In the grocery the talk still continued among the men upon the cracker barrels who seemed unconscious of the boy’s slinking entrance. Indeed, their talk had sunk. From talking of love and of poets they talked of corn and of steers. Banker Walker, his packages of groceries lying on the counter, smoked a cigar.
“You can fairly hear the corn growing to-night,” he said. “It wants but another shower or two and we shall have a record crop. I plan to feed a hundred steers at my farm out Rabbit Road this winter.”
The boy climbed again upon a cracker barrel and tried to look unconcerned and interested in the talk. Still his heart thumped; still a throbbing went on in his wrists. He turned and looked at the floor hoping his agitation would pass unnoticed.
The banker, taking up the packages, walked out at the door. Valmore and Freedom Smith went over to the livery barn for a game of pinochle. And John Telfer, twirling his cane and calling to a troup of dogs that loitered in an alley back of the store, took Sam for a walk into the country.
“I will continue this talk of love,” said Telfer, striking at weeds along the road with his cane and from time to time calling sharply to the dogs that, filled with delight at being abroad, ran growling and tumbling over each other in the dusty road.
“That Freedom Smith is a sample of life in this town. At the word love he drops his feet upon the floor and pretends to be filled with disgust. He will talk of corn or steers or of the stinking hides that he buys, but at the mention of the word love he is like a hen that has seen a hawk in the sky. He runs about in circles making a fuss. ‘Here! Here! Here!’ he cries, ‘you are making public something that should be kept hidden. You are doing in the light of day what should only be done with a shamed face in a darkened room.’ Why, boy, if I were a woman in this town I would not stand it—I would go to New York, to France, to Paris—To be wooed for but a passing moment by a shame-faced yokel without art—uh—it is unthinkable.”
The man and the boy walked in silence. The dogs, scenting a rabbit, disappeared across a long pasture, their master letting them go. From time to time he threw back his head and took long breaths of the night air.
“I am not like banker Walker,” he declared. “He thinks of the growing corn in terms of fat steers feeding on the Rabbit Run farm; I think of it as something majestic. I see the long corn rows with the men and the horses half hidden, hot and breathless, and I think of a vast river of life. I catch a breath of the flame that was in the mind of the man who said, ‘The land is flowing with milk and honey.’ I am made happy by my thoughts not by the dollars clinking in my pocket.
“And then in the fall when the corn stands shocked I see another picture. Here and there in companies stand the armies of the corn. It puts a ring in my voice to look at them. ‘These orderly armies has mankind brought out of chaos,’ I say to myself. ‘On a smoking black ball flung by the hand of God out of illimitable space has man stood up these armies to defend his home against the grim attacking armies of want.’”
Telfer stopped and stood in the road with his legs spread apart. He took off his hat and throwing back his head laughed up at the stars.