Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (33 page)

It occurred to Harold that the figure hadn’t gone
through the white rectangle at all, but only across it, and that it
was still in the hall, creeping along the wall toward the trash keg.
In spite of himself, he turned around quickly. The long hall with the
shadows he couldn’t see into became the small, ordinary room, with
plenty of light to show everything in it, and there was
nobody
else in the room. He relaxed slowly. Finally he even grinned at
himself a little.

"It’s me I better keep the eye on, not Joe
Sam," he said. He looked through the open door and down the
hill. Only the snow-covered plane of the house roof showed, and the
dark, log tower at the north end of it, with its cap of thick white.
They were small and faint through the falling snow. Joe Sam wasn’t
in sight.

Harold quickly finished washing, wiped his face and
hands and combed his hair. Then he emptied the basin into the slop
pail, and straightened up and looked at the door again, and then at
the window. There was still only the faraway roof and the falling
snow. He went to the tool box under the sawhorses and took out a
hammer and went to the trash keg. He lifted out the jagged bottle
neck and laid it on the floor and smashed it into small pieces with
the hammer. He swept up the pieces and dumped them into the keg. Then
he dropped the hammer back into the tool box, put on his cap and
mackinaw, and went out.

He was just closing the door when he saw Joe Sam. He
stiffened and held his breath, because the old man was standing flat
against the outside wall, so close to the door that their shoulders
were nearly touching. Then he let out his breath and loosened his
shoulders. Joe Sam wasn’t even looking at him. He was just standing
there, hugging himself and staring down dreamily at the house from
under the brim of the black sombrero.

After a moment, Harold said, "Come on, Joe Sam,"
carefully keeping the anger out of his voice, and pulled the door to,
and started down the hill. The snow was nearly to his hips now, and
he had to drag his way down through it. It made a quilted hush over
everything, that could be felt in the body, especially after the loud
noise he’d made with the hammer in the hollow bunk-house. He looked
back once, and Joe Sam was coming down right behind him, stepping
carefully in his tracks in the bottom of the trench his legs were
plowing. Harold smiled in his mind, and thought, He hates to leave a
track. Then he thought, looking at Joe Sam’s face, He couldn’t
help hearing me break that thing, but if he cares, he’s sure
keeping it to himself.

He looked out toward the valley, but in this heavy
snowing, it wasn’t even the beginning of a plain any longer. The
white world was closed in to its smallest yet.

Gwen was alone in the kitchen when they came in. She
was already dressed, wearing the bright, yellow blouse again, but her
hair wasn’t braided yet. Instead it was hanging in a heavy mane
down her back, drawn together at the nape of her neck and tied with a
yellow ribbon. Harold had never seen her with her hair down before.
It was just one more little difference, but suddenly everything in
the familiar kitchen was strange, the way the bunk-house had been in
the mirror.

Gwen half turned around from what she was doing at
the stove, and looked at him. With her hair drawn back tight that way
she appeared older too. She looked very tired, and her eyes were only
seeing him, not saying anything or asking anything.

"Good morning," she said, and turned back.
"I’ll have your breakfast ready in a few minutes,"
she
said.

So it’s still that way, Harold thought, and after a
moment said, "I brought Joe Sam down too."

"I see you did," she said, turning
something in the pan.

"Grace up?"

"Not yet. She didn’t get much sleep."

"Then you didn’t either, huh?"

"Don’t bother yourself about me."

Don’t think I am, he thought, with sudden anger,
but waited, and finally said, "I do, though. You know that."

“
Thnks,” she said.

He waited again, and then said softly, "All
right. Have it your own way."

Gwen didn’t say anything. So he was till in a
strange place when he went around the table and into the north room.
The lamp in the window was out, but everything in the white room was
clear with light from the snow. The shape on the bed was still
covered with the white blanket, and the smell of sage and balsam was
almost strong enough to cover the other smell.

The coffin was still standing where they’d set it,
by the bed, but the lining was all tacked into it now. It looked
queer, that soft, puffy patchwork of bright colors inside the plain
wooden box that had only a thin coat of black paint. Harold looked
over at the lid, leaning against the wall, and saw that there was a
piece of quilt tacked onto it too.

The mother was sitting in the rocking chair beside
the coffin, and Harold thought at first that she was asleep, but when
he didn’t speak, she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

"Ain’t this snow ever gonna stop?" she
asked, hardly moving her lips. She wasn’t really asking a question,
but just protesting faintly.

“
It can’t last much longer at this rate,"
Harold said.

The mother closed her eyes again. "We’ll have
the buryin’ as quick as it stops," she said. "I’d like
we should have a preacher for it," she added.

"Not much chance of that, I guess," Harold
said.

"No," she agreed, and after a moment said,
"You should do the talkin’, by rights, but there ain’t much
chance of that, either."

"No," Harold said.

"Well," the mother said finally, "we’ll
wrap him in that blue spread, I guess. He’s always been partial to
that blue spread. When he was a little feller, he was always after me
to get out the blue spread so he could look at it. He’d sit there
and study over it an hour at a time. Run his finger around on all the
birds and trees and things like he was drawin’ them hisself. Tell
hisself stories about ’em while he was doin’ it. They was more
real to him than people that come to the house. He was a queer little
feller, Had a world all of his own, couldn’t anybody else get into,
half the time."

"I know," Harold said, and thought, Not
only when he was a kid, either. "We’1l clear the grave off as
soon as the snow lets up," he said.

"We gotta have it today, even if the snow don’t
stop," the mother said.

"I know, but it’s going to. Has to, the way
it’s snowin’ now, and no wind."

The mother opened her eyes again, and looked at the
coffin. "We could put him in now," she said. "While
we’re one."

"All right," Harold said, and without
knowing it rubbed his hands hard and slowly down his thighs. "You
better let me get Joe Sam, though. Why don’t you go in the kitchen
and get yourself some coffee? Joe Sam and I’ll take care of it."

"I don’t know," the mother said wearily.
"I don’t like too much he should do it, a last Christian duty
like that."

After a moment Harold said, "Arthur thought a
lot of him."

"I know that. More than he did of the rest of
us, I thought sometimes."

"You better let us do it, Mother."

She sat so long, motionless and with her eyes closed,
that he began to wonder if she’d fallen asleep, but finally she
asked, "Is that Gwen Williams getting breakfast?"

"Yes, it is."

Again the mother waited some time before she spoke.
"I’ll just go in your room and lie down a while, I guess. You
could bring me some coffee when it’s ready."

And she’s still at it too, Harold thought wearily.

"All right," he said.

The mother opened her eyes and sat up. After a moment
she took firm hold upon the arms of the chair and pushed herself to
her feet. She faltered when she let go of the chair, though, and
Harold quickly put a hand to her armpit to steady
her. When she was sure on her feet, she stiffened against his hold.

"I can do for myself, thanks."

Harold let go of her. She stood there looking down at
the shape under the white blanket for a minute, and then turned and
walked slowly into the kitchen. She went across the kitchen the same
way, without looking around, and into the bunk-room, and closed the
door again behind her. Harold followed her into the kitchen, and
stopped by the table. Gwen was standing at the stove, where the
mother had almost brushed her going by. She was holding the long fork
in her hand, and looking at the bunk-room door.

"She’s going to lie down for a while,"
Harold said.

Gwen looked down at the fork, and said, "Your
breakfast’s all ready."

"Could you keep it a couple of minutes?"

"Whenever you’re ready," Gwen said.

"Joe Sam," Harold said.

The old Indian stood up in his place by the wood-box
and started toward the outside door. He still had his coat and hat
on.

“
Could you give me a hand in here?" Harold
said.

He went back into the bedroom. Joe Sam came in after
him, and stood at the foot of the bed, where he had stood the night
before.

"We have to put him in the coffin, Joe Sam."

"Put Arthur in?”

He doesn’t like it, Harold thought. Doesn’t want
to touch it, or maybe it’s the coffin that bothers him. Wants it
done some other way, maybe. Right into the ground. Or even one of
those crow’s-nest burials. He studied the old face, but couldn’t
guess anything from it.

"That’s the way Mother wants it."

“
Not like," Joe Sam said.

"Maybe not, but that’s the way we’ll do it."

"Arthur not like," Joe Sam said.

What the hell does it matter, coffin or crow-bait?
Harold thought, staring at him. It’s not
Arthur
anyway, this bloated old man with a profit-counting face. When he
didn’t answer, Joe Sam looked at him, and the retreat took place in
his good eye, the way it did when Curt bullied him.

"Woman say so, I not care," he said.

The hell you don’t, Harold thought. He lifted the
two branches of sage off the white blanket and laid them on the
floor. He stood beside the bed for a moment then, holding his hands
against his thighs again, but finally set his mouth straight and
tight, and moving quicker and harder than the task needed, drew back
the white blanket and let it fall over the foot of the bed. He held
his eyes from looking at the face, and he was holding his breath too.
Joe Sam, though, was looking down the length of the body at the face.
He was seeing it, and he had thoughts about it.

"We’ll wrap him in the blue spread,"
Harold said. "He liked the blue spread. He liked the pictures on
it. Even when he was a kid he used to look at them all the time.
He’ll like that."

He spoke rapidly, almost chattering, while he kept
his eyes nearly blind and made his hands quickly lift the head and
draw the pillow from under it. He dropped the pillow on the floor and
then lifted that side of the blue spread and laid it over the body as
far as it would go. Then the face was covered again too.

"Good blanket," Joe Sam said. He touched
the blue spread with his fingertips, where it was turned over the
feet. Then he moved around to the other side of the bed, before
Harold could, and lifted the other half of the spread and folded it
over too. Harold waited at the foot of the bed, a little ashamed that
the old man should be finishing the task for him, but relieved too.
He watched the dark, gnarled hands fold the spread into itself all
the way down, and then turn
the corners in
again over the feet and at the throat, so it would hold.

Like he was alive still, Harold thought. Like
wrapping a baby or a sick man. And gentle as a woman at it. It suits
him better than the coffin.

He woke himself from the thoughts, and looked across
at Joe Sam. The old Indian was just standing there beside the bed,
waiting for what came next. Harold went around beside the coffin
again, and pushed back the rocking chair, and picked up the pillow.
He laid the pillow in the big end of the coffin and smoothed it and
straightened up again. Then he made a little motion toward the feet
of the blue-wrapped shape. When Joe Sam had moved down there and slid
his hands under the feet, Harold made his mind blank and set himself
to endure the touch and the stiff weight. He pulled the body over at
an angle, so he could get hold under both shoulders, and then the two
of them lifted it. It wasn’t as bad as he’d made himself ready
for. The body sagged a little, but not enough to make trouble, and it
wasn’t as heavy as he’d expected, either. He breathed hard and
slowly, and was afraid the head would roll off the arm he had under
it, but actually they lifted the body evenly between them and let it
down slowly into the coilin, until it settled into the quilt and the
pillow, and nothing went wrong.

Harold straightened up at the head of the coffin, and
stood there steadying his breath and wiping his hands slow and hard
on his jeans again. Joe Sam waited at the foot of the coffin. Both of
them were still looking at the long, narrow mummy the blue spread
made.