The Double Hook (3 page)

She would tell James, Ara thought. He could do what he liked. She’d be free of the thought.

She didn’t think of Kip at all until she saw him leaning over the pommel of his saddle talking to James.

James was standing by the barn. Kip’s hands rested on the pommel. His face was bent down over his horse’s neck towards James.

James, William said, there was no accounting for. He had gamebird ways. He was like a gay cock on the outside in his plaid shirt and studded belt. Myself, William said, I never
needed more than a razor-strop to hitch up my jeans. Yet inside, he said, there’s something’s cooked James’s fibre. He’s more than likely white and dry and crumbling like breast of pheasant.

Ara heard Kip’s voice.

She’s fishing down to Wagner’s, he said. How’re you going to go now? The boy Wagner’s there too, he said.

James’s back was towards her. She saw him take a step forward. Kip pulled himself up and sat loosely against the cantle.

Ara had stopped at the corner of the barn. James’s horse, saddled, waited on the lines. Ara saw it there. She felt the weight of nickel plate pulling its head to the earth.

She untied the bootlace again and hat in hand went towards James as if she had just come.

Didn’t you hear the gate? she said.

James started round.

Overhead the sky was tight as rawhide. About them the bars of the earth darkened. The flat ribs of the hills.

Beyond James over the slant of the ground Ara saw the path down to the creek. The path worn deep by horses’ feet. And higher up on the far side she saw the old lady, the branches wrapped like weeds above her head, dropping her line into the stream.

She saw and motioned with her hand.

Kip’s eyes looked steadily before him.

Your old lady’s down to Wagners’ he said to James.

She’s here, Ara said.

James turned on his heel. But when he turned, he saw nothing but the water-hole and the creek and the tangle of branches which grew along it.

Ara went down the path, stepping over the dried hoofmarks down to the creek’s edge. She, too, saw nothing now except a dark ripple and the padded imprint of a coyote’s foot at the far edge of the moving water.

She looked up the creek. She saw the twisted feet of the cottonwoods shoved naked into the stone bottom where the water moved, and the matted branches of the stunted willow. She saw the shallow water plocking over the roots of the cottonwood, transfiguring bark and stone.

She bent towards the water. Her fingers divided it. A stone breathed in her hand. Then life drained to its centre.

Startled by the thunder, Ara dropped the stone into the water.

James was staring down the road. The hills were touched with light, but darkness had begun to close in.

She’s going to break, James said. There’s nothing else for it. You’d better go in, Ara. Greta’ll make you welcome until it’s over.

He spoke for the first time.

Kip’s face was turned to the sky. To the light stampeded together and bawling before the massed darkness. The white bulls of the sky shoulder to shoulder.

He had risen in his stirrups until the leathers were pulled taut. His hand reaching to pull down the glory.

Ara looked up too. For a minute she saw the light. Then only the raw skin of the sky drawn over them like a sack.

Then the rain swung into the mouth of the valley like a web. Strand added to strand. The sky, Ara thought, filled with adder tongues. With lariats. With bull-whips.

She reached the porch before the first lash hit the far side of the house. She looked back at Kip and at James. James had taken shelter in the doorway of the barn. Kip’s knees had relaxed. He was sitting in the saddle.

Greta and Angel had been drinking tea at the table by the kitchen window. There were two cups on the table and a teapot. But Greta was standing by the stove when the door opened. Standing with her fingers on the lid of the metal water tank so that she looked across the stove at Ara.

The rain drove you in to see us, she said. Sit down. Make yourself at home.

Angel said nothing. She sat tracing the grain of the scrubbed table top with her nail.

I was walking across the hill, Ara said, and I dropped in to ask after Ma. I thought I saw her this morning down by our place, but she didn’t stop.

The room was dark. Greta made no movement in the corner.

You almost need a lamp, Ara said. Did Ma come in? She’s too old to be out in this. It comes on sudden in the summer.

She’s not been out, Greta said.

She must be sleeping, Angel said. Not a single board has creaked.

She’s been sleeping, Greta said.

You’ve been seeing things, Ara, Greta said. Like everyone else round here. You’ve been looking into other people’s affairs. Noticing this. Remarking that. Seeing too much. Hearing too much.

Who’s had the trouble of her? Greta asked. Who’s cooked and care for her? I’m not complaining. It’s my place here, and I know my place. If I’d married a man and gone off, there’s no telling what might have happened. He might be riding round the country in a truck. Stopping and talking to women in the road. He might be leaning over the counter buying thread for somebody. He might be playing the fiddle while the pains was on me. He might be meeting the Widow’s girl down in the creek bottom. He might be laying her down in the leaves.

Ara had been looking at Greta.

You’ve no right to speak that way of the girl, Ara said. You don’t know.

You don’t know what I know, Greta said.

Angel got up and reached for the lamp.

Leave it down, Greta said. I light the lamps in this house now.

The storm which drove Ara into Greta’s kitchen woke Felix Prosper. He sat up in his chair. The hounds cowered down, their dewlaps pressed to the earth.

Who’s shouting on Kip? Felix asked. What’s Kip doing here?

Recalled as if urgently from sleep he looked around for the cause. The heat was still heavy in the air. Felix noticed the
darkening of the sky and heard above the beginning of the storm.

Thunder. It meant nothing to him.

Rain. He picked up the fiddle and took it into the house. Then he came back for an armful of wood.

The hounds had slunk off somewhere. Like old women to a feather-bed. He’d seen Angel light a lamp against the storm. Not a wax candle to the Virgin, but the light she’d said her father kept burning against the mist that brought death.

A candle. He had no need for one.

He lit a fire in the stove. He poured water on the grounds in the granite pot. Ground a few fresh beans and added them to the brew. Sat on a backless wooden chair. Splay-legged. His mind floating in content of being. His lips drinking the cup already.

The cup which Angel had put into his hand, her bitter going, he’d left untouched. Left standing. A something set down. No constraint to make him drink. No struggle against the drinking. No let-it-pass. No it-is-done. Simply redeemed. Claiming before death a share of his inheritance.

The cup for which he reached was not the hard ironware lined with the etch of tea and coffee. It was the knobbed glass moulded to the size of his content. Pleasure in the light of it. The knowing how much to drink. How much drunk. The rough knobbed heat of it.

Above him the blow and the answer. The rain pounding the tar-paper roof. The memory of the time Angel had seen the bear at the fish camp. Seen the bear rising on its haunches. Prostrating itself before the unsacked winds. Rising as if to strike. Bowing to the spirits let out of the sack, Angel thought, by the meddler Coyote. The bear advancing. Mowing.

Scraping. Genuflecting. Angel furious with fear beating wildly. Her hunting-knife pounding the old billycan.

He chuckled, remembering the noise and the white face of Angel when he picked up the bear in its devotions. Picked up paper blown off the fish-shack roof.

The remembrance of event and the slash of rain merged. Time annihilated in the concurrence. The present contracted into the sweet hot cup he fondled. Vast fingers circling it.

Then he heard dogs bark somewhere in the direction of the barn, as if they’d found a rat in the manger and raftered it. He looked round for the terrier and wondered at her going. She would not run with the hounds or rub hides for manger berth.

She was equal to a rat her own size. Would tackle one. Like the one he’d poked down. Poked at. For the thing crouching, its tail hanging there above his head, had sprung. Had jumped to the pole seeking it. Had run from pole to arm, its teeth sinking in his neck crevice, its claws clutching mad with dread. He had shaken it off, uncertain in its rage, and her teeth had closed on its throat. White foam on the brown swirl of it. The old lady fishing in the brown water for fish she’d never eat. The old lady year after year.

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.

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.

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.

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.