The Night of the Hunter

by Davis Grubb

  John?

  Yes.

  Where’s Dad?

  I don’t know, he said truthfully and Willa intervened then with thick sandwiches for each of them: ham salad between thick slices of salt-rising bread fresh that morning from Icey’s oven. John watched them eat but held his own sandwich untouched, still warm and yielding within the wax paper. He returned to his father’s grave and stood for a moment perplexed and scowling at the fresh earth.

  Listen here, now—he began clumsily, and then abandoned it because it was just a pile of dirt and he had been foolish enough for a moment to think that it was really him there and that maybe he could have made his dad say that it didn’t really matter—that it was all right to tell them after all because it was more than he would be able to endure: holding it all inside. Then suddenly he could not believe that anyone alive or dead could be there no matter what the older people said or that any of it had any reality at all: the square eroded slabs with the little names, the numbers, the pictures of the sad, smiling ladies and the little dimpled stone babies. These were the great stone toys of a giant who had grown weary of his play and wandered away long ago. It was a joke of some kind. It was just letters—like the letters on Preacher’s fingers.

  John, are you sick? she said.

  No, Mom.

  Then why don’t you eat your sandwich?

  Not hungry, Mom.

  Well, now, I don’t want you pestering me going home on the boat this evening. There’ll not be a drop of food to eat then.

  He unwrapped his big sandwich slowly, regarded it with faint distaste an instant, and then dutifully bit into it. He did not like the smell of Icey’s salt-rising bread. It had the sour smell like when someone is sick. But he ate valiantly, chewing the hunks of sandwich in his dry mouth.

  Ah, here’s my boy!

  His mouth stopped chewing, then began again. He swallowed in dry agony.

  How about a bite out of that sandwich, boy?

  John said nothing, heard nothing but the vast and enormous clanking of the watch in Preacher’s pocket: the gold watch of his dad’s that Willa had given him.

  Aw, have a heart, boy, whined the voice, and the hand named Love reached out for the sandwich.

  John looked at the fingers and the blue letters of false love and thought: Which is more dangerous? Which is worse? When he is joking like this or when his eyes turn blue like the steel of the pistols in the hands of the men by the smokehouse that day. He held the sandwich out.

  Tut tut, boy! I don’t want your sandwich. That was just my little joke.

  John turned suddenly, threw the sandwich into the rank winter grass, and moved off again. After a bit he found an Indian arrowhead in the sandy earth and brushed it clean and polished it and felt curiously safer with it in his pocket and then he saw them on a wood bench by the roadside: his mother and Preacher. The others had gone off, flushed and giggling, knowing how it was with lovers, letting them be alone. John looked at his mother’s face—flushed and glowing the way it had used to be when Ben Harper came home from work and kissed her in the door. After a bit Willa called to him and stood up smoothing her skirts. She had seen the others moving again toward the landing with their baskets and garden tools.

  Come along, boy! We’re leaving now.

  On the boat again he saw that it was nearly dark and there were black clouds over the Ohio hills and the faint grumble of thunder like a dog growling under a porch and he suddenly thought that he had forgotten something; felt suddenly as if there were still a question he should ask the man under the mound. But then he remembered again that there was no one really there.

  —

  Why are you afraid? he asked himself.

  Because of the rain, he told himself. Because of the lightning and the thunder.

  No, he answered himself. That’s not why you are afraid.

  In mid-channel, above the bend in the river at Paden City a swift and violent spring storm had overtaken them. Night had fallen as swiftly as a door slammed to by the wind. Then in an instant the river was lit by vast sheets of lightning like falling shivers of broken glass and the green water was lashed and riven by the mountain winds. The little river packet tossed and groaned in the passion of the torrential fury. John made no sound, holding Pearl’s hand tightly by his mother’s side.

  Now, everybody just keep calm and collected! Walt Spoon was calling above the roar of the wind and rain. We’ll be home in our parlors inside of twenty minutes!

  In the shelter of the boilers they were protected from the tempest and the great gusts of rain that raced like sheep dogs across the torn, ragged waters of the river. John kept his eyes on the rough boards of the deck beneath him. Thunder boomed and echoed between the high hills in a giant and unremitting cannonade. Lightning flashed and shivered on the black, reflecting waters. Now Preacher stepped into the midst of them and held up his hands.

  Brothers and sisters! The Lord is a-watchin’ over us! But just the same I think we might keep our spirits up in the presence of His almighty wrath with a little hymn singing.

  Well, yes! Yes, that’s a mighty fine idea!

  And Preacher commenced the singing, stamping his foot in a fierce, heavy rhythm on the boards and the little band began singing: their voices lost and wandering among the high keening shrills of the river wind and the bombardment of the thunder. John squeezed Pearl’s hand and glanced sidelong at the doll in her arms. It was safe, close against her heart, its vacuous plaster stare unmoved by any terror such as theirs.

  Brightly beams our Father’s mer-cy! From His lighthouse evermo-o-ore!

  But to us He gives the keeping—of the lights along the sho-o-re!

  John felt Preacher against him and turned his eyes to the fingers on his shoulder and saw the one named H and the one named A and—

  Why ain’t you singin’, John?

  The hot breath was whispering against his face and the bad smell against his lips. He said nothing.

  —Dark the night of sin has settled! Loud the angry billows roa-ar!

  Eager eyes are watching, longing—for the lights along the shore!

  Why aren’t you singin’, boy?

  Now a single flame of lightning rent the river in a blinding sheet and while the night strained and creaked under the enormous blast of sound John lifted his eyes and in another flash saw the face of the man, glittering with rain and twisted with a fury as sudden as the storm itself.

  Why aren’t you singin’, boy?

  Trying now to make the harbor! In the darkness may be lost!

  The fingers were tightening, like the steel pincers of a tool, on the soft flesh of the boy’s shoulder. He tried to wrench free but the grip went under the tendons, around the shoulder bone.

  Sing, boy! Sing! came the hot and furious whisper in his eyes. Goddamn you, sing the hymn!

  I don’t know no words! John cried out suddenly and the fingers sprang free. I don’t know no words!

  He wailed it and flung himself into the soft, scented vastness of Willa’s petticoats, burying his face deep in the sweet, lavender-fragrant clothing, against the warm thigh, and trembled violently, not crying because he would have to learn again some day how to cry and Willa thought it was the wind, the dark, the thunder and the rain that had done it to him; made him scream and throw himself trembling against her.

  I don’t know no words! he stuttered again into the muffling calico.

  But the thunder was so loud and Preacher’s singing was so loud that no one heard what he was saying.

  —

  In the Ohio Valley it is the river that gives and takes the seasons. It is as if that mighty stream were the vast, alluvial artery of the land itself so that when the towns grow weary of snows and harsh fogs the great heart pumps green spring blood down the valley and the banks are warmed and nourished by it and soon the whole environing earth blossoms despite itself and the air comes alive and lambs caper and bleat upon the hillside paths. And so now it was the prime of spring in the bottomlands
. Soon the redbone hound would kelt in the creek hollows on nights when the moon was a curl of golden hair against the shoulder of the Ohio hills. Soon the shantyboat people would join their fiddle and mouth-harp racket to the chorus of green frogs down under the mists in the moonlit willows. And that morning the showboat Humpty Dumpty had put in at the landing.

  And if, in this urgent season of mating, Willa found the attentions of Preacher attractive and exciting, to Icey Spoon they were a challenging imperative. She was roused to a perfect fury of determination to make a match between these two. It seemed to the old woman that to instrument such a union would vindicate something lost in the dust of her own old, youthful, half-forgotten yearnings. Preacher was a man of God. Any woman should be proud to marry a man of God. The ideal aspect to this was that it had none of the sex—none of the nastiness—with which, for her, marriage had always been tainted. And so she persisted night and day, pressing Willa upon this prince of men. Even Walt grew tired of it after a while and would wander down to the grocery store to gossip and spit and whittle and be away from the smell of women which sometimes grew thick in his home. Willa waited, in warm awareness, biding her time while Icey kept on with this kind of ferocious schoolgirl energy.

  It’ll not be forever, my fine missy, that a man like that will wait around for a widow to make up her mind. You’re not the only fish in the river, my proud girl!

  Oh, I know, Icey. I just don’t know what to say.

  Say yes. That’s all! How many times is it he’s asked you now?

  Twice.

  Forevermore! And you ain’t said—I swear Willa if you ain’t a caution!

  They sat behind the marble counter that night; the gold blooms of the twin gas lamps flowering softly in the air above their heads, the whine of a Victrola somewhere off down the leafy street. Willa shook her head, eyes shut, as if she were trying to shake loose some key thought from among others.

  If I was only sure it would—turn out, Icey—

  A husband, grunted Icey, is one piece of store goods you never know till you take it home and get the paper off.

  I know. That’s why I—

  But if ever I seen a sure bargain, cried Icey, it’s Mr. Powell! A good, Christian gentleman!

  Yes, Icey, but that boy of mine—

  John? Well if you care for my opinion what that boy needs is the switch a little more often! He’s growed just a little too big for his britches, missy!

  Yes, I know that. But something happened on the picnic that day.

  The storm?

  Something more than that. Something between him and Mr. Powell. He won’t tell.

  Git in the habit of calling him Harry, honey. Men likes to hear a woman say their Christian name.

  I didn’t say anything about it to—to Harry, of course.

  Maybe it was just seein’ the father’s grave and all, said Icey. Youngsters find it so hard to understand that the flesh is really there—under the stone—

  Willa shivered and stared at the spring night outside: the street lamp glowing behind the canopy of young sycamore leaves in a misty green halo.

  And John—I don’t think he believes that about the money—that Ben throwed it in the river.

  Nonsense! Mr. Powell wouldn’t have lied. He’s a man of God, Willa. Did you explain to the boy?

  Yes. I told John yesterday. And then I made him come in the parlor and stand by the chair while Mr. Powell—while Harry told him.

  And what did he say to that?

  Nothing.

  Without warning the still night was full of the piping notes of the calliope on the showboat down at the landing.

  My, my! Hear that, honey! grinned old Icey. A body don’t hear that sound every month in the year. That’s the sound that says it’s spring.

  Yes, sighed Willa. It’s spring.

  And ain’t it a caution how such a noisy thing as that can get in your bones and make you want to kick up and frolic!

  Yes. Yes, I reckon, Icey—

  Honey, what’s wrong?

  Willa plunged her naked arms into the blue dishwater and brought out a dripping ice-cream dish.

  I don’t think John believed Mr. Powell, she said.

  Well, honey, don’t you believe him? That’s the important thing, after all.

  Yes, I suppose. I just can’t imagine why Ben wouldn’t have told me—those days when I went to see him at the prison—pled with him!

  Because Ben Harper was a good man, said Icey. That’s why. He knowed that money wasn’t nothin’ but Sin and Torment and Abomination. And I reckon he thought he’d test you—let you think it was still somewhere hid—hopin’ at last you’d say you didn’t want it anyways and then maybe he’d be free of it—and you’d be free of it, too. Maybe you failed Ben, Willa! And maybe this is your chance to make it all up to him!

  Aw, Icey, I know! I never doubt really—what Harry says is true.

  Willa stared for a moment at her dripping hands and then pushed a lock of hair back with the heel of her hand and turned her anguished eyes to the old woman.

  Icey, what shall I do?

  Marry him!

  But I don’t feel—Icey, it ain’t like Ben and me that summer—

  Fiddlesticks! That wasn’t love, honey. That was just hot britches. There’s more to a marriage than four bare legs in a bed. When you’re married forty years you’ll know that all that don’t matter a hill of beans. I been married that long to my Walt now and I’ll swear in all that time whenever he took me I’d just lie there thinking about my canning or how I’d manage to git one of the boys new shoes for school—

  That’s another thing, sighed Willa. I kept that boy John out of school all last winter till the trouble was over. I just couldn’t bear what they had to put up with from them other kids—mean, nasty songs and horrible pictures on the fences—

  —a woman, Icey continued, heedless, is a fool to marry for that. Because it’s all just a fake and a pipe dream to start with. It’s somethin’ for a man—the good Lord never meant for a decent woman to want that—not really want it.

  Next winter, Willa said. If I married Mr. Powell—I’d send them both back to school. They’d seem more respectable somehow—

  Pssst!

  What?

  Yonder he comes! Mr. Powell on his way here!

  Yes. Oh, yes! Do I look all right, Icey?

  Honey, you’re as pretty as a picture.

  That’s good, Icey! she breathed wildly. Because—

  Did you—Have you decided? Will you—

  Yes! Oh, yes, Icey! If he asks me again tonight I’ll say yes!

  Icey scampered off to the kitchen, purple with excitement, and presently Willa and Preacher were alone at a table by the window.

  Cocoa tonight? She smiled.

  No, my child! I haven’t eaten a smidgen of food all day.

  Goodness! Are you sick?

  Yes—no—

  He rested his elbows on the table and fixed her with his burning eyes.

  Willa, I can’t sleep nights till you say yes, he murmured, reaching for her hand still damp from the dishwater. It’s just as if the Lord kept whisperin’ in my ear—This is the woman for you, Harry Powell!

  He paused for an instant.

  Have you thought about it, Willa?

  Yes! she breathed, scarlet with her emotions. I have!

  And have you got an answer for me?

  Harry, I’ll marry you, she stammered. If only—

  If only what, my dear?

  She sought to form the answer, but it was too vague, too lost. She did not know herself whose voice this was, deep in the vast river murmurs of her mind, that kept telling her not to do this thing. Something—the figure of a man—wandered in and out among the trees of her consciousness, through the white, blurring fog upon her mind’s shores. Now it was the shape of a lover and now something else—something frightful beyond telling—something with the body of a child in its arms.

  —

  Old Uncle Birdie took his qui
d of tobacco out of his mouth long enough to gulp down another choking throatful of the corn liquor in the tin cup. John squatted on the threshold of the wharfboat cabin watching him with a faint, admiring smile. The night air was shrill with the enormous racket of the showboat calliope a few feet above them.

  I can’t hear ye, boy!

  I said, Did you fix Dad’s skiff yet?

  The skiff! Daggone it, Johnny, I’ve had such a misery in my hip these past couple of days I’ve barely stirred from the boat. Next week, now. I promise. We’ll go fishin’ first day of June if it ain’t too sunny.

  John sighed.

  How’s your maw?

  Oh she’s all right.

  How’s your sister Pearl?

  What?

  Pearl? Pearl?

  John nodded with grown-up authority.

  Jist fine.

  He ducked his head outside the door again and stared again in consuming wonder at the blazing glory of the showboat. She was little more than an enormous barn built on a raft with a stern-wheeler to tow her. And yet she was a miracle from stem to stern—strung with blazing electric lights and glittering white paint. Half the county had come to Cresap’s Landing that night to see her and pay their quarters and go on board to view the show. John, of course, had no quarter and so he had contented himself with the prospect of a half hour’s chat with Uncle Birdie and these stolen glances at the wonderful boat here within staggering earshot of her piping calliope. He had disobeyed Willa again—coming here. And he had, with much greater misgivings, left Pearl in bed alone. And it was this latter which itched his conscience until inevitably it got the better of him and so at last he rose and lifted his hand in farewell to the old man.