Partisan
Review
~ Anvil·
MARCH
1936
The Golden
Harvest
JOSEPHINE HERBST
FRED RIEGEL lived at the crossroads in a very
small, two-story house. One fork led over the hill to
the wild back country, where the farms were poor
and deer-hunting good, and the other turned sharply
through the holler past the summer places of city
folks to the church and graveyard.
Fred lived alone. A few years back, his aunt of
ninety years who was stone blind had lived with him.
Because he drank, the old woman's niece from
Philadelphia used to come and try to take her away.
The aunt was an old maid and would not leave her
nephew, not even after someone stole all their
chickens during one of his sprees. She finally fell
and cut her head while he was off on some jamboree.
The niece came and, seeing the blackening blood on
the old woman's white hair, got in a rage and pack-
ed her off. Fred swore he never wanted to see the
old bitch again, and he went off on a crying jag that
nearly finished
him.
When he came to, his aunt had written from
Philadelphia to keep the oatmeal covered, and how
sorry she was not to have washed the comforter on
his bed. "Be a good boy," she wrote. "You've
a
kind
heart. You're bright and should try to make some-
thing of yourself for the sake of your poor father
and mother, and not drink any more."
For the sake of his dead father and mother, and
because he really believed he had something in him,
Fred had aspired to make something of his life for
some time. He wanted to be useful and to be looked
up to, and he didn't know where to put his strength.
It was a little late in the day for aspirations. His
hair was getting pretty grey. The framed photo-
graphs of his father and mother, hanging side by
side in the upstairs of his house, were already ter-
ribly old-fashioned. Fred's father had had· some
military post in the German army, and his mother
had been a German lady. The father's chest was
decorated, and he had imitation Kaiser Wilhelm
moustaches. His mother wore a Kaiserin pompadour
and the resigned, housewife expression of mingled
sorrow and duty that had been so characteristic of
the wife of the ruler. Not many people in the vil-
lage had seen the photographs. Few would have ap-
preciated them, Fred said, when he did finally favor
a visitor.
He was modest about his parents, but he believed
firmly in their quality. His belief separated him a
little from everyone in the village. Only his father's
death before the war had saved Fred from the
German army. He had been sent like a package to
this country, to relatives. At that time he had
relatives who were Somebody, but he was handed
over to one of the lesser lights. He had a second
cousin, a woman, singing in opera, and there was a
Congressman from Pennsylvania who belonged to
the same family. As a young fellow Fred had been
proud of these relatives, but as time went by, he
seldom mentioned them. A kind of shame hung over
him for belonging to people who might have helped
him in his struggles and who had not lifted a finger.
About his parents he could maintain pride. They
had failed him only because life had failed them.
They would have expected him to make something
grand of himself in the big, free America. As a boy
Fred had been very handsome, and as a man he
retained most of his good looks. Even after a spree,
he managed to look distinguished, with his greying
hair and his fine profile with the head flung back.
It was sometimes a mystery to the city folks who
had summer places there how Fred came to stay in
the valley. He was better, they said, than the com-
mon garden variety, but in other ways he was not
so good. His holding powers were not so strong.
What was worse, he couldn't learn how to find what-
ever would have steadied him. If a woman might
have been a steadying influence, Fred never found
out. He wasn't sure he wanted marriage, but some-
times when he was beginning to be tight he would
single out someone in the village and tell that person
solemnly that he was going to take a wife.
He was one of the greatest going-to-do-its in the
countryside, and the village folk were foolish
enough to laugh at him for it. Noone read more
than Fred. He was a sucker for every fellow work-
ing his way through college. They used to sic one
another on him, and he'd fall every time. Standing
in the doorway of his house with the cold stove
behind him and a cold loaf of bread hacked on the
table, the sight of a face friendly with the deceit of
wanting to sell something was too great a tempta-
tion. He'd invite the fellow in and listen to his
harangue. If he was especially lonesome, he'd pre-
tend to be a little hard of hearing, so the fellow
would repeat. The sound of people talking a lot of
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