The Double Hook (6 page)

Let me go, James, the girl said. Just let me go.

Let’s all walk in and set down, Kip said. She’s got her rope on the wrong horse.

No. No, the girl said, loosening as she pulled forward James’s hold on her wrist.

Who’s dead? she asked Greta. Is it your Ma? Is that why you didn’t come? she said to James.

Come, Greta said. Come where, you little fool?

The girl turned to James.

Say something, she said. Haven’t you anything to say?

I told you not to come here, he said. And you come tonight of all nights.

I had nowhere else to go, the girl said. I thought you might open the door with your own hands. I didn’t want anybody to make you open the door, she said. No one but myself. What do you want me to do now? she asked.

James looked at Greta.

She sat there, her face flat above the fierce twist of printed flowers.

Tell Kip to water the stock, she said. No one has done anything. Go with him. What use is the night to me now?

Kip had set the lamp on the table. He took the lantern from the shelf and lit it.

He thought: He’s only to loose the force in his own muscles. But a horse stays under the cinch because it’s used to it from a colt.

He turned down the wick of the lantern. Waiting.

The door was still open. James turned into his shadow and walked out of the house with Kip at his heels.

Greta got up and closed the door. Then she turned and caught the girl by the shoulder.

Keep on looking, she said. And think what you want. I don’t care. It’s what I am, she said. It’s what’s driven him out into the creek bottom. Into the brush. Into the hogpen. A woman can stand so much, she said. A man can stand so much. A woman can stand what a man can’t stand. To be scorned by others. Pitied. Scrimped. Put upon. Laughed at when no one has come for her, when there’s no one to come. She can stand it when she knows she still has the power. When the air’s stretched like a rope between her and someone else. It’s emptiness that can’t be borne. The potholes are filled with rain from time to time. I’ve seen them stiff with thirst. Ashed white and bitter at the edge. But the rain or the run-off fills them at last. The bitterness licked up. I tell you there was only James. I was never let run loose. I never had two to waste and spill, like Angel Prosper.

She pulled the girl over to the foot of the stairs.

I heard her breath stop, she said. And the cold setting her flesh. Don’t believe what James might say. She’s not looking still. I heard what we’d been waiting to hear. What James and me had been waiting to hear all these years. There was only James, she said. Only James and me waiting.

What do you want? the girl said. What are you telling me for? What can I do?

She pulled herself free and went to the door. But outside was night. Outside was Kip. Outside was floorless, roofless, wall-less.

Let me stop, she said. I’ve no place to go.

Greta crossed the room.

Go away, she said. Go away and leave us in peace. Don’t ask me. Don’t put the blame on me. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can say. Go yourself while there’s still time.

The girl did not move from the doorway.

He’ll kill me too, Greta said. He’ll shove me down for standing in his way.

Then they heard James’s voice rising in the barn. They heard a cry. They heard Kip’s voice: You bastard, James. They heard James’s voice. They heard his words: If you were God Almighty, if you’d as many eyes as a spider I’d get them all.

They heard a bucket overturn and animals move in their stalls.

Then they heard James’s voice again: Miserable shrew, smell me out if you can.

Now Greta and the girl stood watching in the doorway.

James came out of the barn alone. He came one hand swinging the lantern, the other trailing the rawhide whip he used to break his horses. He came out of the barn and up the rise towards them.

James, Greta said.

He lifted his whip. It reached out towards her, tearing through the flowers of her housecoat, leaving a line on her flesh. Then as the thong unloosed its sweep it coiled with a jerk about Lenchen’s knees.

Not long after they heard him ride off through the gate.

Ara heard and woke. William had raised himself on his elbow and was looking down on her in the thin morning light.

I’m sure, he said, I heard the beat of a horse’s hooves.

It’s probably Kip, Ara said. Just looking round.

He’ll look once too often, William said. But he lay down and reached out his arm towards her.

Angel heard. Got up. Went to the window. Saw only the dust raised by something which had disappeared. Turning saw Theophil and the children asleep on the mattress.

He’d no right to turn Kip out, she thought. He’s gone off perhaps, and now I’ll never hear the things he sees.

The Widow heard. It’s the boy, she thought, going off again.

But the boy was stirring in the kitchen below. Knocking the stove wood into place with the lifter.

She put her hand over her eyes.

Dear God, she thought. How easy death would be if there was death and nothing more.

Felix Prosper slept. He dreamed that Angel was riding through his gate on a sleek ass. He was pulling the scratchy white surplice over his uncombed head. It was early and the ground was wet with dew.

I mustn’t forget, he thought. I mustn’t forget.

He saw a coyote standing near the creek. He wanted to follow it into the hills. He felt its rough smell on his tongue.

He turned away from the creek and went to the gate. He could feel the surplice straining at his armpits like a garment which had shrunk in a storm. He reached up his hand.

Dignum et justum est
, he said as he helped Angel down.

H
einrich too had heard the beat of hooves. He wrenched a stick of wood into place in the stove. Stood watching the flicker of light on the board ceiling. Stood trying to think that he’d heard nothing. That it was a morning like every other morning he’d known.

He went to the shelf and took down three cups. He put the pan on the stove and cut bacon and bread. He heard his mother moving about. He went to the foot of the stairs.

Can’t you smell the bacon? he called.

His mother came down and sat at the table.

He gave her her plate. Seeing as he gave it to her her thin grey hair pulled tight from the crown of her head.

The Widow pushed back her plate.

I’m afraid, she said. What is said is said. I couldn’t pick up the shame again, she said.

A man needn’t hang himself because he’s put his neck through a noose in the dark, Heinrich said. What will you do if I bring the girl back?

Dear God, the Widow said. Dear God.

Felix Prosper had wakened after his dream. He sat on the steps in the morning light. The hounds lay away from him, their heads coiled under their paws, their backs cramped against the side of the house. The terrier had crept down under the covers. Felix sat by himself. The edge of the step cut into his flesh. He had brought his fiddle with him, but it lay beside him. His eyes looked out on an empty world. His flesh was heavy on his bone, a cumbersome coat folded and creased and sagging at the seams. His hands dropped empty between his knees.

So one grew old. Haunted by an image of Angel come back filled like a cup with another man’s passion. Haunted by the image of a boy Felix come back in sleep asking: Can your joy be bound by a glass rim? Is death a fishbone in your hand?

Felix reached for his fiddle. He set it in the soft fold between chin and shoulder. The hounds stirring coiled tighter against the sound. Then something answered in the bushes by the creek. Felix heard branches pushed aside. He looked up. It was Kip. Coming over the rise. Lifting his face windward like an animal.

His shirt had been torn by the branches. His legs were splashed with creek water. His face was a livid wound.

Felix put down his fiddle and got up from the step. His hand reached for Kip’s arm.

What’s happened? he said. Where have you been?

Walking down the creek, Kip said. Finding my way by the smell of the water. I wanted a man’s girl, he said. I’d seen enough to buy her.

Fool, Felix said. But he took Kip into the house and shaking the terrier out of the blanket sat Kip on the bed. He lit the fire in the stove and made coffee. He heated some water
and put it in the hand-basin. Then he looked in at Kip silent on the blanket and putting on his cotton cap he walked barefoot out into the dust of the road.

In the cabin by the quarry Angel was getting breakfast. The children sat on the bench by the stove. They were still dressed in the short cotton shirts which they wore in bed. Rolled over on the mattress Theophil smoked, his arm propping his head.

You’ll burn up the bed, Angel said. Then where will you have to lie about on all day long and all night too?

It’s my bed, Theophil said.

He shut his eyes and drew his knees closer to his belly. Then he looked up.

You used to listen and learn from me, Theophil said. Now you just tell. Right from the squeak of dawn. Telling. Telling. A man would be hard pressed to wedge a word into the silences you leave.

You said you wanted to take care of us, Angel said. Now you just want attention yourself.

It’s the way you work on a man, Theophil said. Wearing him out. Forcing everything. I liked the look of you, he said, when you were out of my reach.

Of course, Angel said. Poor and thin as you are. And having climbed up, she said, you’d spare yourself the trouble of climbing again.

She pressed a hotcake flat with her knife.

You needn’t spoil the cakes, he said.

Who would be riding down the road just at daylight? she asked.

How would I know? he said. What’s it got to do with you? Is there nothing you can’t let alone?

It might have been Kip, she said. And then again not. It might have been one of the Potters. There’s trouble already at James Potter’s, she said, and there’ll be more. That Greta’s got a whole case of dynamite under her skirt.

More like that James has a stick in his britches, Theophil said.

Angel turned around from the stove. She wiped her hand on her skirt. Then she spat on her finger and held it up as if she were trying to find the direction of the wind.

Oh-ho, she said.

Theophil got up from the mattress.

Get those cakes on the table, he said. Or I’ll oh-ho and ho-oh you till you think twice next time before you make fun of me. You came jumping into my bed over Felix’s back, and you’ve got me squatting nice for another jump.

Angel jerked the children off the bench where they sat.

Get into your things, she said. What do you think will happen to you if you doze around all day with your backsides hanging out?

What do you think will happen to them anyway? Theophil said. They’ll be stupid and ugly as the rest. They’re nice enough kids, too, he said. But I sure don’t need you and your kids round here showing me how miserable a person can be. I don’t need you or anyone else painting in big letters what’s easy to see.

In Ara’s kitchen William laid down his knife and fork and put his coffee-cup in the middle of his plate. Then he put some more sugar in his cup.

I shouldn’t have come away, he said. But a man has his own things to see to. I took it they could straighten things out between themselves. There’s things even a man’s own brother has to pass by.

Ara sat fraying threads from the edge of the oil-cloth.

There are things, she said, that can’t be straightened out. They have to be pulled and wrenched and torn. And maybe just stay muddled up. Or pushed out of sight and left where they are. You can’t tidy up people the way you can tidy up a room, she said. They’re too narrow or too big. And even rooms, she said, don’t take long to get untidy again.

I don’t complain, he said. Though for myself I like to keep my gear in order.

You never complain at all, she said. Sometimes I wish you would. There’s a sort of dryness settled on us like dust. You’re seeing things all the time, but you never look at anything here. Sometimes when your mother was going up and down the creek I wanted to call out: What are you looking at? She was the one who noticed. If we had a child, she said, you’d care enough to complain. Your mother hated me and you pity me. Where can a woman lift herself on two such ropes. One pulling her down. The other simply holding her suspended.

I don’t know, William said.

That’s the first time I’ve heard you say you didn’t know and really mean it, Ara said.

She pressed her hands against her eyes.

William got up and went round the table. He put his hand on her shoulder.

Don’t, Ara, he said.

Don’t what? she asked.

Don’t squeeze at your eyes like that, he said. I’ve known men blinded by less. Over a period of time, he said.

Could I be blinder than I am? she asked. Seeing things only in flashes.

He put his hand on her shoulder again.

Why are you so set on scorning yourself? he said. Put on your things, he said, and come up to James’s with me. I’m going as soon as I finish here.

He sat down and began to pull on his boots.

If you come thinking Greta’s going to light out at you, he said, she probably will. People keep thinking thoughts into other people’s heads. I’ve seen a woman thinking how a man despised her, and keep thinking it till a man knocked her down. It’s best to be trusting and loving, he said.

What’s loving? she asked. Loving just makes trouble. Look at the girl Wagner, she said. She’s got through loving what loving never gave me, and it’s as much or more shame to her. I told Greta not to speak that way, but I knew. Was Greta right, too, about your leaning over counters when you’re not here. Are you looking for someone else to get children for you? Who is the father of the Wagner girl’s child? Tell me, she said. William, tell me.

What do you want me to tell you? he asked.

Nothing, she said. Nothing at all.

I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Ara, he said. You’ve never talked like this before. It doesn’t make sense in your mouth somehow.