Peace in Friendship Village. Gale Zona
You belong to his family as soon as you strike shore."
Timothy Toplady told me about it. "And," says he, "do you know that man went out of the store looking perfectly queer! And kind of solemn."
All these things begun to open my eyes. Here, all my life, I'd been taking things for granted. My school-days, the fire-engine, postage-stamps, and all the rest, I'd took for granted, just like this generation is taking for granted aëroplanes. And all of a sudden now, I see how they were: not gifts to me, but powers of the big land. I'd always thought of a village as a person. But a Big Land – that had powers too! And was developing more as fast as its folks would let it.
And it was wonderful consoling. It helped me over more than I can tell. When Silas Sykes give light measure on my sugar and oatmeal, thinks I:
"Well, you're just a little piece of the Big Land's power of business – and it ain't grown yet. It's only just growing."
And when the Friendship Village Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality – that's just the name of it and it works at more things than just cemetery – when it had spent five years studying our gover'ment, and then turned around and created an executive board whose reports to the Society of Forty had to be made unanimous – I says to myself:
"Well, the club's just a little piece of the Big Land's power of democracy, and it ain't grown yet. It's only just growing."
And when the Friendship Village chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to leave us ladies borrow their copy of the American flag because they reverenced it so hard they were afraid it would get tore, I says to myself:
"But it's just a little scrap of the Big Land's power of patriotism to the universe, and it ain't grown yet only just to one country – and not entirely to that."
And it made me see things intimate and tender. And it was Jeffro that did that for me.
That summer he come to kind of belong to the town, the way a hill or a tree does, only lots more so. At first, folks used to call him "that Jew peddler," and circus day I heard Mis' Sykes saying we better lock up our doors during the parade, because we didn't know what "that foreigner" might take it in his head to do.
"Mis' Sykes," says I, "where were your mother and father born?"
"New York state," says she, like the right answer.
"And their folks?" I went on.
"Massachusetts," says she, like she was going to the head now sure.
"And their folks?" I continued, smooth. "Where'd they come from?"
Mis' Sykes began to wobble. "Well," says she, "there was three brothers come over together – "
"Yes," I says, "I know. There always is. Well, where'd they come from? And where'd their folks come from? Were they immigrants to America, too? Or did they just stay foreigners in England or Germany or Scandinavia or Russia, maybe?" says I. "Which was it?"
Mis' Sykes put on her most ancestral look. "You can ask the most personal questions, Calliope," she began.
"Personal," says I. "Why, I dunno. I thought that question was real universal. For all we know, it takes in a dozen nations with their blood flowing, sociable, in with yours. It's awful hard for any of us," I says, "to find a real race to be foreign to. I wouldn't bet I was foreign to no one," says I, "nor that no one was foreign, for certain, to me."
"I shall lock my door circus day, just the same," says Mis' Sykes.
"Do," says I. "Circuses is likely to be followed up by hoodlums. And I've known them to be native-born, now and again."
But after a while, in spite of his being a foreigner, most everybody got to like Jeffro. You couldn't help it – he was so patient and ready to believe. And the children – the children that like your heart – they all loved him. They would follow him along the curb, and he'd set down and show them his pack – time and again I've come on him in a shady side-street opening his pack for them. And sometimes when he had a new toy made, he'd walk up to the schoolhouse a-purpose to show it to them, and they'd all crowd round him, at recess.
On account of that, the children's folks took to noticing him and speaking to him. And folks done little things for him and for Joseph. Abigail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she had him make a wooden bridal pair for the top of the wedding-cake she keeps permanent in her show window; Mis' Timothy Toplady had him do little odd jobs around their place, and she'd pay him with a cooked chicken. He'd show most all of us the picture of his little young wife and the two children —
"I declare," says Mis' Toplady, kind of wondering, "since I've seen the picture of his wife and babies he don't seem to me much more foreign than anybody else."
I happened over to Jeffro's one morning with a loaf of my brown bread and a half a johnny-cake. He seemed to know how to cook pretty well, but still I felt more or less sorry for him and the little boy, and I used to take them in a thing or two less than half occasionally. When I stepped up to the door that night I heard him singing – he used to sing low, funny songs while he worked. And when he opened the door for me, all of a sudden he blushed to the top of his face. And he bowed his funny, stiff way, and says:
"Vell, I see I blush like boys. It is because I was singing a little – vat-you-call, lull'by. Ven I make the toys I am always thinking how little children vill go to sleep holding vat I make, and sometimes I put in lull'bies, in case there is no mother to sing them."
That was like Jeffro. I mention it because Jeffro was just like that.
I'd set down the bread and the johnny-cake, and he'd thanked me – Jeffro always thanked folks like he'd just been give a piece of new life with every kindness – and I dunno but he had – I dunno but we all have; and I'd started to go, when he says hesitating:
"I have vanted to ask you thes': If I vork at that bad place in the road in front – if I bring sand from the hill behind, what I can, and fill in that hole, slow, you know – but some every day – you would not mind?"
"Mind?" says I. "Why, my, no. But it's part the village's business to do that. You're in the village limits, you know. It'd ought to been done long ago."
"The village?" said he. "But it is your place. Why should the village fix that hole?"
"It's the village's business," I told him, "to keep the streets good. Most of them do it pretty lackadaisical, but it's their business to do it."
His face lit up like turning up the wick. "Nu!" he cried. "So I vill do. I thought it vould be you I am doing it for, and I vas glad. But if it is the village, then I am many times more glad of that."
It wasn't much of a compliment to a lady, but I thought I see what he meant.
"Why are you glad, Mr. Jeffro," I says, to make sure, "that it's the village?"
"It does all the things for me," he says, simple. "The fire-engine, the post-office – even the telephone is free to me in the village. So it is America doing this for me; for thes' village, it belongs to America. There is no army that I go in or pay to keep out of – there are no soldiers that are jostling me in the streets – they do not even make me buy and put up any flag. And my little Joseph, all day long he is learning. And the people – here they call me 'Mr.' All is free – free. For all thes' I pay nothing. And now you tell me here is a hole that it is the village business to fill up. It is the business of America to fill up that hole! Vell, I can make that my business, for a little – what-you-say —pay-back."
It was awful hard to know what to say. I wonder what you'd have said? I just stood still and kept still. Because, if I'd known what to say, it would have been pretty hard, just then, to say it anyway.
"It is a luck for the folks," he said, "that their own vork lets them make some paying back. My toys, they don't pay back, not very much. I must find another vay."
He followed me out on the stoop.
"There is von thing they vill let me do after a vile, though," he said, with a smile. "In America, I hear everybody make von long, strong groaning about their taxes. Those taxes, ven vill they come? And are they so very big, then? They must be very big to pay for all