8
PARTISAN REVIEW
"I would be a cryen," she whispered to herself, "but all the tears is
stuck inside me. All the world is a cryen, and I don't know for why.
And the ghosts may get daddy.
Now he's goen away, but he'll come
back, with somethin sweet but sicklike hangin on his breath, and hit
momma, and start the baby a bawlen. All the world, and I don't know
for why. If it was all a dream, if I could just wake up and daddy be
smilin, and momma laughing, and us playing. All the world a cryen ....
Mebbe daddy'll know why, he knows everything." Some huge question
rose in her, impossible to express, too huge to understand.
She ached
with the question. "I'll ask daddy." The desire came to ask him, to force
him into some recognition of her place, her desire, her emotions.
As Jim Holbrook strode down the dirt street, he heard a fine patter,
patter, and a thin "Pop." He wheeled.
It was Mazie.
"You little brat," he said, the anger he had felt still smouldering in
him. "What're you running away from home for. Get back or I'll skin
you alive."
She came toward him, half cringing.
"Pop, lemme go with you.
Pop, I wanna know, what ....
what makes people a cryen. Why don't
you tell us ghost stories no more, Pop? . . ." The first words had
tumbled out, but now a silence came. "Don't send me home, pop."
The rough retort Jim Hulbrook had meant to make vanished before
the undersized figure of Mazie, outlined so clearly against the cold sun-
set. In some vague way the questions hurt him. "What call's a kid got,"
he thought, "asking questions like that." Though the cramp in his back
from working, lying on his side all day, shot through him like hot needles,
he stopped and took her hand.
"Don't worry your head about those things. Wait'll you grow up."
Pop, you said there was ghosts in the mine, black, not white, so's
you couldn't see them. And they chased a feller, and then when they got
'em, they laughed, but people think it's just the whistle. Pop, they wouldn't
chase you, would they?" The fear was out at least.
"Why," chuckled Jim, "I'd just throw 'em over my shoulder, like
this." He lifted her, swung her over his shoulder, set her down.
"My
right shoulder, or it wouldn't work.
And then I'd pin 'em down with
the crossbar. Now, how 'd you like to ride to town on pappa's horse and
buggy and get served with a sucker."
:l\1azie smiled, but her heart was still sad. "Pop, does the bos~ man
honest have a white shiny tub bigger than you too was in, and he turns
somethin'
and the water comes out? Or is it a story? And does he
honest have a toilet right inside the house? And silks on the floor?"
She held her breath.
