Hardcastle (16 page)

“Well?” Cecil said.

“Well?” Regus responded, raising his eyebrows quizzically.

“Well, goddam!” Cecil said, the goiter on his neck swelling, “you feed a feller that bullshit until he acquires a taste for it …”—he waved his arms around as though shooing flies and grew red in the face—“you cain’t just leave it there.”

Regus’s eyebrows rose another quarter of an inch, and he turned to look at Music as though for explanation.

“You ain’t a-foolin nobody,” Cecil said. “Go on ahead and tell me what ye done and put me outta my misery.”

“Oh,” Regus said, “why sure. I just only stayed right quiet, took a good grip on the small bear, and when the momma got down where I could, why I clamped my teeth in her ass and grabbed a handful of fur. Lordy,” Regus said and gave a little bark of laughter and shook his head, “she clawed me and that dead bear both right up outta that tree quicker than you could spit. When we got to the top, I just pushed her off, and she broke her neck.”

“Course you did,” Cecil said, looking disgusted. “Shitfire, I don’t see why I didn’t think of that myself.”

“Me neither,” Regus said; “was near about the only thing to do.” He sniffed and ran his finger back and forth under his nose. “Come on, Bill Music,” he said, “less us get outta here fore Cecil gets back everything Hardcastle paid us in wages.”

In spite of himself, Music flushed. “Not yet,” he said; “there’s a trifle here I’d like to buy.”

“Jesus, what’s that?” Cecil said. “I thought I’d listened to that great load of nonsense for the price of a soda.”

“I’d like to know what amount …” Music cleared his throat; his ears heated up. “That is,” he said, “this cloth here, how much of it would it take to make a dress?”

“Well,” Cecil said, “what size woman do you want to cover?”

Regus was looking at him, a hint of curiosity in his mild face, but nothing of ridicule. “Bout this high,” Music said, holding his hand out level with his shoulder. There was a ringing in his ears as though someone had fired a pistol off just over his head, but there was nothing to do but brazen it out.

“Yeah?” Cecil said. “And how big around?”

“I don’t know,” Music said.

“Ha,” Cecil said, “don’t tell me ye don’t know no more about yer sweetie than that!”

“Mercy,” Regus said softly and moved a few feet to the north to stand beside the bins of produce along the wall. He got out his plug of tobacco and his pocketknife.

“Say what?” Cecil said, turning to Regus and laughing.

“Don’t mind me,” Regus said. He cut himself a chew of tobacco, bit it off the knife blade, and talked around it. “I just don’t want to be in the line of fire if you aim to keep showin yer bad manners.”

Cecil flicked his eyes to Music and the butt of the huge Walker Colt. “Here now, didn’t mean a single thing,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t tell how much cloth to sell ye if I don’t know what size the lady is.”

“Not big,” Music said.

Cecil rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I reckon five yards ought to be aplenty.” He brightened and took a yardstick from beneath one of the counters. “Hit’s as pretty a cloth as I’ve ever carried in the store. Right expensive though. Cost you twelve cent a yard.”

“That’s all right,” Music said.

Cecil flipped the bolt over half a dozen times and began to measure.

“I don’t want that part,” Music said.

Cecil blinked his eyes. “Say what?” he said.

“It’s faded, and it’s got coal dust on it,” Music said.

“Christ, if the lady’s goan wear it around here, hit’ll have coal dust on it fore she turns around twice, and once she washes it and hangs it out on the line, hit’ll fade out even,” Cecil said.

“I won’t have the dirty part,” Music said.

“I can’t just cut it off and throw it away without I charge ye for it,” Cecil said. “I had to buy the whole bolt, and that’s what I got to sell.”

“All right,” Music said.

“Take yer measurement from the other end,” Regus said quietly.

“I’ll have to unroll the whole damned thing,” Cecil said.

“I expect,” Regus said.

Mumbling and muttering to himself, Cecil unrolled the bolt, measured from the other end, and cut the material with pinking shears.

“You got any fine paper?” Music asked.

“Say what now?” Cecil said.

“Any colored paper, pretty paper?” Music said. Embarrassment, like anything else, he supposed, could be gotten used to. He looked Cecil straight in the eye.

“No, I don’t,” Cecil said. “Don’t get no call for it.”

“All right, have you got a nice box then?”

“I ain’t got that either,” Cecil said.

“All right,” Music said, “do you have any ribbon?”

“I got some odds of hair ribbon is all,” Cecil said.

“All right,” Music said. “Wrap it up in brown paper and put a ribbon bow on it.”

“I’ll have to charge for the ribbon,” Cecil said. “This here ain’t my stuff. I cain’t give it away.”

“That will be fine,” Music said. “That will be just fine.”

Cecil wrapped the cloth and tied it first with string and then with ribbon. Music paid him, and he and Regus left together, but they got no further than the empty gallery, as though, having managed to buy the material and have it wrapped, Music’s resolve would take him no further; as though what he had already done were sufficient, an end in itself. He stood uncertainly on the gallery, staring off across the company street. Decorously, Regus looked up the highway toward Valle Crucis, chewed thoughtfully, spat thoughtfully, giving Music whatever room he needed to say whatever he wanted to say, or to say nothing at all. Music was grateful, although his ears were still warming the sides of his head. “I guess it wouldn’t make much sense not to go on and give it to her,” Music said at last.

“Sounds right,” Regus said, calm and easy and without the slightest trace of irony.

“Ha, dammit,” Music said all at once, “don’t seem like much of a present now that I think about it. I ought to have bought her a dress, maybe.”

“Nawh,” Regus said. “I don’t think you could have fit her. She’d as soon have the cloth, I’d vow.” He turned his head and spat.

“Well,” Music said, “I guess I’ll go on then. I’ll be back in a little.”

“Take ye time,” Regus said. “Grady says ole Hardcastle wants us to check in on Mink Slide to make sure they ain’t no white faces ner strange niggers back in there. Wants us to take a look-see down to the Bear Paw, too, but it ain’t no hurry.”

“Well, I’ll go on then,” Music said, and he descended two steps and stopped. “Seems awful personal all of a sudden,” he said. “Maybe I should have got some coffee or some grub.”

“I think she’d as lief have the cloth,” Regus said.

Music nodded, and after a moment, without looking back, started across the road. Look here, he wanted to tell her, I just jumped off a train down the road a piece. I got nothin to do with this coal company or any other. I didn’t shoot your husband; don’t intend to shoot anybody’s husband. I been on the road nearly two years. I just want to get on back to Virginia, which I should have never left. I just want to make a few dollars and get on back home. That’s what he’d tell her. He came up the hardscrabble path by her broken front porch and went around to the back door and knocked. His head hurt. He could feel the beard on his face, each individual hair of it, as though it were wire driven into the skin. The ancient Walker Colt under his coat seemed the size and weight of an artillery piece. Maybe the old woman would answer the door and he could give her the package and leave.

The door opened, and it was not the old woman. He fumbled in his head for what he was going to say. “Here,” he said and held the package out to her. Her eyes were blue-grey, the color of smoke, and if they weren’t so hard as they had been the times before, there was nothing else in them either, save, perhaps, curiosity. As though from a great distance, as though he were looking back on it from some future time when it no longer mattered so much, he saw himself standing upon the hard-packed, littered earth outside her back door, coal dust scumming over the small windows of the shack so that they resembled the dusky scales of a snake; smoke curling from the chimney; her eyes going from the brown paper she opened to his eyes, red-rimmed, a bit glazed with embarrassment; the badge on his coat; the pistol grip of the Colt sticking out over his heart like a pump handle; the package of bright cloth between them; and from that great distance he could see that she was only moderately pretty, the faintest touch of querulous lines already about her mouth, merely indeed, the female animal.

“I thought it might make a dress,” he said.

Whatever there had been of curiosity in her eyes was replaced by something else he could not define, and all at once her mouth crumpled suddenly as though she would cry; and abruptly she shut the door in his face; although, before he had quite turned away, she opened it again. She looked at him a long moment—the material, the brown paper, and the ribbon crumpled against her waist—while she appeared to gain control of the expression around her mouth which had twisted it toward weeping. “I’ve got a little coffee on the stove,” she said; “you can come in a minute if ye’d like to.”

“I would,” he said.

She abandoned the doorway, put her package on the table, and went directly to the cupboard for a cup and then to the small cooking range and poured him coffee from an enameled pot. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

“Who’s come?” the old woman’s broken voice asked from another room.

“You rest easy, Aunt Sylvie,” the young woman said, as though it were a proper answer. She held the coffee cup in her two hands and didn’t quite look him in the face. “Set ye down then,” she said.

He sat down at the small table and she put the cup before him. “Won’t you have some with me?” he said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want none.” She sat down across from him and folded her hands upon the table. After a moment she began to stroke the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other. “It’s been right nice, the things you brung,” she said and gave a little laughing sigh. “County relief won’t keep nobody much these days. Maybe a bag of flour now and again and a bar of soap. They seem awful anxious bout folks bein clean. Ye get more soap than ye can use.” She gave a motion of her head toward the front rooms. “Course Aunt Sylvie’s brother, over to Big Stone Gap, he sends us a dollar or two when he can. It’s been right nice, the coffee and all,” she said.

He didn’t know how to reply. He took a drink of his coffee. She sat across from him rubbing the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, her neck beginning to turn rosy, until, from one of the front rooms, came a sound as though someone were swinging a door back and forth on a rusty hinge. “Poor youngin,” she said, “I got to fetch her,” and she left the kitchen to return a moment later with the small child wrapped in a blanket.

“What’s the matter with her?” Music asked.

“I’m scared hit’s the whoopin cough, poor thing,” Merlee said. “I thought she was goan drop off for a while, for she hardly slept at all last night. Poor babe,” she said, “poor thing.” She rocked the child against her breast while, with slow, puffy eyes, it looked at Music, its thumb in its slightly open mouth, its upper lip and nostrils wet and chapped. When the child began again to cough, Merlee held it tighter as though to brace it against the croupy, rusty-hinge sounds that wracked its body. “Now, now, now,” she crooned.

“I use to come down with that a lot,” Music said, “and my little brother worse than me. Momma made a poultice for us that helped, and sometimes gave us teaspoons of whiskey and honey she’d heated up. I’ve laid and watched her make that poultice many a time. I’ll make her one.”

“That’s real kind,” Merlee said, rocking the child against her breast; but then suddenly she stopped and sat absolutely still in her chair. “Look here …” she said, but her mouth and chin began to crumple, and she had to press her lips together to control them. When she looked him in the face, he saw that she was, after all, only a young girl, hardly grown herself; never mind that she had borne a child, that she was already a widow. Anger smoldered in her eyes, but even the quality of her anger seemed young, untaught. “Look here,” she said, “I don’t want to be beholden to no mine guard. I don’t know what yer after, but ye won’t get it!” She began to weep. Like a trick reflection of her, the child she held wept too, with the sound of a braying mule or the cawing of a young crow.

It was not at all funny. He had no notion why he was amused. “Excuse me,” he said, “but seems like you could wait until I ask you and then tell me no.” He got up from the table. “And the youngin’s got enough trouble without you makin her cry. She can hardly get her breath.”

“I don’t want to be beholden to no company goon!” she said and began to rock her daughter again and shush her.

“I need a piece of wool rag, an onion, and some turpentine,” Music said.

“I ain’t got them,” Merlee said.

“All right,” Music said, “I’ll go to the commissary and get them. I don’t expect you got no whiskey, noway.”

“No, ner any honey neither,” Aunt Sylvie said, and Music looked up to see her standing just outside the threshold of the kitchen, her face all wrinkles and puckers and creases into which he could read any expression whatever, or none. “I’ll git yore turpentine,” she said, “and as fer onions, ye’ll find one or two directly under the cupboard yonder.”

“I don’t want to be beholden to him,” Merlee said, but the old woman, listing carefully from side to side and shuffling her feet, managed to turn herself around and move out of sight. “I’d as lief you’d hush awhile, myself,” she said from another room.

While Merlee sat, red-faced and quiet, Music found the onions, peeled the largest one, and chopped it up fine on the sideboard. When the old woman returned, looking up at him from beneath her widow’s hump, he could smell her. It was a strong but not unpleasant odor, like the den of an animal. “I recollect a granny woman use to doctor whoopin cough like this when I was a little bit of a gal,” the old woman said, “but I disremember how she done it.” She held a bottle of turpentine out to him in her warped and palsied hands. “Use hit as liniment fer my rheumatism,” she said, “but hit don’t hep much.”