Part 23

A morning came with a southeast wind. Up to that I had lost almost no flies, so I started out with little extra tackle. The middle of the morning found me a mile deep in an alder swamp, bog on one side and piled-up brush on the other. It was what you would call dirty fishing, and in half an hour I had lost every fly and leader I had with me. There was nothing to do but put up my rod and go back. In an effort to strike higher ground I came into what was new country to me. A trail led up toward where I judged the blueberry ledges would be, and climbing for a mile or so I suddenly broke through into a clearing and a wagon road. A grayish house stood beside the road. A thin spiral of smoke curled out of the chimney. On a split stake, even with the road, teetered a sign reading:

HAND MADE TROUT FLIES FOR SALE HERE

I attacked the door without mercy. A moment’s knocking brought the sound of stirring from within, and the door finally creaked open, displaying the oddest cut of a little man in a wheel chair. He blinked at me like some great nocturnal bird, and soon there was an intelligent wag of the head--more at my clothes than at me.

“Come in. Doan’t gin’rally git lady fishermen. Hearn tell they git ’em down to the harbour lookin’ jes’ as he-ish as the men.” He rolled his chair backward from the door, beckoning me to follow. I could hear him repeating the last of his words under his breath as if by way of confirmation: “Yes, sir, looking jes’ as he-ish as the men.”

He led me into a room that might have been identified even in the uttermost corner of the world as having been conceived and delivered in the State of Maine. An airtight stove centred it, and on its pinnacle stood a nickel-plated moose at bay. There were half a dozen pulled-in rugs: fruit pulled in; red, yellow, and purple roses pulled in; a rooster pulled in; and other things that defied the imagination. The two window sills were gay with geraniums and begonias. Crayon portraits panelled the walls, and between each portrait hung a hair wreath. Fronting the door was a shower of coffin plates, strung together with a fish line. A large coloured print of a clipper hung over the mantel, while all about hung trophies of the South Seas--strings of shells and beads and corals. But the most amazing exhibit was the feathers: peacock, egret, flamingo, pheasant, turkey, and cock tails, yellowhammer and bluejay wings, breasts, crests and what not. The work bench was littered with tiny feathers, partridge and guinea fowl, and spools of bright silk. He brushed all these aside and reached underneath to a drawer, bringing out a handful of trout flies. It took no close scrutiny to tell their exquisite workmanship.

“Pick out what ye want. Swamp back yonder jes’ eats ’em up, doan’t it?” And he smiled an ingratiating, toothless smile.

I made my selections slowly, studying the little man more than the flies. His head was as bald and pink as a baby’s. His lips were tremulous, and his eyes showed that pale blue opacity of the very old or very young. It was his hands that held me confounded. They were twisted like bird claws. How they could have ever taken wisps of feather and fine lengths of silk and wound them into the perfect semblance of tiny aërial creatures was more than I could conceive. He caught at my wondering and with a burst of crowing laughter he held the claws closer for inspection. “Handsome, hain’t they? Cal’ate I work ’em steady as most folks work a good pair. Can’t stand wet nor cold, no better ’n Gram Perkins could in hern. Good days she was the smartest knitter in the county.”

So here was another Perkins. I aimed my habitual question at him, expecting no better results. “Tell me, do you know anything about those four dreams?”

He sat a moment, motionless, in what one might have termed a vainglorious silence. He sucked his lips in and out over those vacant gums as if he found them full of flavour; then he suddenly burst into the triumphant crow of a chanticleer. “Yes m’am! Cal’ate I do know them dreams--seein’ I dreamed ’em. I be Zeb Perkins!” He said it with as sweet an unction as if he had announced himself King of the Hejaz. In a flash the room stood revealed anew. It spoke aloud of Sara Amanda Perkins, beloved wife of Benjamin Perkins, sea captain; of his clipper, of the relics of his voyages, of her handiwork in rugs and wreaths. The very begonias might be slip grandchildren of the ones she had planted. Here, indeed, was a stage set for those dreams. Here sat Zeb Perkins, playwright and stage manager, picking excitedly at his pink head, eternally ready to ring up his curtain. He caught my eye on the wreaths.

“Them little tow-headed fergit-me-nots belonged to her first son as died a baby. She set a terrible store by him. The black in them susans come from her sister Ida, my great-aunt Perkins. See them coffin plates. Ye’ll see every one of them was copper, nickeled over, every one but Gram’s. Hers was solid.”

There was a wealth of information conveyed in that last word. I had been standing until now. One of Zeb’s claws waved itself away from the coffin plates to a chair: “Set, woan’t ye? Ye’ll see them rockers under ye are worn as flat as sledge runners. That was Gram’s chair; and we wore them rockers off luggin’ her ’round. She was all crippled up, Gram was, same as me; only in them days there warn’t no wheel chairs.”

The chair was all Zeb claimed. There was no more rock to it than to a dray sledge. From the chair his eyes flew to the crayon portraits. “Look at them! Look at Marm--then look at Gram. Why, there was nary a thing Gram couldn’t do, for all her crippled-upness. Bake a pie, fry a batch o’ doughnuts, clean up the butt’ry. But Marm seems like she was born fretty and tired. Made ye tired jest to watch her travel from the sink to the cook stove. She’d handle a batch o’ biscuits like she never expected to live to see ’em baked. Jes’ lookin’ at ’em, can’ ye make out a difference?”

I did and I could. In spite of everything the artist had done to obliterate all human expression he had mastered the single point of difference. One face sagged utterly, the other looked out with sharp alert eyes on a world that interested her immensely. There was a grim humour about the mouth, and a firmness that spoke a challenge even at the end of a century.

“I tell ye,” Zeb’s eulogy was gathering momentum. “We boys set a terrible store by Gram. She was cuter and smarter tied to that chair than Marm was on two good legs--hands to match ’em. Golly! How sick boys git bein’ whined at. Didn’t make no odds what we done--good or bad--Marm al’ays whined, but Gram--she stood by like she’d been a boy herself. She’d beg us off hoein’ fer circus and fair days and slip us dimes for this or that. Cal’ate she’s slipped us enough nickels and dimes to stretch clean to the upper pasture. Pasture! Golly! When we was up thar, hot days, hayin’, she’d al’ays mix us a pitcher o’ somethin’ cool--cream o’ tartar water or lemon and m’lasses. When she had it ready she’d take a stick and tick-tack on the wind’y. She could whistle, too; whistle through them crooked fingers o’ hern like a yaller-hammer. She’d whistle whenever she wanted to be fetched anywhars; then one of us boys would come runnin’ and heave her to wheresomever she aimed to go--kitchen to butt’ry--butt’ry to settin’ room--settin’ room to shed.”

Zeb stopped here and illustrated. He put two of his crooked fingers to his mouth and shrilled out a thin, wailing note as eery as a banshee’s.

“That’s the way she done it,” he continued. “And Marm would fuss and fret and say she didn’t see why the Lord ’lowed a little crippled-up body like Gram’s to stay so chuck full o’ spunk. Some days she git sort o’ vengeful, Marm would, and tell Gram she’d better quiet down decent, or more’n likely she’d never rest quiet in her grave after she died.”

III

A hush fell on the room. There was a baleful light shimmering through Zeb’s dull eyes, his claws began a nervous intertwining. “Wall ...” he broke the silence at last, “Gram died. Night afore she died seems like she got scairt. She grabbed us boys one after another and made us all promise we wouldn’t bury her twell we were good and sure she was dead. ‘Keep me five days--promise me that,’ she kept a-sayin’. And we promised. Recollect it didn’t seem to me then as how Gram could die--so full of smartness and spunk. Even after old Doc Coombs come and pronounced her, seemed like she’d open her eyes any minute and ask us boys to lug her somewhars. ’Stead o’ that she lay so quiet, seemed like I could hear Doomsday strike.”

The air about us became suddenly supercharged with something. Was it that ravenous desire for life that must have consumed Gram Perkins? Under their glass domes the hair wreaths seemed to move as if fanned by a breath. The feathers about us swayed. The rooster in the pulled-in rug seemed to pulse with life and a desire to crow. A crowing shook the room, but it came from Zeb.

“Hot! Golly, Gram died in the sizzlingest spell, middle of August, folks can remember. Didn’t embalm in them days, so ’twas ice or nothing. We drew lots for shifts--us boys. Ben and Ellery drew day; Sam and me night. Mebbe we didn’t work! Lugged in hunks from the ice house to the shed; thar we cracked and lugged in dish pans to the settin’ room. Crack--lug--mop--lug--crack. Five days! It’s been a powerful sight o’ comfort sence to know we kept Gram’s promise. Then come the funeral--smart one. Slathers o’ flowers and mourners and hacks. Cal’ate you’ve seen the lot whar we buried her?”

At the mention of burial a sense of enormity made me shudder. I was beginning to realize that the further Zeb progressed in the matter of the obsequies of Gram Perkins the more alive she became. At that moment she possessed the house--every crack and cranny in it. She possessed Zeb, and she possessed me. I found myself straining my ears for the rattle of dishes in the butt’ry or the sharp thin note of a whistle. Zeb’s ear was cocked as well as mine.

“Them dreams,” he said, pulling himself together. “First one come fifteen years after Gram died. All was gone from the harbour by that time but me. Ben took the pneumony and died quick. Ellery got liver complaint, turned yaller as arnicy and thinned out to a straw. Sort o’ blew away he did. Sam--he got trampled on by a horse. That left jes’ me. Night after I buried Marm I come back here and had my first dream. I was young ag’in. Boys back, Marm back, all of us settin’ thar at Gram’s funeral. Parson was a-prayin’--had been fur a considerable time. I could hear Nate French fumblin’ fur his tunin’ fork, so’s to lead the departin’ hymn when plain as daylight I heard a whistle. Yes, m’am. Then I heard a tick-tack--like Gram was knockin’ on some wind’y. Kept hopin’ she’d quiet down when out shot another whistle--clear above the parson’s prayin’. Nobody but me seemed to notice, so I got up gingerly and tiptoed over to the coffin and raised the lid.

“Thar she was--fixin’ fur to tick-tack ag’in. I grapped her fingers quick and shoved ’em back whar they belonged. Then I leaned over and whispered, loud as I durst, ‘Lay still, Gram. Parson’s nigh through and we’ll be movin’ along shortly. Folks ’ll be passin’ ’round in a moment to view the remains. Fur the Lord’s sake, close your eyes and act sensible.’ Wall ... that fixed her. She give me a wink so’d I know she’d act right, and I tiptoed back to my place. They was all still a-prayin’--kept right on a-prayin’ twell I woke up. Three years later, come November, I had the second.”

Zeb shivered, and so did I. I wanted that second dream and yet I did not want it. Had I chosen I could no more have stayed it than one could have held back the second act of a Greek tragedy.

“We was on our way to the cemetery.” Zeb’s voice lifted me free of all choice in the matter. “I was ridin’ outside the first hack, bein’ the youngest, and I was thinkin’ what a fine day it was fur that time o’ year. Sort o’ funny, too, fur Gram died in August and here it was November and we was jes’ gittin’ to bury her. I was lookin’ at the hearse when it happened. Hearses was different in them days, black urns at the four top corners with black plumes stickin’ out and a pair o’ solid wooden doors behind. Above the poundin’ of the horses’ hoofs I heard a hammerin’ on them solid doors. Bang ... bang ... plain as daylight. Old Jared Sims was drivin’ and I didn’t want he should hear so I sung out, ‘Cal’ate they’re shinglin’ the Coomb’s barn.’ He turned ’round in his seat to look, and jes’ that minute thar come a regular whale of a hammerin’ and the doors of the hearse bust open. Thar was Gram--top of her own coffin, peekin’ down low at me and beckonin’ fur me to come and git her.

“Mad! I was as mad as a hornet. I went back to that wink she’d given me in t’other dream and seemed like she’d gone back on her word--something Gram had never done livin’. I was off the seat of that hack in a jiffy, runnin’ aside the hearse. When the goin’ slowed up I stuck my head inside and hollered, ‘Ye git straight back whar ye b’long! And what’s more ye stay thar!’ Then I begun to whimper like I couldn’t stand my feelin’s another minute. ‘Gram,’ says I, ‘hain’t ye got any heart? Do ye want to disgrace us boys? How’ll ye cal’ate we’ll feel to have the neighbours thinkin’ we’re tryin’ to bury ye ag’in your will? We give ye them five days like we promised--can’t ye lay down decent and proper now?’

“That settled her. She turned, meek as a cow, climbed back into her coffin and closed the lid down. I went back to the hack and climbed up. We was still a-goin’ when I woke up.”

IV

An interlude followed. I tried to bring back my mind to the reality of life as I knew it to be. I fingered my trout flies and did my best to image the still, deep pool below the swamp where I had been on the point of casting just as my last leader broke. Half an hour more I could be back there, casting again. But the pool and the trout faded into oblivion beside the sterner reality of Gram Perkins. I was on the hack with young Zeb, my eyes fastened in growing perturbation on a pair of solid black doors.

“Jes’ started on our January thaw when the next dream took me,” broke in Zeb. “We’d reached the cemetery. Grave dug, coffin lowered, folks standin’ ’round fur a final prayer. To all appearances everything was goin’ first rate. But the sexton hadn’t more than picked up his shovel, easy-like, when out comes a whistle, clear as a fog horn. I opened my eyes quick and looked down. Thar was Gram, poppin’ out like a jack-in-the-box, lid swung wide open and both hands reachin’ fur the dirt the sexton was shovellin’ in. Yes, m’am! Ye never saw dirt fly in all your born days the way Gram made it fly. At the rate she was goin’, I knew we’d be standin’ thar twell Doomsday, gittin’ her buried.

“Everybody else was prayin’ hard along with the parson, and he was ’most to the Resurrection. I knew somethin’ had to be done quick, so in I jumped. I slapped the dirt out of her hands hard like you would with a child and says I, ‘Land o’ goodness, Gram, what ails ye? We’ve fetched ye along to what the Bible calls your last restin’ place. All we boys is askin’ of ye now is to keep quiet and rest twell Jedgment Day.’

“The words warn’t more’n out afore I knew I’d said the wrong thing. She didn’t lay any more store ’bout this eternal restin’ than what ye would, settin’ thar fingerin’ them flies. She give me the most pitiful look ye ever saw on a human face. It said, plain as daylight, ‘Zeb, lug me back home and let me git to work ag’in.’

“Wall ... I took to whimperin’ like a two-year-old. ‘Ef ye woan’t do it fur the Bible,’ says I, ‘do it fur us boys. Ye’ve al’ays been terrible proud of us--al’ays wanted we should have jes’ what we wanted, and thar’s nothin’ in the whole o’ creation we want so much this minute as to see ye restin’ peaceful. Git back in. Close your eyes, fold your hands, git that listen fur the last trumpet look on your face. Hurry, woan’t ye? The sexton’s shovellin’ like sixty.’

“She give me another of them pitiful looks--nigh broke me all up--and she sort o’ slid back and slammed the lid down on her fur all the world like one of these cuckoo clocks. I lit out and landed side o’ the parson jes’ as he said ‘Amen.’ ... ‘Amen,’ says I, thankful-like. ‘Amen,’ says the sexton.... ‘Amen,’ says the mourners in a roarin’ chorus like the sea. And then I swear to ye that way under the dirt I heard Gram sing out Amen! Tell ye I woke in a sweat!”

“Cold sweat?” I asked. It was all I could think of.

“Cold as a clam, dripped with it.”

“That makes three.”

“Three!” Zeb tolled it out like a passing bell. “All bad enough--the fourth, worst of all. Ye wait.”

I waited.

“Three years I lived comfortable in my mind. Seemed like that last Amen had settled things. Then May come along. I’d been slippin’ some of them geraniums to take up to the cemetery Memorial Day. I could still walk some--slowly, but git about--and I went to bed mighty real happy at the idea o’ fixin’ up Gram’s grave. Right on top o’ that came the fourth dream!

“I was swingin’ up the road toward the cemetery, and in one hand I carried a pot with the slips in, and t’other held my stick I walked with. Jes’ about reached the lot when up comes a jedge from Boston--nice feller--and I asked him to come along and see the view from our place. ‘Most famous in the State,’ says I. ‘Clear days we can see ’most anything.’

“I fetched him through the iron gates and stood him up close to the monument and begun pointin’ places out. ‘Thar’s Mount Washington,’ says I. ‘Some days ye can see the whole Presidential Range.... Thar’s Katahdin ... thar’s....’ But I stopped thar dead. I’d caught something move in the grass by Gram’s headstone. The next minute out come a whistle, loudest I ever heard. I swung the jedge clear ’round and pointed out to sea. ‘Thar’s Mount Desert,’ says I, and ‘thar’s Isle au Haut. That’s the Rockland boat ye hear whistlin’--consarn it!’

“I looked at Gram. She’d got her head and shoulders clear and she was whistlin’ ag’in fur dear life. Then she took her fingers out of her mouth and nodded her head toward out back. Seemed like she was askin’ me fur the last time to take her home. The jedge seemed lost in the scenery, and I stepped up to Gram and showed her the geranium slips. ‘Look at them,’ says I. ‘Fetched ’em all the way over to decorate your grave, and here ye be, bustin’ loose and cuttin’ up. Hain’t ye ever goin’ to give in and rest in peace?’

“Wall, she never said a word, jes’ kept working herself further and further out. I was terrible scairt the jedge would turn round any second and ketch her. Stood thar on pins and needles watchin’ Gram rise from her grave. ‘Have a heart, Gram,’ I begun coaxin’ ag’in. ‘How’d ye like a city feller like that jedge to ketch a Perkins turnin’ ghost like?’ ... Never finished what I set out to say. She looked so queer and upset--so like she wanted to tell me something and didn’t know how. I stood thar, geraniums in one hand, stick in t’other, tryin’ to make out what it was Gram wanted to tell me. Then it come over me, all of a flash. ’Twasn’t she that wanted to git out; ’twas that smart, spunky body o’ hern. It was drivin’ the sperrit same as a strong wind drives a cloud afore it. She was ready to rest if that doggoned crippled-up, pie-bakin’, doughnut-fryin’ body would have let her be. But it wouldn’t. It was draggin’ her out of her coffin, out of her grave, turnin’ her loose about the county like no decent sperrit could stand.

“‘I’ll fix it,’ says I, droppin’ the geraniums and grabbin’ the stick with both hands, ‘I’ll fix it so it’ll let ye rest quiet twell Doomsday,’ and with that I laid on Gram with that stick. I beat her up twell thar warn’t nothin’ left but a scatterin’ of dust on the spring sod. Yes, m’am! I reduced Gram to dust and ashes like the Bible said had to be.”

A long sigh swept the stillness of the room. The face of Zeb Perkins underwent a sequence of changes. Triumph had been there, but it dwindled out and sorrow took its place; and then a fear, a tremulous commiseration and, finally, bewilderment. He now looked straight at me. His eyes were dull, fearful. “They doan’t understand, them Perkins to the harbour. They doan’t think I ever ought to have done that to Gram.”

I gathered up my flies and was halfway to the door before Zeb spoke again. His voice had now grown querulous: “Wall--what do ye think?”

I gave my answer as I slipped out of doors, into the wide spaces again. “I think the trout are going to bite,” said I.

THE LITTLE GIRL FROM TOWN

BY RUTH SUCKOW

From _Harper’s_

“I wonder who that is coming here,” Mrs. Sieverson said, looking out of the kitchen window.

“Somebody coming?” Mr. Sieverson asked from the sink. “Oh, I guess that’s Dave Lindsay, ain’t it? He said he’d be out.”

“Yes, but he’s got someone with him. Oh! I believe it’s that little girl from back East somewhere that’s visiting them. Leone! Children!”

Mr. Sieverson went outdoors, and then Mrs. Sieverson, and, by the time the car stopped, rounding the drive, all four children were on hand from somewhere. Even Marvin and Clyde, the two boys.

“Anybody home?” Mr. Lindsay called out jovially.

“You bet!”