On the Trask place Adam drew
into himself.
The
unfinished Sanchez house lay open to wind and rain, and the new floorboards buckled and warped with moisture.
The laid-out
vegetable
gardens rioted with weeds.
Adam seemed clothed in a viscosity that slowed his movements and held his
thoughts down. He saw the world through gray water. Now and then his mind fought its way upward, and when the light broke in it brought him only a sickness of the mind, and he retired into the grayness again. He
was aware of the twins because he heard them cry and laugh, but he felt only a thin distaste for them. To Adam they were symbols of his loss. His neighbors drove up into his little valley, and every one of them would have understood anger or sorrow—and so helped him. But they could do nothing with the cloud that hung over him. Adam did not resist them. He simply did not see them, and before long the neighbors stopped driving up the road under the oaks.
For a time Lee tried to stimulate Adam to awareness, but Lee was a busy man. He cooked
and
washed, he
bathed the twins and fed them. Through his hard and constant work he grew fond of the two little boys. He talked to them in Cantonese, and Chinese words were the first they recognized and tried to repeat.
Samuel Hamilton went back twice to try to wedge Adam up and out of his
shock. Then Liza stepped in. “I want you to stay away from there,” she said. “You come back a changed man.
Samuel, you don’t change him. He changes you. I can see the look of him in your face.”
“Have you thought of
the two little boys, Liza?” he asked.
“I’ve thought of your own
family,” she
said
snappishly. “You lay a crepe on us for days after.”
“All right, Mother,” he said, but it saddened him because Samuel could not
mind his own business when there was pain in any man. It was no easy thing for him to abandon
Adam to
his desolation.
Adam had paid him for
his work, had even paid him
for the windmill parts and did not want the windmills.
Samuel sold the equipment and sent Adam the money. He had no answer.
He became aware of an anger at Adam Trask. It seemed to Samuel that Adam might be pleasuring himself with sadness. But there was
little leisure to brood. Joe was off to college—to that school Leland Stanford had built on his farm near Palo Alto. Tom worried his father, for Tom grew deeper and deeper into books. He did his work well enough, but Samuel felt that Tom had not joy enough.
Will and George were doing well in business, and
Joe was writing letters home
in rhymed verse and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.
Samuel wrote to Joe, saying,
“I
would be
disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your
age and
wisdom,
accepted agnosticism the way you’d take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter
only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization
down to
a
stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven’t even got a shovel yet.”
Liza was getting old.
Samuel saw it in her face, and he could not feel old himself, white beard or no. But Liza was living backwards, and that’s the proof.
There was a time when
she looked on his plans and
prophecies as
the crazy
shoutings of a child. Now she felt that they were unseemly in a grown man. They three, Liza and Tom and Samuel, were alone on the ranch. Una was married to a stranger and gone away. Dessie had her dressmaking
business in
Salinas. Olive had married her young man, and Mollie was married and living, believe it or not, in an apartment in San Francisco. There was perfume, and a white bearskin rug in the bedroom in front of the
fireplace, and Mollie smoked a
gold-tipped cigarette—
Violet Milo—with her coffee after dinner.
One day Samuel strained
his back lifting a bale of hay, and it hurt his feelings more than his back, for he could not imagine a life in which Sam
Hamilton was
not
privileged to lift a bale of hay. He felt insulted by his back, almost as he would have been if one of his children had been dishonest.
In King City, Dr. Tilson felt him over. The doctor
grew more testy with his overworked years.
“You sprained your back.” “That
I
did,” said Samuel.
“And you drove all the way in to have me tell you
that you sprained your back and charge you two dollars?” “Here’s
your two dollars.”
“And you want to know what to do about it?” “Sure I do.”
“Don’t sprain it any
more. Now take your money back. You’re not a fool, Samuel, unless you’re getting childish.”
“But it hurts.”
“Of course it hurts. How would you know it was strained if it didn’t?”
Samuel laughed.
“You’re good for me,” he said. “You’re more than two dollars good for me. Keep the money.”
The doctor looked
closely at him. “I think you’re telling the truth, Samuel. I’ll keep the money.”
Samuel went in to see
Will in his fine new store. He hardly knew his son, for Will was
getting fat
and
prosperous and he wore a coat and vest and a gold ring on his little finger.
“I’ve got a package
made up for Mother,” Will said. “Some little cans of things
from France.
Mushrooms and liver paste and sardines so little you can hardly see them.”
“She’ll just send them to Joe,” said Samuel. “Can’t you make her eat them?”
“No,” said his father. “But she’ll enjoy sending them to Joe.”
Lee came into the store
and his eyes lighted up. “How do, Missy,” he said.
“Hello, Lee. How are the boys?”
“Boys fine.”
Samuel said, “I’m going
to have a glass of beer next door, Lee. Be glad to have you join me.”
Lee and Samuel sat at
the little round table in the barroom and Samuel drew figures on the scrubbed wood with the moisture of his beer glass. “I’ve wanted to go to see you and Adam but I didn’t think I could do any good.”
“Well, you can’t do any harm. I thought he’d get over it. But he still walks around like a ghost.”
“It’s over a year, isn’t it?” Samuel asked. “Three months over.” “Well, what do you think I can do?”
“I don’t know,” said
Lee. “Maybe you could shock him out of it. Nothing else has worked.”
“I’m
not good at
shocking. I’d probably end up by shocking myself. By the way, what did he name the twins?”
“They don’t have any
names.”
“You’re making a joke, Lee.”
“I am not making jokes.” “What does he call them?”
“He calls them ‘they.’ ” “I mean when he speaks to them.”
“When he speaks to
them he calls them ‘you,’ one or both.”
“This is
nonsense,”
Samuel said angrily. “What kind of fool is the man?” “I’ve meant to come and tell you. He’s a dead man
unless you can wake him up.” Samuel said, “I’ll come.
I’ll bring a horse whip. No
names! You’re damn right I’ll come Lee.”
“When?” “Tomorrow.”
“I’ll kill a chicken,” said Lee. “You’ll like the twins,
Mr. Hamilton. They’re fine-looking boys. I won’t tell Mr. Trask you’re coming.”
2
Shyly Samuel told his wife he wanted to visit the Trask place. He thought she would pile up strong walls of objection, and for one of the few times in his life he would disobey her wish no matter how strong her objection. It gave him a sad feeling in the stomach
to think of
disobeying his wife. He explained his purpose almost as though he were confessing. Liza put her hands on her hips during the telling and his heart sank. When he was finished she continued to look at him, he thought, coldly.
Finally she said,
“Samuel, do you think you can move this rock of a man?”
“Why, I don’t know,
Mother.” He had not expected this. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think it is such
an important matter that those babies have names right now?”
“Well, it seemed so to
me,” he said lamely. “Samuel, do you think why you want to go? Is it your
natural incurable
nosiness? Is it your black inability to mind your own business?”
“Now, Liza, I know my failings pretty well. I thought it might be more than that.” “It had better be more
than that,” she said. “This man has not admitted that his sons live. He has cut them off mid-air.”
“That’s the way it seems to me, Liza.”
“If he tells you to mind your own business—what then?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
Her jaw snapped shut
and her teeth clicked. “If you do not get those boys named, there’ll be no warm place in this house for you. Don’t you dare come whining back, saying he wouldn’t do it or he wouldn’t listen. If you do I’ll have to go myself.”
“I’ll give him the back
of my hand,” Samuel said. “No, that you won’t do.
You fall short in savagery, Samuel. I know you. You’ll give
him
sweet-sounding words
and you’ll come
dragging back and try to make me forget you ever went.”
“I’ll beat his brains out,” Samuel shouted.
He slammed into the bedroom, and Liza smiled at the panels.
He came out soon in his black suit and his hard shiny shirt and collar. He stooped down to her while she tied his black string tie. His white beard was brushed to shining. “You’d best take a swab
at your shoes with a blacking brush,” she said.
In the midst of painting the blacking on his worn
shoes he looked sideways up at her. “Could I take the Bible along?” he asked. “There’s no
place for getting a good name like the Bible.”
“I don’t much like it out of the house,” she said
uneasily. “And if you’re late coming home, what’ll I have for my reading? And the children’s names are in it.” She saw his face fall. She went into the bedroom and came back with a small Bible, worn and scuffed, its cover held on by brown paper and glue. “Take this one,” she said.
“But that’s your mother’s.”
“She wouldn’t mind.
And all the names but one in here have two dates.”
“I’ll wrap it so it won’t get hurt,” said Samuel.
Liza spoke sharply.
“What my mother would mind is what I mind, and I’ll tell you what I mind. You’re never satisfied to let the Testament
alone.
You’re
forever picking at it and questioning it. You turn it over the way a ‘coon turns over a wet rock, and it angers me.”
“I’m
just trying to
understand it, Mother.”
“What is there to
understand? Just read it. There it is in black and white. Who wants you to understand it? If the Lord God wanted you to understand it He’d have given you to understand or He’d have set it down different.”
“But, Mother—”
“Samuel,” she
said,
“you’re the most contentious man this world has ever seen.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Don’t agree with me all the
time. It hints of
insincerity. Speak up for yourself.”
She looked after his dark figure in the buggy as he drove away. “He’s a sweet husband,” she said aloud, “but contentious.”
And Samuel was
thinking with wonder, Just when I think I know her she does a thing like that.
3
On the last half-mile, turning out of the Salinas Valley and driving up the unscraped road under the great oak trees,
Samuel tried to plait a rage to take
care of his
embarrassment.
He said
heroic words to himself. Adam was more gaunt than Samuel remembered.
His eyes were dull, as though he did not use them much for seeing. It took a little time for Adam to become aware that Samuel was standing before him. A grimace of displeasure drew down his mouth.
Samuel said, “I feel small now—coming
uninvited as I have.”
Adam said, “What do
you want? Didn’t I pay you?” “Pay?” Samuel asked.
“Yes, you did. Yes, by God, you did. And I’ll tell you that pay has been more than I’ve merited by the nature of it.” “What? What are you
trying to say?”
Samuel’s anger grew
and put out leaves. “A man, his
whole life, matches
himself against pay. And how, if it’s my whole life’s work to find my worth, can you, sad man, write me down instant in a ledger?”
Adam exclaimed, “I’ll
pay. I tell you I’ll pay. How
much? I’ll pay.” “You have, but not to me.”
“Why did you come then? Go away!”
“You once invited me.” “I don’t invite you now.”
Samuel put his hands on
his hips and leaned forward. “I’ll tell you now, quiet. In a bitter night, a mustard night that was last night, a good thought came and the dark was sweetened when the day sat down. And this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of the first light—that our betters spoke of. So I invite myself.” “You are not welcome.”
Samuel said, “I’m told that out of some singular
glory your loins got twins.” “What business is that of yours?”
A kind of joy lighted Samuel’s
eyes at the
rudeness. He saw Lee lurking inside the house and peeking out at him. “Don’t, for the love of God, put violence on me. I’m a man hopes there’ll be a picture of peace on my hatchments.”
“I
don’t understand you.”
“How could you? Adam Trask, a dog wolf with a pair of cubs, a scrubby rooster
with sweet paternity for a fertilized egg! A dirty clod!” A
darkness
covered
Adam’s cheeks and for the first time his eyes seemed to see. Samuel joyously felt hot rage in his stomach. He cried, “Oh, my friend, retreat from me! Please, I beg of you!” The saliva dampened the corners
of his
mouth.
“Please!” he cried. “For the love of any holy thing you can remember, step back from me. I feel murder nudging my gizzard.”
Adam said, “Get off my place. Go on—get off. You’re acting crazy. Get off. This is my place. I bought it.”
“You bought your eyes and nose,” Samuel jeered. “You
bought your
uprightness. You bought your thumb on sideways. Listen to me, because I’m like to kill you after. You bought! You bought out of some sweet inheritance. Think now—do you deserve your children, man?”
“Deserve them? They’re here—I
guess.
I
don’t
understand you.”
Samuel wailed, “God save me, Liza! It’s not the
way you think, Adam! Listen
to me before my thumb finds the bad place at your throat. The precious twins—untried, unnoticed, undirected—and I say it quiet with my hands down—undiscovered.”
“Get off,” said Adam hoarsely. “Lee, bring a gun! This man is crazy. Lee!”
Then Samuel’s hands were on Adam’s throat,
pressing the throbbing up to his temples, swelling his eyes with blood. And Samuel was snarling at him. “Tear away with your jelly fingers. You have not bought these boys, nor stolen them, nor passed any bit for them. You have them by some strange and lovely
dispensation.”
Suddenly he plucked his hard thumbs out of his neighbor’s throat.
Adam stood panting. He felt his throat where the blacksmith hands had been.
“What is it you want of me?” “You have no love.”
“I had—enough to kill me.”
“No one ever had
enough. The stone orchard celebrates too little, not too much.”
“Stay away from me. I
can fight back. Don’t think I can’t defend myself.”
“You have two weapons, and they not named.”
“I’ll fight you, old man. You are an old man.” Samuel said, “I can’t think in my mind of a dull
man picking up a rock, who before evening would not put a name to it—like Peter. And you—for a year you’ve lived with your heart’s draining and you’ve not even laid a number to the boys.”
Adam said, “What I do is my own business.”
Samuel struck him with
a work-heavy fist, and Adam sprawled out in the dust.
Samuel asked him to rise, and when Adam accepted struck him again, and this time Adam did not get up. He looked
stonily
at the
menacing old man.
The fire went out of
Samuel’s eyes and he said quietly, “Your sons have no names.”
Adam replied, “Their
mother left them motherless.” “And you have left them fatherless. Can’t you feel the cold at night of a lone child? What warm is there, what bird song, what possible morning can be good? Don’t you remember, Adam, how it was, even a little?”
“I didn’t do it,” Adam said.
“Have you undone it?
Your boys have no names.” He stooped down and put his
arms around Adam’s
shoulders and helped him to his feet. “We’ll give them names,” he said. “We’ll think long and find good names to clothe them.” He whipped the dust from Adam’s shirt with his hands.
Adam wore a faraway
yet intent look, as though he
were listening to some wind-carried music, but his eyes were not dead as they had
been. He said, “It’s hard to imagine I’d thank a man for insults and for shaking me out like a rug. But I’m grateful.
It’s a hurty thanks, but it’s thanks.”
Samuel smiled, crinkle-eyed. “Did it seem natural? Did I do it right?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” “Well, in a way I
promised my wife I’d do it. She didn’t believe I would. I’m not a fighting man, you see. The last time I clobbered a human soul it was over a red-nosed
girl and a
Schoolbook in
County Derry.”
Adam stared at Samuel, but in his mind he saw and
felt his brother Charles, black and murderous, and that sight switched to Cathy and the quality of her eyes over the gun barrel. “There wasn’t any
fear in it,” Adam said. “It was more like a weariness.”
“I guess I was not angry enough.”
“Samuel, I’ll ask just
once and then no more. Have you heard anything? Has there been any news of her— any news at all?”
“I’ve heard nothing.” “It’s almost a relief,” said Adam.
“Do you have hatred?” “No. No—only a kind of sinking in the heart. Maybe later I’ll sort it out to hatred.
There was no interval from loveliness to horror, you see. I’m confused, confused.”
Samuel said, “One day we’ll sit and you’ll lay it out on the table, neat like a
solitaire deck, but now—why, you can’t find all the cards.”
From behind the shed there came the indignant shrieking of an outraged chicken and then a dull thump.
“There’s something at the hens,” said Adam. A
second shrieking
started. “It’s Lee at the hens,” said Samuel. “You know, if chickens had government and church and history, they would take a distant and distasteful view of human joy. Let any gay and hopeful thing happen to a man, and some chicken goes howling to the block.”
Now the two men were silent, breaking it only with small
false courtesies—
meaningless inquiries about health and weather, with answers unlistened to. And this might have continued until they were angry at each other again if Lee had not interfered.
Lee brought out a table and two chairs and set the
chairs facing each other. He made another trip for a pint of whisky and two glasses and set a glass on the table in front of each chair. Then he carried out the twins, one under each arm, and put them on the ground beside the table
and gave each boy a stick for his hand to shake and make shadows with.
The boys sat solemnly
and looked about, stared at Samuel’s beard and searched for Lee. The strange thing about
them was their
clothing, for the boys were dressed
in the
straight
trousers and the frogged and braided
jackets of
the Chinese.
One was in
turquoise blue and the other in a faded rose pink, and the frogs and braid were black. On their heads sat round black silken hats, each with a bright red button on its flat top.
Samuel asked, “Where
in the world did you get those clothes, Lee?”
“I didn’t get them,” Lee
said testily. “I had them. The only other clothes they have I made myself, out of sail cloth. A boy should be well dressed on his naming day.” “You’ve dropped the
pidgin, Lee.”
“I hope for good. Of
course I use it in King City.” He addressed a few short sung syllables to the boys on the ground, and they both smiled up at him and waved their sticks in the air. Lee said, “I’ll pour you a drink. It’s some that was here.” “It’s some you bought yesterday in King City,” said Samuel.
Now that Samuel and Adam were seated together
and the barriers were down, a curtain of shyness fell on Samuel. What he had beaten in with his fists he could not supplement
easily.
He
thought of the virtues of courage
and forbearance,
which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on. His mind grinned inward at itself.
The two sat looking at
the twin boys in their strange bright-colored
clothes.
Samuel thought, Sometimes your opponent can help you more than your friend. He lifted his eyes to Adam. “It’s hard to start,” he
said. “And it’s like a put-off letter that gathers difficulties to itself out of the minutes.
Could you give me a hand?” Adam looked up for a moment and then back at the boys on the ground. “There’s
a crashing in my head,” he said. “Like sounds you hear under water. I’m having to dig myself out of a year.” “Maybe you’ll tell me
how it was and that will get us started.”
Adam tossed down his
drink and poured another and rolled the glass at an angle in his hand. The amber whisky moved high on the side and the pungent fruit odor of its warming filled the air. “It’s hard to remember,” he said. “It was not agony but a dullness. But no—there were needles in it. You said I had not all the cards in the deck— and I was thinking of that.
Maybe I’ll never have all the cards.”
“Is it herself trying to
come out? When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.” “Maybe it’s that. She’s
all mixed up with the dullness,
and I
can’t
remember much except the last picture drawn in fire.” “She did shoot you,
didn’t she, Adam?” His lips grew thin and his eyes black.
Samuel said, “There’s no need to answer.” “There’s no reason not
to,” Adam replied. “Yes, she did.”
“Did she mean to kill you?”
“I’ve thought of that
more than anything else. No, I don’t think she meant to kill me. She didn’t allow me that dignity. There was no hatred in her, no passion at all. I learned about that in the army. If you want to kill a man, you shoot at head or heart or stomach. No, she hit me where she intended. I can see the gun barrel moving over. I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had wanted my death. That would have been a kind of love. But I was an annoyance, not an enemy.”
“You’ve given it a lot of thought,” said Samuel.
“I’ve had lots of time for it. I want to ask you
something. I can’t remember behind the last ugly thing.
Was she very beautiful, Samuel?”
“To you she was
because you built her. I don’t think you ever saw her—only your own creation.”
Adam mused aloud, “I wonder who she was—what she was. I was content not to know.”
“And now you want to?” Adam dropped his eyes. “It’s not curiosity. But I
would like to know what kind of blood is in my boys. When
they grow up—won’t I be looking for something in them?”
“Yes, you will. And I
will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them.
They will be what you expect of them.”
“But their blood—” “I don’t very much believe
in blood,” said
Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.” “You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”
“No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”
“No one
hereabouts
would agree with you. I think even Mrs. Hamilton would not.”
“That’s exactly right.
She most of all would disagree, and so I would not say it to her and let loose the thunder of her disagreement. She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront. She’s a fine woman, but you have to learn to feel your way with her. Let’s speak of the boys.”
“Will you have another drink?”
“That I will, thank you. Names are a great mystery. I’ve never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this—whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong. How do you favor the standard
names—John or
James or Charles?”
Adam was looking at the twins and suddenly with the mention of the name he saw his brother peering out of the eyes of one of the boys. He leaned forward.
“What is it?” Samuel asked.
“Why,” Adam cried, “these boys are not alike! They don’t look alike.” “Of course they don’t.
They’re not identical twins.” “That
one—that one
looks like my brother. I just saw it. I wonder if the other looks like me.”
“Both of them do. A
face has everything in it right back to the beginning.”
“It’s not so much now,” said Adam. “But for a moment I thought I was seeing a ghost.” “Maybe
that’s
what
ghosts are,” Samuel observed.
Lee brought dishes out and put them on the table. “Do you have Chinese ghosts?” Samuel asked. “Millions,” said Lee.
“We have more ghosts than anything else. I guess nothing in China ever dies. It’s very crowded. Anyway, that’s the feeling I got when I was there.”
Samuel said, “Sit down, Lee. We’re trying to think of names.”
“I’ve got chicken frying.
It will be ready pretty soon.”
Adam looked up from
the twins and his eyes were warmed and softened. “Will you have a drink, Lee?”
“I’m nipping at the og-ka-py in the kitchen,” said Lee and went back to the
house.
Samuel leaned down and gathered up one of the boys and held him on his lap. “Take that one up,” he said to Adam. “We ought to see whether there’s something that draws names to them.”
Adam held the other
child awkwardly on his knee. “They look some alike,” he said, “but not when you look close. This one has rounder eyes than that one.”
“Yes, and a rounder head
and bigger ears,”
Samuel added. “But this one
is more like—like a bullet. This one might go farther but not so high. And this one is going to be darker in the hair and skin. This one will be shrewd,
I
think, and
shrewdness is a limitation on the mind. Shrewdness tells you what you must not do because it would not be shrewd. See how this one supports himself! He’s farther along than that one—better developed. Isn’t it strange how different they are when you look close?”
Adam’s face was
changing as though he had opened and come out on his surface. He held up his finger, and the child made a lunge for it and missed and nearly fell off his lap. “Whoa!” said Adam. “Take it easy. Do you want to fall?”
“It would be a mistake to name them for qualities we think they have,” Samuel said. “We might be wrong— so wrong. Maybe it would be good to give them a high mark to shoot at—a name to live up to. The man I’m named for had his name called clear by the Lord God, and I’ve been listening all my life. And once or twice I’ve thought I heard my name called—but not clear, not
clear.”
Adam, holding the child
by his upper arm, leaned over and poured whisky in both glasses. “I thank you for coming, Samuel,” he said. “I even thank you for hitting me. That’s a strange thing to say.”
“It was a strange thing
for me to do. Liza will never believe it, and so I’ll never tell her. An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage
to back truth
unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion. I
haven’t the courage for that.”
Adam said, “I’ve
wondered why a man of your knowledge would work a desert hill place.”
“It’s because I haven’t courage,” said Samuel. “I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called His name
—but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease.
But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
“I’d think there are
degrees of greatness,” Adam said.
“I don’t think so,” said Samuel. “That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other—cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He’s suffering over the choosing right now. It’s a painful thing
to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes.
Isn’t that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.”
Adam chuckled. “This naming is no simple business, I see.”
“Did you think it would be?”
“I didn’t know it could
be so pleasant,” said Adam.
Lee came out with a platter of fried chicken, a bowl of smoking boiled
potatoes, and a deep dish of pickled beets, all carried on a pastry board. “I don’t know how good it will be,” he said. “The hens are a little old. We don’t have any pullets. The
weasels got the baby chicks this year.”
“Pull up,” said Samuel.
“Wait until I get my ng-ka-py,” said Lee. While he was gone
Adam said, “It’s strange to me—he
used to speak
differently.”
“He trusts you now,”
Samuel said. “He has a gift of resigned loyalty without -hope of reward. He’s maybe a much better man than either of us could dream of being.”
Lee came back and took his seat at the end of the table. “Just put the boys on the ground,” he said.
The
twins protested
when they were set down. Lee spoke to them sharply in Cantonese and they were silent.
The men ate quietly as nearly all country people do. Suddenly Lee got up and hurried into the house. He came back with a jug of red wine. “I forgot it,” he said. “I found it in the house.”
Adam laughed. “I
remember drinking wine here before I bought the place.
Maybe I bought the place because of the wine. The chicken’s good, Lee. I don’t think I’ve been aware of the
taste of food for a long time.” “You’re getting well,” Samuel said. “Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no
respecter of glories.
Everyone gets well if he waits around.”
4
Lee cleared the table and gave each of the boys a clean drumstick. They sat solemnly holding their greasy batons and alternately inspecting and sucking them. The wine and the glasses stayed on the table.
“We’d best get on with
the naming,” Samuel said. “I can feel a little tightening on my halter from Liza.”
“I can’t think what to name them,” Adam said. “You have no family
name you want—no inviting trap for a rich relative, no proud name to re-create?” “No, I’d like them to
start fresh, insofar as that is possible.”
Samuel knocked his
forehead with his knuckles. “What a shame,” he said. “What a shame it is that the proper names for them they cannot have.”
“What do you mean?” Adam asked.
“Freshness, you said. I thought last night—” He paused. “Have you thought of your own name?”
“Mine?”
“Of course. Your first-born—Cain and Abel.” Adam said, “Oh, no. No,
we can’t do that.”
“I know we can’t. That would be tempting whatever fate there is. But isn’t it odd
that Cain is maybe the best-known name in the whole world and as far as I know
only one man has ever borne it?”
Lee said, “Maybe that’s why the name has never changed its emphasis.”
Adam looked into the
ink-red wine in his glass. “I got a shiver when you mentioned it,” he said.
“Two stories have
haunted us and followed us from our beginning,” Samuel said. “We carry them along with us like invisible tails— the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel.
And I don’t understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all but I feel them.
Liza gets angry with me. She says I should not try to understand them. She says why should we try to explain a verity. Maybe she’s right— maybe she’s right. Lee, Liza says you’re a Presbyterian— do you understand the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel?” “She thought I should be
something, and I went to Sunday School long ago in San Francisco. People like you
to be
something,
preferably what they are.” Adam said, “He asked you if you understood.” “I think I understand the
Fall. I could perhaps feel that in myself. But the brother murder—no. Well, maybe I don’t remember the details very well.”
Samuel said, “Most
people don’t read the details. It’s the details that astonish me. And Abel had no
children.” He looked up at the sky. “Lord, how the day passes! It’s like a life—so quickly when we don’t watch it and so slowly when we do. No,” he said, “I’m having enjoyment. And I made a promise to myself that I would
not consider
enjoyment a sin. I take a pleasure in inquiring into things.
I’ve never been
content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.”
“I don’t have a Bible,” Adam said. “I left the family one in Connecticut.”
“I have,” said Lee. “I’ll get it.”
“No need,” said Samuel. “Liza
let me take her
mother’s. It’s here in my pocket.” He took out the package and unwrapped the battered book. “This one has been scraped and gnawed at,” he said. “I wonder what agonies have settled here.
Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the
dirt of seeking fingers. Liza wears a Bible down evenly. Here we are—this oldest story. If it troubles us it must be that we find the trouble in ourselves.”
“I haven’t heard it since
I was a child,” said Adam. “You think it’s long
then, and it’s very short,” said Samuel. “I’ll read it through and then we’ll go back. Give me a little wine, my throat’s dried out with wine. Here it is
—such a little story to have made so deep a wound.” He looked down at the ground. “See!” he said. “The boys have gone to their sleep, there in the dust.”
Lee got up. “I’ll cover them,” he said.
“The dust is warm,” said Samuel. “Now it goes this way. ‘And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” ‘ ”
Adam started to speak
and Samuel looked up at him and he was silent and covered his eyes with his hand.
Samuel read, “ ‘And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat
thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.’ ”
Lee said, “Now there—
no, go on, go on. We’ll come back.”
Samuel read, “ ‘And
Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, “Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
“ ‘And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came
to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And he said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And he said, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.
And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” And Cain said unto the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I
can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth, and from thy face shall I be hid. And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.” And the Lord said unto him, “Therefore whosoever
slayeth Cain,
vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.’ ”
Samuel closed the loose
cover of the book almost with weariness. “There it is,” he said. “Sixteen verses, no more. And oh, Lord! I had forgotten how dreadful it is— no
single tone of
encouragement.
Maybe
Liza’s right. There’s nothing to understand.”
Adam sighed deeply.
“It’s not a comforting story, is it?”
Lee poured a tumbler
full of dark liquor from his round stone bottle and sipped it and opened his mouth to get the double taste on the back of his tongue. “No story
has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!”
Samuel said to Adam,
“And you have tried to take it all.”
Lee said, “So do I, so
does everyone. We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.”
Aron broke in, “It makes me feel better, not worse.” “How do you mean?” Samuel asked.
“Well, every little boy
thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.”
“Yes, I see. But how does this story make it better?”
“Because,” Adam said excitedly, “we are descended from this. This is our father. Some of our guilt is absorbed in our ancestry. What chance did we have? We are the children of our father. It means we aren’t the first. It’s an excuse, and there aren’t enough excuses in the world.” “Not convincing ones anyway,” said Lee. “Else we would long ago have wiped out guilt, and the world would not be filled with sad, punished people.”
Samuel said, “But do
you think of another frame to this picture? Excuse or not,
we are snapped back to our ancestry. We have guilt.” Adam said, “I remember being a little outraged at God. Both Cain and Abel gave what they had, and God accepted Abel and rejected Cain. I never thought that was a
just thing. I
never
understood it. Do you?” “Maybe we think out of
a different background,” said Lee. “I remember that this story was written by and for a shepherd people. They were not farmers. Wouldn’t the god of shepherds find a fat lamb more valuable than a
sheaf of barley? A sacrifice must be the best and most valuable.”
“Yes, I can see that,”
said Samuel. “And Lee, let me
caution you about bringing your Oriental reasoning to
Liza’s attention.” Adam was excited.
“Yes, but why did God condemn Cain? That’s an injustice.”
Samuel said, “There’s an advantage to listening to the words. God did not condemn Cain at all. Even God can have a preference, can’t he? Let’s suppose God liked lamb better than vegetables. I think I do myself. Cain brought him a bunch of carrots maybe. And God said, ‘I don’t like this. Try again.
Bring me something I like and I’ll set you up alongside your brother.’ But Cain got mad. His feelings were hurt. And when a man’s feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something, and Abel was in the way of his anger.”
Lee said, “St. Paul says
to the Hebrews that Abel had faith.”
“There’s no reference to
it in Genesis,” Samuel said. “No faith or lack of faith.
Only a hint of
Cain’s temper.”
Lee asked, “How does
Mrs. Hamilton feel about the paradoxes of the Bible?” “Why, she does not feel anything because she does not admit they are there.” “But—”
“Hush, man. Ask her.
And you’ll come out of it older but not less confused.”
Adam said, “You two
have studied this. I only got it through my skin and not
much of it stuck. Then Cain was driven out for murder?” “That’s
right—for murder.” “And God branded him?”
“Did you listen? Cain
bore the mark not to destroy him but to save him. And there’s a curse called down on any man who shall kill him. It was a preserving mark.”
Adam said, “I can’t get over a feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick.” “Maybe he did,” said
Samuel. “But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives
only in the story. We are Cain’s children. And isn’t it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened
in King City
yesterday and hadn’t come up for trial?”
One of the twins
awakened and yawned and looked at Lee and went to sleep again.
Lee said, “Remember,
Mr. Hamilton, I told you I was trying to translate some
old Chinese poetry into English? No, don’t worry. I won’t read it. Doing it, I found some of the old things as fresh and clear as this morning. And I wondered why. And, of course, people are
interested only
in
themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule
—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply
personal and familiar.”
Samuel said, “Apply that to the Cain-Abel story.” And Adam said, “I didn’t kill my brother—”
Suddenly he stopped and his mind went reeling back in time.
“I think I can,” Lee answered Samuel. “I think
this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now—don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection
comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.
Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there—the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world— and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty
animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel? And what do you think of my Oriental
patter, Mr.
Hamilton? You know I am no more Oriental than you are.” Samuel had leaned his elbows on the table and his hands covered his eyes and his forehead. “I want to think,” he said. “Damn you, I
want to think. I’ll want to take this off alone where I can pick it apart and see. Maybe you’ve tumbled a world for me. And I don’t know what I can build in my world’s place.”
Lee said softly,
“Couldn’t a world be built around
accepted truth?
Couldn’t some pains and insanities be rooted out if the causes were known?”
“I don’t know, damn
you. You’ve disturbed my pretty universe. You’ve taken a contentious game and made an answer of it. Let me alone
—let me think! Your damned bitch is having pups in my brain already. Oh, I wonder what my Tom will think of this! He’ll cradle it in the palm of his mind. He’ll turn it slow in his brain like a roast of pork before the fire. Adam, come out now. You’ve been long enough in whatever memory it was.”
Adam started. He sighed deeply. “Isn’t it too simple?” he asked. “I’m always afraid of simple things.”
“It isn’t simple at all,” said Lee. “It’s desperately
complicated. But at the end there’s light.”
“There’s not going to be light long,” Samuel said. “We’ve sat and let the
evening come. I drove over to help name the twins and they’re not named. We’ve swung ourselves on a pole.
Lee, you better keep your complications out of the machinery of the set-up churches or there might be a Chinese with nails in his hands and feet. They like complications but they like their own. I’ll have to be driving home.”
Adam said desperately, “Name me some names.” “From the Bible?” “From anyplace.”
“Well, let’s see. Of all
the people who started out of Egypt only two came to the Promised Land. Would you like them for a symbol?”
“Who?”
“Caleb and Joshua.” “Joshua was a soldier—a general.
I
don’t like
soldiering.”
“Well, Caleb was a captain.”
“But not a general. I
kind of like Caleb—Caleb Trask.”
One of the twins woke
up and without interval began to wail.
“You called his name,”
said Samuel. “You don’t like Joshua, and Caleb’s named. He’s the smart one—the dark one. See, the other one is awake too. Well, Aaron I’ve
always liked, but he didn’t make it to the Promised Land.”
The second boy almost joyfully began to cry. “That’s good enough,” said Adam.
Suddenly Samuel
laughed. “In two minutes,” he said, “and after a waterfall of words. Caleb and Aaron— now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.”
Lee took the boys up under his arms. “Have you
got them straight?” he asked. “Of course,” said Adam. “That one is Caleb and you are Aaron.”
Lee lugged the yelling
twins toward the house in the dusk.
“Yesterday I couldn’t
tell them apart,” said Adam. “Aaron and Caleb.”
“Thank the good Lord we had produce from our
patient thought,” Samuel said. “Liza would have preferred Joshua.
She loves the
crashing walls of Jericho. But she likes Aaron too, so I guess it’s all right. I’ll go and hitch up my rig.”
Adam walked to the
shed with him. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “There’s a weight off me.”
Samuel slipped the bit in Doxology’s reluctant mouth, set the brow band, and buckled
the throatlatch. “Maybe you’ll
now be
thinking of the garden in the flat land,” he said. “I can see it there the way you planned it.”
Adam was long in
answering. At last he said, “I think that kind of energy is gone out of me. I can’t feel the pull of it. I have money
enough to live. I never wanted it for myself. I have no one to show a garden to.”
Samuel wheeled on him
and his eyes were filled with tears. “Don’t think it will ever die,” he cried. “Don’t expect it. Are you better than other men? I tell you it won’t ever die until you do.” He stood panting for a moment and then he climbed into the rig and whipped Doxology and he drove away, his shoulders hunched,
without saying good-by.
