Heed the Thunder

by Jim Thompson

  Tiptoeing into the bedroom allocated to him and his mother, he sat down on his cot and began changing into the clothes he was supposed to wear to school tomorrow. He put on the new overalls, admiring the copper stapling of the suspenders; he put on the jumper, the stocking cap, and the new sheeplined coat. The boots, the prize of the ensemble, he saved until the last. They were, he knew, just like those the cowboys and policemen wore—knobby-toed, thick-soled affairs which extended halfway up his legs and buckled at the top. Reluctantly, he covered their magnificence with overshoes.

  He pulled out the lower drawer of the dresser, climbed upon it, and stood staring at himself in the mirror. He had new red mittens, too, connected with each other by a length of yarn. Spreading his arms, he tried to see if the yarn would break; and the dresser rose precariously on its rear legs. He bent his knees and let his arms drop, and the dresser settled back to the floor. He rocked it back and forth several times, thinking:

  Papa would be coming to see him next week, or next month, or next year. Or tonight, maybe, if he was a good boy. Maybe tonight, Mama had said. It would be sometime very soon, anyway:

  There would be lots of good stuff to eat at Sherman’s for supper. There was always lots of good stuff at Sherman’s. He had told Ma so, and she:

  Papa had bounced an egg one time. It had been ’way off somewhere, and he wasn’t a big man like he was now, and Papa had tossed the egg to him and it had bounced up and hit him in the nose and he had cried a little and Papa had spanked the egg, making it bounce harder than ever, and then they had both laughed:

  That was a ball, though. You couldn’t bounce eggs. Everyone knew that. Balls were like clothes without anything in them. You couldn’t bounce anything with anything in it unless…unless…well, unless you could:

  Papa wore clothes, too. Mama wore clothes, and Pa wore clothes, and Ma, and Sherman, and Alf, and Grant, and the man made you buy clothes. You gave him about a hundred or a million dollars and he gave you the clothes.

  With everything thus settled in his mind, Robert went back out to the porch and stood self-consciously between his uncle and grandfather.

  “Well, now you look almost like a boy,” said Lincoln with warm approval, and Sherman emitted a noncommittal grunt.

  “What does that cider taste like?” asked Robert, encouraged by their reception of him.

  “Oh, kind of like chocolate ice cream sody,” said the old man.

  “Can I have some?”

  “Why,” said Sherman, “you don’t like sodys, do you?”

  “Uh-huh. Sure, I do, Sherman.”

  “He’s just joking you, Sherm,” said Lincoln. “He don’t really like ’em. He told me he didn’t.”

  “I de-ud not!” cried Robert, frantically and emphatically. “I do, too, like ’em, Sherman. I do, I do, I do!”

  “Well, that’s the goddamnedest thing I ever heard of,” said Sherman. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t’ve drank it all.”

  The boy looked from one man to the other. Sheepishly, he realized that they had been teasing him again. Pa and Sherman were always teasing him, Pa ’specially, but he kept forgetting how they were. Once again, he resolved inwardly to discount their statements in the future.

  “We ready to go, now, Sherman?” he asked.

  “I reckon,” said Sherman, reaching for his overshoes.

  “You behave yourself over there to Sherman’s,” said Link.

  “I will.”

  “Well, where you wanderin’ off to, now?”

  “Just to tell Ma good-by. I ain’t—I haven’t told her good-by yet.”

  “Oh,” said Lincoln, and he chewed his cigar angrily.

  Mrs. Fargo was asleep when Robert entered her bedroom, but Robert did not know it. She was lying with her face to the wall, the covers drawn up over her head, and the room was dark.

  He said, “Hello, Ma,” softly; then, “Good-by, Ma.”

  She didn’t answer, but he thought nothing of that. She was in the habit of taking her time in answering him, valuing his time at nothing and her own at a great deal. Just why he felt impelled to tell her good-by he did not know, but he was sure that he had to. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, there was an admonition of his mother’s: “Always tell Ma if you go off any place.”

  “Ma,” he said. “Oh, Ma.”

  He stepped up to the side of the bed and said, “Ma!” And Mrs. Fargo stirred a little but did not speak. She had been sleeping badly since the night the parson had disappeared with the deed. Now, she was catching up.

  “Oh, Ma. Ma!”

  He giggled suddenly, nervously. Maybe she was playing with him, like Mama, or Pa. Pa played like that. He would pretend to be asleep; then, when Bobbie tried to slip up on him, he would reach out and poke him with his cane. Maybe Ma was playing. Maybe she liked him, now, and wanted to play like he and Pa did.

  Taking hold of the head of the bedstead, he inserted a foot between the rail and springs, and stood teetering precariously above her. He leaned over her and his feet slipped. With a wild shout of, “MAW!” he fell on top of her.

  Mrs. Fargo cried out, wildly, and tried to raise herself. She struck out blindly with both hands, flinging him to the floor. She sat up, hysterical, not fully awake, and clutched her head, sobbing, for a button of his sheeplined coat had caught in her topknot.

  Robert got to his feet. “Good-by, Ma,” he said.

  “What? What’s that?” said the old woman.

  “I just came in to tell you good-by.”

  Mrs. Fargo looked at him incredulously, rocking her head. “Up to some meanness again, wasn’t you? What was you tryin’ to do, kill me?”

  “Huh-uh. I just—”

  “You get out of here!” snapped his grandmother, her face a mask of hatred. “Get out! Get out! Get out!…”

  She swung her legs to the floor, grasping for him with a furious, wrinkled hand; and Robert got out.

  “Well, did you tell your gran’ma good-by?” asked Sherman.

  “Uh-huh. But she didn’t tell me.”

  Robert’s face was white, and he was shaking a little. He had hurt Ma, and she would tell Mama; and maybe Mama would go off, way off, some place and leave him.

  “I think I made Ma mad,” he said.

  “Huh!” Lincoln scowled scornfully. “Well, don’t let it worry you none. I’ll tell you good-by twice. How’ll that be?”

  “Fine,” said Robert.

  “All right. Good-by, good-by. Take care of him, Sherm.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” said Sherman. “I’ll cut his ears off and nail ’em to a fence post.”

  And he grinned sourly as the boy burst into laughter.

  7

  In the bitter winter dusk, the house of Sherman Fargo rose above the snowbound valley like a friendly wraith. The bleak ridges of the sand-hills echoed with the coyotes’ call; a brazen bobcat’s tracks marked its owner’s fearless passage across the barnyard; and down along the frozen Calamus the wolves wept shiveringly. But the house stood impregnable, protective, challenging.

  The house was a good house, structurally; it had to be. From an architectural standpoint it was hideous. Like almost every other well-to-do farmer’s house, it had been built for a family which was only potential, which existed only in the parents’ loins, at the time of construction; and the ambition, the frugality, and the lack of maturity of those parents showed plainly in the building. There were eleven rooms, although Sherman had but five children and would have no more. The inevitable parlor had gained its space, used, perhaps, a half-dozen times a year, at the expense of the living room; and the living room, caught between the drafts of a large stained-glass window and the stairway, was difficult to heat. The kitchen was spacious enough; but because of a milk room (Sherman had all but dropped his dairy business), which practically enclosed it on two sides, it was dark, and, in summer, stifling. Over all, there hung the economy of those generous and unnecessary bedrooms. There was a porch, a lower one, right-angling around the faça
de of the building, but it contributed little aesthetically and nothing at all utilitarian. There was room and to spare in the house, and the house was too far from the road to see or be seen. The only other relief, aside from the multiped lightning-rod system, was a small platform transfixed by the main chimney and enclosed by a balustrade of gingerbread scrollwork. It had cost nothing, being by way of lagniappe for an expensive job.…It was a bastard house, sired by hope out of a dead faith. To Robert Dillon it was the finest, the best, the friendliest house in the world.

  As he and Sherman rode into the yard, a tiny face that had been pressed against the kitchen window disappeared, the back door flew open, and little Ruthie Fargo came toddling down the steps.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Sherman stopped the sleigh and held out his arms. “Okay, kid. Come a-runnin’!”

  He snatched her up, pulled her beneath his heavy coat, and they rode on toward the barn.

  “Them damn’ big brothers of yours finished the milkin’ yet?”

  “Huh-uh,” said Ruthie. “Nopff, Daddy.”

  “Goddam their hides,” said Sherman. “Bob, you want to do something while I’m unhitching? Go down and tell Gus and Ted to get a move on. Tell ’em to kick plenty of hay down to the cows, too. Cows need lots more this weather.”

  “All right, Sherman,” said Robert.

  “Tell ’em to step lively, now, or I’ll make ’em wish they had.”

  “All right,” said Robert.

  He got out of the sleigh and started across the lot to the cowshed; and Sherman and Ruthie rode on into the black depths of the great red barn.

  Augustus Fargo was thirteen, a year older than his brother Theodore, but they were practically the same size and they looked so much alike that, at first blush, many people took them for twins. They were wiry, square-shouldered lads, buck-toothed and with little close-set eyes which danced constantly with mean merriment.

  They approved heartily of Robert Dillon. Sensitive to his helplessness, they admired his willingness to try anything. Then, too, he had been to far-away places and had interesting things to tell.

  By the dim light of their lantern, Robert saw them seated in opposite stalls. Their milkpails were nearly full, and they were wasting the residue by “jerking teats” at each other. Their faces were white with milk, and they were shaking with laughter as they leaned back on their stools.

  They greeted Robert with profuse, if profane, warmth; and he gave them their father’s message.

  “Oh, he said that, did he?” scowled Gus with pretended ferocity. His voice dropped into Sherman’s explosively controlled tones. “Well, I’ll show that son-of-a-bitch!”

  While Ted and Robert quaked with mirth, he got up and lumbered back and forth, rolling his shoulders, imitating his father to a t. “Haah!” he snorted. “Where’s me a pitchfork? HI’ll shove it so far up his butt he can smoke it for a cigar!”

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” jeered Ted, “you couldn’t lick a cold cowchip!”

  “I couldn’t because you eat ’em all!”

  “Yah!”

  “Yah!”

  They frowned at each other happily.

  “You better get busy,” said Robert.

  “Well, maybe we had,” said Gus. “The old man an’ lady’s gettin’ too damned old to eat real grub. If we don’t get their pap in to ’em, they’re liable to keel over.”

  “I hope the old lady falls outdoors if she’s got to fall,” said Ted. “I’d sure as hell hate to carry her out.”

  “Well, get busy,” said Gus, resuming his stool. “And no more milk-fighting.”

  “No more milk-fighting,” his brother agreed.

  Each turned and buried his head in his cow’s flank. Each grasped two teats. Each whirled, swiftly, and squirted milk at the other.

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” they said in unison.

  Gus arose suddenly, threw his pail of milk over his brother, and ran. Ted grabbed up his pail and hurled it. It caught Gus between the shoulders, knocking him flat and showering him with milk. Gus lay where he fell, howling with merriment, and his brother howled with him, slapping his knees.

  Robert was amused but frightened.

  “Now what you going to do?” he asked solemnly.

  “Well, by God, Bob,” said Gus, arising and brushing himself, “we got a problem there, all right. What do you say, Ted?”

  Ted sponged at his clothes with his bandanna. “Goddam if I know, Gus. Go in and take a hiding, I guess.”

  “Hell, I hate to do that.”

  “Well, we got to do something pretty quick. What you afraid of a hiding for, you sissy bastard?”

  “I ain’t afraid. I just don’t like to give the old lady the fun.”

  “Bob, you’re a smart man,” said Ted, oldishly. “What do you think we ought to do?”

  Robert beamed, and struggled with the problem. “Could you fill the pails with water?”

  “No—that’s a damned good idea, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. You see, we got to have something—”

  “I got it!” yelled Gus, breaking into another howl.

  “Yeah?” grinned Ted.

  “Sure! The hog lot!”

  Ted roared. “Y-you mean the slop barrel?”

  Gus nodded, tears of merriment streaming from his eyes.

  “Goddam! We will get skinned, then!”

  “What the hell? G-goddam, c-can’t you just see the old lady’s face when—”

  “Goddamit,” said Ted, “it’s a go.”

  Picking up their pails, the brothers went out the rear of the cowshed toward the hoglot, and Robert danced along at their side, giggling nervously. He had seen Josephine, the boys’ mother, in action, and knew something of the danger that lay ahead. At the same time, he had a great deal of faith in the ability of Ted and Gus to absorb punishment—and get out of it. It would be funny. It would be the worst yet. Suddenly his giggles turned into shrill laughter. And his cousins haw-hawed and dropped their arms around his shoulders.

  The slop barrel, with its accumulation of skim milk, dishwater, and garbage, was frozen over; and Gus climbed upon the fence and kicked in the ice with his heel. They filled their pails quickly, then shone the lantern into them. The stuff looked like milk and was, of course, a good part. Ted fished out some potato peelings from his pail, and Gus removed an egg shell from his.

  They started back to the house, warning one another against any display of amusement.

  The family had already sat down at the table when they arrived, and they left their pails in the milk room and washed hastily. They slid onto a bench at the end of the table, Robert between his two cousins.

  Josephine Fargo looked at them suspiciously over her heaped plate of eggs, pork chops, beefsteak, fresh hominy, mashed potatoes, and kraut. (She had been ailing, recently, and had not felt equal to fixing a regular supper.)

  “What was you devils up to down there?” she demanded.

  Robert snickered, and the loyal brothers joined him; and Josephine frowned at them, flabbily.

  She was a quaking, bread-pudding of a woman, with a tiny wad of hair and a nose like a button. Her words were pulled from her mouth by wheezing aspirates, and she seemed to lick their leavings as she licked the food which dribbled from her buck-toothed mouth. Her folks were sand-hillers, and did not amount to much. She had the ferociousness of a rat and the timidity of a mouse, and the two emotions struggled constantly for supremacy. Sherman had married her, so he said, during the year of the blackleg, when nothing but scrub stock survived. He had married her (he said) by way of relieving the overworked buzzards of the sand-hills. He had said such things in his savage inhibited jesting until they had almost attained the stature of facts; and to her, the smothering dropsy creeping over her rawboned frame, they were truth. She could regurgitate the cud of her hell, but a new one soon formed; it was like the poisonous lead under a painter’s nails—painfully scraped away each night and reaccumulating the day following by the inevitabilities of existe
nce. Every waddling step, every lift of her puffy arms, every aspirated word, brought the chameleonic truth back to her.

  Some nights—even some days—she dreamed that a gawky rosy-cheeked girl slipped out of the mountain of fat. And with a morose, roughly affectionate young man, she ran laughing across the virgin prairie or lay supple and submissive among the willows of the bayou. She made coffee over a cowchip fire, and sipped from the cup from which the young man drank, and their lips brushed the same things, and their bodies and their thoughts were one. Together they uprooted the tough sod; together they nursed the cane-bloated yearling. And there was sunlight, sun always upon the snow, the grass crisp or green, the warm or frigid Calamus.…

  It had never happened, though. Time had made it incredible. One cannot believe the unbelievable.

  “What you doin’ there?” she wheeze-whined at Robert, and he broke again into giggles. It sounded like “Huh-wat hyooo ha-dooin’ there?”

  “Nothin’,” said Robert.

  “What you wastin’ all your food for?” She motioned puffily at his plate.

  On it were three eggs from which he had carefully trimmed away the whites. He had eaten nothing but the lean part of his meat. He had helped himself generously to hominy before deciding, remembering, rather, that he didn’t like it.

  “I ain’t wasting it, Josephine.”

  “What’s the matter?” said Sherman. “Ain’t we got enough to eat in the house? Maybe we better go over to the neighbors.”

  “We got plenty,” said Josephine, sullenly. “You don’t look like you was starving.”

  “Well, I was beginning to wonder,” said Sherman. And he took the meat platter and scraped a full pound of ham onto Robert’s plate. The boy trimmed the fat from it, but left it otherwise untouched.

  After supper, he and his cousins and Sherman went into the living room. Sherman drew a rocker in front of the cherry-red stove, and the boys ranged themselves, standing, behind it. Sherman lit his pipe, studying them with sour, proud slyness.

  “What kept you so long down there in the cowshed?”