Green Valley Part 4

Jessup's has been the one Green Valley grocery store ever since the flood or thereabout, so venerable an establishment is it. Green Valley would as soon think of changing its name as permitting a new grocer to open up a rival store. And n.o.body dreams of disloyalty when buying trifles at the post-office. In fact housewives are openly glad that d.i.c.k, the postmaster, has taken to keeping strictly fresh yeast for their leisure days and nice bakery things for times of stress and unexpected company.

d.i.c.k Richards is a small, smiling, curly-headed man who looks older than he should. This is because he wears a big man's mustache and is a self-made boy. His parents died when he was barely old enough to realize his loss and since then he has fought the world without a single weapon unless cheerfulness and a giant patience can be called weapons. Small, ungifted, he early learned to be content with little.

But side by side with this cheerful content is always the giant hope of great things to come. And so though Green Valley buys only its yeast and buns over his little counter he is happy and wraps each purchase up carefully. And all the time he is thoughtfully, carefully setting out other handy things and aids to the hara.s.sed housewife. For with his giant patience d.i.c.k is waiting,--waiting and planning for a time that is coming, that he knows must come. He talks these matters over with no one except Joe Baldwin. He and Joe are great friends. Joe's little shop is such a restful, hopeful place and Joe himself a gentle rather than a loud and swearing man. One can talk things over joyfully with Joe and feel sure of having one's confidence understood and kept. Like Joe, d.i.c.k shrinks a little from the noisy, wholly earthy atmosphere of the livery barn and blacksmith shop. He and Joe often go together of a Sat.u.r.day to the barber shop. They usually stay after closing hours for the barber is their mutual friend.

This barber, John Gans, is a talker, a somewhat fierce and vehement little man who lectures on many subjects but mostly on human rights and politics. Joe and d.i.c.k, both silent men, look with awe at John's great mental and discoursive powers. And because his views are theirs they listen with something like joyful grat.i.tude to hear their own thoughts so clearly and fearlessly expressed.

The fiery little barber is thought by some to be a German anarchist and by others a Russian socialist. Joe and d.i.c.k have been repeatedly warned against him. But they are his loyal friends at all times. This three-cornered friends.h.i.+p is little understood by the town and ridiculed as a childish thing by the great minds that foregather at Uncle Tony's.

But Grandma Wentworth remarked one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, right in the heart of town too, when Main Street was so crowded that everything that was said aloud would be told and retold at church the next moraine and repeated through the countryside the week following,--pointing to Joe, d.i.c.k and John who all three happened to be going to the bank for change,--"There go Green Valley's three good little men. And that makes me think. I have another letter from Nanny Ainslee from Italy enclosing foreign stamps for John."

Now until then n.o.body knew that John Gans was collecting stamps. But that's Grandma Wentworth. She always knows things about people that n.o.body else knows. And when any Green Valley folks go a-traveling they sooner or later write to Grandma Wentworth. Sooner or later they get homesick for Green Valley and they write for news to the one person who, they know, will not fail to answer.

Of course some of them, like Jamie Danby, get into trouble. Jamie ran away from home with a third-rate show. The show got stranded somewhere in the western desert and Jamie wanted to come home. He knew that his mother would be glad to see him but he wasn't at all sure of his father. So he wrote to Grandma Wentworth, begging her to fix things up. And she did.

And there was Tommy Dudley who went away home-steading somewhere out West and who writes regularly to Grandma Wentworth in this fas.h.i.+on:

". . . for heaven's sake send me your baking-powder biscuit recipe and how do you make buckwheat pancakes, and send me all kinds of vegetable seeds and what's good for chicken lice and a sore throat, and tell Carrie Bailey I ain't forgot her and that as soon as I've got things going half-way straight here I'll come back and get her. Just now the dog, the mules and chickens and a family of mice and I are all living peacefully together in the one room but we're awful healthy if a good appet.i.te is any kind of a sign. I can't write to Carrie because her folks open all her letters and they'd nag her into marrying that old knock-kneed, squint-eyed, fat-necked son-of-a-gun of an Andrew Langly, if they thought she was having anything to do with a worthless heathen cuss like me. And say, Grandma, throw in some of your flower seeds, those right out of your own garden, you know, the tall ones along the fence and the little ones with the blue eyes and the still white ones that smell so sweet. You don't know how lonesome I get off here. I've got that picture of you in the sunbonnet right where it's handy, but how I wish I had a picture of you without the sunbonnet so's I could see your face, and say, Grandma, since I've been alone out here I've come to see the sense in praying now and then, and tell Freddy Williams I'll knock the stuffin's out of him when I hit town which will be in about two years at the latest. He knows what for. Is Hank Lolly still talking his way into three square meals a day and drinks, and is all the news still ground over at Uncle Tony's gossip factory and is Mert Hagley as big a tightwad as ever and is it true that Billy Evans married a red-headed girl from Bloomingdale and started a livery barn, and has Green Valley got a minister yet that's suitable to you and Uncle Roger Allan? I'll have to stop and run out to the mail box with this. The nearest one is twenty-five miles away but that's near in this country and now for pity's sake, Grandma, don't forget . . ."

She didn't forget a thing. The messages were all delivered, the seeds sent off and every question fully answered. Grandma did more than that. She had Nanny Ainslee take pictures of the various Green Valley inst.i.tutions while going full blast. How Tommy laughed at the familiar faces in Uncle Tony's armchairs and at Hank Lolly leaning up against the livery barn, and how homesick he grew as he looked at the crowd getting off at the station, and the school children playing in the old school yard where he used to play. The picture of Grandma Wentworth and Carrie standing on Grandma's front porch hurt his throat and shook him strangely. That was Tommy Dudley.

And there was Susie Melton. Grandma saved and remade Susie that time she went to New York to see the world. Susie had taught a country school for twenty years, ever since she was sixteen, and that trip to New York was her first vacation. Susie was an innocent soul and the very second day in the great city some heartless thief took everything out of her purse but a two-cent stamp. Susie was panic-stricken and the only thing she could think of was Grandma Wentworth's face. So she took that stamp and sent a letter to Green Valley and it was Grandma Wentworth who really managed that vacation though to this day n.o.body but she herself knows how and she won't tell. Susie came back so rejuvenated, with such color in her cheeks, such brightness in her eyes, and so much snap and s.p.u.n.k in her system that Jake Tuttle up and married her two months after she came home. And he's been happy ever since for in spite of her school-teaching handicap Susie has turned out to be a born cook and housewife. And as if to make up to her those twenty colorless years Providence sent Susie twin boys at the end of her first year and twin girls at the end of the third.

This blossoming out of little drab Susie Melton was a shock to Green Valley. But Grandma Wentworth wasn't a mite surprised and said she knew that Susie would come into her own some day. As for Jake, he is so in love with his rosy little wife and his four good-looking children that he just goes on raising b.u.mper crops without hardly knowing how he does it. And he says he doesn't hanker much after heaven; that home is plenty good enough for him. And when he goes to town Jake takes care to tie his team in front of Billy Evans' place instead of the hotel.

"Not that I can't take a drink or two and stop," he explained to Billy, "but I have good cider and b.u.t.termilk and Susie's grape juice to home and the smartest of us ain't any too wise while we stand beside a bar.

And I'd ruther go home dead than go back to Susie and the children the least bit silly with liquor. When the Almighty sends a man like me a family like mine He's got something in His mind and I ain't agoing to spoil things just for a drink or two of slops."

So on rainy days Billy's office is the gathering place for such men as find the atmosphere in the hotel and blacksmith shop a little too fragrantly spirited for their eventual domestic happiness.

Not that Billy is a teetotaler. No, indeed. He has his drink whenever he wants it. And he good-naturedly permits such staggering wretches as the hotel refuses to accommodate to sleep it off in his barns. And he is the only man in Green Valley who ever seriously hired Hank Lolly and kept him sober twelve hours at a stretch. The other business men make considerable fun of Billy's hired help; the trifling boys he hires, boys that everybody else has tried and sent packing. Billy says nothing though he did explain fully to Grandma Wentworth once.

"You see it's like this, Grandma. I ain't fixed to pay fancy wages just yet and those kids that everybody runs down ought to be off the streets doing something. Of course some of them _are_ trifling. But I ain't such a stickler for sharp-edged goodness myself nor in any way at all virtuous. I'm terrible easy-going myself and I know just how kids like Charlie Pinley feel working for a man, a careful, exact man like Mr. James D. Austin. By gos.h.!.+ if I had to work a whole week for Mr.

Austin I'd kill myself. Never could stand too much neatness and worrying about time being money and human nature too full of meanness.

No, sir,--I can't live like that. I guess maybe it's because I'm kind of no-account myself that I understand these kids and they understand me. They all like horses same as me and I pay them all I can afford and will do more for them when things pick up and grow.

"Now there's people as laugh about me hiring Hank Lolly. I guess it's the first time Hank has ever held a job longer than a week. But I tell you, Grandma, I like Hank and I understand him. And I don't ever think I'm fit enough myself to be forever preaching at him about reforming.

I figure that what a man eats and drinks is none of my business in a way. But I did explain to Hank that if he would come and work for me I'd furnish him with so many drinks every day and meals and a comfortable place to sleep. I showed him that it was better to be sure of a few drinks every day than to get blind drunk on a week's wages and then go weeks maybe without a decent spree, without decent meals, maybe without underwear and an overcoat. And Hank saw the sense of that. He gets his meals up at the house. My old woman (Billy's wife was a pretty girl of twenty-three and still a bride) sides in with what I'm doing and she sets Hank down every day to three square meals. And a man just can't hold so much liquor on a comfortably filled stomach.

Anyhow, Hank is doing fine and I'm putting a few dollars in the bank unbeknownst for him. I can't trust him just yet with any noticeable amount of cash. But I'm never down on him for his drinking. No, sir!

Every time he feels that he must get drunk or die why he just comes up and tells me and I get him whatever he thinks he needs for his jag and let him get full right here where I can watch him. Why--Grandma, Hank has an easier life than I have. He doesn't need to worry about anything and he knows it. And I'll be goshed if I don't think he's improving. He don't need a jag near so often as he used to and I can trust him now with any kind of work. Why, only last week I gave him a moving job, a big one, and sent him off twenty miles with my two best teams. And he brought those loads of furniture back O. K., dry and without a scratch, though I couldn't sleep all night listening to the buckets of rain das.h.i.+ng against the house and thinking of Hank drunk out there in it with the furniture and wagons in splinters and the horses dead maybe. And honest, when I saw him pull up into the barns, I just hauled him off that seat and--well--I just said things, told him what I thought of him and how I appreciated what he'd done. 'And now, Hank,' I says, 'you can have the greatest old jag you've ever planned on for this.'

"And I'm goshed if he didn't laugh out kind of funny and says he, 'Billy, I'm so goldarned wet right now that I couldn't stand another drop of wetness anywhere. But all these five hours that the rain was a-slos.h.i.+ng me I kept thinking of them there apple dumplings with cream that Mrs. Evans makes (Hank always calls the old woman Mrs. Evans).

So, Billy, if it's all the same to you and I could get full on them there apple dumplings, why, them's my choice.'

"Well--say, I just jumped to the telephone and I guess the old woman was making apple dumplings before I got through talking. Anyway, Hank filled up so that he said he felt like a flour barrel with an apple tree a-sprouting out of it. And Doc Philipps says it's a good sign, Hank liking sweet things that way, because a man soaked in alcohol can't abide sweets.

"And so that's Hank. Now this week I hired that little spindle-legged Barney boy. I hired him to keep this dumbed office clean so's my old woman wouldn't raise such h.e.l.l every time she steps in here. I'm goshed if this here stove don't get fuller of ashes quicker than any other stove in Green Valley. And you know the boys who come in here do spit about careless like and that dumbed screen door is always open and the calendars do get specked up considerable. And the old woman is just where I don't want her being upset about anything.

"Well, I hired that Barney boy to keep the place clean. You know that So-and-So (we won't mention any names) fired him because he said the kid stole money. Well, now--Grandma, you know that's a hard thing to start out a boy in life with in a town of this size, especially a little spindle-legged one at that. I felt real sorry for the young one so I calls him in here day before yisterday and I says:

"'Look here, Barney, could you keep this place clean?'

"'Sure,' he says.

"'All right, then sail in now. The broom's right behind the door somewheres and scarcely used and there's sawdust and rags somewheres in the barn. Ask Hank about them. And Barney,' I says, 'here's the money in this right-hand drawer. Sometimes people come in when everybody's out and you might have to make change.'

"The boy kind of flushed but I didn't let on I noticed. I only said, 'You know, Barney, I'm just beginning this business and I'm poor so you keep a sharp eye on the change and help me get this business going lickety-split so's we'll all be rich together. For when the profits go up here the wages are going up. It isn't just my livery barn, Barney, but yours, too, so just you go to it and if ever you want anything or make a mistake just you come and tell me and it'll be all right.'

"Now, Grandma, that's all I said to that young one and I'll be goshed if I don't think that kid's turning out to be the best bet I've made.

But, of course, I always think that about every one of them. But, honestly, Grandma, Barney has brought in five new customers and last week he kept chinning and holding on to a sixth man that come in here until I came in and made the deal. Never let go of him a minute and just entertained him to kill time and give me a chance to get here.

And I'm going to buy some books to learn myself and Barney bookkeeping.

We can't none of us keep books here and that dumbed account book is lost every time you want it and I've got the poorest memory. Of course, now and then a party comes in and tries to get out of paying but the boys usually settle him and so I don't lose much that way. But the old woman wants me to do this slick and proper and her word goes.

So Barney and I are going to study.

"I'm telling you all this, Grandma, because you always did understand my crazy way of doing things ever since that time when you sent me to the store for that can of mola.s.ses and I give the money to the tramp instead. Remember?"

Billy laughed heartily at the memory and Grandma Wentworth laughed, too, laughed so hard that she had to wipe her eyes. And she smiled all the way home.

"Some day," said Grandma Wentworth to her old friend and neighbor, Roger Allan, "I'll ask some minister to preach a sermon on 'G.o.d's Humor.' I suppose that the Almighty gets so tired running things just so and listening to pet.i.tions for suns.h.i.+ne and pet.i.tions for rain and to prayers for automobiles and diamonds and interest on mortgages and silk stockings, death and babies that some days he just gets tired of being a serious G.o.d and shuffles things up for a joke. And, mark me, Roger, that boy, Billy Evans, is just one of G.o.d's tender jokes. If only people would see that and laugh.

"Now, Billy has no money sense, no business ability. That's what the real business men like George Hoskins and all the old blessed Solomons at Uncle Tony's say. Yet Billy is making money. His business is growing just because without knowing it Billy has got hold of the biggest force in the world to run his business. He's just using love,--plain, old-fas.h.i.+oned love,--and love is making money for Billy.

He's picked out of the very gutters all the human waste and rubbish that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, misborn, misunderstood boys he's playing the business game and winning. He's got the knack of making his help feel like partners and he's so square and sensible in his dealings with them that they are all ready to die for him. Now if that isn't the greatest kind of a business gift I want to know.

"And every time I think of smiling, untidy Billy Evans with a pretty wife as neat as wax, living in a house that she has made as sweet and pretty as a picture--well--I just laugh. n.o.body but G.o.d could have arranged things and balanced them up like that. Talk about any of us improving things in this world! If we'd only learn to mind our own business as well as G.o.d minds His."

But very few besides Grandma Wentworth understood Billy and his livery barn. Even Joe Baldwin failed to see just what Billy was doing in his droll, unconscious, warm-hearted way. Still Joe liked Billy. In fact, everybody liked Billy. And he was welcomed everywhere and nowhere more than in George Hoskins' blacksmith shop.

Next to the bank building George Hoskins was considered the most solid thing in town. He was the brawny blacksmith and people said a very rich man. He was big in every way. Big in body, big in temper, big in his friends.h.i.+ps, big in his drinks. He was indeed so big a man that he did not know how to be mean or little in any way. He did not know his own great strength nor think much of the weakness of his fellows. His grand proportions and great simplicity were what attracted men to him.

Women did not know and so could not like him.

To them George Hoskins was a great, grimy ogre. George, big in all things, was big in his love for the tiny woman who was his wife. Other women George did not see though he spoke to them on the street. He had pleaded on bended knees for the love of his tiny woman and when he got her all other women became just strange shadows. So only his wife and Doc Philipps knew how tender a heart was his.

Green Valley housewives caught glimpses of this man's great figure towering above the roaring forge and saw the crowd of lesser men, their husbands, gathered about him. They went home and told each other that George Hoskins was a big, rude brute, that he drank like a fish and would bring the town to ruin, for he was the village president.

And while they were saying these things about George Hoskins he was perhaps throwing out of his shop some smug traveling man who had stepped into it to get in out of the rain and had mistakenly tried to make himself at home there by telling a filthy yarn that sullied all womanhood.

These then are a few of the many human attractions of Green Valley.

They are listed here to give the right sort of setting and the proper feel to this story of Green Valley life.

CHAPTER V

CYNTHIA'S SON

So Cynthia's son came home and Green Valley took him to its heart and loved him as it had loved his mother long ago. Everywhere he was spoken of as Cynthia's boy and no one seemed to remember that he was born in heathen India instead of in the old porticoed house on the Churchill farm.

Green Valley knew that very first week, of course, that Cynthia's son was very nearly twenty-eight years old and that his full name was John Roger Churchill Knight. But what it did not know for some weeks was that among other interesting things Cynthia's son was a minister, a duly certified preacher of the gospel. It was remembered in a general way that Cynthia's husband had been some sort of a wonderful foreign missionary or something; but a man who was Joshua Churchill's only grandchild and heir needed no other ancestor. So Green Valley was astounded one Sunday morning, when the Reverend Campbell was unexpectedly ill, and the Reverend Courtney off somewhere answering a new call, and Green Valley without a pastor, to have Cynthia's boy quietly offer to take charge of the services.