The Fires of Spring (59 page)

David had now started to organize thought-chapters for his novel. He would wander about the fine old streets of the Village composing whole chapters in his mind. Some days he would repeat a single phrase more than a hundred times, constructing around it an ever-towering edifice of ideas. Even on the most snowy days he could visualize canal barges drifting down a summery canal. When he had perfected a chapter in his mind, he would feel good, almost as good as if it had been committed to paper. The characters of his book—still nameless—came to have greater reality to him than people he met on the Village streets.

Of course, he had no money. In anticipation of Repeal, Mom permitted him to rebuild the bar, and for this she gave him such odds and ends of change as he had to have. He also reported daily to Miss Adams, but usually she said, “Nothing today, David.”

But occasionally she gave him a half dozen galleys to proofread. Sometimes he saw Mr. Clay, who was much older now. The trim gray man edited five magazines and Morris Binder took care of the rest. The other editors had all been fired.

On press days Miss Adams often said, “Here’s a bunch of
art work for the engravers. And they have some packages for us.” She gave him thirty cents, a nickel up, a nickel back, and twenty cents for himself. He took the parcels to an engraver’s on East Thirty-ninth Street. Then he would run as fast as he could, all the way back to Lafayette Street, and thus save a nickel, so that he earned twenty-five cents a day.

But the nickel saved was never a nickel earned; for on his way home he would stop by Shriftgeisser’s Bakery, where an old German woman sold him two stale chocolate eclairs for his hard-earned nickel. So he wound up with only twenty cents after all. But he loved the eclairs! His mouth would water when he saw them, stale though they were. He enjoyed his first bite through the soft chocolate, through the flaky egg crust, and into the cool whipped-cream filling. He ate his eclairs in six big bites, walking down Fourth Street. He usually finished the second one by the time he reached Washington Square, so that no matter what the weather or his disappointments, when he saw that friendly Square he felt good.

For most novelists, the next process after thought-writing is the actual preparation of a first draft, but for David this step was long postponed. His insecurity kept him from doing any sequential work; his agitated emotions imprisoned him in perpetual suspense, and the best he could do was to wander about the Village, erecting cloudy mental images of Bucks County. He lived on the hope that once he sat down to write, perfect scenes and passages would burst magically upon his paper. The novel was as good as written. So he loafed in Washington Square.

Once he spent a whole day trying to evolve a name for Mona Meigs. He strolled from MacDougal Street to Gay and on to Bank and Little West Twelfth, repeating to his inward ear the litany of names he had contrived: Marcia Derry? Alice Bates? Lucretia Berry? Rosa Kullman? He conceived the idea that if he could only find the right name, his book would be half written.

In his loneliness he took a new interest in Claude and talked with him for long afternoons about the use of words. Or he would take Claude’s place in the restaurant. He became meticulous about making change correctly, so that if a Village bum forgot a nickel, David would run after him and remind him of the coin.

But in spite of the dedication he felt within, he acknowledged that these were the dark days. He discovered this when
he walked through the Village streets and found that for the most part he kept his eyes averted. He did not want people to see how lonely and useless he had become. There was a thin, beautiful Jewish girl who went to night school at NYU. She smiled at him night after night, and he borrowed thirty cents from Mom so that he could feel free to speak with her. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“I don’t drink,” she said.

He blushed and ran down Third Street. She cried after him, “I meant I didn’t drink, like that!” But he hurried away, ashamed.

On such nights he did not think: “Some day I’ll remember this and put it in a book.” This was not book stuff. It was a tired and rasping depression, and he could not look in other faces, for they were tired and hungry, too.

And then, strangely, he started to write, violently and eruptingly. It happened in this way. One morning he shuffled into the restaurant and Mom Beckett said, “Dave, pull yourself together. I’ve got bad news for you.”

“What?” he asked stolidly.

“Let’s sit over here.” The big woman was visibly nervous, and she put her hand on David’s. “Bad news comes to everybody,” she said.

“What is it?” David demanded.

“A telegram came. I opened it. Your Aunt Reba’s dead.” She sniffed.

David looked at her big, handsome face and grinned. “Save the act,” he laughed. “She was a mean old sonofabitch.”

A big, happy smile broke over Mom’s face. She said, “Claude! Draw us a couple of beers! So she was a stinker, eh?”

“Mom,” David laughed, “she was the queen of stinkers. How about lending me some dough for a movie?”

“It ain’t as simple as that, kid,” Mom replied. She unfolded the telegram and said, “They ask you to come down and supervise the funeral.”

“Should I go?”

“Yes. Claude’ll lend you his black suit.” So in a borrowed suit David Harper returned to Bucks County.

He had not envisaged such a setting for his return to Doylestown: a steaming day in August, less than a dollar in his pockets, a borrowed suit, and a funeral. He had rather imagined himself coming back with a briefcase in hand and a well-tied tie, bespeaking modest but substantial success.

Yet here he was. He knew no one at the poorhouse. Now even Luther Detwiler was dead, wildly crazy at the end and chained to the wall. Reba Stücke was grim and bitter in her cheap coffin. Against his will David looked at her as she lay in the poorhouse chapel, her lips tight-sealed and her eyes staring meanly ahead, even beneath closed lids. She had been an evil, bitter person, and he could feel no sorrow. A woman who had graced neither her own life nor humanity was dead. She must be buried.

But the burial presented a problem. While David gazed at his aunt’s remains he was aware that two men were watching him from the shadows. After a decent interval one of them tapped him on the shoulder. It was the overseer, who whispered hoarsely, “You got the money to bury her?”

“I didn’t know anything about money!” David protested.

The second man came up. “I’m the undertaker,” he said mournfully. “This must have been a terrible shock to you.”

“I don’t have any money,” David explained.

“She was your aunt!” the overseer insisted.

“But she saved money for her funeral!” David pressed, ashamed of himself yet seeing no other alternative.

“Of course!” the overseer agreed. “But her money’s tied up. No one can get at it legally, not even for a funeral.”

“We could bury her in potter’s field,” the undertaker suggested slowly.

“She’s the boy’s own flesh and blood!” the overseer said in disgust.

“How much?” David demanded bitterly.

“Fifty dollars,” the undertaker said promptly. “And that’s special. Poorhouse rates.”

David left the chapel and walked about the poorhouse grounds. Where could be get fifty dollars? He couldn’t tap Mom again. Mona would let him have it, but where was she? He couldn’t ask Alison. Then he thought of Morris Binder. The overseer gave him the poorhouse truck and he drove into the railway station to send a telegram. But when the attendant read David’s telegram he snorted and said, “We can’t send a message like that. Ain’t you got any respect?”

“Well,” David insisted, “she was a mean old devil.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” the operator moralized. “Your own flesh and blood!”

David grew furious. He stamped from the station and called Miss Adams on the phone, reversing charges. “A
mean ugly old woman died,” he said sharply. “They tell me I’ve got to bury her. Can you send me fifty dollars by wire?” There was no argument. The crisp woman said promptly, “Of course. Wait at the telegraph office.” So during the hot hours David sat in the office while the operator glared at him. He heard the man whisper to a friend: “And she was his own flesh and blood!”

The phrase infuriated David. Reba Stücke was no flesh and blood of his. She was not related to him by bonds of sympathy, interest, ambition, hope or love. An unknown Chinese coolie struggling in the Shantung sun, he was David’s brother! A Polish peasant battling the seasons was David’s flesh and blood. The poet Claude was more his understanding aunt than Reba Stücke had ever been. He had hated her in life; in death he despised everything she had stood for. She was not his flesh and blood.

Finally the telegram came: “
FIFTY DOLLARS
,
BURY THE OLD BAG
.
MORRIS
.” Now the operator was doubly incensed and handed David the money with great reluctance. Holding back the last bill, he pushed his eyeshade up and said, “You mind if I give you some good advice? You ought to learn humility.” David waited until the man had surrended the bills and then said, “Now you’ll get some advice, whether you mind or not. Why don’t you …” But he was immediately ashamed of himself and blustered out of the station.

The funeral was arranged, and a solitary hearse drove Reba Stücke to Sellersville. David rode with the silent driver and helped the graveyard attendants lower the weightless coffin into the earth. Try as he might, he could generate no decent emotion for this woman’s last moment among men. Again the minister said, “His flesh and blood,” and again David’s anger rose. She was not of his flesh! He loved all people and would spend himself in their behalf. He was sensitive to the slightest quivering of humanity. He loved the earth, even this cold brownish earth of Sellersville, where his own mother lay in a pauper’s grave, and he thrilled to the smallest bird or the palest violet. He was not of Reba Stücke’s blood.

The German minister who had known Reba unfavorably in life said a few consoling words, and heavy earth fell upon the echoing coffin. The grisly funeral was over.

But death cannot be so impersonal, and when David was driving homeward in the hearse he saw a sign which said,
New Hope 19 Miles
. “Would you let me out here?” he asked. The silent driver assented, and David walked along the
magnificent roads of Bucks County. In time he came to land he knew. Hot sweat filled his eyes, and he was dusty, but this earth looked good to him. There was solid richness in it, and its barns were rugged against the hillsides. From the distant Delaware birds rose and winged their way inland; and it was while watching one of these birds that death flooded David’s throat and he cried, “Aunt Reba! God have mercy on you!” He stood frozen like Paul in the dusty sunlight and bowed his head. Aunt Reba had been the last remaining person on earth connected to him by blood ties. Now he stood alone on the whirling world. “Have mercy on her, God,” he prayed.

While he stood so, a Ford came up behind him. “Fine place to daydream!” a nasal country voice cried. “Kin I carry yew into New Hope?” The car was jerky, for the man had only recently learned to drive. “Just bought ’er,” he explained. “D’yew think she was a bargain fer a hunnerd and fifty dollars?”

“Everything’s a bargain these days,” David agreed. The man must have been over seventy and took great pleasure in the car.

“Yew from these parts?” the man asked as the Ford rattled through Solebury.

“From Doylestown way,” David said.

“Then why you walkin’ over thisaway?”

“I’ve been to a funeral,” David explained.

“Who ya buried?” the man inquired.

“My aunt. She used to work at the poorhouse.”

The man slammed on the brakes and turned to look at David. “Why, yew little shaver!” he said. “Don’t yew remember me?”

David studied his face, old and sun-beaten, but he could not recognize him. The man chuckled and said, “I saw yew the mornin’ Mr. Paxson come fer me and my wife. Yew was watchin’ us!”

“No!” David said slowly. “You’re the man who wouldn’t stay in the poorhouse! I didn’t even think you saw me!”

“I see lots,” the old man said.

Impulsively, David reached out and grabbed the old man’s hand. “I was proud of you,” he blurted. “I’ve never forgotten you. How’s your wife?”

“She’s fine!” the farmer cried. “Says I’s a damn fool to buy this here Ford at my age but I said, ‘What the hell?’ ”

“How’s … How’s Mr. Paxson?”

“Like ever’ one else, he’s been havin’ his troubles.”

“What?” David asked in alarm.

“His girl,” the man said cryptically. He started the Ford and drove for a few minutes in silence. Then he said, “I owe all I got to Paxson, so I don’t rumor none about him.”

“But his girl? What about her.”

“There’s been talk,” was all the old man would say.

At New Hope David dropped into a soda fountain and casually asked, “How’re the Paxsons doing?” and the clerk said, “Fine.”

David finished his drink and started to walk across the bridge into New Jersey, but he went back to the soda fountain and asked for some nickels. Nervously he called the Paxson farm. “Is Marcia there?” he asked. “No,” replied a woman’s voice he did not recognize. “When will she be back?” David pursued. “I don’t know,” the irritated voice replied and there was a bang as the receiver slammed onto its hook.

At the fountain David ordered another drink and drawled, “See much of the young Paxson girl these days?”

“No,” the tall clerk said. “She ain’t here no more.”

“Where is she?” David asked nonchalantly.

“Folks say she’s out west gettin’ a divorce.”

David held his glass very tightly and took a long drink. “Little trouble?” he finally drawled.

The tall clerk stared at David. “What you askin’ these questions for? You from these parts?”

“Lambertville,” David lied. “Know the Paxsons well.”

“Well!” the clerk confided, leaning toward David, “they say she got mixed up with another man. What makes me laugh is that I heard this high and mighty Paxson dame chose for herself a handyman in a circus! How’d you like them potatoes?”