The Fires of Spring (11 page)

“He’s got a right to be sad,” a newcomer said. “What they did to him!”

“He ain’t sad,” an old-timer said. “He’s nuts.”

With no warning a chair crashed against Door 5. Toothless Tom blanched and said, “Somebody better get the guards.” As he spoke a teacup smashed through Luther’s window and clattered, with broken glass, to the areaway below.

Toothless Tom and David went down to Door 5. “You get away from here!” Luther screamed at Tom. Then, with
an icy grip, he hauled David into the room and banged the door shut.

David saw that the room was a shambles. In the corner lay the broken chair. Glass was scattered about, and the bedclothes had been ripped into ragged strips.

The crazy Dutchman clasped David to him and moaned, “Oh, David! I did have that factory. I made lots of cigars. Good cigars!” His tortured brain collapsed and he bellowed, “I MADE CIGARS!” His hands twisted madly in the cigar-maker’s pattern. With a jagged chunk of wood from the chair he sliced away imaginary ends of Havana wrapper. His eyes were wild with fury, old confusion, old anguish.

He now roared about his factory senselessly, standing between David and the door. The boy stood very still. He had seen many mad people in the poorhouse, over on crazy row. He knew what he must do. He smiled at Luther, who became calm.

“David!” the man began to weep. “I don’t know. I done everything right. They only had to tell me once. ‘Don’t use spit,’ the man said. ‘Use water from that pitcher.’ ” He looked about the broken room wildly for the missing pitcher.

In an excess of violence he thrust David away from him. “You got my pitcher! Paul! Where you hide my pitcher?” David stood very still. In a wild rage the crazy Dutchman heaved his chunk of broken wood through the broken window. Then he leaped at David, shouting, “I’ll kill you, Paul!”

But David managed to evade the frenzied dive, and Luther sprawled into the broken glass. With a cry of pain he brushed away the slivers of glass that tore at his hands and leaped once more at the boy. This time he caught David by the belt. With a tremendous jerk he ripped the boy backwards and lifted him high in the air. For a long moment he stood with the boy, ready to throw him through the broken window. And then some glimmer of light found its way into his addled mind. The Dutchman grinned at David and tossed the trembling boy onto the bed.

The door burst open and two guards leaped at the crazy man. Feeling their hands upon his body, Luther made a last violent gesture and threw the men against the wall. Then he leaped for the open door, but one of the guards tripped him, and he fell forward, so that his face smashed sickeningly into the sharp corner of the door jamb. Mad Luther, his face
smashed in, his hands stabbed with glass, and his knees bleeding, fell backwards into the room.

The scene had been so macabre that for a moment the old men forgot David, and while the guards hauled Luther over to crazy row, the boy slipped into his own room to wash away the flecks of blood that Luther’s frenzied hands had left. Suddenly Toothless Tom cried, “Where’s the boy?”

From the door of his own room David answered, “I’m all right.”

“Did he hurt you?” the excited men demanded, and David, remembering that single flash of recognition on the madman’s face, replied, “He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

Lights went out, and the old men, nervous from having seen something of themselves in mad Luther, went silently to their lonely rooms. After a time Toothless rapped on Door 8. “Come in!” David whispered eagerly, for he too was lonely, but from a different cause.

“I don’t think Luther would hurt you,” Tom reasoned.

“I don’t think so, either,” David agreed. He knew that what had happened between him and Luther had been a kind of game, a passionate, wild affair in which one of the players was mad, but not so mad as to forget who the sandy-haired boy was.

But it was more than a game, and David asked, “Did lots of these people come to the poorhouse because of things other people did to them?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” the toothless old man replied. “Luther did, but he ain’t bright enough to run loose, anyway. I don’t know about Old Daniel. Some men just ain’t intended to make a livin’. As for me?” Tom paused. “I tell you what, David. You seen that long skinny man come in here a while ago? Iron bars couldn’t keep him in. Nor his wife, neither. If I been like him, I’d sure be outta here by now. Don’t that stand to reason?” He paused again, for a very long time, and in the darkness David could almost hear him thinking. Finally he said, “You mark my words. For the next fifteen years ain’t nobody comin’ on this hall but what he claims Mr. Crouthamel done it to him. Whadda you think? You think one man done it all?”

For a moment Toothless Tom’s argument convinced the boy, but then on the crazy row Luther Detwiler recovered consciousness. He moved his aching body on the smelly bed. His mind wandered in past days, and he tried vainly to figure where he was and why. All he could remember was
that he had been a faithful workman and a frugal man, so he surrendered to mad confusion with a piercing cry that echoed through the poorhouse and filled David’s room: “I MADE CIGARS.”

In Bucks County spring ended on the day when the girls went swimming. Not dipping a toe in, either, but the warm fine day when with giggles and delight they plunged to the sandy bottom of the pool.

In David’s eleventh year summer began in late May. A series of warm days heated the earth, and on Friday morning David asked the poorhouse driver to wait a minute at the bridge. The boy got out, felt the water, swished his arm among the reeds, and grinned. At school he reported, “Felt good today!”

The little girls asked, “Warm … enough, that is?” He nodded.

So on Saturday a crowd gathered at the swimming hole behind the hill. The little girls, laughing merrily, ducked into a wooded cave, where traditionally they changed into their suits. David was swinging high on a limb above the water when they arrived, and he thought their giggling especially silly on that fine day.

“How’s the water?” Harry shouted up to him.

“It’s peachy!” David replied.

“How would you know?” Harry teased.

“Look! My suit’s already wet. I went in from up here a while ago!”

“Do it now!” Harry challenged. David swung back and forth, but suddenly he became frightened and began to laugh nervously.

“I’ll wait,” he said sheepishly. Some older boys along the bank began to tease him when suddenly their attention was diverted from the sandy-haired boy in the tree. From the girls’ cave had come a big, well-rounded girl named Betty.

“Hello!” she cried in a bright, edgy voice. The boys began to cluster about her. “Watch out! Them wet suits!” she squealed. This encouraged the boys, and they grabbed at her, eagerly. She struggled happily with them for a while and then screamed murderously as they mauled her into the chilly water. “My God A’mighty!” she squealed. “You’re killin’ me!” From the bank a boy dashed madly into the air and plunged right beside the struggling group. A spray of cold water deluged the big girl. “Watch out, will ya?” she demanded.
Two of the boys began to brush the water off her suit, especially around her chest. She protested mildly, and then uttered a playful scream as another boy grabbed her by the legs and pulled her under the water.

But as she submerged David heard another scream, and this one came not in play. It was a girl’s voice, and she was screaming in the cave. Instantly, David plunged from his high perch, but he was beaten to shore by the strong swimmers who had been grabbing at the girl’s legs. David had to wait till they scrambled out, and then he followed them breathlessly to the cave. Four little girls from Grade Five, two almost undressed, were pointing to the woods.

“A man!” they cried, and they were trembling.

“Just somebody tryin’ to get a peek,” a know-it-all boy said.

“No!” a little girl screamed. “He took his pants down.”

Silently, the big boys looked at the girl. She clutched a petticoat over her body and nodded. “Yes, he did,” she said. In disgust her three companions agreed.

The boys dashed into the woods. One of them—who had himself many times hidden near the caves—cried knowingly, “He’d go this way!” The mob followed him, and soon David heard great shouts.

“Knock him down!”

“Grab his legs!”

“Club his brains out.”

There was a sullen crashing in the woods, and David hurried up just as two stones struck the intruder in the head. He fell to the earth, and two boys jumped on him. His pants were not yet buttoned. “That’s him!” a little girl cried, hurrying up to stare. Four boys slugged at the fallen man. Finally the leader made them stop and roll the trespasser over on his back. It was Toothless Tom.

David felt sick. A little girl from Grade Five took his hand and whispered, “That’s the man, Dave.” But the words came to the boy from far away, filled with strange and horrible loathing.

“Get the cops!” an older boy directed. “You!” he said, pointing to David. “Go out and stop a car.”

Mechanically David started to do so, but he took only three steps. Then he stopped. “Whatsa matter?” the leader asked, standing with a heavy club over Tom’s head.

“Why don’t we let him go?” David asked. A shout of derision howled him down.

“We oughta beat his brains out. Now you scram!” The leader left Tom and shoved David along the path, but the boy would not move. He stuck his jaw out, not much, but some.

“Let’s let him go,” David said quietly. “We already done enough to him.” He pointed at old Tom’s face where a stone had hit below he eye.

“He took his pants down, didn’t he?” the leader demanded, pushing David again.

“We hurt him enough,” David repeated.

He might have won his argument but the big girl now bustled up and stared with disgust at the fallen intruder. “You filthy bum!” she shouted, spitting at him. “Guys like you oughta be shot!”

“Yeah!” the boys agreed, and they began to kick the old man.

“Stop it!” David insisted. His voice rose to a high squeak. The older boys laughed.

“You oughta beat him up some more!” the big girl said, kicking at Tom’s chest.

David leaped at her. “You stay out of this!” he cried. “This is for boys!” The big girl laughed at him and pushed him backwards.

Then she snapped her fingers and cried, “I know you, you little runt. You’re the poorhouse kid! And this old sonofabitch is a poorhouse crum, ain’t he?” The words inflamed the boys and they began to thump Tom again.

“Is he a poorhouse crum?” the leader demanded.

“No!” David said. There was a moment’s pause, but the big girl was beside herself with excitement.

“They oughta operate on a guy like him!” she snarled, kicking at Tom again. The boys would have joined in but David, with tears welling into his eyes, said, “He’s an old man.” In spite of his determination not to cry, tears bubbled onto his red cheeks. He kept his face turned up to the bigger boys, and the unwelcome tears stood like little pools beside his nose. “He’s an old man,” the boy insisted.

There was a moment of long thought. Then Harry Moomaugh, who was bigger than David and therefore more to be respected, said, “Let’s let him go.”

So the bigger boys pulled Toothless Tom to his feet. The old man’s knees actually refused to lock. Pathetically, he slumped forward into the arms of his attackers. Blood from his bruised face stained the naked shoulder of the leader, who
snapped back in unhidden horror. David took the scared boy’s place and held Tom up.

“If you ever come back here,” the big girl cried, “we’ll kill you.”

Stumbling and staggering into trees, Toothless Tom left the swimming hole. The little girls finished dressing and came down to swim. The leader of the boys washed blood from his shoulder, and for a while it seemed as if the swimming hole had returned to normal; but David noticed one big difference. Now the big girl was left alone. Boys did not run their hands beneath her swimming suit to squeeze her legs.

As David dressed, on this first day of summer, Harry Moomaugh whispered to him, “He was a poorhouse crum, wasn’t he?”

“No!” David insisted.

“But I saw him down there!” Harry recalled.

“I never saw him before,” David said.

And that evening, walking home across the hills, David tried to comprehend what he had seen. That Toothless Tom had done something very wrong was obvious. But why did the big girl want Tom killed? Why did the boys beat him so hard? And why did the little girls shiver and scream in the cave? And the big girl, too! One minute all the boys were eager to grab at her and wrestle with her. The next, and she was left alone as if they were ashamed.

David paused and in the sweet evening of soft sounds tried to remember what Old Daniel had told him about men and women, that dark night behind Door 8. Apparently Daniel hadn’t told him everything, but there was one incident of that night which David now recalled. It had happened when Daniel had started to speak. Toothless had tried to scuttle from the room. “I never been married!” he had pleaded, and while Daniel had talked, it had been Tom, tall and almost seventy, who had blushed and fidgeted. “I guess it’s because he didn’t get married,” David reasoned. But immediately he saw that he had come to a conclusion which explained nothing. “Maybe,” he argued stubbornly, “it was because of things like today that he didn’t get married.” The boy was torn with confusion, and he wondered much about men and women.

But on one point there was no confusion. When he reached the poorhouse he would walk right into his room and toss his swimming suit in a corner. Then, as if nothing had happened, he would yell for Tom. When he found the man he
would look right at him, like the Quakers, and ask, “What happened to your face?” And that night—he knew—Tom would be ashamed to tap on Door 8, so he, David, would tap on Tom’s door.

With this idea in mind, David slipped into the pantry and begged for two pieces of cheese and some bread. Stuffing the repast into his pocket, he climbed the steps to the long hall. “You can’t run away from a friend,” David muttered. “Not even if he gets into trouble with little girls.”

David did not comprehend the heartbreak and tragedy of a country poorhouse because he had taken his residence upon an island. When he retreated doggedly to that fortress, nothing could touch him, not death nor humiliation nor the visible decay of defeated old men. He was king of his island, its sole inhabitant, the watcher of its hills and the guardian of its sunsets. The moat of his island was the protecting wonder of his vagabond mind that saw tragedy as an invitation to experience. The castle was David’s unfailing belief in himself; and the ultimate sanctuary of the castle was the boy’s quiet love for other people. He lived in a kind of dream world where Hector always won.