Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (30 page)

"You better take off your things, Joe Sam,"
Harold said. "We won’t get at the chores for a while yet."

The good eye, gleaming steadily in the shadow, seemed
to be looking at him, but Joe Sam just sat here, and didn’t answer.
Harold didn’t want to say anything more, with the father asleep
there under the lamp, and the white light in the door of the north
bedroom, but everything quiet in there too. He went slowly over to
the table, and pulled out Arthur’s chair, lifting it so it wouldn’t
scrape, and setting it down again carefully too. He sat down in it
and looked at the big, gray head in the circle of light, and the
little, flame-shaped locks standing up on it.

I ought to get him up to bed, he thought. If he wakes
up when they come back, and puts in his two-bits’ worth, but then
put that idea aside also, at the thought of the old man’s voice in
the quiet, and the ridiculous struggle to get him up the stairs.

If only Grace don’t go at it the way she did at
mother here, he thought uneasily. Even if she gets Gwen to come down
that way, it’ll only set her dead against us. The waiting became
very long with only the clock ticking and the slow, heavy snoring of
the father.

Well, he thought, I can see to their fire, anyway,
and got up and went into the bunk-room, being as quiet as he could in
his boots. The fire was out, and the room was cooling fast. There was
a faint sweetness of women in the air that made the place strange,
and made him feel like an intruder. The stool Gwen had sat on was
still there beside Arthur’s bunk, and the hollow Grace’s head had
made in the pillow was still there too. Arthur’s little carvings
lay every which way in the wrinkles of the blankets. Gwen hadn’t
left much mark of herself, though. She’d used his bunk, and it was
made up smooth now, with the top quilt pulled up over the pillow. The
only thing he could see that belonged to her was the canvas satchel
with the leather handles on it, and her initials stamped on the side
of it in big, broken letters, G.A.W. The satchel was sitting in the
middle of the neat bunk. It looked as if she had been thinking about
going away all the time, or at least ever since the father had called
her names, and accused her of causing the trouble.

Harold wanted to go over and put his hands on the
satchel, because it was hers, but it made him feel sneaky just to
think about it, with that woman smell in the room, and Gwen so angry
with him now. He stood looking at the satchel for a minute, and then
went over to the stove and shook down the ashes and laid a new tire
and lit it. When the small wood was burning surely, and he could
begin to feel the heat working out, he put in a couple of chunks, and
then went back into the kitchen. From in front of the stove, he could
see that the mother was kneeling by the bed in the north room again.
It made the quiet of the house more oppressive than ever to see her
back at her praying, and it made him angry too.

Half an hour of that, and we’ll be right back where
we started from, he thought.

He moved over to the table and stood looking down at
the father again, without seeing him. Finally he went into the store
room and came back out with one arm full of potatoes. He closed the
store-room door carefully, and almost tiptoed over to the sink board,
and let the potatoes down onto it one at a time. He got out a pan and
a paring knife and began to peel the potatoes slowly, taking off
straight slices that were too thick, and putting the square, peeled
potatoes into the pan. It got night dark in the windows while he
worked, and the wind came
up outside again so he
could hear it roaring in the pines and slithering the snow across the
panes.

Then, finally, he heard the latch of the outside door
click. He turned around quickly, and saw Gwen come in, and then Grace
behind her. Grace’s face, looking at him over Gwen’s shoulder,
was still too bright eyed and triumphantly pale, in the way he didn’t
trust, but Gwen looked at him out of the shadow of her hood and
looked away again at once. She moved into the room a couple of steps,
to let Grace in behind her, and then stood there, the way Joe Sam
always did.

“
This is the worst yet," Grace said, in that
high, happy voice. She closed the door briskly, like a person with a
thousand things to do and eager to be at them. "A little more
and you could get lost between here and the bunk-house," she
said happily. "We could hardly see the light." Gwen began
to brush the snow, that was fine as salt now, from her cloak, and
then leaned over to brush the heavier snow from the hem of her skirt.
She didn’t look at either of them.

"I put some more wood in the stove for Joe Sam,"
Grace said. His fire’ll keep till bedtime. Is she there still?"
she asked.

Harold stood there holding the paring knife in one
hand and a half-peeled potato in the other, and kept looking at Gwen.
He just nodded to answer Grace.

"Good heavens, Harold," Grace cried,
"you’re taking half the potato with the skin. You poor boy,
peeling potatoes. You let them wait now. We’ll get our little
formalities over with, and then Gwen and I’ll get supper in a
couple of shakes."

While she spoke, she took off Curt’s red coat and
hung it on the back of the chair nearest her, and then brushed at the
snow on her skirt with the same busy cheerfulness her voice had.

Harold looked at her, thinking, If she starts on
Mother like that.

"She’s praying again now," he said.
"Maybe we’d better . . .”

"There’s no use putting it off," Grace
said. She came over and took the knife and the potato from him, and
put them on the sink board. "Everything will go better once we
get that settled, better for all of us." She started toward the
bedroom, her chin lifted a little, and that hopeful half-smile on her
mouth. "Mother," she called cheerfully.

'I'he father stirred and muttered in his sleep.

Gwen said, "No, Grace, let her be."

Grace stopped in the bedroom doorway and turned
around. The white, excited shining of her face was already beginning
to fade. "There’s no use putting it off," she said again,
but not so quickly or so clearly.

Gwen moved over into the light by the table, but
still with her cloak on and the hood up to
conceal
her face. "Let it go for now," she said. "She sent you
up, and that’s good enough."

Nobody sent her, really, Harold thought. She took it
all on herself. As if to speak to him, the mother’s voice, the deep
voice like a man’s, said from the doorway, "I didn’t send
her. It was her own idea."

Harold turned, and Grace moved over against the
stairs quickly, and they were all three looking at the mother. The
light behind her was stronger than the light in the kitchen, so they
could see her face only dimly, but the tall figure in distinct
silhouette, the narrow body rising out of the skirt that filled the
lower part of the doorway.

"I had a notion to come myself," she said
clearly, "but Grace thought better not. I got a stiff tongue at
the best of times, and it don’t limber up none owning I’m wrong."

"It’s all right, Mrs. Bridges," Gwen
said.

"No, no it ain’t," the mother said,
almost triumphantly. "I should of come myself. I been upset kind
of, but that ain’t no excuse. I said more’n I meant, and I should
of come myself."

"I know," Gwen said. "I understand."

"No. I made a promise, and a promise I make, I
keep. I want you should hear it from me. I would of come up there
myself, only it seems like I ain’t to be trusted now, not even by
my own children. There, I’ve owned I said too much. You can put
your pride away now, and maybe poor Arthur will get a little peace
anyway. I won’t hinder you no more, anything you want to do. Seems
my ways, and the Lord’s too, for the matter of that, don’t hold
around here no more."

Now she’s done it, the old bitch, Harold thought
fiercely. "Gwen," he said quickly, and turned toward her.

But Gwen just stood very straight where she was, and
looked back at the mother, and said, "If you want me to go, I’m
sure . . ."

"It’s not what I want any more," the
mother said.

"As far as I’m concerned," Gwen began,
but the father’s voice interrupted her, asking thickly and loudly,
"What’s the matter? What’s going on here?"

They all looked at him. He was holding his head up
with difficulty, only a little off his arm, and peering cross at
them. But he didn’t say anything else, and the mother looked at
Gwen again.

"Don’t talk like a fool," she said. "You
couldn’t go any place on a night like this if you wanted to."
She turned and went back into the bedroom.

"What ails her now?" the father asked.

"It’s nothing, Father," Grace said.

"Gwen, listen," Harold said, coming beside
her and taking hold of her arm gently.

"It’s always nothing," the father said
angrily. "What’s she talking about? I asked you."

"She meant it all right, at first," Harold
pleaded. "It’s only that she gets her pride up when she starts
to talk. She knows she was wrong. And we want you to stay, we all do.
You know that."

Gwen still wouldn’t look at him, but she put her
right hand out from under her cloak and patted his hand that was
holding her arm. "She’s right enough about one thing, anyway,"
she said. "We can’t go now. So let’s not talk about it,
shall we?"

She turned away from him and went quickly across to
the clothes pegs, and stood there in front of them, with her back to
the room.

"Talk about what?" the father asked loudly,
and thumped the table with his fist.

"Please, Father," Grace cried. "It’s
all done with."

"All done with, is it? Now, you listen to me,
young lady,” he said angrily, and tried to rise, but lurched to the
side and kicked over the whisky bottle. He looked down at it, and
said, "Oh, oh," and sat back in the chair again, and leaned
over and picked up the bottle. He cradled it in his arm and began to
pat it. "Almost spilled it," he murmured.

Gwen swung her cloak off suddenly and hung it up, and
turned back to face them, saying, “It’s time we get some supper."

The father stopped patting the bottle and looked at
her, startled. He watched her cross the room and pick up the knife
and the half-peeled potato from the sink board.

"There’s sensible girl," he announced
finally. "Glad somebody’s got some sense left. Have to eat, no
matter what happens." He thought about that. "Just time for
one more little drink before we eat," he said finally. He set
the bottle on the table and sat forward and began trying to uncork
it.

Harold came to the side of his chair in two strides
and took the bottle out of his hands and yanked the cork out so it
popped loudly. Then he got a glass off the sideboard, poured it a
third full, and set it in front of the old man. He corked the bottle
again, and set it down sharply beside the glass.

The father’s red, searching eyes found him then. He
nodded, making it almost a sitting bow. "Thank you, my boy,"
he said. He raised his head heavily to look at Harold again, and then
let it swing back down of its own weight. After a moment he
remembered the glass of whisky and held it up and peered at it,
grinning.

"One true friend of man," he declared.

He drank half the whisky, and said, "Ah,"
and set the glass down again.

Harold looked at Grace. "I’l1 get at the
chores," he said. “I’ll be done by the time supper’s
ready."

He got the lantern from behind the stove and set it
on the table and lit it. He put on his coat and cap, and came back
for the lantern, and went to the door. When he opened the door, the
cold wind sucked in and a thin shifting of snow came with it,
twisting and sliding along the planks. The roaring of the pines came
in loudly too.

"Come on, Joe Sam," Harold said.

The old Indian rose from his seat on the wood-box and
crossed the room silently, and went out past him into the noisy
darkness.

"He’Il be eating with us," Harold said.
"Set him a place too."

"But if Mother..." Grace began.

"She’ll stay in there," Harold said.
"She’d damn well better," he added, with sudden
fierceness, and went out, closing the door so hard the window beside
it rattled more than the wind was rattling it.

17

When Harold and Joe Sam came in again, the father was
already eating. Grace straightened up by the table, with the coffee
pot; in her hand, and said, "Mother wants to see you."

"What about now?"

Grace shook her head. "I don’t know. She just
said she wanted to see you as soon as you came in."

Harold took off his coat and cap and hung them up.

"Did she eat any supper?" he asked.

Grace nodded. "She drank her coffee, and ate a
little meat."

"Well, that’s something," Harold said.
"Go ahead," he said to them all, "I’ll be back in a
minute," and crossed to the bedroom door.

The mother was sitting in the rocker by the bed, with
the black shawl around her and her hands lying one upon the other in
her lap.