Luke Baldwin's Vow Read online

  The old dog, lying in the shade and half asleep himself, blinked his eye knowingly at Luke.

  Luke would wonder if he would ever be wise enough to appreciate Sam Carter more than a workman like Alex Malone, that lanky bald-headed mill hand who often stopped for a word with Luke. Alex Malone, whistling to himself, stood with his hands on his hips watching the saws and was always willing to explain something. Yet he did his share of the work, though sometimes he worked a little faster and sometimes a little slower; according to Uncle Henry, Alex Malone was not supposed to be a consistent worker.

  Luke also liked a young fellow named Joe Carson, whom Uncle Henry kept an eye on all the time because Joe had had three jobs in the last year; he had worked up north and had been a seaman on the lake boats. Even now he would stand looking out over the bay with a restless expression in his eyes.

  “That’s one bird of passage, Luke,” Uncle Henry had said. “One of these days Joe’ll get an itchy foot and he’ll be off without as much as a thank-you, and I’ll be short-handed. You can easily figure him out, Luke, and if you’re ever in my position, give those fellows a wide berth unless you’re stuck. Take a man like old Sam Carter every time.”

  Luke liked to imagine that he was a little like Joe Carson and would someday get restless and head for the lumber camps in the north woods or sail on the ships. When he had these thoughts he felt guilty; he knew that Uncle Henry would attribute his sneaking admiration for Joe to his inexperience with men.

  But there was a fat Pole, Willie Stanowski, with the round happy face and the merry little blue eyes, whom Luke really liked; Willie Stanowski always wore bright-red checked shirts. He was a fine workman, quick and intelligent, who had eight children and he lived a mile and a half along the road to town. One of the eight Stanowski children, Tillie, thirteen years old, with ash blond hair, was in Luke’s class in school She was a pretty and friendly kid.

  Luke hadn’t heard Uncle Henry say much about Willie Stanowski until one morning when Willie didn’t report for work at the mill.

  “Luke, hop on your bike and go down to the Stanowski place and find out what’s the matter with Willie. Although I could tell what’s the matter,” he said with a shrug.

  Luke got on his bike with Dan following him and went down the road to the Stanowski house, which was well back in a field. It was an old roughcast cottage with a little vegetable patch. The roof of the cottage sagged and patches of roughcast had fallen off the walls. It was one of those places on the outskirts of the town that could be rented for little, for nobody wanted to live there. The place had no shade trees. The grass around the cottage had withered in the sun. An old wheelbarrow, turned over on its side, lay in the path; the woodpile wasn’t neat, and there were three clotheslines stretching from the back door of the house, laden with the clothes of the Stanowski children. As Luke turned up the dirt road Willie Stanowski was coming out. Willie looked unhappy. “All right, all right, my boy,” he said apologetically. “You come from your uncle, no? Yes, I’m on my way. I hurry. I slept in. I apologize to your uncle.”

  With a shamefaced grin and walking like a man who had a headache and who was bothered by the sun, he hurried by. Luke turned to follow him, but Tillie Stanowski called from the door, “Aw, stay a while, Luke, and have some fun.”

  “What’ll we do?” Luke asked. “What kind of fun?”

  “Just play around. You know – just have fun.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “That’s no fun.”

  “Let’s all play with the dog,” she coaxed him.

  “Dan’s a strange dog,” he began to explain, but by this time all the Stanowski children were crowding together at the door. Even the little boy, who was only four years old and who had smudges of dirt on his face, was there, and behind him was Maria, the big Stanowski girl who was twenty, and who had on a clean white apron.

  “Stay a while, Luke,” Maria called cheerfully. She had the largest dark eyes Luke had ever seen, her hair was so black it gleamed in the sun; she was the prettiest girl Luke had ever seen and when she coaxed him to stay he felt important and wanted to stay.

  Soon they were having the craziest time he had ever had, for when he and Dan entered the dilapidated house all the children began to chase each other wildly and the dog barked furiously. They chased each other in and out of the house, they knocked over chairs, they bumped into Maria, who was ironing, and she only laughed. And when they were all exhausted little Tillie coaxed Maria to sit down at the old fumed-oak piano which had four broken keys and they all began to sing a favorite French-Canadian folk song called “Alouette.” They roared, “Alouette, gentile alouette . . .” And Maria’s clear strong voice carried across the field.

  “Just wait, just wait,” Tillie shouted. “Someday I’m going to be able to sing like Maria.”

  Luke had never known that running and shouting hilariously and knocking things over could be so much fun, or that Dan could be so energetic; and when he was tired out he found himself wishing he could live for a while with the Stanowskis because he liked Tillie and Maria so much.

  So he went back there the next day, which was Sunday, and didn’t come back to the mill until dinnertime.

  After dinner when Uncle Henry was out on the veranda, Aunt Helen, who was sitting in the kitchen with her hands folded in her lap, called, “Just a minute, Luke.” She was wearing her new black Sunday dress which made her look like an important woman when she walked down the aisle in church. Now she had a concerned expression. “I don’t want you to hang around the Stanowski place, Luke,” she said.

  “We were only running around. What’s the matter with that, Aunt Helen?”

  “Well, it’s hard to explain, Luke,” she went on in a grave tone. “I don’t think your uncle would like you hanging around the Stanowski place.”

  “He never said so to me.”

  “Luke,” she said blandly, “when you grow up would you like to be a man like Willie Stanowski or a man like your Uncle Henry?”

  “Like my Uncle Henry. Why?”

  “Well, of course. You might as well know, Luke, that Willie gives your uncle a lot of trouble.” Her voice sinking to a whisper, she added, “Willie Stanowski drinks, Luke. He drinks heavily.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. It’s a shame, isn’t it, Luke?”

  “I guess it is,” Luke said, and he was silent a while pondering over Willie Stanowski’s horrible weakness for liquor. Then he suddenly blurted out, “But I don’t play with Mr. Stanowski, Aunt Helen. I play with Tillie and I like Maria, too. And they don’t drink.”

  “Yes,” Aunt Helen said mysteriously, as she went on with her work. “Tillie right now seems a nice little thing, Luke.”

  “She is. Sure, she is.”

  “A pretty little thing, and you go to school with her.”

  “And we’re in the same room, Aunt Helen.”

  “That’s exactly it, Luke,” Aunt Helen said. She was getting flustered now and having trouble finding the right words, and she hated anything that flustered her. “I don’t want you growing up around here feeling too close to any of the Stanowskis, and particularly to Tillie.”

  “But why?” he asked doggedly.

  “Because she’ll probably begin to take on a lot of bad habits,” his aunt said sharply. “She’ll grow up to be like that sister of hers, Maria.”

  “Maria’s a lot of fun, Aunt Helen,” he said unhappily. “She sings and plays the piano.”

  “Yes,” Aunt Helen agreed, tightening her lips and flushing. “And she goes places she shouldn’t go and sees people she shouldn’t see, and gets a bad name and it all means that she’ll come to a bad end.”

  “A bad end? But if she’s nice to me, Aunt Helen—”

  “Well—”

  “Why shouldn’t I be nice to her? Why?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re an exasperating child,” Aunt Helen snapped at him. Her face bursting red with irritated frustration, she stood up and looked as
if she wanted to slap him. To Luke her anger was inexplicable. It was mysterious and irrational; it had never touched him before. “Any stupid child can go on saying, ‘Why, why, why?’” she cried.

  “But Uncle Henry said I was always to ask why about a thing. He said I should always want to know why.”

  “Yes,” she agreed jerkily. “Uncle Henry would want you to ask ‘Why?’ about something that could do you some good if you got the answer. The Stanowskis can’t do you any good no matter what you know about them, so forget them. Understand, Luke?”

  “I understand,” he said nervously, although he did not understand. Aunt Helen was a kind woman. In fact, everything she did or said to him was out of kindness; and he knew now that she was thinking of his good. But that was what was most frightening about Uncle Henry and Aunt Helen – their kindness; whatever they did they had the advantage of doing it out of kindness.

  He wanted to go back to the Stanowski place but he was afraid of Aunt Helen’s anger. It was the kind of anger that would be hard to withstand because it was still inexplicable; it had to do with her position in the town and in the world and came out of a belief in the rightness of her own kind of life. It would not be like Uncle Henry’s anger. Uncle Henry suddenly seemed to be such a safe and solid man. You could count on him. His anger could always be explained. Yet in the classroom at school Luke found himself staring at little Tillie Stanowski, and when she smiled at him he felt ashamed and guilty because her smile was bright and happy, and he could not figure out why she was bound to have bad habits while she remained so bright and friendly.

  One evening when the lamps were lit in the windows of the houses along the road Luke and Dan approached the Stanowski house. The collie believed that they were going right up to the house, but Luke suddenly said, “No, Dan, stay here.” Lying down in the grass he watched the lighted windows of the shabby roughcast house. They were hidden from anyone passing in the road or anyone who might come to the door of the house.

  But they were close enough to hear the voices of the Stanowski children. The moon, suddenly breaking through a bank of clouds, shed its light on the old roughcast house. In a little while there was the sound of the piano, then the sound of Maria’s voice, and then singing and laughing.

  Lying in the grass and listening, Luke stroked the collie’s head and watched the strange forbidden house and was filled with discontent because all the wild happiness contained in that house was never to be touched by him.

  Then the collie rose and began to trot toward the house, following the path of moonlight. He turned, waiting for Luke, making a motion with his head, inviting him to follow.

  “Come back, Dan,” Luke whispered, and the dog returned slowly and reluctantly, but not quite within reach of his hand.

  “We can’t go in there, Dan,” Luke scolded. But the dog, circling away, backed toward the house, encouraging him to come, and saying with every motion of his body, “Why?”

  “I can’t explain why,” Luke whispered. “Anyway, I don’t quite know why, and besides you’re a crazy dog and the reason why wouldn’t sound any better to you than it did to me. Sit down, Dan. Come on, boy.”

  All Luke wanted to do was lie there in the dark and listen. But suddenly Dan darted toward the house, swerved and came back, and began to circle around in the moonlight. The collie pranced around in the moonlight swaying and coaxing Luke to follow.

  With the sound of the piano and laughter coming from the house, and the old dog circling around in the moonlight, trying to draw him toward the house, Luke began to feel a little crazy himself. Maybe it was the unexpected pallor of the moonlight and the form of the old dog swerving wildly in and out of the light and shadow, but he felt excited and he slowly stood up and watched the dog raptly as if they were both under a spell, and he too would soon begin to dance around in the moonlight.

  Believing that Luke was being lured on, the collie barked joyously, still circling, going a little faster now. But the dog’s sudden bark had upset Luke. He was afraid someone would come to the door. For a moment he remained motionless, staring at the gleaming windows, then suddenly turned and ran toward the road. The dog, stopping his prancing, watched him, let him get about twenty paces away, then relaxed, became a faithful old dog again, and trotted quietly after him.

  On the road, going along slowly together, Luke didn’t speak to Dan, although he felt apologetic. It was as if he knew that for years afterwards the Stanowskis would live in his mind as a fabulous family, and that whenever he heard a piano in the darkness he would remember that shabby roughcast house with the dog circling in the moonlight and feel restless and discontented.

  The next afternoon walking along the road with Dan, he met Maria, who had her hair done with a yellow ribbon, and who was wearing a neat pair of gray slacks. Stopping, she chewed on a blade of grass and looked at him thoughtfully. “You and Dan haven’t come back to see us, Luke,” she said.

  “No, I guess I haven’t, Maria.”

  “The children like the dog. So do I,” she said.

  “Dan’s a very friendly dog,” Luke said. “He likes you all a lot. I know he does. Isn’t that right, Dan?”

  “What’s the matter, Luke?”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” he said uneasily.

  Then she behaved very queerly. With an odd smile on her face she stood looking across the road and beyond the bit of marshy ground to the lake, and there weren’t even any whitecaps out there, for there was no wind at all. She was looking at the line where the blue sky met the grayness of the water and became one with it, and suddenly she shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. “I won’t play around here long,” she said. “And neither will Tillie. I’ll see that Tillie doesn’t stay around here.” Her voice was soft as if she had forgotten Luke was there; then she turned and walked down the road and Luke, standing there with the dog, watched her and felt unhappy and mixed up.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Secret World

  Whenever Luke felt like this it became unbearably hard to go on learning from Uncle Henry. His unpredictable discontent discouraged him. If Uncle Henry had known what was going on in his mind, he would have been disappointed and Luke didn’t ever want Uncle Henry to be disappointed in him. Yet he couldn’t always be learning from Uncle Henry.

  In these restless hours he would lie on his back in the tall cool grass back a piece from the road, the grass so tall he could not be seen, and with Dan beside him he would look at the blue sky and feel a little crazy and think that perhaps God hadn’t intended him to be a shrewd and useful man. Then he had to go on building up that secret life he had begun with Dan. It was as if he lived two lives around the sawmill. He was earnest, eager and attentive with Uncle Henry, but he was only truly happy and not lonely when he was living his secret life with Dan.

  They would play around the millpond, where great logs used to float in the old days, and by the dam with its curtain of falling water. It was easy to pretend that the dam was a great waterfall, the pond a harbor, the rowboat a three-masted ship. Luke had built a raft for the pond and used the rowboat on the river. On one side of the pond he built a fortification of old pieces of lumber. This became their pirate lair where he was esteemed as the young lieutenant of Captain Dan, the fierce old one-eyed pirate who raided Spanish galleons and shot up town after town and left a trail of blood along the gulf.

  For a while they would lie quietly together, Luke with his hands linked behind his head and his eyes closed. In the familiar dream the pictures raced through his head till he forgot where he was. He could see the river emptying into a great sea, and at the mouth of the river was a harbor with an old castle, and there, lived an unyielding Spanish Don.

  He could see the castle overlooking the town’s harbor, and the sprawling main street where Negroes and Indians with gold rings in their ears carried baskets of merchandise from the trading ships in the harbor. He could see the helmeted soldiers from the Don’s castle loafing along the street or jesting with the golden girls. An
d within the castle – he could see within the castle very clearly – the Spanish Don was dining at the long oaken table from which he tossed bones to the huge dogs crouching on the rushes on the floor. Luke seemed to see the face of this great burly Don; he weighed over two hundred and thirty pounds and had a brick-red face. It was not that Luke deliberately tried to see in his dream that the Spaniard had Uncle Henry’s face; but this Spanish Don was unassailable, his town had never been sacked by pirates because he knew how to arrange his defenses perfectly; he knew what soldiers were needed in one place and weren’t needed in another. He couldn’t be overcome, because of his vast common sense. Everything for him was always in order. Of all the pirates on the Main this Spaniard hated Captain Dan most of all because of his unpredictable wild life.

  “Order, order, we must have some order around here! Make yourself useful,” the Spaniard shouted suddenly. “If you’re all useful nobody can overcome us.”

  And in a high-backed chair sat the Don’s wife, pink-faced and smelling of talcum powder, and smiling happily every time he gave an order to his men.

  There was only one way of overcoming the solid perfection of this great stronghold, by an attack which would be so crazy, unpredictable, wild and frenzied, and drunken that the Spaniard could not plan against it.

  Two wild freebooters who understood this secret were there that night in their own sheltered harbor, feasting and drinking and waiting for the dark of the moon. A bronzed damsel who looked like Maria Stanowski was waiting on them. With a great oath Captain Dan suddenly kicked over his chair, yelled for richer wine, and blinked his one amber eye fiercely. There were merchants who shuddered in their dreams, believing that one frightful, yellow eye was gleaming at them in the darkness. Sometimes in their dreams they saw the old one-eyed pirate take the form of a huge dog that went loping over the line of a hill against the moonlight.