Main Street - Sinclair Lewis (little red riding hood ebook .txt) 📗

instead of here. The bunch are down there now: Haydocks and Dyers and Clarks and everybody. Harry wanted to know if I’d bring you down. I guess I can take the time⁠—come right back after supper.”

Before Carol could sum it all up, Erik stammered, “Why, Haydock didn’t say anything to me about the change. Of course he’s the president, but⁠—”

Kennicott looked at him heavily, and grunted, “I don’t know a thing about it.⁠ ⁠… Coming, Carrie?”

“I am not! The match was to be here, and it will be here! You can tell Harry Haydock that he’s beastly rude!” She rallied the five who had been left out, who would always be left out. “Come on! We’ll toss to see which four of us play the Only and Original First Annual Tennis Tournament of Forest Hills, Del Monte, and Gopher Prairie!”

“Don’t know as I blame you,” said Kennicott. “We’ll have supper at home then?” He drove off.

She hated him for his composure. He had ruined her defiance. She felt much less like Susan B. Anthony as she turned to her huddled followers.

Mrs. Dillon and Willis Woodford lost the toss. The others played out the game, slowly, painfully, stumbling on the rough earth, muffing the easiest shots, watched only by the small boy and his sniveling sister. Beyond the court stretched the eternal stubble-fields. The four marionettes, awkwardly going through exercises, insignificant in the hot sweep of contemptuous land, were not heroic; their voices did not ring out in the score, but sounded apologetic; and when the game was over they glanced about as though they were waiting to be laughed at.

They walked home. Carol took Erik’s arm. Through her thin linen sleeve she could feel the crumply warmth of his familiar brown jersey coat. She observed that there were purple and red gold threads interwoven with the brown. She remembered the first time she had seen it.

Their talk was nothing but improvisations on the theme: “I never did like this Haydock. He just considers his own convenience.” Ahead of them, the Dillons and Woodfords spoke of the weather and B. J. Gougerling’s new bungalow. No one referred to their tennis tournament. At her gate Carol shook hands firmly with Erik and smiled at him.

Next morning, Sunday morning, when Carol was on the porch, the Haydocks drove up.

“We didn’t mean to be rude to you, dearie!” implored Juanita. “I wouldn’t have you think that for anything. We planned that Will and you should come down and have supper at our cottage.”

“No. I’m sure you didn’t mean to be.” Carol was super-neighborly. “But I do think you ought to apologize to poor Erik Valborg. He was terribly hurt.”

“Oh. Valborg. I don’t care so much what he thinks,” objected Harry. “He’s nothing but a conceited buttinsky. Juanita and I kind of figured he was trying to run this tennis thing too darn much anyway.”

“But you asked him to make arrangements.”

“I know, but I don’t like him. Good Lord, you couldn’t hurt his feelings! He dresses up like a chorus man⁠—and, by golly, he looks like one!⁠—but he’s nothing but a Swede farm boy, and these foreigners, they all got hides like a covey of rhinoceroses.”

“But he is hurt!”

“Well⁠—I don’t suppose I ought to have gone off half-cocked, and not jollied him along. I’ll give him a cigar. He’ll⁠—”

Juanita had been licking her lips and staring at Carol. She interrupted her husband, “Yes, I do think Harry ought to fix it up with him. You like him, don’t you, Carol?”

Over and through Carol ran a frightened cautiousness. “Like him? I haven’t an í-dea. He seems to be a very decent young man. I just felt that when he’d worked so hard on the plans for the match, it was a shame not to be nice to him.”

“Maybe there’s something to that,” mumbled Harry; then, at sight of Kennicott coming round the corner tugging the red garden hose by its brass nozzle, he roared in relief, “What d’ you think you’re trying to do, doc?”

While Kennicott explained in detail all that he thought he was trying to do, while he rubbed his chin and gravely stated, “Struck me the grass was looking kind of brown in patches⁠—didn’t know but what I’d give it a sprinkling,” and while Harry agreed that this was an excellent idea, Juanita made friendly noises and, behind the gilt screen of an affectionate smile, watched Carol’s face.

IV

She wanted to see Erik. She wanted someone to play with! There wasn’t even so dignified and sound an excuse as having Kennicott’s trousers pressed; when she inspected them, all three pairs looked discouragingly neat. She probably would not have ventured on it had she not spied Nat Hicks in the pool-parlor, being witty over bottle-pool. Erik was alone! She fluttered toward the tailor shop, dashed into its slovenly heat with the comic fastidiousness of a humming bird dipping into a dry tiger-lily. It was after she had entered that she found an excuse.

Erik was in the back room, cross-legged on a long table, sewing a vest. But he looked as though he were doing this eccentric thing to amuse himself.

“Hello. I wonder if you couldn’t plan a sports-suit for me?” she said breathlessly.

He stared at her; he protested, “No, I won’t! God! I’m not going to be a tailor with you!”

“Why, Erik!” she said, like a mildly shocked mother.

It occurred to her that she did not need a suit, and that the order might have been hard to explain to Kennicott.

He swung down from the table. “I want to show you something.” He rummaged in the roll-top desk on which Nat Hicks kept bills, buttons, calendars, buckles, thread-channeled wax, shotgun shells, samples of brocade for “fancy vests,” fishing-reels, pornographic postcards, shreds of buckram lining. He pulled out a blurred sheet of Bristol board and anxiously gave it to her. It was a sketch for a frock. It was not well drawn; it was too finicking; the pillars in the background were