“Dam poor way if you ask me.” But he bought the tractor and many attachments for it, cultivating the corn, sweating and swearing (when the girls were out of earshot); cursing Ash who did no more about the farm than walk around touching things. Was that a way to earn a grown man’s keep?
Nan was afraid he might have a stroke when he found out the mammoth products of the year before were not to be duplicated. The orchard bore beyond all expectation or reason, not a cherry, plum or apricot was undersized, misshapen or bird-pecked. No blossom fell infertile, no hard green nubbin withered and dropped, no set fruit failed to mature. Branches bent almost to the ground under the weight of their loads; breezes twitched leaves aside to uncover briefly a pomologist’s dream. Maxill was no more pleased than by the corn.
“Sacrificing quality for quantity,” he growled. “Bring the top market price? Sure. I was counting on twice that.”
Nan Maxill realized how much she herself had changed, or been changed, since the fellow came.
Her father seemed to her now like a petulant child, going into a tantrum because something he wanted—something she saw wasn’t good for him—was denied. The boys she used to go out with were gluttonous infants, gurgling and slobbering their fatuous desires. The people of Henryton, of Evarts County, of—no, she corrected herself—people; people were juvenile, adolescent. News on the radio was of wars in China and Spain, massacre and bestialities in Germany, cruelties and self-defeat all over the world.
Had she unconsciously acquired Ash’s viewpoint? He had no viewpoint, passed no judgments. He accepted what was all around him as he accepted what she told him: reflectively, curiously, puzzledly, but without revulsion. She had taken the attitude she thought ought to be his, unable to reach his detachment as he was unable to reach that of those who had exiled him here, as one who cannot distinguish between apes would put a gorilla and chimpanzee in the same zoo cage.
As primitive characteristics were sloughed off, a price was paid for their loss. Ash’s people had exchanged his ability to make things grow for a compensatory ability to create by photosynthesis and other processes. If Ash had lost the savage ability to despise and hate, had he also lost the mitigating ability to love?
Because she wanted Ash to love her.
They were married in January, which some thought odd, but the season suited Nan who wanted a “regular” wedding and at the same time a quiet one. She had expected her father’s assent at least; Ash had made him prosperous in two short years; their marriage would be insurance that he would continue to do so. But Maxill’s bank account, his big car, the new respect Henryton—including his son-in-law— gave him, had inflated his ideas. “Who is the fellow anyway?” he demanded. “Where’d he come from originally? What’s his background?”
“Does all that matter? He’s good and gentle and. kind, where he came from or who his parents were doesn’t change that.”
“Oh, doesn’t it? Maybe there’s bad blood in him. Bound to come out. And he’s a cripple and not right in the head besides. Why, he couldn’t even talk like anybody else at first. Sure it matters: you want kids who turn out idiots with the wrong number of fingers? Maybe criminals too?”
Nan neither smiled at his passion for respectability nor reminded him that her children would have a moonshiner and bootlegger for a grandfather. “Ash is no criminal.”
Ash was no criminal, but what of other dangers? Not just children with the wrong number of fingers or differences she knew nothing of (she’d never dare let Ash be examined by a doctor for fear of what anatomical or functional differences might be revealed), but perhaps no children at all. Beings so different might well have sterile union. Or no carnal union at all. Perhaps no bond deeper than that of a man for a cat or horse. Nan didn’t pretend for a second it wouldn’t matter. It mattered terribly, every last perilous possibility. She was still determined to marry him.
Maxill shook his head. “There’s another thing—he hasn’t even got a name.”
“We’ll give him ours,” said Nan. “We’ll say he’s a second cousin or something.”
“Hell we will!” her father exploded. “A freak like that—”
“All right. We’ll elope then, and get a place of our own. It won’t be hard when anyone sees what Ash can do. And we won’t have to have good land.” She left it at that, giving him plenty of time to think over all the implications. He gave in. Grudgingly, angrily. But he gave in.
Ash had never gone into Henryton or showed himself except the few times he’d helped Maxill pay back a debt of work. Still everyone knew there was some sort of hired man on the farm. Gladys and Muriel knew him to nod to and that was about all; they were skeptically astonished to learn he was a remote relative “from back East” and still more amazed to hear he was marrying Nan. They thought she could do better. Then they remembered her reputation; maybe they should be glad the fellow was doing right. They counted the months and were shocked when a year and a half went by before Ash Maxill junior was born.
Nan had counted the months too. Some of her fears had been quickly dispelled, others persisted. She feared to look closely at her son, and the fear was not mitigated by Ash’s expression of aloof interest nor the doctor’s and nurses’ over-bright cheeriness. Her insides settled back into place as she delicately touched the tiny nose, unbelievably perfect ears, rounded head. Then she reached to lift the wrapping blanket—
“Uh... uhh... Mrs. Maxill, uh...”
She knew of course even before she saw them, and a great wave of defiance flowed through her. The little dimpled hands, the little rectangular feet—eight fingers, eight toes.
She wanted to shout, It’s not an impediment, you idiots! Why do you need five fingers when four will do the same things more easily and skillfully, and do things no five-fingered hand will do? It wasn’t physical weakness which kept her quiet—she was a strong, healthy girl and the birth had not been complicated—but the knowledge that she must hide the child’s superiority as she hid Ash’s lest the ordinary ones turn on them both. She hid her face. Let them think it was anguish.
She felt a curious sympathy for her father. Malcolm Maxill was triumphant; his dire prophecies had been fulfilled; he could not restrain his gratification. At the same time it was his grandson—his flesh and blood—who was deformed. Short of betraying Ash’s secret she had no way of reassuring him and even this might not console him. More than likely he would take Ash’s banishment as further proof of undesirability; he did not try to hide his increasing animosity.
“You’d think,” said Nan, “you’d injured him instead of doing all you have.”
Ash smiled and ran his hand lightly over her shoulder. It still surprised her slightly that someone without anger, envy or hate should be capable of humor and tenderness.
“Do you expect him to be grateful?” he asked. “Have you forgotten all you told me about how people act? Anyway, I didn’t do it for your father but for the sake of doing it.”
“Just the same, now the baby is here, we ought to have a regular agreement. Either a share in the farm or else wages—good wages.”
She knew his look of grave and honest interest so well. “Why? We have all we can eat. Your clothes wear out but your father gives you money for new ones, and the baby’s too. Why—”
“Why don’t your clothes wear out or get dirty?” she interrupted irrelevantly.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I told you I didn’t understand these things. Until I came here I never heard of fabrics which weren’t everwearing and self-cleaning.”
“Anyway it doesn’t matter. We ought to be independent.”