Which brings me to another reason my trip into the past was a pleasant one. I enjoyed the devil out of writing each and every story in this collection. Maybe that's why I enjoyed revisiting them, and maybe that's why you'll enjoy reading them. That sort of thing rubs off.
In every language there is a proverb to the effect that we are all born with something, however humble, to offer the world. Be that truth or optimism, I offer the following pages.
T
he glass jars of enamel added to the colorful formless composition that was being created as one-by-one they exploded against the brick wall. Wilson Benton was smiling as he picked up each jar and hurled it with the conscienceless exuberance of a mischievous seven-year old.
Mrs. Hefferman, whose hobby was the making of ceramic pots, mugs, praying-hand plaques, and the like, kept her brightly colored enamels on a dusty shelf in the garage. Usually the garage door was closed and locked. But not today, when Wilson happened by, spotted the neat row of jars, looked at the wide expanse of brick wall on the other side of the alley, and surrendered to the temptation.
"What do ya think you're doin'?"
The voice belonged to Randy Hefferman, Mrs. Hefferman's twelve-year-old nephew who lived with her. With Randy were Bob Rourke, a gangly boy of ten who was the best ballplayer in the neighborhood, and Frankie Toiler, an overweight and overbearing eleven-year-old who nurtured a developing skill at instigating trouble among others while remaining outside the fray.
There wasn't much that Wilson could say to Randy's indignant question. Wilson had, almost literally, been caught red-handed. He stood silently, a frail dark-haired boy with wide and fearful brown eyes that took in the older and heftier Randy with morbid apprehension. The glass jar containing Chinese red dropped from his suddenly sweating hand to shatter at his feet and join the shards of broken glass in the cobblestoned alley.
"He broke the lock on the garage an' got that stuff an' smashed it," Frankie Toiler said accusingly.
Wilson swallowed. "I didn't!" he choked.
Randy moved a menacing step closer to him. Wilson could smell his breath; he'd been eating the hot chili his aunt often made. "Didn't what?" Randy asked.
"Break into the garage!"
"Then how'd you get all my aunt's paint jars an' break 'em up?"
"The door was open! It was!"
"She always locks it," Frankie Toiler remarked.
Bob Rourke stood silently staring at Wilson. He was only vaguely interested in what was going on, but he would go along with whatever Randy and Frankie decided to do to the trapped and unquestionably guilty Wilson.
Randy moved still nearer and Wilson's throat went dry. A coppery corruption of fear lined the sides of his tongue.
"Ain't no reason to break all that stuff just 'cause the door was open," Randy said. His hand pistoned out, pushing Wilson backward, broken glass crunching loudly beneath the soles of his tennis shoes.
"What we gonna do to him?" Frankie asked eagerly. "Can't let him get away with it."
"Tell your aunt," Bob Rourke suggested to Randy.
"Naw, she won't do nothin'," Frankie said. "Besides, we ain't snitches."
Randy's cool gray eyes flared with sudden inspiration. He placed his fists on his hips. "Take off your shoes," he said to Wilson.
Frankie grinned.
"He cuts up his feet through them socks and we'll get in trouble," Bob Rourke observed.
"He's the one in trouble," Randy said fiercely. "This'll teach him not to break into people's garages and bust up their stuff."
"He'll cut himself," Bob Rourke repeated. "Anyway, he ain't gonna take off his shoes."
"If he don't, we'll make him!"
Wilson's hands were trembling. Frankie and Bob Rourke stepped closer to stand beside Randy. Wilson looked into Bob Rourke's narrowed eyes and knew he could expect no help from that direction.
"Now!" Randy demanded.
Wilson bent and removed his shoes.
"Now walk!" Randy demanded.
Wilson stared down at the glittering multicolored fragments of glass.
"You heard Randy!" Frankie said.
Wilson took a step. Another. He felt the uneven pressure of the glass on the soles of his feet, threatening to break through the dirty cotton of his socks and embed itself in his flesh. Gingerly, fearfully, he took light, carefully aimed steps, almost wishing the jagged glass would penetrate the bottoms of his feet and create a pain that might alleviate the overpowering sense of shame that was enveloping him.
But finally he reached a clear spot beyond the broken glass. His feet were undamaged; the cotton socks had been enough protection. He stood staring at the three boys on the other side of the expanse of glimmering danger.
"See," Frankie told Bob Rourke, "he didn't even get cut." He sounded disappointed.
Randy was looking at Wilson with something like startled recognition. "He's a coward," he said gravely. "The guy's a coward." It was as if he'd heard about cowards but had never really expected to see one. And now here was
one, standing directly in front of him. Not only that â it was someone he knew.
"He's a coward all right," Frankie agreed.
For a moment Wilson felt totally alienated from his world as if it had unexpectedly come to his and everyone's attention that he had webbed feet. With one abrupt stroke he was separated from the rest of humanity.
"Iâ"
But the rest of humanity was no longer interested in anything he had to say. Its three representatives turned and walked away toward the mouth of the alley. Frankie glanced over his shoulder for just an instant, but no one else looked back. As they rounded the corner and disappeared, Bob Rourke gracefully leaped to slap the bottom of a rusty Coca-Cola sign protruding from the brick building. The metal sign twanged and continued to vibrate loudly.
Wilson stood for a long time, still holding his shoes in his right hand, staring at the bright world beyond the mouth of the alley. Then he shivered. That world would never be the same. He had been, if not a close friend, an occasional companion of the three boys who had just left him. But he was no longer one of them. He could never be one of them again.
P
earl Harbor had been bombed six months ago. When war had been declared, Wilson Benton, now twenty-six years old, had, in a patriotic fervor, attempted to enlist in the Army. A perforated eardrum and weak eyesight had caused him to be turned down and classified 4-F. Not knowing what else to do, he'd returned to his art studies.
Wilson was considerably talented as a painter in oils. His ambition was to be an illustrator; once, the art director of
The Saturday Evening Post
had given him encouragement in
a long friendly letter. Nature was Wilson's favorite milieu for his art, so with what savings he'd accumulated he leased a tiny clapboard cabin in a gently rolling lush green area of the Ozark Mountains. He intended to spend the summer and part of the fall at the cabin painting. Then, with what he'd created, he would again approach the world of magazine illustration and try to establish a beachhead.
The cabin was a one-room affair with a sharply peaked roof. Though it wasn't equipped with electricity, it did have a septic tank and indoor plumbing. Wilson slept in a comfortable feather bed, cooked his meals on an old iron wood stove, and sat up nights listening to the Silvertone radio he'd hooked up to two six-volt car batteries.
Once a week he would drive into Colver, the nearest town, in his dented gray '36 Chevy coupe and buy groceries to haul back in the trunk. Sometimes he would pull to the side of the narrow dirt road that led to the alternate highway and survey a particularly beautiful view, returning the next day to sketch or paint there. Primitive, yet with a deceptive, almost feminine loveliness that disguised nature's ongoing life-and-death struggle, the rolling green Ozark country was ideal for Wilson's purpose. He was content with what he was accomplishing.
The cabin had a large window that provided northern light, but often during the day Wilson would set up his easel on the side of the wooden front porch and work outside. It was on one of those days that he heard the racketing bang and clatter of a car approaching the cabin along the seldom traveled dirt road. As he stepped down from the porch, he saw a haze of dust among the high branches of maples near the road's sharp bend; the car was very near.
It was a Model A Ford, rusty, the top cut off, the engine exposed. One of the rear fenders was hanging half off and clanking against the car's body as the tall rubber tires bounced over the deep ruts.
When the driver saw Wilson he hit the brakes, and the old Ford pulled to a squealing, rattling halt before the cabin. There were three men and a woman in the car, two of the men in the front seat. The man in the back was slouched sideways, his legs stretched across the woman's lap, his bare feet propped up on the glassless window frame. The cloud of dust raised by the car caught up with it and slowly settled in the brilliant sunlight.
"What you doin' at the Harris cabin?" the driver asked Wilson. He had blond hair and a scraggly beard that was more the result of neglecting to shave than a conscious attempt to grow chin whiskers. The other two men were dark-headed. The woman â or girl â was a brunette with a dirty face, freckles, large blue eyes, and lissome arms, one of which was flung carelessly across the back of the rear seat. None of them appeared to be more than twenty years old, and Wilson guessed the girl to be in her teens.
"I rented the cabin for the summer," Wilson said, moving closer to the car so he wouldn't have to shout. "My name's Wilson Benton."
The girl appeared puzzled. "What for would you rent a place like this?" she asked in a grating soprano voice.
"I paint. I like it here."
"Paint what?" the driver asked. He rubbed a hand across a long nose that had been broken many times. His pale gray eyes were set too close together and regarded Wilson with indifferent curiosity.
"Pictures. Some of them for magazine illustrations."
"Oh, that kinda paintin'," the girl said.
"Ain't that somethin'?" the man with her in the back seat spoke up. His lank hair was hanging in his eyes. He had a
wide lantern jaw and was missing several front teeth. Wilson couldn't tell by the tone of his voice how he'd meant his remark.
The man on the front passenger's side, who would have been darkly handsome if he were clean and well dressed, grinned. "Don't mind 'em, Wilson," he said. "I'm Josh Edwards." He pointed to the driver. "Zach Wheelright. Them in the back is Bandy McCane and Maybelle Sue Dover."
"Lotsa pretty things around here to paint, all right," Maybelle said.
Bandy McCane gave a jut-jawed broken-toothed sneer and peered at Wilson from beneath his unshorn hair.
"Bandy'd be jealous if you was to pose for Wilson, Maybelle," the driver, Zach, remarked.
"Don' matter," Maybelle said to Wilson with a perfect smile, and took in the other occupants of the car with a circular wave of her arm. "These'ns are all gonna be gone into the Army afore the end of summer."
"How come you ain't in?" Bandy asked. "You look to be of age."
"I tried," Wilson said. Unaccountably, he felt himself blushing. The change of his color wasn't lost on Bandy McCane.
"How hard you try?" he asked derisively.
"Hard enough," Wilson said. "They told me I was Four-F."
"Lotsa reasons you can be Four-F," Zach observed skeptically.
"Glad I ain't a reject," Josh said in a solemn voice. "Comes a time to fight, an' this is it."
Wilson nodded. "I agree."
"I'd like to see your pictures sometime," Maybelle said, blatantly changing the subject.
"No time now," Zach shouted,
jamming
the old Ford into gear and gunning protesting life into the clattering engine.
"No call for painters in this man's war!" Bandy shouted over his shoulder at Wilson as the Ford's big wheels dug into the earth without slipping and the car shot forward. Maybelle lifted an arm in a languid farewell that Wilson barely saw through the dust as the car disappeared beyond the rise where the road gently curved.
Wilson walked back up onto the porch, listening to the measured hollow thunder of his boots on the warped planks as he strode to his canvas. The conversation with the four native Ozarkians had disturbed him more than it should have.
T
wo days later he returned after painting a landscape from high on a nearby bluff to find that the cabin had been broken into and many of his paintings had been slashed.
He stood staring at the disruption of the cabin's interior, unable to see clearly for a moment as an aching helpless rage flared deep in his stomach, then gradually receded to a painful smoldering. So personal seemed the attack, it was as if the torn canvas were an extension of his own flesh.