A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Half Portions by Edna Ferber

E >> Edna Ferber >> Half Portions




"Don't let this go any further, see? But I heard it straight that old
Benke is goin' to be transferred to Fond du Lac. And if he is, why, I
step in, see? Benke's got a girl in Fondy, and he's been pluggin' to get
there. Gee, maybe I won't be glad when he does!" A little silence. "Will
you be glad, Tess? H'm?"

Tess felt herself glowing and shivering as the big hand closed more
tightly on her arm. "Me? Why, sure I'll be pleased to see you get a job
that's coming to you by rights, and that'll get you better pay, and
all."

But she knew what he meant, and he knew she knew. And the clasp
tightened until it hurt her, and she was glad.

* * * * *

No more of that now. Chuck--gone. Scotty--gone. All the boys at the
watch works, all the fellows in the neighbourhood--gone. At first she
hadn't minded. It was exciting. You kidded them at first: "Well, believe
me, Chuck, if you shoot the way you play ball, you're a gone goose
already."

"All you got to do, Scotty, is to stick that face of yours up over the
top of the trench and the Germans'll die of fright an' save you wastin'
bullets."

There was a great knitting of socks and sweaters and caps. Tessie's
big-knuckled, capable fingers made you dizzy, they flew so fast. Chuck
was outfitted as for a polar expedition. Tess took half a day off to bid
him good-bye. They marched down Grand Avenue, that first lot of them, in
their everyday suits and hats, with their shiny yellow suitcases and
their paste-board boxes in their hands, sheepish, red-faced, awkward. In
their eyes, though, a certain look. And so off for Camp Sherman, their
young heads sticking out of the car windows in clusters--black, yellow,
brown, red. But for each woman on the depot platform there was just one
head. Tessie saw a blurred blond one with a misty halo around it. A
great shouting and waving of handkerchiefs:

"Goo'-bye! Goo'-bye! Write, now! Be sure! Mebbe you can get off in a
week, for a visit. Goo'-bye! Goo--"

They were gone. Their voices came back to the crowd on the depot
platform--high, clear young voices; almost like the voices of children,
shouting.

Well, you wrote letters; fat, bulging letters, and in turn you received
equally plump envelopes with a red triangle in one corner. You sent
boxes of homemade fudge (nut variety) and cookies and the more durable
forms of cake.

Then, unaccountably, Chuck was whisked all the way to California. He was
furious at parting with his mates, and his indignation was expressed in
his letters to Tessie. She sympathized with him in her replies. She
tried to make light of it, but there was a little clutch of terror in
it, too. California! My land! Might as well send a person to the end of
the world while they were about it. Two months of that. Then,
inexplicably again, Chuck's letters bore the astounding postmark of New
York. She thought, in a panic, that he was Franceward bound, but it
turned out not to be so. Not yet. Chuck's letters were taking on a
cosmopolitan tone. "Well," he wrote, "I guess the little old town is as
dead as ever. It seems funny you being right there all this time and
I've travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Everybody treats me
swell. You ought to seen some of those California houses. They make
Hatton's place look sick."

The girls, Cora and Tess and the rest, laughed and joked among
themselves and assured one another, with a toss of the head, that they
could have a good time without the fellas. They didn't need boys around.
Well, I should say not!

They gave parties, and they were not a success. There was one of the
type known as a stag. They dressed up in their brother's clothes, or
their father's or a neighbour boy's, and met at Cora's. They looked as
knock-kneed and slope-shouldered and unmasculine as girls usually do in
men's attire. All except Tessie. There was something so astonishingly
boyish and straight about her; she swaggered about with such a mannish
swing of the leg (that was the actress in her) that the girls flushed a
little and said: "Honest, Tess, if I didn't know you was a girl, I'd be
stuck on you. With that hat on a person wouldn't know you from a boy."

Tessie would cross one slim leg over the other and bestow a knowing wink
upon the speaker. "Some hen party!" they all said. They danced to the
music of the victrola and sang "Over There." They had ice cream and
chocolate layer cake and went home in great hilarity, with their hands
on each other's shoulders, still singing. When they met a passer-by they
giggled and shrieked and ran.

But the thing was a failure, and they knew it. Next day, at the lunch
hour and in the wash room, there was a little desultory talk about the
stag. But the meat of such an aftergathering is contained in phrases
such as "I says t'him" and "He says t'me." They wasted little
conversation on the stag. It was much more exciting to exhibit letters
on blue-lined paper with the red triangle at the top. Chuck's last
letter had contained the news of his sergeancy.

Angie Hatton, home from the East, was writing letters, too. Everyone in
Chippewa knew that. She wrote on that new art paper with the gnawed
looking edges and stiff as a newly laundered cuff. But the letters which
she awaited so eagerly were written on the same sort of paper as were
those Tessie had from Chuck: blue-lined, cheap in quality, a red
triangle at one corner. A New York fellow, Chippewa learned; an aviator.
They knew, too, that young Hatton was an infantry lieutenant somewhere
in the East. These letters were not from him.

Ever since her home-coming Angie had been sewing at the Red Cross shop
on Grand Avenue. Chippewa boasted two Red Cross shops. The Grand Avenue
shop was the society shop. The East-End crowd sewed there, capped,
veiled, aproned--and unapproachable. Were your fingers ever so deft,
your knowledge of seams and basting mathematical, your skill with that
complicated garment known as a pneumonia jacket uncanny; if you did not
belong to the East-End set, you did not sew at the Grand Avenue shop. No
matter how grossly red the blood which the Grand Avenue bandages and
pads were ultimately to stanch, the liquid in the fingers that rolled
and folded them was pure cerulean.

Tessie and her crowd had never thought of giving any such service to
their country. They spoke of the Grand Avenue workers as "that stinkin'
bunch," I regret to say. Yet each one of the girls was capable of
starting a shirt waist in an emergency on Saturday night and finishing
it in time for a Sunday picnic, buttonholes and all. Their help might
have been invaluable. It never was asked.

* * * * *

Without warning Chuck came home on three days' leave. It meant that he
was bound for France right enough this time. But Tessie didn't care.

"I don't care where you're goin'," she said, exultantly, her eyes
lingering on the stocky, straight, powerful figure in its rather
ill-fitting khaki. "You're here now. That's enough. Ain't you tickled to
be home, Chuck? Gee!"

"I sh'd say," responded Chuck. But even he seemed to detect some lack in
his tone and words. He elaborated somewhat shamefacedly: "Sure. It's
swell to be home. But I don't know. After you've travelled around, and
come back, things look so kind of little to you. I don't know--kind
of--" he floundered about at a loss for expression. Then tried again:
"Now, take Hatton's place, f'r example. I always used to think it was a
regular palace, but, gosh, you ought to see places where I was asked in
San Francisco and around there. Why, they was--were--enough to make the
Hatton house look like a shack. Swimmin' pools of white marble, and
acres of yard like a park, and a Jap help always bringin' you something
to eat or drink. And the folks themselves--why, say! Here we are
scrapin' and bowin' to Hattons and that bunch. They're pikers to what
some people are that invited me to their houses in New York and
Berkeley, and treated me and the other guys like kings or something.
Take Megan's store, too"--he was warming to his subject, so that he
failed to notice the darkening of Tessie's face--"it's a joke compared
to New York and San Francisco stores. Reg'lar rube joint."

Tessie stiffened. Her teeth were set, her eyes sparkled. She tossed her
head. "Well, I'm sure, Mr. Mory, it's good enough for me. Too bad you
had to come home at all now you're so elegant and swell, and everything.
You better go call on Angie Hatton instead of wastin' time on me. She'd
probably be tickled to see you."

He stumbled to his feet, then, awkwardly. "Aw, say, Tessie, I didn't
mean--why, say--you don't suppose--why, believe me, I pretty near busted
out cryin' when I saw the Junction eatin' house when my train came in.
And I been thinkin' of you every minute. There wasn't a day--"

"Tell that to your swell New York friends. I may be a rube, but I ain't
a fool." She was perilously near to tears.

"Why, say, Tess, listen! Listen! If you knew--if you knew--a guy's got
to--he's got no right to--"

And presently Tessie was mollified, but only on the surface. She smiled
and glanced and teased and sparkled. And beneath was terror. He talked
differently. He walked differently. It wasn't his clothes or the army.
It was something else--an ease of manner, a new leisureliness of glance,
an air. Once Tessie had gone to Milwaukee over Labour Day. It was the
extent of her experience as a traveller. She remembered how superior she
had felt for at least two days after. But Chuck! California! New York!
It wasn't the distance that terrified her. It was his new knowledge, the
broadening of his vision, though she did not know it and certainly could
not have put it into words.

They went walking down by the river to Oneida Springs, and drank some of
the sulphur water that tasted like rotten eggs. Tessie drank it with
little shrieks and shudders and puckered her face up into an expression
indicative of extreme disgust.

"It's good for you," Chuck said, and drank three cups of it, manfully.
"That taste is the mineral qualities the water contains--sulphur and
iron and so forth."

"I don't care," snapped Tessie, irritably. "I hate it!" They had often
walked along the river and tasted of the spring water, but Chuck had
never before waxed scientific. They took a boat at Baumann's boathouse
and drifted down the lovely Fox River.

"Want to row?" Chuck asked. "I'll get an extra pair of oars if you do."

"I don't know how. Besides, it's too much work. I guess I'll let you do
it."

Chuck was fitting his oars in the oarlocks. She stood on the landing
looking down at him. His hat was off. His hair seemed blonder than ever
against the rich tan of his face. His neck muscles swelled a little as
he bent. Tessie felt a great longing to bury her face in the warm red
skin. He straightened with a sigh and smiled at her. "I'll be ready in a
minute." He took off his coat and turned his khaki shirt in at the
throat, so that you saw the white, clean line of his untanned chest in
strange contrast to his sunburnt throat. A feeling of giddy faintness
surged over Tessie. She stepped blindly into the boat and would have
fallen if Chuck's hard, firm grip had not steadied her. "Whoa, there!
Don't you know how to step into a boat? There. Walk along the middle."
She sat down and smiled up at him. "I don't know how I come to do that.
I never did before."

Chuck braced his feet, rolled up his sleeves, and took an oar in each
brown hand, bending rhythmically to his task. He looked about him, then
at the girl, and drew a deep breath, feathering his oars. "I guess I
must have dreamed about this more'n a million times."

"Have you, Chuck?"

They drifted on in silence. "Say, Tess, you ought to learn to row. It's
good exercise. Those girls in California and New York, they play
baseball and row and swim as good as the boys. Honest, some of 'em are
wonders!"

"Oh, I'm sick of your swell New York friends! Can't you talk about
something else?"

He saw that he had blundered without in the least understanding how or
why. "All right. What'll we talk about?" In itself a fatal admission.

"About--you." Tessie made it a caress.

"Me? Nothin' to tell about me. I just been drillin' and studyin' and
marchin' and readin' some--Oh, say, what d'you think?"

"What?"

"They been learnin' us--teachin' us, I mean--French. It's the darnedest
language! Bread is pain. Can you beat that? If you want to ask for a
piece of bread, you say like this: _Donnay ma un morso doo pang_. See?"

"My!" breathed Tessie, all admiration.

And within her something was screaming: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He
knows French. And those girls that can row and everything. And me, I
don't know anything. Oh, God, what'll I do?"

It was as though she could see him slipping away from her, out of her
grasp, out of her sight. She had no fear of what might come to him in
France. Bullets and bayonets would never hurt Chuck. He'd make it, just
as he always made the 7.50 when it seemed as if he was going to miss it
sure. He'd make it there and back, all right. But he--he'd be a
different Chuck, while she stayed the same Tessie. Books, travel,
French, girls, swell folks--

And all the while she was smiling and dimpling and trailing her hand in
the water. "Bet you can't guess what I got in that lunch box."

"Chocolate cake."

"Well, of course I've got chocolate cake. I baked it myself this
morning."

"Yes, you did!"

"Why, Chuck Mory, I did so! I guess you think I can't do anything, the
way you talk."

"Oh, don't I! I guess you know what I think."

"Well, it isn't the cake I mean. It's something else."

"Fried chicken!"

"Oh, now you've gone and guessed it." She pouted prettily.

"You asked me to, didn't you?"

Then they laughed together, as at something exquisitely witty.

Down the river, drifting, rowing. Tessie pointed to a house half hidden
among the trees on the farther shore: "There's Hatton's camp. They say
they have grand times there with their swell crowd some Saturdays and
Sundays. If I had a house like that, I'd live in it all the time, not
just a couple of days out of the whole year." She hesitated a moment. "I
suppose it looks like a shanty to you now."

Chuck surveyed it, patronizingly. "No, it's a nice little place."

They beached their boat, and built a little fire, and had supper on the
river bank, and Tessie picked out the choice bits for him--the breast of
the chicken, beautifully golden brown; the ripest tomato; the firmest,
juiciest pickle; the corner of the little cake which would give him a
double share of icing. She may not have been versed in French, Tessie,
but she was wise in feminine wiles.

From Chuck, between mouthfuls: "I guess you don't know how good this
tastes. Camp grub's all right, but after you've had a few months of it
you get so you don't believe there is such a thing as fried chicken and
chocolate cake."

"I'm glad you like it, Chuck. Here, take this drumstick. You ain't
eating a thing!" His fourth piece of chicken.

Down the river as far as the danger line just above the dam, with Tessie
pretending fear just for the joy of having Chuck reassure her. Then back
again in the dusk, Chuck bending to the task now against the current.
And so up the hill homeward bound. They walked very slowly, Chuck's hand
on her arm. They were dumb with the tragic, eloquent dumbness of their
kind. If she could have spoken the words that were churning in her mind,
they would have been something like this:

"Oh, Chuck, I wish I was married to you. I wouldn't care if only I had
you. I wouldn't mind babies or anything. I'd be glad. I want our house,
with a dining-room set, and a brass bed, and a mahogany table in the
parlour, and all the housework to do. I'm scared. I'm scared I won't get
it. What'll I do if I don't?"

And he, wordlessly: "Will you wait for me, Tessie, and keep on loving me
and thinking of me? And will you keep yourself clean in mind and body so
that if I come back--"

Aloud, she said: "I guess you'll get stuck on one of those French girls.
I should worry! They say wages at the watch factory are going to be
raised, workers are so scarce. I'll prob'ly be as rich as Angie Hatton
time you get back."

And he, miserably: "Little old Chippewa girls are good enough for Chuck.
I ain't counting on taking up with those Frenchies. I don't like their
jabber, from what I know of it. I saw some pictures of 'em, last week, a
fellow in camp had who'd been over there. Their hair is all funny, and
fixed up with combs and stuff, and they look real dark like foreigners.
Nix!"

It had been reassuring enough at the time. But that was six months ago.
Which brings us to the Tessie who sat on the back porch, evenings,
surveying the sunset. A listless, lackadaisical, brooding Tessie. Little
point to going downtown Saturday nights now. There was no familiar,
beloved figure to follow you swiftly as you turned off Elm Street,
homeward bound. If she went downtown now, she saw only those
Saturday-night family groups which are familiar to every small town. The
husband, very wet as to hair and clean as to shirt, guarding the gocart
outside while the woman accomplished her Saturday-night trading at
Ding's or Halpin's. Sometimes there were as many as half a dozen gocarts
outside Halpin's, each containing a sleeping burden, relaxed, chubby,
fat-cheeked. The waiting men smoked their pipes and conversed largely.
"Hello, Ed. Th' woman's inside, buyin' the store out, I guess."

"Tha' so? Mine, too. Well, how's everything?"

Tessie knew that presently the woman would come out, bundle laden, and
that she would stow these lesser bundles in every corner left available
by the more important sleeping bundle--two yards of goods; a spool of
100, white; a banana for the baby; a new stewpan at the Five-and-Ten.

There had been a time when Tessie, if she thought of these women at all,
felt sorry for them; worn, drab, lacking in style and figure. Now she
envied them. For the maternal may be strong at twenty.

* * * * *

There were weeks upon weeks when no letter came from Chuck. In his last
letter there had been some talk of his being sent to Russia. Tessie's
eyes, large enough now in her thin face, distended with a great fear.
Russia! His letter spoke, too, of French villages and chateaux. He and a
bunch of fellows had been introduced to a princess or a countess or
something--it was all one to Tessie--and what do you think? She had
kissed them all on both cheeks! Seems that's the way they did in France.

The morning after the receipt of this letter the girls at the watch
factory might have remarked her pallor had they not been so occupied
with a new and more absorbing topic.

"Tess, did you hear about Angie Hatton?"

"What about her?"

"She's going to France. It's in the Milwaukee paper, all about her being
Chippewa's fairest daughter, and a picture of the house, and her being
the belle of the Fox River Valley, and she's giving up her palatial home
and all to go to work in a Y.M.C.A. canteen for her country and bleeding
France."

"Ya-as she is!" sneered Tessie, and a dull red flush, so deep as to be
painful, swept over her face from throat to brow. "Ya-as she is, the
doll-faced simp! Why, say, she never wiped up a floor in her life, or
baked a cake, or stood on them feet of hers. She couldn't cut up a loaf
of bread decent. Bleedin' France! Ha! That's rich, that is." She thrust
her chin out brutally, and her eyes narrowed to slits. "She's goin' over
there after that fella of hers. She's chasin' him. It's now or never,
and she knows it and she's scared, same's the rest of us. On'y we got to
set home and make the best of it. Or take what's left." She turned her
head slowly to where Nap Ballou stood over a table at the far end of the
room. She laughed a grim, unlovely little laugh. "I guess when you can't
go after what you want, like Angie, why, you gotta take second choice."

All that day, at the bench, she was the reckless, insolent, audacious
Tessie of six months ago. Nap Ballou was always standing over her,
pretending to inspect some bit of work or other, his shoulder brushing
hers. She laughed up at him so that her face was not more than two
inches from his. He flushed, but she did not. She laughed a reckless
little laugh.

"Thanks for helpin' teach me my trade, Mr. Ballou. 'Course I only been
at it over three years now, so I ain't got the hang of it yet."

He straightened up slowly, and as he did so he rested a hand on her
shoulder for a brief moment. She did not shrug it off.

* * * * *

That night, after supper, Tessie put on her hat and strolled down to
Park Avenue. It wasn't for the walk. Tessie had never been told to
exercise systematically for her body's good, or her mind's. She went in
a spirit of unwholesome, brooding curiosity and a bitter resentment.
Going to France, was she? Lots of good she'd do there. Better stay home
and--and what? Tessie cast about in her mind for a fitting job for
Angie. Guess she might's well go, after all. Nobody'd miss her, unless
it was her father, and he didn't see her but about a third of the time.
But in Tessie's heart was a great envy for this girl who could bridge
the hideous waste of ocean that separated her from her man. Bleedin'
France. Yeh! Joke!

The Hatton place, built and landscaped twenty years before, occupied a
square block in solitary grandeur, the show place of Chippewa. In
architectural style it was an impartial mixture of Norman castle, French
chateau, and Rhenish Schloss, with a dash of Coney Island about its
facade. It represented Old Man Hatton's realized dream of landed
magnificence.

Tessie, walking slowly past it, and peering through the high iron fence,
could not help noting an air of unwonted excitement about the place,
usually so aloof, so coldly serene. Automobiles standing out in front.
People going up and down. They didn't look very cheerful. Just as if it
mattered whether anything happened to her or not!

Tessie walked around the block and stood a moment, uncertainly. Then she
struck off down Grand Avenue and past Donovan's pool shack. A little
group of after-supper idlers stood outside, smoking and gossiping, as
she knew there would be. As she turned the corner she saw Nap Ballou
among them. She had known that, too. As she passed she looked straight
ahead, without bowing. But just past the Burke House he caught up to
her. No half-shy "Can I walk home with you?" from Nap Ballou. No.
Instead: "Hello, sweetheart!"

"Hello, yourself."

"Somebody's looking mighty pretty this evening, all dolled up in pink."

"Think so?"

She tried to be pertly indifferent, but it was good to have someone
following, someone walking home with you. What if he was old enough to
be her father, with graying hair? Lots of the movie heroes had graying
hair at the sides. Twenty craves someone to tell it how wonderful it is.
And Nap Ballou told her.

They walked for an hour. Tessie left him at the corner. She had once
heard her father designate Ballou as "that drunken skunk." When she
entered the sitting room her cheeks held an unwonted pink. Her eyes were
brighter than they had been in months. Her mother looked up quickly,
peering at her over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, very much askew.

"Where you been, Tessie?"

"Oh, walkin'."

"Who with?"

"Cora."

"Why, she was here, callin' for you, not more'n an hour ago."

Tessie, taking the hatpins out of her hat on her way upstairs, met this
coolly. "Yeh, I ran into her comin' back."

Upstairs, lying fully dressed on her hard little bed, she stared up into
the darkness, thinking, her hands limp at her sides. Oh, well, what's
the diff? You had to make the best of it. Everybody makin' a fuss about
the soldiers: feedin' 'em, and askin' 'em to their houses, and sendin'
'em things, and givin' dances and picnics and parties so they wouldn't
be lonesome. Chuck had told her all about it. The other boys told the
same. They could just pick and choose their good times. Tessie's mind
groped about, sensing a certain injustice. How about the girls? She
didn't put it thus squarely. Hers was not a logical mind, trained to
think. Easy enough to paw over the menfolks and get silly over brass
buttons and a uniform. She put it that way. She thought of the refrain
of a popular song: "What Are You Going to Do to Help the Boys?" Tessie,
smiling a crooked little smile up there in the darkness, parodied the
words deftly: "What're you going to do to help the girls?" she demanded.
"What're you going to do--" She rolled over on one side and buried her
head in her arms.

* * * * *

There was news again next morning at the watch factory. Tessie of the
old days had never needed to depend on the other girls for the latest
bit of gossip. Her alert eye and quick ear had always caught it first.
But of late she had led a cloistered existence, indifferent to the world
about her. The Chippewa _Courier_ went into the newspaper pile behind
the kitchen door without a glance from Tessie's incurious eye.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Melvin Hix - "The Magic Speech Flower"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841"

Gale and Polden, Limited - "A Handbook of the Boer War"

Thomas Clarkson - "A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3)"