Evening Star Newspaper, November 17, 1929, Page 106

12 TR T == THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHI Four DrREAMS OF These O. Henry Memorial Award Stories, Each Complete in The Star’s Sunday Magazine, Are Selected From the Best American Fiction of the Past Year. Another Unusual Story Will Appear in The Star’s Magazine Next Sunday. RAM PERKINS was not my grand- mother. I had good reason to be- lieve that she had died and received Christian burial a half century be- fore I first set foot in Haddock Har- bor. Neither were the dreams of my dreaming; 80 my connection with her was always remote end impersonal. Nevertheless, I came to know through her all the horror and the fascination of a perturbed spirit. For those who may not know the harbor, let me explain that it bites into the northern stretch of Maine coast. Summer resorters are still in the minority, and peace and beauty serve as perpetual handmaidens to those few exhaust- ed, nerve-racked city folk who have found refuge there. I was there only a few days when the immortal essence of Gram Perkins con- fronted me. Perkins is a prevailing name at the harbor. A Perkins peddles fish on Tuesdays and Fridays. A Perkins keeps the village store, in whose windows are displayed those amazing knickknacks somebody or other creates out of sweet grass, beads, birch bark and sealing wax. A Perkins is framed daily in the general deliv- ery window of the post office, and his brother drives the one village jitney. It was Cal Perkins of tender years who indi- rectly introduced me to the mysterious dreamer of the dreams. Cal took me on my first scaling of the blueberry ledges. Standing like Balboa on the Peak of Darien he swept a hand inland and said: “Somewhars, over thar, lives Zeb Perkins. Hain’t never laid eyes on him myself, but pa says you doan't never want to hear him tell of them four dreams he’s had of Grand- mother Perkins. Woan't sleep ag'in fur a month ef you do,” a tradition at the harbor as the “Three Hairs of Grandfather Knowital” are in Eastern Europe—only with a difference. Na- tives in the Balkans pass on their story for the asking; whereas in Haddock Harbor they evade all questions leading to Gram Perkins, while their tongues travel to their cheeks. NE day Cal took me to the cemetery and showed me the Perkins menument. It was a splendid affair in two shades of marble with a wrought-iron fence and gateway, and all about it were the headstones marking the graves of the separate members of the family. 1 read the inscription on Gram Perkins' stone: Sara Amanda Perkins Beloved wife of Benjamin Perkins, Sea Captain 1791-1863 May she rest in perfect peace! “Wall, she didn’t!” Cal hurled the words at me as he catapulted through the gate, shaking all over like the aspen back of the lot. I caught a final mumbling: “Never aim to stop nigh her. Pa says I might git to dreamin’, t00.” Here was distinctly unpleasant food for thought. Already she had a firm grip on my waking hours, and there was no relish to the idea of her haunting my sleeping ones. The manner in which she pcssessed the town was astounding. She lurked wherever one went, popping out with the most casual remark when one was buying a pound of butter or a pint of clams. And yet, for all the daily allusions and innuendoes, one never got at the heart of the matter; one never rightly understood why Gram Perkins was and yet was not five feet below the sod. As for the dreamer of the dreams, one never found him clothed in anything more solid than words. I questioned Peddling Perkins one Friday when he came to our house with the makings of a chowder. “Tell me,” I began, “where does Zeb Perkins live and what relation is he to you?” He paused in his weighing. The scales hung from a rafter in his cart and worked somewhat mysteriously. He might have been weighing out the exact amount of relationship he cared to claim. “Fur as I can make out he’s sort of a third cousin.” “Did he ever tell you about those dreams?” “No, ma’am!” He fixed me with a forewarn- ing eye. “What’s more, he hain’t never goin’ to. I seen Scrip Perkins—time he told him. Scairt! Never seen a feller so shook up in his life. Didn’t take off his clothes and lay good abed fur a week. No, ma’'am!” I questioned the post office Perkins one day: “Do you happen to know what Zeb Perkins dreamed about his grandmother?” “Dreamed! Gosh, what didn't he dream? Think of anything a sensible woman, dead and buried 50 years, stands liable to do and you wouldn't have the half of it.” He finished snapping his teeth together to signify that he had gone as far with those dreams as he In- tended to go—for the present, anyway. A few days later I took the matter to the village store. I even bought a chain and ear- ‘rings of sealing wax to make my going seem less mercenary. “Those dreams,” I ventured, “how did they happen and do they belong entirely to Zeb?” “They do, God be praised!” Whereupon the storekeeper retired behind the necklace for a good two minutes, and then partially emerged to whisper, “No one's layin’ any claim at all to those dreams but Zeb. And I've always thought myself if he hadn’t had them, no knowing what he mightn't have had.” FOR. two recurring Summers I stayed fixed at this point. And then came a Spring when I slipped off early to the harbor for trout. The Perkins who drives the jitney met me at the wharf as I stepped from the Boston boat. “Hain’t a Summer resorter nor a bluejay here yit,” was his greeting. “Weather’s right smart—nips ye considerable.” And it did. The water in the brooks was so cold my fingers re- mained stiff and blue all day. But the fishing was good, and in the end I caught something more than trout. A morning came with a southeast wind. Up to that I had lost almost no flies, so I started out with little extra tackle. The middle of the morning found me a mile deep in an alder swamp, bog on one side and piled-up brush on the other, It was what you would call dirty fishing, and in half an hour I had lost every fly and leader I had with me. There was nothing to do but put up my rod and go back. In an effort to strike higher ground I came into what was new country to me. A trail led up toward where I judged the blueberry ledges would be, and climbing for a mile or so I suddenly broke through into a clearing and a wagon road. A grayish house stood beside the road. A thin spiral of smoke curled out of the chimney. On a split stake, even with the road, teetered a sign reading: HAND MADE TROUT FLIES FOR SALE HERE. I attacked the door without mercy. A mo- ment’s knocking brought the sound of stirring from within, and the door finally creaked open, displaying the oddest cut of a little man in a wheel chair. He blinked at me like some great nocturnal bird, and soon there was an intelli- gent wag of the head—more at my clothes than at me. “Come in. Doan’t gin'rally git lady fisher- men. Hearn tell they git ’em down to the harbor lookin’ jes’ as he-ish as the men.” He rolled his chair backward from the door, beck- oning me to follow. I could hear him repeat- ing the last of his words under his breath as if by way of confirmation: “Yes, sir, looking jes’ as he-ish as the men.” He led me into a room that might have been jdentified even in the uttermost corner of the world as having been conceived and delivered in the State of Maine. An airtight stove cen- tered it, and on its pinnacle stood a nickel- plated moose at bay. There were half a dozen pulled-in rugs; fruit pulled in; red, yellow, and purple roses pulled in; a rooster pulled in; and other things that defied the imagination. The two window sills were gay with geraniums and begonias. Crayon portraits paneled the walls, and between each portrait hung a hair wreath. Fronting the door was a shower of coffin plates, strung together with a fish line. A large colored print of a clipper hung over the mantel, while all about hung trophies of the South Seas—strings of shells and beads and corals. But the most amazing exhibit was the feathers; peacock, egret, flamingo, pheasant, turkey and cock tails, yellowhammer and blue- jay wings, breasts, crests and what not. The work bench was littered with tiny feathers, partridge and guinea fowl, and spools of bright silk. He brushed all these aside and reached underneath to a drawer, bringing out a handful of trout flies. It took no close scrutiny to tell their exquisite workmanship. “Pick out what ye want. Swamp back yon- der jes' eats 'em up, doan it?” And he smiled an ingratiating, toothless smile. I made my selections slowly, studying the little man more than the flies,. His head was as bald and pink as a baby's. His lips were tremulous, and his eyes showed that pale blue opacity of the very old or very young. It was his hands that held me confounded. They were twisted like bird's claws. How they could have ever taken wisps of feather and fine lengths of silk and wound them into the perfect semblance of tiny aerial creatures was more than I could conceive. He caught at my won- dering and with a burst of crowing laughter he held the claws closer for inspection. “Handsome, hain’t they? Cal'ate I work ’em steady as most folks werk a good pair. Can't stand wet nor cold no better 'n Gram Perkins could in hern. Good days she was the smart- est knitter in the couniy.” RAM PERKINS “And jes' that minute thar come a regular whale of a ham- merin’ and the doors of the hearse bust open. Thanr was Gram—top of her own coffin, peekin’ down low at me and beckonin® for me to come and git her.” SO here was another Perkins. I aimed my habitual question at him, expecting no bet- ter results. “Tell me, do you know anything about those four dreams?” He sat a moment, motionless, in what one might have termed a vainglorious silence. He sucked his lips in and out over those vacant gums as if he found them full of flavor; then he suddenly burst into the triumphant crow of a chanticleer. “Yes m'am! Cal'ate I do kif8w them dreams—seein’ I dreamed ’'em. I be Zeb Perkins!” He said it with as sweet an unction as if he had announced himself King of the Hejaz. In a flash the room stood re- vealed anew. It spoke aloud of Sara Amanda Perkins, beloved wife of Benjamin Perkins, sea captain; of his clipper, of the relics of his voy- ages, of her handiwork in rugs and wreaths. The very begonias might be slip-grandchildren of the ones she had planted. Here, indeed, was a stage set for those dreams. Here sat Zeb Perkins, playwright and stage manager, pick- ing excitedly at his pink head, eternally ready to ring up his curtain, He caught my eye on the wreaths. “Them little tow-headed fergit-me-nots be- longed to her first son as died a baby. She set a terrible store by him. The black in them susans come from her sister Ida, my great- aunt Perkins. See them coffin plates. Ye'll see every one of them was copper, nickeled over, every one but Gram’s. Hers was solid.” There was a wealth of information conveyed in that last word. I had been standing until now. One of Zeb's claws waved itself away from the coffin plates to a chair: “Set, woan't ye? Ye'll see them rockers under ye are worn as flat as sledge runners. ‘That was Gram's chair; and we wore them rockers off luggin’ her 'round. She was all crippled up, Gram was, same as me; only in them days there warn't no wheel chairs.” The chair was all Zeb claimed. There was no more rock to it than to a dray sledge. From the chair his eyes flew to the crayon portraits. “Look at them! Look at Marm—then look at Gram. Why, there was nary a thing Gram couldn't do, for all her crippled-upness. Bake a pie, fry a batch o’ doughnuts, clean up the buttry. But Marm seems like she was born fretty and tired. Made ye tired jest to watch her travel from the sink to the cook stove. She'd handle a batch o’ biscuits like she never expected to live to see ’em baked. Jes’ lookin’ at 'em, can’ ye make out a difference?” 1 did and I could. In spite of everything the artist had done to obliterate all human expres- sions he had mastered the single point of differ- ence. One face sagged utterly, the other looked out with sharp alert eyes on a world that in- terested her immensely. There was a grim humor about the mouth, and & firmness that spoke a challenge even at the end of a century. “I tell ye,” Zeb's eulogy was gathering mo- mentum. “We boys set & terrible store by Gram, She was cuter and smarter tied to that chair than Marm was on two good legs—han’s to match ’em. Golly! How sick boys git bein’ whined at. Didn’t make no odds what we done —good or bad—Marm al'ays whined, but Gram —she stood by like she’d been a boy herself. She'd beg us off hoein’ fer circus and fair days and slip us dimes for this or that. Cal'ate she’s slipped us enough nickels and dimes to stretch clean to the upper pasture. Pasture! Golly! When we was up thar, hot days, hayin’, she'd al'ays mix us a pitcher o’ somethin’ cool—cream o’ tartar water or lemon and m'lasses. When she had it ready she’'d take a stick and tick- tack on the wind’y. She could whistle, too; whistle through them crooked fingers o' hern like a yeller-hammer. She'd whistle whenever she wanted to be fetched anywhars; then one of us boys would come runnin’ and heave her to wheresomever she aimed to go—kitchen to butt'ry—butt'ry to settin’ room—settin’ room to shed.” Zeb stooped here and illustrated. He put two of his crooked fingers to his mouth and shrilled out a thin, wailing note as eery as 3 banshee's. “That's the way she done it,” he continued. “And Marm would fuss and fret and say she didn't see why the Lord 'lowed a little crippled- up body like Gram’s to stay so chuck full o spunk. Some days she git sort o' vengeful, Marm would, and tell Gram she’d better quiet down decent, or more'n likely she'd never rest quiet in her grave after she died.” A HUSH fell on the room. There was a bale- ful light shimmering through Zeb’s dull eyes, his claws beg: a nervous intertwining. “Wall . . .” he broke the silence at last, “Gram died. Night afore she died seems like she got scairt. She grabbed us boys one after another and made us all promise we wouldn’t bury her twell we were good and sure she was dead. ‘Keep me five days—promise me that,” she kept a- sayin’. And we promised. Recollect it didn’t seemq to me then as how Gram could die—so full of smartness and spunk. Even after old Doc Coombs come and pronounced her, seemed like she'd open her eyes any minute and ask us boys to lug her somewhars. ’Stead o’ that she lay so quiet seemed like I could hear Dooms~ day strike.” The air about us became suddenly super- charged with something. Was it that ravenous desire for life that’must have consumed Gram Perkins? Under their glass domes the hair wreaths seemed to move as if fanned by a breath. The feathers about us swayed. The rooster in the pulled-in rug seemed to pulse with