Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (289 page)

“Well, all I hope,” said Butch with narrowed glance, “is that you hadn’t been drinking anything when you operated on Pinky.”

“You know, Butch,” the doctor said slowly, “that was a pretty dirty trick of mine to bring that tornado here.”

He had not expected the sarcasm to hit home, but he expected a retort — when suddenly he caught sight of Butch’s face. It was fish-white, the mouth was open, the eyes fixed and staring, and from the throat came a mewling sound. Limply he raised one hand before him, and then the doctor saw.

Less than a mile away, an enormous, top-shaped black cloud filled the sky and bore toward them, dipping and swirling, and in front of it sailed already a heavy, singing wind.

“It’s come back!” the doctor yelled.

Fifty yards ahead of them was the old iron bridge spanning Bilby Creek. He stepped hard on the accelerator and drove for it. The fields were full of running figures headed in the same direction. Reaching the bridge, he jumped out and yanked Butch’s arm.

“Get out, you fool! Get out!”

A nerveless mass stumbled from the car; in a moment they were in a group of half a dozen, huddled in the triangular space that the bridge made with the shore.

“Is it coming here?”

“No, it’s turning!”

“We had to leave grandpa!” “Oh, save me, save me! Jesus save me! Help me!”

“Jesus save my soul!”

There was a quick rush of wind outside, sending little tentacles under the bridge with a curious tension in them that made the doctor’s skin crawl. Then immediately there was a vacuum, with no more wind, but a sudden thresh of rain. The doctor crawled to the edge of the bridge and put his head up cautiously.

“It’s passed,” he said. “We only felt the edge; the center went way to the right of us.”

He could see it plainly; for a second he could even distinguish objects in it — shrubbery and small trees, planks and loose earth. Crawling farther out, he produced his watch and tried to time it, but the thick curtain of rain blotted it from sight.

Soaked to the skin, he crawled back underneath. Butch lay shivering in the farthest corner, and the doctor shook him.

“It went in the direction of your house!” the doctor cried “Pull yourself together! Who’s there?”

“No one,” Butch groaned. “They’re all down with Pinky.”

The rain had changed to hail now; first small pellets, then larger ones, and larger, until the sound of the fall upon the iron bridge was an ear-splitting tattoo.

The spared wretches under the bridge were slowly recovering and in the relief there were titters of hysterical laughter. After a certain point of strain, the nervous system makes its transitions without dignity or reason. Even the doctor felt the contagion.

“This is worse than a calamity,” he said dryly. “It’s getting to be a nuisance.”

IV

There were to be no more tornadoes in Alabama that spring. The second one — it was popularly thought to be the first one come back; for to the people of Chilton County it had become a personified force, definite as a pagan god — took a dozen houses, Gene Janney’s among them, and injured about thirty people. But this time — perhaps because everyone had developed some scheme of self-protection — there were no fatalities. It made its last dramatic bow by sailing down the main street of Bending, prostrating the telephone poles and crushing in the fronts of three shops, including Doc Janney’s drug store.

At the end of a week, houses were going up again, made of the old boards; and before the end of the long, lush Alabama summer the grass would be green again on all the graves. But it will be years before the people of the country cease to reckon events as happening “before the tornado” or “after the tornado,” — and for many families things will never be the same.

Doctor Janney decided that this was as good a time to leave as any. He sold the remains of his drug store, gutted alike by charity and catastrophe, and turned over his house to his brother until Gene could rebuild his own. He was going up to the city by train, for his car had been rammed against a tree and couldn’t be counted on for much more than the trip to the station.

Several times on the way in he stopped by the roadside to say good-by — once it was to Walter Cupps.

“So it hit you, after all,” he said, looking at the melancholy back house which alone marked the site.

“It’s pretty bad,” Walter answered. “But just think; they was six of us in or about the house and not one was injured. I’m content to give thanks to God for that.”

“You were lucky there, Walt,” the doctor agreed. “Do you happen to have heard whether the Red Cross took little Helen Kilrain to Montgomery or to Birmingham?”

“To Montgomery. Say, I was there when she came into town with that cat, tryin’ to get somebody to bandage up its paw. She must of walked miles through that rain and hail, but all that mattered to her was her kitty. Bad as I felt, I couldn’t help laughin’ at how spunky she was.”

The doctor was silent for a moment. “Do you happen to recollect if she has any people left?”

“I don’t, suh,” Walter replied, “but I think as not.”

At his brother’s place, the doctor made his last stop. They were all there, even the youngest, working among the ruins; already Butch had a shed erected to house the salvage of their goods. Save for this the most orderly thing surviving was the pattern of round white stone which was to have inclosed the garden.

The doctor took a hundred dollars in bills from his pocket and handed it to Gene.

“You can pay it back sometime, but don’t strain yourself,” he said. “It’s money I got from the store.” He cut off Gene’s thanks: “Pack up my books carefully when I send for ‘em.”

“You reckon to practice medicine up there, Forrest?”

“I’ll maybe try it.”

The brothers held on to each other’s hands for a moment; the two youngest children came up to say good-by. Rose stood in the back-ground in an old blue dress — she had no money to wear black for her eldest son.

“Good-by, Rose,” said the doctor.

“Good-by,” she responded, and then added in a dead voice, “Good luck to you, Forrest.”

For a moment he was tempted to say something conciliatory, but he saw it was no use. He was up against the maternal instinct, the same force that had sent little Helen through the storm with her injured cat.

At the station he bought a one-way ticket to Montgomery. The village was drab under the sky of a retarded spring, and as the train pulled out, it was odd to think that six months ago it had seemed to him as good a place as any other.

He was alone in the white section of the day coach; presently he felt for a bottle on his hip and drew it forth. “After all, a man of forty-five is entitled to more artificial courage when he starts over again.” He began thinking of Helen. “She hasn’t got any kin. I guess she’s my little girl now.”

He patted the bottle, then looked down at it as if in surprise.

“Well, we’ll have to put you aside for a while, old friend. Any cat that’s worth all that trouble and care is going to need a lot of grade-B milk.”

He settled down in his seat, looking out the window. In his memory of the terrible week the winds still sailed about him, came in as draughts through the corridor of the car — winds of the world — cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes — gray and black, expected or unforeseen, some from the sky, some from the caves of hell.

But he would not let them touch Helen again — if he could help it.

He dozed momentarily, but a haunting dream woke him:
”Daddy stood over me and I stood over kitty.”

“All right, Helen,” he said aloud, for he often talked to himself, “I guess the old brig can keep afloat a little longer — in any wind.”

A SHORT TRIP HOME

Author’s Note: In a moment of hasty misjudgment a whole paragraph of description was lifted out of this tale where it originated, and properly belongs, and applied to quite a different character in a novel of mine. I have ventured nonetheless to leave it here, even at the risk of seeming to serve warmed-over fare.

I was near her, for I had lingered behind in order to get the short walk with her from the living room to the front door. That was a lot, for she had flowered suddenly and I, being a man and only a year older, hadn’t flowered at all, had scarcely dared to come near her in the week we’d been home. Nor was I going to say anything in that walk of ten feet, or touch her; but I had a vague hope she’d do something, give a gay little performance of some sort, personal only in so far as we were alone together.

She had bewitchment suddenly in the twinkle of short hairs on her neck, in the sure, clear confidence that at about eighteen begins to deepen and sing in attractive American girls. The lamp light shopped in the yellow strands of her hair.

Already she was sliding into another world--the world of Joe Jelke and Jim Cathcart waiting for us now in the car. In another year she would pass beyond me forever.

As I waited, feeling the others outside in the snowy night, feeling the excitement of Christmas week and the excitement of Ellen here, blooming away, filling the room with “sex appeal”--a wretched phrase to express a quality that isn’t like that at all--a maid came in from the dining room, spoke to Ellen quietly and handed her a note. Ellen read it and her eyes faded down, as when the current grows weak on rural circuits, and smouldered off into space. Then she gave me an odd look--in which I probably didn’t show--and without a word, followed the maid into the dining room and beyond. I sat turning over the pages of a magazine for a quarter of an hour.

Joe Jelke came in, red-faced from the cold, his white silk muffler gleaming at the neck of his fur coat. He was a senior at New Haven, I was a sophomore. He was prominent, a member of Scroll and Keys, and, in my eyes, very distinguished and handsome.

“Isn’t Ellen coming?”

“I don’t know,” I answered discreetly. “She was all ready.”

“Ellen!” he called. “Ellen!”

He had left the front door open behind him and a great cloud of frosty air rolled in from outside. He went halfway up the stairs--he was a familiar in the house--and called again, till Mrs. Baker came to the banister and said that Ellen was below. Then the maid, a little excited, appeared in the dining-room door.

“Mr. Jelke,” she called in a low voice.

Joe’s face fell as he turned toward her, sensing bad news.

“Miss Ellen says for you to go on to the party. She’ll come later.”

“What’s the matter?”

“She can’t come now. She’ll come later.”

He hesitated, confused. It was the last big dance of vacation, and he was mad about Ellen. He had tried to give her a ring for Christmas, and failing that, got her to accept a gold mesh bag that must have cost two hundred dollars. He wasn’t the only one--there were three or four in the same wild condition, and all in the ten days she’d been home--but his chance came first, for he was rich and gracious and at that moment the “desirable” boy of St. Paul. To me it seemed impossible that she could prefer another, but the rumor was she’d described Joe as much too perfect. I suppose he lacked mystery for her, and when a man is up against that with a young girl who isn’t thinking of the practical side of marriage yet--well--.

“She’s in the kitchen,” Joe said angrily.

“No, she’s not.” The maid was defiant and a little scared.

“She is.”

“She went out the back way, Mr. Jelke.”

“I’m going to see.”

I followed him. The Swedish servants washing dishes looked up sideways at our approach and an interested crashing of pans marked our passage through. The storm door, unbolted, was flapping in the wind and as we walked out into the snowy yard we saw the tail light of a car turn the corner at the end of the back alley.

“I’m going after her,” Joe said slowly. “I don’t understand this at all.”

I was too awed by the calamity to argue. We hurried to his car and drove in a fruitless, despairing zigzag all over the residence section, peering into every machine on the streets. It was half an hour before the futility of the affair began to dawn upon him--St. Paul is a city of almost three hundred thousand people--and Jim Cathcart reminded him that we had another girl to stop for. Like a wounded animal he sank into a melancholy mass of fur in the corner, from which position he jerked upright every few minutes and waved himself backward and forward a little in protest and despair.

Jim’s girl was ready and impatient, but after what had happened her impatience didn’t seem important. She looked lovely though. That’s one thing about Christmas vacation--the excitement of growth and change and adventure in foreign parts transforming the people you’ve known all your life. Joe Jelke was polite to her in a daze--he indulged in one burst of short, loud, harsh laughter by way of conversation--and we drove to the hotel.

The chauffeur approached it on the wrong side--the side on which the line of cars was not putting forth guests--and because of that we came suddenly upon Ellen Baker just getting out of a small coupé. Even before we came to a stop, Joe Jelke had jumped excitedly from the car.

Ellen turned toward us, a faintly distracted look--perhaps of surprise, but certainly not of alarm--in her face; in fact, she didn’t seem very aware of us. Joe approached her with a stern, dignified, injured and, I thought, just exactly correct reproof in his expression. I followed.

Seated in the coupé--he had not dismounted to help Ellen out--was a hard thin-faced man of about thirty-five with an air of being scarred, and a slight sinister smile. His eyes were a sort of taunt to the whole human family--they were the eyes of an animal, sleepy and quiescent in the presence of another species. They were helpless yet brutal, unhopeful yet confident. It was as if they felt themselves powerless to originate activity, but infinitely capable of profiting by a single gesture of weakness in another.

Vaguely I placed him as one of the sort of men whom I had been conscious of from my earliest youth as “hanging around”--leaning with one elbow on the counters of tobacco stores, watching, through heaven knows what small chink of the mind, the people who hurried in and out. Intimate to garages, where he had vague business conducted in undertones, to barber shops and to the lobbies of theatres--in such places, anyhow, I placed the type, if type it was, that he reminded me of. Sometimes his face bobbed up in one of Tad’s more savage cartoons, and I had always from earliest boyhood thrown a nervous glance toward the dim borderland where he stood, and seen him watching me and despising me. Once, in a dream, he had taken a few steps toward me, jerking his head back and muttering: “Say, kid” in what was intended to be a reassuring voice, and I had broken for the door in terror. This was that sort of man.