The Night of the Hunter (27 page)

And she listened to the ticking house and thought: I must keep talking and keep them listening because that will keep us from thinking about him. Because he is out there and he is closer now than I thought because I can feel the crawling stronger now, I can smell it like I can smell burning brush filth in October even when there ain't no smoke on the sky to mark it.

It would have seemed the simplest matter in the world to go to the phone on the hall wall and take down the receiver and crank till Miz Booher answered and tell her to get the state troopers up here quick from Parkersburg. And yet this was the last thing that would have entered Rachel Cooper's mind. She had a deep, bottomlands mistrust of civil law. If there was trouble at hand it could most always be settled by the showing of a gun muzzle and a few strong words.

A gentle, steady wind rose from the river and the mists began clearing and the moon shone bright as twilight. And Rachel thought: Now, if I was to blow out the kitchen lamp I could see it all clearer: the whole of my farm from the barn down to the road and the river beyond it. That way I could sight anything moving out there under the apple tree; I could spot him if he should come creeping low under the puzzle tree through the yard toward the kitchen.

I sure could tell stories better, she exclaimed to the children, if we was to blow the lamp out! It's always more fun hearin' stories in the dark, ain't it, now?

Yes! they cried, shivering with excitement at this night game Rachel was playing. Yes, blow out the lamp!

So she cupped her palm against the smoking chimney and huffed once and suddenly the moonlight came pouring over the window sills in blue pools at their feet and in the soft wind an apple thudded dully among the windfalls in the yard.

Little Mary! cried Rachel cheerfully. Let's hear you do the Twenty-Third Psalm again. You and me has 'bout got that one learnt, ain't we?

Little Mary shut both eyes squint-tight and commenced lisping the words Rachel had patiently taught her through the strange and lonely Sabbath nights by the stove, and in her mind Rachel could now see the small, intent face: the fumbling, racing little tongue trying so hard to say all of it right, to please her.

—He 'storeth my soul. He lea'th me in the paths in righteousness. For He—for He name's sake. He—

And the old woman's mouth shaped the words mutely with the child's voice because when you live for fifty years in a house you know every sound it is capable of making, and Rachel knew that the faint, soft outcry of the floor board by the marble-top table far away in the parlor was a sound that never happened unless a foot was there, pressing it. Yes, she thought, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil for Thou art with me. Yes, she thought, he has come in through the west parlor window that I forgot to latch last Wednesday when I aired the room. Yes, he is in the house with us now and I dasn't get up to go to the stove for a match to light the lamp again because I don't know how close he is.

In the long, ugly pier glass in the hallway outside the kitchen door she could see mirrored the dusty square of moon on the dining-room floor and thought: When he comes through yonder archway I will see him no matter how softly he walks and that's when I'll start pulling this trigger.

Come, lambs! she whispered sharply. Come stand close by me! Mind, now!

They obeyed, and Little Mary, disappointed that Rachel's interruption had spoiled the climax of her recitation, put her thumb in her mouth and sucked it gravely. And then again it might have been Rachel's imagination: the tricks of an old woman's ears: that sound in the room of breathing that was not hers nor the children's. And she had turned her eyes cautiously again to the neglected window just as he spoke distinctly from the far end of the kitchen.

Figgered I was gone, eh?

Rachel swung the heavy gun, ready to start pulling the trigger as soon as she was sure where the voice was: hard and steady and angry as a man would have been and thinking: He's right yonder there behind the spice closet. He come in from the dining-room on his hands and knees so's I wouldn't spot him in the pier glass. I will say at least that he ain't no fool about his sneaking.

What do you want? she said, in a high, steady voice.

Them kids!

Yes, she said. I reckon so. But there's more to it than that, mister. There's somethin' them kids know—somethin' they seen once! What are you after them for, you devil?

None of your damned business, madam!

She ducked her face, whispering among the little faces for an instant.

Run hide in the staircase yonder! Run, quick!

And there was a quick scuffle of naked feet as they obeyed and yet through the corner of her eye Rachel saw that the girl Ruby had not moved: her face suspended like a moonflower in the half-light, like a moth clinging to a gray curtain.

Ruby! Mind me! Git yonder with the rest!

Trancelike, the girl obeyed, and now Rachel stood alone in the pale arena, the gun level in the crook of her arm.

Mister, I'm givin' you to the count of three to git out that screen door yonder. And if you ain't gone by then I'm comin' across this kitchen a-shootin' and I'll blast every winder and joist and shingle out of that end of the kitchen and you with it to Kingdom Come!

Silence. And the prickle and gather quickened in her flesh and even as she shaped her mouth for the count she sensed a motion at her feet; though it seemed no more than the shadow of a leaf on the floor where the moon's square of light ended, a delicate shifting of air and space a yard and a half from her naked toes and she knew suddenly that he had stolen that close in that space of seconds. And now he rocketed suddenly upward before her very eyes, his twisted mask caught for one split second in the silver moonlight like the vision in a photograph negative and she saw the knife in his fist rise swiftly as the bobbin of a sewing machine just as she began pulling the trigger while the gun bucked and boomed in her hands. After the scream and the thunder, the room rang with echoing stillness and she saw him reel backward through the affrighted air onto the threshold, screaming again and cursing, then stumble into the broken shadow and light beneath the apple tree in the yard and up the rough ground toward the open barn.

The children in the dark of the staircase had crouched in mute horror throughout all of it and now they listened as Rachel's footsteps padded to the kitchen door for a moment, and the screen door whined open and fell to again, and they heard her move grumbling into the hallway and crank the wall phone and wait. They heard her tell Miz Booher that she had better send to Parkersburg for the state troopers and get them out to her place right quick for she had trapped something up in her barn.

Yes, she quarreled to the darkness, banging the receiver back on the hook and shuffling to the kitchen door again and out into the yard to the rocker beneath the tree where she would begin the moonlight vigil before the barn door where the black figure had disappeared. Yes, and you can just bet those big, shiftless county court loafers will track up my clean hall floors to a fare-ye-well!

When morning shot its golden shafts into the mists of the trees in the yard Rachel stole softly into the kitchen to the stairway for a moment and stared in at the children on the steps, filled suddenly with the wonder that each of us must feel at least once in his life: the knowing that children are man at his strongest, that they are possessed, in those few short seasons of the little years, of more strength and endurance than God is ever to grant them again. They abide. They huddle together as these children now did: asleep in blessed faith and innocence beneath doom's own elbow, thumbs tucked blissfully between their sweet lips.

When the sun broke clean over the Ohio hills Rachel heard the cars in the lane and the voices of the men. And the children heard them, too, and awoke and went with her to the fence and saw the gathering cars in the lane beyond the north pasture, saw the men in the tan state police uniforms and the blue-coated city police from Parkersburg. Her hand was wound around John's cold fingers and when Preacher suddenly came staggering out of the barn door she felt the sweat spring in the boy's palm and heard the quick intake of his breath as the blue men stole in from the river mists and gathered under the branches of the apple tree.

Is that him, ma'am?

Yes! Up yonder in the barnyard! But mind where you shoot, boys! There's children here!

There'll be no shootin' if we can help it.

Now they moved together toward the man in the barnyard who did not now seem to see them or care if they came or not, and Rachel, towering above her huddled little flock, could not see the boy's face but heard the hiccuping whimper in his throat as he watched the blue men move solemnly toward the swaying man—Preacher, his left arm hanging useless in his shattered sleeve, the dried blood on his finger tips shining like dark droplets on a hare's nose when it hangs from the butcher's hook.

Harry Powell! You're under arrest for the murder of Willa Harper!

And John felt the scalding urine stream into his socks then and thought: It is them again and it is him and it is happening all over again or maybe this is it happening for the first time and it was only something I dreamed that time before. Now they are hitting him with the sticks again. Yes, and now he is falling down in the grass and trying to cover his head with the arm that ain't hurt. Yes, this is it. Yes, directly the little paper poke with the five-and-ten presents will fall out of his pocket and Yes! Yes! now they will drag him away!

John! John, wait! she cried.

But he was gone with the doll Jenny torn from his sister's arms and it was in his own now and he held it out in front of him as he ran toward them, holding it out for them to see. Even the blue men fell back when he came hurtling among them and arched above the man in the grass, his child's face twisted and clenched like a fist.

Here! Here! he screamed, flogging the man in the grass with the limp doll until his arms ached. Here! Take it back! I can't stand it, Dad! It's too much, Dad! I can't stand it! Here! I don't want it! I don't want it! It's too much! I can't do it! Here! Here!

Then the blue men seized him gently and one of them carried him back to the yard, limp and sobbing in his arms and when, at last, they had carried Preacher off to the cars, old Rachel bore the boy upstairs to her own big featherbed and undressed him and kissed his face and tucked him in—little and naked and lost—under the old gospel quilt that she had made when she was a girl in the mountains sixty years before.

John thought: They keep asking me to remember all kinds of stuff. The thing they don't know is that it was a dream and when you tell about a dream it is not all there the way they want it to be. They ask me the questions and all the people are looking at me. And the man with the gold chain on his vest leans over me and smiles. His breath is like a Christmas fruitcake and I think: What is it he wants me to say? What story does he want me to tell?

I had a dream once but you can't remember all the stuff in dreams and so when I start to tell him a little part of it the rest of it all goes away. When I look down there at the people all I can see is Miz Cooper and Pearl and that new doll baby of hers and Ruby and Little Mary and Clary and all I want to do is go home again because it is nearly Christmas.

The blue men came. I remember that part of the dream. And they took him away. Who? Well, I'm not so sure about that part. Only that he is a man and the blue men have him shut up in a big stone house up the street from Miz Cooper's sister's house. One day last week Miz Cooper taken us on the train to Moundsville for this here trial is what they call it. We are going to live with Miz Cooper's sister Lovey until the trial is finished and then we will go home again because it is nearly Christmas. Yesterday it was cold. The snow looked like the feathers when Miz Cooper broke the bolster out in the back yard that time. They have this trial and they ask you questions. It is in a big place called Wellman's Opera House where they show movies. I heard Miz Cooper's sister Lovey say they don't usually have trials here but they are having this one here because the WPA's haven't got done building the new courthouse. When they have this trial they take you up on this big stage like they was going to put on a show and all these people are here on the stage and all those other people down in the seats like in church. And then the man who smells like fruitcake asks me questions and then another man with a gold tooth and bad breath, he asks questions, too. I can't much figure out what any of it is about except that this fellow with the gold tooth keeps saying something about Bluebird. It seems like this Bluebird had twenty-five wives and he killed every last one of them and they been hunting him now for months and months and now they got him. I think it is some kind of make-believe story because nobody ever heard of birds with wives. But I do what they want and I try to figure out what they want me to tell them. Except there is one thing I cannot do. There is a certain place on that stage where I cannot look because I know if I look something terrible will happen like I think it did in that dream and every time they tell me to look over there at this place I get all out of breath and start to shake like I had a cold and then they stop. Maybe sometime I will make myself look but then I am afraid if I do that I will die or something. At night after Miz Cooper puts us kids to bed in that big soft, featherbed at Lovey's house I shut my eyes and after a while I can see it just as plain as day: the man who is there that I am afraid to look at on that stage. But then a funny thing happens and the next day I can't remember who it was and I am afraid to look and see, to remember. Pearl talks a whole lot when the men ask her questions. They sit down in the chair and take Pearl on their lap and talk to her real low and friendly-like and Pearl tells them all kinds of crazy stuff. Miz Cooper she talked lots, too, and somebody named Icey and a man named Walt stood up in the back of the crowd yesterday afternoon and commenced screaming and hollering and the old man behind the big box told them to shut up and when they wouldn't shut up he made the blue men put them people outside in the snow. This here woman Icey puts me in mind of a girl I used to know somewhere but I never seen the man. Today she got up again and commenced screaming and some other people started screaming and hollerin', too, and Miz Cooper taken my hand and held it. I reckon she was scared. This woman they call Icey she come up on the stage and answered some questions, too, and the gold-tooth man talked some more about the Bluebird and I reckon this got her riled up again because she went to shouting some more and when they made her go back down and set in them seats with the rest of the people she commenced hollering over and over again: Lynch him! Lynch him! This court won't never see justice done to that Bluebird monster! For he lied and he taken the Lord's name in vain and trampled on His Holy Book! And directly the old man in back of the box fetched his wooden hammer and beat on the box for a spell and he said: Madam, be silent or I'll order the Court! or something like that. But that don't hold her back and she hollers out: But he dragged the name of Jesus through the mud! And the old man says: Madam! We're trying this man for murder—not for heresy! And then this woman she screams out: Well, ain't that worse? Takin' His Holy Name in vain and tellin' all us good Christians he was a man of God? And then she went to screaming with her mouth open so you could see all the pink inside and the man who was with her started yelling at all the other men around him to do something that I can't remember what and with that the old man with the hammer told the blue men to put them outside in the street again. Last night we et peach cobbler for dessert only I had more than Pearl did and Pearl cried because there wasn't no more left in the pan and Miz Cooper said if we was going to act up like that we couldn't never come visit her sister no more. This is the biggest place I ever did see. They got lots of houses in this town and this here big movie theater only they ain't holding no movies now. They are holding this here Bluebird trial. Pearl has a new baby doll which Miz Cooper bought her at Murphy's five-and-ten the first day we come here. I just hate it. Every time I look at that doll I want to take it and break its head. And when Pearl comes to bed I won't let her take it in the bed with me and she cries something awful. Sometimes I just think to my soul I don't know what I'm going to do with Pearl. That's what Miz Cooper says when us kids is ornery—I just think to my soul I don't know what to do with you youngins! I love Miz Cooper. She says us kids is the little lost lambs of the Shepherd of Galilee. I don't know what it means but I reckon it's all right. She is nice except when she makes me wash all the time.