Up a Road Slowly (18 page)

He sought me out often during these early autumn days, and we would walk arm in arm through the bright woods, saying little, yet consciously fonder of one another, I believe, than we had ever been before. I noticed on these walks that the old buoyancy of his step was gone, that he walked slowly and deliberately; I noticed, too, how his bright hair had become dulled by gray. He had always seemed at least ten years younger than Aunt Cordelia, but that fall he looked older.

One evening as we walked, I remember that he spoke quite suddenly and irrelevantly. “The old piper is clamoring for his pay these days, Julie.”

I was perplexed. “I don't understand, Uncle Haskell,” I answered.

He laughed, but less lightly than in other years. “Do you remember how we once discussed the state of my liver when you were little? You were entranced by a new word, and you asked me very directly if my liver was impeccable.” He chuckled at the memory. “Well, it's no longer impeccable, Julie. As a matter of fact, the doctor tells me that my luck has run out. Cirrhosis.”

I stopped in the path and looked at him. “Surely the doctors can do something, can't they, Uncle Haskell?”

“Apparently not. You see, I didn't aspire to just a
slight
touch of cirrhosis; I did a magnificent buildup.”

To say that I was sorry seemed so trite, so inane. I was more than sorry; I don't think that even Uncle Haskell knew how desolate I felt at that moment.

Neither of us spoke for a long time. Then, when the silence became too much for me to bear, I told him of my wish to write.

It seemed callous when I thought of it later, a self-centered remark worthy of Uncle Haskell himself as it came in the face of what he had just told me. But any words of sympathy that I had were too empty, too inadequate; this was a little something I had to offer him for the grim days ahead, a something that I instinctively felt he would love.

“I've been trying for a long time to write a little, Uncle Haskell. I've never told anyone, and I'm telling you in confidence. I've wondered if you would read some of my stuff and criticize it for me? I warn you, it isn't very good, but I'd like to know if there is
any
good in it, and what I can do about what's bad in it.”

There it was. I hadn't wanted to tell anyone—certainly not Uncle Haskell—about my ambition, but it seemed to have been drawn from me by an urgent necessity.

The obvious delight that came into his eyes was worth relinquishing my secret. He cut our walk short and asked me to bring him one of my manuscripts immediately. Later that evening when Danny and I walked past the carriage-house apartment on our way to saddle our horses for a ride, we saw Uncle Haskell sitting at his table, his glasses astride his nose, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

The manuscript I gave him was not my first, but I considered it at all odds to be my best. I had an old German musician telling the story of his youth, his sufferings in a cold, rat-infested attic where he composed his music. His one solace, other than his work in this desolate environment, was the beautiful daughter of his landlord. This girl, who listened enraptured to the young man's music and poured out a chaste and gentle passion for the young musician himself, was unfortunately the child of a most brutal and sadistic father who, in a story of four thousand words, wrecked the lives of all the characters involved. The musician, old and feeble, at the end of the story, had apparently had very few satisfactions in life since his criminally insane landlord went on that last rampage so many years before.

When I came home that night I found my manuscript encased in a neat manila folder and propped against my door. The outside of the folder was covered with Uncle Haskell's beautifully flowing handwriting; at the bottom of his comments he had given me a B minus.

Seated at my desk, I read his criticism:

I laid the manila folder aside thoughtfully. If I hadn't done anything else, I had given him something to get excited about. I felt very tender toward Uncle Haskell that night.

We had long talks about my writing in the days that followed. “Write of things you know about, Julie; familiar, simple things that you have experienced; things that have touched you deeply.”

“But nothing's ever happened to me. I've just lived here with Aunt Cordelia and you most of my life, I've gone to school, visited Father—oh, sure, I'm in love with Danny, but that's something we've grown into—very wonderful for us, but not very exciting for the rest of the world. How can a person who has lived as quiet a life as I have find anything to write about?”

“Then you do have a problem. If you haven't lived long enough to have felt anything deeply, then you are in the same position I—as many would-be writers are. You've nothing to say. So take up crocheting.”

I thought about that business of remembering an experience which had caused me to feel deeply, and finally as I thought, there emerged in my mind, three little figures standing at a gate in the bright October sunlight; I heard a small girl saying, “You aren't going to live here anymore, are you?” I saw a picture of sheets on the line being wrinkled into malicious faces as the wind blew them about; I heard Laura's voice begging me to stop crying, and I heard Mrs. Peters saying, “. . . and now our pretty petticoat . . .” As I remembered these things, the old feeling of desperation seemed to climb down into my throat, and I saw the closet under the stairs, felt Aunt Cordelia's arms drawing me into her lap.

That evening I went to my room and wrote for many hours, neglecting some of my schoolwork because this paper for Uncle Haskell seemed to demand precedence.

I left it with him before I went to school the next morning, and when I came home in the evening I hurried out to discuss it with him. His face was grave as he turned the paper in his hands. “Is this the way it was, Julie? Did you really experience all this?”

I nodded, and he reread a paragraph thoughtfully. “I never knew,” he said after a while. “I didn't know that children felt that deeply.”

He said no more about the story, but he did not hand it back to me. “I'd like to look this over a little more,” he said without explanation, and laid it aside on a pile of papers.

He was as hard a taskmaster as if he had known only long hours of toil himself, and was unable to understand others who could not live up to his rigid standards. He would make me do a paper over, pointing out a hackneyed phrase, a contrived situation, a paragraph of strained dialogue. He wanted more and more copy, and he was very stern about my failure to turn it in as he demanded it.

“But I have my schoolwork to do, Uncle Haskell. I can't take a chance of getting low grades. High marks are very important to me this year.”

“Any writer who really has the fire within him will
find
time to write, Julie,” said Uncle Haskell with the air of a man who knew that fire well. “What about Cole-ridge and Stevenson, what about dozens of others, sick in body and mind, suffering acute pain, but still finding the energy and time to write?”

“They weren't finishing high school,” I muttered. But I worked as hard as I was able, and Uncle Haskell went over each of my offerings with meticulous care. He would strike out clichés with impatient little crosses, brand paragraphs with such words as “Awkward,” “Illogical,” “Saccharine”; now and then he would reward me with a benevolent “Good!” or “Big Improvement!” My spelling annoyed him occasionally. “Good Heavens, Julie, didn't Cordelia teach you
anything?
” he would inquire via his blue pencil. And at the end of the paper, he would spell out the major faults of my work and the qualities he found commendable. He usually placed a letter grade below his criticism; I received several C's; nothing ever higher than a B.

“Young writers get false ideas from indiscreet praise,” he explained. “When I tell you that your work is good, I'm not suggesting that you're Madame de Sévigné.”

Uncle Haskell must have been in pain often during those months; his face showed the effects of suffering, but he never mentioned it. Aunt Cordelia and Father talked with the doctors, and all that could be done for him was done. It was not much; temporary relief from pain, Aunt Cordelia's devotion.

“Your writing is helping him more than any medicine, Julia,” Aunt Cordelia told me, for we had found it necessary to include her in our secret. “In all the years, he has had no more than a flash of satisfaction out of his strange, twisted thinking. Now, I believe he feels that finally he is making some small contribution to a society he has always ignored.” She watched him as he waved to us and walked away for his evening stroll. “He might have been a very good teacher—a fine man if something terribly wrong hadn't distorted him.”

Uncle Haskell suggested once or twice that I send out one or two of my best things. “See how they're received, Julie. The experience can't hurt you. Anyway, every young author must commence collecting his pile of rejection slips. You had just as well make a beginning.”

But I couldn't bring myself to do it. It seemed too audacious on my part; I had a feeling that I might not only receive a rejection slip but that some outraged editor might give me a sound scolding for presuming to take up his time.

Then one week in April I had a telephone call from Father. “Julie, your story is in the
College Quarterly
,” he said in an excited voice. “Darling, why didn't you tell us?”

It was a day of considerable rejoicing by those who loved me most. Father called Laura and Chris; within a few hours Chris responded with a silly but very proud telegram, while Laura and Bill put through a long-distance telephone call which was still considered an extravagance, and their congratulations extended for a period far beyond the three minutes to which Aunt Cordelia and I carefully restricted ourselves when making such calls. Jonathan Eltwing felt that I had created and sustained a mood in a way that showed promise; Aunt Cordelia and Alicia were pleased. Father, who should have known better, being familiar with the best in literature, rather lost control of his enthusiasm that day. He kept finding another point in my work to praise until I became uncomfortable; I feared that it sounded a little like Grandmother Bishop praising something Uncle Haskell had written. Everyone laughed indulgently, and I felt much relieved when Father finally achieved insight into his overreaction and said quietly, “Well, after all, I remember her from a little vegetable on up. If what she writes gets into print, it seems great stuff to me.”

Only Uncle Haskell remained aloof that day. I ran over to his place early that morning, sure that he was responsible for submitting my manuscript, and anxious to talk about it. There was, however, no response to my knock, and all during the day we saw nothing of him. It was not until late evening when I was getting ready to drive into town with Danny that I saw Uncle Haskell turning into the path that led to the creek, his beret perched jauntily on his head, the golf bag without clubs slung across his shoulder.

I ran down the lane to overtake him. “When did you send my story to the
Quarterly
, Uncle Haskell? Why didn't you tell me?” I asked breathlessly.

“My dear child,” he said with mock loftiness, “I had completely forgotten your little yarn. Did they publish it, really?”

“You know very well that they published it. Oh, Uncle Haskell, I've been walking on clouds today. And how I've missed you; why didn't you answer my knock?”

“I felt no desire to join the throng. I'd sooner discuss your work when we're alone.” He smiled at me, but I noticed that his face looked ashen in the twilight. “Yes, I'll admit that I submitted your story. It was the right thing to do, wasn't it? You see, my judgment of work was accurate.”

“I never could have done it without your help. Never.”

“I like to think that, but I'm not fully convinced.” He looked out toward the misty woods and sighed. “We'll talk about it—sometime later. You run along. You're going out with young Trevort, aren't you?”