The Night of the Hunter (6 page)

Git them two kids fed and bedded down did ye? cried Walt.

Yes, Mr. Spoon, she smiled.

Better go back to the kitchen and let Icey give you a cup of hot coffee!

All right. Thanks, Mr. Spoon.

He followed her with his gaze, wondering what kindly thing one might say to a woman whose husband had been hanged for murder. She was so remote; going about, doing her work well and yet so hidden away from everything that happened around her. He wanted to tell her that it would all turn out for the best; that it hadn't really mattered what had happened; that each cloud had a silver lining. He followed her miserably to the kitchen and watched from the doorway as she helped herself to coffee at the stove.

Here, honey, scolded Icey. Let me git you that. Set down and give your feet a rest.

Icey Spoon was fat and pleasant. Most of her sixty years had been spent cooking good things: tasting pots of boiling fudge, sampling fingerfuls of cookie batter or thick ice cream on the wooden paddles of the old crank freezer. Her ideas of the world and of its people were as simple and even and unchanging as the little pastry hearts her cookie cutter made.

Willa! she snapped cheerfully. What you need is a little meat on your bones.

Willa smiled wanly. She sipped the black, scalding coffee in the thick steamboat china cup. Icey stood before her with fat, freckled fingers smoothing her apron. After glaring at Willa in mounting disapproval for a moment she shuffled off to the ice cream freezers. Presently she returned with a heaping dish of the chocolate cream and set it firmly at Willa's elbow.

There! A dish of that two or three times a day and you'll commence to shape into something a feller might want to look twice at.

Willa thanked her and glanced uneasily at the old woman's eyes, knowing well what it was all leading up to.

Honey, said Icey Spoon, waving her husband away from the kitchen and settling her thick, dimpled elbows firmly on the table, there is certain plain facts of life that adds up. Just like two plus two makes four.

Willa kept her peace, not lifting her eyes, knowing that part of her burden as a widow was to endure such preachments.

And one of them is this, Icey went on. No woman is good enough to raise growin' youngsters alone. The Lord meant that job for two. Are you listenin' to me, now, honey?

Yes.

Now, then! There ain't so many single fellers nor widowers in Cresap's Landing that a girl can afford to get too choosey. There's Charley Blankensop—he drinks. There's Bill Showacre—and he don't amount to much except doin' card tricks at socials but he is kind and he don't touch a drop and the old pap's got some farmland.

Icey, I don't want a husband.

Want nothin'! cried Icey, slamming her palm on the table till the sugar bowl chattered. It's not a matter of wantin' or not wantin'! You're no spring chicken with hot britches, Willa Harper. You're a grown woman widowed with two little youngins and it's them you should be thinkin' about.

Well, yes. Yes, I know that, Icey.

And I don't want you gettin' the idea that neither me nor Walt is buttin' in! the old woman added, pursing her lips and smoothing the tablecloth with swift outward strokes of her fingers. You're welcome to work here and even bring them kids in to live here if you've a mind to. But it's a man you need in the house, Willa Harper!

John—the boy, said Willa. He minds the littlest—Pearl. He takes awful good care of her, Icey.

Mindin' girls ain't no fit business for a growin' boy, neither.

Willa shrugged and looked away.

It's not so easy, she said softly. Finding someone—

I know! Ah, Lord, I know! cried the other woman, rising and sniffling her nose against the heel of her hand. Ah, men is such fools!

Not every man, Willa continued, her eyes grave with her thoughts, wants the widow of a man who—

—A man who done somethin' ornery and foolish! snapped Icey. Ben Harper warn't no common robber. Why, I knowed him as well as I knowed my own five boys and I'd have put him up alongside any one of them. It's these hard, mean times that ruins men, Willa.

Willa stared at the palms of her hands.

I never really understood Ben, she said. He was always thinking things I never knew—wanting things I never knew about. He wasn't a bad man, Icey—he just wanted more than his share, I reckon.

Icey's gingham-blue eyes squinted shrewdly as she bent and pinched Willa lightly on the arm.

There hain't a one of them, she whispered hoarsely, that's walked into that Moundsville bank that ain't been tempted to do the same thing Ben done! And don't you forget it! Lordy, there has been times during this depression when I was afraid of what my own Walt would turn his hand to next!

She sat suddenly, subsided, hugging her fat arms against her bosom and reflecting upon the evil season.

That boy John, smiled Willa. He's so much like his dad it just naturally scares me sometimes, Icey. So serious about everything! He's took his dad's death hard, Icey.

Hmmph! He's took it like a little man if you was to ask me.

Willa scooped a tiny mountain in the spilled sugar by the bowl and her hand trembled. He knows something, she said in a low voice. It scares me, Icey!

How?

There's something strange—He knows something!

Knows what, honey?

Like there was something still between him—and Ben, said the girl and shivered as the river wind said something behind the window and a boat blew low on the river.

Between him and his dad?

Yes, said Willa. Sometimes I think about Ben lying there in that little plot of ground between my ma and pa and him being dead all these weeks and then I look into the boy's face and it's almost as if—

Off in the parlor they could hear Walt cranking the Victrola and waiting impatiently for the couples to come in for ice cream after the first show. Willa was as white as the linen on Icey's spotless kitchen table.

—As if him and Ben—as if they had a pact, said the girl at last.

About which?

About that money, Icey.

That money! snorted the old woman, pouring them both more coffee. A curse and an abomination before God! I hope Ben throwed it in the river wrapped around a cobblestone.

But he didn't, said the girl.

Pshaw!

I'm right sure of it, Icey. It's hid somewhere.

Well if it is—I don't want to know where! That money's caused enough sin and cursedness—

—And I think little John knows where it is, said Willa.

What? Great day in the morning! That child? Fiddlesticks!

Yes, Icey. I may be wrong. But I think Ben told him.

Then why—if he told the boy—why not you—his own wife?

Willa smiled sheepishly and plucked at a loose thread in the tablecloth.

He never thought I was fit to know, she said.

Fiddlesticks, now! Did he say that, now?

The girl nodded.

At the prison? Did you ask him when you visited him there?

Yes. I begged with him to tell. I told him it wasn't just for me—it was for them two kids as well. I told him that.

And what did he say to that?

He said if I got my hands on that money I would just go to hell headlong. He said I was a Bailey and there wasn't ever a Bailey or Harper either one that knowed the worth of a five-cent piece and he said there wasn't a one of them ever got their hands on money that didn't drag himself and all his kin down the fancy road to perdition.

Well, now, I never!

Icey pursed her mouth, considering it all.

But what did he say about them kids of his? What did he figure you to raise them on?

I asked him that, Icey.

And what did he have to say to that?

He said that money was where it wouldn't ever hurt nobody no more and then he shut up like a clam and wouldn't talk about it any more!

But you think the boy knows where it's hid?

Willa nodded and her eyes brimmed and filled.

Icey! Honest to God, I don't want that money! I just wish it was gone somewhere—lost forever—gone to the bottom of the river! When I think about its still being anywheres around us—it just makes me feel like folks is starin'—wonderin'—sniffin' around for it like dogs. Like somethin' awful was going to happen to me and them kids because of it!

Pshaw! Ben was talkin' out of his mind, Willa. The strain of it all! That money is rottin' at the bottom of the river right this very minute.

Willa did not answer, finishing her coffee in slow gulps while old Icey grumbled and speculated by the stove, rattling her pots and skillets angrily about.

And that's why I say, she exclaimed presently, that the sooner you get a man into that house the better, Willa! There's so much can happen to a widowed woman and two youngsters.

A glance at the girl told her that this final remark had frightened her even more. Icey's face lit up and she cracked her palms together sharply.

Ouija! she cried.

What?

The board! We'll just ask old Ouija where Ben hid that money.

No!

Willa's lips were trembling now, the color of cold ashes.

All right, then. We'll just ask Ouija about that man—the one you're going to meet.

Oh, Icey, I'd rather not.

Just you set down there, Willa, and mind your manners. I'll go fetch the board. You can mock if you will but me and Walt has found out more from Ouija than a body ever gets from them tea leaves and cards.

Willa sat solemnly, with her legs pressed tight together, listening as Icey's slippers shuffled off into the parlor after the board. She was back in a moment and slapped it on the table and sat down facing it, across from Willa. Walt came to the doorway to watch and stood puffing thoughtfully on his cob pipe. Icey's face grew solemn and properly awed as she rested the tips of her fingers on the little arrowshaped pointer.

It takes a spell for Ouija to get to workin' right, explained Icey, opening one eye to glance at Willa. And don't talk neither. It gets the spirits nervous.

Willa's nerves curled in her flesh as Icey addressed the beyond. Ouija! Please to give us the name of Willa's next husband.

Willa felt the sweat gather upon her quaking thighs. It seemed as if this were to tempt old ghosts to speak—to conjure from the blackness of that winter night the face of a hanged man who would tell her again with his ruined, strangled mouth that she was not fit—that she was weak—that she would drag them all down if she knew. Now the room was stone-silent but for the thick bubbling of the teakettle and the faint cold whisper of river wind against the sills.

Ah! Ah! There! whispered Icey. See, now!

And the little pointer scratched sharply and jumped beneath her fingers. Willa shut her eyes and pressed the trembling lids with the tips of her fingers. She listened to the dry little feet of the pointer scrabbling slowly across the board, spelling out the letters. Icey's sonorous voice called them as they came. C—L—O—

Willa thought: Yes, he was right! The money is bloodied and cursed and it would take us all to hell headlong. Because we were born in sin and in sin we have lived and God makes us suffer so we can be free!

C—L—O—T—H! Cloth! cried Icey. Now, Walt, whatever do you make of that? Cloth! What kind of sense does that make?

It's a word, said Walt, taking the stem of his pipe from between his long brown teeth. That's plain enough.

Well, sure it's a word! We all know that! But the question was: Give us the name of Willa's next husband. Now cloth ain't no answer to that.

Well, now, hold on here for just a while, said the man. That might signify a lot of things.

He sat solemnly at the table and regarded the board, scowling.

Icey reached out to pat Willa's cold knee and then winked.

Walt's right good at understandin' Ouija, honey. Just you wait, now.

—It might mean Willa was to meet a drummer, said Walt loudly. A drummer that sold bolts of yard goods.

Why, sure!
Cloth!

But now Icey pursed her lips and frowned.

Well, shoot! A drummer ain't no bargain for a husband!

Willa smiled and shrugged.

I don't know any drummers, she said softly. What drummer would want to settle down with me?

Just you wait! laughed Icey. We'll try again another night. Ouija's mighty good at lookin' ahead, honey.

Now they heard the front door squeak out in the ice cream parlor and the soft laughter of young voices.

Gracious! Them's customers! cried Icey, springing to her feet. Better go tend them, honey.

Willa hurried off and took the orders while Walt put a record on the Victrola, and throughout the next hour they kept busy as other customers came and went and Walt stood by cranking and changing the records and Icey filled orders for sandwiches and coffee in the kitchen. By ten o'clock the town had gone to sleep. Outside the snow drifted past in big flakes and the dark wind had fallen. Willa sat alone by the cash box until Walt came and told her she could go for the night. He and Icey stood watching her move slowly down Peacock Alley toward the river road.

Poor, poor little thing, mumbled Icey, her handkerchief balled and pressed to her lips.

Walt said nothing as he moved about downstairs, locking windows. After a bit he came and stood beside her, staring into the dark that had swallowed up the tiny figure on the road at last.

Poor child, Icey said again, shaking her head. I wonder what will ever become of her. It's a story sad enough to beat them picture shows.

Because a pipeline ran through the Harper yard the gas company gave them a free lamp on a wooden post—a big box with a roof like a birdhouse with glass sides and a perpetual flame within. It stood by the great oak at the road's edge and when the wind tossed the branches of the tree the light from the gas lamp made pictures on the wall of the children's bedroom. The twisted, barren winter branches tossed stiffly in the golden light and yet with a curious grace, like the fingers of old men spinning tales, and John, lying snug in his bed beside the little girl, shut his left eye and squinted through the lashes at these weaving phantoms of shadow and light. There was a black horse prancing—lifting its feet to the winter galaxies. And now as the wind changed there came a three-legged peddler roistering to the mad wind's song. And now a brave soldier appeared; then a merry clown with toothpick legs.