shirtwaist brought her to her senses. To kill herself over a man in a hen’s nest! Never!
She got to the wavery-glassed mirror over the sink and looked. The blood was seeping, not jetting, though the cut gaped half an inch wide; the good layer of fat had saved her. Stanching the wound with a snowy dish towel, she got needle and thread from her sewing box and went back to the mirror and sewed up the lips of the wound with a steady hand. The thread was blue. She wrapped a clean rag around her neck. She had a mind to sew something else up as well.
Now Beutle was a dirty old thing to her. She killed every hen that had witnessed her humiliation, screamed at the hired girl until she ran home bawling, and he couldn’t say a thing. She dumped floor sweepings into his tobacco box, stirring to mix in the clots of dirt. She thought often of putting a little rat poison in his coffee, yet did not.
But he’d get in the buggy after lunch and go somewhere.
“Goin over to see Loats,” he’d say, and she guessed he was after Loats’s daughter Polly who was still at home, a dried-up old maid at twenty-six who had almost died of consumption and then gained on the illness, and maybe not as dried-up as all that; she must have some juice.
She said something to Clarissa who kept her eyes open and sure enough, one day she saw Beutle following Polly into the apple trees. Clarissa ran to Loats and asked him to get the shotgun and use it.
“For what? He’s just walking along behind her, you say.”
“You know Beutle. You know what he’s up to.”
“You say he was following her. If she was in the lead, it don’t sound like he’s forcing nothing at all.”
“She don’t know what she’s doing. She’s innocent, I tell you.”
“Going on thirty, maybe not so innocent as you suppose.”
“You ought to beat the stuffings out of him, but I see you don’t do a thing.”
No, Loats wouldn’t do a thing. If Beutle was having fun with Polly, he was doing something no one else had done. Loats believed the three Germans were bound by fate, and fate was the strongest force in life. And though once he’d trusted that common fate had removed them from the pinched seasons of the old country and directed all three of them toward rich and fruitful lives, fate began to turn its hand against them when the Serbs shot the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. It was as though ancient European enmities had sought them out from over the sea, slinking along behind each of them, just out of sight, had burrowed under the grass, waiting, as a pestilence waits until the right moment, then had risen up, eager and poisonous.
The war
Hatred came on slowly, like chill air rolling down a slope at sunset.
“‘Hyphenism’—what is this ‘hyphenism’ business?” said Loats, smoothing out Beutle’s paper. They sat at the oak table in Loats’s overheated kitchen, the wife pressing shirts near the stove where the heavy irons heated, Beutle firing up his black pipe with lunty puffs. On the scrubbed table stood a vinegarcruet, a celluloid baby rattle and a stoneware jar of gleaming forks and knives.
“This is Roosevelt’s horse, he is riding it hard. He don’t like hyphens! Jesus Christ! He is concerned about German hyphen Americans. See here, down here. He says, ‘some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them have come over. But when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.’ And what else drops? Jesus, Jesus and Christ, a beautiful language, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schiller drops, Goethe drops, Kant and Hegel, Wagner, Wagner drops. Schubert, he drops. The accordion drops. And beer drops. Instead we get crazy dried-up American women yelling for the vote and the goddamn dried-up Americans and their dried-up American ideas about Prohibition. They don’t see the Germans are the best, the hardest-working people in America. They don’t see that everything that is good
She got to the wavery-glassed mirror over the sink and looked. The blood was seeping, not jetting, though the cut gaped half an inch wide; the good layer of fat had saved her. Stanching the wound with a snowy dish towel, she got needle and thread from her sewing box and went back to the mirror and sewed up the lips of the wound with a steady hand. The thread was blue. She wrapped a clean rag around her neck. She had a mind to sew something else up as well.
Now Beutle was a dirty old thing to her. She killed every hen that had witnessed her humiliation, screamed at the hired girl until she ran home bawling, and he couldn’t say a thing. She dumped floor sweepings into his tobacco box, stirring to mix in the clots of dirt. She thought often of putting a little rat poison in his coffee, yet did not.
But he’d get in the buggy after lunch and go somewhere.
“Goin over to see Loats,” he’d say, and she guessed he was after Loats’s daughter Polly who was still at home, a dried-up old maid at twenty-six who had almost died of consumption and then gained on the illness, and maybe not as dried-up as all that; she must have some juice.
She said something to Clarissa who kept her eyes open and sure enough, one day she saw Beutle following Polly into the apple trees. Clarissa ran to Loats and asked him to get the shotgun and use it.
“For what? He’s just walking along behind her, you say.”
“You know Beutle. You know what he’s up to.”
“You say he was following her. If she was in the lead, it don’t sound like he’s forcing nothing at all.”
“She don’t know what she’s doing. She’s innocent, I tell you.”
“Going on thirty, maybe not so innocent as you suppose.”
“You ought to beat the stuffings out of him, but I see you don’t do a thing.”
No, Loats wouldn’t do a thing. If Beutle was having fun with Polly, he was doing something no one else had done. Loats believed the three Germans were bound by fate, and fate was the strongest force in life. And though once he’d trusted that common fate had removed them from the pinched seasons of the old country and directed all three of them toward rich and fruitful lives, fate began to turn its hand against them when the Serbs shot the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. It was as though ancient European enmities had sought them out from over the sea, slinking along behind each of them, just out of sight, had burrowed under the grass, waiting, as a pestilence waits until the right moment, then had risen up, eager and poisonous.
The war
Hatred came on slowly, like chill air rolling down a slope at sunset.
“‘Hyphenism’—what is this ‘hyphenism’ business?” said Loats, smoothing out Beutle’s paper. They sat at the oak table in Loats’s overheated kitchen, the wife pressing shirts near the stove where the heavy irons heated, Beutle firing up his black pipe with lunty puffs. On the scrubbed table stood a vinegarcruet, a celluloid baby rattle and a stoneware jar of gleaming forks and knives.
“This is Roosevelt’s horse, he is riding it hard. He don’t like hyphens! Jesus Christ! He is concerned about German hyphen Americans. See here, down here. He says, ‘some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them have come over. But when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.’ And what else drops? Jesus, Jesus and Christ, a beautiful language, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schiller drops, Goethe drops, Kant and Hegel, Wagner, Wagner drops. Schubert, he drops. The accordion drops. And beer drops. Instead we get crazy dried-up American women yelling for the vote and the goddamn dried-up Americans and their dried-up American ideas about Prohibition. They don’t see the Germans are the best, the hardest-working people in America. They don’t see that everything that is good
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