Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (21 page)

Harold went across and got the Bible from the big
chair and took it in his arm with the coat. Then he could speak
evenly. "I tried to take over, Dad, but she wouldn’t let me."

"So she’s going to leave me to sleep by
myself," the father said angrily. "She thinks more of the
dead than she does of the living, that woman; her and her getting
into heaven."

Harold went back to the stove and picked up the mug
of coffee.

"Well, I won’t," the father declared
loudly. "I’ll stay right here and get drunk, that’s what
I’ll do, good and goddam drunk. Won’t freeze to death, then,
anyway," he muttered.

Harold went back into the bedroom and set the mug of
coffee on the table and laid the Bible beside it.

"Here’s your coat, Mother."

"Oh, yes," she said, coming back from
wherever she’d been in her mind. She stood up and held her arms
back so he could put the coat on her. "It was all that fool
reading that done it," she said.

"Did what?"

"Give him such outlandish notions."

"I guess so,” Harold said, pulling the coat
up. And he learned more about God from the most heathen Greek of the
bunch of them, he thought, letting the anger go that he’d held onto
in the kitchen, than you. . . but then, seeing her standing there,
thin and tired in the big,  worn-out coat, couldn’t finish it
that way. Than all your hell-fire, camp-meeting preachers could find
in a million Bibles, he thought instead.

Through the white light in the bedroom and the yellow
light in the kitchen, he saw the bunk-room door open, and Gwen come
out and close it softly behind her. The mother saw too.

"How’s Grace now?" she asked.

"She’s asleep, Mother. Don’t you worry about
her. Gwen’s keeping an eye on her."

"Curt ain’t come in yet?"

"He couldn’t try to, in this snow, Mother.
He’s holed up somewhere till daylight."

"He must of got a long ways out," the
mother said. She folded the slack of the big coat around her, and let
herself down into the rocker again.

"Anything else you want, Mother?"

"Nothing else now, thanks."

When he came out, Gwen was putting meat and potato on
a plate for Joe Sam.

"How is she doing now?" she asked in a low
voice.

"Pretty good, I guess," he said. "She
got to talking about him some; quite a lot for her."

"Well, that’ll do her good."

"It ought to, I guess. Only she can’t seem to
let it be. She keeps remembering things..." But then he stopped,
and stood there thinking. "Well," he said finally, "I
better take Joe Sam his supper, I guess."

He put on his coat and cap and lit the lantern, and
came back for the plate.

"Maybe I’d better go with you," Gwen
said. "There’s the coffee too, and you’ll need a free hand."

Harold glanced at the father. The old man’s elbows
were spread wide on the table, and he was holding the whisky glass
between his two hands, with his face down close to it. Harold looked
back at Gwen and smiled and touched her face with the tips of his
fingers.

"Since when did you start making excuses to go
some place with me?"

Gwen moved closer to him and looked up into his face,
smiling a little. "I never did," she whispered. "And
don’t you get to thinking I ever wi1l," she added, with mock
severity. But then her mouth trembled, and the tears started up in
her eyes. She turned away quickly, saying, "Grace is still
asleep, but I don’t dare leave her alone too long."

She went quickly over to the pegs and took down her
cloak and swung it over her shoulders. She was drawing the hood up as
she came back. It was a dark woolen cloak with a red silk lining.
When the hood was up, her forehead and eyes were in shadow, and all
Harold could see clearly was her mouth, still smiling for him.

Curt’d call her a priestess now, he thought. Or
medicine woman. And she is, too, he thought. She wants what Arthur
wanted. She couldn’t say it in words, the way he could, maybe, but
it’s the same thing. She doesn’t like the God that’s in there
with Mother now any more than he did. It’s a God for the dead. Dad
was right about that much, anyway. And hers is for life, he thought,
looking down at the blue hood. It’s the God of Life against the God
of Death,
that’s what it is, he thought, and
for a moment felt that he was almost into the big secret, the secret
that was quiet in the middle of everything, and that if it only
wouldn’t go too fast, he’d really see what Arthur had meant. He
was tremendously hopeful. Everything seemed to be getting more
beautiful and more important around him, and for the first time since
Kentuck had come in, the despair was letting go of him.

But his mind said, with its old, stubborn resentment,
That God in there wants us all dead. He’s a mean old clerk of a
God; He’d rather have us dead, so there’d be nothing more coming
in, so He could add it all up and put his book away for keeps. That’s
what she’s doing in there now, going over Arthur’s bills with
Him, counting the pennies.

The big feeling was gone then, and the despair came
back even tighter than before. The wonder that had been in everything
for a moment, wasn’t in anything now, but just hanging in the air
and getting fainter all the time, and he couldn’t stop it. It was
like waking from a dream in which he’d worked his way out of a bad
trouble, and finding the trouble was still there, and bad as ever.

Gwen was standing close beside him, pouring coffee
for Joe Sam. All he could see out from under the cloak was her two
thin brown hands holding the mug and tilting the coffee pot. They
were enough, though. He suddenly felt that if he took her in his arms
now, he’d get back into the bigness he’d lost by quarreling with
the mother’s God, and have it so he’d never lose it again. It was
as if something had come out of Gwen to him and made the big moment
in the first place. He put out his hand to touch the small shoulder
under the blue cloak, but then he thought of the old man at the
table, and the open bedroom door behind him. He didn’t touch Gwen,
but just reached past her and picked up Joe Sam’s plate. Then he
turned back to the table and picked up the lantern. He felt that he
had been defeated twice. No, it was worse than that. He had defeated
himself twice. The whole weight of what was in the house came down on
him again while he stood there waiting for Gwen to put sugar into the
coffee and get a knife and fork and spoon. He let her go ahead of him
to the door.

At the sound of the two of them walking together, the
father roused himself again and peered slowly around through half
open eyes until he found them.

"Where you going this tima night?" he asked
thickly.

"Just taking Joe Sam’s supper up, Dad."

"Let him come and get it, the old fool,"
the father said, and his head swung back and down again by its own
weight. At the sound of the door opening, though, he drew a deep,
sighing breath, pushed himself slowly upright in his chair, and
peered around at them again.

"That fool Curt gonna stay out there all night?"
he asked. "Hasn’t even had his supper. Tell him come in, get
his supper."

His head drooped back toward the table. "Didn’
even eat his supper," he said drowsily.

Harold motioned to Gwen to go on out. He followed her
and closed the door, and they went around the house and slowly up to
the bunk-house, side by side and bowed against the thickening snow.

Joe Sam was sitting huddled on a box next to the
stove. The lantern coming in made his shadow move hugely behind him.
His moccasins were set side by side under the edge of the stove, and
his broad bare feet were smooth as a young man’s. They didn’t
seem to belong to the same body as the old hands that were clutching
his elbows. His head was turned to look at the two coming in, and the
lantern made his good eye gleam like metal.

"Here’s your supper, Joe Sam," Harold
said, and held the plate out and waited until Joe Sam had to take it.
"And coffee," he said, and took the cup from Gwen and set
it on the floor beside the box. Then he went to the far end of the
room, took the lamp down from its high shelf and set it beside the
wash basin. Gwen moved closer to Joe Sam and said, "Here’s
your knife and fork."

The old man took them without a word, and sat holding
them upright in one hand, with the plate on his knees.

"Are you warm enough?" Gwen asked.

"Warm. Good."

"Please. You eat something this time. And drink
your coffee. That’ll really warm you up."

"Warm. Good," Joe Sam said again.

Gwen leaned over and put the spoon into his coffee
mug, and stirred three or four times around before she left it there.

Harold set the lighted lamp back up on its shelf,
making the piece of broken mirror, that was fastened to the wall over
the wash basin, flash its shape in light across Gwen and Joe Sam and
the pile of stove wood behind them. Then he saw by the lamp that one
of the whisky bottles he had set on the shelf with it was gone. He
turned back, and finally saw the bottle on the floor in the shadow
behind Joe Sam. The seal was torn off and the cork was out. Harold
came over and stood beside Gwen and looked down at the old man.

"Joe Sam," he said.

After a moment Joe Sam looked at him, but at his
shoulder, not at his face.

"Did you get any sleep at all?"

"Sleep," the old man said finally.

Harold sighed. "Well, eat now, anyway. You have
to eat something."

"Eat," Joe Sam said. He looked down at the
plate, and after a moment poked gently at the potato with his fork.
Harold waited until he had taken the first mouthful, and then said,
"I’ll be right back. We got to get some sleep, you and me. The
way it’s snowing now, we’ll have to take the drag out tomorrow.”

"Much snow," Joe Sam said.

When Gwen and Harold were at the door with the
lantern, he began to speak again, and they stopped.

"All time much snow," he said slowly. "Have
much brother one time. All go now. Have much friend. They go now. My
woman go, my boy, my girl. All go now. Much old." He said
something soft and unhappy in Piute, letting it trail off faintly at
the end.

"I’ll be right back, Joe Sam," Harold
said again. "I’m going to sleep up here too."

Joe Sam didn’t answer. He sat there looking through
them and out the open door at something they couldn’t see.

When he and Gwen were half way down to the house
again, Harold said, "He’s gone and got drunk now, on top of
the rest. I’ll have to get right back up there."

"Yes," Gwen said, and he felt her hand
fumbling for the belt of his coat. When she found it, she hooked two
fingers over it and gave it a little tug, and then just left her hand
there to be touching him. He stopped and put his arm around her
shoulder and drew her close against him. She pressed her cheek to his
coat and held him tightly with both arms. He could feel her shoulders
beginning to shake, and held her even closer, with his head down
against the hood of the blue cloak. He held her that way for a long
time, until her shoulders stopped shaking and loosened in his arm,
and they began to feel the snow coming down on them. Then he turned
her face up to him with a knuckle under her chin and kissed her wet
mouth softly, twice.

When he lifted his head again, and was just looking
down at her, she said, "Would it make things any better if I
went home, Hal? Do you want me to go home?"

"I don’t ever want you to go," he said
softly. "You know that. But this is Bridges’ trouble, honey,
not yours. Don’t you want to go?"

She shook her head quickly, three or four times, and
then held her face up to him again, with her eyes closed. This time,
after a moment, their bodies began to hunt for each other through the
thick winter clothes. Yet even then the light the lantern cast around
them made it seem all the time that they were being watched from the
darkness beyond, or from the lighted north window below. Gwen turned
her mouth from under his, and he let go of her, just holding one of
her hands.

"You couldn’t send me home now anyway"
she said quickly. "Not in all this snow."

"No," he said, and smiled a little and kept
watching her. "I’ll come down with you," he said at last.

She shook her head at him. "You better not,"
she said, and hugged him hard once more, and then pushed him away.

"Well, take the lantern away," he said, and
gave it to her. He waited there, feeling the soft pelting of the snow
he couldn’t see, until the lantern and the small, hooded shadow it
made in its circle of light had disappeared around the corner of the
house. Then he turned and climbed back up to the bunkhouse and went
in.

12

He was in a deep ravine, and Gwen was with him.
They were standing still, listening and not touching each other,
because they had just heard a faint, excited cry from far above. The
ravine was familiar, but Harold couldn’t think where it was now,
the voice troubled him so. It was the voice of someone they knew and
loved, and it was either trying to warn them, or calling for help.
There was nothing to do but wait, though, until they knew what he
wanted. They were in a bad place themselves, out in the middle of a
small clearing part way up the north slope. There was a foot or more
of new snow down around them, so that even with the gray light in the
ravine, they stood out like a bull’s-eye on the white. When he
realized that, Harold was sure that the enemy, whether he was hidden
behind one of the big pines above, or among the aspens or the willows
along the creek below, had a heavy rifle and was a very good shot.
For a moment he was even convinced that there were enemies all around
them, so that his knees became weak, a cold sweat broke out on his
forehead, and his mind leapt from one useless notion to another like
an encircled rabbit darting from bush to bush. He got over that,
though, when he realized that nobody would try to call a warning
about an encirclement. lt would be no use, and it might start things
all the quicker. lt had to be a single enemy then. That was better,
but not much better, unless they could discover where he was. Neither
he nor Gwen had a gun, and if the enemy gave himself away by shooting
one of them, the other one still wouldn’t be able to do anything
but wait for his turn.