The Night of the Hunter (15 page)

What is it, Ben honey?

I just keep thinkin' that I don't want any kids of mine ever knowin' the hard times I had!

They won't, honey! We'll be rich some day!

Rich! Sellin' rakes and hoes and onion sets in a hardware store?

No, honey! You'll get something better. Maybe you'll start a store of your own some day.

Maybe. Maybe.

You will, Ben. I know it.

He sighed long and deep and she could sense that his desperate eyes stared into the flickering gas of the fireplace; searching there among the guttering blue-and-gold phantoms for the visions of the Big Tomorrows.

It don't matter so much about you and me, he said. We'll always get along no matter how rough it gets. I don't get the awful feeling when I think about you wantin'—me wantin'. But I'll never let a kid of mine want. It don't matter how I git it—no youngin of mine will ever want for nothin'.

I know. I know, honey, she whispered, soothing his brow, his quivering eyelids, with her loving, gentle hands—her fingers bright with the pretty dime-store ring he had wed her with.

But now she woke and caught her breath, knowing it had not been real, that it had been a dream, and she felt ashamed and commenced to pray again because it had been adultery, thinking it was Ben Harper in the bed there with her and dreaming that he had embraced her in the way that Preacher had helped her see was the Devil's way. The moon rode high in the pale, unblemished sky above the river. Willa's eyes shone and her gray lips moved soundlessly in the darkness, in the shadow of the body of the man beside her.

Praise the Lord! she whispered fiercely. Praise the Lord!

And in another part of that same night Icey and Walt prepared for bed. After Icey had turned out the gas lamp in the hallway she went back into the bedroom and removed her teeth and put them in the fresh tumbler of water by the bedside. Walt rolled over to face her and rose on his elbow.

You sure all them lights is out downstairs, Mother?

Yes. I'm sure.

It always irritated her: to have him make her talk in the bed after she had put her teeth in the water glass. Yet Walt was in a mood for talk.

Icey, I'm worried about Willa.

Icey grunted and pressed her face deeper into the feather bolster but Walt's words interested her so much that she could not think of sleep. She sat up and fetched her dripping dentures from the drinking glass and fitted them into her mouth again with a faint sucking click.

How do you mean, Walt?

He was silent for a moment until she nudged him impatiently with a fat elbow.

I'm figurin', he said, how I can say it so's you won't get mad.

Say what? Walt Spoon, you can be the most—

There's somethin', he interrupted, something wrong about it, Mother. Somethin' I can't name—somethin' I feel in my bones.

About what? About—

About him. About Mr. Powell!
All
of it!

Walt!

Now, Mother! A body can't help their feelin's.

But she was out of the bed now, standing there in the dark, and he heard her fumble for a match to light the lamp. She stood now in the pale light, glowering at him furiously.

May the Lord have mercy on you, Walt Spoon!

Mother, I—

That man of God! Offerin' that widow the only salvation left to her and them fatherless kids!

He sighed and closed his eyes, pretending to be trying to sleep again. But he opened them again, submitting to her lashing stare.

You're no better than that boy, she said.

He said nothing; sorry already that he had spoken; seeing a night of arguing ahead of him because of his foolish candor.

—Thinking evil! she said. Making up tales on that poor man!

Mother, I only—

Lying tales! snapped Icey, rousing herself now to fresh wrath. Willa has told me all of it. How that boy accuses Mister Powell of talkin' about the money all the time—sayin' he says the boy has it hid somewheres. Such lies as would shame Ananias. And now
you,
Walt Spoon! How you could
dare—

Well, I was wrong, he sighed. Now that I think about it—

Yes, you were, she said, but stood a moment longer to glare at him before she huffed out the light and crawled back into the bed beside him.

Yes, he said, after a spell of consideration. I was wrong. Sometimes we misjudge them most that serves the Lord best.

He heard her sniff and knew that she had forgiven him, that she had retired into herself in triumph and that now he might rest. Yet presently he roused from a half-sleep to feel her shake lightly with laughter.

What's eatin' you, ol' woman?

Oh, shoot, Walt! Just thinkin'!

Well, what?

About all that money, she said.

Yes, he said. All that money—just layin' there molderin' on the river bed. Ain't it enough to make a body ponder?

Lordy, yes! I swear sometimes I get an awful itch to rent a skiff and go draggin' for it!

Shucks, you'd never hook it. Not in a million years. Walt Spoon, shame on you! I was just jokin'! Pshaw, I wouldn't touch that filthy, bloody stuff for nothin'! Shame on you!

Her hand rose to her mouth then, the lips gasped suddenly, and presently the teeth settled gently, grinning, in the glass of spring water, while Icey turned her back on them and fell into the healthy sleep of a fat, innocent child. Yet Walt Spoon lay awake. It was something he had learned to do in their marriage: hammering his thoughts into the shape she wanted. It was a price of peace, of sleep itself. Whatever unframed and as yet unshaped suspicions he had had of Preacher were soon gone—stamped and trodden into the soil of domestic orthodoxy.

It's true, he thought. He's a man of God. Yes, anyone can tell that.

And he slept then, his snores soon mingling in rough counterpoint to those of the old woman. Only the teeth in the glass maintained their ironic vigilance: smiling reflectively above the heads of the innocent sleepers.

“Not cleverness, child, but only thought.

A little thought in life is like salt upon rice, as the boatmen say….”

—
KIPLING
,
The Undertakers

The dangerous shadow was no more than a faint dappling of darkness among the sun-speckled shallows. Uncle Birdie hunched in the skiff and pointed a crooked finger.

Yonder, boy! See! Right yonder! That's him—there by the big root!

John bent suddenly to the skiff's stern and the shadow was gone. It had not moved, it had not fled; it had simply dissolved suddenly from the deep tobacco-dark water and then there was nothing but the sun dapples again.

Meanest, orneriest, sneakinest son of a bitch in the whole damn river, boy! A gar! Did you see him?

Yep. And he stole your bait, Uncle Birdie?

You seen me plunk that there crawdad on the hook, boy. Then you seen me cast—and when I pulled her in the bait was gone. Ain't no tobacco box can do that, Cap. Ain't no little sunfish can swipe bait like that. It was that sneakin', egg-suckin' son of a bitch.

Uncle Birdie blew his nose against one scarred, horny finger and cocked a wise blue eye sidelong at the boy in the boat.

Your ma don't know I cuss—does she, boy?

Shucks, sighed John. She don't even know I'm here half the time.

Well, you ain't opposed are ye?—to cussin', I mean?

No.

Tell you why I ask, boy—your step-pa bein' a preacher and all that I—

John's lips grew thin as string and the old shadow flickered back behind his eyes again: the dark gar in the river of his mind.

Birdie stuffed his cheek full of fresh Mail Pouch and stared off into the shore willows, draped softly out over the still shallows clean to the bend below the orchard.

Never was much of a one for preachers myself, said the old man, with another sidelong glance, quick as a robin's eye. But then I reckon there is all sorts.

John swallowed quickly and his wide eyes were lost in the river. Now Uncle Birdie reached out a scaly, hook-scarred finger and turned the child's face to meet his eyes.

Stepped on your toes that time, didn't I, boy? Well, no matter. I don't know what's wrong up at your place and I don't figure to ask. But just you remember one thing, Cap—if ever you need help you jus' holler out or come a-runnin'. Ol' Uncle Birdie's your friend. Now reach me that can of hooks yonder and I'll show you how to catch Mister Gar as neat as snappin' a tick off a redbone's ear.

John relaxed and his face shone as he handed the old man the hooks. They understood one another that day because of a great many things that neither of them could say and because, for some wonderful and ancient reason, when two men are alone in a boat on a river it is nigh impossible for them not to understand one another, no matter if no word is said at all.

Better pick out a big un, Uncle Birdie.

Big un, hell! I'll pick the littlest one of the lot! The one thing you got to understand about old Mister Gar is this, boy—he is a crafty sort. Why, there hain't nary hook in the land smart enough to hook Mister Gar. What a feller needs is—

He tugged his greasy hat from his shaggy white head and sought among the motley flies and hooks and lures and presently plucked a long gray hair from the greasy, frayed band.

—is mother wit—and a horsehair.

A horsehair!

You heard me, Cap. A horsehair. A horse
tail
hair, mind ye—a good long one like this here. Now watch! First you loop your old horsehair and make a little lasso. See there?—And then you hang your baited hook right down in the middle of it—like so!—See?

John followed the old man's swift hands with brooding, enchanted eyes.

Like this. Now fetch me that piece of crawdad there, Cap. That's a lad! Now! There we are!

Won't he bust it, Uncle Birdie? Won't the gar bust the horsehair when he gits lassoed?

Shoot! A horsehair'll hold a whale, Cap. You jest watch now. You see old Mister Gar comes along and sneaks up on the bait and when he gits his head right smack-dab in the middle of the noose we snap him up. Watch now!

Uncle Birdie lowered his line cautiously into the placid shallows, dark as old mahogany under the golden tessellation of the willow trees and sky. John's eyes peered into the water until they ached, and every submerged can and leaf seemed the dark shadow for which they waited, every cloud or bird that passed above them in the afternoon cast its image in the mirroring river and seemed to the boy to be the black hunter. He thought: Like him. Like his ways. Sneaking around after the bait, only he ain't as smart as a gar—he don't know where the bait is so he can't steal it. Time ticked on and the old man's eyes glared shrewdly into the depths and then suddenly, without warning, Uncle Birdie thrust his arms upward and the boat rocked like a cradle and the air was full of sparkling pearls of water.

There! There! There, you slimy, snag-toothed son of a bitch!

And John wiped the water from his face and saw the ugly, thrashing creature in the skiff bottom.

Don't git your fingers in the way, boy! cried Uncle Birdie, snatching off his mud-crusted shoe. He grasped it by the toe and flogged the thrashing nine-inch fish flat into the floor boards with the heel.

Meanest, suck-egg, bait-stealin' bastard between here 'n' Cairo! roared Uncle Birdie in a proper riverman's rage. Presently he peered, with John, at the broken body of the dark, slim knife-jawed fish in the skiff bottom among the cans and bilge.

There now, boy! He's done!

Can we eat him, Uncle Birdie? Can we cook him?

Shoot! If you've got an appetite for bones and bitterness you can. That's what makes a body so derned mad about a gar. They ain't fit for nothin' after you go to the trouble to catch 'em.

Birdie fetched the creature up gingerly by the tail and threw it far out into the river and watched with angry eyes as it floated away on the quickening current near the channel. Then Birdie spit in the water and went to baiting his line for sunfish again. They had a panful already and the sun was standing close to the crown of the mine tipple across the river on the Ohio shore.

Queen City
's due past tonight, said Uncle Birdie softly. She don't put in at Cresap's Landing no more but she still blows as she passes!

John had seen this last of the great Ohio River packets once or twice in his life; glimpsed it from a distance, through trees, or from the window of his bedroom, a great mountain of decks and white paint and proud stacks spilling black smoke all down the sky. And like all river folk he had heard the sweet enchantment of her whistle on many's the lonely night: that hoarse, sweet chord that seemed the voice of all the great, dark river's past: the brooding spirit of that rich and feral stream and the ghosts of the men of long past times and the good and evil that they made upon her: the Harper and Mason and the Devil Girty and God's own Johnny with his poke of appleseeds.

And so they rowed back to the landing and tied the skiff again under the willows and wallowed up the shore again to the wharfboat.

John had grown restless again with the coming of night. He watched Birdie cleaning the little fish while the skillet began to sizzle on the fire in the stove.

I reckon I better be goin', Uncle Birdie.

What! You mean you caught all these here fish and then you hain't stayin' to taste 'em? Aw, shucks, no, Cap. You can't do thataway.

Mom will be wonderin', Uncle Birdie. It's sundown.

Well, boy, I reckon maybe you're right.

You done a good job with Dad's skiff, Uncle Birdie.

Nothin' at all, boy. She's your skiff now. But say! I reckon I could have your permission to take her out once in a while on my own?

Shucks, yes, Uncle Birdie. You're practically a part owner. You fixed her up.

Well now, boy, it'd be just grand if I could take her out ever' day for a little mess of catfish or tobacky boxes. Besides—a boat needs usin' to keep her trim.

I don't mind, Uncle Birdie.

By granny's, I'll take her down to the deep place first thing tomorrow and catch me some tobacky boxes. That's where they're thick. That deep place down by Jason Lindsay's pasture—there by the west fence.

Restlessly John turned his eyes to the window of the wharfboat and stared out into the peaceful river night. The sun had gone down behind the mine tipple now and dusk gathered like smoke upon the land.

Mind, now, Cap! cried the old man and the little fish cried out as he flipped them one by one into the hot grease.

What, Uncle Birdie?

Mind what I told you! Mind what I said—if you ever git in a crack—just give a holler—just come a-runnin'!

John made no reply but scrambled up the plank and up the bricks of the landing and off down Peacock Alley toward the river road. But the old man knew that he had heard: saw that the scared shoulders were a little braver now.

He sat alone by his bedroom window, watching the moon rise on the hills. The raincrow fluted its soft, grieving notes down in the meadow. And then a soft step sounded on the threshold behind him. John?

He leaped and whirled, gaping and livid with fright but saw that it was only Pearl.

Ain't you hungry, John?

No. He turned his eyes to the hills again, to the impassive and impartial moon in whose far, vast, mottled face he had found, upon so many nights, a solace.

Mom sure was mad, prattled Pearl, not entirely displeased with John's punishment. She sent you to bed without no supper when she found your shoes was wet.

He sighed, letting the silly female chatter roll off his weary head. But then the rich, maddening scent of fried chicken brushed against his senses and he turned just as she fetched it up from under her little calico skirt and held it to him: the thick drumstick from her own plate.

Here, she said, full of ancient, motherly solicitude. Eat it, John.

You swiped it?

Well, I wasn't really very hungry, John. I kept it off my plate.

He would have died for her then and took it from her hand and ate ravenously, like an animal, hunched out of the moon's light, beneath the window sill. She watched him eat and sighed, warmed with something years beyond her, a need that moved her heart often when she pressed the doll against it in the dark.

You feel better now, John? she said, cocking her head.

Yep.

Did it taste good?

Sure. Thanks, Pearl.

One time, she sighed, Mom sent me to bed without no supper and I got so hungry it was just awful, John.

Thanks, he said finally, wishing the subject to be closed and she sensed that and moved away and sat down on the salt box carpet stool by the dresser and regarded him with grim maternalism.

But just the same, John—you really shouldn't associate with that filthy old man.

At the window now he was watching Willa's stooped, nervous figure hurry down the tanbark walk toward the lane on her way to spend another evening at Cresap's Landing gossiping with Walt and Icey. He watched the light fade slowly from her figure as it moved away from the gold circle of the eternal gas lamp beneath the oak tree and when she was out of sight he thought: Now we are alone again in the house with him. He will come upstairs directly and it will start again: the questions and the being scared. In a minute he will be standing there in the doorway and we won't even have heard his shoes on the stairway because he moves that way. This house at night is like the river shallows under the skiff, under the willows where it is shady and dark, and that makes it so he can move without anyone knowing it, without anyone seeing him: like the dark shadow of the gar. Only there is nowhere in the world a hook small enough, a horsehair strong enough.

Woolgathering, children?

And he had been there all along, God only knows how long, standing in the doorway watching them, thinking maybe they would let slip some little clue, some little crumb of bait and then he could move quickly like the gar and snatch it into his evil maw.

There's my little Pearl!

She cried out happily and ran to him and threw her arms around him and the doll Jenny fell forgotten by his shoe toes. John knew that he could not win this battle; the little girl was drawn irresistibly to the stepfather.

Ah, such a sweet little soul, crooned Preacher, stroking her curls with his big, branded fingers. We're not talking to John tonight—are we, Pearl? John's been bad.

Pearl's moon face turned slowly in the gloom and her finger rose to her pouting lips.

No, she said softly. John's been bad.

John was sent to bed without his supper, wasn't he, Pearl?

And John knows that if he disobeys again he'll get a taste of the strap—doesn't he, Pearl?

Yes, said Pearl, pressing herself closer to Preacher, farther from bad John. The strap! You better be good, John!

Ah! Ah! We mustn't even speak to John, little sweetheart. John don't like to be spoken to. We'll just have a little talk between the two of us—how'll that be?

Pearl raised her arms so that he could lift her. He smelled like the cellar, like iron, like old leaves in autumn under the grape arbor.

John is a feller, said Preacher softly, who likes to keep
secrets.

Pearl fell silent now; something had begun to tug: a wind blew from the east and one from the west and she could not tell which to hark to.

John is a great one for secrets, Preacher continued softly. Especially about
hiding things.

John hid his eyes in the window and thought: That is the moon. I can grab her doll in my hand and go through the window and grab the moon and climb up and he cannot get me there and it will be safe after all.

But
you and me!
cried Preacher softly, intimately. We don't keep secrets—do we?

No, whispered Pearl, doubtfully, and plucked at her lip with her finger.