Heed the Thunder (22 page)

They assured each other that it was about time someone was giving the old son-of-a-bitch a hand. They might even have to stay right on there in the valley and farm…goddamit.

Having come to this decision, they began searching for a job that would fill their needs. And after much weary and hungry pounding of pavements, they found what—or so they thought—they wanted.

It was in a Greek restaurant, and the proprietor desired only one man: a combination waiter, bus boy, sweeper-out, and relief dishwasher. But being offered the services of both for the wages of one, and knowing nothing of their appetites, he hired them.

They were hungry for work, and during the first two weeks of their employment, they delighted the proprietor with their efforts. They washed the walls and ceiling. They scrubbed the floors until they were as bright as they had been on the day they were laid. They moved fixtures, destroying the nests of vermin behind them and plugging the rat-and mouse-holes. Handy with tools, they made alterations and improvements which would have cost into the hundreds of dollars. They even painted the front of the establishment. And when two pickets from the painters’ union showed up, they gave them such a drubbing that they never reappeared.

But, then, everything was done. Two of them were no longer necessary, and yet two remained—and ate.

The proprietor’s first move was to cut their joint salary of six dollars a week to five. That did not faze them, nor did another reduction to four. They still had, after paying their room rent, a dollar left to spend for amusement, laundry, tobacco, stamps, and medical attention; and, after all, they were only trying to make the winter. And, too, they sometimes picked up a tip.

The proprietor would have cut their wages to nothing, but there was some sort of state law against that. Anyway, their meals alone were enough to make their employment unprofitable.

He would have fired them outright, but he had a feeling of gratitude for what they had done and a much greater feeling of fear for what they might do.

He issued strict orders to the cook, and he remained adamant to their protests. But while they became sullen, they did not quit.

There came an evening when a white-suited planter and his organdy-gowned wife entered the place. They had never been more than forty miles from their plantation, and they had what probably amounted to a fifth-grade education. But they were experts on everything in the field of human conduct.

Frowning over the menu, the gentleman suddenly drawled an inquiry at Gus as to why a big strappin’ white fellah like him was doin’ a niggah’s wuk. Gus restrained the obvious retort that it was none of his goddamned business, and replied that he didn’t intend doing it any longer than he had to.

The planter grunted disapprovingly.

“Ain’t you from the No’th?” his consort asked.

Gus said, yes, he was.

“I thought so.” The couple nodded at each other grimly.…“Well, what do you recommend?”

Gus didn’t know what he meant for a moment. Then he said that everything on the menu was good. He added that he wished he had some himself.

The planter advised him not to be insolent. Gus said he wasn’t being: everything was good.

“Ah you goin’ to recommend somethin’, oah will Ah have to call the managuh?”

“All right,” said Gus, “I’ll tell you something. Try you a bowl of scabs and a glass of snot.”

“That’s bettah,” nodded the planter. “What—” He paled.

His lady screamed faintly.

Ted came up and stood shoulder to shoulder with his brother. “I can think of something better. Try you some horse-turds with piss gravy.”

The planter tried to cane them, and they flattened him.

They flattened the proprietor and the cook.

They flattened the first detachment of police that arrived.

Then more police came and Ted and Gus were flattened. They were beaten up so thoroughly that they lingered between life and death for days. And it was almost six weeks before they recovered sufficiently to be brought to trial.

They were tried for assault with a deadly weapon, malicious destruction of property, the carrying of deadly weapons (penknives), inciting to riot, and, since they were without jobs, that most serious of charges in a Southern court, vagrancy.

They were obviously damyankees of the worst sort, and they were sentenced to two years on each charge, or a total of ten years. At hard labor. Because of their extreme youth, however, and to show his lack of prejudice, the kindly judge, one Robert E. Lee Clay, directed that the sentences run concurrently.

A
t thirteen (almost fourteen), the boy Bob Dillon was a mass of contradictions, infinitely more worrisome and puzzling to himself than he was to others.

When anyone stopped to analyze his features one by one, which few did besides himself, they decided that he was the homeliest kid in the country. Still, in the aggregate, he seemed to be nice-looking; and the general opinion to that effect had swayed his own. On the other hand, he was inordinately clumsy, and his relatives, his mother included, never missed a chance to reprove him for his gawkiness; but he did not believe that he was awkward. He would deny the fact at the top of his lungs, with all the profanity at his command.

Generally, he did not swear much. He did not object to others cursing—he even enjoyed it. But for himself he preferred using, searching for, words and phrases which expressed the same vehemence and decadence, but yet were acceptable in any company.

His companions were of all ages and sizes. One day he might be seen walking between two high-school seniors, his hands companionably dropped upon their shoulders. An hour later he could be observed talking to some four-year-old tot, his bony face tender, amused—and interested—at the child’s prattling.

He had that mixed curse and blessing, the ability to make people laugh without trying to, even when trying not to. He had but to stroll into any gathering to invoke smiles. An innocent and completely solemn remark about the weather would start a storm of laughter. His teachers seldom called upon him to recite. At the mere mention of his name the class would grin; his standing up would start giggles and chuckles; and a matter-of-fact statement about factoring or the American Revolution would create an uncontrollable hurricane of mirth.

His school grades were amazingly good or abysmally bad, usually the latter. He read all his books through at the beginning of each term and never looked at them again. He could not diagram a sentence and such terms as “past participle” and “present imperfect” filled him with amused annoyance. But he could write better themes than the examples in the text. His grades for the first semester of algebra were seventy-five, zero, and ninety-eight. He had read every history, ancient and modern, in the public library, but he passed the subject in school by the skin of his teeth. The Latin class was unbearable to him, but he would plug away for hours at some foreign-language newspaper.

He was little good at anything that he had to do, yet he possessed a strong sense of duty. Extremely credulous, he was also suspicious of almost everyone.

At thirteen (almost fourteen), the one possible defect in Paulie Pulasky’s make-up was her undeviating affection for Bob Dillon.

She had been voted the prettiest girl in the freshman class, and even oldsters, and Protestants at that, were constantly remarking on her beauty. She was the spirit of gracefulness. She went with girls of her own age and took little interest in others. Her grades were invariably good. She thought that most men swore and it wasn’t very bad for them to do so. She went to mass twice a week, and enjoyed doing as she was told.

But she was still Bob Dillon’s girl, and now, as she lingered in front of the hotel on this late-summer afternoon, she was about to become his in the ultimate meaning of the term.

“Come on, Paulie!” he hissed through the screen. “Come on, now. You promised you would.”

“But I’m afraid, Bobbie!” She looked fearfully over her shoulder and one of her long brown braids swung over her maturing bosom. “I saw Daddy looking out the window a while ago.”

“Well, he won’t know what you’re going to do! You’re over here half the time, aren’t you?”

She giggled. “I am not, either!”

“Paulie! You come in here!”

“I’m afraid y-your mother—”

“Dammit, I told you she was out at my grandfather’s. Now, come on!”

He thrust the screen open, and with a last frightened glance she scurried inside. Grabbing her by the hand, he hustled her up the stairs. He unlocked a vacant room with his skeleton key, pulled her inside, and locked the door behind them. Foresightedly, he had drawn the shades beforehand.

He looked down at her in the dusky room and she, blushing, laid her head against his chest. Awkwardly, he put his arms around her, and they hugged one another.

“I’m afraid, Bobbie.…”

“What are you afraid of? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Well, it’s not nice.…”

He shrugged, sighed with vast impatience; and her arms instantly tightened around him.

“Don’t be mad at me, Bobbie. I—I will.”

“Well, come on, then!”

He led her over to the bed and gave her pointed instructions. The blush deepened on her cream-and-peaches cheeks, even as the great humble eyes grew moist and the pouting breasts trembled.

“You’ve got to look the other way,” she faltered.

“Dammit, how can I?”

“I mean, until I’m ready.”

“All right,” he sighed, and turned his back.

There was silence for a moment; then a hopping sound as she stood first on one foot, then the other. There was a crinkling of stiffly starched gingham, a rustling of taffeta, and a snapping of elastic.

The bed creaked.

“All right,” she said in a muffled voice.

He turned around and almost burst into laughter.

She was on her knees with her face buried in the pillow. Her dress was neatly turned up around her bare pear-shaped bottom.

He did smile, but it was a smile of tenderness and love. Gently he lay down at her side and pulled her prone, facing him. He patted her pink bottom playfully as if he had been years the older of the two.

“That’s not the way, Paulie. You have to lie on your back.”

“Oh…” He could feel the flush of her cheek, pressed so closely to his.

“Well, Paulie…”

“Let’s just kiss, Bobbie.”

“All right.”

“You’d rather, wouldn’t you? You’ll like me better, won’t you, if we just kiss?”

“I like you any way, Paulie.”

She snuggled closer; her lips moved, flower-like, against his ear.

“Tell me you love me, Bobbie.”

“I love you.”

“And you’ll always love me.”

“I’ll always love you, Paulie.”

Somehow, her soft round arm was inside his shirt. Her hand moved over his back and shoulders, timidly at first, then with strange sureness and firmness. Her other hand went to his head, pushing the hair back from his face while she stared into his eyes.

There was so much there, so much that was ancient and wise in the great slate-gray pools, that suddenly it was he who felt young and foolish and frightened. And she saw those things, felt them, knew them almost before they occurred; and her eyes closed and her lips parted. She pulled his mouth down against hers. She held it there while she slowly, carefully turned her body.…

…Downstairs the phone rang again and again. It rang four times within an hour, and each time the DeHart girl lumbered in from the kitchen to answer it, she shouted up the stairs and down the street for Bob Dillon. She told Edie, at last, that she hadn’t seen the scamp since noon and that if she wasted any more time looking for him, there wouldn’t be no supper that night. She banged up the receiver and went back to the kitchen mumbling to herself.

And at Lincoln Fargo’s house, Edie returned to the bedroom where her father lay dying.

“I can’t get ahold of him, Pa. Maybe he’s on the way out here.”

“Maybe,” nodded Lincoln.

“Anyway,” said his daughter brightly, “he’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lincoln snorted feebly and gave her a doggish look from his yellow eyes.

“Goddam if he won’t,” he said.

He was propped up on the pillows in his great mahogany bed. His beloved cane lay across his lap. There was a bottle of whisky at his side and a long black stogie between his fingers. For, hell, as Doc Jones had said, he couldn’t hurt himself any and he might as well be comfortable.

He had said good-by to them all: to Sherman’s kids, one by one, with rude but gentle jests; to his wife, singly, with forced patience; to Sherman, alone, in a long, thoughtful talk; to Josephine, by a shout through the door; to Alf and Myrtle, together, with a few polite nothings. To Edie.…He was still saying good-by to Edie.

The others remained in the living room, talking in hushed tones, now and then looking in at the door.

“I’m sure sorry, Pa,” said Edie, worriedly. “Bobbie’s just thoughtless. He—”

“He’s just a boy.” His gaze became level. “Remember that.”

“All right, Pa.”

“It’s easy to forget that a kid’s a kid. Forgot it lots of times myself. I always excused myself—tried to, anyways—on the grounds that I’d never really been a kid myself. But that’s no excuse. All you need to do is let ’em be; let ’em be what they are. Most always it’s pretty good. If it don’t look good to us, it’s generally because we don’t know what’s good and what ain’t.”

While Edie watched him anxiously, wanting to protest, he took a drink from the bottle and a long pull from his stogie. He coughed and batted smoke from his eyes.

“Yes, goddam,” he said. “Kids and animals, they know. You see a hog eatin’ cinders and you think he’s a damned fool. He ain’t though; he knows what he needs. You see a kid doing something that looks foolish, and he knows what he needs, too. But you bat him over the head and growl and nag at him, and he stops doing it. An’ maybe…”

“Yes, Pa?”

“Nothing.”

“Pa…don’t worry about Grant.”

“We went off and left him there alone in Kansas City, Edie. He wasn’t any more’n a mite. He wasn’t—hell, he wasn’t anywheres near as big as Bob. He was a little bit older than Bob was when you first come here. I remember…I remember, he knew we was leaving, and he was afraid we wasn’t goin’ to take him along. He used to follow Ma around from morning until night, watchin’ to see that she didn’t slip off without him. He was always…he was always kind of afraid of me. But after I went back there to get you folks, he’d keep hangin’ around, tryin’ to do little things to get on the good side of me. One night he slipped down and got the stove-blackin’ and dobbed my shoes all up with it, and I…I…”

Edie bit her lip. “Don’t, Pa. You weren’t ever mean to anyone.”

“I never meant to be. But I remember…I remember the day we left. The printer he was bound to came to get him, and…and you see, Edie, we thought it was best for him. He wasn’t big enough to be any help around a farm, and…sometimes I think I can hear him screamin’ yet, beggin’ us not to leave him there.…”

He took another long drink. Coughing, he leaned over the side of the bed and spat on the papers spread out upon the floor. He settled back again, puffing deeply at the stogie.

“I wish I could have seen Bob, Edie.”

“You will, Pa. He’ll come along afterwhile.…I just don’t know what’s got into him lately. He’s absolutely no help at all. He won’t do his lessons at school. I’m just going to have to give him a good talking-to, I guess.”

Lincoln rolled his eyes at her.

“Was there—was there anything you wanted me to tell him, Pa?”

“I guess not, Edie.” He laughed softly.

Mrs. Fargo came to the doorway and looked in.

“I was goin’ to fix a bite to eat, Pa. You want anything?”

“No, thank you, Ma.”

“You want me to talk—you want to talk to me, any?”

Her husband shook his head. “We’ve been talkin’ something over fifty years, Ma,” he said gently. “I don’t see much point in another hour or so.”

She went away, face sullen, eyes red. After a time Sherman rocked in, his stubby pipe clenched between his teeth.

“Myrtle and Alf was sayin’ we ought to have Doc Jones out again. What do you think, Pa?”

“I don’t see any point in it, Sherman.”

“Well, I don’t either,” Sherman admitted. “But you know how they are.”

“Just tell ’em to run along home after they’ve et. Tell ’em I’ll see ’em tomorrow.”

“Well, hell,” Sherman protested. “You won’t.…Goddamit!” He broke off to blow his nose. “Catchin’ another goddamned cold,” he explained.

“It’s bad weather for colds. A person gets so hot, and then they sit down to cool off and they catch cold,” said Edie.

And her brother looked at her gratefully.

“Take you a drink,” Lincoln suggested.

“Now, maybe I ought to. Nothing like whisky for a cold.” He turned the bottle up, took three long swallows, and laid it back at his father’s side. “You suppose you’ll be all right if I run over home for a while? The milkin’ ain’t done yet, and them goddamned ornery boys—”

He broke off, and for a moment his face was almost entirely blank.

“Hell,” he said, “I ain’t in no hurry.” And he turned and swaggered out.

“Poor Sherman,” said Edie.

“Yes,” said Lincoln.

“Sometimes it just seems like the harder a body tries, the worse off they wind up.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Now and then Lincoln drank while his daughter protested with her eyes. Once he reached for a match, and she leaped up and lit his cigar for him. Then she settled back again. Waiting.

The windmill croaked and moaned, dismally, as the evening breeze tugged at its blades. Cawing, their claws clicking against the board walks, the chickens marched leisurely toward the hen house. Far, far away, there was a long drawn-out
sooooie-sooiepig-soo-ooo-ooie
.

In the town the Catholic Church bell began to toll.

Lincoln stirred. Shyly, he looked at his daughter.

“Edie,” he said, in a shamed voice, “you reckon there’s a hell?”

Edie nodded her head firmly. “I know doggoned well there is. And you don’t have to dig for it.”

Lincoln laughed. Comforted, he took another drink.

“I was just thinking about Sherman…”

“Sherman will get along all right, Pa.”

“I don’t mean him. Well, I was thinking about him, too. But I meant the other one—General Sherman.”

“Oh?”

“I was with Sherman, you know. Marched clear through to the sea with him. Never talked much about it. I guess I never”—he coughed, violently, but waved her back as she started to rise—“I guess I never liked to think about it. I figured I ought to be proud—I kind of had to be proud, y’see—and I couldn’t when I stopped to think, so I didn’t think any more than I had to. We used to have these meetings, up until a few years back, where we waved the bloody shirt, and sang all the old ones like ‘Marching through Georgia’ and ‘John Brown’s Body,’ and even that bothered me. And then, before that, we ran out every Southern sympathizer we could find, an’…I guess I knew that was wrong, too. But I went right along with the others an’ kept myself from really thinking.…”