A VIEW OF
THE
WOODS
-483
"And black is white," the old man piped, "and night is day!"
The bulldozer passed below them. With their faces about a
foot apart, each held the same expression until the noise had receded.
Then the old man said, "Walk home by yourself. I refuse to ride a
Jezebel !"
"And I refuse to ride with the Whore of Babylon," she said
and slid off the other side of the car and started off through the
pasture.
"A whore is a woman!" he roared. "That's how much you
know!" But she did not deign to tum around and answer him back,
and as he watched the small robust figure stalk across the yellow–
dotted field toward the woods,
his
pride in her, as if it couldn't
help itself, returned like the gentle little tide on the new lake-all
except that part of it that had to do with her refusal to stand up
to Pitts; that pulled back like an undertow.
If
he could have taught
her to stand up to Pitts the way she stood up to him, she would
have been a perfect child, as fearless and sturdy-minded as anyone
could want; but it was her one failure of character.
It
was the one
point on which she did not resemble him. He turned and looked
away over the lake to the woods across it and told himself that in
five years, instead of woods, there would be houses and stores and
parking places, and that the credit for it could go largely to him.
He meant to teach the child spirit by example and since he had
definitely made up his mind, he announced that noon at the dinner
table that he was negotiating with a man named Tilman to sell the
lot in front of the house for a gas station.
His daughter, sitting with her worn-out air at the foot of the
table, let out a moan as if a dull knife were being turned slowly
in her chest. "You mean the lawn!" she moaned and fell back in
her chair and repeated in an almost inaudible voice, "He means the
lawn."
The other six Pitts children began to bawl and pipe, "Where
we play!" "Don't let him do that, Pa!" "We won't be able to see
the road!" and similar idiocies. Mary Fortune did not say anything.
She had a mulish reserved look as if she were planning some business
of her own. Pitts had stopped eating and was staring in front of him.
His plate was full but his fists sat motionless like two dark quartz
