The Double Hook (7 page)

Ever since I was in Greta’s kitchen during the storm, she said, I’ve been trying to fit the pieces into a pattern.

Some of the pieces aren’t so far to look for as you think, he said.

Do you know, Ara, he said, for a man who sees so much I’ve not seen what was growing up in my own yard. It’s like a man who stands on a rock looking over a valley. He doesn’t notice the rock, he said. He just stands on it.

He got up, but he did not move away.

Suppose the rock should suddenly begin to move, he said. Or started clutching at you like gumbo.

There’s too much supposing, Ara said. Yet how can a man escape it since he can’t hold and shape the world. I often envy the horses, she said, standing tail to head and head to rump flicking off each other’s flies.

And biting one another from time to time, William said. And letting go with their heels. Beasts aren’t much different from me, he said, though they’ve often less freedom. Take my horse, he said.

He could break out, Ara said. He’s the strength to defy you. You or any man at all.

He could, William said, but what would he gain by it. He wouldn’t know where to go or what to do after the break. I’ve seen horses, he said, untie themselves and go walking out of barns. I’ve seen them knock down fences and kick themselves out of corrals. But I’ve seen them come wandering back to the barn and the hay. Some, he said, are pure outlaw. But there’s the torment of loneliness and the will of snow and heat they can’t escape, and the likelihood that some stranger will put a rope on them at last.

Or perhaps even the man that branded them, Ara said. There are some men I suppose who follow, their ropes coiled
and waiting. Sometimes I think of God like that, she said. The glory of his face shaded by his hat. Not coaxing with pans of oats, but coming after you with a whip until you stand and face him in the end.

I don’t know about God, William said. Your god sounds only a step from the Indian’s Coyote. Though that one would jump on a man when his back was turned. I’ve never seen God, he said, but if I did I don’t think I’d be very much surprised.

I don’t suppose you would, Ara said. Then she picked up the dishes and put them in the pan.

You’re right, she said. Let’s get ready to go. I’ve a feeling that perhaps we’re wanted.

You might have baked something, William said. But it’s too late to be thinking of that now.

Before Ara and William had shut the door of their house behind them, Felix Prosper arrived at Theophil’s.

Angel had cleared the dishes away and sent the children out, but Theophil had gone back to the mattress. He lay loose there like a dog on a rumpled sack. His eyes sagging half shut. His face twitching and jerking as if in near sleep he sniffed again the rank scent of other men on the grass which grew tufted at his own doorstep.

You’re just thinking up trouble, Angel said, the way a man thinks up reasons for what he’s got his mind harnessed to do.

Go on, Theophil said, opening his eyes. Go on as if you were reading out of a newspaper what’s in my mind. Go on as if my head was as plain to see into as an old shack with the
curtains off. Last night you knew what my intentions were, he said, but you didn’t know why I intended. Why that Kip is nothing but a go-between for James and his women.

What women? Angel asked.

Well, the Wagner girl for one, Theophil said.

And for two? Angel asked.

A knocking at the door answered her.

Just a minute, Theophil said. He got up from the mattress and pulled on his trousers.

To think, he said, that someone would come so close and I’d not hear.

Well, said Angel, am I to answer or are you set on combing and scrubbing yourself first? What’s good enough to lay round in is good enough to open the door in.

But the door opened itself. Was opened by Prosper who stood hearing the words before and after the knock. Who stood listening when the occasion for listening had come and gone. Who stood feeling the sweat leak from under the grip of his cotton cap. Stood feeling the dust nagging the soles of his feet.

Felix heavy on the doorstep. Angel spun round like a flame on the wide boards of the floor. Behind Theophil rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

What could he say, Felix thought. All the way up the road he’d been trying to form the words.

Peace be with you, he said.

Angel took a step forward.

Forgive us our trespasses, Felix said.

Theophil shoved Angel aside and started for the door.

And lead us not into temptation, Theophil said. His fingers curled into the palms of his hands. The priest taught me the same way he taught you, he said. He spat on the floor.

And uncurling one hand he wiped it across the back of his mouth.

Felix shut his eyes. He could feel the sweat trickling down the furrows of his cheeks.

Angel, he said, I need you.

She drew back behind Theophil.

I’ve heard those words before, she said. What’s the use of going from worse back to bad?

Felix felt the scratch. He put out his hand. He saw her for a moment as a small cat, trying to step her way through the puddles of the world. Fighting the dogs. Mousing for her young.

Angel, he called as he called the terrier. Angel.

Stop bellowing like a sick cow, Theophil said. And get moving. We don’t want any trouble here. I don’t want to answer in justice for knocking you down. Besides, he said, I’d have to hire a block and tackle to get you off my doorstep.

You couldn’t knock him down, Angel said. He could snap you open the way a man knocks open a box. He could split you down the core the way a man splits open an apple.

What’s the matter? she said to Felix. I never in my life heard you call on anyone.

It’s Kip, he said.

Angel shoved past Theophil and beat her hands against Felix’s bib.

What’s the matter? she cried. Don’t stand there like a lump of meat. What’s happened?

He’s been beat up, Felix said, and I think blinded.

I knew, Angel moaned. I knew no good was in the wind. Blinded? she asked. For sure? Blinded, she said. Who’ll see anything worth seeing now?

She went to the door and called the children.

Theophil sat down on the mattress and lit a cigarette.

Some men get what’s coming to them, he said. He stretched his legs out and leaned back on his arm, his cigarette between his teeth.

When she goes off with you, he said to Felix, I want you to know that I’ve already given her notice. It’s the kids I feel sorry for, he said.

Go out and bring back Lenchen, the Widow said to the boy. Then together we will think what to do.

Yet even as he began to eat, rubbing his bread in the bacon fat, she began again. Looking out the window at the land fenced off. At the dry parcel which marriage with Wagner had given her.

I had things ready. Things from my family.

Then she stopped. Hearing her own voice in the boy’s silence. Her face stirring like ground cracked above a growing shoot.

Heinrich, she said. Then she stopped.

Flesh calls for flesh, she thought. She had paid enough. Had come with Wagner. Her lips closed. Her eyes shut. Had come into the wilderness. She had done wrong. She had seen the wrong. It was God who would judge.

She covered her eyes with her hand.

She had cried out against God. She had set wrong on wrong. She had been judged. Eyes looking from the creek bottom. From the body of another old woman. Knowledge. Silence. Shame.

Heinrich, she said. Go. Go.

Heinrich pushed back from the table.

I’ve been thinking, he said. In the night.

Ya, she said. You slept. Heavy like a stone in the house.

I should have been able to tell Lenchen something, he said. I should have been able to tell her what to do.

How would you know? his mother asked. You’ve not loved.

No, he said. But he thought of light blazed into a branch of fire. How could he say that the earth scorched his foot. That he must become ash and be born into a light which burned but did not destroy.

Without speaking he buckled on his chaps.

Just after Heinrich passed the lake he overtook Ara and William. They were riding slowly. Ara clamped stiff as a clothes-peg on the back of William’s bald-faced mare.

The boy looked at the restless movement of Ara’s hat. It had fallen suspended on its bootlace to her shoulders, and slapped and jerked with every forward step of the horse.

Lenchen was part of any animal she rode. Moved with its movement as if she and the horse breathed with the same lungs. Rode easy as foam on its circling blood. She was part of the horse. Its crest and the edge of its fire.

Ara was something else. Made to walk on roads and to climb cliffs. Made to beat her hands against rock faces and to set her foot on sliding shale.

The boy wanted to call out to William: Set her down. You might as well ask a dog to ride with you. But William would answer: I knew a dog once that could ride a horse as
well as a man. When the going got rough, he’d say, that dog would move his backside against the cantle the way a man settles his rump.

They must be going to James’s place, the boy thought, and moved his hand to rein in his horse. But William turned half in the saddle and called to him.

I was going to see James, the boy said, riding up. But if you have business with him I’d best leave it to another time.

You said your business wouldn’t keep, Ara said, remembering the passage between James and the boy. Could a woman ask, she said, what is between you and James now?

William looked across at her and then to the boy who had ridden abreast of them on her side.

It’s a dangerous thing, he said, to ask about business between men. I’d thought you might have learned that. The boy here would hardly tell you so much. It would seem like setting someone older and wiser right.

The boy turned on him.

If I can’t tell her, who can I tell? She might make things straight somehow. Can a man speak to no one because he’s a man? Who says so? Those who want to be sheltered by his silence. I’ve held my tongue, he said, when I should have used my voice like an axe to cut down the wall between us.

He tightened his legs on his horse so that it sprang forward.

What’s your hurry? William called after him.

The boy pulled in his horse and waited.

Why are you going to James’s? the boy asked.

What would be more natural? William said. James and Greta are in trouble, he said. And it’s my trouble too. Though when a man moves away, he said, he sets up for himself and begins what you might call a new herd. He’s not bound to the
old one like those who stay. If you moved away now, he said, you’d know what I mean.

But I couldn’t, the boy said.

And James couldn’t, Ara said. Though Greta might have. And now that Ma’s dead James still couldn’t unless Greta came to stay with us, and that she’d never do.

The boy looked away.

Ara, he said, you must know what my business with James is. Everyone in the creek must know and no one has turned a hand to help. I don’t know what to do.

You have your own Ma, she said.

The boy was silent.

You best wait to speak to James, William said. And you’d best make sure of the facts before you speak. The rest is woman’s business.

They had reached the line fence now. The house was still hidden by the sweep of the land.

Lenchen’s gone from him, the boy said.

Time and time again I’ve seen it happen, William said. There’s never just one wasp in a wasp’s nest.

There’s no smoke coming from the chimney, he said to Ara as they rounded the bend. She looked. The road reached before them to the gate, which hung open on its hinges.

William leant down from his saddle and looked at the marks in the dust. Ara smelt the scent of the honeysuckle. But the boy saw a head at the window half screened by the vine.

There’s someone there, he said.

William looked up from the dust.

It’s Greta, he said, but James must have gone off somewhere, leaving the gate open behind him.

Inside the house Greta put her hand on the door bolt as if to feel its strength. She had stepped back from the window when she’d seen the boy’s eyes on her.

They’re on me now, she said. The pack of them.

What have I done? she asked. What’s a moth done that a man strikes it away from the lamp?

There was no one to answer.

Then she heard William’s voice: They interfere with a man’s proper business. Some eat cloth that’s needed for human flesh.

She heard Angel’s voice: What do you know about moths? You never felt the flame scorch your wings. You never felt nothing.

She began to laugh.

How much is nothing? she thought.

She felt the weight of it in her hands. She turned to Angel’s voice.

You don’t know, she said.

She heard Ara’s voice speaking on the other side of the door: Greta, we’ve come to help.

Then she heard William’s voice, outside now near Ara’s: Let us in and tell us where James has gone. There’s nothing so bad that a few rivets won’t set it in use again.

She felt hands on the knob. She felt hands twisting her ribs. Plucking the flowers on her housecoat and bruising them. Stripping off the leaves until her branch lay naked as a bone on the dusty floor.

She heard Ara’s voice again and the boy Wagner’s: Ask her if she knows anything about Lenchen.

There’s a good girl, Greta, William said. We want to do what we can. Steady on and open the door.

Then she heard voices again, but not what they said. Then the squeak of a boot as someone walked away from the house. Through a crack in one of the door planks she saw the circle of Ara’s hat. Ara sat down like a watchdog on the step.

Greta turned away from the door. She pulled off her housecoat. She rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the stove. Then she went naked except for her shoes into the pantry and came back with a tin of kerosene.

Ara must have got up from the steps. Greta heard fingers on the door. She heard Ara’s voice: Where’s James, Greta? Tell me what you know about Lenchen and James. The girl’s gone too. We must all help. We want to help you. That’s why we came. Open the door, Greta. The men have gone to the barn.