"Tear it out! Only thing! Chop out the big stuff and burn the brush, grub up the brambles and poison the vines. Goddam right. What if it is growin' back on you soon's you bat your eye? Screw it. You don't get it this round, get it the next. Yee HEE I useta tell Ben. Whoo Whooee. Goddam tootin'. Tear the livin' jesus outa it! You watch an' see if I--"
Hank kept him from falling. Joe caught the outflung cane. Viv hurried to his side, her face white. "Papa, Henry, are you all right?"
"I think he's just gassed, chicken," Hank said without conviction.
"Henry! Are you feeling all right?"
Slowly the old face lifted and turned toward hers; gradually the sunken mouth stretched itself into a grin. "Okay, now--"
He fixed her with one searing green eye. "What's this about tryna sneak off on a coon hunt 'thout me?"
"Oh, lord." Hank sighed, releasing the old man and returning to his seat.
"Papa," Viv said with a mixture of relief and vexation, "you've just got to go to bed--"
"Booger the bed! What about a coon hunt? I asked!"
Joe Ben maneuvered him toward the stairs. "Nobody said anything about a coon hunt, Henry."
"Uh-huh, uh-huh, you think I can't hear? You think the old nigger is too deef, too stove up to go on a little hunt? We'll see about that."
"Come on, Papa." Viv tugged gently at the sleeve of his shirt. "Let's me and you go upstairs to bed."
"Why, all right," he agreed with a sudden change of mood and gave Hank a wink so lascivious and led Viv so spryly up the steps that I told her I was giving her three minutes, at the most five, then I was organizing a posse to come up and rescue her from the old dragon.
We listened to him thundering and hooting overhead. "I sometimes think," Hank said, still shaking his head, "that my dear old daddy is slippin' his gears."
"Oh no." Joe Ben leaped to Henry's defense. "That ain't it. He's gettin' to be the town character, like I said. They're callin' him Old Wild and Woolly in Wakonda--kids pointin' at him, women sayin' hello to him on the street--and don't think for a minute he ain't lovin' every minute of it. Ah, no, Hankus, it ain't that he's really comin' apart--well, maybe a little, like his memory an' his eyes--it's more a kind of act, you see?"
"I don't know which is worse."
"Ah, Hank, he's gettin' a million kicks."
"Maybe. But dammit, the doctor put all that plaster on him to kind of anchor him. He said he wasn't really so bad busted up but if we didn't slow him down some he sure would be. Looks like, if anything, it revved him up."
"He's just holding his mouth right is all, enjoyin' his lot. Don't you think so, Lee? Oh yeah, listen to him rant an' rejoice up there."
I was pessimistic. "Sounds like he's rehearsing for a rape."
"Oh no. It's just an act," Joe insisted. "All just an act. If he's rehearsin' for anything it's for the Academy Award speech for the best actor of the year."
Above us we could hear the Academy Award candidate practicing diction as he called through spongy gums for Viv to get her puny ath back here an' quit bein' so blathted perthnickety! Viv appeared on the stairs, her hair disheveled and her pale cheeks flushed by the recent activity, and announced she was giving the rest of us one last chance to better old Henry's offer of two dollars and a pint of liquor. Hank said that was too rich for his blood but Joe Ben allowed that in as his woman had already petered out on him and gone to bed with the kids upstairs, he'd up the bid to two-fifty. I kept my wallet in my pocket, but as she passed me on her way to deposit old Henry's dirty socks in the laundry bag she asked if I didn't have a five spot I wasn't using. I told her to wait for next Saturday, payday.
"You could get a draw tomorrow," she hinted, blushing as she did with that anomalous combination of demure coquetry and brazen diffidence. "I could talk my husband into it."
"All right, tomorrow. Where shall we rendezvous?
She whirled away, trailing light laughter. "In town at the jetty. Tomorrow is the day I dig rock oysters at the jetty. Bring a hammer."
"It sounds romantic," I said and glanced about for brother Hank, to be sure it didn't sound too romantic. But he was just coming away from the window.
"You know, I been thinking," he said thoughtfully, "what with the big yield we had today we're standin' in pretty fair shape. An' we can't expect this kinda weather to hold. An' we're all about half lit anyhow. So how about we take them dirteaters under the house there out for a little run, just to limber up?"
"A hunt?" I asked.
"Yeah!" Joe Ben was ready.
"It's late," Viv said, thinking of us getting up at four-thirty for work in the morning.
"Just right," Hank said. "I was thinkin' we'd by god just cross off tomorrow as far as work goes. We ain't had a Saturday off in a long while."
"Good deal!" Joe Ben was beside himself. "Oh yeah! An' you know what tomorrow happens to be? Halloween. Oh yeah, it's too much: Halloween in town, a coon hunt, the old man bringin' home a bottle, Les Gibbons fallin' in the river . . . I can't stand it!"
"What about you, bub; you reckon you can stand it?"
"I wasn't exactly planning on a midnight stroll, but I think I'll survive."
"I tell you what, Hankus: Let's me an' you take out first around the hill an' get things goin'--them dogs'll be worthless anyhow for the first hour after this long a layoff--and Lee and Viv can go on up on top to the shack and wait till we tree somethin', then follow on down. No sense in all of us stumblin' around in the brambles. How's that sound, Viv? Lee?"
Viv was willing and I saw no way out of the trap I had fashioned for myself, so I said fine. Besides, I was looking forward to the chance of speaking with Viv alone. During the evening, along with my decision to bury the hatchet, I had resolved to use the impetus of well-being and whisky to tell all, to come clean. My grimy conscience begged for a thorough airing. I had to tell someone everything and had picked Viv as the most sympathetic ear. I would tell her the whole evil scheme, all my terrible plans. Of course, I might have to fill in here and there, pad out the abstract, chink in the unfinished details of the fiendish plot against my brother, but I was determined to reveal the truth to someone, though it meant lying myself blue in the face.
That, however, is not quite the way it turned out.
Upstairs, the young Henry with a compass in every pocket and a knife in his boot reached down to grapple with the shirtfront of the old Henry, pulling him roughly standing. "Okay, old man, you can let them downstairs think you're fooled, but I'm blamed if I'll let you think you fooled yourself. . . ." The old man looks down at the soft doeskin bedroom slipper that covers his good foot, noticing how worn it is already just since that doctor gave it to him. A bedroom slipper, for the love o' Christ . . .
As it turned out, I was never alone with her long enough to begin my fabricated confession--"Because when we swore to beat it," the young Henry goes on, "we wasn't talking just about the first rounds, we was talking about the whole boogerin' fight! So get up from there . . ."--because just as we were leaving old Henry decided that we couldn't possibly survive out there in the untamed wilderness without the blessing of his woods-wily presence. In the front hall below they hear the light slipper's padding change to a heavy stomp counterpointing the rubber thud of the cast's crutch tip. "Listen there," Joe Ben says . . . But, as it turned out, my father's presence was more a blessing than he ever knew; had I actually gone through with the ridiculous confession I was fashioning for Viv, I am sure I would have expired of sheer absurdity when later, back at the house after the hunt, my brother finally shed his phony foliage of olive leaves and forget-me-nots to reveal the true color of his nightshade heart--"Listen there," Joe says. "Sounds like somebody for some reason is changed a slipper for a corknail boot. . . ."--shed his foliage and showed his colors and proved himself once and for all deserving of whatever calamity I could conceivably perpetrate--"Now who do you suppose," Joe asks aloud, "could be snakin' down them stairs after us in one cork boot?"--as it all turned out . . .
&n
bsp; "I got a pretty fair notion who," Hank said. "What I'm wondering about is why."
He and Lee had been helping Viv into a pair of stubborn boots when Joe had heard that first boot-tread. Now they all stood listening to the somber approach of stealthy rubber creeping from the stairs toward the hall.
"Trouble sneakin' up on us," Joe said.
"Trouble is right," Hank said. "And with a snootful."
"Hank," Viv whispered, "couldn't he just go as far as--"
Hank cut her off. "I'll handle him."
She started to speak further but decided it would only cause more fuss. They were all standing in a row when Henry appeared. Viv saw him come clomping through the dark, struggling to work his plaster arm through the sleeve of a tattered elkhide jacket. She saw that he had pared away some of the cast at the elbow and wrist to give him more freedom of movement. He stopped before them in the hall, glowering.
"I couldn't get off to sleep, if you got to know." He looked from Hank to Joe Ben, challenging anybody to just by god try to tell him where he could go and where he couldn't. When no one spoke he resumed his struggle with the jacket. Viv leaned the .22-pump she was holding against the door and walked to give him a hand. "All right, then," he grumbled, "is they any of that likker I brought home left, or you hogs kill it?"
"You want some more of that rotgut?" Hank stepped forward to steady his father while Viv tried to work the sleeve over the soiled cast. "Why, Jesus, Henry, you can barely put one foot in front of the other as it is--"
"Get back away from me, blast it!"
"--so what you want to make yourself more a handicap for?"
"Get back, I say! I'll thank you to leave me dress my own self. Lord love us when the day comes that Henry Stamper is a handicap. Where's me some snoose, then?"
Hank turned to Lee. "What you say, bub? It's your show more or less. You want to drag this old drunk cripple along or not?"
"I don't know. He's a sight. You sure he won't scare off the game?"
"Oh no." As usual, Joe Ben spoke in Henry's behalf. "Creatures been known to come for miles around when Henry's along. He attracks the game."
"There's something to what he says, Lee. You remember, Joe? The time we took him huntin' cat with us in the Ochocos?"
"All right now--"
"Left him leanin' against a tree--"
"I said all right! Viv, honey, you seen my snuff?"
"--an' he dozed off an' we came back into camp an' there was a scrubby coyote wettin' on his leg."
"I remember that. Oh yeah. Thought he was a tree."
Henry was concentrating on the cluttered shelf that ran head-high the length of the hall, choosing to ignore the conversation. "Just one can of Skol is all I ast an' we can get this circus on the road."
"So you see, bub, he may actually be an asset."
"Bring him along. Maybe we can use him for bait."
"I never in my life seen such a collection of crap." He rummaged through boxes of shotgun shells, tools, odds and ends of clothing, tennis shoes, paint cans and brushes . . . "Never in all my born days."
Viv raised herself on tiptoe and found a whole carton. She opened one can for him by running her thumbnail around the crack. Henry looked into the offered can suspiciously before extracting a pinch fastidiously between thumb and finger. "Much obliged," he said moodily. Turning his back on the others to confide to her in a low voice: "All I aim is just to walk up as far as the first flat an' listen to the dogs for a while. Then I'll come on back. I just couldn't get off to sleep."
She replaced the lid on the snuff and put the can in his jacket pocket. "It just hasn't been a night for sleeping," she said sympathetically.
Hank and Joe Ben went on ahead with the dogs and she hung back with Lee to keep the old man company. She preferred staying apart from the dogs, anyway. Not that she minded their baying--in fact, some had very musical voices--but their noise always so overwhelmed the other little noises of the forest night.
Henry had found a flashlight among the shelf's clutter, but it had burned out a few yards from the front door. He flung it away with a curse and they continued on in darkness up the path in the direction of the nearest hill. The clouds that had blazed so brilliantly at sunset now spread across the land, blackening the sky and bringing it down close over their heads. On all sides, just beyond the fingertips, night hung in thick folds; even when the keen edge of the moon managed to slice itself a brief hole, its crippled light emphasized, more than alleviated, the gloom.
They walked in a silent single file, with Viv a few yards behind Henry, and Lee bringing up the rear. The only thing Viv could see of the old man was the murky sweep of his cast leading the way toward the hill, yet she could follow him easily; there were perhaps a dozen paths up to the shack, and she knew them all by heart. Her first year in Oregon she had walked up to the shack almost every day, early in the morning or late in the evening. She had walked home from there many times in complete darkness after sitting through a long twilight. From the hill she could see the sun sink into the sea when the weather was clear, or hear the buoys out over the bar when it was stormy--the bell buoy clanging in slow cadence; the whistler keening mournfully as the waves tossed it about. Hank scolded her for choosing the early morning and the late evening for her walk, saying it would be warmer and clearer at midday. She tried it a few times but went back to her old schedule; in the evenings she liked to look seaward and see that perfectly round sphere sinking to meet that perfectly straight line--so different from the jig-jag line of the Rockies that her childhood sun had turned into a row of volcanoes, and so much simpler, like an orange ball rolling off the edge of a blue-green table--and in the mornings she enjoyed hearing the dark, mist-locked woods below her come awake for the day.
That first summer it came to be almost a daily ritual, her walk to the shack. After the men left for work she piled the dishes in the big sink to soak, filled a Thermos with coffee, singled out one of the dogs to accompany her, and hiked up to the shack to listen to the birds. The dog would sniff about the shack for a few minutes while she spread a big moss-covered stump with a piece of plastic bag she kept in the shack so she would not have to sit on the damp moss; then he would wet on the same wetting post and lie down to sleep on the same pile of burlap that the dog before him had used.
Then nothing else would be stirring--or so it would seem. But gradually her ears would pick out tiny rustlings in the vines nearby, where the grosbeaks were waking. A mourning dove would call unseen from the thicket below--a round, clear, bouncing note, as though a soft ball had been dropped on the lowest key of a xylophone: "Tuuu . . . tuu tu tu." Another dove would answer a distance away. They would call again, closer to each other each time; then they would emerge together from the mist, of the mist, gray, graceful, and be off together wing to wing like reflections of each other in a looking-glass sky. The red-winged blackbirds would wake all at once, like soldiers to Reveille. They would shake themselves from the bam grove and swing in a glistening pack to settle in the nearby bunchberry vines, where they waited for the mist to lift from the cattails, singing incessantly or drawing the black feathers of their wings and tails slowly through their bills. With the bright scarlet amulets on each shoulder of their black uniforms they always made her sure that they were preparing for a review by the king. Then the blue grouse would drum away its kin, and the dowitcher would voice its piercing alarm at seeing the sun. The band-tailed pigeons would call seductively from branch to branch, all with voices like Marlene Dietrich's. The flickers and sapsuckers would begin knocking the trunks of hemlocks for breakfast. . . . And after all the other birds were up and about their affairs--even after the jay, who would burst each morning from the mist, screeching in a blue rage at these damned early birds who never let a fellow finish his rest--the crows would make their stately entrance. From the tops of the firs they would swoop, laughing with a sort of pitiless amusement at the lesser birds, and circle away in a slow, disorganized flock bound for the mudflats, sometimes leav
ing her feeling strangely disturbed. Perhaps because they reminded her of the magpies from around her Colorado home--carrion-eaters, lining the rabbit-killing highways, living off death--but she thought there must be more to it than just that. Magpies were, all in all, rather silly birds. The crows, for all their raucous laughter, never seemed silly.
When the last of the crows had gone she would drink the coffee and return the plastic sack to the shed and start back, whistling for the dog. On the way back she would go by the orchard and kick the old cow awake, then go on to the house to clean up after breakfast. By the time she finished dishes the cow was lowing at the barn door to be milked.
When she milked again in the evening she often saw through the barn window the crows returning from their daily contest with the pigs; sometimes one or two were conspicuously maimed, or even missing. She didn't know about the pigs, how they were taking the contest, but, win or lose, the crows always laughed--the hard, old jaded laughter that came of looking at the world with a black and practiced eye. From the less skillful the laugh might have hinted of despair, or silliness, like the magpies', but the crows were masters of the wry outlook, and Viv never heard them but what she followed their expert lead and laughed along--they knew the secret of black, that it could not be made blacker, and if neither could it be made lighter, it could still be made funnier.
"What are you sniggerin' about?" Hank wanted to know when she carried in the straining cloth from the milkhouse to wash it on the back porch.
"Oh, I've got some secrets," she answered, amused by his curiosity, "some secrets of my own."
"Out yonder in the barn? So. You been meetin' some man on the sly up in the hayloft, is that it?"
She hummed mysteriously as she wrung the cloth out and hung it over a peg. "What man? You keep me imprisoned across this moat all day, forlorn, alone--"
"Uh-huh! So it's one of them animals out there? Which one, the tomcat? I'll wring the rascal's neck. Tell me which one them varmints been duffin' my wife. I got to know. . . ."
She smiled and started for the kitchen door. "You'll just have to wait another two months to see, I guess."
He caught the tail of her sweat shirt and pulled her backward to him until her rear pressed against his pants. He encircled her waist and slid his hand down the top of her jeans over the tight swell of her stomach. "I guess he'll be okay whatever," he said against the back of her head, "just so long's he ain't black; old Henry'll drown all of us if he's black, tomcat and all."