Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

If sometimes she was impatient with his short steps and his constant tagging, one look at his face and chubby body softened her. None of the girls had a little brother so pretty. What if she’d had a pale-eyed weazened little runt like Netta’s Jackie? She was always proud to walk along the street with Frank. They might meet a stranger who would surely, say, “What a beautiful little boy!” Then she could always reply proudly. “He’s my little brother!”

But he never wrote to her.

Then one clear frosty morning when she was doing the Monday’s wash under the elm tree in the yard she looked up and saw him walking down the road to the house, a small suitcase in his hand. She could not believe it was he, but she knew the way he walked. And it was like him to come suddenly, without a word. She straightened herself above suds and ran, clumsy with her child, to meet him and take him in her arms.

“Oh Frank!” she cried, laughing and wanting to cry. “I’ve been thinking about you so much. Why haven’t you answered my letters? I’ve written and written!”

Ah, it was good to have her arms warmly about someone!

He had grown. He was taller than she now, he was handsomer than ever. But so thin! Her eyes took him all in at once — that was the same blue suit he had when he went away. Now it was worn and gray at the wrists and elbows, and he had turned the cuffs of the trousers inward. But it was his face at which she looked. His rosy boyish color was gone. His face was sharp-boned, sunken at the jaws and the temples. He looked tired enough to die.

“I only got two letters,” he said. “It’s taken me a while to come — to get here.”

“It’s home,” she said quickly. “Where I am is always home for you.”

He did not answer. He walked beside her to the house, and followed her in. She took him to the dining room, the only room that was warm, and the day was chilly with autumn. Then she did not know where to take him. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll ask Bart’s mother.”

In the kitchen she said, “My brother has come.” She paused, “May he — What room shall I put him in?”

Bart’s mother looked up from the stove, astonished. “How long’ll he be here?” she asked after a while. No one had ever come here to stay.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I haven’t had a chance to talk.”

Bart’s mother lifted the lid of the stove and pushed in a knotty stick of wood. The lid would not fit down and she clattered at it.

“He can sleep with Sam, or in that old bed in the attic. We used to have a hired man up there when times was good, but nobody’s slept there for a long time. It’s all right as long as it’s not summer. There’s some quilts in that old chest under the eaves.”

She went back to the dining room and took his hand. It was callused and hard, so hard that she looked at it quickly. It was grimed with so deep a grime that it looked as though it could never be clean. “What have you been doing?” she cried. His hands had been slender, the joints supple. It was still a slender hand, it would always be slender, but the skin was scarred and the nails black and broken.

“Been in machine shops,” he said, “and this last six months I’ve been in West Virginia in a coal mine.”

“In a mine!” she said, astonished. “I thought you wanted to fly.”

“I do,” he said. “I lost my job — nobody can hold a job these rotten days — and I went south with my pal. We heard there were jobs in the mines.” He made a grunt of laughter. “Do you see me in a mine, Joan, wanting to fly?” He sat down and put his grimy slender hands through his too long heavy black hair and leaned upon them.

“Come upstairs,” she said. “Come up to my room. I must know everything.”

He followed her up the front stairs, not knowing why she hesitated a moment and then said firmly, “Yes, come this way.” She led him into the bedroom.

“Gee,” he said, “I’d like a bath, Joan. I’ve hiked and hitchhiked for days.”

She hesitated again. There was the bathroom, but — the child made her strong today for Francis. Someday the child would be a man like Francis, and he would not wash himself in a wooden tub in the woodshed. “I’ll show you where the bathroom is,” she said.

While he bathed she went downstairs. She was foolish enough to be afraid for a moment of this fat silent woman moving about the kitchen. She listened to know if Francis was quiet. He used to be so noisy, rushing the water out of the faucets, dropping the soap dish, his strong bare footsteps thudding about. But he was very quiet now. For a moment she was so foolish as to think she would not tell Bart’s mother. She could put everything in order — Then she straightened herself. She would not be afraid, she was going to make a life for her own boy here in this house.

She went to the door of the kitchen. “Francis is using the bathroom,” she said quietly. “He has come a long way — he’s very tired.”

Looking down, she met Bart’s mother’s eyes fully — pale eyes whose brown had no depth. They were the color of shallow leaf-stained water flowing over stones. She gazed into them steadfastly, defying them. Sometimes it was good to be tall and towering. The pale eyes wavered and fell.

“There ain’t too much hot water,” she said. “If he uses too much there won’t be enough for the dishes. How long did you say he was staying?”

“I don’t know,” said Joan.

She set his place beside hers for the noon meal, and went back upstairs. He was dressed again and sitting in the bedroom. Now that he was clean, he looked very pale.

“You are much too thin, Frank,” she said, instantly troubled.

He gave the grin above which his eyes used to sparkle. But now they remained somber. “I haven’t eaten my fill steadily,” he said. “Seems to take a lot to feed me, Joan. I didn’t realize it before when I wasn’t doing it myself.”

He looked about the room restlessly. “What sort of a place is this you’re in? I haven’t seen your — I haven’t seen Bart yet. I can’t seem to think of you as married.” His eyes swept her figure delicately and moved away.

She said at once, “You see I’m going to have a baby soon, Frank.”

“Yes … I hope you’re happy.”

She did not answer. Now that Frank was here something of her own was near her again. She wanted to talk to him, to confide in him as she had never confided. But he kept his eyes steadily turned from her and his reserve held her away. “I’m happy about the baby,” she said.

She waited but he did not answer, so she knew they could not speak of herself. She said, “Now tell me about yourself — everything. I’ve thought about you so. Why didn’t you keep that job?”

“I never could work up in it. They kept me greasing parts and cleaning — all the young fellows who’d been to schools kept coming in and getting ahead. There isn’t any fairness in this rotten system, Joan. I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been away. I used to think if I worked hard and good, I’d get ahead anyway. I soon gave that up, like I gave up all that stuff Dad used to preach. He didn’t know anything real — all that talk.” His face was set in a bitter half-grin.

“He believed it,” she said quickly.

“Oh, sure,” he replied. “That’s why it was so poisonous. He was good enough, but that’s no use — not on this earth, not with things the way they are. There’s no chance for a fellow who hasn’t influence or money or something. Remember that letter you got me? That letter didn’t help me. Bair hadn’t any use for Bradley. He hardly looked at it. I got the job because they happened to need a hand just then. It was summer and things were busy.” He examined his hands carefully as if he had never seen them before. “Well, then things weren’t so busy and they dropped me, and there was nothing to do about that. I was hoping to get to be one of the regular ground crew. And about that time you wrote about Father — but I didn’t want to come to Middlehope.”