Falling to Earth (9 page)

“Are they?”

“You know they are. And next time, tell me yourself. You don't have to wait for Mae to come by.”

 

Paul keeps his mind on his family through the afternoon to distract himself. He can only guess when he'll be able to go home again, what on earth they'll be doing all day while he's gone. Mae and his mother can hardly want to keep the children inside, but neither can they send them outside with the stench that's building all around and the porch to keep them away from. He swings his hammer harder every time he thinks about the porch. The coffins are being taken away almost as fast as they can build them. Just as well; he wouldn't want to turn around and see a stack of them there.

He wonders how far the news has gotten, how much of the country has heard it now. John and Dora must surely be frantic out there in California. With everything down, there's nothing to do but hope they can get a letter out to them, and he imagines Mae and his mother have already thought of that. Send a letter to John and Dora out on a train to the next town that has a post office still standing and then wait. The reply's not the important thing, of course, just the words going out:
Family fine, house and lumberyard also fine
. We've been knocked back a few centuries, but we're all still standing here and breathing.

They've got me building coffins, Johnny, Paul thinks. We're hard at it with the cheapest pine and handsaws. You were right to leave, your old house is gone. Imagine that—I'm finally glad you left.

Paul knows now that the way his mother has been shaking since the storm has as much to do with John as any of the rest of them. She'd been against John's moving out to California, just as Paul had been, but held her tongue and let Paul be the one to try to talk him out of it. John had argued that Paul was only worried about the lumberyard, but it was up and running and everyone knew that either Paul or John could have continued without the other. It was their family Lavinia had been thinking about. Even though Homer, Paul's father, had died, they were increasing: John with his two children, and Paul now with his three, and neither Paul nor his mother could stand the thought of their diminishing again. He and John had argued bitterly, and it was only when Lavinia had happened to come by the lumberyard and walked in on them fighting that they had stopped. Neither of them could be sure whether it was what she had heard or the mere fact of their arguing that had made her face look like that, but they had stopped then and there. The last words spoken on the subject that day, before Paul finally agreed to buy out John's share of the lumberyard were John shouting at Paul, “I didn't make you stay on the farm. Don't you make me stay here in Marah!” If Lavinia can't stop her shaking now, it's because she's grateful, finally grateful after all these years for John's stubbornness, for his forcing himself to turn a deaf ear to Paul and moving anyway.

Paul is blinking hard so he can see, stopping his hammering to wipe his nose on his shirt sleeve. The sounds of others hammering and sawing continue around him. He looks at the length of the boards in front of him and sees that he's building a coffin for a child. It comes as a surprise to Paul that this could be worse, more painful somehow than it had been to carry a dead child out of the ruins of the school. He realizes now that he had deceived himself then, persuading himself as he carried out the children that death weighed no heavier on each one of them than sleep did on his own children when he carried them to bed. Now there's nothing to do but continue, finish the thing and let them take it away.

“Mr. Graves.” Irene is there again, but this time her face is serious. “You're needed out front.”

“Who is it?” Paul asks her.

“It's Russell Meeker. He's here about a coffin.”

Irene seems to be stunned by having to deliver the message. “It's all right,” Paul says and lays his hand on her shoulder. If she's distressed by the very thing they were all braced for, it's only because of her youth and because she allowed herself to believe that Captain Kemmel had put in the total order himself. He walks out of the light of the yard back into the dark office and through to the store. He sees Meeker at the counter, recognizes his outline in the light coming in from the window behind him. Paul walks around the counter slowly, giving himself a moment to take in the changes; the sunken line of Meeker's shoulders, the effort with which he holds up his head.

“Hello, Russ,” he says, and offers his hand. Meeker takes it and looks at him, beginning to shake his head as if he is saying No. His head keeps shaking, back and forth, as if it's only a tremor, but his eyes are still telling Paul no.

“Is it for Gertie?” Paul asks gently, and Meeker begins to nod instead.

“I can't stand to build it myself,” he says, his voice quiet.

“You don't have to,” Paul says. “I'm building it now.”

A
gray cat flicks its tail in the dust. An old man sitting nearby on a salvaged straight-backed chair sees the cat and recognizes his own lassitude in the cat's half-closed eyes. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, he's been rendered little more than a child by the industry of the relief workers around him, left to fill his days with watching. He flicks a pebble at the cat who springs up and bounds away, settling in an identical pose further down the street, out of range.

The men and women in the town are watchful, wary of the western sky. Fearful now of every cloud, they look up at intervals, scanning the horizon. People sifting through the wreckage and those setting out to fetch water or food mark the changes in the sky throughout the day. Children forget to look for animal shapes in the cottony masses at rest in a pale blue sky, finding no pleasure in following even the whitest clouds. At day's end, people gather in the streets, equally fearful of a dark sky and unwilling to take shelter for the night.

Dark clouds draw a crowd.
Time was I'd have just gone inside if I saw a cloud like that.
They stand there, half transfixed, half skittery, their breath going shallow until it begins to rain and they can shake off their fear with a shiver and laugh at their foolishness before they disperse.
Half a minute there, I was ready to run.

They are wary, too, of being out in the town, of being abroad during the day when strangers come touring in their automobiles. The Guardsmen are there to send them away, but they continue to arrive daily by the carload. Those who cannot account for missing loved ones fear the wreckage.
They can hope all they want she was blown away. Won't know for sure till they haul off that house.

Fathers and mothers who are told they should send their children out on trains to get them back to school hesitate. When they're told that they must, that other people in other towns have already done so, they resist. The children hear the talk and stay close. They feel their fathers and mothers gripping their shoulders as they weigh the thing, trying to imagine watching their children pull out of town on a train. When someone argues,
There's folks willing to take them in for a while, under proper roofs. Think how much school they're missing! How much more they'll miss before the school can be rebuilt here
, one of the fathers will finally say,
Nothing saying we can't teach them right here
. The children's fear eases then, when they are all certain that their fathers and mothers will refuse.
They can set up one of those big tents for a school. Give us all something to do till we can rebuild.

Those in the town who have camped before for pleasure recognize the enforced dullness of each day, but also that the boredom and privation are expanding now without their consent. The chill evenings, when it is still too early for people to return to the houses they are sheltering in or to the government tents they have pitched in the fields, are the longest part of the day. The dreariness everywhere heightens the people's restlessness, and restlessness gives way to unease.

The Liberty's showing a Buster Keaton tonight.

Got no money.

Don't need money, they're showing it for free.

That so. Which one?

Sherlock Jr.

Seen it last year.

Well, hell, so'd I. I'm only going to get where it's warm for a while.

The Liberty Theater is full to capacity every night, often with the same people, though the movie showing doesn't change. They sit with their coats on and their hats in their laps. With the electricity restored, the theater is intact, exactly as it was before the storm, and leaves people feeling that they have entered a time machine of sorts. Once the lights are dimmed, it is possible to sit in the dark and imagine that the town also lies just as it was, intact beyond the theater's closed doors. Some of the people forget themselves and laugh at the movie, lulled by the dark and the familiarity of the theater.

A woman flings open the theater doors one evening, halfway through the movie, and runs in screaming,
Tornado!
The men and women rise without looking at each other and rush out of the theater into the street to look at the masses of dark clouds crouching above the town. While they are looking up, judging whether to run or stay, the clouds burst open. There is no glee among the people because of the rain, no relief that the clouds' only intention is to soak them, only despondency that they are no longer rational, no better than cattle in their panicked response. Too wet now to return to the theater's upholstered seats, the words
guess I'll just go home
begin to form on each tongue. There are a few rueful snorts among the men, because home now means a tent in a rainstorm, before they all turn to scurry away along the dark, wet streets.

T
hey're leaving,” Paul says, closing the bedroom door behind him. “The McKinneys say they're leaving after breakfast.”

Mae is making their bed, tucking the bedspread under the pillows more painstakingly than she needs to, weighing her words.

“I know,” she says in an even voice.

“You know? How do you know?”

“They told me last night before I came up to bed.”

“Why didn't you tell me? I could have talked to them before they'd made up their minds!”

“I didn't tell you because I wanted you to be able to sleep. And their minds were already made up before they told me.”

She stands straight and looks at Paul with an expression he has seen before that is both gentle and troubled. She's warning him, he knows, not to try to coerce the last of the people sheltering with them to stay longer. He knows he'll likely meet the same resistance in his mother, whether or not she and Mae have had a chance to talk together this morning.

“Ed and Grace aren't children,” Mae says. “We can hardly force them to stay if they want to go.”

“But go where? There's nothing for them to go to.”

“A tent and cots aren't nothing.”

“I thought we'd made them all welcome.”

“We did.”

Paul sits on the edge of the bed and pulls Mae down to sit beside him. She exhales and looks at her hands lying clasped on her knees. She'd formed her habit of sighing and exhaling during her pregnancies. She'd said each time he'd pointed it out, “Was I sighing? I suppose I was only trying to draw a proper breath.” But she'd never lost the habit, and in the years that had followed it had come to signal her turning inward. Whenever he asked her now whether something was wrong, why she was sighing, she only answered in a distracted voice, “Was I?”

Stay here, Mae, stay here, Paul thinks. He pulls her closer and presses his forehead to her temple, looking down so he won't have to see if she becomes annoyed. “Where did my girl go?” he murmurs.

“It's wearing on everybody, having to be considerate all the time,” Mae says. “If it were me, I'd be lining up for a tent, too. Think what you'd be asking of them if you talked them into staying. Roll your blankets in the corner folks, and don't come back till supper.”

“We never even hinted at such a thing!”

“Of course not. But those are the rules they all followed. I didn't like it either, watching them leave after breakfast, wondering what in creation they could find to do between then and supper time. We tried, your mother and I both tried to convince them it wasn't necessary, that they were welcome to spend their days here with us, but in the end we weren't their family and they weren't really guests.”

Paul takes Mae's hand lightly in his and she exhales again.

“I understand they have their pride,” Paul says, “But it's cold out there.”

“They'll have a wood-burning stove in their tent. Lord knows there's enough stuff lying around to burn.”

“Yes, and if they stayed they could have electric lights and a bathroom.”

“Oh, for pity's sake, Paul!” Mae shakes her hand away from Paul's, gets up off the bed, and finally looks at him. “They can no more stay here than we can get in line and ask for a tent! Ed and Grace McKinney don't need saving. They're not even all that bad off, compared to some. They lost their house, not a child, and they can rebuild.”

Mae looks at Paul sitting there, looking down at his hands. She feels remorse for wanting to leave without setting things right, but decides she's leaving anyway.

“I have to get breakfast,” she says.

 

Paul returns to the kitchen table to sit with his cold coffee. Breakfasts since the storm have become hurried affairs, no matter how they try to make a normal meal out of their random fare, and now Paul is the only one in the kitchen. Milk and bread from the National Guard today, plus their own potatoes, fried, and his mother's strawberry jam spooned sparingly on the bread. He can't figure yet what it is that's got him so upset, whether it's folks no longer accepting his help or simple guilt. Even if it were both and he could say in exactly what proportion each thing weighed on him, it wouldn't matter. Living in this house, untouched as it is, was easier to bear when there were people sheltering there with them. He could at least point to a reason his and a few other houses on their block had been spared and say to the people sleeping on his floors, “I'm so glad we had a place for you to come to.” He's no longer the man with everything to share, he's just the man with everything.