One of Ours, Willa Cather [feel good fiction books txt] 📗

to her natural grace and lightness of movement, to the gentle, almost wistful attitudes of body in which he sometimes surprised her. When he came in from work and found her sitting on the porch, leaning against a pillar, her hands clasped about her knees, her head drooping a little, he could scarcely believe in the rigidity which met him at every turn. Was there something repellent in him? Was it, after all, his fault?

Enid was rather more indulgent with his father than with anyone else, he noticed. Mr. Wheeler stopped to see her almost every day, and even took her driving in his old buckboard. Bayliss came out from town to spend the evening occasionally. Enid’s vegetarian suppers suited him, and as she worked with him in the Prohibition campaign, they always had business to discuss. Bayliss had a social as well as a hygienic prejudice against alcohol, and he hated it less for the harm it did than for the pleasure it gave. Claude consistently refused to take any part in the activities of the Anti-Saloon League, or to distribute what Bayliss and Enid called “our literature.”

In the farming towns the term “literature” was applied only to a special kind of printed matter; there was Prohibition literature, Sex-Hygiene literature, and, during a scourge of cattle disease, there was Hoof-and-Mouth literature. This special application of the word didn’t bother Claude, but his mother, being an old-fashioned schoolteacher, complained about it.

Enid did not understand her husband’s indifference to a burning question, and could only attribute it to the influence of Ernest Havel. She sometimes asked Claude to go with her to one of her committee meetings. If it was a Sunday, he said he was tired and wanted to read the paper. If it was a weekday, he had something to do at the barn, or meant to clear out the timber claim. He did, indeed, saw off a few dead limbs, and cut down a tree the lightning had blasted. Further than that he wouldn’t have let anybody clear the timber lot; he would have died defending it.

The timber claim was his refuge. In the open, grassy spots, shut in by the bushy walls of yellowing ash trees, he felt unmarried and free; free to smoke as much as he liked, and to read and dream. Some of his dreams would have frozen his young wife’s blood with horror⁠—and some would have melted his mother’s heart with pity. To lie in the hot sun and look up at the stainless blue of the autumn sky, to hear the dry rustle of the leaves as they fell, and the sound of the bold squirrels leaping from branch to branch; to lie thus and let his imagination play with life⁠—that was the best he could do. His thoughts, he told himself, were his own. He was no longer a boy. He went off into the timber claim to meet a young man more experienced and interesting than himself, who had not tied himself up with compromises.

IV

From her upstairs window Mrs. Wheeler could see Claude moving back and forth in the west field, drilling wheat. She felt lonely for him. He didn’t come home as often as he might. She had begun to wonder whether he was one of those people who are always discontented; but whatever his disappointments were, he kept them locked in his own breast. One had to learn the lessons of life. Nevertheless, it made her a little sad to see him so settled and indifferent at twenty-three.

After watching from the window for a few moments, she turned to the telephone and called up Claude’s house, asking Enid whether she would mind if he came there for dinner. “Mahailey and I get lonesome with Mr. Wheeler away so much,” she added.

“Why, no, Mother Wheeler, of course not.” Enid spoke cheerfully, as she always did. “Have you anyone there you can send over to tell him?”

“I thought I would walk over myself, Enid. It’s not far, if I take my time.”

Mrs. Wheeler left the house a little before noon and stopped at the creek to rest before she climbed the long hill. At the edge of the field she sat down against a grassy bank and waited until the horses came tramping up the long rows. Claude saw her and pulled them in.

“Anything wrong, Mother?” he called.

“Oh, no! I’m going to take you home for dinner with me, that’s all. I telephoned Enid.” He unhooked his team, and he and his mother started down the hill together, walking behind the horses. Though they had not been alone like this for a long while, she felt it best to talk about impersonal things.

“Don’t let me forget to give you an article about the execution of that English nurse.”

“Edith Cavell? I’ve read about it,” he answered listlessly. “It’s nothing to be surprised at. If they could sink the Lusitania, they could shoot an English nurse, certainly.”

“Someway I feel as if this were different,” his mother murmured. “It’s like the hanging of John Brown. I wonder they could find soldiers to execute the sentence.”

“Oh, I guess they have plenty of such soldiers!”

Mrs. Wheeler looked up at him. “I don’t see how we can stay out of it much longer, do you? I suppose our army wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket, even if we could get it over. They tell us we can be more useful in our agriculture and manufactories than we could by going into the war. I only hope it isn’t campaign talk. I do distrust the Democrats.”

Claude laughed. “Why, Mother, I guess there’s no party politics in this.”

She shook her head. “I’ve never yet found a public question in which there wasn’t party politics. Well, we can only do our duty as it comes to us, and have faith. This field finishes your fall work?”

“Yes. I’ll have time to do some things about the place, now. I’m going to make a good icehouse and put up my