She was despairing of ever getting it right when one morning there was gum under the pillow. We each peeled a stick and solemnly chewed it; it was Beeman’s peppermint, and nothing so delicious has been made since.
Mary was pulling on her long black ribbed stockings when she said with great relief, “Of course.”
“Of course what?” I asked.
“Uncle Tom,” she said and chewed her gum with great snapping sounds.
“Uncle Tom what?” I demanded.
“He’ll know how to get to be a boy.”
There it was—just as simple as that. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it myself.
Mother was in the kitchen overseeing a new little Danish girl who worked for us. We had a series of girls. New-come Danish farm families put their daughters out to service with American families, and they learned not only English but American cooking and table setting and manners and all the little niceties of high life in Salinas. At the end of a couple of years of this, at twelve dollars a month, the girls were highly desirable wives for American boys. Not only did they have American manners but they could still work like horses in the fields. Some of the most elegant families in Salinas today are descended from these girls.
It would be flaxen-haired Mathilde in the kitchen, with Mother clucking over her like a hen.
We charged in. “Is he up?”
“Sh!” said Mother. “He got in late. You let him sleep.”
But the water was running in the basin of the back bedroom so we knew he was up. We crouched like cats at his door, waiting for him to emerge.
There was always a little diffidence between us at first. I think Uncle Tom was as shy as we were. I think he wanted to come running out and toss us in the air, but instead we were all formal.
“Thank you for the gum, Uncle Tom.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“Do you think we’ll have an oyster loaf late at night while you’re here?”
“We’ll certainly try, if your mother will let you.”
We drifted into the sitting room and sat down. Mother’s voice called from the kitchen, “Children, you let him alone.”
“They’re all right, Ollie,” he called back.
We sat in a triangle in the living room. Tom’s face was so dark and his eyes so blue. He wore good clothes but he never seemed well dressed. In this he was very different from his father. His red mustache was never neat and his hair would not lie down and his hands were hard from work.
Mary said, “Uncle Tom, how do you get to be a boy?”
“How? Why, Mary, you’re just born a boy.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. How do I get to be a boy?”
Tom studied her gravely. “You?” he asked.
Her words poured out. “I don’t want to be a girl, Uncle Tom. I want to be a boy. A girl’s all kissing and dolls. I don’t want to be a girl. I don’t want to.” Tears of anger welled up in Mary’s eyes.
Tom looked down at his hands and picked at a loose piece of callus with a broken nail. He wanted to say something beautiful, I think. He wished for words like his father’s words, sweet winged words, cooing and lovely. “I wouldn’t like you to be a boy,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I like you as a girl.”
An idol was crashing in Mary’s temple. “You mean you like girls?”
“Yes, Mary, I like girls very much.”
A look of distaste crossed Mary’s face. If it were true, Tom was a fool. She put on her don’t-give-me-any-of-that-crap tone. “All right,” she said, “but how do I go about being a boy?”
Tom had a good ear. He knew he was reeling down in Mary’s estimation and he wanted her to love him and to admire him. At the same time there was a fine steel wire of truthfulness in him that cut off the heads of fast-traveling lies. He looked at Mary’s hair, so light that it was almost white, and braided tight to be out of the way, and dirty at the end of the braid, for Mary wiped her hands on her braid before she made a difficult marble shot. Tom studied her cold and hostile eyes.
“I don’t think you really want to change.”
“I do.”
Tom was wrong—she really did.
“Well,” he said, “you can’t. And someday you’ll be glad.”
“I won’t be glad,” said Mary, and she turned to me and said with frigid contempt, “He doesn’t know!”
Tom winced and I shivered at the immensity of her criminal charge. Mary was braver and more ruthless than most. That’s why she won every marble in Salinas.
Tom said uneasily, “If your mother says it’s all right, I’ll order the oyster loaf this morning and pick it up tonight.”
“I don’t like oyster loaves,” said Mary and stalked to our bedroom and slammed the door.
Tom looked ruefully after her. “She’s a girl all right,” he said.
Now we were alone together and I felt that I had to heal the wound Mary had made. “I love oyster loaves,” I said.
“Sure you do. So does Mary.”
“Uncle Tom, don’t you think there’s some way for her to be a boy?”
“No, I don’t,” he said sadly. “I would have told her if I had known.”
“She’s the best pitcher in the West End.”
Tom sighed and looked down at his hands again, and I could see his failure on him and I was sorry for him, aching sorry. I brought out my hollowed cork with pins stuck down to make bars. “Would you like to have my fly cage, Uncle Tom?”
Oh, he was a great gentleman. “Do you want me to have it?”
“Yes. You see, you pull up a pin to get the fly in and then he sits in there and buzzes.”
“I’d like to have it very much. Thank you, John.”
He worked all day with a sharp tiny pocketknife on a small block of wood, and when we came home from school he had carved a little face. The eyes and ears and lips were movable, and little perches connected them with the inside of the hollow head. At the bottom of the neck there was a hole closed by a cork. And this was very wonderful. You caught a fly and eased him through the hole and set the cork. And suddenly the head became alive. The eyes moved and the lips talked and the ears wiggled as the frantic fly crawled over the little perches. Even Mary forgave him a little, but she never really trusted him until after she was glad she was a girl, and then it was too late. He gave the head not to me but to us. We still have it put away somewhere, and it still works.
Sometimes Tom took me fishing. We started before the sun came up and drove in the rig straight toward Frémont’s Peak, and as we neared the mountains the stars would pale out and the light would rise to blacken the mountains. I can remember riding and pressing my ear and cheek against Tom’s coat. And I can remember that his arm would rest lightly over my shoulders and his hand pat my arm occasionally. Finally we would pull up under an oak tree and take the horse out of the shafts, water him at the stream side, and halter him to the back of the rig.
I don’t remember that Tom talked. Now that I think of it, I can’t remember the sound of his voice or the kind of words he used. I can remember both about my grandfather, but when I think of Tom it is a memory of a kind of warm silence. Maybe he didn’t talk at all. Tom had beautiful tackle and made his own flies. But he didn’t seem to care whether we caught trout or not. He needed not to triumph over animals.
I remember the five-fingered ferns growing under the little waterfalls, bobbing their green fingers as the droplets struck them. And I remember the smells of the hills, wild azalea and a very distant skunk and the sweet cloy of lupin and horse sweat on harness. I remember the sweeping lovely dance of high buzzards against the sky and Tom looking long up at them, but I can’t remember that he ever said anything about them. I remember holding the bight of a line while Tom drove pegs and braided a splice. I remember the smell of crushed ferns in the creel and the delicate sweet odor of fresh damp rainbow trout lying so prettily on the green bed. And finally I can remember coming back to the rig and pouring rolled barley into the leather feed-bag and buckling it over the horse’s head behind the ears. And I have no sound of his voice or words in my ear; he is dark and silent and hugely warm in my memory.