Then—getting nearer now, the road narrower now and the ruts deepening—he began passing houses with fox and coon skins on the walls, and with three or four lean mongrel hounds asleep on the porch, and, passing one finally, swaying in the deep, hard-baked ruts, he saw three pairs of wild wide childish eyes staring out a window, and as he passed, the man of the house lounging on the porch, tousled and unshaved, waved—but not in greeting: waved down the road, as if to say, yep, he went thataway, went by just a short time ago, and smiled; and Theron realized that the man had recognized the first car and had mistaken the driver for his father.
He came to the hill where, ahead, below, rising out of the last pasturelands and stretching as far as he could see, the pines stood thick as bristles in a brush, where Sulphur Bottom, where it seemed the end of the world, began. It was going on three o’clock when he pulled up alongside the abandoned car, his car—in running order because his father had, now and again, in his absence gone out and run the motor—got out and slung the other of his father’s shotguns, the big one, the 10 gauge, in his arm and stepped into the woods. It was a long time since he had gone hunting. He remembered telling his father that he was never going again. He was going now, he thought, sobbing, after game of a kind that his father had never brought out of the Bottom.
The tracks were of a man running. Seeing this did not cause Theron to quicken his pace. The more the man ran, the sooner he would tire himself. He studied the tracks as he followed them. It was a town man, or else a country man in his Sunday clothes, for the shoes had pointed toes and thin soles: oxfords. He weighed about 160, and taking into account that fear had lengthened his stride past normal, he was about 5’9”. Shortly, very shortly—the quickness was what gave him the answer—he knew it was a town man. For very quickly the tracks slowed to a walk, a slow walk. A country man would have had more endurance, would be in better condition. And then he smiled to see, suddenly, one pair of prints turned around backwards, and a little beyond, another. He had turned to look behind him, had no doubt stood listening for a second, quaking. It was in fact rather a weakly town man: a deduction made from the depth to which the toe of the prints dug into the ground. He was pressed and had to thrust hard to keep up his pace.
Already the pine trees that fringed the woods were behind him—behind them. Now the oaks began—pinoaks, post-oaks, whiteoaks, redoaks, liveoaks—he knew them all; his father had taught him all of them. This was the squirrel-hunting grounds. He heard at a distance the bark of a squirrel and an answering chatter. He stopped. He looked up into the trees. Drawing his mouth hard to the side and sucking in his breath, he clicked his tongue in almost electrical rapidity, and the sound that emerged was like a hundred billiard balls clicking, or like a squirrel chattering. Blind with tears and choking, he thought, he had never gotten better than pretty good at it; he could never make it sound like the first time he ever heard it done.
He glanced about to take his bearings. They were the same as before. Who was it, he asked himself then. Either a man willing to risk these woods alone, or one unconscious of the risk. Just ahead of him lay a clearing, and he saw that the footprints ran straight across it, unveering, and disappeared into the woods beyond. He began to walk faster, and his heart began to beat fast, not with exertion, but with a cruel excitement. Beyond the clearing the land began to dip. The tracks ran straight on, and now he was running, panting. He paused for just a second at a spot where the tracks came momentarily to a halt. There, in the scattered touchwood and leaf mould, was an impression of the man’s whole body, where he had fallen. The footprints just beyond were smeared, showing where he had scampered up in terror. Beyond that the tracks gave him another sign that his father had taught him: as if the man’s fear had added a physical burden to his weight, the prints sank deeper into the ground. But over this he paused only for a moment, and it was not this, but another piece of evidence which brought a grim cold smile to his lips. Ahead the tracks stretched on straight as if paced off by a surveyor. He looked at his watch—four-fifteen—and smiled again. He looked at the sky: it was clouding over, making up to rain. He smiled wider.
A cruel pleasure in his mind made him almost pant with anticipation. With mounting anxiety now lest they should veer off course, he followed the slower, more and more closely spaced tracks, until, at five—though it seemed later, for the sky was dark with clouds—he found himself at last in the first of the giant oaks netted with rattan vines. The woods ahead darkened as if the hour was later there. What seemed the very last clearing lay just ahead of him, and the cross light of the low sun below the clouds picked out the human footprints that traversed its otherwise virgin surface. Across that light bare space and towards the darkness beyond, the fugitive had fearfully, hopefully scampered.
Soon the murderer would be where there was not, now, a man alive who could save him. He himself, if he hurried, still could, but not unless he hurried, he thought, and he leaned his back against a tree and looked at the tracks and at the dark woods. He thought of the time he had wandered in beyond his depth in pursuit of the boar, of the night he had spent there, the sights he had seen, and he tried to imagine, to relish, the impressions to be made upon the mind of a murderer by those towering, twisted, black bald cypresses rising out of the swamp into the moonlight (only, tonight there was not going to be a moon), the lonely, haunting hoot of an owl near at hand, the spectral luminosity of gaseous light rising out of the ground at your feet. He tried to imagine how these things would feel on the second night, and what new things, unknown to him, the second night would bring, the third night, the fourth, and, say, a fifth? Or would the third, the second, would even this first night make him (he could see it plainly, all except the man’s face) hook the trigger guard over a twig low on a tree trunk and, holding the muzzles in his two hands, give it a sudden sharp pull towards his chest? And would he be thinking, as he heard that blast, heard it not with his ears but with his flesh, of that other body he had made? Yes, he thought, he could if he hurried, still bring the man out to justice, to a trial by jury of his peers. But he could also, here, where now he was a law unto himself, decree and take his own retaliation. With a last look at the tracks to make certain of their unswerving direction, and with a smile for their straightness and the haste they betokened, he turned and started back.
He knew, before he had gone a hundred yards, that he would turn around, would go back. He had not relented. It was not lenience, not mercy that would send him back. He kept walking, walked another quarter of a mile, but he knew he would turn. Furious already at himself for abandoning, for such a paltry human motive, his perfect revenge, he knew he would not be able to resist his curiosity to know who it was. In a gesture of self-control that he knew was in vain, he walked on still another hundred yards. Then abruptly, furiously, he turned about and started back.
He crossed the clearing and the first drops of rain struck his face and, cursing himself—for it was all that his vengeance had wished for—dark, damp, cavernous—he followed the tracks into the deep woods. And, cursing himself further, he saw how quickly the place had unstrung the man, saw in a gulch he had entered the desperate marks of a fall, the print of his knee in the stiff mud, and beside it the print of his outspread hand, and there was stark terror, near-madness, in the splayed clutch of those fingers at the ground. And then, straightening after examining this, his eyes as he raised himself running up the line of prints ahead—dim in the murky, fast-failing light—he saw where they climbed the bank, saw where the man had slipped again there, saw where he had clambered frantically to his feet again, and in the same instant saw, lying on the bank, face down, head buried in his arms, the man.
For a moment he hesitated, and this thought passed through his mind: his father’s training had made it hard for him to point a loaded gun at a man. Then he threw the long heavy gun to his shoulder and slammed the stock against his cheek. But his finger disobeyed the command of his mind. He could not pull the trigger. Gnats buzzed at the corners of his eye
s and occasional raindrops splashed his face while he stood rigid and unbreathing, looking at the man over the long tapering barrels.
He climbed the bank, slowly, slowly. He took a step forward. He saw lying on the ground beside the man his father’s other shotgun. His breath began to come in gasps which he feared were audible. He took another step, stopped; another, and stopped again. Who was it? Then he realized with a start that he had never pushed the safety off. The muzzle wavered, and suddenly he was blinded by tears. He stopped, blind. Then the tears welled over his lids, ran, hot and astringent, down his cheeks, and his sight cleared. He steadied the gun and took three slow stealthy steps. Off in the woods something fell—a dead tree or a branch—and he heard the cry of a bird, a water-bird, a crane. Then silence rushed back upon him. When he had taken five more steps, and as he took the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, he could see a tear in the man’s trousers. He saw that his leg had been scratched, had bled slightly, saw the dried blood, and in his mind saw his father’s pitiful, blasted, bleeding body and, maddened by the sight, almost pulled the trigger. He took another step and another, and he could suddenly see, despite the encircling arm, that the man’s hair was gray, almost white. He stopped in amazement, fearful amazement. Who was it? Had a man that age a wife young enough to—His mind did not finish its thought. He saw over the man’s ear a golden glint from the earpiece of eyeglasses. He trembled slightly. Who was it? Two more steps and, though he could see no more distinguishing marks, yet the conviction of familiarity mounted in him, brought his breath up shorter, made his scalp tingle. Who? Who? Another step, another, another, and one more—and he could see that the man was dead.
He jerked the gunstock tight against his shoulder as if the discovery that he was dead had increased the man’s danger. Then, recovering himself, he lowered the gun to his waist. He took two heedless, unquiet steps. Suddenly his curiosity was joined by a sense of reluctance, of unwillingness almost, almost of dread. He loudly let out his breath, took another noisy step, and the man came alive. He reached for the gun beside him, started up, half turned, and from the hip, so close together that the two sounds were one, Theron fired both barrels. The recoil knocked him off his feet, sent the gun flying from his hands, and his ears seemed to faint at the blast. He scrambled up, still deaf, saw that the man was dead, saw leaves and twigs, blasted by the shot, still fluttering to the ground, and his hearing returned, bringing with it the echo, fading, spreading out into the endless depths of the woods.
The man had fallen back upon his face, and suddenly, even in that waning light, Theron saw the last movement of the body, a tremor as it settled to the ground. In the crescendo of silence he heard the snapping of twigs and the sighing of leaves as the body settled among them, and it was as if these were sounds of relaxation and surrender made by the man himself as he died. Faster than the failure of the light, Theron’s vision darkened; the body grew dark. He began to walk towards it. Yet it seemed to fade, seemed to grow darker instead of lighter as he neared. Then he realized—and stopped again, breathless—that the man’s clothes were darkening from the stain of released and rapidly spreading blood. He drew near, stood looking down, and he could feel, like a mist hovering above the body, the warmth of its life departing into the air. He bent and grasped one warm, wet, outflung arm. But already the back of the head, the shape of the ears, the stoop of the shoulders told him who it was. Still holding the arm, which seemed to cool perceptibly, he listened for a moment; the woods had resumed their lively silence, their ancient indifference to men. He turned the body over.
There had been just time, as he felt the pain in his aching heart eased forever, for Mr. Halstead to smile.
Deputy Sheriff Bud Stovall was new to his job then, and eager. “Well?” he said. “What are we waiting for?”
The evidence had been examined. The men of the posse had stood over the body looking down at that triumphant smile and at those eyes which did not close against the glare of the flashlights nor blink the raindrops that fell upon them, but stared past them, fastened upon the dark infinity above their heads. They had seen the raindrops dance upon the two well-oiled, fine shotguns. Now they stood shining their lights down the single line of tracks that led from the body deeper into the woods.
Slowly the great beam of light faded, dwindled, as one by one the men turned away, until only the Deputy Sheriff’s light was left shining down the path, which, shortly beyond, was lost in the darkness and drizzle.
“Well?” said Bud.
Pritchard laid a hand on his arm and said softly, “You’ll never find him in there if he don’t want to be found. Only one man could have done it. Now he’s the best woodsman of all.”
The Sheriff sighed. “The body,” he said, in his official tone, “could not be recovered.”
“Body?” said Bud. “Body? He ain’t got no gun. Don’t you see them footprints? Body? What makes you think—”
Nobody said a word.
Bud turned about, his slicker crackling. “But, men,” he said, “we got to do something. Can’t we get dogs, bloodhounds?” But he knew, for he was just off the farm himself then, that soon, if not already, the rain would have washed away all scent from the ground, by morning would have washed away the tracks themselves. His voice sank to a horrified whisper. “We can’t just leave him in there to—”
“You mean,” said the Sheriff firmly, “that we could not recover the body.”
There was silence for a moment, then Bud said, “How long do you think he can—”
“Will you shut up!” the Sheriff hissed.
Then the Deputy Sheriff slowly lowered his flashlight. One by one, as the beam retracted, the footprints fell away into darkness. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice came shuddering out of the darkness, punctuated by the patter of rain upon his slicker, “the body could not be recovered.”
A Biography of William Humphrey
William Humphrey (1924–1997) was an American author and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1959 for his classic book Home from the Hill, which told the story of a small-town family in rural Texas. Indeed, themes of family life, hardship, and rural struggle are the defining characteristics of his writing, appearing in all thirteen of his works.
Humphrey was born on June 18 in Clarksville, Texas, to Clarence and Nell Humphrey. Nestled in the heart of Red River County, Clarksville in the early 1920s resembled the Old South more than the Texan West. It is from this time and place that Humphrey drew inspiration for much of his writing career. Daily life in rural, isolated Clarksville was built around cotton farming and was emotionally and physically taxing. Neither of Humphrey’s parents attended school beyond the third grade, and the family moved frequently during his childhood: fifteen times in five years. His father, an alcoholic, hunted in the snake-infested swamplands of the Sulphur River to help feed his wife and son. Although Clarence was a difficult and quick-tempered man, Humphrey cared deeply for him, and his love for his father had a profound impact on his writing.
As the Great Depression progressed into the 1930s, so did the strain on the Humphreys’ already-precarious finances. Clarence worked as a shade-tree mechanic, yet was too poor to buy a car of his own. He would test-drive the cars he fixed as fast as they could go, taking them screaming down the back roads of Red River County.
In 1937 Clarence was killed in an auto accident. Humphrey was just thirteen at the time. Much later, in his memoir Farther Off From Heaven (1977), Humphrey commented on this period, which was to be the end of his childhood: “What my new life would be like I could only guess at, but I knew it would be totally different from the one that was ending, and that a totally different person from the one I had been would be needed to survive in it.” Soon after his father’s death, Humphrey and his mother moved to Dallas to live with relatives. He did not return to Clarksville for thirty-two years.
Humphrey exceled in school and was able to attend an art academy in Dallas on a scholarship. At the onset of the Second World War, Humphr
ey attempted to join the navy but was rejected for being color blind. Having seriously considered being an artist up to this point, Humphrey decided to focus on his writing instead. He attended the University of Texas and the Southern Methodist University for short spells during the early 1940s but did not graduate from either college. In 1944 he left SMU in his final semester and headed briefly to Chicago and then went on to live in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
In 1949 Humphrey published his first short story, “The Hardys,” in the Sewanee Review. He was so excited to receive the letter of acceptance that he tripped and fell as he was running up the steps to his house to share the news with his wife, the painter Dorothy Cantine, and broke his ankle. On the strength of that story, Humphrey was hired to teach creative writing and English literature at Bard College. Starting around this time, renowned writer Katherine Anne Porter, Humphrey’s contemporary and a fellow Texan, became a close friend and a firm supporter of his work, and remained so for many years.
The 1950s were a period of prosperity for Humphrey, who continued to publish stories in magazines like the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar. These works drew on Humphrey’s childhood in the Texan scrub, and many were collected in The Last Husband and Other Stories (1953). During this early stage of his career, Humphrey also formed a lifelong friendship with the poet Theodore Weiss and mentored playwright and author Sherman Yellen.
In 1957 Humphrey’s debut novel, Home from the Hill, rocketed him into modern conversation and defined him as an author. Previously regarded as a Western writer due to his Texan roots and their resonance in his work, Humphrey now became firmly grounded in the Southern literary tradition. Comparisons to Faulkner were constant throughout his life and long after his death.
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