Tales for a Stormy Night (21 page)

I don’t know how long it took me to notice what was really going on: I’m slow sometimes, but all this while Clara was standing on a stool polishing a row of fancy mugs Maudie kept on a ledge over the back mirror. The whole row of lights was on under the ledge and shining double in the mirror. Hell, Matt Sawyer wasn’t actually making sense at all, what he was saying in facts and figures. He was just making up words to keep old Maudie distracted—he thought—and all the while gazing up at Clara every chance he’d get. I might as well be honest with you: it was looking at Clara myself I realized what was going on in that room. The way she was reaching up and down in front of that mirror and with a silk petticoat kind of dress on, you’d have sworn she was stark naked.

Well, sir, just think about that. Matt, being a gentleman, was blushing and yearning—I guess you’d call it that—but making conversation all the time; and Maudie was conniving a match for Clara with a man who could talk a thousand dollars’ worth of paint without jumping his Adam’s apple. I’ll say this about Maudie: for an unmarried lady she was mighty knowing in the fundamentals. Clara was the only innocent one in the room, I got to thinking.

All of a sudden Maudie says to me, “Hank, how’s your fiddle these days?”

“It’s got four strings,” I said.

“You bring it up after supper, hear?” It was Maudie’s way never to ask for something. She told you what you were going to do and most often you did it. Clara looked round at me from that perch of hers and clapped her hands.

Maudie laid a bony finger on Mart’s hand. “You’ll stay to supper with us, Mr. Sawyer. Our Clara’s got a leg of lamb in the oven like you never tasted. It’s home hung and roasted with garden herbs.”

Now I knew for a fact the only thing Clara ever put in the oven was maybe a pair of shoes to warm them of a winter’s morning. And it was just about then Clara caught on, too, to what Maudie was maneuvering. Her eyes got a real wild look in them, like a fox cornered in a chicken coop. She bounded down and across that room…

I’ve often wondered what would’ve happened if I hadn’t spoken then. It gives me a cold chill thinking about it—words said with the best intentions in the world. I called out just as she got to the door: “Clara, I’ll be bringing up my fiddle.”

I don’t suppose there ever was a party in Webbtown like Maudie put on that night. Word got around. Even the young folks came that mightn’t have if it was spooning weather. Maudie wore her best dress—the one she was saving, we used to say, for Clara’s wedding and her own funeral. It was black, but on happier occasions she’d liven it up with a piece of red silk at the collar. I remember Prouty saying once that patch of red turned Maudie from a Holstein into a Guernsey. Prouty, by the way, runs the undertaking parlor as well as the hardware store.

I near split my fingers that night fiddling. Maudie tapped a special keg. Everybody paid for his first glass, but after that she put the cash box away and you might say she drew by heart.

Matt was having a grand time just watching mostly. Matt was one of those creamy-looking fellows, with cheeks as pink as winter apples. He must’ve been fifty but there wasn’t a line or wrinkle in his face. And I never seen him without his collar and tie on. Like I said, a gentleman.

Clara took to music like a bird to wing. I always got the feeling no matter who was taking her in or out she was actually dancing alone; she could do two steps to everybody else’s one. Matt never took his eyes off her, and once he danced with her when Maudie pushed him into it.

That was trouble’s start—although we didn’t know it at the time. Prouty said afterwards he did, but Prouty’s a man who knows everything after the fact. That’s being an undertaker, I dare say. Anyway, Matt was hesitating after Clara—and it was like that, her sort of skipping ahead and leading him on, when all of a sudden, young Reuben White leaped in between them and danced with Clara the way she needed to be danced with.

Now Reuben didn’t have much to recommend him, especially to Maudie. He did an odd job now and then—in fact, he hauled water for Maudie from the well she had up by the brewhouse back of Maple Tree Ridge. And this you ought to know about Maudie if you don’t by now—anybody she could boss around, she had no use for.

Anyways, watching that boy dance with Clara that night should’ve set us all to thinking, him whirling her and tossing her up in the air, them spinning round together like an August twister. My fiddle’s got a devil in it at a time like that. Faster and faster I was bowing, till plunk I broke a string, but I went right on playing.

Matt fell back with the other folks, clapping and cheering, but Maudie I could see going after her stick. I bowed even faster, seeing her. It was like a race we were all in together. Then all of a sudden, like something dying high up in the sky and falling mute, my E string broke and I wasn’t playing any more. In the center of the tavern floor Clara and Reuben just folded up together and slumped down into a heap.

Everybody was real still for about a half a minute. Then Maudie came charging out, slashing the air with that switch of hers. She grabbed Clara by the hair—I swear she lifted the girl to her feet that way and flung her towards the bar. Then she turned on Reuben. That boy slithered clear across the barroom floor, every time just getting out of the way of a slash from Maudie’s stick. People by then were cheering in a kind of rhythm—for him or Maudie, you couldn’t just be sure, and maybe they weren’t for either. “Now!” they’d shout at every whistle of the switch. “Now! Now!
Now!
”

Prouty opened the door just when Reuben got there, and when the boy was out Prouty closed it against Maudie. I thought for a minute she was going to turn on him. But she just stood looking and then burst out laughing. Everybody started clouting her on the back and having a hell of a time.

I was at the bar by then and so was Matt. I heard him, leaning close to Clara, say, “Miss Clara, I never saw anything as beautiful as you in all my life.”

Clara’s eyes snapped back at him but she didn’t say a word.

Well, it was noon the next day before Matt pulled out of town, and sure enough, he forgot his umbrella and came back that night. I went up to The Red Lantern for my five o’clock usual, and him and Maudie were tête-à-tête, as they say, across the bar. Maudie was spouting the praises of her Clara—how she could sew and cook and bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy. The only attention she paid me was as a collaborating witness.

I’ll say this for Clara: when she did appear, she looked almost civilized, her hair in a ribbon, and her wearing a new striped skirt and a grandmother blouse clear up to her chin. That night, by glory, she went to the movie with Matt. We had movies every night except Sundays in those days. A year or so ago, they closed up the Bellevue altogether. Why did she go with him? My guess is she wanted to get away from Maudie, or maybe for Reuben to see her dressed up that way.

The next time I saw all of them together was Decoration Day. Matt was back in town, arranging his route so’s he’d have to stop over the holiday in Webbtown. One of them carnival outfits had set up on the grounds back of the schoolhouse. Like I said before, we don’t have any population to speak of in Webbtown, but we’re central for the whole valley, and in the old days traveling entertainers could do all right if they didn’t come too often.

There was all sorts of raffle booths—Indian blankets and kewpie dolls, a shooting gallery and one of those things where you throw baseballs at wooden bottles and get a cane if you knock ’em off. And there was an apparatus for testing a man’s muscle: you know, you hit the target on the stand with a sledgehammer and then a little ball runs up a track that looks like a big thermometer and registers your strength in pounds.

I knew there was a trick to it no matter what the barker said about it being fair and square. Besides, nobody cares how strong a lawyer is as long as he can whisper in the judge’s ear. I could see old Maudie itching herself to have a swing at it, but she wasn’t taking any chance at giving Matt the wrong impression about either of the McCracken girls.

Matt took off his coat, folded it, and gave it to Clara to hold. It was a warm day for that time of year and you could see where Matt had been sweating under the coat, but like I said, he was all gentleman. He even turned his back to the ladies before spitting on his hands. It took Matt three swings—twenty-five cents worth—but on the last one that little ball crawled the last few inches up the track and just sort of tinkled the bell at the top. The womenfolk clapped, and Matt put on his coat again, blushing and pleased with himself.

I suppose you’ve guessed that Reuben showed up then. He did, wearing a cotton shirt open halfway down to his belly.

“Now, my boy,” the barker says, “show the ladies, show the world that you’re a man! How many?”

Reuben sniggled a coin out of his watch pocket, and mighty cocky for him, he said, “Keep the change.”

Well, you’ve guessed the next part, too: Reuben took one swing and you could hear that gong ring out clear across the valley. It brought a lot of people running and the carnival man was so pleased he took out a big cigar and gave it to Reuben. “That, young fellow, wins you a fifty-cent Havana. But I’ll send you the bill if you broke the machine, ha! ha!”

Reuben grinned and took the cigar, and strutting across to Clara, he made her a present of it. Now in Mart’s book, you didn’t give a lady a cigar, no, sir. Not saying a word, Matt brought his fist up with everything he had dead to center under Reuben’s chin. We were all of us plain stunned, but nobody more than Reuben. He lay on the ground with his eyes rolling round in his head like marbles.

You’d say that was the blow struck for romance, wouldn’t you? Not if you knew our Clara. She plopped down beside Reuben like he was the dying gladiator, or maybe just something she’d come on helpless in the woods. It was Maudie who clucked and crowed over Matt. All of a sudden Clara leaped up—Reuben was coming round by then—and she gave a whisk of that fancy skirt and took off for the hills, Maudie bawling after her like a hogcaller. And at that point, Reuben scrambled to his feet and galloped after Clara. It wasn’t long till all you could see of where they’d gone was a little whiff of dust at the edge of the dogwood grove. I picked up the cigar and tried to smoke it afterwards. I’d have been better off on a mixture of oak leaf and poison ivy.

Everything changed for the worse at The Red Lantern after that. Clara found her tongue and sassed her sister, giving Maudie back word for word, like a common scold. One was getting mean and the other meaner. And short of chaining her, Maudie couldn’t keep Clara at home any more, not when Clara wanted to go.

Matt kept calling at The Red Lantern regularly, and Maudie kept making excuses for Clara’s not being there. The only times I’d go to the inn those days was when I’d see Mart’s car outside. The place would brighten up then, Maudie putting on a show for him. Otherwise, I’d have as soon sat in Prouty’s cool room. It was about as cheerful. Even Maudie’s beer was turning sour.

Matt was a patient man if anything, and I guess being smitten for the first time at his age he got it worse than most of us would: he’d sit all evening just waiting a sight of that girl. When we saw he wasn’t going to get over it, Prouty and I undertook one day in late summer to give him some advice. What made us think we were authorities, I don’t know. I’ve been living with my fiddle for years and I’ve already told you what Prouty’d been living with. Anyways, we advised Matt to get himself some hunting clothes—the season was coming round—and to put away that doggone collar and tie of his and get out in the open country where the game was.

Matt tried. Next time he came to Webbtown, as soon as he put in at The Red Lantern, he changed into a plaid wool shirt, brand-new khaki britches, and boots laced up to his knees, and with Prouty and me cheering him on, he headed for the hills. But like Cox’s army, or whoever it was, he marched up the hill and marched down again.

But he kept at it. Every weekend he’d show up, change, and set out, going farther and farther every time. One day, when the wind was coming sharp from the northeast, I heard him calling out up there: “Clara…Clara…”

I’ll tell you, that gave me a cold chill, and I wished to the Almighty that Prouty and I had minded our own business. Maudie would stand at the tavern door and watch him off, and I wondered how long it was going to take for her to go with him. By then, I’d lost whatever feeling I ever had for Maudie and I didn’t have much left for Clara either. But what made me plain sick one day was Maudie confiding in me that she was thinking of locking Clara in her room and giving Matt the key. I said something mighty close to obscene such as I’d never said to a woman before in my life and walked out of the tavern.

It was one of those October days, you know, when the clouds keep building up like suds and then just seem to wash away. You could hear the school bell echo, and way off the hawking of the wild geese, and you’d know the only sound of birds till spring would be the lonesome cawing of the crows. I was working on a couple of things I had coming up in Quarter Sessions Court when Prouty pounded up my stairs. Prouty’s a pretty dignified man who seldom runs.

“Hank,” he said, “I just seen Matt Sawyer going up the hill. He’s carrying old man McCracken’s shotgun.”

I laughed kind of, seeing the picture in my mind. “What do you think he aims to do with it?”

“If he was to fire it, Hank, he’d be likely to blow himself to eternity.”

“Maybe the poor buzzard’d be as well off,” I said.

“And something else, Hank—Maudie just closed up the tavern. She’s stalking him into the hills.”

“That’s something else,” I said, and reached for my pipe.

“What are we going to do?” Prouty fumbled through his pockets for some matches for me. He couldn’t keep his hands still.

“Nothing,” I said. “The less people in them hills right now the better.”

Prouty came to see it my way, but neither one of us could do much work that afternoon. I’d go to the window every few minutes and see Prouty standing in the doorway. He’d look down toward The Red Lantern and shake his head, and I’d know Maudie hadn’t come back yet.