The Night of the Hunter (5 page)

Bart was hungry as a wolf. It always shamed his soul: the vast and gnawing hunger that consumed him the nights after hangings. He hung his wet coat and cap on the antler in the hallway and tiptoed up the stairs to the bathroom to wash up. He could not remember whether he had washed his hands that night after work. At any rate, they seemed cleaner as the bitter, lemony smell of the glycerine soap touched his nostrils and he dried them briskly on the coarse towel. Through the open doorway to the bedroom he could see the sleeping forms of the two children on the big brass bed by the window. He was very quiet as he tiptoed into their room and stared down at the yellow curls of the two little girls asleep on the long bolster. It had stopped raining now and a cold winter's moon had moved into the night's arena. The pale light shone on the sleeping faces of the children. Gently, Bart the hangman adjusted the bright quilt which covered them, pulling it down an inch or two so that the edge of the quilt would not cover their mouths, so that the crisp white sheets would not touch their throats.

Now eat! cried his wife when he sat at the table and tugged his napkin from the thick silver ring which bore his name. It's been waitin' since ten o'clock.

Bart sat for a moment staring at the napkin before he tucked it into his stiff collar and seized the fork.

Mother. Sometimes I think it might be better for us all if I was to quit my job as guard and get my old job back at the mine!

The gray-haired woman sat back suddenly in the straight chair and laid two fingers alongside her pale lips. It was a dread thought.

Yes mom, he said, with his mouth full of the boiled cabbage. I sometimes wish I was back under the hill at Benwood.

And leave me a widow after another blast like the one in '24? Not on your life, old mister!

He ate in silence, chewing his food slowly and heavily, his face clouded over with speculation.

I don't wish to be no widow! cried his wife again. With them two growin' kids to raise!

No woman does, he said.

After a moment he rose and went to the pump and bent, searching for something.

Where's the laundry soap, Mother? I forgot to wash up.

Three weeks after Ben Harper's hanging Walt Spoon gave Willa a job waiting on tables and counter at his little ice-cream parlor at Cresap's Landing. The job paid five dollars a week plus meals. The Spoons needed no help. It was a kindness. The first morning Willa left for work she fed the children their breakfast and told John there was lunch in the pantry—corn-bread and a stone pitcher of cold milk and some leftover sausage. The children watched at the window as Willa walked the short stretch of river road to the Landing. John was gravely and silently dubious of the entire business.

John, can we get candy at Mister Spoon's?

No.

Why?

We ain't got no pennies is why. And besides Mom don't want us hangin' around when she's working.

Oh.

Come on, Pearl, he said patiently. Get your hat and coat.

Where we goin', John?

Out of doors.

Pearl scampered off to the hall closet to get her things. John, dressed and ready, stood waiting for her return. Pearl stood patiently while he buttoned up her ragged brown coat and tucked her silly brown curls into the little goblin's cap. Pearl clutched her doll Jenny throughout and snuffled wearily with an old winter's cold until John fetched out his own handkerchief and tended to her nose.

Now, he said properly. That ought to keep you warm. Come on, Pearl!

He paused on his way to the kitchen door and glanced out the window, up the river road to Jander's Livery Stable. The picture of the hanging man had been washed away in a warm March rain on a night weeks before and yet he could never look at the red bricks of the old lichen-stained wall without hearing the chant again. The picture was gone from the stone and no one sang the song at him on the road but still he could hear it. Though, quite providentially, he was vague in his thinking about what really
had
happened to his father. There was the feed-store calendar in the kitchen, above the pump, and the red circle of lipstick that Willa had made around that number, that day, and that crimson eye had fixed them all for days until Willa, in tears one night, had torn the month away and burned it solemnly in the stove. In the red circle was a knowledge that he did not fully know. It had to do with the blue men who had taken his dad away that day. It had to do with the hanging man on the red brick wall by Jander's and with the song the children sang.

Hing Hang Hung! he hummed softly and shivered when he opened the kitchen door and the March air, piercing and drenched with river cold, swept among them on the threshold. The morning air was thin with winter—sour as lemon. The smoke of morning chimneys rose from the stacks of the houses down at Cresap's Landing and hung for a moment before curling under the gray sky and dragged to earth again like cheap fur collars on old coats. John and Pearl stumped silently along up the dirt road, aimless before the long morning.

Howdy, youngins.

John's eyes turned and stared across the street. It was old Walt Spoon, stamping on the stoop of his ice-cream parlor and blowing on the fingers of one hand while the other waved two green lollipops at them. Through the window, under the pale flower of gaslight by the soda fountain, John saw Willa sipping a cup of hot morning cocoa. He caught Pearl's hand and moved off again, pretending that he had seen neither Walt Spoon nor Willa nor the green lollipops. Now the children paused before the window of Miz Cunningham's secondhand store. John made no sound. Because there was no sound in the world that one might sensibly make while staring through this particular window. For there was no word for total wonder and one could only breathe lightly and in silence against the sorcerer's glass and watch the faint, tiny cumulus of breath vapor come and go upon the pane.

What's that? What are you looking at, John?

He said nothing, had not really heard.

John? Are you going to buy it, John?

But she would not have understood even if he had tried to tell her and so he continued to stare through the window into the dusty shelf where the silver pocket watch lay, winking dully among the gimcracks and buttons and fake diamond stickpins and the old Bryan campaign badges. Then, abruptly, there was a motion among the vast panoply of miserable and tired coats and vests and pants that served as backdrop to the window shelf and without further warning this gray curtain parted and the cunning and dissipated face of an old woman appeared and blinked down at the children in the street. Behind the winking lenses of her bent and crooked spectacles the face of Miz Cunningham was that of an ancient and querulous turkey hen. Her dirty hands fluttered in appalling gaiety to the children and then disappearing momentarily she scurried around to the door which presently opened with the single cry of a little bell, like a ragged golden bird.

Ahhhh! If it ain't the poor little Harper lambs!

John said nothing. Pearl was pleased and put her forefinger coyly to her lips.

And how is your poor, poor mother this sad winter?

She's up at Spoon's, said John, quite cold and matter-of-fact about it, yet uncomfortable lest some of the old woman's coarse and maudlin sentiment brush off on his fingers like the greasy, gray dust of certain miller moths. He let his eyes stray again to the wonderful silver watch.

Hing Hang Hung! the words rang faintly through his daydreams like echoes of Miz Cunningham's tart little doorbell. Then he looked again at the old woman herself. Why, she was really quite wonderful—this old fat woman! In the end, she got her hands on nearly everything in the world! Just look at her window! There by the pair of old overshoes were Jamey Hankins's ice skates. There was old Walt Spoon's elk's tooth. There—his mother's own wedding ring! There was a world in that window of this remarkable old woman. And it was probable that when Miz Cunningham like an ancient barn owl fluttered and flapped to earth at last, they would take her away and pluck her open and find her belly lined with fur and feathers and the tiny mice skulls of myriad dreams.

I'll just bet my two little lambs would like a nice hot cup of coffee! cried the old woman, fidgeting at her iron spectacles with three fat fingers. Eh, now?

I don't care, said John gravely.

Willa never served them coffee at home; partly because it would stunt their growth and partly because it was so dear at the store.

Miz Cunningham's kitchen, like her show window, was like the nest of a thieving black crow. Old clothes hanging on the water pipes and stove door handles. Old shoes in boxes by the door. Old hats in apple baskets beneath the window sill. And because old hats, old shoes, and old clothes bear forever the stance and shape and bulge of the mortal flesh that wore them once the house of the old woman was a place of reflective ghosts, of elbows and bosoms and shoulders long gone into the dust or wandered away down Peacock Alley to count their pennies on Poverty's own lean palm. John and Pearl sat moon-eyed at the littered table while Miz Cunningham fetched her blue-speckled coffeepot and poured them each half-cupfuls.

Now! she exclaimed heartily, settling down for a bit of dandelion wine for her stomach and a breath of gossip for her dusty ears. Tell me how your poor, poor mother is enduring.

John shrugged.

I don't know, he smiled thinly.

Ah, now! I mean about the poor father and all. Ah, poor little lambs! The Lord tends you both these days.

At this poetic outburst the old face screwed suddenly awry, one eye twitched as water appeared above the rheumy lid, trembled, and trickled in unabashed emotion down the sagging, powdered cheek.

There now, she snuffled, rising gruffly and scratching off to the pantry again for her fruit jar of summer provender against winter's griefs. There now, my pets. I'm all right. It's all over in a minute. It's nothing! It's just that it tears the heart out of a body's very breast to see young lambs fatherless and that pretty mother widowed at thirty. Ah, and I knowed your dad. Yessirree, my lambikins! I knowed him like my own. Many and many is the night he sat right yonder on that hair trunk by the stove and drank coffee with my own dear, late-departed Clyde.

John did not listen as the old woman's voice rose in anguished retrospect. He thought again of the watch in the window. It had twelve black numbers on its moon face and there was magic to that. For these were numbers that were not really numbers at all but letters like in words. He shivered at the possibilities of such untold magic. But now Miz Cunningham's hen voice came picking its yellow bill through the dream that covered him.

Has the cat got your tongue, boy? She smiled, dreadfully.

Pardon, ma'am?

I said didn't they never find out what Ben Harper done with all that money he stole?

She grimaced and squinted in cunning speculation as if she were bargaining for a pretty gold pin.

Poor, poor Ben! Gracious me, such a lot of money he took that day from poor dead Mister Smiley! And to think that when they caught him—why, there wasn't so much as a penny of it to be seen! Now what do you make of that? Eh, boy?

John sighed. He stood up and took Pearl by the hand.

Pearl and me, he said. We have to go.

Eh? What's say? What? Why, you ain't even touched your coffee!

John gathered into his fingers the soft little pads of Pearl's hand and led her back the way they had come, through the mournful forest of dangling coats and through the dusty beaded curtains and empty gray dresses with ghosts of perfume about them like the memory of old and far-wandering loves. Away in the dusty shadows shone the door, the light of winter in the street. Behind him John could hear the old woman wheezing and snuffling among the fusty garments in his wake.

Great day in the morning! she exclaimed. For a boy who don't know nothin' about that money you sure pick up and run right quick when a body—

He squeezed Pearl's small fingers till she whined in pain and pulled them free and ran ahead, hugging her old loose doll tight against her. At the doorway threshold Miz Cunningham could contain herself no longer. The fat, ring-crusted fingers clamped tight on John's quaking shoulders and swung him around full face.

If you was to tell
me!
the old voice croaked, all guile and oil gone from it now. Why, then there wouldn't be no one to know but us three, boy! Eh, now? Do you know where the money's hid? Did your dad tell you where? Does your mother know? Eh, boy? Did you see where it was hid?

No! cried John, and twisted free.

The iron bell uttered its harsh and broken cry and the chill March air flowed among them as they hurried out onto the road again. The old owl face squinted again from among the dusty sleeves in the window racks. The children wandered off down Peacock Alley toward the river.

She's bad, observed Pearl. I don't like Miz Cunningham.

John stumped on ahead, quaking with fright.

John! John, wait for me!

He stopped by the corner under the gun and locksmith's shop where the great wooden key creaked hoarsely over the pavement at every whim of river wind. John took out his handkerchief and held it again for the little girl to blow.

Hing Hang Hung! See what the hangman done! Hung Hang Hing! See the robber swing! Hing Hang Hung! Now my song is done!

Was it the children singing in Peacock Alley that morning in Cresap's Landing?—the song of the hanging man? No, he knew then, it was the rusty chant of the swinging key above his head. Yet in a flash he had caught Pearl's hand and begun walking her swiftly up toward the river road and the solace of home. It had begun to snow and the wind grieved in the stark river trees—a wind like a moaning song—a wind like a hunter's horn.

River dusk drifted like a golden smoke among the trees of Cresap's Landing. At six Walt Spoon fetched a kitchen match from his vest and lighted the two gas lamps behind the marble counter. There were no customers in the place now but when the first movie let out at the Orpheum two or three couples would drift in for some of Icey's home-made vanilla cream. Now Walt heard footsteps echoing up the bricks of the sidewalk and turned. It was Willa, her nose cherry-red with cold.