Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

And Joan, his daughter, ministered to his needs in the home, almost as Mary had done. Sometimes he almost forgot Mary was dead. He looked up from his plate to speak to Mary, but it was Joan, so he remained silent. Nothing now stood between him and the work. He could pursue secret mysteries. And he could preach the gospel to the unsaved, now that the chapel at South End was repaired — Dear Mary, who had done more good than she knew with the money she had saved for him. He had forgotten long since that there was any quarrel — Mary in heaven understood him as Mary on earth could not. Mary’s hands in heaven were cool with blessing, Mary’s voice in heaven quiet with approval. He could see her there, tranquil as she often was not tranquil here. Now she understood. “For now we see in a glass, darkly, but then face to face … We shall know as we are known.” He withdrew happily more and more. He moved about the house, a contented ghost. Only in the pulpit did he become real to any human creature. Then the people were his people, to whom he gave again what God had told him. God, who in the Beginning—

He was growing daily into the likeness of what he longed to be. It was daily easier now for him to deny the flesh. He had almost conquered his hungry body. He could take a dish of steaming prepared food into his hand and he could put it steadily down and rise hungry from the table.

“Your pa looks to need red meat,” Mr. Billings panted one Saturday morning in July. He held out a slab of bloody steak to Joan, who had answered the clatter of his wagon at the door. “Veal’s too weak for him, though it’s summer. I looked at him in church last Sunday when he was in his thirdly in the nature of the Holy Ghost, and I says, ‘It’s red beef he needs.’ Here ’tis!”

“I do thank you — you are the kindest man,” said Joan gratefully.

“Leave it red in cooking,” ordered Mr. Billings from his seat in the wagon. “Red’s the thing—”

But after all it was Francis who had eaten largely of the steak. Her father had cut a brown edge from it and that was all, though Joan said, “Mr. Billings brought that steak especially for you, Father — he thought you looked pale last Sunday in church.”

He smiled faintly. “I’d look better doubtless if Mr. Billings would come to prayer meetings sometimes — I never see him on a Wednesday evening.”

“I’ll have more of it, thank Mr. Billings,” said Francis, pushing his plate. “Gee, I like it red, Jo! Hannah always makes it too dry — but this is swell!”

His father kept his eyes steadily upon his own half-empty plate. He won’t eat himself, and he doesn’t like to see other people eat, Francis thought, hating him … “I’ll have some more,” he said loudly.

But then Hannah complained that you couldn’t fill Frank up these days. He was growing beyond all his clothes. Joan could see that, when she reproached him for wearing his dark blue Sunday trousers on a weekday. “I can’t sit down in those old striped pants,” he complained. “Gosh, Joan, I haven’t had a new suit since — since—”

He would not say “since Mother died.” He never mentioned his mother, and if she were talked of in his presence, he went away.

Joan looked at him carefully. He was as tall as she, and broader. In this year he was in body a man, a great, handsome, dark, male creature. Across his lip, along his jaw, the shadow of his constantly shaven beard lay black. He was not an instant still. His body moved, full of grace. When he spoke, his face changed as his mother’s had always done. He had her every look. But he was secret as she had never been secret. There was no knowing him.

For now Joan yearned to know him. For her own sake she yearned to care for him, to perceive his needs, that she might know him, and in knowing him find a sort of companionship. It was lonely to be the only woman in the house except old Hannah, who worked best if she were solitary. “Get out of my kitchen, Joan — your ma never cluttered under my feet the way you do. You’re so big there’s no gettin’ around when you’re here.”

And all she had of Francis were the small things she could do for him, making his bed, mending his clothes, putting them into his drawers, for he was always away. He was away because of school and now because of vacation. At night if he stayed at home he fidgeted and took one book after another and went upstairs early. Bit by bit he had taken his freedom until now he went out of the house as carelessly as though no one were left behind him. But his father did not question him because on Sundays he still came of his own accord to church. If his mother had lived he would long since have cried out at her, “I’m sick of coming to church with you—” But because she was not there for him to cry against he went once a week and sat where she had been used to sit, and because his father saw him there he let him be, serene in the surety that his son was safe and saved. “I am glad Francis is settling down,” he said to Joan.

Francis, sitting in the church, did not listen to anything his father said. He came to church not to listen to his father or to hear about God, but only blindly to find his mother. He often tried to remember what were the things she wanted him to do, and he could think of no command she had ever laid upon him except the wish that he come to church with her. It was the only rebellion against her that he now remembered, and he still rebelled against it and hated it, but because it was yet alive he could seem to see her more clearly in the church than anywhere else. In the home she had been so much his atmosphere that already her face was beginning to be blurred in his mind. But in church he could still see her very clearly as she used to sit, her little brown toque upon her head. For a long time she had worn a bunch of violets on her toque, at the edge on the side toward him where they lay against her curly hair. He loved the look of violets against her dark graying curly hair.

One night in the woods in early spring Fanny had picked a bunch of violets and put them against her black curls and he could not bear it. There could be nothing alike between Fanny and his mother. He would not even think of Fanny in church, where his mother was. They had nothing to do with each other. His mother was real, solid as life itself. Though she was dead, she was real, insofar as she had lived. His life was built on her life. Anything he might do was on that foundation, and where there was something, like this thing between Fanny and him, that could have no relation to the foundation of his mother, he knew it was not real and so it could not last.

But then he did not want it to last. He was wild to get away from it. If only he had some money — He had nothing at all except his bicycle, and if he sold that he might not be able to get away. He would go away without a word to Fanny. He had never promised Fanny anything at all. She burrowed her wild black head under his arm and whispered, “Sweet boy, you aren’t going to leave me ever! If you leave me, I’ll find you and drag you down — down — down. Promise me you won’t leave me!” But he never promised. He never promised anybody anything, because he hated lies. He pulled Fanny’s head back by her short curly hair, and he kissed her, but he never promised her. Women were always wanting promises — his mother, and now Fanny.

And Joan was wanting something from him, too, nowadays — talking to him, asking him questions — wanting to know things he did not know himself. How could he tell her where he was going after supper? When he ran out of the house he didn’t know where he was going. Maybe he was only going down to Winters’ store to see if any of the fellows were there. How could he tell her where he was going? Later, if he were restless, he’d go down to the woods at the south of the town and meet Fanny.