The Steadfast Heart/Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Dave Wilkins caught the gleam of the sun on the spire of the church across the river, and his dry smile had in it a touch of bitterness. It was the men who had reared that spire, pointing like the needle of a compass to heaven, who were depriving him of his boy—the boy he had grown to love…. It was he, an agnostic, doomed by those spire-builders to eternal damnation, who was concerning himself with the soul of that lad—a soul which he could not bring himself to believe was immortal. He saw the irony of it, that he, who could not accept Christianity, was compelled to the practice of it in its concrete form.
“If,” he said to himself, “there is a God, he must be amused.”
He rested his hand on Angus Burke’s shoulder, and at his touch the boy looked up into his eyes with a sudden brightening of his face that made Dave wince.
“Why,” he reflected, “must grief so often be the consequence of doing the right thing?”
He drew Angus to him with an unaccustomed display of affection. “Is it decided?” he asked. “Have you thought it over: About the school?”
“I got to go. I got to stick up for myself.”
“Where did you learn that, Angus.”
“She told me I got to.”
“Who told you? Miss Trueman?”
“No,” said Angus, nor could questions elicit the name of the mysterious She who had sown this seed in his mind. Lydia Canfield was shut away in some reserved, secret fastness of the boy’s heart, hidden from all the world—even from Dave Wilkins…. It was a curious thing, a curious reticence emerging from the fineness of his submerged character.
In that moment apathy seemed to settle over Angus, nor did it lift during the few weeks which remained of his stay in Rainbow. No doubt the sudden, terrifying appearance of his father undid much of the good work his friends had accomplished. The threat it expressed hung over him, appalled him. He seemed duller, less interested in events, more phlegmatic. Dave he followed like a dog, regarding every instance of his presence as precious. He was afraid to be alone, fearful of going upon the street unaccompanied. His father’s face haunted him so that at night he cried out in the terror of his dreams—and then Dave Wilkins sat long hours by his bed, holding his hand to reassure him of his safety.
“He won’t find me at this here school,” Angus said again and again, and Wilkins took all possible precautions to avert such a catastrophe. Angus’s going or his destination were matters entrusted to the knowledge of a trusted few.
It was early September when Lafe Fitch’s ’bus carried Wilkins and Angus to the depot. They had stopped in the shop to say good-by to Bishwhang and Jake Schwartz, but both were gone, not to be found. Browning had come with Mary Trueman—and she had kissed Angus and cried over him and whispered words in his ear which returned to comfort him many times during the years which followed.
Joylessly the pair clambered aboard the ’bus, and rattled and clattered down the street, across the iron span of the bridge, where loafers stood snaring bony fish out of the current with loops of copper wire—and thence along the dusty road, past the fair ground and the oil tanks, to the depot a half mile from town. Dave alighted first, then Angus.
In the waiting room were Bishwhang and Jake Schwartz, perspiring not from heat but from embarrassment. Their farewells were spoken gruffly, jerkily, in monosyllables.
“Jake and me,” stammered Bishwhang, “we come to see you off—didn’t we, Jake?”
Schwartz growled and shuffled his feet. He seemed extraordinarily ill-tempered. Angus’s face grew a trifle more blank than usual. Wilkins’s jaw set and he paced to and fro with short, uneasy, indecisive strides. There fell an awkward silence, the silence of human beings striving to express what was in their hearts—something which uncouth, masculine inhibitions kept imprisoned.
Bishwhang stammered again, “Jake and me—we kinder calc’lated we’d come to see you off.”
“This here kid and me—” blustered Jake, but words failed him; he thrust his hands viciously into his pockets and glared provocatively at the inoffensive ticket seller through his little window.
“It looks kinder—like a nice day fur—fur travelin’,” Bishwhang said, forcing out the words as if he were being strangled.
In desperation Jake plunged an inky hand into his hip pocket and extracted a much be-fingered, thumb-marked packet. The knots would not yield to his clumsy touch, and he jerked off strings and wrapper violently.
“Bishwhang—him—” He pointed out the printer’s devil as if Bishwhang were a strange individual, never seen before by Angus. “Him and me we kind of figgered… seein’ as how you was goin’ to be some’eres else—quite a spell… Gol darn it! Here, take the damn thing, and maybe—with this here a-layin’ in your pocket—you’ll kind of rec’lect the’s sich folks as Bishwhang and me—back here in this consarned town….”
Mechanically Angus accepted the pasteboard box, scarcely comprehending that it was a gift, a farewell gift. He made no movement to examine it…. Bishwhang gulped, waggled his arms excitedly, waiting for Angus to take off the cover. This presentation was the great achievement of Bishwhang’s life, the one glowing thing which, from the dull years which lay before him, he could look back upon with a feeling that he had once lived, acted, participated. Still Angus remained motionless.
“It’s yourn,” urged Bishwhang. “Open her up, can’t ye? Me’n Jake—we got it fur ye.”
Angus removed the cover and saw within a silver watch of enormous proportions, near to an inch in thickness, open-faced, with a tick so loud it could be heard distinctly even when hidden away in a pocket. Bishwhang and Jake waited breathlessly for him to speak. Angus regarded the watch, stared at Jake and Bishwhang stonily, expressionlessly, and then happened a thing to remember. From his eye there welled a tear that topped his lid, lingered, then rolled slowly down his cheek.
“For me…. For me….” he said slowly. Then he sat down abruptly on the edge of the platform, his face bleak, lifeless, while silent tears followed each other in strange procession down his cheeks….
Presently the train roared in; they boarded it as people might board a funeral train, and from its platform, at Dave’s direction, Angus waved a lifeless hand at the friends he was leaving behind—and so he disappeared from their view.
Until the train was hidden by a distant curve, Bishwhang and Jake stood staring stonily after it; when the rear platform of the last car passed from view, Bishwhang heaved a deep sigh and moved closer to Jake as if for companionship….
…Thus Angus Burke departed from Rainbow, Godsped by a printer’s devil and a whiskey-smelling printer. When he returned, not even these were there to bid him welcome.