He was pleased with the baby. “It’s our stock,” he said, “just a little changed.” And he boasted to Elizabeth, “Ours is a strong stock. It comes out every time. For nearly two hundred years now the boys have had those eyes.”
“They aren’t far from the color of my eyes,” Elizabeth protested. “And besides, babies’ eyes change color as they get older.”
“It’s the expression,” Burton explained. “There’s always the Wayne expression in the eyes. When will you have him baptized?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll be going to San Luis Obispo before very long, and of course I’d like to go home to Monterey for a visit some time.”
The day’s heat came early over the mountains and drove the chickens from their morning talking on manure piles. By eleven it was unpleasant to be out in the sun, but before eleven, Joseph and Elizabeth often took chairs out of the house and sat under the shading limbs of the great oak. Elizabeth engaged in the morning nursing then, for Joseph liked to watch the baby sucking at the breast.
“It doesn’t grow as fast as I thought it would,” he complained.
“You’re too used to the cattle,” she reminded him. “They grow so much more quickly, and they don’t live very long.”
Joseph silently contemplated his wife. “She’s grown so wise,” he thought. “Without any study she has learned so many things.” It puzzled him. “Do you feel very much different from the girl who came to teach school in Nuestra Señora?” he asked.
She laughed. “Do I seem different, Joseph?”
“Why, of course.”
“Then I suppose I am.” She changed the breast and shifted the baby to the other knee, and he struck hungrily at the nipple, like a trout at a bait. “I’m split up,” Elizabeth went on. “I hadn’t really thought of it. I used to think in terms of things I had read. I never do now. I don’t think at all. I just do things that occur to me. What will his name be, Joseph?”
“Why,” he said, “I guess it will be John. There has always been either a Joseph or a John. John has always been the son of Joseph, and Joseph the son of John. It has always been that way.”
She nodded, and her eyes looked far away. “Yes, it’s a good name. It won’t ever give him any trouble or make him embarrassed. It hasn’t even much meaning. There have been so many Johns—all kinds of men, good and bad.” She took the breast away and buttoned her dress, and then turned the baby to pat the air bubbles out of him. “Have you noticed, Joseph, Johns are either good or bad, never neutral? If a neutral boy has that name, he doesn’t keep it. He becomes Jack.” She turned the baby around, to look in its face, and it squinted its eyes like a little pig. “Your name is John, do you hear?” she said playfully. “Do you hear that? I hope it never gets to be Jack. I’d rather you were very bad than Jack.”
Joseph smiled amusedly at her. “He has never sat in the tree, dear. Don’t you think it’s about time?”
“Always your tree!” she said. “You think everything moves by order of your tree.”
He leaned back to look up into the great tender branches. “I know it now, you see,” he said softly. “I know it now so well that I can look at the leaves and tell what kind of a day it will be. I’ll make a seat for the baby up in the crotch. When he’s a little older I may cut steps in the bark for him to climb on.”
“But he might fall and hurt himself.”
“Not from that tree. It wouldn’t let him fall.”
She looked penetratingly at him. “Still playing the game that isn’t a game, Joseph?”
“Yes,” he said, “still playing. Give the baby to me now. I’ll put him in the arms.” The leaves had lost their shine under a coat of summer dust. The bark was pale grey and dry.
“He might fall, Joseph,” she warned him. “You forget he can’t sit up by himself.”
Burton strolled up from the vegetable-patch and stood with them, wiping his wet forehead with a bandana. “The melons are ripe,” he said. “The ‘coons are getting at them, too. We’d better set some traps.”
Joseph leaned toward Elizabeth with his hands outstretched.
“But he might fall,” she protested.
“I’ll hold him. I won’t let him fall.”
“What are you going to do with him?” Burton asked.
“Joseph wants to sit him in the tree.”
Instantly Burton’s face grew hard, and his eyes sullen. “Don’t do it, Joseph,” he said harshly. “You must not do it.”
“I won’t let him fall. I’ll hold him all the time.”
The perspiration stood in large drops on Burton’s forehead. Into his eyes there came a look of horror and of pleading. He stepped forward and put a restraining hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “Please don’t do it,” he begged.
“But I won’t let him fall, I tell you.”
“It isn’t that. You know what I mean. Swear to me that you won’t ever do it.”
Joseph turned on him irritably. “I’ll swear nothing,” he said. “Why should I swear? I see nothing wrong in what I do.”
Burton said quietly, “Joseph, you have never heard me beg for anything. It isn’t the manner of our family to beg. But now I am begging you to give up this thing. If I am willing to do that, you must see how important it is.” His eyes were wet with emotion.
Joseph’s face softened “If it bothers you so much, I won’t do it,” he said.
“And will you swear never to do it?”
“No, I won’t swear. I won’t give up my thing to your thing. “Why should I?”
“Because you’re letting evil in,” Burton cried passionately. “Because you are opening the door to evil. A thing like this will not go unpunished.”
Joseph laughed. “Then let me take the punishment,” he said.
“But don’t you see, Joseph, it isn’t only you! All of us will be in the ruin.”
“You’re protecting yourself, then, Burton?”
“No. I’m trying to protect all of us. I’m thinking of the baby, and of Elizabeth here.”
Elizabeth had been staring from one to the other of them. She stood up and held the baby against her breast. “What are you two arguing about?” she demanded. “There’s something in this I don’t know about.”
“I’ll tell her,” Burton threatened.
“Tell her what? What is there to tell?”
Burton sighed deeply. “On your head, then. Elizabeth, my brother is denying Christ. He is worshipping as the old pagans did. He is losing his soul and letting in the evil.”
“I’m denying no Christ,” Joseph said sharply. “I’m doing a simple thing that pleases me.”
“Then the hanging of sacrifices, the pouring of blood, the offering of every good thing to this tree is a simple thing? I’ve seen you sneak out of the house at night, and I’ve heard you talk to this tree. Is that a simple thing?”
“Yes, a simple thing,” Joseph said. “There’s no hurt in it.”
“And the offering of your own first-born child to the tree—is that a simple thing, too?”
“Yes, a little game.”
Burton turned away and looked out over the land, where the heat waves were so intense that they were blue in color and their twisting made the hills seem to writhe and shudder. “I’ve tried to help you,” he said sadly. “I’ve tried harder than Scripture tells us to.” He swung back fiercely. “You won’t swear, then?”
“No,” Joseph replied. “I won’t swear to anything that limits me, that cuts down my activity. Surely I won’t swear.”
“Then I cast you out.” Burton’s hands hid in his pockets. “Then I won’t stay to be involved.”
“Is what he says true?” Elizabeth asked. “Have you been doing what he says?”
Joseph gazed moodily at the ground. “I don’t know:”
His hand arose to caress his beard. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t sound like the thing I have been doing.”
“I’ve seen him,” Burton cut in. “Night after night I’ve seen him come out into the dark under the tree. I’ve done what I can. Now I am going away from this wrong.”
“Where will you go, Burton?” Joseph asked.
“Harriet has three thousand dollars. We’ll go to Pacific Grove and build a house there. I’ll sell my part of the ranch. Maybe I’ll open a little store. That town will grow, I tell you.”
Joseph stepped forward, as though to intercept his resolve. “I’ll be sorry to think I’ve driven you away,” he said.
Burton stood over Elizabeth and looked down at the child. “It isn’t only you, Joseph. The rot was in our father, and it was not dug out. It grew until it possessed him. His dying words showed how far he had gone. I saw the thing even before you ever started for the West. If you had gone among people who knew the Word and were strong in the Word, the thing might have died—but you came here.”