“I – At The Post-Office
It was a gray, midwinter afternoon.
A noisy wind pursued the fine hard flakes
Of blinding snow, and piled sharp, ridgy drifts
Where swale or grass gave shelter. The front room
At Fiddler’s house held loungers waiting mail.
Over the checkerboard hung four or five;
With head turned down and nose to wall, one stooped
In the dim light to read newspaper print
Pasted upon the plaster. Brady moved
From the ruddy stove to the window. “”Six hours late.””
“”He’ll come. He’s Uncle Sam’s man. Pretty slow
Through drifts. He’ll stay all night, and travel Sunday
To make two trips this week.”” So Fiddler drawled,
Thumping a cob pipe on his heavy boot.
With fingers upon eyes, the man at the wall
Straightened and stretched. ” This time I read her through!
How come you paste that paper bottom up,
About Guiteau a-shooting Garfield? Gosh!
A man can’t hold the sense.””
“”I’ll use more care
Next spring when I repaper; these are yellow
With age and smoke.”
“”I see him on the hill!””
Came Brady’s voice.
”Bert, fix up, take his team;
He’ll be nigh froze,”” called Fiddler to his son.
Out of the buckboard stiffly climbed the man
Wrapped in great coat and scarf, and looming tall
Beside his ponies, gently freed from ice
Their eyes and mouths, instructing Bert with care
Concerning feed and water. He came in
While Fiddler sorted mail, and stooping, spread
His rough, dark hands to the warmth. Above his beard
His cheeks were weather-dark; a great scar seamed
His forehead. He laughed back to hearty words
From men who had come miles for letters, papers,
And now moved out to the storm.
At dusk our fire
Roared, while outside through creaking trees, the wind
Exulted.
“”What’s your route like?””
“”Up this creek,
Cross the divide, back down Old Sandy. Twice
A week, about a hundred forty miles.
Monotonous? Most men know little road,
Travel on fair days. I have shift of light
And weather upon changing scenes. This stream
Elbows round bluffs that shoulder in to choke
The woods and the valley. Farther up, the groves
Of willow, ash, and elm thin out to a line;
Beyond the headsprings, lonely cottonwoods
Bulk huge above the plum and cherry thickets;
Last, buckberry and ironweed fringe the ditch
Until the canyon ends. On the high divide
The sky is set far back, and the prairie runs
For miles and miles. Your eye can just make out
On clearest days, far to the north, the crests
Of sandhills. Now head down the other creek.
One bit of road there, – say in blossom time, –
A soft wind soaked plumb full of meadow smells
And fluttering the leaves, – with oriole,
Brown thrasher, blackbird, bluebird, meadow-lark
A-chirrup and a-trill, – one lazy fleece-cloud –
The green and the sunshine – I’ve heard about a place,
All things perfected: there’s that stretch of road.
”Of course, it changes. August brings a drouth;
The dust dries in the sweat upon your face.
All months have storms; these blizzards are the worst.
A mile to-day is plenty; thirty miles,
The frost gets into the marrow of your bones,
It tires your blood and your will. Now these men here
Wanted their mail, expected it; and I, –
I brought it. Driving mail is hard to stop.
When the contract ends you’re tempted two years more.
Seven years at seventy a month! Maybe
I’ll change next summer. Ponies are too small
To farm, and I don’t want to sell them off.
They might receive abuse. Poor brutes, poor brutes!
Relay as you will, road-life is hard for them.”
“”You’ve had adventures.””
He slowly shook his head.
“”No, mostly weather. I used to have a soft
And ruddy face like little Mabel there.
You’ve seen a board under the wind and sun
And rain and sleet. It wears and warps a man
Into my shape.”
Came Fiddler’s easy drawl:
“”Tell us about the time they stopped the mail,
When you got the scar.””
The child’s voice fluted in,
”Mother says, come to supper.”
We drew round
The kitchen table. Coffee, steak, potatoes
Were richly odorous; conversation fell.
Our hostess saw and did, but seldom spoke;
Neat, matronly, low-voiced, with gracious eyes
That guessed and answered thoughts. In that low room,
In the mellow lamplight, hospitality
Admitted us to see the tender glow
Of family love; and as we broke the bread,
We knew the blessing, while we heard without
The storm’s white fury moving through the dark.
II – In A Public Place
We men and little Mabel had drawn near
To the purr of the great heater. She was whispering
Night-counsel to her dolly. Fiddler’s voice
Boomed slow: “”We want the story of the scar,
And the highwaymen.””
That mark went white and red.
”No, I can’t! Ain ‘t worth while. Fiddler, you, –
You know a-plenty stories, for you made
The first house and first well along this road.
We’ll smoke and listen.””
Fiddler nothing loath
Of spokesmanship began. “”There’s Beaver office –
Down stream, you know. The country was just new.
The government was called on, but a woman
Settled the matter.
“”In a two room shack,
Jim Lane and Mrs. Lane and three grown girls
Kept the office. Maybe sixty dollars pay
A year for stamps he cancels. Folks for mail
All hours, and every day, and not convenient
People should just walk in.
“”There was a lad,
An old bach nigh on forty years of age,
Named Charley Baxter, lived off on the ridge,
A cousin to the Baxters up above,
Set in his way, respecting his own word
As if from Scripture. Like old Shakespeare said,
‘Now when I speak, let all the dogs keep still.’
This Baxter fellow would walk in at Lane’s,
No ceremony. And Mrs. Lane, she said,
Real easy, not at all correcting like,
‘Charley, it ain’t convenient for us folks.
Why don’t you knock? We’ll open up the door.’
”’Because,’ says Baxter,’ this is a public place;
Government office. I come in when I like.’
“”‘You better not,’ she says; ‘this is my house,
And now you got your mail, clear out of it!’
“”‘ I ‘d stay,’ says he,’ but the men are waiting for me
In the road to go a-threshing!’
“”Old man Lane,
Dodger of trouble, wanted to resign.
The neighbors wouldn’t hear it. All the roads
Run by his house. Government couldn ‘t find
Another man to take it. Baxter would,
But frightful roads to his place.
“”Months rolled on,
This Baxter fellow raspin’ at the Lanes,
And folk a-grinnin’ at him ’bout his rights,
Just like a pack of schoolboys set to tease
Some chap that’s easy mad.
“”‘Bout six o’clock
One April morning, he went to Lane’s door,
Opened and started in. Lane, doin’ chores,
Heard shrieking, run, laid holt and jerked him out;
And they begun. Now Lane was getting old;
Baxter soon had him under pounding him.
But Mrs. Lane come charging on the scene,
Soon changed all that. She grabbed a garden rake;
The iron teeth tore Baxter’s shirt away,
And scratched his scalp, and notched him in the ear;
His hat come off while he was fighting Lane.
She chased him, raked him good while he was rolling
Under the barbed wire out into the road,
And threw his black hat after him.
”Old man Ryan
Was passing with a load, and so the story
Didn’t lose nothing from the Irishman
That had the telling of it.
“”Charley Baxter
Couldn ‘t give in. Ridicule, too. Some fellow
Say ‘garden rake’ and Charley’d try to whip him.
He wanted law, and swore to the J. P.
That Lane assaulted him in a public place.
“”They all with old man Eyan, up to Stevens’s
To try to settle it. The justice sat,
Heard everything all parties had to say, –
Baxter oratin’ on the rights of man, –
Rubbed his bald head, looked in the book of statutes;
Took three chews of tobacco, passed the plug;
Says, ‘ Out of my jurisdiction: for all turns
On whether Lane’s house is a public place,
Or whether the office is a private dwelling.
The statutes are silent. I will write to Washington.
Meantime the court will order peace be kept,
And costs assessed to the plaintiff.’
”Government
At Washington ain’t in a hurry. They’ve
A lot to think of. Finally come word,
‘Tell Charley Baxter that he’ll have to knock.’
And Mrs. Lane wrote: ‘Baxter ain’t been here
For ten months. If he comes, we’ll make him knock.'””
“”What did the fellow do about his mail?””
“”Changed his address to town. ‘Twas fifteen mile.
And two years afterwards he left these parts;
I don’t know what become of him, – went west.””
III – The Man With The Key Once More
Our pipes drummed brisk approval; we refilled.
Fiddler enjoyed slow whiffs. “”I wish I knew
The way to tell a tiling. This is a man
A-looking for a house to fit his key.””
”What! Him? Heard of him lately?”
“”No.””
The driver
Sat bolt upright. ”That’s the lad helped me out
When I got this.” A finger touched the scar.
Somewhere a cricket chirped; the storm was loud;
Fiddler stowed chunks in the heater, and flame petals
Curled eagerly about them.
“”It was five,
No, six years back, and farther up the creek.
You see, he always follows streams. I heard
Two men a-riding up behind, and looked,
But didn’t know ’em. Suddenly, my head
Went busted on a loaded club. I lay
In the dirt and couldn’t move. They started cutting
The mail bags loose. In front, over a rise
‘Bout sixty yards away he came. They saw him.
One fired and missed. Maybe to scare him,
Maybe, – the nerves of a new hand. He just kept walking;
They grabbed the bags and rode. The government
Gave them a contract down at Leavenworth.
He brought me water, and he drove me back
To the next house, and I laid off one trip.
Six years ago. I saw him just once since.”
“”About this house, this key?”” I ventured.
“”O,””
Drawled Fiddler; “”it’s his house, but it isn’t there.
He keeps the key and carries it all round.””
“”Yes, an imagined house? The perfect place
You’d build if you were rich?””
“”No, this was real.
A house he built upon his claim. The land
Was river bottom. Came a flood. We think
We know the rains. It pours half a day.
Come three, four days together, local fall
And upstream waters joining, make the floods
Our fathers tell of. So the river bed
Got shifted, muxed his fields, and spread fine sand
Deep on his crops. The house was gone.
Nobody Would recognize the place; then he went looney,
And goes a-lookin’, lookin’.””
Mrs. Fiddler
Had put the little girl to bed and come
To sit in the rocker. Easy music lived
In her quiet voice. ” I know, he told me once,
Or tried to tell. And my sister wrote about him.
A girl was coming out to be his wife;
Clear from Ohio, by herself. He went
To the railroad town, and waited. No trains came
Because of floods, and no news, for the wires
Went down. He waited, heard of wrecks;
Still waited trembling, till the third day brought
The list of killed, her body.
“”He turned back,
Alone, the forty miles. The flood had drowned
His farm, – left just such ruin in his mind;
The stream’s bed where the garden used to be.
The suffering of it isn’t understood
Until you see the man.”” Her low tones ceased,
The tears were in her eyes.
We studied, moveless,
The dull glow of the stove, and the clicks of the fire
Till the driver’s voice began with little jars,
As when a wagon wheel grinds on the brake.
”I hope he’s in a good warm house to-night. –
It’s time to find our bunks. What a roar in the woods
Of the wind and the snow! – This man – he scarcely changes!
The ants soon honeycomb a log in the grass.
Life shines and showers, or blows and drips on the
mind, And burns and freezes. Something in his nature –
“”Be nasty roads to-morrow, even if
The storm dies down, and tough on pony flesh.””
(Edwin Ford Piper)”
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