4
PARTISAN REVIEW
through the stalks almost of its own weight. The stalks fell, and I
gathered them together and stood them up and tied them. I used to
wish I could gather my own thoughts together so easily. I began to
notice the way trees grew out of the ground, as if they were aimed
straight, some of them, and going somewhere. I got to noticing all
the different shapes and colors that come out of the ground. I'd never
thought of these things before.
One evening near the end of November we heard steps on the
front porch and somebody opened the door without knocking. We
looked up and saw my father. I knew it was my father from his picture
and because he looked like me. Bran and I were sitting at the table
and Aunt Freda was sitting up on the sofa in the corner where we
had carried her supper tray. We didn't say anything, we just looked
at my father.
I
saw that
his
shirt was dirty and his coat sleeve ripped.
He had on a bright blue tie with some kind of big glass stickpin in it.
He looked dusty, as if he had walked a long way. We had thought
he was dead, but there he stood.
. "Well, don't you know me?" he asked. He was grinning in an
embarrassed kind of way. He put his bag down and batted the dust
from his hat.
Aunt Freda dropped her cup; it broke on the floor. Bran had
looked up with his fork halfway to his mouth when my father came
in. His face turned so red I thought the blood would burst through
the skin, ·then it turned white. He put the fork in his mouth, laid it
down, drank from his glass, and went on eating. I got up and shook
my father's hand because he held it out to "me, then I sat down again.
I couldn't think of anything to say. Aunt Freda said "Bring your
father a plate, Vair." I brought a plate and knife and fork from the
kitchen and my father drew up a chair and sat at table with Bran
and me. He ate a lot. When he helped clear away the dishes after
supper he ate the scraps left on the plates when he thought we weren't
looking.
I made a pallet for him to sleep on in Bran's room. He went to
bed early. I saw him open his bag. There was nothing in it but a
couple of dirty shirts and a pair of worn shoes.
Aunt Freda was patching a pair of Bran's work pants when I
came back in the room. "I don't know," she was saying, "I don't
know ... what do you think? ... he's starving, we can't turn him
out."
It turned cold that night, and for two days it rained. It was just
as if my father had brought the winter. We didn't go out of the house
except to feed the stock and to milk. One room in the house had a
stove in it. We lived and ate in that room, leaving it only to sleep at
night. The stove was the last thing we thought of before we went to
