Read The Stories of John Cheever for Free Online Page B

and spotted with juniper. From the fields came an indescribable perfume, pungent and soporific. “See,” Nils said when they reached the corn patch. “See, see …” Leaves, silk, and half-eaten ears were strewn and trampled into the dirt. “I plant it,” Nils said, like the husband of a shrew recounting instances of unrewarded patience. “Then there’s crows after the seed. I cultivate it. Now there’s no corn.”
    They heard Greta, the cook, singing as she came up the drive, bringing garbage to the chickens. They turned to watch her. She was a big, strong woman with a magnificent voice and the breasts of an operatic contralto. A second after they heard Greta, the wind carried Mrs. Garrison’s voice to them from the cutting bed. Mrs. Garrison talked to herself continually. Her cultivated and emphatic words sounded across that clear morning like the notes of a trumpet. “Why does he plant this hideous purple verbena every year? He knows I can’t use purple. Why
does
he plant this loathsome purple verbena? … And I’m going to have him move the arums again. I’m going to have the lilies down by the pool again …”
    Nils spat in the dirt. “God damn that woman!” he said. “God damn her!” Greta had reminded him of his dead wife and Mrs. Garrison’s rich voice had reminded him of that other binding marriage, between mistress and gardener, which would last until death dissolved it. He made no effort to contain his anger, and Jim was caught in the cross fire of his mother-in-law’s soliloquy and her gardener’s rage. He said he would go and take a look at the traps.
    He found the traps in the tool house and a rifle in the cellar. As he was crossing the lawn, he met Mrs. Garrison. She was a thin, white-haired woman, and she was dressed in a torn maid’s uniform and a broken straw hat. Her arms were full of flowers. She and her son-in-law wished one another good morning, exclaimed on the beauty of the day, and went on in opposite directions. Jim carried the traps and the rifle behind the house. His son, Timmy, was there, playing hospital with Ingrid, the cook’s daughter, a pale, skinny girl of eleven. The children watched him briefly and then went back to their game.
    Jim oiled the traps and filed their catches so that they slammed shut at the least touch. While he was testing the traps, Agnes Shay came out, leading Carlotta Bronson, another of Mrs. Garrison’s grandchildren. Carlotta was four years old. Her mother had gone West to get a divorce that summer, and Agnes had been elevated from the position of housemaid to that of nurse. She was almost sixty and she made an intense nurse. From morning until dark, she gripped Carlotta’s hand in hers.
    She peered over Jim’s shoulder at the traps and said, “You know you shouldn’t put out those traps until after the children have gone to bed, Mr. Brown…. Don’t you go near those traps, Carlotta. Come here.”
    “I won’t put the traps out until late,” Jim said.
    “Why, one of the children might get caught in one of those traps and break a leg,” Agnes said. “And you’ll be careful of that gun, too, won’t you, Mr. Brown? Guns are made to kill with. I’ve never seen one yet where there wasn’t an accident…. Come along, Carlotta, come along. I’ll put on your fresh pinafore and then you can play in the sand before you have your fruit juice and your crackers.”
    The little girl followed her into the house, and together they climbed the back stairs to the nursery. When they were alone, Agnes kissed the child on the top of the head timidly, as if she were afraid of troubling Carlotta with her affection.
    “Don’t touch me, Agnes,” Carlotta said.
    “No, dear, I won’t.”
    Agnes Shay had the true spirit of a maid. Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants’ halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown