The Milky Way

MILTON BLISS tipped the old rocker gently, and the yellow cat, clutching aimlessly, slid off on to the porch-steps, rose stiffly with a vain attempt at feline dignity, thought better of the square of bright sunshine in which she found herself, and with the magnanimity of her kind sprawled forgivingly at the feet of this rude disturber of afternoon naps. Her master dumped out the red cushion, coated with tawny hairs, and seated himself with a kind of subdued haste, manifested in tensity rather than in rapidity of action. The pages of the Green Valley Herald stuck under his hand, but he had it opened at last and found himself on the front page, just between ‘News from the Front’ and the mention of the Presbyterian churchsupper.

Bliss had never seen himself in print before, and there was a strangeness in the words which he had penned as they spanned the lines set up in cold type. It struck him that he had expressed himself more neatly than he remembered ; there was a terse elegance about the phrasing which he admired, and it set him thinking that, after all, it was not too late to settle down to the teasing joy of building words into magic sentences and paragraphs which should be read.

For the last thirty of his forty-odd years Bliss had pondered the same thing in a mild inquiring sort of way, which got him no further than the semioccasional letters to Brother Henry in Milwaukee and Cousin Mattie in Portland, Oregon—letters which were, however, read admiringly by the whole family before they were solemnly licked down and deposited in that yawning crevice in the post-office wall. He often pictured Brother Henry and Cousin Mattie reading those letters in their strange and unfamiliar environment; it was a mild pleasure which relieved the dull monotony of dark winter evenings. The milk tinkling merrily into his pail and the steaming breath of the mild-eyed cows were no more his own than the white mountains of Oregon, with Cousin Mattie sitting somewhere in those eternal snows, his letter in her pocket.

But it vexed him that his best efforts could chronicle only the familiar comings and goings of Green Valley, and that, adorn and punctuate as he might, Mrs. Judge Brown’s tea-party remained only a tea-party. Some time, he felt, and somewhere, he would find subjects more worthy of his adjectives.

Years before, when he had first begun to carry milk to Green Valley, before school in the morning and after school in the evening, he had not known there was so much life beyond. The soft horizons which spelled Wakerusa on the west and Little Creek on the north seemed at a distance which could scarcely be measured and surely not traversed. But now New York echoed in Green Valley, if only in the jargon of the traveling men; and San Francisco was but a few nights on the Limited; and of late the Great War had tightened the cords until Paris seemed no farther off than a trip to the county seat. And yet Milt Bliss still peddled milk in Green Valley!

In the old days there was only a twoquart pail in each hand, one for the Flaggs and one for Abbie Barnes; but as the fame of the Bliss milk grew, so did the appetites of Green Valley, and presently Milton made over his old express cart to hold two great cans, a quart cup, and a bell. As the bell jingled its cheerful way through the shady streets, out would come each customer with her white bowl and her change. Then the ticklish business of pouring out the foaming quart was gone through with, the customer critical and alert, Milton confident and skillfully nonchalant, both with eyes fixed on the milky stream. The task accomplished, there was a moment for leisurely conversation, and all the movements of Lyddy Brown and her new beau, and all the incidents relative to the demise of George Hewitt ’s gray mare, were conscientiously and cheerfully detailed.

It was after Milton’s father died that he bought the milk-wagon and painted it a bright and cheerful blue. Now he drove accompanied by from one to three small urchins, who dangled precariously from the steps and whose only excuse for existence was to ‘help Milt move the big can,’ and to ‘ run back with change,’ reasons loudly proclaimed to doubting mothers.

So the years marched on, and Milton and the blue wagon, losing their first freshness together, took on the air of an institution, like the post-office and the Green Valley Bank. Once only was their punctual planetary course disturbed — that mild September afternoon when, passing the old O’Larry house, Milton heard frightened trampling and the swish of a raw-hide whip, and knew that Mike O’Larry was licking his horse again. Milton left old Nellie to nip delicately at the tall flowering weeds by the roadside, and went to wreak punishment on the man who would lick a horse. As he explained to old Mrs. Flagg afterwards, in his slow drawl, holding his clenched fist up for her inspection, ‘You see, those knuckles are hard, and the tendency was downward.’ Indeed, Mike O’Larry wore a bloody head for some days, never washing off the signs of carnage until it became clear that the law refused to take action against Milton.

The yellow cat stirred in her sunny dream and stretched a lazy paw toward the rhythmically moving foot beside her, but Milton was reading his words aloud now in time to an unsung song:—

‘ To the Citizens of Green Valley. — I wish to state that after Saturday night I shall discontinue my Milk route for Reasons. Please Notice and Oblige,
‘MILTON BLISS.’

As he came to the end of the line, he heard voices in the front room, and knew his sister was attempting to explain his course to some neighbor.

‘I don’t just know myself,’ she was saying. ‘Milt ’s queer, you know. Takes right after Uncle Jabe. Lately it’s seemed to worry him getting up so early and all. I guess we ’re all getting on in years.’

Milton chuckled at her predicament and stooped to pat the yellow cat. He would let it leak out about to-morrow, but not before, and then there would be a week or two to taste the full flavor of the town’s surprise. ‘Getting on in years,’ indeed, and he as sound and good as a nut — the examining doctor had said so himself. Once the uniform was on, they would all see how straight and true he had kept himself. See, and wonder, and admire; and Milton hummed a phrase from ‘Marching through Georgia,’ as he marched toward the barn, a pail in each hand.

All these years Green Valley had taken him and his wagon and his Jersey milk and his unfailing regularity just as they did the phenomena of nature, and thought no more of them. He recalled those dark hours in the early morning, when he floundered to the cow-barn through the drifts, with never a lighted window in all Green Valley to bear him company. And those Sunday afternoons, when the other men sat about in lazy comfort, and he, shorn of his white shirt and gay tie, must take his accustomed way at his accustomed time, an unwilling cup-bearer. And the weary jokes they shouted at him on his rounds: ‘Got through waterin’ that fluid, Milt?’ and, ‘There’s Milt startin’ on his Milky Way. ’Most the only star in sight, hey, Milt?’

That night Milton sat up and read. Not guiltily, remembering that morning comes apace, but gayly and defiantly, with the grateful sense that there was no hurry. But Travels in the Yellowstone were less exhilarating than usual, and his mind flew about in a fluttering sort of way. Sometimes he was on shipboard, watching the gray waves break as he had seen them in pictures; and sometimes he was marching across a treeless and devastated country, and sometimes he was pursuing vast hordes of flying Germans. And all these pictures clothed themselves in verbal equipage so glowing and splendid that Milton thrilled, thinking of letters sent back to the Green Valley Herald. Fair and beautiful letters they would be, spelled out on the front page, with headlines for all the world to read, from Green Valley to Wakerusa. Dear Green Valley, which would read and praise! Kind Green Valley, which would send him forth from its midst with tears and cheers, panoplied in knitted garments three deep, just as they had Matie Evans and Nathan Flagg’s nephew last month!

Milton started on his last trip two days later, knowing that the news was out, and there was the gayness of anticipation singing in his blood. The wheels went round in martial time — one, two, three, four — two quarts for Mrs. Jabe Miller; one, two, three, four — one for Sam White.

Mrs. Flagg hailed him from her doorstep, and came through her rows of tall larkspur to him waiting by the side of the road. Her spare, white-aproned figure looked frail and yielding, but her black eyes snapped as she faced him.

‘What’s all this nonsense I hear about your going to war, Milt?’ she said.

Milt shifted weight from one leg to the other, growing appreciably redder. There seemed nothing to say, nothing which could be said to Mrs. Flagg, at any rate.

‘A fellow sort of wants a change — Sort of gets tired adoin’ the same thing thirty-odd years,’ he drawled mildly.

Mrs. Flagg fixed him with her eyes. ‘There ain’t no such thing as change, Milt, not this side heaven. Everybody’s got his job, and he can’t go squeaking off every whip-stitch, trying to get out of it. ’T ain’t reasonable and steady. Take me! Nice thing it’d be for me to flounce out to California and leave my canned fruit to freeze and the Aid Society without any place to meet!’

‘It’s the war,’ Milton put in vaguely. ‘A fellow’s got to do his bit.’

Mrs. Flagg met this sentiment with a ‘pooh! ’ that sounded down the street. ‘That’s all right for boys, Milt. You ’re too old to go, anyway.’ And with her fatal memory for dates Mrs. Flagg executed a mathematical sum before Milton could blink. ‘June 4, 1874. That makes you forty-three. You ’re too old; they won’t take you, Milt,’ she announced. ‘You stay right here and give us our milk same as always.’

With a triumphant note in her voice, as if disposing forever of a vexed issue, she turned up her walk.

All the marching rhythm went out of Milton’s soul and left it middle-aged and dull and fit only to peddle milk. He climbed heavily into the seat, and clucked to the white horse. Old Nellie stumbled over the cross-walk, and the cans lurched together noisily just as a small boy landed on the step and tumbled himself into the wagon, his flushed forehead beady with perspiration.

‘Ran two blocks to catch you. Milt,’ he panted. ‘Ma would n’t let me come till I’d finished raking.’

He squirmed on to the floor among the cans and swung his feet out the door.

‘Say, Milt, are you really goin’ to war? Gee! I’d like to go along.’ And the small fists clenched.

Bliss nodded, a warm light coming into his eyes again.

‘Say, Milt, did you see that German helmet in the drug-store window? Gee, I’d like to get one! S’pose this war’ll just last till I get there? Scrubby Evans says there ain’t a show, but I say you can’t tell.’ He was silent a moment, considering his chances. Then in a burst, ‘Milt, s’pose you’ll like to fight? The women say you can’t never do it, that you won’t even drown your cat’s kittens. They say they don’t see you a-chasin’ the foe.'

The boy’s brown eyes searched Milton’s anxiously and then looked away. Bliss did not answer, and old Nellie stopped of her own accord before Jabe Miller’s hitching-post, a relic of former placid surrey days.

‘I got to drop off here, and get ma some oil,’ the boy remarked uncomfortably, swinging to the ground. And then, a few yards on his way, he called back, ‘But I told them to remember how you busted up Mike O’Larry.’

Milton waited hopefully as pretty little Mrs. Bessey waved her green parasol at him down the street. Her husband had just gone into service, and all the town praised her cheerful courage.

‘Oh, Mr. Bliss,’ she called, hurrying; ‘do tell me it’s not true that you’re going to leave us.’

Bliss nodded, his eyes on her soft pinkness. He was not prepared for her next action, which was to sink suddenly and hopelessly on to the wagon-step and bury her face in her hands.

‘I—can’t — bear it,’ she sobbed, ‘just when baby’s getting on so well on your milk, and there is n’t any other decent milk in this town, — and we’ve had so much trouble with her, and — and— Harry’s gone.’ This last was lost in an uncontrollable gulp.

Milton felt helplessly guilty as the cause of that soft sobbing, but he could only pat her shoulder and wish that someone would come or that she would pull herself together. Jabe Miller, driving up a moment later, found them so occupied, and stopped to learn the trouble.

‘That’s right,’ he declared heavily, when Milton had explained and Mrs. Bessey raised her tear-stained face.

‘ Must think he’s some young feller in his twenties, a-wantin’ to chase off to France! Must think he’ll be a mighty spry young chicken in a unyform!' He poked the hapless Milton in the ribs. Then he added in a more serious tone, ‘Us old middle-aged folks got to let the boys have it their way I’m thinkin’.’ He rolled his pale eyes. ‘Us’ll better stick to home. Not but what it does you credit Milt, to want to help a bit. But we’ve got to stick to home.’ And with a chuckle he flipped his broad-backed mare. ‘Byelo.’

Things grew worse instead of better as the milk-wagon proceeded east on Center Street, and then turned into the home-stretch. Mothers who had waved a merry good-bye to their sons looked askance at Milton, and asked suspiciously, ‘Who’s going to give us milk now?’ while the men on Main Street made merry with the notion of Milton in ‘unyform.’

Isa Rann had just read an article on the value of milk as food, and the dangers attending its disuse; and she volunteered to bring it over that very night, that Milton might understand his place in Green Valley. ‘If we stop drinking milk, we’ll be stunted, Milton. All the races that don’t drink milk are stunted. And if you go, there won’t be any milk to drink.’

Her voice trembled, and all Milton Bliss’s assurances that he ‘was n’t agoin’ to take the cows too’ failed to dim the vivid picture of a milkless Green Valley, weazened and shrunken.

But Milton’s severest trial came to him at home, after the supper had been cleared away and the sister and brother sat cosily on the side porch, with the yellow cat purring by their side. Down by the garden the shadows were growing purple, and the scarf of sunset sky deepened into dull orange and then into flame. Milton wondered if skies in France were more gorgeous.

Mary Bliss put by her knitting and spoke.

‘Milt,’ she said, ‘if I thought’t was just patritism I would n’t say a word. But you know, and I know, that you was always a great hand to want to get away from home. You had that notion from a boy. No, sir, if ’t was just patritism I’d keep still, but if it’s just an itchin’ to see strange places you were n’t never meant to, all I can say is that this is no time to be indulgin’ your own wishes, with me and all Green Valley sittin’ at home waitin’ for you to get back. Patritism’s one thing and wantin’ to get a free travel-ticket’s another.’

Milton Bliss did not answer, and presently he rose and strolled off down the path that led to the barn. He felt strangely numb and indifferent. Green Valley grudged him his chance: it looked askance at him, and doubted his motives, and called him old. He felt at that moment as if it might be right, and a vision of himself, old and gray, but still pouring foaming milk from a quart cup against the drearily familiar landscape of Green Valley, confronted him. He swung himself easily up on the fence that bounded his little barnyard and heard the cows nuzzling in the straw. Overhead the stars popped out in the growing darkness, and a misty band showed clear through the heavens. Milton remembered the old joke and smiled to himself. Was his to be the Milky Way forever, when in all the rest of the heavens there were such bright, clear stars? Green Valley might laugh, but Green Valley should listen later!

‘The women can milk you themselves,’ he addressed the sleeping herd; ‘I don’t put it past them, and they’ve time enough, the Lord knows.’

He felt the great muscles of his forearm, and smiled, remembering Mike O’Larry’s bloody head.

‘I guess the years don’t matter, if you’ve got the goods,’ he muttered. And he right-about-faced and strode back to the house, whistling ‘Marching through Georgia.’