Brush arrived at the McGraw House in Oklahoma City on the same evening. The following morning he set about putting in a hard day’s work. He called on all manner of school superintendents, principals, and heads of departments. He drove out to a reformatory and was persuaded to address the assembled student body.
At eight o’clock in the evening he knocked at Blodgett’s door. For a moment there was the sound of voices in loud altercation, then Blodgett came out into the hall and closed the door behind him.
“Say, Brush,” he said, “about tonight. I just want to ask you to be a little careful. You know. My cousin’s kind of nervous. Just keep off subjects that might upset her. You get the idea.”
“All right. I’ll try and remember.”
“Yeah. She’s had a lot of fuss lately. She only got a divorce last month, and you know how it is.”
“She’s a . . . divorced woman?” asked Brush, softly.
“Yeah, yeah. So you see!” and Blodgett winked with fraternal complicity. Then he opened the door and announced, with nervous cordiality: “Well, Marge, look who’s here.”
Margie McCoy was sitting on the bed, her feet on a newspaper, her back against the iron bedstead. Her face was still sullen. She held a tall glass in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. She acknowledged Brush’s greeting by only the slightest movement of her eyes, after which she continued gazing implacably at the wall before her.
The conversation proceeded with the greatest difficulty. Brush went carefully, not sure which subjects were likely to unnerve a woman who had recently passed through the harrowing experience of obtaining a divorce. After forty minutes of this discomfort he rose to go.
“Well, thank you very much for letting me come around,” he said, backing to the door. “I’d better be going. I still have some reports to draw up, and . . .”
To the surprise of both the men, Mrs. McCoy spoke: “What’s the hurry? What’s the hurry?” she asked, irritably. “Sit down. Don’t you smoke, either? No wonder you feel like a fool, just sitting and talking. Remus, give’m some ginger ale, anyway. That way he can at least hold something in his hand, my-God!”
A second attack was made on conversation. Brush let fall the news that he had been arrested and taken to jail since last he saw them. He was encouraged to tell the story and was soon recounting his conversation with Mr. Southwick. He explained the theory of voluntary poverty. Now Mrs. McCoy’s eyes were resting on him in astonishment. At the end of his exposition the same question rose simultaneously to the lips of both the listeners.
“What would you do if you lost your job?” they asked.
“Well, I don’t know exactly. I never really thought about it. I guess I’d find something. Leastways, it doesn’t seem very likely. I keep getting raises all the time. They even make me nervous.”
“The raises make you nervous?” asked Mrs. McCoy.
“Yes.”
“What would you do if you got sick?” she asked.
“What are you going to do when you get old?” asked Blodgett.
“I already explained that to you,” he said.
Mrs. McCoy solemnly put her feet on the floor and, placing her hands on her hips, she leaned forward: “Listen, baby,” she said. “Let me look at you. Are you trying to kid me?”
“Why, no, Mrs. McCoy. I’m serious.”
She just as solemnly returned to her position on the bed. “Well, something’s the matter,” she muttered, looking distrustfully into her glass.
“Buddy,” said Blodgett, “why did you say that it made you nervous to get raises?”
“Because hardly anybody else’s getting raises these days. I think everybody ought to be hit by the depression equally. You see?”
Mrs. McCoy said dryly: “Sure I see. Your ideas aren’t the same as other people’s, are they?”
“No,” said Brush, “I should think not. I didn’t put myself through college for four years and go through a different religious conversion in order to have ideas like other people’s.”
“I see. Now answer me another: When you get married what are you going to use for money?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“How do you know your wife’ll be willing to throw away all your money every month, and how do you know she’ll be willing to look forward with a big thrill to the poorhouse, like you do?”
“Oh, she will,” said Brush.
“You’re engaged, are you?” asked Blodgett.
“I’m . . . I’m practically engaged. Well, I don’t know whether I’m engaged or not.”
“Is she a . . . she’s a nice girl, eh?”
“I don’t know that, either—not for sure.” Brush glanced at Blodgett. “I’d better not talk about it,” he said. “It’s all a part of that big mistake I made. You said you didn’t want me to mention things like that tonight.”
“I can stand anything now,” said Mrs. McCoy. “After the big poverty idea I can stand anything. The other morning was different. I couldn’t stand it on an empty stummick, that’s all. Come on and tell us what happened.”
Again Brush looked at Blodgett.
“Sure,” said Blodgett, “Go ahead.”
“I know it’s a pretty intimate thing to tell people . . . people that I’ve only known a short time. But you’ll see how badly I need advice on it. Before I begin I think I ought to explain to you how I feel about women.”
“Just a minute, buddy,” said Blodgett, trimming a cigar. “You’re sure you can stand it, sister?”
“What did I tell you? I can stand anything.”
Brush looked up in surprise. “There’s nothing hard to stand about this. I just wanted you to know that until this thing happened I was looking everywhere for a wife. Really, everywhere. It was almost the only thing I thought about. You see, I’m twenty-three years old; in fact, that was my birthday when you met me yesterday.”
“Well, well!” said Blodgett. “Many happy returns of the day.”
“Thank you a lot . . . and I should have settled down long ago . . .”
“I see.”
“. . . and founded an American home.”
“What?”
Brush leaned forward earnestly. “You know what I think is the greatest thing in the world? It’s when a man, I mean an American, sits down to Sunday dinner with his wife and six children around him. Do you know what I mean?”
“Six, eh?”
“Yes, and the more the better. Well, that’s the thing I want most of all, so everywhere I go I keep looking for a wife. And every now and then I used to think I’d found her. For instance, I was singing in church one day—I guess I never told you I had a very good tenor voice—”
“No.”
“Well, I have; so when I come to a town where I have to stay over Sunday I go to the minister of a church and offer to sing at the service. It makes the service more inspiring. And one day I was singing and I saw a girl in the congregation that looked perfect to me. I was singing ‘The Lost Chord,’ and when I came to the loud part you can imagine how I put everything into it. After service everybody came up and asked me to go home to dinner with them. That’s what always happens. And the father of this girl came up and asked me to go home with them. All during dinner I sat by her and I thought she was the finest girl I’d ever seen in my life, even though she didn’t say hardly a word. But all the time I was afraid something would spoil it. I brought the conversation around to evolution and I found she was all right there; they didn’t believe any of that about monkeys. Well, you can guess what happened.”
“No,” said Blodgett, “I don’t know as I can.”
“We were sitting around after dinner and she asked her brother for a cigarette.”
“You don’t say!”
“Her mother was pretty disappointed in her and said so, but she wasn’t as disappointed as I was. I guess she wanted to show off, with a singer in the house, that she wasn’t just a village girl. That was in Sulphur Falls, Arkansas. Now I can never hear about Sulphur Falls without a funny feeling in my stomach.”
“That’s quite a story,” said Blodgett. “Eh, Margie?”
“Did she ever know what she lost?” asked Mrs. McCoy.
Brush smiled. “It wasn’t only me she lost, Mrs. McCoy,” he said.
Blodgett broke in hurriedly. “Do they ever refuse to let you sing?”
“Sometimes they give me a test, but after a few notes they know it’s all right.”
“You ought to be able to pick up some handy money, that way.”
“No, I don’t believe in taking money for it. Once in Plata, Missouri, a man came up and offered me two hundred dollars to sing at the Elks’ convention in St. Louis, but I couldn’t. I would have done it for them free of charge, only my route didn’t go anywhere near St. Louis at that time. That’s another of my theories. A voice like mine is just a gift, that’s all. It’s not to anybody’s credit to have a fine voice. It’s just a thing of nature, like any other. Niagara Falls and the caves of Kentucky and John McCormack are just gifts to the public. It’s like strength. I happen to have that, too. I’ll help you move your trunk or your piano all day, but I wouldn’t take money for it. Do you see?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. McCoy, “I see something. Only, when are you going to get back to the other story?”
“It’s a hard story to tell. It was in the vacation before my senior year at college——”
“What college was that?” asked Blodgett.
“Shiloh Baptist College, in South Dakota, a very good college. Summers I used to cover Missouri, Illinois, and some parts of Ohio, selling the Children’s Encyclopedia. I walked and hitch-hiked from one place to another. And one day I got lost. I must have been about twenty miles from Kansas City, sort of southwest. It got dark and began to rain. So I stopped at a farmhouse to ask if I could sleep in the barn. The farmer and his wife took me into their kitchen and gave me some coffee and bread and butter. They said they were Methodists and I could see there were three or four beautiful daughters moving around; but I couldn’t see them very well because they stayed out of reach of the lamplight. But I noticed them and they all seemed to be quiet, beautiful girls. I said to myself that I’d make a good note of the house in the morning and come back again some day. Then I thanked them and said good night and went to the barn and went to sleep.” Here Brush took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “From now on it’s kind of delicate,” he said, “and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I guess you’ve both been married.”
“Yes,” said Blodgett, “we know the worst.”
“I woke up in the pitch dark and heard a girl’s voice laughing, and then later it was half laughing and half crying. She asked me if I wanted something to eat. Well, I can always eat something—”
“Have an apple?” asked Mrs. McCoy.
“No, thank you, not now . . . We had a long talk. She said she wasn’t happy on the farm. I asked her what her name was and she said ‘Roberta.’ Anyway, it sounded like Roberta. And that’s important, because maybe it was Bertha. And one day in the newspaper I saw that there was a girl’s name called Hertha. It might have been any one of those names.”
“What does it matter what her name was?” cried Mrs. McCoy.
“You’ll see. Anyway, she cried and I tried to comfort her. So I decided she was the person I was going to marry.”
There was a pause; the others looked at him inquiringly.
He repeated with emphasis, “So I decided she was the person I was going to marry.”
Blodgett leaned forward and asked in a low, shocked voice, “You mean you ruined the girl?”
Brush turned pale and nodded.
“Give him a drink!” cried Mrs. McCoy, abruptly, “Give him a drink, for Gawd’s sake!”
“I don’t drink,” said Brush.
“Remus, you give’m a drink,” she cried, still more violently. “He’s gotta take it. I can’t stand seeing him act like a big baby. Now you drink that down and stop being a fool.”
Brush accepted the glass and made a pretense of sipping at it. To his surprise, a weak sweetish taste lingered on his lips.
“Hurry up,” said Mrs. McCoy. “How does it end?”
“That’s about all,” he continued. “I tried to tell this girl I’d be back the next day to marry her, but she ran back into the house. So I went down the road in the rain and walked all night. I walked for hours, planning what I’d say to her father and everything. But, you know, I’ve never been able to find that house again. I’ve been up and down every road that side of Kansas City a dozen times. I asked everybody about a farmhouse with daughters that were Methodists. I talked to all the R.F.D. postmen, but it was no good. Now you know why I can’t think of being a minister.”
There was a pause.
“And you love the girl, huh?” asked Blodgett.
Brush was displeased with the question. “It’s not important if I love her or not,” he said. “All I know is that I’m her husband until she or I dies. When you’ve known anybody as well as that, it means that you can never know anybody else as well as that until one of the two of you dies.”
Mrs. McCoy leaned out of the bed and peered at the glass in his hand vindictively. “You’re not drinking that drink!” she cried. “Drink it up. Don’t you fool with it. Drink it up.”
“I don’t drink, Mrs. McCoy.”
“I don’t care whether you do or don’t. I tell you to.”
Blodgett himself was alarmed at her intensity. He raised one eyebrow expressively as a signal to Brush who took another swallow. Mrs. McCoy watched him belligerently. Then again she lowered her feet solemnly to the floor. She said, slowly, “Do you want advice?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Naw, naw. I’m asking you, do you want some advice?”
“Yes.”
“From who? From me?”
“Yes.”
“Then listen! Now listen! Since you’ve tried as hard as you can; since you can’t find the girl; since the girl let herself in for it, anyway—see?—since all these things are so, forget it. You’re clear. You’re free. Begin again. Begin all over.”
“I can’t do that. Don’t you see I’m married already?”
“What are you talking about? You’re not married. You have no license. You’re not married.”
“Mrs. McCoy, if you say I’m not married you’re just quibbling with words, because I certainly am.”
Mrs. McCoy stared at him wrathfully, then, shaking her head, returned to her former position.
Brush continued with lowered eyes: “Anyway, it’s perfectly clear to me. And maybe it means that I can’t settle down and found an American home. Sometimes I think I may get so discouraged that I may fall sick—or worse. Because that’s all sickness is—discouragement. That’s one of my theories, too. I have a theory that all sickness comes from having lost hope about something. If they find out they’re not as good as they thought they were—in business or in anything else—or if they’ve done wrong and can’t undo it, then they gradually fall sick. They really want to die. They haven’t any real interest left in wanting to see the sun come up on the next day. They think they want to live, but secretly they don’t. Anyway, I’m going to think it through next November when I get my vacation. In the meantime I’m a good example of it. Look at me; I’m so worried about this that I got influenza last Spring. I’ve never been sick in my life. And another thing—if you’ll excuse my mentioning it—I never used to have to take laxatives; but now I have to take laxatives all the time. I know what causes it, too. It means that I don’t want to live unless I can settle down and have an American—”
At this point Margie McCoy became distraught. “Can’t you stop him? Name-a-God, is this going on forever! Seems like we been here hours talking about this one thing. Change the subject. I’m going nuts. And you there, take another drink. No-o-o, none of those bird-sips.”
Brush took another swallow and then rose. “I guess I’d better be going,” he said. “I have to leave on a two o’clock train for Camp Morgan. Thank you for letting me come to see you.”
He stood lamely in the middle of the room, waiting to see whether Mrs. McCoy intended shaking hands with him. She rose and strolled towards the door, swinging her hips as she went. She leaned against the wall by the door. The two men looked at her in some trepidation.
“Now, listen! Listen to me!” she said, emphatically. “You make me sick. Where do they get yuh, your the’ries and your ideas? Nowhere! Live, kid,—live! What’d become of all of us sons-a-bitches, if we stopped to argue out every step we took? Stick down to earth.”
Brush looked at her with furrowed brow and said in a low voice, “It seems to me I live.”
To the astonishment of both men, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “I mean, look around you. We’ll be dead soon. Thinking doesn’t change anything. It only makes you twice as blue.”
“It doesn’t make me blue,” he said.
Mrs. McCoy turned back angrily into the room and lit another cigarette. “Oh, go to hell!” she said.
Blodgett followed Brush into the hall.
“I wish she’d at least shaken hands with me,” said Brush.
“Don’t get her wrong,” said Blodgett, confusedly, “That’s the way she is when you first know her. She’ll be all right when you know her better.”
Brush returned slowly to his room. Before beginning to pack, he stood at the window and looked out into the rain. “I talk too much,” he said to himself in a whisper. “I must watch that. I talk too damn much.”