Neighborhood Stories

Things was about to this degree when Spring come on. I donno how it is with other people, but with me Spring used to be the signal to run as far as I could from the place I was in, in the hopes, I guess, of getting close up to all outdoors. I used to want to run along country paths all squshy with water, and hang over a fence to try to tell whether it’s a little quail or a big meadowlark in the sedge; I wanted to smell the sweet, soft-water smell that Spring rain has. I wanted to watch the crust of the earth move because May was coming up through the mold. I wanted to climb a tree and be a bud. And one morning I got up early bent on doing all these things, and ended by poking round my garden with a stick to see what was coming up – like you do. It was real early in the morning – not much after six – and Outdoors looked surprised – you know that surprised look of early morning, as if the day had never thought of being born again till it up and happened to it? And I had got to the stage of hanging over the alley fence, doing nothing, when little David Beach come by. He was eating a piece of bread, and hurrying.

“Morning, David,” I sings out. “Where’s your fish-pole?”

He stopped running and stopped biting and looked up at me. And then he laughed, sharp and high up.

“Fish-pole!” says he.

“Is it swimming, then?” I says. And then I felt sick all over. For I remembered that David had gone to work in Silas Sykes’s canning factory.

“Oh, David,” I patched it up. “I forgot. You’re a man now.”

At that he put back his thin little shoulders, and stuck out his thin little chest, and held up his sharp little chin. And he said:

“Yup. I’m a man now. I get $2.50 a week, now.”

“Whew!” says I. “When do you bank your first million?”

He grinned and broke into a run again. “I’m docked if I’m late,” he shouts back.

I looked after him. It didn’t seem ten days since he was born. And here he was, of the general contour of a clay pipe, going to work. His father had been crippled in the factory, his mother was half sick, and there were three younger than David, and one older.

“Kind of nice of Silas to give David a job,” I thought. “I don’t suppose he’s worth much to him, he’s so little.”

And that was all I thought, being that most of us uses our heads far more frequent to put hats on than for any other purpose.

Right after breakfast that morning I took a walk down town to pick out my vegetables before the flies done ’em too much violence in Silas Sykes’s store window. And out in front of the store, I come on Silas himself, sprinkling his wilted lettuce.

The minute I see Silas, I knew that something had happened to make him pleased with himself. Not that Silas ain’t always pleased with himself. But that day he looked extra-special self-pleased.

“Hello, Calliope,” he says, “you’re the very one I want to help me.”

That surprised me, but, thinks I, I’ve asked Silas to do so many things he ain’t done that I’ve kind of wore grooves in the atmosphere all around him; and I guess he’s took to asking me first when he sees me, for fear I’ll come down on to him with another request. So I followed him into the post-office store where he motioned me with his chin, and this was what he says:

“Calliope,” says he, “how’d you like to help me do a little work for this town?”

I must just of stared at Silas. I can keep from looking surprised, same as the best, when a neighbor comes down on to me, with her eyebrows up over a piece of news – and I always do, for I do hate to be expected to play up to other folks’s startled eyebrows. But with these words of Silas’s I give in and stared. For of some eight, nine, ten plans that I’d approached him with to the same end, he had turned down all them, and all me.

“With who?” says I.

“For who?” says he. “Woman, do you realize that taking ’em all together, store and canning factory combined, I’ve got forty-two folks a-working for me?”

“Well!” says I. “Quite a family.”

“Timothy Toplady’s got twelve employees,” he goes on, “and Eppleby’s got seven in the store. That’s sixty-one girls and women and then … er…”

“Children,” says I, simple.

“Young folks,” Silas says, smooth. “Sixty-one of ’em. Ain’t that pretty near a club, I’d like to know?”

“Oh,” I says, “a club. A club! And do them sixty-one want to be a club, Silas?”

Silas scowled. “What you talking?” he says. “Of course they want all you’ll do for ’em. Well, now: Us men has been facing this thing, and it’s so plain that even a woman must see it: Friendship Village is going to empty itself out into Red Barns, same as a skin, if this town don’t get up and do something.”

“True,” says I, attentive. “Even a woman can take in that much, Silas, if you put it right before her, and lead her up to it, and point it out to her and,” says I, warming up to it, “put blinders on her so’s not to distract her attention from the real fact in hand.”

“What you talking?” says Silas. “I never saw a woman yet that could keep on any one subject no more than a balloon. Well, now, what I thought was this: I thought I’d up and go around with a paper, and see how much everybody’d give, and we’d open an Evening Club somewheres, for the employees – folks’s old furniture and magazines and books and some games – and give ’em a nice time. Here,” says Silas, producing a paper from behind the cheese, “I’ve gone into this thing to the tune of Fifty Dollars. Fifty Dollars. And I thought,” says he direct, “that you that’s always so interested in doing things for folks, might put your own name down, and might see some of the other ladies too. And I could report it to our Commercial club meeting next Friday night. After the business session.”

I looked at him, meditative.

“If it’s all the same to you, Silas,” I says, “I’ll take this paper and go round and see some of these sixty-one women and girls, instead.”

Silas kind of raised up his whole face and left his chin hanging, idle.

“See them women and girls?” says he, some resembling a shout. “What have they got to do with it, I’d like to know?”

“Oh,” says I, “ain’t it some their club too, Silas? I thought the whole thing was on their account.”

Silas used his face like he’d run a draw string down it.

“Women,” he says, “dum women. Their minds ain’t any more logical than – than floor-sweepings with the door open. Didn’t I just tell you that the thing was going to be done for the benefit of Friendship Village and to keep them folks interested in it?”

“Well, but,” I says, “ain’t them folks some Friendship Village too?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” shouts Silas. “Of course they are. Of course we want to help ’em. But they ain’t got anything to do with it. All they got to do with it is to be helped!”

“Is it!” I says. “Is that all, Silas?” And while he was a-gathering himself up to reply, I picked up the subscription paper. “It can’t do ’em no harm,” I says, “to tell ’em about this. Then if any of ’em is thinking of leaving, it may hold on to ’em till we get a start. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just run around and see ’em to-day. Mebbe they might help – who knows?”

“You’ll bawl the whole thing up,” says Silas. “I wish’t I’d kep’ my mouth shut.”

“Well,” I says, “you’d ought to know by this time that I ain’t any great hand to do things for folks, Silas. I like to do ’em with ’em.”

Silas was starting in to wave both arms when somebody come in for black molasses. And he says to me:

“Well, go on ahead. You’ll roon my whole idea – but go on ahead and see how little hurt you can do. I’ve got to have some lady-help from somewheres,” says he, frank.

“Lady-help,” thinks I, a-proceeding down the street. “Lady-help. That’s me. Kind of auxiliarating around. A member of the General Ladies’ Aid Society. Lady-help. Ain’t it a grand feeling?”

I went straight to Abigail Arnold that keeps the Home Bakery. Abigail lives in the Bakery, and I donno a nicer, homier place in town. She didn’t make the mistake of putting up lace curtains in the store, to catch the dust… I always wonder when the time’ll come that we’ll be content not to have any curtains to any windows in the living rooms of this earth, but just to let the boughs and the sun and the day smile in on us, like loving faces. Fade things? Fade ’em? I wonder they didn’t think of that when they made the sun, and temper it down to keep the carpets good… Sometimes I dream of a house on a hill, with meadows of grass and the line of the sky and the all-day sun for neighbors, and not a thing to say to ’em: “Keep out. You’ll fade me.” But, “Come in. You’ll feed me.”

Well, Abigail Arnold was making her home-made doughnuts that morning, and the whole place smelled like when you was twelve years old, and struck the back stoop, running, about the time the colander was set on the wing of the stove, heaped up with brown, sizzling, doughnut-smelling doughnuts.

“Set right down,” she says, “and have one.” And so I done. And for a few minutes Silas and Red Barns and Friendship Village and the industrial and social relations of the entire country slipped away and was sunk in that nice-tasting, crumpy cake. Ain’t it wonderful – well, we’d ought not to bother to go off into that; but sometimes I could draw near to the whole human race just thinking how every one of us loves a fresh doughnut, et in somebody’s kitchen. It’s a sign and symbol of how alike we are – and I donno but it means something, something big.

But with the last crumb I come back to commerce.

“Abigail,” I says, “Silas wants to start a club for his and Timothy’s and Eppleby’s employees.”

“Huh!” says Abigail, sticking her fork down in the kettle. “What’s the profit? Ain’t I getting nasty in my old age?” she adds solemn. “I meant, Go on. Tell me about it.”