All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (42 page)

He inquired at the stables; the Negro stableboy was not sure where she had gone. He gestured in a southwesterly direction. Jackson took off his coat and loosened his tie and got back into the scorching car. He pulled the brim of his Baku straw hat lower, tilting it against the sun-bounce off the car's hood, the brilliance of the sky.

All the roads were dirt, for the most part straight and pale through the knee-high cotton, through dusty green soybean fields. Trees appeared in oasislike clumps, their shade closely packed with somnolent cattle. He stopped at a cotton gin, but no one there had seen her. At a railroad siding he passed the private car in which he and Champ had completed their journey from Kansas City. Seeing it revived sensations rather than memories. The way behind him was laden with dust, impenetrable.

He drove fast and mindlessly, quartering the huge plantation, thinking only of the horse and rider, feeling the relentless pull of Nhora, erect and galloping, somewhere just beyond his reach. The car, needing only a robot's touch on brake or gas pedal, going slowly out of his control, an instrument of the destructiveness of time. Chutes and sloughs, low glitter of an oblong pond, willow trees, a spillway. The heat over all, shimmering. Then fallow ground, brush arbors, and, nearer the river, rise and fall of wooded ridges, limestone outcrops. Noon. Birds and shadowless pine trees, fencewire, the road dwindling to a muddy impasse. A gate. A sign.

DASHAROONS

PRIVATE HUNTING PRESERVE

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Silence, as he left the car. Galaxies of insects, spinning nowhere, lifespan of a single day. He saw the roof lines of some low rustic buildings through a stand of oak and tulip poplar, and walked that way, stepping into a clearing dominated by massive stone barbecue pits, a taint of old feasting. The riderless stallion, suddenly aware of him, threw up its head in alarm and snorted. Lofty trees here, interlaced branches, a hothouse stillness, the sun falling in glimmers across the moss-covered, swaggy ground. Green, damp scent of humus rising with every step he took. The horse's saddle had been removed and thrown over the railing of a long porch. There were shutters over every window.

As he was about to call, Nhora came around the corner of the main lodge, limping a little as if she'd picked up a stone bruise in the thin leather riding boots she wore. Strands of hair were loose across her face. She was drinking from a tin cup as she walked.

She looked at him and stopped, clearly anxious, as if he wasn't recognizable at a distance of a hundred feet or more. Jackson humbly removed his hat. Leaves stirred, there was a change of light-play around her head simultaneous with the glow of recognition in her eyes, but Nhora hesitated a few moments longer, teeth on her lower lip as if she were nibbling at some minor traces of restraint.

Then she ran all the way to him and pitched thankfully into his arms.

M
idafternoon.

Sun stealth on the glazed oak floor, the fabulous Persian carpets of the Boss-room, sun a hot tickle on the toes of Aunt Clary Gene as she sat softly drowsing, curled in a high-backed chair.

In the bed he stirred; from the first, wakeful change in his breathing he had Aunt Clary Gene's full attention. After several hearty yawns he moved to his right and noticed her.

"What are you doin' here, Aunt Clary Gene?"

He had caught her by surprise after all. She sat up straighter, one hand slowly rising to her heart as if she feared at long last its beat had been lost. She couldn't reply.

"What's the matter with you?" he said crossly. "Swallow your teeth? And what the hell time has it got to be?" He raised himself on one elbow, alert to the angle of the sun through the windows. "Godalmighty!" he yowled. "The whole day shot." He looked disgustedly at the mute old woman. "That's all right, don't bother to be civil to me in my own house. I sure do know how to spoil my niggers, don't I?" She started to rise from the chair, reacting automatically, eyes still full of wonder and fixed on his face. He made a stay-put gesture and said with a big, needling smile, "No, no, don't go to any trouble on my account; I'll just get up from here and pour my own coffee."

He sought to get out of bed then, but the shock of weakness drove him down, left him sprawled momentarily breathless and wide-eyed with apprehension. Then he began to laugh, a whiskey rumble.

"Looks like I had a little too much to drink last night. What was the occasion? I don't seem to remember a damn thing."

The door to the bedroom opened and Bull Pete, unnoticed by either of them, looked in.

"Just get me coffee;
coffee
, is that asking too much? I don't need a nursemaid, I'm just hung over. Maybe a little worse than normal." He closed his eyes and breathed heavily. Bull Pete shut the bedroom door. Aunt Clary Gene heard it click into place and swung her head quickly around. When she looked back he was scratching his scalp and yawning again.

"Aunt Clary Gene, after you've fetched the coffee, get the boys up here, will you?"

Her lips trembled. "They all gone now. Every last one. Gone."

That quieted him, and time went by. His eyes were open, looking straight up. The tone of the sun changed, the light of the room was inflamed. Aunt Clary Gene began to fret, as if she felt imperiled by, his blankness, by the unfilled space of his remorse.

The bedroom door opened again. Hackaliah came hesitantly in, frowning. Behind him, Bull Pete, breathless, trying not to look scared.

"Asked for the boys," Aunt Clary Gene said to Hackaliah, who stood with his hands clenched behind his back. Bull Pete, no good for this kind of thing, rattled the stem of his corncob pipe against his teeth. Hackaliah gave him a stern look, then shifted his attention back to the thin, ravaged young man on the bed. There was no movement, no sign that they had been observed.

"Boss?" Hackaliah said, bending forward, peering intently at his face.

He was answered by a long and agonizing sob.

T
here was room after dim room in the hunting lodge and sportsman's club, nothing fancy, just rough plank floors and bunk beds and exposed rafters. There was an odor of cold ashes, mustiness of trophy heads, tiny skittish noises of mice in the walls and kitchen stovepipes. The windows apparently had never been washed. The hard, thin blankets they had pulled from cedar-lined closets to nest in were clean, but smelled vaguely of the iron-filled water in which they had been washed. A torn sheet had saved their skins during prolonged lovemaking, one tumultuous orgasm after another. And still they couldn't bear to let each other go.

Sunlight fell in sharp squares on the floor near their feet, vanished, fell bright again, like the pictureless throw of a balky movie projector while, outside, clouds marched across the sun and they heard the sullen trumps of thunder.

Nhora's long body was a match for his as they lay head to head and neatly intertwined, her fingers in his hair; she gazed with curiosity and a trace of regret at the sluglike scars which she'd exposed, then smoothly, tenderly covered them over, a child planting a dead rabbit in clover. Jackson wished there was something he could do about the bruises on her neck. He had an arm around her, the other hand astride a softly cambered buttock. His wearied penis was still half-erect and snugged in tribute against her belly. The heat and balm of repeated couplings had ripened her, and although she'd been far from drab or unvital before, the act of love seemed to have brought Nhora awesomely to life. By contrast he felt overpowered, his resting heartbeat too faint and too cold. Not an uncommon complaint for someone his age, he thought wryly. Yet even as he loved her obsessively he wished for more profit, a shared potency, some of her tremulous, blazoned joy in the aftermath. Anything but this weakness, and nerves, and a low-pitched thrum of dismay.

Thunder again; she stirred, muscling uneasily against him as if preparing to pull away. Jackson smiled, reluctant to give an inch.

"Not yet."

"If there's lightning, Rowdy Boy will be frightened. I need to take him back. And besides—you know." She made a face of necessity. "My kidneys are about to float."

Nhora untangled them with lingering gentleness, stepped out of the bunk bed and crossed to the bathroom gingerly, on her toes, wary of picking up splinters from the floor.

Jackson rose and began to pull on his clothes, feeling the spell of the sensuous afternoon sadly broken. His fingers were stiff and rather cold, his heart pounded lugubriously.

She came back before he put his shirt on and embraced him fiercely, standing eye to eye.

"We haven't said ten words to each other in three hours."

With a pang he noted that her voice wasn't right, a hoarseness from the throttling she'd received, and she was developing the nervous habit of constantly trying to clear her throat

"Not very civilized," he agreed, kissing her. And again.

The truth was they'd consciously, and gratefully, avoided the matters that oppressed them. But their unwillingness to talk seriously now seemed forced, to both of them. The undeniably guilty feeling of time stolen for pleasure, the subtly felt influence of the coming storm, all worked against the mood they were trying to sustain.

Nhora turned away first, looking numb around the mouth, smile barely visible, eyes lonely. She began to dress, standing a little apart from and with her back to him, as if she were shy about the act of covering her nakedness in the bleak, nearly empty space of the long dormitory. Jackson buttoned his own shirt and put on his jacket.

"I'm free, you know," she said, just whispering. "Free to go where I want and with whom I want."

"I hope so."

Thunder; he was feeling light-headed and blamed the sudden drop in air pressure as the storm took shape. He pulled up a wooden chair and sat astride it. "Nhora, about Champ—"

She turned on him with a face he'd seen only once before, when a maid had startled her. "I told you, told you,
told
you something awful would happen, that he just wasn't right! Now this—" She swiftly shielded her throat with an open hand, stood rigidly staring at Jackson with her teeth bared in an unpleasant way. Then the hand dropped hopelessly and a crushing despair changed her face, pulling all the muscles downward in a mask of heroic lament. "I've had nightmares," she said. "And they've all come true. I saw Nancy lying dead in that motel room long before I heard about it."

"Nhora, did Nancy get in touch with you from Kezar County?"

"No. I didn't hear from her at all this time."

"Could she have called, and could you have driven to Kezar County and found her dead, and then driven back to Dasharoons the same night in such a state that by the next morning you didn't remember having made the trip at all?"

Nhora was very still for an improbably long time. The sun that entered the room was no longer geometrically defined; it flooded now like a rising sea, struck highlights in places he hadn't looked before. The head of a razorback hog was mounted on one wall. Bodiless, the tusker seemed not to have surrendered even in death, and something of his transcendental rage and wildness was repeated in Nhora's brilliantly touched eyes.

A small bird, lost in the light, dived against the unshuttered window, startling them. The bird flubbed briefly at the glass, then got its bearings and flew away. Nhora snatched up her stovepipe boots and stormed away to the door, heedless of splinters this time.

"Have you gone crazy?" she yelled back at Jackson, and went out to the porch.

He caught up to her as she was sitting on the steps pulling the boots on.

"Nhora, I'm sorry."

"What made you bring that up?" she said, still furious, eyes shut as she stomped her left heel securely into the boot.

"I had breakfast with Everett Wilkes this morning. He claims there are members of the Bradwin family who saw you in Kezar County two nights ago."

"Well, he despises me, and he might say almost anything." The right boot went on; Nhora jumped away from Jackson's hand on her shoulder. The impulse to run from him took her well into the clearing before she stopped. She swayed then as if she might faint, cupping her hands to her face.

"God, how can I tell
anybody
what I'm suffering?"

The heavy noon shade in the clearing had been translated into gloom; the space around them was no longer secluded and inviting, it seemed cavernous and threatened to be uninhabitable. Leaves whipped through the air. The sky was solid brass overhead, purple-dark between the trees. Jackson closed and hooked the shutters, lugged saddle and blanket to the horse and cinched the saddle in place.

When he turned around to call Nhora she was already there, sad taut face again. "Thank you; it's getting bad, I have to get back."

"Nhora, we can tie the horse behind the car, drive slowly."

"I'll make better time across country." She swung up into the saddle, and he handed her the reins. "Are you going to the house?"

"No, I'm out of barbiturates and I need a supply of other pharmaceuticals. I'll take what I want from the clinic and arrange payment later."

"Come as soon as you can!" she urged. She wheeled her horse around and looked up at the sky. "If I get caught in this I'll lay over at the railroad spur, so don't worry." She urged the big horse into a canter, then changed her mind and came back, riding in a big circle around him, horse becoming difficult to hold, side-stepping fractiously with his head thrown back. She leaned over in the saddle, staring at Jackson, face pale with intensity.