The Long Valley (21 page)

Jim turned and quickly stole back across the kitchen and down the back steps. He walked up the yard to the water-trough again, and sat down on the edge of it. The moon was white as chalk, and it swam in the water, and lighted the straws and barley dropped by the horses’ mouths. Jim could see the mosquito wigglers, tumbling up and down, end over end, in the water, and he could see a newt lying in the sun moss in the bottom of the trough.

He cried a few dry, hard, smothered sobs, and wondered why, for his thought was of the grassed hilltops and of the lonely summer wind whisking along.

His thought turned to the way his mother used to hold a bucket to catch the throat blood when his father killed a pig. She stood as far away as possible and held the bucket at arms’-length to keep her clothes from getting spattered.

Jim dipped his hand into the trough and stirred the moon to broken, swirling streams of light. He wetted his forehead with his damp hands and stood up. This time he did not move so quietly, but he crossed the kitchen on tiptoe and stood in the bedroom door. Jelka moved her arm and opened her eyes a little. Then the eyes sprang wide, then they glistened with moisture. Jim looked into her eyes; his face was empty of expression. A little drop ran out of Jelka’s nose and lodged in the hollow of her upper lip. She stared back at him.

Jim cocked the rifle. The steel click sounded through the house. The man on the bed stirred uneasily in his sleep. Jim’s hands were quivering. He raised the gun to his shoulder and held it tightly to keep from shaking. Over the sights he saw the little white square between the man’s brows and hair. The front sight wavered a moment and then came to rest.

The gun crash tore the air. Jim, still looking down the barrel, saw the whole bed jolt under the blow. A small, black, bloodless hole was in the man’s forehead. But behind, the hollow-point bullet took brain and bone and splashed them on the pillow.

Jelka’s cousin gurgled in his throat. His hands came crawling out from under the covers like big white spiders, and they walked for a moment, then shuddered and fell quiet.

Jim looked slowly back at Jelka. Her nose was running. Her eyes had moved from him to the end of the rifle. She whined softly, like a cold puppy.

Jim turned in panic. His boot heels beat on the kitchen floor, but outside, he moved slowly toward the water-trough again. There was the taste of salt in his throat, and his heart heaved painfully. He pulled his hat off and dipped his head into the water. Then he leaned over and vomited on the ground. In the house he could hear Jelka moving about. She whimpered like a puppy. Jim straightened up, weak and dizzy.

He walked tiredly through the corral and into the pasture. His saddled horse came at his whistle. Automatically he tightened the cinch, mounted and rode away, down the road to the valley. The squat black shadow traveled under him. The moon sailed high and white. The uneasy dogs barked monotonously.

 

 

At daybreak a buckboard and pair trotted up to the ranch yard, scattering the chickens. A deputy sheriff and a coroner sat in the seat. Jim Moore half reclined against his saddle in the wagon-box. His tired gelding followed behind. The deputy sheriff set the brake and wrapped the lines around it. The men dismounted.

Jim asked, “Do I have to go in? I’m too tired and wrought up to see it now.”

The coroner pulled his lip and studied. “Oh, I guess not. We’ll tend to things and look around.”

Jim sauntered away toward the water-trough. “Say,” he called, “kind of clean up a little, will you? You know.”

The men went into the house.

In a few minutes they emerged, carrying the stiffened body between them. It was wrapped up in a comforter. They eased it up into the wagon-box. Jim walked back toward them. “Do I have to go with you now?”

“Where’s your wife, Mr. Moore?” the deputy sheriff demanded.

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “She’s somewhere around.”

“You’re sure you didn’t kill her too?”

“No. I didn’t touch her. I’ll find her and bring her in this afternoon. That is, if you don’t want me to go in with you now.”

“We’ve got your statement,” the coroner said. “And by God, we’ve got eyes, haven’t we, Will? Of course there’s a technical charge of murder against you, but it’ll be dismissed. Always is in this part of the country. Go kind of light on your wife, Mr. Moore.”

“I won’t hurt her,” said Jim.

He stood and watched the buckboard jolt away. He kicked his feet reluctantly in the dust. The hot June sun showed its face over the hills and flashed viciously on the bedroom window.

Jim went slowly into the house, and brought out a nine-foot, loaded bull whip. He crossed the yard and walked into the barn. And as he climbed the ladder to the hayloft, he heard the high, puppy whimpering start.

When Jim came out of the barn again, he carried Jelka over his shoulder. By the water-trough he set her tenderly on the ground. Her hair was littered with bits of hay. The back of her shirtwaist was streaked with blood.

Jim wetted his bandana at the pipe and washed her bitten lips, and washed her face and brushed back her hair. Her dusky black eyes followed every move he made.

“You hurt me,” she said. “You hurt me bad.”

He nodded gravely. “Bad as I could without killing you.”

The sun shone hotly on the ground. A few blowflies buzzed about, looking for the blood.

Jelka’s thickened lips tried to smile. “Did you have any breakfast at all?”

“No,” he said. “None at all.”

“Well, then, I’ll fry you up some eggs.” She struggled painfully to her feet.

“Let me help you,” he said. “I’ll help you get your shirtwaist off. It’s drying stuck to your back. It’ll hurt.”

“No. I’ll do it myself.” Her voice had a peculiar resonance in it. Her dark eyes dwelt warmly on him for a moment, and then she turned and limped into the house.

Jim waited, sitting on the edge of the water-trough. He saw the smoke start out of the chimney and sail straight up into the air. In a very few moments Jelka called him from the kitchen door.

“Come, Jim. Your breakfast.”

Four fried eggs and four thick slices of bacon lay on a warmed plate for him. “The coffee will be ready in a minute,” she said.

“Won’t you eat?”

“No. Not now. My mouth’s too sore.”

He ate his eggs hungrily and then looked up at her. Her black hair was combed smooth. She had on a fresh, white shirtwaist. “We’re going to town this afternoon,” he said. “I’m going to order lumber. We’ll build a new house farther down the canyon.”

Her eyes darted to the closed bedroom door and then back to him. “Yes,” she said. “That will be good.” And then, after a moment, “Will you whip me any more—for this?”

“No, not any more, for this.”

Her eyes smiled. She sat down on a chair beside him, and Jim put out his hand and stroked her hair and the back of her neck.

In P——(as the French say), in the year 13—, there lived a bad man who kept a bad pig. He was a bad man because he laughed too much at the wrong times and at the wrong people. He laughed at the good brothers of M——when they came to the door for a bit of whiskey or a piece of silver, and he laughed at tithe time. When Brother Clement fell in the mill pond and drowned because he would not drop the sack of salt he was carrying, the bad man, Roark, laughed until he had to go to bed for it. When you think of the low, nasty kind of laughter it was, you’ll see what a bad man this Roark was, and you’ll not be surprised that he didn’t pay his tithes and got himself talked about for excommunication. You see, Roark didn’t have the proper kind of a face for a laugh to come out of. It was a dark, tight face, and when he laughed it looked as though Roark’s leg had just been torn off and his face was getting ready to scream about it. In addition he called people fools, which is unkind and unwise even if they are. Nobody knew what made Roark so bad except that he had been a traveler and seen bad things about the world.

You see the atmosphere the bad pig, Katy, grew up in, and maybe it’s no wonder. There are books written how Katy came from a long line of bad pigs; how Katy’s father was a chicken eater and everybody knew it, and how Katy’s mother would make a meal out of her own litter if she was let. But that isn’t true. Katy’s mother and father were good modest pigs insofar as nature has provided pigs with equipment for modesty, which isn’t far. But still, they had the spirit of modesty as a lot of people have.

Katy’s mother had litter after litter of nice red hungry pigs, as normal and decent as you could wish. You must see that the badness of Katy wasn’t anything she got by inheritance, so she must have picked it up from the man Roark.

There was Katy lying in the straw with her eyes squinted shut and her pink nose wrinkled, as fine and quiet a piglet as you ever saw, until the day when Roark went out to the sty to name the litter. “You’ll be Brigid,” he said, “And you’re Rory and—turn over you little devil!—you’re Katy,” and from that minute Katy was a bad pig, the worst pig, in fact, that was ever in the County of P—.

She began by stealing most of the milk; what dugs she couldn’t suck on, she put her back against, so that poor Rory and Brigid and the rest turned out runts. Pretty soon, Katy was twice as big as her brothers and sisters and twice as strong. And for badness, can you equal this: one at a time, Katy caught Brigid and Rory and the rest and ate them. With such a start, you might expect almost any kind of a sin out of Katy; and sure enough, it wasn’t long before she began eating chickens and ducks, until at last Roark interfered. He put her in a strong sty; at least it was strong on his side. After that, what chickens Katy ate she got from the neighbors.

You should have seen the face of Katy. From the beginning it was a wicked face. The evil yellow eyes of her would frighten you even if you had a stick to knock her on the nose with. She became the terror of the neighborhood. At night, Katy would go stealing out of a hole in her sty to raid hen roosts. Now and then even a child disappeared and was heard of no more. And Roark, who should have been ashamed and sad, grew fonder and fonder of Katy. He said she was the best pig he ever owned, and had more sense than any pig in the county.

After a while the whisper went around that it was a were-pig that wandered about in the night and bit people on the legs and rooted in the gardens and ate ducks. Some even went so far as to say it was Roark himself who changed into a pig and stole through the hedges at night. That was the kind of reputation Roark had with his neighbors.

Well, Katy was a big pig now, and it came time for her to be bred. The boar was sterile from that day on and went about with a sad suspicious look on his face and was perplexed and distrustful. But Katy swelled up and swelled up until one night she had her litter. She cleaned them all up and licked them off the way you’d think motherhood had changed her ways. When she got them all dry and clean, she placed them in a row and ate every one of them. It was too much even for a bad man like Roark, for as everyone knows, a sow that will eat her own young is depraved beyond human ability to conceive wickedness.

Reluctantly Roark got ready to slaughter Katy. He was just getting the knife ready when along the path came Brother Colin and Brother Paul on their way collecting tithes. They were sent out from the Monastery of M———and, while they didn’t expect to get anything out of Roark, they thought they’d give him a try anyhow, the way a man will. Brother Paul was a thin, strong man, with a thin strong face and a sharp eye and unconditional piety written all over him, while Brother Colin was a short, round man with a wide round face. Brother Paul looked forward to trying the graces of God in Heaven but Brother Colin was all for testing them on earth. The people called Colin a fine man and Paul a good man. They went tithing together, because what Brother Colin couldn’t get by persuasion, Brother Paul dug out with threatenings and descriptions of the fires of Hell.

“Roark!” says Brother Paul, “we’re out tithing. You won’t go pickling your soul in sulphur the way you’ve been in the habit, will you?”

Roark stopped whetting the knife, and his eyes for evilness might have been Katy’s own eyes. He started out to laugh, and then the beginning of it stuck in his throat. He got a look on his face like the look Katy had when she was eating her litter. “I have a pig for you,” said Roark, and he put the knife away.

The Brothers were amazed, for up to that time they’d got nothing out of Roark except the dog sic’d on them, and Roark laughing at the way they tripped over their skirts getting to the gate. “A pig?” said Brother Colin suspiciously. “What kind of a pig?”

“The pig that’s in the sty alone there,” said Roark, and his eyes seemed to turn yellow.

The Brothers hurried over to the sty and looked in. They noted the size of Katy and the fat on her, and they stared incredulously. Colin could think of nothing but the great hams she had and the bacon she wore about like a top coat. “We’ll get a sausage for ourselves from this,” he whispered. But Brother Paul was thinking of the praise from Father Benedict when he heard they’d got a pig out of Roark. Paul turned away.

“When will you send this pig over?” he asked.

“I’ll bring nothing,” Roark cried. “It’s your pig there. You take her with you or she will stay here.”

The Brothers did not argue. They were too glad to get anything. Paul slipped a cord throught the nose-ring of Katy and led her out of the sty; and for a moment Katy followed them as though she were a really good pig. As the three went through the gate, Roark called after them, “Her name is Katy,” and the laugh that had been cooped up in his throat so long cackled out.

“It’s a fine big sow,” Brother Paul remarked uneasily.

Brother Colin was about to answer him, when something like a wolf trap caught him by the back of the leg. Colin yelled and spun about. There was Katy contentedly chewing up a piece of the calf of his leg, and the look on her face like the devil’s own look. Katy chewed slowly and swallowed; then she started forward to get another piece of Brother Colin, but in that instant Brother Paul stepped forward and landed a fine big kick on the end of her snout. If there had been evil in Katy’s face before, there were demons in her eyes then. She braced herself and growled down deep in her throat; she moved forward snorting and clicking her teeth like a bulldog. The Brothers didn’t wait for her; they ran to a thorn tree beside the way and up they climbed with grunts and strainings until at last they were out of reach of the terrible Katy.