He looked at me with hound’s eyes, rimmed with red, and dark brown iris and pupil all one piece. He seemed about to say something but changed his mind about it. “You’re a good kid,” he said.
“Don’t depend on it.”
“A good kid!” he said explosively and as though shocked by his show of emotion he went out of the store and walked away.
I was weighing out two pounds of string beans for Mrs. Davidson when Marullo came charging back. He stood in the doorway and shouted at me.
“You take my Pontiac.”
“What?”
“Go someplace Sunday and Monday.”
“I can’t afford it.”
“You take the kids. I told the garage for you to get my Pontiac. Tank full of gas.”
“Wait a minute.”
“You go to hell. Take the kids.” He tossed something like a spitball at me and it fell among the string beans. Mrs. Davidson watched him plunge away again down the street. I picked the green wad from the string beans—three twenty-dollar bills folded in a tight square.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s an excitable Italian.”
“He must be, throwing money!”
He didn’t show up the rest of the week, so that was all right. He’d never gone away before without telling me. It was like watching a parade go by, just standing and watching it go by and knowing what the next float would be but watching for it just the same.
I hadn’t expected the Pontiac. He never loaned his car to anybody. It was a strange time. Some outside force or design seemed to have taken control of events so that they were crowded close the way cattle are in a loading chute. I know the opposite can be true. Sometimes the force or design deflects and destroys, no matter how careful and deep the planning. I guess that’s why we believe in luck and unluck.
On Thursday, the thirtieth of June, I awakened as usual in the black pearl light of the dawn, and that was early now in the lap of midsummer. Chair and bureau were dark blobs and pictures only lighter suggestions. The white window curtains seemed to sigh in and out as though they breathed, because it’s a rare dawn that does not wave a small wind over the land.
Coming out of sleep, I had the advantage of two worlds, the layered firmament of dream and the temporal fixtures of the mind awake. I stretched luxuriously—a good and tingling sensation. It’s as though the skin has shrunk in the night and one must push it out to daytime size by bulging the muscles, and there’s an itching pleasure in it.
First I referred to my remembered dreams as I would glance through a newspaper to see if there was anything of interest or import. Then I explored the coming day for events that had not happened. Next I followed a practice learned from the best officer I ever had. He was Charley Edwards, a major of middling age, perhaps a little too far along to be a combat officer but he was a good one. He had a large family, a pretty wife and four children in steps, and his heart could ache with love and longing for them if he allowed it to. He told me about it. In his deadly business he could not afford to have his attention warped and split by love, and so he had arrived at a method. In the morning, that is if he were not jerked from sleep by an alert, he opened his mind and heart to his family. He went over each one in turn, how they looked, what they were like; he caressed them and reassured them of his love. It was as though he picked precious things one by one from a cabinet, looked at each, felt it, kissed it, and put it back; and last he gave them a small good-by and shut the door of the cabinet. The whole thing took half an hour if he could get it and then he didn’t have to think of them again all day. He could devote his full capacity, untwisted by conflicting thought and feeling, to the job he had to do—the killing of men. He was the best officer I ever knew. I asked his permission to use his method and he gave it to me. When he was killed, all I could think was that his had been a good and effective life. He had taken his pleasure, savored his love, and paid his debts, and how many people even approached that?
I didn’t always use Major Charley’s method, but on a day like this Thursday, when I knew my attention should be as uninterrupted as possible, I awakened when the day opened its door a crack and I visited my family as Major Charley had.
I visited them in chronological order, bowed to Aunt Deborah. She was named for Deborah the Judge of Israel[56] and I have read that a judge was a military leader. Perhaps she responded to her name. My great-aunt could have led armies. She did marshal the cohorts of thought. My joy in learning for no visible profit came from her. Stern though she was, she was charged with curiosity and had little use for anyone who was not. I gave her my obeisance. I offered a spectral toast to old Cap’n and ducked my head to my father. I even made my duty to the untenanted hole in the past I knew as my mother. I never knew her. She died before I could, and left only a hole in the past where she should be.
One thing troubled me. Aunt Deborah and old Cap’n and my father would not come clear. Their outlines were vague and wavery where they should have been sharp as photographs. Well, perhaps the mind fades in its memories as old tintypes do—the background reaching out to engulf the subjects. I couldn’t hold them forever.
Mary should have been next but I laid her aside for later.
I raised Allen. I could not find his early face, the face of joy and excitement that made me sure of the perfectability of man. He appeared what he had become—sullen, conceited, resentful, remote and secret in the pain and perplexity of his pubescence, a dreadful, harrowing time when he must bite everyone near, even himself, like a dog in a trap. Even in my mind’s picture he could not come out of his miserable discontent, and I put him aside, only saying to him, I know. I remember how bad it is and I can’t help. No one can. I can only tell you it will be over. But you can’t believe that. Go in peace—go with my love even though during this time we can’t stand each other.
Ellen brought a surge of pleasure. She will be pretty, prettier even than her mother, because when her little face jells into its final shape she will have the strange authority of Aunt Deborah. Her moods, her cruelties, her nervousness are the ingredients of a being quite beautiful and dear. I know, because I saw her standing in her sleep holding the pink talisman to her little breast and looking a woman fulfilled. And as the talisman was important and still is to me, so it is to Ellen. Maybe it is Ellen who will carry and pass on whatever is immortal in me. And in my greeting I put my arms around her and she, true to form, tickled my ear and giggled. My Ellen. My daughter.
I turned my head to Mary, sleeping and smiling on my right. That is her place so that, when it is good and right and ready, she can shelter her head on my right arm, leaving my left hand free for caressing.
A few days before, I snicked my forefinger with the curved banana knife at the store, and a callusy scab toughened the ball of my fingertip. And so I stroked the lovely line from ear to shoulder with my second finger but gently enough not to startle and firmly enough not to tickle. She sighed as she always does, a deep, gathered breath and a low release of luxury. Some people resent awakening, but not Mary. She comes to a day with expectancy that it will be good. And, knowing this, I try to offer some small gift to justify her conviction. And I try to hold back gifts for occasions, such as the one I now produced from my mind’s purse.
Her eyes opened, hazed with sleep. “Already?” she asked, and she glanced at the window to see how near the day had come. Over the bureau the picture hangs—trees and a lake and a small cow standing in the water of the lake. I made out the cow’s tail from my bed, and knew the day had come.
“I bring you tidings of great joy, my flying squirrel.”
56
Deborah the Judge of Israeclass="underline" Judges 4-5. Deborah, a prophetess, the only woman judge mentioned in the Bible. With her guidance and aid, the Israelite general Barak conquered Sisera, captain of the Canaanite army, and delivered Israel from Canaanite rule.