The Common Harvestman
Halsey, Margaret
"Me kill Daddy-Wong-Wegsl" An idle conversation had lapsed comfortably into silence. Jessica was sitting in a state of summer-afternoon vacancy when the child's voice and the mother's quick...
...Instinctively, Jessica wanted to love and cherish him, but the expressions on his face and the cold, withdrawn look in his eyes often made her hate him instead...
...All right...
...she said triumphantly, and retrieving the wood, put it on a table...
...Oh, I wish I could decently get out of here...
...He'll run right up your arm, twinkle, twinkle," Ruth said, waving her fingers...
...she said...
...repeated Eric, making a tentative dab with his foot...
...She could not bring herself to a careful scrutiny, but her impression was that half the small body was squashed and two legs waved feebly...
...But the mother's voice was jocular as she said, "All right, champ...
...Now, darling," Ruth said, "the Daddy-Long-Legs is a good spider...
...It was, however, too late...
...Ruth's attitude was still easy and good-natured, and Jessica—though knowing from experience how this minuscule drama would probably unfold—was free to think how much, except for being slightly older, Ruth resembled the handsome, smiling mothers in the advertisements...
...Ruth relaxed, and Jessica said to herself that it was almost unsatisfactory—the boy had not said thank-you for the gum—but at least the Common Harvestman had been spared by the Grim Reaper...
...1" Her friend did not hear...
...Ruth's patio had all the artifacts for outdoor living on the eastern seaboard...
...Let's go some place else," and steered the tired child away from the moment of truth and death in the afternoon...
...Ruth disappeared, and Jessica turned quickly to Eric...
...The mother-and-son dialogue continued on its predestined course...
...Eric stopped crying and looked at her while she fumbled in her bag...
...I'll play with the trucks with you," the chatelaine of all the gay and hospitable appointments was saying...
...With the back of her hand on her forehead, she strode toward the house...
...Oh, no...
...As she unwrapped the gum, Jessica remembered from her sons' Book of Knowledge that another name for the Daddy-Long-Legs is the Common Harvestman...
...Come along," she said...
...asked Eric hopefully...
...No...
...Take it into your room and fill it up with your little teeny trucks, and then bring them out here and run them along the coping...
...Jessica, glancing down, said "No...
...But the Flemings were civilized and literate and liberal, and it was worth it...
...There was a light of near-madness in his eye, and an answering light gleamed in his mother's...
...There were times when he was irresistible...
...But he always cries if he's with anyone but me...
...Taking the wooden block from Eric and resolutely not looking at what she was doing, she administered the coup de grace...
...Jessica gasped, and then bent forward...
...His cries pierced the eardrum, and he made a few feebly menacing gestures toward the Daddy-Long-Legs with the block of wood...
...On the contrary, they laughed at pretentiousness and gracious living and spoke with accomplished mockery of Madison Avenue...
...Eric took the gum and, apparently pacified, began a meditative conquest of it...
...It's on the counter...
...she said thankfully...
...Eric smiled, and the sheer loveliness of his features smote Jessica like a blow from a seraph's wing...
...she screamed...
...The Daddy-Long-Legs eats the bad bugs, Eric," suggested the visitor helpfully...
...Momentarily, the offer tempted Eric, but then he stamped and shook his head violently...
...He had brought the wooden block down on the Daddy-LongLegs and was looking about him in a bewildered fashion...
...At the door, she flung a terse inquiry back to her guest, but Jessica said she would not have anything...
...He threw the block of wood angrily at his mother...
...There were the glider, the fatly-mattressed chaises, the umbrella, the charcoal grill, the cedarwood table and benches (childproof, Ruth said) and the modernistic chairs whose brightly colored canvas, slung from metal frames, suggested laundry bags at bay...
...Eric's response to her exclamation was simply an absent-minded glance, but it reminded Jessica of something she did not wish to forget...
...Eric shook his head in a badgered way, and bellowing with sobs, picked up the missile again...
...The trees, however, were background...
...On more or less pretending, in fact, that they did not exist...
...It occurred to her that the word "ambivalence" is used too casually...
...Missed him...
...Maybe a little hydrotherapy...
...Visibly new was an inflated plastic wading pool...
...As he slowly removed the block, Jessica noted with a little frisson of horror and pity that the insect was not entirely dead...
...However, since these ideas were not legal tender, she merely leaned back and glanced appreciatively at her surroundings...
...Why don't I take Eric along with me...
...Jessica thought nothing more beautiful than trees in summer, and responded gratefully to their atmosphere of stability and leisure...
...It occurred to Jessica briefly that she might pick up the imperiled insect and remove it to safety, but although a Daddy-Long-Legs was not quite the same thing as a spider—she seemed to recall that it was technically a mite or a tick—she had a reluctance to handle things that crawled...
...Oh, Ruth...
...Mother wants you to calm down," she added, smiling...
...and automatically put out her hand to hold Eric off...
...Ambivalence was what she felt about Eric...
...roared Eric...
...I'll tell you what, honey," she said—the animation now perceptibly forced—"you go into the kitchen and get that little basket the straw berries came in...
...At that, his mother's pose shattered and she turned on the child...
...You mustn't throw things, darling...
...Kickle...
...but he pointed with a chubby finger...
...Indeed, the house itself had been undertaken because the children needed room for this, space for that, and encouragement for the other thing...
...The valse triste was still going on...
...Her physique was supple and virginal, and people were always surprised to learn that she had four children...
...Before her marriage Mrs...
...Jessica broke off her musing...
...Kill the damned bug...
...Then, with shattering abruptness, Eric stooped, picked up the wood and flung it down on the Daddy-Long-Legs...
...Aloud, she said to Ruth, "I have to go downtown and get air put in the tires...
...Ruth's face, haggard by this time, flashed briefly into possessiveness and pride...
...But her too-eager tone betrayed her...
...1" Jessica gave a sudden exclamation...
...Eric set his teeth and re-possessed himself of the wood...
...The Daddy-Long-Legs was on the pavement about a yard away from her foot...
...I have some gum here, Eric...
...At the same time, she was aware that if only God can make a tree, only a neighborhood association that fights like the Army of Northern Virginia can save them—if they happen to be growing forty minutes by express from the Grand Central...
...Intractability was perfectly distinct beneath Eric's pleasant tone, and the guest suddenly became aware of the contrast between this unseemly little tussle and the bland setting in which it was taking place...
...Looking again, Jessica saw that the sacrificial victim had not departed, but had merely moved about a foot from his original spot...
...Me kill Daddy-Wong-Wegs first...
...Now, sweetie, don't be a mean wittle kid...
...Ruth pointed to a blazingly chromatic bed of petunias blooming like dutiful Organization Flowers behind the stone coping that edged the flagstone...
...Me kill Daddy-Wong-Wegsl" An idle conversation had lapsed comfortably into silence...
...The crisis, it seemed, was over...
...The insect, she noted, had moved another foot away, but obviously did not realize that he stood in as much clear and present danger from mother love as he ever had from birds of prey...
...Me kill Daddy-Wong-Wegsl" said Eric, his rising inflection containing the promise of hysteria...
...I hope that will satisfy you...
...Jessica became aware that the muscles in her neck and shoulders were aching with tension...
...A brief, wordless yell was Eric's sole comment on the arachnid's putative virtue...
...If you pick him up gently," Ruth said with elaborate womanliness, if you pick him up very carefully, he'll run up your arm and tickle you...
...The Daddy-Long-Legs," Ruth said, "eats the bad bugs on Daddy's flowers...
...Thanks anyway...
...You wouldn't want to be mean to the Daddy-Long-Legs...
...The coping can be the Merritt Parkway...
...There were times when you forgot that this child's usual mode of address was that of an infant power saw...
...Eric's distress seemed beyond the possibility of any articulate utterance, but he framed something that sounded like, "Me kill...
...It fell considerably short, and Ruth, making a visible effort at self-control, slowly reached for a cigarette and lit it with studied calm...
...His blonde hair grew in hyacinthine curls, his nose had an Attic straightness and his large grey eyes were fringed with dark lashes...
...It will feel so funny...
...Though she was the mother of male twins, aged twelve, and therefore did not live a contemplative life, she had never been able to get used to the idea of living tissue as expendable...
...I know you've been in the wading pool twice today, but I'll make an exception and let you go in again...
...One of the Eastern religions—she could never remember which—forbids all taking of life and in Jessica, it had a nearconvert...
...Eric picked up a rhomboid-shaped block of wood—apparently left over from some recent construction—with which he had been playing...
...It was not, however, that the Flemings were chi-chi...
...A stab of sympathy pierced the visitor at the strained gaiety of Eric's mother's face...
...Five or six children of appropriate ages were engaged with these aids to leisure, and on the rough-cut stretch beyond the lawn, some older boys were playing softball...
...Jessica summoned perspective to her aid and reminded herself that Ruth was a good sort when away from the children...
...The minstrel boy to the wars has gone," Ruth's husband had said...
...The Daddy-Long-Legs helps Daddy...
...Besides," she thought resentfully, "it's his mother's job...
...In the ranks of Dreft you will find him...
...Jessica burst out laughing...
...Will tool" Eric's voice picked up volume...
...He's gone away...
...The look of dementia consorted oddly, Jessica thought, with Ruth's spare, cool heraldry of know-how—the Bermuda shorts, sunburned musculature and pushcart-owner hairdo...
...Ruth's patio, where they sat, was both shaded and presided over by willow, elm and tulip trees...
...Ruth is just as anxious to save the creature as I am," Jessica thought...
...Jessica sat up, prepared for action, but Ruth was already speaking...
...A case of Nature copying art directors," went through Jessica's mind...
...We could stop at the drug store and...
...The expressive smile and attentive turning of the head which Ruth Fleming bestowed on her youngest child struck Jessica as "actressy," and she thought to herself that at almost five, Eric ought to be talking more distinctly...
...I'm going to get a drink...
...Good relations with Ruth, she knew, depended on making no comments whatsoever about the Fleming children...
...Oh, look...
...I'll tell you what I'll do...
...People do not stop to realize how painful is the feeling it actually stands for...
...Would you like some...
...Oh, no, darling, I wouldn't do that...
...Fleming had been a textile designer commanding twelve or fifteen thousand a year, and she was refreshingly unimpressed by the local stuffed shirts and efficient to work with for the Scouts and the Urban League...
...In the foreground, on the grass beyond the patio, were a see-saw, a sandbox, a set of swings and a jungle gym—all of them weathered...
...Then she took Eric's hand and pointed to the path that led around to the front of the house...
...Eric's eyes were streaming with tears and seemed scarcely capable of refraction from any outside object at all, to say nothing of such a small one...
...Not mean...
...Nevertheless, Jessica often thought—with a twinge of pity for the waste and pathos involved—that what the world of fabrics had lost, the world of child care had not gained...
...Jessica was sitting in a state of summer-afternoon vacancy when the child's voice and the mother's quick reply aroused her...
...If the Flemings spent a good deal of money, it was all in one way or another for the children...
Vol. 8 • July 1961 • No. 3
