The Puzzleheaded Girl Page 17

  “One morning Rudolf, the Strasser boy, the elder, came a-runnin’ up the hill about nine and sang out to me, Mr. Thornton, come quick, down to the Dilleys’; it’s murder down there. I said, What is it, Rudolf? And while we were a-runnin’ down he told me Hilda was out here a-throwin’ things and a-screamin’; and her father and her mother couldn’t get her home. Well, I wasn’t too sure, because she’s been funny before; and I thought the boy could get easily scared by her; but I ran down with Rudolf just the same, a-takin’ a bit of rope which was a-hangin’ on the fence, with me. I thought: I’ll bind her up till she quiets down. They were a-shoutin’ and a-hollerin’ and when I got round the corner of the barn here, I see poor old Mrs. Dilley with her grey head bendin’ low down over the garden path, her head nearly in the earth, and Hilda her daughter was a-throwin’ knives at her. Just as I came along, Hilda flung a tomahawk which struck her poor old mother on the shoulder. Her head was already covered with blood. She collapsed into the dirt and I thought she was dead. What are you a-doin’, Hilda? I shouted. She had an axe in her hands now and she was ready to heave it at her mother. I ran right up before she could think, and said, Hilda, put down that axe! What are you a-doin’? Aren’t you ashamed? She looked very pale and wild; and she told me she was a-killin’ her mother because her mother did things to her. She said, She takes everythin’ from me. I said, Shame on you, Hilda, shame on you! Look at your poor mother, a-bleedin’ there in the dirt; you’ve cut her on the shoulder and on the head. I am ashamed of you, Hilda! And while I was a-talkin’ and she was a-lookin’ to see what she had done, I grabbed the axe. She held on to it, but I got between her and the tomahawk a-lyin’ on the path. Then Mrs. Dilley, who had said nothin’, was groanin’ a little and she started to get up. She leaned on her hands and said to me, The poor girl doesn’t know what she is a-doin’! She was always so quiet.

  “Well, I went on a-talkin’ to her and a-pushin’ her into the house: and I found her father where she had driven him with her axe into the staircase and locked him in; because she said she was a-comin’ after him to kill him next. I gave her a terrible talkin’ to, shamin’ her for what she’d done; for her wickedness, and I talked so much, I got the rope round her and tied her to a chair. There was no place to lock her but the barn and that was full of sharp dangerous things. Upstairs she could have got to the windows and done harm. Then I sent Strasser up to my place to get them to telephone for a doctor and I waited there till he came. He fixed up the parents and went back to town to arrange for the girl. There was no doubt at all; Hilda was mad and dangerous. The doctor had given her a drug and they put her to bed and locked her in. Well, after I finished my work I went a-back there and found her awake and a-ravin’ and a-shoutin’, so I stayed there until two in the mornin’. But when she quietened down, I went in there and I talked to her a long, long time; for I couldn’t help a-feelin’ that if they hadn’t given in to her and let her wear that fancy dress and have that baby doll and that tomahawk, she might not have gone mad. So I talked to her sensibly and scolded her and asked her what was the matter, until she got quite quiet.

  “She said I wasn’t her friend because I had tied her up with a rope; but I told her she was only like a calf or a young horse, she had to learn. I knew she wasn’t a bad girl, only selfish with no thought for her poor parents. Well, we talked on nearly all through the night and she told me a lot of her strange ideas. She thought people were her enemies. When she was quiet I gave her the drug again and locked her in and went away.

  “In the mornin’ at eight o’clock I came with my buggy and horse and knocked on the door: Hilda, it’s Mr. Thornton. I want you to come and take a ride with me. You let your mother dress you.

  “After a bit I went in and said to her, Hilda, do you want to go to a square-dance? Will you come and dance with me? Then you must get dressed up in your best dress. What are you a-doin’ like that, Hilda? You said you’d come dancin’ with me. For she had torn her nightdress into pieces. Maybe she wanted to climb out of the window. Well, with a-beggin’ and a-pleadin’ and a-sayin’ of fine stories to her, I got her to get dressed and I brought her downstairs. The poor parents were keepin’ out of the way, as they had been told, though it was hard for them. We did not dare tell the mother where we were takin’ her. I kept a-talkin’ about the square-dance and a-praisin’ her looks and I picked some flowers outside the door to put in her belt. But she was puzzled, too; and she said, It’s early in the mornin’ to go to a square-dance. I said, No, it isn’t, Hilda. We’ve got to go to dinner at the hotel first; and we have people to meet. I am a-drivin’ you in and I want people to see you. She was pleased and put flowers in her hair too; and I said, Give me those flowers, Hilda, to keep fresh; you know what a long dusty road it is to town. She said, Why, are you ashamed of me? Is there somethin’ wrong with me? I think there’s somethin’ wrong with me. I said, No, no, Hilda, but you are so sweet and pretty, I wanted to see you in the first figure of the square-dance the prettiest there; so keep your flowers fresh till we get to Lambertville. She looked quite pretty, though her face was pale and troubled and she had not been able to smooth her hair right, poor thing. I drove her straight down to the doctor’s and he went with us to the asylum. Mr. Dilley took her things there the next day; and she’s been there ever since, many years.

  “Her mother kept a-cryin’ to get her out and blamed the doctors for not a-curin’ her; and with a-worryin’ and a-blamin’, she got worn and tired out herself. So I’m sorry for Mr. Dilley, too. She can’t go far enough to lay the blame; one time on the farm, another time on them both for a-lettin’ her marry that Nevada man with the gui-tar; and so on.

  “That’s the story, you see; and I’m a-lookin’ after the place for Mr. Dilley because of his hard luck. Mr. Davies thought I was a-takin’ of Mr. Dilley’s money, I could see; but I said nothin’ to Mr. Davies because he is a sick man. Yes, I saw her right here in that doorway a-throwin’ axes and mad as a coot. Young Strasser could hear from the hill—on that hill they can hear everythin’ you say down here if they listen. And I guess you can hear what they say, except that they never speak on this side of the hill. And young Strasser ran for me, you see, because roundabout here they run for me. Well, I’ll send Johnson down to cut down your weeds.”

  “Oh, no, please don’t, Mr. Thornton. Those weeds bring the birds and my wife loves to have them round.”

  “Ah, the only birds you can find for miles are in this creek run. They’ve been driven out everywhere else. My sons have been to agricultural college and say we need them. But we’re not used to them round here. You can have too many of them.”

  “My wife can’t have too many. I think she could live all her life here with them and not miss people.”

  “Well, that’s not quite right for a woman: it’s too lonely.”

  “You don’t know my wife. She loves all this. She doesn’t need anything else. She always wanted to live in the zoo. She’d like to have the animals, including the insects, in the house with her.”

  “Would she now? Well, they try to oblige her!” he said, with a kind look, and pointing to the large spider which had slipped out from its plank, viewed them and slid back. “Does she like that?”

  “Well, she looks out for it from the house. She tells me, There’s the spider sunning himself. He sees her, too.”

  The summer was fat, steamy, heavy-headed, an obsession. Sam went to town to see “the boys,” and Mr. Thornton was busy. Clare was happy in the Dilleys’ place. She put out food for the animals, and pulled up no plants because each plant is a shelter for some living thing. Once or twice, when alone, she herself lay down naked in the centre of the weed patch, to get all the sun, lay there drowsy thinking of fertility, surrounded by all the life and love of the beast and plant world, part of the earth life. “Why is the devil called the Lord of Flies? If he is, then we must be close to his hole.” Myriads of flying insects shone, flitted, strummed, whined and in the thick air lived. “The woodchuck is quite bold now, he c
omes nearer the house every day observing us; only his wife hangs in the background; but she too is coming nearer.” The woodchuck who lived in the bank fed in the old vegetable patch. There was a family of skunks now that came for their food by night, hundreds more mice living with them in the two houses. Two weasels flashed in and out by the porch; the house-wrens on the porch singing boldly or creeping mouse-like through the woodpiles all day sounded their rattles; there were more mourning doves making every clouded and clotted evening sky sad; the whistling whip of the sleepy thrushes, the lowing cows and their lost calves, the woodchucks nearly to the house now, the birds invading, the danger-calling catbirds, the strange insect’s strumming in the house, immense flies and wasps, the increasing heat and damp, the owls, the insect rabble; and myriads multiplying in this one sacred uncleared hollow. “If we lived here long enough and everything grew thick enough and high enough we would see the world as an ant does among his grass stalks.”

  Clare cleaned the house and was frightened. “I was on the landing at the top of the wooden stairs and I felt myself being pushed towards the stairs, a force from that little room wanted to throw me downstairs, from the door, like a…I was afraid; I came down the stairs step by step sitting on them.”

  Sam Parsons then told the story of Hilda Dilley. “I forgot her married name. But that was Poky—Pocahontas—after you.”

  “Is she capable of such strength? The house has accumulated a great ousting power. But how can it oust me? I am for it, I am for all here.”

  The catbirds’ catcalls and mewing ran through the bushes. Eels went downstream. Clouds of insects came from the cornfields. A large ball of soot sat watching on the bridge and bobbed down when it saw them move. At night the fireflies burned like a net of sparks through the wild plants. If they turned out the light this curtain of fire made a faint glow around them. In bed, they saw them still, for Dilley’s place was an underearth, lower than all the green around; and there around them burned the world of flies, so that the distant sky-stars, obscured by night insects and waving vines and leaves as if by smoke, were unnecessary. It was a kind of infant lightning.

  The air grew heavier; unusual streaked and mottled skies appeared. “I never knew we had such large flies in the USA. I thought that was for South America.”

  “The ants and spiders have come in everywhere. It is going to rain.”

  “I never lived in so much nature; I never knew I could,” said Sam, laughing, tenderly, helplessly.

  “Poky is singing much louder now,” said Clare referring to the insect that strummed in the corner, and which they had never located. “This morning I heard it when I was near the creek; and I looked for it again.”

  “I suppose there are more of them. Whatever it is, has had a family. Everything round here has had four or five families this summer.”

  “I read in the Lambertville Gazette that this and the wood on the cliff, in the film-star’s estate, is a refuge for birds and all wild things, everything driven from the farms.”

  The owl hooted. “That’s a dreadful sound.”

  “Yes.” To comfort him, she remarked, “Where the mice and little birds and insects are, there are owls; and mice and little birds where corn and insects are.”

  “Oh,” said Sam Parsons, “I have gotten used to them. Not so long ago I would have taken the first train back to New York.”

  They listened awhile to the footsteps, which now began to go downstairs, with a heavy soft irregular tread.

  “The mice must enter the kitchen where the step is worn under the door at the bottom.”

  Presently the footfalls came upstairs again the same slow soft way and crossed the landing.

  “I suppose they get crumbs; I put away everything,” said Clare, “but why do they live in the little room here?”

  “Let’s go to sleep,” said Sam.

  The plank in the bridge clonked.

  “They’re coming from the movies.”

  She heard Sam breathing faintly in sleep. The living sleeping night was all around, close, formless, rich and suffocating as a mother’s breast. On the black breast of night she fell asleep, too. The footsteps passed her again; she did not hear them; the bridge gave warning; they slept. The faceless haunter of the stone house moved slightly through the open attic door and down the closed stairs; with the strength of water behind glass, without shape and ready to pour through, it mixed with the moonlight at the locked glass door, mixing as blood with water, smoking, turning. But there was peace in the bedroom; until the skunks came for the liver laid out at the back door, when, at the musky stench, there was a great rain of mice and Clare awoke, listening, delighted. “There you are, friends, animals, children,” she thought; and heard many small real footfalls, squeaks and movements.

  In mid-July the skies began to cloud. The air thickened and darkened. All day long the wren’s wearying clackers rang. Awfully mournful in these oppressive days, was the late and early sobbing of the doves; fateful, the sound of the thrush retiring last in the woods. The ants marched thick along their routes. When would the rain come?

  Every evening and morning now the Parsons walked out of the brooding hollow, where the Lord of Flies surely sat spinning his flies; and they walked on the upper roads and tracks. Higher up, where the Dilleys’ creek parted from the river, was a bridge; brilliant birds, tanagers, orioles, canaries and even bluebirds flew and sat freely here.

  One evening they were upon the township road winding around the meadowy hill above the Sobieskis’. Below lay their hollow, the thick trees surging over their red roofs. They were now higher than the Strassers’ ridge and the sun was setting over it. There was trouble somewhere, a warning. Something not yet unwound but waiting lay complete under the green stuff in the valley bottom. On this upland the air was easy to breathe; there was still golden light. They started back again, almost with regret. A dead swallow, which had been for weeks dangling in the telephone wires, had now turned to skeleton and hung still. The descending road turned south and caught the Dilleys’ track which turned west. The sky was sapphire. Looking at it before they went down to their burrow, they saw one cloud forming, one cloud only in the whole sky, in the west directly over the sun going down. It came out in flecks and wisps, became suddenly one curled gold feather, and so stayed, as if beaten out of metal; marvellous, and the only thing in the sky and like an eyebrow right over the sun in the green sky.

  “Down came the hurricane,” said Clare as the first cold air caught them.

  “You would say that is a hurricane cloud?”

  “Oh, but it is so still; and the sky is clear. No; that is from the ‘Ballad of Carmilhan’: the Captain up and down the deck—”

  They came down into their trees. It was nearly dark there. There were the solitary liquid notes of the woodthrush beginning to be heard in the brush by the track. “Birds understand music and natural beauty.” And then began, miserable, intolerable in this air, the dove who nested by the bridge. For a long time he sobbed; and the birds were restless in the fever of midsummer.

  They ate and looked through a book they found on the top shelf of the window-closet in the stone house. They never used the sitting-room of the stone house, preferring the stove, the porches and fiery windows of the farm kitchen. But tonight for the first time they sat there, and read the fat, heavy volume, a farmers’ encyclopaedia, of the sort once sold at country fairs, miscellaneous reading, advice on farming, cooking, sewing, illnesses. A nineteenth-century gingerbread murder castle: “But how could you calculate all the unaccounted-for space in a gingerbread house?” An account of John Wesley and his diary: “You know when he says he gave up smoking, I believe he meant something else.”

  The lightning was now forking from opposite the sunset, stabbing high; and then the sky-creature’s blue nervous system, its brain, its lungs and its nerves like trees lighted up all around, on high, turning the trees into a black huddle, a pressed herd. Now they did not seem to be lost in a lowland, but the lowland was heaved up
to light and the hills flattened by the pallid shine.

  The rain began, at first only a few drops; and it remained almost dry all night. Soon they locked everything and went to bed. It was cooler. The entire sky now quivered with pale light. As well as the perpetual quivering everywhere and the faint sound, another lightning now rolled over the sky from east to west in long pale corrugations and thunder followed its rolling. There was no darkness and no silence. Such a strange storm they had never seen. They did not sleep; and it was not the storm, not the light, not the noise, so much as the strangeness. At length, Clare came and sat on Sam’s side of the bed and held his hand; and the two of them sat all night huddled up, looking with astonishment at a night they had never seen, the combers of light, the continuous irregular rush, murmur and roar.

  The next day it rained. The thin glassy creek thickened and washed from saucer to saucer. In the evening, it could be heard slapping down, in the night it was gushing. What would the woodchucks do? But Mr. Thornton had already told them about the good sense of woodchucks. Old man woodchuck had a dryland exit somewhere up the bank; he would doubtless save his family. In the morning, with the rain continuing, the creek had risen yellow; it poured and curdled along. The mailman blew his horn. They hurried out. “Are you all right?” At this they laughed. “Right as rain.” In the afternoon, Riondo, the Lambertville butcher, came along in his car and shouted, “Are you all right?” “What are those planes?” The planes, which had been above them all day, were army bombers looking out for marooned farmers. The Delaware had risen; those nearest to it in Lambertville were in danger; they had drawn all boats out of the river. It was exciting. The birds made little sound except for the house-wrens and the dove. It was still warm. In the afternoon, when the rain ceased, the insects and birds began again; but the woodchuck and his wife did not come to the vegetable patch. It was still raining elsewhere. The creek had risen again and was a yellow pouring in which no life was visible; only the rubbish from the banks and woods. The rain came again at night. Through it, they heard their creek as it tore through the vines and roots. Then it grew quieter and then ceased. In the morning, the rain had ceased and Clare getting up saw that they were surrounded by a grey standing fog, for from all the floor-level windows she could see grey only; but when this grey fog moved slightly, carrying sticks, then she saw it was flood; Dilley’s place was under water. The water had not yet entered the house and it had stopped raining. They took all movables upstairs and prepared to leave. The water spread out over the two acres was smooth and moving slowly; but it rushed and foamed out of the long narrow gorge beyond, where the boys bathed, and had risen to the top rail of the bridge; the spider, the ball of soot, was no more. They waded through the hip-high water at the bridge, climbed the hill and asked Mr. Thornton to get them to town.