The Double Hook

by Sheila Watson

  He heard a bark. And then the soft shuffling thud of unshod horse feet and the clink of bit chains. He heard the step boards creak. He sat, his face pendulous above his horizontal bib, his knees wide, his belly resting between his thighs.

  The door opened.

  Felix did not move. His bare feet pressed the boards. His hand still held the cup. For a moment he thought it was Angel come out of some storm of her own.

  It was the Widow’s daughter, Lenchen.

  15

  The girl stood, the door open behind her. Stood resting on her heels as he’d seen Angel stand when she was heavy with young.

  You’d best put your mare in, he said. The stall’s empty. You’re welcome until it’s over.

  She turned and went out. Shaking her hair back from her eyes. Walking in her heeled boots as a man might walk. Rolling. Lurching. As if legs had taken shape from the beast clamped between them. Beast turned to muscle twist. Beast answering movement of shank and thigh.

  Walked in jerky defiance, Felix thought. Like a colt too quickly broken.

  She’s been rid on the curb, Felix thought. And felt the prick of steel.

  He’d never broken Angel. He’d never tried to. He’d lived with her as he’d lived in his father’s cabin. By chance. By necessity. By indifference. He’d thought of nothing but the drift of sunlight, the fin-flick of trout, the mournful brisk music made sweet by repetition.

  Angel had borne his children. She’d hoed his potatoes. One day she’d walked out of his gate and Theophil had taken her away in his wagon. Theophil had lived by himself without wife or children. Now Felix lived by himself. Things came. Things went. A colt was dropped in the pasture. A hen’s nest was robbed. A vine grew or it was blown down.

  He reached for his fiddle and began to play.

  The girl came back and sat on the bench beside the stove. The water was dripping from her hair. Her shirt was rumpled and caught to her skin. She said nothing at all.

  In the sky above evil had gathered strength. It took body writhing and twisting under the high arch. Lenchen could hear the breath of it in the pause. The swift indrawing. The silence of the contracting muscle. The head drop for the wild plunge and hoof beat of it.

  She leant forward a little.

  I wanted Angel, she said. But she’s not at Theophil’s.

  16

  In Greta’s kitchen Angel had set down the lamp.

  Ara thought: Why is James so long coming.

  I suppose William’s gone for the post, Greta said. I’m waiting for the catalogue. There are things one needs from time to time. There are things people think other people have no need of. There are things that other people think people need that no one needs at all.

  She turned to Angel.

  Take her, she said. I don’t want her. I don’t want you coming Ara. I don’t want anything from William. My post I’ll come for myself. James’ll come for it. I don’t want my things pried over and then brought along here. The government pays William to carry our things as far as your post office. No farther. The government pays you to hand me my things out of the sack. I’ll come along and get my catalogue myself. I don’t want anyone coming here disturbing James and me. There’s been more than I could stand. More than anyone could be held responsible for standing. I’ve been waiting all my life. A person waits and waits. You’ve got your own house, Ara. You don’t have to see lamps in the night and hear feet walking on the stairs and have people coming in on you when they should be in their beds. I want this house to myself. Every living being has a right to something.

  17

  James had turned into the barn. Kip had gone off.

  He might have climbed down from his horse, James thought, and set himself on the bottom rung of the ladder leading to the loft. Looking wise. Knowing too much. Like the old lady. Like Greta. Like Angel sitting now in the kitchen. Waiting to catch you in the pits and snares of silence. Mist rising from the land and pressing in. Twigs cracking like bone. The loose boulder and the downdrop. The fear of dying somewhere alone, caught against a tree or knocked over in an inch of water.

  All around the hollow where he’d taken the girl there was nothing but the stems of trees so close packed that a man had to kick loose of the stirrups and leave his legs flat and push forward on his horse’s shoulders to get through them. So still you could hear the frost working in the bark. No other sound except the shift of a horse’s hip and the clink of bit on teeth grazing the short grass. But when he’d looked up he’d seen Kip standing in the pines.

  He went to the door of the barn and looked out through the rain to the house. Since the fury of the morning he’d not been able to act. He’d thrown fear as a horse balks. Then he’d frozen on the trail. He was afraid. He was afraid what Greta might do.

  She had said nothing. She’d not even looked at the door slammed shut. She’d set his breakfast in front of him and had sat herself down in their mother’s chair. While, however his mother lay, he knew, her eyes were looking down where the boards had been laid apart.

  This is the way they’d lived. Suspended in silence. When they spoke they spoke of hammers and buckles, of water for washing, of rotted posts, of ringbone and distemper.

  The whole world’s got distemper, he wanted to shout. You and me and the old lady. The ground’s rotten with it.

  They’d lived waiting. Waiting to come together at the same lake as dogs creep out of the night to the same fire. Moving their lips when they moved them at all as hunters talk smelling the deer. Edged close wiping plates and forks while the old lady sat in her corner. Moved their lips saying: She’ll live forever. And when they’d raised their eyes their mother was watching as a deer watches.

  Now Greta’d sat in the old lady’s chair. Eyes everywhere. In the cottonwoods the eyes of foolhens. Rats’ eyes on the barn rafters. Steers herded together. Eyes multiplied. Eyes. Eyes and padded feet. Coyote moving in rank-smelling.

  Nothing had changed. The old lady was there in every fold of the country. Seen by Kip. Seen by Ara.

  He had to speak. He had to say to Greta: I’m through. I’ll take the girl, and we’ll go away out of the creek and you can stop here or go to William. Or I’ll bring her to wait on you as you waited on Ma. Or I’ll bring her and you can do as you like.

  He could hear the chair grating back on the boards. He could hear her voice dry in his ear: I’ve waited to be mistress in my own house. I never expected anything.

  He could hear Greta listening at doors. He could see her counting the extra wash. Refusing to eat at table. He felt on his shoulder a weight of clay sheets. He smelt the stench of Coyote’s bedhole.

  His horse waited, water dripping from its sides. He stood with his foot on the doorframe. Then went out into the yard. Unsaddled the horse. And turned it into the pasture.

  18

  As James opened the house door the Widow’s boy swung into the yard. Water was running from the scoop of his hat brim. His moosehide jacket was heavy with rain.

  In the sky above darkness had overlaid light. But the boy knew as well as he knew anything that until the hills fell on him or the ground sucked him in the light would come again. He had tried to hold darkness to him, but it grew thin and formless and took shape as something else. He could keep his eyes shut after the night, but it would be light he knew. Light would be flaming off the bay mare’s coat. Light would be kindling on the fish in the dark pools.

  He had met Kip on the road.

  You and your messages, he said. The girl’s gone. I’ve come to speak myself at this end of the creek. If there’s anything any man wants from us, let him come asking on his own feet at our door.

  He untied the knot in his reins and threw his leg over the horn. As he came down his feet slipped in the mud of the dooryard.

  He can’t have her here, he thought. The old lady’s out, but Greta’s not been off in months.

  James opened the door again. This time to look out.

  You’d best put your beast in, he said. The far
stall’s empty.

  The boy walked towards the steps.

  I’m not stopping, he said.

  You’d best come in, James said, till it blows over.

  What I’ve come about won’t blow over, said the boy.

  Then you’d best go away with it, James said.

  The boy saw the door closing. He jumped the steps and caught at the handle, pulling the door open into the wind.

  Behind the metal tank Greta stood fingering the knob. Angel sat at the table. And Ara, in the darkness of the room, her eyes wide under her shaggy bangs.

  Ara! The boy laughed.

  Ara laughed too.

  What’s so funny, she said.

  By God, Ara, the boy said, when I saw you glaring from under that forelock –

  You thought, said Greta, coming round the tank and reaching to pull the kettle over the flame – you thought that James had rounded up the herd. An animal can hide in a herd.

  Angel stood. She picked up the teapot.

  Let it down, Greta said. In this house if tea’s offered –

  I’m clearing away, Angel said.

  I’m come to tell you, the boy said turning to James.

  What won’t blow will keep, James said. Set down.

  I’m come to tell you, the boy said.

  He hesitated. He felt the women about him leaning against his silence.

  His voice dropped. He turned to James.

  I came to tell you, he said, that your Ma’s out in the storm. Before it broke she was down to our place fishing in our pool.

  Not at your place, Ara said. Up beyond us. Up the elbow-joint towards the hills. Up to the source.

  Greta looked at James. Then she turned to the others.

  I ask you, she said, if knowing Ma was out in this I’d not look for her? Do you think James would stand there letting her come to harm? I told you she didn’t go out.

  But it’s easy enough to find out if Ma’s here, Ara said. All we’ve got to do is call her. All we’ve got to do is look. I’ve not been up in your house, Greta. It’s not my place to go.

  I’ve not been up myself lately, Greta said. The thing about stairs is that they separate you from things.

  If your Ma is still sleeping this late in the day, Angel said, she’s sleeping quieter than most living things. There’s no living being don’t turn and creak the bed a little.

  How could we both have seen her? Ara asked. How would we have seen her at both our places? She wasn’t fishing downstream. She was fishing up, and I saw her ahead of me and moving on. Greta just doesn’t know, she said. Go back down to your own creek, James. I saw her there too. There by the cottonwoods when Kip was telling you –

  Oh Kip, said James. It’s always Kip, Kip, Kip.

  Get out, he said, turning to Angel. Go home. The rain’s stopped. Is this the first time it has rained? Is this the first time that no one knows where Ma is? She’ll come back. She always comes back.

  A person has to go out to come back, Greta said.

  She walked across the kitchen and stood by James.

  Go home, Ara, she said.

  Go home, she said to the boy. Ma’s my business and James’s business. Who’s had the care of her all these years that you bother yourself about her now? What makes you choose today to bother?

  It was Ma herself, Ara said.

  James moved away from Greta.

  She’ll be back, James said.

  He opened the door as if to look out.

  Kip was standing on the doorstep, peering into the darkness of the room. Light flowed round him from outside. The sun was shining again low in the sky. The mist rose in wisps from the mud of the dooryard and steamed off the two horses standing there.

  If you want to go down to Wagner’s now, Kip said, I saw your old lady climb down through the split rock with Coyote, her fishes stiff in her hand.

  He smiled.

  The boy’s here, he said. There’s nothing stopping you. I just came to tell you, he said.

  Greta looked at James.

  I knew what you wanted, she said.

  She went to the foot of the stairs and turned to Kip.

  You didn’t see her, she said. You couldn’t. I tell you she’s here.

  Get out, she said. Go way. This is my house. Now Ma’s lying dead in her bed I give the orders here. When a person’s dead in a house there should be a little peace.

  She pointed to the door. But when the others went out James did not move.

  TWO

  1

  After the storm the Widow’s girl did not get up from the bench by Felix Prosper’s stove. Felix sat looking at her. Her eyes shut. Her head settling on her shoulder. Her mouth loose with sleep.

  He wondered: If a bitch crept in by my stove would I let her fall on the hot iron of it? I’ve got no words to clear a woman off my bench. No words except: Keep moving, scatter, get-the-hell-out.

  His mind sifted ritual phrases. Some half forgotten. You’re welcome. Put your horse in. Pull up. Ave Maria. Benedict fructus ventris. Introibo.

  Introibo. The beginning. The whole thing to live again. Words said over and over here by the stove. His father knowing them by heart. God’s servants. The priest’s servants. The cup lifting. The bread breaking. Domine non sum dignus. Words coming. The last words.

  He rolled from his chair. Stood barefoot. His hands raised.

  Pax vobiscum, he said.

  The girl lifted her head. She licked the saliva from the corner of her mouth.

  What the hell, she said.

  Go in peace, he said. Turning away his head. Closing his eyes. Folding his hands across his overalls. Waiting for her to go about her business. With Angel. With anyone. Leaving him alone after the storm.

  The girl looked at him.

  I got no place to go, she said.

  He’d had his say. Come to the end of his saying. He put a stick on the fire. There was nothing else he could do.

  2

  I thought it best to go straight on when Angel told me, William said to Ara. The strange thing, he said, is that you should have been there below stairs with Greta and James. What a person has a right to is his kin. There’s enough things half-cocked in life, he said, without scrambling out of it any which way.

  What a person would like to have, he said, is the grain brought in and the tools wiped and put away and the ropes coiled and the animals in their stalls.

  I didn’t intend to be there, Ara said. It just happened. I was sure I’d seen her fishing past the house. Then something led me to go and speak to James.

  She wasn’t in her bed, William said. She was laying on the floor, her rod broke beside her and the line tangled in the hook.

  And Greta below stairs drinking tea with Angel, Ara said. And James with his horse saddled about to go off. A house isn’t a range, she said. So big that a man can’t keep track of what goes on in all corners.

  I know, William said, but a man gets used to things being as they are from day to day. It’s always when a man sleeps that his barn burns down to a fistful of ash.

  But Greta knew, Ara said.

  There’s no telling, William said, how a person will act. A man would be hard pressed to know what a person would do. James did nothing, he said. He just let her lie. He wouldn’t move to put a hand on her. And Greta, he said, trying to send me off before I’d ever looked. You’ve no notion, he said to Ara, how curious a person can be.

  He unlaced his boots and set them behind the stove. He stood in the centre of the linoleum, tracing the edge of a square with his toe. Pressing his toe up and down in his grey woollen sock.

  I’ve handled lots of dead things, he said. But it didn’t seem right to lay a finger on her. She was dry and brittle as a grasshopper, he said. A man does what he can. I’ve seen men die in winter stowed away in trees until spring thawed the ground soft enough for digging. In summer a man can’t wait.

  He sat down at the table. Ara opened the oven and took out a plate of food which she set before him. He took a kn
ife and fork out of the tumbler on the table and began to eat.

  3

  Ara left him. She went to the parlour and opened Greta’s catalogue. She heard William shoving aside his plate. Pulling his boots on again. Going out through the back to do his night chores.

  She opened the front door. The land was humped against the sky. Noisy and restless in its silence.

  She went out into the night.

  From the corner of the house she could see William’s lantern in the stable. She could see him leading a horse out to water. She could hear the other horses’ lips moving in the dry hay. She wished she had some living chore to busy herself with now. She’d locked the chickens away for the night. They would be standing edged together on their poles.

  The ground was dry under her foot. She thought she heard hoof-beats in the distance. And as she turned back to the house, an owl passing in the dark called out to her Weep-for-yourself. Weep-for-yourself.

  4

  The boy sat by the lake edge. Ply on ply, night bound the floating images of things.

  They had stood like a crowd of fools outside of James’s door. He and Ara and Angel. Since Kip had gone off.

  Having come together by accident, Ara said.

  Sent by William, answered Angel.

  Perhaps because he’d had word, Ara said, that his mother was sick or that some accident had happened. Perhaps, she’d said, brought together by sympathy.

  And what sympathy could one have for Greta. Angel’d asked. Since Greta never thought of anyone. Not even herself. Only what had been done to her. An old hen pheasant, Angel said. Never bred. Looking for mischief. Trying to break up other birds’ nests.

  When they’d gone, the boy had hung around thinking:

  I’ll pull James out and make him speak. There won’t be women to interfere. Wondering what he’d do if James answered his question. Waiting for James to open the door again. When he’d heard William’s truck he’d ridden round through the brush to the lake, thinking he’d go back when William had taken himself off. Thinking he’d go back and surprise James at his night chores.