The Big Rock Candy Mountain (28 page)

The voices in the parlor had grown louder, and he listened. It sounded as if Mrs. Mangin was mad. Carefully he slid off the hall seat and sneaked up to the door. By the time he got there and held his breath to listen, it was his mother's voice.

“... that you're not being fair to him. You can't lay all the blame on him. He's not a bad boy.”

Now Mrs. Mangin‘s, heavy and triumphant. “What do you call climbing on the rafters and peeking at the girls in bed? If that isn't bad ...”

“You don't know he did that. Mrs. Hemingway doesn't think he did.”

“What else would he be doing up there? I'm sorry to say it, Mrs. Mason, but I think we are dealing with a corrupt and filthy-minded child.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Ma said, almost as loudly as Mrs. Mangin. “He's not quite seven years old yet.”

Mrs. Mangin said, “My experience lets me know many more children than you can have known, Mrs. Mason ...”

There was the scrape of a chair, as if someone had stood up, and Chet started to scuttle for the hall seat, but stopped when he heard his mother's voice again. “I know that when I brought Chester here he was as clean and nice a boy as anyone could ask for.”

Mrs. Mangin's voice cut in, rising, “Mrs. Mason, if you mean to insinuate ...”

“So if there's any evil in his mind now, he learned it at this home. I won't stand for your putting him in jail for two weeks, making him feel as if he's done something horrible. There's no evil in a child that age. The evil is read in by other people.”

“There is only one way to treat a rotten-minded child,” Mrs. Mangin said. “If our methods don't suit you ...”

“There is only one kind of rotten-minded child,” Ma said, almost shouting, “and that's the kind that exists in a rotten mind. You can just bet your methods don't suit me.”

His ear against the wood, Chet shook his shoulders and crowed silently. Ma was just giving it to the old stink. “I looked at Bruce tonight, too,” Ma was saying, and her words sounded jumbled and fast as if she were trying to say two or three things at once. “He's thin as a rail, all shoulder blades and eyes.”

“If he won't eat his meals,” Mrs. Mangin said, “he gets nothing else here. We don't coddle children, Mrs. Mason.”

Ma didn't say anything for a minute, and Chet stretched his neck, trying to see through the crack in the door. But all he could see was the tiled fireplace, and the stone dog set above the opening. He jerked back when Ma's voice came, much closer to the door.

“There's not much point in discussing it, is there?” she said. “I'm taking the children out, right now.”

Chet ducked back against the hall seat and the door opened, letting out a wide stripe of light across the hall. Ma stepped out and came over to him quickly. Her shirtwaist smelled like ironing as she stooped to hug him. “Wait here,” she said. “I'm going up and get Bruce and we're going to get out of this place.”

Ten minutes later she was down carrying Bruce; he was dressed, but sleep had not entirely left him, and his knuckles dug into his eyes. Mrs. Mangin stood in the parlor door, drawn up high, with her teeth not quite covered by her inadequate lips. Chet sidled past her, watchful for a thumping, till he got his hand in his mother's.

“I'll be back tomorrow for their clothes,” Ma said.

Mrs. Mangin, with her wintry and goldenly-gleaming smile, watched them out the door. Chet stuck out his tongue from the porch, and then Ma set Brucie down and they walked together down the aisle of black spruces. It was the latest Chet had ever been out, and the yard looked funny in the dark. He wouldn't have known it was the same place.

“Where we going, Ma?” he said.

Her hand closed on his. “To my room.”

“Are we gonna live there?”

“No.”

“Is Pa coming back and get us?”

“No.”

“What are we gonna do then?”

Ma sounded tired. “There's only one thing we can do,” she said. “We'll have to go back and visit Grandpa.”

That house—the dark, quiet little parlor, the library table stacked with Norwegian newspapers, the glass-fronted bookcases full of sets, Ibsen, Bjørnson, Lie, Kjelland, the folksongs of As bjørnson and Moe, the brass-and-leather Snorre, the patriotic
landsmaal
songs of Ivar Aasen—she knew the feel and look of everything there, the wallpaper, the curtains, the stained dark woodwork. Nothing had changed a particle. She knew on what page of the great Snorre she would find the engraving of the death of Baldur that had made her cry as a child because Good was being destroyed by Evil, and she even felt some of her old hatred of the unstable and mischievous Loki. The most wonderful thing about the place was that sense of everything just where it had always been.

Kristin's arm was around her all the way upstairs, as if she were an invalid. The affection and sympathy in her sister's face was almost too much. She hadn't found it in her father or in Sarah; they were polite, dutiful, a little cold, and she knew they didn't want her, she knew their disapproval cut so deep that even now, in her desperation, when she had no other place to turn to, they suffered her merely, without real welcome. She smiled a little wearily, going upstairs, at what her pride had come to. Not once only, but twice, she had come back on them like a charity case.

Her room was just as it had always been. The roses still clustered in the wallpaper, the curtains hung crisply against the window whose bars were outlined by early snow, the carpet still took its streak of sun, and she saw the mark where it had faded through the years. On the wash stand was the big red and white bowl, the pitcher inside it, just as they had stood through her childhood, and through the misted window was the same quiet street and the same three white houses and the same gentle swell of open country dotted with bare trees..

Like smoke that rose and filled a room the feeling swelled in her that she had never breathed properly since she had run away from home. Dakota had been too open, a place of wind and empty sky. Seattle had been tenements in crowded streets and the interminable drifting rain. The tent-house where she had almost got the feeling of home had been huddled closely within a circle of woods. But here there was both shelter and space, here was home even if she was unwelcome in it. The changelessness of the house and the strip of quiet street and the swell of farmland was like an open and reassuring door.

She heard Kristin talking without being fully aware of what she said. There was a sad-sweet relaxation in all her bones, as if she had just taken off a rigid corset after hours of formality. Then Kristin's talk paused, and Elsa looked up to see her holding a dress she had just taken from the telescope. The dress was cheap, too-much-laundered, and the instant defensive words jumped to Elsa's lips. “I've had that dress ever since we lived in Hardanger. I ought to have thrown it away, years ago, but you know how you hang onto things.”

“Yes,” Kristin said quietly, and hung the dress in the wardrobe, but there was a vague hostility between them. Elsa had no idea what they all thought about her leaving Bo. Maybe they thought she had left because he wasn't a good provider, as if she were as disloyal and selfish as that! She shut the empty telescope and shoved it under the bed.

“Is there any hot water?” she said. “The boys ought to have baths.”

“So should you,” Kristin said. “They're out playing around the barn. You look after yourself first.”

“Maybe I will,” Elsa said. “A bath will feel good.”

“I'll bring the tub up here.”

“I can get it.”

“Let me,” Kristin said. “Please.” She was out the door, and Elsa let her go. Slowly she unbuttoned her blouse and took it off, unhooked her corset, unlaced her shoes. Kristin labored in with two pails of steaming water, went out again after the tub. As she set the tub down she looked at Elsa, and Elsa saw her eyes widen and her mouth twist. She was looking at the burned arm. Elsa raised it and laughed a little.

“Oh, Else, how did you do it?” Kristin said.

“The coffee urn tipped over.”

Kristin came up and touched the smooth whitish scar that prevented the arm's being completely straightened. “It must have been awful,” she said. “Were you alone?”

“Do you want to blame that on him, too?” Elsa said.

Kristin stammered, flushing.

“He was there,” Elsa said. “He carried me down to the doctor.”

“Oh.” Kristin stood twisting her engagement ring around on her finger.

“He isn't as bad as all of you always thought he was,” Elsa said bitterly.

“I'm sorry, Elsa. Honestly, I didn't mean to ...”

“Oh, let's not,” Elsa said. “Please, Kristin. I didn't mean to snap at you, either. I just get tangled up. I can feel it all through the house, the way they blame him for everything. I'm as much to blame as he is.”

“Do you know what Dad said to me after we got your wire?” Kristin sat down on the bed and took both of Elsa's hands. “He'd talked it all over with Sarah, and you know what he said? He said he wanted me to keep you occupied, and stay around and do things with you, because this whole thing was going to be pretty hard on Sarah. On
Sarah!
Oh, Else, she's still ashamed of marrying Dad, and she dislikes you for it, somehow, I know she does.”

“Does she?” Elsa said. “I gave up disliking her a long time ago. She married Dad because she was alone and didn't have any place to turn. I couldn't dislike her for that very long. And besides, he's doing me a favor if he asks you to look after me. Isn't he?”

“I think Dad would be all right if it weren't for her,” Kristin said. “She's just got so good. He missed you after you went away, but she keeps reminding, him of all the sins she says Bo does. When you came back before she didn't want Dad to let you. That's the only time I ever heard him get mad at her and bawl her out.”

“Oh well,” Elsa said. “I'll try to find work somewhere, and then we won't have all this. I'm just so tired now I guess I don't care what they think.”

“When George and I get married in April you come and live with us,” Kristin said.

Elsa smiled. “I guess I don't want to wish that on you,” she said. “I thought maybe I could keep house for Erling on the farm.”

“You don't want to go out on that farm and get snowed in all winter. You stay right here. You've got more right here than Sarah has. I wouldn't let her drive me out ”

“We'll see,” Elsa said. She didn‘t, actually, want much to go out to the farm. The farm was the one part of home that was spoiled for her. The winter when Bo had nearly gone crazy out there would keep coming up and reminding her of things she didn't want to remember.

 

“You're thin,” Kristin said, on the second morning. “You need to rest and eat a lot.”

After that things were set beside her at the table casually, slyly. Her plate was heaped before she could refuse. She got second helpings she didn't want. She tried, she ate till she was stuffed, she let herself be supinely carried off for naps after lunch, but all the time she was aware that her father and Sarah were not a part of this plan. They were like strangers on a bench, making room for her to squeeze in, but asking no questions, inviting no confidences, interesting themselves in what had absorbed them before her arrival. They would not welcome her, but they would make room out of Christian charity.

Still she could forget, often, that they didn't want her. She could forget Bo and the café and Seattle and the orphanage, could look at the children and see them blooming, and be thankful at least for their sakes. Chester was in school, Bruce was teasing to go too, devoting himself for hours to crayons and slates, curled on the floor in the dining room. In the mild, brooding, early-winter days Elsa often sat in the dining room sewing and watched his absorbed play-learning and was grateful.

On Sunday afternoons her father took his nap in the dining room, on a couch crowded into the corner, his fingers trailing on the floor among the trailing fringes of the cover. The boys, unable to subdue themselves to Sunday, were in and out, pestering. They sneaked up to tickle Grandpa with feathers, and he played with them as Elsa had never seen him play with his own children. Even the unrelaxing sternness of his face, after the first few uncertain days, could not fool them. On the pretense of having protection against the flies, he took a
fly-
swatter with him to his nap, waving it up out of his doze occasionally. He seemed to sleep, his mustaches faintly blowing as he breathed, and the boys crept forward smothering giggles, stretching their feathers far out. They would be right at his nose, only an inch away, when one blue eye would open like a shutter, the stern eyebrows would scowl, and the fly-swatter would swish around their legs.

“Preacher's tails!” he would roar at them. “Mosquit”hadowsl”

Watching that, or watching the boys playing with the neighborhood children, Elsa hadn't the heart to look for work yet. She couldn't take them away just when they were tasting normal childhood, making friends, feeling themselves secure. So she kept her own feelings quiet and made herself useful in the house. She helped preserve meat at butchering time, made head cheese and sausage and tried lard. And when there was nothing else to do she could help Kristin with her trousseau.

Most of her clothes had to be made, for her father would stand for no nonsense like shopping tours in Minneapolis. So Elsa made nightgowns and dresses and petticoats and blouses, hemmed sheets and pillow cases, crocheted lace, working as if it were her own hope chest that was being filled, and not her sister's.