The Night of the Hunter (18 page)

John, why do we have to hide?

It was dark behind the shelves of Mason jars, behind the barrel of stale winter apples and the bench with its boxes of onions and turnips and potatoes. Yet she could see the white shape of John's face clearly, and the dark eyes burning in it.

John, why?

Hush up!

Yes, but, John, why?

Because! he whispered furiously, thinking: Isn't it enough that I have to save her from him? Do I have to put up with the rest of it, too: the questions, the whys?

John, where's Mom?

He thought: Mom is dead. Because she wouldn't go away and leave
him
that way. She might leave us but she wouldn't leave him and so she must be dead somewhere.

John?

What? Pearl, hush up!

But where's Mom?

So he lied: She's gone to Moundsville.

And he thought about the sound of the car in the night and he thought that maybe that might not be a lie after all, that maybe she had seen him at last for what he was and fled for her life and that scared him worse than the thought of her dead so he stopped thinking it.

To see Dad? Pearl was saying.

What?

Did Mom go to Moundsville to see Dad?

I don't know. Yes, I reckon that's it. Now will you hush?

Why, John? I want to see Daddy Powell.

He shuddered, thinking: It's too much for me: hearing her call him that while I am trying to save us both from him and all the time her trying to stop me, to get to him anyway, even though he would kill her for what's hid in the doll.

Someone, he said, is after us, Pearl!

He thought: If I scare her too bad then she will start crying and he will hear it and come find us. But maybe if I scare her a little bit she will shut up.

Why is someone after us, John?

Never mind about that. Just be still, Pearl!

I want to go upstairs, she said. It's cold and spidery down here. I'm hungry, John.

He turned in the darkness and grasped her firmly by the shoulders, feeling her tremble under his fingers because now she could feel his own fright flowing through his fingers into her arms.

Now listen to me, Pearl, he whispered. You and me is runnin' off tonight.

What's runnin' off?

Runnin' away, he continued, and brushed some crawling creature from his leg. If we stay here somethin' awful will happen to us.

Won't Daddy take care of us?

No, he said. That's just it! No!

Where are we goin', John?

I don't know yet. Somewheres, Pearl. When it gets dark and he quits huntin' for us and goes up to bed—

Who? Who's goin' to bed?

The man, he said carefully. The man who's hunting us. When it's night—then we can tiptoe up to the kitchen and—and steal somethin' to eat—

Oh, no, John! Mom will punish us. That's spoiling our supper.

No, he said. It don't matter about that now. Just do like I tell you, Pearl.

All right, John. I will. I promise.

And she was still for a moment at least.

John, is Mom running away, too?

No.

So she fell silent again and they waited, listening to the far, faint sounds of the distant daylight: so remote that they might have been from another world. There was a single barred cellar window in the stone wall beneath the joists above the coal bin. And they fastened their eyes to that single square of world, watching as it faded to gray and then, as twilight fell, winked shut like the lid of an eye, and they could hear him moving about in the dark house above them as he had throughout all that dark day, singing to himself and then stopping a spell to listen, to poke and search, and then call their names again in that tight, shivering voice of outrage. Then he would commence his singing again.

Leaning, leaning! Safe and secure from all alarms!

Leaning, leaning! Leaning on the everlasting arms!

And when Pearl fell asleep against him John crouched listening alone in the roaring darkness, and the footsteps padded back and forth and the closet doors squeaked open one by one and then he would call again and after a spell he would begin to sing again and then after a bit they heard him cry out softly to himself as if he had thought of something and the footsteps moved along the hall and directly the cellar door opened far away in the distance and Pearl knew by the cold, tightening fingers on her arm that John meant for her to be still.

Children? he whispered.

John?

Hush!

And suddenly and with astonishing loudness a cricket commenced chirping in the apple barrel and John, gasping with fright, imagined somehow that this might lead the hunter to their hiding place.

Pearl? called the voice softly from the stairs.

And then a portion of the whitewashed wall sprang suddenly into light as he moved down the steps with the candle in his hand and stopped halfway, straining his angry eyes into the shadows.

I know you're here, children, he said, not shouting, not angry-sounding at all. So you'd better come out before I come find you myself. I can feel myself gettin' awful mad, children.

John? she whined faintly. He said—

John's hand clapped quickly to her mouth and his fingers pressed into the warm cheek. He could feel her fluttering, frightened eyelashes on the heel of his palm.

I hear you whisperin', children. So I know you're down there.

John listened to the cricket among the Winesaps and thought: If we was crickets we could hide under the cool apples, deep in the dark barrel, and he would never find us; never ever find us.

Very well! My patience has run out, children. I'm comin' to find you now.

And his footsteps were quick and angry on the creaking steps and now the whole cellar was alive with new shadows and stretching light from the moving candle in his fingers. John peered between two half-gallon jars of candied apples and he could see him: his back to them, the black of one shoulder and the corner of his head as he stood by the furnace and held the candle high.

This is your last chance, my dears. I'm just gettin' played out. I'm just gettin' so mad I won't be responsible!

Now the whole web of light and dark tore loose and stretched itself and danced again as he moved toward the coal bin and bent to peer inside.

Children!

And then they all heard the voice calling from the kitchen and John thought for one moment of salvation: It's Mom come back! It's her upstairs in the kitchen! Nothin' has happened to her after all!

Yoohoo! Mister Powell!

They could hear him shuffling back across the stone toward the steps and John counted them as the footsteps mounted to the door to the kitchen.

Gracious, Mister Powell! You frightened me!

It was Icey Spoon, and Preacher closed the cellar door and they could hear him greeting her in that coaxing, warm voice he could put on when he wanted.

Here! Icey was saying. It's just a little hot supper I fixed for you and the children. Walt and me got to thinkin' about you lonely and helpless over here without a woman in the house and it seemed the least we could do.

Then it was his voice again, fawning over the basket of supper she had brought and then his voice fell and John knew what it was he would be saying.

Because directly Icey cried out: They what? Oh, no! They haven't!

And now his voice again: whining and trembling with pious concern and bewilderment.

Yes! Yes! he cried. They're down there playing in the cellar and they won't mind me when I call them and I just don't know what to do. It just seems a little too much with everything else on my mind today—Willa and all. Would you mind trying?

The door flew open again and now it was Icey's voice, clear and commanding.

John! Pearl!

It's as if I didn't have enough on my mind, Preacher was whimpering. The grief and burden of what the mother has done—

Icey's voice crackled with authority now and John knew that the jig was up; the business of disobeying a woman was somehow too much for him.

John! Pearl! You get up out of that cellar this very minute! Icey clapped her hands sharply.

Come on! Shake a leg! I won't have you worryin' poor Mister Powell another minute. Hurry!

John appeared, blinking, and moved into the gaslit kitchen and Pearl followed, hugging the doll sheepishly before her shamed eyes.

Now just look at you! cried Icey, brushing the cobwebs from the little one's curls. Dust and filth from head to toe! If that ain't a poor way to serve Mister Powell on a sad day like this!

She turned to Preacher and raised her eyebrows.

Want me to take them up and wash 'em good?

Thank you, no. Thank you, dear Icey. No, I'll tend to them. Thank you.

Well, smiled Icey, folding her hands beneath her apron before she departed. At least you'll all have a good hot meal tonight.

She turned and patted John's shaggy head, bowed now in dreadful and stunned defeat beside his sister.

Don't be too hard on them, Reverend, she whispered. Like as not they've took it hard—the mother runnin' off that way. Poor lambs! Poor motherless children!

Preacher chuckled and reached out his hand and ran the fingers named Love through Pearl's tumbling, dusty locks.

I've been thinking, he said, of something that might ease the pain.

Yes? said Icey.

I thought I might take them away for a week or two, he said. To my sister's—down at Marietta.

Well, now!

The change might help, he sighed. A different scene. Good country food for a while. A kindly Christian woman to tend them.

Well, now! Hear that, children? Don't that sound nice?

Yes, said Preacher. I think I may do that. It would give me time to—help mend things.

That's a grand, sensible plan, Mister Powell. Just grand!

She gave Pearl's head a final pat and pinched John's cold, livid cheek and moved out onto the porch with Preacher.

And remember, now, Mister Powell. If you need anything—any time of night or day—don't be afraid to call on us. Mind now! Good night!

Good night, Miz Spoon. Thank you. The Lord will watch over us all.

And in a breath her fat round figure was a small shape, bobbing away into the green dusk under an early moon. Preacher came back into the kitchen and smiled at the children by the pump.

Weren't you afraid, my lambs? he said softly. Down there in all that dark?

For a moment the kerosene lamp teetered and rocked on the littered table but then the old hands darted out and caught it and steadied it before it fell. Uncle Birdie snatched his bottle from under the rocker and filled the tin cup half full again. Then he began shaking worse than ever, teeth chattering like an angry groundhog, and Uncle Birdie knew suddenly that whisky wasn't going to help him that night: it would take more than that to exorcise the day's phantoms. And yet he drank it swiftly and choked once and settled back again, rocking and moaning softly to himself and sucking the liquor from his dripping mustaches. Earlier he had considered lighting his lantern and taking Ben Harper's skiff back down along the shore to the deep place to see if it was really there: what he had seen that morning. But he thought that seeing it again would drive him crazy with fear and he would fall out of the boat and drown. And so he sat a moment longer, rocking with that measured beat of children and the very old, hugging his tough, scrawny arms around his chest like a frightened old woman, and then he labored to his feet and steadied himself on his way across the wharfboat cabin wall to the hair chest by the stove. Bess would understand why he was so powerfully and brutally drunk this night. Bess would forgive him his intemperance once he told her what he had seen that morning in the deep place below Jason Lindsay's west fence. He fell thickly to his knees and fumbled at the green brass hasp to the chest and got the lid up at last and fetched out the faded cardboard photograph in the cheapjack tin frame he had bought from a country peddler thirty-five years before, and when he had stumbled back to his rocker again he propped the little picture against the lamp and fell back into his cushions.

Now, Bess! Don't go preachin' at me again. I'm drunk as a lord and I know it but hear me out, woman. Hear me out and you'll understand. Now, Bess! Don't scold!

And he turned his face away from the proud black eyes of the handsome country girl in the picture. And still not looking at her he commenced rocking swiftly now and considered how he should shape the tale, how he could tell his long-dead wife why he had been driven again to the awful drunkenness that had been the plague and sorrow of their marriage. Something dripped with the soft rhythm of blood on the floor boards beside him and he saw that he had upset the bottle and the soft whisper of the falling drops made him shake all the worse and for a while there was no sound but that and the cry of the rockers and at last he dragged his eyes back to the stern cardboard face. Because she was waiting to hear his excuse and Bess got angry when she had to wait for things.

This mornin'! he choked. I borried Ben Harper's skiff and went down in the deep place along the shore there below Jas' Lindsay's west fence. I 'lowed to catch me a few cats for supper, Bess. Now hold on, woman. Wait! The boy didn't mind me borryin' the skiff. I figgered to take her out every day like that for a little fishin'. He said I could!

Yet the eyes seemed to mock him: burning with scorn under the unfailing gleam of the lamp.

Hear me! Hear me out, woman! Hold on now, 'fore you go to preachin' me!

Now he leaned toward the picture with starting eyes and jaws agape and his hands clamped to the table's edge like the prisoner's on a bar of justice.

Christ God Almighty! he breathed. If you'd a-seen it, Bess! Swee' Jesus, if you'd a-seen it down there in the deep place!

Then he shut his eyes against the scorn of the dusty face and fell back in the rocker again and the faint, wooden tread of the rockers resumed like the pace of a damned sentry and he could hear her voice again: vibrant and rich with disdain as it had been in those decades long gone to earth: Drunken sot! You worthless, drunken fool!