Gale Zona
Peace in Friendship Village
WHEN THE HERO CAME HOME 11
Never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget the evening that Jeffro got home from the War. It was one of the times when what you thought was the earth under your feet dissolves away, and nothing is left there but a little bit of dirt, with miles of space just on the under side of it. It was one of the times when what you thought was the sky over your head is drawn away like a cloth, and nothing is there but miles of space on the upper side of it. And in between the two great spaces are us little humans, creeping 'round, wondering what we're for. And not doing one-ninth as much wondering as you'd think we would.
Jeffro was the little foreign-born peddler, maker of toys, that had come to Friendship Village and lived for a year with his little boy, scraping enough together to send for his wife and baby in the old country. And no sooner had he got them here than the Big War came – and nothing would do but Jeffro must go back and fight it out with his country. And back he went, though how he got there I dunno, for the whole village loaded him down so with stuff that he must have been part helpless. How a man could fight with his arms part full of raspberry jam and hard cookies and remedies and apple butter, I'm sure I don't know. But the whole village tugged stuff there for days beforehand. Jeffro was our one hero. He was the only soldier Friendship Village had – except old Bud Babcock, with his brass buttons and his limp and his perfectly everlasting, always-coming-on and never-going-off reminiscences. And so, when Jeffro started off, the whole town turned out to watch him go; and when I say that Silas Sykes gave him a store-suit at cost, more no one could say about nothing. For Silas Sykes is noted – that is, he ain't exactly expected – that is to say, – well, to put it real delicate, Silas is as stingy as a dog with one bone. And a store-suit at cost from him was similar to a gold-mine from anybody else. Or more – more.
Well, then, for six months Jeffro was swallowed up. We never heard a word from him. His little wife went around white and thin, and we got so we didn't ask her if she'd heard from him, because we couldn't stand that white, hunted, et-up look on her face. So we kept still, village delicate. And that's a special kind of delicate.
Then, like a bow from the blue, or whatever it is they say, the mayor of the town got the word from New York that Jeffro was coming home with his right arm gone, honorably discharged. And about the same time a letter from Europe, from somebody he knew that had got him the money to come with, told how he'd been shot in a sortie and recommended by the captain for promotion.
"A sortie," says Mis' Postmaster Sykes, thoughtful. "What kind of a battle is a sortie, do you s'pose?"
"Land," says Mis' Amanda Toplady, "ain't that what they call an evening musicale?"
When it heard Jeffro was coming home, Friendship Village rose up like one man. We must give him a welcome. This was part because he was a hero, and part because Mis' Postmaster Sykes thought of it first. And most of Friendship Village don't know what it thinks about anything till she thinks it for them.
"We must welcome him royal," – were her words. "We must welcome him royal. Ladies, let's us plan."
So she called some of us together to her house one afternoon – Mis' Timothy Toplady, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Abigail Arnold, that keeps the Home Bakery, Mis' Photographer Sturgis, that's the village invalid, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that her husband's dead, but she keeps his title because we got started calling her that and can't bear to stop – and me. I told her I couldn't do much, being I was training two hundred school children for a Sunday night service that week, and I was pretty busy myself. But I went. And when we all got there, Mis' Sykes took out a piece of paper tore from an account book, and she says, pointing to a list on it with her front finger that wore her cameo ring:
"Ladies! I've got this far, and it's for you to finish. Jeffro will come in on the Through, either Friday or Saturday night. Now we'll have the band" – that's the Friendship Village Stonehenge Band of nine pieces – "and back of that Bud Babcock, a-carrying the flag. We'll take the one off'n the engine house, because that stands so far back no one will miss it. And then we'll have the Boy Scouts, and the Red Barns's ambulance; and we'll put Jeffro in that; and the boys can march beside of him to his home."
"Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "what'll you have the ambulance for?"
"Because we've got no other public ve-hicle," says Mis' Sykes, commanding, "without it's the hearse. If so, name what it is."
And nobody naming nothing, she went on:
"Then I thought we'd have the G. A. R., and the W. R. C. from Red Barns – they'll be glad to come over because they ain't so very much happening for them to be patriotic about, without it's Memorial Day. And then the D. A. R. of Friendship Village and Red Barns will come last, each a-carrying a flag in our hands. Friday is April 18th, and we did mean to have a Pink Tea to celebrate Paul Revere's ride. But I'm quite sure the ladies'll all be willing to give that up and transfer their patriotic observation over to Jeffro. And we'll all march down in a body, and be there when the train pulls in. What say, Ladies?"
She leaned back, with a little triumphant pucker, like she'd scraped the world for ideas, and got them all and defied anybody to add to them.
"Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "and then what?"
"Then what?" says Mis' Sykes, irritable. "Why, be there. And wave and cheer and flop our flags. And walk along behind him to his house. And hurrah – and sing, mebbe – oh, we must sing, of course!" Mis' Sykes cries, thinking of it for the first time, with her hands clasped.
Mis' Toplady looked troubled.
"Well-a," she says, "what would we sing for?"
"Sing for!" cried Mis' Sykes, exasperated. "Because he's got home, of course."
"With his arm shot off. And his eyes blinded with powder. And him half-starved. And mebbe worse. I dunno, Ladies," says Mis' Toplady, dreamy, "but I'm terrible lacking. But I don't feel like singing over Jeffro."
Mis' Sykes looked at her perfectly withering.
"Ain't you no sense of what'd due to occasions?" says she, regal.
"Yes," says Mis' Toplady, "I have. I guess that's just what's the matter of me. It's the occasion that ails me. I was thinking – well, Ladies, I was wondering just how much like singing we'd feel if we'd seen Jeffro's arm shot off him."
"But we didn't see it," says Mis' Sykes, final. That's the way she argues.
"Mebbe I'm all wrong," says Mis' Toplady, "but, Ladies, I can't feel like a man getting all shot up is an occasion for jollification. I can't do it."
Us ladies all kind of breathed deep, like a vent had been opened.
"Nor me." "Nor me." "Nor me." Run 'round Mis' Sykes's setting-room, from one to one.
I wish't you could have seen Mis' Sykes. She looked like we'd declared for cannibalism and atheism and traitorism, all rolled into one.
"Ain't you ladies," she says, "no sense of the glories of war? Or what?"
"Or what," says Mis' Toplady. "That's just it – glories of what. I guess it's the what part that I sense the strongest, somehow."
Mis' Sykes laid down her paper, and crossed her hands – with the cameo ring under, and then remembered and crossed it over– and she says:
"Ladies, facts is facts. You've got to take things as they are."
Abigail Arnold flashed in.
"But you ain't takin' 'em nowheres," she says. "You're leavin' 'em as they are. War is the way it's been for five thousand years – only five thousand times worse."
Mis' Sykes tapped her foot, and made her lips both thin and straight.
"Yes," she says, "and it always will be. As long as the world lasts, there'll be war."
Then I couldn't stand it any longer. I looked her right square in the face, and I says:
"Mis' Sykes. Do you believe that?"
"Certainly I believe it," she says. "Besides, there's nothing in the Bible against war. Not a thing."
"What about 'Thou shalt not kill'?" says I.
She froze me – she fair froze me.
"That," she said, "is an entirely different matter."
"Well," says I, "if you'll excuse me for saying so, it ain't different. But leave that go. What about 'Love thy neighbor'? What about the brotherhood of man? What about – "
She sighed, real patient. "Your mind works so queer sometimes, Calliope," she says.
"Yes, well, mebbe," I says, like I'd said to her before. "But anyhow, it works. It don't just set and set and set, and never hatch nothing. This whole earth has set on war since the beginning, and hatched nothing but death. Do you think, honest, that we haven't no more invention to us than to keep on a-bungling like this to the end of time?"
Mis' Sykes stomped her foot.
"Look-a-here," she says. "Do you want to arrange something to go down to welcome Jeffro home, or don't you? If you don't, say so."
Mis' Toplady sighed.
"Let's us go down to meet him," she says. "Leave us do that. But don't you expect no singing off me," says she, final. "That's all."
So Mis' Sykes, she went ahead with her plan, and she agreed, grudging, to omit out the singing. And the D. A. R's. put off their Paul Revere Tea, and we sent to the City for more flags. Me, though, I didn't take a real part. I agreed to march, and then I didn't take a real part. I'd took on a good deal more than I'd meant to in training the children for the Sunday night thing, and so I shirked Mis' Sykes's party all I could. Not that I wouldn't be glad to see Jeffro. But I couldn't enthuse the way she meant. By Friday, Mis' Sykes had everything pretty ship-shape, and being we still didn't know which day Jeffro would come, we were all to go down to the depot that night, on the chance; and Saturday as well.
Friday afternoon I was working away on some stuff for the children, when Jeffro's wife came in. The poor little thing was so nervous she didn't know whether she was saying "yes" or "no." She'd got herself all ready, in a new-ironed calico, and a red bow at her neck.
"Do you think this bow looks too gay?" she says. "It seems gay, and him so sick. But he always liked me to wear red, and it's all the red I've got. It's only cotton ribbin, too," says she, wistful.
She wanted to know what I was doing, and so's to keep her mind off herself, I told her. The hundred children, from all kinds and denominations and everythings, were to meet together in Shepherd's Grove that Sunday night, and I'd fixed up a little exercise for them: One bunch of them were to represent Science, and they were to carry little models of boats and engines and dirigibles and a little wireless tower. And one bunch was to represent Art, and they were to carry colors and figures and big lovely cardboard designs they made in school. And one bunch was to represent Friendship, and they were to come with garlands and arches that connected them each with all the rest. And one was to represent Plenty, with fruit and grain. And one Beauty, and one Understanding – and so on. And then, in the midst of them, I was going to have a little bit of a child walk, carrying a model of the globe in his hands. And they were all going to come to him, one after another, and they were going to give him what they had. And what we'd planned, with music and singing and a trumpeter and everything, was to be all around that.
"I haven't the right child yet to carry the globe though," I says to Jeffro's wife; "I can't find one little enough that's strong enough to lug the thing."
And then, all of a sudden, I remembered her little boy, and Jeffro's little boy. I remembered Joseph. Awful little he was, but with sturdy legs and arms, and the kind of a face that makes you wonder why all little folks don't look the same way. It seems the only way for them to look.
"Why," I says, "look here: Why can't I borrow Joseph for Sunday night, to carry the globe?"
"You can," she says, "without his father won't be wanting him to leave him, when he's just got home so. Mebbe, though," she says, "he's so sick he won't know whether Joseph is there or not – "
She kind of petered off, like she didn't have strength in her to finish with. She never cried though. That was one thing I noticed about her. She acted like crying is one of the things we ought to have outgrown – like dressing in black for mourning, and like beating a drum on the streets to celebrate anything, and like war. Honest, the way we keep on using old-fashioned styles like these makes me feel sorry for the Way-Things-Were-Meant-To-Be.
So it was arranged that Joseph was to carry the globe. And Jeffro's wife went home to wash out his collar so he could go at all. And I flew round so's to be all ready by six o'clock, when we were to meet at Court House Park and march to the depot to meet Jeffro – so be he come that night.
You know that nice, long, slanting, yellow afternoon light that begins to be left over at six o'clock, in April? When we came along toward Court House Park that night, it looked like that. There was a new fresh green on the grass, and the birds were doing business some, and there was a little nice spring smell in the air, that sort of said "Come on." You know the kind of evening?
We straggled up to the depot, not in regular marching order at all, but just bunched, friendly. Mis' Sykes was walking at the head of her D. A. R. detachment, and she had sewed red and blue to her white duck skirt, and she had a red and blue flower in her hat, and her waist was just redded and blued, from shoulder to shoulder, with badges and bows. Mis' Sykes was awful patriotic as to colors, but I didn't blame her. She'd worn mourning so much, her only chance to wear the becoming shades at all was by putting on her country's colors. Honest, I don't s'pose she thought of that, though – well, I mean – I don't s'pose she really thought – well, let's us go ahead with what I was trying to tell.
While we were waiting at the depot, all disposed around graceful on trucks and trunks, the Friendship Village Stonehenge band started in playing, just to get its hand in. And it played "The Star Spangled Banner." And as soon as ever it started in, up hopped Silas Sykes onto his feet, so sudden it must have snapped his neck. Mis' Amanda Toplady, that was sitting by me on the telegraph window sill, she looked at him a minute without moving. And then she says to me, low:
"Whenever a man gets up so awful sudden when one of his country's airs is played, I always think," she says, "I'd just love to look into his business life, and make perfectly sure that he ain't a-making his money in ways that ain't patriotic to his country, nor a credit to his citizenship – in the real sense."
"Me, too," I says, fervent.
And then we both got to our feet deliberate, Silas having glared at us and all but beckoned to us with his neck. He was singing the song, too – negligent, in his throat. And while he did so, I knew Mis' Toplady and I were both thinking how Silas, a while ago, had done the town out of twice the worth of the property we'd bought from him, for a Humane Society home. And that we'd be paying him for ten years to come. I couldn't help thinking of it. I'm thinking of it now.
Before they were done playing the piece, the train whistled. We lined up, or banked up, or whatever you want to call it. And there we stood when the train slowed and stopped. And not a soul got off.
No; Jeffro wasn't on that train. He didn't come that night at all. And when the next night we all got down there to meet the Through again, in the same grand style, the identical same thing happened. He didn't come that night, either. And we trailed back from the train, with our spirits dampened a little. Because now he couldn't come till Monday night, being the Through only run to the city on Sundays and didn't come out to Friendship Village at all.
So I had that evening to put my mind on the children, and finish up what I had to do for them. And I was glad. Because the service that I was planning for that night grew on me. It was a Spring festival, a religious festival – because I always think that the coming of Spring is a religious ceremony, really – in the best sense. It's when the new birth begins to come all over the earth at once, gentle, as if somebody was thinking it out, a little at a time. And as if it was hoping and longing for us to have a new life, too.
And yet I was surprised that they'd leave me have the festival on Sunday. We've got so used to thinking of religion – and one or two brands of patriotism – as the only holy things there are. I didn't know but when I mentioned having Science and Art and Friendship and Beauty and Plenty and Understanding and Peace at my Sunday evening service, they might think I was over-stepping some. I don't know but they did, too. Only they indulged me a little.
So everybody came. The churches had all agreed to unite, being everybody's children were in the festival. And by five o'clock that Sunday afternoon the whole of Shepherd's Grove was full of Friendship Village folks, come from all over the town and out on the edges, and in the country, to see the children have their vesper festival. That's what I'd called it – a vesper festival, so it'd help them that had their doubts.
There weren't any seats, for it wasn't going to be long, and I had them all stand in a pleasant green spot in the grove, on two sides of the little grass-grown road that wound through the wood, and down which, pretty soon, I was going to have Joseph come, carrying the globe of the world.
When we were ready, and the little trumpeter we'd got had stilled them all with the notes he'd made, that were like somebody saying something and really meaning it – the way a trumpet does – then the children began to sing, soft and all together, from behind a thicket of green that they'd made themselves:
"Don't you wish we had a place
Where only bright things are,
Like the things we dream about,
And like a star?
"Don't you wish the world would turn
For an hour or two,
And run back the other way
And be made new?
"Don't you wish we all could be
What we know we are,
'Way inside, where a Voice speaks,
Far – and near – and far?"
And then they came out – one after another of the groups I've told you about – Science, and Art, and Friendship, and Plenty, and the others. And each one said what they knew how to do to the world to make that wish come true. I don't need to tell you about that. You know. If you have friendship or plenty or beauty in your life, you know. If only we could get enough of them!
Out they all came, one after another. It was very still in the wood. The children's voices were sweet and clear. They all had somebody there that they were near and dear to. The whole time was quiet, and close up to, and like the way things were meant to be. And like the way things might be. And like the way things will be – when we let them.
Then there was a little pause. For they'd all told what might be, and now it was time to signal Joseph to come running up the road, carrying the globe in its orbit, and speaking for the World, and asking all these lovely things to come and take possession of it, and own it, and be it. But, just as I got ready to motion to him, I had to wait, for down the grassy road through Shepherd's Grove, where there wasn't much travel, was coming an automobile, though one doesn't pass that way from the city once in ten years.
We all drew back to let it pass among us. And, in that little pause, we looked, curious, to see who was in it. And then a whisper, and then a cry, came from the nearest, and from them back, and then from them all at once. For, propped up on the seat, was Jeffro. He'd come to the city on the Through, that doesn't come to Friendship Village Sundays, and they'd brought him home this way.
I dunno how I thought of it – don't it seem as if something in you works along alone, if only you'll keep your thinking still? It did that now. Almost before I knew I was going to do it, I signed to the man to stop, and I stepped right up beside the car where Jeffro sat, looking like a ghost of a man. And I says:
"Mr. Jeffro! Mr. Jeffro! Are you too sick to leave us welcome you home?"
He smiled then, and put out his hand – the one hand that he'd come back with. And from somewhere in the crowd, Jeffro's wife got to the car, and got the door open, and leaned there beside him. And we all waited a minute – but one minute was the very best we could do. Then everybody came pressing up round the car to shake his hand. And I slipped back to the bugler we had, and I says:
"Blow! Blow the loudest you ever blew in your life. Blow!"
He blew a blast, silver clear, golden clear, sunlight clear. And I sent him through the crowd, blowing, and making a path right up to the automobile. Then I signed to the children, and I had them come down that open aisle. And they came singing, all together, the song they had sung behind the thicket. And they pressed close around the car, singing still:
"Don't you wish we had a place
Where only bright things are,
Like the things we dream about,
And like a star?"
And there they came to meet him – Art and Science and Plenty and Beauty and Friendship – Friendship. I don't know whether he understood what they said. I don't know whether he understood the meaning of what they carried – for Jeffro wasn't quite sure of our language all the time. But, oh, he couldn't misunderstand the spirit of that time or of those folks.
He got to his feet, Jeffro did, his face kind of still and solemn. And just then Mis' Silas Sykes, in a black dress, without a scrap of red or blue about her, stepped up to him, her face fair grief-struck. And she says:
"Oh, Mr. Jeffro. The D. A. R., and the G. A. R., and the W. R. C. was to welcome you back from the glories of war. And here you've took us unbeknownst."
He looked round at us – and this is what I'll never forget – not if I live till my dying day:
"The glories of war!" he says over. "The glories of war! You do not know what you say! I tell you that I have seen mad dogs, mad beasts of prey – but I do not know what it is they do. The glories of war! Oh, my God, does nobody know that we are all mad together?"
Jeffro's wife tried to quiet him, but he shook her off.
"Listen," he said. "I have gone to war and lived through hell to learn one thing. I gif it to you: Life is something else than what we think it is. That is true. Life is something else than what we think it is. When we find it out, we shall stop this devil's madness."
Just then a little cry came from somewhere over back in the road.
"My papa! It is my papa!" it said. And there came running Joseph, that had heard his father's voice, and that we had forgot' all about. We let him through the crowd, and he climbed up in the car, and his father took him in his one arm. And there they sat, with the globe that Joseph carried, the world that he carried, in beside them.
We all began moving back to the village, before much of anybody knew it – the automobile with Jeffro in it, and Jeffro's wife, and Jeffro's little boy. And with the car went, not soldiers, not flags, not the singing of any one nation's airs – but the children, with those symbols of the life that is living and building life – as fast as we'll let it build. Jeffro didn't know what they were, I guess – though he knew the love and the kindliness and the peace of the time. But I knew, and more of us knew, that in that hour lay all the promise of the new day, when we understand what we are: Gods, fallen into a pit.
We went up the street with the children singing:
"Don't you wish we all could be
What we know we are,
'Way inside, where a Voice speaks,
Far – and near – and far?"
When we got to Jeffro's gate, Mis' Sykes came past me.
"Ain't it sad?" she says. "Not a soldier, nor a patriotic song, nor a flag to meet our hero?"
I looked at her, kind. I felt kind to all the world, because somehow I felt so sure, so certain sure, of things.
"Don't you worry, Mis' Sykes," I says. "I kind of feel as if more was here to meet Jeffro than we've any notion of."
For it was one of the times when what you thought was the earth under your feet dissolves away, and nothing is left there but a little bit of dirt, with miles of space just on the under side of it. It was one of the times when what you thought was the sky over your head is drawn away like a cloth, and nothing is there but miles of space high on the upper side of it. And in between these two great spaces are us little humans, kind of creeping round – wondering what we're for.
