LITMIR.BIZ

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of the enthusiasm he had evinced the night he brought it home kept him silent. He was afraid of what the boy might say, afraid he might put two and two together, so he let it stay, although with his usual caution he had arranged for a trial and would have felt justified in packing it back as soon as the roads had permitted. Illogically, he felt it was all Bill’s fault that he must endure this annoyance.

      That fall, the boy started to high school in Fallon, making the long daily ride to and from town on horseback. He was a good pupil and the hours he spent with his lessons were precious; they made the farm drift away. To his mind, which was opening like a bud, it seemed that history was the recorded romance of men who were everything but farmers. School books told fascinating stories of conquerors, soldiers, inventors, writers, engineers, kings, statesmen and orators. He would sit and dream of the doers of great deeds. When he read of Alexander the Great, Bill was he. He was Caesar and Napoleon, Washington and Lincoln, Grant and Edison and Shakespeare. When railroads were built in the pages of his American History, it was Bill, himself, no less, who was the presiding genius. His imagination constructed and levelled, and rebuilt and remade.

      One beautiful November afternoon, in his Junior year, at the sound of the last bell, which usually found him cantering out of town, he went instead to the school reading-room, and, sitting down calmly, opened his book and slowly read. The clock ticked off the seconds he was stealing from his father; counted the minutes that had never belonged to Bill before, but which now tasted like old wine on the palate. He cuddled down, lost to the world until five o’clock, when the building was closed. He left it only to march down a few blocks to the town’s meager library, where another hour flew past. Gradually an empty feeling in his middle region became increasingly insistent, and briefly exploring his pockets, Bill decided upon a restaurant where he bought a stew and rolls for fifteen cents. Never had a supper tasted so satisfying. After it, he strolled around the town, feeling a pleasant warmth in his veins, a springiness to his legs, a new song in his heart. It was so good to be free to go where he pleased, to be his own master, if only for a stolen hour, to keep out of sight of a cow or a plow. He wondered why he had never done this before.

      It was youth daring Fate, without show or bravado or fear; rolling the honey under his tongue and drawing in its sweetness; youth, that lives for the moment, that can be blind to the threatening future, that can forget the mean past; youth slipping along with some chewing-gum between his teeth and a warm sensation in his stew-crammed stomach, whistling, dreaming, happy; youth, that can, without premeditation, remain away from home and leave udders untapped and pigs unfed; sublime enigma; angering bit of irresponsibility to the Martins of a fiercely practical world. Bill was that rare kind of boy who could pull away from the traces just when he seemed most thoroughly broken to the harness.

      It was ten o’clock before he got his pony out of the livery barn and started for home. Even on the way, he refused to imagine what would happen. He entered the house quietly, as though to tell his father that it was his next move, and setting his bundle of books on a chair, he glanced at his mother. She was at the stove, where an armful of kindling had been set off to take the chill out of the house. She looked at him mysteriously, as though he were a ghost of some lost one who had strayed in from a graveyard, but she said nothing. Bill did not even nod to her. He fumbled with his books, as though to keep them from slipping to the floor when, quite obviously, they were not even inclined to leave the chair. Rose let her eyes fall and then slide, under half-closed lids, until they had Martin in her view. She looked at him appealingly, but he was staring at a paper which he was not reading. He had been in this chair for two hours, without a word, pretending to be studying printed words which his mind refused to register. Martin had done Bill’s share of the chores, with unbelief in his heart. He had never imagined such a thing. Who would have thought it could happen—a son of his!

      His wife broke the silence with:

      “What happened, Billy? Were you sick?”

      “No, mother, I wasn’t sick.”

      Martin was still looking at his paper, which his fists gripped tightly.

      “Then you just couldn’t get home sooner, could you? Something you couldn’t help kept you away, didn’t it?”

      Bill shook his head slowly. “No,” he answered easily. “I could have come home much sooner.”

      “Billy, dear, what did happen?” She was beginning to feel panicky; he was courting distress. “Nothing, mother. I just felt like staying in the reading-room and reading—”

      “Oh, you had to do some lessons, didn’t you! Miss Roberts should have known better—”

      “I didn’t have to stay in—I wanted to.”

      Martin still kept silent, his eyes looking over the newspaper wide open, staring, the muscles of his jaw relaxed. The boy was quick to sense that he was winning—the simple, non-resistance of the lamb was confounding his father.

      “I wanted to stay. I read a book, and then I took a walk, and then I dropped in at the restaurant for a bite, and then I walked around some more, and then I went to a movie.”

      “Billy, what are you saying?”

      Martin, slowly putting down his paper, remarked without stressing a syllable:

      “You had better go to bed, Bill; at once, without arguing.”

      Bill moved towards the parlor, as though to obey. At the door he stopped a moment and said: “I wasn’t arguing; I was just answering mother. She wanted to know.”

      “She does not want to know.”

      “Then I wanted her to know that I don’t intend to work after school any more. I’ll do my chores in the morning, but that’s all. From now on nobody can make me do anything.”

      “I am not asking you to do anything but go to bed.”

      “I don’t intend to come home tomorrow afternoon until I’m ready. Or any afternoon. And if you don’t like it—”

      “Billy!” his mother cried; “Billy! go to bed!”

      The boy obeyed.

      Bill was fifteen when this took place. The impossible had happened. He had challenged the master and had won. Even after he had turned in, his father remained silent, feeling a secret respect for him; mysteriously he had grown suddenly to manhood. Martin was too mental to let anger express itself in violence and, besides, strangely enough, he felt no desire to punish; there was still the dislike he had always felt for him—his son who was the son of this woman, but though he would never have confessed aloud the satisfaction it gave him, he began to see there was in the boy more than a little of himself.

      “Poor Billy,” his mother apologized; “he’s tired.”

      “He didn’t say he was tired—”

      “Then he did say he was tired of working evenings.”

      “That’s different.”

      “Yes, it’s different, Martin; but can you make him work?”

      “No, I don’t intend to try. He isn’t my slave.”

      With overwhelming pride in her eyes, pride that shook her voice, she exclaimed: “Not anybody’s slave, and not afraid to declare it. Billy is a different kind of a boy. He doesn’t like the farm—he hates it—”

      “I know.”

      “He loathes everything about it. Only the other day he told me he wished he could take it and tear it board from board, and leave it just a piece of bleak prairie, as it was when your father brought you here, Martin.”

      “You actually mean he said he would tear down what took so many years of work to build? This farm that gives him a home and clothes and feeds him?”

      “He did, Martin. And he meant it—there was hatred burning in his eyes. There’s that in his heart which can tear and rend; and there’s that which can build. Oh, my unhappy Billy, my boy!”

      “Don’t get hysterical.

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