We wait in the snow, with the lamp, with Papa there, going on to the next lamppost, with Gilbert waiting to shout, though he pretends he is not thinking of us and stoops down to make another snowball.
It goes on in what we later called slow motion, at the moving-picture shows.
Or we stop there.
If we do not remember, it is nevertheless there. It crept up and its edge was white like the lamp, and the way it came up the flat sand was the way the snow drifts round the lamppost.
I was high up; his bathing suit was blue and stuck to his shoulders as we went together across the sand; he said, “No, it isn’t cold, I’ll take her in.” He will take me in and that will be the end of me, but I am high up and the waves come close.
It is terrible to be taken in when the waves come up, but he does not drop me in.
He puts me down in the ocean. When the waves come up I run back and watch the waves come up after me, but it is a long way, the water goes on and on.
Mama does not like it. She does not like the hot sun; she sits under a parasol with Ida who is taking off Harold’s white dress and putting bathing drawers on him. Gilbert is far away with some big boys and a boat.
“It is too far for you to walk,” he told me.
There are pebbles, they are wet and shiny. There are shells.
Mama put the seashell to my ear and said, “Listen, you will hear the sea,” but when we got to the sea it was too hot, she said, and she lay down in her room.
Professor Harding came with us. We ride down to the ocean in a big coach. Ida has a bag with towels and our bathing things.
“Come, come, don’t be afraid.” This is a boat and the boys are catching crabs; a crab is on the floor of the boat, he makes a horrible scratching on the wooden floor of the boat. There is a little square of water in the bottom of the boat but the boat won’t sink, “Don’t be afraid, girls are always afraid.” Yes, I am afraid.
The crab comes along; you do not know which way he is walking, only that he is walking. He walks fast, fast. Girls are afraid. Don’t scream. This is the worst thing that has ever happened. The crab gets bigger and bigger and the boys laugh more and more. “He won’t eat you.”
How do I know he won’t eat me? The boat goes up and down with the waves and the crab opens his pincer-claws and one of the boys pushes him, even nearer. Then the crab comes nearer — girls scream sometimes.
“Here,” says Papa and he picks up the crab with his big hand and its claws grab round in the air and he is going to throw it back in the water.
“My crab,” says Professor Harding who has on a big straw hat like a farmer. “Taking privileges with my property.”
“Take your critter then,” says Papa. He calls things a “critter,” a crab or the alligator.
Professor Harding pushes a tub of water toward him, Papa drops the crab in the tub, the water splashes and the other critters claw round the edges of the tub.
When the alligator fell out of the attic window, the gardener screamed that it was the devil.
The gardener’s name was Mr. Cherry.
“It can’t be,” said the Williamses, “you made it up.”
“Mr. Cherry, Mr. Cherry,” we called and he looked up, where he was tacking up a vine that has a purple flower that fell down. There was the bleeding-heart bush under the kitchen window, and above that was the window of Uncle Hartley’s room where he slept in the afternoon, when he was at the steel mills the other side of the river at night. Then there was the little window above, just as you draw just the shape of such a house on a slate, when you do not draw the Christmas tree.
The alligator fell right into the bleeding-heart bush and the bush shook and waved, like blowing in the wind, and we knew what was there, but Mr. Cherry did not know and was surprised.
He ran away, but we did not.
We stood and watched the bush for the alligator to come out, but Uncle Hartley said, “You children better run off,” but we did not because Papa was coming from the wash-kitchen door; he had on his big leather furnace-glove. He must have heard Mr. Cherry shriek or saw what happened, for he had on his big glove before Uncle Hartley could go back to the house and get whatever it was he was getting. I was glad it was not Papa’s pistol. Then I thought, “I am glad he is not going to shoot the alligator.”
He put his hand in the top of the bush and he had the alligator by the neck and he carried him into the house and up Papalie’s front stairs past the clock, round the corner and up the next steps to the attic. Uncle Hartley tugged at the little attic window that was left open, and fastened it tight shut. “But you children better keep away from the attic,” he said, “till we get some fresh wire nailed up here. Cherry will do it.” Papa laughed like he does with a snort and said, “Better let me do it, Cherry doesn’t like alligators.”
Papa has a workbench in the little room beyond the kitchen over the wash kitchen where we keep our shoe-blacking and shoe brushes. He can make willow whistles.
Mamalie said, “St-st-st-st, that alligator better go.”
We said and Tootie said and Dick stood watching, “Go where?”
“Well,” said Mamalie, “after all …”
We said, “After all, what? Didn’t someone send it to Papalie in a cigar box, wrapped in that Florida moss?”
Mamalie said, “Of course.”
It is moss that we put under the tree for the animals to stand on and for the sheep to lie down in, and eat.
We made cherries out of cotton (like Papalie stuck on the clay sheep) for May Day, and Mrs. Williams trimmed Olive and Mea’s leghorn hats with real tulips and leaves. Bessie had a crown of cherry blossoms on her hat, and when we had the May Day party in their garden under the cherry tree, Bessie was the queen because it was her birthday.
When we got home, Ida said, “Don’t worry your mother, you can sleep in my bed tonight,” and she woke me the next morning and her face was happy and she said, “Guess.”
I said, “Guess what?”
She said, “You have a new brother.”
I must have known all that, because we had talked about Mrs. Williams and the way she wore her raincoat all the time out-of-doors, even when it wasn’t raining, and her wrapper indoors and Olive told me what it was, and then Amery came, but I did not seem to know. I seemed to be surprised. The baby was born on the second day of May.
Now at this minute, while we stand under the lamppost, he is not born yet, because he was born in May and this is Christmas and Harold is the baby.
Slow motion. Slower and slower.
Clock-time and out-of-time whirl round the lamppost. The snow whirls; it is white sand from the desert. Ahead is Papa, stopped in slow motion and then going back and back in time, back through the ages, the Middle Ages, though I do not know that, Rome, Greece; but he does not stop at Greece. The snow that has stopped in slow motion and folds us in a cloud is a pillar-of-cloud-by-day. The lamp shining over our heads is the pillar-of-fire, and the snow is the pillar-of-cloud and never, in-time or out-of-time, can such children be lost, for their inheritance is so great.
Gilbert must go to France, for Gilbert must inherit the pistol from Papa who was in our Civil War. Harold will inherit the mills and the steel and numbers too and become a successful businessman like Uncle Hartley. Gilbert has been asleep for a long time, in a place called Thiacourt, in France. Harold is a grown man, a grandfather with three children of his own; he inherited the three children, too, a girl and two boys. Hilda has inherited too much but she cannot let it go. There is the lamppost and the pillar-of-fire, and there is the cloud-by-day, the mystery, and Papa far ahead, a dark shape in the snow.