white race and their own sense of injustice and of outrage among the grave white teeth, the dark, courteous, fatal, speculative alien faces, and had Midgleston to breakfast with me. I had to invite him and then insist. He was on hand at the appointed hour, in the same dirty trousers, but his shirt was now white and whole and ironed, and he had shaved. He accepted the meal without servility, without diffidence, without eagerness. Yet when he raised the handleless bowl I watched his hands tremble so that for a time he could not make junction with his lips. He saw me watching his hands and he looked at my face for the first time and I saw that his eyes were the eyes of an old man. He said, with just a trace of apology for his clumsiness: “I ain’t et nothing to speak of in a day or so.”
“Haven’t eaten in two days?” I said.
“This hot climate. A fellow don’t need so much. Feels better for not eating so much. That was the hardest trouble I had when I first come here. I was always a right hearty eater back home.”
“Oh,” I said. I had meat brought then, he protesting. But he ate the meat, ate all of it. “Just look at me,” he said. “I ain’t et this much breakfast in twenty-five years. But when a fellow gets along, old habits are hard to break. No, sir. Not since I left home have I et this much for breakfast.”
“Do you plan to go back home?” I said.
“I guess not; no. This suits me here. I can live simple here. Not all cluttered up with things. My own boss (I used to be an architect’s draughtsman) all day long. No. I don’t guess I’ll go back.” He looked at me. His face was intent, watchful, like that of a child about to tell something, divulge itself. “You wouldn’t guess where I sleep in a hundred years.”
“No. I don’t expect I could. Where do you sleep?”
“I sleep in that attic over that cantina yonder. The house belongs to the Company, and Mrs. Widrington, Mr. Widrington’s wife, the manager’s wife, she lets me sleep in the attic. It’s high and quiet, except for a few rats. But when in Rome, you got to act like a Roman, I say. Only I wouldn’t name this country Rome; I’d name it Ratville. But that ain’t it.” He watched me. “You’d never guess it in the world.”
“No,” I said. “I’d never guess it.”
He watched me. “It’s my bed.”
“Your bed?”
“I told you you’d never guess it.”
“No,” I said. “I give up now.”
“My bed is a roll of tarred roofing paper.”
“A roll of what?”
“Tarred roofing paper.” His face was bright, peaceful; his voice quiet, full of gleeful quiet. “At night I just unroll it and go to bed and the next a. m. I just roll it back up and lean it in the corner. And then my room is all cleaned up for the day. Ain’t that fine? No sheets, no laundry, no nothing. Just roll up my whole bed like an umbrella and carry it under my arm when I want to move.”
“Oh,” I said. “You have no family, then.”
“Not with me. No.”
“You have a family back home, then?”
He was quite quiet. He did not feign to be occupied with something on the table. Neither did his eyes go blank, though he mused peacefully for a moment. “Yes. I have a wife back home. Likely this climate wouldn’t suit her. She wouldn’t like it here. But she is all right. I always kept my insurance paid up; I carried a right smart more than you would figure a architect’s draughtsman on a seventy-five dollar salary would keep up. If I told you the amount, you would be surprised. She helped me to save; she is a good woman. So she’s got that. She earned it. And besides, I don’t need money.”
“So you don’t plan to go back home.”
“No,” he said. He watched me; again his expression was that of a child about to tell on itself. “You see, I done something.”
“Oh. I see.”
He talked quietly: “It ain’t what you think. Not what them others…” he jerked his head, a brief embracing gesture “think. I never stole any money. Like I always told Martha, she is my wife; Mrs. Midgleston money is too easy to earn to risk the bother of trying to steal it. All you got to do is work. ‘Have we ever suffered for it?’ I said to her. ‘Of course, we don’t live like some. But some is born for one thing and some is born for another thing. And the fellow that is born a tadpole, when he tries to be a salmon all he is going to be is a sucker.’ That’s what I would tell her. And she done her part and we got along right well; if I told you how much life insurance I carried, you would be surprised. No; she ain’t suffered any. Don’t you think that.”
“No,” I said.
“But then I done something. Yes, sir.”
“Did what? Can you tell?”
“Something. Something that ain’t in the lot and plan for mortal human man to do.”
“What was it you did?”
He looked at me. “I ain’t afraid to tell. I ain’t never been afraid to tell. It was just that these folks…” again he jerked his head slightly “wouldn’t have understood. Wouldn’t have knowed what I was talking about. But you will. You’ll know.” He watched my face. “At one time in my life I was a farn.”
“A farn?”
“Farn. Don’t you remember in the old books where they would drink the red grape wine, how now and then them rich Roman and Greek senators would up and decide to tear up a old grape vineyard or a wood away off somewheres the gods used, and build a summer house to hold their frolics in where the police wouldn’t hear them, and how the gods wouldn’t hear them, and how the gods wouldn’t like it about them married women running around nekkid, and so the woods god named named…”
“Pan,” I said.
“That’s it. Pan. And he would send them little fellows that was half a goat to scare them out ”
“Oh,” I said. “A faun.”
“That’s it. A farn. That’s what I was once. I was raised religious; I have never used tobacco or liquor; and I don’t think now that I am going to hell. But the Bible says that them little men were myths. But I know they ain’t, and so I have been something outside the lot and plan for mortal human man to be. Because for one day in my life I was a farn.”
II
IN THE OFFICE where Midgleston was a draughtsman they would discuss the place and Mrs. Van Dyming’s unique designs upon it while they were manufacturing the plans, the blue prints. The tract consisted of a meadow, a southern hillside where grapes grew, and a woodland. “Good land,” they said. “But wouldn’t anybody live on it.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Because things happened on it. They told how a long time ago a New England fellow settled on it and cleaned up the grape vines to market the grapes. Going to make jelly or something. He made a good crop, but when time came to gather them, he couldn’t gather them.”
“Why couldn’t he gather them?”
“Because his leg was broke. He had some goats, and a old ram that he couldn’t keep out of the grape lot. He tried every way he knew, but he couldn’t keep the ram out. And when the man went in to gather the grapes to make jelly, the ram ran over him and knocked him down and broke his leg. So the next spring the New England fellow moved away.
“And they told about another man, a I-talian lived the other side of the woods. He would gather the grapes and make wine out of them, and he built up a good wine trade. After a while his trade got so good that he had more trade than he did wine. So he began to doctor the wine up with water and alcohol, and he was getting rich. At first he used a horse and wagon to bring the grapes home on his private road through the woods, but he got rich and he bought a truck, and he doctored the wine a little more and he got richer and he bought a bigger truck.
