Tales for a Stormy Night (12 page)

“I will not, thank you. May I ask your reason for declining? If you’re afraid the board won’t confirm it, in all humility, I can say my word is…”

Before he had selected the delicate word to complete his thought, Jeb said: “If it’s not impertinent, sir, I’d rather know your reason for nominating me.”

“It is impertinent, Jeb. Most impertinent.”

“There’s always been a Sayers on the church board, Jeb,” his father murmured uneasily.

“Nominated for good and true service,” Jeb said, “and upright citizenry. Would you credit me with those virtues, Mr. Wilkinson?”

“I think you’re capable of them, Jeb—when you’re through sowing your wild oats.”

“I think I was done with them when I draped the parish chains across the vicars’ tombstones. That’s a long time ago, sir.”

“But you’re still proud of it, aren’t you, Jeb?”

“Not exactly. It was a stupid thing to do. But I’m not ashamed of the reason I did it. It’s a long past time that Tinton outgrew its chains.”

“The chains are nothing but a symbol, Jeb,” Wilkinson said with paternal patience. “They’re a symbol of sin and the bondage into which it sells a man. But I did not come to discuss either with you. Think over the honor I’m offering you. Give me your answer at services tomorrow. Good night, Martin.” He nodded to Jeb’s father and went out the back door.

“The meat’s as hard as leather,” the old man said, putting a portion on each of their plates.

“No harder than Wilkinson,” said Jeb.

His father had nothing to say during the meal, but his face was tightened with pain. Finally Jeb could stand it no longer.

“Don’t you see what he’s trying to do, Dad? He wants me to get into line, into his line, and he figures if I’m an elder, I’ll have to do it. I’m working for what I think is right for Tinton. There’s nothing wrong in that. It used to be wrong to dance. Now there’s even church dances. I want a town where people speak through their board members, instead of being spoken to or for.”

His father shook his head. “I know nothing of politics, Jeb, and I want to know less.”

“Damn it, Dad, you need to know more. We all do.”

“You’ll not swear in this house, boy.”

Jeb got up from the table. “Then I’ll swear out of it,” he said, “if that’s swearing.”

He went to his room and changed his clothes. It was the only place in the house where he felt at home, there and in the fields and woods. At times he thought that it would be better for him to leave Tinton. For five years he had put every spare moment into the town and the church. He had organized study groups and bought the books with his own money, money he should have laid away for the time Ellen would marry him. Despairing of bringing Tinton into the world, he tried to bring the world into Tinton. There was not even a high school in the town. Those who wanted it enough traveled eighteen miles morning and night.

“It’s the chains,” he said aloud, “the damned blasted chains.”

There was a legend about the town that in the early days it had been a wicked place, so wicked that once the church elders had gone among the citizens in chains lest one of them fall into temptation. Thus bound together they had surrounded the maker of evil and captured him. Jeb could almost see them, so obsessed had he become with the story. He wondered what the poor devil had done. The chroniclers had left that out. Conveniently, he thought. But the chains still lay in the church belfry, and whenever a preacher was hard put for a subject, he was likely to stumble over the chains that day. It was after one such sermon, that Jeb, at eighteen, had hauled the chains to the cemetery and strung them over the tombstones of the vicars buried there in the seventeenth century.

Downstairs, he stopped at the kitchen door. His father was still sitting there, in the semi-darkness now. “I’ll be home late,” he said gently. “I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Dad. But I’m trying to do what I think right.”

The old man looked up at him. For all his stubborn blindness, he knew how hard it was for Jeb to stay sometimes. His gratitude was in his eyes. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Jeb. Whenever you want to reform something, you do it from the inside if you’re honest. It isn’t the easiest way, ever. The easiest way is starting something new. But first you’ve got to try and fix up what you’ve got. If you’re honest, that is. And I don’t know a more honest person than you, Jeb.”

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll try.”

He decided to walk the two miles to Tinton. When he reached the main road the sun had already set and a heavy blue mist hung close to the ground, reminding him of the thistle he had hoed that day. In a way, it was the same with all his work. Thistle was quicker than corn. But he could not abandon it any more than he could abandon Tinton itself. He tried to buoy his spirits with the thought of Ellen. But she, too, was part of Tinton. For all that she admitted her love of him, she had not consented to marriage. It was as though she were in some sort of bondage.

The full moon was rising. It would be overhead by his return. Far below him he could see the lights going on in the town, and he could see the smoke of the seven-fifty train. The mist lay like a long sheet over a hollow that ended at Hank’s woods. He could hear a car grinding to a start somewhere, and the long whistle of the train. He watched it come into view between the hills and then vanish again. When its sound was gone, there was only the burble of frogs.

The usual Saturday night crowd had congregated along the main street, the men half-sitting on car fenders, waiting for their wives to finish shopping or the kids to get out of an early show. Jeb knew them all. He waved and said a word here and there. Outside Robbins’ music store he stopped at the window. He had not seen Ellen for a week. She was showing a man and his two sons all the harmonicas in the place. As he watched her, Jeb’s quarrel with Tinton fell away. There seemed to be an aura of goodness and happiness about her. A wisp of hair had strayed out of her braid. She kept brushing it away as she might a fly while she talked. By the time she noticed him, Jeb was pantomiming a hot harmonica player. Her eyes laughed at him. He went in, but Ellen did not leave her customers, not even for a moment to say a word to him. He was being over-sensitive, he told himself—hot and cold, like a kid with puppy love. He forced himself to watch her until she looked at him again. He winked. She came to him then.

“Silly Jeb. Where were you all evening?”

“Examining my conscience. Thinking of you.”

“In that order?”

He nodded. “I still don’t understand why you won’t marry me.”

“Sometimes I don’t either,” she said. There was a blast of sound from the counter. “Please boys, not unless you want to buy that one.” She turned back to him. “Jeb, will you do me a favor? Mrs. Robbins bought some more relics. They’re in back. Would you dust and put them in the case for me?”

As he walked to the rear of the store, he noticed other customers in the record booths. Ballet music and blues blended into each other as he passed. He was proud of the store. It was largely his idea. For years, Mrs. Robbins kept it as a curiosity shop to attract the tourists who came to Tinton because it was so “quaint.” The relics, he found, were a mandolin without strings, a fife, and an ancient horn. All of them were clogged with dust, and the horn was tarnished black. He rummaged through a cupboard and found rags and silver polish. He was depressed again. Ellen was casual, and he had needed something strong, something warm. She came to the back room a few minutes later.

“I’ll close up soon. How are you coming, Jeb?”

“Almost done. Where’d she get these things?” he asked, but not really caring.

“The Rutherford place. I’m afraid Miss Hannah is hard up. That fife’s supposed to have been used in the Revolution.”

“It looks it,” he said.

“You’re an angel, Jeb.” She brushed his cheek with her lips as she left him to return to her customers. And for some reason that hurt him even more than her indifference. “Be a good boy,” everyone seemed to say. He had to shake off this pettiness. He returned to work and tried to distract himself by thinking of the Rutherford place. It was the oldest house in Tinton. In fact, it had all but survived the family, for in his time there was only Hannah left. She was older than his father and unmarried. Perhaps when all the old families died out Tinton would change. He, himself, was the last of six generations in the town, and still not married at twenty-seven. There might be a reason beyond random for that. Surely something more than fancy held him waiting for Ellen all these years, and her from marrying him. He felt now that they would never marry.

The blackened horn was taking color in his hands, a deep gold that glowed like a core of fire. Indeed, it seemed very warm to his touch as though it were a thing he was tempering instead of cleaning. It was a simple instrument, not quite as long as his arm, and wonderfully fragile-looking. He pushed the rag gently through the bell end, and taking a coat-hanger and bending it, he worked the cloth up to the mouth, cleaning away, perhaps, the dust of centuries. When he had finished he spread a cloth on the table and laid the horn on it. Its simple beauty enchanted him. He was impelled to touch it, to run his fingers over its warm smoothness, around the notches which must have guided its tonal range. While he carried the fife and mandolin to the front of the store and made room in the case for them he felt an urgency to return to the horn.

“I’ll be a few minutes more, Jeb,” Ellen said.

He scarcely heard her. As he leaned down to lift the backboard of the case, he imagined he saw the horn glowing in the semi-darkness. He could close his eyes and see it, as one sees the sun long after having looked at it. Beside it again, he lost all sense of time and place, even of Ellen. He picked it up tenderly, with the feeling coming over him that he could take from it the music of heaven and earth, the stars, the sea, the grass, the birds, yesterday, tomorrow.

He moistened his lips and put them to the mouth of the horn. Against his lips the pressure was sweet and natural, as a kiss might be, and all the while the golden beauty of it enthralled him. He held it loosely for fear of injuring it, and then finally, like an impatient lover, he breathed into it his wish to give it life. The sound was no more than a whispered moan, the wind perhaps on a hushed night. But he could hear it still when he took the horn from his lips. Time being nothing to him, Ellen was beside him instantly.

“What are you doing, Jeb? That sound would raise the dead.”

He showed her the horn but she saw nothing wondrous about it.

“You look flushed, Jeb. Do you feel well?”

“I’m all right,” he said, running his fingers protectively over the horn. He was glad she had not commented on it, even on its beauty.

“If you must play that thing, please take it outside. I should be through soon. I think it’s very inconsiderate of Mrs. Wells to buy records at this hour. She has all week…Really, Jeb. You don’t look well.”

He turned from her, the color driven higher in his face with anger at her words, “that thing.” “I’m all right, I tell you.”

“All right, Jeb. I must go back,” she said quietly. “I’m near the end of my patience too.”

He waited until he was sure that she had left the room before he moved. Then he unbolted the back door and went out, carrying the horn beneath his coat.

The closing of the door behind him released Jeb from every tie that had ever held him. In the moment or two that he stood in the shadows of the building, he seemed to see the climaxes of his life turning like reflections in the facets of a diamond, and then the reflections were gone, and only the crystal deepness of the unmarked facets passed before him, filling him with the urge to touch each one with his personality, his power. The sweet, buoyant air seemed part of him. He felt that he could bring a blessed warmth to wastelands, a coolness to the desert…this by nothing more than impulse. And all the while, the horn was warm next to his breast and becoming more and more a part of him.

He drew it out and looked at it, a thin line of fire in the darkness. He lifted it to his lips and once more breathed into it. The sound now was like a lonesome bird call. He paused and heard a rustle, as of animals stirring in the night. Again he touched the horn to his lips, this time covering a notch with his finger, changing the pitch. Presently he alternated the two notes. When he stopped to listen, the sound of rustling heightened. For a moment he thought the sea had climbed beyond its walls and driven in upon the town. He moved away from the building and the rustling followed him. As he went he heard his name called into the night at first behind him, and then to the left of him, and then to the right, starting as a familiar voice, and growing with each repetition more strange, more distant. He walked through the side streets stealthily, with catlike swiftness, and the rustling followed him, heightening all the while, and seeming at times to sweep above and past him. He could even feel it wafting about him the way the wind might, although not a leaf was stirring among the trees he passed.

At the edge of town he paused and sounded the golden horn more boldly, swelling the tones until they were true and strong. He played his fingers down the tonal openings, exciting a soft, rich trill of music. The rustling intensified. He was in the center of a whirlwind. He pushed through it, fashioning the rhythm of the music to the step he took along the road. Presently he was half-stepping, half-skipping, and the rustling took on his rhythm. Somewhere ahead of him two round lights came out of the darkness like two strange moons traveling side by side. Almost upon him, they turned with fierce abruptness and were gone. He took the horn from his lips. The light of the true moon was everywhere, and among the rustling sounds came the burble of the frogs, the frenzied scolding of birds disturbed in their nests, and the chatter of scurrying animals. Jeb laughed aloud, and the hills picked up his laughter, and swung it back into the fury of sounds about him. Again he played. He did not pause until he came to the edge of Hank’s woods. There the fog still lay like spun linen and he felt that he might bounce upon it as a child bounces on a bed. It was a passing fancy, but it drew him from the road along the edge of the woods, where, as he went the birds awakened and followed him, joining their song with his. He sat down on a stump and rested. The birds carried along the melody, a translucent sort of music: little bells, reeds, the long thin tremolo of hair-like strings. In his hand the horn was vivid gold, giving a light that was reflected in the eyes of the little forest animals watching him. He realized the rustling sound was gone. He laid the horn across his lap and put his hand upon it, its velvety warmth answering his tenderness. His breathing quickened and the smell of earth came to him and a mustiness that was almost sweatlike. The rustling sounds were returning, at first quietly on one side of him and then surrounding him. He stood up and climbed onto the stump to breathe above the stifling air near the ground. The rustling swept away in front of him toward the meadow. The horn in his hand seemed to quicken to the movement of his fingers on it, and he drew his other hand affectionately about it as though he were alone for a moment with his beloved, suffering an exquisite anticipation.