“He lives on a farm,” Clem said.
“Your best bet would be that way,” the man said nodding toward the south.
“Thank you,” Clem said.
The man looked surprised but said nothing and Clem began walking. His days on the sea had made his feet tender although they had once been horny from long walking on rough Chinese roads. But his muscles still were strong. The heat here was nothing to that in China, and the air was sweet with some wild fragrance. He did not see anyone after he left the small railroad town, and this was strange. Were there no people here? It occurred to him that it was nearly noon, and they might be having a meal. Even so, where were the villages? As far as he could see there was no village in sight. The fields rolled away in high green waves against a sky of solid blue. They were planted with corn, he saw with surprise. Did the people here eat only corn?
After another hour he was tired and hungry and he wished that he had stopped to buy some food. Five miles had seemed nothing in his excitement. He sat down beside a small stream and drank and rested, and while he sat there a wagon came by, pulled by two horses as high as camels. A man drove them, seated on a bench in the wagon. “Hi, there, feller,” he called down. “Wanta ride?”
Clem was cautious. Why should a stranger offer him a ride? Might not the fellow be a bandit? “No, thank you,” he replied.
The man drew the wagon to a stop. “You look like a stranger.”
Clem did not reply. The barber on the ship had clipped his hair close to get rid of the dyed hair, and he was conscious of his baldness.
“Where you goin’?” the man asked.
“To Mr. Charles Miller’s farm,” Clem replied.
The man stared at him, his jaw hanging. He was a dirty fellow, clad in a sweat-soaked shirt and blue cotton trousers. Through the unbuttoned front of his shirt Clem saw a chest woolly with repulsively red hair.
“Old Charley Miller is dead,” the man said.
The sunlight glittering upon the landscape took on the sharpness of dagger points, springing from the edges of leaves, the tips of grass, the points of fence rails. Clem’s eyes blurred and weakness laid hold upon his knees.
“When did he die?” His mouth was full of dust.
“Coupla years ago.” The man prepared for the story. He spat thick brown spittle into the road and pushed back his torn straw hat.
“Fact is, the old man hung himself in his own barn. Disappointed, that’s what. He’d been tryin’ for ten years to get a job with the Republicans, and when they got in that year they give him the sheriff’s job. He had to put somebody off a farm the very first day — mortgage couldn’t be met. He was too softhearted to do it — he was awful soft-hearted, old Charley was. He just hung himself the night before — yeah.”
The man shook his head and sighed. “Wouldn’t hurt a flea, Charley wouldn’t. Couldn’t kill a fly. Lived all alone. He had a son somewheres, but he never come home.”
“His son was my father.” The words escaped Clem like a cry.
The man stared, brown saliva drooling down his chin. “You don’t, say!”
Clem nodded. “He’s dead, too. That’s why I came to find my grandfather. But if I haven’t anybody — I guess — I guess I don’t know what to do.”
The man was kind enough. “You get up here along of me, sonny, and I’ll take you to your grandpop’s farm, anyway. There’s folks livin’ there. Maybe they’ll lend a hand.”
For lack of any directing thought Clem obeyed. He lifted his suitcase and gave it to the man and then stepping upon the axle he crawled into the seat. There in the hot sunshine he sat, his suitcase between his knees, and in silence the man drove two miles and put him down before an unpainted gate set in a decaying picket fence lost in high weeds. The wagon went away and Clem stared at a small solid stone house.
This, then, was the place of which he had dreamed as long as he could remember. The grass grew long and unkempt even in the yard. Over the house leaned an enormous sycamore tree. Under this tree he saw some ragged children, two boys and two girls. The boys were about his own age, the girls younger, or at least smaller.
They were eating dry bread, tearing at hunks of it with their teeth as they held it. When they saw him they hid the bread in their hands, holding it behind them.
“What you want?” the bigger boy asked in a gruff voice. He had a thin freckled face and his hair grew long into his neck.
“Who lives here?” Clem asked.
“Pop and Mom Berger,” a girl said. She began to chew again at her bread. “You better go way or they’ll set the dogs on you.”
“Are you their children?” Clem asked. Where could he go in a strange country where nevertheless he belonged?
The thin boy answered again. “Naw, we’re Aid children.”
Clem looked at them, comprehending nothing. “You mean — Aid is your name?”
They looked at each other, confounded by this stupidity. “Aid children,” the girl repeated.
“What do you mean?” Clem asked.
“We’re Aid children. Children what ain’t got nobody.”
Clem gazed and his heart began to shrink. He, too, had nobody. Then was he, perforce, an Aid child?
Before he could reply to this frightful question, a short stout man ambled from the open door of the house and yelled: “Here, you kids — git back to work!” The children fled behind the house, and the man stared across the tumbled grass at Clem.
“Where’d you come from?” he demanded.
“I thought Charles Miller, my grandfather, was here,” Clem said.
“Been gone two years,” the man said. “I bought the place and took over the mortgage. I never heard he had no grandson.”
“I guess my father didn’t write. We lived a long way off.”
“Out West?”
“Yes.”
“Folks still there?”
“They’re dead. That’s why I came back.”
“Ain’t none of your folks around here as I know of.”
He was about to go back into the door when something seemed to occur to him. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Fifteen,” Clem said.
“Undersize,” the man muttered. “Well, you might as well come in. We was just thinkin’ we maybe could do with another Aid boy. The work’s gittin’ heavy.” He jerked his head. “C’mon in here.”
Clem took up his suitcase. He had nowhere else to go. He followed the man into the house.
“I’ll report you to the Aid next time she comes,” the man said.
William Lane was walking solitary along the beach. He had to be solitary a good deal of the time, for he had met no boys of his own age and it was intolerable to him to be with his sisters. Occasionally he went swimming with Ruth, but only at a time when the beach was not crowded. He had supposed of course that the beach was private since his grandfather’s house faced upon it, and on that first day of his arrival when he had gone for a swim with Ruth he had been shocked to see at least fifty people in or near the water.
“Does Grandfather let all these people use our beach?” he had asked Ruth.
Before she could answer he heard Henrietta’s horrid laughter. She came swimming out of the sea, her long straight hair lank upon her shoulders. “Nobody has private beaches here, stupid,” she had said in a rude voice.
Ruth had reproached her as usual for his sake.
“How can William know when it’s only his first day?”
“He’d better learn quick, then,” Henrietta had retorted and returned to the sea.
Now of course he knew the truth. The beach belonged to everybody. Anybody at all could come there. They were all Americans, he knew, and yet they were of a variety and a commonness which made him feel the loneliest soul in the world. He longed for his English schoolmates, and yet he was cut off from them forever, because he did not want to see them any more. He did not want them to know that America was exactly what they had said it was, a place full of common people.