Part 23

The noonday buzzed with the flies and the broken little shouts of the children. It was hard not to doze as she waited. Once her head did fall forward.

"It's a hot day," said Meyerbogen the baker, and set down a brown dish of the beans with a pale cube of pork on top.

"Yah."

Suddenly it was hard to eat. Even while her nostrils flared with the need of the strong hot food the heat was full of disks, spinning little juggler's plates and the shouts of the children were so far away--so far----

"Here--quick! You going to vaint? No. Don't. Here--drink----"

"I--where----"

"It's all right. You god a liddle stroke from the zun. Here, sit while I fan you."

The noonday drone swam back again. It was good to feel it, hot and buzzing and full of the shouts of the children.

"I'm all right," she said, and shook herself like a spaniel, and looked up at Meyerbogen with the blue channels of her eyes.

"You're all right, sure, now," he said and went off on his waddle about the business of unstacking buns from a wooden tray which a helper had just brought up from a basement.

But the lunch. For the life of her the beans would not go down or the cup of the light tan coffee. That was terrible. To feel all warm again and free of the chill of cold sweat and back safely once more in the drone of the noon and the lunch spread out on the clean wooden top of the table, untasted. Waste. The half days made one calculate so. Inevitably the slashing blades of hunger that cut through and through the great organism of Bertha would begin to champ again, a little later and the day's food allotment was already spent down to the last penny. Slowly and against a restricted throat she began to swallow the coffee.

Presently Meyerbogen sat down on the chair opposite.

"It's a heat," he said and the fog of the flour rose up off him.

"Yah."

He was like a great milk-fed baby. Pink polished cheeks. Tight, spring-tight curls and fat hands with dimples. And the enormous girth of him! He swayed back from himself for all the world like a tenor drinking in breath for Pagliacci's sob. And, ridiculously enough, he was almost dainty.

His big white throat was soft, and when he laughed he shook from head to toe, and the cloud of flour exuded as if someone were beating him with a baby's cornstarch bag.

"You lost your abbidite?"

"Yah--a little----"

"Take your time----"

"The heat----"

"Yah--yah---the heat--my woman--she died on me in heat like this." He looked off toward the roadway and screwed up his face. There was something about him actually of a baby about to cry.

"Yah----"

"Meningitis," he said--"down two days----"

"Oh--oh----"

"A good woman. Never down with child more than three days--and then in two days--meningitis--gone----"

"Oh--oh----"

"Five of them needing her. From two years old to ten."

"The children?"

"Yah--we had it neat like a pin here once. Now look!--I had a good woman----"

"Oh."

His great baby face was still screwed and resolutely out toward the road.

"Zummer," he said cryptically, "is zummer. It's good but not too much----"

Foolishly you could have cried for him. Big baby.

"Some zinnamon buns? Just hot from the ofen."

"No."

He waddled out on the porch and began carrying a sack of flour around the side entrance. You could hear him wheeze and the white haze was everywhere. Gradually it was pleasant to be eating. The coarse, strong food--the steam of it was appetizing, and after the first forkfuls appetite came back.

Clank. Clank. One of the children wandered in. Oh, how your heart leaped back, wounded. He had a poor little leg in a brace that clanked. A fat baby, too, only it was as if the father resembled the child and not the child the father. A dirty baby. A not nice baby. Eggy. With a smeared and too-large little girl's dress hung on him and horrid, dirt-ground underthings. He was lugging something. A man's ground down and discarded shoe that he must have found in the roadway.

"Shoe," he said and held it out toward Bertha.

"Ugh, dirty," she said, and made a grimace.

"Dirty," he said, and made an identical grimace with his already dirt-grimaced face, and took the shoe by thumb and forefinger and threw it out of the door.

That was adorable and made you want to pinch the dirty little cheek.

"Lady?"

She lifted him up and sat him rather gingerly on the knee of her neat skirt. The brace bit through and down into her flesh. It was heavier than the child. Cruel. Sickening.

"Baby."

"Lady."

Meyerbogen came in. There were lines of perspiration running down his face.

"Chimmie," he said, "go back out in the yard. Get down off the missis. Here's a zinnamon bun."

"It's all right."

"He's dirty. I can't ged help in the gountry."

"Yah--dirty."

"I'm dirty," said Jimmie, and looked up at her with his clear eyes shining in their smeary sockets. The brace cut in.

"I'll wash him."

"Ach--blease--"

"Where is the----"

"Ach, no, but you ain't so good yourself with zunstroke----"

"I'm all right. Where?"

"Back there."

"Come, Chimmie."

Clank. Clank.

Incredible disorder of that room behind the shop. The fantastic confusion of a chair sitting crazily on a carpet sofa. A red hen had wandered in through a hole in the screen door. The dishes of what seemed many a breakfast were stacked on the table and half covered with the flung-up edges of the red tablecloth. Flies. There were swiss curtains at the windows, but they had dried on their poles into strings. A pet tortoise hung halfway up one. Boys' caps and flung off aprons and half a basket of new dug potatoes. A broken high chair. Dumped-out coffee grounds. Sack of grass seed. A child's slate hung on the wall with this chirography in the nonsense hand of boyhood.

[Illustration: The Meyerbogens]

It made the disorder suddenly not so terrible. It made you want to laugh.

Poor little Jimmie. He was so dirty. The smudge ran deep down into his pores and he cried at the rubbing. The brace was hard to lift off. Meyerbogen knew the device and did that, and the welts on the plump curving leg were so deep that you kissed them.

"He can ged all right. The doctor says he needs to be shown two hours every day how to walk so he don't throw his little leg out. I don't ged the time."

You kissed them again, the red fiery welts.

"I can ged all right." That was his way. The little mimic!

There were no towels and Meyerbogen ran downstairs into the basement where the baking ovens were, for some flour sacks, but while he was gone, Bertha found a clean bed sheet and rolled Jimmie into it.

He came out as round and as plump as a mushroom.

"O-o-o-o-o."

"O-o-o-o-o."

Patty-pat-pat up and down the bare back.

The children came trooping in. Three of them in dirty little steps. Oscar and Petey and Essie. Meyerbogens all. Dumpy. Thick. Sturdy. The girl had two beautiful brown braids that she could sit on. Oscar and Pete were just shaved, like little convicts.

"We gotta house-girl. We gotta house-girl."

"Shut up. It's only a gustomer gifing us help."

"I'll stay. I do day work."

"Ach, if you knew how I need help. I'll pay good."

There was a clean dress found for Jimmie. Almost immediately he fell asleep and the chair was lifted down off the carpet couch so that Bertha could stretch him out there. The children drifted off. You could hear the pleasant treble of them all through the somnolent afternoon. Thin, high incessant talk of children. Meyerbogen was downstairs baking. Once he called up for one of the large tin trays from the shop. Bertha carried it down. It was clean and full of the sweet hot breath down there in the basement, and one of the two helpers kept stoking the roaring ovens. Meyerbogen, leaning back from himself, enormous and flour-dusted and pink in the face. He lunged at the dough with a rolling pin; flattened it to a mat, flopped over the mat, lunged. The smell was strong. Full of life. Firm sweet bread. It was the realest smell of all. Almost with dimension. Bread.

"It's no blace down here in this heat for you. Go right back. You had a touch from the zun."

It was hard to know where to begin. The four tiny bedrooms up under the hot eaves were wrathy-looking with confusion. The tossed children's beds. What had once been neat enough carpets had rents in them where children's feet had skated. More of the once dainty curtains had sagged on their rods. The room where the boys slept was filled with the bulk of an elaborately contrived aeroplane. You had to climb around it to get at the window to open it. There was not enough fresh bed-linen but finally Bertha found a chest of it tucked away in a small slanting garret over the back porch.

A neat, old-world trunk full of coarse, carefully laundered linens, some with cotton crochet. Homely, strong things that the wife of Meyerbogen must have hemmed, crocheted, laundered, and packed away. They made all the tumbled-looking beds in that house seem suddenly cool, as if the mother of the Meyerbogens had laid a placid hand suddenly on the hot tossed brow of her household.

And Meyerbogen's room, with the great solemn walnut bed and the wardrobe that just grazed the ceiling. The wife of Meyerbogen had given life four times on that ugly brown bed. She must have been a strong woman. An odor still hung over the room. The green and milky sweetness of cows' breath when they lick their calves. Something had happened to the mirror over the dresser. It had come unscrewed and stood with its face to a corner. There was a chair rigged up beside the bed with a bit of looking-glass as jagged as lightning propped up against it and a razor and a shaving mug stiff with old suds beside it.

Great baby of a Meyerbogen. It must have made him red to bursting to stoop to shave. Bertha found out the trouble with the mirror against the wall. Its screws were threadbare. It was not easy to stand on a chair and unhinge the top ruffle of mill-work that made the wardrobe just graze the ceiling, and take out its screws and lean it against the wall and drag back the mirror for mounting on the dresser. It was a man's job, and a great pox of sweat broke out as she hoisted and screwed. It was astonishing, though, how it seemed to quiet the room of its state of confusion. That adjusted mirror and the made bed. There was little hope to do more in that afternoon than to untie the strings of swiss curtains from someone's attempt to get them up out of the way, and pin up one of the neat "splashers" that came out of the trunk behind the washstand. It was especially designed for there. An oblong of white crash with a little girl and a little boy embroidered in red and underneath in scrolled red script, "Good Morning."

It made the room begin to shine.

At long intervals the screen door to the shop slammed and the bell tittered. You could hear Meyerbogen lumbering up the cellar stairs. The house shuddered. Or sometimes one of the children ran around from the side yard across the wooden porch, slamming the kitchen screen sharply.

By late afternoon the beds were at least fresh and made and the dishes washed and a clean red cloth laid out on the table. Four hours of hoisting, scrubbing, straightening, that had scarcely made their dent. The red hen still clucked among the stove cinders and would not remain shooed out. And Jimmie. Constantly in and out through the hole in the screening he was lurid again with dirt. The crusty dirt of damp little hands and clay and unsavory objects about the yard.

"Chimmie, you bane all dirty!"

"Chimmie bane all dirty." Clank. Clank.

There was something about that little way of repeating your phrases. You held him very closely. The brace made him so heavy.

Meyerbogen was generous.

"Here is three dollars! You done a big day's work in a few hours."

"Oh, no----."

"Oh yes. Could you, blease, come to-morrow all day?"

"I got morning work promised at Coronation Point."

"To-morrow afternoon, then. Part time like to-day?"

"Yah----."

"Dot's good. You can stay for zupper now, if you want."

"Oh no--no----."

The shy inexplicability of that. She wanted to stay for supper. She wanted to putter over the stove with Essie. There was a great dish-pan of greens with the dirt from the garden still brown against their roots on the sink, and a ham end. Chimmie's low little body down there about her knees. The boys tussling out in the dust. It was pleasant there in that room with the new red tablecloth. The late sun slanted in through the screen and one step down led right out into the weed-ridden kitchen garden with the thin leafage of the peas stuck on sticks against the pinkening sky.

"You live in the city, not?"

"Yah."

"It's a long way."

"Yah."

"I bay carfare."

"Yah."

"You won't dissaboint--to-morrow?"

"No."

"Dot's good. I need help, blease. It's a confusion----"

"I'll come."

"Good night."

"Good night."

The sun was gone. The road back to the city was like a long gray river and the light on the forceps of car tracks had died.

***

The bread. Every noon of that week as you came down from Coronation Point Inn, the smell ran out a little ways to meet you and the treble shouts of the children and once Essie with her pigtails, came flying.

"Bertha's here. Bertha's here."

Why, that was a greeting! The words ran down your spine. Bertha's here.

"Say, oughtta see. Chimmie fell off the counter and shinnied his nose."

"Oh Essie----"

"It bled."

"Oh----"

"Papa couldn't make it stop. Papa can't do nothing. Blood makes him sick."

"Oh, Chimmie, Chimmie. Where is he?"

"There he is, laying out in the road. Get up, you. Papa will get you. Automobile will get you."

"Oh, Chimmie, you got hurt?"

"Chimmie got hurt. Look."

Clank. Clank. There was a great wad of cotton across his nose, held there precariously with strips of adhesive plaster. The brace that made him twice too heavy. And now his shinnied nose. You pulled back the cotton. It stuck and already some of the grime from the smeared little face was under.

There was a long siege of washing with the warm water from the basin that Essie held, and Pete tore off the hem of one of Meyerbogen's clean handkerchiefs and Oscar stood by with the vaseline.

So! The little dressing on Chimmie's nose was neater and flatter and cleaner. It made you glad, the neat little flatness and cleanness.

"Now, Chimmie's well."

"Now, Chimmie's well."

The children ran off. There were the curtains to be hung. They had been washed and ironed the day before and lay out, waiting.

Meyerbogen came around the side of the house with a sack of flour on his back. The white fog made him dim.

"You, Bertha?"

"Yah."

"Dot's good."

"Yah."

"Want lunch?"

"Yah, but I can fix it----"

"No, I'll fix. Veenie sandwich. Baked beans. Corned beef hash with boached egg."

"Beans."

It was pleasant at the little table in the bake shop. The motors spun past and left a little trail of quiet after the whizz. The mat of flies clung to the screen door but could not force in. The bread. The sweet rich smell of it from the ovens beneath. The beans were fragrant too.

Meyerbogen sat down opposite. His knees were very short and very wide apart and his great paunch threw him sway-back, so that he could not see them. Pouf! Out came the little fog of flour when he sat. His spring-tight curls and his eyelashes were all gray with it. Pouf! Out came a little fog when his hand struck the table. A short hand as dainty as a woman's and all bleached and soft from knuckling into the dough.

"It's a heat," he said.

"Yah."

"Want some mustard?"

"Yah----"

"Chimmie shinnied his nose."

"You didn't know how to dress it."

"Blood goes against me----"

"Yah----"

"Want some mustard?"

"I got some."

"You fixed it good."

"What?"

"Chimmie's nose."

"Yah----"

"It takes a woman. I can't keep help in the gountry. Since my woman is--gone, I got only confusion."

"They don't need me no more at Coronation Point."

"If, blease, you could come by us. There is a good room for you upstairs and----"

"By the week, you mean?"

"By the month. By the--always, if you would blease. I can pay...."

"Yah...."

"It ain't easy to find such a woman like you. The children, they like you. There is dot something about you--they know it always first. Children do."

"I can come."

"Dot's good. Oh, dot is very good. The confusion, it's bad. I need a woman. You. We would treat you like one of the family."

"Yah----"

The drone of high noon. The treble of the children. The little shining of the beads of sweat on Meyerbogen's nose.

He began to shamble out. Presently you could see him walking around the side of the house, bent, with a sack of flour on his back.

Family. A snug kind of a word. Like a new reefer that buttoned you in up the front. Only the buttons this time were Chimmie's eyes. Family. A snug kind of a word.

There were the curtains to be hung. They were very starched and stood away from the windows, and more than ever the rooms began to shine.

The dining room was the best. The red tablecloth helped and a potted petunia, revived a bit with watering, stood in the center. The red rooster was a trial. Finally, you had to sit on the floor and shir together a piece of red calico and hang it for a curtain across the lower half of the screen. For some reason the tortoise chose that to cling to now. Four times he had to be returned to his place under the stove. Petey's tortoise was named Pete. Once when Bertha exclaimed at him, for clinging to the new red curtain, Petey himself came running.

"Want me?"

"Not you. I meant Pete under the stove."

"Gimme piece of bread and apple sauce?"

"Here."

"M-m-m-m."

His shaved yellow head. You ran your hand around and around its bristliness and could feel his temples munching.

"Ouch."

"Don't run so hard, Petey."

"Aw quit. What you taking that down for? That's my slate, with my drawing on it. Give me."

"I yoost want to wipe down the wall, Petey, I'll hang it back."

"Give me. Where's my slate pencil?"

"Here."

He curled himself up in a corner. You could hear the soft stalkings of the pencil across the slate. The walls had to be brushed down with a broom with a cloth tied about it. They were very dusty.

"Watch out, Petey."

"M-m-m-m."

"Petey, get out of the dust."

"Lookie. Haw, lookie. Here we are. The whole family. I got you in this time--haw, lookie!"

There they were. The Meyerbogens as Petey had drawn them, only there was something that made your heart catch on its beat.

[Illustration: The Meyerbogens]

"Why Petey, that's me, on the end. Why Petey----"

After he had gone like a streak through the door with his bread and his apple sauce, she hung it back on the wall. Carefully. The Meyerbogens.

***

Chimmie had to be dressed and walked up and down the room without his braces and drilled not to curve out his leg. He cried because that hurt, and after she had helped him up and down for a cruel twenty minutes, he fell asleep. Then there was the sink drain pipe to be poked out. Essie was such a little girl and of course she had let the grease clog it up. Squnch. Ugh. It was not so bad if you turned your head....

Meyerbogen was coming up the stairs. You could tell by the little vibrations. They ran up the wall. The dishes shook. He carried a tray of cinnamon buns. You could almost hear their soft hot breath and get the whiff of the currants.

"Bertha, is dot you?"

"Yah...."

"Dot's good," he said, and went into the shop with the tray of hot buns.

The day began to slant. There were potatoes to be dug. The screen snapped as she went out with the dish pan, and the red calico curtain swung. The clayey earth gave forth grudgingly and showed up hard and yellow through the green. But the peas ran up the sticks gayly and there was an arbor that was all spangled with tiny green grapes that were no bigger than buckshot. Presently they would swell and purple and soften. The way to press wine out of grapes was with the feet. The bare, white toes.

Bertha's toes were hurting in her bluchers. The warm clay came burning through to them, making them climb and wriggle. It was easy to kick off the shoes and slide down the stockings. The soft, naked earth. Its warmth ran up her legs in a lightning of gooseflesh. Her toes bit down. White spatulate beauties, she could lift up little dredges of clean dirt with them.

To be bled free of the torments of the ecstasies. To sit there in the wide, westering light with the flat, eager faces of the toes down tasting earth, the good earth, peasantly. Breathers. Suckers in of the little vibratory messages.

Gladnesses here with dimension. The treble shrilling of the children. Pretty leafage of peas up a stick. Clank. Clank. Chimmie must be awake. Meyerbogen disappearing around the house with a sack of flour on his back. The tawny smell of the bread.

THE END

[Transcriber's Notes:

Odd and unusual spellings, contractions, etc., are as printed.

The source book used what looks like a small Viking ship as thought breaks: images/img-ship.jpg. In this ebook's text and HTML files, no attempt was made to replicate this, using three asterisks (***) instead.]