Tammy out of Time Page 19

  After they had driven away beyond the bridge, they came out into a paved highway. Pete’s car went as fast as Ernie’s now, but the rattle in its bones, the creak in its joints, made a noise that drowned out all talk. They topped a rise and Pete shouted, “This is Forestville ahead.”

  A church steeple and some chimneys rose from a sea of green treetops, a gray water tower with the town’s name on it stood higher yet. They sped down the slope and turned into the main street of the town, passing houses and lawns and people and cars. “You know where the jail is, Pete?” Tammy called above the noise of the car. She thought it might be a place of high walls and barred windows and great iron gates.

  Pete slowed close by the side of the road. “I’ll soon find out.” He called to a man walking on the green grass in front of a house, “Say, can you tell me where the jail is?”

  “What’s the matter, Bud? Going to give yourself up?” He sauntered to the side of the car.

  Pete laughed. “Just looking up a friend.”

  “Well, we got the nicest little jail in the county. Go to the blinker and turn right. You’ll see the jail on the far corner two blocks down. Ivy all over it. You can’t miss it.”

  Pete thanked him and they drove on, coming soon to a green lawn and an ivy-covered building set back from the street. The bars were twined with ivy. “It really is a pretty jail,” Tammy said. “I thought he was just fooling. You reckon they’ll let us see Grandpa?”

  “Sure they will,” Pete said.

  They mounted three steps and went in by an open door. There was a bare long hall and at the left, a room with the door ajar. “I’d better see the jailer,” Pete said.

  The room was empty. There was only a bench and a chair with no legs where legs ought to be, though coming down from the center of the seat was an iron piece that ended in legs. It sat before a desk with several empty soft-drink bottles and some papers on it.

  “Now that’s a curious thing,” Tammy said. “A jail and nobody keeping it and nobody kept.”

  “But there must be. Come on, let’s see.” Pete drew her with him down the hall. They passed a stairway and went on to a closed door at the end. Pete tried the handle and it turned.

  “Listen,” Tammy whispered. “Don’t you hear? It’s Grandpa and he’s apreaching. That’s his preaching voice. Open it easy.”

  Pete swung the door gently on its hinges. There was a little passageway and then a barred gate through which they could see into the middle of the jail. It was a courtyard, with barred balconies all around, upstairs and down, with all the gates swung wide and the people of the jail come down to hear Grandpa. He was off to the side, standing on a big goods box and preaching for all he was worth. The sound of his voice rose now and filled the high space overhead and came nigh to shaking the walls.

  “He’s agoing great,” Tammy whispered, almost choking on the words because it was so good to see him. They stood back a little, watching and listening.

  “...and here I be,” Grandpa was shouting, “here I be, a voice come out of the wilderness, a cry come forth from the swamp, a boiler off the riverbank, and apreaching on the text, ‘The great day of His wrath has come and who shall be able to stand?’ And Tm nigh on to the end of my sermon, so keep yourselves harking and hold your peace.”

  “He’s seen us,” Tammy said. “He’s asaying that to us.”

  Pete nodded and Grandpa went on, “For I’m atelling you that there’s many a man that walks the earth, free to come and go, who’s jailed up as much as any of you, and all by reason of this fear that’s come upon him. He’s bound and gagged and plumb hog-tied with the fears of civilization. Not that I’m agin civilization, but it’s got off on the wrong foot and brought the world to a pretty pass. Man’s so afeard that all he talks about is security.”

  Pete folded his arms and leaned against the wall, listening. It did Tammy good to see how he was listening to Grandpa.

  “Now there’s two kinds of knowledge come to man,” Grandpa went on. “One’s here—” he tapped the Bible in his hand—“and one’s by way of man’s figgering in his mind. They call that reason, and in these latter days it has led to science. But the Good Book calls it eating of the tree of knowledge.

  “Now I come up out of the swamps and out from my sojourn on the river waters, and I look around at mankind and I see he’s done cast aside the Word and taken up altogether with reason. Now the Lord let man eat of the tree, and we got a right to seek knowledge. But in these times it’s led us astray, it’s set us lopsided instead of upright and that’s how-come we’re nigh onto the second fall of man. The great day of His wrath hath come and who shall be able to stand?

  “Man’s give himself colic with eating too much of one fruit of the tree of knowledge and too little of another. He’s unbalanced his diet and come near unbalancing his mind. It’s no wonder he’s apalsied with fear. He’s et too free of science and too sparingly of brotherly love. He’s got inflammation of the liver from too high living and too low thinking, and the softness of his comforts has give him softening of the brain. The kind of gas he’s got on his stomach is a deadly and explosive kind, because it comes from the atom bomb. He’s got water on the knee from lack of bending it, and now his head’s asplitting with a headache like nobody’s business, since he split the atom apart.

  “I tell you, man is in a sorry state and it looks like the Lord’s about give up on him and said, Just go on and blow yourself up, you dern fool. Yessir, there ain’t but one hope left for man, and that’s to see with his reasoning mind how he’s got off his feed, and how he’d better search out the good fruit growing on the tree of knowledge. He’s got to purge himself of the pizens of hate and envy and greed. He’s got to eat of the bread of humility and drink deep of the milk of human kindness.”

  He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and there was a little stirring among the men who sat listening. A few looked around toward Tammy and Pete, but mostly they waited for Grandpa to go on.

  “Now I been listening to you all.” Grandpa searched their faces with his narrowed blue eyes. “I been harkening and holding converse with one and another. This man says, ‘I had hard luck.’ Another says, ‘I growed up in bad circumstances,’ and another says, ‘It ain’t my fault, it’s the system of government that done me wrong.’ And another sets back and says he’s the common man and this-here’s the age of the common man and if he don’t get his share, he’s going to take it. I tell you it ain’t nobody but himself’s responsible for a man’s being low-down and mean and common. And a man that goes around whining and putting the blame on somethin’ outside himself ain’t fit to be called a man. He’s done lost his human dignity and how in this day of wrath is he going to be able to stand? I tell you can’t nobody outside yourself make you secure. You got to start inside and work out, and when you stand on your own feet, then the Lord is your right hand, pointing out the way; then the Lord is your shield and your buckler, of whom shall ye be afraid?

  “You tell me you got things pressing in on you, this side and that side. You say you’re about fit to be tied, with it all. Well, I tell you that’s all right. When the pressure gets too high like the steam in the boiler, it’ll find the way out. It won’t be far off either. The way is always close to hand, only many’s the time a man’s too big a fool to see what’s in front of his nose.”

  Grandpa changed his tone and Tammy whispered, “He’s awinding up now.” Pete nodded.

  “You needn’t think the atom bomb’s new. The Lord’s been knowing about it all along. Next time I’m going to preach to you on Sodom, Gomorrah and the atom bomb. Now let us pray.”

  There was a rustling and a stirring as the men bowed their heads. “Lord,” Grandpa said, “let us go back into our places, into our small locked cells, with no fear in our hearts but the fear of the Lord that makes us strong and free, that gives us back our human dignity and sets us firm on the unshaken firmament? Amen.”

  “I reckon he’s done now,” Tammy whispered.

&
nbsp; But Grandpa was not quite done yet. “Now,” he said, “let every man shake the hand of the man on his right before he goes, because brotherly love has got to begin sometime and it might as well be now.”

  Pete took Tammy’s hand, smiling down at her. Grandpa stood still and waited till the men had shaken hands and passed in orderly line, going back each one through his open gate and closing it behind him. Grandpa did not go into any cell. With his Bible under his arm, he came toward them, unlocked the big gate with a key from his pocket. He shut it behind him and, blinking, took Tammy in his arms. He shook Pete’s hand hard to make up for not having any words for a moment. Then he said, “Let’s come into the front office and let me sit down and look at you. I’m fair weak in my knees for joy.”

  “You don’t seem to be shut-up and closed in, Grandpa. How can that be?” Tammy marveled.

  “It looks to me as if you’re the jailer,” Pete said.

  “Well—” Grandpa sat down in the chair before the desk and turned to show how it turned, and so that he might see them sitting side by side on the bench—“in a manner of speaking, I am the jailer. The real one, a mighty nice fellow, likes to get out for a drive with his folks on a Sunday and he’s got into the way of leaving me in charge whilst he’s away. We have our service and it gives the men something to think about when they have to go back into their cells. Yessir, they tell me that they often ponder on the things I preach about. Makes me feel that the Lord does indeed move in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.”

  “And how’s your rheumatism, Grandpa?”

  While Grandpa was telling about his rheumatism, Pete got up and began walking around the room, looking at the bars across the window, coming back to the desk behind Grandpa and then just walking about, eyes on the floor. He might be listening with one ear, Tammy thought, but the other was sure attending to something else. When Grandpa finished, saying, “I’m that spry, honey, you’d think my joints was greased,” Pete said he was mighty glad to hear it. Then he said he thought he’d better get some gas for the car and that he’d be back in a little.

  Tammy looked after him uneasily. Grandpa kept on talking but she couldn’t take her mind off Pete for a minute.

  “Looks like he’s kind of edgy and wound-up,” Grandpa said at last.

  “Yes,” Tammy said on a long breath.

  “Likely as not my sermon got him to thinking. It takes a man that way sometimes when he’s troubled in his mind.”

  “That’s what he is, Grandpa.”

  “Well, honey, just give him time. Pete’s a man got power. You can feel it. And like I was saying, when the pressure gets too high to bear, he’ll find a way, and likely close to hand.”

  “You reckon, Grandpa?”

  He nodded. “I ain’t got a doubt of it. Now you tell me what all you been doing, child.”

  “Me?” Tammy smiled. “I feel like I been on a long journey out into the world, a pilgrimage, finding out about things and inventions and people in the midst of them.”

  “If you’ve found out all about people, you’re doing well, honey.”

  “I’ve found out a little. The trouble is—” she leaned forward, clasping her hands tight around her knees—“people, they got so many notions and ways and cunning devices so they say one thing and underneath they’re saying another. They got as many layers to them as an onion.”

  Grandpa nodded. “You’re learning, child.” Then, hearing Pete’s step in the hall, he said, “You got a lot to be thankful for, having such a good place to stay.” He turned to Pete. “I hope she’s been making herself useful.”

  “She has indeed.” He smiled at Tammy and sat down on the bench beside her.

  Grandpa studied him awhile. “It’s kind of you to be looking out for her so well. It’s much appreciated, I tell you. Does your aunt that lives with you take to her?”

  “She does that. Aunt Renie really needs somebody in the house with her, especially after the next two weeks when my father and mother will be going back to town.”

  “I see,” Grandpa said. “I see.”

  “Now, Mr. Dinwoodie,” Pete said, “I believe I might be able to use some influence about getting you out of here. My father, and some friends of his...” He hesitated.

  Grandpa looked from him to Tammy and then out the high window, and after a moment he shook his head. “I thank you just the same, Pete. But I don’t believe in the shortening of judgment nor the easing of the penance. Not that I got my judgment yet. Case won’t be called till next week or so. But the way I feel, the Lord’s put me here for a purpose and I mean to fulfill it. Besides, my rheumatism is easing something miraculous, and they feed me fine. I got every convenience, not to say luxury, and I wouldn’t turn a hand to budge out of the place—unless you’re getting tired of Tammy here.”

  “That’s impossible,” Pete said. “Why, Tammy—she’s like a little sister to me. You don’t know what a help she is.”

  Grandpa nodded slowly. “I see,” he said with a kind of sadness in his tone. “I see. Well, it’s all in the Lord’s hands.”

  Then Peter said they’d better go. Clouds were blowing up. “Looks as if there might be something brewing in the weather line, it’s got so muggy all of a sudden.”

  As they drove away, Tammy looked back at the vine-covered jail set back on its green lawn. “It sure is a pretty jail, Pete. And you know, it looks to me like Grandpa’s mighty pleased with it.”

  “Well, he didn’t seem too anxious to be bailed out or pardoned, that’s a fact.”

  “Looked to me like he was holding back the real reason, the way he stopped a minute before he answered you. Maybe——”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Nothing,” Tammy said, keeping her thought to herself. “But he’s got a long head on him, Grandpa has.”

  16.

  AFTER the tramp through the swamp, after the long drive, Tammy slept hard and deep. Once in the night the sound of rain roused her just enough to think of Pete’s tomatoes, drinking it thirstily. It was much later that she was vaguely aware of hurrying steps overhead. But it was the knocking that brought her sharply awake to fling the night from her, lips parting to call that she was coming.

  The knocking was not at the door. It was a sparse, strange tapping at the windowpane, a scratching and whispering along the outside wall of the house, on leaf and earth. Cool clean air came to her, rarely pure. Tammy sprang out of bed and ran to the open window. The sound was everywhere, a thousand footfalls in the thin dark. “Goshamighty!” Tammy cried as the strokes on the windowpane grew louder and white balls danced on the sill. “Pete’s tomatoes!” The hail stones bounded on the grass, catching the faint morning light. They were quickly driven by the wind into small white drifts and eddies. They struck everywhere, cruel and hard. A rain of leaves fell with them, severed from the oak. No small green tender thing could live through their terrible cutting.

  Tammy tore off her gown, snatched up her dress, diving into it, buttoning it as she stumbled through the dark room, across the passageway and down the ell gallery. In the garden her foot slipped on a heap of hailstones, but she caught herself and ran on, not feeling the cold underfoot, knowing only that the fall had ceased as suddenly as it had come.

  In the kitchen garden, the lettuce was flat, the beans were stripped and beaten, but she gave them only a glance as she ran down the muddy row. Ahead—she strained her eyes to see—the plants that Pete had put out early stood no longer brave and fine. There was only a muddied green carpet where they had been. In a moment, in a twinkling, they had been cut down. But the cold frames—surely that was what they were for, to guard the young plants. That was why the cloth cover was spread each night and fastened down. Tammy stopped short before the nearest one. Beaten and torn, thin cloth trembled along the sides of the frame and hail lay in heaps, weighing down, muddying the rest of it amid the crushed green of the plants. She dropped on her knees and began scooping away the hail, flinging it furiously aside.

  “No use,
Tammy. They’re done for.”

  She sprang to her feet and saw Pete sitting on a stump at the edge of the field, bent over, elbows on knees, as if he too were crushed and beaten down by the hail. She caught her breath in a sob and looked up at the brightening sky and the innocent pink of sunrise clouds. “Oh, Pete,” she cried, “why did it have to come like this, why—?”

  “It just did.” Pete’s voice was as flat and hopeless as the little green things. He came to her and patted her shoulder. “Never mind, Tammy. I’m slow at figuring things out, but this is plain enough for even me to understand.” He drew a long breath. “In a way it’s a relief, to get it all settled.”

  “No, no, Pete.” She turned and bent to jerk away the broken cloth, flinging the strips aside. “There must be some left. There’s bound to be. See.” But there were only a pitiful few, standing close against the boards of the frame, tucked away in the corners. She ran to the next cold frame, whispering under her breath, saying, “O God, let there be some! He’s got to have some.” The hope was a raw ache inside her. Pete followed and watched as here too she snatched away the cover.

  Maybe there were a few more here, but pitifully few that had survived. Tammy straightened slowly, hands limp at her sides. She had thought to hearten him and she had only shown him how complete his ruin was. Her breath caught in a dry sob and she began to shiver, the chill of the early morning going through her sharp and merciless. Then she felt Pete’s arms around her, felt him draw her close, and with her face hid against him, she got out the choking words, “I wanted you to have them. I wanted you to have all the tomatoes in the world!”

  He stroked her hair. “Bless you, Tammy.” The bleak stricken tone had gone from his voice. “You’re cold,” he said with tenderness.

  In the midst of her shivering, she felt the warmth of his body against her, spreading through her, purely sweet and keener than the hurt, dissolving it. Must be the Lord had arranged a man and woman so, that they could find comfort in their misery, strength to go on. Strength? She felt it, pouring into her. She flung back her head, caught Pete by the shoulder and shook him hard. “Don’t give up, Pete! You got to fight back. Don’t you see—when the Lord slaps you down, you got to rise up. That’s the only way you can sass Him back.” She flung away from him and dropping to her knees began gathering up the best of the plants, handing them up to him. “Here—come on, take them, set them out. The field’s all ready and waiting. They’ll grow, they got to grow.”