Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

But he was wild to leave Middlehope. He must get away because he must get away from Fanny. When he had gone to South End that Sunday afternoon with Jack Weeks he had never dreamed of getting himself in a mess — not like this. He’d only thought of having a little fun and forgetting that his mother had to die. The house was so different and empty when she lay upstairs. He could not stay in it. There was nothing to do after church and after dinner, and Jack had said, “Gosh, there’s a swell joint down at South End.” So they had gone and Fanny was there dancing. She was dancing when he came in and he couldn’t be sure she was not white, her color was so fair. Her skin was as light as the cream-colored rose his mother had by the porch, that same creamy yellow, and when he had touched her cheek it had the smooth firm feel of the smooth closed bud. Sometimes when his mother fixed flowers for the table he had sat watching her and playing with the roses. He knew the feel, the color … He hadn’t meant anything except fun. But Fanny had meant everything right from the start. She had danced at him, danced toward him, danced for him. Jack Weeks had joshed him. She came up to the table and leaned over him.

“Sweet boy, what’s your name? I gotta know your name.” Her voice was black. No white woman had a voice like that, deep, soft, black. He could see her breasts as she leaned over him. He had never seen a woman’s breasts. She wanted him to look at her. As soon as Jack had gone into the next room to play pool she had taken his arm and coaxed him. He wanted to go and watch Jack. He had no money and he couldn’t play, but she was there … He knew enough not to go to her room. He shook his head when she wanted that. So she said, “Let’s take a little walk, sweet boy. Don’t you love the woods and the river? I know where there’s a pool, so quiet and pretty—” So they had gone down to the wood … But you could hardly tell what she was. Her skin was as white as his, whiter than he was where the sun had burned him.

He hadn’t ever really loved her. He loved his mother and so he knew what he felt for Fanny was not love. He wanted her and hated her, and he longed to be where he could not find her when he wanted her. But she was like earth in him. She was a sediment in him, a clay. If he could run away he would be like clear water, escaping from a muddied pool. Sometimes when he was with her, though he was deep in her, he wished he could rise straight up into the dark sky. At such times when he came home, even after he had bathed and was lying clean in his bed, he thought not of her but of flying in the sky, the clean, clean sky. To rise out of the dark, hot, close earth, away, away, into the emptiness where even big clouds had space enough to pass each other, not touching — Why did he want to be close to Fanny, touched by her hands, to touch her, to bury himself in her, and then come forth himself, loathing her touch, longing to be miles above her, above them all, in the sky?

He could not forget his mother. He wanted to forget her. But out of the darkness in the wood, out of the deep hot darkness, he saw her face, not angry, not even knowing he saw her, but simply as she had been when she was alive and everyday. And the moment her face came out of the darkness he wanted to get away, up, up, into the clear coolness of the sky, to leave everything he had ever known.

Joan drew the words out of him. She was always planning, now that Rose had gone away. She couldn’t plan anymore about Rose’s wedding and clothes, and now she was beginning to want to plan for him. She ought to have about six kids to keep her busy. The other night she was sitting on the porch when he came in — that was a night he’d met Fanny — and the old man was in bed. She didn’t ask him where he had been, but she began talking suddenly out of the dark when he sat down on the step to get cool, and because he didn’t want to go to bed yet. He had sworn to himself he would not meet Fanny again, and yet suddenly when he was with the fellows he had to go to her, even though his head cried prudently, “Better not go anymore, now while nobody knows! This is the time to stop, now when nobody knows.”

But Fanny had her dark hands on him. He could feel the dark deep hold of her in him, and he went. Now it was over. He was back, and as he sat down he saw Joan.

“You not in bed yet?” he asked making his voice gruff. If he were gruff enough she would not begin asking him anything. He had learned that trick with his mother.

“It’s hot upstairs,” Joan answered.

And then suddenly she began talking and her voice changed and sounded just like their mother’s. Queer, he had never noticed it before. But now, not seeing her in the shadow behind the rose vine, it frightened him to hear what seemed his mother’s voice.

“What do you plan for yourself, Frank? What are you doing with yourself?”

It was like his mother to throw a clear, direct question at him. He could almost hear the overtone of other words. “What are you doing with yourself — oh, my son!” His palms grew suddenly damp. Gosh, if it were true, what the old man was always saying, that the dead live and know! They had talked about that tonight down at the store. “Way I figure it,” Mr. Pegler said, “we got no call to think that when the chemical combination we call the ‘human body’ is broken up that there’s anything left. It’s all chemistry, that’s what I say.” While they talked he scarcely listened. He was saying he never would go near Fanny again, but already his blood was plotting. He could feel it stirring about his heart. There was something about the still close heat of a summer night that made him think of Fanny. Outside the door of the store he could see the heat dancing above the road. A cicada called. In the back of his brain, underneath his attention to their talk, he felt the shapes that Fanny took, rising, writhing, secret in him, waiting. He had been glad — glad that the dead did not know, because only his mother could have discerned in him that dark stir. Maybe she did know? He had again that instant desire to spring from the earth, to rise, to leap into the sky, away, away.

“The only thing I really want to do,” he answered Joan passionately out of the dark, “is to be an aviator. I want to fly.”

“To fly?” Joan repeated, astonished. “But how could we ever get you to where you could?”

To his relief it was her own voice again. His mother would have answered strongly, “Nonsense! Frank!” And when he persisted she would have said, “Want it bad enough, and you’ll get it.”

But he had not really thought of being an aviator until this moment. He had only dreamed of being in the cool pure lonely upper air, freed from the earth like a bird. But now he planned instantly. What he had not thought of before came quick and complete in his mind.

“We could ask Martin Bradley. He was in the air service in the war. He dropped bombs.”

Joan did not answer for a moment, and when she did her voice came differently again, another voice, small, breathless. “I shouldn’t like to ask anything from him.”

“Why? I thought you were running around with him. Gosh, I heard fellows laughing about it at Winters’.”

“You let them laugh at me?” Joan asked, angrily.

“They didn’t before me,” he answered. “But I heard ’em snickerin’. Town like this everybody knows everything.”

She did not answer. He rose at length, yawned loudly, and said in the aggrieved way he used to have for his mother, “Well, if you won’t, you won’t.”

He went indoors and to his room and undressed. The longer he brooded, the more likely it seemed that there was no one to help him except Martin Bradley. And Joan would not ask — changeable, like all women. He thought for a while about women and how changeable they were. Even his mother had been changeable, and he learned to watch her when he wanted something so that he might know whether today were a day in which she was willing or unwilling. Only Fanny did not change — Fanny, steadily there in the wood at night, down by the small pool, down by the fallen tree, where the branches made a tent to cover them. “Sweet boy, don’t you ever leave me. I’ll hunt you everywhere. I’ll drag you down — if ever you go away from me.” He heard her voice always mingled with the rush of the stream, a soft, thick, singing voice. He broke into a sweat. He threw himself upon his face in his bed and felt himself sinking, sinking, into a black abyss. He was lost, he was lost. There was nobody to save him, no one to help him get away.