Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (27 page)

Harold crossed to the water bucket and dipped himself
a glass of water. This time he looked at Joe Sam in the mirror. The
old man was very small, and way back there on his box, in the mirror,
but Harold could see that he was pulling on a moccasin now, and not
paying any attention to anything else. Harold raised the glass of
water, and while he drank, felt quickly over the old dust coat,
hiding the search with his body. There was nothing solid in the dust
coat. It hung flat and limp, and was getting damp now from the snow
melting on it.

Harold finished his drink, set the glass down, and
went to the window, where he pretended to be looking down at the
house. As he turned back, he took a quick look into the trash keg in
the corner. The bottle neck was there again, lying on top of all the
smaller pieces. He smiled a little at the way he was setting tricks
of his own against Joe Sam’s now, and took off his cap and mackinaw
and hung them up. Then he went back to the board across the two
sawhorses. As long as he knew where that bottle neck was, that was
the thing. As long as it didn’t show up where he didn’t expect
it. There’d be some chance to get rid of it for good when the old
man didn’t have to watch him do it. Or when he was sober again, if
that was what made the difference.

He stood looking down at the board and thought for a
minute. Then he unfolded the yellow rule along the edge of it, and
began to mark off the length he wanted.

Joe Sam had finished dressing now. He crossed slowly
to his bunk and sat down on the edge of it and watched the work. He
followed every move with his good eye, but didn’t appear to be
really paying attention to any of them.

"You better eat something," Harold said.

"Maybe, soon," Joe Sam said, and didn’t
move.

"Well, it can’t get any colder now, that’s
sure," Harold said.

He laid the square across the board at the end of the
length he’d measured, and made a quick slash along it with the
pencil. He started the saw against the square too, and when it had
cut a
line groove to hold the teeth exactly on
the blue line, pushed the square away. Then the rasping of the saw
began, loud and rhythmical in the closed room. The sawdust fell in
little, soundless spurts from the cut, and in the window behind
Harold, the thinning snow fell soundlessly also, and always slower
and slower. It was just floating now, as if it were being let down
carefully and all together.

15

It was about one o’clock when Gwen came up with
coffee and sandwiches. Harold tried to get Joe Sam to eat, but the
old man just looked up at him slowly, and as if he didn’t really
see him, and said, "Maybe, soon," and looked back down at
the curly shavings under the plank.

"No use trying to make him eat when he’s like
this," Harold said, and set the plate and cup down on the box
beside the untouched breakfast.

Gwen turned back toward the door, and Harold asked,
"How’s everything going down there now?"

"Al1 right, I guess," she said.

"You don’t have to go right away, then, do
you?"

"Well," Gwen said, "I could stay a
little while, I guess."

She came around the planks laid out on the sawhorses
and sat down on Harold’s bunk. She smiled up at him quickly, and
looked away again quickly. After a moment she said, "It’s
awfully hot in here," and stood up and took off her cloak and
laid it carefully over the foot of the bunk. Then she sat down again,
with her hands together in her lap. Harold sat down on one of the
planks, where it crossed the sawhorse nearest to her, and began to
eat his lunch. When they looked at each other at the same time, they
both smiled, but they didn’t try to talk. lt was too quiet in the
bunk-house, and both of them felt Joe Sam there too much. They kept
looking at him, first one of them and then the other.

When Harold had finished eating, he got Joe Sam’s
breakfast and lunch and set them on the plank, and began to break the
food into a little pile of scraps on one plate, crumbling the bread
in with the rest.

"We might as well give it to his birds," he
said. “He’s even forgotten them, this time. He most generally
puts grain out back for them, when it snows."

He stacked the used dishes together on the plank and
picked up the plate of scraps and the cup of coffee, and they went
out together. Harold emptied the coffee into the snow, and led the
way around to the back corner of the bunk-house. There he gave the
plate to Gwen, and with short steps going around and in, in a spiral,
he stamped the snow firm over a small circle. When he was done, Gwen
scattered the food onto the packed surface. Her hands worked quickly
and deftly at the little task. Her yellow blouse was bright as fire
against the snow and the dark edge of the woods, and the floating
snow slowly laid its thin crystals on
the heavy
coil of her hair. Harold stood there watching her all the time. When
she finished, she stood for a moment looking at the birds that were
already appearing in the nearest trees, and then turned and came back
to him. He took the plate from her gently, looking down at her face
and smiling a little all the time, and dropped the plate and the cup
into the new snow behind him. They made a small, muffled clatter
against each other, but neither Gwen nor Harold heard it. He took her
hands and drew her slowly against him and bent his face down to hers.
After the long kiss, he pushed her off a little, and kissed her
lightly on the forehead, meaning to let her go. He couldn’t,
though, but suddenly drew her closer again and kissed her repeatedly
on the cheeks and eyelids and throat, and at last on the mouth again.
He bent her back under this kiss, and their faces became fierce and
bereaved. They clung to each other desperately, with their eyes
closed and their hands beseeching.

The many little black caps and chickadees and the two
orange towees that had been waiting fluttered down and hopped into
the circle, one at a time, and then two and three together, and began
to pick quickly about among the scraps. A downy woodpecker went twice
around the big pine that was nearest on the other side of the circle,
making a faint, rhythmical scratching on the bark. Then he walked
straight down it for a few feet, launched out, and lit abruptly by
the morsel he’d chosen. A big, black-crested jay came down onto the
corner of the roof and stalked about in small circles, complaining
stridently. Three more jays arrived in the big pine and hitched and
scolded too, one on the lowest branch and the other two on the second
branch above him.

It was Gwen who finally gently pushed Harold from her
and shook her head at him. Harold lifted the pushing hands to his
lips, pressing them together in his own, and kissed them many times.
The hunger came on Gwen’s face again as she looked down at his
head, but after a moment she whispered, "No, no," and
kissed his hair quickly and lightly and drew her hands free.

"I have to go back now, Harold."

He stood looking down at her again, with a little,
one-sided smile like Arthur’s. Finally he just nodded and touched
her arm with his fingertips. Then he turned and dug the cup and plate
up out of the snow.

"I’ll get the rest of the dishes," he
said huskily.

They stood looking at each other again, and then,
suddenly Gwen’s eyes filled with tears.

"Honey, honey," Harold said, and would have
moved to her again, but she held him oif, gently but stubbornly.

"No, Harold, please."

"No," he said finally, and tried to smile.
He stepped back to let her go ahead of him, and the way he did it
made it a big gesture, as if he were opening a way through a crowd
for her. Then he turned and followed close behind her, glancing down
at the house as he did so. He
wasn’t thinking
about it at first, but after an instant he really saw what he was
looking at, and something pierced swiftly and coldly into him. Small,
not quite real, a puppet in the box of the closed stage down there,
the mother was standing in the north window, watching them. Her face
was only a tiny, blank oval, but he knew how it looked. He knew what
she was thinking as if he could hear her saying it, and the knowledge
separated him from Gwen. A quick, murderous fury leapt up in him, but
it was partly the fury of a culprit caught in the act. He looked away
from the north window at once.

Behind them, the scolding jays came down into the
circle, and the blackcaps and chickadees and towees fluttered away.
The downy woodpecker stayed where he was, though, and went on picking
at what he wanted. The jays left a clear circle of snow around him,
but they were angry because they had to do it, and squabbled loudly
with each other. Two of the chickadees came back down and started to
feed again. They kept close to the woodpecker, and the jays let them
alone too.

"Mother’s watching us," Harold said.

"Is she?" Gwen said absently. Then she
said, "Oh,” and that little sound coming by itself afterwards
told him the cold blade had struck into her too. He didn’t want to
look down at the north window again, but he saw Gwen glance 
down, and then away again quickly, and he began to feel that he was
even walking awkwardly. In spite of himself, he looked again as they
went around the corner to the front of the bunk-house. The dark
puppet with the white patch of face was still there in the window.
Gwen stopped outside the door and turned to face him. He halted an
arm’s length from her.

"Will it make her awfully angry, Hal?" she
asked.

"Don’t you care about it," he said.
"Don’t you care, no matter what she says."

After a moment, Gwen said, "It was pretty bad,
wasn’t it? I mean now? She’d think it was?"

"What was" he asked angrily. "What did
we do that was so awful?"

"It’s what she’s thinking about it,"
Gwen said tonelessly.

"I don’t think she likes me very much anyway,
and now . . ."

There wasn’t anything good to say to her that was
true. After a time, he turned and stared down at the house. His fists
were doubled, and the fury came out in his words, though quietly.
"Just because she’s never been anything but a whore and a
slave, just because that’s all it’s ever meant to her, she thinks
even God sees it that way now. If she even . . ." He turned back
and saw Gwen standing there, perfectly still, staring at his face,
and the anger turned cold in him. Gradually he knew what it was that
he’d said, and heard a little how it must have sounded to her.

"Well," he said finally, "she’s seen
us now, and she can’t pretend about it any more. The sooner we get
it over with, the better. Wait’ll I get the dishes."

Gwen turned her back to the house and stood there
while he went in and picked up her cloak and the dishes and came
back.

"If you’ll take these for a minute," he
said, "I’ll put your cloak on."

She took the dishes without looking at him, and
turned her back to him, and waited. He laid the cloak gently over her
shoulders, and then, because he had to do something more, drew the
hood up over her head and forward to shield her face. While he still
had hold of the hood, he leaned past her shoulder until he could see
her face inside, in the shadow, and smiled at her. She wouldn’t
smile back, though, and after a moment he couldn’t smile either. He
straightened and walked stiffly back and closed the door. When he
turned again, Gwen was already going down toward the house, carrying
the dishes. He couldn’t hurry after her and try to take them from
her when she had done that, so he just followed her down, feeling
that he had already lost all that would matter in the trouble he was
sure was coming.

When they entered the kitchen, Grace was sitting by
herself at the table, holding Arthur’s little carving of a
sheep-herder carrying a lamb over his neck. She wasn’t really
looking at it, though. She was staring at the edge of the table, and
then she looked up at them. Before any of them could speak, the
mother appeared in the bedroom door. She had the black shawl on
still, and was holding it together at the throat with one hand. She
looked only at Harold, and she spoke to him as if Gwen weren’t
there.

"I saw you up there with her."

"Did you?" Harold said.

He took the dishes from Gwen, and walked slowly over
and set them down on the sink shelf. He did it carefully, so they
couldn’t see how he was trembling.

"How could I help it?" the mother asked, in
the deep voice like a man’s. "Playin’ with your little whore
right out in plain sight, and your brother not yet in his grave."

Harold turned around and took hold hard on the edge
of the sink shelf behind him, with both hands. "You could maybe
pick your words a little better," he said softly.

"You’ve done the pickin’ for me, I’d say.
Your pa called her a dirty, foreign little mucker’s brat. Well,
she’s that, right enough, but that’s the least of what she is. I
never been one to mince my words, when they tell the truth. Whore is
what I called her, and whore is what I meant. I’m sayin' only what
has to be said, and you’l1 listen to me."

"Get it all said quick then."

The mother stared at him. "I’d send her
packin’ this minute," she said finally, "only I won’t
have it on my conscience she got put out in this storm by herself.
And you can’t take her home now. You’ll have to finish the
coffin, and with Curt gone, you’ll have to dig the grave too. She
can get her  things together and take them up to the bunk-house,
and wait there till you’re ready. If she.. ."