“Can you steer by it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. It’s an interesting question.”
I told him, “I can never find the North Star. I always expect it to be bigger than it is.”
“That’s right. I don’t know why the hell they made it so small.”
His shape before me was made less human by the bag of groceries he was carrying and it seemed, my legs having ceased to convey the sensations of walking, that his was the shape of the neck and head of a horse I was riding. I looked straight up and the cobalt dome was swept clean of marble flakes and a few faint stars were wearing through. The branches of the young trees we walked between fell away to disclose the long low hump, sullenly lustrous, of our upper field.
“Peter?”
My father’s voice startled me, I felt so alone. “What?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you were still behind me.”
“Well where else would I be?”
“You got me there.”
“Shall I carry the bag for a while?”
“No, it’s clumsy but it’s not heavy.”
“Why’d you buy all those bananas if you knew we were going to have to lug everything half a mile?”
“Insanity,” he answered. “Hereditary insanity.” It was a favorite concept of his.
Lady, hearing our voices, began to bark behind the field. The quick dim doublets of sound like butterflies winged toward us close to the earth, skimming the feathery crust rather than risking a plunge upward into the steep smooth dome that capped a space of Pennsylvania a hundred miles wide. From the spot where the lower road led off from the upper we could see on a clear day to the first blue beginnings of the Alleghenies. We walked downward into the shelter of our hillside. The trees of our orchard came first into view, then our barn, and through the crotches and tangled barren branches of the orchard our house. Our downstairs light was on, yet as we moved across the silent yard I became convinced that the light was an illusion, that the people inside had died and left the light burning. My father beside me moaned, “Jesus I know Pop’s tumbled down those damn stairs.”
But footsteps had beaten a path around the corner of the house ahead of us, and on the porch there were plentiful signs that the pump had been used. Lady, free, raced out of the darkness with the whir of a growl in her throat and then, recognizing us, leaped like a fish from the splashing snow, jabbing her muzzle at our faces, her throat stuck fast on a weak agonized note of whimpering love. She battered and bustled through the double kitchen door with us and in the warm indoors released an unmistakable tang of skunk.
Here was the kitchen, honey-colored, lit; here were the two clocks, the red electric thrown all out of right time by the power failure but running gamely nevertheless; here was my mother, coming forward with large arms and a happy girlish face to take the bundle from my father and welcome us home. “My heroes,” she said.
My father explained, “I tried to call you this morning, Cassie, but the lines were down. Have you had a rough time? There’s an Italian sandwich in the bag.”
“We’ve had a wonderful time,” my mother said. “Dad’s been sawing wood and this evening I made some of that dried-beef soup with apples Grammy used to make when we ran out of food.” An ambrosial smell of warm apples did breathe from the stove, and a fire was dancing in the fireplace.
“Huh?” It seemed to daze my father that the world had gone on without him. “Pop’s O. K.? Where in hell is he?”
Even as he spoke he walked into the other room and there, sitting in his accustomed place on the sofa, was my grandfather, his shapely hands folded across his chest, his little worn Bible, shut, balanced on one knee.
“Did you cut some wood, Pop?” my father asked loudly.
“You’re a walking miracle. At some point in your life you must have done something right.”
“George, now I don’t wish to be ac-quisi-tive, but by any chance did you remember to bring the Sun?” The mailman of course hadn’t gotten through, a sore deprivation for my grandfather, who wouldn’t believe it had snowed until he read it in the newspaper.
“Hell, no, Pop,” my father bellowed. “I forgot. I don’t know why, it was insanity.”
My mother and the dog came into the living-room with us. Lady, unable to keep the good news of our return to herself any longer, jumped up on the sofa and with a snap of her body thrust her nose into my grandfather’s ear. “Hyar, yaar” he said, and stood up, rescuing the Bible from his knee in the same motion. “Doc Appleton called,” my mother said to my father. “Huh? I thought the lines were out.”
“They came on this afternoon, after the electricity. I called Hummel’s and Vera said you had gone. She sounded more pleasant to me than I’ve ever heard her over the phone.”
“What did Appleton say?” my father asked, crossing the room and looking down at my globe of the Earth. “He said the X-rays showed nothing.”
“Huh? Is that what he said? Do you think he’s lying,
Cassie?”
“You know he never lies. Your X-rays are clear. He said it’s all in your nerves; he thinks you have a mild case of, now I forget-I wrote it down.” My mother passed to the telephone and read from a slip of paper she had left on top of the directory, “Mutinous colitis. We had a nice talk; but Doc sounds older.”
Abruptly I felt exhausted, empty; still in my jacket, I sat down on the sofa and leaned back into its cushions. It seemed imperative to do this. The dog rested her head on my lap and wriggled her ice-cold nose into place beneath my hand. Her fur felt stuffed fluffy with chill outdoor air. My parents looked enormous and dramatic above me.
My father turned, his great face tense, as if refusing to undo the last clamp on hope. “Is that what he said?”
“He did think, though, you need a rest. He thinks teaching is a strain for you and wondered if there was something else you could do.”
“Huh? Hell, it’s all I’m good for, Cassie. It’s my one talent I can’t quit.”
“Well, that’s what he and I thought you’d say.”
“Do you think he can read X-rays, Cassie? Do you think the old bluffer knows what he’s talking about?”
I had closed my eyes by way of giving thanks. Now a large cool dry hand came and cupped itself over my forehead. My mother’s voice said, “George. What have you done with this child? He has a roaring fever.”
Muffled somewhat by the wooden wall of the staircase, my grandfather’s voice called down to us, “Pleasant dreams.” My father strode across the vibrating kitchen floor and called up the stairs after him, “Don’t be sore about the Sun,
Pop. I’ll get you one tomorrow. Nothing’ll happen until then, I promise you. The Russians are still in Moscow and Truman’s still king.”
My mother asked me, “How long has this been?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ve felt sort of weak and un real all afternoon.”
“Do you want some soup?”
“Maybe a little, not much. Isn’t it a relief about Daddy? His not having cancer.”
“Yes,” she said. “Now he’ll have to think up some new way of getting sympathy.” A quick bitter frown came and went in the soothing oval of her face.
I tried to get back into the little intricate world my mother and I had made, where my father was a fond strange joke, by agreeing, “He is good at that. Maybe that’s his talent.”
He came back into the room and announced to us, “Boy, that man has a temper! He is really and truly sore about my not bringing home a newspaper. He’s a powerhouse, Cassie; at his age I’ll be dead for twenty years.”
Though I was too dizzy and sleepy for calculations, this sounded like an upward revision in his expectations.