Zona Gale - Peace in Friendship Village

Faint and high and quite a ways off, I heard a little call. It wasn't much of a call, but when another came and then another, it set my heart to beating and the blood to rushing through me as though it was trying to tell me something.

I stood up and looked. And up the street I saw them – running and jumping, shouting little songs and laughing all the way – the children, coming out of the Friendship Village schoolhouse, there at the top of the hill. And in a minute it came over me that even if I couldn't help him, there was something to do that mebbe might comfort him some, just now, when he was needing it.

I stepped to the door, and up by the locust-tree I see Joseph coming. I could pick out his little black head and his bobbed hair and his red cheeks. And I called to him.

"Joseph, Joseph!" I says. "You come over here – and have the rest come too!"

He came running, his eyes beginning to shine. And the others came running and followed him, eager to know what was what. And up the road a piece I see some more coming, and they all begun to run too.

Joseph ran in the gate ahead of everybody, and past me, and in at the door that was close to the road. And he threw away his book, and ran to his father, and flung both arms around his neck. And the rest all came pressing up around the door, and when they see inside, they set up a shout:

"It's the Present-man! It's the Present-man! He's back a'ready!"

Because I guess 'most every one of them there had had something or other of Jeffro's making for Christmas. But I'd never known till that minute, and neither had he, that they'd ever called him that. When he heard it, he looked up from Joseph, where he stood holding him in his arms almost fierce, and he come over to the door. And the children pressed up close to the door, shouting like children will, and the nearest ones shook his hand over Joseph's shoulder.

And me, all of a sudden I shouted louder'n they did: "Who you glad to see come home?"

And they all shouted together, loud as their lungs: " The Present-man! The Present-man! "

And then they caught sight of Miss Mayhew, coming from the school, and they all ran for her, to tell her the news. And she came in the gate to shake hands with him. And then in a minute they all trooped off down the road together, around Miss Mayhew, one or two of them waving back at him.

Then I turned round and looked at Jeffro.

"Why, they have felt – felt glad to see me!" he says, breathless. And back to his face came creeping some of the old Jeffro look.

"Why, they are glad," says I. "We all are. We've missed you like everything – trudging along with your toys."

Joseph wasn't saying a word. He was just snuggling up, nosing his father's elbow, like a young puppy. Jeffro stood patting him with his cracked, chapped hand. And Jeffro was looking down the road, far as he could watch, after the children.

"I've got a little canned stuff there in the cupboard for your suppers," I says, not knowing what else to say. "And I stuck a few things in the ground for you out there, that are coming up real nice – potatoes and onions and a cabbage or two. And they's a little patch of corn that'll be along by and by."

All of a sudden Jeffro turned his back to me and walked a few steps away. "A garden?" he says, not looking round. "A little garden?"

"Kind of a one," I told him. "Such as it is, it's all right – what there is of it. And Abigail Arnold," I says, "wants you should make her another wooden bridal pair for the cake in the window – the groom to the other one is all specked up. And I heard her say you could set some of your toys there in her front case. Oh yes, and Mis' Timothy Toplady's got a clucking hen she's been trying to hold back for you, and she says you can pay her in eggs – "

I stopped, because Jeffro frightened me. He wheeled round and stood looking out the door across the pasture opposite, and his lips were moving. I thought maybe he was figuring something with them, and I kept still. But he wasn't – he was thinking with them. In a minute he straightened up. And his face – it wasn't brave or confident the way it had been once, but it was saying a thing for him – a nice thing, even before he spoke.

He came and put out his hand to me, round Joseph. "My friend," he says, "I vill tell you what it is. Thes' is what I thought America was like."

Wasn't that queer, when I understood all he had hoped from America, and all he hadn't found? A lump come in my throat – not a sad one though! But a glad one. And oh, the difference in them lumps!

He went back to work at his toys again, and he began at the bottom, a whole year after his first coming, to save up money to bring over his wife and the little ones. And it wasn't two weeks later that I went there one night and saw him out working on the hole in the road again.

"I work for you this time, though," he said, when he see I noticed. "Thes' I do not for America – no! I do it for you and for thes' village. No one else."

And I thought, while I watched him pounding away at the dirt:

"Anybody might think Friendship Village knows things America hasn't found out yet – but of course that can't be so."

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Copyright, Red Cross Magazine , April, 1919.

Copyright, Good Housekeeping , June, 1919.

Copyright, Everybody's Magazine , 1915.