Part 10
“Well,” says I, “then you let me put a wet cloth over your head and eyes, and you set still and stop talkin’. You’ll be wore to a thread,” says I.
And that was what I done to her, expecting that if she didn’t keep still I’d bake the ice cream and freeze the cake and lose my own head entire.
Out in the shed I’d set Amos to cracking ice, and Harriet to cracking nuts, with a flatiron and a hammer. And pretty soon I stepped along to see how things was going. Land, land, it was a pretty sight! They was both working away, but Amos was looking down at her more’n to his work, and Harriet was looking up at him like he was all of it--and the whole air was pleasant with something sweeter than could be named. So I left them two alone, well knowing that I could manage a company sole by myself yet a while, no matter how much courting and mourning was going on all around me.
And everything went fine, in spite of Mis’ Fire Chief’s looking like death in the rocker, with a wet rag on her brow.
But she kept lifting up one corner and giving directions.
“No pink frostin’, Calliope, you know,” she says, “only white. An’ no colored flowers--only white ones. You’ll have to write the place cards--my hand shakes so I don’t dare trust myself. But I’ll cut up the ribbin for the sandwiches--I can do that much,” says she.
The place cards was mourning ones, with broad black edges, and the ribbin to tie up the sandwiches was black too. And the centerpiece was one Mis’ Fire Chief and Hettie hed been up early that morning making--it was a set piece from the Chief’s funeral, a big goblet, turned bottom side up, done in white geraniums with “He is Near” in purple everlastings. The table was going to look real tasty, Mis’ Fire Chief thought, all in black and white so--with little sprays of willow laid around on the cloth instead of ferns.
“I’ve done the best I could,” she said, solemn, “to make the occasion do honor to Maria an’ pay reverence to the Chief.”
I had just finally persuaded her to go up-stairs and look the chambers over and then try to take a little rest somewheres around, when Amos come to the shed door to tell me the freezer wouldn’t turn no more, and was it broke or was the cream froze. And Mis’ Fire Chief, seeing him coming in the shed way, seemed to sense for the first time that he was there.
“Amos More,” says she, “what you doin’ here?”
“I ask’ him,” says I, hasty; “I had to have his help about the ice.”
She covered her eyes with one hand. “Courtin’ an’ entertainin’ goin’ on in the Chief’s house,” she said, “an’ him only just gone from us!”
“Well,” s’I, “I’ve got to have _some_ man’s help out here this afternoon--why not Amos’s?”
“Oh,” says Mis’ Merriman, “you’re all against me but the Chief, an’ him helpless.”
“The Chief,” says I, “was always careful of your health. You’ll make yourself sick taking on so, Mis’ Fire Chief,” I told her. “You go and put flowers in the chambers and leave the rest to me. Put your mind,” I told her, “on the surprise you’ve got for your guests that’s comin’--Maria Carpenter here and all! Besides,” I couldn’t help sticking in, “I donno as Amos is cold poison.”
So we got her off up-stairs.
Maria Carpenter’s train was due at 3:03, so she was just a-going to have the right time to get ready when the afternoon would begin, because in Friendship Village “sharp four” means four o’clock. I had left the sandwiches to make last thing, and I come back from my dinner towards three and tiptoes through the house so’s not to disturb Mis’ Fire Chief if she was resting, and I went into the pantry and begun cutting and spreading bread. I hadn’t been there but a little while before the stair door into the kitchen opened and I heard Hettie come down, humming a little. But before I could sing out to her, the woodshed door opened too, and in come Amos that had been out putting more salt in the freezer.
“Hettie!” he says in a low voice, and I see she prob’ly hed on her white muslin and was looking like angels, and more. And--“I won’t,” says Amos, then--“I won’t--though I can hardly keep my hands off from you--dear.”
“It don’t seem right even to have you call me ‘dear,’” says Hettie, sad.
Amos burst right out. “It is right--it is _right_!” says he. “They can’t nobody make me feel ‘dear’ is wicked, not when it means as dear as you are to me. Hettie,” Amos says, “sit down here a minute.”
“Not us. Not together,” says Hettie, nervous.
“Yes!” says Amos, commanding, “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. Set down here, by me.”
And by the little stillness, I judged she done so. And I says this: “Them poor things ain’t had ten minutes with each other in over a year, and if they know I’m here, that’ll spoil this time. I’d better stay where I am, still, with my thoughts on my sandwiches.” And that was what I done. But I couldn’t--I _couldn’t_--and neither could most anyone--of helped a word or two leaking through the pantry door _and_ the sandwich thoughts.
“I just wanted to pretend--for a minute,” Amos said, “that this was our house. An’ our kitchen. An’ that we was settin’ here side of the stove an’ belonged.”
“Oh, Amos,” said Hettie, “it don’t seem right to pretend that way with Aunt Hettie’s stove--an’ her feelin’ the way she does.”
“Yes, it is right,” says Amos, stout. “Hettie! Don’t you see? She _don’t_ feel that way. She’s just nervous with grievin’, an’ it comes out like that. She don’t care--really. At least not anything like the way she thinks she does. Now don’t let’s think about her, Hettie--dearest! Think about now. An’ let’s just pretend for a minute it was then. You know--_then_!”
“Well,” says Hettie, unwilling,--and yet, oh, so willing,--“if it _was_ then, what would you be sayin’?”
“I’d be sayin’ what I say now,” says Amos, “an’ what I’ll say to the end o’ time: that I love you so much that the world ain’t the world without you. But I want to hear _you_ say somethin’. What would you be sayin’, Hettie, if it was _then_?”
I knew how she dimpled up as she answered--Hettie’s dimples was like the wind had dented a rose leaf.
“I’d prob’ly be sayin’,” says Hettie, “Amos, you ain’t filled the water pail. An’ I’ll have to have another armful o’ kindlin’.”
“Well,” says Amos, “but then when I’d brought ’em. What would you say then?”
“I’d say, ‘What do you want for dinner?’” said Hettie, demure. But even this was too much for Amos.
“An’ then we’d cook it,” he says, almost reverent. “Oh, Hettie--don’t it seem like heaven to think of us seein’ to all them little things--together?”
I loved Hettie for her answer. Coquetting is all right some of the time; but--some of the time--so is real true talk.
“Yes,” she says soft, “it does. But it seems like earth too--_an’ I’m glad of it_.”
“Oh, Hettie,” says Amos, “marry me. Don’t let’s go on like this.”
“Dear,” says Hettie, all solemn,--and forgetting that “dear” was such a wicked word,--“dear, I’d marry you this afternoon if it wasn’t for Aunt Hettie’s feelin’s. But I can’t hurt her--I can’t,” she says.
Well, just then the door bell rung, and Hettie she flew to answer it, and Amos he lit back to the woodshed and went to chopping more ice like life lay all that way. And I was just coming out of the butt’ry with a pan of thin sandwiches ready for the black ribbins, when I heard a kind of groan and a scuffle, and down-stairs come Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman, and all but fell into the kitchen. She had something in her hand.
“Calliope--Calliope Marsh,” says she, all wailing like a bereavement, “Cousin Maria has fell an broke her wrist, an’ she ain’t comin’ _at all_!”
I stood still, real staggered. I see what it meant to Mis’ Merriman--invites all out, Cousin Maria for surprise and hostess in one, Mis’ Merriman not figgering on appearing at all, account of the Chief, and the company right that minute on the way.
“What’ll I do--what’ll I _do_?” cries Mis’ Merriman, sinking down on the bottom step in her best black with the crêpe cuffs. “Oh,” she says, “it’s a judgment upon me. I’ll hev to turn my guests from my door. I’ll be the laughing-stock,” says she, wild.
And just then, like the trump of judgment to her, we heard the front door shut, and the first folks to come went marching up the stairs. And at the same minute Amos come in from the shed with the dasher out of the second freezer, and Hettie’s eyes run to him like he was their goal and their home. And then I says:
“Mis’ Fire Chief. Leave your company come in. Serve ’em the food of your house, just like you’ve got it ready. Stay back in the kitchen and don’t go in the parlor and do it all just like you’d planned. And in place of Maria Carpenter and the surprise you’d meant,” says I, “give ’em another surprise. Leave Hettie and Amos be married in your parlor, like they want to be and like all Friendship Village wants to see ’em. Couldn’t nothing be sweeter.”
Mis’ Merriman stared up to me, and set and rocked.
“A weddin’,” she says, “a weddin’ in the parlor where the very last gatherin’ was the funeral of the Chief? It’s sacrilege--sacrilege!” she says, wild.
“Mis’ Merriman,” I says, simple, “what do you reckon this earth is about? What,” says I, “is the purpose the Lord God Most High created it for out of nothing? As near as I can make out,” I told her, “and I’ve give the matter some study, He’s got a purpose hid way deep in His heart, and way deep in the hearts of us all has got to be the same purpose, or we might just as well, and a good sight better, be dead. And a part of that purpose is to keep His world a-going, and that can’t be done, as I see it, by looking back over our shoulders to the dead that’s gone, however dear, and forgetting the living that’s all around us, yearning and thirsting and passioning for their happiness. And a part of His purpose is to put happiness into this world, so’s people can brighten up and hearten out and do the work of the world like He meant ’em to. And you, Mis’ Merriman,” says I, plain, “are a-holding back from both them purposes of God’s, and a-doing your best to set ’em to naught.”
Mis’ Merriman, she looked up kind of dazed from where she was a-sitting. “I ain’t never supposed I was livin’ counter to the Almighty,” she says, some stiff.
“Well,” says I, “none of us supposes that as much as we’d ought to. And my notion, and the notion of most of Friendship Village, it’s just what you’re doing, Mis’ Fire Chief,” says I,--“in some respec’s.”
“Oh, even if I wasn’t, I don’t want to be the laughin’-stock to-day,” says she, weak, and beginning to cry.
“Hettie and Amos,” says I, then, for form’s sake, “if Mis’ Merriman agrees to this, do you agree?”
“Yes! Oh, _yes_!” says Amos, like the organ and the benediction and the Amen, all rolled into one.
“Yes,” says Hettie, shy as a rose, but yet like a rose nodding on its stalk, positive.
“And you, Mis’ Fire Chief?” says I.
She nodded behind her hands that covered up her face. “I don’t know what to do,” says she, faint. “Go on ahead--all of you!”
My, if we didn’t have to fly around. They wasn’t no time for dress changing. Hettie was in white muslin and Amos in every-day, but it was all right because she was Hettie and because he looked like a king in anything. And they was so many last things to do that none of us thought of dress anyhow. It was four o’clock by then, and folks had been stomping in “past the bell” and marching up-stairs and laying off their things--being as everybody knows what’s what in Friendship Village and don’t hev to be told where to go, same as some--till, judging by the sound, they had all got there and was clacking in the parlor, and Mis’ Fire Chief’s party had begun. And Mis’ Fire Chief herself revived enough to offer to tie the ribbins around the sandwiches.
“My land!” I says, “we can’t do that. We can’t have black ribbin round the wedding sandwiches.”
But Hettie, she broke in, sweet and dignified, and before her aunt could say a word. “Yes, we can,” she says, “yes, we can. I ain’t superstitious, same as some. Uncle’s centerpiece an’ his willow on the tablecloth an’ his blackribbin sandwiches,” says she, “is goin’ to stay just the way they are, weddin’ or no weddin’,” says she. “Ain’t they, Amos?” she ask’ him.
“You bet you,” says Amos, fervent, just like he would have agreed to anything under heaven that Hettie said. And Mis’ Merriman, she looked at ’em then, grateful and even resigned. And time Amos had gone and got back with the license and the minister we were all ready.
They sent me in to sort of pave the way. I slips in through the hall and stood in the door a minute wondering how I’d tell ’em. There they all was, setting sewing and rocking and gossiping, contented as if they had a hostess in every room. And not one of ’em suspecting. Oh, I loved ’em one and all, and I loved the way they was all _used_ to each other, and talking natural about crochet patterns and recipes for oatmeal cookies and what’s good to keep hands from chapping--not one of ’em putting on or setting their best foot forwards or trying to act their best, same as they might with company, but just being themselves, natural and forgetting. And I was glad, deep down in my heart, that Maria Carpenter hadn’t come near. Not glad that she had broke her wrist, of course--but that she hadn’t come near. And when I stepped out to tell ’em what was going to happen, I was so glad in my throat that I couldn’t say a word only just--
“Friends--listen to me. What do you _s’pose_ is goin’ to happen? Oh, they can’t none of you guess. So look. Look!”
Then I threw open the dining-room door and let ’em in--Hettie and Amos, with Doctor June. And patterns and recipes and lotions all just simmered down into one surprised and glad and loving buzz of wonder. And then Hettie and Amos were married, and the world begun all over again, Garden of Eden style.
There is one little thing more to tell. When the congratulations was most over, the dining-room door creaked a little bit, and Amos, that was standing by it, whirled around and see Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman peeking through the crack to her guests. And Amos swung open the door wide, and he grabbed her by the arm, and though she hung back with all her strength Amos pulled her right straight into the room and kissed her, there before them all.
“_Aunt_ Hettie,” he says to her, ringing, “_Uncle_--Hettie’s uncle an’ mine an’ your husband,--wouldn’t want you stayin’ out there in the dinin’-room to-day on account o’ him!”
And when we all crowded around her, greeting her like guests should greet a hostess and like dear friends should greet dear friends, Mis’ Fire Chief she wipes her eyes, and she left ’em shake her hands; and though she wasn’t all converted, it was her and not me that ask’ ’em please to walk out into the dining-room and eat the lunch that was part wedding and part in memory of the Chief.
THE BIGGEST BUSINESS
I donno whether you’ve ever lived in a town that’s having a boom? That’s being a boom town, as they call it? There ain’t any more boom to Friendship Village than there is to a robin building a nest. There ain’t any more boom to Friendship Village than there is to growth. We just go along and go along, and behave ourselves like the year does: Little spurt of Spring now and then, when two-three folks build new houses and we get a new side-walk or two or buy a new sprinkling cart. Little dead time, here and there, when the tobacco or pickle factory closes down to wait for more to grow, and when somebody gets most built and boards up the windows till something else comes in to go on with. But most of the time Friendship Village keeps on pretty even, like the year, or the potato patch, or any of them common, growing things.
But now over to Red Barns it ain’t so. Red Barns is eight miles away, and from the beginning the two towns sort of set with their backs to each other, and each give out promiscuous that the other didn’t have a future. But, same time, the two towns looked out of the corners of their eyes enough to set quite a few things going for each other unconscious: Red Barns got a new depot, and Friendship Village instantly petitioned for one. Friendship Village set aside a little park, and Red Barns immediately appropriated for one, with a little edge more ground. Red Barns got a new post office, and Friendship Village started out for a new library. And so on. Just like a couple of boys seeing which could swim out farthest.
Then all of a sudden the Interurban come through Red Barns and left Friendship Village setting quiet out in the meadows eight miles from the track. And of course after that Red Barns shot ahead--Eppleby Holcomb said that on a still night you could hear Red Barns chuckle. Pretty soon a little knitting factory started up there, and then a big tobacco factory. And being as they had three motion-picture houses to our one, and band concerts all Summer instead of just through July, the folks in Silas Sykes’s Friendship Village Corn Canning Industry and in Timothy Toplady’s Enterprise Pickle Manufactory began to want to go over to Red Barns to work. Two left from Eppleby Holcomb’s Dry Goods Emporium. Even the kitchens of the few sparse ones that kept hired help begun to suffer. And the men begun to see that what was what had got to be helped to be something else--same as often happens in commercial circles.
Things was about to this degree when Spring come on. I donno how it is with other people, but with me Spring used to be the signal to run as far as I could from the place I was in, in the hopes, I guess, of getting close up to all outdoors. I used to want to run along country paths all squshy with water, and hang over a fence to try to tell whether it’s a little quail or a big meadowlark in the sedge; I wanted to smell the sweet, soft-water smell that Spring rain has. I wanted to watch the crust of the earth move because May was coming up through the mold. I wanted to climb a tree and be a bud. And one morning I got up early bent on doing all these things, and ended by poking round my garden with a stick to see what was coming up--like you do. It was real early in the morning--not much after six--and Outdoors looked surprised--you know that surprised look of early morning, as if the day had never thought of being born again till it up and happened to it? And I had got to the stage of hanging over the alley fence, doing nothing, when little David Beach come by. He was eating a piece of bread, and hurrying.
“Morning, David,” I sings out. “Where’s your fish-pole?”
He stopped running and stopped biting and looked up at me. And then he laughed, sharp and high up.
“Fish-pole!” says he.
“Is it swimming, then?” I says. And then I felt sick all over. For I remembered that David had gone to work in Silas Sykes’s canning factory.
“Oh, David,” I patched it up. “I forgot. You’re a man now.”
At that he put back his thin little shoulders, and stuck out his thin little chest, and held up his sharp little chin. And he said:
“Yup. I’m a man now. I get $2.50 a week, _now_.”
“Whew!” says I. “When do you bank your first million?”
He grinned and broke into a run again. “I’m docked if I’m late,” he shouts back.
I looked after him. It didn’t seem ten days since he was born. And here he was, of the general contour of a clay pipe, going to work. His father had been crippled in the factory, his mother was half sick, and there were three younger than David, and one older.
“Kind of nice of Silas to give David a job,” I thought. “I don’t suppose he’s worth much to him, he’s so little.”
And that was all I thought, being that most of us uses our heads far more frequent to put hats on than for any other purpose.
Right after breakfast that morning I took a walk down town to pick out my vegetables before the flies done ’em too much violence in Silas Sykes’s store window. And out in front of the store, I come on Silas himself, sprinkling his wilted lettuce.
The minute I see Silas, I knew that something had happened to make him pleased with himself. Not that Silas ain’t always pleased with himself. But that day he looked extra-special self-pleased.
“Hello, Calliope,” he says, “you’re the very one I want to help me.”
That surprised me, but, thinks I, I’ve asked Silas to do so many things he ain’t done that I’ve kind of wore grooves in the atmosphere all around him; and I guess he’s took to asking me first when he sees me, for fear I’ll come down on to him with another request. So I followed him into the post-office store where he motioned me with his chin, and this was what he says:
“Calliope,” says he, “how’d you like to help me do a little work for this town?”
I must just of stared at Silas. I can keep from looking surprised, same as the best, when a neighbor comes down on to me, with her eyebrows up over a piece of news--and I always do, for I do hate to be expected to play up to other folks’s startled eyebrows. But with these words of Silas’s I give in and stared. For of some eight, nine, ten plans that I’d approached him with to the same end, he had turned down all them, and all me.
“With who?” says I.
“For who?” says he. “Woman, do you realize that taking ’em all together, store and canning factory combined, I’ve got forty-two folks a-working for me?”
“Well!” says I. “Quite a family.”
“Timothy Toplady’s got twelve employees,” he goes on, “and Eppleby’s got seven in the store. That’s sixty-one girls and women and then ... er....”
“Children,” says I, simple.
“Young folks,” Silas says, smooth. “Sixty-one of ’em. Ain’t that pretty near a club, I’d like to know?”
“Oh,” I says, “a club. A club! And do them sixty-one want to _be_ a club, Silas?”
Silas scowled. “What you talking?” he says. “Of course they want all you’ll do for ’em. Well, now: Us men has been facing this thing, and it’s so plain that even a woman must see it: Friendship Village is going to empty itself out into Red Barns, same as a skin, if this town don’t get up and do something.”
“True,” says I, attentive. “Even a woman can take in that much, Silas, if you put it right before her, and lead her up to it, and point it out to her and,” says I, warming up to it, “put blinders on her so’s not to distract her attention from the real fact in hand.”
“What you talking?” says Silas. “I never saw a woman yet that could keep on any one subject no more than a balloon. Well, now, what I thought was this: I thought I’d up and go around with a paper, and see how much everybody’d give, and we’d open an Evening Club somewheres, for the employees--folks’s old furniture and magazines and books and some games--and give ’em a nice time. Here,” says Silas, producing a paper from behind the cheese, “I’ve gone into this thing to the tune of Fifty Dollars. Fifty Dollars. And I thought,” says he direct, “that you that’s always so interested in doing things for folks, might put your own name down, and might see some of the other ladies too. And I could report it to our Commercial club meeting next Friday night. _After_ the business session.”
I looked at him, meditative.
“If it’s all the same to you, Silas,” I says, “I’ll take this paper and go round and see some of these sixty-one women and girls, instead.”
Silas kind of raised up his whole face and left his chin hanging, idle.
“See them women and girls?” says he, some resembling a shout. “What have they got to do with it, I’d like to know?”
“Oh,” says I, “ain’t it some their club too, Silas? I thought the whole thing was on their account.”
Silas used his face like he’d run a draw string down it.
“Women,” he says, “dum women. Their minds ain’t any more logical than--than floor-sweepings with the door open. Didn’t I just tell you that the thing was going to be done for the benefit of Friendship Village and to keep them folks interested in it?”
“Well, but,” I says, “ain’t them folks some Friendship Village too?”