The Night of the Hunter

by Davis Grubb

  Willa smiled sheepishly and plucked at a loose thread in the tablecloth.

  He never thought I was fit to know, she said.

  Fiddlesticks, now! Did he say that, now?

  The girl nodded.

  At the prison? Did you ask him when you visited him there?

  Yes. I begged with him to tell. I told him it wasn’t just for me—it was for them two kids as well. I told him that.

  And what did he say to that?

  He said if I got my hands on that money I would just go to hell headlong. He said I was a Bailey and there wasn’t ever a Bailey or Harper either one that knowed the worth of a five-cent piece and he said there wasn’t a one of them ever got their hands on money that didn’t drag himself and all his kin down the fancy road to perdition.

  Well, now, I never!

  Icey pursed her mouth, considering it all.

  But what did he say about them kids of his? What did he figure you to raise them on?

  I asked him that, Icey.

  And what did he have to say to that?

  He said that money was where it wouldn’t ever hurt nobody no more and then he shut up like a clam and wouldn’t talk about it any more!

  But you think the boy knows where it’s hid?

  Willa nodded and her eyes brimmed and filled.

  Icey! Honest to God, I don’t want that money! I just wish it was gone somewhere—lost forever—gone to the bottom of the river! When I think about its still being anywheres around us—it just makes me feel like folks is starin’—wonderin’—sniffin’ around for it like dogs. Like somethin’ awful was going to happen to me and them kids because of it!

  Pshaw! Ben was talkin’ out of his mind, Willa. The strain of it all! That money is rottin’ at the bottom of the river right this very minute.

  Willa did not answer, finishing her coffee in slow gulps while old Icey grumbled and speculated by the stove, rattling her pots and skillets angrily about.

  And that’s why I say, she exclaimed presently, that the sooner you get a man into that house the better, Willa! There’s so much can happen to a widowed woman and two youngsters.

  A glance at the girl told her that this final remark had frightened her even more. Icey’s face lit up and she cracked her palms together sharply.

  Ouija! she cried.

  What?

  The board! We’ll just ask old Ouija where Ben hid that money.

  No!

  Willa’s lips were trembling now, the color of cold ashes.

  All right, then. We’ll just ask Ouija about that man—the one you’re going to meet.

  Oh, Icey, I’d rather not.

  Just you set down there, Willa, and mind your manners. I’ll go fetch the board. You can mock if you will but me and Walt has found out more from Ouija than a body ever gets from them tea leaves and cards.

  Willa sat solemnly, with her legs pressed tight together, listening as Icey’s slippers shuffled off into the parlor after the board. She was back in a moment and slapped it on the table and sat down facing it, across from Willa. Walt came to the doorway to watch and stood puffing thoughtfully on his cob pipe. Icey’s face grew solemn and properly awed as she rested the tips of her fingers on the little arrowshaped pointer.

  It takes a spell for Ouija to get to workin’ right, explained Icey, opening one eye to glance at Willa. And don’t talk neither. It gets the spirits nervous.

  Willa’s nerves curled in her flesh as Icey addressed the beyond. Ouija! Please to give us the name of Willa’s next husband.

  Willa felt the sweat gather upon her quaking thighs. It seemed as if this were to tempt old ghosts to speak—to conjure from the blackness of that winter night the face of a hanged man who would tell her again with his ruined, strangled mouth that she was not fit—that she was weak—that she would drag them all down if she knew. Now the room was stone-silent but for the thick bubbling of the teakettle and the faint cold whisper of river wind against the sills.

  Ah! Ah! There! whispered Icey. See, now!

  And the little pointer scratched sharply and jumped beneath her fingers. Willa shut her eyes and pressed the trembling lids with the tips of her fingers. She listened to the dry little feet of the pointer scrabbling slowly across the board, spelling out the letters. Icey’s sonorous voice called them as they came. C—L—O—

  Willa thought: Yes, he was right! The money is bloodied and cursed and it would take us all to hell headlong. Because we were born in sin and in sin we have lived and God makes us suffer so we can be free!

  C—L—O—T—H! Cloth! cried Icey. Now, Walt, whatever do you make of that? Cloth! What kind of sense does that make?

  It’s a word, said Walt, taking the stem of his pipe from between his long brown teeth. That’s plain enough.

  Well, sure it’s a word! We all know that! But the question was: Give us the name of Willa’s next husband. Now cloth ain’t no answer to that.

  Well, now, hold on here for just a while, said the man. That might signify a lot of things.

  He sat solemnly at the table and regarded the board, scowling.

  Icey reached out to pat Willa’s cold knee and then winked.

  Walt’s right good at understandin’ Ouija, honey. Just you wait, now.

  —It might mean Willa was to meet a drummer, said Walt loudly. A drummer that sold bolts of yard goods.

  Why, sure! Cloth!

  But now Icey pursed her lips and frowned.

  Well, shoot! A drummer ain’t no bargain for a husband!

  Willa smiled and shrugged.

  I don’t know any drummers, she said softly. What drummer would want to settle down with me?

  Just you wait! laughed Icey. We’ll try again another night. Ouija’s mighty good at lookin’ ahead, honey.

  Now they heard the front door squeak out in the ice cream parlor and the soft laughter of young voices.

  Gracious! Them’s customers! cried Icey, springing to her feet. Better go tend them, honey.

  Willa hurried off and took the orders while Walt put a record on the Victrola, and throughout the next hour they kept busy as other customers came and went and Walt stood by cranking and changing the records and Icey filled orders for sandwiches and coffee in the kitchen. By ten o’clock the town had gone to sleep. Outside the snow drifted past in big flakes and the dark wind had fallen. Willa sat alone by the cash box until Walt came and told her she could go for the night. He and Icey stood watching her move slowly down Peacock Alley toward the river road.

  Poor, poor little thing, mumbled Icey, her handkerchief balled and pressed to her lips.

  Walt said nothing as he moved about downstairs, locking windows. After a bit he came and stood beside her, staring into the dark that had swallowed up the tiny figure on the road at last.

  Poor child, Icey said again, shaking her head. I wonder what will ever become of her. It’s a story sad enough to beat them picture shows.

  —

  Because a pipeline ran through the Harper yard the gas company gave them a free lamp on a wooden post—a big box with a roof like a birdhouse with glass sides and a perpetual flame within. It stood by the great oak at the road’s edge and when the wind tossed the branches of the tree the light from the gas lamp made pictures on the wall of the children’s bedroom. The twisted, barren winter branches tossed stiffly in the golden light and yet with a curious grace, like the fingers of old men spinning tales, and John, lying snug in his bed beside the little girl, shut his left eye and squinted through the lashes at these weaving phantoms of shadow and light. There was a black horse prancing—lifting its feet to the winter galaxies. And now as the wind changed there came a three-legged peddler roistering to the mad wind’s song. And now a brave soldier appeared; then a merry clown with toothpick legs.

  John?

  Yes.

  Is Mom home?

  Yes.

  Is she in bed, John?

  Yes. Go to sleep, Pearl.

  All right, John. Good night.

  Good night. Sl
eep tight, Pearl! Don’t let the bedbugs bite!

  The little girl lay still for a bit, breathing thoughtfully into the matted wig of her doll.

  John?

  Yes?

  What’s bedbugs?

  Hush up, Pearl! It’s time you was asleep!

  She lay still a moment more and then commenced scratching furiously and sat upright in bed.

  Does bedbugs tickle when they walk, John?

  Hush, Pearl. Go to sleep. That’s just a joke when you say, Don’t let the bedbugs bite. There ain’t no such a thing. Now go to sleep!

  Pearl watched the whirling pictures in the light the yard lamp made on the wallpaper.

  Tell me a story, John. She sighed, her eyes lost in the fancies of the dancing shadow branches. John lay still and squinted his other eye.

  All right. If you’ll lay back down and keep the covers on you so’s you won’t catch your death of cold.

  Pearl shot down under the sheets again and tucked her legs up tight against her breast, hugging the doll and waiting for the story to start.

  Once upon a time—there was a rich king—

  What’s a rich king, John?

  Never mind! You’ll see what it means directly, Pearl. There was this rich king and he had a son and a daughter and they all lived in a castle over in Africa. Well, one day this king got carried away by bad men—

  Pearl loathed the story now. But still she was silent, thankful enough to hear any story at all; comforted by the droning voice muffled beneath the quilt.

  —And before he got carried off he told this son to kill anyone that tried to steal their gold. Well it wasn’t long before them same bad men come back to get the gold—you see they missed that on the first trip—and these bad men—

  The blue men? whispered Pearl, in a perfect faint of dread.

  John stopped telling the story. He turned his head away from the dancing things and shut his eyes against the fresh, wind-smelling pillow.

  John! What happened to the king’s gold? Did the blue men—

  Go to sleep, Pearl! I forgit the rest of that story.

  He shivered silently under the warm covers, his fingernails digging into his palms. Pearl sighed and put her thumb in her mouth. Presently she took the thumb out again and blinked at the doll on the pillow beside her.

  Good night, Miz Jenny, she said softly. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  And she fell asleep. But John lay still awake, heeding on the winter wind the blowing bawl of a steamboat whistle upriver at the head of the Devil’s Elbow where the channel straightened and ran up straight through the Narrows. The dark tumbling wind was rollicking with river ghosts. John thought of some of the tales old Uncle Birdie Steptoe used to spin on the deck of his wharfboat on dreaming summer afternoons: of the dark river men—gone now and cursed and lost in the deep water’s running. Simon Girty riding with the Shawnees against his own people; the soldier Mason running with the devil Harper to ravage the river from Cave-in-Rock clean to the sugar coast; Cornstalk and Logan and the young chiefs in the black buffalo robes. Old Uncle Birdie carried the tales down through the river years from a lost time, tales spun round the smoking oil lamps of a thousand wharfboats from Pittsburgh to the Delta. John rose from his pillow when he heard the thick, even breath of his sleeping sister. Slipping from bed John tiptoed across the frosty boards of the floor and fetched his broken cap pistol from the pocket of his jacket. For a moment his own shadow loomed vast and threatening in the golden arena on the wallpaper. The small boy scowled, clenched his chattering teeth, and brandished the little gun.

  I ain’t scared of you none! he whispered hoarsely and made a fierce devil’s face at the shadow. And he watched in fascination as it mocked him. The shadow hunched down when John hunched down, it twisted when he twisted, and it bent grimacing to one side when he did. Blue man! Take that!

  His mouth shaped the words as his finger pressed the trigger of the broken toy and in his mind the wonderful roar of powder filled the silence. But the shadow did not fall. When John lifted the pistol above his head and danced on his numb white toes the shadow danced and waved his pistol, too. John clicked the toy pistol once more, a coup de grace, and stumped grimly back to the bed. Now the shadow man was dead. He and his kind would come no more to drag the king from his castle by the sea. Beside the body of his sleeping sister John snuggled his face into the cold, sweet pillow and pressed the toy gun underneath where he could get at it in a moment. And then something in the wind’s dark voice caused him to open one eye again to the square of yellow light on the wall. The shadow man: it was smaller than before but it was still there. He pondered it a moment, lying quite still, his heart thundering in his throat. Yes, to be sure it was the shadow of a man in the yellow square of light from the yard lamp: a very silent, motionless man with a narrow-brimmed hat and still, straight arms. John’s tongue grew thick as a mitten at the growing dread within him.

  I ain’t scared of you, he whispered to the shadow man and the wind rattled the window like pressing hands.

  The shadow could not really be there. John was not there to make it. And yet there it was: the neatest little shadow man in the world and he could see it unmistakably and it was not make-believe like the clown and the peddler and the prancing horse that the branches made. John slipped out of bed again and crept to the window. He pressed his nose to the icy pane and stared across the deserted snowy yard to the place where the single yellow flame bloomed in the glass box like a golden fish in a bowl of light. Then he saw the man by the roadside. The man stood in silence, motionless, staring speculatively toward the house like a traveler seeking a night’s lodging.

  Go away, man! whispered John, his flesh gathering for a paroxysm of trembling.

  Off down the river the eleven-o’clock train of the Ohio River Division of the Baltimore and Ohio screamed twice and hurried off panting among the bottom farms. There was no regular depot at Cresap’s Landing and often the late train from Moundsville stopped at the crossroads to let off travelers or drummers to make their way as best they could the half mile into Cresap’s Landing and a room at Mamie Ernest’s boardinghouse.

  I ain’t scared! I ain’t scared! whispered John and saw after a moment that his dread had been unnecessary. It was really a most plain-looking man. He stood shivering for a moment longer in his cheap gray suit and his old gray hat and even as John watched he moved back into the shadows again and off up the road to Cresap’s Landing. Now the old winter branches made the dancing horse again on the golden square and the clown with toothpick legs frolicked on the mad wind. John crept back into the bed and huddling close to the warm body of Pearl thought carefully to himself: Just a little gray man in a little gray suit and a little gray hat and he’s gone. A pleasant man, too, one would guess. For even now as he wandered up the road for Mamie Ernest’s he was lifting his high, clear tenor to the cold night and singing a sweet old gospel tune.

  —

  Willa said he was a dirty old man and used to forbid John to go there. But to the boy the old wharfboat at the landing seemed the most perfect kind of home. It wallowed against the lapping slope of the shore—a crumbling houseboat scarcely better than the cheap floating shacks of the shantyboat trash down the shore under the willows at the edge of Jason Lindsay’s meadow. Willa had taken Pearl to work with her that morning and John had a few hours to spend as he chose. Uncle Birdie was just having morning coffee. When the old man spied John standing timidly on the bricks by the narrow gangplank he threw up his knotted hands and ran to the door.

  Bless my soul if it hain’t Ben Harper’s boy John! Hop up, boy!

  John smiled, and Uncle Birdie motioned him up the plank.

  Come on in, boy, and have a good hot cup of coffee with me. Does your maw let you?

  John’s eyes fell.

  By damn, it don’t matter if she does or don’t! We’ll have ourselves a cup anyways. I say a feller ain’t worth a hoot without his morning coffee. Hurry up, there, boy, and shut that door! It’s cold enou
gh to freeze the horns off a muley cow!

  John crept into the narrow little cabin and sat on a salt box by the stove.

  Now! cried the old man, fetching the coffeepot and pouring John’s cup full. How you been? ’Deed, I hain’t seen you for a coon’s age, Johnny!

  I been mindin’ Pearl, said John.

  Birdie cracked his old fist in his leathery palm.

  Pshaw, now! Hain’t it a caution what women will load onto a feller’s shoulders when he ain’t lookin’! Mindin’ girls! Shoot! That hain’t no job for a big feller like you!

  Oh! said John promptly. I don’t mind, Uncle Birdie. Pearl needs someone to mind her.

  Well, now, yes, I reckon that’s so. I reckon with your pap gone—that sorty makes you the man of the house, so to speak! ’Scuse me, Cap, while I sweeten up my coffee a little. A man of my years needs a little snort to get his boiler heated of a mornin’.

  John watched as the old man reached under the bursting leather rocker in which he sat and fetching up a pint bottle of crystal liquid splashed generously into his coffee. He sipped it, sucked his wet white mustaches for a moment, and then fixed John with his twinkling blue eyes.

  And how’s your maw, Johnny?

  Well she’s fine. She’s workin’ up at Mr. Spoon’s place now.

  Go away, now! She is? By granny’s, it hain’t ever’ boy in Cresap’s Landing whose maw works in an ice-cream parlor! Bet she can sneak you out a dish of tutti-frutti anytime you take a notion, eh, Johnny?

  Oh, no! She don’t like me or Pearl hangin’ around her at work. She’s took Pearl up there with her today but it’s kind of special.

  And so you figured it was time you come down and paid old Uncle Birdie a call, eh, boy?

  John wriggled his cold toes in his shoes and moved closer to the cherry-red woodstove. Beyond the dusty window the river was flaked with shards of spring ice. The early thaw had begun and in a month the cattails in the shallows would lift their brown thumbs to test the first spring wind. John wandered to the window and stared at the half-sunken boat down the shore below the landing.

  Ain’t nobody stole Dad’s skiff, he observed softly.