In this close half-world of perpetual twilight he immersed himself. He spoke to Francine infrequently; he clasped her to him and heard themselves speak only in their heavy breathing and wordless cries, until at last he thought he found his only existence there. Beyond the four walls that surrounded him he could imagine only a nothingness which was a brightness and a noise that pressed threateningly against him. If he looked too long and too intently, the walls themselves seemed to press upon him, and the objects in his sight—the red couch, the carpet, the knick-knacks scattered upon the tables—seemed obscurely to threaten the comfort he found in the half-darkness where he lived. Naked in the dark beside the passive body of Francine, with his eyes closed, he seemed to float weightlessly within himself; and even in waking he partook of some of the quality of the deep sleep he found in the moments after his love-making with Francine.
Gradually he came to look upon his frequent and desperate unions with Francine as if they were performed by someone else. As if from a distance, sightlessly, he observed himself and his sensations as he fulfilled his needs upon a body to which, meaninglessly, he attached a name. Sometimes, lying beside Francine, he looked down the pale length of his own body as if it had nothing to do with himself; he touched his chest, where fine hair like down curled sparsely on the white flesh, and wondered at the sensation of his hand brushing lightly above his skin. Beside him, at these moments, Francine seemed hardly to have any relation to him; she was a presence which assuaged a need in him that he barely knew he had, until the need was met. Sometimes, heavy upon her and lost in the darkness of his passion, he was surprised to find within himself qualities of sensation of which he had been unaware; and when he opened his eyes, meeting the eyes of Francine open and wide and unfathomable below him, again he was almost surprised that she was there. Afterward, he remembered the look in her eyes and wondered what she was thinking, what she was feeling, in the close moments of their passion.
And finally this wondering drew his mind and his eye away from the center of his self and focused them upon Francine. Covertly he watched her as she walked about the dim room, clothed loosely in her thin gray wrapper, or as she lay naked on the bed beside him. Not touching her, he let his eyes go over her body, over her round untroubled face framed loosely by the yellow hair that in the dimness was dark upon the bed sheets; over her full breasts that were laced delicately with an intricate network of blue veins; over her gently mounded belly, which flowed beneath the fine light maidenhair caught in the faint gleams of light that seeped into the room; and down the large firm legs that tapered to her small feet. Sometimes he fell quietly asleep gazing at her, and awoke as quietly, his eyes again upon her, but upon her without recognition, so that he searched again her face and her form as if he had not seen them before.
Near the end of the week a restlessness came upon him. No longer content to lie torpidly in the warm dark room, he more and more frequently left it to wander about the single street of Butcher’s Crossing. Seldom did he speak to anyone; never did he linger for more than a few minutes at any place he stopped. He was content to let the sunlight seep into him, as he blinked his eyes upon the brightness. He went once to Butcher’s Hotel to pick up his bedroll, to pay for his brief lodging there, and to inform the clerk that he would not be back; once he wandered down the road west of town and rested beneath the grove of cottonwood trees, gazing across the area piled with baled hides that had been McDonald’s place of business; several times he went into the bar of Jackson’s Saloon and took a glass of luke-warm beer. Once, in the bar, he saw Charley Hoge seated at a rear table, alone except for a bottle of whisky and a half-filled glass. Though Andrews stood for several minutes at the bar, sipping his beer, and though Charley Hoge’s glance passed him several times, Charley Hoge gave no sign that he saw him.
Andrews walked the length of the bar and sat down at the table; he nodded to Charley Hoge, and spoke in greeting.
Charley Hoge looked at him blankly and did not answer.
“Where’s Miller?” Andrews asked.
“Miller?” Charley Hoge shook his head. “Where he always is, down at our dugout by the river.”
“Is he taking it pretty bad?”
“What?” Charley Hoge asked.
“About the hides,” Andrews said. He put his nearly empty glass before him on the table and turned it idly between his hands. “It must have been a blow to him. I guess I never realized how much this all meant to him.”
“Hides?” Charley Hoge said vaguely, and blinked his eyes. “Miller’s all right. He’s down at the dugout, resting. He’ll be along directly.”
Andrews started to speak, and then looked closely into the wide blank eyes that stared at him. “Charley,” he said, “are you all right?”
A small perplexed frown crossed Charley Hoge’s face; then his expression was clear and empty. “Sure. I’m all right.” He nodded rapidly. “Let’s see, now. You’re Will Andrews, ain’t you?”
Andrews could not look away from the eyes that seemed to grow larger as they stared at him.
“Miller’s looking for you,” Charley Hoge went on in a high monotonous voice. “Miller says we’re all going somewhere, to kill the buffalo. He knows a place in Colorado. I think he wants to see you.”
“Charley,” Andrews said; his voice trembled, and he clutched his hands hard around the glass to keep them from shaking. “Charley, get hold of yourself.”
“We’re going on a hunt,” Charley Hoge continued in his singsong voice. “You, and me, and Miller. Miller knows a skinner he can get in Ellsworth. It’ll be all right. I’m not afraid to go up there any more. The Lord will provide.” He smiled and nodded, and continued nodding toward Andrews, though his eyes had turned downward to his glass of whisky.
“Don’t you remember, Charley?” Andrews’s voice was hollow. “Don’t you remember anything about it?”
“Remember?” Charley Hoge asked.
“The mountains—the hunt—Schneider—”
“That’s his name,” Charley Hoge said. “Schneider. That’s the skinner in Ellsworth that Miller’s going to get.”
“Don’t you remember?” Andrews’s voice cracked. “Schneider’s dead.”
Charley Hoge looked at Andrews, shook his head, and smiled; a drop of spittle gathered on his lower lip, swelled, and coursed into the gray stubble around his chin. “Nobody dies,” he said softly. “The Lord will provide.”
For another moment Andrews looked deep into Charley Hoge’s eyes; dull and blue, they were like bits of empty sky reflected in a dirty pool; there was nothing behind them, nothing to stop Andrews’s gaze from going on and on. With a sense almost of horror, Andrews drew back and shook his head with a sharp movement. He got up from the table and backed away; Charley Hoge did not change his empty stare or give any sign that he saw Andrews’s movement. Andrews turned and walked quickly out of the bar. On the sidewalk, in the bright sunlight, the sense lingered; his legs were weak and his hands were trembling. Swiftly, unsteadily, he went up the street, turned, and took the stairs that led up the side of Jackson’s Saloon to Francine’s room.
He opened his eyes wide to the dimness of the room; he was still breathing heavily. Francine, lying on the bed, raised herself on an elbow and looked at him; with that movement, her loose gray wrapper parted and one breast drooped toward her forearm, pale against the gray material. Andrews went quickly to the bed; almost roughly, he pulled the wrapper away from her body and let his hands run swiftly, desperately, over her. A small smile came upon Francine’s face; her lids dropped; her hands came to Andrews, fumbled with his clothing, and pulled him down upon her.
Later, as he lay beside her, the tumult within him quieted; he tried to tell her of his meeting with Charley Hoge, and of that sense of horror that the meeting had released in him. It was not, he tried to make her understand, so much a result of his recognition that what Charley Hoge showed him in a blind and enveloping stare was something that each of them—Miller, Charley Hoge, Schneider, and
even himself—that each of them had had inside them, all along. It was something—he tried to tell her—that McDonald had spoken of by the flickering light of a lantern in the great empty sleeping house the night they had returned to Butcher’s Crossing. It was something that he had seen on Schneider’s face as he stood stiff and upright in the middle of the river, just after the horse’s hoof had split his skull. It was something—
The faint afterlift of a smile hung on Francine’s full, pale lips; she nodded; her hand moved softly, soothingly, over his bare chest.
It was something, he continued, speaking in broken phrases that did not say what he intended, it was something that he had felt even in himself, from moment to moment, during the long trek across the plains, and in the kill of the buffalo at the instant the great animal shuddered and crashed to the ground, and in the hot smothering stench that came with the skinning, and in the vision of whiteness during the snowstorm, and in the trackless view in the aftermath of the storm. Was it in everyone? he asked, without using the words. Did it lurk hidden in everyone, waiting to spring out, waiting to devour and rend, until there was left only the blankness he had seen in the blue stare that Charley Hoge now had to give the world? Or did it wait without, crouched like a timber wolf behind a rock, to spring suddenly and horribly without reason upon anyone who passed it by? Or beyond one’s knowledge, did one seek it out, this shape of terror, and pass it by in an obscure, perverse hope that it might spring? At that swift moment in the river, did the splintered log seek the belly of Schneider’s horse, and the hoof Schneider’s skull? Or was it the other way around, Schneider passing by precisely in search of the gray shape, and finding it? What did it mean? he wanted to know. Where had he been?
He turned on the bed; beside him, Francine had dropped into a light sleep; her breath came gently from her parted lips, and her hands lay loosely curled at her sides. He got up quietly, went across the room, turned the wick of the lamp down, and blew into the chimney, extinguishing the light. Through the single curtained window across from him, a last gray light filtered; outside it was growing dark. He returned to the bed and lay carefully next to Francine, on his side, looking at her.
What did it mean? he asked himself again. Even this, his—he hesitated to call it love—his hunger after Francine, what did it mean? He thought again of Schneider; and suddenly he imagined Schneider in his place, alive, lying beside Francine. Without anger or resentment he saw him lying there, and saw him reach across and fondle Francine’s breast. He smiled; for he knew that Schneider would not have questioned, as he was questioning; would not have wondered; would not have let a look from Charley Hoge loose within him these doubts and these fears. With a kind of rough and sour friendliness, he would have taken his pleasure from Francine, and would have gone his way, and would not in any particular manner have thought of her again.
As Francine would not have thought again of him. And, he added suddenly, as Francine probably would not think again of him, Will Andrews, who lay now beside her.
In her sleep, in a whisper, Francine mouthed a word that he could not understand; she smiled, her breath caught, she breathed deeply, and moved a little beside him.
Though he did not want the thought to come to him, he knew that he, tool like Schneider, would leave her, would go his own way; though, unlike Schneider, he would think of her, remember her, in a way that he could not yet predict. He would leave her and he would not know her; he would never know her. Now the darkness was nearly complete in the room; he could barely see her face. With his eyes open in the darkness, he slid his hand down her arm until he found her hand, and lay quietly beside her. He thought of the men who had known her appetite and flesh, as he had known them, and had known nothing else; he thought of those men without resentment. In the dark they were faceless, and they did not speak, and they lay still in their breathing like himself. After a long while, his hand still loosely clasping Francine’s hand, he slept.
He woke suddenly, and did not know what caused him to awake. He blinked his eyes in the darkness. Across the room a dim glow flickered at the curtained window, died, and flickered again. A shout, thickened by distance, came into the room; the hooves of a horse thudded in the street outside. Andrews eased himself out of bed and stood for a moment, shaking his head sharply. Another burst of excited voices came up from the street; the wooden sidewalks clattered beneath heavy boots. He found his clothes in the darkness and pulled them on hastily; he listened for other sounds; he heard Francine’s regular, undisturbed breathing. He went quickly from the room, easing the door shut behind him, and tiptoed down the dark corridor toward the landing outside the building.
To the west, in the direction of the river, clearly visible above the low buildings of Butcher’s Crossing, a flame billowed up out of the darkness. For a moment Andrews clutched the handrail of the stairway in disbelief. The fire came from McDonald’s shack. Fanned by a heavy breeze from the west, it lighted the tall grove of cottonwoods across the road from it, so that the light gray trunks and deep green leafage were shown clearly against the darkness around them. The fire illumined its own smoke, which coiled upward in thick black ropes, and were dispersed and carried back toward the town on the breeze; a rank, acrid odor bit into Andrews’s nostrils. The clatter of running below him broke into his stillness; he went swiftly down the stairs, stumbled on the board sidewalk, and ran up the dusty road toward the fire.
Even at the point where the wagon-wheel trail turned off the road just above the grove of cottonwoods, he felt the great heat of the fire push against him. He paused there at the twin swaths of worn earth, which were clearly visible in the yellow-red glare of the fire; he was breathing sharply from his running, yet the heavy dregs of sleep were not yet cleared from his mind. Scattered in a wide, irregular semicircle about the flaming shack, fifteen or twenty persons stood, still and small and distinctly outlined against the billowing glare. Singly or in small clusters of two or three, they watched, and did not call out or move; only the dense heavy crackling of the flames came upon the night stillness, and only the great pulsations of the flame moved the men’s shadows behind them. Andrews rubbed his hands over his eyes, which were smarting from the haze that settled from the twisting coils of smoke, and ran toward the clusters of people. As he approached them, the intense heat made him turn his face away from the direction he was running, so that he collided with one of the small groups, knocking one of the onlookers aside. The man he bumped against did not look at him; his mouth was open, and his eyes were fixed on the huge blaze, the light of which played upon his face, casting it in deep and changing hues of red.
“What happened?” Andrews gasped.
The man’s eyes did not move; he did not speak; he shook his head.
Andrews looked from one face to another and saw no one that he recognized. He went from one person to another, peering into faces that were like distorted masks in the throbbing light.
When he came upon Charley Hoge, cringing before the heat and light and yet crouched as if to spring, he almost did not recognize him. Charley Hoge’s mouth was pulled open and awry, as if caught in a cry of terror or ecstasy; and his eyes, streaming from the smoke, were opened wide and unblinking. Andrews could see in them the reduced reflection of the fire, and it seemed almost that the fire was burning there, deep in the vision of Charley Hoge.
Andrews grasped him by the shoulders, and shook him.
“Charley! What happened? How did it start?”
Charley Hoge slid from under his grasp, and darted a few steps away.
“Leave me be,” he croaked, his eyes still fixed before him. “Leave me be.”
“What happened?” Andrews asked again.
For an instant Charley Hoge turned to him, away from the fire; in the shadow of his brows, his eyes were dull and empty. “The fire,” he said. “The fire, the fire.”
Andrews started to shake him again; but he paused, his hands lightly resting on Charley Hoge’s shoulders. From the crowd came a murmur, low but
intense, rising in concert above the hiss and crackle of the flames; he felt more than saw a slight surging forward of the people around him.
He turned in the direction of the movement. For a moment he was blinded by the intensity of the flame—blue and white and yellow-orange, cut through with streaks of black—and his eyes narrowed against the brilliance. Then, among the scattered bales of buffalo hides, high above which the flames turned massively, he saw a dark furious movement. It was Miller, on a horse which reared and screamed in terror at the flames, but which was held under control by the sheer force of Miller’s strength. With furious jerks of the reins, which cut the bit deep into the horse’s bleeding mouth, and with heavy strokes of his heels against its sides, Miller forced his horse to dart among the scattered bales. For several moments Andrews gaped uncomprehendingly; senselessly, Miller darted up to the very mouth of the flame, and then let his horse pull away, and darted close again.
Andrews turned to Charley Hoge. “What’s he doing? He’ll kill himself. He—”
Charley Hoge’s mouth lifted in a vacant grin. “Watch,” he said. “Watch him.”
Then Andrews saw, and could not comprehend, and then realized what Miller was doing. Forcing his horse up to the bales piled close to the burning shack, he was pushing the piled bales so that they fell into the open mouth of the flame. Against those bales which lay singly upon the ground, he forced the breast of his horse, and raked the flanks relentlessly, so that the bale was pushed along the ground into the edge of the holocaust.
A cry came from Andrews’s dry throat. “The fool!” he shouted. “He’s crazy! He’ll kill himself!” And he started to move forward.
“Leave him be,” Charley Hoge said. His voice was high and clear and suddenly sharp. “Leave him be,” he said again. “It’s his fire. Leave him be.”