Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (23 page)

"No get,” Joe Sam said. He sounded very
unhappy about it, and he didn’t say anything more.

Harold pulled his pants on up and buttoned them and
fastened his belt. Then he sat down on the edge of his bunk and began
to pull on his socks. Joe Sam said something in a very low
voice.

"What?" Harold asked.

"No hunt painter," Joe Sam said.

After a moment Harold said, "No, it’s no use,
I guess."

"Painter get," Joe Sam said more clearly.
"Painter get now. He know."

He’s getting worked up again, Harold thought.

"Get who, Joe Sam?"

But Joe Sam just said sadly, in the going—away
voice again, "No get now."

After a minute Harold gave up trying to straighten it
out. He finished dressing and came over and stood in front of the old
man. Joe Sam didn’t even seem to know he was there.

"Maybe you can get some sleep now, Joe Sam,"
Harold said finally. “The painter won’t hunt in the daylight. You
better get under the covers, though."

Joe Sam didn’t answer, and for some time didn’t
move. Finally he began to tug awkwardly at his blankets, trying to
get them out from under himself. When he got them out, he just lay
down on his side on top of them, with his knees drawn up. Harold
worked the blankets out again, and pulled them up over him. Then he
put on his mackinaw and cap, I and picked up Joe Sam’s plate and
mug from the box. The mug was empty, but only the meat was gone from
the plate. He stood holding the mug and plate and looking down at Joe
Sam. Even under the blankets, the old man was still lying drawn up
like a cold child. His eyes were closed now, and his breathing was
slow and regular.

Harold turned away, saying softly, but out loud. "Old
as time, and nothing but bones. I don’t know what keeps him alive
when he has these spells."

Joe Sam’s voice said, "Much ’live, all
right. Pretty quick get."

Harold turned back and stared at him. Joe Sam was
looking at him, and grinning a little. Slowly Harold realized that he
had spoken aloud himself. The old man was making a joke about it, and
about the hunting that was going on in his mind too. Harold didn’t
understand the last part, but finally he grinned too.

"Get what?" he asked.

Joe Sam’s grin faded slowly, but only as if he were
falling asleep in spite of himself. Before his eyes were quite
closed, though, Harold thought the good one looked at him the way Joe
Sam looked when he wasn’t saying what he meant. The good eye was
amused about the joke Joe Sam was keeping to himself. Then the dark,
heavy lids came all the way down.

"Much whisky. Much ’live," Joe Sam
muttered drowsily. Harold thought, That’s no answer, you old fraud.
And you’re not sleepy either; you’re not a damn bit sleepy. But
alive or not, there won’t be any more whisky. I can take care of
that much, anyway, and went over and blew out the lamp, and took down
the bottle of whisky from beside it.

With the lamp out, the blue window turned gray, and
through it he could see the snow still falling outside. The flakes
were very big, but they were coming down slower and farther apart
than they had been the night before. Standing there in the dim light
and watching the snow fall, he was again seized by the emptiness and
the wish to be asleep or even to be dead that came every time he
remembered that Arthur was gone. He waited there, only bending his
head a little, until the despair weakened into the bearable
unhappiness that came after it. Then he said in his mind, Keep
moving, boy. You can’t lick it standing still, and crossed to the
door. As he went out, he believed he heard a soft chuckle behind him,
but when he looked, Joe Sam’s eyes were closed and there was no
smile on the sunken, melancholy old face. He pulled the door shut,
and stood there in the quietly falling snow for a minute or two, just
listening. There was no sound he could hear except the occasional
passage of wind through the laden pines, and the soft whispering and
thumping of their burdens falling.

He’s up to something for sure, he thought, but Lord
what. Well, I can’t stay here all day, he thought finally.

"But I’ll be right back, you old possum,"
he said very quietly, and started down, plowing his way through the
fall of new snow that was nearly knee deep now. There was light
showing in three windows of the house below. The small kitchen window
was a shadowy orange, but the white lamp itself showed in the north
window of the bedroom, and the clear light it made let him see into
the room through the west window. He could see the tall, dark
wardrobe in the corner, and one post of the foot of the bed, and
somebody’s shadow, probably the mother’s, moving on the white
wall beside the wardrobe. From up there it was like seeing into one
corner of a little stage. He was moved by the glimpse, as he had been
moved when he stood beside Arthur’s body and watched, through the
tunnel, the three women together, and then the old man alone behind
them, moving slowly away toward the lamp like a star in the
kitchen door.

He looked on out across the roof of the house. The
mist of snow still hid the valley, and the hay derrick stood up too
near and big in it, like the mast of a vessel appearing unexpectedly
out of a heavy fog.

13

When Harold opened the kitchen door, he saw the
father still there, asleep on his arms on the table. He looked at the
big head in the circle of light, the gray hair twisted up into
little, wry locks, the shape of flames, and then at the two whisky
bottles beyond the old man’s right arm, one of them empty, and the
other still half full.

All night, he thought. That must have been nice. He
came in and closed the door quietly. Then the smell of whisky and
stale cigar smoke was thick in the warm room. There were new smells
too, though, coffee, and the ham he could hear sizzling in the pan.
He peered across
the table, through the shadow of
the lamp, and saw Gwen. She was standing by the stove with a long
fork in her hand. The whiter light from the bedroom door reached her,
making her face
pale and her eyes too big and
dark.

"Hello," he said softly.

Gwen raised one hand a little, in a way that reminded
him of Arthur, and turned back to the stove. He stood there looking
at her a moment, and wondering why she was so short with him. Then he
put the whisky bottle into the cabinet under the clock, and came over
beside her, and set Joe Sam’s dishes on the sink shelf.

"I see you had company, anyway," he said.

Gwen nodded twice, quickly, but didn’t answer. She
began to break eggs into the pan with the ham. She did that too
quickly also, and a little too hard. Harold moved closer to her, but,
because of the bedroom light behind him, only put his hand gently
against the small of her back. His own body would hide that.

"Did he keep you up all night too?" he
asked.

Gwen shook her head and began to turn the ham over
with the long fork.

After a moment Harold asked, "What’s the
matter, honey?" and slid his hand along so that he was almost
holding her in his arm.

"Nothing," Gwen said, still keeping her
head down. She was holding herself stiff as wood in his arm, and he
had to make up his mind not to let go of her.

"Something is," he said. "Tell me."

"Let me alone, please, will you?" she said
sharply, and at the same time glanced around at him. She looked down
again at once, but he had seen the white anger of her face and the
faint glitter of tears in her eyes. He let go of her slowly.

"It’s nothing, really," Gwen said. "I’m
just kind of tired, I guess."

He understood that this was an apology, but it wasn’t
one that made things any easier.

Finally he said, "It was Dad, wasn’t it?"

"Please, Harold," she said again, but then
added, "It wasn’t anything, really. I just don’t want to
talk about it."

Harold turned part way, and looked at the father
sleeping on the table. He was snoring heavily, and at every
out-breath his big moustache shivered and his lips burbled softly
under it. Harold set his jaw and turned back and took hold of Gwen’s
shoulders with his two hands.

"You better tell me about it, though," he
said.

She shook her head. "It was my fault. I tried to
get him to go to bed, that’s all, and he didn’t. . ." Her
voice broke, and she bent her head down stiffly, fighting against
crying.

"What did he do?"

She shook her head again. "Nothing."

"What did he say, then?"

"It doesn’t matter, Harold."

"It does to me," he said. "What did he
say?"

At first he thought she was going to flare out at him
again, but that moment passed, and finally she said, "He’s
worried about Curt. That’s all it was really. He didn’t even know
who I was, I don’t think."

"Would you be crying about that?" he asked,
and started to turn her around to face him.

She twisted free, and said quickly and fiercely,
though almost whispering, "I’m not crying."

"Look, honey," he said, taking hold of her
again. This time she turned to him suddenly, and buried her face
against him.

"Oh, Hal," she cried softly, "he
thinks I’m to blame."

He held her closely for a moment, and then kissed the
top of her head, and asked, "To blame for what?" as if it
were a joke that anybody should blame her for anything.

"All of it. For Arthur, and Curt not coming
back."

"And just how does he figure that?"

"No, Hal, he meant it. That’s what. . ."
She buried her face and held herself tight against the sobs. "I
don’t care what he calls me," she said, the words muffled in
his coat.

"But he meant that, Hal. He thinks . . ."

“
So he called you things too?"

Gwen nodded against him.

"Such as?"

Gwen shook her head. Then he could feel her stiffen,
not just to stop the crying, but to free herself a little too. "I
don’t care about that," she said more clearly. "It’s
only because he really
thinks . . ." but
then gave up again.

"Listen, honey," Harold said. "He
didn’t think anything. He’s drunk. He always gets drunk when
there’s trouble, and when he’s drunk, he doesn’t think. Like
you said, he probably didn’t even know who you were. He probably
thought you were somebody from forty years back. He likes you, honey;
really, he does. He was all perked up, having you here."

“
He knew who I was," Gwen said. "He
called me a . . ."

Harold waited, but then she said again, "I don’t
care. But he really blames me. He thinks Arthur . . . He said none of
it would have happened if I hadn’t—if I hadn’t made eyes at
Curt."

"Oh," Harold said.

He kept saying Curt would be back now if he hadn’t
sworn he’d get the hide for me, the painter skin."

"That’s nonsense, honey," Harold said,
and kissed the top of her head again. "Don’t you pay any
attention to such nonsense. He knows who was making the eyes. And
what’s more, once Curt got started after that cat, he couldn’t
have quit for anything, and it would be just the same if he’d never
even seen you. You know that. And if you don’t, we all do, and Dad
the most of all, when he knows anything. He boasts about it; you’ve
heard him."

Gwen nodded against his coat.

"Curt would stay out there till he got that cat
if there was only him and it left in the whole world. He was just
showing off a little for you, and that wasn’t your fault. Nobody
blames you for that."

“
But if I . . ."

"But if you hadn’t been here at all, it
wouldn’t have been any different. Not once that painter killed a
steer. You remember that."

Gwen nodded against him. Then suddenly she pushed
away from him and turned hastily back to the stove and slid the
frying pan off the fire lids.

"Here I am letting everything burn up while I
act the crybaby," she said, laughing shakily. "I’ll have
your breakfast ready in a minute. Only these eggs. I’m afraid the
eggs are ruined."

"They look fine to me,” Harold said. He
started to say something else, and then didn’t. Finally he asked,
"How’s Grace this morning?"

Gwen spread a wire toaster on the fire lids and laid
four slices of bread on it. She didn’t answer for so long he began
to think she hadn’t heard him. Then she said, "She’s all
right, I guess. She’s asleep now."

"Meaning she didn’t sleep last night?"

There was another long wait before Gwen said, "Not
much, I guess," and at last added, very low, "She went in
there once," and raised her hand a little from her side to point
at the north bedroom.

"Oh, Lordy," Harold said softly. "Not
like last night again?" he asked.

Gwen nodded, and then, before he could speak, said,

"I’m scared for her, Hal. She just can’t
seem to let up any at all."