Heed the Thunder

by Jim Thompson

  But she was still Bob Dillon’s girl, and now, as she lingered in front of the hotel on this late-summer afternoon, she was about to become his in the ultimate meaning of the term.

  “Come on, Paulie!” he hissed through the screen. “Come on, now. You promised you would.”

  “But I’m afraid, Bobbie!” She looked fearfully over her shoulder and one of her long brown braids swung over her maturing bosom. “I saw Daddy looking out the window a while ago.”

  “Well, he won’t know what you’re going to do! You’re over here half the time, aren’t you?”

  She giggled. “I am not, either!”

  “Paulie! You come in here!”

  “I’m afraid y-your mother—”

  “Dammit, I told you she was out at my grandfather’s. Now, come on!”

  He thrust the screen open, and with a last frightened glance she scurried inside. Grabbing her by the hand, he hustled her up the stairs. He unlocked a vacant room with his skeleton key, pulled her inside, and locked the door behind them. Foresightedly, he had drawn the shades beforehand.

  He looked down at her in the dusky room and she, blushing, laid her head against his chest. Awkwardly, he put his arms around her, and they hugged one another.

  “I’m afraid, Bobbie.…”

  “What are you afraid of? I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Well, it’s not nice.…”

  He shrugged, sighed with vast impatience; and her arms instantly tightened around him.

  “Don’t be mad at me, Bobbie. I—I will.”

  “Well, come on, then!”

  He led her over to the bed and gave her pointed instructions. The blush deepened on her cream-and-peaches cheeks, even as the great humble eyes grew moist and the pouting breasts trembled.

  “You’ve got to look the other way,” she faltered.

  “Dammit, how can I?”

  “I mean, until I’m ready.”

  “All right,” he sighed, and turned his back.

  There was silence for a moment; then a hopping sound as she stood first on one foot, then the other. There was a crinkling of stiffly starched gingham, a rustling of taffeta, and a snapping of elastic.

  The bed creaked.

  “All right,” she said in a muffled voice.

  He turned around and almost burst into laughter.

  She was on her knees with her face buried in the pillow. Her dress was neatly turned up around her bare pear-shaped bottom.

  He did smile, but it was a smile of tenderness and love. Gently he lay down at her side and pulled her prone, facing him. He patted her pink bottom playfully as if he had been years the older of the two.

  “That’s not the way, Paulie. You have to lie on your back.”

  “Oh…” He could feel the flush of her cheek, pressed so closely to his.

  “Well, Paulie…”

  “Let’s just kiss, Bobbie.”

  “All right.”

  “You’d rather, wouldn’t you? You’ll like me better, won’t you, if we just kiss?”

  “I like you any way, Paulie.”

  She snuggled closer; her lips moved, flower-like, against his ear.

  “Tell me you love me, Bobbie.”

  “I love you.”

  “And you’ll always love me.”

  “I’ll always love you, Paulie.”

  Somehow, her soft round arm was inside his shirt. Her hand moved over his back and shoulders, timidly at first, then with strange sureness and firmness. Her other hand went to his head, pushing the hair back from his face while she stared into his eyes.

  There was so much there, so much that was ancient and wise in the great slate-gray pools, that suddenly it was he who felt young and foolish and frightened. And she saw those things, felt them, knew them almost before they occurred; and her eyes closed and her lips parted. She pulled his mouth down against hers. She held it there while she slowly, carefully turned her body.…

  …Downstairs the phone rang again and again. It rang four times within an hour, and each time the DeHart girl lumbered in from the kitchen to answer it, she shouted up the stairs and down the street for Bob Dillon. She told Edie, at last, that she hadn’t seen the scamp since noon and that if she wasted any more time looking for him, there wouldn’t be no supper that night. She banged up the receiver and went back to the kitchen mumbling to herself.

  And at Lincoln Fargo’s house, Edie returned to the bedroom where her father lay dying.

  “I can’t get ahold of him, Pa. Maybe he’s on the way out here.”

  “Maybe,” nodded Lincoln.

  “Anyway,” said his daughter brightly, “he’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Lincoln snorted feebly and gave her a doggish look from his yellow eyes.

  “Goddam if he won’t,” he said.

  He was propped up on the pillows in his great mahogany bed. His beloved cane lay across his lap. There was a bottle of whisky at his side and a long black stogie between his fingers. For, hell, as Doc Jones had said, he couldn’t hurt himself any and he might as well be comfortable.

  He had said good-by to them all: to Sherman’s kids, one by one, with rude but gentle jests; to his wife, singly, with forced patience; to Sherman, alone, in a long, thoughtful talk; to Josephine, by a shout through the door; to Alf and Myrtle, together, with a few polite nothings. To Edie.…He was still saying good-by to Edie.

  The others remained in the living room, talking in hushed tones, now and then looking in at the door.

  “I’m sure sorry, Pa,” said Edie, worriedly. “Bobbie’s just thoughtless. He—”

  “He’s just a boy.” His gaze became level. “Remember that.”

  “All right, Pa.”

  “It’s easy to forget that a kid’s a kid. Forgot it lots of times myself. I always excused myself—tried to, anyways—on the grounds that I’d never really been a kid myself. But that’s no excuse. All you need to do is let ’em be; let ’em be what they are. Most always it’s pretty good. If it don’t look good to us, it’s generally because we don’t know what’s good and what ain’t.”

  While Edie watched him anxiously, wanting to protest, he took a drink from the bottle and a long pull from his stogie. He coughed and batted smoke from his eyes.

  “Yes, goddam,” he said. “Kids and animals, they know. You see a hog eatin’ cinders and you think he’s a damned fool. He ain’t though; he knows what he needs. You see a kid doing something that looks foolish, and he knows what he needs, too. But you bat him over the head and growl and nag at him, and he stops doing it. An’ maybe…”

  “Yes, Pa?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Pa…don’t worry about Grant.”

  “We went off and left him there alone in Kansas City, Edie. He wasn’t any more’n a mite. He wasn’t—hell, he wasn’t anywheres near as big as Bob. He was a little bit older than Bob was when you first come here. I remember…I remember, he knew we was leaving, and he was afraid we wasn’t goin’ to take him along. He used to follow Ma around from morning until night, watchin’ to see that she didn’t slip off without him. He was always…he was always kind of afraid of me. But after I went back there to get you folks, he’d keep hangin’ around, tryin’ to do little things to get on the good side of me. One night he slipped down and got the stove-blackin’ and dobbed my shoes all up with it, and I…I…”

  Edie bit her lip. “Don’t, Pa. You weren’t ever mean to anyone.”

  “I never meant to be. But I remember…I remember the day we left. The printer he was bound to came to get him, and…and you see, Edie, we thought it was best for him. He wasn’t big enough to be any help around a farm, and…sometimes I think I can hear him screamin’ yet, beggin’ us not to leave him there.…”

  He took another long drink. Coughing, he leaned over the side of the bed and spat on the papers spread out upon the floor. He settled back again, puffing deeply at the stogie.

  “I wish I could have seen Bob, Edie.”

  “You will, Pa. He’ll come
along afterwhile.…I just don’t know what’s got into him lately. He’s absolutely no help at all. He won’t do his lessons at school. I’m just going to have to give him a good talking-to, I guess.”

  Lincoln rolled his eyes at her.

  “Was there—was there anything you wanted me to tell him, Pa?”

  “I guess not, Edie.” He laughed softly.

  Mrs. Fargo came to the doorway and looked in.

  “I was goin’ to fix a bite to eat, Pa. You want anything?”

  “No, thank you, Ma.”

  “You want me to talk—you want to talk to me, any?”

  Her husband shook his head. “We’ve been talkin’ something over fifty years, Ma,” he said gently. “I don’t see much point in another hour or so.”

  She went away, face sullen, eyes red. After a time Sherman rocked in, his stubby pipe clenched between his teeth.

  “Myrtle and Alf was sayin’ we ought to have Doc Jones out again. What do you think, Pa?”

  “I don’t see any point in it, Sherman.”

  “Well, I don’t either,” Sherman admitted. “But you know how they are.”

  “Just tell ’em to run along home after they’ve et. Tell ’em I’ll see ’em tomorrow.”

  “Well, hell,” Sherman protested. “You won’t.…Goddamit!” He broke off to blow his nose. “Catchin’ another goddamned cold,” he explained.

  “It’s bad weather for colds. A person gets so hot, and then they sit down to cool off and they catch cold,” said Edie.

  And her brother looked at her gratefully.

  “Take you a drink,” Lincoln suggested.

  “Now, maybe I ought to. Nothing like whisky for a cold.” He turned the bottle up, took three long swallows, and laid it back at his father’s side. “You suppose you’ll be all right if I run over home for a while? The milkin’ ain’t done yet, and them goddamned ornery boys—”

  He broke off, and for a moment his face was almost entirely blank.

  “Hell,” he said, “I ain’t in no hurry.” And he turned and swaggered out.

  “Poor Sherman,” said Edie.

  “Yes,” said Lincoln.

  “Sometimes it just seems like the harder a body tries, the worse off they wind up.”

  They sat in silence for a long time. Now and then Lincoln drank while his daughter protested with her eyes. Once he reached for a match, and she leaped up and lit his cigar for him. Then she settled back again. Waiting.

  The windmill croaked and moaned, dismally, as the evening breeze tugged at its blades. Cawing, their claws clicking against the board walks, the chickens marched leisurely toward the hen house. Far, far away, there was a long drawn-out sooooie-sooiepig-soo-ooo-ooie.

  In the town the Catholic Church bell began to toll.

  Lincoln stirred. Shyly, he looked at his daughter.

  “Edie,” he said, in a shamed voice, “you reckon there’s a hell?”

  Edie nodded her head firmly. “I know doggoned well there is. And you don’t have to dig for it.”

  Lincoln laughed. Comforted, he took another drink.

  “I was just thinking about Sherman…”

  “Sherman will get along all right, Pa.”

  “I don’t mean him. Well, I was thinking about him, too. But I meant the other one—General Sherman.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was with Sherman, you know. Marched clear through to the sea with him. Never talked much about it. I guess I never”—he coughed, violently, but waved her back as she started to rise—“I guess I never liked to think about it. I figured I ought to be proud—I kind of had to be proud, y’see—and I couldn’t when I stopped to think, so I didn’t think any more than I had to. We used to have these meetings, up until a few years back, where we waved the bloody shirt, and sang all the old ones like ‘Marching through Georgia’ and ‘John Brown’s Body,’ and even that bothered me. And then, before that, we ran out every Southern sympathizer we could find, an’…I guess I knew that was wrong, too. But I went right along with the others an’ kept myself from really thinking.…”

  “They’d’ve done the same thing to you, Pa.”

  “I don’t know, Edie. Maybe, maybe not. I ain’t very smart. It seems to me, though, that there was never a fight or a killin’ or a war yet that wasn’t started to keep someone from doin’ something to someone else. If they got a chance.…

  “It was a mighty pretty land, Edie, the South. An’ from what I seen of the people, they were fair decent. Never saw a one of ’em that had horns or a tail. ’Bout all you could say was wrong with ’em was that they weren’t Northerners an’ their thinking apparatus didn’t quite tick with ours.…But that seemed to be enough.

  “So we run ’em off their places, their homes, an’ then we burnt ’em to the ground after we’d carried off everything that was worth carrying. We done it because we knew they’d’ve done the same thing to us if they’d had the chance. We done it because they’d done some shameful things to us, because they knowed we’d’ve done the same things to them if we’d had the chance.…”

  “Pa, don’t drink any more.…”

  “There’s not much left, Edie.” Lincoln lay back with his eyes closed; he gasped painfully, and there was a low rattle in his chest.

  Edie got up. She watched him, hesitating.

  “You want me to get the others, Pa? Shall I—”

  “Bob—Bob ain’t come yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ll go call again, and—”

  “No. No, don’t you do that, Edie.” The color came back into his face, and the gasping slackened. He sat up again.

  “I guess we don’t never learn, Edie. We don’t never learn. There ain’t none of us can tell whether it’ll rain the next day or not. We don’t know whether our kids are goin’ to be boys or girls. Or why the world turns one way instead of another. Or—or the what or why or when of anything. Hindsight’s the only gift we got, except on one thing. On that, we’re all prophets.

  “We know what’s in the other fellow’s mind. It don’t make no difference that we’ve never seen him before, or whatever. We know he’s out to do us if he gets the chance.”

  “Pa!”

  “You got plenty of time to talk, Edie. I ain’t.…We came to a house one day—not far out of Atlanta it was—and I was bringin’ up the rear, an’ all I got was a book. Don’t know why I bothered to take it, but I did. Guess I just had takin’ ways. Well, so I took it an’ I read quite a bit of it before I got tired packin’ it around. It’d been wrote a long time before and it didn’t make much sense to me, then…but part of it stuck in my head and I used to mull it over, and tonight, when that bell started ringin’, it sort of reminded me of it again.…

  “I don’t remember the words no more, but I got the idea. I know what the fellow was thinkin’, and I know he was right. I know now, maybe, what the Bible means when it talks about a sparrer falling—I mean, every time there’s a death, the whole world dies a little. There ain’t no death, no deed, no o-mission or co-mission that don’t leave its mark.…

  “We burn off a forest, an’ all we see is the cleared land, an’ the profit. We burn the forest because we say it’s ours to burn, an’ we can do what we want with what’s ours. We burn it, an’ the birds leave, an’ the grubs come, and the grain don’t grow so good. And there’s hot winds and dust.

  “We plow up the prairie because it’s ours to plow, and we dam up the cricks because they’re ours to dam. We grab everything we can while the grabbin’s good, because it’s ours an’ because some other fellow will do it if we don’t.…And, hell, there ain’t nothin’ that’s really ours, and we don’t know what’s in the other fellow’s mind.…

  “I had a thousand acres once. I said it was mine.

  “Sherman had a hundred and sixty clear. He said it was his.

  “And we was just two out of thousands, out of millions.

  “I remember when the hay-flats—what we call the sand-hills, now—was fair land. It wasn’t as deep as the va
lley and more loamy, but it was fair land. It was hay country, like I said, and any damned fool could see it was. But the people wasn’t satisfied to grow hay. It wasn’t enough money for ’em, and it was their land, they said, and if they didn’t grow grain, someone else would.…So they had half a county, and they still got it—and they got something else along with it: sand and cactus an’ buzzards and rattlesnakes an’ months on end of drought, an’ half-starved rickety kids that’s going to grow up to do with what’s been given to them.…

  “And now we ship in most of our hay. Prob’ly from fellows who ought to be growin’ wheat.

  “I had a son, an’ he was mine. And what he done was mine, too. Fifty years or more ago we marched through Georgia, and it was ours. And, now, Ted and Gus…Ted an’ Gus…”

  Edie had begun to sob. The tears, at last, had broken through her Fargo reserve.

  “It’s no good cryin’, Edie,” said the old man.

  “D-don’t you w-want me to call the—”

  “I don’t see no point in it. It’s too late. But—but tell Bob…tell him…”

  “Pa!” screamed Edie. “Ma! Sherman—Sherman!”

  Lincoln’s eyes grew wider and wider. They stood out in his head like yellow apples. His hands went to his throat, seeming to claw at the rattle there. He gasped and a cable of blood and mucus rolled out of his sunken mouth. He looked around wildly, searching, and one of his hands ceased its clawing and gripped the cane. Twisting, he swung it viciously.

  “You sons-of-bitches!” he roared, and then he fell back. And with the last twitch of his fingers, he flung the stick from him.

  He had no use for canes.

  26

  A month after Lincoln Fargo died, his wife turned the place over to Sherman and moved into the hotel. She did not want to, nor did she have to, for, while Lincoln had taken title to it after the deed-to-God fiasco, he had left it to her during her lifetime, with Sherman the ultimate heir. But Sherman needed money badly, now, and she did not need so much room, and so she moved.