THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER
59
the door. The door was locked. She kept on sobbing.
They sat at the foot of the ash. The seed keys paddled in
the night breeze.
Steve tried his goosequill. He tried his corncob. He
wasn't comforted. The hard man with his moist nose and curly
hair waited for Murf to speak. But Murf was too busy with
the toad.
Steve had gone thru many women as thru a fence, but every
time he came across a new one he was stumped and terrified.
He said, "She talks like a whore."
Murf twanged like a jew's harp. "It's this depression.
Lots of women, straight as a shingle, had to take on with men.
Two trades got hurt bad. They ain't fixed codes for them yet.
Barbering and whoring. A man shaves himself and bulls his
own fist."
"Human nature, it sure changed."
"Human nature's the same. People get set against each
other like fighting cocks. Hard times digs a pit for them.
Republicans against Democrats, and you don't know whom to
put money on. Read the papers, Stevey."
The old blacksmith was the only one who read the papers.
Evenings he would read over his cider until the print would
swarm over him like carrion flies.
"Sure," said Steve. "With Mule, it's this way. It ain's
only hisself, he can't forget Slim in the asylum jail. That woman
dosed him up. It went to his head. He can't forget it."
"That's
it.
Yet that there little hotbox was only earning a
living for herself. You got to consider that. Some of them
big shot farmers along the river and up on Gun Hill, I heard
the boss's fat sister say so, they hired housegirls and egged them
on and salted them around for the hired men. Fine girls was
forced that way. How the hell did they keep all them foreign
hired men they got from Castle Garden? But then if a man
ain't got it, he goes crazy; if he's got it, he goes crazy. Only
the more a man you be the less happy in all ways. It's an ache
always. When you're born you fight and wrestle to get out.
Soon after, you start bawling for it. And the rest of the days
of your life, you get into all sorts of scrapes because of it. Seems
like human nature was built by guess and by God, not by square
and level."
The tractor exploded suddenly in the machine shed. The
bed jangled in the girl's room. Murf groaned and crept to his
