The Night of the Hunter

by Davis Grubb

  And there’s little John! Ah, what a day this is! What rejoicing there must be in heaven just now! Come to me, boy!

  But John did not move and the wind blew and the rope swing stirred gently under the gnarled branch. Rachel’s mouth was a slit, her arms folded tight against her gingham bosom, her eyes watching Preacher.

  Didn’t you hear me, boy?

  Preacher put Pearl down and he was still smiling.

  John swallowed and lifted his eyes to the old woman.

  What’s wrong, John? she said.

  Nothin’, he said, smiling unaccountably because he knew how foolish it would all sound if he tried to tell her the truth of things.

  What’s wrong, John? she said again, bending to him a little. When your dad says come—you should mind him.

  Her eyes twinkled and he read them and they said: You know this ain’t true and I know it ain’t true because there is something going on here that I don’t know about but we must play the game out for a while till things get clear.

  John? she repeated.

  He ain’t my dad, John said, and hugged the doll.

  Preacher’s smile was still there as he came toward the boy, and then Rachel moved between them and stood, thinking: And he ain’t no preacher, neither, because I have seen preachers in my day and some was saints on earth and some was crooked as a dog’s hind leg but this one has got them all beat for badness.

  John! Have a heart! You’ll have poor Miz Cooper here thinkin’ I’m an imposter directly.

  He turned his head to the little girl and smiled again.

  Pearl, tell Miz Cooper who I am. Come on, now!

  Pearl bent and pressed her fat knees with her palms and dimpled in a smile for them all. You’re Daddy, she said. Preacher turned to Rachel again and threw up his hands at this proof.

  There now. You see? The boy’s a strange lad. The shock of all this—the mother runnin’ away and all—he’s a little queer.

  Not so’s a body would notice, snapped Rachel. Not so queer as some I’ve seen today.

  And now the woodland warnings cried and skittered louder within her and she turned and moved, flushed and breathless, toward the washhouse.

  Miz Cooper, you don’t mean to hint you believe this boy!

  I know him! cried Rachel. A damned sight better than I know you, mister!

  The lights were there now, plain to see: the flickering fire rising behind his veiled eyes. His whole face began to sag suddenly, the smile gone; the whole mask of flesh melting quickly into a sallow leer of unveiled malevolence.

  Well, they believed me in town, he said. And they’d understand it wasn’t my fault if there’s going to be any trouble about gettin’ them kids back.

  Old Rachel ducked inside the washhouse and John was alone as Preacher moved swiftly toward him. Soundlessly, John scrambled under the puzzle tree and disappeared.

  Boy! Boy! Here! Here!

  Squatting, Preacher peered through the leaves and saw that John had crawled under the low foundation of the washhouse. Preacher rose, dusting off his knees, and looked at them all accusingly.

  Don’t this beat all, now! A loving father come to claim his little lost lambs and one of ’em actin’ up this way. Well! I reckon I’ll just have to peel off my coat and scramble in there after him myself.

  Old Rachel loomed above him then on the stone threshold: mottled and blue-stained with the sloshings of a half century’s wash waters. The blue barrel of the pump gun was steady as doom in her old hands.

  Just march yourself yonder to your horse, mister.

  Preacher, on all fours beneath the puzzle tree, lifted his face slowly to the gun muzzle and then to Rachel’s face. His features were yellow with it now: the raging, uncontrollable fury.

  March, mister! I’m not foolin’!

  He staggered to his feet and she saw then that he had the knife open in the palm of his hand, had had it out even as he started under the washhouse after John. Now he backed away from her, bouncing it lightly in his palm, the froth seeming to have gathered on his lips even before he started screaming at her; moving stiffly backward step by step, the bone-handled thing with its bright, winking blade still bouncing in his palm, his whole face suddenly going to pieces in a wash of madness.

  Goddamn you! Goddamn you, I’m going! Yes, I’m going but I’ll come back! Goddamn you, I’ll come back! I’ll have that bastard yet! Goddamn you, I will! You ain’t done with Harry Powell yet, you Whore of Babylon!

  Upon this outburst the children fell back to let him pass under the apple tree on his way to the tethered mare at the fence. His whole body was bent and racked with spasms of the roaring maniacal rage, the face a wrinkled mask of murder, the knife still bouncing like a carnival toy in his open palm. He led the horse away, shaking too badly to mount it and still screaming, and Rachel followed with the gun to the fence with all her little flock behind her, except for the still-hidden John.

  I will wait until Almighty God sounds the trump of Doomsday! the voice roared across the silent fields. You’ll wish you had never been born when I am done with you! The Lord God Jehovah will guide me to the hiding places of mine enemies! He will guide my hand in vengeance! Goddamn you! Goddamn you! I’ll come back when it’s dark. You devils! You Whores of Babylon! Just wait! You wait! Just wait!

  And through the tranquil innocence of all that smoldering autumn afternoon the voice echoed across the fields, punctuated only by the thud of windfalls beneath the apple tree. When dusk fell Rachel lit the kitchen lamps and gathered all her lambs about her by the stove and sat with the shotgun across her knees, facing the night in the window. The sun had gone down in a blazing river rainbow in the yellow sky and it had been dark for only a few moments before the full moon appeared and lit the mists of early evening. They could see him quite distinctly from the kitchen window: sitting on a locust stump at the end of Rachel’s garden, his whole body malevolently concentrated and fixed upon the silent farmhouse. Preacher’s last siege had begun. Rachel sent the whimpering Ruby off to put the children to bed. John’s eyes shone with an unflinching confidence that Rachel would save them. Incredibly, he slept.

  The moon shone down on the field and against the pale luminescence of the mists the old woman fixed her smarting, weary eyes on the black shape of the hunter, thinking: Dear God, don’t let me sleep. Dear God, there is something awful out there in my garden and I’ve got to keep it from my lambs. Dear God, don’t let me sleep.

  Once her head nodded and her lids fell for an instant and, catching herself, the old face snapped up and, peering through the deepening mists, she saw that the black shape of the man was still there. Now she thought for an instant that her wits were slipping, that her mind had begun to fail under the strain of the day. And yet the sound was quite distinct, quite unmistakable: he was singing a hymn: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. And partly because she needed strength from God and partly because it would keep her from hearing the voice, her mouth began to shape the old words, too.

  —

  It seemed that her head had fallen only for a second. And yet when her eyes flew open again the moon had moved from the crooked elbow of the apple tree and swam free in the thin mists above the stable. The black figure was gone from the end of the garden. And the old woman thought in the first moment of real fear she had known: But he won’t leave. No, he is up to something. If he had gone away I would have heard the mare, if he had gone across the river I would have heard the ferry engine or the bugle at the tree. He is closer now; sneaking in toward the house like a rabid fox with its belly dragging in the corn furrows, somewhere out yonder in the corn where I can’t see him.

  She was strong and she was old and there had been many things that had happened to her through the long years that had made her not so much brave as simply beyond fearing. But Rachel was frightened now, feeling again that hunch and twist of the skin of her neck and shoulders: the ancient, feral sense of something abroad among her flock. When the hoarse hall clock chimed three she gasped for brea
th and whispered: Oh, dear merciful God!

  Then she thought: I had better fetch them all downstairs and we will stay here together by the stove till morning. Because I was a fool and fell asleep for a spell and even now if he was to get to the house I wouldn’t know it.

  She took the lamp to the doorway at the foot of the kitchen stairs and held it into the darkness.

  Ahhhh, Ruby! Ruby! Ahh, Ruby!

  An instant later there came a rustle of the straw tick in the room above and the dry hiss and pad of the girl’s naked feet.

  Yes’m?

  Ruby, git John and Pearl up out of bed. Git Clary and Mary up, too. Bring them all down here to the kitchen.

  Yes’m, Miz Cooper.

  And she turned again and the long shadows stretched like arms before the moving lamp as she came back to the table and sat down again with the pump gun facing the night window and thought: How many fools has that devil tricked with his lying, mealy-mouthed gospel and his prayers and his hymn singing? God, women is such fools! Such fools! And a widow with kids is the worst fool of all because she is the most alone and the quickest to cotton to a man like him.

  The children padded swiftly into the kitchen from the stair door and circled her, wide awake and frightened and waiting for Rachel to tell them what to do. And looking into their round child faces she saw all the trust that was there and bit her tongue with hot, choking rage at the man in the mists.

  Children, I got lonesome, she snapped directly, and wanted company. I figgered we might play games.

  Pearl and Little Mary jumped up and down, patting their fat palms.

  Will you tell us a story? Pearl said shyly.

  I might, said the old woman with a swift, furious glance into the moonlit arena, I might tell a story.

  And now she saw again in Ruby’s face that stunned and simple smile, that glow of sweet wonder that had crept over her since Preacher’s appearance in the yard that day. And when the girl saw Rachel looking at her she asked the question that had kept her tossing and burning under the quilt all that night.

  Miz Cooper. Did that nice man go away?

  Hush! Hush, Ruby! Just git a hold of yourself, young woman, and come back down to earth. Shame on you! Moonin’ around the house this livelong day just hot as a fritter over that mad dog of a preacher! Shame, Ruby! Shame!

  Ruby squatted on the floor boards by the old woman’s knees and plucked reflectively at a callus on her long left foot.

  That man! said Little Mary, moon-eyed and scary. He’s bad, hain’t he, Miz Cooper?

  Yes, but hush up talkin’ about him! cried Rachel. If we don’t think about him he won’t bother us half as much. Because it’ll be sunup directly and he won’t dare to come pokin’ around by daylight. Ruby, run put the coffeepot on.

  Can we have coffee? chimed the small ones.

  Yes! exclaimed Rachel, with brisk, sudden cheeriness. I reckon a smidgen of good, strong coffee would do us all some good. Go long, Ruby, and heat the pot.

  The girl padded to the stove in gawky, loose-limbed sullen-ness and shoved the full pot over the burner and lighted it.

  John had spoken no word since coming into the kitchen. His eyes, fixed now on the night beyond the window screen, saw now another night by the wharf and his ears heard again the heels of the hunter ringing clear on the bricks of Peacock Alley in that hour when he and Pearl had fled the world. A moth thudded against the screen then, and Rachel bit her tongue to keep from crying out and her finger tightened on the warm flat trigger of the gun and she said loudly: All right! Who’ll tell a story?

  You! they cried unanimously. You tell a story!

  John pressed forward so that the whole of his right arm was touching hers and he thought: Touching her is like something I forget: something long ago when the whole world was a blue wool blanket and the sun in my eyes and there was only two faces in the world only they are faces I can’t remember no more.

  Well, said Rachel, sipping the warm coffee that Ruby had poured for each of them. Mind what I told you last Sunday about little Jesus and his ma and pa?

  They remembered. For how could any of them forget this tale of wanderers and of No-Room-At-AH and of those who took the wanderers in?

  Well, now, there was this sneakin’, no-account, ornery King Herod! cried Rachel softly, her lips pursed with indignation. And he heard tell of this little King Jesus growin’ up and old Herod figgered: Well, shoot! There sure won’t be no room for the both of us. Ain’t nobody wants two Kings and that’s a fact. I’ll just nip this in the bud. Well, he never knowed for sure which one of all them babies in the land was King Jesus because one baby don’t look much different from another. You know that as well as I do.

  Deep in the brush filth above the north pasture a rabbit gave the shrill death cry before the soft owl fell from the moon, and she thought: ’Deed, it’s a hard world for little things. Rabbits and babies has a time. It’s a cruel world to be born into and that’s for sure.

  —And so that cursed old King Herod figgered if he was to kill all the babies in the land—every last one—he’d be sure to get little Jesus and no mistaking. And when little King Jesus’s ma and pa heard about that plan what do you reckon they went and done?

  They hid in a broom closet! gasped Clary.

  They run under the washhouse, said Little Mary.

  No, said John. They went a-runnin’.

  Well, now, John, that’s just what they done! cried Rachel, angry all over again at what King Herod had done to all these little, helpless things. Little King Jesus’s ma and pa took and saddled a mule and rode clean down into Egyptland.

  Yes, said John. And that’s where the queen found them in the billy rushes.

  Pshaw, now! scolded Rachel. That warn’t the same story at all. That was little King Moses. But just the same it does seem like it was a plagued time for little ones—them olden days—them hard, hard times!

  And she listened to the ticking house and thought: I must keep talking and keep them listening because that will keep us from thinking about him. Because he is out there and he is closer now than I thought because I can feel the crawling stronger now, I can smell it like I can smell burning brush filth in October even when there ain’t no smoke on the sky to mark it.

  It would have seemed the simplest matter in the world to go to the phone on the hall wall and take down the receiver and crank till Miz Booher answered and tell her to get the state troopers up here quick from Parkersburg. And yet this was the last thing that would have entered Rachel Cooper’s mind. She had a deep, bottomlands mistrust of civil law. If there was trouble at hand it could most always be settled by the showing of a gun muzzle and a few strong words.

  A gentle, steady wind rose from the river and the mists began clearing and the moon shone bright as twilight. And Rachel thought: Now, if I was to blow out the kitchen lamp I could see it all clearer: the whole of my farm from the barn down to the road and the river beyond it. That way I could sight anything moving out there under the apple tree; I could spot him if he should come creeping low under the puzzle tree through the yard toward the kitchen.

  I sure could tell stories better, she exclaimed to the children, if we was to blow the lamp out! It’s always more fun hearin’ stories in the dark, ain’t it, now?

  Yes! they cried, shivering with excitement at this night game Rachel was playing. Yes, blow out the lamp!

  So she cupped her palm against the smoking chimney and huffed once and suddenly the moonlight came pouring over the window sills in blue pools at their feet and in the soft wind an apple thudded dully among the windfalls in the yard.

  Little Mary! cried Rachel cheerfully. Let’s hear you do the Twenty-Third Psalm again. You and me has ’bout got that one learnt, ain’t we?

  Little Mary shut both eyes squint-tight and commenced lisping the words Rachel had patiently taught her through the strange and lonely Sabbath nights by the stove, and in her mind Rachel could now see the small, intent face: the fumbling, racing little tongue trying
so hard to say all of it right, to please her.

  —He ’storeth my soul. He lea’th me in the paths in righteousness. For He—for He name’s sake. He—

  And the old woman’s mouth shaped the words mutely with the child’s voice because when you live for fifty years in a house you know every sound it is capable of making, and Rachel knew that the faint, soft outcry of the floor board by the marble-top table far away in the parlor was a sound that never happened unless a foot was there, pressing it. Yes, she thought, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil for Thou art with me. Yes, she thought, he has come in through the west parlor window that I forgot to latch last Wednesday when I aired the room. Yes, he is in the house with us now and I dasn’t get up to go to the stove for a match to light the lamp again because I don’t know how close he is.

  In the long, ugly pier glass in the hallway outside the kitchen door she could see mirrored the dusty square of moon on the dining-room floor and thought: When he comes through yonder archway I will see him no matter how softly he walks and that’s when I’ll start pulling this trigger.

  Come, lambs! she whispered sharply. Come stand close by me! Mind, now!

  They obeyed, and Little Mary, disappointed that Rachel’s interruption had spoiled the climax of her recitation, put her thumb in her mouth and sucked it gravely. And then again it might have been Rachel’s imagination: the tricks of an old woman’s ears: that sound in the room of breathing that was not hers nor the children’s. And she had turned her eyes cautiously again to the neglected window just as he spoke distinctly from the far end of the kitchen.