josiah would not have it so,” Maw told them while Aunt Ellen nodded corroboration. So they compromised by having a hired hand in to do the plowing and heavier work.
At first nothing seemed vitally wrong except the absence of Paw’s explosive laughter and endless stories, plus a growing dearth of popguns and slingshots. Then, one rainy day when I had been brooding over one of his dog-eared books—Vanity Fair, it was —I looked up, caught sight of Maw, her potato peeling forgotten, sitting tense beside the kitchen table, and knew what it was that had been bothering me. Maw was still listening … always listening now. Without her husband’s quizzical common sense to balance her, she was slipping imperceptibly into that never-never land which had so often beckoned.
Not long after that discovery I awakened, chilled, as the Seth Thomas clock clinked midnight. The door was open a crack and I could glimpse, by the flickering embers, Maw’s foot in its accustomed place.
“Maw,” I called.
“Shhh! Listen! I think I hear a wagon.”
“Maw,” I screamed. “Maw!”
“What is it, honey?” She came inside, crossed the room and placed a homy hand on my forehead in one of her rare caresses.
“You’ll catch cold,” I mumbled, somehow ashamed.
“I was just listening to the katydids. They sound … fresh, like spring water,” she lied.
“Don’t listen any more.”
“All right, honey. I’ll go to bed. Don’t worrit yourself.”
But she did not keep her promise.
Several months later I came home from school ahead of Annette, who was dusting erasers. I heard animated conversation inside. Thinking it was one of the neighbor women who dropped in occasionally to gossip, I rushed in, eager not to miss anything, then stopped, heart in mouth.
Aunt Ellen was out of the house on one of the chores she now condescended to put her white hands to and Maw was occupying the old rocker before the mirror. But what frightened me was the chatter in two distinct voices which still continued.
“Maw,” I gulped. “Who … who you talking to?”
‘Why, with Mrs… . Mrs. Jones here, of course,” she laughed although her eyes refused to meet mine. “Mrs. Jones, this is my grandson I was telling you about. Take off your cap, son,, and say.. ”
“But Maw,” I whimpered. “There’s no one there. It’s just your reflection in the looking glass.”
“Why … why so it is,” she stammered, brushing a hand across her eyes. “I was just fooling.” She jumped to her feet and started bustling about like her old indefatigable self. “Now run along and fill the wood box. Then wash your hands and help me peel these taters. Fm way late with supper, what with having to stop to talk … I mean I must have set down to rest and went to sleep.”
Then began one of the strangest battles in the history of fairie —two children against a mirror, for, of course, I enlisted poor blue-eyed, flaxen-haired Annette. I tried to explain to Aunt Ellen too, but she merely smiled and patted me with one fat hand while her prominent eyes fluttered back to the minor.
I wrote a scrawl to Uncle Bill, my favorite, and he left his hardware store the next weekend and came down from the city with a little, chinwhiskered doctor. Since psychiatry was unknown in those days, the physician looked at Maw’s tongue, thumped her chest, asked her a few questions which she answered with sly humor, and pronounced her sound.
“I think it’s you that’s imagining things, boy,” said Uncle Bill when he took me for a walk in the woods after one of Maw’s wonderful chicken dinners. “We’re all upset by Paw’s going. Just don’t worry about things.”
“But Uncle Bill,” I protested. “I heard what I saw.”
“I know. I know.” His lean face had a worried look, I noticed. “But you’re a highstrung youngster … Write me often, though. And I’ll come down every time I can. Say! Look!” I could almost h^ar him sigh with relief at an opportunity to change the subject. “There’s a patch of violets already. Let’s pick some and take them back to Maw and Ellen.”
After that, of course, I had to carry on the fight with only Annette to help. ,
We tried everything: Went right home when we could have been playing with the other kids after school; got Maw to sing for us by the hour; read out loud to her; inveigled her into the spring woods to pick flowers and look for birds’ nests. Oh, it was a brave batde put up by a twelve- and a ten-year-old against something alien and, somehow, far wiser than we.
At first Maw managed to banish her visions when she heard us come into the yard. Then we had to strive hard and harder to break the spell.
And one day we both became twins!
It happened when Annette and I came home that time when the teacher took sick. It was much earlier than usual and we caught Maw rocking happily before the mirror, gossiping.
“I’m so glad you brought your own children to visit me today, Mrs. Jones,” Maw exclaimed the moment our reflections appeared in the glass behind her. “My Tommy and Annette don’t have many playmates, we live so far from any neighbors. I’m sure they’ll be much happier now.”
“But Maw,” Annette protested as we ducked out of range. “Those ain’t real children. You’re just looking at us in the looking glass.”
But the damage had been done and for once in the few times of my life I saw grandmother grow really angry.
“I’ll have none of your sass, Annette,” she stormed, rising and straightening her back until it cracked. “Mrs. Jones, I don’t know what has come over my younguns. Now, will you two say you’re sorry, or must I whip you right before company?”
Shamefaced and shaken, we did apologize. And from that hour Mrs. Jones and her brats became our constant companions.
At first we hated and resented them, then, childlike, accepted the inevitable and even made the best of it. Sometimes, so real did Maw make the delusion become, we almost believed in the shadow;. On rainy weekends we found ourselves inventing games to play with them. Perhaps, in time, we might have gone to inhabit Maw’s world of dreams.
But Maw’s health was failing rapidly. We tried to ignore the i fact as she did, though it soon became pitifully obvious that Paw’s >. loss had broken the iron will which had sustained her through so : many adversities. Aunt Ellen more and more ceded her place ; before the mirror as she helped Annette and me do the lighter chores and even some of the cooking. Bill Bailey came over every day now. (Maw never paraded her shadows when he was around, knowing that the farmer was not to be trusted with such dream stuff.) And the money which aunts and uncles contributed willingly or grudgingly, according to their natures, was more and more needed to fill the gaps in our finances.
“Tommy,” Annette said to me one afternoon as we were plodding home from school along the muddy, dogwood-bordered road, “What happens to people when they die?”
“Aw, I don’t know,” I kicked a loose stone with my copper-toed shoe. “Maw says the angels come and get ’em.”
“But the angels didn’t come and get Dickie.” (Dickie was a wry-necked, pin-feathered rooster that Paw had taught to come when he called, dig fishing worms for us and jump through a barrel hoop.) “I went to look at Dickie’s grave the other day. A dog had dug him up. There were just feathers—and bones.”
“Aw,” I said. “Chickens don’t have souls. But Maw says that when Mrs. Bailey died last year, she was there and she saw …” “We’re going to be awful lonesome,” my sister sighed. “And you’ll have to get up and make the fire every morning.”
“What do you mean?” I challenged.
“Nothing. Let’s run. I’m cold.” And she was off in a flutter of long legs, gingham, and pale yellow braids.
After such a conversation I hardly dared enter the house. When I did go in, after fooling around in the bam as long as possible, I found Maw singing lustily about some man who had gone to the gallows with a white dove riding on his shoulder to prove him innocent of the murder of his sweetheart.
“Where’s Mrs. Jones and her kids?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“They went home,” said Maw. “I told them to. Can’t spend all my time gassing with an ugly old woman like that when I’ve got housecleaning to do.”
And until long after sunset she made the feathers fly from the old pillows, beat up the crackling, comshuck mattresses, sprinkled and swept the floors and polished the meager kitchen utensils. Annette and I, feeling as if we had been released from jail, helped with a will. Aunt Ellen, reinstated in her rocking chair, frowned and sneezed by turns at the commotion and dust.
“There,” said Maw at last as she hung the home-made broom behind the kitchen range and sank into a chair, looking suddenly more worn and old than I had ever seen her. “There. It’s all swept and garnished for when the bridegroom cometh.”
“The bridegroom?”
“I was just fooling again, son.” She stared down at her big-veined hands. “Must be getting old, I guess. I just meant that I have a feeling your Uncle Bill will come tomorrow. And you know how fussy he is about everything being neat and dean.” She rose with a sigh, half of weariness, half of content. “Come. You and Annette get undressed. I’ll sing you to sleep like I used to when you were little.”
“You look just like my daughter, sir,
Who from me ran away . .
Her cracked voice still had its hypnotic quality. I felt my eyelids drooping despite my certain knowledge that I should stay awake.
“Maw,” I mumbled. “I wanna drink.”
Her bare feet padded into the kitchen. I heard the rattle of tin cup against galvanized bucket. Then the spring water was fresh on my dry lips.
“Maw,” I rambled on. “I don’t wanna sleep. Tell me about when you were a little girl back in Virginia … and the big white house and the black people …”
“Not tonight, honey. You’re all tuckered out,” she crooned, stroking my forehead and picking up the thread of that interminable song:
“I a-am not your daughter, sir,
And neither do I know.
I a-am from Highlanzer
And they call me Jack Monroe . .
I woke with a start, those last lugubrious lines still ringing in my ears:
“She dre-ew out her broadsword.
She bid this world adieu.
Saying ‘Goodbye to Jack Highlanzer’
And ‘Goodbye to Jack Monroe.’ ”
Have you ever awakened in a strange place—a hotel room perhaps—tried to locate a familiar lamp; the dim outlines of your own bedchamber; the tick of a friendly clock? Or have you sought frantically for a door, with your hands sliding futilely along unbroken walls?
This was the same room in which I had gone to sleep. The fire Was almost out. By my side Annette breathed deep and low. I could hear Aunt Ellen snoring not far away. Through the open door a full moon stretched its carpet almost to my bed. Yes, despite these comforting sights and sounds, everything about me seemed topsy turvy and wrong.
My heart leaped and my bare toes curled as I realized what it was. Our front door was in the south wall of the cabin. The moonshine was pouring in through a wide opening in the north wall … through the place where the mirror stood! And a cold, cold wind was pouring in with it.
“Maw,” I whispered, sitting up.
Only the chorus of katydids answered.
But this was spring!
At the same moment I saw a bare foot and ankle etched in
moonlight as it hooked around the age-darkened frame of the glass.
“Please, Maw.” I still struggled between dream and waking. “You’ll catch cold out there.”
She came partially inside the “door,” then, and smiled at me. And I noticed, with the lack of surprise which accompanies nightmares, that her teeth were white and firm in the moonglow.
“Shhh!” she admonished. “I think I hear a wagon.”
“But Paw is …” I began, then stopped spellbound.
Far in the distance, across hills bathed in beauty, and above the fresh staccato mutter of katydids, I, too, heard the creak of wheels on a gravel road, the jingle of trace chains and the rumble of a half-empty jolt-wagon bed.
I crouched, hardly breathing, until the wagon stopped at our gate. (We always kept it closed now.)
Rusty hinges squeaked, and the thump, thumpety, thump of the wagon resumed across the yard.
“It’s Uncle Bill, ain’t it, Maw?” I pleaded.
“Uncle Bill ain’t due till tomorrow, honey.” She shaded her eyes against the moonlight with one slim hand. “No. It’s just Josiah.”
“But it can’t be,” I sobbed. “He … the angels took him.”
“Angels wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole, thanks to dear, just God,” she chuckled. “He’ll have a whole raft of packages after all this while.” She started forward. “I’ll go help him pack them in.”
“No, Maw! Don’t leave. Wait for me,” I screamed as I plunged out of bed.
I regained consciousness to find Aunt Ellen bathing my forehead with hot vinegar. Annette was whimpering somewhere. My face was badly cut … I still wear the scar … and the mirror was shattered in its frame.
“Maw!” I struggled to get up. “She …”
“I know,” said Aunt Ellen in just the thread of a voice unused for years as her plump white hands pressed me back against the pillows. “I understand.”
When Uncle Bill arrived next morning there was a great to-do and the neighbors organized a search of the surrounding woods and the creek bottom. Of course they found nothing. I knew they wouldn’t. Annette and Aunt Ellen knew they wouldn’t. And I think Uncle Bill knew it too. The rest of them patted my head and said poor boy, he’s been under an awful strain.
Several months later a woman’s body was found in White River. People said it must be Maw and the aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins had a funeral.
But Annette and 1 wouldn’t go.
John Collier
SPECIAL DELIVERY
This expertly-turned bit of nastiness plays
a mean trick on the Pygmalion legend— which
was, if you recall your Bullfinch rather than
your G. B. Shaw, to the effect that the statue
Pygmalion carved and fell in love with came
alive for him. In our modern time and clime, no
such poetic nonsense would be tolerated, of course… .
In the ancient legend it was the mythological
Aphrodite, if I mistake not, who did Pygmalion
the favor of turning stone to blood. In the present
instance, it is the very un-mythological Mr. Collier’s
intent to turn your blood to stone, and I think you
will find he is pretty good at that game.
It was with his eyes wide open, and with a reluctance amounting to dread, that Albert Baker slowly surrendered to the passion that was to change his whole life. “Am I mad?” he asked.
He addressed this inquiry, at the end of a long letter, to a certain Big Brother Frank, who gave candid advice in the Heart Corespondence Column of the popular Tails Up Weekly They printed his letter in full.
Dear Sir,
Excuse my writing to you, but you say write your difficulties. I am in a difficulty, and cannot ask anyone else, they will say I am mad. I am in love. Only the young lady is not like others. She is different.
Have you been along Oxford Street at eight in the morning? I have to go every morning, that is where I work. In all the shop windows you can see the young men carrying in the artificial young ladies they have to dress for the day. All the way along you can see them, like the old master picture of the Romans and the stolen women, only not so fat. Some struggle, some have their arms round the young men’s necks but are looking out of the window. She does not struggle or look out of the window. She is one of those young ladies and I am one of the young men.
Surely it is not much difference from falling in love with a film star. I have been in London on this job four years, no one to really talk to. She seems to know everything I try to say. She has those very long blue eyes, thinking about the Riveera, but very kind.
After all, what do you really want with a girl, if not higher things? It isn’t only the Riveera, either, but I look after her every way, and you would really think she knew. Ordinary girls don’t know, take it from me.
I take her in and keep well in front of her till she is full-dressed, no one shall write to the papers about her. Anyway, what is it they make all the fuss about—nothing.
