The Giant Who Came to Our House

It happened on a Sunday long ago, on one of those hot still days in late summer. I was ten that summer, and it was a bad summer for me because of my father. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of him. I just felt sort of let down. I think my mother felt the same way, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

Everything had been fine until my father had gone into partnership with big Ed Wadley. My father had owned the mercantile store in town and Ed Wadley had owned the feed business, and then they went into partnership and made it a big general store called the Wadley and Barret Company.

That Ed Wadley was a big man, with a head getting bald, a red face and small blue eyes. And he had a very loud voice. He kept coming over to our place all the time that summer. He and my father would argue about the business, and Ed seemed to think that every idea my father had was no good at all. And somehow he had started calling my father Shorty.

But before I can tell what happened on that Sunday when the tension between Ed and my father reached its greatest peak, I must tell about the giant.

I had come home from swimming at about three o’clock on a July day and found him cleaning out the barn. All my breath left me when I saw him, and I ran into the house. Mother told me that he had come to the house asking for work. She said his name was Harry Sturmer and he had been in a road show over in Cincinnati and it had folded up and somebody had stolen the money he had kept hidden against the times such things happened. She said the name printed on his trunk was Big Tex. He was going to sleep in the barn, and he was going to prune the dead limbs off the apple trees in the orchard behind the house. And I shouldn’t stare at him.

After an hour of staring and moving closer as my courage improved, I got close enough to start asking questions. His voice didn’t sound the way a giant’s should. It was thin and kind of rusty sounding. All in all, I guess he was a disappointing sort of giant. Unfinished looking. And nothing fit just right. He was powerful, but slow and awkward and clumsy. His face was long and had a sad look and he sunburned easy.

Every time I asked a question, he had to think over his answer and then he made it short. But I learned he was seven foot four and weighed three hundred and twenty pounds. In the show he wore a cowboy costume with seven-inch heels and a thirty-gallon hat. His work pants and shirt had been made by one of the women in the road show. He’d made his canvas shoes himself. They looked it. He made himself a bed in the barn with straw on the floor and canvas over it.

When my father got home about six o’clock, he put the Oakland in the barn and started to trudge toward the house. He had his head down, and I guess he was worrying about the business. I started to run toward him to tell him about the giant, but I didn’t make it. My father met the giant right at the comer of the barn. His head snapped up and he made a funny grunt and jumped backward about five feet and landed with his knees bent and his mouth open.

After that frozen moment it was as if his legs took over and carried him a dozen running steps toward the house, making a sort of half circle around Harry. I was saddened to see him run, because it seemed all tied in with the Ed Wadley thing. Then he stopped and stared at Harry for a second or two, and went on into the house at a brisk walk.

When I got inside I heard him saying, “Ye gods, Sarah!”

“He’s really very nice and Sam Horsch has been stone drunk for five weeks so there’s a lot to be done around the place, things Billy can’t do and you haven’t got time for. Anyway, it’s only a dollar a day and his keep, and he says he’ll get an answer to the letters he’s going to write and get another job in his trade.”

“Have you stopped to think, woman, what a thing like that might eat? How many chickens will he want on Sunday?”

“I asked him and he told me he doesn’t eat as heavy as folks might think. When I gave him his dinner this noon, he said I gave him too much.”

“Sarah, it unsettles me to have... something like that around the place.”

“He’s cleaned the barn and pruned half the orchard already. So you go on out and tell him to move along, and give him his dollar and maybe he can find a field to sleep in.”

Harry stayed, of course. By the very next day the whole town knew about him. I guess every kid for miles around came over one time or another to stand around and stare at Harry and ask questions. Harry was a slow but careful worker. He spent a lot of time on the yard, inching along on big pads he’d made for his knees, taking out the weeds. And he wrote letters. I sneaked out to the mailbox and looked at some of them. He printed the addresses and I could print better. He made backward N’s and S’s. They were to places I never heard of.

I got used to Harry. I got to like him. That was why, when on that awful Sunday when Ed Wadley said that terrible thing, I wanted to cry or kick Ed Wadley or something. And the worst of it was that my father didn’t do anything.

It was a Sunday afternoon and my father and mother and Ed Wadley were on the front porch. I was down on the ground below the porch with Davey from down the road, playing mumblety-peg. Mother was sewing. My father and Ed were arguing about some kind of yard goods my father wanted to buy for the store. And Harry was edging the driveway, working about twenty-five feet from the poreh. Though my mother didn’t hold with working on Sunday, she let Harry work because he said he would rather than just sit out there by the barn.

Suddenly, in a loud, nasty, laughing voice, Ed Wadley said, “Now honestly. Shorty, how much respect am I supposed to have for the business judgment of a man who’d hire a freak to take care of the work around his place?”

There was a strange silence. The whole afternoon seemed to stop, even the birds. I was close enough to barely hear my mother whisper, “That was rude. Ed Wadley. Very rude. You’ve hurt his feelings.”

I had watched Harry. He paused in the middle of a stroke, arm raised. I hoped he’d go up on the porch and grab Ed Wadley and throw him all the way out into the country road. But after being very still, he began to work again.

Ed said, just as loud as before, “Nonsense, Sarah. Those freaks haven’t any feelings, and they have about as much brain power as a moo cow. As I was saying, Shorty, it’s your job to handle the trade. I’ll do the buying and set the policy. That way we’ll get along fine.”

And my father didn’t do anything. He didn’t tell Ed Wadley to get off the place. I felt sick inside. I wanted to make it up to Harry somehow, but there just wasn’t any way I could think of.

I didn’t want to play any more. I told Davey and he went on home. I went outside and sat for a while under our old maple tree. I had a book and I tried to get so deep in it that I could stop feeling ashamed of the whole family. It must have been an hour later when I heard my father say, “Great Scott!” He used a tone of voice that made me sit up and come running.

I was glad I ran, because I was in time to see Harry come across the yard. He had put on his whole cowboy costume. A huge, high, dark hat, red neckerchief, fringed buckskin shirt, fringed chaps and big cowboy boots that gleamed in the sun. He had no expression on his face. He moved differently, with a kind of sureness and pride, as if he was the biggest man in the world and knew it. He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked onto the porch. There wasn’t enough roof clearance for him to come up, and he had the look of a man who wasn’t going to scrunch over.

“I thought I’d tell you I’m leaving tomorrow, Mr. Barret. I’m joining a circus in Toledo. I got the word in the mail yesterday.” His voice wasn’t faint and rusty.

“That’s fine, Harry. Splendid!” my father said.

“I’m so glad,” my mother said. “I hope it’s a nice circus.”

“You’ve been kind, ma’am,” Harry said. He looked complete, as if he had moved into his own place in the world again. Then he stared at Ed Wadley. Harry was on the lawn and Ed on the porch, but he looked down at him. He slowly reached his big hand out and said, “I’ve never met your partner, Mr. Barret.” My father quickly mumbled an introduction.

Ed said, “Pleased to meet you.” He bobbed his head, and his voice was slightly squeaky.

Harry still held his hand out, patiently. It was the size of a side of bacon. “You’ll shake hands, won’t you, Mr. Wadley?” We all knew what Ed had called him. Ed’s face got white, and then redder than usual. But I must say that he made himself move gingerly to the porch steps and go down and stick his hand out. It disappeared into that grip like the hand of a little child. He stared up at Harry and Harry looked down at him somberly. There must have been strength in that grip because I saw Ed’s knees buckle and saw him bite his lip.

“Now,” Harry said, “you can go tell your friends you shook hands with a freak.”

“I... I... I didn’t mean to call...”

For the first time we saw Harry smile. It was a wide crooked smile that unveiled an expanse of huge yellow teeth. In that instant Harry seemed to grow even taller, and Ed dwindled. “I didn’t mind what you called me... Shorty,” Harry said.

He released the hand, nodded to us, and walked back across the yard, his hat higher than the eaves trough, and was gone.

Ed massaged his hand. His face looked purple. “That damn freak!” he said, not too loudly. “Try to bust my hand. I’ll get the law on him! I’ll...”

My father had been looking thoughtful, his head tilted to one side as though he was listening to something a long way off.

He interrupted Ed sharply, but he didn’t sound angry. “You’ll do one thing, Ed. You’ll watch your language.”

“I’ll talk as I please.”

“Then get off the place. Now!” The two partners stared at each other. I wanted to holler. My father was back the way he used to be, and I knew we’d never have another bad summer.

Ed was the first one to break the locked stare. He looked away, looked down the road toward the town and then looked back. “All right... Sam,” he said meekly. “Sorry, Sarah.” He lowered his eyes.

“How about some nice iced tea,” my mother said.

Three summers later, when I was thirteen, Davey’s father drove a bunch of us kids over to see a small circus in Elmira. And Harry was in the side show. I expected that he would know me right away, but he didn’t. It disappointed me a little, but I guess I’d changed a lot and he saw a lot of kids every day. I went over to him when the barker was taking the people around to the other parts of the show.

“It’s me, Harry,” I said. “Billy Barret.”

After slow seconds his eyes came alive and he said, “Well, hello, Billy. How are things with your folks?”

“Things are fine. The store is doing real good. My father bought out Ed Wadley over a year ago.”

He nodded his big slow head, and I thought I could see a change of expression, a look of both amusement and satisfaction, but I couldn’t be sure. Then the crowd came over in front of Harry and the barker started his spiel. I moved back away from all the others.

Harry stood up. The sun came golden through the canvas, and the black boots were shiny. He stood to his full height and the people stared at him there on his platform. He towered high, looking over their heads, a somber and golden giant, standing in pride over the pygmy world, fitting in only this one place, yet making me think then, as I watched him, that in that great slow head were long dreams of a world where all were as large as he. A world of the remote past, or the equally distant future.