He thought again of the weight and feel of his son in his arms, and he thought again of his father and mother. Then into his mind came Libby’s answer to his question, whether her parents would take her back. Yes. They love me. They’ll always take me back. She had said it so simply; did she know, he wondered, with all the fatuity of discovery, what a profound thing she had said? They love me. They’ll always take me back. In those simple words, so simply spoken, he found the last of her great gifts to him. He stood up suddenly and, now taking a different direction, began walking home.
59
On Sundays, now that the weather was good, the Captain had taken to sitting out on the lawn, pretending to himself to read the newspaper, while he watched the street, hoping against hope that Theron, with or without Opal and the baby, would suddenly appear. Each Sunday he experienced the same anxious certainty, then the same dread certainty and the same disappointment when finally Melba called him in to dinner—Sunday dinner, when other families were together and happy.
Soon now Melba would call him. But today his certainty had been all of one kind. He had tried to work up his old faith, and for a moment, once or twice, had succeeded in fooling himself. But it was not genuine—more like the feeling one has when he senses that he is being watched—and underneath it was the pervading hopelessness. Something had given way in him today. Today at last he knew that Theron was not going to come.
He sat on without hope because the thought of going in was intolerable. He could not face Hannah or, even less, face her inability to face him. Feeling again that prickling on the nape of his neck, like the sensation of being watched, he glanced behind him, and he noticed the leaves of the oak trees. It was time to go hunting, so went the old saying, when the oak leaves were the size of a squirrel’s ears. What times they had had! How could Theron have forgotten the times that they had had?
He rebelled against the judgment upon him. Never even to see him! It was unnatural. No matter what he had done, how deeply he had disappointed the boy, this was too severe, this was unjust. But the one strength he had now was in acceptance of the judgment upon him—he, who was so used to allowing himself to be forgiven easily. He deserved it all; he could take it all. He would not whine, not even to himself—especially not to himself.
It was not pride, however, that had kept him from going to Theron and begging forgiveness. From the very severity of his punishment there came to him a measurement of how much he had been admired. More stunning than the thought that he had been disowned was the terrifying knowledge of how he had been adored. He had been stopped from begging for a little love by the awesome knowledge of how much had been his, how much he had thrown away. He could make no move then; he could only wait for Theron to come to him.
Meanwhile, he could take it all. He was almost ashamed of his endurance. Upon so big and bluff-looking a man remorse sat with a strange and almost comic incongruity. It was as if the soul inside him hammering its fists against his tough frame was baffled and ashamed of its weakness.
There was no point in waiting for Melba to call him. He heard a new, strange sound escape him. It was a sigh. It sounded like the first whisper of age. He rose stiffly from his chair and, halfway up, saw Theron standing at the gate. Not less, but more stiffly than before, he straightened, stood. He began like a sleepwalker, then walked faster and faster, almost ran. And then the figure crouching behind the hedge rose, stiffly, with a creak of stiffened joints, and hobbled to the corner of the garage. No shadow preceded or trailed it, so that it seemed hardly to touch the ground. From the garage it glided to the house, then slipped down along the wall, and disappeared through the door of the den.
They stood with the gate between them. Neither moved to open it, and for fully a minute neither spoke. Both, with both hands, grasped the palings of the gate.
“Theron?” said the Captain. “Son?”
“Yes, Papa,” said Theron. “It’s me.”
“I’ve been home every night since you went away,” said the Captain in a low, husky, breathless voice. “Son? You understand? Early. By eight o’clock, every night. Ask your mother.”
The gate trembled. Theron could not speak, not even to hush this confession that burned in his ears. Love at last had banished all judgment from his heart and filled him with wonder.
“We would have come … your mother and I … to call on you, you and … your wife. We didn’t know whether you … whether we … I hope you have all been well.”
Then Theron found the latch, fumblingly, hastily undid it. The gate being down between them, both were hesitant, almost afraid. They moved closer together, and in that fleeting moment Theron noticed with a quiet queer little thrill of pride and gratitude that they were of just the same height, looked level into each other’s eyes. Then he bent forward quickly and kissed his father’s cheek. Both flamed at the touch and, terrified of their own emotion, both started back.
They could not face each other. A rush of confidences came to Theron’s tongue. He wanted to share his personal joy with him, to tell him about Libby, to tell him that he himself was a father, he a grandfather, to tell him about Opal’s leaving. He did not know where to begin. Then he thought better of telling him about Libby just now. His father’s pleasure in that could not but be mixed: he would see at once that it meant he would soon, even though happily this time, be leaving home again. He said, “My wife and I have separated. She has left, gone to Dallas. We didn’t fight, just parted,” he said, and he felt, rather than saw, his father’s acknowledgment that he understood, that he thanked him for the news.
Their eyes met again then, and suddenly both remembered that they were men.
“Dinner,” said the Captain after a moment, “will be ready soon. Won’t you … have you had your dinner?” And he thought of the Sundays when he had wished for this, when he and Hannah had sat at the table, he at one end and she at the other, and the empty long stretch between, and again his emotion was too much for him. He said, “Your mother will be happy.”
Theron had reproached himself that his leaving home had driven them still further apart. Then he had solaced himself with the thought that his leaving would have brought them together, forced them to lean upon each other. Now in his father’s words he saw a vision of their estrangement: the vision of a house of silence, of two people coming and going, meeting in the hallways, at the table, with no words for each other, two people living together in daily hatred.
“Why don’t you go in and tell her?” said his father.
Theron looked at the house, at the windows of his mother’s room, and his old happy life with her came back to him. He remembered the comforting, faintly soapy smell of her breast when she had hugged him to her as a child. But then he looked at his father again, and he said, “No. You tell her.”
The thought at first seemed to frighten him a little. Then he understood his son’s reason for the suggestion. His eyes filled with tears of gratitude. He said, “I will! I will! Wait here. Don’t go away. She’ll want to see you right away.”
But Theron did not want her to be able to see him right away, to see him and forget his father as soon as he had told her. “No,” he said. “While you’re telling her I’ll go to my house and get my things. It won’t take me long. Tell Melba to hold dinner.” Suddenly he wanted this very much, wanted to come home completely, with nothing of himself left to go back for to the other house.
His father looked alarmed, as if he was afraid to let him out of sight, for fear that he might lose him again.
“I won’t be long,” said Theron.
“Your car is still in the garage. It’s running. I ran the motor … now and again,” said his father, and Theron saw that: his father going out to the garage to start his car and run the motor, keeping it for him, keeping it in shape, keeping himself in the belief that Theron would one day want it, when he came back home.
But no, that would get him there and back sooner than he wanted to be. “I went there on foot and I want to come back
on foot,” he said.
He looked back twice, once to see his father looking after him, the second time to see him running like a boy towards the house.
But though he would not take the car because he wanted to delay his return, he could not slow his rapid steps, being too eager to get back. He had gone three blocks and was turning off the street the house was on when he heard a noise behind him. It was a car horn. It shattered the Sunday dinner hour quiet. It did not stop, but, stuck, blared like a hoarse siren. He turned, looked back, just in time to see a black car streak past, going what must have been 70, the tires churning on the rough wooden bricks. The car howled on down the street like a fleeing dog, the noise reverberating in the empty streets.
He resumed his walk. But when he had gone another half a block he felt a sudden sharp pang of uneasiness. He shook it off. He thought of his homecoming and he thought now with pleasure of seeing Chauncey and Melba again. He pictured in detail the house in which he had spent his whole life. He imagined Libby there. Soon he would sit in the shade of the oaks on the lawn with his wife and son, his mother and father. Suddenly he stopped. Even while his mind had been on other, happy things, a sudden, inexplicable chill of dread had come upon him. He shuddered. He turned about, hesitant. At once, hesitant no longer, he started walking, back towards home. Suddenly he found himself running and, frightened by his own fear, ran breathlessly.
60
Mrs. Hannah was sitting in her bedroom waiting to be called to dinner when suddenly the heavy silence of the house was disturbed by a pounding on the front porch, the sound of running footsteps, followed instantly by the bang of the door thrown open and Wade’s shout:
“Hannah!”
She stiffened with fright. Unable to answer or even to rise, she sat gripping the arms of her chair, and she heard him bound down the hall and shout again:
“Hannah? Hannah?”
Then she felt her heart flutter, timidly yet wildly, hopefully, yet afraid to hope. For it seemed to her then that the urgency and excitement in his voice was happiness, elation. Was there news—good news—of Theron? Had he come? Was he here? She found her voice, or thought she had found it, and said, “Yes?” But she had not, and it came out choked, husky, little better than a whisper, so that she had to repeat:
“Yes?”
“Han—”
And then a blast—as if the house had been struck by lightning. The house shuddered. The windows shook in their frames; the pictures trembled on the walls. In the corner of her room from the wainscoting a sprinkle of plaster fell to the floor. And then came a second, fainter thud, like an echo of the first, and a fainter, echoing shudder.
Mrs. Hannah rushed into the hall, to the stairs, down to the landing. There, breathless, she stopped. She waited to hear him call her again, to finish her name, that first syllable of which seemed to vibrate in the profound silence. Chauncey, his hands full of silverware, had come from the pantry, Melba from the kitchen, wiping her floury hands on her apron. But Wade came from nowhere, nor did his voice. They looked at each other, and still he did not appear while her heart ticked off that breathless minute of not wanting to know more than it knew.
They reached the den just as the car shot from the garage and howled down the drive. But none of them heard the scream of the engine or the rattle, like buckshot, of the gravel sprayed against the garage or the blast of the horn. Rather, they all heard, but took it for the sound made upon their minds by the sight that met their eyes.
Mrs. Hannah glimpsed the body and reeled back, her eyelids pressed shut, staggered, and put out a hand to catch herself. She felt the wall, and in another second felt that it was sticky, warm, as if she had touched wet paint, only warm. She opened her eyes and saw that the wall was splattered with unbelievable red, phosphorescent, vibrant, as if pulsating, alive, and she watched aghast as a large, heavy drop ran glistening down the door. In horror at the faint adhesive sound her hand made as she drew it away, she pressed it to her forehead, and then, in multiplied horror, tore it away.
Some husband, she heard a voice say in her mind. It was the voice of her mind, but it sounded distant and strange. Some husband. A wonder it had not happened before. She quaked with a strange misgiving for the very readiness to mind of her explanation. And then she heard another voice, still her own but different from the first, say, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.” Her mind split as if halved by an axe.
She heard Chauncey say, “Get a doctor.”
With as violent a movement as when she had recoiled, she turned. She saw Melba shaking her head. She saw them look at her. There were tears in both their eyes and on their cheeks.
“And call the Sheriff,” said Chauncey.
She looked down at the body. Its frightfulness was intensified by its divided, half mangled, half living appearance. He had been shot at close range and the weapon had been a shotgun. The charge had caught him in the right side, and from the waist up he was blood. The body, the arm, the face were all but obliterated on that side. The left side, however, was practically untouched. A fit like epilepsy shook her. I didn’t do it, she heard herself say, plead. It wasn’t me. Wade, it wasn’t me. Do you hear? Terrified, she wondered if she had spoken aloud. She saw Chauncey rise, stiffly, brokenly, slowly, as in a dream, saw him come towards her. She shrank violently from him. The movement momentarily restored her sanity. Of course it wasn’t her. Of course she didn’t do it. No one thought it was her. But then she heard his voice, heard him shouting her name, heard him begin her name and heard it cut off by the blast, and that loud reverberating first syllable of her name was like a cry of betrayal. Over her mind, with an effect like a hot iron drawn over silk, passed an insane terror. She was afraid of him. That fragment of her mind still in touch with the world of cause and effect, of possibilities, told her that he was dead, dead, and that the dead were powerless to hurt. Its voice was dispersed like a whisper by the roar of terror. She was afraid of him.
Suddenly her mind seemed to open out like a cavern, and she was wandering, lost, in it. It was endlessly full of vast black, echoing chambers, and from it on all sides reverberated: Some husband. Husband. Husband. I didn’t do it. Do it. Do it. It wasn’t me. Me. Me.
Then she saw him before her, erect, bloodless, pale and ghostly, coming towards her, reaching for her. She leapt back in terror, screamed. Then she saw that it was not him, but Theron, and she screamed again. “Some husband,” she murmured hoarsely. “Some husband.” He followed her, she shrank away. She knew who it was. It was Theron. She was afraid of him too, more afraid of him than of anything. “It wasn’t me!” she screamed. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!”
61
He stopped—barely stopped—at three filling stations to ask, “Did a car with a stuck horn go past here?”
“Yeah—” pointing—“it—”
And then finally, “No. Didn’t go past here with a stuck horn. Stopped here with a stuck horn and I fixed it. All you got to do is just disconnect—”
“Who was driving? Did you recognize him? Did you know him?” And then a new thought struck him. “It was a man, wasn’t it?”
“It was a man, but I didn’t know him cause I didn’t even see him. He kept blowing his nose all the time. Hope I don’t never see him. He asked how much it’d be, and I said a quarter and he give me a five dollar bill, and I went to get change, and while I was inside at the cash register—Hey! What’s up?”
And one last stop—a drowsy little general store with one gas pump where the passing of a car any day of the week was an event, on Sunday an occasion. There they knew him, asked after his father. No, no car had gone past all day except one cattle truck headed the opposite direction. So he turned around and headed back to the last turnoff, and suddenly then he knew where the chase would lead, knew where it would end.
He left the filling stations and the roadhouses behind, and he began to pass fields pale green with the first young shoots of cotton, endless and flat, so that the trees on thei
r far horizons were like more fields, green in the distant atmosphere. He drove with the speedometer needle fixed at 80, and the telephone poles unrolled as off a ribbon past the corners of his eyes. There began to be Negroes hoeing in the fields, distant specks, bent and at that distance immobile, and occasionally a line of wagons like a string of ships motionless far out in a calm clear green sea. Then there were families of choppers in the rows close by the roadside and pickanninies in floursack shifts and swallowed by straw hats, and even above the drone of his motor he caught snatches of their chant, mournful and tuneless and not like a sound, but like the echo of a sound. Then, passing one man, he had to slow for a bad stretch of road, slow enough that the man had time to hear and look up before he was past and gone, and he pushed his hat back off his forehead and shaded his eyes with his hand, and then he waved and the wind whipped his cry past:
“Hiya, Captain!”
He left the blacktop and went south on a gravel road that quickly became a dirt road, and in the dirt he found fresh tire treads of the right pattern. Then he began to pass weevilly little cotton patches and farmhouses each the same as the last, with a gray dirt yard smooth and hard as ironstone, a shade tree or a chinaberry tree with a car-casing swing, a high front porch under which a hog languished, brought in from the shadeless hog pen, a gray, never-painted shotgun house with at least one windowlight stuffed with a towsack or tacked over with pasteboard, a wash bench at the back door with a water bucket and a gourd dipper hanging on the wall above the bucket, a back lot with a castiron washpot and an upended oil drum for scalding the hog in at hog-killing time, a weed-choked kitchen garden gone permanently to seed, with a drunken scarecrow, tatters of faded rag tied to the fence wire and rusty tin cans on top of the fence posts to scare off rabbits, and at each one three or four or five yapping, colorless curs that met him when he was still half a mile off to race alongside in the boiling white dust.
Home from the Hill Page 32
