Omensetter’s Luck

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Now folks today we're going to auction off Missus Pimber's things. I think you all knew Missus Pimber and you know she had some pretty nice things. This is going to be a real fine sale and we have a real fine day for it. It may get hot, though, later on, so we want to keep things moving right along. And now I'm going to begin the sale with the things back here by the barn. You've all had a chance to look at everything so let's bid right out for these fine things and keep things moving right along. The sale is cash as usual and Missus Grady is inside to take care of that. The ladies of the Methodist Church are kindly providing the lunch. You can see their tables across there in Missus Root's lot and I know you'll want to help all these ladies just as they are helping you. It’ll be good I know. All right I'm going to begin the sale back here so if you folks will follow me we'll get started.

It was his first excursion. He had tottered about in the yard for several weeks despite the high grass, and for three months he had practiced in his bedroom and in the living room and halls, but he was going to try himself in earnest now. He'd said he'd see the summer under and he had. The grass was burned. There were flecks of yellow in the cotton trees. The weeds were wilted and long in seed. Where were all his friends?

Once he went out in the morning down the street and everyone was up and he knew everyone. He could hear the anvil ring and Mat's mild voice between the ringings singing to the horses. You could shout from one end of town to the other and be heard. And in the morning Mat was like a bell.

Israbestis rubbed his cheek. Who was the man with the gold teeth?

He was out of touch. He used to stop at Mossteller's place. Mossteller was a quiet fellow but he loved to joke. He used to stop in Lloyd Cate's on the way. Lloyd would put his foot up on the stove and say he'd overet himself and swear that it was cold if it was May. He and Lloyd would talk until the train whistled for Gilean. When the whistle blew a second time, Lloyd would take his foot down and they would both go and stand in front of the store and stretch. Well, Lloyd would say, I've got to get at it. Israbestis would shake his head sympathetically and walk off to the station.

People passed impatiently around him. They walked so fast. A crowd was gathering by the barn. Its paint was scaling badly. The roof sagged toward a thorn tree. I caught a kite in there, he said. Thee main door hung by one hinge. Windows were broken and the darkness jagged. The house, however, was square and firm, beautiful everywhere, without a crack, each brick made by hand and laid by a master. The sound of the crowd grew as he came slowly along. All along the front were tall narrow windows Lucy Pimber showed candles in while it snowed on the carolers.

Sam raised his hand and peered between his missing fingers. Everybody laughed. People inched among the chairs and couches on the lawn or sat in rocking chairs and talked or leaned against divans and talked, shading their eyes with their hands. They handled vases, fingered silver spoons, smoothed hand-quilted quilts. On the shaded porch the women squeezed themselves between card tables set with tilting towers of china cups, bubbled colored glass and painted plates. In the back, by the barn, the men gathered in serious pairs to smoke, heft heavy implements, and think. Under the lamps at a side of the house, young children sat and fussed with the laces of their shoes. Sam Peach yelled, looked at his fingers gone, and spat. Everybody laughed, and he held up between his missing fingers a ball of twine and with his full-fingered hand a fine old saw, a rope, a rubber mat, a can of lime; while in high-backed and formal chairs, beneath the scattered shade of half-dead elms, old ladies and old canes leaned together and nodded jerkily. Too bad, they said. Too bad. Too bad.

Not much of a woman. Mean, thin, and silent. Samantha's friend. He excused himself when bumped.

I saw this house go up, Israbestis said. First on the street.

That so?

I saw the cellar dug and the first brick laid. I was in this house the very day Bob Stout, who built her, fell from the Methodist steeple.

That so?

He fell on the iron fence that used to go around it. Parson Peach, he'd just come then — no, no, it was longer ago than that, Huffley's day it was — Huffley was a builder — took Furber's place-anyway, Huffley had the fence torn down.

That so?

It was funny about the fence because—

Lutie Root? It was her lot across the street. Was that the one her old man got in a swap for a flock of geese? Yes. There was a story. No. That wasn't Lutie Root. She had a harder eye, as hard an eye as her old man had, like translucent rock. She went in the winter. He'd forgot. Hard eye and all, paler and paler till it went out. Who were all these people?

Sam Peach held up a set of jelly molds, a length of screen, an antique drinking cup he claimed was pewter but was not, a box of bolts, a rake, rope in a tangled figure-eight. Sam wiped his face with a spotted cloth he'd knotted to his neck and nodded to the crowd. He exclaimed how hot it was, remarked how hard he worked, in what repair a wooden wringer was. His face was flushed from shouting and the waving of his arms and while he talked he switched from cheek to cheek tobacco with his tongue and when he spat he made a wide and running stain upon the ground. Sam smiled his dark brown teeth. He pointed to a flaw. He threw apart his arms. His nose twitched with harmless honesty. He told what he would use a crooked miter for if he had one, and said how much his missing fingers brought the day he'd knocked them down, and how he'd sold the saw, too, for a dollar more. Everybody laughed and bid. Sam tipped his broad-brimmed hat. He winked, and the friendly lines by his eyes drew in. His wife marked down the sale. They both moved on and with them moved the crowd and everybody's laughter.

I don't know that fellow, Israbestis thought.

I saw this house go up, Israbestis said. First on the street.

Oh?

They built things those days—

The summer had been hot. The ground was hard. The drive was dusty. Cars had been driven in the drive and dust raised. The dust had settled on the grass by the drive and turned it gray. Children had written their names on thee tops of dressers. Wasn't anybody going to shake his hand?

Quite a sale, lsrabestis said.

Lot of junk.

Oh no, not—

He thought he knew the fellow with the black cheroot. God if he didn't look like Hog Bellman. Israbestis felt his stomach tumble. Gas. Italians, he'd heard, had bought it. It was such a big house. Somehow he forgot there were Italians. In those days there weren't many. Sometimes they came to repair the railroad. Or were they Mexicans? Sicilians? Did it make a difference? It always seemed so far away for Italians. There were Italians of course. More and more. And now in this house that used to blaze with lights.

You seen Miss Elsie Todd?

Who?

Maybe McCormick or Fayfield? They used to come in a lot.

Hog Bellman. A high white hat on him. My god. Hunting in the marshes in the time of high water. Mat making them be quiet. Not a bird but the rush of water. Hog Bellman. My god. There's the chief. Good.

You get around pretty good, Israbestis said.

I get around fine. I come to all of them. I never miss a one. Rain or shine. I never miss. Don't see anybody much any more. Don't see you much, Tott, been sick?

Been fine. Just fine.

Wops got this place. Going to tear it down. I had no truck with them. Troublemakers. They'd come to town nights and make trouble. I got on to them quick enough. When I was chief I kept things peaceful and the jail full. See the papers?

But Bob Stout built this house.

I remember the time they was fixing the bridge down to Windham. A clutch of them was down there — cheap labor and all and I always said they was cheap too, like Mexicans — and there was a clutch of them big ones. They was big and burnt like niggers from working in the sun. Some of them even was niggers I guess. Yes. We never had any niggers in this town till now.

There was Flack.

Who?

Jefferson Flack.

Soon as the sun came down they was at it. Came in here by the wagonload.

I was here — I lived here then.

You was? Of course you was. Well they used to come in piled up like logs on them wagons and when they let the tailgate down it was like letting a load of logs loose.

They would jump out of the wagons as soon as they got to the edge of town. There was one who—

All at once they would pour out. Har! They was big ones!

Big ones, Israbestis thought. There was only one big one. He and his huge hee-haw. Who was it always called poor Brackett Omensetter that — the huge hee-haw? Sometimes the walls in Israbestis' room closed at their corners like a book and would not let him remember. Now the sun drove his eyes down. There was nothing to see at his feet. It could have been Jethro Furber, but it wasn't. Hee-haw.

You don't look up to snuff Tott. Been sick?

Not a day.

Seen Cate?

Ah — no. He's still…?

Saw him at the farm. Too bad. Too bad. He's real bad. Pretty old you know. Pretty old. Shakes bad. Shook the whole time I was there. Terrible. Won't last long. I had a bitch did that as soon she whelped. Her jaw bobbled and her teeth clacked — constant. .

Dull old fool, Israbestis thought, he's got no flair. I know these stories. Most of them are mine, my mouth gave each of them its shape, but I've no teeth to chew my long sweet youth again. A terse man years ago and sheriff after Curt Chamlay had angered his badge in the snowy weeds, the fellow never drew a breath in his old age, but watered everyone he knew with words, haphazardly, like Israbestis did himself, he was afraid. Long? sweet? The heat… it was the heat. They had come to the train to meet the Reverend Jethro Furber: Samantha, Henry, Lucy Pimber, both Spinks, Gladys Chamlay, others, Rosa Knox and Valient Hatstat. There had been quarrels over that, oh god, such resourceful bickering. Well he didn't sweat as much now as he had then, that was one thing. The steam from the engine had seemed to issue from the ground. Neat, he remembered thinking as Furber stepped down, and then the Reverend's arm reached out and bit him. Howdju. He supposed he flinched. Neat. Neat, stiff, pressed, black, burning. The Reverend grabbed at Henry, Henry mumbling. The wheels of the engine creaked, steam threatened the cars, and they all retreated awkwardly toward the station, Furber bowing briskly. He's tiny, he's just tiny, Samantha whispered, and their new minister suddenly ran into the station where, through the window, they saw him climbing the stairs.

… well you was never married was you? Har. Well you got a pension I hear, and that house. Us men die before our women usually. You don't have to worry about that. There's Samantha though, ain't there? Well you got that pension and that house.

Yes.

Lloyd's got the shakes.

They would sit in the boat and fish in the river. The trees hung over and shaded the sides. They would drift in and out of the shade, eddying with the river, watching the cork float, their broad hats tilted, shading their eyes. It would be pleasantly cool in the shady places where the roots of the willows and the beeches came mossy to the riverside, and the water was black by the boat. They would get caught up in a curl of the river, the water still and black by the boat, until Lloyd would reach up and pull on a limb and the boat would coast out into the sun again where the water sparkled and slapped gently against the hull. It was warm and comfortable and there weren't many fish, but just slow and easy drifting down the checkered river.

Careful Lacy. He'd nearly forgot. Ford and Jasper and Willie Amsterdam. Most people didn't know about that. Careful must have been sixty then. He fought Morgan's men. The fire was a great kite flying to the river. Careful Lacy. He'd nearly forgot. Had an ass like an ape.

Like fishing, said Israbestis Tott.

Some.

Fishing's fun.

I like sledding better.

Sledding's fun too.

You're pretty old. How old are you?

Pretty old.

I bet. What do you do now you're so old.

I was postmaster once.

Not really.

I was. I was postmaster for this whole town. I had the job all by myself. I did it all.

You ain't postmaster now.

No. I was once. I used to be.

My dad says I'm the busiest he ever saw.

I bet you are. What do you do?

I live in a tree.

What kind of a tree?

A high tree. It goes way up into the air and you can see clean to Columbus.

That's a good way.

Oh it's awful high. A thousand feet. Well, good-bye.

The boy had vaulted a bench. It had Henry Pimber's bullocks on it. Israbestis considered; shook his head. The sun, too… no shade anywhere. He could have told that boy the story of the man who went to pieces, he'd have liked that; or the story of the high and iron fence. He'd begin it, gently, and then the boy would say:

Why'd they want a fence, though, anyway?

And then he'd say:

It was the kind of fence that a good stick would make a good loud noise on if you was to run it along.

Oh.

That was the kind of fence they wanted — a high iron one with tall sharp pickets close together that would ring loud and handsome with a stick. But not everyone wanted a fence just like that.

Why not?

Well some thought it would be nice to have a fence with deers in it or trees like the one that used to be around Whittacker's, the undertaker's.

I don't think much of that.

I never did either, Israbestis thought. I never did. And boys were all like that. Pop. Well. Even my own ears are weary.

There were rows of straights and rockers, kitchen and parlor chairs, both painted and upholstered, rows of empty old embraces. Everybody wants it new, he said. Then he saw where he could sit: on the slope of the cellar door. She put up a lot of vegetables and fruit and things, Mrs. Pimber did. Every year. Now for myself, I'd want a house that had a little more than my weak poozly tracks all through it. I'd want some corners other folks had warmed. I'd sit in my chair in the quiet by the window, and watch the purpling air, the lazy hats and horses, and I'd think back on… well, the seasons of families, the passage of blood through the house, just like, you know, it passes through me while I'm standing here. I'm not too old for that. He should probably have apologized for his teeth. The man's sleeves were too long, they needed an elastic. There were good days, though, days when he remembered mostly drugstores. A bee flew by his face. Omensetter was a wide and happy man. Fact. At least he had that straight. And in the mornings Mat was like a bell. But Mat had finally faded like a sound. Okay, okay, just let me ease … myself… The sun slid from his back, and it was like swimming for a moment — that moment of cool green coasting when you've jumped. He closed his eyes, but the lids flamed. Furber never listened either. He declaimed. Tott sighed. Swimming took away your weight. Was that the reason he loved the smell of drugstores, and all those drawers? It was Omensetter's luck. Likely. To lose the heaviness of life. That Furber fellow, for instance, was nothing but bones, and even those you could have wrapped in a hankie. Yet he weighed a ton. Didn't he, by george! a ton.

Now folks we've got four fine beds here and we're going to sell them all. Kids, don't bounce on the beds. These are fine beds and the springs and mattresses all come with them. You can feel what shape they're in. It's first rate. Here's your chance to get a real good bed. Say can everybody hear me? There's too much talking, ladies, please. All right, fine. We might as well start right here and go right down the line. This here's solid cherry, and isn't she a beauty! There, just feel that mattress. Looks like new. Lot of use in them yet. Of course if you don't want to use the springs and mattress that is on it, you don't have to. You can put anything on it you want to. Look at that wood. Well now what'll you say to start for this cherry bedstead and this fine mattress and good springs. Who'll say twenty-five?

Gaiety was continuous.

Don't talk to dirty old men.

Henry Pimber had lain with lockjaw in that bed, and the Reverend Jethro Furber had planted prayers around it like a hedge, and later Israbestis had followed him downstairs, the minister cursing Nature, Man, and God, at every step.

Israbestis moved his feet with effort. He was tired and stiff. He made his way slowly to the back of the house through the crowd flung out now like a ragged shirt and cupped some water from an outside tap, rinsing the dust from his mouth. He spat and watched his spit ball up in the dirt under burned-out marigolds. At the frayed edge of the crowd the chief was gesturing to a man whom Israbestis didn't know. The chief held out his badge. The man craned to see Sam Peach. The chief touched the man's arm. The man moved away, turning his side, craning to see Sam Peach. The chief's badge gleamed. Israbestis counted balls of spit and made, with difficulty, three. His dark room now seemed cool and restfully confining. You could imagine maps in the wallpaper. The roses had faded into vague shells of pink. Only a few silver lines along the vanished stems and in the veins of leaves, indistinct patches of the palest green, remained — the faint suggestion of mysterious geography. A grease spot was a marsh, a mountain or a treasure. Israbestis went boating down a crack on cool days, under the tree boughs, bending his head. He fished in a chip of plaster. The perch rose to the bait and were golden in the sunwater. Specks stood for cities; pencil marks were bridges; stains and shutter patterns laid out fields of wheat and oats and corn. In the shadow of a corner the crack issued into a great sea.

There was a tear in the paper that looked exactly like a railway and another that signified a range of hills. Some tiny drops of ink formed a chain of lakes. A darker decorative strip of Grecian pediments and interlacing ivy at the ceiling's edge kept the tribes of God and Magog from invasion. Once he had passed through it to the ceiling but it made him dizzy and afraid. Shadows moved quixotically over the whole wall, usually from left to right in tall thin bands, and sank behind a bureau or below the bed or disappeared suddenly in a corner.

Lying there staring at the wall in the partial darkness hour on hour, the pain rising as periodically as high water and leaving only a slight backwash of relief when it receded, Israbestis lamented bitterly his lack of education. He sent himself on journeys with an effort that brought sweat to his brow and moistened his palms and the back of his ears. He took ship down the faint crack rivers. He cut his way through matted, tortuous jungles designated by the pale leaves. He trudged across vast blanks of desert and drank thirstily at muddy holes. The days that he was in the wall he thought of himself primarily as a sailor. He conjured up bright images of sail, green swells on the reaches of the ocean, the brown slabs of river mouths and the awesome blue chop and the trailing spray of troubled weather. Climbing the shrouds, the springs of the bed squeaking like a rolling deck and hull and like the tackle in the block, he would sight a dark cloud puffing from the horizon. Funneling up, it would run at the ship and Israbestis would hitch himself on his elbow, waving his other arm free of the clothes, and shout, "Look out, she's coming on, look out, look out," for he knew no nautical terms and nothing of seamanly action. Pain would storm at his eyes. Sweat would drip from his nose. "She's a blower, captain, aye, she's a roller, captain," Israbestis would cry. "The worst I've seen in these seas." The hiss of his words was like the spray from the bow. Israbestis screamed in order to be heard above the wind in the rigging that was howling in the shrouds and through the ports of the ship. Then all of a sudden it would be gone. He would watch the paling cloud and the dimpled water disappear before he fell, for a moment, asleep.

In this way he visited the ports of the world. He was a Chinese, a Hindoo, a sheik; he rode upon wild Asian horses and on the back of elephants in India, while on camels he crossed the African wastes; but the farther he traveled, the more bizarre and remarkable his adventures, the less satisfying was his life in the wall. More and more his fancy bad to supply his vision with its objects, had to make up even the course and color of the sun, the feel of the ground, so different everywhere, and above all, the smells that inhabited the corners of the earth. He was conscious, always, of the inadequacy of his details, the vagueness of his pictures, the falsehood in all his implicit etceteras, because he knew nothing, had studied nothing, had traveled nowhere. Consequently he was never fully in the wall, he was partly clenched in the bedclothes, clawing at the skin of his legs and biting his arms. He was only partly bowed by rain or sand or sleet, crouched before the attack of lions or wild tribesmen, swimming for his life. The pain struck without obstruction then, and he closed like a spider on it.

On better days he left the wall although he always began in it. Gently closing his lids to allow an eyelash of light, he would push off from the bank and coast by the torn hills, poling the grease-spot marsh, and by the time he had baited his hook and dropped his line in the plaster chip he was in the history of his life, out of the wall, in the old slow world. He sat by Lloyd Cate's stove or he leaned back on a bench on Lloyd Cate's porch in finer weather. He took his early morning walk through the town, the anvil singing out, and he went to the depot three times a day for the mail. He would stop at Mossteller's to talk or at the bakery, passing the time in the pleasantest way with news of people, conditions of the land or crops, predictions of the weather. All his friends were clear in his imaginings. He knew them by their dress, by the mannerisms of their walk, by their characteristic tilts and gestures. His dreams were not embarrassed by clichés, but in each he always knew the precise feel of the air, what manner of birds were singing, the position of the sun, the kind of cloud, the form of emotion in himself and others, and every felicity of life. As his friends approached he called out gaily to them. "Hi there, Pete. 'Morning, Michael, Billy. Well if it ain't Claude Spink, by god, and Nichol Ames."They came to visit in his illness. Hog Bellman. Bullet in his back. Careful Lacy. Pants undone, silly grin on his face. Bob Stout with nails in his mouth. Samantha. Sister. Like a rod in watered silk. Tale after tale he told, each many times over, getting them right or trying to, amazed at what he forgot and what he remembered. There was a secret in every one and he tried to discover it. When the Hen Woods burned, for instance, the way he told it you could taste the ashes in Careful Lacy's mouth. Indecision was put as plain as a cow in a field. Luke Ford. Ben Jasper. Willie Amsterdam. And then May Cobb. Of course he hadn't, but he knew what it was like to be the man who'd had her. God. Not pretty. Not round in the rump or full in the bust, either, but god! Every line of her was essential. He put that plain too. He made it seem as if the juices of the body would all squeeze out. He often saw her up to her elbows in cream. Her twisted mouth. May I have more punch she asked politely. Damn loud band.

Careful Lacy was riding the back roads; the fire was a cloud. He knew the secret to that. He walked through the whole of his storied past, greeting everyone: Kick Skelton, Eliza Martin, May Cobb. He kissed the pits of her neck. There was Brackett Omensetter, Lucy Pimber, Lemon Hank. And all the dogs. And all the cats and cattle. Hog Bellman with a knife. Swine and sheep. Madame DuPont Neff, from Paris, and her udders. Something French. But best of all May Cobb and the blades of her shoulders. His eyes would open sometimes and Israbestis would climb like a well young man from his bed and walk down the echoing halls. He would go all over the house, in a fever, putting his hands to furniture and geegaws until his hands were black. Sometimes he climbed to the attic and felt the relics. Other times he went to the barn in back or to the basement. But always he would weary at last and drop to the floor on his knees, wherever he was, weeping noisily. It was then that he would have his worst attacks.

Now folks we've got this china here. You all know what Missus Pimber did with paints. A lot of you I know been waiting just for this. It's plenty hot so we'll get right along. We got here a decorated — this a toothbrush holder, Grace? — a hand-painted toothbrush holder my wife says. It's china, and it's signed by Missus Pimber with her name. See there? Now everybody'll want this and so what'll it be, what? All right a dollar, a dollar I have to start, one dollar, so I have one, one, who'll say two, two, I have two over there, right off, and everybody wants it, now do I hear three, that's three thank you now four and who says four, four, and who says fifty then, fifty. I have three and who says fifty, three twenty-five — look, that's not much to ask for a hand-painted toothbrush holder — once more and you're out. Three twenty five? twenty-five? Three, then, it's three to that lady over there thank you. Now we have here a fine china bowl, also hand painted, and it's a dilly. Hold it up there George so the folks can see it. That's a honey, ain't it, hay? What are them, birds? That's signed by Missus Pimber, too, right there. Hold it higher George so the folks can see it. Oh say now what'll it be to begin? See them birds? Ain't they pretty? What am I bid? Lots of mashed potatoes go in that, boys. So, so, so now, let's begin, and what'll you give for this hand-painted bowl?

Longlegs, like a small smooth pebble walking, crossed a brick and stopped on a line of mortar. If he walks another row I'll get him, Israbestis thought, but the spider ran up three and sat, waving a thread-thin leg. Israbestis put the shadow of his hand over the spider. It rubbed its feet together. From the withered end of a marigold another spider swayed on a strip of silk. This one was small and black with yellow spots. Ants milled by the wall, chasing one another back and forth. Israbestis wiped his brow and leaned against the house. He could feel the blood beating in his stomach. Don't talk to dirty old men.

Pardon me. Maybe you can tell me how old that cradle is. The one by the churn there — there by the tree.

The young man's shadow darkened Israbestis' spider. It ran swiftly up two courses and halted in the sun. Israbestis followed the young man's finger and shook his head. I'll have to see, he said, though I most likely know it.

Don't take any trouble. I just thought you might know.

I watched this house go up. First on the street.

Really?

I saw the cellar dug and the first brick laid. As a matter of fact I was in this house the very day Bob Stout, who built her, fell from that steeple over there.

Really?

Quite a builder Bob was. You can see. Look at that brick. All hand made. He fell right on the iron fence that used to go around it. It was Saturday. Between Good Friday and Easter.

The Methodist? My wife and I go there.

Really? Well, that's the one — the one he fell from. Before that the Redeemer's church stood there. Or very near… very nearabouts.

Bending over the cradle was a young woman, plainly pregnant, who pushed at it with a cautious finger, her head swaying slightly as it rocked.

It's awful cute, she said.

Israbestis felt his stomach tumble. Gas, he decided. Israbestis knew the cradle of course, but how had Lucy Pimber got it? He struggled to recover himself.

That — that was Brackett Omensetter's cradle, Israbestis said. Missus Pimber — the woman of this house — never had any children herself.

And Israbestis continued to talk while he wondered. Had it lain in this house all these years? And what could it mean to her? how had she got it?

How old would you say, the young man said.

Pretty old. I guess it's pretty old. I don't know how long it was that Omensetter'd had it when he wagoned over. That was… that was '90. Thereabouts.

But the Reverend Jethro Furber filled Tott's skin and clothing. He stood by the cradle, as dark as a corner, reciting — jingles. Tott's head hurt; there was pressure against the inside of his eyes. The child had died. But the child had survived.

He had a craftsman's hands — Omensetter had. He likely made it. Hands quick as cats. And there were two girls — he had two daughters when he came. Let's see. It must be… The older one was nine. Wasn't she? Nine. Make it 1880 maybe.

Do you remember that?

Not well, Israbestis thought. Not well. Not well. Why? The child had survived and they had gone down river. But if the child had survived, they'd have taken the cradle with them.

I remember Omensetter coming, Israbestis managed. Everybody who lived here then remembers that.

What is it made of — pine?

Yes. Pine.

But the Reverend Jethro Furber fluttered in his clothes. It was hot, now, as winter. The steep sun was snowing. And holding his stomach, Jethro Furber began singing a song for Samantha:

a greedy young spinster

ate, live, a lobster

and now every winter

when she sits dinner

as a kind of remonster

he pinches her inner

This, Israbestis remembered. This, he heard clearly.

It's awful cute.

I don't think it'll go for much. Maybe we can get it. Come on. Hon?

I don't imagine anyone who remembers it will bid, Israbestis said.

Why not? It's sweet.

Too old, he thought. Too dead. Too shocked. Omensetter must have left the cradle behind — left it in the Perkins house — and sometime, closing up or renting out, Lucy Pimber found it there. And never said a word. These years.

It's a long story, Israbestis was saying, a long story. This is Brackett Omensetter's cradle. It's not a name that means anything to you, I imagine, but there are a few of us left, like old leaves, I guess Israbestis cackled desperately — who were here when Omensetter drove his wagon into town. Nothing's ever happened like it. Not here. Nothing ever will,' is my guess. Omensetter, now — he was—

Hon?

Too old, he thought. Too dead. Too shocked. The way he'd told it always, it was luck.

It had been a wet spring, you know, Israbestis continued — well, wetter than most you'd want to call wet — and the road from Windham to Gilean was all mud and running ruts and deep brown holes. There was hardly a day it didn't rain, but the day Brackett Omensetter drove over was as warm and clear as this. He had everything he owned piled up in the wagon with this cradle tied to the top of it, and nothing covered. That was the kind of fellow Brackett Omensetter was. He knew it wasn't going to rain again. He counted on his luck.

Don't mind my teeth, my mouth is—

Sam Peach came suddenly and people spilled around him. Israbestis was pushed from behind. Sam was talking in a loud voice and pointing to the churn. He moved the handle up and down. Israbestis struggled against the crowd. There were strange legs against his. He pushed to the edge, his stomach turning. Sam laughed uproariously. The crowd roared. The laughter fell on him like blows. A tall farmer clapped his hands and howled. Peach was selling the cradle. To perish with the owner, that was wise.

Israbestis rested under an elm that was dying of disease. Was that Mabel Fox? Mabel Fox's head was larger and her ears were a fox's ears. When he was a kid, and Mabel was a little girl, the boys used to say: do you know Mabel Fox? and then laugh raucously. They used to chant: Mabel Fox has ears like a fox; put her head in a box and let's throw rocks. That couldn't be Mabel Fox. Her head was too small. What had become of Mabel, he wondered. Put her head in a box. Dead likely — too. He stared at the ground until his vision blurred. Do you know Mabel Fox? He saw a blade of dry grass, suddenly, as something strange, not grass at all. It was like looking at a word until it melted. Mabel Fox has ears like a fox. The world seemed to dwindle in his vision of the blade. Then he reached down and snapped it off. Let's throw rocks. He held it for a moment on the tips of his fingers. It lifted, halted in the air, dropped between his feet. He studied its eaten edge, its blunted point. He carefully set his heel on one dead end.

Furber-like behavior. Tott laughed explosively, in pain.

There was the story of the man who went to pieces, and there was the story of the high and iron fence. There was the saga of Uncle Simon, the Hen Woods burning, and the hunt for Hog Bellman. He had them all. Hours, weeks, months — a life — they'd cost him. Were they all as wrong as the one about the cradle? Well, he'd said he'd see the summer under, and he had… a small success. He'd see… It was on the morning of the sixth of April… on the morning of the sixth… Dickie Frankmann found two of his Tamworth hogs with their throats cut. That made, between Huff and Staub and Gustin, eight in six days, and Ernie said Hog Bellman, mad as a man can be, had done it. Curtis Chamlay rode out to Frankmann's as he'd ridden out to Huff's and out to Staub's and Gustin's. Frankmann riding by him, standing in the stirrups too much. He looked at the carcasses and blood. There wasn't a print though the sty was mud and Chamlay's weight forced water to the edges of his boots. So far it's only Tamworths, Dickie Frankmann said, and there ain't many of them. What has a ghost got against English pigs?

The shoes in front of his were like his own. Black and cracked like his, they laced with hooks and went above the ankles. Soiled white cotton socks oozed out of the shoes and piled up into limp and shiny gray serge pants. The pants were dotted with grease spots. Dirt was caked in the wrinkles, the fly misbuttoned. Suspenders of yellow webbing and brown leather held the pants to a shrunken chest where a frayed, collarless, formal shirt bunched under them and under flowered blue elastic bands. Don't you hear good anymore, the chief shouted. A car backed roughly out the drive. The chief retreated, fanning the air. Israbestis blew the dust from his nostrils, but it lodged in his broken teeth and filmed his shoes. Israbestis rubbed the stubble on his chin. He sank to his back with a weary groan.

How big of a cat have you ever saw, the boy asked.

Well now I've seen some pretty big, said Israbestis Tott.

How big?

Oh let's see. There was Mossteller's cat — huge with yellow eyes — he was near twelve when he died and the size of a dog.

How big of a dog? As big as a pony?

Don't be silly. No cat's as big as that. I swear, though, Skelton's cat might of grown up to it, give him time and rats enough, where he hunted by the station. It was alive. At night stars were scattered in between the shed crates, all by twos, a mean red. Why I remember if you rattled a stone in there, there'd be a scuttering like leaves blown down a road by a strong wind. Skelton's cat would snarl at you for spoiling his stalk, and you'd see his eyes beam up sudden from on top of a box where he sat, lashing his tail, I figure, to the beating of his heart.

You can't hear that.

Of course you can't. I didn't say so. But cats have got the hunter's heart. If you knew how to, minding it ain't easy, not to be picked up like a marble and pocketed to home, you can hear them beat at dusk, just at the time when you can see through their swallowing eyes, if you look hard and straight in at them as they grow fat for the evening, and see backwards down their tight cat strings to their very hunger.

Honest?

You just listen. It ain't easy. Quieter than paws is all their inner talking; just the same, their hearts are speaking to the grass and to the falling dew and to the stone.

What do they say?

Nothing you can put in words. But you've seen cats and how they get low in the grass and put their eyes on what they're after. Have you seen them with their mouths aquiver and not a sound coming out? They want the whole world to be still while they move.

So the rat won't run?

Yes, certainly — so the rat won't run. So the bird won't fly either. So the longlegged hopper will brush his teeth and the goldfish float close to the claw water.

How old was Skelton's cat when he was near to a dog's weight?

Mossteller's cat?

Skelton's cat.

He was about the age I was then.

How old was that?

Fourteen maybe.

That ain't very old. Mine's twenty-nine.

Really? That old?

Well twenty-nine or thirty-three.

That's as old as I ever heard of.

I knew it.

But he lived too long and got too fat.

What happened to him?

There's a story in that.

I knew it.

I know you knew it.

Tell me the story, then. I like cats — soft ones anyway, that don't scratch.

Here was no soft cat, boy. No sir. Leather fur he had, and as for scratching, why he could leave his mark on brick as Guy, well, as a rake makes ruts in the spring dirt.

Boy. I knew it.

I know you did.

Please — tell me the story then, if he had leather for his fur — boy. I like that. I like stories about Kick Skelton.

Did I tell you about Kick Skelton? He's the man who went to pieces.

Sure you did.

No I didn't.

Yes you did — did his cat go hunting with him like his dog did?

Just wait. Like I said, Kick's cat lived by the station. He lived around it in the spring and fall and summer like birds live around their nests. I suppose like rats around trash too, because they did. Maybe Kick's cat didn't live by the station at all. Maybe, because the dump was near, and the rats came to live around it, Kick's cat came to live around the rats, and the station just happened to be there. I was never sure about that. Anyway, he did, though he was no particular place ever, when you looked. But it was all his and he was never far. If something happened strange: if two things different noised together, or if someone laughed a way he hadn't heard before, or squeaked new boots or made a funny motion, like Able Hugo who used to leap straight in the air sometimes, just for the fun of it; whenever anything happened the least from the usual, for he was terrible against that, he'd be to see — and all the trains. When a train was late he'd sit in the bed and stare down the track and lash his tail until the whistle sounded. Still he'd sit there until the train came down on him and at the last second, as slow and lazy as you please, he'd turn his back and walk away.

Golly.

In the winter he often slept inside the station. He knew to an inch how far from the stove to sleep. He knew where everybody spat and where we stamped the snow from our boots, shaking the floor, and where the wind came pouring, snowflakes with it, rattling the paper spills we kept in the woodbox. He knew where a live ash from a pipe might land or a whittler's shavings, and he'd figured the fall and roll, I'm sure, of every checker to the corner when the board was spilled, as it often was if Jenkins played. Jenkins. Now there was a fellow. . However. . Kick's cat knew everything about the station. He knew where most of the light fell, and the talk, and where the smoke went. He knew even, I bet, how many flakes would blow to the stove when Kick came in. He balled up on a piece of canvas under a bench and covered his nose with a paw. He sighed and sucked in his sleep sometimes, and sometimes he snored.

Not really.

It's a fact. If we had time I could show you where he'd scratched some bricks like I said he could.

Honest?

Course.

Not really.

Ever watch a cat stretch? Cats know how to live.

I know it.

Cats beat us at it bad. Now Brackett Omensetter, though—

I know it. Did he stay there all the time — in the station I mean? Kick's cat?

He didn't sleep there often enough so you could say he lived there, for he was sometimes out in the worst of the weather. In the middle of the winter I'd find his tracks in strange places, and in the winter most he kept his habits secret. I'll tell you about that later.

Did Kick's cat have a name?

A name?

Yes, a name. Like Isaac, maybe, or Brineydeep.

Gracious. Brineydeep?

If I had a cat I'd name him Brineydeep or Isabel.

I thought you said you had a cat.

I just said that. If I had a cat he'd be as big as a pony and have a long tail. Did Kick's cat have a long tail? Mine would, and when he did, I'd call him Whiskers instead of Brineydeep probably.

I don't follow that.

What was Kick's cat's name? Molly's turtle's Sam, which is dying.

His name was Kick's cat.

If he didn't have a name you couldn't find him. I know a kid got his name erased and he went away forever. Nearly forever. Longer than that even. You go bango, you know, bango!

What happened to him?

He went away invisible so no one could see him.

No one at all?

Only trees. Things like that.

Who told you so?

A man. Bango! You go bango!

A monkey.

Maybe a monkey. Say. What was Kick's cat's name?

Kick's cat.

Just that?

Just that.

Why?

Because that's whose cat he was.

I bet he knew everything about trains and stations.

He knew everything about trains and stations.

I bet he knew when trains got to Chicago Illinois.

He knew when trains did anything.

I bet he was fierce as anything, like a turkey.

Turkeys aren't very fierce.

I hate turkeys. They gobble at you.

Well Kick's cat was fiercer than that.

I bet. I bet he could fly.

Of course he couldn't.

He could.

No.

At night. At night he could.

Say, who knows about this cat, boy, you or me?

Tell me how he knew about trains and stations.

You going to listen or talk?

I want it to be a long story.

It is a long story.

Put everything in it.

I always put everything in it.

Is it good and long? Good stories are long.

Well, they ought to be, anyway. So, let's see: Kick's cat knew everything about trains and stations. He could gallop up a rail like it was a walk and skip across the tracks without moving a cinder in the bed. He perched on spouts and dropped sudden on unloaded crates to claw and sniff out the city wood. When a train was in he would march through the cars, his tail fluffed up and curled over his back, rubbing against the passengers and purring the only time he purred, with a deep bass purr, like a tractor's. The passengers would give him things to eat: peanuts and crackers and candies and fruit and sometimes the centers of sandwiches. Kick's cat hated bread. I'll have to tell you about that. It came from the time some fool boys locked him in the washroom when the train was leaving. Their names were Frank and Ned and Harry and they were fool boys playing at bandits. I call that story the story of Kick's cat's fierce revenge, or sometimes I call it the story of the boys who played at bandits. It depends on which end I come at.

Boy.

Anyway, Kick's cat hated bread. He would lick it clean if it was minced ham, but afterward he'd hook the slice with a claw and toss it down the car. He ate the inside of a lot of sandwiches, come to think of it.

Cats hate fruit.

Not Kick's cat. He was no ordinary cat, haven't I been telling you that?

I hate bread.

You don't hate bread.

I do.

You don't.

Kick's cat hated milk.

He loved milk. He doted on it. He drank three gallons and a pint a day.

He didn't.

Maybe more than that. I couldn't say.

Honest?

That's a way cats have. They've got to love milk and fish and chase mice and rats and birds. Otherwise they ain't cats. It's what they call a law of nature.

I hate ice cream.

No you don't. But that reminds me of old Doc Orcutt.

Bah on doctors.

Ah but Orcutt was special. He had a beautiful beard.

Bah on beards. Was that really his name?

Orcutt? Sure was. And you can bet he heard about it. But he could tell wonderful jokes on himself. Lord. There was the time, well, it's the story I call the story of the cut-rate tonsillectomy.

I don't want to hear about it.

It's funny.

If it's tonsils it's not funny.

Ice cream put me in mind of it. Think of it that way.

My cat hates milk.

You don't have a cat and if you did he wouldn't hate milk, but if he hated milk he'd be a beaver and bite you in half like a log.

Kick's cat then.

Well. He was big and tawny. He had a face as round as a barrel and great wide circle eyes.

Cheese. I got to go. That's my ma. She'll be awful mad if she sees me.

But what about Kick's cat?

I got to go.

But I haven't come to the story. You don't know about the rat either. You see there was a particularly big gray rat, as big as a boot maybe, maybe bigger, and that rat wasn't afraid of anything.

Boy. But I got to. I got to go.

But the rat. It was the rat that bit Kick's nose. Remember? t was the challenge to the fight.

Bye.

He'd arrange a fight between Kick's cat and the boot-big rat… a chase and a fight… between cars, in the walls… whisker to whisker … it would last all night. You should have heard the way the wind passed between his paws. Arrange… So I'll arrange… Well, he seemed a nice boy, one of those our nowadays have lost. Too young for the story of May Cobb. And how would he learn his history now? Imagine growing up in a world where only generals and geniuses, empires and companies, had histories, not your own town or grandfather, house or Samantha — none of the things you'd loved. No, I didn't finish about Bob Stout. Boy — your own leaves are keeping your eyes from the trunk. I could arrange for pirates. Fire at the Hen Woods. Uncle Simon, the ancient bony sycamore, burning and breaking my heart. I could arrange that But the boy was gone, wrapped round by his mother. Yet I remember everything. Kick's cat. Droplets of cream along his jaws. Omensetter swinging his arms in a dance. Surely they should be of use. No. An odd lot. He couldn't even auction them off. Still — suppose they were sold? Could he bear to live through that sweet weather again, through that purple sky and lingering haze, the long clouds losing the sun, the twilight deepening the roads and lying in the tracks till dawn? Or so it seemed then — when his flesh was young.

The churn was sold. The cradle. He didn't see who got it. All the tools were gone. The rope. The canned goods. Even empty soda bottles dull with dust. Sam Peach had cleaned the back and swept one side. Sofas. Chairs. The row of ladies was empty. It was the heat. The sky had a vacant blue. Was that fellow the son of Parson Peach? Could that be? First Pike. Let's see. Then Meldon, Rush, and Furber. In the Redeemer's. Huffley after that, and Peach. Oh he was out of touch. Well there was no resemblance. Lamps. Satin shades and tassels. Now plates and coffee mills and cups. The crowd was with him in the front. It seemed smaller. More painted plates by Lucy Pimber. Pepper mills. Goblets of cranberry glass. Cut crystal bowls. Linen. Rugs. Sheets. Towels. Quilts. Rags that were old clothes. To perish with the owner. That was wise. Samantha. Sister. She would sell his bones. What would his bones bring?

Israbestis rose with effort. To climb a tree so high you could see Columbus from it — what a wonder. It was Omensetter's luck. Not a story, an illness. He'd never live its telling. Henry Pimber died of Omensetter's luck, too, one way or other, everybody said. The boy had died at that — the infant. How lucky was he? anybody?

If you ask me that minister is mad. Will you shush? In that garden, bless me, back and forth, back and forth, all he does is walk.

Well, I told old Harris if you use your heart like that, you'll stop, Doc Orcutt said, but if you don't it'll just plug up — you're just as dead and there's no effort in it. The doctor slapped his thigh.

Tott — you've shut your house. In effect, you've shut your house. You can't forget, and you don't dare remember.

I remember who said bless me. In that garden, bless me… Yes. The darkie. Funny… Omensetter was dark, he was brown, a deep brown like pot roast gravy. Israbestis chuckled. Then Furber was dark in his cloth, small and dark, though very pale of skin… oh, very… very pale… a moon out, somebody said, where the stars had been.

The tap when he reached it was warm. He searched the bricks, aware of his sweat. His eyes went over every pit and crater. He saw his spit crusted flat in the dust and spat again on top of it a cottony spit. He pushed aside the stems of marigolds and inspected all their rusty petals. The pungent scent cleared his nose. He hunted patiently through their leaves. There, beside his foot on the walk, stilting on its thread-thin legs, the pebble stood. Israbestis bent down and it suddenly fled. He pursued it down the walk with his thumb, jabbing. It nearly escaped his reach, which would have been too bad, for they were alone in the world, but he put his thumb down and the longlegs went out like rays around it. Then slowly they curled up. Bango, you go bango, Israbestis said, feeling the cement warm his thumb.

What are you doing mister, killing spiders, a little girl said. Yes. Killing spiders, Israbestis whispered, getting up.

Good. I hate spiders. They crawl you up.

Yes.

They're nasty.

Yes. Nasty, said Israbestis Tott.

The Love and Sorrow

of Henry Pimber