Plowing On Sunday

by Sterling North

1

In the early autumn of 1913 a French flyer looped the loop to the amazement of an incredulous world. More troops were ordered to the Mexican border. In Chicago the Bon Ton girls were the last word in burlesque. Smart horses wore bobbed tails and well-cropped manes. Forty-four thousand eight hundred tons of dynamite tore away the barrier at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal while Shriners cheered. Prime favorites on the piano rolls were "Good-bye Boys," "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" and "You're a Great Big Blue-Eyed Baby." Wheat sold at around ninety cents in Chicago with hogs close to nine dollars. Aunt Martha of the Needle Notes column found that one could cut whalebone to any desired length by warming it first before the fire. German and American yachts raced off Marblehead, and Lieutenant Governor Thomas Morris of Wisconsin told an attentive audience that never again would his fair state become a coaling station for Wall Street, nor a water tank for the Rockefeller and Morgan interests.

But to Peter Brailsford, impatient with his youth; torn with fear of God, of hell, and of sex; romantic, inexperienced, wistful; anxious to get ahead in the world, yet essentially unworldly; intolerant, rebellious, headstrong; filled with hatreds, jealousies, and a morbid interest in death; saddled with concepts of duty, patriotism, and courage which were fatal to millions of his generation; big, clumsy, lovable; obsessed with the idea that he was only a country boy; almost as supersensitive as Sarah and nearly as lusty as Stud; fine, intelligent, mechanically minded, and above all a considerate and good hearted young fellow....

To this healthy but unhappy product of English ancestry, Methodist theology, and the American public school system the tumult of the outer world meant little compared to the tumult within his brain.

Now, striding along Main Street in greasy coveralls, glowering at the Saturday afternoon sun through eyes dark with anger, kicking defiantly through drifts of yellow elm leaves, flaunting rebellion and stubborn pride at every step, he was just a kid coming home from work at the "Trailer" to those he met; but to himself, Peter was quite naturally the center of the Universe.

He would show the world and particularly Mike O'Casey and the front office gang what sort of a boy they had greasing their trailers. He would invent some new and world-revolutionizing trailer which would make them pop-eyed with amazement. And when he had been made vice-president of the company he would call Bud Spillman into his office and dismiss him with great dignity.

Peter told himself that he was talking nonsense and acting like an unbroken yearling. He knew that he should be the happiest boy in the world and should thank God for his good fortune. Nevertheless as he elbowed his way through clots of gossiping farmers whose rigs and Fords lined Main Street he knew that he was far from being happy.

Maybe life in town wasn't so perfect after all. Perhaps after he had taken a crack at this trailer job.... But no. He would never go back to the farm. Not even if he could be thrashing boss every year with twenty men under him. He would stick it out greasing trailers until the day he died. Bud Spillman or anyone else couldn't whip Peter Brailsford.

He stopped before the Bentley Brothers' Hardware store, irrepressibly drawn by the beautiful stag and pearl-handled jack-knives in the window, and remembered the jack-knife he had stolen from a boy at country school and how he had known that God had seen him steal the knife, and how for days he went in constant dread that God would strike him dead for his sin. He still had an overwhelming desire for pearl-handled jack-knives. He remembered how he had thought that eternal damnation was not too great a price to pay for that shining knife, which was as cool and smooth as slippery elm between his fingers.

Looking in at the hardware store window cluttered with milk pails, muskrat traps, fish poles, pitchforks and spades he suddenly caught sight of his own offensive image in the glass: ears that stuck out on either side of his head like sails, a thatch of dark, unruly curls which would never stay combed, big brown calf's eyes which might have graced a Jersey heifer, and pouting lips.

He wondered how anyone could look so ugly. "What you need," he said irrelevantly, "is a good swift kick in the pants." Undoubtedly, with a face like that, he was getting more than he deserved from a most generous world.

He began to count his blessings, unconvinced but hopeful. He was away from the farm at last, had freedom, a job, and a room in town. His third weekly paycheck of twenty-two dollars and fifty cents was in his pocket. He had a girl who some day might give him a kiss, and a dapper little employer, Mike O'Casey, whom he admired beyond all power of expression.

Still he was miserable.

The very eminence of O'Casey was deflating to Peter. How could a country lout with big feet and clumsy red hands ever hope to reach such pinnacles of success? The president of O'Casey Trailers was not only a man of the world, a fine mechanic, an inventor of proven genius, a baritone soloist, and a buck and wing dancer. He was also the most popular and best dressed man in town. Peter bet that nobody in New York's Four Hundred was better looking or a classier dresser.

The boy leaned against the hitching rail and sighed as his hero went roaring past in his big red car with cutout open. Peter wished that Mr. O'Casey would turn and nod, but no such miracle occurred.

Peter asked himself what he was mooning about. But he knew all too well. Bud Spillman, out of all the hundreds of thousands of possible men, had been made his straw-boss at the "Trailer." Peter remembered once when he was going to kill Bud Spillman. He had waited for hours behind the Methodist church with a piece of pipe. He had stood all that he could possibly stand from the bully, had been kicked in the stomach when he was down, had been insulted in the showers before all the other boys, had had his clothes tied in knots in the locker room, and his tennis shoes filled with tacks.

He had stood in the cold behind the Methodist church waiting for Spillman who usually took that short cut home. He had envisioned just how the bully would look when he lay there pale and dead, and he had planned all his own actions: what he would do if he were chased, and where he would jump the freight which was to take him from Brailsford Junction forever. A wishful little song from childhood echoed and re-echoed in his brain:

"Moonlight, starlight,
I guess the bears ain't out tonight."

But Bud had gone home another way.

And now, out of all the possible fellows in Brailsford Junction, Bud Spillman had been made his straw-boss. Bud, his rival for Maxine, and his instinctive enemy since childhood.

Ruthaford S. Spillman, Bud's father, and owner of the biggest livery stable in Brailsford Junction had been one of the twenty backers who had put up money with which O'Casey had built his factory. It had been a snap for Bud to get the job.

Peter's adventure had started so auspiciously that he could scarcely believe this new turn of events. He had come steaming into town sixty miles an hour on his motorcycle, dressed in his best serge suit and wearing his brightest tie. After an hour of agony and anticipation he had been ushered into the awe-inspiring offices of president Mike O'Casey.

"Know anything about trailers?" asked O'Casey.

"No, but I could learn."

"Is that your motorcycle out in front?"

"Yes sir."

"Can you take'er apart and put'er together?"

"You're darned right I can ... I mean, yes sir. And I know all about Fords and thrashing machines."

Mr. O'Casey smiled at the serious, eager young man before him.

"I'm seventeen going on eighteen," Peter said.

"I guess you'll do, Kid."

Peter walked out, floating on air.

He started work the next morning and was temporarily assigned to the paint shop where a shipment of the crude semi-trailers of that day, based on the early Martin patents, were being painted a snowy white for a Chicago milk company. He was clever with a brush and soon acquired the knack of enameling and varnishing without leaving a sag or a brush mark. All went well until the second week when Bud Spillman came to work at the "Trailer." From that moment on Peter was miserable.

"So you wanted a job as a mechanic?" asked Bud. "I'll see what I can do."

Several days later Peter was transferred to the assembly plant where from morning until night he greased trailers and plant machinery. Bud promised to have him cleaning out toilets and spittoons by the end of the month.

To hell with all of them! Some day Brailsford Junction would wake up to the fact that Peter was a genius. They would go around telling anecdotes of his youth, and laugh about the time he quit school, told "Indian Face" Bolton where he could go, and tossed his school books into the creek. He would invent an "equalizer" to take the "whip" out of the action between car and trailer. He would make a half a million dollars and would live in a large house on Shannon's Hill with Maxine Larabee and their many children.

The day began to brighten all about him as he dreamed. The farmers and their wives looked more kindly, the girls more handsome and the men more noble. By the time Peter had reached the Brailsford Junction National Bank he was noticing how blue the sky seemed overhead, how bright the leaves, how keen the wood-smoke in the air. Not even the appearance of the prissy Mr. Clarence Bolton, principal of the Brailsford Junction high school of recent and unpleasant memory could take the sunshine out of this newly discovered Saturday afternoon.

Peter stopped to admire a brace of mallards which Hank Vetter the butcher was just taking from his Ford roadster. Hank said that in his opinion Mike O'Casey was a card and highly worthy of the admiration of every young man in town. In front of the pool hall, men sat on the hitching rail watching the farm girls go by. Cats dreamed happily on piles of fresh vegetables in the grocery store windows. The loafers sitting on the steps of the cigar store spat idly at the wooden Indian.

In Peter's new frame of mind even Old Man Mulroy who was teaching his bow-legged grandson to say "God damn" before a highly appreciative male audience in front of the livery stable, was mildly amusing on this day.

"Dod damn," said the toddler.

The men slapped their thighs and guffawed.

Old Man Mulroy, drooling tobacco juice at the corners of his toothless mouth, grinned slyly.

A job in town. A paycheck in his pocket. The boy whistled gayly as he marched along.

He looked in over the swinging half-doors of the Red Moon Bar and felt that the time would never come when he would be twenty-one and could stand with one foot on the brass rail and drink with the rest of the men. A new and brilliant bock-beer billy goat was charging out of a sign on the back wall. A large red bull, and a superior cowboy rolling a cigarette with one hand advertised a well-known brand of cigarette tobacco.

Peter wished that he dared to smoke on the street. He wished quite violently that he could roll a cigarette with one hand like the superior cowboy in the picture.

He paused before the Palace theater where he examined the bright billboards displaying a serial queen poised in midair between precipice and precipice, another view of the same harassed young woman to whom the villain was touching a torch, while the hero of the affair looked on calmly from his rearing mount.

Life was very full and romantic, thought Peter Brailsford. He realized that he could see every movie that came to Brailsford Junction without making the least impression upon his nearly inexhaustible weekly stipend. He could even buy himself a new suit and some dazzling new ties.

A room of his own, no school work. He could skip church and Sunday School if he wished.

But no, he could not. A momentary cloud passed over his sunny landscape as Peter came abreast of the Dingle Brothers' General Store into which Temperance Crandall was just disappearing. He really liked the fussy creature even if she did make him go to church, knit him wristlets which he dared not wear and equally dared not refuse, brought him soapstones on chilly autumn nights, and saw that his flannel nightgown was warmed before the base burner before he went to bed. But he did wish that she would be a little less curious as to where he went evenings and what time he got in.

Rooms were scarce in Brailsford Junction with the "Trailer" booming. Peter had taken what he could get. He could abide the games of Authors and Flinch played with Temperance and her mother in the latter's upstairs bedroom, with the oil heater making weird patterns of light and shadow on the ceiling, and the kerosene lamp spluttering. But he did not like to be crossquestioned about Maxine Larabee.

"Maxine Larabee!" He rolled the syllables over his tongue and felt the excitement that even her name produced. How delicate and fine and unattainable she was. He felt like a great clumsy oaf beside her. He felt as awkward and shy as the boys in the milling stag corner at the Firemen's Ball.

He only asked to be allowed to watch her from a distance, to wait outside the library hoping that she would speak to him, or to wander disconsolately back and forth before her house, wondering which room was hers, wishing that some marauder might attempt to break in so that he could prove his love by cracking the fellow over the head.

Love-sick and divinely miserable he walked the streets at night listening to the wind in the trees, holding imaginary conversations with his beloved, devising tests and trials for his devotion. Sometimes the sweet pain of his affliction seemed more than he could bear. But when he had a chance to speak to her there was nothing of this he could express. He was apt to be rough and boisterous, or merely shy and dumb.

His emotions could scarcely have been phrased by Shakespeare nor captured in music by Beethoven, yet the most that found utterance was:

"Gee, you look swell tonight."

Coming upon her as he rounded the corner at Main Street and Albion he managed a loud and joyous greeting. But Maxine had no answering shout. She took one look at his greasy coveralls, his blackened hands and face, then turned away. She did not speak as she passed.