The Night of the Hunter

by Davis Grubb

  John, can we get candy at Mister Spoon’s?

  No.

  Why?

  We ain’t got no pennies is why. And besides Mom don’t want us hangin’ around when she’s working.

  Oh.

  Come on, Pearl, he said patiently. Get your hat and coat.

  Where we goin’, John?

  Out of doors.

  Pearl scampered off to the hall closet to get her things. John, dressed and ready, stood waiting for her return. Pearl stood patiently while he buttoned up her ragged brown coat and tucked her silly brown curls into the little goblin’s cap. Pearl clutched her doll Jenny throughout and snuffled wearily with an old winter’s cold until John fetched out his own handkerchief and tended to her nose.

  Now, he said properly. That ought to keep you warm. Come on, Pearl!

  He paused on his way to the kitchen door and glanced out the window, up the river road to Jander’s Livery Stable. The picture of the hanging man had been washed away in a warm March rain on a night weeks before and yet he could never look at the red bricks of the old lichen-stained wall without hearing the chant again. The picture was gone from the stone and no one sang the song at him on the road but still he could hear it. Though, quite providentially, he was vague in his thinking about what really had happened to his father. There was the feed-store calendar in the kitchen, above the pump, and the red circle of lipstick that Willa had made around that number, that day, and that crimson eye had fixed them all for days until Willa, in tears one night, had torn the month away and burned it solemnly in the stove. In the red circle was a knowledge that he did not fully know. It had to do with the blue men who had taken his dad away that day. It had to do with the hanging man on the red brick wall by Jander’s and with the song the children sang.

  Hing Hang Hung! he hummed softly and shivered when he opened the kitchen door and the March air, piercing and drenched with river cold, swept among them on the threshold. The morning air was thin with winter—sour as lemon. The smoke of morning chimneys rose from the stacks of the houses down at Cresap’s Landing and hung for a moment before curling under the gray sky and dragged to earth again like cheap fur collars on old coats. John and Pearl stumped silently along up the dirt road, aimless before the long morning.

  Howdy, youngins.

  John’s eyes turned and stared across the street. It was old Walt Spoon, stamping on the stoop of his ice-cream parlor and blowing on the fingers of one hand while the other waved two green lollipops at them. Through the window, under the pale flower of gaslight by the soda fountain, John saw Willa sipping a cup of hot morning cocoa. He caught Pearl’s hand and moved off again, pretending that he had seen neither Walt Spoon nor Willa nor the green lollipops. Now the children paused before the window of Miz Cunningham’s secondhand store. John made no sound. Because there was no sound in the world that one might sensibly make while staring through this particular window. For there was no word for total wonder and one could only breathe lightly and in silence against the sorcerer’s glass and watch the faint, tiny cumulus of breath vapor come and go upon the pane.

  What’s that? What are you looking at, John?

  He said nothing, had not really heard.

  John? Are you going to buy it, John?

  But she would not have understood even if he had tried to tell her and so he continued to stare through the window into the dusty shelf where the silver pocket watch lay, winking dully among the gimcracks and buttons and fake diamond stickpins and the old Bryan campaign badges. Then, abruptly, there was a motion among the vast panoply of miserable and tired coats and vests and pants that served as backdrop to the window shelf and without further warning this gray curtain parted and the cunning and dissipated face of an old woman appeared and blinked down at the children in the street. Behind the winking lenses of her bent and crooked spectacles the face of Miz Cunningham was that of an ancient and querulous turkey hen. Her dirty hands fluttered in appalling gaiety to the children and then disappearing momentarily she scurried around to the door which presently opened with the single cry of a little bell, like a ragged golden bird.

  Ahhhh! If it ain’t the poor little Harper lambs!

  John said nothing. Pearl was pleased and put her forefinger coyly to her lips.

  And how is your poor, poor mother this sad winter?

  She’s up at Spoon’s, said John, quite cold and matter-of-fact about it, yet uncomfortable lest some of the old woman’s coarse and maudlin sentiment brush off on his fingers like the greasy, gray dust of certain miller moths. He let his eyes stray again to the wonderful silver watch.

  Hing Hang Hung! the words rang faintly through his daydreams like echoes of Miz Cunningham’s tart little doorbell. Then he looked again at the old woman herself. Why, she was really quite wonderful—this old fat woman! In the end, she got her hands on nearly everything in the world! Just look at her window! There by the pair of old overshoes were Jamey Hankins’s ice skates. There was old Walt Spoon’s elk’s tooth. There—his mother’s own wedding ring! There was a world in that window of this remarkable old woman. And it was probable that when Miz Cunningham like an ancient barn owl fluttered and flapped to earth at last, they would take her away and pluck her open and find her belly lined with fur and feathers and the tiny mice skulls of myriad dreams.

  I’ll just bet my two little lambs would like a nice hot cup of coffee! cried the old woman, fidgeting at her iron spectacles with three fat fingers. Eh, now?

  I don’t care, said John gravely.

  Willa never served them coffee at home; partly because it would stunt their growth and partly because it was so dear at the store.

  Miz Cunningham’s kitchen, like her show window, was like the nest of a thieving black crow. Old clothes hanging on the water pipes and stove door handles. Old shoes in boxes by the door. Old hats in apple baskets beneath the window sill. And because old hats, old shoes, and old clothes bear forever the stance and shape and bulge of the mortal flesh that wore them once the house of the old woman was a place of reflective ghosts, of elbows and bosoms and shoulders long gone into the dust or wandered away down Peacock Alley to count their pennies on Poverty’s own lean palm. John and Pearl sat moon-eyed at the littered table while Miz Cunningham fetched her blue-speckled coffeepot and poured them each half-cupfuls.

  Now! she exclaimed heartily, settling down for a bit of dandelion wine for her stomach and a breath of gossip for her dusty ears. Tell me how your poor, poor mother is enduring.

  John shrugged.

  I don’t know, he smiled thinly.

  Ah, now! I mean about the poor father and all. Ah, poor little lambs! The Lord tends you both these days.

  At this poetic outburst the old face screwed suddenly awry, one eye twitched as water appeared above the rheumy lid, trembled, and trickled in unabashed emotion down the sagging, powdered cheek.

  There now, she snuffled, rising gruffly and scratching off to the pantry again for her fruit jar of summer provender against winter’s griefs. There now, my pets. I’m all right. It’s all over in a minute. It’s nothing! It’s just that it tears the heart out of a body’s very breast to see young lambs fatherless and that pretty mother widowed at thirty. Ah, and I knowed your dad. Yessirree, my lambikins! I knowed him like my own. Many and many is the night he sat right yonder on that hair trunk by the stove and drank coffee with my own dear, late-departed Clyde.

  John did not listen as the old woman’s voice rose in anguished retrospect. He thought again of the watch in the window. It had twelve black numbers on its moon face and there was magic to that. For these were numbers that were not really numbers at all but letters like in words. He shivered at the possibilities of such untold magic. But now Miz Cunningham’s hen voice came picking its yellow bill through the dream that covered him.

  Has the cat got your tongue, boy? She smiled, dreadfully.

  Pardon, ma’am?

  I said didn’t they never find out what Ben Harper done with all that money he stole?

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sp; She grimaced and squinted in cunning speculation as if she were bargaining for a pretty gold pin.

  Poor, poor Ben! Gracious me, such a lot of money he took that day from poor dead Mister Smiley! And to think that when they caught him—why, there wasn’t so much as a penny of it to be seen! Now what do you make of that? Eh, boy?

  John sighed. He stood up and took Pearl by the hand.

  Pearl and me, he said. We have to go.

  Eh? What’s say? What? Why, you ain’t even touched your coffee!

  John gathered into his fingers the soft little pads of Pearl’s hand and led her back the way they had come, through the mournful forest of dangling coats and through the dusty beaded curtains and empty gray dresses with ghosts of perfume about them like the memory of old and far-wandering loves. Away in the dusty shadows shone the door, the light of winter in the street. Behind him John could hear the old woman wheezing and snuffling among the fusty garments in his wake.

  Great day in the morning! she exclaimed. For a boy who don’t know nothin’ about that money you sure pick up and run right quick when a body—

  He squeezed Pearl’s small fingers till she whined in pain and pulled them free and ran ahead, hugging her old loose doll tight against her. At the doorway threshold Miz Cunningham could contain herself no longer. The fat, ring-crusted fingers clamped tight on John’s quaking shoulders and swung him around full face.

  If you was to tell me! the old voice croaked, all guile and oil gone from it now. Why, then there wouldn’t be no one to know but us three, boy! Eh, now? Do you know where the money’s hid? Did your dad tell you where? Does your mother know? Eh, boy? Did you see where it was hid?

  No! cried John, and twisted free.

  The iron bell uttered its harsh and broken cry and the chill March air flowed among them as they hurried out onto the road again. The old owl face squinted again from among the dusty sleeves in the window racks. The children wandered off down Peacock Alley toward the river.

  She’s bad, observed Pearl. I don’t like Miz Cunningham.

  John stumped on ahead, quaking with fright.

  John! John, wait for me!

  He stopped by the corner under the gun and locksmith’s shop where the great wooden key creaked hoarsely over the pavement at every whim of river wind. John took out his handkerchief and held it again for the little girl to blow.

  Hing Hang Hung! See what the hangman done! Hung Hang Hing! See the robber swing! Hing Hang Hung! Now my song is done!

  Was it the children singing in Peacock Alley that morning in Cresap’s Landing?—the song of the hanging man? No, he knew then, it was the rusty chant of the swinging key above his head. Yet in a flash he had caught Pearl’s hand and begun walking her swiftly up toward the river road and the solace of home. It had begun to snow and the wind grieved in the stark river trees—a wind like a moaning song—a wind like a hunter’s horn.

  —

  River dusk drifted like a golden smoke among the trees of Cresap’s Landing. At six Walt Spoon fetched a kitchen match from his vest and lighted the two gas lamps behind the marble counter. There were no customers in the place now but when the first movie let out at the Orpheum two or three couples would drift in for some of Icey’s home-made vanilla cream. Now Walt heard footsteps echoing up the bricks of the sidewalk and turned. It was Willa, her nose cherry-red with cold.

  Git them two kids fed and bedded down did ye? cried Walt.

  Yes, Mr. Spoon, she smiled.

  Better go back to the kitchen and let Icey give you a cup of hot coffee!

  All right. Thanks, Mr. Spoon.

  He followed her with his gaze, wondering what kindly thing one might say to a woman whose husband had been hanged for murder. She was so remote; going about, doing her work well and yet so hidden away from everything that happened around her. He wanted to tell her that it would all turn out for the best; that it hadn’t really mattered what had happened; that each cloud had a silver lining. He followed her miserably to the kitchen and watched from the doorway as she helped herself to coffee at the stove.

  Here, honey, scolded Icey. Let me git you that. Set down and give your feet a rest.

  Icey Spoon was fat and pleasant. Most of her sixty years had been spent cooking good things: tasting pots of boiling fudge, sampling fingerfuls of cookie batter or thick ice cream on the wooden paddles of the old crank freezer. Her ideas of the world and of its people were as simple and even and unchanging as the little pastry hearts her cookie cutter made.

  Willa! she snapped cheerfully. What you need is a little meat on your bones.

  Willa smiled wanly. She sipped the black, scalding coffee in the thick steamboat china cup. Icey stood before her with fat, freckled fingers smoothing her apron. After glaring at Willa in mounting disapproval for a moment she shuffled off to the ice cream freezers. Presently she returned with a heaping dish of the chocolate cream and set it firmly at Willa’s elbow.

  There! A dish of that two or three times a day and you’ll commence to shape into something a feller might want to look twice at.

  Willa thanked her and glanced uneasily at the old woman’s eyes, knowing well what it was all leading up to.

  Honey, said Icey Spoon, waving her husband away from the kitchen and settling her thick, dimpled elbows firmly on the table, there is certain plain facts of life that adds up. Just like two plus two makes four.

  Willa kept her peace, not lifting her eyes, knowing that part of her burden as a widow was to endure such preachments.

  And one of them is this, Icey went on. No woman is good enough to raise growin’ youngsters alone. The Lord meant that job for two. Are you listenin’ to me, now, honey?

  Yes.

  Now, then! There ain’t so many single fellers nor widowers in Cresap’s Landing that a girl can afford to get too choosey. There’s Charley Blankensop—he drinks. There’s Bill Showacre—and he don’t amount to much except doin’ card tricks at socials but he is kind and he don’t touch a drop and the old pap’s got some farmland.

  Icey, I don’t want a husband.

  Want nothin’! cried Icey, slamming her palm on the table till the sugar bowl chattered. It’s not a matter of wantin’ or not wantin’! You’re no spring chicken with hot britches, Willa Harper. You’re a grown woman widowed with two little youngins and it’s them you should be thinkin’ about.

  Well, yes. Yes, I know that, Icey.

  And I don’t want you gettin’ the idea that neither me nor Walt is buttin’ in! the old woman added, pursing her lips and smoothing the tablecloth with swift outward strokes of her fingers. You’re welcome to work here and even bring them kids in to live here if you’ve a mind to. But it’s a man you need in the house, Willa Harper!

  John—the boy, said Willa. He minds the littlest—Pearl. He takes awful good care of her, Icey.

  Mindin’ girls ain’t no fit business for a growin’ boy, neither.

  Willa shrugged and looked away.

  It’s not so easy, she said softly. Finding someone—

  I know! Ah, Lord, I know! cried the other woman, rising and sniffling her nose against the heel of her hand. Ah, men is such fools!

  Not every man, Willa continued, her eyes grave with her thoughts, wants the widow of a man who—

  —A man who done somethin’ ornery and foolish! snapped Icey. Ben Harper warn’t no common robber. Why, I knowed him as well as I knowed my own five boys and I’d have put him up alongside any one of them. It’s these hard, mean times that ruins men, Willa.

  Willa stared at the palms of her hands.

  I never really understood Ben, she said. He was always thinking things I never knew—wanting things I never knew about. He wasn’t a bad man, Icey—he just wanted more than his share, I reckon.

  Icey’s gingham-blue eyes squinted shrewdly as she bent and pinched Willa lightly on the arm.

  There hain’t a one of them, she whispered hoarsely, that’s walked into that Moundsville bank that ain’t been tempted to do the same thing Ben done! A
nd don’t you forget it! Lordy, there has been times during this depression when I was afraid of what my own Walt would turn his hand to next!

  She sat suddenly, subsided, hugging her fat arms against her bosom and reflecting upon the evil season.

  That boy John, smiled Willa. He’s so much like his dad it just naturally scares me sometimes, Icey. So serious about everything! He’s took his dad’s death hard, Icey.

  Hmmph! He’s took it like a little man if you was to ask me.

  Willa scooped a tiny mountain in the spilled sugar by the bowl and her hand trembled. He knows something, she said in a low voice. It scares me, Icey!

  How?

  There’s something strange—He knows something!

  Knows what, honey?

  Like there was something still between him—and Ben, said the girl and shivered as the river wind said something behind the window and a boat blew low on the river.

  Between him and his dad?

  Yes, said Willa. Sometimes I think about Ben lying there in that little plot of ground between my ma and pa and him being dead all these weeks and then I look into the boy’s face and it’s almost as if—

  Off in the parlor they could hear Walt cranking the Victrola and waiting impatiently for the couples to come in for ice cream after the first show. Willa was as white as the linen on Icey’s spotless kitchen table.

  —As if him and Ben—as if they had a pact, said the girl at last.

  About which?

  About that money, Icey.

  That money! snorted the old woman, pouring them both more coffee. A curse and an abomination before God! I hope Ben throwed it in the river wrapped around a cobblestone.

  But he didn’t, said the girl.

  Pshaw!

  I’m right sure of it, Icey. It’s hid somewhere.

  Well if it is—I don’t want to know where! That money’s caused enough sin and cursedness—

  —And I think little John knows where it is, said Willa.

  What? Great day in the morning! That child? Fiddlesticks!

  Yes, Icey. I may be wrong. But I think Ben told him.

  Then why—if he told the boy—why not you—his own wife?