Who Has Seen the Wind Read online

  “I feel more like playing inside,” Brian was saying to his mother, “so I’m playing inside.” He did not bother to tell her that Artie was waiting for him.

  “Better try the back verandah then. Den’s next for cleaning. Take your crayons with you.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Just stay out of Mother’s way.” She gave him an affectionate pat on the rump as he passed her on his way to the living-room he must cross to reach the back verandah. In the breakfast-room he passed his grandmother at the sewing-machine, bent over and threading the needle.

  He played store with God on the trunk in the glassed-in back verandah. He sold R.W. some shoes, a toothbrush, three rolls of toilet paper, and soda. R.W. had gas on His stomach something awful.

  R.W. in turn sold Brian ice cream, balloons, and a hundred chocolate bars with nuts in them. Brian gave half of them to R.W., who promptly ate them. He then bought more soda.

  At the dinner-table that evening, Brian bowed his head, his hands held palms together against his breastbone, as his father said Grace. It was a different Grace from the “Bless the food — bless the men — Jesus’ sake — Amen,” which his father let him say sometimes.

  “For what we are about to receive at this time, O Lord, make us truly thankful.”

  “R.W.,” said Brian upon the heels of his father’s deep “Amen.”

  “Just wait until your father’s said Grace,” his mother admonished him gently. “Your plate, Mother.”

  Mrs. MacMurray handed her plate to her daughter. She sat on the opposite side of the table to Brian, her erect back to the dumb waiter that was next to the door opening from the breakfast-room to the living-room and the dining-room. This rope and pulley arrangement was seldom used now that the stove had been put into the breakfast-room and the kitchen below converted into a laundry-room. It had been out of bounds to Brian ever since he had placed the baby in it the spring before. By standing upon a chair he had managed to lower his brother to the cellar, but the thing had stuck when he had tried to haul it up, and he had been forced to leave his brother half-way up the dark shaft, suspended over the soft water cistern that echoed his terror-stricken cries alarmingly.

  Tonight was the baby’s first meal with them, and he sat in his high chair between his grandmother and his father. His illness had given his usually pale face a waxen quality; it was white with the stark whiteness of egg white. He looked far from fragile, however, for he was a chunk of a child with fat legs like hams, his face not as plump as it had been, but still round and full. Orange-red hair was like froth on the top of his head, and his blue eyes were almost wild with devilishness.

  “Ye need not give me any of the carrots, thank ye, Maggie,” said Brian’s grandmother. “We’re a wee bit short on material — ye should have read what the pattern called for.” She had been working on a suit for Brian.

  “You’ll need all the cloth before you’re through,” said Brian’s mother. “Put your plate down, Brian.”

  “You needn’t give me any of the carrots, Mother.”

  “Carrots are good for you, Son,” she said as she heaped his plate.

  “They make ye grow,” his grandmother said. “I’m fond of them myself —”

  “You can have all of mine.”

  “— but they disagree with me.”

  “Carrots are bloody.”

  “Where did you pick that up!” That was his father, large at the end of the table, his coat off, his white shirt with its turned-back sleeves setting off the rich mahogany of his hair.

  “Nowhere,” said Brian. “Beets bleed. Carrots got blood — they’re coloured too.”

  “Does Artie use words like that?” his mother asked him.

  “Don’t they bleed really?”

  “Don’t say it any more, Spalpeen,” his father told him. He said it with some relief now that he knew it was not another of Sean’s expressions that the boy had picked up. There had been a couple of sizzlers after the last visit to Sean’s farm.

  “Grass has got green blood,” Brian was saying. “You get it all over your pants.”

  “It isn’t nice,” said Mr. O’Connal returning to his potatoes.

  “Why?”

  “It just isn’t.”

  “Then, I don’t have to eat my carrots?”

  Gerald O’Connal looked down the table to his wife. He saw what might have been amusement in her dark eyes, and with a slight shrug of his shoulders and a nod of his head in Brian’s direction, he indicated that it was time for her to take over. He was fond of his sons with a consistently deep emotion that he knew made him helplessly indulgent; he had often blessed the vein of iron that enabled his wife to deal with them more firmly than he.

  “Eat your carrots,” said Brian’s mother. Brian picked up his fork.

  “Isn’t he the comical one, though!” exclaimed the grandmother. Butter and jam were smeared around the baby’s mouth and on the tip of his nose. He wore an oilcloth bib decorated with kittens and a great deal of the egg he’d had for his dinner. He was holding out what had once been bread and butter to his grandmother.

  “Dere — brea’!”

  “He’s an O’Connal though,” she said.

  “’onnal dough,” echoed the baby, and held out his mug. The grandmother took it.

  “The other’s MacMurray to the gizzard.”

  The baby threw his spoon. He had very bad manners, decided Brian.

  When dinner was over and his father had smoked his pipe, he said, “Shall we have our bath together tonight, Spalpeen?”

  “Oh, yes!” cried Brian. “Let’s!”

  His mother warned them not to splash as they had the time before, when water had ruined the paper on the living-room below. Brian and his father promised that they wouldn’t.

  Except for his waist, Brian undressed himself; people couldn’t unbutton waists, for they did up behind. He sat facing his father, his back to the taps, the water up almost to his armpits. It did not come up nearly as far on his father, not to the red hair curling on his chest.

  When Brian stood up, his father soaped him well, then suggested that they had time for the pink swan. By pushing one’s hand up and down, ripples could be made that would send the swan back and forth in the tub.

  After Brian had said his, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” and had been told by his mother that he was a sweet-smelling boy, he lay waiting to go to sleep. The baby cried about something in his parents’ room below. R.W. God slid down one of the moon stripes slanting through Brian’s window. He climbed up to the front of the bed and teetered there a moment.

  Brian said, “Good night, R.W.”

  * * *

  The sun poured brightly through his window; sparrows were shrill and pigeons hiccoughed on the small projection of roof that separated the second and third floors. For a moment Brian lay watching the small boys on his wall paper. They were all fishing with bent rods. As he laced his shoes, he remembered R.W.

  At breakfast his grandmother told him twice not to bolt his food. He set his empty glass on the table, wiped off the milk moustache, and said, “Come on, R.W.”

  By the hedge that ran along the side of the house away from Sherry’s he took God from his pocket and placed him on a clean poplar leaf, and the leaf was on the lawn, and God was nice to play with, and he was going to make a song — one about God.

  “Now God is on a leaf — and the leaf is on a lawn — on a lawn — on a lawn — and He’s got cuff links — He’s got them on — on the lawn — and they are gold — they are gold cuff links — and they’re yellow — so are the dandelions — and that’s how God is — with gas on His stomach — with gas on His stomach — so He can belsh if He wants to.”

  He played all morning with R.W., and at lunch when his father said, “Amen,” Brian said, “R.W.,” again.

  “What’s this?” his mother said.

  “He was argy-bargyin’ about something — about R.W. after his breakfast this morning,” the grandmother said.

&n
bsp; “What is it, Spalpeen?” asked his father.

  “A little man,” said Brian. “Forbsie has the mumps.”

  “Has he?” said Mr. O’Connal. They ate their lunch.

  * * *

  It was unfortunate that afternoon was the one chosen by Mrs. O’Connal to hang out a washing. It was unfortunate too that she picked that time when R.W. should have a gas attack necessitating a particularly large belch.

  “Don’t you ever let me hear you doing that again!” Her eyes were startled as she stood by the line with one of the baby’s small sweaters in her hand.

  Brian looked up to her. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “But — I just heard you! Don’t tell stories, Son.”

  “It wasn’t me,” insisted Brian. “R.W. — like Gramma has gas on her —”

  “You wouldn’t want to hurt your grandmother’s feelings — making fun of her.”

  “But — I didn’t —”

  “Brian! Get into the house!”

  She made him stay in his room until his father came home. He was allowed down to dinner, his father walked back up the stairs with him.

  As he pulled up the covers, his father sat on the edge of the bed.

  “What’s this about fibs, Spalpeen?”

  “But, I didn’t.”

  “Your mother says —”

  “God.”

  “What!”

  “God did it.”

  “Just a minute —”

  “Mr. R.W. God. I call him R.W. like you do with ‘Judge’ Mortimer — E.L. and Mr. Hoffman — S.F. and like that.”

  “I see,” said his father as though he did not see at all.

  “We play by the hedge. He ate a shovel full of soda, and —”

  “But —”

  “Baking. A person belshes after a shovel full of soda. Gramma belshes when she’s only had half a spoonful.”

  “All right. Just — could you give me a short description of — of R.W.?”

  “He rides a vacuum cleaner.”

  “Does He!”

  “Yes. Sometimes a sewing-machine too, but mostly vacuum cleaners — with rubber boots on.”

  “Oh.”

  “White.”

  “Go on.”

  “A pipe — gold cuff links — he recites.”

  His father fumbled a moment with the cuff of his shirt.

  “He’s up to my knee.”

  “What does He recite?”

  “‘Casey At the Bat’, and ‘When Father Rode the Goat’.”

  “As well as I do?”

  “He can’t remember sometimes — all the things.”

  “I see.” For several long moments, Brian’s father was silent, his eyes on the bed quilt. He cleared his throat. “Spalpeen, God is — He isn’t — it’s not the thing for little boys to think that God’s a — a Gentleman who rides vacuum cleaners. It’s not right.”

  “Why?”

  “It — He might not like you to — you know you can’t ride a vacuum cleaner.”

  “An angel — piggy back?”

  “Nor an angel piggy back. You know that as well as I do.” Brian said nothing as his father waited for an answer. “It’s sort of silly, isn’t it?” Brian still said nothing. “You don’t really talk to Him, do you?”

  Brian’s dark eyes, steady on his father’s face now, were disconcerting. They said that it was not silly, that he did see Him, that he did talk to Him.

  “We’ll just forget about Him. Say your prayers and go to sleep.”

  As his father listened, Brian said, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”

  “— bless Mother and Daddy and Gramma and the baby and Uncle Sean and Ab and Forbsie — ‚ not Artie — the — the —” He cast about for someone to take a place in the gap that Artie Sherry had left — “the boy on the prairie.” He looked up to his father. “Is that all?”

  “Better stick Artie back in — who’s the boy on the prairie?”

  “I saw him once — he’s always on the prairie — he likes it.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes. I’m a prairie boy — aren’t I?”

  “That’s right.” Mr. O’Connal got up. “Good night, Spalpeen.”

  “I didn’t say, ‘Amen’.”

  “Didn’t you? Well — go ahead.”

  “Amen,” said Brian fervently, “R.W.”

  FOUR

  * * *

  The puppy’s feet were spraddled out, the grass brushing his fat stomach. He was red. He was white. He was Brian’s.

  “He’s the jeezliest thing.”

  “What’s that?” Brian asked.

  “I dunno,” said Forbsie, his fat face bent over the pup. “I just made it up.”

  “His ears flop,” pointed out Artie Sherry.

  “But they will stick up,” Brian assured him. “He’ll get older. He’s a fox-terrier. He’s a fox-terrier pup.”

  “I like his belly,” said Forbsie.

  “He has a very pretty inside to his mouth,” Brian said. “Freckles — black ones. Look.” The puppy tried to get away from him, but he managed to hold its jaws apart for the other boys to see. “There’s tiny, tiny waves,” he explained to them. “They’re hard ones. You stick your finger in and you’ll feel them. I’ll let you feel.”

  Forbsie and Artie felt.

  “He’s got a candy tongue,” said Forbsie as he wiped his fingers on the grass. “I wish he was mine. I’d like one. How do you get them?”

  “I got him a funny way. My dad didn’t want me to play with a Friend. I don’t play with R.W. any more.”

  “Who’s R.W.?” asked Artie.

  “Somebody my dad didn’t like.”

  “Why?” asked Artie.

  “It’s not right for people to have friends riding vacuum cleaners with rubber boots on and gold cuff links.”

  “Maybe, if my — my dad would get me a fox-terrier puppy if I told him I was playing with R.W.,” said Forbsie. “Where did he get him, anyway?”

  “He just brought him home for dinner.”

  “Where do they get pups?” wondered Forbsie.

  “I dunno,” said Artie.

  The puppy’s attention was taken by a white butterfly that went scattering past him; he galloped awkwardly after it. An empty match box caught his eye; half-way to it he was attracted by a dandelion. He snarled at it.

  “He don’t seem so bright to me,” Artie said.

  “He is so! He’s very smart. He doesn’t do it on rugs now.”

  “Is he house broke?” asked Artie.

  “He doesn’t do it on rugs.”

  “Is he house broke?”

  “Just on bare floors.”

  “Do you rub his nose into it?” asked Artie.

  “Uh — uh!”

  “You’re s’posed to.”

  “I don’t care! Nobody’s rubbing my dog’s nose into anything! I’ll fix her!”

  “Your maw?” asked Forbsie.

  “Gramma. He gets under her feet all the time. He chewed up a lot of squares she was saving for a log cabin quilt. He coughed them all up in her room. She says he’s yappy.”

  The puppy was yapping shrilly now — at Artie’s boot. He stopped to look under his stub tail. He sat up. He yawned. He turned his head over his shoulder, saw Brian, ran to him with his stern wiggling, and climbed up into his lap. Brian tried to hold his head out of reach, but the puppy licked at his nose and tried to get his ear to chew.

  It was a shame that he liked to chew things. It was a shame that the grandmother’s dresses were so close to the floor and that they rustled. Several times the puppy had got his teeth into the hem and had leaned back tugging. When she had scolded him, he had simply growled puppy growls at her. It was bad enough, she said, having one leg in a brace without having a pup try to upend her every time she turned around.

  * * *

  Three weeks after Brian had got his dog, the grandmother’s patience had almost reached the breaking point. She was crotchety one day at lunch-time when she was unab
le to find the pillow she usually sat on. “I’ve not used it all morning,” she said. “I left it on my chair right here in the breakfast-room. It is not here now.”

  “Well,” said Brian, “the pup didn’t get it.”

  “I did not say that he did. But if he did not, has it grown legs and walked away?”

  “Four or two?”

  “Perhaps it’s on your rocker, Mother, in your room.”

  “It is not there, I tell you.”

  “How many legs?” said Brian again. “Four or two?”

  “Enough of your cheek, young man! Maggie, you should not let him talk to me like —”

  “I’ll just take a look in your room,” said Mr. O’Connal.

  When Mr. O’Connal had brought the pillow downstairs from her room, she did not tell Brian she was sorry. Throughout the meal she complained of the dog. She had never known a smellier dog; as she said this, she lifted her head and sniffed loudly. Brian’s mother asked him to leave the table and wash his hands.

  Just as dessert was brought to the table, the grandmother’s stomach rumbled distantly, ending on a high, singing note much like the ricochet sound of a bullet. It left Brian open-mouthed.

  “’Tis my nervous indigestion,” she excused herself. “The dog has done it.”

  “Has the pup been chewing that too?” said Brian’s father jokingly.

  The grandmother chose to be hurt. “Go ahead. Poke fun at an old woman while ye still have time for it. Do it now, for I will not be with ye long.”

  Mr. O’Connal apologized immediately, but the harm had been done. To mollify her mother’s feelings, Mrs. O’Connal announced that from now on the dog was not to enter the house; he was to sleep outside — in the garage.

  That night, with Brian’s help, Mr. O’Connal tied the puppy with a length of binder twine in one corner of the garage. The puppy twisted and turned in frenzy, tugging at the twine around his neck. He bit vainly at it, jumped from it again and again. Then he sat and cried pitiful, squeaking cries that made Brian wish he could tie his grandmother out in the garage.