A Daughter of the Morning. Gale Zona
I thought he was going to say something nice, and I hoped I'd think of something smart and sassy to say back to him. But all he says was just:
"Thank you. Now, come and sit down, please."
We fixed the flowers. Then Joe brought a basket of beautiful peaches, and we took what we wanted. The man took one, and sat touching it with the tips of his fingers, and he looked over at me with a nice smile.
"And now, my child," he says, "tell me your name."
I always hate to tell folks my name. In the village they've always made fun of it.
"What do you want to bother with that for?" I says. "Ain't I good enough without a tag?"
He spoke almost sharp. "I want you to tell me your name," he says.
So I told him. "Cosma Wakely," I says.
He looked funny. "Really?" he says. "Cosma?"
"But everybody calls me 'Cossy,'" I says quick. "I know what a funny name it is. My grandmother named me. She was queer."
"Cossy!" he says over. "Why, Cosma is perfect."
"You're kiddin' me," I says. "Don't you think I don't know it."
He didn't say he wasn't.
"Ain't you going to tell me your name?" I says. "Not that I s'pose you'll tell me the right one. They never do."
"My name," he says, "is John Ember."
"On the square?" I asked him.
"Yes," he says. He was a funny man. He didn't have a bit of come-back. He took you just plain. He reminded me of the way I acted with Luke. But usually I could jolly like the dickens.
"You travel, I guess," I says. "What do you travel for?"
He laughed. "If I understand you," he said, "you are asking me what my line is?"
I nodded. I'd just put the pit in my mouth, so I couldn't guess something sassy, like pickles.
"I have no line," he says. "It's an area."
"Huh?" I says – on account of the pit.
"I travel," says he, "for the human race. But they don't know it."
"Sure," I says, when I had it swallowed, "you got to sell to everybody, I know that. But what do you sell 'em?"
He shook his head.
"I don't sell it," he says. "They won't buy it. I shall always be a philanthropist. The commodity," says he, "is books."
"Oh!" I says. "A book agent! I'd have taken you for a regular salesman."
"I tell you I don't sell 'em," he says. "Nobody will buy. I just write 'em."
I put down my other peach and looked at him.
"An author?" I says. "You?"
"Thank you," says he, "for believing me. Nobody else will. Now don't let's talk about that. Do you mind telling me something about yourself?"
"Oh," I says, "I've got a book all made out of wrapping paper. It ain't wrote yet, it's in the bottom drawer. But I'm going to write one."
"Good!" he says. "Tell me about that, too."
I don't know what made me, except the surprise of finding that he was what he was, instead of a traveling man. But the first thing I knew I was telling him about me; how I'd stopped school when I was fourteen, and had worked out for a little while in town; and then when the boys got the job in the blast furnace, I came home to help Ma. I told him how the only place I'd ever been, besides the village, was to the city, twice. Only two things I didn't tell him at first – about what home was like, and about Luke. But he got them both out of me. Because I wound up what I was telling him with something I thought was the thing to say. Lena Curtsy always said it.
"I've just been living at home for four years now," I said. "I s'pose it's the place for a girl."
I remember how calm and slow he was when he answered.
"Why no," he says. "Your home is about the last place in the world a girl of your age ought to be."
"What do you know about my home?" I asked him quick.
"I don't mean your home," he says. "I mean any home, if it's your parents' home. If you can't be in school, why aren't you out by this time doing some useful work of your own?"
"Work," I says. "I do work. I work like a dog."
"I don't mean doing your family's work," he said. "I mean doing your own work. Of course you're not going to tell me you're happy?"
"No," I says, "I ain't happy. I hate my work. I hate the kind of a home I live in. It's Bedlam, the whole time. I'm going to get married to get out of it."
"So you are going to be married," he says. "What's the man like – do you mind telling me that?"
I told him about Luke, just the way he is. While I talked he was eating his peaches. I'd been through with mine quite a while now, so I noticed him eat his. He done it kind of with the tips of his fingers. I liked to watch him. He sort of broke the peach. The juice didn't run down. I remembered how I must have et mine, and I felt ashamed.
Before I was all through about Luke, Joe come in with the trout, and some thin, crispy potatoes on the platter, and the toast and the marmalade; and Mr. Ember went to see about the coffee. He brought it out himself, and poured it himself – and it smelled like something I'd never smelled before. And now, when he begun to eat, I watched him. I broke my toast, like he done. I used my fork on the trout, like him, and I noticed he took his spoon out of his cup, and I done that, too, though I'd got so I could drink from a cup without a handle and hold the spoon with my finger, like the boys done. I kept tasting the coffee, too, instead of drinking it off at once, even when it was hot, like I'd learned the trick of. I didn't know but his way just happened to be his way, but I wanted to make sure. Anyway, I never smack my lips, and Luke and the boys do that.
"Now," he said, "while we enjoy this very excellent breakfast, will you do me the honor to let me tell you a little something about me?"
I don't see what honor that would be, and I said so. And then he told me things.
I'm sorry that I can't put them down. It was wonderful. It was just like a story the teacher tells you when you're little and not too old for stories. It turned out he'd been to Europe and to Asia. He'd done things that I never knew there was such things. But he didn't talk about him, he just talked about the things and the places. I forgot to eat. It seemed so funny that I, Cossy Wakely, should be listening to somebody that had done them things. He said something about a volcano.
"A volcano!" I says. "Do they have them now? I thought that was only when the geography was."
"But the geography is, you know," he says. "It is now."
"Did that big flat book all mean now?" I says. "I thought it meant long ago. I had a picture of the Ark and the flood and the Temple, and when the stars fell – "
"Oh, the fools!" he says to himself; but I didn't know who he meant, and I was pretty sure he must mean me.
All the while we were having breakfast, he talked with me. When it was over, and he'd paid the bill – I tried my best to see how much it was, so as to tell Lena Curtsy, but I couldn't – he turned around to me and he says:
"The grass is not wet this morning. It's high summer. Will you walk with me up to the top of that hill over there in the field? I want to show you the whole world."
"Sure," I says. "But you can't see much past Twiney's pasture from that little runt of a hill."
We climbed the fence. He put his hand on a post and vaulted the wire as good as the boys could have done. When he turned to help me, I was just doing the same thing. Then it come over me that maybe an author wouldn't think that was ladylike.
"I always do them that way," I says, kind of to explain.
"Is there any other way?" says he.
"No!" says I, and we both laughed. It was nice to laugh with him, and it was the first time we'd done it together.
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