The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
The vision was frightful, and David woke from it crying. There were others that night screaming worse than he, so that his protest went unnoticed, and for this he was glad, because when his first hysteria ended, he was able to survey his vision.
The flies were free. Only when they approached the line were they in danger, and from this simple truth David derived great consolation. There are two degees of freedom. A few flies can soar at will, with their wings intact. Most surrender their wings, yet still retain a measure of freedom.
“A man’s crazy not to see that pretty soon he gives up his wings,” David mused. “Some of us even seem to rip them off ourselves, as if we couldn’t bear freedom. But even in prison we have certain freedoms.”
Toward daylight he regained full sanity and lay weak upon his pillow. “There goes my dream of a great novel,” he muttered. “Well, there’ll be work to do some place else. Maybe I don’t have wings …” He relaxed, content with his prison.
And in that critical moment he joined the millions of the world who have seen a great vision—love, universal peace, decency, brotherhood—but who surrender the vast hope and immure themselves jealously within the walls of their petty prisons.
When morning dawned, David still had a high fever, and for a moment he thought crazily that he was burning. Then he laughed at himself and with his eyes closed recalled two memorable fires that he had seen. The first had destroyed a forest in Colorado, and it had been terrible to witness, for on a neighboring mountain stood a field of jagged stumps, charred and forever barren; and David had known that the forest he was watching die in smoke could not rise again. Its lonely stumps would always remind men of that day’s conflagration.
But there had been another fire that had danced in his memory for a long time. In Iowa a farmer had burned off his fields so as to enrich the soil for spring planting; and this fire had been life-bringing, for it cleansed away old encrustations and laid the true soil bare for tilling.
A calmness came over David, and he actually felt his fever subsiding. He prayed briefly that the fires of his life had been like those set consciously by the Iowa farmer. He hoped that the encrustations and trivia of youth had been burned away and that his fields were now ready for adult harvests. He thought: “I’ll bet there are men who’ve never had a day’s worry growing up. There must be a million fellows who’d never have given Mona Meigs a second look.” Then, sleepily, he concluded that such men would have to be like those who wilfully avoided the great valleys of experience. “They’d either be cowards or fools,” he chuckled, and he went to sleep.
Some time after the lunch hour—he was too weak to eat—he heard through the ward the soft voice of an Italian housewife. She was reading to the sick men from an essay to which she had become much attached, for it spoke of her own longings: “Men are not born citizens of the countries they inhabit. They are like wanderers on whom fall the ashes of many places, and some men live forever in countries they never even dimly understand. No! Men grow to citizenship. They earn it. How do they earn it? By love, work, a passion for things better than they are, or by flashes at night when all the vast land from New York to California stands illuminated. That is how men gradually come to know where they live and why.”
The words were so astonishing in a charity ward that David called feebly to a passing nurse. “Whatcha want?” she demanded.
“That woman reading? Who?”
“One of the WPAers.”
“Ask her if she’d stop here,” David requested quietly.
“She a’ready stopped, but you were asleep.”
Nevertheless, the nurse spoke to the Italian woman. The sick man to whom she was reading had long ago fallen asleep. That was her daily experience, but in her quiet way she had determined that even if the entire hospital fell asleep, she would nevertheless continue to read the things she thought worthwhile.
“Hello,” she said softly to David. “I’m Mrs. Allegri.” She was a big woman, in her forties, and her hips were immense.
“That selection you were reading? What is it?”
“It’s from an essay,” she explained, beaming with satisfaction.
“It was very good. Who wrote it?”
“My boss!” she said proudly. “That is, the regional boss for the Eastern states. I’m on WPA, you know.”
“Your boss writes well. Who is he?”
“Mr. Joseph Vaux,” she said with great pride.
David grinned and thought of the steel-hard fellow he had known in college, the radical, the know-it-all, the intransigeant fighter. Jesus! It was good to hear about your friends. “Would you read me that again?” he asked.
Mrs. Allegri sat down and patiently shuffled her papers. “Men are not born citizens of the country they inhabit,” she began. When she finished the flowing essay David repeated his former verdict. “That’s wonderful!” he said. Mrs. Allegri beamed at him, but from long experience with her own children she recognized David’s constricted breathing and told him to go to sleep again. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said.
He watched her go, a large, soft woman who walked with grace and who saw each wornout defeated man as her special charge. She nodded gently to each inmate as she left, and when her large body turned the last corner, it was as if goodness itself had departed from that hall.
That night David had no nightmares. Visions prompted by Mrs. Allegri’s reading filled his mind. This was the vast land! This America thrown between oceans, perfect in prospect and reassuring in achievement. He thought slowly and with heavy breathing of the states he had bummed through after Chautauqua folded: Kansas and Colorado and Oregon! They were names of beauty; even as words they were cherishable. The Dakotas and Texas. Missouri and Wisconsin, and strange Alabama where he had not felt at home.
He could not believe that his vast country had run down. He refused to acknowledge that it had come to a halt or that its spirit was dead. The depression was terrible—he knew how terrible—and his nightmare of the wingless flies was worse, but one Mrs. Allegri slowly refusing to surrender gave David courage.
The next afternoon he found himself eagerly awaiting her arrival, and about two she appeared with several other women. She walked with stately mien down the long aisle to David’s bed and said, “I’ve brought an assistant who likes to read.”
But the helper took one look at David, threw her hand to her mouth and dashed from the ward. David tried to leap from his bed but stumbled weakly and was caught by Mrs. Allegri. “Marcia!” he cried. “Come back!”
She wouldn’t. She rushed down the long aisle and slammed open the door. Then she turned and disappeared. Mrs. Allegri and the nurse put David back in bed.
“How do you know her?” David gasped.
“She lives with me. She’s on WPA, too.” Mrs. Allegri dismissed the nurse and sat with David. “She told me about you. She’s been looking for you, and she’s been afraid she’d find you.”
“Is she divorced?” David asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Allegri said. “She never talks much, but one night she saw me washing Achilles …”
David asked more than a hundred questions before the visiting period was over, and Mrs. Allegri answered each one as if he were one of her children asking: “What makes the wind?” Then she rose gracefully and walked slowly down the aisle, smiling at the sick men.
When Marcia and Mrs. Allegri appeared the next afternoon, the experience was different from anything David had previously known. Marcia was older. Unlike Mona Meigs, she had been unable to slough off the consequences of her actions. They showed clearly in her face. She was thinner, too, and less neat than David had remembered her. But she was still straight and she still looked at David directly. Her clothes showed numerous signs of having been mended. She wore no makeup and was noticeably pallid, but she was the same girl he had always known, defiant, eager for contest, alive and hopeful. She blushed deeply and said hello.
“I’ll read farther down,” Mrs. Allegri said. She had with her
David stared at Marcia and said, “Won’t you sit down?” She was embarrassed. She opened an oilcloth bag and produced a novel.
“This is The Good Earth,” she said.
“Your parents are wondering where you are,” he interrupted.
“We’ve lots of time to talk later,” she said, but as she read the Chinese novel, her hand shook, and she was visibly relieved when Mrs. Allegri came to take her home.
“We’ll be back!” the soft Italian woman said, and when the day came for David to be discharged she insisted that he come to live with her for a week. “You need nursing,” she said, and she took him to her home.
At Mrs. Allegri’s David was surrounded by a degree of love he had never known before. It was his first experience in living with an actual family whose members loved one another, and the impact upon him was very great. Mr. Allegri was a fiery man, older than his wife and weighing about half as much. He had been unemployed for three years, a catastrophe that he laid loudly and personally upon the doorstep of one Herbert Hoover, whose infamy he could discuss for hours. He had six children. The oldest was a girl studying law at NYU. Two sons were in the CCC and wrote long letters about Wyoming which Mr. Allegri read to anyone who would listen. Two children were in school and baby Achilles was three years old.
Where the money came from to sustain this sprawling household David never knew. Allegri worked at odd jobs. Mrs. Allegri was on WPA. Marcia paid some rent and the CCC boys sent home a few dollars. It was not money, it was Mrs. Allegri that held the home together. She did immense washes, scrubbed the place once a week, and took care of her children. She babied her hot-tempered husband and laughed with the neighbors at night as they all sat on fruit crates in Bleecker Street. She felt ashamed to take her dole from WPA, for all she had to do was to sit and read books that she had always yearned to study. She had a rich, wonderful life, and her happiness in it glowed from her big round face.
David was given a bed on the ground floor. He tried to walk about but found himself far too weak. He still breathed heavily and was unable even to argue with Mr. Allegri for long. Once he asked the little fighting cock what happened to men who got sick and had no place like this to come to. Allegri stuck his jaw way out and said, “They croak, that’s what!”
David’s appreciation of his refuge made him consider the even greater kindness that had been extended him by Mom Beckett. He was ashamed of not having gone back to her hilarious restaurant and he explained the situation to Marcia, begging her to visit Mom and to extend his apologies. Marcia agreed that someone must do so, and when she reached Mom’s flowing bar she was glad that she had come.
“He’ll be coming back in about a week,” she explained.
“Keep him till he gets well!” Mom insisted. “Eatin’ this grub would kill a healthy guy.”
“You’ve been very kind to David,” Marcia said. “Even if he’s never told you, he appreciates what you’ve done.”
“The important thing,” Mom interrupted, “is gettin’ you and him married. When’s it gonna be?”
“I don’t know,” Marcia said. “David’s changed. He seems to have lost his courage.”
“Hell!” Mom exploded. “He ain’t had a job for three years.”
“But I can’t marry a weakling, Mrs. Beckett.”
“It’s Miss Beckett!” Mom corrected. “But hell, sister! All men are weaklings. Women marry ’em and make ’em strong.” Impatiently she went to the kitchen door and kicked it open. Marcia could see the tall, thin, bearded figure of a man who wore a chef’s funny white cap and a dirty apron. He was bending over the stove, tasting a stew with his thumb. Grandiloquently, Mom pointed at him.
“There he is!” Mom said. “Ain’t he a godforsaken, pitiful wreck of a man?” She closed the door and said powerfully to Marcia, “They tell me he’s America’s greatest poet, but he’s so goddamned dumb that if I didn’t look after him he’d starve to death. In one way or another, all men are like that. You marry Dave and make a man of him.”
But Marcia was not so sure of David’s future. She saw defeat written in his face and she guessed clearly that he had surrendered. What he had relinquished she did not know: hope, a play, the dream of the future, perhaps a book of poems. She took Mr. Allegri aside and said, “Get him out into the fresh air, even if it is winter.” The little man led David through the Italian quarter to a group of narrow clay courts on which a score of men were playing bocce. Then he bundled David up and sat him on a cold bench, adding, “Now if you could lend me even so much as ten cents, you and I could make a lot of money. But for the love of the Virgin, don’t tell my wife I played bocce!”
The players cheered in Italian when he stepped onto the courts. He was like a fighting cock, and bocce—the Italian game of bowls—was a wild experience when he played. He cursed the balls, wept at a bad shot, used exaggerated body English, refused to accede a single point, and went crazy with joy when he won.
After each game he rushed up to David and handed him some money. “Keep it for me! Now don’t get cold. Only one more game!” David shivered, but the fresh air did him good, and the wild pleasure of the Italian men—all unemployed—delighted him.
“Do you play here every day?” he asked the men about him.
“Oh, yes!” a watcher replied. “I can remember when Allegri would win as much as ninety dollars. Now they play for pennies, but they get as much fun.” He paused to laugh at little Allegri screaming passionately over a foul. “It’s better when he’s here. But his wife won’t let him play much any more. No money. You must have lent him some?”
Mr. Allegri won eighty cents. Hoarse and trembling with excitement, he cried, “We’ll have a beer! For you, orange juice.” He led the way to an espresso shop where the players reconstructed the games. Once Allegri became so excited that it seemed to David as if murder by knife could be the only solution when suddenly everybody burst into wild laughter, slapped Allegri on the back, and sent him home to his wife.
The streets were cold and dark, and Mr. Allegri became afraid. “She’ll know for sure what I was doing!” he wailed. Then he said accusingly to David, “You should have made me come right home.” He grasped David by the arm and said, bravely, “It’ll be all right. Let me do the talking! If she asks you, deny everything.”
There was no necessity to lie. Mrs. Allegri looked at her guilty little husband and said, “You took David for a walk? Good!” She cooked a big meal and said, “With the money you won at bocce, David, you should take Marcia to a movie!”
They didn’t go to a movie. They walked about the streets and finally sat in a drug store, talking. “I’ve never known so much love before,” David said quietly.
“That’s why I live there,” Marcia said.
“We could be like that,” David said haltingly.
“We could be,” Marcia said. “I’ve always wanted a home like theirs. A home where there was so much love it could spill over onto people. That would be a good home.”
“We should get married,” David said.
“It’s what I long for most,” Marcia replied.
“When can we?” David asked.
He was shocked by her answer. “How can I be sure you’re ready?” she asked. “Have you changed yourself in humility, as I’ve had to?”
“Can’t you see that I have?” he said.
“No. You look merely frightened to me.”
“Watch me for a while,” he said humbly. “If you think I’ve learned, will you marry me?”
“Of course!” she replied. “Why else have these things happened?”
They walked home slowly and David told the Allegris that in the morning he would go back to MacDougal Street and find a job. They were unhappy to have him go, and late that night Mr. Allegri crept to his bedside and whispered, “Any time you ne
David pounded pavements for eleven days and finally uncovered a rumor of a job. At Wanamaker’s freight shed the foreman admitted, “Things are better. Some time later this month we may have a job unloadin’ trucks. Pays $18 a week. Keep comin’ back.”
David was so pleased that he galloped directly to Marcia, who was as proud of him as if he had really started work. In search of celebration, he snapped his fingers and said, “There’s a wonderful man I’d like you to meet. But he has fits.”
“Why would that make a difference?” Marcia asked. When they arrived, the immense editor was playing Brahms, and as the rich clean chords sounded he voiced his approval of Marcia. “A lovely girl, much better than the last. Whew! You should have seen her, Miss Paxson. An actress, but she got her man soaked up in concrete.”
“Was it Miss Meigs?” Marcia asked suspiciously.
“Yes,” Binder laughed merrily. “And he put her in his novel, too. She was the heroine.”
“David!” Marcia cried. “I didn’t know you were writing a book.”
“I’m not,” he said abruptly. “Not any more.” Then Marcia understood what surrender David had made. She could see the glory missing from his face, and she became sad, even though he had a job unloading trucks.
But Morris Binder, himself a man who had surrendered, thought David’s new job something to celebrate. He suggested, with great trepidation, “Why couldn’t we go to the symphony tonight? Stokowski is conducting.” He pointed to a clipping from the Times which he had tacked above his record player. It gave the program, and David knew that the huge man had intended playing the records that night, imagining himself at the symphony. The editor bowed to Marcia and said, “Miss Paxson, would you risk it?” His big hands were nervously twitching as he stumbled to explain, “We could sit in the back and I’d pay the ushers to watch me. Recently I’ve been able to anticipate … I could hold your hand, David to let you know.” He unfolded a campaign that had obviously been in his mind for a long time. “And Marcia can carry this little pillow to stuff against my face in case …”