Rough-Hewn

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Nevertheless she stopped taking things out, and there was a scramble and things put in any old way, with a good deal of laughing and funning from Father and Mother, and finally with Mother and Neale sitting on the lid, Father in his shirt sleeves strapped and locked it. Then while they were eating supper, the expressman drove up (only an hour late, no, not even quite an hour late, Neale thought), and took the trunk away, and now Neale felt they were going.

He lay awake that night thinking of the coming adventure, his heart beating faster, and then it was morning, and Mother was shaking him and getting him into his clothes. A hurried breakfast on lukewarm oatmeal. They went outside and got into a coupé standing there. Father and Mother sat on the back seat, and Neale on the little front seat you had to unfold. Then jog, jog, they went along Griffith Street down the curlycue road, the horse's feet going clatter on the cobblestones. Then jog, jog, jog again till at last they stopped and got out. They had come to the ferry.

After they were on the ferry-boat, Father and Mother always waited so that Neale could see the deck-hand pull down the gates that closed the end of the boat and take out the iron hooks that held her fast to the dock. Then the whistle blew, and the boat started, leaving the dock looking as though a giant had bitten a half-circle out of it. Father walked with him out to the front deck, where, holding to his wide-brimmed sailor hat, Neale watched the waves and tug boats, and the gulls flapping about. Father made him look at the city ahead, and pointing out a building with a gold dome, told him that it was the World Building, and the highest in the city. Neale looked, found it of no interest and went back to his waves and gulls, which stirred something of the quiver and wonder the wharves made him feel.

When the boat got across, it went smash into the piles and slid along into the dock, where men hitched it fast with iron hooks and pulled the hooks tight by turning a wheel around. Neale always noticed just how such things were managed, and Father always gave him plenty of time to look.

Then up went the gates and off went everybody. Outside they got into a horse-car. After a while the horse-car began to run through a long, white-washed cellar, and Father explained (just as he had last year and the year before that), that he could remember when the trains used to be pulled through that tunnel by horses. At the other end of the tunnel they all got out once more, and now, at last, you were really getting quite "warm," for this was the railway station.

After Father had bought the tickets and checked the baggage, they got on the train, and Father and Mother talked for a while, till Father said, with a long breath, "Well, it might as well be soon as late," and kissed Mother and she kissed him.

Until Neale was a pretty big boy, Father always stooped and kissed him too. But Neale felt that this was quite a different sort of kiss, and he noticed too, that after it, Father always kissed Mother again, and held his cheek for an instant close to hers. But after this he always walked right away, quietly, turning around once or twice to wave his hat at them, his face as composed as that of any man in the crowd coming and going beside the train.

Mother let Neale settle things in the train, making no comment as he fussed over it, putting the satchel up in the rack, and then deciding that it would be better to have it down where he could put his feet on it, arranging his coat and her golf-cape over the back of the seat and then remembering the hook between the windows. Then the train started. A smoky tunnel, a scraggly belt of half-city—and then the real country. Neale never called anything the real country unless there were cows in the fields.

He was always astonishingly glad to see it, and stared and stared till his eyes ached, and drooped shut, and he had a nap, hunched up with his feet on the seat. When he woke up there was more real country, and finally they got there.

There was Grandfather Crittenden waiting for them, with the team and the three-seater, only the two back seats were out to make room for the big trunk. This was something like living! Grandfather Crittenden let him hold the lines. He remembered—how he remembered—every step of the eight miles, every hill, every house and barn and big rock, till finally they drove into the yard, got out, were kissed, and went up to the same room as last year, with its rag-carpet and painted yellow bed. Mother washed his face very hard in the cold water from the big white pitcher, there was supper of fried ham and scrambled eggs and soft rolls, and cherry pie—and that was all a tired little boy could remember that night.