What — and Uncle Rodney begun to cuss and say Dammit, don’t start sniveling and crying now, and Aunt Louisa said Rodney, what have you done now? and then they both heard the knocking at the door and how Aunt Louisa looked at Uncle Rodney and she knew the truth before she even laid eyes on Mr. Pruitt and the sheriff, and how she said Don’t tell pa! Keep it from pa! It will kill him. . . .
“Who?” papa said. “Mister who?”
“Mr. Pruitt,” Aunt Louisa said, crying again. “The president of the Compress Association. They moved to Mottstown last spring. You don’t know him.”
So she went down to the door and it was Mr. Pruitt and the sheriff. And how Aunt Louisa begged Mr. Pruitt for Grandpa’s sake and how she gave Mr. Pruitt her oath that Uncle Rodney would stay right there in the house until papa could get there, and Mr. Pruitt said how he hated it to happen at Christmas too and so for Grandpa’s and Aunt Louisa’s sake he would give them until the day after Christmas if Aunt Louisa would promise him that Uncle Rodney would not try to leave Mottstown. And how Mr. Pruitt showed her with her own eyes the check with Grandpa’s name signed to it and how even Aunt Louisa could see that Grandpa’s name had been — and then mamma said Louisa! Louisa!
Remember Georgie! and that was me, and papa cussed too, hollering How in damnation do you expect to keep it from him? By hiding the newspapers? and Aunt Louisa cried again and said how everybody was bound to know it, that she didn’t expect or hope that any of us could ever hold our heads up again, that all she hoped for was to keep it from Grandpa because it would kill him.
She cried hard then and papa had to stop at a branch and get down and soak his handkerchief for mamma to wipe Aunt Louisa’s face with it and then papa took the bottle of tonic out of the dash pocket and put a few drops on the handkerchief, and Aunt Louisa smelled it and then papa took a dose of the tonic out of the bottle and mamma said George! and papa drank some more of the tonic and then made like he was handing the bottle back for mamma and Aunt Louisa to take a dose too and said, “I don’t blame you.
If I was a woman in this family I’d take to drink too. Now let me get this bond business straight.”
“It was those road bonds of ma’s,” Aunt Louisa said.
We were going fast again now because the horses had rested while papa was wetting the handkerchief and taking the dose of tonic, and papa was saying All right, what about the bonds? when all of a sudden he jerked around in the seat and said, “Road bonds? Do you mean he took that damn screw driver and prized open your mother’s desk too?”
Then mamma said George! how can you? only Aunt Louisa was talking now, quick now, not crying now, not yet, and papa with his head turned over his shoulder and saying Did Aunt Louisa mean that that five hundred papa had to pay out two years ago wasn’t all of it?
And Aunt Louisa said it was twenty-five hundred, only they didn’t want Grandpa to find it out, and so Grandma put up her road bonds for security on the note, and how they said now that Uncle Rodney had redeemed Grandma’s note and the road bonds from the bank with some of the Compress Association’s bonds out of the safe in the Compress Association office, because when Mr. Pruitt found the Compress Association’s bonds were missing he looked for them and found them in the bank and when he looked in the Compress Association’s safe all he found was the check for two thousand dollars with Grandpa’s name signed to it, and how Mr. Pruitt hadn’t lived in Mottstown but a year but even he knew that Grandpa never signed that check and besides he looked in the bank again and Grandpa never had two thousand dollars in it, and how Mr. Pruitt said how he would wait until the day after Christmas if Aunt Louisa would give him her sworn oath that Uncle Rodney would not go away, and Aunt Louisa did it and then she went back upstairs to plead with Uncle Rodney to give Mr. Pruitt the bonds and she went into Uncle Rodney’s room where she had left him, and the window was open and Uncle Rodney was gone.
“Damn Rodney!” papa said. “The bonds! You mean, nobody knows where the bonds are?”
Now we were going fast because we were coming down the last hill and into the valley where Mottstown was. Soon we would begin to smell it again; it would be just today and then tonight and then it would be Christmas, and Aunt Louisa sitting there with her face white like a whitewashed fence that has been rained on and papa said Who in hell ever gave him such a job anyway, and Aunt Louisa said Mr. Pruitt, and papa said how even if Mr. Pruitt had only lived in Mottstown a few months, and then Aunt Louisa began to cry without even putting her handkerchief to her face this time and mamma looked at Aunt Louisa and she began to cry too and papa took out the whip and hit the team a belt with it even if they were going fast and he cussed. “Damnation to hell,” papa said. “I see. Pruitt’s married.”
Then we could see it too. There were holly wreaths in the windows like at home in Jefferson, and I said, “They shoot fireworks in Mottstown too like they do in Jefferson.”
Aunt Louisa and mamma were crying good now, and now it was papa saying Here, here; remember Georgie, and that was me, and Aunt Louisa said, “Yes, yes! Painted common thing, traipsing up and down the streets all afternoon alone in a buggy, and the one and only time Mrs. Church called on her, and that was because of Mr. Pruitt’s position alone, Mrs. Church found her without corsets on and Mrs. Church told me she smelled liquor on her breath.”
And papa saying Here, here, and Aunt Louisa crying good and saying how it was Mrs. Pruitt that did it because Uncle Rodney was young and easy led because he never had had opportunities to meet a nice girl and marry her, and papa was driving fast toward Grandpa’s house and he said, “Marry?
Rodney marry? What in hell pleasure would he get out of slipping out of his own house and waiting until after dark and slipping around to the back and climbing up the gutter and into a room where there wasn’t anybody in it but his own wife.”
And so mamma and Aunt Louisa were crying good when we got to Grandpa’s.
III
And Uncle Rodney wasn’t there. We came in, and Grandma said how Mandy, that was Grandpa’s cook, hadn’t come to cook breakfast and when Grandma sent Emmeline, that was Aunt Louisa’s baby’s nurse, down to Mandy’s cabin in the back yard, the door was locked on the inside but Mandy wouldn’t answer and then Grandma went down there herself and Mandy wouldn’t answer and so Cousin Fred climbed in the window and Mandy was gone and Uncle Fred had just got back from town then and he and papa both hollered, “Locked? on the inside? and nobody in it?”
And then Uncle Fred told papa to go in and keep Grandpa entertained and he would go and then Aunt Louisa grabbed papa and Uncle Fred both and said she would keep Grandpa quiet and for both of them to go and find him, find him, and papa said if only the fool hasn’t tried to sell them to somebody, and Uncle Fred said Good God, man, don’t you know that check was dated ten days ago?
And so we went in where Grandpa was reared back in his chair and saying how he hadn’t expected papa until tomorrow but by God he was glad to see somebody at last because he waked up this morning and his cook had quit and Louisa had chased off somewhere before daylight and now he couldn’t even find Uncle Rodney to go down and bring his mail and a cigar or two back, and so thank God Christmas never came but once a year and so be damned if he wouldn’t be glad when it was over, only he was laughing now because when he said that about Christmas before Christmas he always laughed, it wasn’t until after Christmas that he didn’t laugh when he said that about Christmas.
Then Aunt Louisa got Grandpa’s keys out of his pocket herself and opened the desk where Uncle Rodney would prize it open with a screw driver, and took out Grandpa’s tonic and then mamma said for me to go and find Cousin Fred and Cousin Louisa.
So Uncle Rodney wasn’t there. Only at first I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a quarter even, it wouldn’t be nothing this time, so
