The Night of the Hunter (25 page)

Ruby?

Yes, sir.

Not a word about this little powwow to Miz Cooper, eh? That's part of the bargain. Eh?

And she smiled and nodded and he gave her the movie magazine again. And when he said good night and began to walk away she sprang to her feet and followed him and when he felt her fingers on his shoulder his face turned, already writhing with disgust and fury.

What do you want now?

She lifted her mouth and whispered it in his ear.

What?

Don't you want to? she mumbled. You can if you want to—

Get away from me!

He thrust her heavily away and walked rapidly out into the street, past the evening loafers, striding furiously through the dust toward his horse, choking and cursing, his mouth gaping with nausea.

In the doorway she stood for a moment, watching his receding figure. The golden neon caught the color of paper flowers above her face and she thought: He is not like them.

She moved past the men on the evening bench, hurrying toward the river with the basket of eggs swinging on her arm, not turning at their catcalls and whistles.

He is not like them! she kept on thinking and the ferryboat lamp shone like a piece of moon through the elms and she knew that the night was gone but she hugged the movie magazine against her breasts thinking: He is not like them. He is different and next time I am with him I will make him want to and I won't even ask him to buy me the ice-cream soda or the movie magazine again.

After Rachel found the movie magazine under Ruby's skirts that night she took it from her. Ruby sat on the straight-backed chair by the kitchen door and wept soundlessly into her big fingers. After a while she took her hands away from her face and let the great tears squeeze slowly from her quivering lids. Rachel sat opposite her on the canning bench, scowling at the girl in troubled speculation and massaging the yellow soles of her bare feet. She was sure now: Ruby had been with a man. It was a swift, country knowing: a realization that swept over the old woman in choking dismay.

Ruby, stop your weepin' and look me square in the eye and answer me.

The puffed red lids opened and stared.

Ruby?

Yes'm.

Ruby, you didn't have no money to buy that movie book did ye?

No'm. But I never took nothin' from your sugar bowl. Miz Cooper, you just know I wouldn't steal nothin' of yours.

Now, I know you wouldn't, child. I'm not accusin' you of nothin'. Just tell me and tell me the truth. Where'd you git the money to git that there book?

You'll whip me!

Shoot! When did I ever? You been spanked by me and you may be again but you never got a whippin' after the day you walked over my threshold. Just tell me, Ruby. There hain't nothin' to fear.

He give it to me, she babbled. He said—

Who?

That man down at the drugstore!

I see. You was at the drugstore. And this here man—

He was a nice man, said the girl. He said my eyes was the purtiest things.

Pshaw, now! And who ever said they warn't! You're a beautiful young girl, Ruby, and that's the very reason I don't want nothin' happenin' to you.

Now the old woman, roused and fidgety with anger at the world's trifling men, fetched her tiny can of brown snuff from the table, shook a smidgen into the lid, and dropped it daintily into her lower lip, beneath the gums.

Miz Cooper, said Ruby, snuffling and bending forward, her face aglow now with the new ecstasy of confession. I been bad!

How, Ruby?

Miz Cooper, the girl continued, her face illumined. I never went to ol' Miz Blankensop's all them times.

Where did you go, child?

Miz Cooper, I done it with men! Yes, ma'am, I done what they asked me to!

Dear God, child! With
men?
Was there more than one? And that loosed it and the girl told it all in a spilling babble: about the Thursday nights when she had not been at the seamstress's house at all, about the boys that had taken her down the river road in fruit trucks, in family jalopies, and afoot. She told how at first she thought it was what Rachel had sent her to do and when she finally found out that it was bad and that she was supposed to be doing something else it was too late to stop. And then she burst out crying again and Rachel joined her, hugging her and rocking gently with her in the lamplight, and they both enjoyed a good, female cry together for a spell and then Ruby told Rachel about Preacher.

But he warn't like them, whispered the girl, like one who has seen a vision. He just bought me the sody and the book and he said my eyes was the purtiest—

But he must have wanted something, Ruby. A man don't waste his time on a girl unless he gits something. What—

He asked about John—and Pearl.

And Rachel thought: And so it has come as it has come before. Sooner or later they come back for them and take them away and it's just like they was to take and cut a piece off me.

Is he their pap?

Ruby shrugged.

Well, girl, didn't he say?

No'm. He just said was them kids Pearl and John livin' here.

He said that, eh?

Yes'm.

Rachel arose, livid with anger, biting her tongue with it. She stomped across to the pump, splashed the dipper full and, rinsing the snuff from her gums, spat it out through the open screen door.

Then I'd just like to know why he never come right up to the house today and showed hisself! she cried. Just come right up like ever'one else does in broad daylight and said, Them's my youngins! Much obliged, madam! Hand 'em over! Shoot! I just plainly can't abide a sneak!

He was nice, observed Ruby. He said my eyes—

Hush, child! What else did you tell him?

I said they come to live with us last summer Pearl and John did.

All right. And then what did he say?

Ruby squinted and stuck her tongue out with a pathetic try at shrewdness; trying to remember how it had been.

I forgit, she said, scratching her head slowly.

Rachel glared out the open window into the black night of autumn.

He'll come a-callin' soon enough, she mumbled, hugging her withered breasts and rocking gently and thinking: All the love and worry and fretting like they was my own. I just wonder to God if they know when they come calling to claim them again after they've had their fill of sporting and carrying on and leaving me to mind their kids: to pray over them and wash their bottoms and pick school lice out of their heads and keep their britches patched—I just wonder if they know what a chunk they're cutting out of me when they come for them at last.

Fool! she scolded out loud. Derned old fool!

And then she fetched a candle and shooed Ruby before her up the kitchen stairs to bed. Rachel despised all womankind that night, including herself.

It was Ruby who saw the man on the horse first and dropped two brown eggs splattering on the flagstones by the stable. He rode slowly up the path through the meadow from the river road and Ruby scampered off to the basement where Rachel was setting up the fresh quart jars of apple butter she had canned that week.

It's him!

Who?

The man! The man!

Well, shoot! Don't take on like it was the Second Coming, Ruby. Git on up to the kitchen and put your shoes on. I'll be up and talk with him directly. Gracious sakes alive, girl, don't act so simple!

He tethered his horse to a fence post and walked across the yard toward the back porch, his head cocked slightly, his eyes creased in cautious greeting.

Mornin', ladies.

Ruby sat suddenly in the rope swing under the apple tree. Rachel stood behind the screen door, her hands folded under her apron in the timeless pose of country women greeting strangers.

How'do!

He stood for a moment staring at them: at the old woman and then the girl and then back to the old woman with a bow.

You're Miz Cooper, I take it.

I am.

Then you're who I'm lookin' for all right, ma'am.

Rachel stepped boldly onto the stoop and approached him across the grass. She had forgotten her shoes and yet her feet, even at her age, were strong and graceful among the plantain and buttercups.

It's about them two kids I took in, she said. That John and that Pearl?

Ah, then it's true. You have them.

Yes. I have them.

His face twitched with emotion then and his voice broke in great, thankful sobs.

My little lambs! he cried, falling to his knees near the feet of the transfixed Ruby. Oh, Lord, we praise Thy name! Oh, sweet, sweet little lambs! And to think I never hoped to see them again in this world! Oh, dear madam, if you was to know what travail—what a thorny crown I have borne in my search for these strayed chicks!

Rachel kept her eyes on him, her mouth thin as a string, and suddenly sat down in the warped old rocking-chair by the puzzle tree.

Oh, where are they, Miz Cooper? Where are my little lambs? They've all went to gather black walnuts, she said, rocking fast in the dark August grass. Up in the woods beyond the Stalnaker place. My other two girls Mary and Clary's with them.

She fixed him still with that stare, her black eyes twinkling like berries and she thought: It's right for him to come for them if they is his own but there is something wrong here. There is nothing I can guess by looking at him but there is something I can feel in my bones, in my skin, in my hair, that is wrong. It is just like I could smell it on the poor dumb girl when she come in last night, that she had been with men. It is just like I can feel the thunder and rain in my arches and back a whole day before the purple thunderhead comes over the Ohio hills from the west.

Ruby, she said. Go call them kids!

Ruby minced primly off through the tall grass at the edge of the lawn, toward the pasture below the woods.

Preacher wiped at the tears on his leathery cheeks with the heel of his hand. That was when Rachel saw the letters of the Hate tattoo and shivered and the old mother-wit warnings raced and chattered like scared mice in the dark cupboards of her mind. He caught her staring and immediately commenced explaining. She listened, unmoved, as his rising voice described the war of good and evil in the human heart and his knuckles cracked and squeaked as the hands met and the fingers twined and strove together.

I am a man of God, he said at last.

And them kids, she said, is yours?

My flesh and blood! he said. My very heart and soul!

Where's your missus?

He bowed his head away from her and bit his lip and stared off into the far rainbow flicker of dragonflies above the puddles in the meadow.

She went the way of temptation, he whispered. Run off with a drummer one Wednesday night not an hour before I was to preach the prayer meetin'.

And took them kids with her? That's strange! If she took them then how come—

Yes, he said. Took them with her. God only knows what unholy sights and sounds those innocent little babes has heard in the dens of perdition where she dragged them! But at last it was too much for them. They run off from her—

Where's she at?

The Lord only knows! The good Lord only knows!

And them kids has been runnin' the roads since then?

Yes, he smiled softly. Before Jesus whispered in their little ears and led them to you.

Where'd they run from? I mean, where'd you figure the woman took them when she run away from you?

Somewhere downriver! he said, shaking his head grimly. Parkersburg, mebbe! Cincinnati! One of them Sodoms on the Ohio River!

Rachel rocked fast and hard, her eyes twinkling and strong in her face.

Right funny hain't it, she said, how they rowed all the way upriver in a ten-foot John boat!

Preacher's eyes flashed like summer heat lightning before the night storm.

They run north, he said. I been follerin' them all summer long. I reckon they stole the skiff and coasted downriver a spell to keep off the hot roads.

Rachel grunted sharply and listened to the flat, pale voice of Ruby hollering and hailing the children against the wind.

And now tell me about them! cried Preacher. Are they well?

They're a sight better than they was when I fetched them up from that mudbank where the river had throwed 'em. They was a sight to turn a body's stomach. Ticks in their hair and mud in their shoes and dirty as shoats from head to toe. Just skin and bones, too, and hungry as hogs.

Gracious, gracious! You are a good woman, Miz Cooper!

Now if you don't mind my askin', Preacher, she said, how you figgerin' to raise them two without a woman?

The Lord will provide, he said softly, and stooping chose an apple from the windfall beneath the tree. He tried it with his thumb and bit into it thoughtfully.

I don't reckon, he said, they had nothin' in the way of worldly possessions—except the clothes on their backs?

Not much more! snapped Rachel. And
they'd
hardly stand another washin'.

He eyed her again swiftly; the glance moving in a quick, feathering appraisal like the forked tongue of a copperhead.

That little Pearl! he crowed softly. Her and that doll of hers! Kept it with her night and day!

She still does, said Rachel and remembered the day she had tried to get the doll away from the little girl to give it a scrubbing in the Monday wash and John had carried on as bad as she had.

And suddenly the children rounded the corner of the wash-house in a pell-mell rush of small faces: Ruby's towering above them all like a thistle above buttercups, and the face of the curious Clary and beaming Little Mary and the face of Pearl, just now awakening to the shock of love and remembrance at the sight of Preacher's face.

John, Pearl, said Rachel, rising. We got company today. Your dad has come to claim you.

For an instant none of them spoke, none moved. The group seemed frozen like figures in some quaint country tintype at a family reunion. Then Pearl gave a wail of happiness and, dropping the doll in the grass by John's feet, raced to Preacher's arms. He caught her up and kissed her and his face was twisting again in sorrowful happiness and he was crying out something about the mercy of the Lord. John stood still and looked straight into the old woman's eyes. And in that instant neither spoke and yet each told the other a thousand things, Rachel's eyes holding his and saying: What is it, John? What is wrong about all of it? What is it I can feel the same way I feel the gathering of tomorrow's storm before the west cloud comes? And then she read the dark and awful answer in his eyes. The years alone in the nights of river silence and river wind had taught her the wisdom of stable beasts; the cunnings of the small creatures of the woods. And now while she looked at the boy and listened while Preacher prattled and joked with the little girl Rachel felt the skin of her back bunch and twist like the hide of a frightened mare when something prowls the midnight yard and her new foal bleats with mortal dread. John lowered his eyes from hers then and stared at the doll at his feet. He stooped bravely and gathered it up, its loose, silly arms flopping against him. Preacher peered over Pearl's shoulder at him.