Then it was Francis!
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” she answered. He came in as though the house were his own and sat down before her. He had come to tell her Francis was dead. After a while, very soon, it would matter that Francis was dead. But not yet.
“It is true?” He had put down his hat. Now he took off his coat. She had never seen him in ordinary clothes before. This was the sort of clothes he wore, this rough brownish stuff.
“I’ve got to tell you. I wish I had been there. He was such an odd fellow — never himself on the ground. People didn’t like him. But in the air he was quite different.” He was swallowing hard, wiping his forehead with a brownish linen handkerchief. “In the air something changed him. He was gay, you know — quite gay, as soon as we’d left the earth. I saw it happen again and again when we went up together.”
He was telling her about Francis and she must listen. It was not right now to look at his eyes, his mouth, his hands.
“He’d been getting on very well — only nobody liked him. I don’t think anybody ever had any proof that he had actually any part in the trouble we had over wages. But he was the sort you’d suspect of discontent. I hope I’m not hurting you?” He was looking at her kindly. She shook her head and he went on.
“I liked him — knowing how he was in the air, you know.”
But he was talking to her at a distance, as though they had never written to each other, as though letters had not come and gone a hundred times.
“Don’t — don’t be sad,” he begged her. He leaned forward and his face was near to hers — very near. She could see lines about his eyes. His skin was fine-grained, burned brown, his teeth strong and even. “No one will ever know exactly what happened. No one was near him — I mean he had no close friends. The men saw him coming to the field, walking along with a woman. She was telling him something, talking to him …
“Sweet boy, haven’t I told you I can’t get a job? Take me with you where you live. How did I find you? I have my ways. No, I’ll tell you the truth — I asked a farm fellow—”
“Let me go. Take your hand off my arm!”
But she would not loose him. She was there, still pretty. How did women like that stay pretty so long? God, if she’d only been fat — ugly — old! But she was pretty. Her breast was against his arm. He could feel it. No white woman had such lovely breasts. She had pulled back her coat on purpose. When he knew what she did on purpose why couldn’t he hate her? But it only made him want her again. And when he wanted her he thought of his mother, and he couldn’t take her — not to glut himself. If once he could glut himself, he might get it out of him forever.
He used to sit in church beside his mother. He could sit still a long time feeling her warmth, catching the smell of her, the organ, the sound of his father’s high intense voice, playing intensely upon him.
“Get away!” he shouted. He began to walk quickly, as fast as he could. But she was saying something, hanging to him, never letting him go. There was a smell about her, warm, close. He began to run. But she was saying something.
“And your boy, Frank — there’s Frankie—”
He stopped. “Who?”
“Didn’t Miss Joan tell you? You put a boy in me, Frank — he’s almost as big as me now.”
“Joan?”
“She’s been helping me with him this long time.”
“You’re lying!”
“Come home and look at him! Spittin’ image of you, Frank. Your sister knows it — everybody knows it if they see him—”
Now he could shake her off. Now he must shake her off. He ran through the station and into the field. There the plane was waiting, the little plane in which he had learned to fly. Someone was getting into it, someone else who was learning. He pushed the boy aside.
“I’ve got to,” he gasped, and leaped into the seat and seized the stick. That was the engine roaring. Now, now he was off the ground. There — up … up … up — as high as he could go, into the sky!
… Roger was holding her two hands. “The plane dropped like a shot bird, wheeling, over and over. No one will know what happened. He was burned to death.”
The room was so still. The two boys were at school, the two babies were asleep. She was ashamed of her hands, rough from gardening. He would feel her hands rough in his. Francis burned to death — that was because Fanny had found him. She had tried so desperately to keep them apart. If Fanny ever came back she would say, “I never can see you again. I have taken the child. Now let me never see or hear of you again.”
“Don’t grieve so silently — speak to me — ease yourself to me.” He was caressing her hands. She must draw them away.
“My hands are so — so rough,” she said indistinctly.
“Why should they be so rough?” He was looking at them, tenderly.
“I raise a good many of our own vegetables. The children eat a lot.”
“You don’t make enough at that music?”
“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “It really mounts up. I work at it several hours every day. But it all helps. Besides, I like gardening. It’s good soil.”
He was still looking at her hands. Now he dropped them as though he had thought of something. He began to feel in his pockets for his pipe. He began to speak as he had before he took her hands. “Well — did your brother help you in any way — financially, I mean?”
“No,” she replied. “No. Francis never helped me in any way. He wasn’t really able to.”
He lit his pipe and began smoking it. He looked around the room and at her. “This is where you live,” he said. “I’ve wondered what a room would be like where you live — you and all your children!”
“It is really where I live,” she said. She must look at him carefully, at every line of his body, his hands, his hair and head, the shape of his mouth, the color of his eyes. This was he. She put aside Francis. Francis must wait now, being dead. He must wait upon this moment of life. Soon Roger would be going. … But he was going even now, standing up, putting on his coat, his hat in his hand.
“Now, I must go. You will not grieve too much?”
She shook her head, not smiling, her eyes steady. “I am too used to sorrow. But it will be sorrow. I remember him a little boy—”
“I must come back,” he said abruptly. He had a very kind quiet voice, the voice of one habitually kind.
“You will come back?” she cried, smiling at him.
“Yes,” he said, “I must come back — to see how you do. You are very solitary here.”
She shook her head, speechless, and he went away.
Now their letters began again, now without pretense.
“I am used to seeing women helpless, leaning upon men. You live on that solitary hillside and are not afraid …”
“… Don’t you see I am not solitary? I have everything.”
He began to write of his wife — quietly, without apology that he had said so little about her. “She is a delicate creature — you would make two of her — a small creature looking like a child until one sees her face. It’s always been like living with a small child.”
She put the letter away. Let her remember Francis — let her remember she had a fresh sorrow over which to mourn. His clothes had come home to this house he had never entered, but it was his home because she was here, because she was the only one to know if he lived or died. She sorted them, his few clothes, his books. She looked at them. There were two little books about revolution, a copy of a book by Marx — she remembered hearing of Marx in college, long ago — a book about communism in Russia. Yes, the papers talked a good deal about Russia. It was all so confusing. Nothing was clear except the days of her life, beginning each morning and ending with the night. She found a picture of his mother among the books. But nothing else — no letter, no trace of how he had lived. His clothes were cheap and old, except his extra flying clothes. Those he had bought of good quality. He had paid well for those.