"You been monkeying with that furnace again!" Bella would scold."If you want something to do, why don't you plant a garden in the back yard and grow something? You was crazy about it on the farm."His face flushed a slow, dull red at that.He could not explain to her that he lost no dignity in his own eyes in fussing about an inadequate little furnace, but that self-respect would not allow him to stoop to gardening-- he who had reigned over six hundred acres of bountiful soil.
On winter afternoons you saw him sometimes at the movies, whiling away one of his many idle hours in the dim, close-smelling atmosphere of the place.Tokyo and Rome and Gallipoli came to him.He saw beautiful tiger-women twining fair, false arms about the stalwart but yielding forms of young men with cleft chins.He was only mildly interested.He talked to anyone who would talk to him, though he was naturally a shy man.He talked to the barber, the grocer, the druggist, the streetcar conductor, the milkman, the iceman.But the price of wheat did not interest these gentlemen.They did not know that the price of wheat was the most vital topic of conversation in the world.
"Well, now," he would say, "you take this year's wheat crop, with about 917,000,000 bushels of wheat harvested, why, that's what's going to win the war! Yes, sirree! No wheat, no winning, that's what I say.""Ya-as, it is!" the city men would scoff.But the queer part of it is that Farmer Ben was right.
Minnie got into the habit of using him as a sort of nursemaid.It gave her many hours of freedom for gadding and gossiping.
"Pa, will you look after Pearlie for a little while this morning? I got to run downtown to match something and she gets so tired and mean- acting if I take her along.Ma's going with me."He loved the feel of Pearlie's small, velvet-soft hand in his big fist.He called her "little feller," and fed her forbidden dainties.His big brown fingers were miraculously deft at buttoning and unbuttoning hertiny garments, and wiping her soft lips, and performing a hundred tender offices.He was playing a sort of game with himself, pretending this was Dike become a baby again.Once the pair managed to get over to Lincoln Park, where they spent a glorious day looking at the animals, eating popcorn, and riding on the miniature railway.
They returned, tired, dusty, and happy, to a double tirade.
Bella engaged in a great deal of what she called worrying about Dike.Ben spoke of him seldom, but the boy was always present in his thoughts.They had written him of their move, but he had not seemed to get the impression of its permanence.His letters indicated that he thought they were visiting Minnie, or taking a vacation in the city.Dike's letters were few.Ben treasured them, and read and reread them.When the Armistice news came, and with it the possibility of Dike's return, Ben tried to fancy him fitting into the life of the city.And his whole being revolted at the thought.
He saw the pimply-faced, sallow youths standing at the corner of Halsted and Sixty-third, spitting languidly and handling their limp cigarettes with an amazing labial dexterity.Their conversation was low- voiced, sinister, and terse, and their eyes narrowed as they watched the overdressed, scarlet-lipped girls go by.A great fear clutched at Ben Westerveld's heart.
The lack of exercise and manual labor began to tell on Ben.He did not grow fat from idleness.Instead his skin seemed to sag and hang on his frame, like a garment grown too large for him.He walked a great deal.Perhaps that had something to do with it.He tramped miles of city pave- ments.He was a very lonely man.And then, one day, quite by accident, he came upon South Water Street.Came upon it, stared at it as a water-crazed traveler in a desert gazes upon the spring in the oasis, and drank from it, thirstily, gratefully.
South Water Street feeds Chicago.Into that close-packed thoroughfare come daily the fruits and vegetables that will supply a million tables.Ben had heard of it, vaguely, but had never attempted to find it.Now he stumbled upon it and, standing there, felt at home in Chicago for the first time in more than a year.He saw ruddy menwalking about in overalls and carrying whips in their hands--wagon whips, actually.He hadn't seen men like that since he had left the farm.The sight of them sent a great pang of homesickness through him.His hand reached out and he ran an accustomed finger over the potatoes in a barrel on the walk.His fingers lingered and gripped them, and passed over them lovingly.
At the contact something within him that had been tight and hungry seemed to relax, satisfied.It was his nerves, feeding on those familiar things for which they had been starving.
He walked up one side and down the other.Crates of lettuce, bins of onions, barrels of apples.Such vegetables! The radishes were scarlet globes.Each carrot was a spear of pure orange.The green and purple of fancy asparagus held his expert eye.The cauliflower was like a great bouquet, fit for a bride; the cabbages glowed like jade.
And the men! He hadn't dreamed there were men like that in this big, shiny-shod, stiffly laundered, white-collared city.Here were rufous men in overalls--worn, shabby, easy-looking overalls and old blue shirts, and mashed hats worn at a careless angle.Men, jovial, good-natured, with clear eyes, and having about them some of the revivifying freshness and wholesomeness of the products they handled.
Ben Westerveld breathed in the strong, pungent smell of onions and garlic and of the earth that seemed to cling to the vegetables, washed clean though they were.He breathed deeply, gratefully, and felt strangely at peace.
