Neighborhood Stories

They was running out of their little houses, up towards us, coming with whatever they had, with children, with baskets between ’em, with little animals, with bed-quilts tied and filled with stuff. Some few we see was busy loading their things up on to the second floor, but most of ’em didn’t have any second floors, so they was either running up the hill or getting a few things on to the roof. It wasn’t a big river – we none of us or of them was afraid of any loss of life or of houses being tipped over or like that. But we knew there’d be two-three feet of water over their ground floors by noon.

“Land, land,” says Mis’ Sykes, that’s our best housekeeper, “and I ’spose it’s so late lots of ’em had their Spring cleaning done.”

“I was thinkin’ of that,” says Mis’ Holcomb, her enemy.

“But then it being so late most of ’em has got their winter vegetables et out of their sullars,” says Mis’ Merriman, trying to hunt out the bright side.

“That’s true as fate, Mis’ Merriman,” I remember I says, agreeing with her fervent.

And us two pairs of feuds talked about it, together, till we got down into the Flats and begun helping ’em load.

We filled up the wagon with what they had ready, tied up and boxed up and in baskets or thrown in loose, and Timothy started back with the first load, Mis’ Haskitt calling after him pitiful to be careful not to stomp on her best black dress that she’d started off with in her arms, and then trusted to the wagon and gone back to get some more. Timothy was going to take ’em up to the top of Elephant Hill and dump ’em there by appointment, and come back for another load, everybody sorting their own out of the pile later, as best they could. While he was gone we done things up for folks like wild and I donno but like mad, and had a regular mountain of ’em out on the walk when he come driving back; but when we got that all loaded on, out come Mis’ Ben Dole, running with a whole clothes bars full of new-ironed clothes and begged Timothy to set ’em right up on top of the load, just as they was, and representing as they did Two Dollars’ worth of washing and ironing for her, besides the value of the clothes that mustn’t be lost. And Timothy took ’em on for her, and drove off balancing ’em with one hand, and all the clothes blowing gentle in the breeze.

I looked over to Mis’ Holcomb, all frantic as she was, and it was so she looked at me.

“That was Ben Dole’s wife that Timothy done that for,” I says, to be sure we meant the same thing. “Just as if he hadn’t never harmed her husband’s cement plant.”

“I know,” says Mis’ Holcomb. “Don’t that beat the very day to a froth?” and she went on emptying Mis’ Dole’s bureau drawers into a bed-spread.

By the time the fourth load or so had gone on, and the other wagons that had come was working the same way, the water was seeping along the Lower Road, down past the wood-yard. More than one was saying we’d ought to begin to make tracks for high ground, because likely when it come, it’d come with a rush. And some of us had stepped out on the street and was asking Silas, that you kind of turn to in emergency, because he’s the only one that don’t turn to anybody else, whether we hadn’t better go, when down the street we see a man come tearing like mad.

“My land,” I says, “it’s Bitty Marshall. He wasn’t home. And where’s his wife? I ain’t laid eyes on her.”

None of us had seen her that morning. And us that stood together broke into a run, and it was Silas and Mis’ Merriman and me that run together, and rushed together up the stairs of Bitty’s little grocery, to where he lived, and into the back room. And there set Bessie Marshall in the back room, putting her baby to sleep as tranquil as the blue sky and not knowing a word of what was going on, and by the window was Bitty’s old mother, shelling pop-corn.

I never see anybody work like Silas worked them next few minutes. If he’d been a horse and a giant made one he couldn’t have got more quick, necessary things out of the way. And we done what we could, and it wasn’t any time at all till we was going down the stairs carrying what few things they’d most need for the next few days. When we stepped out in the street, the water was an inch or more all over where we stood, and when we’d got six steps from the house and Bitty had gone ahead shouting to the wagon, Bessie Marshall looked up at Silas real pitiful.

“Oh, Mr. Sykes,” she says, “there’s a coop of little chickens and their mother by the back door. Couldn’t we take ’em?”

“Sure,” says Silas, and when the wagon come he made it wait for us, and when the Marshalls and the baby and Mis’ Merriman was seated in it, and me, he come running with the coopful of little yellow scraps, and we was the last wagon to leave the Flats and to get up to Elephant Hill again.

“But, oh,” says Mis’ Merriman grieving, “it seems like us women could do such a little bit of the rescuing. Oh, when it’s a flood or a fire or a runaway, I do most question Providence as to why we wasn’t all born men.”

You know how it is, when a great big thing comes catastrophing down on you, it just eats up the edges of the thing you think with, and leaves you with nothing but the wish-bone of your brain operating, kind of flabby. But when we got up on top of Elephant Hill, where was everybody – folks from the Flats, and a good deal of what they owned put into a pile, and the folks from Friendship “proper” come to watch – there was Mis’ Timothy Toplady already planning what to do, short off. Mis’ Toplady can always connect up what’s in her head with what’s outside of it and – what’s rarer still – with what’s lacking outside of it.

“These folks has got to be fed,” she says, “for the days of the high water. Bed and breakfast of course we can manage among us, but the other two meals is going to be some of a trick. So be Silas would leave us have Post Office hall free, we could order the stuff sent in right there, and all turn in and cook it.”

“Oh, my,” says Mis’ Holcomb, soft, to me, “he’ll never do that. He’ll say it’ll set a precedent, and what he does for one he’ll have to do for all. It’s a real handy dodge.”

“Well,” says Mis’ Merriman, “leave him set a precedent for himself for floods. We won’t expect it off him other.”

“I ain’t never yet seen him,” I says, “carrying a chicken coop without he meant to sell chickens. Mebbe’s he’s got a change of heart. Let’s ask him,” I says, and I adds low to Mis’ Toplady that I’d asked Silas for so many things that he wouldn’t give or do that I could almost do it automatic, and I’d just as lives ask him again as not.

It wasn’t but a minute till him and Timothy come by, each estimating how fast the river would raise. And I spoke up right then.

“Silas,” I says, “had you thought how we’re going to feed these folks till the water goes down?”

I fully expected him to snarl out something like he usually does, about us women being frantic to assume responsibility. Instead of that he looked down at us thoughtful:

“Well,” says he, “that’s just what I’ve been studying on some. And I was thinking that if you women would cook the stuff, us men would chip in and buy the material. And wouldn’t it be some easier to cook it all in one place? I could let you have the Post Office hall, if you say so.”

“Why, Silas,” I says, “Silas …” And I couldn’t say another word. And it was the rest of ’em let him know that we’d do it. And when they’d gone on,

“Do you think Timothy sensed that?” says Mis’ Toplady, meditative.

“I donno,” says I, “but I can see to it that he does.”

“I was only thinking,” says she, “that we’ve got seven dozen fresh eggs in the house, and we’re getting six quarts of milk a day now…”

“I’ll recall ’em,” says I, “to his mind.”

But when I’d run ahead and caught up with ’em, and mentioned eggs and milk suggestive, in them quantities,

“Sure,” says Timothy, “I just been telling Silas he could count on ’em.”

And that was a wonderful thing, for we one and all knew Timothy Toplady as one of them decanter men that the glass stopper can’t hardly be got out. But it wasn’t the most wonderful – for Silas spoke up fervent – ferventer than I’d ever known him to speak:

“They can have anything we’ve got, Calliope,” he says, “in our stores or our homes. Make ’em know that,” says he.

It didn’t take me one secunt to pull Silas aside.

“Silas,” I says, “oh, Silas – is what you just said true? Because if it’s true – won’t you let it last after the water goes down? Won’t you let Bitty keep his store?”

He looked down at me, frowning a little. One of the little yellow chicks in the coop got out between the bars just then, and was just falling on its nose when he caught it – I s’pose bill is more biologic, but it don’t sound so dangerous – and he was tucking it back in, gentle, with its mother, while he answered me, testy:

“Lord, Calliope,” he says, “a flood’s a flood. Can’t you keep things separate?”

“No, sir,” I says, “I can’t. Nor I don’t believe the Lord can either.”

Ain’t it like things was arranged to happen in patterns, same as crystals? For it was just in them next two minutes that two things happened: The first was that a boy came riding over on his wheel from the telegraph office and give a telegram to Timothy. And Timothy opened it and waved it over his head, and come with it over to us:

“First contribution for the flood-suffers!” says he. “They telephoned the news over to Red Barns and listen at this: ‘Put me down for Twenty-five dollars towards the flood folks food. Zachariah Roper.’ ”

I looked over to Timothy straight.

“Zachariah Roper,” I says, “that owns the cement plant that some of the Flat folks got in the way of?”

Timothy jerked his shoulder distasteful. “The idear,” says he, “of bringin’ up business at a time like this.”

With that I looked over at Silas, and I see him with the scarcest thing in the world for him – a little pinch of a smile on his face. Just for a minute he met my eyes. Then he looked down to get his hand a little farther away from where the old hen in the coop had been picking it.

And the other thing that happened was that up in front of me come running little Mrs. Bitty Marshall, and her eyes was full of tears.

“Oh, Mis’ Marsh,” she says, “what do you s’pose I done? I come off and left my lace curtain. I took it down first thing and pinned it up in a paper to bring. And then I come off and left it.”

Before I could say a word Silas answered her:

“The water’ll never get up that far, Mis’ Marshall,” he says, “don’t you worry. Don’t you worry one bit. But,” says he, “if anything does happen to it, Mis’ Marshall, I’ll tell you now you can have as good a one as we’ve got in the store, on me. There now, you’ve had a present to-day a’ready!”