Rhode Island, 3 - Indiana, 1

IF I spend the rest of my life in New England and see my sons grow up here, I may eventually adopt Yankee ways, or at least become reconciled to them in others. I will try. But at the moment I am not sure that I shall succeed. I am not at all sure. Although I have spent the past ten years in Rhode Island, today it is more obvious to me than ever that I am still a Hoosier and shall probably always remain one.

It is the Hoosier’s irrepressible urge to express his feelings that makes me fee! like Ruth amid the alien corn. Natives of Indiana are inclined more than most people to wear their hearts on their sleeves. They lose their tempers quickly and fall in love readily and grow excited over the things they like and furious over the things they don’t like. Five minutes after meeting a stranger, they are telling him all about themselves, what they are partial to at table (which is usually fried chicken and butter beans), how they vote (which may be either Democratic or Republican, but always emphatically), and what the weather was like on the day they were born (which was sure to have been hot as blazes if their birthday was anywhere between the first of June and the first of October). Hoosiers are great talkers. They do not always say what they think, but they invariably say what they feel. They can’t help it.

Now, in New England, people may sometimes say what they think; but they never say what they feel. Either they say the opposite or, more likely, they say nothing. Once I saw a Yankee fall off a ladder while he was picking apples. It was a magnificent fall, beautifully executed, with several revolutions in mid-air and a crash at the end that caused a minor earthquake. Surviving as he did, I should have got up and systematically smashed the ladder to splinters and then probably chopped down the apple tree and afterwards sold the farm. But the Yankee did no such thing. He lay quietly on the ground for a while and ended by poking his finger inquisitively into the earth beside him. ‘H-m-m — mushrooms,’ he said, and nothing more.

Another time, when I was gathering wild flowers for my wife’s table, I met up with some Yankee farmers haying in the rain. Thinking I’d make polite conversation, I said, ‘Not very good weather for haying, is it?’ They looked me over in silence for a long time; then one of them replied, ‘’Tain’t no worse than it is for pickin’ flowers.’

That’s the principal difference between me and the people I live among. I have never got used to it. Today my Yankee-born sons have made me realize that I probably never shall.

Two of those sons were born only a few hours ago — twins. When a man has twins, he can be expected to have emotions, even in New England, —mingled emotions perhaps, but emotions nonetheless, — pride and joy and amazement and no small dash of anxiety. Being a Hoosier, I have all of them today in good measure; and when a Hoosier has emotions, he expresses them.

The first thing I did after leaving the hospital was to call up one of my oldest friends here in Rhode Island He is all Yankee, with a Yankee name, a Yankee altitude of frame, a Yankee mind, and a Yankee accent; and, both in spite and because of these characteristics, I regard him as one of the best friends I have.

‘It’s twins!’ I announced excitedly over the telephone. ‘ Twins — bom at noon today and both over six pounds and their mother is fine. Twins!’

There was a long silence at the other end of the line, but at last my friend spoke.

‘Twins?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Twins! Two of them!’

‘H-m-m,’ he said. ‘Boys or girls?’

‘ Both boys — fine, big boys! ‘

Another silence. Then: —

‘H-m-m — too bad you didn’t get a boy and a girl.’

‘Well,’ I began; but he interrupted me: —

‘Are they identical twins?’

‘Yes.’

‘Be hard to tell them apart, won’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, lamely now. ‘But we don’t have to dress them alike, and anyhow they say the parents can always tell.’

There was another long silence, and I began to think my friend had hung up. But he hadn’t.

‘Reckon they’ll make good book-ends,’ he said; and that “was all.

After that, I decided I would not announce the news to anyone else until my six-yearold son came home from school. My son, named for me but known as ‘Wigs’ among his intimates, was born in Rhode Island; but it has been said that he looks like me, which makes him part Hoosier at least; and after all, in spite of his six New’ England winters, he still has some of the fresh bloom of .youth left upon him. I could count on him to rise to the occasion. The twins were his brothers and my sons, and we would celebrate together in good, open-hearted Hoosier fashion. We might even shed a few’ sentimental tears together in our happiness.

I waited impatiently at the front windows, watching for him; and finally I saw him coming down the street. It took him forever to reach the house. He zigzagged across the sidewalk, swinging his legs. He stopped for a game of hopscotch. He tried a standing broad jump, then a few running broad jumps, He got down on his hands and knees to examine a minute object which he discovered on a neighbor’s lawn. He loitered at the curb waving a gaudy red-and-green sample of his first-grade work in water color at passing motorists. He turned a somersault. He made a long speech to the house across the street, with many gesticulations for emphasis. But, Hoosier that I am, I knew better, after ten years in Rhode Island, than to open the door and shout the news at him for all the neighbors to hear. Instead, I waited as patiently as I could until he entered the house and had begun to fling his wraps about the parlor.

‘Wigs,’ I said then, breathlessly, ‘you have two baby brothers!’

He sat down on the floor and began to pull off his snow suit.

‘Have I?’ he said, without looking up. Then he stopped suddenly and stared at me.

‘ Two?'

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Two.’

For a full minute he sat still in the middle of the floor, staring at me in amazement; and my heart began to beat fast. In another moment he would fly to me and we would go dancing about the room in our joy, and afterwards we would go out and have ice-cream sodas and stick candy and I would answer his thousands of questions about the new brothers as best I could. But, when the minute of amazement was past, Wigs began again methodically to remove his snow suit and his face became once more matter-offact.

‘Oh,’ he said quietly, ‘you mean twins. Daddy, may I have a cookie?’

Yes; if I spend the rest of my life in New England, I may eventually adopt Yankee ways, or at least become reconciled to them in others. With three Yankee-born sons now, I shall have to try. But I’m not at all sure that I shall succeed. At the moment, although I have just become the father of twins, I feel rather ineffectual and lonely — and cheated.

WILLIAM E. WILSON