[Gutenberg 53650] • Mothers to Men

"Daddy!"The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding ahead."Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely distinguishable back."Climb up," he commanded.The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two steps or three, past the man."Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could-yet. I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I had to talk about it."The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's voice was less like a drowned butterfly."Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?""I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?""It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes-but it sounds like a coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."This, the man understood swiftly, was because her coffin had been black velvet-the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly."Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein' warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked....""My God!" said the man.The child looked up expectantly.