“Here’s your two dollars.”
“And you want to know what to do about it?”
“Sure I do.”
“Don’t sprain it any more. Now take your money back. You’re not a fool, Samuel, unless you’re getting childish.”
“But it hurts.”
“Of course it hurts. How would you know it was strained if it didn’t?”
Samuel laughed. “You’re good for me,” he said. “You’re more than two dollars good for me. Keep the money.”
The doctor looked closely at him. “I think you’re telling the truth, Samuel. I’ll keep the money.”
Samuel went in to see Will in his fine new store. He hardly knew his son, for Will was getting fat and prosperous and he wore a coat and vest and a gold ring on his little finger.
“I’ve got a package made up for Mother,” Will said. “Some little cans of things from France. Mushrooms and liver paste and sardines so little you can hardly see them.”
“She’ll just send them to Joe,” said Samuel.
“Can’t you make her eat them?”
“No,” said his father. “But she’ll enjoy sending them to Joe.”
Lee came into the store and his eyes lighted up. “How do, Missy,” he said.
“Hello, Lee. How are the boys?”
“Boys fine.”
Samuel said, “I’m going to have a glass of beer next door, Lee. Be glad to have you join me.”
Lee and Samuel sat at the little round table in the barroom and Samuel drew figures on the scrubbed wood with the moisture of his beer glass. “I’ve wanted to go to see you and Adam but I didn’t think I could do any good.”
“Well, you can’t do any harm. I thought he’d get over it. But he still walks around like a ghost.”
“It’s over a year, isn’t it?” Samuel asked.
“Three months over.”
“Well, what do you think I can do?”
“I don’t know,” said Lee. “Maybe you could shock him out of it. Nothing else has worked.”
“I’m not good at shocking. I’d probably end up by shocking myself. By the way, what did he name the twins?”
“They don’t have any names.”
“You’re making a joke, Lee.”
“I am not making jokes.”
“What does he call them?”
“He calls them ‘they.’ ”
“I mean when he speaks to them.”
“When he speaks to them he calls them ‘you,’ one or both.”
“This is nonsense,” Samuel said angrily. “What kind of fool is the man?”
“I’ve meant to come and tell you. He’s a dead man unless you can wake him up.”
Samuel said, “I’ll come. I’ll bring a horse whip. No names! You’re damn right I’ll come Lee.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll kill a chicken,” said Lee. “You’ll like the twins, Mr. Hamilton. They’re fine-looking boys. I won’t tell Mr. Trask you’re coming.”
2
Shyly Samuel told his wife he wanted to visit the Trask place. He thought she would pile up strong walls of objection, and for one of the few times in his life he would disobey her wish no matter how strong her objection. It gave him a sad feeling in the stomach to think of disobeying his wife. He explained his purpose almost as though he were confessing. Liza put her hands on her hips during the telling and his heart sank. When he was finished she continued to look at him, he thought, coldly.
Finally she said, “Samuel, do you think you can move this rock of a man?”
“Why, I don’t know, Mother.” He had not expected this. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think it is such an important matter that those babies have names right now?”
“Well, it seemed so to me,” he said lamely.
“Samuel, do you think why you want to go? Is it your natural incurable nosiness? Is it your black inability to mind your own business?”
“Now, Liza, I know my failings pretty well. I thought it might be more than that.”
“It had better be more than that,” she said. “This man has not admitted that his sons live. He has cut them off mid-air.”
“That’s the way it seems to me, Liza.”
“If he tells you to mind your own business—what then?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
Her jaw snapped shut and her teeth clicked. “If you do not get those boys named, there’ll be no warm place in this house for you. Don’t you dare come whining back, saying he wouldn’t do it or he wouldn’t listen. If you do I’ll have to go myself.”
“I’ll give him the back of my hand,” Samuel said.
“No, that you won’t do. You fall short in savagery, Samuel. I know you. You’ll give him sweet-sounding words and you’ll come dragging back and try to make me forget you ever went.”
“I’ll beat his brains out,” Samuel shouted.
He slammed into the bedroom, and Liza smiled at the panels.
He came out soon in his black suit and his hard shiny shirt and collar. He stooped down to her while she tied his black string tie. His white beard was brushed to shining.
“You’d best take a swab at your shoes with a blacking brush,” she said.
In the midst of painting the blacking on his worn shoes he looked sideways up at her. “Could I take the Bible along?” he asked. “There’s no place for getting a good name like the Bible.”
“I don’t much like it out of the house,” she said uneasily. “And if you’re late coming home, what’ll I have for my reading? And the children’s names are in it.” She saw his face fall. She went into the bedroom and came back with a small Bible, worn and scuffed, its cover held on by brown paper and glue. “Take this one,” she said.
“But that’s your mother’s.”
“She wouldn’t mind. And all the names but one in here have two dates.”
“I’ll wrap it so it won’t get hurt,” said Samuel.
Liza spoke sharply. “What my mother would mind is what I mind, and I’ll tell you what I mind. You’re never satisfied to let the Testament alone. You’re forever picking at it and questioning it. You turn it over the way a ’coon turns over a wet rock, and it angers me.”
“I’m just trying to understand it, Mother.”
“What is there to understand? Just read it. There it is in black and white. Who wants you to understand it? If the Lord God wanted you to understand it He’d have given you to understand or He’d have set it down different.”
“But, Mother—”
“Samuel,” she said, “you’re the most contentious man this world has ever seen.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Don’t agree with me all the time. It hints of insincerity. Speak up for yourself.”
She looked after his dark figure in the buggy as he drove away. “He’s a sweet husband,” she said aloud, “but contentious.”
And Samuel was thinking with wonder, Just when I think I know her she does a thing like that.
3
On the last half-mile, turning out of the Salinas Valley and driving up the unscraped road under the great oak trees, Samuel tried to plait a rage to take care of his embarrassment. He said heroic words to himself.
Adam was more gaunt than Samuel remembered. His eyes were dull, as though he did not use them much for seeing. It took a little time for Adam to become aware that Samuel was standing before him. A grimace of displeasure drew down his mouth.
Samuel said, “I feel small now—coming uninvited as I have.”
Adam said, “What do you want? Didn’t I pay you?”
“Pay?” Samuel asked. “Yes, you did. Yes, by God, you did. And I’ll tell you that pay has been more than I’ve merited by the nature of it.”
“What? What are you trying to say?”
Samuel’s anger grew and put out leaves. “A man, his whole life, matches himself against pay. And how, if it’s my whole life’s work to find my worth, can you, sad man, write me down instant in a ledger?”
Adam exclaimed, “I’ll pay. I tell you I’ll pay. How much? I’ll pay.”
“You have, but not to me.”
“Why did you come then? Go away!”
“You once invited me.”
“I don’t invite you now.”
Samuel put his hands on his hips and leaned forward. “I’ll tell you now, quiet. In a bitter night, a mustard night that was last night, a good thought came and the dark was sweetened when the day sat down. And this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of the first light—that our betters spoke of. So I invite myself.”
“You are not welcome.”
Samuel said, “I’m told that out of some singular glory your loins got twins.”
“What business is that of yours?”
A kind of joy lighted Samuel’s eyes at the rudeness. He saw Lee lurking inside the house and peeking out at him. “Don’t, for the love of God, put violence on me. I’m a man hopes there’ll be a picture of peace on my hatchments.”