The Eighth Day (16 page)

On the third evening it was revealed to him that he was crossing the country too quickly. When he reached the river he must walk boldly into some rural community—as primitive a one as possible—in order to purchase some food and to sell Evangeline. He could not expose himself to that danger until his hair and beard had grown. Each morning and evening he leaned over a pool and examined his reflection. His head had been shaved in jail on the night that his sentence was pronounced, five days before his train journey. Now each morning there was greater promise of a brown plush mat. A foolish honey-colored beard was forming. He needed this to cover a scar on his left jaw; he had fallen on a hay fork thirty years ago while working on his grandmother's farm. He must remain hidden for a time in this thinly populated region. He now stayed two nights in each camping site. He massaged his scalp.

Other projects became successively clear to him—ways of reaching the southern Pacific Coast, ways of earning money. There were some problems to which the counsels of sleep offered no solution: how, in time, he would write to his wife, how he would send her money, how he would learn what was passing at “The Elms.”

In the meantime the land was swarming with John Ashleys. Colonel Stotz in Springfield began receiving the first of hundreds of letters and telegrams—within the year they were to arrive from Australia and Africa—telling him where Ashley had been seen; many of them demanded their reward (it had risen to four thousand dollars) by return post. Travelers between the ages of twenty and sixty were being pulled off their horses, dragged from their buggies, pursued across fields and their hats snatched off. Sheriffs became sick and tired of all the indignant and often terrified bald men who were brought before them. Newsboys cried “Extra! Extra!” Ashley had been found living on an Indian reservation in Minnesota, his face stained with walnut juice. Ashley had been found sequestered in an expensive private institution for the insane in Kentucky. Great wealth and important connections were increasingly associated with the fugitive.

Ashley made nicks in his saddle to mark the days, but even so lost track of them. The oats and the bag of food came to an end. Berries were beginning to redden; he found watercress. A change came over horse and rider; they grew younger. When they took to the road, Evangeline picked up her heels smartly. Ashley became aware that her coat shone, even before he took to currying her with fistfuls of twigs and moss. He had the sensation that she had accompanied hunted men before, that she was no stranger to pursuit and secrecy. The traffic on the road increased. She heard the oncoming hoof beats before her master did and found hiding. When they aroused barking dogs she took to a gallop. When, for the third time, he dismounted to walk beside her she showed her displeasure and it came to him suddenly that hounds might have been put upon his scent. When his mood inclined toward dejection during the day she moved toward him and tried to distract him; she snorted into the water of the brook or she pawed the ground. When he was afflicted with diarrhea she gazed soberly into the distance; she counseled fortitude.

Riding along after midnight he would occasionally see the light of a lamp from the second story of a farmhouse. To a family man the sight suggests sitting up beside an ailing child. The thought would fill him with a tumult of emotion. He learned that he must limit the occasions when he could permit himself to think of the past. Memories pressed upon him, uncalled, all but unendurable. He held in his arms for the first time—wonder of wonders—the newborn Lily. He surprised for the first time a look of fear directed toward him on the face of his son, Roger, three years old. (He had had to be severe; he had had to spank him. The boy had twice broken away from his mother's hand and run toward the horses in Coaltown's main street.) He returned from work and was met again by Constance's clamorous welcome, and heard Lily rebuking her: “You don't have to act like a pack of dogs when Papa comes home!” From time to time it had been necessary for him to spend the night, on the mines' business, in Fort Barry—he heard Sophia saying, “When Papa's not in the house I don't sleep, really. The house is different.” And Beata, the good, the patient, the silent, the beautiful. “Evangeline, I'm a family man. That's all. I have no talents. I'm not even an engineer. All I have to show, living and dying, is that I'm a family man. Girl, why did this meaningless, crazy thing happen to me?”

At Coaltown, even in his home, Ashley had not been a talkative man, yet he now talked copiously to Evangeline.

“I know why you're looking so handsome. You're thinking what I'm thinking. We can't go on this way for five hundred miles. I must sell you and you want to fetch me a good price. Goodbyes are hard. They're like death—like my grandmother's death. The only thing to do about them is to know them, to take them completely into yourself, and then put them out of your mind. They'll come back to you of their own accord when you need them. It's no good to reach out after them. . . . ? I told you all about my grandmother who did so much for horses. I've been thinking about her more and more on this trip we're making. She's come back to me when I need her. She taught me how not to be afraid. Have you noticed that no hunters have shown up to disturb us, no farmers have come into these woods to mark their trees, no sheriffs have been sitting up all night waiting for us to pass by? It would be a pity, wouldn't it, if this adventure of ours, that started out with such bravery and generosity—shucks, it would be a pity if it ended up with another little train ride to Joliet. But better men than you and I have been ambushed, greater hopes than ours have been brought down like a house of cards. Sure, Evangeline, if the spectacle of one defeat or of a hundred defeats discouraged a man, civilization wouldn't have gone anywhere. There'd be no justice on earth, no hospitals, no homes, no friendships like yours and mine. There'd just be moaning people, creeping about. Let's not do anything foolish.”

Ashley had told her all about the trial.

“There's nothing awful about dying; the only awful thing about dying is the things you leave unfinished. Can you imagine it? I left no provision for the education of my children. How could I have been so stupid? Beata set aside a little money every week for Lily's voice training; it was eaten up by the trial, of course. I suppose I assumed that the boy could fend for himself and that I could send the younger girls to better schools when the time came. If Beata had firmly called my attention to it, I could have done something about it. I could have hunted for another job, or insisted on a raise, or have really pushed those inventions of mine. . . . ? Mind you, I'm not blaming Beata. The fault's mine. I was happy and stupid. Happy, asleep, and stupid.”

By the end of a week he was satisfied that he had a modest stand of hair. He rubbed some dirt on his head and squeezed the juice of some purple berries on it and was astonished. He could have entered civilization two days before. His beard made him look like a wan theological student. The long thin line of his scar could be seen through it. He experimented with the saps of twigs and roots in an effort to stain it. It became manly and opaque.

They reached the river at Gilchrist's Ferry toward two in the morning of the following night. All was dark in the town. He followed a road to the south along the bluffs. After riding an hour he came upon a cluster of houses and stores, a church and a schoolhouse. He was barely able to make out a sign on the front of one of the buildings: “United States Post Office, Giles, Illinois, pop. 410.” “We can't have a fine upstanding post office,” he murmured and rode on. An hour later he found what he wanted. There was a general store with a long hitching rail before it, a blacksmith shop beside a dirt clearing in which stood a stake for pitching horseshoes, some shacks, some steps leading down to a landing on the river. Downstream he saw some lights on what appeared to be an island. He retraced his road to a place about a mile north of the village, sat down on the bluff, and fell asleep. He awoke at dawn. Through the mist he saw a long lumber barge descending the river. There was a light in the wheelhouse. He thought he heard voices. He imagined that he smelled coffee and bacon.

On the highest Andes a zephyr may precipitate an avalanche. It was the imagined smell of coffee and bacon that unmanned John Ashley. It brought back with it “The Elms,” the job in which he delighted, the long weariness of the trial with Beata's proud drawn face ten yards from him, Lily's singing, Roger's self-reliance, Sophia's watchful gravity, Constance's boisterous love—all, all, all. He put his head between his knees. He fell over to one side, then rolled over to the other. He groaned, he lowed, he bayed. The anguish of mind in a mature man is borne in silence and immobility, but John Ashley was not a mature man.

The sun had been up several hours when he returned to the village. He tethered Evangeline to the hitching rail and stood on the bluff for a long time looking at the river, his back to the general store. He knew that an increasing number of eyes would be fixed upon him and would be appraising the horse. Finally he turned, strolled across the road, nodded to some men on the porch, and entered the store. Five men were standing or sitting about a cold stove. All but the storekeeper dropped their eyes to the floor. Ashley uttered the grunt which is the last reduction of how-do-you-do. It was returned. He purchased a box of ginger snaps, discreetly displaying some dollar bills. He ate a cookie in thoughtful silence. The curiosity about him became intense. Some more men drifted into the store.

“Where you from, son?” asked the storekeeper.

Ashley pointed north with his thumb, smiling: “Canada.”

“Sight ways!” The words were repeated in a murmur around the room.

“I took it slow. Hung up in Ioway a bit. Hunting for my brother.”

“Well, now!”

Ashley continued to chew meditatively. More men and boys gathered about the door. A rig drew up.

“Suppose I could buy some breakfast? Eggs, bacon? Like two bits' worth?”

“Well! . . . ? Emma! Emma! . . . ? Fix the fella some eggs and bacon and grits.”

A woman appeared at the door behind the counter and stared at him. Ashley tilted his hat. “Right kind of you, ma'am,” he said.

She disappeared. There was another long silence.

“Where you thinking to find your brother?”

“Got word maybe he's down to New Orleans.”

“Well, now!”

Ashley looked at the storekeeper and said in scorn, “Up to Gilchrist's Ferry a man offered me twenty-four dollars for my horse!—What's this place called?”

“Just called ‘Hodge's.'”

The heads of the men in the doorway had turned to gaze at Evangeline. Several sidled out through the open door to join a circle forming around her. There was talk in low tones. Ashley went out on the porch, still chewing, and looked up and down the river. Addressing no one in particular he asked, “On those lumber barges, do they ever take a man on, just for the ride?”

“Some does and some don't.”

“Do they ever pull up here?”

There was a low laugh. “They keep away from the shore all right. They don't like the shore any. See that island down there? That's Brennan's Island. They stop there now and again. There's two of them there now. See them?”

A young man had pulled back Evangeline's lips and was examining her teeth. Evangeline put back her ears and snorted. Ashley did not look at her.

“I'll give you twenty dollars for the horse and saddle,” said the young man in a loud voice.

Ashley gave no sign of having heard him. He re-entered the store and sat down on a nail keg, his eyes on the floor. Emma brought him his breakfast in a pewter basin. Evangeline neighed. Some women came into the store and made some purchases in a constrained manner. Evangeline neighed again. There was a stir at the door; the loungers drew back. A short solid woman of fifty marched in and placed herself before Ashley. She was wearing a jacket and skirt of the denim from which overalls are made. A man's cap, visor at the back, was pulled close over her short wiry hair. Her scuffed cheeks were red, almost as red as the turkey-red scarf tied about her throat. Her manner was brusque, but a smile seemed to come and go in her gray eyes.

“Thirty dollars,” she said.

Ashley looked up at her quickly, then ate a forkful of grits. “Is that you who just come in that rig?”

“Yes.”

“Let me look at your horse.”

The woman gave a scornful snort. Ashley filled his mouth again slowly and went out into the road. He inspected her horse from all sides. The woman stood beside Evangeline, who bunted her sleeve and shoulder smelling oats.

“Thirty-two,” said Ashley, “and you get someone to row me to Brennan's Island.”

“Done!—Follow me.”

Ashley paid his bill, exchanged grunts with the company, and rode after the woman's rig. At the end of ten minutes they turned in at a gate bearing the sign
MRS. T. HODGE, HAY AND FEED
. She called “Victor! Victor!” A boy of sixteen came running from the barn. Ashley dismounted.

“Does that horse know her name?”

“Yes—Evangeline.''

“Where'd you get that saddle?”

“Friend gave it to me.”

“I've only seen one like it before. It's Indian work. Victor, put Evangeline in Julia's stall and give her some oats. Then get your oars. I've got to go in the house and fetch something. Let my rig stay like it is. And bring me a jenny bag of corn.”

Evangeline did not look back.

Mrs. Hodge was gone some time. She returned carrying an old carpetbag, which she handed to Ashley.

“Victor, row this gentleman over to Dinkler's. Take the corn down to the boat and wait for him.”

Victor started down the steps to the dock. Mrs. Hodge took an old shapeless purse out of her pocket and put it in Ashley's hand.