Chapter XIV

There was a girl, Tar’s age, came to visit Colonel Farley’s house on Maumee Street. The street went out past the Farley place and ended at the town cemetery. The Farley place was the last one on the street, but one, an old rickety house where the Thompsons lived.

The Farley house was large and had a cupola on top. There was a low hedge in front, facing the road, and an apple orchard at the side. At the back of the apple orchard was a large red barn. It was one of the swellest places in town.

The Farleys were people who were always nice to Tar after he began selling papers, but he did not see them often. Colonel Farley had been in the war, like Tar’s father, and was a married man when he went in. He had two sons, both of whom had gone to college. Then they went away to live in some city and they must have got rich. Some said they had married rich women. They sent money home to the Colonel and his wife, plenty of it. The Colonel was a lawyer but hadn’t much practice--just fooled around getting pensions for old soldiers and that sort of thing. Sometimes he did not go to his office all day. Tar saw him sitting on the front porch of the house reading a book. His wife sat sewing. She was small and fat. When he collected for the paper the Colonel always gave Tar an extra nickel. Such people, Tar thought, were all right.

They had another old couple living with them. The man took care of the carriage and drove the Colonel and his wife out on fine afternoons and the woman cooked and did the housework. Every one had it pretty soft at that house, Tar thought.

They weren’t much like the Thompsons who lived beyond them, out that street, right by the cemetery gate.

The Thompsons were a tough lot. There were three grown sons and a girl Tar’s age. Tar hardly ever saw old Boss Thompson or the boys. They went every summer with a circus or a street fair. One year they had a stuffed whale on a box car. They had canvas all around it and went around to towns and charged ten cents to look at it.

When they were at home the Thompsons, father and sons, hung around the saloons and bragged. Old Boss Thompson always seemed to have plenty of money, but he made his women folks live like dogs. His old woman never had a new dress and looked all worn out while the old man and the boys were always strutting on Main Street. That year they had the whale, old Thompson wore a plug hat and always had on a fancy vest. He liked to go into a saloon or a store and take out a big roll of bills. If he had a nickel in his pocket when he wanted some beer he never showed it. He took out a ten dollar bill, peeled it off a big roll and threw it on the bar. Some men said most of the roll was made up of one-dollar bills. The boys were the same sort, but they did not have so much money to strut with. The old man kept everything for himself.

* * * * *

The girl that came to visit the Farleys in the summer was their son’s daughter. Her father and mother had gone to Europe so she was going to stay until they came back. Tar heard about it before she came--such things get about town pretty fast--and was on hand at the railroad station, to get his bundle of papers, when she came in.

She was pretty all right. Well, she had blue eyes and yellow hair and wore a white dress and white stockings. The Colonel and his wife and the old man who drove their carriage met her at the station.

Tar had got his papers--the baggage man always threw them off on the station platform at his feet--and he hustled to see if he could sell some to people getting off and on the train. When the girl got off--she had been put in charge of the conductor and he handed her off himself--the Colonel came over to where Tar stood and asked for his paper. “I can just as well save you coming clear out our way,” he said. He was holding the girl’s hand. “This is my granddaughter, Miss Esther Farley.” Tar went all red. It was the first time any one had ever introduced him to a lady. He did not know what to do so he took off his cap but did not say a word.

The girl didn’t even blush. What she did was just to stare at him.

“Lordy,” Tar thought. He did not want to wait to see her again until he had to take the paper to the Farleys’ the next day, so he went out that way in the afternoon, but saw nothing. The worst was that when he went out past the Farleys’ he had to do one of two things. The street did not go anywhere, just went to the cemetery gate and stopped and he had to go on into the cemetery, through it and out over a fence and into another street, or come back again past the Farleys. Well, he did not want the Colonel, his wife or the girl, to think he was hanging around.

The girl had got him all stirred up, right off. It was the first time that had happened. He dreamed of her at night and didn’t even dare speak of her to Jim Moore. One day Jim said something about her. Tar got red. He had to begin talking of something else. He couldn’t think what to say.

* * * * *

Tar began going off by himself. If he went out the railroad tracks a mile, toward the little town of Greenville, then turned off through the fields, he came to a creek that did not run through town at all.

He could go that way clear to Greenville if he wanted to. He did once. It was only five miles. It was nice to be in a town where he did not know a soul. The main street was only half as long as the one in his own town. People he had never seen were standing in the store doors, strange people walking in the streets. They looked at him with curiosity in their eyes. In his own town he had now become a familiar figure, running around with the papers mornings and evenings.

The reason he liked to go off by himself that summer was that, when he was alone, he could fancy the new girl was with him. Sometimes when he took the paper he saw her at the Farley house. She even came out sometimes to take the paper from him and did it with a self-possessed smile on her face. If he was disconcerted in her presence, she wasn’t.

She said “good morning” to him and all he could do was to mutter something she could not hear. Often when he was going around with the papers in the afternoon he saw her riding with her grandfather and grandmother. They all spoke to him and he took off his cap, awkwardly.

After all, she was only a girl like his sister Margaret.

When he went out of town alone, in the summer afternoons, he could imagine she was with him. He took hold of her hand as they walked along. He wasn’t afraid then.

The best place to go was to a beech woods about a half mile back from the tracks.

The beech trees grew in a little grassy gully that led down to the creek and on the hill above. There was a branch of the creek in the gully in the early spring but during the summer it dried up.

There isn’t any woods like a beech woods, Tar thought. Under the trees the ground was clear, no small bushes growing, and there were places among the big roots, that stuck up out of the ground, where he could lie as in a bed. Everywhere squirrels and chipmunks darted about. When he had been still a long time they came close. Tar could have shot any number of squirrels that summer and perhaps if he had and had taken them home to be cooked, it would have helped the Mooreheads a good deal, but he never took a gun.

John had one. He had got it cheap, second-handed. Tar could have borrowed it easy enough. He did not want to.

He wanted to go to the beech woods because he wanted to dream of the new girl in town, wanted to pretend she was with him. When he got to the place he settled his body down in a good comfortable place among the roots and closed his eyes.

There was the girl, close beside him--in fancy, of course. He did not talk much. What was to be said? He took her hand in his, held her hand against his cheek. Her fingers were so soft and small that when he held her hand his own looked big like the hand of a man.

He was going to marry the Farley girl when he grew up. That he had decided. He did not know just what marriage meant. Yes, he did. The reason he was so ashamed and blushed so when he went near her was because he was always having such thoughts when she wasn’t near. First he would have to grow up and go to the city. He would have to get as rich as she was. That would take time, but not so long. Tar made four dollars a week selling papers. He was in a town where there weren’t many people. If the town were twice as large he would make twice as much--if four times as large four times as much. Four times four is sixteen. In a year there are fifty-two weeks. Four times fifty-two is two hundred and eight dollars. Lordy, that’s a lot.

And he wouldn’t be selling just papers. Maybe he’d get him a store. Then he would have him a carriage or an automobile. He would ride up in front of her house.

Tar tried to imagine what the city house the girl lived in when she was at home, could be like. The Farley house on Maumee Street was about the grandest place in town, but the wealth of Colonel Farley didn’t amount to anything against that of his sons in the city. Every one in town said that.

In the beech woods, during the summer afternoons, Tar closed his eyes and dreamed the hours away. Sometimes he went to sleep. Nowadays he was always lying awake in bed at night. In the woods he could hardly tell the difference between sleeping and waking. All that summer no one in his own family seemed to pay any attention to him. He just came and went at the Moorehead house, mostly in silence. Sometimes John or Margaret spoke to him. “What’s the matter with you?” “Ah, nothing.” It may have been that his mother was a little puzzled by his state. She, however, said nothing. Tar was glad of that.

In the beech woods he lay on his back and closed his eyes. Then he opened them slowly. The beech trees near the foot of the ravine were heavy-bodied great fellows. Their coats were patched with color, the white bark alternating with torn brown places. Up the side of the hill, in one spot, there was a group of young beech trees. Tar could imagine the forest above going on and on indefinitely.

In books things were always happening in forests. A young girl got lost in such a place. She was very beautiful, like the new girl in town. Well, there she was in the forest alone and night came on. She had to sleep in a hollow tree, or in a place among tree roots. As she lay there and just as darkness was coming, she saw something. Some men rode into the forest and stopped near her. She kept very still. One of the men got off his horse and said strange words--“Open Sesame” and the ground opened at his feet. There was a great door, so cleverly covered with leaves, sticks and earth that you would never guess it was there.

The men went down a stairway and stayed a long time. When they came out they got on their horses and the leader--a strangely handsome man--just such a man as Tar felt he would be when he grew up--said some more strange words. “Close Sesame,” he said and the door closed and all was as before.

Then the girl tried it. She went to the place and said the words and the door opened. Many strange adventures followed. Tar remembered them dimly from a book Dick Moorehead read aloud to the children on winter evenings.

There were other stories, other things always happening in forests. Sometimes boys or girls got changed into birds or trees or animals. The young beech trees that grew on the side of the ravine had bodies like the bodies of young girls. When a little wind blew they swayed slightly. Tar, when he kept his eyes closed, could fancy the trees were beckoning to him. There was one young beech--he never knew why he singled out just that one--that might just have been Colonel Farley’s granddaughter.

Once Tar went to where it stood and touched it with his finger. The feeling he had was at the moment so real that he blushed when he did it.

He became obsessed with the notion of going out to the beech grove at night and one night he did it.

He had picked out a moonlit night. Well, a neighbor was at the Mooreheads’ and Dick was talking on the front porch. Mary Moorehead was there but not saying much--as usual. Tar’s papers were all sold. If he stayed away for a time his mother would not care. She was sitting silently in a rocking chair. Every one was listening to Dick. He usually managed to make them do that.

Tar lit out the back way and hurried around through back streets to the railroad tracks. When he had got out of town a freight train came along. A lot of tramps were in an empty coal car. Tar saw them as plain as day. One of them was singing.

He got to the place where he had to turn off the tracks and without trouble found his way to the beech grove.

It was all strange. Everything was still and spooky. He found a place where he could lie comfortably, and waited.

For what? What did he expect? He did not know. Perhaps he thought the girl might come to him, that she might have got lost and would be somewhere in the woods when he got there. In the darkness he wouldn’t be so embarrassed when she was near.

She wasn’t there, of course. He didn’t really expect it. No one was there. No robbers came on horseback, nothing happened. He kept perfectly still for a long time and there wasn’t a sound.

Then little sounds began. He could see things more clearly as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. A squirrel or a rabbit ran down along the bottom of the ravine. He saw a flash of something white. There was a sound back of him, one of the little soft sounds made by tiny animals when they move about at night. His body trembled. It was as though something was running over his body, under his clothes.

It might have been an ant. He wondered whether or not ants went out at night.

The wind blew a little stronger and a little stronger--not a gale, just blowing steadily, up the ravine from the creek. He could hear the creek chattering. There was a place near, where it had to run over stones.

Tar closed his eyes and held them closed a long time. Afterwards he wondered if he slept. If he did it couldn’t have been long.

When he opened his eyes again he was looking right at the place where the young beeches grew. He could see the one young beech tree he had gone across the ravine to touch that time, standing out from all the others.

That time when he was sick--things, trees, houses and people--were always leaving the ground and floating away from him. He had to hold onto something inside himself. If he hadn’t he might have died. No one else understood about that but he did.

Now the white young beech tree was coming toward him. It might have had something to do with the light and the wind blowing and the young beech trees swaying in the wind.

He did not know. The one tree just seemed to leave the others and come toward him. He was as scared as when Colonel Farley’s granddaughter spoke to him when he took the paper to their house, but in a different way.

He was so scared that he jumped up and ran and when he ran he got more scared. How he got out of the woods and back to the railroad track without being hurt he never knew. He kept running after he got up onto the tracks. He was in his bare feet and the cinders hurt and once he stubbed his toe so that it bled, but he never stopped running or being afraid until he got back into town and to his own house.

He couldn’t have been gone long. When he got back Dick was still going it on the front porch and the others were still listening. Tar stood out back by the woodshed a long time, to get his breath and let his heart stop pounding. Then he had to wash his feet and get the dried blood off his hurt toe before he went sneaking off upstairs and to bed. He did not want to get blood on the sheets.

And after he got upstairs and into bed and after the neighbors went home and his mother came upstairs to see if he and the others were all right, he could not sleep. There were a lot of nights that summer when Tar could not sleep much.