The Fires of Spring

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Book: Read The Fires of Spring for Free Online
Authors: James A. Michener
demanded.
    “No,” Mrs. Paxson replied truthfully. Luther kicked his little friend.
    “Thank you,” David said. “I like books.”
    Then Marcia spoke. “I want thee to visit us, too.” She held out her hand. It was longer than David’s, and stronger.
    But when their car rolled down the lane, Luther threw the books on the ground and started cuffing David about the head. “Daniel tells you! I tell you! When you get somethin’, you say thank you!” David recovered the books and took them tenderly to his room.
    The Krusens were different. They were like no other couple that ever came to the poorhouse. They arrived one evening about five. It was not the manner of their coming that was unusual. A truck drove up to the women’s building, and two bundles of meager belongings were tossed onto the porch. The driver—like all such drivers—was most careful to explain that
he
wasn’t related to the Krusens. “Not me! They ain’t my kin! I drove ’em up here for a friend.” The driver shivered as he saw the poorhouse doors open, and then he was gone with a memory that would plague him whenever he spent a dollar.
    Mr. Krusen was a tall man, very bent in the shoulders, rheumy-eyed and unhappy. He was put in Door 11, across the hall from David. At first the boy noticed nothing peculiar, but at dinner on the second night David saw that Mr. Krusen was different. The boy had grown accustomed to watching married men when their wives first came through the women’s door. There was a terrible wrench that even David could understand. Here was the woman this man had sworn to protect, and because of his faulty judgment she would die in the poorhouse. It seemed to David that married women took the poorhouse in their stride, but to their husbands it was agony.
    Mr. Krusen wasn’t that way. When Mrs. Krusen entered the barren hall she put her hands on her hips, surveyed the room, and said, “It could do with some flowers.” Mr. Krusen looked across the hall at her as if she were no concern of his, and then he never looked at her again. He kept his eyes on his plate and as soon as the meal was over he hurried back to Door 11, where he locked himself in and spoke to no one.
    Three days later Mr. Krusen got a letter. David took it up to him. It was from Lancaster, and the old man eagerly ripped away one corner, then hurried into his room. Even in the half hour when men and women could visit he remained locked in his room.
    Mrs. Krusen was in the visiting area, however. She was apparently waiting for her husband. When he did not appear, she sat on a bench with two old women. David walked near them, and they called him over. He was reluctant to go, for he did not like old women. Mrs. Krusen smiled at him and asked, “Have you seen Mr. Krusen?”
    “He’s up in his room,” David said.
    “Will you please be a dear little boy and ask him to come down?”
    “He knows you’re here,” David said loudly. “He was looking at you a minute ago.”
    Mrs. Krusen’s head snapped back as if he had struck her. The other old women were ashamed and looked away. Finally Mrs. Krusen licked her lips and asked, “What is he doing?”
    “He’s reading a letter,” David replied. “I took it up to him.”
    Mrs. Krusen gave a sharp cry and put her hands to her face. Now her two friends turned back to her and said, “There, there.”
    “Was it from … Lancaster?”
    “Yes,” David said, and Mrs. Krusen began to cry. At first David thought she was crying for herself, but apparently she wasn’t, for she said many times, “Jonas, Jonas!”
    That night Mr. Krusen refused to look at his wife. She stared at him throughout the long meal, but he would not look up. When he was through eating, he wiped his mouth furtively and sneaked back to Door 11.
    Next morning Mrs. Krusen waited by the messhall door so that her husband must pass her on the way to breakfast. “What’s the matter, Jonas?” she whispered.
    “Nothin’,” the man grunted,

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