“Well, but does he?”
“He’s crazy for religion. They all three are. They sing hymns, mornin’, noon, and night.”
“Oh.”
“You listen when you go by—you’d think they was having conniption fits. And sometimes they are.… He’s a powerful hand with a whip.”
“A whip?”
My puzzled question fell unanswered, except by the singsong of the milk in the pail.
My aunts were as nice as they could be. I think they didn’t know much about children—or small boys—and that I was a problem which very likely they discussed, sometimes, till late at night. What fantastic conclusions they reached, heaven only knows! They were very much alike—in fact, at first I couldn’t tell them apart. They both wore spectacles and both had thin, white, kindly faces; they dressed in black, with lace over their shoulders, parted their hair severely in the middle, and had bright blue eyes. It was a day or two before I knew that Aunt Julia was the one who had gray hair and usually folded her hands as she talked. She was very gentle. Aunt Jenny was plumper, stuck out in front a little more, had a loud sudden laugh like a man and an aggressive sense of humor. Except to church on Sundays, when Betsy the mare was harnessed to the old closed carriage, and Jim wore a special coat, not quite so green with age as his other, and once a month to tea at the Minister’s, and about as often to Captain Phippen’s, they never went out. They lived in the house and garden, only occasionally going to the barn for an official inspection. Now and then, if there happened to be a “special sunset,” they would take me with them to the upper orchard, from which one had a fine view right along the valley to the west, where one could see the notched mountains against the sun. But this was seldom; and they did it gravely, as if it were a kind of religious duty.
It was on such an occasion, as we stood by a fallen apple tree which, though half broken through at the ground, still continued annually to blossom and bear, and as we watched the sunset fading in the curves of the Mill River, that I first heard the Willards mentioned by my aunts. At that hour and in that light the Willard farm was unusually conspicuous. It stood very black and square and alone against the western light, and even at that distance it looked forlorn and deserted. From where we stood we could see also the little white footbridge which led across from it to the main road. And it was Aunt Julia who first noticed that someone was crossing the river.
“There he goes now,” she said.
“Who?”
“Old Isaac. I wish he’d fall in and drown.”
“He’d do well to drown in Mill River!”
I could just make out on the footbridge the figure of a man, who seemed to be carrying something in one hand.
“What’s he carrying, Aunt Jenny?”
“Keg of hard cider, most likely.”
“There’ll be hymn-singing tonight, I guess.”
“And more than that.”
“What does he do?” I asked.
Aunt Jenny gave Aunt Julia a quick look, not meant for me.
“He beats time,” she said. And then added, “With a razor strop.”
“Jim said it was a whip.”
“Well, I guess he isn’t particular. It might even be a broomstick. Anyway, you can hear it for miles around!” Aunt Jenny gave a quick laugh. “And then Lydia keeps out of sight for a while.”
I wanted to ask questions, feeling that something queer was behind all this, but at that moment, as the best of the sunset was over, my aunts, picking up their long skirts, began to retrace their steps toward the house, and nothing further was said. In fact, though the Crazy Willards were seldom far from my mind, and though I never went out without hoping, or half hoping, to meet Isaac, I made no further discoveries about them until several weeks later, when I had walked up to Captain Phippen’s to take him a present of gingerbread from Aunt Julia. Long before I had climbed the hill (it was a very hot day) I could see him in his usual rocking chair, with his feet against the porch-rail and his spyglass at his eye. He watched me climb, and when I arrived at last he told me that he had been counting the sweat-drops on my forehead.
“You look hot,” he said.
“I am!”
“Well, sit down on your hunkers and rest. Don’t tell me your Aunt Julia is sending me more gingerbread! That woman will be the death of me.”
I sat down and presently was allowed to look through the precious glass, and of course instantly turned it on the Willard farm.
“I’m looking at the Willard farm,” I said.
“Well, I’d be careful, if I was you.”
“I can see two great big seashells by the front door.”
“If that’s all you can see,” he said, chuckling, “you’re a lucky boy.”
“Does old Isaac beat Lydia?”
“What made you think that?”
“Something Aunt Jenny said.”
“Well, I dunno, I dunno, maybe he does.”
“Is she bad?”
“Maybe she was. She ran away once with some young feller.”
“Did she want to marry him?”
“Perhaps she did.”
“And what happened then?”
“Old Isaac went and brought her back again.… You’ll understand it when you’re older.”
“And did he beat her?”
“Yes, he beat her.”
Captain Phippen’s face had become grim.
“Your aunts happened to be driving by—I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t save her life! They went in with Jim and stopped him.”
“Oh!”
“And now we’ll talk about gingerbread.”
Of course, I didn’t dare ask my aunts about that scene, much as I burned with curiosity. The whole thing seemed to me such a queer mixture of things—the beatings and the hymn-singings and the drinking—that I couldn’t in the least fathom it. As a result of a few hints to Jim, while driving Lemon to and from the hill pasture, or passing the Willards on our way to Hackley Falls for supplies (when the subject could be brought up quite naturally with a “There’s the Willards’, isn’t it?”) I added a new small item or two, but nothing of great importance. Apparently they were very poor and made only a bare living by selling milk and butter. Old Isaac was a tyrant. He made his wife and Lydia do all the work, while he himself got drunk night after night, slept it off in the morning, and read the Bible all afternoon. He had a violent temper, and at such times went purple in the face. Once he had gone into the post office, and accused the postmaster, Mr. Greene (who also ran the general store), of reading his mail. The fight which ensued was of epic splendor. Isaac had jumped over the counter and grabbed Greene by the throat. They had catapulted all over the store, knocking down boxes of shoes, upsetting glass cases full of cheap candy, wrapping themselves in ladies’ muslin dresses, and finally had both rolled right through one of the front shop-windows. Mr. Greene had cut his right forearm so badly that it had to have seven stitches. Eye-witnesses said that Isaac’s face was the color of an eggplant. For some strange reason, there had been no arrest; and later on Isaac had walked in one afternoon (when sober, I suppose) and publicly apologized and walked out again. It was still considered the best fight Hackley Falls had ever seen. Isaac, although fifteen years older than Mr. Greene, had had all the best of it—everybody had marveled at his strength. I never went into the store for the mail without hoping that Mr. Greene might, by some chance, have his right sleeve rolled up, so that I could see the scar, but he never did. I imagine he wasn’t too proud of it.
Nevertheless, and not so long after my talk with Captain Phippen, it was thanks to Mr. Greene that I made the first of my only two actual visits to the Willard farm. I had walked down one afternoon to get a pound of coffee, and after I had got the tight fragrant paper bag under my arm and paid for it, Mr. Greene looked at me appraisingly over his glasses. He was holding a letter in his hand.