Then He Goes Free
Jessamyn West
While her mother and father awaited the arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Kibbler, who had called asking to speak to them “about Cress
and Edwin, Jr.,” Mr. Delahanty reminded his wife how
wrong she had been about Cress.
“Not two months ago,” he said, “in this very room you told me you were
worried because Cress wasn’t as interested in the boys as a girl her age should
be. In this very room. And now look what’s
happened.”
Mrs. Delahanty, worried now by Mrs. Kibbler’s message, spoke more sharply than she had intended.
“Don’t keep repeating, ‘in this very room,’” she said, “as if it would have been
different if I’d said it in the back porch or out of doors. Besides, what has
happened?”
Mr. Delahanty took off his hat, which he’d had
on when Mrs. Kibbler called, and sailed it out of the
living room toward the hall table, which he missed. “Don’t ask me what’s
happened,” he said. “I’m not the girl’s mother.”
Mrs. Delahanty took off her own hat and jabbed
the hatpins back into it. “What do you mean, you’re not
the girl’s mother? Of course you’re not. No one ever said you
were.”
“A girl confides in her mother!” Mrs. Delahanty
was very scornful. “Who tells you these things, John Delahanty? Not your mother. She didn’t have any
daughters. Not me. Cress doesn’t confine in anyone. How do you know these
things, anyway, about mothers and daughters?”
John Delahanty seated himself upon the sofa,
legs extended, head back, as straight and relaxed as a
plank.
“Don’t catch me up that way, Gertrude,” he said. “You know I don’t know
them.” Without giving his wife any opportunity to crow over this victory he went
on quickly: “What I’d like to know is, why did the Kibblers have to pick a Saturday night for this call?
Didn’t they know we’d be going into town?”
Like most ranchers, John Delahanty stopped work
early on Saturdays so that, after a quick cleanup and supper, he and his wife
could drive into town. There they did nothing very important: bought groceries,
saw a show, browsed around in the hardware stores, visited friends. But after a
week of seeing only themselves---the Delahanty ranch
was off the main highway---it was pleasant simply to saunter along the sidewalks
looking at the cars, the merchandise, the people in
their town clothes. This Saturday trip to town was a jaunt they both looked
forward to during the week, and tonight’s trip, because of February’s warmer air
and suddenly, it seemed, longer twilight, would have been particularly
pleasant.
“Five minutes more,” said Mr. Delahanty, “and
we’d have been on our way.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mrs. Kibbler we were just
leaving?”
“I did. And she said for anything less important she wouldn’t think of
keeping us.”
Mrs. Delahanty came over to the sofa and stood
looking anxiously down at her husband. “John, exactly what did Mrs. Kibbler say?”
“The gist of it,” said Mr. Delahanty, “was
that…”
“I don’t care about the gist of it. That’s just what you think she said.
I want to know what she really said.”
Mr. Delahanty let his head fall forward, though
he still kept his legs stiffly extended. “What she really said was, ‘Is this
John Delahanty?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ Then she said,
‘This is Mrs. Edwin Kibbler, I guess you remember
me.’”
“Remember her?” Mrs. Delahnty exclaimed. “I
didn’t know you even knew her.”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Delahanty, “but I remember her all right. She came before
the school board about a month ago to tell us we ought to take those two ollas
(wide-mouthed jars used for holding water) off the school grounds. She said it
was old-fashioned to cool water that way, that the ollas looked messy and were
unhygienic (unhealthy).”
“Did you take them off?” Mrs. Delahanty asked,
without thinking. As a private person John Delahanty
was reasonable and untalkative. As clerk of the school
board he inclined toward dogmatism (positive, arrogant declarations of beliefs)
and long-windedness. Now he began a defense of the ollas and the school board’s
action in retaining them.
“Look, John.” said Mrs. Delahanty, “I’m not
interested in the school board or its water coolers. What I want to know is, what did Mrs. Kibbler say about
Cress?”
“Well, she said she wanted to have a little talk with us about Cress—and
Edwin, Jr.”
“I know that.” Impatience made Mrs. Delahanty’s
voice sharp. “But what about
them?”
Mr. .Delahabty threw his feet up toward the
sofa, then bent down and retired his shoelace. “About what
Cress did to him—Edwin, Jr.”
“Did to him!”said Mrs.
Delahnaty aghast.
“That’s what his mother said.”
Mrs. Delahanty sat down on the hassock at her
husband’s feet. “Did to him,”
she repeated again. “Why, what would Cress do
to him? He’s two or three years older than Cress, fifteen or sixteen anyway.
What could she do to him?”
Mr. Delahanty straightened up. “She could hit
him, I guess,” he ventured.
“Hit him? What would she want to hit him for?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Delahanty. “I don’t
know that she did hit him. Maybe she kicked him. Anyway, his mother seems to
think the boy’s been damaged in some way.”
“Damaged,” repeated Mrs. Delahanty angrily.
“Damaged! Why, Cress is too tender-hearted to hurt a
fly. She shoos them outside instead of killing them. And you sit there talking
of hitting and kicking.”
“Well,” said Mr. Delahanty mildly. “Edwin’s got
teeth out. I don’t know how else she could get them out, do
you?”
“I’m going to call Cress,” said Mrs. Delahanty,
“and ask her about this. I don’t believe it for a minute.”
“I don’t think calling her will do any good. She left while I was talking
to Mrs Kibbler.”
“What do you mean, left?”
“Went for a walk, she said.”
“Well, teeth out,” repeated Mrs. Delahanty
unbelievingly. “Teeth out! I didn’t know you could get
teeth out except with pliers or a chisel.”
“Maybe Edwin’s teeth are weak.”
“Don’t joke about this, John Delahnaty. It
isn’t any joking matter. And I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Cress did it or
that that boy’s teeth are out. Anyway I’d like to see them to believe
it.”
“You’re going to,” Mr. Delahanty said. “Mrs.
Kibbler’s bringing Edwin especially so you
can.”
Mrs. Delahnaty sat for some time without saying
anything at all. Then she got up and walked back and forth in front of her
husband, turning her hat, which she till held, round and round on her finger.
“Well, what does Mrs. Kibbler expect us to do now?”
she asked. “If they really are out, that is?”
“For one thing,” replied Mr. Delahanty, “she
expects us to pay for some new ones. And for another…” Mr. Delahanty paused to listen. Faintly, in the distance a car
could be heard. “Here she is now,” he said.
Mrs. Delahanty stopped her pacing. “Do you
think I should make some cocoa for them, John? And maybe some
marguerites?”
“No, I don’t,” said Mr. Delahanty. “I don’t
think Mrs. Kibbler considers this a social
visit.”
As the car turned into the long driveway which led between the orange
grove on one side and the lemon grove on the other to the Delahanty house, Mrs. Delahanty
said, “I still don’t see why you think this proves I’m
wrong.”
Mr. Delahanty had forgotten about his wife’s
wrongness. “How do you mean wrong?” he asked.
“About Cress’s not being interested in
boys.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, you’ve got to be pretty interested in a person—one
way or another—before you hit him.”
“That’s a perfectly silly notion,” began Mrs. Delahanty, but before she could finish, the Kibblers had arrived.
Mr. Delahanty went to the door while Mrs. Delahanty stood in the back of the room by the fireplace
unwilling to take one step toward meeting her visitors.
Mrs. Kibbler was a small woman with a large,
determined nose, prominent blue eyes and almost no chin. Her naturally curly
hair---she didn’t wear a hat---sprang away from her head in a great cage-shaped
pompadour (hairstyle) which dwarfed her face.
Behind Mrs. Kibbler was Mr. Kibbler, short, dusty, soft-looking, bald, except for a fringe of hair about his ears so thick
that the top of his head, by contrast, seemed more naked than mere lack of hair
could make it.
Behind Mr. Kibbler was Edwin, Jr. He was as
thin as his mother, as mild and soft-looking as his father, and to these
qualities he added an unhappiness all of his own. He gave one quick look at the
room and the Delahantys through his thick-lensed spectacles, after which he kept his eyes on the
floor.
Mr. Delahanty closed the door behind the
callers, then introduced his wife to Mrs. Kibbler. Mrs. Kibbler in turn
introduced her family to the Delahantys. While the
Kibblers were seating themselves—Mrs. Kibbler and Edwin, Jr. on the sofa, Mr. Kibbler on a straight-backed chair in the room’s darkest
corner---Mrs. Delahanty, out of nervousness, bent and
lit the fire, which was laid in the fireplace, though the evening was not cold
enough for it. Then she and Mr. Delahanty seated
themselves in the chairs on each side of the fireplace.
Mrs. Kibbler looked at the fire with some
surprise. “Do you find it cold this evening, Mrs. Delahanty?” she asked.
“No,” said Mrs. Delahanty, “I don’t. I don’t
know why I lit the firee.”
To this Mrs. Kibble made no reply. Instead, without preliminaries, she
turned to her son. “Edwin,” she said, “show the Delahantys what their daughter di
to you teeth.”
Mrs. Delahanty wanted to close her eyes, look
into the fire, or find, as Edwin, Jr., had done, a spot
of her own on the floor to examine.
There was an almost imperceptible ripple along the length of the boy’s
face as if he had tried to open his mouth but found he lacked the strength. He
momentarily lifted his eyes from the floor to dart a glance into the dark corner
where his father sat. But Mr. Kibbler continued to sit
in expressionasless silence.
“Edwin,” said Mrs. Kibbler, “speak to your
son.”
“Do what you mother says, Son,” said Mr. Kibbler.
Very slowly, as if it hurt him, Edwin opened his
mouth.
His teeth were white, and in his thin face they seemed very large, as
well. The two middle teeth, above, had been broken across in a slanting line.
The lower incisor appeared to be missing entirely.
“Wider, Edwin,” Mrs. Kibbler urged. “I want the
Delahantys to see exactly what their daughter is
responsible for.”
But before Edwin could make any further effort, Mrs. Delahanty cried, “No, that’s enough.”
“I didn’t want you to take our word for anything,” Mrs. Kibbler said reasonably. “I wanted you to
see.”
“Oh, we see, all right,” said Mrs. Delahanty
earnestly.
Mr. Delahanty leaned forward and spoke to Mrs.
Kibbler. “While we see the teeth, Mrs. Kibbler, it just isn’t a thing we think Crescent would do.
Or in fact how she could do it. We think Edwin must be
mistaken.”
“You mean lying?” asked Mrs. Kibbler
flatly.
“Mistaken,” repeated Mr. Delahanty.
“Tell them, Edwin,” said Mrs. Kibbler.
“She knocked me down,” said Edwin, very low.
Mrs. Delahanty, although she was already
uncomfortably warm, held her hands nearer to the fire, even rubbed them together
a time or two.
“I simply can’t believe that,” she said.
“You mean hit you with her fist and knocked you down?” asked Mr. Delahanty.
“No,” said Edwin even lower than before. “Ran into
me.”
“But not on purpose,” said Mrs. Delahanty.
Edwin nodded. “Yes,” he said. “On
purpose.”
“But why?” asked Mr. Delahanty. “Why? Cress
wouldn’t do such a thing, I know—without some cause. Why?”
“Tell them why, Edwin,” said his mother.
Edwin’s head went even nearer the floor—as if the spot he was watching
had diminished or retreated.
“For fun,” he said.
It was impossible not to believe the boy as he sat there hunched, head
bent, one eyelid visibly twitching. “But Cress would never do such a thing,: said Mrs. Delahanty.
Mrs. Kibbler disregarded this. “It would not
have been so bad, Mrs. Delahanty, except that Edwin
was standing by one of those ollas. When your daughter shoved Edwin over she
shoved the ollas, too. That’s probably what broke his teeth. Heavy as cement and falling down on top of him and breaking up in a
thousand pieces. To say nothing of his being doused with water on a cold
day. And
“What had you done, Edwin?” asked Mrs. Delahanty again.
“Nothing,” whispered Edwin.
“All we want,” said Mrs. Kibbler, “is what’s perfectly
fair. Pay the dentist’s bill. And have that girl of yours apologize to
Edwin.”
Mrs. Delahanty got up suddenly and walked over
to Edwin. She put one hand on his thin shoulder and felt him twitch under her
touch like a frightened colt.
“Go on, Edwin,” she said. “Tell me the truth. Tell me
why.”
Edwin slowly lifted his head. Go on, Edwin,” Mrs. Delahanty encouraged him.
“He told you once,” said Mrs. Kibbler. “Fun. That girl of yours is a big, boisterous thing from all
I hear. She owes my boy an apology.”
Edwin’s face continued to lift until he was looking directly at Mrs.
Delahanty.
He started to speak—but had said only three words, “Nobody ever wants,”
when Cress walked in from the hall. She had evidently been there for some time,
for she went directly to Edwin.
“I apologize for hurting you, Edwin,” she said.
Then she turned to Mrs. Kibbler. “I’ve got
twelve seventy-five saved for a bicycle. That can go to help pay for his
teeth.”
After the Kibblers left, the three Delahantys sat for some time without saying a word. The fire
had about died down and outside an owl, hunting finished, flew back toward the
hills, softly hooting.
“I guess if we hurried we could just about catch the second show,” Mr.
Delahanty said.
“I won’t be going to shows for awhile,” said Cress.
The room was very quiet. Mrs. Delahanty traced
the outline of one of the bricks in the fireplace.
“I can save twenty-five cents a week that way. Toward his teeth,” she
explained.
Mrs. Delahanty took the poker and stirred the
coals so that for a second there was an upward drift of sparks; but the fire was
too far gone to blaze. Because it had not yet been completely dark when the
Kibblers came, only one lamp had been turned on. Now
that night had arrived the room was only partiallylighted; but no one seemed to care. Mr. Delahanty, in Mr. Kibbler’s dark
corner, was almost invisible. Mrs. Delahanty stood by
the fireplace. Cress sat where Edwin had sat, looking downward, perhaps at the
same spot at which he had looked.
“One day at school,” she said, “Edwin went out in the fields at noon and
gathered wildflower bouquets for everyone. A lupine, a poppy, two barley heads,
four yellow violets. He tied them together with blades of grass. They were sweet
little bouquets. He went without his lunch to get them fixed, and when we came
back from eating there was a bouquet on every desk in the study hall. It looked
like a flower field when we came in and Edwin did it to surprise
us.”
After a while Mr. Delahanty asked, “Did the
kids like that?”
“Yes, they liked it. They tore their bouquets apart,” said Cress, “and
used the barley beards to tickle each other. Miss Ingols made Edwin gather up every single flower and throw it
in the wastepaper basket.”
After a while Cress said, ”Edwin has a
collection of bird feathers. The biggest is from a buzzard, the littlest from a
hummingbird. They’re all different colors. The brightest is from a
woodpecker.”
“Does he kill birds,: Mr. Delahanty asked, “just to get a
feather?”
“Oh, no!” said Cress. “He just keeps his eyes open to where a bird might
drop a feather. It would spoil his collection to get a feather he didn’t find
that way.”
Mr. Delahanty sighed and stirred in his wooden
chair so that it creaked a little.
“Edwin would like to be a missionary to
“A medical missionary?” asked Mr. Delahanty.
“Oh, no! Edwin says he’d had to take too micj medicine to ever be willing to make other people do
it.”
There was another long silence in the room. Mrs. Delahanty sat down in the chair her husband had vacated and
once more held a hand toward the fire. There was just enough life left in the
coals to make the tips of her fingers ros. She didn’t
turn toward Cress at all or ask a single question. Back in the dark Cress’s
voice went on.
“He would like to teach them how to play baseball.”
Mr. Delahanty’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“Edwin doesn’t look to me like he would be much of a baseball
player.”
“oh, he isn’t,” Cress agreed. “He isn’t even any
of a baseball player. But he could be a baseball authority. Know everything and
teach by diagram. Thaty’s what he’d have to do. And
learn from them how they paint. He says some of their pictures look like they
jad been painted with one kind of birdfeather and some with another. He knows they don’t
really paint with bird feathers,” she explained. :That’s just a fancy (imaginative idea) of
his.”
The night wind moving in off the Pacific began to stir the eucalyptus
trees in the windbreak. Whether the wind blew off sea or desert didn’t matter;
the long eucalyptus leaves always lifted and fell with the same watery,
surf-like sound.
“I’m sorry Edwin happened to be standing by the olla,” said Mr. Delahanty. “That’s what did the damage, I
suppose.”
“Oh, he had to stand there,” said Cress. “He didn’t have any choice.
That’s the mush pot.”
“Mush pot,” Mr. Delahanty
repeated.
“It’s a circle round the box the olla stands on,” said Cress. “Edwin
spends about his whole time there. While we’re waiting for the
bus anyway.”
“Crescent,” ask Mr. Delahanty., “what is the
mush pot?”
“It’s prison,” said Cress, surprise in her voice. “It’s where the
prisoners are kept. Only at school we always call it the mush
pot.”
“Is this a game?” asked Mr. Delahanty.
“It’s dare base,” said Crescent. “Didn’t you
ever play it? You choose up sides. You draw two lines and one side stands in the
middle and tries to catch the other side as they run by. Nobody ever chooses
Edwin. The last captain to choose just gets him. Because he
can’t help himself. They call him the handicap. He gets caught first
thing and spends the whole game in the mush pot because nobody will waste any
time trying to rescue him. He’s just get caught again,
they say, and the whole game would be nothing but rescue
Edwin.”
“How do you rescue anyone, Cress?” asked her
father.
“Run from home base to the mush pot without being caught. Then take the
prisoner’s hand. Then he goes free.”
“Were you trying to rescue Edwin, Cress?”
Cress didn’t answer her father at once. Finally she said, “It was my
duty. I chose him for our side. I chose him first of all and didn’t wait just to
get him. Only I ran too hard and couldn’t stop. And the olla fell down on top of
him and knocked his teeth out. And humiliated him. But
he was free,” she said. “I got there without being
caught.”
Mrs. Delahanty spoke with a great surge of
warmth and anger. “Humiliated him! When you were only trying to help him. Trying to rescue him. And you were black-and-blue for days
yourself! What gratitude!”
Cress said, “But he didn’t want to be rescued, Mother. Not by me anyway.
He said he liked being in the mush pot. He said…he got there on purpose…to
observe. He gave me back the feathers I’d found for him. One was a road-runner
feather. The only one he had.”
“Well, you can start a feather collection of your own,” said Mrs. Delahanty with energy. “I often see feathers when I’m
walking through the orchard. After this I’ll save them for
you.”
“I’m not interested in feathers,” said Cress. Then she added, ”I can get
two bits and hour anytime suckering trees(removing buds from trees) for Mr.
Hudson or cleaning blackboards at school. That would be two fifty a week at
least. Plus the twelve seventy-five. How much do you
suppose his teeth will be?”
“Cress,” said her father, “you surely aren’t going to let the Kibblers go on thinking you knocked their son down on
purpose, are you? Do you want Edwin to think that?”
“Edwin really doesn’t think that,” Cress said. “He knows I was rescuing
him. But now I’ve apologized—and if we pay for the new teeth and everything,
maybe after a while he’ll believe it.”
She stood up and walked to the hall doorway. “I’m really tired,” she
said. “I guess I’ll go to bed.”
“But Cress,” asked Mrs. Delahanty, “why do you
want him to believe it? When it isn’t true?”
Cress was already through the door, but she turned back to explain. “You
don’t knock people down you are sorry for,” she said.
After Cress had gone upstairs Mrs. Delahanty
said, “Well, John, you were right, of course.”
“Aright? Asked Mr. Delahanty, again forgetful.
“About Cress’s being interested in the
boys.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Delahanty. “Yes, I’m afraid I
was.”