Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

But now Joan would have dug out his vitals — let him give her something! He never gave her anything—

“You can put down ‘highly recommended,’ can’t you? He’s my brother and he’s a very bright boy. Put it down.”

She was breathing hard over his shoulder. He felt her there, large, implacable in her demand. He wanted to get home, to get away from her, to get home to his supper. She was distasteful to him. He shrank from remembering her. After a moment he wrote down carefully, Recommended. Why had he ever thought her like a lovely boy?

She was only a woman and he hated women, especially when they had long hair. Besides, she was taller than he.

She snatched the card from him and ran home. It was in her hand, Frank’s escape. She ran up the steps, shouting for him.

“He’s in his room, I reckon!” cried Hannah from the kitchen. She ran upstairs and into his room. He was on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his hands under his head, his face flushed and sullen, slack with despair. He turned his eyes toward her.

“Here,” she cried. “I have it — introduction to Roger Bair, aviator! You can go right away — now!”

He sat up on the edge of the bed, his whole body lifted up, his face breaking into light. “I can go?”

“Yes,” she whispered. She was suddenly exhausted. She sat down.

“I haven’t any money,” he said frightened.

“I have — nearly eighteen dollars. I’ll give it to you—”

She looked at him and instantly the tears rushed thick into her throat. If she had not found out, what would have happened to him?

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re white as a sheet.”

She stood up, shaking her head. No, she couldn’t tell him she knew. She couldn’t speak. They were too near to speak.

“Pack your things,” she said. “I want you to go tonight. His plane maybe starts early in the morning. I hear them in the sky in the morning before I get up. I’ll get the money.”

She climbed the attic stairs quickly and opened the round-topped trunk and found the sandalwood box. It was half full of pennies and nickels and a few dimes, but there was a handful of quarters. The quarters were what she had not put into the missionary collection. Her father had given them to her each month on the day of the meeting. “Your mother used to give twenty-five cents each month at the ladies’ foreign missionary society. I would like you to continue it.”

“Yes, Father,” she had replied.

But she had put the quarters in the box. Six of them had gone for Rose. The rest were now to go for Francis. She saw her mother’s eyes twinkle from the grave.

What she could do for Francis was not done until he was away. For his sake she must send him as far as she could. He must not stay a night more, not if she could help it. She packed his garments feverishly into her own bag — fresh shirts, his ties, the dark red tie his mother loved, his garments. He came and went, his black hair tumbled, his eyes shining. But he was not gay. He was silent. His face was grave, tense, tightened. The loose sullenness of his red mouth, still full-lipped as a child’s mouth, was gone, changed to some inner determined control. They did not speak. How could she speak, lest she cry out, “How could you do what you have done?” He did not speak because there was no one but himself in his mind. Everyone in the world was below the horizon of his mind. He moved alone in his life, to take his chance of freedom. If she had spoken he would have shouted at her to leave him alone. He was sore with sickness at the tangle he was in. He felt himself sweeping out of it upon wide silver wings, into the sky.

“There,” said Joan, rising from her knees. “Everything’s in but your toothbrush. Eat your supper and brush your teeth before you go. You can catch the nine o’clock and be in New York at eleven. You go straight to a Y.M.C.A. Tomorrow morning you can go out to the field and find him. You write me a letter how things go — write soon, Frank — tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered. It did not seem possible he was really leaving this room. In this room he had lived so long that it did not seem possible he could sleep in another bed. But this very night he must sleep in some strange unknown bed in the city he had never seen. He’d never even once seen New York and now suddenly tonight he was going to sleep there.

“You sell my bicycle,” he said suddenly. “Jack Weeks wants it. He’ll give you fifteen dollars for it, maybe. But be sure you have the money before you give it to him. He’ll cheat you if he can.”

“I’ll sell it and send you the money,” she said steadily.

“If I don’t get the job—” he said.

“If you don’t get one job, you’ll get another,” she replied in the same even tone. “You don’t come back — you’ll get the job, though — I feel you will.”

He looked at her deeply from under his black brows, questioning her. Did she know something? Who could know when he told nothing? Even at the store when other fellows boasted of the girls they knew, he was silent. No one ever saw him with any girl. He was never with any girl. He never walked with any girl. He and Fanny met and parted in the darkness of the wood beyond old Mrs. Mark’s house. Fanny went south and he went north. He withdrew into deeper silence. Silence was safe — never tell, and no one could know.

“Supper’s ready, and your pa’s waiting,” Hannah’s voice shouted from downstairs.

“I’ll go and tell him,” said Joan. “He won’t understand, but he’ll have to be told.”

She went downstairs to the dining room. The table was set for three. Soon it would be set for only two. She had an instant of terror. How swift was change, how insecure was life! This home had seemed for many years as permanent as her own body. Her mother, her father, Rose, Frank, herself, these five, had seemed as safe as the setting and rising of the sun. Her father came in at Hannah’s call and she saw him freshly, sharply, in the power of the moment. He was a frail old man, and he was all that was left to her of what was the safety of her childhood.

He looked vaguely about. “Where’s Francis? I’ll sit down. I’m tired today.” He took his seat at the head of the table, clinging to the sides of the chair as he sat.

“He’s coming,” she replied, and sat down. She would tell him quickly, now, before Frank came down. “Father,” she said, “Frank’s got a job. At least, probably, and he’s going to New York.”

He had begun to dip up the thick soup in the bowl before him in haste for its heat and warmth. When she said this he looked up at her, the spoon poised above the bowl.

“A job?” he repeated. “He isn’t finished school. What’s it mean? Isn’t he going to college? It’s strange if my son doesn’t go to college. And I thought he’d begun to give weight to God. He’s been so regular in his attendance at church I thought he was—”

“He has a job,” said Joan, raising her voice and shaping each word plainly. “He wants to go. He’s going tonight.”

“Tonight!” the old man repeated, astonished. He paused and said at last, “I wasn’t told.”

“He didn’t know until tonight,” said Joan. “You have to take a job when you get it.”

“What job?” he asked.

“Martin Bradley’s helping him,” she answered.

He went on with his soup in silence. He would talk to Francis, he thought to himself. He would not talk to Joan. Women knew very little. Francis would not tell her, but he would tell his father. He waited until Francis came in, and looking up saw his son unwontedly. The boy’s cheeks were very red and his eyes looked like Mary’s eyes. He came in quickly, and sat down quickly and began to eat, and he said nothing, after all, to his father.