“Don’t know,” Aldin said.
“Hard to believe,” said Clarky.
“We should all take a ride down there to Hiram,” I told them. “Just to see.”
“I was thinking that myself,” Grove said.
Clarky snapped shut his pocket watch that he’d been checking against Rinaldi’s wall clock. He put the watch back in his pocket. “Remember the Gleason girl,” he said, “how she looked, greased head to toe, when she caught the pig?”
“How about the time the old man fell asleep drunk in Tucker’s onion warehouse and then couldn’t get out?”
Aldin sat back through it all as we talked, tamping on his pipe, nodding his head a little. You might almost call it a smile he had on that face of his.
“Look there,” Aldin said, motioning with the pipe out the window. “You ever think of that?”
Sylvia managed the stroller over the curb. She kicked at the bad wheel to knock it back in place.
“What?” Grove said.
“The kid,” Aldin said. “We still got Willy Gleason’s kid.” He looked pleased, all right, that Aldin.
And we sat there thinking about it as we watched Sylvia and the kid move down the sidewalk. Then they turned and disappeared into Coleman’s store.
HUNTERS
She was glad it was getting dark because now the shooting would stop. It had made them jumpy for a couple of days, sounding so close. She was afraid to go out of the house. She’d even made George call the sheriff when it had started. But the sheriff said unless their property was posted there wasn’t anything he could do. It was always like this in hunting season. And now, today, it was worse than ever.
“I’m afraid they’re going to shoot toward the house and hit one of us,” Alice told her husband.
“Maybe I should post the land, like the sheriff said,” he answered.
“You’ve been saying that.”
“I’m going to town first thing in the morning,” George told her. “I’m getting some signs, and I’m putting them up, but good. Then we’ll see.”
“I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Alice said. “If I’d known . . .”
He looked at her with that worried look he got whenever she was at the end of her patience with him.
It had been one thing after another since they’d moved in. First she’d found out she was pregnant. Then he’d lost his job. And everything was strange between them lately.
“Maybe we should go stay with my mother,” she said
“This is our house,” George told her. “This is where we should stay.”
She stood near the window, resting her hands on her round stomach. “We should never have moved here,” she said.
“You liked it,” he told her. “You said you wanted to live here.”
“I didn’t think it would be so – deserted. I didn’t know we’d be living in the middle of a wilderness.”
“Well, don’t blame me now. You said you liked it.”
She turned and looked him straight in the eye. “I do blame you. I feel like I’m in prison. In solitary confinement.”
He raised his eyebrows. “With me?” he said, and he smiled.
“It was bad enough when you worked,” she told him. “But now, when you’re gone all day with your friends. And at night, too.”
“Just once in a while,” he said. “Not all the time. Don’t I ask you to come?”
“I hate those places. I hate bars. You said you wouldn’t anymore.”
“I have to have some fun, don’t I? What am I supposed to do, just sit around here day and night?”
“Like I do?” she said. “You could get a job.”
“There aren’t any jobs.”
She turned from him. “Something’s not right,” she said.
He came up behind her and put his hand on her stomach. “The baby?” he asked, sounding a little startled.
“I don’t mean that.”
She looked out the window. “They’ve stopped,” she told him.
“It must be too dark for them now.”
“Good,” she said.
She turned and faced him. “I want to stay with my mother, George. Just for a while. Till the baby comes.”
“God, Alice,” he said. “She’d just love that, wouldn’t she?”
“I’ve talked to her,” she told him.
“And what about me? Am I invited, too?”
She didn’t answer.
He ran his hand through his hair. He moved away from her and sat down at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. “Sit down with me,” he told her. “Come sit with me for a minute.”
She went and stood near the table, facing him.
“Gil needs a driver,” he told her. “It’s not full-time, but it’s something.”
“Did you tell him yes?”
“I’ll tell him tomorrow.”
“I can’t take much more of this, George.”
“I’m telling him, Alice. I’m telling him tomorrow.”
She sat down with him.
“You have to be twenty-one, though,” he said. “I told him I’m twenty-one.”
She gazed across the room, and she touched her stomach, and moved her fingers across it.
“Is he kicking?” George asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to cook you the best supper you ever had,” he told her. “You never had anything like this, I swear.” He got up from the table and went to the refrigerator.
“What are you talking about? You don’t know how to cook.” She didn’t know if she would laugh or get angry.
“But I do, I do,” he answered. He waltzed around the kitchen, cradling a chicken wrapped in cellophane.
“George,” she said, and she laughed, in spite of herself. Her laughter spurred him on, and he danced with the chicken for her. Then he waltzed back to her and put the chicken on the table. “We need mushrooms.”
She got up and went to the cupboard and took out a can of mushrooms. She helped him cook. They turned the radio on while they ate supper, and they didn’t talk anymore about her moving in with her mother.
It was still early. He sat on the floor, polishing his boots over a newspaper. She had set the ironing board up in the living room and was ironing a shirt for him.
“It’s only Gil,” he told her.
“And what if he’s already got somebody? And you have to go look somewhere else?”
He gave her a funny look and shook his head, and she knew that work was the furthest thing from his mind.
She put the shirt on a hanger and hooked it over a doorknob. She stopped and watched him bent over the boots, steadily rubbing the polish in. The oddest thing had been happening to her lately: The bigger the baby grew inside her, the emptier she felt.
She heard the sound again, and looked toward the door. “George, what is that? Do you hear it?”
“What?” He kept his head lowered.
“It sounds like somebody walking outside.”
He looked up and listened, and she watched his face. He went back to polishing the boots. “Probably deer the hunters scared up.”
She moved quietly through the room, straining to listen for sounds, as she put away her ironing things. Even the house felt empty – cool and damp and echoing, out in the middle of the empty woods.
When he’d finished with the boots, they both heard the sound. “That’s not deer,” she told him.
“Somebody’s out there,” he said.
“Who can it be? Tom?” she said, thinking of their neighbor a half mile down the road. “I didn’t hear any car.” He shook his head. They listened as the footsteps came nearer.
“Who is it?” George called out.
There was no answer.
“Who’s out there?” he called again. “Tom?”
“We need help,” a voice said.
George stood up. Alice folded her hands against her stomach and watched the door.
“What is it?” George asked. “What kind of help?” He to
ok a step closer to the door.
“Open up,” the man said. “We got lost in the woods. Hunting.”
“Lost?” Alice said to George.
“Hey!” the man called. “Can we use your phone?”
“George,” Alice said.
He looked at her. “It’s all right,” he told her. “Isn’t it?” He called to the man, “You want to use the phone?”
“Yeah,” the man said.
George looked at Alice again and shrugged. He went and opened the door.
She was able to see the man from where she stood. He was heavy, with a stubbly beard, and he carried a shotgun. His jacket was half-zipped, with a plaid flannel shirt showing underneath.
“Got dark on us,” the man said. He peered around George, into the room.
“Petey,” a voice close behind him said.
“It’s okay,” the man said.
They entered the house. The other man was smaller. He cradled his left arm, wrapped in a thick wad of cloth. He was bald, and his face was strange, pale and wrinkled like a baby’s. Yet he looked like he couldn’t have been over thirty. He walked in behind Petey, moving his eyes quickly to take in everything.
George closed the door.
Petey looked around the room. When he noticed Alice, he nodded to her. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the other one’s hand. “Had a little accident,” Petey told them.
“The phone’s over there,” George said.
“Mind if we sit down a minute?” Petey asked. “We’ve been on our feet all day.”
He sat on the sofa. The other man stood quietly, swaying a little, holding his left hand. Petey leaned back on the sofa, the shotgun propped between his knees.
“Coe,” the man said. “Have a seat.” Coe didn’t move.
“You all right?” Petey asked him.
“Yeah.”
“You better sit down,” Petey told him.
“I’m okay,” Coe said, but he sat in the chair across from Petey anyway.
“Wasn’t expecting to find a couple of kids living out here,” Petey said. “Thought the place was still empty.”
“Do you want me to call somebody for you?” George asked the man.
“No, that’s all right,” Petey told him.
“George,” Alice said from the far side of the room.
“George,” the man repeated. His eyes were half-closed, as if he were exhausted. “Now there’s a name you don’t hear too often. Used to be popular, though.” He moved his knees so that the gun fell against his stomach. “Ain’t that right, Coe?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Coe said. “You got any food here?”
Alice looked at George, expecting him to do something. But George acted like nothing was wrong.
“We’ve been out here all day,” Petey said to him. “We haven’t eaten since early morning.”
“It’s okay, Alice,” George said to her. “Can’t you find them something?”
“Thank you, George,” Petey said.
Alice kept her eyes on George a minute, to let him know what she thought of him.
When she started for the kitchen, Petey leaned forward and watched her. “Well,” he said to George. “Looks like you kids have been keeping yourselves busy out here.”
Alice hurried from the room.
“She’s pumped right up there, isn’t she?” the man said.
She was horrified.
“You said you wanted to use the phone,” George told the man. She could hear them through the open doorway. “There’s the phone.”
She cut pieces of cold chicken and threw the sandwiches together. There was no outside door in the kitchen, but there was a window. She looked up at it, considering, but they would be able to see her through the doorway.
“You said you were lost,” she heard George say. His voice shook a little. “You said you needed help.”
“That’s right,” Petey answered. “That’s what I said. How’s that hand, Coe?”
“It’s all right.”
Alice found a tray and put the sandwiches on it. She paused in the doorway with it.
“George, I wonder if you could bring us all a little something to drink,” Petey said. “You’re old enough to drink, aren’t you? A little bourbon would be nice.”
George looked up at Alice. “You better go now,” he told the man, “if you’re not going to use the phone.”
“You’re funny,” Petey told him.
Alice set the tray down on the end table. Already pieces of chicken were falling from between the slices of bread. “Do you know that, ma’am?” Petey said. “Do you know how funny your boyfriend is?”
Alice stepped away from him. She looked the man in the eye. She wanted him out of her house now.
“It’s good to have a sense of humor,” Petey told her. “Coe,” he said, “you better eat something.” He laid the shotgun at his feet and picked up a sandwich.
“Alice,” Petey said. “Could you take this tray to Coe? I don’t think he can get up.”
Alice took the tray to Coe and held it angrily in front of him. Coe glanced at her as he picked up a sandwich, and she backed away from him. He ate with his one good hand.
Alice watched the wrinkles move over his strange face as he chewed.
“Now where’s that drink?” Petey said. “George, didn’t you just bring me a drink?”
George hesitated. He went to the cupboard near the kitchen doorway and brought out a bottle and two glasses. “You’ve got to leave after this,” he told the men. He put the bottle and glasses down next to the tray.
“That’s right,” Petey said. He filled the glasses, and the two of them drank and ate in silence.
The door across the room seemed a long way off. Alice looked at George while the men ate. And then, like that, George and Alice began to move, slowly, carefully, toward the door. George reached out and lightly touched her arm, but she was not afraid. The men had no right to be there, and she wanted them out.
George and Alice were at the other end of the sofa, and still the men paid them no attention. Then they were near the door, without having made a sound, and they moved toward the door, almost there.
The gun exploded, and Alice cried out from the noise of it. A piece of wall shattered to bits of flying wood and plaster in front of them.
They froze, then turned around.
“It’s not polite to walk out on your company,” Petey said.
A puff of smoke hung near Petey. Alice could smell the burned powder and splintered wood. Coe looked at her over the rim of his glass.
“Come sit here with me,” Petey told them. His voice sounded so odd after the blast. He motioned with the gun.
George finally moved and sat where the man had pointed.
“You, too, honey,” Petey said.
She kept her eyes on George, but he did not look at her. She moved awkwardly across the room; it seemed to take her forever. They are going to shoot us now, she thought, and she felt sad, not for herself or for George, but for the baby.
Petey filled Coe’s glass for him, then sat back down. Coe drank and let out a sigh.
“You hurting, Coe?” Petey asked.
“No.”
“Honey, why don’t you go get us some bandages? And something to clean out that wound, some antiseptic.”
“I’m okay,” Coe said.
It took Alice a minute to realize they weren’t going to be killed right then. She looked at George. He sat clasping his knees, gazing down at the floor as if he were afraid to make the slightest move, leaving it all up to her. It had always been that way, she knew it, but it struck her now how nothing she could do would ever change him. And that was what her mother had been trying to tell her about him all along.
“You ever been hunting?” Petey asked George.
“No,” George blurted.
She started for the bathroom, in a daze, still feeling the shock of the shotgun blast. She took gauze and antiseptic from the cabinet, and a towel that she wet, and c
ame back into the room.
“Everybody should know how to shoot a gun,” Petey said. “Right, Coe?”
Alice stood with the bandages in front of Coe. His head was thrown back, and his eyes were closed.
“Coe,” Petey said. “Let Alice fix your hand. Coe!”
He stirred.
“She’s going to fix that hand, Coe,” Petey told him. “Go ahead,” he said to her.
George rose to help. “Let me do that,” he said. “Leave her out of this.”
“George, I think you should calm down. Alice is doing a fine job. You’re doing a fine job, Alice.” Petey lifted the shotgun and examined the barrel. He squinted at George over the barrel. “Sit down,” he told him.
“Now, Alice,” Petey said, “take that rag off Coe’s hand. Clean his hand up nice, and put a new bandage on for him.” He nodded to encourage her.
Alice knelt on the floor and began to unwrap Coe’s hand. He sat with his head tilted back, eyeing her. She could not bear touching him. She tried to hurry, to get it over with. When the rag was almost off, he winced. The blood was everywhere.
“Jesus,” George said.
Alice wiped away blood with the wet towel. “It won’t stop bleeding,” she said.
“Just wrap it up,” Petey told her.
Coe breathed hard while she dabbed at the wound.
“This is awful,” Alice said. “This is bad.”
“Them damn hunters,” Petey said. “Must’ve thought Coe was a deer.” He laughed. “We’ll have to report this to the sheriff.” He laughed again. “Won’t we, Coe?”
They fell silent. Alice wrapped the hand in a clean bandage. Coe lay back in the chair with his eyes closed as she finished.
“Looks like you’re due just about anytime,” Petey said to her.
She glanced at him, then went back to the hand.
She could feel his eyes on her.
“A funny thing happened to me once when I was hunting,” Petey said, after a while.
Alice left ever ything on the floor and went to George. He took her hand, and his palms were cold and damp.
“I killed a deer,” Petey said. He turned and poured himself another drink. “This was a couple years ago. I went to gut it, right there in the woods. When I slit its belly open, you know what I found inside?”
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