homemade Sunnybrook Farm, until the cellar was flooded with whiskey and they stood knee-deep in broken glass.
Stumbling along the path again with his mind full of carnage, he saw Lew McReady in a dozen postures of defeat, collapse, and cowardly apology. He saw the girl, too. She came up to him soft and beguiling, and for a moment his picture of her was totally obscured by the image of his own scornful eyes and contemptuous, repudiating mouth. But within seconds of that magnificent rejection he was thinking how it would be to touch her, and he was beside her in some very private place with a grate fire and soft music when he came to himself and fell to cursing again. Thinking how close he had come to letting her into those dreams of coiling limbs and silky skin, he shook with self-loathing. Passing a tree, he smashed his fist against it and howled with outrage at the pain.
There was a moon like a chip of ice; the air smelled of smoke and frost. He was the loneliest creature alive. With his hands tucked into his armpits, his eyes glaring into the dark, his throat constricted by occasional diminishing sobs, he went on. Now he was at the edge of the big cabbage field he had passed that afternoon. Out of the shadows the heads lifted in even rows, touched by the moon with greenish light.
Reminded of the
castra
with its rows of tents, he yearned for that job he had begun. He wanted to be back above the warmregister, removed, intent, and inviolate. He saw the kitchen as sanctuary: though he had fled from it, he had already had enough of the cold and dark. And anyway, what he had fled from was the parlor. In the kitchen was not only warmth but the true thing that made it sanctuary—his mother, sitting with her magazine, glancing across from her isolation to his, making tentative humble suggestions that might for a few seconds gain her entrance to his world.
Understanding and shame dawned together, coming on like the rheostat-controlled light in a theater. He had had all the contempt he wanted, that day, but now he heaped more on himself. With his chin on a fence post he stared across the glimmering cabbage field and gnawed his chapped knuckles, thinking. There was this one person in the whole world who loved him, only this one he could fully trust. If he thought himself lonely, friendless, and abused, what should he think of her? Ever since they had left Canada she had been without friends, without even acquaintances beyond the company that came to the parlor. He had school, he was almost as used to praise as to contempt. Outside his hateful house he was able to gather approval with both hands, and bring it back to her and have it doubled. Who praised
her?
Who helped
her?
What did
she
have? He remembered the scuttle of coal he had deliberately not roused himself to get for her.
His father said, “If we don’t do this, how do we eat? Did you ever hear of money?”
She said, “It might be better to starve. So help me, sometimes I’d rather.”
Bruce said, “I won’t let us starve. I’ll get a job. I’ll quit school if I have to. We won’t take anything from him. I’ll look after you.”
The roguish one, the ninety-pound volunteer.
In the moonlight the cabbages went row on row like the crosses in the poem. Their ranks swam and melted and reformed greenishly, shadowily, a great store of food left carelessly unharvested, while at his house they ran a speakeasy because it was the only thing his father knew how to do. His mother submitted because she must, or because of Bruce.
In his nostrils, shrunken in the cold, lay the sourish smell ofthe field. He dove under the fence and in a moment was wrestling with an enormous cabbage, trying to unscrew its deep root from the ground. Before he defeated it he was crying again with exhaustion and anger, but there it lay at last, a great cold vegetable rose. Stripping off its outer leaves, he rolled it under the fence, crept through after it, gathered it in his arms, and went
Stumbling along the path again with his mind full of carnage, he saw Lew McReady in a dozen postures of defeat, collapse, and cowardly apology. He saw the girl, too. She came up to him soft and beguiling, and for a moment his picture of her was totally obscured by the image of his own scornful eyes and contemptuous, repudiating mouth. But within seconds of that magnificent rejection he was thinking how it would be to touch her, and he was beside her in some very private place with a grate fire and soft music when he came to himself and fell to cursing again. Thinking how close he had come to letting her into those dreams of coiling limbs and silky skin, he shook with self-loathing. Passing a tree, he smashed his fist against it and howled with outrage at the pain.
There was a moon like a chip of ice; the air smelled of smoke and frost. He was the loneliest creature alive. With his hands tucked into his armpits, his eyes glaring into the dark, his throat constricted by occasional diminishing sobs, he went on. Now he was at the edge of the big cabbage field he had passed that afternoon. Out of the shadows the heads lifted in even rows, touched by the moon with greenish light.
Reminded of the
castra
with its rows of tents, he yearned for that job he had begun. He wanted to be back above the warmregister, removed, intent, and inviolate. He saw the kitchen as sanctuary: though he had fled from it, he had already had enough of the cold and dark. And anyway, what he had fled from was the parlor. In the kitchen was not only warmth but the true thing that made it sanctuary—his mother, sitting with her magazine, glancing across from her isolation to his, making tentative humble suggestions that might for a few seconds gain her entrance to his world.
Understanding and shame dawned together, coming on like the rheostat-controlled light in a theater. He had had all the contempt he wanted, that day, but now he heaped more on himself. With his chin on a fence post he stared across the glimmering cabbage field and gnawed his chapped knuckles, thinking. There was this one person in the whole world who loved him, only this one he could fully trust. If he thought himself lonely, friendless, and abused, what should he think of her? Ever since they had left Canada she had been without friends, without even acquaintances beyond the company that came to the parlor. He had school, he was almost as used to praise as to contempt. Outside his hateful house he was able to gather approval with both hands, and bring it back to her and have it doubled. Who praised
her?
Who helped
her?
What did
she
have? He remembered the scuttle of coal he had deliberately not roused himself to get for her.
His father said, “If we don’t do this, how do we eat? Did you ever hear of money?”
She said, “It might be better to starve. So help me, sometimes I’d rather.”
Bruce said, “I won’t let us starve. I’ll get a job. I’ll quit school if I have to. We won’t take anything from him. I’ll look after you.”
The roguish one, the ninety-pound volunteer.
In the moonlight the cabbages went row on row like the crosses in the poem. Their ranks swam and melted and reformed greenishly, shadowily, a great store of food left carelessly unharvested, while at his house they ran a speakeasy because it was the only thing his father knew how to do. His mother submitted because she must, or because of Bruce.
In his nostrils, shrunken in the cold, lay the sourish smell ofthe field. He dove under the fence and in a moment was wrestling with an enormous cabbage, trying to unscrew its deep root from the ground. Before he defeated it he was crying again with exhaustion and anger, but there it lay at last, a great cold vegetable rose. Stripping off its outer leaves, he rolled it under the fence, crept through after it, gathered it in his arms, and went
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