The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [205]
The town has existed for a long time in this part of the Midwest, more than seventy years by 1910, but it has not been a city very long. "Why, not so long ago," they will say, "I can remember when this here town was nothin' much more than a post office and the school house, the Old Presbyterian church and the Main Hotel. Old Ike Cummings had the general store then, and for a while we had a feller barbered hair, but he didn't last long, moved on some'er else. And then," with a slow evaluating wink, "they was a town whoor used to do business in the county."
And of course when Cyrus Cummings (named after the older McCormick) went to New York on those banking trips, he didn't waste his time. "I tell you," the people will say, "they had to bring that factory here. Cy Cummings didn't give his help to McKinley for nothing back in 'ninety-six; he's a Yankee trader. He might not a had much of a bank in those days but when he called in all the farmer debts the week before election this here became a McKinley county. Cy is even smarter than old Ike, an' you remember when Ike had the general store nobody traded him a horse with a canker." And the old man on the vanishing cracker barrel fluffs some spittle into his corded stale handkerchief. "Course," with a grin, "I ain't sayin' that anyone in town loves Cy more than is proper, but the town. . ." (with another grin) "I mean, the city, sure as hell owes him a lot, be it in gratitude or hard dollar bills."
The town is set in the middle of the great American plain. There are a few knolls or rills bordering it, one of the insignificant accidents of land in the long flat face of the Midwest, and you can find quite a few trees on the lee side of the railroad tracks. The streets are broad and the elm and oak bloom in summer, soften the harsh crabbed outlines of the Queen Anne houses, throw interesting shadows into the angles of the gable windows and truncated dormer roofs. Center Street has only a few buildings left with false façades, and there are lots of stores now, so many farmers in town on Saturday afternoons that they are beginning to pave it with cobblestones so the horses won't bog in the mud.
For the richest man in town, Cy Cummings's house is not too different. The Cummingses built it thirty years ago at a time when it stood all alone on the edge of town and you walked to your thighs in mud to reach it in early fall and spring. But the town has encompassed it now and there is not much Cy Cummings can do in the way of improvements.
The worst of the changes you can blame on his wife. The folks who know them say it's her fault, a fancy eastern woman with Culture. Cy's a hard man, but he isn't a fancy one, and that new front door with all the windowpanes on the bias is something French. She's mentioned the name at church meeting, Newvelle something. And Cy Cummings has even turned High Episcopal for her, was instrumental in getting the 'Piscopal church built.
Odd family, people will tell you, funny kids.
In the parlor with the portraits on the wall, the brown murky landscapes in golden scalloped frames, the dark draperies, the brown furniture, the fireplace -- in the parlor the family is sitting around.
That feller Debs is making trouble again, Cy Cummings says. (A sharp-featured face with a partially bald head, silver-rimmed glasses.)
Yes, dear? The wife turns to her sewing, embroiders another golden stitch on the buttocks of the Cupid in the center of the doily. (A pretty woman, flutters a little, with the long dress, the impressive bosom of the period.) Well, why does he make trouble?
Aaahr, Cy snorts,