Chapter IX
Sunday morning Saxon was beforehand in getting ready, and on her
return to the kitchen from her second journey to peep through the
front windows, Sarah began her customary attack.
"It's a shame an' a disgrace the way some people can afford silk
stockings," she began. "Look at me, a-toilin' and a-stewin' day
an' night, and I never get silk stockings--nor shoes, three pairs
of them all at one time. But there's a just God in heaven, and
there'll be some mighty big surprises for some when the end comes
and folks get passed out what's comin' to them."
Tom, smoking his pipe and cuddling his youngest-born on his
knees, dropped an eyelid surreptitiously on his cheek in token
that Sarah was in a tantrum. Saxon devoted herself to tying a
ribbon in the hair of one of the little girls. Sarah lumbered
heavily about the kitchen, washing and putting away the breakfast
dishes. She straightened her back from the sink with a groan and
glared at Saxon with fresh hostility.
"You ain't sayin' anything, eh? An' why don't you? Because I
guess you still got some natural shame in you a-runnin' with a
prizefighter. Oh, I've heard about your goings-on with Bill
Roberts. A nice specimen he is. But just you wait till Charley
Long gets his hands on him, that's all."
"Oh, I don't know," Tom intervened. "Bill Roberts is a pretty
good boy from what I hear."
Saxon smiled with superior knowledge, and Sarah, catching her, was infuriated.
"Why don't you marry Charley Long? He's crazy for you, and he
ain't a drinkin' man."
"I guess he gets outside his share of beer," Saxon retorted.
"That's right," her brother supplemented. "An' I know for a fact
that he keeps a keg in the house all the time as well."
"Maybe you've been guzzling from it," Sarah snapped.
"Maybe I have," Tom said, wiping his mouth reminiscently with the
back of his hand.
"Well, he can afford to keep a keg in the house if he wants to," she returned to the attack, which now was directed at her husband as well. "He pays his bills, and he certainly makes good money--better than most men, anyway."
"An' he hasn't a wife an' children to watch out for," Tom said.
"Nor everlastin' dues to unions that don't do him no good."
"Oh, yes, he has," Tom urged genially. "Blamed little he'd work
in that shop, or any other shop in Oakland, if he didn't keep in
good standing with the Blacksmiths. You don't understand labor
conditions, Sarah. The unions have got to stick, if the men
aren't to starve to death."
"Oh, of course not," Sarah sniffed. "I don't understand anything. I ain't got a mind. I'm a fool, an' you tell me so right before the children." She turned savagely on her eldest, who startled and shrank away. "Willie, your mother is a fool. Do you get that? Your father says she's a fool--says it right before her face and yourn. She's just a plain fool. Next he'll be sayin' she's crazy an' puttin' her away in the asylum. An' how will you like that, Willie? How will you like to see your mother in a straitjacket an' a padded cell, shut out from the light of the sun an' beaten like a nigger before the war, Willie, beaten an' clubbed like a regular black nigger? That's the kind of a father you've got, Willie. Think of it, Willie, in a padded cell, the mother that bore you, with the lunatics screechin' an' screamin' all around, an' the quick-lime eatin' into the dead bodies of them that's beaten to death by the cruel wardens--"
She continued tirelessly, painting with pessimistic strokes the
growing black future her husband was meditating for her, while
the boy, fearful of some vague, incomprehensible catastrophe, began to weep silently, with a pendulous, trembling underlip. Saxon, for the moment, lost control of herself.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, can't we be together five minutes without
quarreling?" she blazed.
Sarah broke off from asylum conjurations and turned upon her
sister-in-law.
"Who's quarreling? Can't I open my head without bein' jumped on
by the two of you?"
Saxon shrugged her shoulders despairingly, and Sarah swung about
on her husband.