Lee went quickly out of the kitchen. He sat in his room, gripping his hands tightly together until hestopped choking. He got up and took a small carved ebony box from the top of his bureau. A dragonclimbed toward heaven on the box. He carried the box to the kitchen and laid it on the table betweenAbra’s hands. This is for you, he said, and his tone had no inflection.She opened the box and looked down on a small, dark green jade button, and carved on its surfacewas a human right hand, a lovely hand, the fingers curved and in repose. Abra lifted the button out andlooked at it, and then she moistened it with the tip of her tongue and moved it gently over her full lips,and pressed the cool stone against her cheek.Lee said, That was my mother’s only ornament.Abra got up and put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek, and it was the only timesuch a thing had ever happened in his whole life.Lee laughed. My Oriental calm seems to have deserted me, he said. Let me make the tea,darling. I’ll get hold of myself that way. From the stove he said, I’ve never used that word—neveronce to anybody in the world.
There was a nodding of heads in the kitchen, and only Tom sat rocklike and brooding.Tom, wouldn’t you be willing to take over the ranch? George asked.Oh, that’s nothing, said Tom. It’s no trouble to run the ranch because the ranch doesn’t run—never has.Then why don’t you agree?I’d find a reluctance to insult my father, Tom said. He’d know.But where’s the harm in suggesting it?Tom rubbed his ears until he forced the blood out of them and for a moment they were white. I don’t forbid you, he said. But I can’t do it.George said, We could write it in a letter—a kind of invitation, full of jokes. And when he got tired of one of us, why, he could go to another. There’s years of visiting among the lot of us. And that was how they left it.
You may thank God you didn’t want to be an actor, Tom, because you would have been a very bad one. You worked it out at Thanksgiving, I guess, when you were all together. And it’s working smooth as butter. I see Will’s hand in this. Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.I wasn’t in favor of it, said Tom.It doesn’t sound like you, his father said. You’d be for scattering the truth out in the sun for me to see. Don’t tell the others I know. He turned away and then came back and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. Thank you for wanting to honor me with the truth, my son. It’s not clever but it’s more permanent.
Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick.
Samuel glanced at him. That’s right, he said. Set your teeth in it. How we do defend a wrongness! Shall I tell you what you do, so you will not think you invented it? When you go to bed and blow out the lamp—then she stands in the doorway with a little light behind her, and you can see her nightgown stir. And she comes sweetly to your bed, and you, hardly breathing, turn back the covers to receive her and move your head over on the pillow to make room for her head beside yours. You can smell the sweetness of her skin, and it smells like no other skin in the world—
The little engine roared and then stopped. Adam sat back for a moment, limp but proud, before he got out. The postmaster looked out between the bars of his golden grill. "I see you've got one of the damn things," he said. "Have to keep up with the times," said Adam. "I predict there'll come a time when you can't find a horse, Mr. Trask.""Maybe so."They'll change the face of the countryside. They get their clatter into everything," the postmaster went on.
I can just see it all over again. You'll stay around a a year or so and then you'll get restless and you'll make me restless. We'll get mad at each other and then we'll get polite to each other-and that's worse. Then we'll blow up and you'll go away again, and then you'll come back and we'll do it all over again."Adam asked, "Don't you want me to stay?" "Hell yes," said Charles. "I miss you when you're not here. But I can see how it's going to be just the same.
A war always comes to someone else. In Salinas we were aware that the United States was the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. Every American was a rifleman by birth, and one American was worth ten or twenty foreigners in a fight. Pershing’s expedition into Mexico after Villa had exploded one of our myths for a little while. We had truly believed that Mexicans can’t shoot straight and besides were lazy and stupid. When our own Troop C came wearily back from the border they said that none of this was true […] Somehow we didn’t connect Germans with Mexicans. We went right back to our own myths. One American was as good as twenty Germans. This being true, we had only to act in a stern manner to bring the Kaiser to heel. He wouldn’t dare interfere with our trade--but he did. He wouldn’t stick out his neck and and sink our ships--and he did. It was stupid, but he did, and so there was nothing for it but to fight him. The war, at first anyway, was for other people. We, I, my family and friends, had kind of bleacher seats, and it was pretty exciting. And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also that somebody else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn’t true either. The dreadful telegrams began to sneak sorrowfully in, and it was everybody’s brother. Here we were, over six thousand miles from the anger and the noise, and that didn’t save us […] The draftees wouldn’t look at their mothers. They didn’t dare. We’d never thought the war could happen to us. There were some in Salinas who began to talk softly in the poolrooms and the bars. These had private information from a soldier--we weren’t getting the truth. Our men were being sent in without guns. Troopships were sunk and the government wouldn’t tell us. The German army was so far superior to ours that we didn’t have a chance. That Kaiser was a smart fellow. He was getting ready to invade America. But would Wilson tell us this? He would not. And usually these carrion talkers were the same ones who had said one American was worth twenty Germans in a scrap--the same ones.
I think I can, Lee answered Samuel. I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now—don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there—the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world—and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel? And what do you think of my Oriental patter, Mr. Hamilton? You know I am no more Oriental than you are.
They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit, and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. I don’t know whether it was a divine stupidity or a great faith that let them do it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow. They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while. It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units—because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.
Seems to me you put too much stock in the affairs of children. It probably didn’t meananything.Yes, it meant something. Then he said, Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts ofpeople suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?Maybe you’re right, said Adam.It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, said Lee, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.And memory.Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed against us.