The Watchman (7 page)

rette felt dirty now between her lips; she mashed it out angrily in a little ashtray. Why? Why did they always want that instead of love? In some curious sense, it suddenly occurred to her, the whole business about bodies doing things got between people and kept them from real loving. Bending a little forward in a glow of strange warmth she came suddenly aware of the risen small nipples of her appled breasts and the warmth of the furred, dangerous mouth, safe and deep within the sanctuary of her robed and clenched soft thighs. No. To give these was to give a death. And she told herself as she had done so often in her life that this was something which a woman must not give to men but to herself.

But suddenly she forgot all that. Suddenly she could think only that the threshold of her bedroom doorway spoke. And spoke beneath the weight of someone standing there. Another time she would have screamed and whirled. Now she was gone all boneless and liquid with the strangling shock of that sound, that certainty of someone come, someone who watched. And the dread was compounded with the sudden, insane fancy that when, at last, she looked round she would discern there the figure of a boy fashioned from fog, begotten by mists, his shattered face repaired by the mercy-fingered night; that from the womb of dark there had emerged reborn a face whose mouth could smile and speak her name again. In the stillness the night-comer snuffled the sniff of an embarrassed apology. Then lifting her eyes to the wrinkled glass of the quartered-window Jill saw him imaged and all her terror blew out in a gust of rage. Tzchak.

The little dog raised its head, looked, went back to dreams again.

What are you doing here! she cried out. What do you mean sneaking up here like this—scaring me half to death?

I didn't want to wake the old woman downstairs, he said.

Joe, don't think my daddy won't hear about this. How dare you come in my bedroom like this!

Seeing if you was all right. That's all, Miss Alt. Seeing if you was all right, he said it again, softly, and darkly smiled.

His stony eyes were the paradox of shrewd, informed imbecility. Tzchak's face was a Slavic mask of taut, expressionless skin: it was a face impartial and indifferent as a fist, with two knuckles for its high cheekbones and a lipless mouth like the slit between thick and toughened fingers. Jill glared at him, breathless with reUef and outrage both.

Just to see if you was all right, he said.

Well, maybe I might be all right if I hadn't been scared half to death listening to you prowl around down there in the dark, she said.

I come straight in the front door. The door was open anyway. And I come quiet so's not to wake up the old woman.

Joe, don't lie to me. I heard you down there in the yard. Get out, Joe, she said.

I will. Now that I seen you're all right I will.

Why did you come down here tonight, Joe? she said.

Just looking out for you, that's all. Just sitting up there in the courthouse tonight all alone and thinking about you down here by yourself with nobody in the house but that snoring old woman. So I thought to myself, Tzchak, you better go check. Better go look after Jill like her daddy would want.

Where is he, Joe?

Well now to tell the truth that's kind of a cause for bad talk uptown tonight.

Where is he?

Where he usually is for three days after he's had a hand in an execution.

But where?

How do I know? Have I ever known? Holed up in some boardinghouse room probably with a quart of Jack Daniel's and the blinds pulled down and your mama's old Bible tucked under his gun belt.

Papa doesn't drink, she said. And besides that, my mother's Scriptures, it so happens, is right over there in the little hatbox by the bed, Joe Tzchak.

I'll bet it's not. I know it's not. For I seen it just where I said. Last night. Up there. I seen it just as I've always seen it when he's there to watch them throw the switch or trip the gallows on a man. That's one of the really beautiful things about that fine daddy of yours, Miss Alt—that womanly tenderness underneath all his guts and toughness. What's that fancy word that fits it?—enigma. Is that it? Sure—enigma. A man like your daddy; lawman and peace-man, a man I've never seen scared once in all the thirty years I've known him, as deadly a peace-officer as ever I've known and yet when the moment comes when they pull that black bag over the head he's got to feel that old book tucked in there between the bullets of his belt and the shirt against his belly. Thirty years and never once scared except—

Except nothing. My daddy's never scared.

Except then. Yes, then. Well, it's pardonable enough. Every man has his own little soft spot however tough he is. Ain't that so?

It's not so. Nothing—not even that. Nothing ever scared my daddy, Joe Tzchak.

Maybe. Still—I've seen a lot of him. Tough times and good ones, too. His face. Every time the same. Last night I watched him when Diaz throwed the switch and the lights went down and all the quiet air in that green room began to fry. I'll swear to it—the sweat sprang out across your daddy's face like rain and his big right hand felt slow for the touch of that black book's leather. And I could see his stomach beneath his shirt—hard and pulled in tight so's he wouldn't breathe for a while, wouldn't smell something for a while.

You're saying my daddy's weak! she said.

Why, no. Not weak, Tzchak said. He's just got his private thoughts, that's all. Don't we all. Even the best and toughest of us? My God, I swear I couldn't feel any closer to your daddy than if he was blood brother to me! That's why I just got to thinking up there in the magistrate's ojffice tonight —mulling it all over in my head till I just got plumb sick to my stomach with worry.

Thank you for your worry. I know how tmselfish it was, Joe Tzchak. Now will you please leave me be.

Worry not just about you though. Oh, Jesus, no. Not just about you, Miss Alt. I've got your daddy to think about, too. What kind of family friend would that make me?—not worrying over him as well! I'm not the sort of guy who can be a man's best friend for twenty-five years— follow him through a dozen towns across a continent— serve proudly as his deputy in every one of them—and then not carel When folks start talking queer about a man like Luther Alt, little girl, you can bet old Joe Tzchak won't just sit there resting his heels on a constable's desk.

What? Talking queer? What are they talking queer?

Nothing really serious. Nothing to worry enough to stay awake tonight. Just what you might call a little grumble of discontent. And—well, you might say a whisper of certain questions that aren't fittingly respectful. After all—

What questions?

Jill Alt, you'll have to admit it's a fair question to whisper. Fair, I say, even though it's not reasonable to them that

knows the facts. Facts, that is, to intimates like you and me.

What facts? she said.

Why, the fact Hke us knowing why your daddy's nowhere to be found. Now we know the answer to that one well enough. It's his little soft spot hurting him, that's all. He always disappears for a spell like this after he's lent a hand at execution. You know it—I know it. But them up there in town—they don't wholly sympathize. That's because they're not part of our little family. They haven't known Luther Alt as near and dear as we have all these years. It's pardonable. All they can reason is this way—a boy's dead. And the father of you both—and Mound County Sheriff besides —suddenly nowhere to be found. Now honestly, Miss Alt, if you was just somebody on the streets wouldn't that plant a little whisper in your ear that your Sheriff wasn't just exactly tending to the job you'd put him there to do? Sure it would.

Joe, in God's name please go away.

Well, I will. Directly.

Now, Joe. Oh, please, Joe, now. Let me be alone. Get out.

I only hope the things I said didn't frighten you. That sure wasn't my purpose in coming down tonight. You know that, don't you? I came to bring you comfort—to look after you. Haven't I always?—through all those years—all those towns—all the lonesome scared times when your daddy wasn't here? Poor motherless little child. Ever since you wasn't no taller than my belt buckle I've tried to be something to you that even he can't be. Not ever.

No. My papa's everything!

Father. Yes, father. Sure, he's always been that. Btit not everything.

Everything, Joel

Her, too?

Both! Mother—father—all I ever needed!

That's not what you used to say when you were a kid in second grade back in Corpus Christi. I remember nights like this when he'd be away and I'd rock you in my arms and you'd suck your thumb and directly you'd stop sobbing like you'd stopped remembering her at all. And then you'd fall asleep. Don't you remember those nights—nights like the time when he'd gone off this way and you grabbed her picture off his bed stand and throwed it clean across the room?

No. No. I don't remember.

The glass is still gone from the frame. See—over there?

It never did get put back. Her picture's dusty now—the colors have all run. Now, I wonder who's that standing beside her? It's all blurred.

The rain—it did that once. The rain. It blew in on it once in that old house in San Antone.

Funny. Queer he never got new glass. A picture needs glass.

You don't know anything about it. He wants it that way—he likes it kept that way. God, you don't know anything about the way he thinks of her. It was her hand, he says —her hand that brushed that picture from the table by his bed. Her dead ghost hand, he says, that broke the glass so sometimes in the dark when he got lonely he could reach out and touch her face. The spirit of her hand, he says, come back so that no glass, no anything could keep his hands from touching all the memory of her he had left to feel. It so happens that's perfectly beautiful, Joe. But you couldn't understand.

Oh, I understand.

Why won't you go? If you understand so much—why won't you go? If you want to comfort me so much, Joe Tzchak, you'll please not refer again to my mother.

And now JUl's great eyes lifted quickly to the time-washed face of her mother printed with gaudy, brutal inexactitude into the yellowing pasteboard in its dime store frame. She stared at it with her eyes glazed and dry with a grief more anguished than tears could ever tell. The deputy cracked his knuckles.

My poor little mama, she murmured—to the picture, perhaps to herself, and not to Joe at all. Poor Uttle mama. But you couldn't help it. How could you know? What woman ever knows until she's learned it hard and then it is too late? Mama, I know. That's why I can pity—forgive. Mama, it's not too late for me. I learned from your being dead. Because that's all they want, really—doing that to a woman —doing that thing that made the thing inside you that killed you. But I forgive that, Mama. You didn't know.

She stopped hush-still, fixed her white teeth softly in the rouged droop of her Up and turned to Tzchak with her eyes brilliant with new tears.

Joe, Where's my daddy?

A day or so. He'll be back.

Oh, Joe, I have this terrible feeling maybe this time's different.

No different. This time—this town. No different.

Joe, I'm sick of new towns. I'm tired, Joe. Oh God, I'm so tired of all the towns.

Luther Alt's a wandering man. Maybe he don't like being one but he is. Maybe he's tired, too. But you and me—we know it's got to be like that. He's got to keep moving.

And someday it will have to end. We know that, too, don't we, Joe?

Maybe. Meanwhile, it's like it's always been when he's gone off like this. Like I was one of the family—like a faithful old mama-watchdog guarding the master's baby.

Jill shivered. She rose suddenly and, reaching out, turned the picture frame face-downwards on the vanity. Then she went back to sit again, hunching into her knees, eyes closed, clench-tight, thinking about that face of her mother, bathed in the lying colors of some long-gone Texas sun of forenoon.

You ought to get a piece of glass for that.

No.

What with dust. What with rain and sunshine and time.

I hate it. Sometimes I want to take it downstairs and soak it in the sink—drown it—let all the colors soak out till there's no face left at all. Sometimes I hate it. Not her. I mean sometimes I just want to kid myself that there are some things you can send gurgling down the drain—weakness, stupidity, that something in her eyes that tells me she could never say no—that she couldn't keep herself from letting a man use her even if it meant his using her would someday make her die. Oh, I hate that picture sometimes.

Then how come you keep it there always in plain sight?

Because I love it.

Well, that's mighty queer thinking. Now ain't it?

Sure. To a man it is. To a user, she said.

But your daddy's a man. By God, there was never more man than your daddy. How about that?

You wouldn't understand. He loves me. He's always always loved me. He watches after me.

And when he's not here to watch after you—it's me that watches after you, kitten.

Don't call me that tonight, Joe.

Didn't I always call you that when you was scared and lonely? Have you clean forgot that first time—that night when you was only ten, kitten?

Quit teasing me. Please stop. Oh God, Joe, get out!

I will. Directly. Kitten. Soft little kitten.

Stop—that!

No. Because whenever you was scared and lonesome like this when you was little you was always that. And when I say that name it eases. Now don't it? Didn't it always ease things, little kitten?

So seeing him now risen, seeing him so now, through eyes blood-burned, and brain flinching under the drum of pulse that hurt her tender temples: watching him as at the far end of the corridor of nearness as slowly he moved toward her down the little space of garish, fevered light with all the hues and definitions of him washed hke the ruined, rain-grieved picture. But this time I won't, she thought, because it never does any good—it never kills its coming back or stops its forever being, rising.

No, she mumbled, drunkenly. This time no.

Kitten, she heard him somewhere whisper, a soimd lost among the remote, hurried rustle of polished chino.