O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 14

The cook went out through the sitting room and down the hall. Mrs. Egg patted her black hair, sighed at her third chop and got up. The cook's voice mingled with a drawling man's tone. Mrs. Egg drank some milk and waited an announcement. The cook came back into the dining room and Mrs. Egg set down the milk gla.s.s swiftly, saying, "Why, Sadie!"

"He--he says he's your father, Mis' Egg."

After a moment Mrs. Egg said, "Stuff and rubbidge! My father ain't been seen since 1882. What's the fool look like?"

"Awful tall--kinda skinny--bald----"

A tremor went down Mrs. Egg's back. She walked through the sitting room and into the sunny hall. The front door was open. Against the apple boughs appeared a black length, topped by a gleam. The sun sparkled on the old man's baldness. A shivering memory recalled that her father's hair had been thin. His dark face slid into a ma.s.s of twisting furrows as Mrs. Egg approached him.

He whispered, "I asked for Myrtle Packer down round the station. An old feller said she was married to John Egg. You ain't Myrtle?"

"I'm her," said Mrs. Egg.

Terrible cold invaded her bulk. She laced her fingers across her breast and gazed at the twisting face.

The whisper continued: "They tell me your mamma's in the cem'tery, Myrtle. I've come home to lay alongside of her. I'm grain for the grim reaper's sickle. In death we sha'n't be divided; and I've walked half the way from Texas. Don't expect you'd want to kiss me. You look awful like her, Myrtle."

Tears rolled out of his eyes down his hollowed cheeks, which seemed almost black between the high bones. His pointed chin quivered. He made a wavering gesture of both hands and sat down on the floor.

Behind Mrs. Egg the cook sobbed aloud. A farmhand stood on the gra.s.s by the outer steps, looking in. Mrs. Egg shivered. The old man was sobbing gently. His head oscillated and its polish repelled her. He had abandoned her mother in 1882.

"Mamma died back in 1910," she said. "I dunno--well----"

The sobbing was thin and weak, like an ailing baby's murmur. It pounded her breast.

She stared at the ancient dusty suitcase on the porch and said, "Come up from Texas, have you?"

"There's no jobs lef for a man seventy-six years of age, Myrtle, except dyin.' I run a saloon in San Antonio by the Plaza. Walked from Greenville, Mississippi, to Little Rock. An old lady give me carfare, there, when I told her I was goin' home to my wife that I'd treated so bad. There's plenty Christians in Arkansaw. And they've pulled down the old Presbyterian church your mamma and I was married in."

"Yes; last year. Sadie, take Mr. Packer's bag up to the spare room.

Stop cryin', Papa."

She spoke against her will. She could not let him sit on the floor sobbing any longer. His gleaming head afflicted her. She had a queer emotion. This seemed most unreal. The gray hall wavered like a flashing view in a film.

"The barn'd be a fitter place for me, daughter. I've been a----"

"That's all right, Papa. You better go up and lie down, and Sadie'll fetch you up some lunch."

His hand was warm and lax. Mrs. Egg fumbled with it for a moment and let it fall. He pa.s.sed up the stairs, drooping his head. Mrs. Egg heard the cook's sympathy explode above and leaned on the wall and thought of Adam coming home Wednesday night. She had told him a thousand times that he mustn't gamble or mistreat women or chew tobacco "like your Grandfather Packer did." And here was Grandfather Packer, ready to welcome Adam home!

The farmhand strolled off, outside, taking the seed of this news. It would be in town directly.

"Oh, Dammy," she said, "and I wanted everything nice for you!"

In the still hall her one sob sounded like a shout. Mrs. Egg marched back to the dining room and drank a full gla.s.s of milk to calm herself.

"Says he can't eat nothin', Mis' Egg," the cook reported, "but he'd like a cup of tea. It's real pitiful. He's sayin' the Twenty-third Psalm to himself. Wasted to a shadder. Asked if Mr. Egg was as Christian an' forbearin' as you. Mebbe he could eat some b.u.t.tered toast."

"Try and see, Sadie; and don't bother me. I got to think."

She thought steadily, eating cold rice with cream and apple jelly. Her memory of Packer was slim. He had spanked her for spilling ink on his diary. He had been a carpenter. His brothers were all dead. He had run off with a handsome Swedish servant girl in 1882, leaving her mother to sew for a living. What would the county say? Mrs. Egg writhed and recoiled from duty. Perhaps she would get used to the glittering bald head and the thin voice. It was all most unreal. Her mother had so seldom talked of the runaway that Mrs. Egg had forgotten him as possibly alive. And here he was! What did one do with a prodigal father? With a jolt she remembered that there would be roast veal for supper.

At four, while she was showing the Ashland dairyman the bull calf, child of Red Rover VII and b.u.t.tercup IV, Mrs. Egg saw her oldest daughter's motor sliding across the lane from the turnpike. It held all three of her female offspring. Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, admiring the new milk shed and the cider press. When she waved him good-bye from the veranda she found her daughters in a stalwart group by the sitting-room fireplace, pink eyed and comfortably emotional. They wanted to kiss her. Mrs. Egg dropped into her particular mission chair and grunted, batting off embraces.

"I suppose it's all over town? It'd travel fast. Well, what d'you think of your grandpapa, girls?"

"Don't talk so loud, Mamma," one daughter urged.

Another said, "He's so tired he went off asleep while he was telling us how he nearly got hung for shooting a man in San Antonio."

Mrs. Egg reached for the gla.s.s urn full of chocolate wafers on the table and put one in her mouth. She remarked, "I can see you've been having a swell time, girls. A sinner that repenteth----"

"Why, Mamma!"

"Listen," said Mrs. Egg; "if there's going to be any forgiving done around here, it's me that'll do it. You girls was raised with all the comforts of home and then some. You never helped anybody do plain sewin' at fifteen cents a hour nor had to borrow money to get a decent dress to be married in. This thing of hearin' how he shot folks and kept a saloon in Texas is good as a movie to you. It don't set so easy on me. I'm old and tough. And I'll thank you to keep your mouths shut.

Here's Dammy comin' home Wednesday out of the Navy, and all this piled up on me. I don't want every lazyjake in the country pilin' in here to hear what a bad man he's been, and dirty the carpets up. Dammy likes things clean. I'm a better Christian than a lot of folks I can think of, but this looks to me like a good deal of a bread-and-b.u.t.ter repentance. Been devourin' his substance in Texas and come home to----"

"Oh, Mamma, your own papa!"

"That's as may be. My own mamma busted her eyesight and got heart trouble for fifteen mortal years until your papa married me and gave her a home for her old age, and never a whimper out of her, neither.

She's where she can't tell me what she thinks of him and I dunno what to think. But I'll do my own thinkin' until Dammy and your papa gets back and tell me what they think. This is your papa's place--and Dammy's. It ain't a boardin' house for----"

"Oh, Mamma!"

"And it's time for my nap."

Susan, the oldest daughter, made a tremulous protest. "He's seventy-six years old, Mamma, and whatever he's done----"

"For a young woman that talked pretty loud of leavin' her husband when he came home kind of lit up from a club meetin'----" Mrs. Egg broke in. Susan collapsed and drew her gloves on hastily. Mrs. Egg ate another chocolate wafer and resumed: "This here's my business--and your papa's and Dammy's. I've got it in my head that that movie weekly picture they had of b.u.t.tercup Four with her price wrote out must have been shown in San Antonio. And you'll recollect that your papa and me stood alongside her while that fresh cameraman took the picture. If I was needin' a meal and saw I'd got a well-off son-in-law----"

"Mamma," said Susan, "you're perfectly cynical."

Mrs. Egg p.r.o.nounced, "I'm forty-five years of age," and got up.

The daughters withdrew. Mrs. Egg covered the chocolate urn with a click and went into the kitchen. Two elderly farmhands went out of the porch door as she entered.

Mrs. Egg told the cook: "Least said, soon'st mended, Sadie. Give me the new cream. I guess I might's well make some spice cookies. Be pretty busy Wednesday. Dammy likes 'em a little stale."

"Mis' Egg," said the cook, "if this was Dammy that'd kind of strayed off and come home sick in his old age----"

"Give me the cream," Mrs. Egg commanded, and was surprised by the fierceness of her own voice. "I don't need any help seein' my duty, thanks!"

At six o'clock her duty became highly involved. A friend telephoned from town that the current-events weekly at the moving-picture theatre showed Adam in the view of the dreadnoughts at Guantanamo.

"Get out," said Adam's mother. "You're jokin'! ... Honest? Well, it's about time! What's he doin'? ... Wrestlin'? My! Say, call up the theatre and tell Mr. Rubenstein to save me a box for the evenin'

show."

"I hear your father's come home," the friend insinuated.