And I almost had Hans’s magazines.
But he might come again. Yet he’d not chase me home, not now, no. By god, the calendar was clean, the lines sharp and clear, the colors bright and gay, and there were eights on the ice and red mouths singing and the snow belonged to me and the high sky too, burningly handsome, fiercely blue. But he might. He was quick.
If it was warmer I couldn’t tell but it wasn’t as damp as by the boxes and I could smell soap. There was light in the kitchen. It came through the crack I’d left in the closet door to comfort me. But the light was fading. Through the crack I could see the sink, now milky. Flakes began to slide out of the sky and rub their corners off on the pane before they were caught by the wind again and blown away. In the gray I couldn’t see them. Then they would come—suddenly—from it, like chaff from grain, and brush the window while the wind eddied. Something black was bobbing. It was deep in the gray where the snow was. It bounced queerly and then it went. The black stocking cap, I thought.
I kicked a pail coming out and when I ran to the window my left leg gave way, banging me against the sink. The light was going. The snow was coming. It was coming almost even with the ground, my snow. Puffs were rising. Then, in a lull when the snow sank and it was light enough to see the snowbank shadows growing, I saw his back upon a horse. I saw the tail flick. And the snow came back. Great sheets flapped. He was gone.
3
Once, when dust rolled up from the road and the fields were high with heavy-handled wheat and the leaves of every tree were gray and curled up and hung head down, I went in the meadow with an old broom like a gun, where the dandelions had begun to seed and the low ground was cracked, and I flushed grasshoppers from the goldenrod in whirring clouds like quail and shot them down. I smelled wheat in the warm wind and every weed. I tasted dust in my mouth, and the house and barn and all the pails burned my eyes to look at. I rode the broom over the brown rocks. I hunted Horse Simon in the shade of a tree. I rode the broom over the brown meadow grass and with a fist like pistol butt and trigger shot the Indian on Horse Simon down. I rode across the dry plain. I rode into the dry creek. Dust rose up behind me. I went fast and shouted. The tractor was bright orange. It shimmered. Dust rolled behind it. I hid in the creek and followed as it came. I waited as its path curved toward me. I watched and waited. My eyes were tiny. I sprang out with a whoop and rode across the dry plain. My horse had a golden tail. Dust rolled up behind me. Pa was on the tractor in a broad-brimmed hat. With a fist like a pistol butt and trigger, going fast, I shot him down.
Pa would stop the tractor and get off and we’d walk across the creek to the little tree Simon stood his bowed head under. We’d sit by the tree and pa would pull a water bottle out from between its roots and drink. He’d swish it around in his mouth good before he swallowed. He’d wipe off the top and offer it to me. I’d take a pull like it was fiery and hand it back. Pa’d take another drink and sigh and get on up. Then he’d say: you feed the chickens like I told you? and I’d say I had, and then he’d say: how’s the hunting? and I’d say pretty good. He’d nod like he agreed and clap Simon on the behind and go on off, but he’d always say I’d best not play in the sun too long. I’d watch him go over the creek, waving his hat before his face before he put it on. Then I’d take a secret drink out of the bottle and wipe my lips and the lip of it. After that I’d go and let the ragweed brush against my knees, and then, sometimes, go home.
The fire had begun to feel warm. I rubbed my hands. I ate a stale biscuit.
Pa had taken the wagon to town. The sun was shining. Pa had gone to meet Big Hans at the station. There was snow around but mud was flowing and the fields had green in them again. Mud rode up on the wagon wheels. There was sweet air sometimes and the creek had water with the winter going. Through a crack in the privy door I saw him take the wagon to the train. I’d a habit, when I was twelve, of looking down. Something sparkled on the water. It was then I found the first one. The sun was shining. Mud was climbing the wagon wheels and pa was going to the train and down the tight creek snow was flowing. He had a ledge beneath the seat. You could reach right down. Already he had a knack for hiding. So I found it and poured it out in the hole. That was the last year we had the privy because when Big Hans came we tore it down.
I ate an apple I’d found. The skin was shriveled but the meat was sweet.
Big Hans was stronger than Simon, I thought. He let me help him with his chores, and we talked, and later he showed me some of the pictures in his magazines. See anything like that around here? he’d say, shaking his head. Only teats like that round here is on a cow. And he would tease, laughing while he spun the pages, giving me only a glimpse. Or he would come up and spank me on the rump. We tore the privy down together. Big Hans hated it. He said it was a dirty job fit only for soldiers. But I helped him a lot, he said. He told me that Jap girls had their slice on sideways and no hair. He promised to show me a picture of one of them and though I badgered him, he never did. We burned the boards in a big pile back of the barn and the flames were a deep orange like the sun going down and the smoke rolled darkly. It’s piss wet, Hans said. We stood by the fire and talked until it sank down and the stars were out and the coals glowed and he told me about the war in whispers and the firing of big guns.
Pa liked the summer. He wished it was summer all year long. He said once whiskey made it summer for him. But Hans liked the spring like me, though I liked summer too. Hans talked and showed me this and that. He measured his pecker once when he had a hard one. We watched how the larks ran across the weeds and winked with their tails taking off. We watched the brown spring water foam by the rocks in the creek, and heard Horse Simon blow and the pump squeak.
Then pa took a dislike to Hans and said I shouldn’t go with Hans so much. And then in the winter Hans took a dislike to pa as he almost had to, and Hans said fierce things to ma about pa’s drinking, and one day pa heard him. Pa was furious and terrible to ma all day. It was a night like this one. The wind was blowing hard and the snow was coming hard and I’d built a fire and was sitting by it, dreaming. Ma came and sat near me, and then pa came, burning inside himself, while Hans stayed in the kitchen. All I heard was the fire, and in the fire I saw ma’s sad quiet face the whole evening without turning, and I heard pa drinking, and nobody not even me said anything the whole long long evening. The next morning Hans went to wake pa and pa threw the pot and Hans got the ax and pa laughed fit to shake the house. It wasn’t long before Hans and I took to hating one another and hunting pa’s bottles alone.
The fire was burning down. There was some blue but mostly it was orange. For all Pedersen’s preparing like pa said he always did, he hadn’t got much wood in the house. It was good to be warm but I didn’t feel so set against the weather as I had been. I thought I’d like winter pretty well from now on. I sat as close as I could and stretched and yawned. Even if his cock was thicker . . . I was here and he was in the snow. I was satisfied.
He was in the wind now and in the cold now and sleepy now like me. His head was bent down low like the horse’s head must be and he was rocking in the saddle very tired of holding on and only rocking sleepy with his eyes shut and with snow on his heavy lids and on his lashes and snow in his hair and up his sleeves and down inside his collar and his boots. It was good I was glad he was there it wasn’t me was there sticking up bare in the wind on a horse like a stick with the horse most likely stopped by this time with his bowed head bent into the storm, and I wouldn’t like lying all by myself out there in the cold white dark, dying all alone out there, being buried out there while I was still trying to breathe, knowing I’d only come slowly to the surface in the spring and would soon be soft in the new sun and worried by curious dogs.
The horse must have stopped though he made the other one go on. Maybe he’d manage to drive this one too until it dropped, or he fell off, or something broke. He might make the next place. He just might. Carlson’s or Schmidt’s. He had once before though he never had a right or
any chance to. Still he had. He was in the thick snow now. More was coming. More was blowing down. He was in it now and he could go on and he could come through it because he had before. Maybe he belonged in the snow. Maybe he lived there, like a fish does in a lake. Spring didn’t have anything like him. I surprised myself when I laughed the house was so empty and the wind so steady it didn’t count for noise.
I saw him coming up beside our crib, the horse going down to its knees in the drift there. I saw him going to the kitchen and coming in unheard because of all the wind. I saw Hans sitting in the kitchen. He was drinking like pa drank—lifting the bottle. Ma was there, her hands like a trap on the table. The Pedersen kid was there too, naked in the flour, towels lapping his middle, whiskey and water steadily dripping. Hans was watching, watching the kid’s dirty toes, watching him like he watched me with his pin-black eyes and his tongue sliding in his mouth. Then he’d see the cap, the mackinaw, the gloves wrapped thick around the gun, and it would be the same as when pa kicked the glass from Big Hans’s hand, only the bottle this time would roll on the floor, squirting. Ma would worry about her kitchen getting tracked and get up and mix biscuits with a shaky spoon and put the coffee on.
They’d disappear like the Pedersens had. He’d put them away somewhere out of sight for at least as long as the winter. But he’d leave the kid, for we’d been exchanged, and we were both in our own new lands. Then why did he stand there so pale I could see through? Shoot. Go on. Hurry up. Shoot.
The horse had circled round in it. He hadn’t known the way. He hadn’t known the horse had circled round. His hands were loose upon the reins and so the horse had circled round. Everything was black and white and everything the same. There wasn’t any road to go. There wasn’t any track. The horse had circled round in it. He hadn’t known the way. There was only snow to the horse’s thighs. There was only cold to the bone and driving snow in his eyes. He hadn’t known. How could he know the horse had circled round in it? How could he really ride and urge the horse with his heels when there wasn’t anyplace to go and everything was black and white and all the same? Of course the horse had circled round, of course he’d come around in it. Horses have a sense. That’s all manure about horses. No it ain’t, pa, no it ain’t. They do. Hans said. They do. Hans knows. He’s right. He was right about the wheat that time. He said the rust was in it and it was. He was right about the rats, they do eat shoes, they eat anything, so the horse has circled round in it. That was a long time ago. Yes, pa, but Hans was right even though that was a long time ago, and how would you know anyway, you was always drinking . . . not in summer . . . no, pa . . . not in spring or fall either . . . no, pa, but in the winter, and it’s winter now and you’re in bed where you belong—don’t speak to me, be quiet. The bottle made it spring for me just like that fellow’s made it warm for you. Shut up. Shut up. I wanted a cat or a dog awful bad since I was a little kid. You know those pictures of Hans’s, the girls with big brown nipples like bottle ends . . . Shut up. Shut up. I’m not going to grieve. You’re no man now. Your bottle’s broken in the snow. The sled rode over it, remember? I’m not going to grieve. You were always after killing me, yourself, pa, oh yes you were. I was cold in your house always, pa. Jorge—so was I. No. I was. I was the one wrapped in the snow. Even in the summer I’d shiver sometimes in the shade of a tree. And pa—I didn’t touch you, remember—there’s no point in haunting me. He did. He’s even come round maybe. Oh no jesus please. Round. He wakes. He sees the horse has stopped. He sits and rocks and thinks the horse is going on and then he sees it’s not. He tries his heels but the horse has finally stopped. He gets off and leads him on smack into the barn, and there it is, the barn, the barn he took the horse from. Then in the barn he begins to see better and he makes out something solid in the yard where he knows the house is and there are certain to be little letups in the storm and through one of them he sees a flicker of something almost orange, a flicker of the fire and a sign of me by it all stretched out my head on my arm and near asleep. If they’d given me a dog, I’d have called him Shep.
I jumped up and ran to the kitchen only stopping and going back for the gun and then running to the closet for the pail which I dropped with a terrible clatter. The tap gasped. The dipper in the pail beneath the sink rattled. So I ran to the fire and began to poke at it, the logs tumbling, and then I beat the logs with the poker so that sparks flew in my hair.
I crouched down behind a big chair in a corner away from the fire. Then I remembered I’d left the gun in the kitchen. My feet were sore and bare. The room was full of orange light and blackened shadows, moving. The wind whooped and the house creaked like steps do. I was alone with all that could happen. I began to wonder if the Pedersens had a dog, if the Pedersen kid had a dog or cat maybe and where it was if they did and if I’d known its name and whether it’d come if I called. I tried to think of its name as if it was something I’d forgot. I knew I was all muddled up and scared and crazy and I tried to think god damn over and over or what the hell or jesus christ, instead, but it didn’t work. All that could happen was alone with me and I was alone with it.
The wagon had a great big wheel. Papa had a paper sack. Mama held my hand. High horse waved his tail. Papa had a paper sack. We both ran to hide. Mama held my hand. The wagon had a great big wheel. High horse waved his tail. We both ran to hide.
Papa had a paper sack. The wagon had a great big wheel. Mama held my hand. Papa had a paper sack. High horse waved his tail. The wagon had a great big wheel. We both ran to hide. High horse waved his tail. Mama held my hand. We both ran to hide. The wagon had a great big wheel. Papa had a paper sack. Mama held my hand. High horse waved his tail. Papa had a paper sack. We both ran to hide. Papa had a paper sack. We both ran to hide.
The wind was still. The snow was still. The sun burned on the snow. The fireplace was cold and all the logs were ashy. I law stiffly on the floor, my legs drawn up, my arms around me. The fire had gone steadily into gray while I slept, and the night away, and I saw the dust float and glitter and settle down. The walls, the rug, the furniture, all that I could see from my elbow looked pale and tired and drawn up tight and cramped with cold. I felt I’d never seen these things before. I’d never seen a wasted morning, the sick drawn look of a winter dawn or how things were in a room where things were stored away and no one ever came, and how the dust came gently down.
I put my socks on. I didn’t remember at all coming from behind the chair, but I must have. I got some matches from the kitchen and some paper twists out of a box beside the fireplace and I put them down, raking the ashes aside. Then I put some light kindling on top. Pieces of orange crate I think they were. And then a log. I lit the paper and it flared up and flakes of the kindling curled and got red and black and dropped off and finally the kindling caught when I blew on it. It didn’t warm my hands any, though I kept them close, so I rubbed my arms and legs and jigged, but my feet still hurt. Then the fire growled. Another log. I found I couldn’t whistle. I warmed my back some. Outside snow. Steep. There were long hard shadows in the hollows of the drifts but the eastern crests were bright. After I’d warmed up a little I walked about the house in my stocking feet, and snagged my socks on the stairs. I looked under all the beds and in all the closets and behind most of the furniture. I remembered the pipes were froze. I got the pail from under the sink and opened the door to the back porch against a drift and scooped snow in the pail with a dipper. Snow had risen to the shoulders of the snowman. The pump was banked. There were no tracks anywhere.
I started the stove and put snow in a kettle. It always took so much snow to make a little water. The stove was black as char. I went back to the fireplace and put more logs on. It was beginning to roar and the room was turning cheerful, but it always took so much fire. I wriggled into my boots. Somehow I had a hunch I’d see a horse.
The front door was unlocked. All the doors were, likely. He could have walked right in. I’d forgot about that. But now I knew he wasn’t meant to. I laughed
to see how a laugh would sound. Again. Good.
The road was gone. Fences, bushes, old machinery: what there might be in any yard was all gone under snow. All I could see was the steep snow and the long shadow lines and the hard bright crest about to break but not quite breaking and the hazy sun rising, throwing down slats of orange like a snow fence had fallen down. He’d gone off this way yet there was nothing now to show he’d gone; nothing like a bump of black in a trough or an arm or leg sticking out of the side of a bank like a branch had blown down or a horse’s head uncovered like a rock; nowhere Pedersen’s fences had kept bare he might be lying huddled with the horse on its haunches by him; nothing even in the shadows shrinking while I watched to take for something hard and not of snow and once alive.
I saw the window I’d broke. The door of the barn hung ajar, banked steeply with snow. The house threw a narrow shadow clear to one end of the barn where it ran into the high drift that Hans had tunneled in. Higher now. Later I’d cut a path out to it. Make the tunnel deeper maybe. Hollow the whole bank like a hollow tree. There was time. I saw the oaks too, blown clean, their twigs about their branches stiff as quills. The path I’d taken from the barn to the house was filled and the sun was burning brightly on it. The wind had curled in and driven a steep slope of snow against the house where I’d stood. As I turned my head the sun flashed from the barrel of pa’s gun. The snow had risen steeply around him. Only the top of the barrel was clear to take the sun and it flashed squarely in my eye when I turned my head just right. There was nothing to do about that till spring. Another snowman, he’d melt. I picked my way back to the front of the house, a dark spot dancing in the snow ahead of me. Today there was a fine large sky.
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country Page 10
