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Roy Glashan's Library
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Liberty, 4 April 1931, with "The Golden Day"
His hand fell on the back of another chair,
and instantly it was a club in his grasp.
FOR thirteen days at a time, Jim Eagan rose at five and worked until dark; even after supper he often patched harness or sharpened plowshares in the blacksmith shop till his bedtime, for the land of his hill farm was poor, and although he multiplied his hands and his hours in this fashion he got on very slowly; often the loans on his crops nearly equaled their value.
On alternate Sundays he drove his Ford thirty miles through the uplands down to Tucker Flat and Tuckerville to see Kate Martin
This morning in mid-March was only Thursday of the week.He had cut from the shelf of the stack hay for the cows in the corral; he had fed, curried, and harnessed the mules in the barn; he had loaded the light wagon with redwood posts for the fence which he was building to separate the southeast forty acres of summer fallow from the hillside pasture; and still the sun was not up when he started for house with the first bucket of milk. The sun was not up, but something on the hills made Eagan turn about and stare at them, the heavy bucket swinging slowly at the end of his arm.
All the slopes were glowing. The poppies were out. They must have been blowing for days and days, but labor had stooped the head of Eagan so that when he walked out he saw little but the ground before him and the square toes of his boots stepping on it. He stood there for so long that his shoulder began to ache. He drew in a breath so deep that it hurt him; then he went on to the house.
He finished the milking, strained the milk into the shallow tin setting pans, put them on the shelves, and went in to cook his breakfast. The barn, where the mules were stamping and grinding at their hay, seemed a cheerful place compared with the stillness and damp shadow which filled his house.
When he kindled the fire it strangled for a moment in its own fumes, but the draft took hold presently and the flames jumped up the chimney with a roar.
He poured three cups of cold water over three heaping tablespoonfuls of coffee and put the pot over the strongest part of the fire. He cut from a remnant of a side of bacon, home-cured, four good thick slices. As it began to fry, into the grease he sliced two potatoes, boiled the evening before. He left the skins on; he had an idea that the good of the potato was in or near the skin. Then he slid a pan filled with fragments of corn bread into the oven, and in twenty minutes his meal was ready to take from the stove.So he sat down with his heels hooked round the table legs and consumed the food.
Nearly every breakfast was the same. He kept chickens, but the eggs brought such a good price that he would not waste them on himself. Whether he ate little or much seemed to make small difference. His strength of body and of nerve was a reservoir never drained, and winter or summer his weight varied not two pounds.
The sun was up and the day was well begun as he finished his third cup of coffee, the smallest, bitterest, blackest cup of the three. He rolled a cigarette out of brown wheat-straw papers and sweet pipe tobacco. It made a rich, dense fume and condensed a moisture in the mouth. It burned crookedly and soon the smoke became scalding hot, but the mouth of Jim Eagan was lined with iron. He inhaled to the bottom of his lungs and blew out slowly through his nose and mouth until there was a blue-brown cloud between him and the window, and beyond the window poured the brilliance of the outer day.
THE fire had died down. The room was already chill again, and out of the dank shadow and through the mist of his own making he looked at the brilliance of the morning. Jim Eagan shuddered a little as he did on a gray winter day when he followed the plow, walking through grass which was crystal white with frost; this day the winter was in his heart.
"I'll get out," said Eagan to the cloud of tobacco smoke. "I'll go to town."
So he washed the dishes, swept the floor, made the bed, and went out to the barn. When he opened the door of it, the sight of the harnessed mules and the way they turned their heads to him roused up his guilty conscience. He took the harness off them slowly, badly hurt by remorse and self-contempt, but when he turned out the mules and saw them run on to the green of the pasture, shaking their heads and switching their tails, incredulous and joyful, some of his melancholy left him, and his sense of guilt. It would do them good, that extra day off.
Yellow, white, and blue gleamed on the close-cropped grass of the pasture. Over the naked bones of the elm trees beyond, a silver smoke of land mist was rising, but even through the mist he could see the flame of the poppies that rippled up the hillside.
With big strides he went back to the house. Passing the chicken-yards, they raised a great cackling at the sight of him and ran with beating wings to get to the fence: but they had no meaning to him, and he went on.
In his bedroom he stripped off his clothes. Then he went out on the back porch, poured a bucket of cold water into a laundry tub of galvanized iron, and scrubbed himself with yellow laundry soap and a stiff brush. A breeze came out of the west and laid icy fingers on him, puckering the skin and turning it bluish white about the knees, but he looked down at the lean, hard strength of his body and smiled at the wind.
Standing at the verge of the porch, he flung out the dirty water as far as he could throw it. He poured in a fresh bucket and rinsed himself thoroughly with it; then he dried himself and went back to his bedroom. There he dressed in a suit of blue serge, well pressed and spotless, and pulled on a pair of high shoes for which he had paid eight dollars several years before. He flexed his toes and admired the flawless suppleness of the leather. It paid to get the best now and then. Once a week he polished those shoes; twice a month he wore them.
He was always a man to face the facts, and therefore he faced himself in the mirror, a thing which many a hero has not been able to do. Eagan was twenty-nine, but he admitted that he looked six years older. The coat which once had fitted so perfectly now was a trifle snug across the back and a trifle loose across the breast. He had begun to stoop. Even the good iron of which he was made was yielding a little.
But what the farm made of him he must accept. He had invested in it the faith of ten years of labor and therefore the land was sacred. He completed the picture of himself which Tuckerville and Kate should see with a silk handkerchief carefully tucked into the breast pocket of his coat so that a corner of it projected. Then he rolled in a towel a clothes brush, hair brush, comb, and small mirror; he put on a pair of chamois gloves and went out to the Ford.
It was an open delivery-wagon model which he had bought secondhand. Of all the running parts and the engine he took his usual perfect care, but lack of paint and loose mud guards flapping and rattling did not disturb Jim Eagan. At the first whirl of the starting crank the motor roared, and in another moment he was on the road to Tuckerville.
He drove very slowly as far as his land extended on either side of the way. His plowed ground, over the level and up the slopes, made an irregular pattern; again and again it invaded the rocks, but they were as aggressive as he, putting out stern peninsulas and headlands into the heart of his richest meadows. Two forbidding islands arose in the forty acres of summer fallow and other islands stood here and there like shapeless boats at anchor in the sea of green. Year by year the margins of those islands grew as the rocks thrust their heads above the surface of the fields and had to be pried up and carried away.
HE used to say that he had the best ground in the world, for it could produce a ton of hay and a ton of rocks to the acre, but there was always sorrow in his heart and dread of the future when he made the jest. Hope was no dazzling light in the soul of Eagan; for ten years he had fought like a soldier until he had cleared away the last defiling trace of a mortgage and now he was looking forward only tosome minor degree of comfort, and Kate Martin.
He made better speed after leaving his own domain. Above the rattling of the car the songs of the meadow larks flashed against his ear and were gone. The smell of damp soil and of growth was in the air.
When the car slid out from the hills, he found Tucker Flat on fire with spring blossoms from Loren's Gulch to the town. In the meadows and between the orchard rows all the ground was weltering with blue flames of lupin, niggertoes, and wild iris, white spottings of popcorn flowers, the yellow of the Johnny-jump-ups. Above all, glowing like hot embers, the poppies took whole pasture fields and shone along the margins of the roads and lanes. But all this was only the fire on the ground. Higher up, the plum trees had stopped blowing and offered only translucent clouds of green, but the peach trees were alight with miles and miles of rosy pink that stained the ground about their feet and poured out a smoke of perfume on the wind.
It blew in Eagan's face; the flush of the spring went through him like the color through the branches. Carefully he refrained from looking to his left, for there, he knew, he would see the long chasm of Loren's Gulch in which the spring could leave hardly a fingermark of green, for the hydraulic miners in the old days had washed away the soil and left only a dead rubble of boulders and the naked walls of rock.
As he pulled up near the front gate of the Martin house, he saw old Henry Martin sitting on the veranda with his hands folded over the top of a walking stick.
Winter or summer he was nearly always there in just that position, erect, alert, his hands folded over the knob of his walking stick, looking as if he were about to rise. He was sixty-five, brown as a sailor, and thin, dry, and hard as wood.
EAGAN got down from the car, waved to old Martin, and taking the clothes-brush from its wrapping, he brushed himself thoroughly, spending a good deal of time over the cuffs of the trousers. Using the mirror and the comb, he arranged his hair. He took the handkerchief from his breast pocket, shook the dust from it, refolded and returned it to its place. Then he entered the yard.
It was Kate's garden from beginning to end. No other person ever had planted, weeded, cultivated, pruned, and trained. It was mostly roses; the low, white forehead of the house was crossed and recrossed by the long branches of the climbers and in the beds were groups and clusters of short stalks and bunchy heads. The new sprouts were out, some of them half a foot long and of an almost transparent green, but the younger shoots were as red as hammered copper, and glittered under the sun.
Mr. Martin scorned greetings and farewells alike. "The sap is running pretty good," said he, as Eagan came through the gate and latched it with proper care behind him.
"Hello, Mr. Martin," said Eagan. "Everything is coming along, all right. Where's Kate?"
"She's gone out," said Martin.
"Where?" said Eagan.
"Oh, out. A lot of places."
His glance held straight before him, not on the street, nor the opposite house, nor the trees beyond it, but toward the curving line of the horizon on the southern hills.
"Where's a lot of places?" suggested Eagan.
"Gone out to the Ripleys'."
"I'll go find her there, then."
"She was taking them some duds she made for their little kid. Then she was going on to the Parkers."
"She can sew," said Eagan. "She could make shirts, even, I guess. She can make anything with her hands. She can do about anything with her hands. I'll g© find her."
"She can waste a lot of time with her hands," said Martin.
"Waste time?" said Eagan. "What would people do—poor people like the Ripleys—if there wasn't Kate to take care of 'em?"
"They'd put out roots and hold themselves up. Sit down here. You won't find Kate. She had a coupla pies along for I don't know who. She made them out of those raspberries that she preserved last summer. I never liked anything better than I liked those raspberries. There was kind of something about them. You remember them raspberries, Jimmy?"
"They were mighty good," agreed Eagan.
He sat down gingerly. Henry Martin's grim, stone-hard face and his far-sighted eyes always disturbed Eagan, but it was plainly a vain chase to follow Kate when she was out distributing charities.
"I was pretty partial t@ those raspberries," said the old man. "But she took the last big jar of them. It was two-thirds full. She makes two pies. In the extra big pie plates—the deep ones. She filled those plates clear full. I smelled it clear out here on the porch. 'Hey, Kate, what are you doing?' I yell. She comes out and shows me the pie plates, filled and frothing with red at the top. I know at one glance. 'That's not for us!' I say. 'Poor dear Mrs. What-not,' says she. 'Damn poor dear Mrs. What-not,' I say. Damn all this trotting around. There's only one cure for the way that she wastes her time."
"She's the finest girl in Tuckerville, or all of Tucker Flat, for that matter. Everybody knows that," pointed out Eagan. He began to grow hot in the back of his neck, and his lips twitched.
"There's only one thing that would cure her," declared Martin again.
"What might that be?"
"A newspaper," said Martin.
"Newspaper?" echoed Eagan, rather agape.
"Yes. Newspapers are a short cut across country and no corners to turn and get you to glory just as good and better than a hand-built reputation that depends on gossip will. The work that I've seen men do to get famous, it makes me tired even to think of it, but when a newspaper comes along it gives a lot of more leisure to the Christian souls."
"I don't understand," said Eagan. "I don't know what you mean."
"I didn't think you would," said Martin, "but you might grow up to it. What keeps my girl laying awake at night and working all day, sewing, cooking, or going out and sitting by a deadbed, and holding the hand of some old fool, or reading aloud, or selling tickets to a charity concert?"
"Because she's good! "said Jim Eagan. Something filled his throat so that his voice became a little uneven. "Because she's good!" he repeated.
"Because she's ambitious," said Martin. "That's why. A newspaper would save her a lot. Suppose that it printed a picture of her, once in a while, wouldn't the plain eyes of any man tell him that she was pretty? Of course they would. And she'd get a permanent reputation at the same time. 'Charming Leader of Tuckerville's Younger Set Is Charity Patron.' That's the way they write those things up. It pretty near poisons a couple dozen of the other girls, and it makes the boys buy new neckties and brush their hats. But unless they's a newspaper to help her out, the harder she works and the more she keeps at it, the more they're gunna take her for granted. Nothing that people get tired of sooner than talking good about others."
"I don't see why that should be," protested Eagan.
"I wouldn't think you would," said Martin. "But you look at it this way. How many ways is there of damning a man, a woman, or a mule? There's a thousand ways. It's rich and inspiring, sort of, to open up and damn somebody. It's a comfortable thing, too, to shrug your shoulders and sneer out of the corner of your eye. But when it comes to praising, you run out of shot right away.
"There is only three things that people can say about my girl. She's a nice girl; she's got a good heart; and she treats everybody just the same. Well, they get tired of saying those things. If they can't find something else, they wanta forget about her, and that's what they'll do in spite of the way she works. She's on a treadmill. The faster she runs, the more she stays on the same place. She's made herself into a traveling hospital, grocery store, and dry-goods shop, all free; and now Tuckerville takes her for granted, like the post-office or the church. There's no more losing trade than being good. There's nothing that'll make a family or a town or a whole county so damn' tired. And I could tell you a story about that: a story about how good Dave Loren was."
"Hold on," said Eagan. "You don't mean the Loren of Loren's Gulch, do you? Why, he killed a man, didn't he?"
"I'm gunna lead up to that. I'm gunna lead up to that," said Martin. "Or maybe you know all about it already?"
He dared Eagan with his eye, shifting it for the first time from the distant horizon. So Eagan shook his head, and Martin again reverted to the sky line.
"Dave Loren," said he, "was the only man among the miners on Tucker Flat that carried a Bible along with his pick. Nobody could get sick without having Dave come along and read a few chapters to him. Nobody could up and die without having Dave turn a few pages over his grave. If there was any lazy thug or crooked gambler that went broke and was starving, Dave would share his last pound of flour with that tramp and treat him to a coupla parables. Nobody could start a fight but Dave would step in between and raise his hand. He made as much trouble in that camp as a damned vigilance committee, and we got pretty tired of him. We used to talk it over now and then, but we couldn't find anything to do about it. And now I wanta tell you what saved that camp from Dave Loren, and what saved Dave Loren from himself."
"What was it?" asked Eagan.
"It was a bottla rum. Dave had gone and got himself a chill doing one of his good works, which was putting splints on abroken leg in a hailstorm. And the man with the broken leg hands him that bottle. Dave never had seen that stuff.'It's kind of a homemade medicine, says the man that owned it. Bill Clark was his name. And Dave poured down a good big shot. It tasted cool and watery compared with whisky, but it was full hundred-and-forty proof. Pretty soon it felt like another drink. It was a ureal repeating double-action little old bottle, and the first thing you know, Dave had six sizable slugs circulating somewhere inside of him. Then he went off like a rocket laid flat on the ground. You could hear him for miles away. You never could tell which way he was dodging and the smoke he raised was like a fog.
"We were pretty glad about this. All of us that was near by, we went and shook hands with Bill Clark and finished that bottle for him, and he admitted that it was almost worth a broken leg, what that rum had started; and we told him that it was worth two broken legs.
In the middle of the racket, bang! goes a gun, an bang! again. And pretty soon we hear that a long-drawn-out mule skinner from Missouri by name of Clyde Way has got It into his mean head to stop Loren from rocketing around, and has gone for him with a gun. But he misses his first shot, and before he can shoot again, Loren takes the gun away from that rat and shoots his head off for him. We gather around. Loren is dead sober and looking sick as he stares down at the leavings of Clyde Way. He has his Bible squeezed to a pulp between his big hands, but it don't occur to him to open it and use it on himself for comfort.
"He asks us what we want to do with him and when the hanging is to be, and we tell him it will be the next time he starts singing hymns on a Sunday when decent men want to rest around and take it easy. But you couldn't make a joke to Loren. He says that God had put a mark on him and that he's going off by himself, away from the faces of his fellow men, because he's not worthy to enjoy the comfort of their presence.
"SO away he goes in the rain and makes his first camp up yonder in the gulch, which was a mighty pretty place in that time. He camps by the creek, and when he starts on the next morning, aiming for nowhere but misery, he sees a little yellow eye winking at him from the pebbles along by the water. Gold, my son. That was how he made his strike. That was his golden day. He forgot the wilderness then. Him and the rest, we ripped the lining out of Loren's Gulch, and he went back and got himself a house in Boston and a house in New York, and right now he's the grandpa of a railroad and a steel mill.
"But you take a ride up to Loren's Gulch, and by the look of it you'll see what happens when a good man explodes. He always leaves scars! You think over what I'm saying, and while you're thinking, go back there in the kitchen and fix us up a snack for lunch. Kate won't be back here in time to cook it."
Eagan went to the kitchen. It was so neat that the pattern had been scrubbed from the linoleum on the floor; the stove shone like his own shoes. He felt like aneavesdropper. The sweetness of pastry baking was still in the air like a secret perfume, and the two window-shades were drawn two-thirds of the way down. He never had been able to understand why women darken a room before they leave it, but now as he raised the shades he felt less like a trespasser.
In the pantry he found cold pork and beans, which he warmed up with fresh slices of bacon in the frying pan. There was coffee also, and bread of Kate's own making, soft, white, and fine of grain. They ate their lunch, finishing on bread and strawberry preserves, Eagan with the appetite of a giant, such as he always had when he sat down at Kate's table. And after lunch they went out and sat through most of the afternoon on the porch, silent a great part of the time.
EAGAN had a maddened feeling of the flight of time. The golden day was slipping from him, and when would he find another like it? He was half nervous, half sulky, like a child that wants to hurt itself to spite its masters.
"Mr. Martin!" he said suddenly.
"Aye," said the old man.
"I'm gunna ask Kate to marry me. I'm gunna ask her today."
Martin did not even look at him.
"You might of asked her a coupla years back," said he.
"No. There was still a lump of mortgage then."
"Everybody's always tied to a mortgage, one kind or another."
"Always? " said Eagan, not understanding.
"Aye, till you retire. I don't owe any mortgage. I've given up. That's why."
"There's Kate," said Eagan, starting out of his chair.
Out of the steep shadow which fell across the veranda they looked as from the dark mouth of a cave to the brightness of the street, and there in the river of gold was Kate walking with a big young fellow whose face was strange to Eagan.
"Who's that with Kate? " he asked over his shoulder.
"That's Carol Raymond."
Eagan half turned.
"What's she doing with Bud Raymond?" he asked, "He's not more than two months out of jail."
"Oh, a broken leg, or a busted reputation, it don't matter. Kate's a great patcher."
Eagan turned back to stare uneasily. He laid hold of one of the veranda pillars and his big hand went halfway around it.
"But Raymond, he's no good," said he, muttering, and he almost forgot Kate, so intently did he search the man. In the penitentiary they are supposed to keep the prisoners hard at work, but Raymond was as sleek as ever. He had on a dark blue suit that fitted well over the weight of the shoulders and was cut trimly about the narrowing hips. He wore a bow-tie and he had on a light gray hat, the brim turning up cavalierly on one side. It never would have occurred to Eagan to wear a hat of that color with a dark suit, but on Raymond it seemed very right and swagger. He was set off furthermore by a little white flower in a buttonhole and by a walking stick that flashed like a sword as he walked along, stepping short to keep rhythm with Kate. At the gate they paused.
Kate had her back to the house. Her hands behind her back, she leaned a little against the gate and looked up to Raymond, talking and laughing softly, while he stooped somewhat from his height above her, deprecatory, polite, and genial. He was leaning gracefully, lightly against his walking stick, which he held in his left hand, and in the same hand was a pair of light yellow chamois gloves. Why should gloves be carried, and not worn? thought Eagan.
She leaned a little against the gate and looked
up to Raymond, talking and laughing softly...
Straining his eyes, Eagan saw Raymond breathe into his hand and then cast the nothingness away—some unpleasant thought perhaps—while the girl laughed and nodded at the gesture.
Raymond took off his hat and, resting his stick on the ground a little before him, he bowed, and sustained his bow, arid said something charming in the midst of it.
He was off up the street after that, and Kate calling musically after him a word or two which Eagan did not understand, because in his ears there was a roaring like that of a distant fall of water. She opened the gate, then leaned on it a moment, looking idly up and down the street—chiefly up, no doubt, after the retreating figure of the gallant Carol Raymond. As she turned away, she still was in no hurry to come to the dim forms on the veranda, but paused to lean above a rosebush which was heading out with clusters of small buds.
"The green flies are at them again, father," said Kate. "The horrible things—we'll have to spray with tobacco and soap again."
Halfway up the path she recognized Eagan, and the recognition stopped her short.
"Jimmy!" she cried, "Why, it's not your day! Jimmy, what on earth has happened? "
HE went down the steps to meet her and take her hands, but she gave him only one, putting it out in what seemed a gesture of surprise and protest; yet she was so dear to him that, now she was close, he paid no heed to gestures and even could forget the unhappiness which had been aching in his throat the moment before. Into the heart of his chosen day and into his own heart she fitted perfectly with her golden-brown hair and her blue eyes.
"I'll tell you what's happened," he said, climbing the steps beside her, "It's a vacation. You know, after ten years."
"Yes, I know. Sometimes it seems to me a hundred. Poor Jimmy!"
But the sympathy was all in her voice, he thought, and her glance lingered critically about his shoulders. He forced them back with a fresh and more intimate touch of pain that made him say tersely:
"Where did you pick him up—Bud Raymond?"
They had come to the top of the steps. She turned and looked at him coldly for a moment before she repeated: "Where did I pick him up?"
Before she answered, she went to her father and kissed him. The old man made no response. He continued to look out toward the line of the hills with a smile of evil content, yet she addressed him only. A pointed slight, this appeared to Eagan, since he himself had asked the question.
"I found Bud coming in from the Bradley house. He'd been clear to Bradley Crossing. He walked all the way to see the warehouse people, and what do you think? They wouldn't take him! He told them that he would do anything; he'd work with a hand truck. You know—they always need men; but they told him they were full up. Nobody'll have him. It's a terrible thing—and he keeps so quiet and brave through it all. I don't understand how men can do such things to him!"
"I do," said Eagan harshly.
She whirled about at him, jerking her head up in a passion. Anger in her was as rare as laughter in her father, but now h§r eyes darkened with it.
"Look what Bud has always been," said Eagan. "A loafer. He sponged on his father; he sponged on his brother a couple of years, too, till they kicked him out!"
"It isn't fair. He was a sick man! cried Kate.
"Oh, come along!" said Eagan. "He was always as strong as a horse, though I don't know where he ever got his muscle. He certainly never worked for it. He was never any good, and when he can't sponge off his family, he goes and cracks a safe and gets five years for it. He ought to of got ten."
"You don't know the position he was in," said Kate. "It wasn't that he wanted the money for himself, but because—"
"Yeah, Bud was always a great hand at explaining," interrupted Eagan.
"I don't like the way you talk! she exclaimed. She was breathing with anger. Eagan grew more nasal and drawling.
"I don't like the way that you go around with a yegg like Raymond," he told her.
"I won't kick a poor fellow when he's down!"
"You leave him alone," ha advised her solemnly. "He's no good. I don't want you to go around with him like that."
She laughed a little. The sound was hard and sharp, and stopped suddenly before the breath was out.
"Are you going to tell me what I'm to do?" the demanded.
It was as though a cold finger had been laid upon his frown. He grew sober at once, but still was not really afraid because he dared not doubt. From the time he was nineteen and she fifteen, the sweetest an**d merriest girl one would wish to see, all of his hope in life had been poured out into her hands.
"Well," he said, more slowly than ever, "it's that right that I've come after. This morning, out at the farm, it was kind of pretty, The hills were like gold, and I thought about you. The land is clean now. There's no mortgage on it, and when I looked around at the morning, I thought about you. I came in to see when you'd marry me."
He waited through the space of three heartbeats.
"I can't," said she.
"Kate," said old Martin, "you run along in and fix some supper. Jimmy, you're a damn' fool. Sit down and talk to me."
Neither of them paid the least attention to the father's voice.
"For ten years," said Eagan, "I've thought that I was walking straight towards you."
"I've always been mighty fond of you, Jimmy," said she.
"You knew what I was working to. You always knew," he insisted.
"Well, people can change," said she.
"I've not changed. Have you changed?" he demanded.
He even came a little closer to her, so that his attitude was very like a threat, yet when he saw her stand her ground and tilt up her face, his heart was wrung.
"Yes, I've changed," she said.
"It's this here Bud Raymond?" he suggested.
"Yes," said she.
He took off his hat and passed a hand through his hair. There was something he wanted to say. If he could so much as touch the sleeve of her blouse, he felt sure that the right words would come.
"I guess I'd better be getting along," said he. "Good night, everybody."
NEITHER of them answered, but he went down the path to the gate, fumbled for the latch, missed it, fumbled again, and found it.
"Jimmy!" called the breaking voice of Kate behind him, but he did not want sympathy, so he went out to the Ford and got into the driver's place. It was not cranked. It made him feel foolish to have to climb down again and start the engine. He saw that she had run halfway down the path and stopped there; then he began the turn which would start him back to the ranch. But he thought of the dampness and the darkness of the farmhouse, and the smell of boiled codfish ineradicably in the corner of the kitchen, so he straightened out the curve with a stagger of the car and went on down the street.
In the center of the town there was a parking space on either side of the main street, the berths chalked out with white lines upon the pavement. Here he found a vacant place and left the car. As he was getting out he remembered that he had forgotten the chickens that morning, and the thought of their hunger touched his heart. He hesitated, but he could not go back. He had to go on, he did not know where, for his major dread was that soon he would have to sit quietly, alone with his thoughts. There had been in his life only two things; one was lost and the other seemed to him the very emblem of despair.
At the corner of Main Street and Second someone spoke to him. He waved a hand and went on. When he came to the railroad, the gates were shut, so he turned down Front Street, sauntering slowly, and wished that Tuckerville had been larger so that he would have more miles of pavement to walk over.
"Hello, Jimmy Eagan," said a voice.
He turned and saw Deputy Sheriff Tom Larkin standing in the middle of the street, a man with a hanging, forward-thrusting head and canny eyes, always alight.
"What're you doing in this part of the world?" asked the deputy sheriff.
"What are you doing?" answered Eagan.
"I'm seeing the sights. It's my job."
"I'm one of the sights," said Eagan sourly. "Take a look at me."
And he walked on. The ugly speech gave him pleasure. He put his hands behind his back and locked them hard together.
He passed the front of Bill Meyer's saloon, now a celebrated speakeasy. The volume of Bill's business had fallen off since prohibition, but he was making more money on it. He had built a new house and supported the charities. Bill had been a slovenly "Dutchman" in the old days, but now he was both neat and eminent on account of the lawlessness of his profession and the size of his profits.
Eagan knocked at the door and it was opened by a white-jacketed little man with a bald head and a mustache as pale as potato sprouts.
"I don't know you," said he, holding the door.
"You'd better," said Eagan, and walked in.
"It ain't right," said the latter. "You got no right! I'll get you heaved out, and—"
Eagan leaned on the bar with one elbow.
"Gimme a whisky," said he.
DOWN the bar stood big Carol Raymond with two companions, both rather brightly dressed for Tuckerville.
"It's fate," said Eagan to himself. "Something is going to happen."
"Any of you gentlemen know him?" asked the bartender, sweating. He held out both his pudgy hands in pathetic appeal.
"I know him," answered Raymond. "I know him like myself. It's Jimmy Eagan. Hullo, Jimmy, old boy! "
He came forward with his genial smile and his hand extended, but Eagan stopped him.
"I know you, Raymond," he said. "I know you too damn' well."
Raymond stopped, and the hand which had been extended dropped to the edge of the bar.
"You can't get away with that kind of talk," said he.
He looked steadily at Eagan and Eagan looked back without making an answer. He was afraid that if he spoke again the sound would tear his throat and blind him.
"All I want you to know is, you can't get away with that kind of talk," said Raymond.
He turned slowly, his eyes still on Eagan's, and went back to his two companions. They showed no surprise, but they also eyed Eagan with a judicious calm, like men capable of action but able to control hasty impulses.
"It's too bad," said the bartender. "There oughta be no trouble in here. We're all together, boys. There oughta be no hard feeling."
He drew out the whisky bottle, hesitant, looking wistfully at the new patron. Then, deciding, he thrust it out boldly upon the bar and put a little glass beside it. He even smiled at Eagan when he saw the brown of the hand that grasped the bottle, and the gray calluses which covered the upper side of the forefinger.
"YOU'LL find that pretty good stuff," he said. "What I mean, it's real. That was never cut, that whisky. It's fifty cents a shot. Right up the street here, at Chuck Parmenter's place, it's seventy-five. But Meyer ain't a robber."
He took the half dollar and dropped it into the cash drawer. Eagan poured off the drink as the bell rang.
"It's like water," he said. "Let's have another. It's like water. I can't taste it."
"Well," laughed the bartender, "if you're iron it won't rust you. Here you are! "
Eagan poured again. Again he threw it off, and again the bell rang and seemed to send a vibration through his brain. Things were snapping inside him like the cords which might bind a giant.
"You live around here, friend?" asked the bartender politely.
Eagan unlocked his jaws.
"I live around here," he said.
He turned and stared down the bar. He could see the face of big Raymond in the mirror and the faint image of Raymond streaming down the bar. The other seemed to feel the gaze and turned likewise.
"I see what it is," said he. He nodded at Eagan. "It wears a skirt, does it?"
"Back up, Bud," said one of his friends. "This is no place. You back up, will you?"
"I won't back up," said Raymond. "I'm fed up with this jay town. I'm going to give that squarehead a buzz and see if he can talk on the wire. I asked you a question, Eagan. I asked you if it wore a skirt. I asked if that was the trouble."
Eagan tried to answer, but his teeth would not part. Only a growling sound swelled and died in his throat as he walked up to Raymond and slapped his face. The flesh was not soft. It was firm and did not seem to give under the stinging tips of his fingers. Then a hand flashed under Eagan's eyes and he was knocked flat on his back. His head struck the footrail of the bar and warm blood ran down his neck.
As he got to his feet again, the bartender was pleading for order in a screaming whisper; Raymond was shaking off his two companions.
"I told him I wouldn't take that kind of talk," he said. "I'm going to break his damned neck."
Eagan laughed without unclosing his teeth. He ran in. A blow stopped him. He ran in again. He admired, calmly, the grace and ease of the other as Raymond sidestepped him and clipped him on the jaw with a short punch. The shock of it flung him against the wall with a crash; he used the rebound to spring in again, and this time his fist went home. He felt the ribs spring under the weight of his knuckles, and striking up with the other hand he reached the head solidly.
Raymond was on his hands and knees, bleeding onto the floor; the bartender's image was waving frantic arms in the mirror; and Raymond's friends, separating, ran in at Eagan from different sides. A bottle flashed like a knife in the hand of one. The other swung a chair, and Eagan tried to get in under the sway of it. He was too late. He felt it crash about his head and shoulders. The face of the man who had wielded it became a white blur, and Eagan struck that blur down to the darkness of the floor.
He turned as the bottle missed his head. His hand fell on the back of another chair, and instantly it was a club in his grasp. The club dwindled, grew lighter. Darkness began to pour through the room, and out of the darkness forms kept looming swiftly at him; there were shocks from behind, from the sides, from in front. Blood ran down into his eyes and a voice roared and thundered in his very ears, following him. It was his own voice.
The window went out. The bar mirror shivered from end to end. He could hear the bartender screaming in earnest now, but still the vague forms rushed into the twilight of his mind and he struck them away with the broken fragment of the chair. His knees began to fail. They sagged to the floor, but still he struck out at the shadows before him that rose through the dimness like monsters through the sea.
HANDS that were full of a fresh, new strength mastered him from behind. "Stop it, Eagan! "shouted a voice in his ear. "It's finished, d'you understand? And you've raised sweet hell! "
"Where's Bud Raymond?" asked Eagan. "I can't see him. Show me Bud Raymond."
"They got him into their car, what was left of him, and then they scooted, but we'll have them by tomorrow. We only wanted a charge against them; and now we've got it, they'll have a long rest up the river. This'll close Meyer's place, the sneaking dog. Maybe you oughta be jailed, but not by me. You've done a good day's work for Tuckerville."
The bruised mind of Eagan could fumble at one fact alone.
"Is Raymond gone?" he asked.
"Kind of gone," said Larkin. "About all gone. How did the three of them happen to jump you?"
"It was just a little party," said Eagan. "It was only—" The darkness, increasing, rose out of the floor and covered his eye....
He was still in almost utter night when he heard voices, and consciousness came slowly back to him. He was covered from foot to chin in the coolness of fresh sheets, like the touch of water.
Through the shadows of his mind he heard the voice of Larkin saying: "I thought I'd bring him here; I thought he kind of belonged here."
"He does! "cried Kate Martin. "I hope they're sent to prison for life. The cowards, the cowards—"
"Three of 'em, mind you," said Larkin, sounding a note of content like a connoisseur. "And Bud Raymond is no easy thug to handle. It must of been pretty good. They took chairs and bottles to him, but he gives them all the run. He knocked them apart. He must of exploded, kind of, the way that place looked. He's all steel and a yard wide, this old son."
Still blinded, Eagan pushed himself to a sitting posture. "I've gotta get out of here," said he."
A broad hand was laid on his breast, but he resisted.
"I've gotta get out of here. You don't understand, Larkin," said he. "There's only one person has gotta right to let me stay—"
"Jimmy, my darling!" said Kate.
"You say if it's all right," said Eagan.
"It's going to be all right forever," said she, weeping. "Only if you'll forgive me, it'll be all right."
He allowed himself to be pushed back into the bed.
"We won't be needing you for a bit, I guess," said old Martin.
"No," said Larkin, laughing with a foolish loudness. "It sounds pretty nearly like he's fixed for life."
Then one of Eagan's eyes opened a little, painfully, so that he could see the white of the ceiling; from the other eye he would be able to see nothing for many a day. But as his eye widened and he could see the stain of the sunset spreading over the ceiling, in the same manner his stunned brain took in more and more the meaning of the girl's words until at last it was like the casting open of a door in a dark room; a whole beautiful world rushed in upon him.
"Father," said she, "you watch him. Watch him very closely. I have to get some more iodine. Don't take your eyes off him one second, because he's not himself yet."
"Father," said she, "you watch him. Watch him very closely. I have
to get some more iodine. Don't take your eyes off him one second.
"A drunk that goes out and wrecks a saloon and gets himself beat up," said Mr. Martin, "I dunno that I'd bother so much about him."
"Father," said she, stamping, "how dare you say such a thing?"
"I wouldn't have to be saying it," said Martin. "You could see it for yourself, and smell it on his breath! "
"The most honest, gentle, good, quiet—and he goes to throw himself away for me—I'm a detestable creature, and he'll never forgive me—and I'll never forgive myself—"
Her voice trailed away into the distance through the house as she hurried for the medicine.
"Mr. Martin," said Eagan, "d'you think that Kate has really changed her mind and kind of cares for me?"
"If you'd heard some of the row that she's been making over you," said Martin, "you wouldn't need an interpreter. I think kind of she does care, all of a sudden. Women are that way; changeable. I'm mighty sorry for you, Jimmy."
"I'm gunna be all right," said Eagan, "I'm practically all right now."
"That's what you think," said Martin, "because no young fool can look on the hind side of a wedding day. But the time'll come when you'll find out that every week has seven mornings, and only one of them is Sunday; and out on a farm there ain't even a Sunday to speak of. But why I'm mostly sorry for you is the kind of a start you've made. It's the pace that kills, Jimmy, and a slow start is what you want for a long race."
"I don't know what you mean by all that," said Eagan.
"Don't be a blockhead, Jimmy," said the old man. "Ain't it plain that Kate is a nacheral patcher? I couldn't keep her busy at home. Can you?"
"I don't understand," said Eagan. "You wait and just grow, and one day you'll reach the idea without even standing on tiptoe," said Martin.
But thought was still difficult for Eagan. He preferred to listen to the light and hurried footfall of Kate, returning down the hall.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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