Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  ‘But howsoever thou pursuest this act,

  Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

  Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven

  And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

  To prick and sting her.’

  HAMLET

  Cover design: Sarah Olson

  Cover image: Retrofile/Getty Images

  This unabridged edition is reprinted by arrangement with the author’s estate

  © 1944 by Ben Ames Williams

  Copyright renewed 1971 by Ben Ames Williams Jr., Roger

  Chilton Williams, and Ann W Wardwell

  All rights reserved

  This edition published in 2007 by

  Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN-13: 978-1-55652-725-8 ISBN-10: 1-55652-725-X

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  1

  LEICK and the boatman adjusted a bridle on the canoe so that it would tow without yawing, and they loaded the dunnage into the motorboat, and then Leick came to where Harland was waiting. Harland had been standing apart, looking down the lake, his eyes fixed upon that distant notch between the mountains which was the threshold of the River. Above the wharf, where the road ended at a garage made of sheet mental with stalls for half a dozen transient cars, three men sat on the concrete base of the gasoline pump, watching him and the others. While he waited he had heard the low murmur of their voices, needing not to hear their words to be sure what they were saying and to wince at that knowledge.

  Leick said mildly: ‘We’re ready any time you are.’ Harland came to the wharfside and stepped into the motorboat and sat down in the stern while Leick cast off the mooring lines. The engine caught at the first spin and they moved away. Wes Barrell, at the wheel, looked back and lifted his hand in farewell to the three men by the gas pump, and to Harland his gesture seemed to promise that he would have a tale to tell when he returned. Leick too looked back; but then he went forward and stood with the boatman, engaging him in conversation. Thus Harland was left alone.

  He turned his head for a brief survey of the garage, the neat little hotel, the half-dozen houses and the store. This would be his last sight of the world of men — except for an occasional glimpse of individual men — for a long time. ‘Forever, I suppose,’ he thought, not bitterly but with a calm acceptance. as he set his back toward the scene they had left and turned his eyes ahead.

  – II –

  This hamlet at the head of the lake — it bore the lovely name of Hazelgrove — seemed to Harland today an ugly huddle of houses, an ugly huddle of humanity. Probably there were people here who if you met them singly were pleasant, simple, friendly folk; but in a group, here as elsewhere, they became a mob, sinking to the level of the lowest of them, degenerating into a gabbling, yelping pack, a hunting pack ready to pursue and tear and rend.

  He and Leick had arrived on the early train, and Leick when they alighted went forward to the baggage car to see to the unloading of their gear. Jem Verity, the station master — Harland remembered him from another morning four years before — followed to talk with Leick there, and Harland as the train pulled out was left alone by the station. Three men who he shrinkingly supposed had come to have a look at him stood in a loose group a little along the platform, and he was uneasy under their speculative contemplation. When Leick and Jem Verity returned toward him, Jem stopped to speak to these men a low-voiced word, and they drifted away while Leick came on to where Harland stood.

  ‘He’ll take us to town and then come back and truck our gear down to the wharf, and the boat’s all ready,’ Leick said. ‘We’ll go get your license and your forest permit.’

  Jem joined them and drove them into the village. The game warden’s house was next door to the store, and his wife answered their knock. Her eyes were fine and merry, and two small children, a boy and a girl, pressing beside her, were ready to make friends with these strangers; but when the young woman saw Harland, she said quickly to the children: ‘There now, run along! Don’t bother the gentlemen!’ They vanished, and she told Leick, as though she knew their errand: ‘Come in. Ed’s in the woodshed. I’ll call him.’

  The warden was a broad-shouldered young man with a fine brow. He heard Harland’s name without any outward sign that it was familiar, though Harland had expected — and dreaded — a look of startled recognition. When, their business done, Leick said they must find the forest supervisor, the young man volunteered to show the way. As they passed the second house, a boy nine or ten years old came running out to hail them.

  ‘Hi, Ed!’ he called. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘I’m busy, Jimmy,’ the warden told him. ‘You stay home.’ The boy lagged and reluctantly turned back; and the warden apologetically explained: ‘The kids always trail along with me if I’ll let ’em. They like to have me tell ’em about deer and bear and fish, and birds and things.’

  Harland judged children would like Ed; but he understood that today the news of his own presence in the village must already have been spread abroad, and mothers would keep their children indoors till he and Leick were on their way.

  The forest supervisor had a small farm along the shore; and an old woman, presumably his mother, watched their approach through a curtained window. As they reached the front gate, the supervisor, a blocky young man with an expressionless countenance, came out to them. ‘This here’s what you want, I guess,’ he said, in a hurried, embarrassed tone; and Leick took the permit and glanced at it, and Harland felt a wry amusement at this proof that his coming was expected. ‘Starting right away?’ the supervisor asked. Leick nodded, and the man said: ‘Ed and me’ll see you off.’

  Harland almost nodded, in submissive understanding. They meant to make sure that he left the little community unharmed. As they all walked back toward the wharf, Harland at some sound looked behind them and saw the supervisor’s mother following along the dusty road. She turned into the first house of the village, and he guessed she would watch from that vantage their further movements, while she told an avid audience there all she had seen and heard and thought of him.

  Except for her and his companions, no one was visible till at the wharf they found Jem and the boatman. Wes Barrell would set them down the lake to the outlet, and when he returned, his wife would have a thousand questions. Harland. had encountered her avid curiosity four years ago; and on the wharf now, seeing Wes ostentatiously ignore him while they prepared to depart, he imagined Barrell’s homecoming and his wife’s persistent interrogations so completely that he was almost sorry for the man.

  While the gear was being loaded and the canoe made ready for towing, Harland, although the three men by the gas pump were the only ones in sight, felt many eyes upon him. There were, he supposed, fifty or sixty people who lived either in the village or near-by, their lives devoted to defending their fields and garden patches against the encroachments of the wilderness. They traded work among themselves, and now and then Jem Verity hired them for one of his enterprises, or placed them as guides for sportsmen bound down the River; for Jem dominated this small community. Wes Barrell and the boat were alike Jem’s property. Probably not even the warden and the forest supervisor could hope to hold their places without hi
s good will.

  Harland felt the eyes and the thoughts of all these people fastened upon him, felt himself naked before them. They knew his most secret hopes and sorrows. They knew when he had bedded his wife, and when he left her bed, and why; they knew his bliss and his agony; they knew his dreams, and they had witnessed, though from a distance, the catastrophe which had so nearly destroyed him. All about him during the hour since he and Leick alighted from the train he had seemed to hear their whisper: ‘Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!’

  So, gladly, after that one farewell glance when the boat pulled away from the wharf, he turned his back upon the scene, turned his back upon these men and women and upon the world. There was nothing so ugly as an ugly town — unless it were the people in it. He was hungry to bid the place good-bye.

  – III –

  Harland turned his back upon the world, and almost at once there began to be a subtle change in the bearing of the man himself. As long as, standing on the wharf, he had felt many eyes upon him, he had been a little stooped, as though half-crouching under an expected blow, with his head thrust slightly forward, his shoulders bowed. His hat, pulled low over his eyes, seemed a part of a vain effort at concealment. But now, when Leick went to join the boatman and they stood together with the wheel between them, their backs to Harland, he felt himself for the first time in weary months blessedly alone.

  To be lonely is one thing, to be alone is another. There is no loneliness so acute as that of a man upon a pillory, facing ten thousand eyes; but to be alone is to be free, free from eyes and tongues that watch and question and condemn. Feeling himself now thus alone, his shoulders began insensibly to straighten. His head lifted, and after a few minutes he removed his hat, baring his pallid countenance to the strong sun. Their course was northeasterly, and it was still well short of noon, so the sun was in his eyes; and the glare and shine on the water made Harland blink and squint and finally shut his eyes altogether, for they were not yet used to the fine and splendid light of day. Yet the very hurt of the glare pleased him, and he embraced it, leaving his hat on his knee, opening his eyes again, drinking the beauty of the scene. His glance swung a slow circle clear around, but always he avoided looking backward, and always his eyes lingered hungrily on that deeper notch, still miles ahead of them, through which the River escaped from this high basin where like a gem the lake was set, to begin its rushing journey to the sea. He sat erect and eager now, and the wind and the sun made their play with him; and when a gust of spray flung up by the boat’s blunt and plunging bows whipped back to wet his cheek, something like a laugh leaped in his eyes. How long was it since he had laughed before? He dared not remember.

  Leick looked astern to make sure that the towed canoe was riding easily; and his eye rested on Harland with a faint surprise, and Harland felt this and hurriedly replaced his hat again. But then, and this was a brave and valorous thing he did, he took it off once more.

  Leick came back to him. ‘Fine day,’ he remarked.

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘It’s been an awful dry spell, and hot; but it’s some cooler today. The sun feels good.’

  ‘It does to me.’

  ‘Be’n so dry they tell me it’s hard going to the second dam,’ Leick reported. ‘Not bad beyond there, though.’

  ‘I won’t be able to help you much. I’m pretty soft.’

  ‘We’ll get along. You’ll toughen up quick.’ Leick spoke in an easy reassurance, and Harland’s courage quickened like a young fire when fuel is laid freshly on. He stood up and took off his coat and necktie and opened his shirt at the throat and rolled his sleeves. Leick said warningly: ‘Don’t get too much of a burn too quick.’

  ‘I’ll take it easy.’ After a moment, Harland asked uncontrollably: ‘Leick, is she really all right?’

  He had asked that question a dozen, twenty, fifty times in this scant score of hours since the heavy doors shut on his heels and Leick met him with car and train tickets and luggage and gear all prepared and every plan in order. He had asked the question over and over; but Leick answered it again, as he had answered it each time before.

  ‘Yes, she’s good. She couldn’t be better.’

  Harland after a moment, with an awkward gesture, touched the other’s arm. ‘I appreciate you, you know,’ he said. ‘The way you’ve stood by.’

  ‘Sho!’ Leick spoke casually. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ And he said gravely: ‘It’s time you started to forget all that. It’s done.’

  ‘I can’t help remembering.’

  The other smiled, wise and gentle. ‘Remembering can be a nard thing on a man,’ he suggested. ‘I wear life like an old pair of shoes that’s easy on my feet. I might figure ahead some, what we’ll have for tomorrow breakfast, say, or what job of work there might be to do today, and how best to do it. But I’ve already done the best I could with yesterday, so I never could see the sense of fretting about that.’

  Harland, about to speak, saw Wes Barrell watching them; and his face changed, and Leick saw this change and looked at Wes. Wes was wishing he could hear what they said, and the wish was in his eyes; so Leick went to him, took him in conversation. Harland, thus protected, was left again alone.

  He resumed his slow survey of all that lay within his vision here, looking right and left and far ahead; but he did not look back. He would never look back again. He must never look back through these six years. Since that one outbreak, like madness, which had prolonged his sentence for half a dozen unnecessary months, he had sought to drill his mind to forget these years, had tried to teach himself the hard lesson of forgetting, had forced himself to look ahead — and by so doing had won back to sanity again. To remember now was to risk the loss of all that he had won.

  – IV –

  The lake was sometimes wide, with deep bays on either side, it was sometimes narrow and confined, when the forest-clad mountains came plunging down to the water’s edge. Once Leick caught Harland’s eye and pointed toward the shore where a deer fed among lily pads a quarter-mile away. As they advanced, the horizon slowly changed its character. Mountains which, seen from one angle, were smoothly rounded off revealed from another point of view precipitous slopes; or steep bluffs and cliffs were lost to sight as gentler contours were revealed. Except for an occasional naked cheek of rock, where even in this dry season a trickle of water reflected the sun in a flash of brilliance, the forest was everywhere unbroken. There were no clearings here, no farms along the lake, no camps or cottages. The civilization from which men came was far away; and those who ventured here were lumbermen with permits to take out a few thousand feet of spruce and pine, or fishermen bound for the River, intent upon the great salmon there, scornful of the lesser fish with which the lake abounded. Watching the changing profile of the mountains and the passing shore, Harland realized that they had long since rounded the point of land which shut out the village whence they had come; but even then he did not look back, fearing his calculations might be wrong, fear ing he might catch one more glimpse of the world he wished to leave behind.

  An hour before noon, they reached the dam at the foot of the lake, the gateway to the River. The sluice was open, but no water flowed through it, and there was only a little leakage through the timbers of the dam, trickling among the boulders in the narrow stream bed below. The dam-tender’s cabin was deserted, the dam-site solitary. Leick and the boatman put the gear ashore. There was a crate of oranges, and a small packing box was full of staple supplies; sugar, coffee, flour. Two wooden pails held cooking dishes and the little provision they would require today and tomorrow. Bedrolls and a canvas fly, Leick’s small pack and Harland’s old, familiar duffel bag, the axe and the paddles and the pole made up the lot. To unload this little was no long business. Harland left them at it, walking over to look at the dam and the thin stream below; and Leick swung the canoe up on the landing. A moment later the engine started, and Wes Barrell went his homeward way; but he stood sidewise to look back at them, giving only scant attention to his course, as t
he motorboat drew up the lake again.

  Leick above the landing began to build a little fire. When he was ready, he called and Harland joined him.

  ‘Where’s the dam-tender?’ Harland asked, remembering the wheezing old man who had been here when they passed this way before.

  ‘He died,’ Leick said. ‘Died all alone here last fall. There was an early freeze that caught him so’s he couldn’t get up the lake. They didn’t find him till the ice was thick enough to travel. He’d been dead a week anyway, by then.’

  They ate toasted corn bread and bacon and drank hot sweet tea. ‘Where was everybody in the village this. morning?’ Harland inquired, remembering the solitude which had been drawn like a wall around them there; but Leick did not know. Harland watched the departing boat half fearfully, dreading to see it turn and retrace its course toward them; but before they were done with eating it was far away, and presently it passed behind a jut of the shore and disappeared. He filled his lungs with a deep inhalation.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said, in a great relief.

  Leick nodded cheerfully. ‘Yup. I’ll clean up, and we’ll be on our way.’

  – V –

  The first stage of their journey was tedious, for the stream that would so soon become a broad river, marching through its deep valleys to the sea, was here no more than a shallow rill. They surveyed the prospect together, and Leick said:

  ‘No use to try to float the canoe right here. We’ll carry to the mouth of the brook.’ He added: ‘You take it easy till you get your strength back. I can handle it all right alone.’

  ‘I’ll see how it goes,’ Harland decided; and when Leick had swung the canoe, paddles and pole lashed to the thwarts, across his shoulders and set out along the half-mile carry, Harland burdened himself with Leick’s small pack and his own duffel bag and picked up the wooden bucket which held the cooking dishes and took the carry trail.