The Night of the Hunter

by Davis Grubb

  So he went away again and stayed for a while in the pitch-dark parlor, among the white specters of the muslin-cloaked furniture, and stared at the little glowing numerals that winked and burned softly like the eyes of golden mice, and listened to the measured ticking of the watch, as solid and steady and fine as the beat of his own stout heart, and above him in the bedrooms the voices of Clary and Pearl and Little Mary whooped and screamed over their pretty dresses while the low, shy voice of Ruby asked them all if hers looked pretty, too.

  He thought: You have to be careful or things go away. So I will take a big piece of butcher twine from the kitchen drawer and tie it very tight around the little link on top and then I will tie another knot with the other end so’s it will be a loop and I can put it around my neck when I go to bed. If it is still there in the morning then I will feel a whole lot better about it. I’ll bet she paid a lot of money for it because it is gold or something like that and if Pearl ever tries to take it away from me I’ll push her even if she is a girl. She give me the watch and I give her an apple because it is the day when you give things to people because the Lord is born. And there wasn’t no room for Him at the inn so Him and His folks put up for the night in a barn. I went and looked out the window at the barn while she was reading but I never seen no one so I reckon it is just a story. Or maybe they ain’t got here yet and they’ll be getting set up in the barn after we’re all in bed asleep. You never know what they tell you. You never find out if it’s real or a story.

  And again he pressed his face to the cold pane in the parlor window and stared across the white sheen of fresh snow that blanketed the valley under the winter’s moon.

  Because someone is chasing them, he thought. That’s why they picked up and started running. I reckon that’s what she meant because there was another story she told us about the bad king and the children who ran. I wish I could remember stuff. It all gets mixed up inside you. And sometimes you can’t remember if things is real or just a story. You never know.

  In the kitchen now he could hear Rachel hollering about how pretty Ruby and the rest of them all looked in their dresses and directly she yelled for him to come, that it was time they all got to their beds. But there was no sleep for John for a long, ticking time that night. Crouched beneath the bright, heaped quilts he stared at the watch on the string; watching the circuit of the creeping golden hands until they marked the passing of an hour. Pearl hunched warm and sleeping beside him. In the other bed Clary and Little Mary smiled and wriggled in their dreams. And John lay listening to the faint, bright ticking and then he heeded some secret and forgotten bidding of his memory and looked at the place where, on the ancient, flowered wallpaper of the bedroom, the moon cast its square of pale light through the windowpane. The branches of the apple tree shook their naked winter fingers in the gusts of harsh wind from the river. And in that new, pale proscenium of light John saw again the dancers, the black horse prancing and the brave little soldier and the clown with his toothpick legs. Now when John shut his left eye the soldier waved his sword gaily and the charging mare frollicked and tossed her forelegs to the stars. And yet something else awaited its cue in the wings of that arena: the shape of a man who had stood there in a lost time long ago. Silently John slipped from beneath the covers into the icy air and stole shivering across the cold floor to the window sill. Then he saw that the black shape had, indeed, returned, standing as it had before, as he had known it would be. John lifted an arm and the specter did the same. He twisted his body that way and this and lifted his arms above his head and wiggled his hands and the shadow mimicked every finger, every nodding lock of bushy hair. Then John felt the cold watch pressing against his naked breast.

  I ain’t afraid of you! he whispered to the shadows. I got a watch that ticks! I got a watch that shines in the dark!

  And with that he scurried back into the bed and lay still for a long while, heart thundering, daring not look to see if the shadow man had been angered as before and had stayed, fixed to that white square of moonlight: watching, waiting, speculating before he moved on, singing down some fateful country lane among dream meadows that were breathless beneath the affrighted moon. At last he forced his eyes to turn again and look and he saw that the man was not there. Only the others remained: the horse dancing and the soldier waving his sword at the circling winter galaxies and the clown pirouetting on his spindly legs. But the night of the hunter was gone forever and the blue men would not come again. And so John pulled the gospel quilt snug around his ear and fell into a dreamless winter sleep, curled up beneath the quaint, stiff calico figures of the world’s forgotten kings, and the strong, gentle shepherds of that fallen, ancient time who had guarded their small lambs against the night.