“What?” she asked. “Tell me. What did you say?”
“Turn your head and I’ll tell you over the phone.”
“Oh, don’t be shy. Just tell me.”
“No. Turn your head.”
She turned her head. Into the phone he said, “I told you I’m not a good dancer.”
He watched her as she waited for more. After a moment she turned about, frowning, pouting. “Is that all?” she said.
“No,” he said. “Turn your head.”
She smiled. She turned back.
“No,” he said. “The whole, unpleasant truth is, I can’t dance at all. Never danced a step in my life.”
She spun about, lips set, but grinning despite herself, and said, “And yet you asked me!” and then threw the telephone at him as he ducked through the door.
In another moment she sprang to the door and in a loud whisper called down the steps after him, “On whole wheat!”
Alone in the attic Libby felt more and more the injustice of her father’s suspicions. She felt also a kind of complicity in them. The attic became for her a kind of museum of Theron’s whole life, and there was nothing there that needed to be hidden from sight. That not everything there belonged personally to him did not detract from this sense. She felt that she had got to know him even better through knowing more about his parents and his feeling for them. These relics of the family’s shared occasions by which she was surrounded, gifts given and received, used and preserved, tokens of their love, shamed her for the romantical impetus she had come on, and which depended on a kind of complicity in her father’s suspicions, on wishing to believe that Theron was a danger. Now she recounted in her mind the story he had told of his mother’s dress. The spontaneity of his emotion, his excitement as the details returned to him, the depth of his love for his mother, and his eagerness to share it all with her, both gladdened and shamed her now. She had seen him vividly as a small boy as he talked, and that image had the effect of sharpening her impression of him as he was now. She looked around her at the examples of his handiwork; somehow they too, in their care for detail and obvious ambition for perfection, gave testimony to the injustice of her father’s suspicions.
There came to her then more forcibly than before the thought of the possible implications of her present position, of the last hour. And her father had been suspicious of him! He had more to worry about from his daughter, she thought, blushing slightly. Theron was more respectful of her than she was of herself. She would have kissed him—and would have been sorry that she had—if he had not brought them to their senses.
He did get caught. By Melba. “Git out of that frigidaire, boy,” she said. “I’ll let you know when yo dinner’s ready.”
“My stomach says it’s time now.”
“I guess I was wrong bout you,” she said.
“I’ll fix my own lunch and take it up to my room. I have things to do and don’t want to be disturbed.”
Rummaging in the refrigerator he said, “Don’t we have any cream cheese?”
“Cream cheese? Who roun this house gonna eat that stuff?”
“I like it,” he said.
“Since when do you like it?”
“People can change their tastes,” he said.
He hoped she was not too hungry. For he could not make too many sandwiches or take too big a slice of cake without arousing suspicions, and he could take only one glass of milk.
It was a sudden impulse altogether different from this, however, that prompted him as he passed the dining table to take from the fruit bowl just one apple.
27
Going over the day in his mind that evening, with a blush and a smile he remembered the apple.
His impulse to take the apple had come from recalling not Melba’s request for it, but his own words to her, that you need not feel uncertain about any girl you could get to do something like that with you. But in her absence now he wondered just what had her sharing it with him proved. To her, possibly nothing. He began to suspect that he owed today entirely to her father’s disapproval of him. It had been only the hopelessness of the affair that had momentarily attracted her. Or if even that was still too egotistic of him, she had come only to make the apology that simple courtesy demanded. At once doubts began to multiply in his mind like germs. It began to seem he had dreamed it all. She would not meet him again; he would not hear from her again. At home now she must be wondering what had induced her to do such a wild thing. She must be shuddering now to think of her folly, of how closely she had escaped proving her father right.
He found himself in the attic, burning his fingers with matches, searching for the apple core. He found it, darkened and softened, wrapped it in his handkerchief, and went down to the kitchen.
“Here,” he said, holding it out to Melba.
She smiled; but she knew better than to make any comment.
He watched her preparations, and his disgusted reason watched him. He did not believe in it, and was conscious of losing all self-respect, but he was powerless to stop himself. She split the core with a knife and with her long yellow nail dug out two of the glossy black little seeds.
“Touch em,” she said, “and give em yo names. Yours and hers.”
He baptized the first Libby and the second Theron.
She brought out the ash shovel from behind the range and placed the seeds on the blade an inch apart. She lifted the front lid from the firebox, and the red glow rose and hovered in the air. “I gonna hold this spade over the heat,” she pronounced. “Ef the heat make Theron move away from Libby, it means that’s what the real Theron gonna do, gonna be untrue to Libby. Ef Libby move away from Theron, she gonna be untrue to you.”
“Don’t you know any pleasant magic?” he said. “Doesn’t anything ever turn out happy?”
“I am but the handmaiden—” she said.
“Of providence. I know,” he said.
She brought the shovel over the opening and carefully lowered it.
“Which is which again?” he said.
“’At’s you on the far side.”
“I’m not worried about me,” he said, less to her than to himself. “It’s the other one I have to watch.”
“Where’d I hear that before?” she said, more to the two seeds than to him.
She brought the shovel down to rest upon the two sides of the firebox. A glow beginning at her chin spread upward over her face, turning it the color of iron heating up. He bent gradually closer, until he could feel the heat upon his face.
A minute passed. A hiss, so faint that even that close and in that suspenseful silence it was barely distinguishable, began to be heard, and the two seeds began to vibrate. First from the one representing Theron, then from Libby, arose the faintest tendril of smoke, then simultaneously they rocked slightly.
Now the fraction of a drop of juice which it contained boiled out and sizzled about the one representing Theron, and, apparently sticky with sugar, cooked it to the blade, stilling its movement. It was not going to work, and Theron was on the verge of calling off the experiment of which he was already sufficiently ashamed, when the other seed split from the heat, the black hull cracked open, revealing the white within. It resembled a burnt kernel of popcorn.
“What does that mean?” he said, and to his surprise, and adding further to his sense of foolishness, his voice emerged a whisper.
“Means the fire was too hot,” she said. “Git two more.”
This time she held the shovel above the stove top. And he never afterwards could be quite sure that she had not jiggled it to make the two seeds roll lovingly together.
28
The hounds had treed him first at midnight; now at half past two they had him again. It was the same coon, the big one: there was no mistaking the frantic yapping of the hounds.
Theron and his father and Verne Luttrell, his tenant, stopped, panting, and turned upon each other’s faces the cold, intense white light, like distilled moonlight, of the carbide lamps, g
iant Cyclops eyes gleaming out of the forehead of each. The light drained the faces of all color and all but the shallowest depth. They stood listening for a moment, then agreed without words which direction the sound was from and set off at a lope through the trees that danced in the bobbing lights.
This coon had made fools of them, dogs as well as men, from early evening, had led them cursing through swamps and canebrakes, then backtracked and led them through the same ones again, had crossed water so many times that the hounds were in a frenzy of confusion, then got so far ahead of them that he doubled and crossed his own scent, and would have been in the next county before the dogs came out of their maze had the wind not taken a shift. Apparently he had allowed himself to be treed at midnight for his own amusement; for the moment that Verne Luttrell had stopped chopping and stood aside to let the tree fall, the coon was sitting in the top of the tree looking like a robber trapped in the glare of searchlights, the big black spots under his eyes like a robber caught with his mask slipped down; and then, when the tree crashed and the dogs closed in for the fight, yelping and squirming, he was nowhere to be found.
Now, as they tore through a gulley and scrambled up the bank, the barking grew louder and more excited, and when they started across the moonlit clearing to the woods Verne Luttrell commenced calling, “Hold im, Prince. Hold im, Queen. Hold im, Champ.” And the hounds reached such a pitch that their barks became whines of helpless excitement.
It was a dead slippery-elm and one layer of dogs was straining up the trunk, pawing and leaping, while another layer climbed up their backs, a pushing, squirming, howling double layer of dogs. When Verne Luttrell approached they fell back, though reluctantly, and made a circle at a little distance from the tree trunk, all a-tremble and whimpering pitifully with excitement and unable to hold their ground. Verne Luttrell fell on his knees and examined the tree bole. “Hit’s holler,” he said. “He’s up inside. We’ll smoke im out.”
Theron brought an armload of trash. Verne Luttrell said, “You’ll have to git more’n that. We’ll have to fill this ole tree with smoke enough to stay while we chop her down. Else that old coon’s liable to come out and git a breath of fresh air an duck back in again.”
The fire was slow to take; there was no draw and no smoke came out at the top. The Captain said, “My! He is fat, ain’t he?”
At the first stroke of the axe the dogs began to hop up and down in place like dancers in a ring. Then, as Verne Luttrell rested between strokes, Theron heard, above the clamor of the dogs, the deep sound of claws against wood as the coon began to move. It was a tight squeeze and at one point the clawing became desperate. Then the old brown and white head with the glittering, intelligent eyes peering over the black domino came slowly over the edge of the tree trunk into the beam of light, and the fat, lazy-looking body followed.
The dogs were old, well-trained, and knew the sound of the final axe stroke on a hollow tree. They watched, almost silent now in strained expectancy, and those in the way of the fall moved aside exactly enough while the others closed ranks and narrowed their ring as Verne Luttrell stepped back.
The tree fell with a dry, splintery crash. There was a spray of dirt exploded from the ground, the rip and crack of dead branches shattering, a howl from the dogs. Then, in a sudden hush, a readjustment of carbide lamps revealed nine eager but wary hounds and an unperturbed, ready, fat old coon who stood on his hind legs slowly circling, his front paws cocked like a boxer’s, revolving on his tail inside the flexible, undulating, spotted dog-ring which surged cautiously in as his back was turned and bulged swiftly out again as his front came round.
“Git im, dawg!” said Verne Luttrell.
The one called Queen, acknowledged the leader, went in to the chorus of the others. There was a blur of spots and stripes, a sudden puff of fur loosened upon the air, a yelp, and Queen, with one long ear slit through and streaming blood, howled ignominiously out of the ring.
At the smell of blood the pack closed in. It became a snarling, yelping, spotted pinwheel, swelling and contracting, until suddenly it slowed, came into focus, and there in the center of things, in the circle of light, lay the one called Champ, his throat slit wide, kicking feebly while the last of his dark blood flowed upon the ground. Meanwhile the coon, with no more thought of him, had resumed that slow circle, only spiraling slightly now to move the ring away from this obstacle to his defence.
“Git im, dawg!” said Verne Luttrell, whose pup Champ had been, in a tone from which the sport was gone.
The circle closed again, and again the coon had the best of it. At last Verne Luttrell raised his voice above the din and called, “Hold, dawg! Steady! Steady!” Which did no good at all. The din continued, the struggle spun like a top, slowing occasionally to reveal the coon still in that slow, steady, unhurried circling, as though he had been doing just that all along and never been involved in the ruckus. Another hound, one of the Captain’s, was bleeding now.
Verne Luttrell came and took the .22 from Theron. But Captain Wade stopped him, saying, “Let’s let him go.”
“Let im go?” said Verne. “Let im go! Hell, he don’t want to go nowhere. Let im go! That was my hound he killed, not one of yourn. And he was my best one, too.”
“Well, I’ll give you one of mine. For a wedding present,” said the Captain.
And even in that cold light, Theron saw, or rather remembered later, that Verne Luttrell colored at this allusion to his marriage. “I don’t want one of yourn. Which one?”
“Whichever you say,” said the Captain. “But let the coon go. He has outsmarted us all night and he has outfought us. Call off the dogs—or rather, beat them off—while we still have some of them left. I got lots of dogs, but not many coons like that to run them on.”
At the back of Verne’s house the men drank in turn from a gourd dipper and washed in the same water with a slab of rancid lye soap, then dried on the faded floursack towel. The thick curly smoke of a kindling fire rose from the chimney, and as Verne Luttrell, the last to wash, was flinging out the dirty water, a sleepy-faced young woman, wearing only a cotton slip, barefooted and uncombed, appeared around the smokehouse carrying a scant load of stovewood which she rested upon her swollen belly. Then Theron understood Verne’s embarrassment when congratulated upon his recent marriage.
This house had been found for him just two weeks before when Verne, son of a Hunnicutt tenant (his bride the daughter of another) had told the Captain of his sudden need for a home of his own. Everything in it—or perhaps it was the everything that was not—bespoke the haste with which the Luttrell household had been established, from the bride’s dowry of faded and ill-fitting window curtains and mismatched crockery and the six quart mason jars of her mama’s canned pears on the shelf above the sink, to the new husband’s patrimony of a ludicrously domestic-looking mail-order padded armchair. The furnishings had the look of having been herded together at the point of a shotgun. There were signs of one of those meagre country bridal showers, and country honesty had lavished upon the bride the things she showed evident need for, with the result that the kitchen towels were actually a dozen new baby-diapers.
The hunters sat in the kitchen without speaking while griddlecakes sputtered on the stovelids and the coffeepot boiled over to nobody’s concern. Opal was readying herself. Nothing was said until the men were at the table, when, as she poured the thick coffee, Opal, now dressed and rather pretty though overpainted, said, “You coulda told me you was going.”
Verne Luttrell said nothing. He finished spreading oleo on his griddlecakes, ran his coffeecup over with sugar, and swilled loudly from the saucer. There was a quarrel between them and, thought Theron, they lacked the breeding to conceal it before strangers. He could guess what the quarrel was. There was a whine in her voice which betokened a consciousness of guilt, a whimper of entreaty and a look in her eyes like that of a punished dog. No doubt what kind of marriage Verne Luttrell’s had been, and no doubt it chafed him still, and apparently he wa
s still taking it out on her.
“Bring me the coffeepot,” said Verne in the tone in which he commanded his dogs.
Shamed before strangers, she flared up. “Talk like that, mister, and you can jist git it fer yourself.” She gave as saucy a shake to her hips as her big belly would allow and a toss of her curls that seemed meant to show off those charms which others might yet appreciate if he did not.
His domination in his new household had been challenged, and in front of male guests. “Do as I tell you, Opal,” he said.
His tone was such as to put a stop to her sauciness. “Now, Verne,” she whined, “you stop picking on me. Ain’t you as much to blame for things as me?”
And then the aspect of his marriage that was really troubling Verne Luttrell came out. “Am I?” he said.
It was the first time he had voiced that particular suspicion. This was apparent from the deliberate way he brought it out, and from her reaction. She had a subtle instinct: if she felt outraged or hurt she did not show it; instead she seized upon his doubt as a weapon. She gave him a slow, teasing, sidelong look, and said, “Don’t you jist wish you knew?”
The mistake she made was in not realizing that though this was the first time he had spoken it, it was far from the first time in these past few weeks that this suspicion had crossed his mind. It had beaten a regular path across it, as she realized just one instant after she had spoken. In his eyes she saw leap up the fire on which she had thrown fuel, and in an impulse of terror she shrank back, shrank towards the nearest protection—which in another instant, with a smile of reassurance and daring, she realized, was the most providential she could have found: his boss. She darted behind the Captain’s chair like a child dodging behind a parent from a brother’s blow, and like a child, smiled a dare, a taunt from her place of protection.
The Captain sat for a moment looking intently at his plate, like Theron himself waiting embarrassedly for this scene to terminate, uncomfortable in the position she had placed him in. Suddenly he got to his feet, almost upsetting the young woman, and stepped aside. He cast a look of annoyance at her, and as she impulsively darted behind him to hide from Verne again, shot her a look more forbidding than the one which had first frightened her in her husband’s eyes. She froze. Verne Luttrell ceased to be an actor in his own drama, and became a spectator to the one between his wife and his guest. All became aware of him when he sat down noisily. He stared. Then he became aware of his plate and stared at that. He picked up his fork and mechanically conveyed to his mouth the last large bite of griddlecakes, chewed, ran his tongue around the inside of his lips, raised his coffeecup to his mouth and found it empty and seemed to recall then that the start of all this had been his demand to be served more coffee. His wife meanwhile had ventured on her own away from her unwilling protector, and, emboldened by what she understood to be his cowardice, stood gazing down upon her husband with a look of contempt. Verne pushed back his chair, rose, and passing her on his way to the range, knocked his wife sprawling on the floor with the back of his hand, and, returning, skirted her with a minimum of extra steps where she lay stunned, slowly rubbing her bruised and reddened cheek.
Home from the Hill Page 16
