Watch With Me

  They moved along with him wherever he moved. He went, still, pretty much level along the face of the slope, into the draws and out around the points through old woods and through thicket, across pastures and tobacco patches, but mostly in the woods. Sometimes he would stop or sit down, and then they would wait, and when he went ahead they would go with him. That Nightlife was not himself, that he had become merely the vehicle of something he suffered that they had not suffered, they could tell by the way he moved and carried himself, the way he looked always straight ahead and always at the ground. He moved like a man in the concentration of urgent bodily pain, though they knew his pain was not of the body. Maybe he was not going to kill himself, they thought. Maybe he just needed something he did not have, had never had, did not know how to ask for, maybe did not know the name of. But they knew also that Old Fetcher was an influential weapon. It was not a squirrel rifle—not a gun with which you could confidently undertake to shoot yourself just a little. If you picked up Old Fetcher, declaring that you might as well shoot yourself, then they knew as surely as if they held it in their own hands, you couldn’t put that gun down again without deciding not to shoot yourself.

  It was a long time since morning now, and the day was getting hot. In the woods it was still and close. All five of them had sweated through their shirts. And still they moved along with Nightlife, and still they formed their rough and ever-shifting semicircle at the limit of sight. They were squirrel hunters and they knew how to move unobtrusively and quietly in the woods. In the spell of Nightlife’s silence and their own, strangeness came over them, as if they had died and come back in another time. Everything familiar had become strange. What they saw around them now seemed no longer to be what they knew and had always known, but seemed only to remind them of a time when they had known those things. They were following a man whom it had never occurred to them to follow before, who now had become central to their lives, and who perhaps was trying to find his way out of this world.

  By noon they had come all the way down the Katy’s Branch valley and turned into the valley of the river, still keeping along the mostly wooded face of the bluff, high up. Now they were conscious of the bigger space and larger light; down through openings among the treetops they could see the river itself bending across the valley floor between its two parallel rows of trees, leaving the wide bottomlands first on one side and then the other. They could see the cornfields and houses and farm buildings in the bottoms on down into the blue distance halfway to Hargrave. Off somewhere on the far side of the river they heard a dinner bell.

  And now they were aware also of the world going on, unaware of them and their extraordinary worry and purpose. It seemed unaccountable to them that they should know so well where they were when nobody else in all the world had any idea.

  Presently they came to a deep crease in the face of the slope, worn there over the millennia by a steep wet-weather stream known as Squire’s Branch. And here instead of turning into the hollow in order to keep on the level as he had been doing, Nightlife slanted down into the dry bed of the branch and then turned straight down toward the river, stair-stepping down the tumbled rocks of the streambed. The others followed in their half circle, with Tol in the center and the others fanned out on either side.

  They stayed in the wooded hollow, but as the slopes gentled they could see open pasture off through the trees first on the left and then also on the right. And then they could see a little tobacco patch on the left. From time to time, the foliage opening, they could see the little store at Squire’s Landing and the house on the slope above it where Uncle Otha and Aunt Cordie Dagget lived and farmed a little and fished a little and kept the store and the landing and kept an eye on the comings and goings of the neighborhood.

  When Uncle Otha and Aunt Cordie’s house came full into sight, Nightlife climbed out of the streambed onto the open slope. And then he walked down across Uncle Otha’s cow pasture, through the yard gate, across the yard, up onto the back porch, and through the kitchen door without so much as a knock.

  Tol stopped at the edge of the woods and the others came up beside him.

  “What now?” Walter Cotman said.

  Tol uttered a sound that was partly a laugh and partly a grunt. What he should have done was all too clear to him now, and to the rest of them, too. He should have sent Sam Hanks and Tom Hardy, who were on that side of the branch, to Uncle Otha’s ahead of Nightlife. But it had not occurred to him that Nightlife, who earlier had avoided him and Sam and who had spent the whole morning skulking along in the woods by himself, would think of going right into somebody’s house. Tol had his lower lip between his teeth.

  “Well, what are we going to do?” Braymer Hardy said.

  “Boy, there ain’t nothing to do. We can’t go barging into Aunt Cordie’s kitchen ourselves. He’s the only one that’s got a gun. And if we had guns they wouldn’t do us any good, unless we wanted to shoot somebody or get shot, which I reckon we don’t.”

  “So I reckon we’re going to wait,” Walter Cotman said. And he sat down.

  The others seemed to consider sitting down also for they would not have minded a rest, but nobody but Walter did so. Nor could they stay where they were. Watching the house always, they eased gradually down into the yard. They did not go closer to the house than the yard gate for fear of inciting Nightlife to some damage they feared without naming. The worst they could imagine now had as good a license to happen as the best, and there was nothing at the moment that they could do. They did not go to the shade for the same reason that they did not sit down: it would not have been right. All the morning, it seemed to them, they had been walking the rim of the world, a narrow, shadowy, steeply sloping margin between life and death, and this imposed a strict propriety on them all. But from where they stood even with the kitchen windows open, they could not tell what was happening inside.

  They weren’t going to know what was happening inside until after the story was over and Uncle Otha told Sam Hanks and Sam told Tol and Tol told the others at church on Sunday morning.

  What happened was that Uncle Otha and Aunt Cordie were eating dinner. It was fried catfish. The others knew that much; they could smell it out in the yard. It smelled better than they wanted it to, for they were hungry themselves by then.

  “Do you want some cornbread, Othy?” Aunt Cordie said.

  And then the screen door opened and here came Nightlife right into the kitchen with that old gun cradled in the crook of his left arm and looking like he was trying hard to remember something that he only barely remembered forgetting. They had not heard him until he put hand to the door and the spring sang.

  He seemed to get clear into the middle of the kitchen before he realized that he was among people.

  When he saw Uncle Otha and Aunt Cordie sitting at the table, looking at him, their laden forks suspended between their plates and their mouths, he said, “Let us earnestly compose our hearts for prayer.”

  “Son,” Uncle Otha said to Sam Hanks, “I did earnestly compose my heart for prayer. I was afraid if I looked up I’d find my head in my plate.”

  When Uncle Otha and Aunt Cordie bowed their heads, Nightlife prayed. What he said Uncle Otha was unable to report to Sam, for he said his mind had been occupied with a few words in his own behalf.

  It was, anyhow, a long prayer that Nightlife prayed; Uncle Otha ran out of anything to say in his own behalf before it was over, and under the circumstances he was unable to think of anything to say in anybody else’s behalf. He and Aunt Cordie sat there with their heads down while that good fish got cold on the platter and Nightlife prayed, but not for them or at them; he prayed as if he were off somewhere by himself, and out loud but not too loud, Uncle Otha said, as if he suspected Old Marster was present but too deaf to overhear a thought or a whisper.

  Aunt Cordie kept her head bowed to the end, for she would honor even a crazy man’s prayer. But when Nightlife
said, “Amen,” she looked straight at him. “Thacker Hample, now what is all this foolishness? Sit down, child, and let me fix you a plate.”

  But Nightlife just stared at her and at Uncle Otha, too, as if they, who had known him all his life, were strangers. His face was covered by a sort of blur of incomprehension, as if he not only did not recognize them but had no idea where he was.

  “Son,” Uncle Otha said, “put down that daddamned old gun, now, and get yourself something to eat.”

  “I can’t eat of that river,” Nightlife said, “for it’s of the passing of the flesh. I don’t know where it has come from nor where it’s a-going.”

  “Son, that river has come from up and it’s a-going down. Take a chair, and let the woman fix you a bite of fish.”

  Aunt Cordie, who had got up, said, “Yes!” and reached out toward Nightlife as if to take hold of his arm.

  Nightlife shrank away from her hand like a half-wild colt, and went back out the kitchen door.

  “I went to the kitchen door and watched him go,” Uncle Otha told Sam, “and then I seen you all was following along after him. So I sat down again and told the woman to pass the cornbread, for I had to eat and I didn’t have all day.”

  When they had come out of the shadowy woods, the whole hillside, buildings and trees and all, quaked in the still sunlight. Under the strong light, the maples in Uncle Otha’s yard seemed bent in profound meditation on their shadows now drawn in at their feet. Standing together just inside the yard gate, Tol and the other three quaked, too, and sweated in the fierce, bright fall of the noon heat. Not a leaf stirred anywhere. They heard what they would later know was Nightlife’s prayer—not the words, but just the rising and falling sound of it. And then, more briefly, they heard the voices of Aunt Cordie and Uncle Otha.

  And then the screen door was flung open and Nightlife came out, letting the door clap to behind him. When he stepped off the porch, he looked straight at the little band of men standing inside the yard gate with no more sign of recognition than if they had been posts or trees or not there at all. He followed the path around the house and down past the little store that would be closed until Uncle Otha finished his dinner. He turned upriver along the road; beyond the wooden bridge over Squire’s Branch, he crossed the narrow bottom to the river and turned upstream again at the top of the bank.

  They were following him again, easing along behind him as before, keeping him in sight. If he knew he was thus accompanied, he gave no sign, and he did not look back. They walked nonetheless in fear that he would look back, would see and recognize them, and that the sight of them would cause him to do they did not know what. They were too busy, picking their way along and keeping him and each other in sight, to have time to think much about anything else, but they never ceased to be conscious of the gun, and of the immense difference it made. It was the wand that transformed them all. Without it, they would have been men merely walking on the world. Having it there before them in the hands of a man who might do with it they did not know what, they were men walking between this present world and the larger one that lies beyond it and contains it.

  When they had passed the store they had seen Put Woolfork sitting in the shade under the porch roof, waiting for Uncle Otha to come down and open up for the afternoon. Put, as they knew, had a misery that wouldn’t let him work much in hot weather, and so he would walk down to the landing in the afternoon to fill himself up with Uncle Otha’s gossip and free advice. They had not passed near enough to him to speak, though Tol had raised his hand. Put did not raise his hand in reply, for he was too absorbed in watching them. They knew that they would be the first subject of conversation in the store that afternoon. They expected that as soon as Put was fully informed of the dinnertime events in the Daggets’ kitchen, he would be along.

  They were right. Now that Nightlife was walking along the river, he began to stop more often. The river seemed to have attracted his notice as nothing had since he had spied Old Fetcher leaning against Tol’s shop door. As he went along now, he would pause to stand and look at the shady water beneath the overleaning trees. Or if he came to a stump or a drift log, he would sit down and look. And so it was no trouble for Put, once he had been informed, to catch up with them. Tol was soon aware that somebody was coming along behind them, and before he looked he knew who it was. Glancing back, he would see Put watching them from a weed patch or from behind a tree, his face sticking out, curious—in truth, fascinated—and yet afraid. He had come to observe and report.

  Put was a man of about Tol’s age, somewhere in his mid-forties, though his face showed not a wrinkle. He was round of eye and face and form, as tight-skinned and smooth as an apple. “Put” was a foreshortening of Pussel Gut, a name that had been conferred upon him on his first day in school. Put lived on a tiny farm where the Cotman Ridge road came down into the river bottom. He kept three or four cows, which his wife milked, and with the help of his wife and his neighbors, he grew a little crop. The misery that kept him from working much in hot weather also did not allow him to work much in cold weather or in wet weather, or ever to do any work for very long if it was very hard. Put walked with his knees bent and his posterior slightly lowered as if at any moment he might be called upon to squat, so that even walking on level ground, he gave the impression that he was going down a steep hill. It was not a good idea to ask him how he was, for he would tell you. Tol nevertheless always asked him how he was. Tol was as good a friend as Put had.

  Still, it made him uneasy to have Put tagging along. Though he did not like to know it, and would never have said so, he knew that Put, beyond being useless, could be a burden. He knew also that unlike most of the neighborhood, who either tolerated Put or ignored him, Walter Cotman despised him. It had not been but a few days since Tol had heard Walter say in Put’s presence—as if Put were not there or as if it did not matter if he was—that he was “as no-account as a shit-for-a-living damned old housecat.” Walter was a good farmer and a good dependable young man, and yet Tol knew that Walter had an edge to him as hard, sharp, and forthright as a good saw. Walter was a fastidious, demanding man, who did good work himself, who had no patience with bad work, and who said exactly and without hesitation whatever he thought. Walter’s tongue, as Tol often said to Miss Minnie, was connected directly to his mind.

  Tol knew furthermore that when Walter laid one of those opinions of his in front of all the world, the Hardy brothers would laugh at it. The Hardys were stout, good-natured, smiling fellows, enough alike almost to be twins, except that Tom pitched and Braymer caught, and Braymer never owned anything he wouldn’t trade and Tom never owned anything he would. They were half Proudfoot, the sons of Tol’s sister, and Tol took much pleasure and pride in them. But they were young yet, too willing to laugh. So far as he could, Tol would go along with Put just as he would go along with Nightlife; he would do what he had to do, or what he could. If, after it was over, it made a good story, then he would tell it; if it was funny, he would laugh. But now was no time for laughter.

  Nightlife had stopped again. He had come to one of the rare places where the bank slanted down gently almost to the water’s edge. He sat down on the exposed roots of a big water maple that leaned out over the water; the gun lay across his lap and his hands rested on the gun. All the trees were big there, the riverbank was clear of brush, and Tol and the others had fallen a long way back. From his distance behind them, Put could no longer see Nightlife at all. Presently Tol saw Put break cover and start forward. Put was curious; he wanted to be where he could look at Nightlife. But Tol knew that he also had got lonesome and was longing for company and approval. Wanting no more commotion than necessary, Tol eased quietly back to forestall him.

  “How’re you, Put?” Tol said.

  “Aw, Tol, I ain’t no good,” Put said. “I’ve had my misery a right smart lately. You know how this weather does me. How you, Tol?” he asked sympathetically, as if Tol suffered from the
same misery.

  “Fine,” Tol said.

  “Well, Uncle Othy was telling me about Nightlife and all. What do you reckon is going to happen? You reckon he’s going to shoot hisself?”

  They were talking under the white trunk of a large sycamore, well out of sight of Nightlife, but Put was peering ahead, trying to see him; he had hardly looked at Tol. “Where’s he at?”

  “He’s yonder,” Tol said.

  Now, having seen Tol move back, the others were coming, too.

  Walter Cotman came up beside Tol just as Put said, “Well, I just thought you might need some help.”

  And Tol imagined Walter saying to Put—or to one of the others, for he would say it in front of Put but not to him, “If somebody’s going to get shot, he’d like to be on hand to see it, long as it ain’t much trouble.” Tol could hear it as plainly as if Walter had said it, though so far Walter had said nothing.

  “Honey,” Tol said to Walter, “I expect one of us ought to keep an eye on Nightlife. We don’t want him to go off without us.”

  Walter nodded and went back.

  “Why, sure,” Tol said to Put. “A fellow never knows when he’ll need help.”

  After Nightlife got up from the roots of the maple and started on, it was a long time before he stopped again. He stayed near the river, avoiding the farmsteads, using farm roads or cow paths when he came to them and they were going in his direction; where there was no beaten way, he kept to his course anyhow. Briar patches he went around; other obstacles he climbed or went through apparently without granting them notice of their existence. He went through patches of nettles up to his waist. He went through brakes of horseweeds and fields of corn that were over his head. He was not hurrying, but neither did he alter his pace or stop. And Tol followed just as steadily behind him, with the young men spread out on either side of him as before and Put Woolfork coming along behind. The crops having been laid by, the six of them walked in a deserted country even there among the fields, and as they walked, the hot bright afternoon stood tall and still above them. Around them, in the heat, the low fields shimmered and