Neighborhood Stories

all wavy, like a little stream trickling along; and then another part chimes in,

“Loving-kindness”

all wavy, like another little stream trickling along, and then everybody clamps down on

“Loving-kindness – oh, how great!”

like the whole nice sweep of the river? Well, that was the one she sung. And being it’s a terrible catchy tune, and most of us was brought up on it and has been haunted by it for days together from bed to bed, we all more or less joined in with what little vocal pans we had, and we sung it off and on all the way out.

We was singing it, I recollect, when we come in sight of the Toll Gate House. The Toll Gate House has been there for years, ever since the Tote road got made into a real road, and then it got paid for, and the toll part stopped; and now the City rents the house – there’s a place we always say “City” again – to most anybody, usually somebody poor, with a few chickens and takes in washings and ain’t much of any other claim to being thought of, as claims seem to go.

“Who lives in the Toll Gate House now, I wonder?” says Mis’ Pettibone, breaking off her song.

“Land, nobody,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer; “it’s all fell in on itself – my land,” she says, “the door’s open. Let’s stop and report ’em, so be it’s been tramps.”

So we made Jem Meddledipper stop, and somebody was just going to get out when a woman come to the door.

She was a little woman, with kind of a pindling expression, looking as if she’d started in good and strong, but life had kind of shaved her down till there wasn’t as much left of her, strictly speaking, as’d make a regular person. A person, but not one that looks well and happy the way “person” means to you, when you say the word. She had on a what-had-been navy-blue what-had-been alpaca, but both them attributes had got wore down past the nap. A little girl was standing close beside her – a nice little thing, with her hair sticking up on top like a candle-flame, and tied with a string.

“My land,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer right out, “are you livin’ here?” Mis’ Lockmeyer is like that – she always wears her face inside-out with all the expression showing.

But the woman wasn’t hurt. She smiled a little, and when she smiled I thought she looked real sweet.

“Yes,” she said, “I am. It – it don’t look real like it, does it?”

“Well,” puts in Mis’ Pettibone, “gettin’ settled so – ”

“Oh,” says the woman, “I been here a month.”

And Mis’ Lockmeyer, wishing to make amends and pull her foot out, planted the other right along side of it instead.

“Do you sell anything? Or sew anything? Or wash and iron anything?” she asks.

And the woman says: “I sew and wash and iron anything I can do home, with my little girl. But I ain’t a thing in the world to sell.”

“Of course you ain’t,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer soothing, and hoping to make it better still.

“Well,” says Mis’ Puppy hearty, “I tell you what. We’ll be out to see you in a little bit, if you want us to.”

My land, the woman’s face – I donno whether you’ve ever seen anybody’s face lit up from the inside with the light fair showing through all the pores like little windows? Hers done it. She didn’t say nothing – she just done that. And we drove on.

“Land,” says Mis’ Pettibone, thoughtful, “how like each other folks are, no matter how not-like they seem to the folks you think they ain’t one bit like.”

“Ain’t they – ain’t they?” says I, hearty. And I guess we all felt the same.

Nobody was absent to the club that afternoon, but Mis’ Elkhorn’s sitting-room was big enough so’s we could get in. None of us could bear a parlor club meeting. Our ideas always set in our heads to a parlor-meeting, called to order by rapping on something. But here at Mis’ Elkhorn’s we were out in the sitting-room, with the red table-spread on and the plants growing and the spice-cake smelling through the kitchen door. And you’d think things would of gone as smooth as glass.

Instead of which, I donno what on earth ailed us. But when we got to sitting down, sewing, it was like some kind of little fine dislocation had took place in the air.

Mis’ Puppy had brought a centre-piece to work on, big as a rug, all drawn work and hemstitching and embroidery. And somehow Mis’ Pettibone, that only embroiders useful, couldn’t stand it.

“My, Mis’ Puppy,” she says, “I shouldn’t think you could get a bit of house-work done, making that so lavish.”

Mis’ Puppy shut her lips so tight it jerked her head.

“I don’t scrub out continual, same as some,” she says.

“If you mean me,” says Mis’ Pettibone, tart, “I guess I can do house-work as easy as the most.”

“I heard there’s those that can – where it don’t show,” says Mis’ Puppy, some goaded beyond what she meant.

“Mean to say?” snaps Mis’ Pettibone.

“Oh, nothin’,” says Mis’ Puppy, “only to them that their backs the coat fits.”

“I never was called shiftless since I was born a wife and a house-keeper,” says Mis’ Pettibone, bordering on tearful.

“Oh, was you born a house-keeper, Mis’ Pettibone?” says Mis’ Puppy, sweet.

Then Mis’ Pettibone went in and set on the foot of the bed where we’d laid our things, and cried; and one or two of us went in and sort o’ poored her.

And, land, when we’d got her to come out, the first thing we heard was Mis’ Lockmeyer pitching into Mis’ Wilme.

“Anybody that can say I don’t make ice-cream as cheap as the best ain’t any of an ice-cream judge,” she was saying hot, “be they you or be they better.”

“I wasn’t saying a word about cheap,” says Mis’ Wilme, “I was talking about good.”

“Well,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, “I thought I made it good.”

“Not with the little dab of cream you was just mentioning, you can’t,” says Mis’ Wilme, firm. “It ain’t reasonable nor chemical.”

“Don’t you think your long words is goin’ to impress me,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, more and more het up.

“Well, ladies,” says Mis’ Elkhorn, humorous, “nobody can make it any colder’n anybody else, anyhow.”

Somebody pitched in then, hasty and peaceful, and went to talking about Cemetery; and it looked like we was launched on a real quiet subject.

“I guess we’ve all got more friends up there then we’ve got in town,” says I. “When we go up there to walk on Sundays, I declare if I had to bow to all the graves I recognize I’d be kep’ busy.”

“I know,” says Mis’ Wilme, “when my niece was here from the City she said she had eighty on her calling list. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve got that many if I count the graves I know.’ ”

“Most of my acquaintances,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, sighing, “is in their coffins. I says to my husband when I looked over the Daily the other night: That most of the Local Items and Supper Table Jottings for me now would have to be dated Cemetery Lot.”

“I know, ladies,” says Mis’ Puppy, dreamy, “but ain’t it real aristocratic to live in a place so long that you know all the graves. We ain’t got much else to be aristocratic about. But that’s real like them county families you read about,” she says.

And up flared Mis’ Pettibone. “I donno’s there’s any need to make it so pointed to us that ain’t lived here so very long,” she said, “and that ain’t any friends at all in your Cemetery.”

“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Puppy, indulgent, “of course there’s them distinctions in any town.”