Death In The Family, A - James Agee [117]
“Well now, that’s mighty smart. But of course I don’t mean smarter than Sister. You’re a lot bigger boy.”
“Yes, but I could say that when I was four years old. She’s almost four and I bet she can’t say it. Can you, Catherine? Can you?”
“Well, now, some people learn a little quicker than others. It’s nice to learn fast but it’s nice to take your time, too.” He walked over and picked Catherine up and sat down with her in his lap. He smelled almost as good as her father, although he was soft in front, and she looked happy. “Now what does that word ‘primordrial’ mean?”
“I dunno, but it’s nice and scary.”
“Is it scary? Yes? Yes, spose it does have a sort of a scary sound. Now you can say it, you ought to find out what it means, sometime.”
“What does it mean?”
“Not sure myself, but then I don’t say it. Don’t have occasion.” He opened out one arm and Rufus walked across to him without realizing he was doing so. The arm felt strong and kind around him. “You’re a fine little boy,” Mr. Starr, said. “But it isn’t nice of you to lord it over your sister.”
“What’s ‘lord it’?”
“Brag about things you can do, that she can’t do yet. That isn’t nice.”
“No, sir.”
“So you watch, and don’t do it.”
“No siree.”
“Because Catherine’s a fine little girl, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aren’t you, Catherine?” He smiled at her and she blushed with delight. Rufus liked Catherine so well, all of a sudden, that he smiled at her, and when she smiled back they were both happy and suddenly he was very much ashamed to have treated her so.
“I want to tell you two something,” they heard Mr. Starr’s quieted voice. They looked up at him. “Not because you’ll understand it now, but I have to, my heart’s full, and it’s you I want to tell. Maybe you’ll remember it later on. It is about your daddy. Because you never got a real chance to know him. Can I tell you?”
They nodded.
“Some people have a hard, hard time. No money, no good schooling. Scarcely enough food. Nothing that you children have, but good people to love them. Your daddy started like that. He didn’t have one thing. He had to work till it practicly killed him, for every little thing he ever got.
“Well, some of the greatest men start with nothing. Like Abraham Lincoln. You know who he was?”
“He was born in a log cabin,” Rufus said.
“That’s right, and he became the greatest man we’ve ever had.”
He said nothing for a moment and they wondered what he was going to tell them about their father.
“Somehow I never got a chance to know Jay—your father—well as I wish. I don’t think he ever knew how much I thought of him. Well I thought the world of him, Rufus and Catherine. My own wife and son couldn’t mean more to me I think.” He waited again. “I’m a pretty ordinary man myself,” he went on. “Not a bad one. Just ordinary. But I always thought your father was a lot like Lincoln. I don’t mean getting ahead in the world. I mean a man. Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don’t. But there never was a man up against harder odds than your father. And there was never a man who tried harder, or hoped for more. I don’t mean getting ahead. I mean the right things. He wanted a good life, and good understanding, for himself, for everybody. There never was a braver man than your father, or a man that was kinder, or more generous. They don’t make them. All I wanted to tell you is, your father was one of the finest men that ever lived.”
He suddenly closed his eyes tightly behind his glasses, and swallowed; a long sobbing sigh fell from him. Deeply and solemnly touched, they moved closer to him, whether to comfort him or themselves they did not know. “There, there,” he said, his eyes still closed. “There, there now. There, there.”
Upstairs, they heard the door open.
Chapter 18
When grief and shock surpass endurance there occur phases of exhaustion, of anesthesia in which relatively little is left and one has the illusion of recognizing, and understanding, a good deal. Throughout these days Mary had, during these breathing spells, drawn a kind of solace from the recurrent thought: