Part 4 (1/2)
_The Mother_ We'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never!
_The Son_ It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of dishes Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, Another from the kitchen to the bedroom, Another from the bedroom to the attic, Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it.
Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.
I was a baby: I don't know where I was.
_The Mother_ The only fault my husband found with me-- I went to sleep before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.
The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it.
I was just coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.
The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then some one Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with one leg and a crutch, Or little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile: It wasn't any one who could be there.
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them--and good reason.
My first impulse was to get to the k.n.o.b And hold the door. But the bones didn't try The door; they halted helpless on the landing, Waiting for things to happen in their favor.
The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.
I never could have done the thing I did If the wish hadn't been too strong in me To see how they were mounted for this walk.
I had a vision of them put together Not like a man, but like a chandelier.
So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.
A moment he stood balancing with emotion, And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.) Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, The way he did in life once; but this time I struck the hand off brittle on the floor, And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all directions.
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my b.u.t.ton-box--it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, ”Toffile, It's coming up to you.” It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall.
It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand.
I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, ”Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake!” ”Company,” he said, ”Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed.”
So lying forward weakly on the handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light (The kitchen had been dark) I had to own I could see nothing. ”Toffile, I don't see it.
It's with us in the room, though. It's the bones.”
”What bones?” ”The cellar bones--out of the grave.”
That made him throw his bare legs out of bed And sit up by me and take hold of me.
I wanted to put out the light and see If I could see it, or else mow the room, With our arms at the level of our knees, And bring the chalk-pile down. ”I'll tell you what-- It's looking for another door to try.
The uncommonly deep snow has made him think Of his old song, _The Wild Colonial Boy_, He always used to sing along the tote-road.
He's after an open door to get out-doors.
Let's trap him with an open door up attic.”
Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough, Almost the moment he was given an opening, The steps began to climb the attic stairs.
I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them.
”Quick!” I slammed to the door and held the k.n.o.b.