Liebereich4
I The House That He and Emmy Built
“He’d be better off,” said Mrs. Schwalm, referring to the possible death of old Liebereich.
“You don’t mean you’d be?” grinned Hermann Schlimm.
He had drifted into Mrs. Krantz’s kitchen, among the women, after the funeral. No one gave him any attention.
Old Liebereich’s wife had just been buried, and they were met to pay Mrs. Krantz their respects. She had been the “next-door neighbor” through Mrs. Liebereich’s illness.
There was some strawberry preserve presently, and some “field tea.”
Then Mrs. Krantz said to Mrs. Schwalm:
“You had better go now.”
Mrs. Schwalm was “next door” on the other side. She would now housekeep for old Liebereich for a week. Then Mrs. Engwein, who lived next to Mrs. Krantz, would take her turn, and so on while old Liebereich lived—which it was thought would not be long. For no one ever went to “the poor-house” or “the home” from this German vicinage.
These things were so well understood that they were not even discussed at this gathering. But there was a well-defined understanding that the brief management of old Liebereich would be difficult. Mrs. Schwalm rose to go.
“He won’t fold his britches unless you make him,” warned Mrs. Krantz.
“And I’ve heared,” said another, “that he never hangs ’em on the back of a cheer if he kin put ’em on the floor.”
Old Liebereich had an odious reputation for this sort of thing.
“You know Emmy she spoiled him.”
“If he didn’t do things, she done ’em.”
“That’s a good way to spoil ’em!”
Mrs. Krantz warned again:
“You got to keep the clock on him all the time, or it’s no use. At six he’s got to eat his supper. You’ll have to push him right in his cheer, and see that he gits things in his mouth. If you don’t, you’ll have to clean ’em off the floor. Seven, to bed with him. Yisterday he says to me, says he: ‘I ain’t no dog-gone baby! Lemme alone! I kin git to bed myself.’ But I had him asleep by that time.”
Mrs. Schwalm sighed. It was plain that she was going to a house of trouble. But it was her duty, and she would do it, as they all would.
I do not know at what point, precisely, along the pike, east and west from old Liebereich, the “next-door neighbor” obligation ceased. It was very far. Nevertheless, before the year which succeeded the death of his wife had passed, its courtesies had been exhausted. Each neighbor had served two turns, and each had murmured dismally at the prospect of a third. Finally, they all joined in discussing out-and-out rebellion against custom and Liebereich.
Indeed, one morning the doctor, whose business it was to keep the people up to their duties, found an interregnum. He brought Mrs. Krantz from her house to old Liebereich’s as one does a detected criminal.
“I’ve had three turns a’ready,” she defended.
“The man has had no breakfast,” said the doctor. “He must eat while he lives!”
“Well, he’d be better off, and so would we, if he was—”
The doctor stopped her with a solemn up-lifted finger:
“‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’”
She thought it made no difference that she gave grudgingly. But old Liebereich felt the touch of impatience. And he saw that she swept the dirt into a corner, stood the broom where it did not belong, and left the stale water in his pitcher.
“You git out!” he quavered senilely. “I kin housekeep for myself!”
“Git your other leg in your britches, or I’ll—”
He did it so suddenly, in his fright, that Mrs. Krantz’s humor returned, and she laughed. She was dressing him. He broke out afresh at this evidence of safety:
“I built this here house before I was twenty-one or you was born—I did. My mother she says, says she: ‘Bill, soon it will be a man in the house. Don’t you think you’d better git the house? You and Emmy’s mighty thick.’ I took the hint. And, on the morning I got twenty-one, here I was! And, begosh, there”—he pointed to the other side of the fireplace—“was Emmy! She and me done it all—together. She drawed the plan. You see them bricks that ain’t the right color? Emmy laid ’em! Yessir! With her little hands—and a trowel—and mortar! They are all right except the color. I says, says I, ‘Take ’em right out!’ But she threw the mortar on me, and it went in my hair and eyes, and she had to wash it out—that’s why they was never changed. And I’m glad they wasn’t. Whenever I look at ’em—one of ’em’s a little loose—I kin see my Emmy laying ’em! Well, you never see nothing as nice, I’ll bet you, as Emmy laying bricks! Old Gaertner made the bricks—out there where the boys swim now. That was all clay once. None of the ground clods like you git in bricks nowadays! It’s too long for you to remember, I expect. You not more’n sixty-five or so.” Then his mind flew back to the cause of his rebellion, and he was all the more angry that he had forgotten it in thinking of Emmy. “And now you want to boss me! I won’t stand it. Git out! You’re just a spring chicken.”
“You shut up!” cried Mrs. Krantz.
At this anathema he gasped in fresh fear.
“Betsy,” he said humbly when he could speak, “you’re too young to talk to me like that!”
“I’m going on seventy!” snapped Mrs. Krantz; which boast was untrue.
“So?”
Old Liebereich caught the insincerity and turned to inspect her.
“’Tain’t so!” he said, with old-fashioned passion against a lie. “You think you kin shut me up that-a-way and I’ll go to bed easy! You git right out!”
“If you don’t take keer I will!” cried the exasperated housekeeper. “Let’s see what the Lord says!”
She closed her eyes and put a finger on a text of the Bible which lay open there, meaning, if it were favorable, to take him at his word and leave the consequences to heaven.
But what she read was:
“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”