They Came Like Swallows (8 page)

The clothes-basket was in the kitchen, on the other side of the stove, where he knew it would be. As he staggered through the library with it, he looked at his mother hopefully. But she was absorbed by what Irene was saying. Robert went on. He made it a practice never to listen to their conversation. It was generally about cooking or clothes, and it made him low in his mind. He set the basket down at the head of the stairs and while he was waiting amused himself by pulling horse-hairs out of the sofa. Irish would be expecting him. They had promised to be at school by eight-thirty, both of them. If he had only known that his mother was going to talk so long…. When his patience gave way, he went to the railing and called down.

“Please, will you hurry? I have to go.”

His mother called back to him from the library: “All right, Robert. I’m coming.” But it was several minutes before she appeared in the downstairs hall. Irene was with her and they were still talking.

“That’s the trouble. I never can think of anything for lunch that we haven’t already had.”

By leaning dangerously far out over the banister, Robert could look down on the tops of their heads. Irene came first. His mother followed, but more slowly.

“Why this unseemly haste?” she asked when she had reached the landing.

“I promised Irish I’d come by for him.”

“If that’s all it is, then I’m afraid Irish will have to wait.”

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!”

“That’s enough, Robert.”

But it wasn’t. It was nowhere near enough, so far as Robert was concerned. “The trouble with you, Mother”—he swallowed hard—“is you don’t appreciate what a fine upstanding son you have. I wish you had Harold Engle around the house for about a week. You’d be hop-footing it over to the Engles’ so fast, and saying, “We have to have Robert back again, Mrs. Engle. I guess we can’t get along without him.”

“I expect I would, Robert.”

Mollified, he put the stepladder in place beside the linen-closet.

“Try not to make any more noise than you have to. You’ll disturb Bunny.”

She bent over the clothes-basket, sorting underwear from pajamas; sorting shirts, napkins, tablecloths, towels. First she handed the sheets up to him, then the pillow-cases. And then she began to sing, under her breath, so that he could scarcely hear what she was singing.

“There’s a long long
trail a-
winding
Into the land of
my dreams
…”
Robert choked on his own haste.
“Where the night-
in-gale is
singing
And
the
pale—”

The song ended so abruptly that Robert drew his head out from among the sheets and pillowcases to see what was the matter.

“There’s a bird in here,” Irene exclaimed and went back into the sick-room again, closing the door behind her.

His mother turned to him, her arms filled with winter underwear. “You’ll have to do something, Robert.”

This was more like it…. Robert slid down the stepladder, recklessly, having made up his mind to try the broom first. Then if that didn’t work, they’d have to let him use his bee-bee gun.

When he came back upstairs, Irene and his mother were both in Bunny’s room—Irene by the dresser and his mother on the edge of Bunny’s bed, holding him. With feverish sick eyes, Bunny was watching the sparrow that flew round and round the room in great wide frightened swings. The windows were open as far as they would go.

“It’s all on account of Karl taking down the
screens,” his mother said. And so far as Robert was concerned, her remark was neither helpful nor necessary. He took hold of the broom.

“You better get out of here, both of you. Because in a minute I’m going to start wielding this!”

Irene retreated at once, laughing and covering her hair with her hands as the bird brushed by her. His mother was not so easily hurried. “Lie still, lover,” she said, with the bird flying from one side of the room to the other, swooping, turning, diving intently past her face. The door closed and right away Bunny was sitting up again, his eyes glittering with fever.

“Please don’t hurt it, Robert!”

“Why not?”

Robert swung vigorously.

“Because I don’t want you to.”

“One sparrow more or less—”

“I don’t care, I don’t want you to hurt it!”

Robert swung and missed again. Nevertheless, the bird dropped and lay like a stone on the counterpane of Bunny’s bed. As Robert’s hand closed over it, he remembered:
It is vitally important to keep her out of that boy’s room….

“I’ll tell Mother on you!”

Tears ran down Bunny’s cheeks.

Tie her down, the doctor said.
… The sparrow escaped from Robert’s fingers and with a sudden twist shot through the open window.

Tie her down …

And already she had managed to get in when they were all excited. Already she had been sitting on the edge of Bunny’s bed.

“Oh, shut up!” Robert said, and swung his broom upon the empty air.

All Thursday morning Robert raked leaves—raked them toward him until there was a crisp pile at his feet, and then another and another. With no more leaves to fall, the trees stood out in bare essential form, forgotten during the summer and now remembered. By noon the yard was swept clean on both sides of the house, and he had carried the trash up from the basement. There was nothing left but to burn the dead leaves and trash together, in the alley. And he could do that whenever he liked.

As soon as lunch was over, Robert went upstairs to get his football helmet and jersey. He was almost at the front door when his mother saw him.

“Where are you going?”

“To play football.” He had done all that his father told him to do. The afternoon belonged to him. It was as good as in his pocket. “The whole gang—”

“I want to talk to you a minute.”

His mother went on into the living-room and adjusted
one of the shades which was not on a line with the others.

“Come here,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded suspiciously.

“I want to see what makes you bulge so.”

“That’s handkerchieves.”

“One, two, three, four … So I begin to perceive. Your back pocket must be a place where they meet and congregate. Suppose you take them up to the hamper in the back hall, where they belong.”

“Do I have to do it now? Can’t I do it later?”

“If you like. But I’m afraid you can’t play football this afternoon.”

“Why not?”

“Various reasons. I want you to stay in your own yard, do you hear? Because if you run all over town, you’ll be playing with all kinds of boys who probably haven’t a thing the matter with them.”

Robert looked at his mother unguardedly. She was smiling, but what she said wasn’t funny and in fact didn’t make a bit of sense. They had been up with Bunny for two nights—first Irene and then his father. And today was the third day, so that his fever would break, Dr. Macgregor said, or else it would go higher.

“I’m not going all over town. I’m only going to the vacant lot across from Dowlings’ to play football.”

“Please don’t argue with me, Robert.”

Don’t argue with her!
And already they were choosing up sides. As plainly as if he were there, Robert could hear them: Scully and Matthews and North-way and Berryhill.

“Crimenently——”

“There’s no point in discussing it any further, Robert. Just do as I say.”

His mother was tired. That was the whole trouble. She was tired and she didn’t realize…. Robert went into the library and sat down. His father was there with stacks of papers around him—work that he had brought home from the office. He was vaguely aware of Robert’s presence but no more, and for that Robert was grateful, because there was a lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to dispose of. He twirled his football helmet this way and that on the end of his finger, and tried not to think about things.

Partly it was all his own fault, because he let his mother into the room where Bunny was, so maybe it was right for him to be punished. Two days had passed and she didn’t look any different, but maybe it was right anyway. Only what good, he asked himself as he got up and went over to the rocking-chair—what good was it having school closed? What good was all the time in the world? So long as he had to stay in his own yard, what good was anything?

No answer occurred to him, and therefore he rocked—gently at first, then with conviction.

Rocking and singing cheerfully, Robert was well into the second verse when his father took a pencil from behind his ear and said, “If you’re going to stay in the house, you’ll have to be quiet, son. I can’t concentrate.”

Robert jammed the football helmet on his head and went to the kitchen, where Sophie was washing the sheets for Bunny’s bed. Sophie was always disagreeable lately. She flew around with her nose in the air, bossing everybody. And if he so much as asked for a piece of bread and butter, she would threaten to tell his mother on him.

“Now what do you want?”

“Last night’s paper.”

“Right there under the table. And don’t get the rest of them in a mess, do you hear?”

People were always saying,
Do you hear, Robert? Do you hear me?
As if there was something wrong with his ears. But there wasn’t. He heard everything that he wanted to hear and a lot more besides. The newspaper was on top. He folded it carefully and tucked it under his belt.

“What do you want last night’s paper for?”

“None of your beeswax,” he said, and slammed the door on his way out.

Old John followed him around to the back of the house, where the roof sloped down over the cellar stairs. There, by bracing his arms against two box elders
which grew side by side, Robert could get up on the roof. As soon as he put his knee up, Old John whined.

“You better go somewhere else and play,” Robert said, bitterly, and drew his other leg up after him.

Once he got as far as the kitchen roof, the rest was easy. Up there he was no longer at the mercy of anybody who chose to take a pencil from behind his ear, or raise or lower a window shade. He could look down on everything—on the back yard and the garage and the fence and the alley behind the fence, on Burnhams’ trash pile and the row of young maples along the other side of the alley. To the right he could see the garden, the grape arbor, and the yard. To the left was the drive, and Bunny’s sandpile under a big tree. Robert surveyed the whole scene carefully, before he sat down with his back against the chimney and opened the
Courier.
Page two…. There it was:
“SCHOOLS … The school board and the health officer have posted notices on the school houses and at places about town to the effect that the schools will be closed until further notice
…” Robert felt very small prickles in the region of his spine. He read the first sentence twice, to make sure that there had not been a mistake…. His mother couldn’t keep him at home indefinitely. Things as awful as that didn’t happen. She was just tired and cross this afternoon. And so there would be time for playing football and marbles, for making shinny sticks, for taking muskrat traps down from the top of the garage and cleaning them, for hunting rabbits and squirrels…. But
there was more in the notice than that. It meant that something was happening in town, all around him. Not an open excitement like the day the Armistice was signed, with fire engines and whistles and noise and people riding around in the hearse. But a quiet thing that he couldn’t see or hear; that was in Bunny’s room, and on Tenth Street where Arthur Cook lived, and more places than that. Far down inside him, and for no reason that he could understand, Robert was pleased….
The notice reads as follows: To the Parents … While the epidemic has not reached Logan to any extent, and while it may seem unnecessary to many, yet after consulting with the health officer and the medical authorities your school board decided to close the schools for this week at least, in the hope that no new cases will develop and that this community will be spared any serious epidemic. The Illinois committee on public safety strongly advises this course and cautions people against gathering in large numbers for any purpose, also traveling on railroad trains except when absolutely necessary.
… Robert closed his eyes. It seemed once more as if he could hear shouting.
First down and … four … to go …
Matthews and Berryhill shouting. And for that reason he wished (just for this afternoon) that Bunny, who was sick, anyway, had been the one to get run over and have his leg cut off above the knee.

But it was Crazy Jake that Robert heard, coming down the alley with his wagon and his old white horse. A long time ago, before Robert was born, Crazy Jake was held up by robbers who took his
money from him and his watch, and hit him over the head. And because he was never able to think very well after that, he drove through alleys collecting tin cans for people. And he came at all hours. Robert had heard his mother say that lying awake sometimes in the middle of the night, she heard him.

“Hi, Jake!”

That was the thing about being on the roof. Robert could see Crazy Jake, who couldn’t see him. It was like being invisible. Searching steadily, Crazy Jake emptied the Morisons’ ashcan into his wagon. Then with his lips blowing, with his vacant face pressed to the sky, he drove on.

There was still part of the roof for Robert to climb—the upper level which extended out in the shape of a ledge. To reach it he made use of the rain-spout, the window frame, and the iron hook where the screen had been fastened. When he reached the top he was out of breath and a little dizzy with his accomplishment. The distance to the ground was considerable; enough to affect the pit of his stomach. He could reach out if he wanted to. He could almost touch the branches of the box elder. But also he might fall headlong and break every bone in his body. And they would all come running out of the house. His mother … she would cry and take on about
him,
for a change. But she couldn’t do anything. It would be too late…. Sometimes Robert fell from the roof of the garage, sometimes from the top of the flag-pole at the Chautauqua grounds. But in any case, people came running and took on over him.