The Double Hook Page 6

  You couldn’t knock him down, Angel said. He could snap you open the way a man knocks open a box. He could split you down the core the way a man splits open an apple.

  What’s the matter? she said to Felix. I never in my life heard you call on anyone.

  It’s Kip, he said.

  Angel shoved past Theophil and beat her hands against Felix’s bib.

  What’s the matter? she cried. Don’t stand there like a lump of meat. What’s happened?

  He’s been beat up, Felix said, and I think blinded.

  I knew, Angel moaned. I knew no good was in the wind. Blinded? she asked. For sure? Blinded, she said. Who’ll see anything worth seeing now?

  She went to the door and called the children.

  Theophil sat down on the mattress and lit a cigarette.

  Some men get what’s coming to them, he said. He stretched his legs out and leaned back on his arm, his cigarette between his teeth.

  When she goes off with you, he said to Felix, I want you to know that I’ve already given her notice. It’s the kids I feel sorry for, he said.

  6

  Go out and bring back Lenchen, the Widow said to the boy. Then together we will think what to do.

  Yet even as he began to eat, rubbing his bread in the bacon fat, she began again. Looking out the window at the land fenced off. At the dry parcel which marriage with Wagner had given her.

  I had things ready. Things from my family.

  Then she stopped. Hearing her own voice in the boy’s silence. Her face stirring like ground cracked above a growing shoot.

  Heinrich, she said. Then she stopped.

  Flesh calls for flesh, she thought. She had paid enough. Had come with Wagner. Her lips closed. Her eyes shut. Had come into the wilderness. She had done wrong. She had seen the wrong. It was God who would judge.

  She covered her eyes with her hand.

  She had cried out against God. She had set wrong on wrong. She had been judged. Eyes looking from the creek bottom. From the body of another old woman. Knowledge. Silence. Shame.

  Heinrich, she said. Go. Go.

  Heinrich pushed back from the table.

  I’ve been thinking, he said. In the night.

  Ya, she said. You slept. Heavy like a stone in the house.

  I should have been able to tell Lenchen something, he said. I should have been able to tell her what to do.

  How would you know? his mother asked. You’ve not loved.

  No, he said. But he thought of light blazed into a branch of fire. How could he say that the earth scorched his foot. That he must become ash and be born into a light which burned but did not destroy.

  Without speaking he buckled on his chaps.

  7

  Just after Heinrich passed the lake he overtook Ara and William. They were riding slowly. Ara clamped stiff as a clothes-peg on the back of William’s bald-faced mare.

  The boy looked at the restless movement of Ara’s hat. It had fallen suspended on its bootlace to her shoulders, and slapped and jerked with every forward step of the horse.

  Lenchen was part of any animal she rode. Moved with its movement as if she and the horse breathed with the same lungs. Rode easy as foam on its circling blood. She was part of the horse. Its crest and the edge of its fire.

  Ara was something else. Made to walk on roads and to climb cliffs. Made to beat her hands against rock faces and to set her foot on sliding shale.

  The boy wanted to call out to William: Set her down. You might as well ask a dog to ride with you. But William would answer: I knew a dog once that could ride a horse as well as a man. When the going got rough, he’d say, that dog would move his backside against the cantle the way a man settles his rump.

  They must be going to James’s place, the boy thought, and moved his hand to rein in his horse. But William turned half in the saddle and called to him.

  I was going to see James, the boy said, riding up. But if you have business with him I’d best leave it to another time.

  You said your business wouldn’t keep, Ara said, remembering the passage between James and the boy. Could a woman ask, she said, what is between you and James now?

  William looked across at her and then to the boy who had ridden abreast of them on her side.

  It’s a dangerous thing, he said, to ask about business between men. I’d thought you might have learned that. The boy here would hardly tell you so much. It would seem like setting someone older and wiser right.

  The boy turned on him.

  If I can’t tell her, who can I tell? She might make things straight somehow. Can a man speak to no one because he’s a man? Who says so? Those who want to be sheltered by his silence. I’ve held my tongue, he said, when I should have used my voice like an axe to cut down the wall between us.

  He tightened his legs on his horse so that it sprang forward.

  What’s your hurry? William called after him.

  The boy pulled in his horse and waited.

  Why are you going to James’s? the boy asked.

  What would be more natural? William said. James and Greta are in trouble, he said. And it’s my trouble too. Though when a man moves away, he said, he sets up for himself and begins what you might call a new herd. He’s not bound to the old one like those who stay. If you moved away now, he said, you’d know what I mean.

  But I couldn’t, the boy said.

  And James couldn’t, Ara said. Though Greta might have. And now that Ma’s dead James still couldn’t unless Greta came to stay with us, and that she’d never do.

  The boy looked away.

  Ara, he said, you must know what my business with James is. Everyone in the creek must know and no one has turned a hand to help. I don’t know what to do.

  You have your own Ma, she said.

  The boy was silent.

  You best wait to speak to James, William said. And you’d best make sure of the facts before you speak. The rest is woman’s business.

  They had reached the line fence now. The house was still hidden by the sweep of the land.

  Lenchen’s gone from him, the boy said.

  Time and time again I’ve seen it happen, William said. There’s never just one wasp in a wasp’s nest.

  There’s no smoke coming from the chimney, he said to Ara as they rounded the bend. She looked. The road reached before them to the gate, which hung open on its hinges.

  William leant down from his saddle and looked at the marks in the dust. Ara smelt the scent of the honeysuckle. But the boy saw a head at the window half screened by the vine.

  There’s someone there, he said.

  William looked up from the dust.

  It’s Greta, he said, but James must have gone off somewhere, leaving the gate open behind him.

  8

  Inside the house Greta put her hand on the door bolt as if to feel its strength. She had stepped back from the window when she’d seen the boy’s eyes on her.

  They’re on me now, she said. The pack of them.

  What have I done? she asked. What’s a moth done that a man strikes it away from the lamp?

  There was no one to answer.

  Then she heard William’s voice: They interfere with a man’s proper business. Some eat cloth that’s needed for human flesh.

  She heard Angel’s voice: What do you know about moths? You never felt the flame scorch your wings. You never felt nothing.

  She began to laugh.

  How much is nothing? she thought.

  She felt the weight of it in her hands. She turned to Angel’s voice.

  You don’t know, she said.

  She heard Ara’s voice speaking on the other side of the door: Greta, we’ve come to help.

  Then she heard William’s voice, outside now near Ara’s: Let us in and tell us where James has gone. There’s nothing so bad that a few rivets won’t set it in use again.

  She felt hands on the knob. She felt hands twisting her ribs. Plucking the flowers on her housecoat and bruising them. Stripp
ing off the leaves until her branch lay naked as a bone on the dusty floor.

  She heard Ara’s voice again and the boy Wagner’s: Ask her if she knows anything about Lenchen.

  There’s a good girl, Greta, William said. We want to do what we can. Steady on and open the door.

  Then she heard voices again, but not what they said. Then the squeak of a boot as someone walked away from the house. Through a crack in one of the door planks she saw the circle of Ara’s hat. Ara sat down like a watchdog on the step.

  Greta turned away from the door. She pulled off her housecoat. She rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the stove. Then she went naked except for her shoes into the pantry and came back with a tin of kerosene.

  Ara must have got up from the steps. Greta heard fingers on the door. She heard Ara’s voice: Where’s James, Greta? Tell me what you know about Lenchen and James. The girl’s gone too. We must all help. We want to help you. That’s why we came. Open the door, Greta. The men have gone to the barn.

  Greta reached for the matches. She laid the box on the stove and poured kerosene from the tin. The flowers in the stove-box were breathing out fragrance which filled the whole room. They were raising purple faces and lifting green arms into the air above the stove.

  She heard Ara’s voice: Tell me what you know about Lenchen.

  She wanted to cry abuse through the boards. She wanted to cram the empty space with hate. She wanted her voice to shatter all memory of the girl who had stayed too long, then gone off perhaps to die in the hills. Die suffering so that James would remember the pain of her. Die young so that James would remember the sweetness of her. Die giving so that he’d live in the thought of her.

  She picked up the box of matches.

  Don’t play with those, Greta.

  She turned quickly. Her mother was standing on the stairs.

  Don’t play with those, Greta, she said. They’re hard to get. A person has to know how to play with fire.

  Greta. Greta: it was Ara’s voice.

  Greta lit a match and dropped it into the stove. The flowers raised gold filaments anthered with flame. Greta reached for the tin and emptied it into the fire.

  And Coyote cried in the hills:

  I’ve taken her where she stood

  my left hand is on her head

  my right hand embraces her.

  9

  At the other end of the valley Prosper and Angel reached the gate. Angel did not come riding a sleek ass. She walked beside Prosper on her two feet, her children tagging behind her.

  She did not come in peace. Her voice lapped and fretted against Felix’s silence.

  Why was it Kip came to you? she asked. Just why?

  Now we’ve come, she said, we’ve come to stay. There’s nowhere else now.

  And what’s for them, Angel asked, looking over her shoulder at the children, except rocks and ground and wild beasts to play with – or themselves – in the empty spaces. I’ve thought sometimes it would be better to take them down below out of the loneliness. But if loneliness is being in one’s own skin and flesh, there’s only more lonely people there than here.

  But how do I know? she asked. How do I know since I’ve never been there. I could guess, she said. One man is one man and two men or ten men aren’t something else. One board is one board. Nailed together they might be a pig-pen or a henhouse. But I never knew men you could nail together like boards.

  She had fallen behind Felix. Now she came up to him and beat her hands against the flesh of his shoulder.

  Take a man and woman, she said. There’s no word to tell that when they get together in bed they’re still anything but two people.

  The hounds had come to the gate. They stood swinging their tails and grinning foolishly at Angel. But the terrier on the step snapped at her as she passed and crowded close to Felix’s ankle.

  The house door was shut. Angel put her hand on the knob, but did not open the door. The terrier tugged at the bottom of Felix’s overalls and began sniffing its way forward.

  Angel turned. Go off, she called to the children. If there’s food to be had I’ll raise my voice.

  The terrier was scratching at the base of the door and pressing its nose against the crack. Angel turned the knob, and the terrier shoved its way in as the door opened.

  I suppose there is no food, Angel said. Besides it’s Kip who matters. Bellies. Bellies.

  From the room came the sound of the terrier’s voice. Angry. Affronted.

  Stop your noise, Angel said. Then she saw the Widow’s daughter standing by the stove.

  The girl stared at Angel.

  I thought, you’d gone away, she said. I didn’t suppose you would come back. Not really. I didn’t suppose people ever did.

  Then she pressed her back against the wall, shut her eyes and began to sob.

  There’s no use crying, Angel said. No use at all.

  FOUR

  1

  James had simply saddled his horse and ridden through the gate.

  Let the world see me now if it cares, he thought.

  The world didn’t seem to care. James passed William’s house. He passed Theophil’s. He passed the Wagners’. Smoke was rising from the Wagners’ chimney; otherwise there was no sign of life. James passed Felix Prosper’s.

  He felt the quirt which he had shoved under his belt pressing into the soft edge of his ribs. He pulled it out and threw it into the scrub.

  He crouched down between his horse’s ears and pressed it into a full gallop. He wanted only one thing. To get away. To bolt noisily and violently out of the present. To leave the valley. To attach himself to another life which moved at a different rhythm.

  The horse slowed to a rocking canter. James smelt the sage and the dust. He saw hill roll into hill.

  At last he came to the pole fence of the Indian reservation. The cabins huddled together. Wheels without wagons. Wagons without wheels. Bits of harness. Rags and tatters of clothing strung up like fish greyed over with death. He saw the bone-thin dogs. Waiting. Heard them yelping. Saw them running to drive him off territory they’d been afraid to defend. Snarling. Twisting. Tumbling away from the heels they pursued.

  He had covered about half the distance to the town below. Now he came to fenced-off land. Signs of habitation. A flume. A gate. Some horses pastured in a field. Still he had seen no one.

  He struck into the highway at last. Here, bordering the road, were the market gardens. Men working among the tomato vines. But he saw only the circle of their hats as they squatted among the plants or bowed down over the shaft of a hoe.

  A truck raced towards him. Lace loose. Canvases flapping. Shrouded as it passed in a swirl of dust.

  In the town below

  lived Paddy, the bartender,

  and Paddy’s parrot.

  Lived Shepherd, the game warden,

  Pockett, manager of the General Store,

  Bascomb, the bank manager

  and Tallifer, his clerk.

  Lived ten score other souls.

  The road twisted and curled as it dropped to the river. James’s horse was dark with sweat. It had been on the road ten hours or more. James leaned forward and ran his fingers down its neck. He felt it tremble under his hand.

  Below him on the other side of the river he could see the town. Houses and sheds set in a waste of sand and sagebrush. A crisscross of streets and alleys leading out to nothing. Leading in to the hotel and the railway station which fronted it.

  On the near side of the bridge which crossed over the river into the town he saw a car stopped and drawn in to the bank. Shepherd, the game warden, was asleep at the wheel. Sweat streaking his shirt. Sweat matting the hair on his forehead. James steadied his horse for the bridge.

  Over the low railing he could look down to the flowing eddies of grey water. He edged closer to the rail. The horse quivered. Its mouth tightened on the bit. The water moved and stood still. An empty box floating downstream was caught and held suspended beneath him. His eyes
searched the river bank and the naked silver bars. And there on a bar at the foot of the pier on which the arch of the bridge rested he saw the dark figure of his mother playing her line out into the full flood.

  He pulled the horse up. Then closing his eyes gave it its head. He felt it draw to the centre of the bridge. And heard its feet echoing on the boards until solid earth dulled their beat.

  2

  The horse took him without any sort of direction to the barn where he had stabled it in the fall when he’d driven in the beef. James climbed down and threw the reins to a man who had been sleeping outside the door.

  Rub him down, he said. Don’t water or feed him until he’s cooled off.

  Then he walked away.

  The lane which went past the stable led to the main street. James walked quickly. He had decided what he was going to do.

  Outside the hotel two men sat on chairs tipped back against the frame wall. James looked through the window of the hotel. The clock on the wall opposite the door showed that it was almost three o’clock. He quickened his step. The door of the bank was still open.

  Inside the building the heat was contracted and tense. James went up to the wicket. Through an open door he saw Bascomb, his coat off, sitting vacantly at his desk.

  The teller raised his head from the balance-sheets.

  I want all my money, James said.

  The teller’s face seemed to be pressing through the bars at him.

  I want all my money, James said.

  Pardon, the teller said.

  James lifted his hand. Then he let it drop heavily on the sill of the wicket.

  Bascomb came out of his office. He waved the teller aside.

  I’ll see to Mr. Potter’s business, he said.

  I want all my money, James said.

  Bascomb seemed to be grinning at him.

  Did you say you wanted to close your account? he asked.

  Could I say it plainer? James said.