The Ordways

by William Humphrey

  They went up and over Latimer’s Hill and the Vinson house came in sight. “Oh, Pa!” said Winnie from the back of the wagon, her voice bouncing, “I promised Ned we’d bring him something from town.”

  “Rather late for you to think of it now, ain’t it, precious?” said my grandfather, while to himself he smiled.

  Mrs. Vinson was not at the gate and for once her Felix was not out in the yard to run shouting to the house. The Ordways drew up and sat waiting to be discovered, and my grandfather reached under the seat and drew out the striped paper sack filled with coconut bars, peanut patties, jawbreakers, licorice sticks, and jellybeans which he always remembered to bring the Vinson children, his way of thanking their mother for minding Ned, and which they were generally at the gate waiting for. Now, however, no one appeared, and when the front door suddenly blew in and banged against the inner wall and echoed through the house, that brought no one out either. A bellow from the Vinson cows reminded my grandfather of his own waiting, and tying the reins to the brake handle, he leapt down from the wagon.

  He went through the gate, which hung open, and around to the back of the house. No one was in sight. There was no sound.

  “Hello!” he called. He waited a moment but no answer came. “Hello!” No answer. He opened the door, stuck his head in, and called, “Hello?” Just from the sound of his voice dying away through the rooms he could tell that the house was empty. He shut the door, stepped back a moment to ponder, and he heard a cow bawl.

  Still carrying the sack of candy, he went out to the barn. There, unmilked, stood Will Vinson’s three Jersey cows, as he had imagined his own cows waiting for him. Just freshened for spring, they were heavy with milk. The knotty veins on their bags stood out like hemp ropes. Their hind hooves stood in pools into which a steady drip fell from their bursting teats. As soon as he stepped into the barn they let out a groan as if all three were having calves.

  Something must have come up. My grandfather was slow in the extreme to suspect anything out of the common run, but being one himself, he knew that a farmer did not lightly go off and leave his evening chores undone. And he knew that like himself Will Vinson made just one regular trip a month into Clarksville. Something must have come up. One of the children, possibly his, hurt or suddenly taken sick? Why take along the whole family? An accident to Will Vinson, necessitating his wife’s driving the wagon, which would mean taking along the children, as none of them was big enough to leave in charge of the rest? Yet why had he not met them in town or on the road?

  The thing to be done now was to milk those cows. My grandfather went back to the wagon and told my grandmother what he had found; and since milking three cows was a matter of only half an hour, left her and the children there to wait. He went round to the kitchen for the milk pail. It was not on the drainboard where it should have been. He looked in the cupboards, trying to see nothing but a milk pail, for he had a horror of seeming to pry, and he looked outside to see if it was hanging on the wall. He looked in the closet and on the shelves. It occurred to him to try the springhouse. But out in the springhouse there was not only no milk pail, there was nothing at all—which seemed odd.

  He could hear the cows bawling as he returned to the house and they reminded him again of his own cows. He thought of the water bucket. But though the gourd dipper hung in its place over the washstand, the bucket was gone; in the place where it was supposed to sit was a bleached circle, now quite dry. The cows bellowed louder and more insistently, and now mystified and vaguely uneasy, my grandfather spread his legs and pushed his hat forward and scratched the back of his head and wondered where else a man might think to keep his milk pail. But you could not hear yourself think for those cows. It sounded like a slaughterhouse out there.

  Their noise was not like anything that my grandfather had ever heard come from cows before, and it drew him out to the barn without any pail. Inside he cast a look around in the faint hope that the pail might have been left there, and he took closer note of the udders of the cows. They were the size of washpots and, almost touching the floor, sat upon their stiffened teats like washpots on their legs. He stooped and touched the near one, and he jerked his hand back as if he had burnt his fingers. He had expected to find it full but not to find it so hot. Why, it was more like a huge running boil, throbbing with fever, than like a milk bag, and at his touch the cow had flinched and let out a bawl that was almost human. He stood up and in the silence heard the steady drip of the milk into the puddles.… These cows had not been milked this morning either.

  Momentarily quieted by the man’s presence, the cows now let out a roar that sent my grandfather dashing out of the barn and back to the kitchen to search again for the pail. It was surely there. But it was not, and when he then began searching frantically for a pot, a saucepan, anything that would hold milk, he discovered that all such vessels as those were missing too. Just then the front door banged against the jamb again and, starting up, my grandfather wondered if someone had taken advantage of the absence of the family and burglarized the house. He dashed into the parlor, had just time to see that everything appeared to be in order there, when again the cows roared, and looking out towards the barn he caught sight of the well.

  He dashed back through the kitchen and out of doors and across the yard to the well, and there he found the rope gone and the bucket gone with it. He stared at the empty pulley. And though the noise from the barn now sounded like three love-crazed bulls instead of three milch cows, he did not hear it. He peered down the shaft: his mind seemed to drop, to plummet down, down, and to splash in the black shimmer deep below. He seemed to have to draw it all the way back up.… Had someone murdered all the Vinsons and murdered his Ned and were their bodies even now all lying at the bottom of the well?

  When the bawling of the cows broke in upon his mind he was grateful for the distraction. But out in the barn he found them all three now straining and heaving as if they were trying to throw up. Their tails stuck out rigid, their sides labored and fell as they wheezed and coughed. He gave them bran and meal but they were in too much distress to eat. He grabbed the stool and sat down under the nearest one. Her teats had ceased to drip, they were hot to the touch, thick and hard as ears of corn. Feeling hands upon her, she let out a grunt, a sort of grateful protest, then a querulous little groan like a child helpless and bewildered by pain.

  My grandfather began milking, or rather trying to milk, for though he squeezed and tugged as never before, nothing came. The cow could not let down her milk and with each dry, unyielding tug she moaned with pain. Meanwhile the other two moaned with her and stamped and tossed their heads. At last in spurts and broken jets the milk came: viscous, clotted, and from one quarter streaked pink with blood. Then it flowed, hissing upon the straw, frothing as if at a boil, and watching it swirl with the brown stain of manure and run away into the waste, my grandfather felt like a criminal. It spewed upon his shoe tops and sprayed his trouser cuffs, welled up and foamed in puddles, and still it came, squirting with a kind of constant thud upon the sodden straw as he pumped rhythmically on. The manure trench ran brownish white as the milk, floating bits of straw and stover, drained out of the barn and into the lot outside. The cow’s flank twitched against his forehead and her sides heaved and the great crooked milk vein under her belly twitched and jerked in orgasmic spasms. Her voice sank bit by bit to a hoarse sigh of pained and partial ease. The other two had commenced meanwhile a kind of tortured, ponderous dance. Rising on one hind hoof and then the other, they shifted their weight from side to side, their inner organs swishing audibly, their great distended bags swinging, the teats dragging in the puddles beneath them. They bawled only sporadically now; when they did it sounded as if they had the croup. Sweating heavily, his face flushed from the heat of the cow’s flank, his hands and forearms knotted with aching muscles, my grandfather could at last feel the pressure ease, could at last see the streams thin, dwindle. At last they dribbled out. The cow could not stand on her feet to be stripp
ed. As soon as the milking was done she sank quivering upon the milk-soaked straw as if she had been deflated, as if every drop of substance had been pumped out of her body. Then my grandfather moved to the next in line, who now seemed almost to bark, as, racking her back and straining like a cow unable to calve, she tried to bawl. Again he drew the milk down in solid streams, until, hearing a noise at his back and stopping like a thief caught stealing, he turned to find Bea standing in the door.

  “Whatever is keeping you, Pa?” she asked. “And whatever is wrong with them cows!” She skipped, finding her feet wet, warmly wet, for the barn floor was flooded white now, steamy.

  “Go back!” snapped my grandfather. “Get back to the wagon. I’ll be along directly.”

  But she must have seen. Must have seen the uncanny sight of a man milking without any milk pail, for suddenly shocked silent, she turned and crept away.

  To his wife my grandfather said nothing about the missing buckets and kitchen utensils. That the cows had been kept waiting past their time was all that he told her. They went on home and he unhitched the team and fed them and milked his own three cows, who by this time were in almost as bad shape as Vinson’s; and as he listened to the steady fizz of the milk and watched the spume rise up the sides of the pail, he puzzled over what he had found, or rather not found, at the Vinson place. Every explanation that came to his mind got just so far, and then tripped over those missing vessels. Of one thing only was he sure: whatever it was, it had happened shortly after they had left Ned there in the early morning, before Will Vinson had even had time to milk. Word had come of the sudden illness of some relative? Why take buckets? One of the children, or all of them, suddenly taken sick? Why take along all the kitchen utensils? And then he had it, and nodding to himself and pausing in his milking—so that the cow kicked—he said, “Yes! Now that’ll hold water!” A fire. News had been brought of a fire and the Vinsons had dropped everything and dashed off to help fight it. Clever of them to have thought to take along all their pails, their pots and pans, anything that would carry a pint of water, something to cook a meal in for the family that had been burnt out. He felt much better. Not only relieved of worry but confirmed in his belief that there was always a simple commonsense explanation to everything if you just thought about it long enough. Not of course that he was glad to think that somebody had had a fire. He wondered where it was, wished he had been at home to volunteer. It must have been a big one to keep the Vinsons from early morn till night.

  Well, this had been a day! he thought as he got into bed. But there was nothing strange in this world when you kept your head and looked calmly at things. And on that comforting thought, and looking forward to hearing all about it from Vinson when he went to get Ned in the morning, my grandfather bade my grandmother good night, sighed once, and fell asleep.

  When the Ordways drew up at the Vinsons’ gate on their way to church the next morning the place looked about as empty as it had the day before. No smoke rose from the chimney, and as he was tying the reins to the brake handle my grandfather heard the front door blow open and slam against the inner wall with a hollow boom. It occurred to him then that no dog had barked at their approach, nor had one last evening. The Vinsons had a dog to be sure, a big collie named Rex; and generally he came out to bark at you when you were still half a mile away, especially if his folks were gone from home. The Ordway girls sitting along the tailgate would draw their legs into the wagon just thinking of Rex as soon as they came over Latimer’s Hill if it was a day when the Vinsons were known to be away from home. But Rex was not here now, nor had he been yesterday when they stopped.

  My grandfather went round to the back door and called: “Hello! Anybody home?”

  There was no answer, not a sound. He opened the door, and the first thing he saw was the sack of candy, alive with ants, on the table where he had forgotten it yesterday.

  When he told my grandmother that they were still away, to his annoyance she gasped and turned pale. Why must women always jump to dire conclusions? “Something has come up,” he said. It annoyed him that she, who had never shown enough concern for the boy, should now show too much. “Something has called them away and they have had to stay overnight. It’ll all be explained.”

  “You’d think they might have left a note,” said my grandmother.

  “They didn’t know they would be gone this long. Now you drive on to church with the children while I do the chores here. Stop and pick me up on your way back.”

  The cows were quiet this morning, but there was an angry snuffling of pigs from the distant pens and a squawking of hens. Last evening in his perplexity over the milking he had not even heard them. Determined not to milk onto the floor again, he found a bucket in the barn loft, a battered old thing full of rusty fence staples; but while anything from it would be unfit for human consumption, he was able to get to the pigpen before all the milk leaked out. The barn stank of sour milk.

  When he was finished he went and sat on the front porch to wait for Hester. The door banged again and he got up and shut it once and for all. Coming back to resume his seat, he was struck from out of nowhere by an odd, and oddly disquieting, question. Who were the Vinsons’ relatives? His or hers?

  They never came to bring Ned home all Sunday afternoon. So, that evening, after his own chores were done, my grandfather went again over to their place. He was gone for nearly two hours—time enough to mean to my grandmother that he had again had to tend the Vinson stock. When he came in she broke down and cried, ran crying from the room. This time my grandfather was not annoyed. Not that he shared her uneasiness; but he was grateful, was touched that she should show so much concern, uncalled for though he believed it to be, over Aggie’s boy.

  At breakfast Monday morning they outdid one another in feigned lightheartedness, fluttering about and chirping like two canaries, while Winnie and Bea, making themselves small, followed them with wide, watchful eyes. Bea knocked a cup and saucer off the table and at the crash everyone exploded with held breath; yet, to her terror, she was not even scolded. My grandfather drew out his watch, and as though alluding to a brand-new topic, said, well, he wondered what Will Vinson would have to tell them when he came bringing Ned home?

  In loyalty to his waning conviction he held out against going over to the Vinson place until that noon.

  The house, even from a distance, looked emptier than ever. The chimney was dead, and although hereabouts, as early as May, a housewife’s first thought in the morning was to pull down the window shades to keep out the heat, the panes of the Vinson house stared open like the glazed eyes of a carcass.

  “They might have left a note,” my grandfather muttered.

  Possibly they had. In searching so singlemindedly for a milk pail the other evening he might have overlooked a note. He went into the kitchen. The hush of emptiness had begun to settle upon the house. A coating of dust lay upon the surface of things. The disused range was beginning to stink with the sour smell of damp wood ash. There again was that sack of candy; from it in all directions on the tabletop, moving like molasses, slow trickles of small brown ants. He flung it out of doors.

  The kitchen contained no note. He stepped out to the hall. Hearing something, he stopped. It was the sound of footsteps, of someone coming down the stairs. It stopped. He took a step: it took one. Someone coming downstairs, slowly, slowly, a few steps at a time, then stopping as he stopped, listening. Then suddenly they were moving, running. He dashed to the foot of the stairs—just in time to have a rubber ball bounce down the last few steps, land at his feet, and going like the heart in his breast, bound across the hall into the parlor.

  Aimlessly he followed it, glanced about, was wandering out again when he noticed something. Noticed something, but what it was he could not grasp. Something was odd, something not quite as it should be, though, and he paused, and then—it must have been a puff of wind outside—a long, low sigh and the windowpanes trembled and the house gave a shudder, and my grandfather froze, b
reathless, overcome by a conviction that he was in a deserted house, that Will Vinson had run away, had fled something or somebody, had done some awful thing, and had taken his boy along because Ned had been a witness to the crime; or that he had been threatened with some punishment, so swift, so terrible, that he could not tarry long enough even to return his neighbor’s child left with him for the day.

  My grandfather was not, as has been said, a suspicious-minded man. But even the most mistrustful soul would have laughed at his fears, as my grandfather laughed, when, a moment later, the face of Will Vinson came up, like the full moon, to dispel the darkness of his thoughts. To see Will Vinson once was to know him, to know him was to trust him with anything and to entrust him with nothing. He was comprehended in the phrase “a good old country boy”: hardworking, none too bright, softhearted, and, all in all, about as sinister as Santa Claus.

  But though he did not realize it quite yet, the face of Will Vinson was precisely what my grandfather could not see when he looked about the room. What he could see, what had seemed odd before, was that on the wall above the mantel hung … well, nothing. A dark square of nothing. Of original, unfaded, pristine patterned wallpaper, from the upper corners of which ran two lines which met at a nail overhead. On each of the side walls a similar, smaller, dark, colorful, blank rectangle showed where other pictures had always hung, until very recently taken down. Pots and pails and pictures: on what sort of an outing would you take that queer assortment along? Then into those spots materialized the bland, bashful face of Will Vinson. In those spots had hung the family photographs, that large rectangle in the dust on the piano lid, there had always lain the family album. Gone. All gone. All the pictures by which the Vinsons might have been traced, identified.