5 October 1960
The Day He Spoke His Piece For You
The home of Mrs. Ertha Bates was kept tidy, but it was old. Autumn leaves had gathered in great piles on the roof, and in the rain gutter. Nathan stood at the curb, taking in his surroundings. Thinking she should sweep those off before the first snows threatened. Nathan certainly would have had them off by now, if this had been his house. But he supposed she had no one to do the work for her.
That tight feeling had returned to his stomach again. And he didn’t enjoy it one bit. It was fear, plain and simple, and Nathan knew there was no point in denying or recasting it. His grandfather probably would have said that all men feel fear, but cowardly men deny it. Or perhaps he even had said that at some point.
But the truth was, Nathan did not ordinarily feel fear. This morning was only the second time in many decades. In as long as he could even remember. It seemed odd, and he wondered at the significance of it. It was as though only in the last few days had he had anything too important to risk losing.
The porch boards creaked and sagged under Nathan’s weight.
He rapped on the front door, into which was set an arrangement of tear-drop-shaped glass panes forming a half circle.
A curtain slid aside, and part of a woman’s face peered through.
Then the door opened, and the whole of the woman appeared. Nathan could only assume it was Mrs. Ertha Bates.
She stood on the sill, did not invite him in. She was a woman perhaps his own age or a bit younger — forty-something — but old-looking, as though used too roughly, with graying hair, a faded-but-clean dress, and a plain white apron.
“Yes?” she said.
Nathan held his hat in front of him.
“I’m the man who found your baby grandson in the woods.”
“I see.”
“Is that all you have to say to me? ‘I see’?”
He immediately regretted speaking to her that way. Although he had not raised his voice or betrayed anger. Still, there was a rudeness, an effrontery, to his comments. It had just come out that way, unbidden. Because he had anticipated some specific reaction, and not received it. Somehow he had expected more.
“I can’t know what to say to you,” she said, “until I know more about what you’ve come to say to me.”
While they talked, her hands worked across that apron, smoothed and smoothed, as if trying to smooth away … what? Nathan wondered. Like all of us, probably only that which she was able to reach at the moment.
Of course, Nathan thought. She’s afraid. Like me. That knowledge put him more at ease.
State yourself to her, he thought. Quickly. While you’re still sure of what you need to say.
“I wanted to adopt that boy.”
“So I heard.”
“But I didn’t come to argue that.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I am his flesh and blood.”
“Yes,” Nathan said. “That is incontrovertible. Now let me tell you something else that also is. That boy would not exist if I had not been in just that place at just that moment. I’m not suggesting there was any special heroism involved, or that anyone else couldn’t have done the same thing equally well. Only that it wasn’t anyone else; it was me. No one can take that from me, any more than they can deny your claim by blood.”
There. That had been perfect. Just the way he’d rehearsed it in his imagination for days. Smooth and definite.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, beginning to sound unnerved.
“Only this, and I think it’s reasonable: sometime in the course of that boy’s life, I want him to know me. I want you to bring him to me when he’s grown. Or half-grown. That’s up to you. And I want you to introduce me, and say to him, ‘This is the man who found you in the woods.’ That way he’ll know me. I will exist for him.”
Ertha Bates stood silent a moment, smoothing.
Then she said, “How would I find you?”
Nathan reached into his coat pocket and produced his business card. He’d been sure to have a supply along. And, in fact, he had even taken one out from its sterling-silver case, which had been a Christmas gift from Flora, so that he could produce it more easily. If asked.
Mrs. Bates accepted the card without looking at it. It disappeared into one big apron pocket.
Her eyes found his directly.
“I’ll have my hands full,” she said, “with managing the information this child will hear as he grows. This is not the largest town in the world, and he will all too likely bump into those who know more about the story than I might think he’s ready to hear at any given time. I don’t plan to tell him — ever — sir, that his mother threw him out like yesterday’s garbage. I don’t think it would be mentally healthy for a child to entertain such a truth.”
“I have always felt,” Nathan said, “that the truth is simply the truth. And perhaps does not exist for us to bend and revise. Or even filter to suit the feelings of those we love and want to protect.”
He watched her eyes, the change in her expression. She was leaving him, growing more distant. Closing to his requests.
Perhaps he had better take a more respectful tack. After all, this was not his grandson in question. It was hers. And she should be allowed to raise him using whatever methods and judgments she saw fit.
“Then again,” he said, “it’s really not my decision. Is it? You are the one to decide how he should be raised. So if I have a chance to meet the boy, I won’t introduce any topics you might deem inappropriate.”
He continued to watch her face, but she betrayed little.
Nathan made a mental notation to commiserate with her situation. The way you would when speaking to someone who has lost a loved one. After all, her daughter was in jail. The whole town was speaking of the girl — this poor woman’s girl — as though she were the devil incarnate. And Mrs. Bates, at a rather inappropriate age, had been unexpectedly saddled with the care of an unhealthy infant.
The least he could do was express a message of condolence for her in this most difficult time.
Ertha Bates sighed deeply.
“All right, then,” she said. “All right. As you say. When I think he’s old enough to understand such a thing, I’ll bring him around to see you.”
“Thank you.”
Nathan replaced his hat, turned, and took a few creaky steps. Then he looked over his shoulder, hoping she had not gone back inside.
She had not.
“Does the baby have a name yet?’ Nathan asked. “Have you picked out a name for the child?”
She drew his card out of her apron pocket and peered at it closely, as though her eyes were not good.
“Nathan,” she said, reading aloud. “He has a name now, then.”
A flush of warmth came over his insides, washing away the tight knot of fear. At last. At last a healthy dose of the sort of feeling he had been pursuing.
“Thank you, Mrs. Bates.”
Though he knew it was an old-fashioned, overly polite gesture, he tipped his hat to her before heading away.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, as he walked off her porch. It was a huge statement, made all that much bigger by the way she spoke it. It caused the flush in his mid-section to glow more warmly. This is what had been missing in her greeting of him. And only now, as he walked off her porch, was she willing to deliver it. Briefly, without much elaboration, but it was there. In that simple statement.
Thank you, sir.
Truth be told, Nathan had been anticipating gratitude. And, though delayed, it had eventually been delivered.
He turned back once more, realizing there was something he had forgotten to ask.
“Mrs. Bates … Is your daughter … A knitter?”
She burst into a nervous little laugh.
“That is certainly not how I expected you to finish your sentence. I’ve had quite a few questions about my daughter in the last few days. Believe me. Most I won’t even repeat. But not a single one went to her knitting abilities.”
“So she does knit?”
“Yes. In fact she does. Inherited it from me, I suppose. I’ll have to bring her some yarn in prison. She’ll have so much darned time on her hands.”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, I thank you for your time.”
Nathan turned and walked back to his car.
? ? ?
He had driven several blocks, replaying his parts of the conversation in his head, when he remembered with a start that he had forgotten his intention to express some type of condolence.
What had become of his manners of late? Why did everything seem to be shaken?
Nathan longed briefly for some aspect of life which had remained unchanged. But there was nothing as far as he could see.