Chapter 14

Joe Doane lay there still. He couldn't help anybody much--more was the pity. He had his own three children--and you could be a Doane without having money to help with--though some people didn't get that through their heads. Things used to be different with the Doanes. When the tide's in and you awake at three in the morning it all gets a good deal like the sea--at least with Joe Doane it did now. His grandfather, Ebenezer Doane, the whaling captain--In--Out--Silas Doane--a fleet of vessels off the Grand Banks--In--Out--All the Doanes. They had helped make the Cape, but--In--Out--Suddenly Joe laughed.

"What are you _laughing_ at?" demanded his wife.

"I was just laughing," said Joe, "to think what those _old_ Doanes would say if they could see us."

"Well, it's not anything to laugh at," said Mrs. Doane.

"Why, I think it is," good-humoredly insisted her husband, "it's such a _joke_ on them."

"If it's a joke," said Mrs. Doane firmly, "it's not on _them_."

He wasn't sure just _who_ the joke was on. He lay thinking about it. At three in the morning, when you can't sleep and the tide's in, you might get it mixed--who the joke was on.

But, no, the joke _was_ on them, that they'd had their long slow deep _In_--_Out_--their whaling and their fleets, and that what came after was _him_--a tinkerer with other men's boats, a ship's carpenter who'd even work on _houses_. "Get Joe Doane to do it for you." And glad enough was Joe Doane to do it. And a Portagee livin' to either side of him!

He laughed. "You've got a funny idea of what's a _joke_," his wife said indignantly.

That seemed to be so. Things he saw as jokes weren't jokes to anybody else. Maybe that was why he sometimes seemed to be all by himself. He was beginning to get lost in an _In_--_Out_. Faintly he could hear Mrs. Cadara crying--Joe Cadara was in the sea, and faintly he heard his wife saying, "I suppose Agnes Cadara could wear Myrtie's shoes, only--the way things are, seems Myrtie's got to wear out her _own_ shoes."

Next day when he came home at noon--he was at work then helping Ed. Davis put a new coat on Still's store--he found his two boys--the boys were younger than Myrtie--pressed against the picket fence that separated Doanes from Cadaras.

"What those kids up to?" he asked his wife, while he washed up for dinner.

"Oh, they just want to see," she answered, speaking into the oven.

"See _what_?" he demanded; but this Mrs. Doane regarded as either too obvious or too difficult to answer, so he went to the door and called, "Joe! Edgar!"

"What you kids rubberin' at?" he demanded.

Young Joe dug with his toe. "The Cadaras have got a lot of company," said he.

"They're _crying_!" triumphantly announced the younger and more truthful Edgar.

"Well, suppose they are? They got a right to cry in their own house, ain't they? Let the Cadaras be. Find some fun at home."

The boys didn't seem to think this funny, nor did Mrs. Doane, but the father was chuckling to himself as they sat down to their baked flounder.

But to let the Cadaras be and find some fun at home became harder and harder to do. The _Lillie-Bennie_ had lost her men in early Summer and the town was as full of Summer folk as the harbor was of whiting. There had never been a great deal for Summer folk to do in Cape's End, and so the Disaster was no disaster to the Summer's entertainment. In other words, Summer folk called upon the Cadaras. The young Doanes spent much of their time against the picket fence; sometimes young Cadaras would come out and graciously enlighten them. "A woman she brought my mother a black dress." Or, "A lady and two little boys came in automobile and brought me kiddie-car and white pants." One day Joe Doane came home from work and found his youngest child crying because Tony Cadara wouldn't lend him the kiddie-car. This was a reversal of things; heretofore Cadaras had cried for the belongings of the Doanes. Joe laughed about it, and told Edgar to cheer up, and maybe he'd have a kiddie-car himself some day--and meanwhile he had a pa.

Agnes Cadara and Myrtie Doane were about of an age. They were in the same class in high school. One day when Joe Doane was pulling in his dory after being out doing some repairs on the _Lillie-Bennie_ he saw a beautiful young lady standing on the Cadaras' bulkhead. Her back was to him, but you were sure she was beautiful. She had the look of some one from away, but not like the usual run of Summer folk. Myrtie was standing looking over at this distinguished person.

"Who's that?" Joe asked of her.

"Why," said Myrtie, in an awed whisper, "it's Agnes Cadara--in her _mourning_."

Until she turned around, he wouldn't believe it. "Well," said he to Myrtie, "it's a pity more women haven't got something to mourn about."

"Yes," breathed Myrtie, "isn't she _wonderful_?"

Agnes's mourning had been given her by young Mrs. MacCrea who lived up on the hill and was herself just finishing mourning. It seemed Mrs. MacCrea and Agnes were built a good deal alike--though you never would have suspected it before Agnes began to mourn. Mrs. MacCrea was from New York, and these clothes had been made by a woman Mrs. MacCrea called by her first name. Well, maybe she was a woman you'd call by her first name, but she certainly did have a way of making you look as if you weren't native to the place you were born in. Before Agnes Cadara had anything to mourn about she was simply "one of those good-looking Portuguese girls." There were too many of them in Cape's End to get excited about any of them. One day he heard some women on the beach talking about how these clothes had "found" Agnes--as if she had been lost.

Mrs. MacCrea showed Agnes how to do her hair in a way that went with her clothes. One noon when Joe got home early because it rained and he couldn't paint, when he went up-stairs he saw Myrtie trying to do this to _her_ hair. Well, it just couldn't be _done_ to Myrtie's hair. Myrtie didn't have hair you could do what you pleased with. She was all red in the face with trying, and being upset because she couldn't do it. He had to laugh--and that didn't help things a bit. So he said:

"Never mind, Myrtie, we can't all go into mourning."

"Well, I don't care," said Myrtie, sniffling, "it's not fair."

He had to laugh again and as she didn't see what there was to laugh at, he had to try to console again. "Never mind, Myrt," said he, "you've got _one_ thing Agnes Cadara's not got."

"I'd like to know what," said Myrtie, jerking at her hair.

He waited; funny she didn't think of it herself. "Why--a father," said he.

"Oh," said Myrtie--the way you do when you don't know _what_ to say. And then, "_Well_,----"

Again he waited--then laughed; waited again, then turned away.

Somebody gave Mrs. Cadara a fireless cooker. Mrs. Doane had no fireless cooker. So she had to stand all day over her hot stove--and this she spoke of often. "My supper's in the fireless cooker," Mrs. Cadara would say, and stay out in the cool yard, weeding her flowerbed bed. "It certainly would be nice to have one of those fireless cookers," Mrs. Doane would say, as she put a meal on the table and wiped her brow with her apron.

"Well, why don't you kill your husband?" Joe Doane would retort. "Now, if only you didn't have a _husband_--you could have a fireless cooker."

Jovially he would put the question, "Which would you rather have, a husband or a fireless cooker?" He would argue it out--and he would sometimes get them all to laughing, only the argument was never a very long one. One day it occurred to him that the debates were short because the others didn't hold up their end. He was talking for the fireless cooker--if it was going to be a real debate, they ought to speak up for the husband. But there seemed to be so much less to be said for a husband than there was for a fireless cooker. This struck him as really quite funny, but it seemed it was a joke he had to enjoy by himself. Sometimes when he came home pretty tired--for you could get as tired at odd jobs as at jobs that weren't odd--and heard all about what the Cadaras were that night to eat out of their fireless cooker, he would wish that some one else would do the joking. It was kind of tiresome doing it all by yourself--and kind of lonesome.

One morning he woke up feeling particularly rested and lively. He was going out to work on the _Lillie-Bennie_, and he always felt in better spirits when he was working on a boat.

It was a cool, fresh, sunny morning. He began a song--he had a way of making up songs. It was, "I'd rather be alive than dead." He didn't think of any more lines, so while he was getting into his clothes he kept singing this one, to a tune which became more and more stirring. He went over to the window by the looking-glass. From this window you looked over to the Cadaras. And then he saw that from the Cadaras a new arrival looked at him.

He stared. Then loud and long he laughed. He threw up the window and called, "Hello, there!"

The new arrival made no reply, unless a slight droop of the head could be called a reply.

"Well, you cap the climax!" called Joe Doane.

Young Doanes had discovered the addition to the Cadara family and came running out of the house.

"Pa!" Edgar called up to him, "the Cadaras have got a _Goat_!"

"Well, do you know," said his father, "I kind of _suspected_ that was a goat."

Young Cadaras came out of the house to let young Doanes know just what their privileges were to be with the goat--and what they weren't. They could walk around and look at her; they were not to lead her by her rope.

"There's no hope now," said Joe, darkly shaking his head. "No man in his senses would buck up against a _goat_."

The little Doanes wouldn't come in and eat their breakfast. They'd rather stay out and walk round the goat.

"I think it's too bad," their mother sighed, "the kiddie-car and the ball-suit and the sail-boat were _enough_ for the children to bear--without this goat. It seems our children haven't got _any_ of the things the Cadaras have got."

"Except--" said Joe, and waited for some one to fill it in. But no one did, so he filled it in with a laugh--a rather short laugh.

"Look out they don't put you in the fireless cooker!" he called to the goat as he went off to work.

But he wasn't joking when he came home at noon. He turned in at the front gate and the goat blocked his passage. The Cadaras had been willing to let the goat call upon the Doanes and graze while calling. "Get out of my way!" called Joe Doane in a surly way not like Joe Doane.

"Pa!" said young Joe in an awed whisper, "it's a _government_ goat."

"What do I care if it is?" retorted his father. "_Damn_ the government goat!"

Every one fell back, as when blasphemy--as when treason--have been uttered. These Portuguese kids looking at _him_ like that--as if _they_ were part of the government and he outside. He was so mad that he bawled at Tony Cadara, "To _hell_ with your government goat!"

From her side of the fence, Mrs. Cadara called, "Tony, you bring the goat right home," as one who calls her child--and her goat--away from evil.

"And keep her there!" finished Joe Doane.

The Doanes ate their meal in stricken silence. Finally Doane burst out, "What's the matter with you all? Such a fuss about the orderin' off of a _goat_."

"It's a _government_ goat," lisped Edgar.

"It's a _government_ goat," repeated his wife in a tense voice.

"What do you mean--government goat? There's no such animal."

But it seemed there was, the Cadaras had, not only the goat, but a book about the goat. The book was from the government. The government had raised the goat and had singled the Cadaras out as a family upon whom a government goat should be conferred. The Cadaras held her in trust for the government. Meanwhile they drank her milk.

"Tony Cadara said, if I'd dig clams for him this afternoon he'd let me help milk her to-night," said young Joe.

This was too much. "Ain't you kids got no _spine_? Kowtowing to them Portuguese because a few folks that's sorry for them have made them presents. They're _ginnies_. You're Doanes."

"I want a goat!" wailed Edgar. His father got up from the table.

"The children are all right," said his wife, in her patient voice that made you impatient. "It's natural for them to want a few of the things they see other children having."

He'd get _away_! As he went through the shed he saw his line and picked it up. He'd go out on the breakwater--maybe he'd get some fish, at least have some peace.

The breakwater wasn't very far down the beach from his house. He used to go out there every once in a while. Every once in a while he had a feeling he had to get by himself. It was half a mile long and of big rocks that had big gaps. You had to do some climbing--you could imagine you were in the mountains--and that made you feel far off and different. Only when the tide came in, the sea filled the gaps--then you had to "watch your step."

He went way out and turned his back on the town and fished. He wasn't to finish the work on the _Lillie-Bennie_. They said that morning they thought they'd have to send down the Cape for an "expert." So _he_ would probably go to work at the new cold storage--working with a lot of Portagee laborers. He wondered why things were this way with him. They seemed to have just happened so. When you should have had some money it didn't come natural to do the things of people who have no money. The money went out of the "Bank" fishing about three years before his father sold his vessels. During those last three years Captain Silas Doane had spent all the money he had to keep things going, refusing to believe that the way of handling fish had changed and that the fishing between Cape's End and the Grand Banks would no longer be what it had been. When he sold he kept one vessel, and the next Winter she went ashore right across there on the northeast arm of the Cape. Joe Doane was aboard her that night. Myrtie was a baby then. It was of little Myrtie he thought when it seemed the vessel would pound herself to pieces before they could get off. _He_ couldn't be lost! He had to live and work so his little girl could have everything she wanted--After that the Doanes were without a vessel--and Doanes without a vessel were fish out of sea. They had never been folks to work on another man's boat. He supposed he had never started any big new thing because it had always seemed he was just filling in between trips. A good many years had slipped by and he was still just putting in time. And it began to look as if there wasn't going to be another trip.

Suddenly he had to laugh. Some _joke_ on Joe Cadara! He could see him going down the Front street--broad, slow, _dumb_. Why, Joe Cadara thought his family _needed_ him. He thought they got along because he made those trips. But had Joe Cadara ever been able to give his wife a fireless cooker? Had the government presented a goat to the Cadaras when Joe was there? Joe Doane sat out on the breakwater and laughed at the joke on Joe Cadara. When Agnes Cadara was a little girl she would run to meet her father when he came in from a trip. Joe Doane used to like to see the dash she made. But Agnes was just tickled to death with her mourning!

He sat there a long time--sat there until he didn't know whether it was a joke or not. But he got two haddock and more whiting than he wanted to carry home. So he felt better. A man sometimes needed to get off by himself.

As he was turning in at home he saw Ignace Silva about to start out on a trip with Captain Gorspie. Silva thought he _had_ to go. But Silva had been saved--and had _his_ wife a fireless cooker? Suddenly Joe Doane called.

"Hey! Silva! You're the government goat!"

The way Doane laughed made Silva know this was a joke; not having a joke of his own he just turned this one around and sent it back. "Government goat yourself!"

"Shouldn't wonder," returned Joe jovially.

He had every Doane laughing at supper that night. "Bear up! Bear up! True, you've got a father instead of a goat--but we've all got our cross! We all have our cross to bear!"

"Say!" said he after supper, "every woman, every kid, puts on a hat, and up we go to see if Ed. Smith might _happen_ to have a soda."

As they were starting out, he peered over at the Cadaras in mock surprise. "Why, what's the matter with that _goat_? That goat don't seem to be takin' the Cadaras out for a soda."

Next day he started to make a kiddie-car for Edgar. He promised Joe he'd make him a sail-boat. But it was up-hill work. The Cape's End Summer folk gave a "Streets of Bagdad" and the "disaster families" got the proceeds. Then when the Summer folk began to go away it was quite natural to give what they didn't want to take with them to a family that had had a disaster. The Doanes had had no disaster; anyway, the Doanes weren't the kind of people you'd think of giving things to. True, Mr. Doane would sometimes come and put on your screen-doors for you, but it was as if a neighbor had come in to lend a hand. A man who lives beside the sea and works on the land is not a picturesque figure. Then, in addition to being alive, Joe Doane wasn't Portuguese. So the Cadaras got the underwear and the bats and preserves that weren't to be taken back to town. No one father--certainly not a father without a steady job--could hope to compete with all that wouldn't go into trunks.

Anyway, he couldn't possibly make a goat. No wit or no kindness which emanated from him could do for his boys what that goat did for the Cadaras. Joe Doane came to throw an awful hate on the government goat. Portagees were only Portagees--yet _they_ had the government goat. Why, there had been Doanes on that Cape for more than a hundred years. There had been times when everybody round there _worked_ for the Doanes, but now the closest his boys could come to the government was beddin' down the Cadaras' government goat! Twenty-five years ago Cadaras had huddled in a hut on the God-forsaken Azores! If they knew there was a United States government, all they knew was that there _was_ one. And now it was these Cadara kids were putting on airs to _him_ about the government. He knew there was a joke behind all this, behind his getting so wrought up about it, but he would sit and watch that goat eat leaves in the vacant lot across from the Cadaras until the goat wasn't just a goat. It was the turn things had taken. One day as he was sitting watching Tony Cadara milking his goat--wistful boys standing by--Ignace Silva, just in from a trip, called out, "Government goat yourself!" and laughed at he knew not what.

By God!--'t was true! A Doane without a vessel. A native who had let himself be crowded out by ignorant upstarts from a filthy dot in the sea! A man who hadn't got his bearings in the turn things had taken. Of a family who had built up a place for other folks to grow fat in. _Sure_ he was the government goat. By just being alive he kept his family from all the fancy things they might have if he was dead. Could you be more of a _goat_ than that?

Agnes Cadara and Myrtie came up the street together. He had a feeling that Myrtie was _set up_ because she was walking along with Agnes Cadara. Time had been when Agnes Cadara had hung around in order to go with Myrtie! Suddenly he thought of how his wife had said maybe Agnes Cadara could wear Myrtie's shoes. He looked at Agnes Cadara's feet--at Myrtie's. Why, Myrtie looked like a kid from an orphan asylum walking along with the daughter of the big man of the town!

He got up and started toward town. He wouldn't stand it! He'd show 'em! He'd buy Myrtie---- Why, he'd buy Myrtie----! He put his hand in his pocket. Change from a dollar. The rest of the week's pay had gone to Lou Hibbard for groceries. Well, he could hang it up at Wilkinson's. He'd buy Myrtie----!

He came to a millinery store. There was a lot of black ribbon strewn around in the window. He stood and looked at it. Then he laughed. Just the thing!

"Cheer up, Myrt," said he, when he got back home and presented it to her. "You can mourn a _little_. For that matter, you've got a _little_ to mourn about."

Myrtie took it doubtfully--then wound it round her throat. She _liked_ it, and this made her father laugh. He laughed a long time--it was as if he didn't want to be left without the sound of his laughing.

"There's nothing so silly as to laugh when there's nothing to laugh at," his wife said finally.

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Joe Doane.

"And while it's very nice to make the children presents, in our circumstances it would be better to give them useful presents."

"But what's so useful as mourning?" demanded Doane. "Think of all Myrtie has got to mourn _about_. Poor, poor Myrtie--she's _got_ a father!"

You can say a thing until you think it's so. You can say a thing until you make other people think it's so. He joked about standing between them and a fireless cooker until he could see them _thinking_ about it. All the time he hated his old job at the cold storage. A Doane had no business to be ashore _freezing_ fish. It was the business of a Doane to go out to sea and come home with a full vessel.

One day he broke through that old notion that Doanes didn't work on other men's boats and half in a joke proposed to Captain Cook that he fire a ginnie or two and give him a berth on the _Elizabeth_. And Bill Cook was _rattled_. Finally he laughed and said, "Why, Joe, you ought to be on your own vessel"--which was a way of saying he didn't want him on _his_. Why didn't he? Did they think because he hadn't made a trip for so long that he wasn't good for one? Did they think a Doane couldn't take orders? Well, there weren't many boats he _would_ go on. Most of them in the harbor now were owned by Portuguese. He guessed it wouldn't come natural to him to take orders from a Portagee--not at sea. He was taking orders from one now at the cold storage--but as the cold storage wasn't where he belonged it didn't make so much difference who he took orders from.

At the close of that day Bill Cook told him he ought to be on his own vessel, Joe Doane sat at the top of those steps which led from his house down to the sea and his thoughts were like the sails coming round the Point--slowly, in a procession, and from a long way off. His father's boats used to come round that Point this same way. He was lonesome to-night. He felt half like an old man and half like a little boy.

Mrs. Cadara was standing over on the platform to the front of her house. She too was looking at the sails to the far side of the breakwater--sails coming home. He wondered if she was thinking about Joe Cadara--wishing he was on one of those boats. _Did_ she ever think about Joe Cadara? Did she ever wish he would come home? He'd like to ask her. He'd like to know. When you went away and didn't come back home, was all they thought about how they'd get along? And if they were getting along all right, was it true they'd just as soon be without you?

He got up. He had a sudden crazy feeling he wanted to _fight_ for Joe Cadara. He wanted to go over there and say to that fireless cooker woman, "Trip after trip he made, in the cold and in the storm. He kept you warm and safe here at home. It was for you he went; it was to you he came back. _And you'll miss him yet._ Think this is going to keep up? Think you're going to interest those rich folks as much next year as you did this? Five years from now you'll be on your knees with a _brush_ to keep those kids warm and fed."

He'd like to get the truth out of her! Somehow things wouldn't seem so _rotten_ if he could know that she sometimes lay in her bed at night and cried for Joe Cadara.