The Watchman

i I "I marrowchilling

^nd

evil:.. few npvelists

have.

^

•

such power lb conjure up

I

the forces ol darkness."

ii

' .

^|fr|HM|

tale of good

;

:*' '#;'i:

-Time

•_.

1

THE WATCHMAN .... He was

a good

man who knew

his job

A

sheriff.

quiet, careful

and the people

in his

town. Folks could feel safe in bed at night know-

ing he was watching over them.

But when he and

his

two daughters

were curiously linked with the shocking death of a

young man, terror invaded the familiar

streets

.

•

•

"... passionate melodrama

.

.

.

will

hold

you spellbound by the sheer beauty and flow of

its

"A book

prose."

—Boston Herald

that should not

but read."

"Dramatic

.

.

.

be told about,

—Kansas City Star many-leveled—a book

with a strange hold on the reader."

—New York Herald Tribune

.

.

.

For what its

is

Hate hut Love that has

way

lost

in the dar\l

THE CREST IMPRINT ON OUTSTANDING BOOKS IS YOUR GUARANTEE OF INFORMATIVE AND ENTERTAINING READING

THE

WATCHMAN by

DAVIS GRUBB

A

Crest Reprint

^CRESTi

[BOOKJ Fawcett Publications,

Inc.,

Greenwich, Conn.

Member of American Book Publishers Council,

Inc.

MEMORIAM

IN

ELEAHOR LOUISE ALEXAHDER 1896—1959

MEMORIAM

IN

DEATH-ROW FOUR ONE .

.

C07s[VICT HUMBER THREE THREE FOUR •

•

1912—1958

A Crest Book published by arrangement with Copyright

No

©

Charles Scribner's Sons

1961 Davis Grubb. part of this book may be reproduced

All rights reserved. in any form without the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. First Crest printing,

September 1962

All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Crest Books are published by Fawcett

World

Library,

67 West 44th Street, New York 36, New York. Printed in the United States of America.

one Stripped down to nothing but a suit of long underwear and gray cotton socks the tough bulk of the big man on the Httle hotel bed seemed bigger than if it had been dressed. His legs stuck out between the brass bars of the bed's foot. His stuffed, tight shoulders extended far out over each side of the narrow, horsehair mattress. He had lain there nearly moalmost tionless for four hours. Now it was early evening time for the killing. The single window of the room was open but the blind was pulled to the sill. So that the air was

—

cold. Yet, despite that, the leathery face of the big man was flushed with the fever of savage speculations: his forehead

beaded and trickling with sweat.

when

the wall clock struck

its

And

each quarter-hour

announcement

far

down

in the

lobby of the country hotel the gray eyes of the big man glazed, his clenched mouth paled, and the big shape of him shuddered so that, for a moment, the sagging bedsprings sang and cried like a cage of rabid ferrets. Every article in the room had been rearranged to fresh placements of personal and astonishing eccentricity. Across the bureau mirror had been draped a threadbare bath towel upon which dimly could be read HOTEL. On the dresser top, beside the cracked leather of a broken, bulging Bible lay the big man's blue revolver. The keyhole of the hallway door, locked from the outside, was stuffed with newspaper. Yet, despite that precaution a heavy marble-topped washstand was jammed beneath the china knob. On the dusty rug beside the bed an ancient, broken table-radio hummed and crackled. Its sound filled the room with thin disturbance: a deranged

MOUND

and insect murmur. And yet that sound and the murmur through the open window of the small town night and the laughter of men's voices down in the lobby did not keep 5

The Watchman

6

Luther Alt from hearing the four soft knocks against the door. Yes, he thought, stiffening and closing his eyes a moment. Yes, time now, he thought. Time to get up and dress and strap on the gun and go: time for the kilHng. He

opened his eyes, stiffened, then sprang out of bed, crossed the room, stood by the door in a half-crouch searching the

He whispered a challenge of query, heard the muffled, unintelligible reply of a man's voice, waited, then walnut panels.

heard presently again the light knocks. And thinking: It might be him. But then again it might not. It might be old Dobey sent up to rouse me. But then again it might be

someone

else.

Luther Alt swiftly crossed to the bureau, caught up the thirty-eight revolver, broke it open, saw its loaded chambers. He stood an instant staring at his big gun, somehow crippled now in his hand. Yes, he thought, it might be someone else. He inverted the gun, shook it hard, watched the five brass cartridges tumble out into the palm of his other hand. The man outside rapped more sharply now. Directly! called Luther Alt and dropped the bullets into the pocket of his jacket on the chair by the washstand. He looked at the empty revolver with a grunt of relief, a notion of safety. Then he went to the door again, put his ear to the panel. He moved the washstand away from the knob and waited for the knock again. Is that you, Dobey? he whispered, but the one beyond the oak did not hear him and rapped again, sharply now. Who is it? cried Luther Alt. It's me, Sheriff. It's the night clerk.

Who? The night clerk! said the voice sharply at the crack of the door. Dobey the night clerk. You said for me to come and unlock you when it's time. Well it's come time. Unlock the door, said Luther Alt wearily. He went back and fetched out the cartridges from his jacket, went to the dresser, broke open the revolver again, slowly loading it while he listened indifferently to the clatter and scratch of the night clerk's housekey, the opening of the door. The night clerk thrust his birdlike head inside for an instant to be certain Luther was awake and up. Luther listened,

without turning.

You

all right,

I'm

all

and

Sheriff?

right,

Dobey. Thank you, Dobey,

said

Luther,

listened to the whisper of the night clerk's carpet slip-

The Watchman

7

pers fading away again down the hallway. He dressed swiftly now, strapping on the gunbelt, sliding his big shoulders into the jacket. For an instant before he left the room he

hfted his head, murmuring something, raising his eyes slowly to the dim light of the room's ceiling globe: a frosted, mindless moon shedding the illumination of soiled twilight upon the squaUd room's sixty years of drummers' mercantile dreaming, the insomniac toss of transients drunk or halfmad with loneliness, the furtive and chronic embrace of lovers by the hour. The Sheriff's anguished eyes searched senselessly for that instant among the blurred, scattered pattern of dead moths and flies which calicoed the dull hght globe's interior: dried-up hieroglyphics of long-vanished simi-

mer

nights.

Perhaps

he

imagined

something was

to

be

maybe an answer to his torment. And for that moment his mouth murmuring softly, uninteUigibly, spoke read there;

to it or to himself or to the God beyond this spurious moon and thought to himself: How many more years? How many more towns? How long can a man keep running from it? Then he stiffened himself, passed through the open door, shut it behind him and moved down the hallway toward the stairway to the lobby, toward the men who sat there waiting to watch him pass, toward the street of the silent river night. And, of course, toward the killing.

On the water-green wall of the hotel lobby the hands of Peace the Undertaker's banjo clock stood at quarter past eight. The three men sat submerged in the couch and two chairs of bursted black leather and watched the river fog gather in the street beyond the long glass window. Dobey the night clerk fussed behind his front desk. The men had talked little in the hour since the woman had come slowly down the staircase and taken up her position on the straightbacked chair to the darkened dining-room door. They chewed and smoked and spat, listening to the growl of good dinners beneath their vests, watching the coming of the fog upon the long glass. An hour before Uke this woman of the man who must die it was not there. Since sundown the men had sat chatting in the lobby of the death that was to be done at nine. And then, hke the fog, the woman came.

—

seemed

—

to Mister Jibbons, the horse trader, that the there to deprive them of something rightfully theirs; that she had come to spoil an occasion. And so it was from anger more than through any delicacy toward It

woman was

The Watchman

8

woman's feelings that he said the least of any, smoking and spitting and pondering the fog; avoiding the other men's eyes with the ritual diffidence of males in public toilets. The woman sat straight, hands folded upon her lap. the

streaked brown hair, knotted low on hillwoman's face suggested that it had been pretty until the battering of long and humdrum mischances had convinced it that prettiness was not useful: a face that seemed not so much to have gone old as to have gone out,

Beneath her

her

neck,

straight,

a

and one which somehow would have best grown ugly rather than having kept among its features of a faint, pinched prettiness the eroded traces of a girlishness long since become irrelevant. In that strained hour her gray eyes made their unending circuit: watch the backs of the men for a spell, then to the black telephone by the night clerk's gartered sleeve, then back to the hands of Peace the Undertaker's clock. Her gaze returned always to the neck of Jibbons, the horse trader. In the deep crease of that fat nape between shaggy hairline and soiled collar Jibbons seemed to possess a second, lipless mouth. And it seemed to the woman in her racing fancies that this mouth might suddenly open and make a pronouncement of thunderclapping and unearthly reprieve. It was in the small curve of her own mouth that she showed how strongly she sensed her antagonists. But her eyes quietly declared that this place was where she belonged, this closest permissible place to her

man on

his night to die.

At the sound of the Sheriff's boot heels on the horse trader seemed roused from his glum trance.

stairs the

Evenin', Luther, he declared loudly when the Sheriff was midway across the lobby. Luther turned briefly, glanced at

men beside him. evening, gentlemen, he said. He looked slowly to the face of the woman on the chair by the dining-room door. He seemed on the point of saying something until suddenly it seemed to occur to him that

Jibbons and the

Good

there his

was nothing to be said. He removed his hat, bowed head and moved quickly on to the threshold,

grizzled

hurried into the night, closing the door softly behind him. listened to Luther Alt's boots ringing up the brick pavements, the sound diminishing at last in the fog. By God, now there's a man, said Jibbons, the horse trader. body sleeps better of a night hearing them boots making man. Not much orneriness their rounds of the town.

The men

A

A

The Watchman

9

can happen in a town with a man Hke Luther Alt out yonder sentrying the night. Jibbons' tongue seemed suddenly freed by Luther's appearance;

his

eyes

worked the

glistened,

stogie

his

back and

face forth.

his gold teeth turned suddenly to

flushed,

He

the dour, dozing figure at his right.

Matthew Hood, how long you been

Hood touched

retired

a forefinger to his nose

now?

and gave the

brief,

modest cough of a pubhc speaker taken unawares. It will be four years, three months and twelve days tomorrow, Mister Jibbons, he said. Hood raised his fingers, touched their tips together, stared into his thumbnails. The hands of Matthew Hood were instruments of such fragile and curious beauty that it was impossible to imagine them belonging to the rest of him. Gloved in the firm and slender flesh of youth, with nails that were the long, immaculate ovals of a girl, these hands; those fine wrists, blue-veined and yet steel-strong, jutted from the seedy, frayed sleeves of an unmatching, hand-medown jacket of bile-colored worsted which was mottled with stains of lunchroom stew, spilled whiskey, slobber, and perhaps, indelibly, with the dye of splashed horrors unremembered even in the mind of Matthew Hood himself. Within the coat his torso and shoulders mushroomed up into a bulge of sinew, gristle and bone which stuffed his coat so tightly that in order not to split the seams he moved generally with a stiff and thrifty caution which gave his movements an air of shoddy elegance, as if he were consul for all destitution. Hood lived alone in a room on the second floor of the hotel. He spent most of his evenings brooding in the black couch before the lobby window and traveling men often saw those hands, those astonishing hands, and were aware that he was exceptionally proud and careful of them, for there was always about him the faint odor of glycerine and rose water. Yet strangers seldom guessed what his trade had been, knowing only that, whatever it was, he was retired from it now, and something about those incongruous, brutal shapes of his body, the sleeves into which those elegant wrists disappeared, something of a nostalgic and affronted reserve about his bloodshot and unlaughing eyes kept anyone from ever asking Matthew Hood what once he had been. Tonight, however, even before the horse trader had spoken to him. Hood seemed uncommonly animate: the hulk of him immobile in its pinched, mean clothing but

— The Watchman

10 the hands

moving more than

usual;

not fidgeting restively

but mobile with a subtle and manual liveliness as if they, more than the mind that moved them, remembered the old, fine days before they had been ordered idle. Things, said the horse trader solicitously. Tilings aren't what they used to be up there, Matthew. There's more fuss now more confusion when it comes to getting a thing like

—

this

done and over with. grunted and stared

Hood

bitterly

into the mists

beyond

the glass.

used to get done quietly, the horse trader went on. the kin never come to Adena to sit in public and shame themselves on the night when it was to be done. Not once in all those years, eh, Matthew? Leastways not that I mind of. No. They would wait like decent Christians and most of the kin was that wait till the morning to come and claim the remains. Jibbons scowled, took his stogie from his teeth, glared at the cold ash and fumbled in his vest for a kitchen match. While in his mind he fingered for a tinder of words, moving words, since nothing he had yet said to Matthew Hood had evoked more than one terse answer and that solitary grunt, and a slow caressing of those now useless hands, one against the other. Jibbons considered what words might unloose the floodgates of happy memories in that disenchanted heart. As things stood now he was uncomfortably suspicious that Hood wanted to hear about that night's killing as little as It

And

—

did the

—

woman.

I reckon, he remarked with a scintillating intuiProgress just says we have to change our way of

Progress, tion.

doing things.

Hood's beautiful hands slowly clenched into fists, slowly unclenched again and lay lovely on his greasy cotton knees. And they say, Jibbons went on swiftly, that it don't hurt as much. It's quicker. That's what Uncle Doc Snedeker claims and Godalmighty knows how many men he's watched go down.

Any hearsay, said Matthew Hood suddenly, that some damned fool assumes he heard said from somebody that a worse damned fool would know couldn't be heard to say anything

—and

mean, namely, someone who

—

is dead is nonsense that I would count on hearing from that old fool O. T. Snedeker M.D. I dropped the trap on forty-two men up yonder at the Pen

just the

sort of

I

damned

fool

The Watchman

11

my

twenty years of service and I never heard one of them yet to tell me whether it hurt him none or not. Judgin

them when we got the bag off it went some than it done with others. Some folks' necks is just more naturally obliging than others is my opinion. Some folks goes into the chamber with entirely the wrong frame of mind I mean they're all tensed up and braced and rebellious and it's my judgment that they're the ones ing by the faces of easier with

— —

that don't get the clean, quick snap that get

A man

it

over with

what he puts into it, as I told a nigger from Boone County one night and, by God, he smiled at me and when he went through the floor he was humming a gospel hymn just as relaxed as could be. Whenever I done my job I done it in a journeyman way clean and artistic but I could just do so much to make it easy the rest was up to them. It takes two to square-dance, Trader, and that's a God known fact. quick.

—

gets out of hanging just

—

—

That's so. That's so, said Jibbons, smiling softly, content

enough that the woman would be hearing aU this. I have had, said Matthew Hood, a lot of time to think about the way things were up there the way I used to do things the way they do them now. A lot of time, Jibbons. The clock struck quarter till nine and in the inch of

—

—

stillness after

Hood

last

spoke they heard the faintest

shift-

woman's heavy shoes. They told me up yonder, she

ing of the

said suddenly in a whisper breaking of a straw. They said any time before two-minutes-of wasn't too late. They said the governor he might telephone the reprieve even if it was as late as that. Even as late as two-minutes-of. Since she had not spoken for them to hear; inasmuch as her words were an apostrophe addressed to some selfof-her exiled out there in the fog, none of the men pretended to have heard. And Hood himself when he spoke again seemed, like her, dreamlike: to be speaking to himself and to none of them; perhaps petitioning some vainglorious and fallen figure of himself lost yonder in the mists with the brittle as the

woman. Progress, he said. Efficiency. Mercy. Painlessness. It had to do with nary one of them damned hollow words, gentlemen. No, by the Almighty, I've had long, quiet years to think it out to ponder it plumb to its heart. No, it was

—

none of them

fine words that caused the State Board to vote the Change. I have sat up yonder in my room many's

The Watchman

12

the night with a length of rope on my knees, in my hands in the dark. Just feeling that rope from one a-feeling of it end to the other and trying to think it out, to ponder it,

—

like a

fisherman playing out his line and wondering what's

hooked down yonder

at the end of it, in the deeps. And I paid Jake Martin thirty-five dollars and twenty-three cents to have a gas line run up to all my lights, and Welsbach mantles and glass chimbleys put in each and every one, so's I wouldn't have any part of that of the electric not even think, ponder it out, and by-and-by light to help me see, to to it come clear to me, Trader. Hood clasped his fingers gently and then slowly let them disengage and fall loose in the cracked leather of the cushion where they lay on either side of him, invalid and memoryless of their once cunning. He looked like an old child, about to cry, stuffed unwilling into a dilapidated baby carriage, chafing and sour in its juices. Trader, it's on the noose-end of the rope that a man finds revelation. It's there the truth hangs. Trader, and it's the only end that any man even a hangman ever finds it out. By God, I know, for I've spent enough years on the other end and that's for sure, my Christian friends. So one night I got myself fortified sufficient with prayer and whiskey, tore the lath and plaster loose from a place in the ceiling where the rains had come in and done half the job already, and I lashed my rope to the bare beam, made the good old noose I'd made so many times before, fetched it around my head just so, with the knot beneath the chin and, gentle-

—

—

—

—

—

men,

I

hanged myself a

little.

A little? Well, Christ Jesus, man, I am here am I not? still— little I said. Not the whole job, damn it. I charge for that. Trader, and who'd be there to pay? You see what I was after was the Point of View the Philosophy, so to speak. Not the drop. Not death. God knows I'm not yet that forlorn nor cowardly. You might say I just leaned into the noose a little just let myself sag enough at the knees to let the feel of the hemp bite into my gullet. Well, by the

WeU, but

A

—

—

time the

began to go dim I had the truth by had mine. And I knew, at was the State Board voted the Change. It's all

gaslights

the neck as firm as the noose last,

why

it

Philosophy, Trader,

Well now,

1

all

Philosophy!

have heard

all

the pros

and cons.

— — The Watchman

13

And

nary one of them knows the truth of it but me! I got the feel of that rope up there in my room that snowy night for the first time. All those years of hanging men and I had never known that my days were numTrader,

bered, that

some morning would come when

my

skills

would

be as useless and old-fashioned as if I was a blacksmith or a carriage-striper. Trader, I could feel that rope for the whole length of it and I knew suddenly that it ended right up there at the beemi. Now, says I to myself directly, how is the folks in the town to share in a killing like that?

When

a town like

Adena

kills

a

man

Objection, Hood. Now you sound like those fanatics with their letters to Bonner and letters to the Governor. It's the State that will put Bonner to death in twelve minutes and

not this town. Trader, you that's going to

No. By God,

A

know kill

that's a pure technicality. him. Can't you feel it?

that's

—

It's

the

town

^No.

kind of tingle in the

air.

Even them

that's

dead

set

against the killing can feel that tingle, Trader. And it's just here just in Adena. You don't reckon the folks up at Wheeling or down at Parkersburgh feel any thing tonight, do you.

—

Trader? They'll read about air,

it

tomorrow and go wash up

Why, it thrums in the Trader, hke the rope whirs after the drop. Every man,

for breakfast. But here

woman and

different.

it's

child in this

town knows

that he's about to

lend his hand to a just and terrible retribution. Matthew Hood, you drink too much. And so would you, Trader, if you'd given twenty years in the perfection of a highly skilled and delicate trade only to have the State Board vote you out in favor of a God damned gadget! So would you drink! So would you fortify yourself, Trader, just as I was fortifying myself that night in my room, in the noose, when I knew why I'd been thrown aside. As I was saying when you took issue with me when the people of Adena kill a man they like to know, they like to feel that they're part of the Justice! That night I knew for the first time that rope ended right there at the beam, at the frayed end beyond the knot. Now, suppose that rope didn't end at the beam suppose it went crawling out through the town and into every home. Suppose every time I'd dropped a man up there in the Chamber that every clothesline in Adena every window-blind cord every length of butcher's twine on every kitchen table quivered. Suppose

—

—

—

—

—

— The Watchman

14

every rope or cord or string of every imaginable description everywhere in this town hummed and vibrated when I dropped the trap. You see? It would personalize it somehow, Trader. It would make the town know in six minutes

Five minutes, Hood. in five minutes that they all are taking part in a Justice. A Christian, ordered Justice, Trader! It would make what was happening up there in the Chamber reach out and connect with every kitchen and parlor and nursery. Tonight at nine a child can reach for a switch and turn on the toaster and consider the good lesson that bread and bad

—

boys can both end up nicely browned at the edges.

my

And

good friend, is why the State Board voted the Change. That is the reason the sc^e and only reason! Let art and skill be thrown on the junk heap. Well, maybe I know that now. in the long run it's fair. It had to come The electric was inevitable, gentlemen. The people of the town had to enjoy their share of that business up in the green chamber. For that's all it is now a business. And that,

—

—

—

A

a bitter cup, gentlemen, to a man such as me. bitter cup, indeed. And I know if it wasn't for my religion I'd long ago have fetched that noose up over the beam and done my last and neatest job upon myself. He leaned forward an inch, with a profound sigh, cupping his stubbly, prideless jowl in the magnificent arc of an alabaster thumb and finger, staring deep into the thickening wool of night beyond the window and perhaps finding there among the ambiguous shapes of traJB&c meters and telephone posts, blurred into imprecision, some makeshift resemblance to the proud crossed sticks of his past. Jibbons covered the mischievous smile which struggled at his lips. He almost felt pity for Matthew Hood; it was the shameless woman of the doomed man he had meant to badger in the hearing of all this. It was for her that he had unstoppered the old hangman's thoughts. As for Hood he had been heedless that she was there, he had spoken as unaware that any of them were there: as the woman herself, in the merciful illusion of a solitude, had spoken. The horse trader lifted his eyes to the woman's reflection in the glass and saw her oldyoung face now gray as soup meat, her lean, lye-scarred hands clutched together in her lap like the embrace of crippled lovers. Jibbons yawned loudly, elaborately, exposing in the dull, yellow lobby fight the cavernous glittering motherlode of his bridgework. He fetched out his dollar that's

The Watchman

15

watch and compared its hands with those of the wall clock. One minute to live, he observed. Tom, is that clock right on the button? Peace the Undertaker, silent and abiding throughout all, stirred his lean limbs and blinked irritably. My clocks, Mister Jibbons, he said, are always right. And the more he thought of it the more the suggestion piqued him. He shot the horse trader an offended, sidelong glance. I've got two hundred clocks set round and about Mound County, Mister Jibbons, and you can check any one of them against the other one-hundred-and-ninety-and-nine. My wall clocks are the best and they're always right. For more than forty years the people of this county have known they can count on Peace when it comes to the Time, Mister Jibbons. He subsided again into the buttoned, black leather, the lid of his left eye drooped a little, wearily, as if it and its mate had seen enough of death in their time to jade even the taste of Old Mortality himself. And hardly had his sloganly observation finished when the clock began its strike of nine, like a sound of distant chopping. With a lean hand Peace stroked the dyed black hair above his aged but fittingly ageless face. Barely perceptibly his lower lip thrust out as if, for an instant, he sincerely deplored the ceaseless prosperity of

eyes of the cashiered hangman were shut tight as if he were deep in the drugged throes of some hempen dream. The horse trader's face had stopped smiling: flushed and strained it was, as if he were suddenly and profoundly preoccupied with certain climactic reflexes deep within his body and outside it, as well: a quiver, a spasm of shameless pleasure, perhaps only a flaccid stirring among the folds of his dirty underclothing. The woman fetched up her cardhis art.

The

board suitcase by the clothesline handle and moved toward the side door. She would stand in the fog on the corner till the southbound Greyhound came by at ten to fetch her home to Hundred. By the threshold she paused, turning, looking

men

almost as in afterthought. I most kindly thank you, gentlemen, for letting me set here till it was done and over, she said softly. And I want you to know I bear nary one of you mahce for them killing him up yonder in the chair tonight Jibbons grunted and struck a kitchen match to light his at the

cold stogie.

Why

should you, lady? he fairly shouted to her reflection

The Watchman

16 in the glass.

He was

wasn't he?

guilty,

He

killed that cop,

didn't he? that. He was a murderer. Yes, seen him when he come in the kitchen afterwards and I could read it writ plain across his face. It's just that I had to thank you all kindly for letting me set here till it was over and done and to tell you all I bear you no malice. She paused and laid her hand on the china door knob, opening the door an inch, feeling the autumn fog against her cheek. No malice, she said in a yet softer voice. Only pity. I surely feel pity for you all and this here town. We don't need your pity, widow-woman, Jibbons said

Oh,

He done

yes, she said.

he was

that. I

know

it.

For

I

loudly.

Oh, now, yonder

ting

you

yes, she said. Yes,

in that very chair

it

For

whilst I

come

across

do.

just

was

my

set-

eyes

like a vision.

Jibbons chuckled till he choked amid his blue cloud of smoke. Well now you tell us about that vision, widow-woman, he said. Wouldn't you like to hear, Tom Peace? How about you. Matt? Go on. Tell us about your vision, widow-woman. One of your own, she said, almost sorrowfully. Yes, one of your own, misters. I seen it as plain as I see you now. There'll be the blood shed of one of your town's own before the rising of the sun.

You

fixing to get

even for something, widow-woman? said

the horse trader. I'll be long gone, she said.

Gone on

the bus to

Hundred

comes to pass. And there's nothing I could do to was here or I'd stay. For I wish nary one of you nor yours to come to harm and I'd raise my arm to no one in malice nor murder. I just tell you what I seen and what I know. I reckon it's the working out of the rule again. Lord, I've sawn it all my life. Love breeding love. Hate breeding hate. Murder breeding murder. Don't never end, misters. They killed him up at the pen tonight someone will kill one of your own before the rising of the sun tomorrow. I seen it plain, misters. I thought you oughter know. Jibbons had not counted on this extension of the evening's amusements; he could not resist playing the grief -crazed

when stop

it

it

if I

—

woman

further out.

Well now, he

said.

You mean

to say ever' time

we burn

a

The Watchman

man up yonder in

Adena?

Is

in the chair

that

17

we can count on

what you

trying

to

a murder here put over, widow-

woman? Somewheres, she said. Not ever' time here. But somewheres. Tonight 'twill be here. I know for I seen it plain as yonder clock face on the wall. I was setting there and it come across my eyes. And I thought it not fitting to leave 'gainst I told you. God knows might one of you be there to stay the murderer's hand. And now I bid you one and all good night, misters. And Christ's mercies on you all. Jibbons, inspired, took a deep drag on his rank stump of stogie, pulled his tieless collar out from the greasy roll of his throat and with a giggle blew a white smoke cloud down into his shirt front and then settled back, shaking with mischievous hysteria, while blue wraiths rose from the folds of his clothes in curhng wisps and he stiffened in the leather chair, jiggling.

That's how he'll look, too! cried the horse trader. The one does it that's how he'll look when they throw the switch on him up there. Did you see it, widow-woman? Btit he had heard the door close softly while in the very middle of his pantomime; it was a minor disappointment among the evening's divertissements. The woman, in fog and night and the madness of her grief, had gone. that

—

The hotel dining-room was almost dark. That was why Jill Alt and the boy Cole were there. On nights when she could get away without unpleasantness with her father Jill and Cole Blake spent their dates at the table by the long glass window in the dusky dining-room. In the street outside the cold and pulsing stare of the neon sign painted their faces every two seconds with yellow, appointing those who might pass along the sidewalk to be their chaperon. Jibbons and the two others had left now that the fun was over: the lobby, except for the night clerk, was deserted. Cole sat for a long while silent watching the girl wind and unwind the little handkerchief round her finger. Maybe it's having a Sheriff for a father, he said. I don't blame you for all of it, Jill. Cole, Daddy's got nothing to do with how I think about it, she said. Don't you ever give me credit for having a conscience of

my own?

Yes, he said. I didn't mean that. You know I do, Jill. I reckon you've got more character and cleanness than any

The Watchman

18 girl

ever knew. It's just that you tell me you're in love me and you know I love you and yet you won't hardly me so much as touch you with my fingers. I get the feelI

with let

ing sometimes

you

feel like you're afraid

of doing anything

that he might see.

Cole, that's not true, she said. I do all my own thinking about that. Papa doesn't watch me. Ever count the number of times he drives past out there real slow? asked the boy. Real slow and keeping his face out of sight so that he can see you and you can't see him? Cole, he loves me, too, she said. Someday maybe you'll understand Papa worrying so much about me. Well, sighed the boy, I don't reckon it makes much difference. A person can be in love but there still may not be a thing they can do about it. Here I am talking to you about love and everything and what good is it? I'm only eighteen, living all by myself here in the hotel with no money but that little check Uncle Harry sends me from Romney every month and that job at the glass plant with no future in it. What good's it even talking about love or anything to some-

one It

like you, Jill?

sounds good to me, Cole Blake, she said gently.

What good? he sighed into his fingers. We can't get married. And you won't let me do any more than hold your hand or

kiss

you good

night.

Cole, sometimes it's just like you were two persons, she said suddenly. One of them sweet and kind and we talk about poetry and music and things we like together. And the other Cole is someone that just seems to want to hurt me. I swear, Cole Blake, sometimes when I'm fighting off

your hands

I

get the notion

you want me

to be like

my

sis-

ter Cristi.

would it be being like Cristi just to be human with someone you're in love with?

Jill,

self

he

said,

Be human? she

said.

Cole,

I

stupid nineteen-year-old girl but

may I

let

your-

not be anything but a

certainly

know

that

when

a boy says he wants me to be human with him what he means is undressed. Jill, I've never been with a girl, he said, covering his face with his hands and then throwing them down on the table to stare miserably into his palms. I guess maybe I never wanted to bad enough to care about it till you and me started going together. So we'd be starting off about equal, Jill. I don't know any more about it than you do. All I know is I reckon

The Watchman I

always wanted the

first

time to be with somebody

19 I

was

in

love with.

Well, she said, I don't know how you can say you're in love with me, Cole. You just as much as ask me to throw away everything my mama was and everything my daddy raised me up to believe in and just go be like my sister Cristi. Living over there above the drugstore on the corner and carrying on every night with that Jason Hunnicutt and the in the house. He so she can live there away from him and me. Cole, you've got to get it clear that I am me and Cristi is Cristi. Just like there is day and night. But, Jill, isn't there any between? he murmured. Is the

Lord knows who gives her

Papa won't have her

else.

money every month

day-white Jills and night-black any moon-and-star girls and sunlight-girls with a lot of Ught in them and the kind of dark that's not really dark? No girls vdth little shadows running over them hke clouds make over meadows? No rainbow, sunset girls with every kind of color and light and dark there is in the world? I love you, Jill. God only knows it. But it always seems like you're afraid. Like you're trying to live up to someone that's standing watch over you with a

world

full

of nothing but

Cristis? Is that all? Aren't there

gun.

Meaning Papa,

I

suppose, she said.

Well, yes, he said. Yes, I do mean him. being Cole, you have any notion what it's meant to Papa mother and father to me and Cristi both through all these through all the towns we've lived in all the way beyears tween West Virginia and Texas? Both, Cole. He's had to be

—

—

both to

us.

And

he's sacrificed.

I

understand

just so

it

is

all that,

happens can't Uve up

to all

how

she lives is one thing or the I couldn't live with myself if I ever

not say

I do know Papa down.

other. All let

Cristi

I'll

Jill,

he

said. All his sacrificing

and

all. What I can't understand is why it's only you he watches. If he cares so much about the both of you how come he lets Cristi run the streets not much better than a town-girl. Her living alone up over the drugstore in that furnished room and only seventeen years old. How come he doesn't watch Cristi like he watches you? Because Cristi is willful and headstrong is why, she said. Lord knows, Cole, he's sacrificed every bit as much for Cristi as he has for me. Maybe more. She died, you know, when Mama was bom. What I mean to say was. Mama died when

The Watchman

20 Cristi that.

was born. And I don't reckon Papa has ever got over Leastways there's never been anyone else for him since

Mama

died. I was just five then. I don't know what he'd do if wasn't for me living with him to darn his socks and cook it and clean up after him. And not have any real life of your own, he said. Cole, don't think I fail to understand perfectly well what you mean by 'having a real life of my own,' she said. You want me to be easy like Cristi is. Do you think he could stand seeing me turn out that way, too? Wouldn't that be a little too much. Cole? Cristi's nearly broken his heart as it is. But he still doesn't care as much about her as he does you. He cares! she said.

As much

as he cares

about what you do,

Jill?

he

said.

No.

Why?

he said. That's what I can't understand. Because it wouldn't make any difference is why. Because Cristi is what she is and has been for so long that nothing he could do could change her, she said. Doesn't he give a hang about what the town says about her? he said. The Sheriff's seventeen-year-old daughter living like she does.

In the town's eyes it's the cross he has to bear, she said. They think more of him for bearing up under it and doing his job and taking care of me. Everybody in Adena knows that Cristi is just naturally incorrigible.

You mean, he

said, there's

someone

alive in

Mound Coun-

mighty Sheriff has no power over, Jill? Cole Blake, that's just unspeakably mean of you, she said. I reckon it is, he said. You get to thinking pretty mean things sometimes when you know you're being watched every minute of every hour you're with someone God and the sun and moon and stars know it's right for you to be with! Jill, listen now. Being my girl. Is that what you want to stop? And do you want me to stop it. Because I can't. That's something only you can stop, Jtll. No no no, she murmured. Cole, I want to keep on being your girl always. But I want it to keep on being like it is now. I want it to be with the Cole I understand. The one who isn't always trying to make me do things I can't do. And that has nothing to do with Papa either. It's me who wants that, Cole. I'm the one who watches us aU the time not

ty that the

—

Papa.

Was

it

you

that ordered

me

out of Miss Dede's yard that

— The Watchman

21

summer night I first come to take you out? he said. Or wasn't it him? Cole, you don't understand Papa, she said. Do you, Jill? he said. Does your sister understand him? Sometimes I think she's the only one who does. Sometimes I want to go up to your sister and say, Christi, what kind of a man is that? Cristi, what kind of a god is that over there on the courthouse steps with the badge and the gun? Well, why don't you then? she said. No, Jill, he said. I ask you, Jill. What's there to understand? What kind of god's the father with the badge and gun, Jill? That's blaspheming, Cole, she said. Against who, Jill, he sighed. Him or God? She looked at him silently in the darkness, her pale face framed in her lustrous dark hair which in those shadows seemed to give off a rich and shining ambience almost lighter

than her face. All right then, Cole,

want

me

she said suddenly.

What

Just that you love me, he said. And that nothing ever do together could ever be evil or bad. Do you really think that, Cole? she said. I know And if

that, I

he

you

we could

what you're

asking, she said,

that beautiful cultured pearl necklace in

window

of Mister Booher's jewelry? what's that mean? he said. What's that got to do with

JiJl,

it?

it

said.

said maybe, Cole, to

would you buy me the

is

to say?

You know I And if I changed

opal rin^ in the

maybe to yes would you buy me the same window and the pair of white rabbit's the

up in Gant's? she said. what's this have to do with what we been talking

fur lounging slippers Jill,

about? he

said.

wanted you to hear the kind of answer Cristi would give a boy if he asked her to do the thing you're asking me, she said. Oh, Cole, can't you understand I couldn't be lik« I just

that. I couldn't

mirror,

stand

it!

I

couldn't stand to look myself in a

couldn't stand Papa's eyes breakfast in the morning. It's

I

always him, he

said.

Then

when

it's

I

brought him his

really true.

It's

always

him. Cole, he's only watching after me, she said, her voice almost breaking. Only looking out for me. There's nobody

— 22

The Watchman

ever looked out for me like Papa. I guess when Cristi was born and Mama died there just wasn't anybody left in the world that Papa could take care of but me. And Cristi. And when Cristi turned out like she did there wasn't anyone but rae. Cole, you don't know what kind of girl I'd have grown up to be if it wasn't for him. I know, Jill, he said. I know what you were born to be

what you grew up to be. No, she said. You don't know me, Cole. I don't really know myself. If it wasn't for Papa keeping a close watch on

me

might be something wilder even than

I

someone you couldn't love, Cole. There's nothing you could be Yes, she said. Oh, yes, there

I

is,

might be

Cristi. I

couldn't love, he said. Cole. Sometimes

I

dream

and I wake up from the dream with an awful shout and Papa lights the light and I have to sit up shaking for an hour with night terrors before I feel safe getting back Into bed again. Yes, Cole, I could be something far different than the girl I am if it wasn't for Papa. And I know what he wants me to be and I know what I want myself to be. What is it you want yourself to be? he said. Someone clean and decent and beautiful like Mama. Cole, you remember your mother, she said. Beautiful and always, always young. The last of the Ladies, as Papa always says. it

Well, that's

how

I

remember

my mama,

too.

And

I just

can't

myself be something cheap that Papa wouldn't love. My hair is dark like hers was Mama's, I mean. Papa says I'm her living image. He says I'm the shining picture of her.

let

—

Cole,

I

can't spoil that picture.

I've got a picture, too,

Jill,

he said

bitterly.

The

Sheriff of

Mound

County, West Virginia. At night when you're safe in bed you can hear his strong, slow boot-strides along the brick

—

hearing that sidewalks out in the fog. You feel safer now sound picturing that firm mouth, those watchful, glittering eyes. And especially that big Colt he's got slung on his hip.

—

He— Cole, you're killing something, she moaned. Please stop

And now you're going with me here at our table

me you

it.

never want to sit again and you're getting ready to walk out of here, I reckon, and I'm going to follow you, he said. And if I lose you in the fog I'll call you on the phone tomorrow. And if you tell me you never want to see me again it won't make any here at our table not anywhere difference. Because I love you sweeter and harder than I

—

—

to

tell

—

The Watchman

23

love my own life. And I guess if you made me take back everything I said tonight then I'd do that. And mean it. And say I'd made it all up for contrariness sake. Because there is

nothing inside me that I feel as hard as the thing I feel about you, JUl. And the only thing you could never make me take back is telling you I love you. Cole, let's go for a walk, she said gently. You don't want to walk with me, Jill, he said. You just want to get me out of your sight. No, Cole, she said. Let's walk. I don't like our table tonight. The shadows here in our room tonight aren't kind hke they've always been. And that red light from the window it scares me tonight. Cole. It comes and goes on my

—

hands and when

looks like blood. No blood. It's only electricity. me for a walk, she said, feeling for her purse under the chair. It's beautiful in the fog these autumn nights. We'll climb the Mound and look down at the fog and forget there's even a town underneath it. You're not sore at me? No, she said.

only a Cole, take It's

it's

there

light, Jill,

he

it

said.

As long as I Uve, he said, taking her hand. Do you know As long as I live I'm going to love you this much.

that, Jill?

But she was standing up now, not

down over

ing her hands

listening to him,

smooth-

the fabric of the strange frock

that covered her slender body.

Cole? she said. Do you like me in this dress? You've never even seen me in it before. I pretty in this dress, Cole? Tell me. Beautiful, he said. Lord knows, it's old and out of style, she said. But he's kept it always as fresh and new as if it was just off the racks up at Gant's. Cole, would you believe this dress is twenty years old? Would you believe it? And not a worn-out seam, not a moth hole. He's kept it that way lovely and new,

Am

—

Cole. All these years.

You they

look beautiful in

moved through

the fog, into the

Beautiful

still

just

town

like

it,

he

the lobby

it

and took her hand and and out the front door into

said,

night.

was brand new! she was saying,

pleased at his praise of the dress far more than anything he could have said of her. And wouldn't you just swear it was made for me. Cole? And nobody would ever guess would they, Cole?

—

The Watchman

24

Guess what, honey? he said. About this dress, she said. It was Mama's.

^

Mister Thomas Peace, the Adena Undertaker, was from time to time subject to nightmare premonitions of total public health. Some would have thought, to hear certain men talk, that Peace willed them to die. It was true that he did not forever, that is. But what landnot will them to live scape painter would not stagger at the news that cows, river willows, and weather-beaten rural slums were to be abolished? Hence Peace the Undertaker's obsessive vision of professional apocalypse: public fatalities on the decline, longevity run out of hand, an epidemic of deathlessness, the demise of demise, the antiquation of that most fragrant of literary forms the obituary an abrupt and gay silliness about lilies, the gloomy hymns gone humdrum, grave diggers turned gardeners, and Peace's own black hearse painted taffy-colored

—

—

—

its conversion to a tinkling wagon of good-humor. That and certainly for no very night he was in such a mood good reason. The truck from the penitentiary was late coming with the body of the executed man. But that sometimes happened. No reason to be so damned depressed. In the morning everything would go well. At seven o'clock sharp the doors of Peace's Parlors would open to the throngs that would be waiting. The queue for the Viewing of bodies of condemned men was an Adena tradition. It made up for the little fee the State paid Thomas Peace for the labors involved. Sometimes on such mornings Peace would fix one fatigued and oysterish eye to the parted lace curtains of his parlor and see the line of

in

—

them stretching so far as to be lost in the morning mists. Sometimes after the execution of a particularly notorious criminal it would seem that every man, woman, and child in all Mound County stood yonder on the brick sidewalk, shuffling and impatient. Their morning faces would thin off dwindling obscurity of mists like dull and mismatched beads upon a dirty string of sleepy yet savage curiosity. It paid little, it was sometimes tedious, but it

into

the

Peace was rather a student of human nature. He would watch their faces as they filed past. All the town there it would seem sometimes. The faint scents of his trade: formaldehyde scarcely perceptible and among its wisps the paradox of flowers. Smells of the living human queue as well: mortal, morning smells, sleep smells, the

was nice

publicity.

The Watchman

25

fragrances of life that rises early and hurries to stand in wait for a glimpse of never-quite-credible death. Peace would speculate: They come to see and say to themselves: Why, no. It's not me yet. Smells of breakfast: bacon-smoke still whispering in their work shirts and house dresses. Scent of shaving soap. They come to look quickly and say: How natural. He's asleep just like I was asleep an hour before now. But I woke. I really woke up. So it's not me yet. And so this night, on the eve of a Viewing, Peace the Undertaker anxiously paced his parlors waiting for the truck from the prison. Something was amiss. He could feel it in his bones. It was late later than they had ever been before in arriving. He was not nervous about the job of embalming the executed man. Nothing complicated: simplicity itself. Cosmetics over electrode bum marks, a wig for the shaved head, flesh tints to conceal usual discoloring flush of face. Star-fracture of optic lens but that never shows: lids gummed down. Simpler certainly than in the old hanging-days. Occasional decapitation problem then. Remember time head of Sissonville axe slayer got misplaced. Never found. Used head of Angel Swamp pauper destined for Potter's Field. real triumph. Even the widow didn't seem to Nice effect. notice difference. O, beauty. Poor Matthew Hood. Always came. Victim of Progress. Back in his hanging heyday a proud man. Thomas Peace wrung his moist hands nervously. They itched to be about their art. The truck from the penitentiary. Late. Late. Something surely amiss. Peace longed to get to work. It was not that Peace the Undertaker was an unkindly, malevolent, death-wishing man. He was a businessman. He was no greedy misanthrope; no clammyspaded, morbid grave digger, dogging the steps of his fellow man, fevering shamelessly for him to drop down cold as soon as possible so that Peace might clap him into a scrolled box and turf him away snugly to snooze till the horn-shout of Doomsday. Peace was an artist. He hungered for his canvas, his pigments. Still and all, he was frequently seized by these unnerving moods of professional pessimism. Fortunately, man's manifest mortality was always there to re-

—

A

assure him.

Peace the Undertaker was well thought of in Mound County and when, as once occurred, he was heard to remark in a voice of hushed alarm: "Have you noticed how the death rate has been falUng off lately?" it seemed, to those who overheard him, an imiocently fiscal comment:

The Watchman

26

something a grocer might say in a bad year for turnips. Moreover, it would be a mean mind indeed which could think cynically of a man so warmhearted as to have embalmed his wife Elma's adored Irish setter Herbert in a posture so movingly lifelike that its lifted, lacquered nose seemed at times fixed upon poor, grieving Elma's eyes and at others that nose might well have been snuffling for the spoor of Heaven itself, as if the Almighty were the illusive Bird of Salvation after which all hunters searched vainly in the shrubbery of this life. The dog was cunningly mobile, as well: Peace having provided Herbert with steel foot-rollers like a child's Christmas bear by Steiff, so that Elma could move it about the house in her wake of chores. And it was only those few townsmen of hasty and quarrelsome vision

who

fancied they saw in the setter's cocked, agate eyes a

and imagined upon its trumpedup face a wounded expression of outraged disbelief in the incessant, hounding chatter of its little iron wheels. It was light of despairing wildness

—

—

perhaps small children natural skeptics who were the least appreciative of the art of Peace the Undertaker. Almost all of these, not yet hooked by their elders' festive addiction to funerals, saw Peace the Undertaker as a kind of creeping landslide, a human glacier moving with inexorable approach across the green playground of their world: grinding uncles under grass, immuring aunts like butterflies in amber, absorbing grandpas, parents, and pleasant candy storekeepers, and leaving in its wake nothing but the trackless memory of vanished school chums. None remembered it now but, had there been any to remember, one of them surely would have made something of the clue that, as a child, Thomas Peace was forbidden to play with dolls but that he did so anyway, secretly, in the shadows of his father's carriage-house. They were never

new

dolls,

they were old dolls

—dead

dolls,

so to speak:

sawdust-trickling dolls, dolls with an arm gone, dolls with melted wax faces or splintered china faces, decidedly dead dolls. To this clue they might add the spectacle of young Tom Peace plaguing old Jake Booher for

broken

dolls,

every empty shoe box he could spare. But no one remembers. In an age, two thousand years from this, when bewildered archaeologists unearth myriad dolls from the sand loam and humus of a vanished river village but let them

—

—

do their guessing. No one remembers and that's just as well. There is trouble enough now for now. Thomas Peace

The Watchman hears, at last, the

whine of

27

and the rumble of a truck

tires

driveway at the rear of Peace's Parlors. He hurries to the back door, flings it open, peers anxiously into the headlights as he searches for the familiar face of the penisometentiary's Captain of Guards. Yes, he had been right thing clearly amiss. In the half-light Peace could see that it was not the prison van that had backed up to his rear door. Before he snapped on the back porch lights he saw the slowly revolving Grimes' light of the Mound County Sheriffs truck. Luther Alt's deputy Tzchak and two other men were struggling with a sheet-covered figure on a stretcher

in the

—

at the truck's rear doors.

Where's the boys from the pen? called Thomas Peace unI've been waiting up for that convict half the night. Tzchak grunted, eased his end of the stretcher up onto

easily.

the concrete ledge of the porch. Got a little surprise for you, Mister Peace, he said. What surprise? said Peace the Undertaker. Where's the body of the electrocuted convict? Deputy, what are you doing here? I don't understand all this. See here, deputy, I've got a full night's work ahead of me to be ready for

by seven this morning. Oh, you'll have your Viewing all right. Mister Peace, said Tzchak. I reckon it'll draw a better crowd than any burned con ever did. You'll have your Viewing. Don't never worry

the Viewing

about

that.

What

are you talking about, deputy? I'm talking about our little surprise here under the sheet. Mister Peace, Tzchak said. Somebody went and got himself

murdered tonight. Murdered, said Peace the Undertaker. Murdered? Cold dead murdered. Mister Peace, Tzchak said. Murdered, said Thomas Peace again as if he had never

come

across the

word

before.

Is

this

some

sort

of joke,

Nobody ever gets murdered in Mound Somebody sure as hell did tonight, Mister Peace, Tzchak County.

deputy? said.

Who?

breathed the undertaker.

We're working on that now, chuckled Tzchak. What do you mean by that? working on it? cried Peace

—

the Undertaker. See here, deputy,

if

this

is

some

sort of

take it up with Sheriff Alt. Sheriff's not available right now, smiled Tzchak. In fact, nobody knows just rightly where Sheriff Alt is at right now.

prank

I'll

The Watchman

28

Well, whose body is that yonder on the stretcher then? snapped Peace the Undertaker. We'll know directly, Tzchak said. An hour or two and we'll know, Mister Peace. Maybe you can help us. Build up the face a

little.

We've got him printed already. build up the face? said Thomas Peace.

What do you mean

—

what I said, Mister Peace, said the deputy. wax and wire. You're supposed to be pretty handy line. That's one reason we brung him here. Just

A

little

in that

—don't

understand, said Thomas Peace. simple enough, said Tzchak. Most of his face's been shot away by all five bullets from a Smith and Wesson I

It's

Police special. Cristi Alt called to him from her little kitchen: Don't you want me to fix you something to eat, Jason. No, he said. It was his birthday and he had come to her apartment late and pretty drunk and not wanting to go home. It'll make you feel better, she called to him.

Thanks, he said. No thanks. He could hear her moving around with her maddening efficiency: making coffee, putting things away, fetching down cups, spoons, saucers, washing up her few supper things, smoking a cigarette and humming under her breath. It was a quality he vaguely resented: her independence, her ability to do anything that needed doing and sometimes many things at once. She was like a man about this. But in this only. There were two Cristis within that flesh in which, it seemed to Jason Hunnicutt, only one should abide. It made him want to hit her sometimes when he would find her alone in her parlor with the coffee table littered with wood and tubes and razor blades building the little model of a boat. He often wondered why, in the times when they made love, that she did not take over and seduce him with the savage expertise of an amazon. But when he would look at her again; when they would say with their eyes that it was time again and when he would touch her hand or a breast or her lips, she was all sprawled female, softness and back-tumbling gift: her eyes sometimes laughing gay, some nights shameless and scalding, others dreamy and glazed

with God-praise for the Earth-wonder of his flesh and for for the one-flesh they made together. She was a riddle of many parts: no woman, at all, he would think

hers and

The Watchman

29

sometimes, but rather a whole village of women and each one confoundingly, unpredictably different. Cream in your coffee? she called from the kitchen. He did not bother to answer. She was deliberately poking at him tonight because he was drunk, because it was his birthday and because by the time he had got there all the candles had melted and spoiled the icing on the cake she had baked for him. Well, I can't much blame her, he thought, closing his eyes and resting his head back on the studio couch and thinking about the many Cristis that she was. Jason liked sameness, predictability. In his childhood he had found it so: he felt without it that something in the scheme of life was about to ambush him. He had discovered early that consistency and uniformity were the best ways to escape being noticed. But then, since his failure in military school, his father rarely noticed him anyhow. And the few times he did were times when Jason had brought a book home from the library which was not .Right-Thinking or had worn a sport shirt which proved to be, to the retired Major, a red cape in the already bloody arena. Thanks, Cris, he said, watching her put the steaming cup on the table before him. He drank hot coffee till his eyes watered and suddenly he thought he was going to have to go in the bathroom and be sick. He wanted suddenly to start a quarrel with her, to get her so mad that she would order him out and tell him never to come back. But she would not fight with him. And it seemed sometimes that this was the most dreadful kind of fighting back: the pacifying touch of love, the perhaps patronizing, kindly smile. Sometimes rarely her eyes would darken at something he would say and she would turn away but he could never be sure whether that was a dumb, answering anger or a still hurt. He kept his eyes closed, his head not spinning so much now: listening and feeling her move beside him on the couch as she fetched a nylon from a little wicker basket and set about mending the start of a run with nail

—

—

polish.

have you got any aspirin? he

said. I've got myself headache. Hold on, she said, rising. They're in the bedroom. He watched her hips going, her fine slim heels looking grand and elegant even in the rundown sneakers, her graingold, whiskey-colored hair swinging loose like sleeves of silk

Cris,

one

fine

The Watchman

30

along the back of her many-laundcrcd cashmere sweater. And hating himself now because he had kruiwn well and good that the aspirin were always on the little stand beside her bed; that he had only wanted her to go there, that he really had the clearest head in the world. Hating himself, too, because he knew that she would probably not come back with the aspirin at all. She would stay, humming maybe in

him to come to her, her from the hardware store thrumming softly in the bedroom air which smelled like Cara Noma cologne, face creams, shampoo, girl, and clean sheets. He lighted a cigarette with trembling hands but there was something in him of restored boypride: for once he had predicted her. Still she spoiled it a little. Because suddenly he heard her hammering a nail into the wall plaster. Now what are you doing? he yelled. the dark, waiting in the dark for

cheap

little

plastic

radio

Moving

a picture, she saixl with her mouth holding small bring you your aspirin in a minute. He shrugged, smiled, mashed out his cigarette in the sea shell ashtray. Then he loosened his necktie, got up carefully and moved toward the bedroom. Never mind it, he said. The headache's gone. He wondered if they would make love and he wondered which Cristi she would be that night. She's always had to make it on her own, Jason used to tell himself in rare moments of understanding. She's always had to be on her own: alone. And when you are little and have to be alone and if you're brave and lucky you grow up learning to accept what you are with every bit of energy you have to give. Because what you are is all you have to give anybody. And if you're little and alone you learn how to give it because it's the only way you can keep the world from smashing you, stoning you, running over you like small gray dogs whose color nobody can ever remember afterward when they go home to their good dinner. But then he would spoil it all by telling himself later: I can't fall in love with her though. You can't fall in love with somebody that's always different. And you surely can't fall in love with somenails.

I'll

When what

he really meant was: She's unpredictably different. She scares me. And she's not the kind of girl you marry. Not the nice kind like Cole

body you

feel

pity for.

Not like Jill. As for Cristi she was constantly warning him not

has.

in love with her.

to fall

The Watchman

31

you want to spoil everything, she said one night, just Everybody has their own kind of sickness and guess that's mine. Remember what we promised each other If

fall I

for me.

—

first time? No love just fun. Just understanding. I'm holding you to that, Jason. In one way the arrangement satisfied him: the illusion of noninvolvement. In another way it made him feel that she was holding something back. Something she was saving for someone else. Though, of course, he was mistaken. Why do you think about us like that, Cris? he asked

the

that night.

Why?

she smiled, darting him a suspicious look. Because simply can't stand the idea of being owned. It's like being a slave or a cat or something. Besides I despise the idea of owning anybody else. I've always been that way. Once you begin to own somebody they begin to matter. And then you lose them. I promise you one thing, Jason I'll never lose anybody. Nobody will ever die and leave me nobody will ever go away and leave me. He leaned against the door jamb watching her sitting on the bed glaring at her left hand: a tiny split in one of the pale ovals of her immaculate manicure. She was very much just then a girl at an age in which every hopeless treason and conspiracy of life seemed precisely reduced to such microcosmic proofs of a whole world set against them: a moment in the minds of very young girls and madwomen when a broken fingernail, a ruined stocking, periods, a new freckle, lip rouge on a dress fresh from the cleaners seem in almost paranoiac outrage to be clues to the universal plot against their contentment. He was almost sober now: he thought of making love to her. But she frightened him. The old uncertainty of which Cristi she would be seized him afresh. He never knew which one. No! Leave the light on. I want it on! she cried sometimes from the bed, naked as shameless Eve and not even trying to cover herself so that he blushed and had to undo his shirt buttons with his back to her. I want you to see me because I am beautiful and I want to see you because you are so beautiful, Jason. Don't touch the light. Leave it on. I want to watch your face while we love each other so that I can see the moment come when your face lights up with me. And I want you to see me, too. Mirrors! That's what we are, Jason mirrors to watch each other's faces in! Oh, hurry, Jason! Hurry hurry hurry! I

—

—

—

—

—

The Watchman

32

Or

would be a night when she would wait for him darkness, warm and deep as the womb that once shaped him: a whispering, enchanted Cristi, murmurous and whimpering and her voice husky with the foreknowledge of sadness that something they would be together would presin

there

total

and flow away. Other times he would find her pouting and sulky and teasing as a River Road rip; other times laughing like a small child: tearing her clothes off as an infant tears the joyously rustling wrappings off a Christmas present: an innocency and bashlessness that sometimes frightened him. And yet that night when he sat beside her on the bed all of the lust suddenly ran out of him and was gone. She gave him his aspirin and water and then laid her fingers softly on his hand. TTien she sat like a boy, leaning on her knees and blowing cigarette smoke between her ankles into the flowers of the hooked rug she had made three autumns before in Abilene, Kansas. Did I tell you what my pa gave me for my birthday? he asked. Tell me, she said, though he had told her a half dozen times that night and forgotten. He wants to make a Man of me, Jason said. So he gave me four tickets one pair to go see My Fair Lady tonight up in Wheeling and the other pair to go watch them electrocute that man up at the pen. He said he knew ahead of time which I would choose but he wanted to prove he was right about me. Well, Cris, he was right about me.

ently ebb

—

Poor Jase, she murmured. Never mind poor Jase, he said. Never mind that bunk. All right then, she said. Poor Cristi. Poor Everybody. She stood up suddenly and strode to the window, scowling out through the curtains. I didn't mean that, she said. I don't feel sorry for myself so why should I feel sorry for everybody. I mean that. I look at myself in a very truthful way. As nearly as I can, I

mean. The way

You

I've

grown up

I've

had

to

do

that, Jase.

never really had what they call the in-between morning I had pigtails hanging down to my waist One years. looked under those pigtails and morning I next and the Because I had never seen breasts shock. It was a saw breasts. before. It took me a good couple of months to figure out what they could possibly be good for. Now I've learned to look in the morning mirror and say, "Look, woman, see

I

The Watchman

33

you're this but you're not that. You can be one thing but you can't ever be something else. And if you try you'll only break your heart. You know how to do one thing beautifully

—

beautifully

—and

there's not

much

else

you can do."

See?

He nodded

silently, feeling a warmness for her that strangedrove out the last heat of wanting. After we'd left Texas me and Papa and Jill I grew up five states. No. It was more than that. Somein five towns New Mexico, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa. Arkansas, times I forget.

ly

—

—

—

how many. Now, isn't that ridiculous? How many? It doesn't make any difference. It was always the same. There was always Papa and Jill. And there was Cristi. All this time, he said. You know all this time us toI

forget

—

—

I never knew what Cristi was short for. Christine? gether Cristabel? What's it short for? It's short for Nothing, she said. It's just Cristi, that's all. It's part of the name of the town I was born in. Corpus Christi, Texas. It means Christ's Body in Mexican or Latin or something. It was Papa's idea naming me that. Mama died when I was bom and it was all pretty sad, I guess, and it sure wasn't the best foot forward in the world for me. I think Papa must have reckoned that with a bad start like that I might not turn out very well. So he hung that name

—

around

my neck in

Your mother

hopes

dying,

I'd improve. Jason said.

He

couldn't very well

blame you, Cris. Not blame me? she said. Tear your mother's body open coming into the world and see if they don't blame you. Because it doesn't matter to people that you were a baby and couldn't help it and maybe didn't really want to be born anyway. I know how he must have felt. I don't blame him for it. Thank God I didn't have to live in one town all these years. Having people blame me for Mama's death all this time. I long ago learned to stand Papa's blame. I don't know if I could have stood theirs, too. All the towns. My God, all the towns. But it was good that way. Anonymous. Nobody knew that about me. Whatever else they knew they never knew that. All those towns. It was good. Because they were all the same town, really. I was me and Jill and Papa were what they were to each other. And Papa was always the Sheriff no matter what town it was. We were always packing up and catching the next bus out. I never Uved in one town long enough for anybody to ever find out

?

The Watchman

34

about me. They might have gossiped everything else about me. But not that. They couldn't say I'd killed Mama. I reckon I couldn't have stood that. But maybe it wouldn't have mattered after all. I remember sometimes I'd hate to leave one town more than another because instead of just

that

one movie theater it had two or three. When I was little I think I would have died if it hadn't been for movie shows. I used to eat Milky Ways till I would fall asleep in a kind of a candy stupor but it didn't matter because I'd wake up and see the whole show through the parts I'd missed. Sometimes I'd stay in that theater from the hour they opened in the morning till late at night when they took down the

—

big letters that spelled the movie's name out front. I used to hide in movies like they say bears hide in caves when winter comes. Like people hide in churches or bomb shelters.

Because nothing was really real except having to go to the ladies' room or having to change seats all the time.

—

Did the usher

Oh, sure, there was one usher. But usually it was some amazingly well-dressed and respectable-looking man who had the seat next to mine and sooner or later, it never failed, he'd be trying to get his hand up under my dress. I used to go half crazy trying to figure out what it was how he knew ^why he picked me out. But in every town, in I'd be there every movie house, all the way across the continent, there'd always be that man there in the seat by mine and that nervous, creepy hand. I used to have dreams it was the same man, following me all the way across America. And then one afternoon in Sioux City, Iowa, in a movie house called Dream Palace I'll never forget that name, Dream Palace this man started the business and I just decided I wouldn't put up with it any more, I'd fight back, and the only way I could think of to fight was to scare him half to death. It was a movie with Jane Russell in it and I memorized a line where she said to John Wayne or somebody, "Then go ahead and kiss me, you big, wonderful idiot!" only in a very intense, sexy voice, and when the man started the business I just sat there and let him go ahead and when he was really enjoying himself I sprang out of my seat, stood up in his lap, and I grabbed him by the head with both hands and yelled out in this screechy little ten-year-old voice: 'Then go ahead and kiss me, you big wonderful idiot!" Well, at least I got to see him and know that thing about the man following me all the way across America wasn't true. It was somebody who'd

—

—

—

—

The Watchman always lived in Sioux City so

saw

couldn't be that. Because I

his collar.

What about It

it

35

was our

his collar?

minister.

You know

—one

of those collars

on

backwards.

So you really fixed him? No. He ran out of the theater like a panther was after him but in the end he won out. Didn't you tell your father? I didn't have the chance. The preacher got to him first. He got home even before I did and he told my father that he thought it was his Christian duty to report that he'd seen me out in the tool shed that morning with a boy named Homer Skeen and both of us were naked. And your father believed it? Sure he believed it, she said. Why not? Because the preacher dragged Homer along with me to our house. But then couldn't you deny it? he said.

Why

should

I,

Jase? she laughed, with a breezy

little

shrug,

and turned to look at him. It was the truth, wasn't it? She looked at him a second, then came and clasped

his

face in her fingers.

Here I am, she said. Doing the thing I*m always picking on you for doing feeling sorry for myself. No, he said. Just telling me about yourself. You hardly

—

ever told me anything about yourself, Cris. She straightened and turned away. I hardly ever tell anyone about myself, she said in a queer, tight voice. You know more about me than anyone I've ever

been with, Jase. That makes two, he smiled at her.

Two?

Two people I know about, he said. Two people in the whole worid I care about. Deeply. Two people that have told me things about themselves they never tell anybody else. The other one is Cole, isn't it? she said. He nodded quickly, not looking at her. You

love Cole, don't you, Jase, she smiled.

No, he said. Cole is my friend. He's closer to me than anyone except you. Men don't love each other, I know, she said. That's one of the things that's wrong

—

with us in the world.

You know what ent.

I

mean, he

said. Cole's

something

differ-

—

—

The Watchman

36

He

two pair of tickets out of his inside pocket them, I think I'll have these framed, he said. A choice. Tickets to watch people sing and dance. Tickets to watch a man tcx)k the

and looked

at

killed.

Throw them

He was

out, she said gently.

staring at them there in his fingers. them out, Jase, she said again, more softly, moving Throw to sit by him on the bed and trying to take them from his silent,

hands.

No. Let me keep them, he said. They're a birthday present from the Major. My father's gift to me. He put them back carefully into his pocket and looked at his empty hands. I wish Cole was my brother, he said. I mean my blood brother. I'd be pretty proud of that. It would make up for something. You love him like a brother, she said. That's better than a lot of blood brothers can say. He's just about everything I always wanted to be and never made, Jason said. Best in school. Better looking than me. Better brains. He even got the best She smiled kindly and touched his reddening cheek again with her fingers. Go on, she said. Say it, Jase. The best girl. I don't mind. Go on and say it. We're only friends. Remember? I didn't mean that, he said. Yes you did, she said. But I don't care because I know how you meant it. I know how you think about Jill. I know how you think about me, too. I want it that way. The nice girl

—

No

the

bad

girl.

no, he said. Cris,

I don't think about you that way. Yes, you do, she said. But it's all right. And you're right thinking that way. Chris, you're my girl, he cried suddenly, embracing her with bewilderment and sorrow. I bet I could have got a girl like Jill if I'd wanted that. But I didn't, Cris. It's you I want. I know. I know, she said. The way things are, Jase. The way things are. It's all right. I'm glad to be whatever I am to you. Even if it's only for a while. And suddenly it was there among them, so strong now that he felt like crying; stronger than it had ever been. He tore at her sweater and the gesture was like tinder: a spark

in a

warehouse

full

of flammable gas. There

was no more

The Watchman now.

talk

And

37

they met swiftly so that their teeth struck and breath stormed beneath their nostrils

against each other

and there was the

small, coppery taste of blood in their could hear voices whispering, urging; and from a great distance she could hear the rayon rip and elastic snap and textile whispering in the air which was suddenly filled with garments which rose and drifted and fell. Voices shouting seemed far off: voices not their own. What woman's voice was that moaning, screaming? thought Cristi in the moments after they both tumble backwards and seek each other savagely now and then someone inside her laughs: It was me. Oh, dear Maker, what loveliness! Oh, how beautiful

mouths.

is

Cristi

man!

a

But

it

was gone so quickly; over so soon.

rousing,

long,

listening

to

the

subsidence

of

And

she lay her breath, rhythm. Yet,

hearing their two breaths falling to a common still the shouting. Someone in the streets. She tened a moment to be sure of it. curiously,

Who's

that?

he murmured, half asleep.

lis-

Someone's out

there yelling, Cris.

go see, she whispered, but I don't think I can move. doesn't matter, he said drowsily. Let them yell. She lay quiet a moment longer and then got up and went I'd It

naked into the darkened parlor and listened at the window men below on the sidewalk. Jason fell asleep for a second. When he wakened it seemed like she had been gone

to the

for hours.

Cris?

But there was no answer. He struggled out of the sheets and went to the doorway and saw her pale figure on the studio couch. She held her head in her hands. Cris, what's wrong? She shook her head quickly and mumbled something: he could tell she had been crying. He went over and sat down, laying his hand on her bare shoulder. Cris, what is it? he said. Oh, my God, she whispered. My poor little Jill. Cris, what were they shouting? he said, shaking her shoulder

she turned to him. I can't tell you, she sobbed. Give can't tell you. Not yet, Jason. till

Jason,

me

a minute.

I

has something happened? he said. She nodded fast, three times, started to cry again and

Cris,

made

herself stop.

The Watchman

38

what is it? he shouted. Cole Biake, she mumbled found him shot to death on the Cris, It's

in a dumb Mound two

trance.

They

hours ago.

Wide awake and staring indignant at the knifepoint of new moon which blazed in the edge of the windowpane, Dede Moonshine cursed among her quilts and struggled up. Someone was prowling yonder in her yard. Loud as a drum beat had been the stumbling bootfall on the oak planks which covered the cistern beneath Dede's rose of Sharon. Angrily she snatched her dentures from the bedside water glass and clapped them into her mouth. She glared at the

window

a

moment, gumming them

into place.

At

eighty-five

Dede's eyesight was perfect. Yet it was her belief that when times came to rouse out of bed and search for prowlers in her yard she could see nothing without her teeth. She sat upright for a spell, grumbling, the cold plates warming in her jaws. Yonder in the kitchen the Welsbach mantel of the bubbling gaslight cast a faint dust of gold illumination: a light of softly greenish and submarine cast, as if that lowraftered chamber in her century-old Water Street house still kept within it the ghosts of river floods with which it had recurrently been filled throughout the obstinate invasions of more times than she cared to remember. Presently the old woman fetched from beneath her spooled bed the Delco lamp which she kept there close beside the flowered china chamber pot. She creaked out of the bedclothes. Damn them sons of bitches! she croaked softly in the dimness. Damn them drunken Polacks! Drunken bastards stumbling home and mashing down my nasturtiums! She darted the white beam of the torch before her across the rag rugs scattered about upon the cold, stone basement floor.

Who's yonder out there? shouted Dede Moonshine. Damn you show your face! In the open door, her old toes aching on the chill of the

—

time-smoothed sandstone stoop, she stabbed the light beam helter-skelter through the tapestried wilderness of her dark: a white finger moving and bouncing up and down among her sunflowers and hollyhocks and the rose of Sharon.

By God, you

I

Now you just get up and out of my property

are, too!

carcass

know who your damned drunk Dago

see you, she lied to the livid

for the law!

moon.

'gainst

I

I

go and phone

The Watchman

39

nothing spoke save the river wind, and no things the dry, small scurry of fallen leaves which rushed, as if in close-ranked fright, across the sandstone flags of the dooryard. Who's there? she cried again, and shivered in her heavy muslin nightdress for the river-wind was heavy with the Still

moved but

of autumn water. Answer me, damn you, or take to your heels! I've got a pistol here in my t'other hand and don't never think I'll not use it. Who's that yonder stomping down my mint bed? And waited, listening to a jew's-harp far away down among the trailer camp on lower Water Street and heard the distant putt-putt of the ferry leaving Portsmouth on the riv-

chill

Ohio shore. And cursing herself that her long dead brother Armph's government forty-five was back buried beneath yarn skeins and thimbles in the woven basket beneath her sewing machine. Still outrage was a comfort, more so than the Delco: it kept her warm. And she had had the sense, at least, to fetch her teeth. She cocked her head, harking. Maybe it had been only the banging of a loose shutter. She cursed again, switched off the light and stood a moment grumbling in the dark. It was a sorry day, she said to herself, that I ever let out those upper rooms to that Sheriff and his queer girl Jill. It was like as not one of them. And she moved back through the gaslight of her kitchen toward her bed again, cursing once more before she crept cautiously in among the quilts and glared with one eye at er's

the insolent

A

sorry,

moon

before she

sorry day, said

the old quilts to her chin.

fell

asleep.

Dede Moonshine, and hugged

Them

derned outlanders!

I

should

have knowed!

And now

the house was virtually in darkness. All except

back which was Jill's, a comer which she had made so especially hers that it seemed sometimes not to be part of the rest of the house at all, nor even of the world, but rather a refuge of solitude which she herself had created in space: the small gold of her single open window glowing up there in the riverfront dark. She rocked. Even after she had stopped crying she rocked, her slender naked toes thrusting back and forth against the floor, the prim folds of her nightgown swaying back and forth above her ankles, her fingers pressing the cheap pewter of the picthat corner of the third floor

The Watchman

40

The little white dog undisturbed on her cushion by the chest of drawers. Jill shivered. It was for the picture's sake that she had made herself stop crying: and for the sake of the little white dog BamBam. The glass of the picture was already gone from the frame and her tears had already blurred some of the pale colors that had been hand-tinted there once by a Mexican photographer in San Antone, Before the open window the chintz curtains stirred in the chill gusts of the autumn night, rising sometimes to stand like the gauze veils of frightened brides. In the vague dark beyond the window she could see the dim blossoms of the rose of Sharon. Earlier she had switched off the record player, stilling the dirge of the Cesar Franck; listening. Listening because she knew suddenly that a prowler beneath the big willow watched; squatting in the brush-filth of the darkness, his eyes fixed upon that yellow square of window. It could not be the wind, the river sounds. Somewhere beneath the willow's droop someone had come to watch, and after a bit Jill wished she had not turned off the music because, in that blank silence afterwards, there was no mistaking the twig-snap and remote rustle of the night-comer. The stifled gasp of her tears served, for a while, to keep her from hearing. And after that, the sentried whisper of her bare soles and the squeaking rocker's tread. Still she was certain someone was there; someone watching the gold oblong from a spying vantage point in the high grass of the dark yard beneath the willow and the rose of Sharon. She was scared. She was alone. Luther was away. In the depths of her feather tick in the basement's dank bedroom Dede Moonshine slept the sleep of the dead. Jill's feet desperately pushed the rockers back and forth. She pressed the picture closer as if its quaint face, indefinite beneath the Mexican's tints, its face stilted and foolish, might give her reassurance. She lifted it away from her breast and searched its image again. Somehow that made her feel worse, sickeningly worse: one tear splatter had given that face of longpast, gala innocence a leer of dissolute and corrupt drunkenture frame tight into her clothed breasts.

slept

ness.

To

see that special face this night that

no comfort. And the prowler now, her panic,

moved yonder among

it

seemed

way was

surely

to her, sensing

the polk-weeds

more

bra-

zenly, indifferent of being heard. It was a clear fall night with a sliver of new moon among a drift of scudding clouds. Jill wondered why she did not turn her light out and go to bed, not to sleep but to lie there

The Watchman

41

for a while until her eyes had learned the dark and she could steal to the sill and peer down through the rose of Sharon and the willow's hair. She might see the man's shape;

there might perhaps be moon enough to see his face. But darkness in that room would be, she knew, suddenly full of him. She would sit him out instead, in the light, in the chal-

lenge of wakefulness. She fingered the riddle of who he might be, of why he had come, of what he meant to do. It would be easy enough to come into the house: Dede Moonshine never latched her doors. Who's there? she whispered to the stillness and to herself as

if,

in that hush,

any voice, even her own, might be a

sound of restored confidence. She made her eyes go round the room among her treasures, hoping to distract her thoughts into the illusion of indifference:

her

little

sleeping

dog,

her books, her record

Manolete posters and the framed glossy of the young film star who died violently in the neverland, faraway and glamorous phrase of Paso Dobles. That room, asylum above the spoiled earth of man and the star-crossed streets of his disenchantment: it had always been the one niche of all the universe in which she could be she, be JiU. A hinge whispered. She got up slowly from the rocker, put the framed picture back among the others ranked across the length of player, her

the vanity's buckling, crazed veneer, faces galleried like a box of mismated, smiling jurors summoned to hear the case for Loneliness, poorly argued; and fetched the night-robe

which was draped across the jail-bars of the brass bed's foot; moving with the stiff, studied languor of someone badly scared: sitting on the spindled chair before the vanity's tall pier glass she began to do her mouth in careful lipstick strokes and when she had finished she slipped her cold feet naked into the whorish high heels which none but those pictures' pasteboard eyes had ever seen her wear: doing these daytime, goodtime rituals as if these had the power to dispel the night-comer, or, at least, her consciousness of his being there; as if, moreover, these gestures might somehow contradict her evening's grief and her stunned horror of the past night's nightmare, smiling back, at last, at the sickly pale image, twin of her spirit, the girl behind the glass as frightened as herself. In the old house somewhere the timber of a joist cried faint as a winter cricket. Cole's dead, she thought in a grind of quickened anguish; no, whoever in the world crept lightly forward in the dark

The Watchman

42

and universal yonder it was not Cole: Cole's dead, oh God, dead Cole forevermore. And the eyes of the girl beyond the scarred, time-scorched silver of the pier glass scared as she, livid as milk behind the blood red bow of new-made mouth,

more scared somehow than she and no comfort at all. Not Cole, oh God, not Cole; no, nevermore. And this time it was not a sound she heard but somehow somewhere, in the damp rooms below or on the ancient staircase, a subtle shift of the silence itself and this infinitely more dreadful. Humming, she got up and went to the Httle record player, switched it on, Hstened to the small sing of warming tubes. Darling Cole, she said within, dearest Cole, and all her memory of him verified and borne upwards, soaring on the bird-wing rise of the D-Minor. Oh God, the best and dearest among them all most cherished of them all. And now him dead. And yet, she thought in a moment's instant shame of thinking that, dead Cole more safely irreproachable than living Cole. Ghost of Cole hfted at last above the nasty insistence, the endless, physical arguments that she give him that unforgivable giving.

—

Her feet had grown warm now in the cold pumps. The face of her In the mirror shone pink. Her smile was real. She told herself suddenly that she had imagined the sounds of the prowler's foot. The little dog would have heard and awakened. There was no one yonder in that tenebrous hush: no one but the river-wind, the scuttle of fall leaf, the old house stirring, like Dede Moonshine, in the memoried turn of innocent and aged hearts' rumor: old houses like old

women

restive in their sleep. Jill was alone. Only Cole, purihad come that night to share with her. Fear had gone; there remained only the bittersweet of two-faced grief. She felt as if she had, at last, earned the pleasure of a good cry. Not yet. For now a smoke would be second best and so, lighting a cigarette, she tucked her robe close about her and sat on the stool by the stUl window's darkness, feeling the sweet season's cool good-by kiss upon her face, smelling the river and the smoke of summer leaves. Cole. Oh, Cole gone. Cole finest of them all and yet something in him like them all. Why had he not been different; why must that snakish, turgid hunger always rise? She watched the blue smoke coil out milkish from her rounded lips. And thought, seeing it curdle in the dark above the sill, that if smoke were liquid it would look Uke that: that sickening manstuff that they always wanted to spoil you with. Why? The tip of the ciga-

fied,

The Watchman rette felt dirty

43

now between her lips; she mashed it out angriWhy? Why did they always want that

ly in a little ashtray.

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

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

little

No. To give these was to give a death. And she told had done so often in her life that this was something which a woman must not give to men but to her-

thighs.

herself as she

self.

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 mercyfingered 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.

—

my daddy won't hear my bedroom like this!

Joe, don't think

dare you Seeing

come

in

you was he

about

this.

How

Miss Alt. Seeing if and darkly smiled. His stony eyes were the paradox of shrewd, informed imbecility. Tzchak's face was a Slavic mask of taut, expression-

you was

if

all right,

all right.

said

it

That's

all,

again, softly,

it was a face impartial and indifferent as a fist, with two knuckles for its high cheekbones and a lipless

less skin:

mouth

like the slit between thick and toughened fingers. glared at him, breathless with reUef and outrage both.

Jill

— The Watchman

44 Just to see

you was

if

maybe

Well,

half to death listening to

right,

all

might be

I

all

right

he

said.

if

I

hadn't been scared in the

you prowl around down there

dark, she said. I

come

And

way.

come

I

Joe, don't

Get

The door was open anywake up the old woman. heard you down there in the yard.

straight in the front door.

lie

quiet so's not to

to me.

I

out, Joe, she said.

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

Why

go check. Better go look after

better

Jill

like

her daddy

would want.

Where Well talk

is

he, Joe?

now

uptown

to

tell

Where is he? Where he usually in

the truth that's kind of a cause for bad

tonight.

is

for three days after he's

had a hand

an execution. But where?

How

do

I

know? Have

ever

I

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

said.

bet

it's

not. I

Last night.

Up

know there.

it's

I

not.

seen

For it

I

seen

just

it

where

I

always seen

just as I've

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 peaceman, 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

—

— — The Watchman

45

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?

—

not so. Nothing not even that. Nothing ever scared 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 the sweat sprang out across your dadfry. I'll swear to it dy'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 It's

my

—

—

—

while.

You're saying

Why,

my

thoughts, that's all. est of us? God,

My

daddy than

if

I swear I couldn't feel any closer to your he was blood brother to me! That's why I

just got to thinking

—mulling

my

daddy's weak! she said. said. He's just got his private Don't we all. Even the best and tough-

Not weak, Tzchak

no.

up there in the magistrate's ojffice tonight my head till I just got plumb sick to

over in stomach with worry. it all

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?

Thank you

—

—

Nothing

awake

Nothing to worry enough to stay what you might call a little grumble of well, you might say a whisper of certain

really serious.

tonight. Just

discontent.

And

—

questions that aren't What questions? Jill

say,

respectful.

After

all

have to admit it's a fair question to whisper. even though it's not reasonable to them that

Alt, you'll

Fair, I

fittingly

46

The Watchman

knows

the facts. Facts, that facts? she said.

is,

to intimates like

you and me.

What Why,

the fact Hke us knowing why your daddy's nowhere 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 to

at execution.

in

town

—they

You know

it

—

I

know

it.

But them up there

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

—

—

—

my purpose in coming down tonight. You know you? I came to bring you comfort to look after all those you. Haven't I always? through all those years wasn't daddy your when times scared towns all the lonesome wasn't no since you Ever here? Poor motherless little child. something to you taller than my belt buckle I've tried to be that even he can't be. Not ever. No. My papa's everything! Father. Yes, father. Sure, he's always been that. Btit not sure wasn't

that, don't

—

—

—

—

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 nights like the fall asleep. Don't you remember those nights time when he'd gone off this way and you grabbed her pic-

—

—

—

ture off his bed stand and throwed

No. No.

The

I

glass

it

clean across the

room?

—over

there?

don't remember. is

still

gone from the frame. See

The Watchman

47

—

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. It

The

rain

—

it

did that once.

The

once in that old house in San Antone. Funny. Queer he never got new

rain.

glass.

blew in on

It

A

it

picture needs

glass.

know

—You way. God, kept about the way he thinks of —her hand brushed don't

anything about

it.

He

wants

it

that

way

you don't know anything her. It was her hand, he says that picture from the table by his that 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. that

^he likes it

Oh,

understand. 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 timewashed 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. poor little mama, she murmured ^to the picture, perI

—

Why

—

My

haps 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 forgive. Mama, late? Mama, I know. That's why I can pity 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? day or so. He'll be back.

A

Oh, Joe, ferent.

I

have

this terrible feeling

maybe

this time's dif-

The Watchman

48

No

—

This time this town. No different. new towns. I'm tired, Joe. Oh God, I'm the towns.

different.

Joe, I'm sick of

so tired of

all

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. hate it. Sometimes I want to take it downstairs and soak drown it let all the colors soak out till there's it in the sink 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. I

—

—

—

—

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

Have you when you was only lonely?

clean

forgot that

Quit teasing me. Please stop. I will. Directly.

time

first

—

that

ten, kitten?

Kitten. Soft

Oh God,

Joe, get out!

little kitten.

night

49

The Watchman

—

Stop

that!

No. Because whenever you was scared and lonesome like this when you was little you was always that. And when

Now

don't it? Didn't it always I say that name it eases. 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 the

down hues

the

and

little

space of garish, fevered light with

definitions

of

him washed hke

rain-grieved picture. But this time

—

I

the

all

ruined,

won't, she thought, be-

cause 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. Thinking now: Whose face among the suns of time-far

Texas? No, I won't. Oh, mother lost in god-tints whose pigments are not fast-fixed on the half-breed's pasteboard heaven. Oh, God, I will do it because I have to do that or else do the other but no, God, I won't do it because it will not quench forever the fang's renewing milk; the snake eternal, resurrected. Yes, thinking, I will do it, must do it, because there is no other doing but the other. Mother? No, not you, my darling and despised. Hearing dimly the rustle of her chaste, sheathing garments now and, far off, her own despairing, hungering sob and thud of knees as sorrowfully she slid and knelt.

Kitten, he said.

now

her eyes safe into the chastity of dark and Christi? Yes. And mother, onebreasted, vanquished, too: and the proud, nippled lift of once firm life gone slack and forever unfeeding in the tinted

Clenching

nothing-feeling.

Texas earth.

Corpus

—

Just don't touch me, she mumbled. I'm a virgin remember that. Don't touch me. Not any part of me. Don't ever touch me with your hands.

Cole Blake's funeral took place two days later. For Thomas Peace they had been trying days of rude surprises, confounding changes, abrupt switches of program production, public announcements, phone calls, freighting orders, fresh staging requirements and potfuls of wreath-black coffee more bitter

The Watchman

50

even than the limpid, simple preservatives which were, in a manner of speaking, the lifeblood of Peace the Undertaker's somber art. The executed convict, naturally enough, had no Viewing he was boxed up and shipped away to his widow down state at Hundred. Thomas Peace had quite enough on his hands getting Cole Blake patched up and ready to be put on exhibit. Never before had his ingenuity risen to such heights of resourcefulness and imagination. The tricks of his trade with wax and wire and make-up had been the least of the problem. The awkward question was where the services might properly be held. Ordinarily the boy's funeral would have taken no house, place in his home. But Cole Blake had no home at least. And so there was no parlor. As for holding the ceremony in that cramped, austere hotel room which was, in fact, his home, that was out of the question. It would not accommodate the throngs of Adena mourners who would come. Still, the Mound Hotel had been the place Cole Blake had lived. And funerals were always held where men

—

—

had tion.

lived

—

And

it was a custom of inviolable, immemorial tradiso Peace racked his wits for two days and nights,

chewing his thumbnail, pondering, until, providently, the answer came to him. And so on the night before Cole Blake's funeral Thomas Peace and his assistant sons went to work. The Rotary plaque, the calendar, some chairs, tables, and the merchandise of tourist souvenirs were pacing

sleepless,

stored

away

in

the

cellar

beneath

the

big

kitchen.

The

and the long marble counter were blanketed with sheets of gray muslin; the juke box by the door was softened and re-stacked with hymns. And so, on the morning of the third day after his murder the funeral of Cole Blake began in the dining room of the Mound Hotel. When the lobby clock struck eight o'clock the doors opened and Thomas Peace, after a showmanly bow to the enterprising faces of those first come, stepped back drily into the shadows to let the pilgrimage commence.

chromed, leather

stools

Good morning. Good morning. Peck. Good morning. Miss Beulah. Good morning. Master Danny. His voice: the mannered, modulated baritone of his own school of theater. It was hke a bell toUing softly, muffled by distances.

Good morning, Johnny. Morning. Morning. Good morning, Miss Octavia. Morning. Good morning. To the rear of the long dining room, flanking the kitchen

The Watchman

51

doors and at a distance appropriately remote from the bier, aluminum tables groaned beneath their burden of food and drink, home-cooked and home-fetched. Since daylight they had come in ceaseless caravan: the food-bearers, until, at last, the two tables, teeter-legged and crying out beneath their towering load, threatened to collapse beneath the weight of so much bounty: chicken salad, pies, peach cobblers and meat loaves, chilled brown crocks of potato salad, muffins, biscuits, ham, apple sauce and enormous pots of scalding coffee, their speckled blue enamel spouts huffing steam like gigantic hens in the morning freeze of some bitter winter, while beside them stood willowware pitchers of thick, faintly souring cream. The front of the room was lavished with flowers and wreaths in such profusion that the atmosphere round about them reeked with a feverish fragrance, like the boudoir of a honeymooning gangster. And yet the room was in many ways ideal. Because it was, after all, a dining room. And because everyone of that morning's swelling mob seemed incessantly eating: seized with a savage, insatiable appetite. It would seem that it is not easy to look sad and to chew at the same time: between the stuffed cheeks and the mournful eyes there exists a certain paradox. Perhaps the trick of it is possible only at funerals. And perhaps only at funerals because it is there that a man must eat in order to reassure himself of his own aliveness in the presence of somebody else's deadness. The munching, murmuring horde that morning thronged filing through the Mound Hotel dining room in such close-shouldered press that Thomas Peace feared that, at last, they would burst splintering through the plate-glass

window

in the front

crowds which waited

and into the shoulders of the

even greater number along someone had forgotten to take in the front. Still and all, the

their turn in

the sidewalks. Thoughtlessly,

away two chairs and a table morning was nearly perfect. Mingling modestly among the others, Peace the Undertaker's haggard face showed still a pleased flush of impresario-zeal.

Good morning. Morning. How Good morning.

are you, Ort Dobey.

Morn-

ing.

Seeing sometimes the awe-struck pan-flash of decision in someone's face which meant invariably that this or that one had suddenly committed himself to Thomas Peace's ultimate easel.

Morning, Captain. Morning. Morning, Fizzer. ing.

Good morn-

The Watchman

52

There had been but one accident to flaw the performance and that had been no real fault of Thomas Peace, The big Davey and juke box was the responsibility of his two sons Humber and they that morning had turned its volume down and restocked all of its hundred discs (but one) with suitable hymns and dirges. Consequently, the hushed, whispering room that morning was momentarily shocked to hear the sudden twanging outcry of an Elvis Presley blues. Peace charged through the shoulders and swiftly stilled it. Few would remember it later; some even failed to notice: they were too busy eating. And so nothing was really spoiled. Sharp on the stroke of noon the pantomime happily approached its climax. Under an autumn sky of limpid blue the people of Mound County stood tight-clustered across the trimmed, green lawn of Mount Rose Cemetery. His face blanched with grief, Jason Hunnicutt stood by the trenchside of the fresh and ugly wound in the tended, velvet grass. At grave edge he could not keep his eyes away from

—

—

the struggling twelve black shoe-tops of the pallbearers. He watched the carved bronze box descend, clasped in the clutch

of those canvas straps which seemed in mortal contest with the men whose hands gripped them tightly and uneasily: men edgy as if they sensed a competition between themselves and the earth, something rigged and unfair: an event whose decision could be, at best, postponed. When the last drumming spadeful of sod was scattered across the mound the Most Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd, Minister at the Adena Episcopalian Church and Chaplain at the penitentiary, recited the static monotony of the last rites. There was

an instant aftermath of almost frightened

stillness.

And

then,

was the most honest human utterance made that day. In the shocked silence after no one looked at his neighbor's face. None of them ever knew who had belched. It did not matter. In fact, no one wanted ever to know who it had been who belched. Because, in a sense, that stomach had spoken for each of them there. Humanness returned; the crowd stirred and moved back. Reporters from the Adena and Wheeling papers came forward with their cameras. And, since he had been the doctor who had ushered Cole Blake into life, O. T. Snedeker M.D. incredibly,

someone belched.

It

stepped forward to pose at graveside holding a dime-store framed baby picture of the dead boy, staring down at it stiffly with an expression of clinical acceptance and mild pro-

The Watchman

53

melancholy. The people stood for a spell, then moved away, homeward bound. Only Jason stayed by the fresh mound. And presently, lifting his eyes, he saw, far in the distance, the unwelcome ones; the two uninvited: Sheriff Luther Alt and his girl Jason stooped by the grave, fussed with the wreaths Jill. and the flowers, thinking, waiting. After a while he looked up to see the two again. But now there was only one. Far off down the cemetery road, shuffling in the wake of his townsmen, his tortiu-ed face bowed, went Luther Alt. Jill stood expressionless, her pale hands dangling limp at each side of h&[ mother's short, outmodish coat. Jason looked at the fresh earth, the flowers again, his eyes blurred with angry tears. Rest easy. Cole. Sooner or later. Rest easy, he whispered. He brushed the tears angrily from his face. One of these nights, he went on in a breath of words, they'll strap the one who did it in that chair. Rest easy, Cole. fessional

We'll get even.

He

looked up at the far figure of Jill. She was staring at him. And so with a forced smile stiff on his mouth the boy stood up and walked slowly off among the scrolled stones

and cold angels to where she stood.

From the table by the window of the hotel dining room Jason watched in the fog for her coming. Every evidence of the morning's ceremonies had thoroughly, astonishingly vanished from the long dark chamber every remnant, that gone, whisked away; flowers, wreaths, tables, is, save two: food, and the shrouding yards of gray muslin gone as well: like the tents of a circus which has struck, pulled up stakes, carted up its beasts and freaks and disappeared with the roustabout, raging swiftness with which circuses, in morn-

—

ing darkness, strike and go. Even the funeral smells were gone: flowers and coffee and the faint scent of restrained human morbidity. The dining room was as it had been: ready for tomorrow noon's Kiwanis. Jason sat sweating Ughtly, his pale, searching face moist in the neon-hemorrhaging illumination at that table, that widow. That place. But Jill would have it no other way, would meet him that night in no other place. He had not argued the point. When he had walked to her among the stone angels and hmestone slabs he had simply taken her hand and they had walked back to town together. In si-

The Watchman

54

was nothing to be said or for too much. They had both loved him; each in his way, and there might, for them, be time for each to tell what way it had been. It seemed very natural, he thought, holding Cole's girl's hand and walking beside Cole's girl all the way home and saying nothing, like old lovers, who have constructed sweetly the intricate and eloquent vocabulary of stillnesses. Very natural, he thought, with a nudge of guilt at his shoulder like the cooling touch of someone freshly ghosted and new gone into the land. Natural. And yet it always seemed she hated me. And how, he thought, could she have loved somebody like Cole and not have anything but sick contempt for somebody like me?

lence.

Silence because there

the reason

that

there

was

far

Grief is the magnet. Yes, only the loss and sorrow they both felt could have made him go to her that day in that place after the funeral and only these things could have made her let him take her hand and walk her back to town and only those bonds could have made her promise to come to

him

that night.

turned his eyes to the darkness behind him and stared at the big juke box all fired-up again with drifting amber lights and bubbles rising in its golden tubes; he had tried to turn it off, tried to tug the socket from its fixture in the wall. And he looked again at the single residue of the morning's somber carnival, stared at it a moment with a crawl of curious distaste, unable to touch it, remove it: a single white rose stuck upright in a half-emptied Dixie cup of stale, warm Doctor Pepper. It stood upon the sill of the big front window, its long stem already bowing mortally into the pane of glass, the flesh of its petals already dying, browning, while yet the shine from the neon gave it a flush of cruelly

He

spurious livingness. He turned his eyes back to the window, the night; and taking shape slowly in the milky mists he saw her come, crossing Lafayette Avenue beneath the darkened theater marquee, coming closer across the bricks of the street glistening like patent-leather beneath the night, the

quaint dark silhouette of that beauty of young womanhood cloaked in the shabby cut of her mother's old coat. For a moment under the gold-red sign she looked and saw him and then disappeared up the old stone steps into the hotel lobby and it seemed to him that he saw in her face in that swift glimpse a flushed glitter of excitement as if she were bravely on her way to face a danger. He said: I'm glad you could make it.

The Watchman

55

would be here, didn't I? she said. I never say I'll do something and then not do it. She stood a moment in the half-living twilight of the juke box and unloosed the old fox collar, letting it fall from her white neck and stared at him with a curious, gentle smile. Why did you think I might not come? she said. I don't know, he said. I reckon the kind of day this has been. This place. This room. You thought I wouldn't come because you think I am I said I

frightened of you, she said. He was still, turning his eyes again to the rose, dying in the cold soft drink in the waxed cup. She slipped into the chair across from him as she had done so often in the

when Cole was

across from her. She sat a while back into the shadows of the long room. Everything's gone, she said. Every single thing. Everyone

nights

staring

gone, too. The juke box, like a gigantic and transparent samovar filled with light and moving clouds and a wine of madmen among which bubbles rose in slow, turgid stillness to break and return, remarkably, to their source: its light touched the glistening softness of the girl's face, moist with the mists of the night. All the people, all the roses and the lilies, she said. And all of him. Gone. Jill, he said, do we have to stay here? Couldn't we just walk in the streets or go have a soda or something anything but stay here? You think I'm queer, don't you? she said. Queer wanting to come here tonight. I didn't think you would feel that way, Jason. I thought somehow you would be able to understand. I do, he said. I do understand. It's the only place Cole and I could ever be alone together, she said quietly to her long fingers on the table and her voice had gotten quaky and high the way girls' voices do before they cry. I don't mind, Jill, he said. No one ever really understood, she said, near to whispering. People always said the reason Cole and I sat here togethbecause it was the one er in the dark was because of Papa place in town he could be sure that someone would always be able to see us every few minutes so that he could be sure that we didn't do anything wrong. Well, that's just not true, Jason. It's not true at all. Daddy knows me. He trusts me. is

—

—

The Watchman

56

Papa knows I wouldn't do anything wrong with a boy. Not even if it was upstairs in one of those rooms where the drummers take their waitresses. And I knew Cole. 1 knew him like myself. And I knew Cole never wanted to do anything like that with me. She thrust her face

up and

stilled

her quivering

lips

and

her eyes flashed. No, she said.

We spent our evenings here because it was dark enough and just hght enough to see each other and sometimes when we'd have a quarrel it would be just dark enough not to see anything cruel in each other's faces, anything that it would hurt to remember. And we could look out there in the street all the town going past in the night. We could look at them and feel sorry because they weren't and couldn't ever be in love. Not the way we were. She stood up suddenly, the chair scraping back from her thrusting legs, and she stared at the rose nodding into the whatever garden immortality of night beyond the glass. It wasn't because of anything Papa made me do! she whispered. It was just our place to be together. Papa doesn't make me do anything. He doesn't have to because he happens to trust me. People used to say the only reason Papa used to drive down LaFayette so many times a night in the Sheriff's Ford was so he could slow down in front of the hotel and spy on me and Cole. Isn't it a caution what lies they say! And all of them in this dining room this morning flocking and jamming like a mob to stare at him dead and stuff themselves with food. My God, I went to his coffin eight times this morning just to be sure he was still there. I would look into their faces the eyes of them above their

just

—

—

chewing mouths and I'd get this sick, horrible, delirious fear that they were slicing off bits of him. She walked slowly to the rose, stood a moment looking down, lifted it gently from the drink, its slashed stem dripping, wiped it carefully with a wisp of handkerchief fetched from the old coat's pocket. She kissed it with her eyes closed, the lashes fallen on her petaled cheeks. Jason shivered and his mouth grew parched suddenly. And it was not at the sight of her breaking the dead stem and fetching the rose up to the dark and dusky coils of her hair; but from the sudden, unreasoning sense that there were three and not just two of them there now. The rose's pale spent blossom new-living in Jill's hair, she smiled suddenly and seemed seized with a fresh mood, almost of quiet exultation.

The Watchman

We

used to dance, she said in a

57

new

voice, a low, bright

and moved to the juke box. Cole would turn it down real low so it wouldn't bother folks out in the lobby and we would dance here in the dark. She turaed and smiled at Jason, almost teasingly, almost challenging, a coin in her fingers above the metal plungervoice,

slot.

Cole would want me to dance tonight, she said Will you dance with me tonight, Jason?

He was tight in the

silent

softly.

that instant too long, his throat gripped

wooden

stocks of guilt; he could not speak im-

mediately.

We

both loved him, she said, her great dark eyes both merry and glittering with small, fine crystals of rimming to wipe out all the tears. We're here tonight to try to deny awful, lying show that they made out of him in this room this morning. Aren't we, Jason? Yes, I guess we are, he said, rising. She slipped in the dime, pressed the plunger home and waited. The rose in the dixie cup of listless drink: it was not all that poor, fallible Thomas Peace and sons had left that dusk when they had struck the circus tents of death. For now the twilight of the hotel dining room was filled suddenly with the choiring chords of the morning. "Abide with Me." Even Jill, for an instant, drew back her hand as if it had been shocked by electricity. And then she laughed a little, softly, holding out her arms for Jason to come take her in the dance. My God, Jill. We can't dance to that, he said. Why not? she whispered. I think Cole would like it, Jason. Come on, Jason. It's turned down soft. No one will hear.

—

Jason, sweating, trying to smile, trying to

make

his

arms

go up to take her. Besides, she said,

someone very

it

— should Oh, —Cole would with me— amid

cial in your life, Jason. reason, too! "Abide

hymn of say very spelove it for that

happens to be the favorite

special in

my

life

yes

or

I

the encircling gloom." Can't you see the way he'd throw back his head and laugh, Jason Hunnicutt? He took her warm fingers in his cold, and made his feet take him to her, against her, feeling her Uttle belly quake with soft, sorrowing laughter against him. Who? he whispered among her hair. Whose favorite hynm, Jill?

The Watchman

58

Why, my favorite

sister's,

hymn! Or

My

Jason, she cried softly.

didn't she ever bother to

tell

sister Cristi's

you

that she

had a favorite hymn?

And he blurted unsensibly: No. much about religious things.

Cristi

and

I

never talk

No, she said, deliciously pleased. No. I reckon not. She pressed her hair closer into his face and smiled, unseen, among his shadowed cheek, took a deep breath and shaped a teasing question. Didn't you and my sister have a date tonight, Jason? We had a date, Jason said. I broke it. She came to the hotel today after the funeral. I told her I couldn't see her tonight. Jill restrained the little shiver of pleasure that raced pellmell within her secret flesh. Did you tell her that you had a date with me? No. Not exactly, Jill, he lied. I called her tonight. I said you were Cole's girl and I told her how I'd seen you at the cemetery today the way your face looked. I said I thought maybe it would be easier for her to be alone tonight than it would be for you. Well, I wouldn't worry about Cristi if I were you, Jason Hunnicutt. She'll manage tonight.

—

What do you mean Oh, nothing has to be alone

He

—manage what tonight?

Cristi's very resourceful. she doesn't want to be.

really. if

She never

and felt the worse for it, as if his and yet sensed an edge of somevoice that he did not yet dare press

said nothing to that

silence

was a Judas

thing sharp in

thing,

Jill's

against.

And

murmured

sudden change of voice, althe hunt begins. Yes, he said. The hunt begins. And I for one count myself among the hunters. Because never again so long as I live, Jill, wUl I sleep a dreamless sleep again nor walk Adena's streets feeling clean under the sun until I've watched Cole's murderer strapped in that chair up yonder in the Uttle green room. Until I've seen him die! She pulled away, almost thrusting him from her, and went slowly to the table to sit down, to cup her cheeks and see so,

most hoarse with

grief.

Jill

in a

And

so

—

the merciful shapelessness of street things in the fog. He followed, contrite, bewildered, and slowly sat across from her again. What did I say wrong? he asked. What could I have said

The Watchman you shouldn't

that

feel

59

a hundred times sharper than

me

even?

She was

count of five breathings: exhale, inof sorrowing heart, exhale, remembrance and the unremembering horror, inhale, and the gunflash of soundless and imperfect recollection, exhale, love, and pray to God forever more, amen. silent for the

hale, pulse,

Why,

drum

Jill?

Because you make it sound the way you said hunt begins somehow here tonight with me,

that the she said, furious at her shameless, trembling lip and the well of tears. With me, she said. As if I know who killed Cole. As if I know and won't tell. I know that's not so, he said honestly. I don't know, she cried faintly. I swear it. On the memory of her of my mother that I don't know, Jason. I loved Cole Blake. And the way you said that the way the hunt begins saying it as if that was all and the only reason you came to me today the reason that you asked me to come here tonight. Do you think I could sit here with you at this

—

—

—

—

it

—

—

if I knew who killed poor Cole? No, he said. And that wasn't why

table

me and

I wanted you to be with got to believe that, Jill. I wanted you to be together tonight because we were probably the

tonight.

me

You have

who

understood Cole at all. Cristi would underI'd want to be with you tonight. Cristi doesn't understand, she whispered, with the faint sibilance of a shpped veil. Cristi understands nothing in the world that isn't below her hips! She was still a spell, clenching with white knuckles the tiny lace kerchief of her mother's, sweet with its drifting only ones stand that

memory

—why

of violet cologne.

That was mean of me, she

said.

That was a

dirty thing to

say.

understand about you and Cristi, he said. I know the between the two of you. I think I knew them every time I used to see Cole's face when he said your name. He loved me, she said. Oh, yes, he did love me, Jason. I

differences

Jason, in darkness, flushed

warm and

stared at the faint,

pale shapes of his hands. Yes, he loved you. I don't reckon even your daddy loved you like Cole Blake loved you. She raised the shadowed, heart-shaped flower of her face slowly and looked at him.

The Watchman

60

Why

do you mention my daddy? she said levelly. don't know, he stumbled. 1 just said that I didn't think even he loved you as much as Cole did. Is that wrong, Jill? I

But you meant something else by it, she said. Nothing else, he said. Jason, I am a very wary person, she said. I feel and sense things that people mean underneath the things they say. And when you said that the way you said that I could feel that you were hinting at something. Jill, no. Hinting at what? I only said Cole loved you more than your daddy. I meant just that. As if, she went on quietly, you were hinting the same awful thing that I've heard some others hinting out there in the town today. That somehow Daddy was to blame because Cole got killed. She began to cry, her face naked to the light from the drifting street, making no motion to cover her anguish with

—

—

her hands. He sat helplessly before the unapproachable, unanswerable feminine condition, waiting till she stopped, blew her nose softly and began to speak again. The hunt begins, she murmured. And you among the hunters. Very well. So I come here to you tonight expecting one thing and discovering something quite different, Jason. Jill, I swear before God I never meant that, he said. No. You listen, Jason Hunnicutt. You the hunter among

And

isn't that what it all Hunters after us all? Couldn't any one of us be someone they could name and frame and nail to the courthouse cross and call it done and clean and all-avenged? As if by doing that they had raised Cole back from that earth you stepped across today to get to me, Jason? Don't say these things, Jill, he said. No, listen to me, please. You make of this table and this room and these chairs this place that meant all that you know it meant to Cole and me you make it into a chamber of judgment. So let me tell you. Jill, will you let me say something? No. Because I must tell you. I was there we had gone there Cole was there. And we had gone there for nothing that needed hiding or sneaking up there to do like whatever other couples go there for. Because it was the place we'd the first time I had ever been with Cole. On the first gone mound. Feeling all that wonder and mystery of ancientness

the rest of the hunters after us all. really means? Aren't they that?

—

—

—

—

—

—

— The Watchman

—the

61

and princes sleeping town below us. Adena all hidden in its white fogs. Adena with whatever meanness might be happening down there. A pure place up there high above everything and the fog of the town below us like the way clouds look in movies from airplanes. Pretendbeneath our feet in the

mound below

secret princesses

us.

And

the

—

—

ing almost anything might be down there beneath that whiteoceans or China or a different time thousands of years

ness

—

—

And then and then She shuddered and covered her face and waited for the blood in her throat to take its tightening fingers from her

ago.

speech.

—

— —

and then someone coming up from the fog up the path that winds round the mound coming suddenly out of the fog. Shouting something. I can't see the face not even

when

—

—

my

eyes some face by moon. I can't remember. And then the shouts. Are you listening quite carefully, Jason, because I am telling it to you Uke it was. And I think if I ever have to tell it to anyone else ever again it will kill me! Shouting! And the moon. And I saw Cole's face and heard the the jarring flat crack of something like someone hitting a flat board on a wood floor slapping it hard and fast and j -jarring and Cole's face began to to go away in pieces and there was nothing to do. He was on his knees and the flat slapping sound never seemed to end and his face was all gone and nothing there but a broken redness in the moon. Oh, my God! And I was holding him in my arms then and moaning and rocking him to and fro and trying with my other hand to put his face all back but there was nothing there. It was all gone. And what was left was only broken. She was not shaking now, almost in full possession of herself again, so that he watched her and wondered in pity and another emotion that he would come to gently learn in the weeks of the autumn yet unspent, unspoiled, seeing her strength and valor and some profoundly moving sensibility of loyalty and love, sweet as the vestiges of that autumn unspent, unspoiled. He wanted to take her in his arms. Not for love as he had grown to learn it with the other girl but as he might have put his arms around Cole Blake in a moment of total and unstuck grief. They're saying out there, she whispered, that any boy who goes with me is cursed. All the people out there tonight in Adena's pantries over midnight milk and cookies in I

close

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

— —

— The Watchman

62

—

married bedrooms they're saying that any boy goes with the Sheriff's oldest girl is bound headlong for a bad, sad end. Why, Jason? Why do they lie? Why do they blame Papa, Jason? No one blames him, Jill, he said, covering her hand with his fingers and feeling it quiver wonderfully beneath that fresh, lovely touch so new and strange to his flesh. No one their holy,

who

does.

You I

swear that you don't, Jason? she said

like

a child.

swear.

And you

didn't

—you

mean anything?

didn't

hinting like they are at something awful about

—myyou weren't papa?

was not, Jill. Then she was still a spell more, while he watched her in that dark honey dusklight: watching her slender fingers clasp and unclasp, clasp and unclasp on the table before her shabby coat sleeves. Beyond in the lobby someone thumped and scuffled, slipshod and stumbling sloven-footed on the stoop and the big door slammed, setting the water tumblers behind the counter to chattering like glass gossips upon their shelves. Jill took in a deep breath of braveness, caught her breath up sharp as if at some half-seen memory, her eyes closed and her head tilted a little to one side in a clenched squint of I

swear

I

shape among the mists of her fears. Sometimes, she said. Sometimes, Jason, I half-remember sometimes I can almost see something feel something, someone a face, a hand something, someone up there on it's the Mound that night. And then well, it's just no use not there. It's like a picture a dark, colored picture. But somehow some of the picture has been washed away. Scratched out with soap and scouring steel wool. I think think if I could see could make myself remember that effort to define the

—

—

—

part of the picture

—

—

—

—

—

I

think I'd

know who

^I

killed Cole.

Don't try now, he said in kindness, gently. There'll be time. Remembering's a thing that sometimes can't be made

come

to

No,

—

back.

wait, she said in a sharp whisper. I can hear that flat

—

—

jarring crack and I can see I can see Someone's silhouette filled suddenly the yellow door into the lobby. It swayed and sobbed a little, faceless and massive, staggered and shouldered hard into the door frame with a creak of old woodwork and a tinkling, muffled gibberish of hidden crystals striking together somewhere in the folds of the great, ill-fitted overcoat. It was Matthew Hood,

that awful

The Watchman

63

drunk as old Noah, and close to seeing every pair of beasts within the mad, sad ark of his proud, uptilted head, weathering the floods beneath it: laughing a little, then a soft snatch of hymn, then a sob and the quiet, dreadful laugh more sad than ever the sob could have been. children, he announced with the plodding, careful articulation of drunk men who must keep the secret of their drunkenness from others not so much as from themselves.

My

My young and beautiful lover-children. Shhhhh! Don't fret now! Don't think I've come to hssp! to intrude. Shhh. Now don't get up. I just stopped a second on my way upstairs to bed. Bed bed bed. I was setting yonder in the fog

—

—

—

—

sipping my tonic my medicine, that is I heard that sweet old church tune softly through the doors. Great Maker, I says to me. Great Maker, is there dead men singing high up yonder in the fog? And then I seen the familiar shape and shadows of you two in here. And I sat a spell more in the -hssp the the fog and had me a sip more of my tonic and I

— —

—

—

A

thought it was a good world maybe. Just maybe. good world maybe and all the bad things undone like ropes untied d'you see? ropes untied. Lovers darling young lovers knotted together in the dark, praising Great Maker Him in the dark. I had to stop and see you plain and tell you: Thank

—

—

—

you.

He bowed precariously, with the learned caution of men often pitched headlong; bending from the waist, keeping his legs planted apart, his shoes askew but steady on his numbed feet.

—thank you, my knotty world— Oh, Great —

minding me that there is still That there is still Love in this lovers. Maker, thanks to you, God, for

dears, for

that there are

that.

And

still

thanks to you,

my

dears.

My

child-lovers.

—

Was

you singing? So many voices. Wonderful ^wonderful! "Abide with Me." Wonder-ful. He hiccupped again and his fingers of frailest, china-pale delicacy reached up to brush certain droplets of fog or perhaps the exudation of some deeper mists behind a forehead which was pale and broad as a greasy soup platter beneath the shabby havoc of unkempt gray-brown hair. He hunched a little and flapped his arms out, letting them fall with a slap to his sides and again that remote chink of little glass among the threadbare drape of his old cloak. It was a gesture of that

beholdenness beforehand, a petition of irresistible hungering. Might I just set a spell? a span of no more than three

—

The Watchman

64

my

bed with my head There now! Til fetch out my Elgin and keep time on myself. Three minutes. Not a second more. He fumbled struggling in the vast, ragged woolen snarl of his cloak, his glove-tight, bulged and bursting suit, feeling for the watch to fetch it out. It's all right, Mister Hood, said Jason. You're not intruding. I have to get Jill home in half an hour. We were just minutes so that

I

remembering the

can go up yonder to

sight of child-lovers here?

talking.

Great Maker, my dears, you have the most God-almighty sweet singing voices! he cried out. Sitting out yonder in the fog having my midnight tonic, as it were I heard you plain. Angels of the souls of dead men high up yonder in the fogs, I thought, and it scared me some to think of angels who could sing so sweet and all their poor throats broken. But Heaven patches up all things, eh? Throats, eh? The Great

—

—

Maker

toy-man mending his lost and shattered dolls. a good thing to see in young folks in these knotty, twisted times. Where did you learn to sing that sweet? "Abide with me amid the encircling " Which encircles what? I never can mind the rest that kind, old gospel tune. Encircling? No matter. An old man wanders on and on because he dreads it when the gas is twisted out like the light of an eye and the dark is cold as the quilt round his neck. Used up thrown out. The Board the damned Board! Excuse me, Miss Jill. Please pardon my loose, coarse tongue, Master Cole. Jason could not look at Jill, his eyes wanting to see her face, to tell them that it was all right, not to be afraid: that an old man like drunk, mad Matthew Hood might not know the quick from the dead in the dusk of a darkness in which he had so often seen another boy's long gone face. Matthew Hood for an instant turned into himself, wound up and inlike a

Religion.

Ah,

it's

—

—

ward

like

crusty

Do

—

—

a sea-creature in the

momentary

nautilus of his

grief.

you know what

you care

The

—

to

I

hate? said the old hangman.

know? The power companies,

that's

what

Would I

hate!

electric! They're crawling through this lovely valley like

an octopus. Wires. Wires. Ain't that so, Cole Blake? Wires every which where! Eh, Cole? Mister Hood, he said, for Jill's sake he told himself, but deep down for his own. I'm Jason Hunnicutt. Cole Blake passed away.

—

I

The Watchman

Oh? Ahh! he mused,

his lovely fingers

65 pinching his gray,

grieving lips together in a pout of thoughtfulness. am really saddened. When did it happen, boy?

Now,

I

Jason laid out his hand and squeezed Jill's iced and fistclenched knuckles. Oh, I sleep badly badly badly, mumbled the old hangman. Badly, indeed. That's no worry of yours, I know. D'you mind my saying I sleep badly, Master Cole? No, Mister Hood, said Jason. I'm sorry. Did I hear you did you just say something recently

—

mean

—

a

moment back

—

young Jase Hunnicutt mean, that he was sick in bed

to the effect that

you just say it, I Death's Door? I'm Jason Hunnicutt, Mister Hood, he said. The vast head shot forward two inches, the big frame tinkled and tottered, steadying itself, the eyes of the old hangman squinted and strove to pierce the dark. Why, no, boy. I know you. You're Cole Master Cole Blake. And you. Miss Jill. No, boy. And I want it said for the record here and now, Master Cole and Miss Jill Alt was and

didn't

at

—

that

you are sweet singing

He

children.

back

like a sergeant, his before him: a primly big head high and his girl-hands laced child about to confess a theft of apples. I Ued to you, he said. And I loathe and abominate untruth. It wasn't medicine I was a-sipping out yonder on the steps. I am drunk. It's all right, Mister Hood, Jason said. Thank you. Master Cole, I thank you. But it is not all right. I lied to you. Tonic, I said. Medicine, I said. Not medicine. Not tonic. Booze, my babies, booze! I am staggering drunk and soused as a trough-foundered percheron. And for that for the lie I apologize. Accepted? someIt's all right, Mister Hood, Jason said. Everybody

straightened, shoulders thrust

—

—

—

times Shouldn't, said the old man. And most especially shouldn't a

Nobody anytime shouldn't. man with a lifetime of honored and artistic journeyman skills behind him a man once looked up to no, I shouldn't put it so. Looked down to, I

—

—

—

convey to you is that the the patrons of my art, so to speak, looked down to me at the very moment they were looking up. Up at the Great Maker. Do I convey my meaning? It's a most contrary thing to shape into sensible and poetic speech, don't you agree? And I am drunk.

will say.

What

I

mean

to

— — The Watchman

66

And, Great Maker, forgive me that. I drink seldom. I do it few and far between. And they're only little drinks little bottles

—

see?

And with that he thrust his fingers gingerly into either pocket of his coat and fetched out four miniatures of whiskey, club-car size, and he swayed a little with again that vast, bandaged, secret chinking touch of glass upon glass; his pockets in overcoat, vest, jacket, trousers were sagging with them: a good three dozen, to say the least, his whole vast, absurd vestments, stuffed and hoarded with these little whiskey bottles like draperies in the shoddy drawing room of an insane and alcoholic midget. My older sister Viney, he confided, with a Dresden forefinger holding fast to one of the bottles while, dextrously, he touched a fingernail secretly to his lips. She sends them to me every two months from Baltimore, Maryland, packed

amongst medicinal cotton in a fruitcake box. Viney's good. When the Board first fired me for the Chair I went and stayed with Viney in Baltimore for two whole drunken, shameful months. And whilst there it come upon me that if ever I was to take hold of my soul again it would mean giving up the Big Bottle forever. Just one of these little ones enough to carry me along when the shivers come over me and shook me like a tree worried in a wind of bitterness and remembered ingratitude. Master Cole Blake, mind this! If if ever, I say, and may ever the Drink takes hold of you half the battle's licked the Great Maker forbid it ever should when you put forever away from your hand the Big Bottle and learn to get along with one of these nice tinies tucked just in your vest. See? Sometimes you don't want it at all knowing it's there's enough. See? One or two or three of these little tinies. Oh, the darlings. There's not enough in one

—

—

—

—

to

make

a babychild tipsy.

He

sobbed suddenly and leaned his face into his hands one of the tinies fell to burst and tinkle: a splatter of and drink and diamonds across his shoes. Sometimes, he chuckled, I forget. This pocket that pocket!

Blast

the

pockets

to

tarnation!

—

—

all

the

pockets!

sometimes I forget which pocket my tiny is in and I fetch another and forget it and another. Till in the end I'm nothing more than a bagful of glass and drunk past remembering my pockets from my hat. Drink! Oh, I should know better. Viney told me. She prays and I thank the Great Maker that she does pray because it seems the thirst only

— The Watchman

67

me every few months or so with nothing in between do but think and remember. Remembering what? Remembering my lost life, that's what! Remembering man's sometimes reingratitude to man, is what! And sometimes drink that knowing that it was Buddy and poor membering poor sensehis mind and seized conscience, blinded his sense, in it and less, conscienceless, mindless hand and put a gun told him to shoot that poor harness-maker's wife in Cameron more than twenty years ago. A man has to unburden his memory now and then and again. Buddy hanged. And it was my hand hanged him. And it was drink that should have stood before the bar and heard the sentence of judgment if there was a true justice to this knotty world. The Drink. The Big Bottle. Couldn't I guess it plain from Buddy? seizes

to

—

Couldn't

I

read

it

—my

my own brother she never forgave me. I

plain in

mother's

am

a much misunderstood man. Can darlings a my man, maligned tinies many many you guess now why I need my night of ever few months or so? But neither of them could answer: Jason cold-sweating and the bowed figure of Jill, silent now beyond the speech oldest child? Well,

—

of grief or horror, clenching her blue knuckles in the neon's loveless dusk.

That's why, concluded the old hangman. That's why, I at the First reckon, I taken the job of sexton janitor, too Protestant Episcopal Church when Doctor Godd and the members offered it. Sometimes I think there's some among them that know the clean, good work I've always tried to do in the old days before the Board threw me away like a windbroke horse to the boneyard. I was God-fearing as a child

—

—

back in St. Louis from whencet I come to this fine state to do my work with the ropes. It's nice to be used again needed again. And ropes again! Ropes to toll the bells! And sometimes when I sweep up in the Sunday dusks before the eight o'clock service it's like I'm sweeping up God's sinners for the dustpan. Like I used to do. Don't hangmen sweep the corners clean in this twisted, knotty world? Great Maker, what sweet singers you two make. Cole Master Cole Blake, there's only one tenor I ever heard could beat yours and that was my brother mother's oldest Buddy Hood. He sighed and sat a moment with his head nodding and tiien chuckled a profound, stomachy grunt of bitterness. Great Maker, he whispered. This past master of one rope

—

— —

— The Watchman

68

now

has sixteen. Sixteen! Think of that now. And each one with a bronze man on the end crying to the quiet Sabbath to make men heed the wrath of God and the justice of man. Oh, they hke me. Sometimes I think there's some among them Doctor Godd, mind you, is also chaplain up yonder well, they thank me. Even that one time he at the prison scolded me he forgave he understood. He didn't even speak of firing me. It was a Sabbath after a Saturday night when I'd had a little too many of the tinies in my pockets and I'd had a sip or two not all, mind you just a sip or two from each one of maybe thirty-five or forty of them. Oh, I wasn't really what a man might call drunk. I was what you might label reminiscent! And homesick! So I done it. Doctor Godd forgave me. Rut there was many and many's the church-goer that morning that just couldn't seem to understand how a man homesick and a whole keyboard full of ropes and bells in front of him can get a notion in his fingers that nothing can shake loose till he's gone and done what those fingers have to do. And it was startling but beautiful, I may say beautiful in its way folks on their way to church on a soft, sweet morning in Easter Week and suddenly the bells in the Protestant Episcopal Church starts ringing out the "Saint Louis Blues." Missus Octavia Merkin who is choir leader was the one who started the drive that Monday to get me fired. Lord Great Maker,

—

— —

—

—

—

—

—

that pathetic old whistle-tit!

It is

my

belief that

church

altos

should be used only for the study and experimenting of medical science! And it is and has been for some fifteen years my careful and studied opinion that this so-called Missus Octavia Merkin is a morphadite. Forgive me, Miss Jill Master Cole. I thank you again. Your sweet voices rising in the fogs of this knotty, troubled night will sing sweetly tonight in my dreams. I thank you. I'll sleep to-

—

Ah, Great Maker, maybe no more tur'ble tur'ble nightmares of big, roped bronze bells swinging and roarin' their damned booming ding-dongdell chimes above my poor head sweatin' on the bolster trying to hide 'neath the quilts! night!

—

Jason, his mind filled suddenly with the thunder of his own bells of judgment; the quick memory and sweet vision of friendship and love and loss, felt a surge of pity and a queer admiration for the old hangman. I wish, he said, almost in spite of himself, and wholly heedless of the Jill in the dark between himself and the

other man.

I

wish

it

was you

that

would be there

to

do the

— The Watchman

69

—

Hood I wish it was to be you when the time hang the man that killed my friend. Hang? Hang who? Lord Maker, Hood's hangin* days is done. Master Cole. Hang who, boy? Buddy, you say? No Buddy was a good boy. It was the Big Bottle should have swung off the gallows that night. Hark now! Is there a bell swinging somewheres? No. Ah, thank the Great Maker. It's only the clock of Peace struck twelve! Be proud of yourself, Mister Hood, said Jason. I say again that I wish it was your hand your rope that would hang his murderer when time comes. No, muttered the downcast head of Matthew Hood, his sloppy lips now gone fumbling, his chest bubbling like the pipe of the gaslight above the storm-stained wallpaper of his hemp-haunted room. No, he muttered bitterly. It will be the Electric, Master Cole. The chair. Thankless men! Ungrateful Great Maker, Lord forgive me! Time and progress won! The Board won! They don't deserve the skills of my breed any more! Yes! Hanging is too good for them! Jason got up to help him to the lobby, to the broad steps, and the worn mahogany banister rail. Still maybe. Mister Hood, Jason said in a spurt of reassuring inspiration. Maybe he'll be caught, tried and get off clean, scot-free! Walking Adena streets in the end and mocking us all. Maybe then you can do the job! To a lamp post. Mister Hood. To the good, strong limb of a high sycamore! Matthew Hood turned on the bottom step, stared hard, focusing with delicate, washy imprecision at the boy's face. He snatched his sleeve from Jason's touch, and pulled back job, Mister

comes

to

—

against the newel post.

That's lawless talk! he snapped soberly. Master Cole,

you

make me ashamed for you! Lawless. A lamp post? A tree? Why, boy, shame on you. I'm purely disappointed! What's the earth without Law! No! No, by Judas, never that. Why, I'd rather know I'd never knot another noose than harbor such a fancy. Lamp? Tree? No! A man shouldn't never and the people and the doctor and makes it all fair and right and clean! He snuffled, straightened, cast upon Jason one last pitying, condemnatory eye of bloodshot indictment and turned to go laboring up the stairway, still fiercely, stiffly swing

till

the

judge

the God-fearing preacher

upright with that precarious, tilt-wary caution of the drunken, his little hand clawing and stabbing along the painted rail;

The Watchman

70

moving with queasy, upright care of ropewalkers who balance baskets of eggs upon their heads, while from his preposterous out-sized overcoat there came murmuring the cut-glass tinkle and clink of the myriad tinies: he sounded like an enormous Victorian chandelier ascending to some rococo paradise of useless and discarded ornaments: the parlor junkshop of a dusty crystalled Valhalla. When Jason turned he saw the figure of Jill waiting for him beyond the lobby window in the milk of the mists.

weary

on the time-scooped dip of the stone threshold of the house on Water Street. He could smell her sweetness mingling with the many and curious herbal sweetnesses of the gardens: the death of the rose and the scent Jason stood

Jill

of her and something from Dede Moonshine's tangled maze of dooryard, too: wisteria or the wisping reek of jasmine spilling through the dark, and that smell, that compost of scents became more than a sense in his nostrils, became that emotion which is the only truth any of us ever carries away from great and secret encounters which, in a twinkling, change or sanctify or curse the fifty or sixty years of life yet left to us. Jason fell in love as haplessly as if, had he gone stumbling twelve feet further back into the Persianrug pattern of Dede Moonshine's dark, wild, gardened yard he would have fallen into her cistern by the rose of Sharon. She kept a massive oak board covering across that cistern and held that down with a thirty-pound sandstone as if the latter were a paperweight to keep the oak lid from blowing away. That night she had dragged off both stone and lid and left the cistern wide agaping in the dangerous and enchanted darkness of her spicy dooryard jungle so that any fresh night prowlers were sure to tumble in and she, hearing the curse, ultimate splash, and hollow, holler for neighbors to

come

fetch

muddy

him

out:

cries,

would

a precaution

be sure, inasmuch as Dede was cerGerman ancestry would not hurt anything, whereas a Spaniard or Polack would taint the cistern's sweet store of hoarded rains forever and gone. Dede Moonshine was a wild-hearted gambler. And though that night the cistern would hold no one, Jason's heart was tumbling full of Jill. He decided not to kiss her. It had nothing to do with the artifices of courtship, was in no way concerned with whether Jill wanted him to kiss of

some pantry

risk, to

tain that an intruder of Scotch-Irish, English or valley

The Watchman

71

her or not, first date or thirtieth date whatever. It had to do with the thing that moment of scents had whipped together in his mind: an alchemist's trick with smidgens of this and the other and that in the enchanted, alembic of his heart which now felt enormous as the night, the dark, the mist itself. He wanted to keep hold of this strange and beautiful rush of things inside him: his blood, it seemed, reversing its course suddenly and running in playful pellmell backwards to his heart, and his breath come up short and gasping like after a belly punch in boxing, but without that pain. He wanted to take the feeling home and look at it in the dark of his bedroom, as once he had fetched home a blazing, cold chunk of forest stump, cold-burning like the moon with the heatless light of foxfire. How long ago, he could not imagine, although it was a bare second past, she had said to him: I'm glad we were together tonight, Jason.

He said, And bit

I

am

glad too,

Jill.

it seemed there might have been something much more clever and poetic to be said if only he had thought a minute. I'm sorry about poor Mister Hood, he said. I thought you were real kind, she said. I'm g^ad he came in tonight and carried on that way, Jason. I never thought of you as a really understanding person. I mean kind like you reminded me of things in that, Jason. It made me

his lip

because

—

Cole. Jill. Me! No. Not like Colel Yes, she said, and it had not mattered what he had decided about not kissing her and he was not yet old enough to know that it never matters anyway, because she bent forward suddenly, the flower-pale heart-shape of her face tilting a little, and put her lips against his. He did not move. Not even his lips moved because hers did not move and that somehow all the more moving, more stunning with the wild astonishment of wonder's wine: her lips a little wet and the moistness half her and half the mists and the smell closer and blowing sweeter: the httle hurricane thunder of their breaths between their upper lips and the scent of her hair and the soul of the dead rose risen and the mist's scent, too, wisteria or jasmine or whatever and even the smell of himself: an ozone. She kept her lips against his, very still, breathing very still as if it were an effort to do that, and then her whole mouth shivered and something moaned so deep within her that he thought it was not in her but

Oh, Lord,

72

The Watchman

somewhere behind them both, across the waters, bobbhng oil lamps of the frog-gigging skiffs. He wanted her to keep her mouth there, her lips against his lips, her smell making the magic things be all round him in the night which now he filled. But she made that low, lorn moan again and suddenly drew back and stood above him on the stoop, her eyes seeming to see beyond the dark, the mists, her fingers of one hand stroking his hair as if it were something fresh and treasured that she must touch just now and never touch again. He wondered what he had done; he thought perhaps she had guessed when, for an instant, he had remembered and forced from his mind the vision and sensation remembered of another mouth: Cristi's open and wild beneath him among the tangled violet-reeking pillow of her little room; her tongue was a craziness in his mouth, like a creature ina voice

among

the

—

dependent of the rest of her, gone amok in wild search for his tongue and in the end, always, the muffled, groaning shriek in her throat and her white teeth deep in the subsiding flesh of his thrusting shoulders, and all of them both like a rocking chair run down. This kiss scarcely like that kiss, this row of beautiful teeth behind these lips not like those of Cristi's however beautiful once they may have seemed. Jill. Cristi. The dark and the light. The night, the morning. The moon the noonday. Would he ever, could he ever want to do that to her: to the moon, the dark one, the night one, the girl of scents and praise-causing and love Hke a new moon, sickle-thin and frail as curl of soft silver whittled from a spoon. He thought of the embarrassment

—

was to stand up at a table to greet her when Cristi appeared in the doorway of Deke Virgin's Lunch because every man in the place would look at him and know the way it was with him and Cristi. Though they might have spent an afternoon in August up in the swelter and cologne of her room above the drugstore, four hours of tooth and tongue it

and lip and the insatiate twined, grinding frolic of bounding hip and rollicking loin, a madness of deep though always depthless pleasure, yet it was as if he were striving to dipper out the ocean of all ecstasy with a golden dessert spoon, and fall at last spent, the nearest, sweetest death this side of death herself or of her kind kinswoman sleep; done, an afternoon finished, drained as a child's sucked orange

—

of this kind of brass-bed music like a concert of soprano wailing above the backing of a hundred spring orchestra.

The Watchman

73

exhaustion. And always when you had done your own man's best to banish it somehow for more than your own pleasure: rather for your own protection, more even

total

than merely that: for the protection of all boys and men, males anywhere within wind of that crazy she-spoor. It was an emanation, an essence, which spoke one word: Come. And he thought often that had her body chosen any other in speech, perhaps, idiom to express this particular petition or by intimate exposure of her body she would have been sent away to prison for the rest of her Ufe and even then would have driven her warders mad or watched them waste away in happy, sated comas.

— —

He this

stood

now

scarcely finding

loveliness half-visible in the

it

possible to believe that

dark above Dede

Moon-

was the sister of Cristi. Time, like his blood, was running the wrong way, too. Hadn't she just said something to him about his being kind? Like Cole? And hadn't he said some sort of modest No? But that seemed to have been words uttered in a time so ancient; older than the river. But still, for all that, only an astonished breath ago. There are no clocks in the room of love. shine's trelliced stone stoop

Yes, she said. You are. I never knew you, Jason. I always thought of you somehow as different than the way I saw you today at the funeral afterwards when you did that kind thing and came to me and walked me home from Mount Rose cemetery. And tonight when you stayed with me. You were even kind and understanding about spending our date in the place where Cole where we used to spend our evenings together. I didn't mind that, he said with a shiver. Jason, I just don't think I could have gotten through to-

—

—

—

night alone.

—daddy? he

Your

said cautiously.

He's upstairs, she said softly. But he*s terribly worried about something now. He won't even look up at me when I bring him his supper plate and his glass of milk. He just

and

on the chair by the window. Well, he's worried about catching Cole's murderer, he said, straight out, risking much. sits

stares at his

gun

belt

Yes, she said thoughtfully after a second. Yes, that's it. Cole's murderer. Daddy takes his job very seriously. Well, it's a serious thing, I reckon becoming a sheriff.

—

It

a

is,

sheriff

she said. But you're wrong.

—

^he

was born

sheriff.

Daddy

Like a

didn't

man

become

of music,

a

The Watchman

74

It's something born. And do you know somein all the years my daddy's been thing astonishing, Jason? never shot his gun at a single living thing. he has lawman a Sometimes he reads to me. He always animals. Not even little. Poetry. William Blake, when I was to me used to read

painter, a poet.

—

Keats, John Donne, Wordsworth. She lifted her head to the night again, and suddenly, in an accident of striking sadness, the dead rose fell from her hair at the very moment when Jason heard again within her, from somewhere in the red-leaved, grieving secrets of the belly below her breast, that moan once more. " for everything that lives is holy," she whispered in a shaken and small voice, then seemed to breathe in evenness again, gathering strength from something in the dark. That's Blake, she said. That's something Daddy is always saying: "For everything that lives is holy." And then he breaks his pistol and puts the bullets under Mama's Bible in the bureau drawer and he sits alone and says nothing for a great long while like he was letting some dirt or bloodshed wash from off him in the rain of silent lamplight. You believe me, don't you, Jason? she said, her voice risen a little, a quartertone higher, her cold-tipped fingers rising suddenly to touch his cheek and lips as if they might beg out the blessing of a Yes.

—

Yes, said Jason.

You must

believe me, she said. Daddy's never shot his gun at any Uving being. Not even so much as a rabbit. Not any human creature not any living thing. Once I remember Oh, I remember, a drunken ranch hand in Tulsa. He shot and killed two men in a little country grocery store that sold moonshine whiskey. And Daddy had to go take

—

—

in. And Daddy came in the grocery store just as the man was reloading his gun and Daddy walked across the floor toward the man with his hand out, pleading, kind and gentle pleading and the drunk man pointed his gun at

him

—

—

Daddy and said if he came a step farther he would shoot him, but Daddy just kept on coming and the man shot Daddy twice through the shoulder and once in the leg. And Daddy didn't even take his own gun out of the holster. You see how he is? You believe me, don't you, Jason?

And he took the gun out of the men who saw it and Miss

—he

the ranch hand's fingers and Shackleford who ran the store

walked away and dropped the man's gun in a big barrel of pickles and then he came back to the man wounded, mind you shot three times and bleeding all

swear to

—

it

—

The Watchman

75

he was and he laid his hands on the man's shoulders and he was crying but it wasn't for anything that hurt him, it was for the man and what he knew other I know that! men would do to him! And he shook the man's shoulders hke he was a bad child and he shouted: "Don't you know, that everything that lives is holy?" boy! Don't you know! It's legend down in Osage County, Oklahoma, and in the country across the Arkansas River where it happened. Don't you believe me, Jason? I wish I could see your face in the

as

—

—

dark.

I

He

think you're laughingl

I'm not. I'm not laughing, Jill. I'm cold, Jason, she whispered, and he thought he heard her teeth chatter. I'm cold. Is there a wind tonight? No wind, he said. It's fall, JiU. It's like this on river said:

nights

when

it's fall.

Jason, put your arms around me, she whispered, moving down from the stoop, coming against him. I'm cold, Jason.

I'm cold and I'm afraid. He put his arms around her and felt her shoulders quaking under his touch, her breasts against his breast leaping with the shudder of a sudden little storm of sobs and he could feel the shape of her mouth upon his neck, the hps open and shaped to terror and the breath quick and warm, though the place where they touched his neck was wet and when she breathed out it felt cool, and he felt bigger than the fog, the night, the river, tall aU the way to the vast, dark ceihng where the lost and unseen stars wandered among the exile of heavens.

Maybe, he whispered. Maybe You'U catch your death.

I better let

you

get

up

to

bed.

A

minute,

she

sobbed.

a minute more. the scaring goes.

Just

tighter, Jason.

Hold me

till

Yes. Yes.

will hold

you

I

till

it

goes,

he

Hold me

said.

Behind him in the house something moved, creaked, the speech of hinge and flood-swollen door upon its jamb. light shot a thin gold bar down the narrow staircase. It was not Dede Moonshine. It was the door to the upper

A

floors.

Daughter? strong, quiet It's

Jill?

the Sheriff called, not loudly, but Ib a

command.

me. Daddy, she called up the dark beyond the door-

way.

Then come up, he said. Who are you with? up for hours for you to come.

waiting

I've

been

The Watchman

76

Yes, Daddy. I'll not embarrass your young beau, he said. I'll not ask him his intention in keeping you out tiJl one o'clock. He may now leave. And, daughter JiU come up to bed now. I mean this very minute now. Before him in the dark she had been there: the warmth, scent, sweet whispering laughs. Now suddenly gone. Gone without a brush of her lips, a cold squeeze of her fingers, so much as a touch. He could not see the expression on her face when Luther called to her but in the flash when she whirled at his command and paused for a moment, face uplifted to the narrow doorway at the top of the staircase, her profile: lashed eye and flared nostril and the open, quivering mouth: that half-face painted in dusky yellow for an instant from the long light raced zigzag down the steps from the lamps in the Sheriff's parlor: something stunned and confounded in her face, something begun to work among the soft features, twisting them into the grimace of an emotion which Jason was not to see completed, so swiftly did she bow her head and shoulders and then rush in a whisper of sandals up the light-cloven darkness toward her father;

—

an expression he somehow was to remember as the gathering together of a stricken realization within her of an absentmindedness, a guilt at neglect, a terror at the thought of having hurt

Any

someone by her

arrests this

selfishness.

morning, Mister Alt? said the Prosecuting

Attorney.

The

Sheriff stares at Mister Christmas Janders stony-eyed,

holds back his answer that bare

know

moment

sufficient to let Jan-

County Attorney Christmas Janders knows quite well there have been ders

that he quietly acknowledges the jibe:

no arrests and Luther wants him what Janders knows. None, Mister Janders.

to

know

that he

knows

Christmas Janders smiles, fetches off his spectacles, and pinches once or twice at the red marks they left, high on the chisel-thin bridge of his long, white nose.

New

suspects? New leads. Mister Alt? Janders always makes a light emphasis on "Mister" he speaks to Luther Alt; he never calls him Sheriff. Night and day. Mister Janders, said Luther Alt, looking, watching, weighing every possible suspect.

when I

am

— The Watchman

77

however, says landers, pursing his lips. Nothing really spaded up yet, eh? Nothing much to go on, eh? You know. Mister Alt I reckon you know, at least that we've got a queer kind of stew in our pot with the case of this Blake boy's murder. It's a broth, you might say, that could well be spoiled by too many cooks. With reference to what, Mister landers? The matter of jurisdiction, Mister Alt. That's right, Alt, echoes Chief of Police Flick SmitherStill,

—

—

man.

Jurisdiction. That's the matter.

Christmas landers touches together the chalky tips of his bony fingers and frowns into the air as if he were about to indict a dust mote or intimidate a shabby sunbeam from the dirty window.

There would, he went on suddenly, be none of this confusion as to who hunts whom if the Blake boy had had the common courtesy to get himself murdered anywhere else but on the Indian Mound. Oh, does my levity offend you. Mister Alt? You paled. Still and all, if we took our hard jobs too grimly, Mister Alt, we'd none of us last long. God damn and that's the truth, said the Chief of Police. As I was saying, Mister Alt, landers went on. The Mound where the murder was committed. One city block to the

—

—a Hock south— the left

—

to the right

seventy-five yards to the north or

crime had happened anywhere but on the Mound it would be a matter for Chief Smitherman here to find the killer a city matter. Mister Alt. At least, till the killer's in our hands. That's right, said the Chief, nodding twice in kind of flabif

—

by punctuation. That's what it would be! But the Mound, Mister Alt, said Christmas landers.

It's

a strange alien island here in our midst. The Mound, Mister Alt, isn't really part of Adena at all being, as you know it well to be, under the authority, jurisdiction and control of the State Penitentiary as it has been since nineteenand-nine. It's a strange little prehistoric principality in our midst. state monument with no real government but the Prison Board and no real governor but our good warden

like

A

Verge Holly. Soldier Holly, said the Chief. That's Soldier.

By God,

there's a

stiff

one,

what they

all

right.

call

No

him

bull

and

blabber about good old Soldier. Tough as a singletree and mean as garbroth with that cage of mean monkeys up there. Now naturally, said the County Attorney, it would be

The Watchman

78

Smitherman and his men won't do all they can to hunt this monster down. Not that it's really a a police matter, mind you. But they'll keep an city matter eye peeled night and day. Day and night, said Smitherman. Almost Hke it was really to say that Chief

silly

—

our

job.

And whose

job

is

it

the boy's

find

to

murderer? said

Luther.

And mine. It's The County to find him, you see. now, Business a County try, and the County to County to the the County to arraign, led through the prison wheelmake certain he ends up being gate. And then he's Soldier Holly's piece of meat. Assuming, said Luther, that we catch the murderer. We'll catch him, said Christmas landers. Oh, never doubt Yours, Mister Alt, said Christmas landers.

it.

By God,

that's for sure, said the Chief. That's for

sure.

And

assuming that the

—death

—

penalty

that the

goddam

murderer

gets the death penalty, said Luther.

That, too, you must not doubt, Mister Alt, said Christmas Janders.

Under what

legal jurisdiction

was

it

made

entirely a

Coun-

ty matter? whispered Luther. I spent two hours in conference last night, said Christmas Janders smoothly. With Warden Holly and the Prison Board. We spent thirty minutes on the phone with the Governor. It was thus decided. It's reasonable a County matter is a State matter when all is said and done. And the Mound is not Adena-ruled it is County-ruled, State-ruled Prison-ruled

—

—

—

when you come might say,

is

down

right

king.

By God, a good Maybe he might

to

it.

And

Soldier Holly,

you

—

boy

Soldier! growled the Chief. within his infinte wisdom, said Luther drily, to deputize a force of convicts and send them out to hunt the murderer down. Do I gather from your little joke, Mister Alt, that you

old

find

it

don't relish this job of hunting? murmured the prosecutor. I am mighty aware of my duties to the County and the people, Mister Janders, said the Sheriff. Of course you are, Mister Alt. Why, you're almost a sort of legend in Mound County for that matter, in the whole length and breadth of the state. Sheriff Luther Alt a name

—

—

whispered from Weirton to the Big Sandy, from Huntington

— The Watchman to Harper's

Ferry.

Sometimes with

79 all

your modesty and

Mister Alt, I don't think you really grasp what a big name you've got. Why, Mound County folks look up to you as a kind of strong, fatherly watchman to keep the haunts and boogeymen away at night. Alongside of you. Mister Alt, the people see me as not much more as a dull and colorless clerk! And so I am, Mister Alt so I am! But that's all right. I wouldn't want it any other way. My rewards are humble but sufficient I prefer them I much in the shadows. Guns make me uneasy. Mister Alt the hands them in the having of man in whose great favor shadow, modestly, I labor. Still and all, even those penscratching hours have their moments of lofty reward.

close-mouthed seriousness,

—

—

—

The reward

of seeing Justice done? said Luther Alt. Christmas Janders. There's a fine word, Mislike Heaven. Naturally, all good Christians hope

Justice, said

ter Alt. It's

to reach it. Sadly enough, time and human abuse have blurred its meaning. Poor Justice. It's not much good as a word any more except, of course, in campaign speeches. It's a pity you're not an attorney. Mister Alt, or you'd know better

what I'm fumbling

Justice as a

you

woman

—

so

many

things to so

think, really. Mister Alt, that

Mound County

—

No wonder

to say. Justice.

when

Attorney they want

me

they show

many men. Do

the people elect

me

to turn out pretty

watchmaker squinting over his twinThose aren't my creations. Mister Alt. I honestly wish they were I think sometimes, by chance, they are. But people know what they want from me just as they know what they want from an eggman, a sassafras pedlittle

Justices?

like

a

kling bench? Justices?

dler,

—

a butcher, or an icebox salesman.

And

I'm sorely afraid

what they want of me is not Justices, Mister Alt. And what do you fancy they do want, Mister Janders?

that

Convictions, Mister Alt. Despite the occasional conviction of the innocent the crazy the ones spoiled in the oven like cakes that fall when Fate stomps his foot on the pantry floor. Convictions, Mister Janders. Even of them?

—

—

Doctors tors.

Am

Alt? Chief

make

mistakes, said Christmas Janders. Even docanyone of their noble calling, Mister

better than

I

of

Police

Smitherman yawned

slowly

and

rose

briskly to his feet.

And

so.

you and

I.

Mister Alt, said Christmas Janders. The hunters We loose our hounds, hear them bay at the iSnd-

— The Watchman

80

— —

and follow. Have you hunted much in your ing of the spoor game, I mean? Animals, I mean? I hope you life, Mister Alt have. Because it's an animal we're hunting, you and I though I reckon I should call you the hunter the trapper

—

the man with the gun. You fetch home our game. Then I dress him, skin him, build the fire, drive the take over forked stakes, spit our beast on a skewer, season him nicely rather apt image, isn't and settle back to watch him roast. Mister Alt? you look glass water, of I fetch you a it? Can

—

A

a

—

little sick.

I am, landers, said the Sheriff. Sick to hear a man talk about a dirty job like it was a Baptist barbecue. You really love the manufacture of your little convictions, don't you,

Lawyer? I like keeping Don't you?

my

my

job

—

if

that's

what you mean. Mister Alt

Luther Alt levelly. I have despised day thirty years ago in Corpus my my belt on and took the star. when buckled Christi I Well, now ^wouldn't that be disenchanting news to the good people of Mound County? smiled Christmas Janders. Why have you been a Sheriff all these years, in all these

No.

I

life's

hate

job, said

calling since the

—

towns,

if

you despise

Because

it's filthy,

it

so?

said Luther.

I don't quite get that, said Janders. If

why do you do

you think

it's

filthy

it?

do it someone filthier than me would, Lawyer, do you know what's kept me a lawman all these years? It's what I know about lawmen sadists, gun-slinging, Colt-happy killers to the end of the list. I can't fill all the sheriffs' boots in the world but, By the Lord, I can fill two and that means two boots that won't be strutting around beating in the heads of creatures God forgot to fijiish ^two less boots in the world to stomp on the faces of men, women and children whose indictment seems to be that they got sick in the soul instead of the stomach or lungs or heart. I tell you this though I know I might as well not bother. For you'll not know what a word of it means, he said suddenly; a fury behind his composed and stoic face. When I was a boy I learned early what Life was to ask of me. Are you grasping anything I'm saying, prosecutor? Christmas Janders smiled, unruffled, stretching his legs under the long table and leaning back in the hard chair. I'm a lawyer. Mister Alt. Admitting that some lawyers Because

if

I

didn't

said the Sheriff.

—

—

—

— The Watchman

81

—

jSrst in my class at are idiots I am not considered stupid 1930 no, in I think I am reaVirginia the University of personal find this testament sonably intelligent. Go on. I

—

very interesting. Luther looked away from the other with as much disgust as his face could ever show; his eyes fixed a moment on the window and then softened in the lambent cider-yellow of

autimm afternoon. daddy was a lawman, he said, speaking abstractedly somehow, as if he were addressing his words in apostrophe, in penitence. My daddy shot a drunk Apache in the legs once

the

My

watched, ten years old, in an Amarillo chiH-joint. Then he went over to where he lay and spent ten minutes kicking him to death. The Indian was drunk though and even when he was sober he was crazy and he was an Indian so it didn't much matter. It didn't even much matter to me then I was only ten and children aren't too finicky, I reckon. But then I sew him do it again six months later this time to a sixteen-year-old Mexican boy who did chores in the Uvery stable behind our house. And it came over me that this time it wasn't a drunk person nor even a crazy while

I

—

—

my

and I saw the picture in focus, so to speak, for the first time. I saw my daddy's crazy, depusaw him weave and smirk with tized, legal, frozen eyes and I knew who it that smoking old Navy Colt in his fist was in that picture who was drunk and crazy. That night I ran away from home. Well, Lord God knows what makes it come over a man that way a hurt maybe, a shame, a wife run off, something maybe he's clean forgot. What makes it come? What makes men like that be? I've asked myself that for more than fifty years and I always come round to the same judgment that the same things mould lawmen as mould the men they hunt: fear and cruelty. Are you under-

person that

daddy

killed

—

—

—

—

standing a single thing I'm saying, prosecutor? landers stirred, his eyes thinned, watching as he would watch the progress of a trial. I do, Alt, he said. I am a lawyer. Partly a lawyer, said the Sheriff. The other half of the store, so to speak. You're a prosecutor and that's no lawyer at all, in my judgment. It came over me long ago my Uncle Jody was a circuit lawyer and by the time he had got a man set to swing he'd be off on his jennymule and six hundred miles across the Brazos before they even got the rope on the poor devil's neck. That hastiness, I should say.

—

—

— The Watchman

82

my

Uncle Jody of half the satisfactions due him. was him that set me off into the consideration of a whole world full of them: one half trying to jail

deprived

But

still

it

— — the other

lawyers

men

half trying to see they didn't.

It hit

me

that

it was like all the doctors in the world throwed in together and agreed that half would spend their time making people sick and the other half trying to cure 'em. Some years later I found this doctor notion wasn't too far from the whole truth. Take the head medicine man you've got here in Adena Snedeker. A hundred and fifty men under his care last year with t.b. gnawing at their lungs. Half his time he spends inside the prison and the other half out. He was a neck specialist when they hanged men up there and now he's something I bet they haven't even got written up in the doctor journals: an electric specialist. For the Hve men up there he doctors and the killed ones he reports on for the coroner I don't know which I'd rather be. Mister Alt, there is every reason for you and I to get along

—

together, said the prosecutor.

At

least,

until

our

killer's

in

his cage.

That

me

is

my

Very

Mine

job,

made

you've

well, said

to finish

Sheriff. It seems to job and mine alone.

Mister Janders, said the that pretty clear.

My

Christmas Janders. Your job to catch him.

off.

Isn't that a perfectly fair cutting of the

pie? It being perfectly plain, said Luther, that if, for some reason or other I don't come up right soon and set before the hungry crowd my half of the pie, then I'll be finished here

—done

—

here off again to some new town and maybe anothif I'm that lucky. Mister Alt, it's hard very hard for me to think of Mound County's good people ever losing their faith in you. All right, said Luther. Yes. Of course. You're one of my most devoted admirers. I think we can cut out all that twotalking nonsense, Mister Janders. I'm not a jury so save your honey till supper time. You've never liked me since the day I came here six years ago, so let's talk level. In my profession, Sheriff Alt, said Janders genially, I've never been in the position to let myself like a man or dislike

er badge

him

—

either.

Yes, folds

I

on

know, prosecutor. You've got one of those

There's too on.

A

blind-

like her in the nightshirt out yonder.

much

at stake for likes-dislikes, Janders

went

certain balance, for example, has to be struck in the

The Watchman

83

matter of county officials. Importance appropriate to their popularity and respect that hasn't gotten exaggerated office and run out of hand. Sheriff Alt, I told you earlier I don't think you know your status in this county what a stature you tower to in the people's mind. Almost a god. Now, it's not your fault, surely. You've never strutted and bragged and puffed out your chest so the star would scratch their your modesty, noses. And maybe that's the secret of it your silence, your strong stillness and tacit composure. When a man doesn't say much more than five sentences a week people decide he's either simple or a divine oracle and they wait for what he does say when he says anything so they can take it home and either laugh it to death or press it like a flower in the family Bible. Now, you're not simple. Sher-

—

—

—

—

iff

Alt.

thank you for a most lawyerly dismissal of that charge, Mister landers, said the Sheriff, letting his eyes long for the autumn light beyond the window-dirtied day. But which is worse, Sheriff Alt? for the people to look up or down at him as the town to a man like he was a god simpleton? Like, for instance, they look at Chief Flick Smitherman, said Luther. Which, I say, is worse, Mister Alt? said Christmas landers, assuming an expression of moderate sadness. Between the two, said Luther, I'd a damn sight rather have them see me as the idiot and pelt me with road-apples every time I walked down the street. Because because I am not a god. I'm not even what the sharpest-eyed amongst them would even call a good sheriff if they knew the truth of me. None of them knows the truth of me. Not since I left Christ's Body, Texas. Christ's Body, Mister Alt? Is there such a town in Texas? hamlet, perhaps? On the contrary, Mister landers, a large coastal port. You I

—

—

—

A

might know

Oh

it

as

Corpus

Christi.

Corpus Christi. But why Christ's Body, Mister Alt? Because that's what it means, snapped the Sheriff, flushing slowly like wine rising darkly in a milk-glass goblet. Christ's Body, sir. For reasons which are my affair, I dislike the name of Corpus Christi. I hate the word Corpus it makes me think of my Jane Nancy's death. And the Christi certainly, certainly!

—

—

the Christi

is

meaningless,

sir,

meaninglessl

I

come from

— Christ's

me

I

The Watchman

84

Body, Texas, Mister landers, and now,

if

you

will

do

the courtesy, let us leave the subject there!

Luther sniffed once, shook something away from his face with an angry head gesture of an animal that has been hurt. He lowered his eyes, staring them into his big hands, while behind the weather-grained patina of his prairie-seasoned face the dark blush slowly drained, leaving the flesh beneath his leathered mask pallid and mutton gray. And with that subsiding color went, it seemed, all surly defiance as well, his jokey quickness, the slow but jaunty measure of his irony. Christmas landers studied that face with new interest, puzzled, seizing one reason after the other and as swiftly discarding it. Luther stood up, with the smooth, resolute and swift gathering-together of masses with which some big men move. He stood a moment, knuckling the table with his fists, staring at the County Attorney and yet, it seemed to landers who had an eye for eyes not staring at him at all but, rather, through him and beyond him into some bleak and dreadful parable implied in the wave-grained, varnished woodwork beneath the dirty window at his back. We have talked too much, said the Sheriff. We have talked far too long. Mister landers, for men who do not like each

—

other.

Yet it was good, smiled Christmas landers. For men who must do a job together. And will you do your job, Mister landers? he said abruptly. Will you see that boy's murderer sent to the chair? No matter

who?

No matter who. Mister Alt, said Christmas landers, with a voice that seemed to originate in chambers of cold case-metal. Even

if it

were

my own wife.

though through different entrances, the appeared suddenly in the hotel lobby as if by

Simultaneously, three

men

foreplanned appointment, seated themselves in the old leather upholstery round the window, glancing at one another in sheepish suspicion since their conversion at that moment was entirely coincidence. Ort Dobey, behind the registry counter, noticed none of them: having reached the fourth and last page of that night's Evening Mound, he began to read it through again and for the fifth time from the masthead, weather, date, and headlines on page one, all the way through the drugstore ads and obituaries to the last of the classifieds:

—

—

.

The Watchman

85

and beaded-shade cheap and in A-1 shape. For nearly thirty years the night clerk had read the four-sheet Evening Mound over as many as five and sometimes six times and each time more carefully, combing it as if there lurked in the back of his head the suspicion that sooner or later he might chance upon some item of enormous fate-bettering importance: perhaps the death of a wealthy, landed uncle (he had no relatives) whose will was presently to be probated in the favor of an only surviving relative (Ort Dobey was one of thirteen lost dogs, cattle auctions, constable's sales,

table lamps,

brothers, nine Uving)

Jibbons, the horse trader, squinted toward the doorway to the darkened dining room, his fine nose for mystery hopefully sniffing for something to start an argument over. Mister Hood, wasn't there someone sneaked in the dining

room yonder

just as

we come

in?

he

said, in his usual,

con-

tentious manner.

The

old

hangman grumbled a

negative sound and brooded

into the fog, dense as hairs of fair, fresh

Be damned if there wasn't! sight of a shadow and a shoe you? No,

hemp.

said the horse trader. I caught

heel just as I

come

in.

Didn't

Matthew Hood. someone had been sneaking in there while Ort yonder was reading and the lobby otherwise empty and then hurried into the dark to hide when he heard us coming. Didn't you see anything, Mister Hood? God damn it, I said I didn't, snapped the hangman. But if there's anyone yonder there it's the Sheriff's girl Jill and her I

did not, said

Just as

if

—

beau.

No,

said the horse trader.

They always sit at the window from where I'm sitting now

table. I can see the window table There's nary soul there.

The hangman grumped

disinterestedly,

and mused on, him an instant

and lone-minded. Jibbons glared at and then rising, crept to the darkened doorway, peered, blinking and winking myopically, into the shades, seeing no one, not even the (remarkable, since it was big) shape of the man seated in darkness on the stool at the end of the long lunch counter. The horse trader went back to his chair, disgruntled and more testy than before. He had chosen, as he should well have known from experience, a poor night to

sullen

come looking for a The third man,

quarrel.

seated a fastidious distance

from himself

The Watchman

86

and Matthew Hood, was Adena's oldest curiosity and longretired attorney Colonel William Tansy Jackson Bruce. In his huge brick home amid three acres of property at the dwindling foot of Lafayette Avenue, Colonel Bruce had slept in no other bed but that towering, quarter-ton oaken giant among whose goose-down quilts he had, ninety-seven years before, first sprung, bawling and ready for argument, into the light of a hot Mound County spring. After three years of war and forty years of criminal law he had retired into a disenchanted, hermetic, and angrily literate seclusion, a total isolation broken only by a once-monthly walk of two blocks to the lobby of the Mound Hotel where he would sit for a length of time listening attentively to the chit-chat, dissections,

character-crucifixions,

and then

and solutions to world

affairs

Bruce's interruptions ran often to a length of two hours and at the sound of any disputing voice his own would merely rise eight or ten decibels of interrupt. Colonel

volume and then continue,

quietly disintegrating

all

oppo-

heat of informed and meradmitted defeat or, one audience ciless enthusiasm, until his by one, got up and fled into the fog. Yet, it was rare that any of them did that; they were like men impoverished and bankrupt by years of diseased, obsessive addiction to two-dollar racetrack windows and yet who always were lured back by the firefly hope of someday's long-shot windfall. The Colonel was craggy and yet massively solid with an ageless and patrician face, held always high to match the back-thrust of his giant shoulders; dressed invariably in old, frayed, rumpled suits of muted Manx tweeds and nothing new about his get-up except for a flannel shirt of glowing, garish plaid, buttoned tight at the throat, and, perhaps, some fresh variation in the grin of fixed outrage in which his face seemed originally molded, like the dangerous, stamped, furious head of a satyr cast in the pewter lid of a snuffbox. He spent his days at home reading: in the mornings, only newspapers: last night's Mound, both Wheeling papers, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, the Times and Tribune and to the endless gabbing and delighted suspicions of the mailman's wife the Manchester Guardian, the London Times and the New Statesman and Nation. In the evenings he read all the current novels, histories, criticisms, and political memoirs. The large window of his bedroom was kept open, winter and summer, and from it from time to time hurled volumes plummeted out in flapping sition, lilting occasionally in the

—

—

The Watchman

87

trajectory, like chickens shot from cannons, so that in the yard beneath the window there was always to be seen a mildewing pile of most of the current popular books of the season: hke a disordered, steaming, and rain-soaked rental library. Having read everything ancient from the speeches of Catiline to the millennium-ending memoirs of the Sitwells he read everything current; cursing and slashing the machete of his restless, hopeful intellect through the tangled undergrowth of that dismal and epidemic swamp, panting ever onwards in savage optimism that his gnostic, eclectic eye would, as sometimes it did, fall upon the rare and preciouspetaled weed of a fresh and personal imagination: reading

and pudder in a valiant, iterant, maddening compulsion not unlike Ort Dobey's night quests through the four-sheet Evening Mound. Aside from the classics, the library in the Colonel's bedroom was small, queer and crankishly varied, the painfully achieved distillation of a thousand and one nights' dissertainments, three close-packed bookshelves of a monster and epicurean eccentricity: Rebecca West and the autobiography of Billie Holliday, the war cartoons of Mauldin and the warrior first-nights of James Agate, Mother Jones and Father Schweitzer, Eugene V. Debs and Cyril Connoly, Simenon, Raymond Chandler, Albert Camus; and two identical copies of the personal, best-selling memoirs of the past two decades' most celebrated general, copies the Colonel had especially purchased to be used as heavy book ends having sent them to be, for that purpose, encrusted in thick bronze by a flabbergasted Middle Western firm which specialized in electroplating baby shoes. For Colonel Bruce was not, as most Adenans euphemized it, a Republican, and since most of them were, it was natural for them to avoid the word Demothe seasons' slop, trash

all

often

crat as nicely as possible.

One

winter in a

mood

of particularly sour literary exasperabook of his own: a mystery, a romance, a memoir, a God knows what: compendium of tion he set out to write a

own enormous,

turbulent, mob-vast mind, spirit and whose maiden was the cosmos and cavalry charge whose objective was the close-ranked trenches of general stupidity. He finished the two thousand pages of it in that single, snowed-in winter. It was of course never published probably he had never intended it to be for it was, his

years: love story

—

anything, the savage manuscription of a man talking to himself. And no one ever read it not more than a fraction if

—

The Watchman

88

—

and those fragments only by a terrified, inDoctor O. T. Sncdcker and a milk-skinned, blackhaired and extraordinarily pretty young stenographer, nervous and fresh from an Office School in Wheeling who, shortly after her winter in the Colonel's exclusive employment, had a brief emotional breakdown and later took orders in a Western Pennsylvania convent. In the middle and darkest hours of bleak, crackling winter nights the Colonel would spring from his quilts and search cursing in the pack rat's nest of his desktop for notepaper, his mind ratding full of wild, fresh phrases which would not, could not wait till morning for transcription. When in that stumbling, crashing dark he found scratch-paper he would make his furious notes but in the morning somehow he could not ever find the sheets or, if he found them, could not fit them into sensible sequence and so one night, after stamping about the carpet in the circle of his desk's single gooseneck lamp, the muslin of his short, shabby nightshirt flapping round his legs, he flung himself angrily back in the bed, glared for a moment in outraged improvisation and suddenly began writing notes on the bared skin of of

it,

at least

furiated

his knee.

proved to be one of those creative accidents of inspired now he had his notes always at hand and even, one might say, at knee, at thigh, and eventually at stomach, chest and shoulders, finding upon his flesh that unique continuity of surface which no conceivable paper could provide: his scribbled ideas and even, toward the end, whole phrases and sections of chapters from the book itself scrawled all over himself from the soles of his feet to the collar-line of his neck: no book, perhaps in all history both hterarily and literally had been so much a part of any author; so that, seen naked, the old man, with all his flesh, youthful and well muscled as Blake's Jehovah, intricate with crabbed and circumambient scribbling, looked like some sort of inscribed Egyptian god: a walking, human notebook; though, of course, he was cautious never to write on any part of him that would show beyond the wrist or neckline of his flamboyant shirts of schoolboy plaid, for it was his notion that Link Doty's Grocery where he went once weekly to buy his victuals was teeming with cynics and plagirists. During the day's work it was not uncommon for him to tear open his collar and begin checking and incorporating into the manuscript, notes from his chest and stomach. It

ingenuity:

The Watchman

89

One afternoon he had gone to the office of Doctor O. T. Snedeker, presumably for a heart and lung examination, and taken off his shirt and let the top of his long underwear fall round his waist and not at all out of absent-mindedness either but in a mood of flaunting arrogance over some jaunty and outrageous comments about the medical profession in general and of O. T. Snedeker in particular: savage paragraphs which took up the most of his abdominal area and disappeared suddenly and maddeningly under his trouser tops, all of it written upside-down, of course, so that it was necessary for O.T., who had long since dropped his stethoscope and commenced reading in almost apoplectic disbelief, to crook his neck and invert his outraged head to read it. You can't say that about me, you old bolshevik radical, cried the doctor, fumbling to undo the top of the Colonel's trousers so that he might j&nish the horrifying passage. Snedeker! boomed Colonel William Tansy Jackson Bruce. ^not expurgated! I came here to be examined

—

And

so Jibbons, this night, as he might have summarily dismissed from his mind the two-year-old who placed eighth that fixed,

at Wheeling's Downs, forgot the nature of the thought-rigged, unbeatable wheel which rested, oiled

day

and ready on

its

jeweled hub, across the hotel lobby from

him.

What

brings

you up town

he blurted, pleasantly, recklessly,

tonight,

Colonel Bruce,

sir?

fatally.

Mister Jibbons, I came to see and feel and sense the beginnings of that happy-hunt which will end inevitably in the hound running the sick, rabid fox to ground and tearing the little creature to bits. Hasn't it started yet? Jibbons scowled, since it was his policy when confused to look angry and so cleverly divert attention from his consternation.

Hasn't what started yet, Colonel? The town, sir? Isn't Adena flexing its muscles for the kill? boy's been murdered. Mister Jibbons. The Sheriff is hot on the spoor. God help him if he doesn't find his town a

A

fresh

trail.

We'll get him, said the horse trader perfunctorily. Don't you ever worry about that. Colonel Bruce. "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction," Mister Jibbons, smiled the Colonel. That's William Blake. You remember him that painter who used to see

—

— The Watchman

90

God

grinning

They

sent

at

him

him out of Link Doty's prune barrel. Weston asylum. Whew, a dangerous

to the

one was Blake! said Matthew Hood, suddenly rising from his fog-enchanted reveries. Lucky they taken him off when they did, too. He had a hanging look about him, that bango! he'd have off one. Another week on the loose and and shot his wife and then bingo! he'd have been mine. Bill was it? Bill Blake, yes. A hanging look, Colonel. You hanging look if you can know what I mean, I'm sure. imagine what that is, sir. "Everything possible to be believed," said the Colonel, chuckling softly. "Is an image of truth." Did he say that, too? cried the old hangman, rising in I

knew him,

glaring,

—

— —

—

A

chair.

his

By God now, you

see

what

I

mean? By God,

that BUI Blake!

The big door to the street opened suddenly and the Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd came in, with a wisp of fog in his black shoes' wake, which hung in the air for a moment by the crack of the shut door, like a rag of angelic muslin snatched from his heels. In the three generations since the doom-bogged and sepulchral manner of eighteenth century divines a transition has occurred more challenging and resourceful than those faced by any other of theatrics: the problem of blending harmoniously the humility of the Lordappointed with the jolliness of the Rotarian: Doctor Godd had not fallen short in this subtle, flashy duality.

Quite a night out there, fellows, he said. By golly, you can feel a hint of old father frost out there in that fog. Oh, good evening. Reverend Godd, said the horse trader politely, uneasy always in the presence of unfixed handicaps.

"Nothing

a vulture like biting into a glass-eye,'* said the Colonel, looking into the window again.

Was

irritates

hangman

that Bill, too? said the

now,

that's a

that.

Colonel?

mad one

if

ever

I

heard

it.

suddenly.

Was

that

By God him said

strangler, said the Colonel. That was Kin Hubbard Brown County, Indiana. Did you almost hang him, too? The name, said Matthew Hood carefully. The name es-

No, of

me for the moment. Hubbard? Hubbard. Squint-eyed Adam's apple? Judge Bruce, said Reverend Godd, rubbing his moist hands genially one against the other, and then suddenly folding

capes big

The Watchman them

91

at the fly of the smartly tailored sharkskin suit

he wore you I came to see. I was passing in my car and saw you and I thought it a good chance to drop in and pay my respects. Your respects, Preacher, might begin by not calling me Judge, said the Colonel, unmoving his eyes from the window. Judge I never was, never wanted to be, never was asked to be, and never would have been trusted to be inasmuch as I would have sent most juries to prison for life and tried to get most defendants a job and at least one new friend. Well, now you've as much as said it to me, said Reverend Godd. What kind of man I know you to be a pal and a buddy to the forsaken and doomed. "Even the best of us has a little of the worst of us in for the Other Six Days. Judge Bruce,

it's

—

him," smiled the Colonel gently. "And even the best has the worst than he knows." Now there's a quote, said the Reverend, feeling in his breast pocket for a paper and pencil. That's one I want to

more of

use.

You

Colonel drily. To the man you led into the night of this state's first electrocution. did. Colonel Bruce. So I did. Poor wretch. Somethink we lost something when the state made that

did, said the

the green

So

I

times

I

room

change from the rope and gallows to the inhuman crucifix of electrodes and cruel, naked lightning. Amen, croaked Matthew Hood bitterly, his eyes suddenly

brimming a little. Hanging a man

How

—dreadful Doctor Godd went phrase —Somehow a man went the gallows as

on.

it is.

can I it? to and there was a chance that in the very feeling of his terrible isolation from the rest of humanity and his sudden presence at the edge of God's throne brought a chance of repentance. It was tradition! Since Judas, eh? But with this electric thing sometimes I think it does nothing for a man's soul nothing to make him feel so set apart from all

—

— —

the rest of us. In the presence of the noose, gentlemen, I

used to see in the eyes of the doomed man a change of But now with this electric chair I miss that look of atonement. Sometimes I think it's this age we've come into. Everything gone electric electronic. Sometimes when I watch a man's face when they strap him in that chair his eyes almost mock me almost laugh. Well, maybe it's this queer nuclear age that's to blame. The noose well it was heart.

—

—

—

The Watchman

92

somehow

less universal. Its passing

undoes,

I

think, the

whole

spiritual value of execution.

"The Ohio Valley's future now stands proudly on the threshold of a brightly lit new era and that brightness comes from electric energy of that colossus which will give to our region the just name 'Ruhr of America,' " said Colonel Bruce stentoriously. That's another quote for you. Preacher, and that one's from Cliff Rector's speech at the Kiwanis the week he was promoted as President of the Ohio Valley Power and Light Development Association. Reverend, I don't think you should go around knocking big business that way. Especially electrical business. They'll brand you a Democrat if you don't watch out. Colonel Bruce, politics and the ministry are bad bed-

warmly laughed the Reverend, with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head. My reason for stopping by when I saw you tonight was to mildly point out what a stranger you've become in our congregation these past few

fellows,

Good

heavens, Colonel, it's been so long I'm surprised recognized me. you even The Most Reverend Doctor G. Colonel. Godd, said the Robert Godd, Doctor of Divinity, Infinity, Trinity and Equanimity. Yes, I recognized you. I'm ninety-seven my vision is twenty-twenty and my mind is fifty-fifty: half decided that the human race is worth saving and half entirely opposed to such a disgraceful notion. Doctor Godd, you are quite recognizable to me. I believe I knew your father Godd. Or is it Godd, the father? By the way, is that really a family name? Never mind I knew a prosecuting attorney once whose name was True so I suppose there are as many con-

years.

—

—

tradictions

among

the patronymics of one profession as there

are in any other.

warms me, smiled the Reverend, with unshatterable genialty, to see your mind still so quick and alert, Colonel. It

We

For a man of your years, well, none of us sir, if you'll forgive my pointing it out lives forever, Colonel Bruce. A Sunday in church once in a while? A little touch maybe a hearty handshake with the Almighty? need your kind

at church.

—

—

Something, said the Colonel, in the order of a lodge-grip, suppose you mean? Preacher, I shake hands with the Almighty every night of my life every time I open a good book or look at my Blake Oh, by the way, Matthew Blake managed an astonishing escape soon after his commitment I

—

—

—

The Watchman

93

to the asylum, so keep that rope handy and a sharp eye ready. No, Reverend, the Lord and I manage very nicely at home, thank you. I'm entirely too religious to go to

church.

Perhaps

just

erend. Just a

occasionally, Colonel Bruce? said the Rev-

little

you'd profit by a

church

little

now and

then

?

Don't you think

Jesus?

A

little Jesus, said the Colonel, is a dangerous thing. That's a mighty cynical thing to say, Colonel. Yes, I judge it is, said the old man loudly. Because isn't "a little Jesus" like talking about a Httle pregnant, a little

peace-loving, a little hanged? Can a man of anything so great and so damned essential to his sanity and survival that a piece of it is nothing more kindly,

a

stand a

little

little

nor less than a half-truth that he can make mean whatever he pleases? The minister said nothing. And then the front door opened, slammed, and Major Hunnicutt stalked forward a few paces, glared from one face to the other and then went to the darkened dining room and saw the empty table by the window. He turned to the men again. I am looking for my boy Jason, he said. Has he been here tonight? Sit down, Will, said the Colonel, stewing sweetly now in the invigorating sauces of his evening out. Sit down and join the rest of the dodo-birds.

—

He's with that girl the Sheriff's girl Jill, snapped the Major. Haven't they been here tonight? When the shadow of the big man appeared in the diningroom doorway, Jibbons started and then smiled: he had known it all along, that he'd seen someone slip in there just

them entered the lobby. No, Major, they haven't been here

as the three of

tonight, said Luther

Alt behind him quietly.

How

do you know? snapped the Major, whirling. Because I have been sitting in there for the past hour, the Sheriff said. Watching for her. She was not home tonight for supper. Is she with your boy, sir? I would assume that, said the Major. Only tonight did I find out about it. My son. Sheriff, and your girl and you need not take this as any slur the plain fact of the matter being. Sheriff, that I would just as soon the relationship break off now before it becomes anything more. Always at that table, said Luther Alt, with a smoldering,

—

—

— The Watchman

94

slow pinpoint of concentration, like the smoking white spot beneath a sunglass. They've been coming here just like she

—

with

did

came for

back

tonight, sat

her — thinking

Always at that table. And so I the end of the counter, watching

one.

other

the

she'd

at

come

here.

Which she plainly did not, said the Major, gathering indignation confidently now because he fancied that the other man was cowering. So it's anyone's guess where they might be. And I don't mind telling you. Sheriff, I have plans for my son and they don't include an early, hasty involvement with a town It

has to end,

girl

— however

said

the

respectable.

Sheriff,

saying,

in

effect,

what

the Major had said but speaking somehow as if following a train of private speculation so savagely absorbing that he was not even aware of the other man's speaking, I won't have her going with him. I forbid my Jill from keeping

any

sort of steady

And

company like she did with the other one. men by the window, excepting the old

the watching

each began to see the gathering together in the something covetous and unnatural: he stood and spoke as if in a furious trance, almost as if he could all but not see the Major or them at all, and so the men one read from Luther's face the script of a mean-minded possessiveness, on the one hand, and, on the other, a truckling, back-stepping sheepishness about him in the face of Major Hunnicutt's anger and the Major, seizing on this, grew even bolder in the rising nag of his tirade. As for the matter of your other girl, he said. He's seeing her, too. I suppose you're aware of that. Sheriff, that he's

Colonel,

Sheriff's face of

—

—

seeing her, too.

home by now,

said Luther, passing his big brushing away a web. Yes. she's fixed my cup of cocoa like She's probably home now she always does. She's probably sitting home waiting for me

She's probably

fingers

across

his

eyes

as

—

if

right this minute. Yes.

The other ing bravely

girl,

now

snapped the Major, to

match

his capon-spirit swell-

the surly rooster of

its

outward

Fm

saying anything that should insult armor. I don't think or embarrass you, Sheriff Alt, in the presence of these men

—

nothing, that is, that you and they don't already know that my son's relationships with your other girl are nothing to be taken too seriously. I'm a man of the world, sir. I know what sort of liaisons are dangerously involving and what sort are transitory a part of every boy's growing up.

—

—

— The Watchman

95

have no real feelings one way or the other about girl what's her name? Cristi. These things between a hot-spirited boy of good breedthings pass ing and a town-girl. No offense meant, as I say: these facts are generally known to you and to these gentlemen mutually, so you need not take this as any kind of public, exposing

So

that I

my

—

son and your other

—

insult.

Town-girls, as

we

all

know

Yes, I feel it, the Sheriff was saying, already moving slowly toward the door, his great face bowed in thought and his deep and somehow broken eyes already lighting with fresh reassurances. I feel that my Jill's home waiting for me.

So

I'll

go home.

Not done with

game, the Major blocked the Sheriff's with first-blood's scent: he wanted man the big a moment more. to play with Town girls, as I was about to say, he continued, are a part of all our early lives. Sheriff. The fallow field that lies open and inviting to every boy's wild oats. What would we do without them, actually? They keep our nice girls safe, don't you agree? Nice girls such as, perhaps, your other way;

—

girl

his

his nostrils pricked

^what's her

name?

Jill.

Now, on

the other

hand

Luther moved forward, found himself obstructed by the martinet; the Sheriff bowed his head patiently and closed his eyes. Excuse me, Major Hunnicutt, he said. I'd like to pass. want to get home to my girl. I On the other hand. Sheriff, if you will hear me out a moment more, said the Major, his voice strutting cocky up and down before the men by the window. You never know too much about any female when she's that age. Pardon me. Major, said Luther, his eyes still closed, his big head still bent and shadowed. Would you please to step aside and let me by. If your girl Jill, for example, cried the Major, cramming in as much as he could in the inch of time left. If she flush-faced

turned out to be something quite different. Sheriff. What I mean to say is this: I think my son would have a little too much on his hands with two town girls, don't you agree, Sheriff?

Don't

agree to what, Major? said the Sheriff, without much as a hair, without opening his eyes by so much as a slit, hearing the other one out with that large and awful patience. Well, I mean if the other one turned out to be a townI

lifting his

head by so

The Watchman

96 girl,

too.

Wouldn't that be a

little

too

much

for

one boy,

Sheriff?

Hunnicutt turned his face to the eyes of the others and winked elaborately and then he grinned back into the SheriflTs unseeing

lids.

A

boy like my son, said Major Hunnicutt. He's every inch a man. Sheriff. But he's not a stud. Luther opened one eye now a barest slit and looked with it at the place in the Major's vest where the necktie disappeared. He spoke with a tight-stoppered, temperate calm, and with that one thin, glittering wound of eye-brightness running swiftly up and down the regimental stripes of Hunnicutt's cravat.

Major, are you quite sure

that's

he murmured.

Why

—

I say what I mean. ask you again to move girl Jill's likely got cocoa ready for waiting for me. Please, Major. Move

not. Sheriff? I speak carefully

All right. Let out of my way.

me —

what you meant to say?

stand.

Now,

I'll

My

home

sitting

away from

it

the door.

—

Waiting at home maybe, said the Major. Or maybe spread out in the back seat of my boy's car waiting for something else. The other eye shot open a slit to match its mate and Luther seemed hunched and straining with some dreadful struggle behind the walls of his massive, terrible composure: his face sweating now, a single droplet of it trembhng like a crystal on his nose tip. Will you stand aside. Major Hunnicutt? Sheriff, I swear to God I believe you're afraid of me, whispered the Major.

murmured Luther hoarsely. I'm afraid of you. The more you talk the more afraid I get of you, soldierman. The more I listen to you and smell you the more scared I get. Scared of what you make me want to do to That's right,

you. Stand aside. Aren't you afraid of something more, Sheriff? said the Major. Afraid maybe that your girl Jill might turn out to be the street-girl her sister is already? Afterwards none of them was able to describe what happened after that accurately or at least in the same way: Jibbons always said he did it slowly, like a crane or bulldozer might nudge and tilt a giant obstruction of rock or earth;

Hood

the

hangman

said that Luther, uncoiling,

snapped

The Watchman

97

upward with such a blurred speed that he had not, in fact, seen it at all: both remembered the big man's memorably clenched in a grimace of weeping. All in fact, be certain of was the fixed, that posture of the big man Hunnicutt flat static, ridiculous against the wall, some three feet from the baseboard, and Luther's hands holding him there, beneath the armpits, the whole upward swooping movement one of such effortless impact that it might have not been a two-hundred -pound man he had lifted up and slammed there but a child of five or six years: slammed not brutally but with a firm, sudden and accurate attachment to the wall: a tremor that jarred the wall beaneath the undertaker's clock which, despite its hands that pointed twenty-past, suddenly, awakened and startled, repeated the strike of eight as if in some unsprung consternation of its own. After the initial shock, Hunnicutt cursed hoarsely and began struggling, and then Luther, lifting him a little out from the wall, almost delicately slammed him back again: not as if he were conscious of an assault at all but banging him as he would pound his fist upon a table in rhythm to his sobs and Hunnicutt began with his knee then something he had learned in the Army, Jibbons said later bringing the cap of his thighed-leg up in hard, swift punches into Luther's midriff, below the sternum, and then Luther's own leg lifting slowly and almost as mechanically as the claw of a power-shovel catching the tops of both the Major's shoes in the arch of his boot and pinioning them back against the plaster, till they all heard the faint tear of his black-lisle socks, and then Luther suddenly when the Major seemed suddenly tired of it all and lay back there, crutched up in the Sheriff's big-thumbed hft; suspended like an ikon, helpless and almost acquiescent, Luther shouting into his neck, still keeping his eyes from that face as if he hated it so murderously that he actually dared not look any higher than the collar-points: Don't you know, damn you! Don't you have any idea, damn you, what you're saying, damn you! Don't you? Don't you? And each time slamming the Major with short, shocking thuds against the wall as if that body were stoic face incredibly

any of them could,

— —

an orator's palm driving home a terrible and fateful point: Don't you know, you, you damned, dumb brass-assed fool,

—

what you said ever happened that if your boy ever on that girl Jill that he'd be lying dead like his friend is now! Don't you know that? Oh my that

if

laid a finger of seduction

The Watchman

98

God, you poor, damned,

helpless fool! Don't

you? Don't you?

Don't you?

He slammed the Major once more and the clock, though it did not strike, growled a brassy disturbance and the Sheriff, holding his man still three feet off the floor and against the chipped wall flat as a martyr on his cross, glared a moment his face, slowly gathering itself up and toresumed its customary mask of unshakable, indifferent enigma; and the tears and the sweat that streaked it, lay upon all that sculpted plain of impassive physiography as if they were only rains that had blown there briefly and stopped. He lowered the major as delicately as he might lift a child from the horse of a carousel, looked at the faces of the others a moment in silence, stood fingering the empty holster on his studded, bright belt and went slowly and

more and then gether,

it softly behind him. could have killed him, you know, said the Major, straightening his suit jacket a moment later, and brushing at himself as if the shreds of humiliation were some sort of invisible lint. Judo, he said to the men. I could have killed the son of a bitch. But I have the feeling, gentlemen, that if I wait a while I'll see him come to a tougher end. Step over here, Mister Jibbons, and lift me the way he did and I'll demonstrate how I could have killed him. I won't hurt you, of

gently out the door, closing I

course.

No

thanks,

No, come

Major, said the horse trader glumly. snapped Hunnicutt. I won't really hurt

here,

you.

Now, Major, you know I can't, whined Jibbons. You mean you're afraid of me, too, eh? It's not that! Major Hunnicutt, you know I wear a truss. Doc Snedeker says I shouldn't even get out of bed too suddenlike of a morning and lift my own shoes! Beautiful! Beautiful! boomed Colonel Bruce, banging his in slow, chopping applause: a beaming and venerable claque of one. Oh, beautiful! By God now, what a curtain-speech to such a piece. Oh Lord, I think I may have to double my explorations into this jungle and come here twice a month! Beautiful! Gentlemen, tonight a star is bom. Will Hunnicutt, take at least six bows! All this seems to strike you as humorous. Colonel Bruce? Oh Lord no, Will, humorous is not word enough! Your little study tonight had wit, irony, charm by God, sir, when I saw you poised there against that wall with the grace

palms together

—

—

— The Watchman

99

of a hawk and the face of a transfixed Saint Sebastian, your voice rippling with the dying fall of Richard Mansfield By God, Will, you made me see for one split second the glory of Nijinsky's eight-foot flight out of the window in what was it? Petrouchka? L'apres-midi? No matter. It was beauti-

—

ful

Beautiful! he struck his

And more

cupped hands booming together three

times, his black eyes flashing with naughty pleasure.

Perhaps, Colonel Bruce, you see the threat to

Major.

kill

my

Maybe

boy

the

interesting

you. Colonel. Nothing escapes me, Willie.

humor

in Alt's virtual

Blake boy died! snapped the

like the

significance

Drop

of

this false

that

esacpes

modesty and

a lesser player. The stop attributing all the Sheriff spoke for a continent of fathers. He said he'd guard his daughter's virtue. And what he said, Colonel, suggests nothing of interest to you about the Blake murder. Does that escape you, Colonel? Wilhe, sit down and hush. Nothing escapes me. I'm a lawyer still and you're nothing but a chestful of green medals set to molder in the attic. It was you, Will Hunnicutt, who came in here spluttering and fuming virtue. Full of speeches best

lines

to

about preserving intact the hymen of your son Jason's socioeconomic genitaha. I'm a great admirer of that man Luther Alt, Will, so kindly respect an old man's unaccountable hate all lawmen as I hate all soldiers, prosecutors, judges, executioners and ex-excutioners (and, Matthew Hood, as I hope you will take that in the spirit it was meant the expression of a generic revulsion and nothing personal) but, by God, I love that man Luther Alt! There's a man fit to keep peace because he loves peace, would take spit in his face for the sake of peace, would be deviled past the point of ordinary, human sanity for the sake of peace and the tastes! I

—

—

proof of his love for peace. Will Hunrlicutt, is the fact that, long before he hung you on the wall beneath the clock, he didn't jam yonder brass cuspidor down your gullet and make you swallow it. And now come sit there beside Mister Jibbons and join the rest of the dodo-birds. Will! we need you to make the display com.plete: a horse trader in an age of the machine, a hangman whose arts have been nudged aside for the refinements of the electric, and now you, Major a soldier in an epoch of abrupt, and, to you, wholly incredible

—

a man whose thirty-thousand-year apprenticeship in the skiUs of foot-soldering has overnight been rock-

obsolescence:

The Watchman

100

make way for the hornrimmed, haggard and hunch-shouldered figure of a livid-skinned and flabby-muscled Florida intellectual in a vulgar sport shirt from Burdine's bent over a row of apocalypse buttons at Cape Canaveral. Join the dodo-birds, Willie. Shake hands with the hangman. Major his rope's as ragged as your puttees! And his ass is dragging like your forty-and-eight choo-choo train! Colonel Bruce, I wish to hell you were forty years younger. Major Hunnicutt, I thank God I'm not, for when I consider what I could do to you now it frightens me to think what I'd probably have done to you then. Come, Willie, sit and be amiable. You've had your curtain calls tonight and good reviews to boot. Now wash the grease-paint off your indignation before it begins to run in those tears of self-pity eted aside to

—

which ill-become you. For the Major it was, in any event, an impossible exit. He fled out the door and home through the fog, leaving the Colonel, still chuckling and flushed and filled with all the spiteful joy like a tonic to keep him living for another month; ignoring the hangman and Jibbons who shambled up the steps to bed and lay awake a while, perhaps, to finger the snarled skeins of bathos and revelation that the evening had tossed into their laps.

two Parting the curtains of the little window in Cristi's second-floor parlor Jason could see through the cool, gold window of tiie eater-cornered Mound Hotel and the vague, forlorn figure of Jill waiting

light of late afternoon to the

him at their table. He could hear Cristi still swearing under her breath and throwing her French heels into the clothespress. He went back to the door and looked at her for

again. said. You're wrong. You don't understand anything about it. I'm the one who understands it because it happens to be perfectly plain and obvious you're jealous. You are furious and spiteful jealous since you found out about me taking Jill out. She stared at him, her bare feet planted apart like a boy's, her fists knuckling into her naked hips. She shook her head, hopelessly, and folded her arms under her breasts. Jase, you used to tell me, he shouted. Jase, go fall in love with any girl in town and I won't mind and if you want to keep on seeing me it will be the same with us and if you don't, that'll be all right, too. Remember? She nodded, with her pursed lips full of safety pins, and began hanging up her rumpled dress on a quilted hanger. He stared with gathering, baffled fury at her naked buttocks swaying into the shadow of the closet. Are you listening to me? he shouted. Can't you even sit down and stop doing things while we have an important

No, he

at all

—

conversation?

She finished in the clothespress, turned to the dressing and sitting on the bed, crossed her long legs and looked at him. If it was anybody, she said. Anyone in the world but Jill. table, lighted a cigarette

101

^^^ Watchman

102

Oh,

I see,

he

said.

The one

exception.

The one undefeatable

competition. Is that it? No, she said calmly, and bending her head began, maddeningly, to comb her long hair down over her face with one

hand; holding the cigarette

in the other.

Then would you mind telling me your reasons? he Or even just one reason why I shouldn't go out with

said. Jill?

Because, her voice said behind the shimmering cloak of her hair, I don't want you dead, Jase. He began to pace the room again, barefoot and outraged with a sense of intangible disadvantage in the argument. He was as naked as she. And he was quite too young to know that no male in the history of his gender has ever won a

without clothes. It is one of the few inequities, perhaps compensatory, in which women have the absolute, final and total advantage: since to argue successfully a man is helpless without lapels to be tugged, pockets into which hands may be thrust, necktie knots to be dragged open, handkerchiefs to be snatched out for noses to be blown into in bugling exclamation: clothes, the whole visible punctuation of male argument, in short; so that judges are massively, sartorially overdraped to fit the niggling, magisterial sententiousness of lofty judgments, or as it is impossible to imagine a nude policeman succeeding at an arrest. Women, on the other hand, possessing every advantage imaginable in unclothed debate, having at their disposal an entire organic idiom of rhetoric, intimidation and cozening guile and though the points to be won by hair-combing, flank-stroking, hip-posturing and the rest of the baggage of tricks being small, women possess by the mere fact of their bared delitigation

the

sirability

which

is

matter

constant,

defeating,

to whatever argument,

being

naked and

argued.

pallid,

in

indefatigable itself,

rebuttal

the heart of the

The most innocent man on

dangling

livid

as

earth,

bread dough with his

own

impotence, would in a witness chair make a revolted jury send him to hang as they would surely hang no naked woman, though her slender arms were smeared with incriminating blood. And so while Cristi, done with her hair, now bent to buff her pink nails, Jason could only clasp his hands behind his behind and strut. I have a date tonight with Jill, he snorted. She's already waiting for me down at the hotel.

What

else did

you sec down

there, Jason? she said quietly.

The Watchman

When you went What does at

street:

and saw

Jill

waiting what

that

mean?

she said. Were you so busy looking anything else anything in the a parked car with a waiting man across by the movie

what

said,

I

you

that

Jill

my window

you see?

else did

Just

to

103

didn't see

—

house, for example? I did not, he said. The street was empty. She laid the buffer on her bedside table, looked up at him, shook her head again slowly, sadly, pityingly of all malekind, and then got up, went to his suit hanging on the chintzy chair and fetched out the folded paper, holding it up again for him to see. And this? she sighed. You think this is some kind of joke, Jase Hunnicutt? Some crank, he said, looking at his feet. Letters scissored out and pasted on. Like a ransom demand, she snapped, her patience crumbling. Black and white letters cut out of the sentences in courthouse forms and stuck on here to spell it out so you couldn't possibly misunderstand, Jase. Here, read it again. I read it, he said. No. Damn you, she said. Read it again. Here. I'll read it for you: "Don't see Jill Alt any more. Not any more. Never again.

A friend."

Another boy who's crazy about her, he

said.

You

think I'm

yellow?

Not

Not even dumb. No, you're not But below the neck you're something short of feeble-minded. And below the waist you're an

dumb just

yellow,

—not

she said.

in the head.

idiot.

What exactly would that mean? he said. Below the waist? What's that got to do with Jill. I told you how I felt about her. It's not like you and me. Jase, sit down beside me a minute, she said, rapidly patting the tufts of the candlewick spread. Jase, listen to me a minute.

Come

What

sit

here.

So you can keep me here? So you can get me bed again and know I won't keep my date with Jill. Not that, she said. If that's what I wanted you'd know it. No. Just to talk to you a minute. Please, Jase? Then you can go. I wouldn't stop you. He came to her, mistrustful, defensive, sitting beside her like a child in the presence of a strange nurse, his hands in that

for?

The Watchman

104

folded with an almost pathetic primness; like a makeshift of fingers. Listen, Jason. If you think it's jealousy of my sister that makes me ask you this then I can't help that. Look, Jase, I fig leaf

know what

mean

you

—what

we are when it

each other. It's Nothing's changed. I'm just a very dumb, ignorant girl and I've never pretended to you that I was anything else. I'm not the brainy type like Jill. Whatever I've ever learned I learned the only way I was able to from lonely people, in queer places, up old streets, under the light of motel neons saying Vacancy or Full-up, in all-night movies that smelled like men's room

what

I

1

said

I

to

wanted

it

to

be

to

started.

—

and

disinfectant

show with

my

stale

popcorn where

legs pressed together

I

had

to

watch the

they ached and my the other fingers with

till

hands always ready to push away the big lodge rings on them that were always there in the dark, or in beer joints where I was lonely and the hands didn't matter and could do what they wanted. Jill has learned

—

from another kind of loneliness her books, her little dog music and poetry. That's good, too, I guess. I won't knock it or say it's not as good as the way I've had to learn. Only it's different. I don't even blame my father that Jill has been, is, and always will be his all and everything. His feeling that way has simply meant that I've had to be a loner

life

—

—always—

learn things the bungling way, banging my nose dark and learning to go round that place the next time. Jill's strange and wonderful brains are all in her head like Mama's were, I guess, or else Father wouldn't see her like he does. My brains are all under my skin, Jase my skin and things just under it. Maybe you might say they're just in my hips or my breasts. Jill's eyes read a book and they know what that book means and I guess they see the beauty that they were meant to read there. My eyes are eyes I've had to grow eyes all over my body, and the only thing they can read is what another woman is scheming or what a man's next move will be. So much for me. Now you, Jason Hunnicutt, you're a wonderful boy with a good family that's full of crummy motives. You're strong, too, Jase stronger than you know, more than you've ever had to be which is why you've never been. She stopped then and lighted another cigarette, blew a blue slow cloud of thoughtfulness into the dusk upon her bedroom window. She laughed then. Well, okay, she laughed, looking at her nails quickly and in the

—

—

—

—

— The Watchman

105

then flushing and looking away to the mirror for an instant before she looked at him again. Okay, we'll let that go at that. And we'll forget all this theory stuff and I'll get to the point. There's someone, Jase, who doesn't want you around Jill and I swear before God that someone isn't me. Jason, there's

someone who wants

so badly that nothing

—

to

keep you away from

absolutely nothing

is

my

going to

sister

let

you

be alone with her very much longer. Jase, believe me on my oath I know. That note you got today was no joke. Oh, honey, if you'd only believe that my telling you this isn't jealousy! I've known about you and Jill for days now. Do you think if I hated you that I'd have gone to bed with you this afternoon? Sure you would, he said. Because you'd be trying to hold me with something you know Jill would never give me because I wouldn't ask her for it. I wouldn't even want it. Oh, my God, do you have any idea how sad a thing you just said, Jase? That you'd love a girl and not want that? My God, I think that's even sadder than my wanting that and not wanting love. And if it was any other girl in Adena any girl but Jill I wouldn't yell at you like in the world this. But, Jase, you just don't know how it is with Jill. And ^you think you know I just can't tell you. And my father

—

—

—

him, and, Jesus, Jase, you don't listen to me, Jase?

know him

at

all.

Can't

I

make

you

If

you mean can you stop me from keeping my date toNo, he said. I'm not that much of a

night the answer's

weakling.

Oh, God, I wish I could explain it all to you, she gasped, her lips suddenly hidden in her long, white fingers. All my life I've been so proud never to have told a lie or even half the truth and all I can give you now is less than half, my poor, dear Jase honey! He got up awkwardly and put his thumbs on his hips, looking

And

down if I

at her in utter consternation.

keep on seeing

Jill,

he

said.

You mean

it

will

be

the end of us?

No, she said, her hands rising to cover her eyes. Only the end of you. Do you think I'm afraid? that I can't take care of myself, Cris? I'm a pretty good man, you know. A better man than Cole Blake, Jase? she whispered. He picked up the cheap sheet of crumpled court-stenogra-

—

The Watchman

106

pher's yellow, ruled-pad paper and looked at the pasted letters, like a first-grade exercise at alphabets. And Cole was killed for being with Jill? he said. Is that

what you meant, Cris? She nodded, fast, hard, quick nods into her fingers. And I feel like a Judas, she whimpered. Because I haven't told you all the things you ought to know to keep on living.

What

things? he said. Just things things things! she cried. Things I couldn't tell you because I wouldn't know how to even begin dark

—

—

My

God, yes, a queer, twisted things. Judas! Jase she-Judas. That's what I am! She looked so forlorn, so spent and defeated that every

things,

shred of sexuality, for the moment, seemed gone from her. And so he felt it safe to reach out and touch her glossy, freckled shoulder; consoling, patting it with manly taps. And then she had seized his hand in both of hers, drawing him down again to sit beside her, against her, pressing her mouth against his ear like an open, roseate sea shell to let him hear the faint surf of sea-dangers, in the thunder of her slow, harsh breath. Stay here with me, Jase, she whispered. Don't go. Call the tell them to let her know you won't hotel desk and tell

—

be there.

No,

Cris.

Oh, Jason, I've never asked you for anything ever. I'm asking you this in God's name, please. Stay with me. Come back into bed with me, under the covers Oh, Jase, Jason, I'll do anything for we'll do it the way you like you! Listen, Jase, I'll even try to be like her cold and mockPlease.

—

Now

—

—

ing and not-letting-you-do-anything

—

if

that's

how you want

start to love me and I won't even learn to love, too. We could get bus tickets at the hotel and go away to Elkton, Jase, and I'll be real coy and cold and won't let you touch me till we're married and up in the hotel room. Is that what you want, Jase? Would it work? I wouldn't be just acting either because I can make myself be whatever someone wants me to be and make myself want that, too. Would it work, Jase? No, I have a date with Jill, he said, pulling away, undoing her fingers from his face as if they were cold and clinging things whose touch just then he could not quite endure. She got up suddenly, snatched up her flowered seersucker housecoat and jabbed it on, ripping the seam somewhere: he heard

me.

Jase,

mind

maybe you might

—maybe

I'll

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107

the tear, and her swift, angry feet whispering off now toward the bathroom. Go to hell then, she shouted, and he could hear the waterrunning and the bowl-flushing and the shower roaring: all the sounds she could make so that he wouldn't hear her crying.

Go

Go

to hell, Jason Hunnicutt.

I

don't care what you

Jason Hunnicutt. It was still not dark, nor even dusk: the air was the late gold of chilled autumn light: the pale, limpid amber of harvest cider. He moved away from the window and began to dress slowly, sadly. He wondered if she would ever let him come back, and if she ever let him come back if she would ever let him. The bathroom door slammed thundering shut with a bang that crooked the framed picture of Cole Blake by the clothespress door. He could hear now, above all the smothering tumult of open taps, the wildness of her sobs and so he looked at himself in the mirror and watched a stranger tie his tie and when he had on his suit jacket he saw that his tie pin had fallen into her half-opened vanity drawer among the silks and sundry lace, rickrack and nylon daisies: his fingers feeling through it all as if dipping into a tumbling,

do.

to

Jill

and go

to

hell,

cream soda. He found the tie pin. It had bottom of the brassieres and panties aside in his search. It was there. It lay on

silken froth of ice

worked its way which he drew

to the

wood almost touching the Sheriff's blue and iridescent with gun oil, and in its scorched, impotent chambers the brass shells of five fired the yellow, sachet-fragrant

revolver:

steel

cartridges. Still, of one thing she had been wrong: there was no car of surveillance waiting across from the hotel window where Jill still waited. Seeing her again he breathed in the season and felt it jolt his pulses Like whiskey. The air was brilliant, as if it contained within itself the source of light, independent of the sun which stood in the high heyday of late afternoon at the instant before it would blaze with thermite brightness on the orchard brim of the hilled Ohio horizon and then quench swiftly out. Now the fine air was

spun out lucent as noon,

all

shimmering light rich with September like a honey

that nacreous, silken luster of river

mother-of-pearl, air to be tasted more than breathed, tart as the leaping juice of hard, cold apples' first bites, yet air neither cold on the tongue nor hot but something, mysteriously, of both, paradox of peppermint: chilled at its surface

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108

but blooded and blush-dappled under, like the dimpled, strutting flesh of a cheer leader's thighs. And Jason, starting across the street sljwly, a little breathless, his heart racing on some paces ahead of him toward the girl, watched, waiting for the lover's good hurt of her first glancing-up to see him.

On was

the corner

men

by the bus stop a curious and minor tumult

of gathering into climax: the fifteen gray leaning against the streaked and lichened bricks of the

jiist

in the act

lounging nor loafing, and yet idle in a curious at first sight suggested attitudes of both stilted tension and languid, purposeless idling: fifteen men in cheap, identical suits of a material stiff and styleless as gray wrapping paper, some of them holding cracked and bursting suitcases of imitation leather, like laundry cases bound in clothesline strips, all of them with the sallowed pallor of convalescents, skin livid with the sicklied bleach of flesh long constrained from light and movement both and the pitted eyes in their faces feverish with the lifeless, shoe-button glass of old, thrown-out toys. There was a manner about them of restrained and bandaged uneasiness, even of terror at having abruptly been set adrift among eddying, pedestrian custom and sidewalk liberty: a milieu which, plainly, they had each been for long terms and at great pains both to cherish and put from their hotel,

not

way which

thoughts. Fifteen convicts, or rather ex-convicts (there was something about them still which was both), men paroled,

others merely at the end of their sentenced waiting on the street corner for the Greyhound

some pardoned, terms,

now

bear them off down State Route Two, scattering each mercilessly into the sudden shock of aliened home, among fifteen country crossroads, cities and villages stretched down

to

the whole state's length. The bus was late and, for that matter, so were the men: some snarl in the intricate prison pro-

cedures of release, of eviction, having postponed their exodus

now. Jason's pace slowed as he approached them, he searched them with curiosity: something in them was frightening which

from early morning

until

A

originated in the contagious frightenedness of themselves. few yards away from them, leaning against a lamp post

meter were the two guards, chewing and spitting with slow, sag-jawed remorseless indiTerence and staring at the leafy pavement with faint, odd smiles. And though, since

and a

traffic

the fifteen were, at least in a savage, heartless technicality,

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109

freedmen, the guards, unarmed and also in street clothes, had come to see them to the last, the final card-punched, static performance in the long, vast ritual of their penitential regimen: come, perhaps, to take one long, careful, sen tried glare into the blanched, restive masks of these men's eyes: one final inspection of their insides before departure as if, like jail-gate electronic-eyes detecting metal, they might still luckily and at last-minute spot, incipient in the men's very terror, a lurking, latent

crumb

of criminality which the re-

medial despotism of state-captivity had not douched from them. Perhaps, indeed, it had not. But whatever it had not flushed from out these men, with the flooding, purgative agony of a firehose enema, it had washed from their spirits every last taste for that very freedom, ambiguously and so long hoarded through years, months, weeks, days, minutes, seconds and those yet finer fractions of time, unknown to all but convicts and insomniacs, with which no clock-face is calibrated: the moment of liberty which they had cross-calendared through aggregate centuries with chewed-point and stubbly pencil fragments on the reeking cell walls, that sweet wine now gone vinegar and murky with the mother-fungus of a tortured misgiving. So that the freedom of them there on that innocent comer of small-town street, beneath the kindly softness of a sad and all-forgiving autunm light, seemed rife and racing with delusions of guardless anarchy of treachery and menace: the very blowing maple leaves across their shoes might each have showed, like blood-money, their damning fingerprints.

Even the guards, out of uniform, out of gun belts, seemed meanly out-of-sorts. From time to time they spat splashing spurts of mail-pouch tobacco juice across the sidewalk bricks:

great splatters of brown, bitter wetness like the excreta

some

dark, special organ, peculiar to their profession,

from which

had grown in the quid-bulged udder of their hard cheeks. And sometimes they would look at one another and the playing smile would break into open chuckle: cynical and knowing, and they would run their immured and slitted eyes stonily along the ranked faces of the fifteen, seeing them not as friends soon to say farewell forever but rather as commuters about to take a ride home for the night to return with time-clocked and recidivist precision on some soon dreadful morning. And, even more terribly, the eyes of some of the fifteen would rise sometimes to meet this inspection

no

The Watchman

pettifogging meanness, four eyes like bloodless slashed in nerveless leather, would smile back sheepish, helpless smiles, pale smiles whispering tacitly: Well, hell, sure, don't I know it, too, that this ain't good-hy nor the end

of shifty,

wounds

and me, screw? So don't bother to tell me already know, that I'll be back and back maybe times after that. Like it was. Like I come back before and the times before that since the first little stretch when I was eighteen. Don't tell me with your slick, hard grain what I know. Don't grin at all, Christamercy, at the terrible sight of a man that's been jailed so long, so often that jail is home and home is jail. Sure, I'll be back, Christamercy, and then I'll start scratching the days off on the wall again and counting the hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds till I'm out, standing here, and wanting to go home again: stir-sick and home-sick all the same. Because after a while the steel bars of the wheelgate is the old front porch, and the night smell of tears and creosote and sodomy and death is the downhome smell of Mama's cooking, the big pump-gun in your ham-sized fists, screw, like old Pap's hayrake in the harvests. Don't tell me what I know and stand here free and sick and pissing my pants with fear of knowing, for I know, Christamercy, yes, how well I know that, screw. Jason came to a full stop, looking at the men like a stacked row of embalmed, mobile mummies astonishingly excavated of

it

what

with you

I

from some

vast

chilled steel:

prehistoric

mound

incredibly alive;

of granite and oiled, saw them and gaped shame-

lessly, as did the others on the street: commoners passing in pedestrian and unarraigned or even unsuspected guilts within themselves; troubled somehow to see these stigmatized and classified felons wearing the state's gift of the new street suit with the state's new ten-dollar note in its pocket: criminals in suits, no uniforms, perhaps plainer but essentially civil as their own: somehow these men should not be

dressed with that communal casual indiscrimination, something should set them off from the, if not good, at least unpatch sewn in the convicted, unconfined, unstained. sleeve, perhaps, like the yellow-star of mongreled ghettos: a number needled blue into the flesh of perhaps, a tattoo

A

—

A

small crowd gathered, not standing, moving back and forth so as to give the surface impression, at least, of nonchalant and passing interest; perhaps crossing the street to turn suddenly and stare from the irreproachable

the forehead.

decency of that distant vantage.

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111

Such crowds have always come. Such crowds have always shuffled by, paused, turned to stare, cringing at the whisper of comparisons inadmissible even in the deepest dungeons of

crowds who watch men move in the orbit of doomed and dooming punitive hopscotch, men shuttled from one maroonment to another; crowds have always watched First the only time in the so. Nor was that chronicled times of such crowds when some among them with bolder their thought,

—

may, before they dismiss the spectacle, say terribly to themselves: But there for the grace of I goes God. Jill called to him from the hotel steps and he moved up the stones to her side and squeezed her hand and was about to forget the spectacle of the gray men and the thought they had brought stealthily back into his consciousness of the gun, strange and deadly as a copperhead, beneath the foolish, heaped sweetness of Cristi's lingerie. The bus would come, the crowd would plass on, the guards would go back sullen and momentarily cheated up the chilling street of dusk; he would have forgotten all that, had he not, at that moment, seen reflected in the plate-glass window the shadowed, somehow pathetic figure of the man watching them from behind the ticket window of the movie house across the street. His seeing that was a shock and that shock compounded suddenly and Jason aware of this and with a swift chemistry of blood-beat and gland watching Jill; the fifteen men facing their guards in the bared-nerve prison of emancipation: these souls

making it difficult for him to speak to her at all and then suddenly, as if at a prearranged signal, the last blazing wisp of sun went out in the Ohio orchards and cast the valley instantly into the chill of a darkened twilight, like water suddenly flowed among everything; simultaneously, and as if hopefully, and by the will of God, come at that moment to correct the gloom and bathos of dusk, seven men, girls, and boys carrying musical instruments came down the pavement, their faces beaming with that dour, oppressive optimism of professional redeemers, took up positions between the two guards and the fifteen men and industriously commenced fitting horns together and clipunsettling ingredients

ping small paper hymnbooks into their lyres. It was the Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band come to inspire the parting penitents and not only with campground melodies for now their leader Mister I. W. Humbolt produced a stack of inspirational leaflets and went the round of the men with them, having come provided (with relentless evan-

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112

gelism) with two extra pamphlets for the guards. Their tuning-up was always enough to draw a crowd in Adena: the tentative male whinny of the slide-trombone (reputed to have been willed to I. W. Humbolt by the late Homer Rhodeheaver), the skittish, noodling soprano of the oldfashioned, yellow-wood clarinet, the cornet, drums, and, of course, the tambourine. The fifteen ex-convicts whose lives, if they had achieved

nothing more for themselves, had conditioned them to an unastonished acceptance of the bizarre and unforeseen, looked a little more miserable and glanced hopefully up the dusk of Lafayette Avenue for the lights of the Greyhound. It was the guards whose composure was shaken. The crowd gathered, increased, the faces of them illumined light which arced on suddenly, coldly,

street

now by

the

noiselessly

heads Hke a corporation moon. Everyone in hated, or misunderstood music liked the ignored, Adena who Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band. Captain Jarvis of the Sal-

above

their

vation Army, to his credit, disliked them with that mild degree of violence of which his temperate, wise spirit was capable; disliked them for the very reason that had brought them out that evening. Captain Jarvis, having spent as many hours among convicts as he slept each night, knew and understood them well enough to guess how dreadful it was for them, at a moment when they wished for nothing more than whatever last shred of inconspicuousness was left to them, wished nothing less than to find themselves surrounded by a loud, small street band. The spectators came from every like leaves around a river appropriately, at least with not island in the flowing dusk. If a certain locational symbolism, they struck out with "Brighten Up the Corner Where You Are." Jason seized Jill's hand and pulled her into the shoulders

direction

and began to gather

of the crowd: Luther could not see them there. The band played with desperate, zealous imprecision. Star of the agperhaps, after all, it was he more than anything gregation that was the lodestar attraction of the Trumpet Home Taberwas the comettist. Though, even at the band's nacle Band beginnings, no one in Adena had been surprised at the notion

— —

that a as

man

Matthew

of such myriad, arcane and shadowy virtuosities Hood could also play the horn. It was not the

instrument of redemption with which his ally

been associated.

literal-minded

And

man, there

is

life

had

tradition-

the most tone-deaf and always the suggestion of Judg-

yet,

to

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113

ment

in the very name of trumpet. The crowd thickened, necks craned, children lifted onto shoulders, small dogs ran barking, windows flew open: the street was filled clear across to the theater entrance. So that Jason guessed at Luther elbowing his way through the throng to get to Jill. To himself. He pulled her on, ducking and moving among the multitude. Jase, let's go back in the hotel? "Brighten up the corner where you are!" he sang, and pulled her on into the seclusion of so many others. He laughed and caught a glimpse of one of the guards, beetfaced and furious, shouting something which could not be heard above the din, his mouth open and working soundless and idiotic like a landed fish. The roar of a powerful motor thundered through now: for a moment the guards and prisoners turned, bright with hope that the bus was coming. It was Colonel Bruce in his 1926 Buick touring car on his way to Qick Doty's Grocery for the rriakings of his evening meal. He parked at the outer edges of the crowd and nudged his big frame through toward the band, the convicts, the outraged guards. Matt! he bawled at the cornettist, in a moment's rest between spirituals. What are you trying to do? Wake all those dead so you can hang them again? Matthew Hood shook spit from his horn and smiled with -

martyrdom. When the band struck up "Jesus Wants

silent

Beam" Jason looked

anxiously

among

Me

a Sun

for

the faces for

some

sign

him somewhere among straw hats and hair ribbons and tossed of Luther, thought he caught a glimpse of one eye of

children's knees.

Come

on, honey, he said, dragging her off into the

The bus is in. Let's Those men! she gasped.

again.

Why?

—

I

feel

crowd

get on.

Jason, I'm scared.

safer with

them than

I

do

in

this

crowd.

We we don't have bus tickets! she cried. And I don't have Mama's purse and not so much as a nickel of mad money

in

—

my

handkerchief.

he laughed, jubilant and all the tingle of crowd and even the poor little makeshift band somehow quickening his heart and deepening the love, both heavy and I've got a dollar,

the

light: all

a golden nugget at the top of his stomach.

we need

A

dollar's

to get to Captina.

Captina! Jason, what in the world for. Captina's just a

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114

little nothing down the river road! Captina! she cried. Jason, whatever would we go there for? What would be there? We'd be there! he shouted, thrusting his arms under the sleeves of her coat and lifting her off the bricks. That's who'd be there. Jill, it's autumn! Look at the new moon waiting in the trees up there in the orchard ridges!

a strange thing to think of, she said oddly, giving him queer, suspicious stare. Jason, you wouldn't just want to get me down there in the country to to be fresh, It's

a

slow,

—

would you? Never, Jill! Never ever would I ever! he said gravely. She looked at him closely, chewed her lip, looked at him a moment more, blinking twice slowly. I can see you really mean it, she said, squeezing his hand. So I won't ask you to swear. Oh, Jason, it is a beautiful night! No fog! Hurry, she cried, pulling him now, pushing her way into the very center of the weary, hangdog cluster of gray, identical men forming to file, with long, unfolded tickets in their sweating, pallid fingers,

open

bus.

Luther was

lost

in

on

their

way

to the

the milling background, the

drum boomed like a madman pounding from the inside of a padlocked cellar door, while the apocalyptic chant of Matthew Hood's horn awoke the ghosts of the night's murdered serenities. The bus driver with his ticket-punch, uncased as the guards had been by his strange gray cargo: bass

Hurry, please. Running half an hour late as

it

is.

Tickets,

please.

her hair fragrant as food against his nostrils and mouth, his thrilled, shaky fingers fumbling for money in his jacket. The Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band in remorseless pursuit: "When the Roll Is Called up Yonder I'll be There." Tickets, please. Hurry. Somewhere as if in savage, tiny assault upon the taunting timbrel of the tambourine-sound like the thumping jingling of a bagful of coins, a small dog barking agnostically. Hurry. Hurry. Something bumps shouldering against his legs. He glances down: it is old Toomis Burke, thirty years legless from the mines, down there on his cushioned dolly, knuckling his way through the shoes and ankles and creased trousers, his massive, muscular trunk rattling along the bricks like a toy on his little iron wheels; a pint bottle, half empty in his fist and himself having a huge good time on his

Jason pressed closed behind

different level

vate forest

there in that quite different and most priother folks' sound legs, at the curb edge

down

of

Jill,

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now

115

where, unseen he fancies, and without self-consciousness,

his trousers and piddles in the gutter. The queue Almost there. But someone tugging now at Jason's sleeve and he whirls, his mind gone mindless with words to be shouted in the Sheriff's covetous face. But it is only

he opens shortens.

Cristi.

Jason, listen to

me

just a minute.

go of my arm, hangman's horn and the the hammering to be let out of aged and corrupted with the her fingers were fixed tight as Cristi,

let

he shouts into the clamor of drum-imprisoned imbecile, still his drum. Cristi's face seemed ferocity of long weeping, and the hand of a drowning woman

in his sleeve.

Jason, my God, don't go tonight. Not tonight, please! she screamed among that loud, harsh music about a quiet, gentle

Man. Tickets, please. Come on, folks, I'm late now! Inside, please, shouted the busman. Jason, I never asked you for anything before now never anything, Jason! Cristi yelling at him. Please, Oh God, please! He hauls his clutched arm free, thrusts Jill's shoulders forward, Cristi's face drowned in the crowd, and like all such last images of swift exposure, a face of stark, memorable emotion; though not perhaps to Jason so dramatic and wonderful as the smiling, knowing, feverish look Jill threw back after her sister, now swallowed in the ocean of hats, hair and baby legs: a withering grimace of odd triumph. Now with a hiss and a rumble the bus was off. They stood: Jason with his hands on her shoulders from behind. Most of the convicts stood, as well: some fortunate ones in the pressed, breathless, shoving sway of passengers massed tight as fisted hands, able to turn and direct their miserable eyes into the dark luggage racks; less lucky were those unable to move and forced to stand with their nose tips fairly brushing the poking, probing, unabashedly curious faces of huckstering farm wives and big-vested salesman of strip-mine equipment. Say, are you fellows really just fresh out of the pen? Yes'm. Guess it must feel pretty good being out, mister? shadow of a pause before the answer to that most moot of all questions, then: Yes'm. Pretty good. Reckon you fellers in the pen's the only ones they couldn't never pin the Blake murder on.

—

A

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116

No comment

to

most torturing and

a

that:

interesting

thought to one of the men: an old Marion County bank robber with a face as flat, smooth, impervious as an ax blade. He remembers the lifer named Jacoby Banjo, a favorite of the Warden's, permitted passes whenever he wanted them, movies down town once a month, sometimes a woman in a river road beer joint motel: the bank robber winces at the memory of those squandered nights and the most fascinating alibi a man might ever want for any crime conceivable: I'm a lifer. I been in jail fifteen years. And I got one hundred and ninety-nine to go. Don't look funny at me. I was here. Go ask the warden. The bus hisses, lunges, pauses, hisses, lurches rumbling on, its tires ripping silk down the blacktop river road. A very small girl without so much warning as a premonitory consternation in her large, sad eyes is suddenly sick all over the front of the new coat Grandma got her for last Easter, now sitting bolt-upright, weeping in the aftermath, her arms elevated to either side of her now, like those of a ropewalker, in shamed, fastidious humiliation at the lunch in her lap. How long was you in for, Mister? Five years, eleven months, twenty-nine days, twelve hours, twenty-eight minutes, and fifteen seconds. Well, I never! You sure got a good mind for numbers. That's God's own truth, ma'am. Serial numbers. That's what I done my time for. Jill's eyes burn into Jason's own adoring ones; she squeezes both his hands, bites her lip on a secret, then, teasing, blurts it

out:

I

knew

all

along

why you wanted

to get

away from

the hotel, she cries softly to him.

What? Why? No, you

he

don't,

said.

You mean

your

sister?

No, she thought of

says, her face it.

— waiting

street

Daddy, she to

burning pink with the zest of the said.

You saw Daddy

come over and make

across the

a big fuss.

deny and then flushed and looked away. Daddy's following us. You make it sound like you wish he was, he said. No, she laughed. That would be crazy now, wouldn't it? She sighed and smiled another smile, looking away into the shoulders of the gray men, her eyes misty and wistful. Still a girl can't help being proud, she murmured. With a daddy looking after her like that a daddy who loves her that much.

He

started to

ril bet anything, she said, that

—

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117

Must get ter'ble confining] shouted the old woman's mouth, snufT-streaked at its corners, her face upthrust inches from the convict's eyes. What's a feller do to pass the time? Lady, if you don't mind I just as soon not bother remembering. I

saw'n in the Sun-Telegraph where you fellers play checkold bottle caps. Is that what they play checkers

ers with

with up there? I never played no checkers, lady. Well, now is that true about all the lights going

down dim

they turn on the electric chair? He shoots his eyes up to hers for a moment, and for a moment hers recoil, and then his gaze slides back again to the plastic cameo at the neck of her rickracked collar. Well, is that true about the lights when they burn 'em? she

when

cries,

seizing

courage again, relishing this brush with unoutlaw regions of freedom in all the monotony

known,

arctic,

of her

own cozy, dangerless life. Is it? she persists. why don't you just go kill somebody and find

Lady,

out? "Well,

I

that

ne-ever\

She hugs her large net shopping bag and struggles to turn around with her outraged back to him: assaulted, disappointed, and thrilled to her tingling toes. But why would he make a fuss? Jason asks Jill. Why doesn't he want me to take you out? Oh, Daddy's strange, she sings. To those that don't know him like I do. He just can't stand the idea of anyone taking me away from him, I guess. Not even for an hour or two. Was he always that way about you? he asked, sorrowfully, and queerly puzzled. Always, she said. As bad about me being off somewhere with somebody as if it had been Mama off somewhere with somebody. It's the way I favor her, I guess. You should just see Mama's picture, Jason. Why, I'm her hving image, Papa says!

He

turned

his

massed humanity

head

and

tried

to

window

search to see

through

the

by chance,

to the big rear a car with a whirling orange light might be following. He could see nothing but the convicts and several black straw hats with plastic Woolworth fruit: hats like lacquered wreaths nailed to the doorways of the dead, beneath whose brims were the faceless faces of those women who seem eternally to be on buses: colorless, ageless, destinationless, and vaguely. if,

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118

absently troubled women who peer anxiously from time to time into the lightless highway dark as if searching for familiar landmarks and fooling no one about that for it is manifest that these are women hurled by life into the orbit of a family-less, memory-less, deracinated migration. They call incessantly to the driver to know what time the bus will then glance again into the get to Amarillo, Biloxi, Boston searching again for that blackness, of pit window's futureless landmark, the clue to home's proximity, illusory and fictional while all the bus folk but they themselves know that their haven, home and destination is, and perhaps has been forever since their widowdom, the next rest-station, and tuna salad and a teabag in tepid water as their welcome-feast. While in their bulging string-net shopping bags they bear eternally home-sewn bean-bag toys and tinned oat-meal cookies, fruit-

—

cakes and melting bags of peppermints and hard fruit-candies for imaginary (or perhaps vanished, dead, grown up) small nieces, nephews and perhaps children of their own, now children no longer, except in the immutable agelessness of yellowing baby photo-albums: five-year-olds with whining, candid ungraciousness who will not want those homemade presents, and who will want even less the unctuous pats, ministrations and chin-chuckings of those old, child-starved hands. They seem for a moment, these women, to brighten a little in the naked, garish, waking blaze of bus stop luncheonettes and when their tuna salad and tea treat is over they move about, pricing souvenir wall-plaques with burnt-wood slogans and those ubiquitous glazed black china panthers

whose

to be such shelves; and yet, of they never buy, but move on then with cautious,

jungles

course,

seem always

of mortgaged doUhouses, they cross the room to fluff up the flounce of a plastic curtain at a window and then stand back to inspect it critically, head tilted, mouth pursed, and straighten a paper rose in the vase

brittle vivacity, like mistresses

on the greasy formica tabletop as if Christmas company were due at any moment. Did you just hear how he talked to me? I ne-ever! A body tries to be friendly and Christian with one of their kind and look how they serve you. A convict, tool Did you hear what he said?

I

declare!

Captina! droned the bus driver. You folks want off here? long, tight, edgewise sidling for these two then through half the bus' length; the doors tipped folding in, hissing, open, and Jason and the girl stepped down into the oceaned dark

A

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119

of moonrise country night. And then alone in that profound, the bus gone growling south in a reek of still freshness: fume: the convicts and their unsparingly charitable and wellwishing inquisitors borne off to their already sorted and starfixed lots. Idling, unhurried and, for the

moment, unpursued,

they walked, unspeaking and among no sound but that country silence, the soft and wordless flow of wind, the gritty whisper of their kicking, lazing shoes along the crushed shale of the road's edge. The moon, as if provoked by faint and distant hound barks behind the quilted, sleeping farms, had moved out from the high-ridge apple boughs and stood now

above the

river.

In the dark, said Jill suddenly, you can be anyone you like. He smiled at that, grunting agreement for the reason that he did not understand it.

Who would you

like to

Me,

be? he

said.

she said uncertainly. But bad sometimes and that's never good enough somehow. And so I find a dark like this where I can be whoever I like. Maybe so that I can be the someone-else that people I want to will understand and love me and take care of me. It's Jill I love, he said, and swallowed his heart back quickly to the place from which it had bounded up at the thought that he had never told her that before.

Oh,

first

of

all

I

guess,

things get

—

Sometimes, she said strangely, I like her I've never loved her not Jill. And so in the dark I can be the someone I always knew would be loved no matter what she did no matter if she did something unspeakable and heartless like dying. Mama. In the dark I run my hands across these lovely old clothes I wear I touch my hair and my cheeks my run my hands along my genteel wrists with fingers and

—

— —

—

and

I

really

You're

No.

and

Jill,

truly

become

too, he said.

her.

More

Mama. Jill

than anyone

else.

a strange magic, Jason, she said, heedless. I really believe that if someone had eyes that could see me in the dark when that feeling comes over me they would not see It's

—

They'd see Mama. Mama's clothes, her eyes, her hair, the way she moved. And when I feel like I'm Mama, a lying Jason, I never want the light to come and spoil it light in which I only look like me. Because, Jason, inside me I am Mama. I'll always be. That's why you should try to understand poor Daddy a little more. I'll try, he murmured lamely, and pushed from his mind the sudden thought of scissored courthouse letters pasted into a me,

at all.

—

—

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120

menacing conundrum of

momentary

origins, driving

of something deadly

vision

nice, fragrant laces.

And

Jill

seemed

from

his

beneath

to sense

mind

the

Cristi's

all

someone

in his

thoughts. Why did Cristi try to stop you tonight, Jason? she said, and he could feel the smile on her face by the sound of the shape of her words. Jealousy, 1 reckon, he said. What else would it be? Goodness! she chuckled, pleased suddenly, and yet she

had known the answer he told her before she asked. Will wonders never cease! She was industriously silent for a while; he could sense her wits working quickly behind a frown of racing concentration.

love with you, Jason? she asked, disingenuously, the indestructible certainties of Jill's curious logic that her sister was incapable of love; yet and sensory still she could not ask Jason what the question really was inIs Cristi in

for

it

was one of

tell her, if he was in love with her sister. and me, he said cautiously. The thing between us was never like it is with you and me, Jill. At least, not as far

tended to Cristi

as

my

feelings are concerned.

Was, Jason? she said

softly.

Does

that

mean you and

Cristi are finished?

We had a talk, he began. I guess Now she was quite silent for a ningly,

most

secretly silent,

so. If

you want

it

to be.

long shuffling while, cunkicking her shoes along through

the shale. But, Jason, she said presently. I don't want it to be. You want me to keep on seeing Cristi? he said. Yes, she said.

And

seeing

you

at the

same time? he

said.

Yes, she said.

Don't you have a funny feeling about things being that though? he blurted, his reason

now

like

in full rout.

Why should I? she said airily, and kicked a big stone flying into the polkweeds on the berm. Then you must not care about me at all, he said miserably. Not even

a Yes, but

little.

do, she said warmly. That's what you can't unsuppose. Jason, you don't know it but in the httle time I've had to get to know you, I like you more even than I liked Cole Blake. And that, whatever else it might have meant or done, came

derstand,

I

I

j

The Watchman like a

121

shadow against him, a cold and unforgiving shade that, moment, seemed to dim her luster, to hide from his

for the

eyes her shiningness.

You

mean

he

even like to hear you say that, Jill. Why shouldn't you? she said. Tell me why? Well, because Cole was something else to me, he said. Different from anyone! Cole was everything good I ever believed in. He was things I couldn't be if I lived to be three times my father's age. So when you say you like me more than Cole it makes me feel like I was cheating him out of something. And after he's dead, too, which makes it worse. Or else it makes me think you just haven't gotten to know me for what I really am. Oh, I know you, Jason, she said softly. I know you very well. I know both of you. What do you mean exactly? he said. Both of who? Both me can't

that,

said. I don't

and Cole? No, she said. The both of you that is you. Like I knew the both of Cole that was Cole. Everybody's two people, Jason. Two people as if they were split down the center. Cole. Yes, Cole. There were nights when he was the Cole I loved and wanted him always to be: wanting to be with me for the clean, good reasons: poems and music, beauty and love. And

—

then,

could

maybe tell

by

the very next night, he'd be that other Cole. I his face

window through

when

I'd see

him walking toward our

the dusk of Lafayette Avenue.

And

I'd cringe

and curl up like the scared, angry baby armadillo Daddy let me keep when I was little in Texas. Because I'd know it was the wrong Cole coming to me that night the Cole who couldn't keep his hands off me, the Cole who kept whispering awful things to me and my head would start to ache till I saw black stars bursting. And I'd hardly know he was even there I'd be so mad and scared. Cole loved you, Jill, he said. The good Cole did, she said. But the other one didn't. You can't love people and want to do things to them that will make them horrible and dirty and maybe even die! She seemed so affrighted at the rememberance of that twinned vision that she lengthened her strides and moved on ahead of him several yards, then stopping to wait for him to catch up, while she stood with her arms dangling sadly by her sides, staring off downriver to the lights on the locks of

—

The Watchman

122

Dam

Fourteen. And when he took her fingers and squeezed them, she shuddered. Always pawing me, she murmured. Always whispering to me, begging me, and there didn't ever seem to be any way to nothing that he could ever believe put him off the subject was No. But then, she said, more gently, there was the other

—

And that was the one I loved. And are there two Jasons, Jill? he asked. Sure, she laughed softly. And that's why

Cole.

I don*t mind. Behave the one that's best the gentlest, sweetest one the lovely one that understands me. And the other me? he said. She picked a seared, dry stem of grass and took it jauntily in her teeth, swaying on ahead of him a ways once more.

cause

—

—

I

Cristi takes care of him, she laughed. It's the only nice thing she ever did for me! He stayed a moment away from her, not wanting to get too near her until the frightening feeling passed: unreasonable, savage and unaccountable it had come and kindled in him like a fever because of what she had said: the first strong surging want, in full ferocity, that he had ever felt toward her physically. Oh Lord, he thought. Don't let me

spoil

cause

it

all

it's

now. Make

me

stop feeling that about her. Be-

not like that with her and

Because she have known.

is

right

—

it

me

—

I

won't

let

it

be.

would be wrong. Even Cole should

He stood stock-still with his eyes closed, waiting for it to go, and started when he felt her hands suddenly fold round his: she had slipped swiftly to where he waited in her wake, and now he could see her face uptilted and smiling in the moonshine: something of tease and beauty and tantalizing ambiguity: all of it there in her upraised face, flashing there in the sea deeps of her great and black-lashed eyes, playing there like the paws of kittens at the corners of her lips. Kiss me, Jason? she whispered. He stood looking at her mouth a moment, her lips now shaped for his and her eyes closed, her whole face and self raised. He suffered and wanted to run. But then quickly he kissed her lips with a quick, light, brushing shiver, as he might anemically, at twelve, have kissed his first partner at Miss Lydia's Dancing School. Daddy was away all day, she said suddenly then, striding ahead with her back to him, kicking the weeds and striking, as she passed, the steel-blue blossom tops of the iron-weed

— The Watchman

123

stick. He went down the river to Marietta on the Ohio side. Something to do with the chase? he said. No, she said. What did he go for? he asked. Oh, to buy something he needs in his job, she said idly. I guess you could say it has to do with the case. I know it was something he hated buying. I know how his face looked when he told me he was going down there this morning. Sometimes when Daddy's got to do something he hates his like a baby you want to face looks forty years younger

with her

—

comfort.

What was it he had to buy? Jason said, with her indifferently. new gun, she said.

A A new

now making

talk

gun?

Yes, she said. He lost his old one. Just day before yesterday. You should have seen him when he found out. It was the day after poor Cole's death and the execution of that man and Daddy was all upset enough anyway. And then on and with everyone in Adena saying disgusting, top of it all mean, slanderous things about him not tending to his job ^he lost his gun. Isn't that really pathetic, Jason?

—

Where

—

did he lose

don't know.

it,

He

Jill?

it, that's all, she said with a shrug and broke a milkweed pod with a slash of her stick, filling the moon-bright air with a drifting cloud of lustrous, shimmering-white fluffs, sailing down the wind like an elfin maybe it fell flotilla. Maybe, she said, he left it somewhere out of his holster. Lord knows, maybe someone stole it. He was awful worried, I know. And hating to buy another one a new gun: I think he'd rather go out somewhere and cut off a finger. Not for the money's sake either. But because he hates guns so. Jason felt his eyes hot, veiled; his thoughts hurrying round the stage of his mind, scurrying to hide behind painted trees, then scuttling away to hide again behind a painted rock. Come on, he said, pulling her hand. Let's go down to the

I

just lost

—

Dam

and see

if

Who, Jason? great,

they're there tonight.

she cried, smiling up at

him now with her

wide velvet-violet eyes.

The ones who've been here longer than the Longer than us

Who? Who?

—than anyone.

she laughed, running after him,

rest!

he

now

racing in

cried.

124

l^he

Watchman

down through the mist-moist timothy and Queen Anne's lace of the meadow. Guess! he cried, taunting. It's a riddle, Jill! Guess their names and I'll give you a kiss for free! Who? Who? she shouted. Oh, Jason, you're the world's high bounds

worst old tease! Pittsburgh towboat, herding her ordered brood before her; black steel barges like a line of children nudged by an anxious, gasping mother down along the glittering street, had moved into midstream and downriver now, blowing her claxons for the tricky bend and feeling for the channel with her radar-cunning, and the squawking voices of her ship-toshore. The massive concrete of the lock-wall shone white as a promenade before them. It was cold there: the water gave up a liquid emanation, a chill of invisible and deep, motionless dark. They stood, fingers laced, breathless and breathing in the watery air like a dippered coolness from a winter cistern, watching the diamond-flash of moon and searchlight flutter crystals on the wind-roughed riffles of the stream. Jason

The

stood spellbound; she felt the shiver of his hand and knew it for wonder and not chill. Look yonder, Jill, he said suddenly. There by the dam-gate. Where the light sparkles on the waves. Did you see it? Oh no! she cried, disappointed. Oh, Jason, what was it? There, he said. Another one. There's more! See! They rise and show their faces for a minute and then dip plunging back like they say the dolphins do. There! Jason, I saw\ she cried out. What was it? That ugly, awful

What was it? Why, the catfish, he

face!

said.

The

—

—the

ancient catfish. wide thick lips and big rubbig

Oh, Jason, they're so homely ber whiskers on their heads! Jason, look! Oh, there! Did you see?

She shivered now in a real chill that was more than the cold of those remembered seas, and the tugging, watered gusts of the river's winds. Always, said Jason. They've been here always. Since the beginning. Since the oceans went away, I guess. Think how proud they'd be if they could know\ she gasped. Oh, what awful snobs they'd be. Worse than those old rich Catletts up on Crystal Street, I'll bet! And then they fell silent, at the brink of the concrete wall, at the brink of something far more, peering over the edge into the fathomed, mist-wisping blackness of millen-

The Watchman

125

niums and the immeasurable

infinities of epochs which total millenniums. of Almost without sound, a breaking upwards, a hurled handful of moon-bright crystal drops, the blunt, Silurian faces lifted for an instant to the shine, the barest ripple, and the big backs, scaleless and smooth, arcing for a moment as if in immemorial ritual, before they sank plunging noiselessly beneath the waves again. It's the moon, say the old river-men, said Jason, That's what old man Ernst who used to be wharfmaster told me. The moon's fullness, he says. That's what brings them up to dance. And maybe they're looking for their oceans again. Waiting. Maybe they dream someday those oceans will come

sum

the long

—

A

think of it, Jill! thousand feet above that highest out yonder in Ohio a quarter of a mile above that orchard ridge: waves breaking and spindrift blowing in seawinds, and old gulls calling. It's awful, she said. It's beautiful in a way, I guess. But it's scary, Jason! Look there! That big one! Lord, Jason, he must

back

—

hill

be

five feet long.

He

said: It's like standing down here on the floor of the ghost of the sea. With whales' and dolphins' spirits rolling in the flashing waves two thousand feet above our heads! Did you ever gather sea shells on a mountain? I did, Jill! and

—

when

I

was

five!

It

was back up there on Roberts' Ridge

—

where my uncle's orchard used to be pocketfuls of sea shells from a hilltop, Jill! shells from the floor of the sea! Can you imagine? She did not answer him. For Jill just then was imagining nothing: her face turned just a little away from him, her head atilt, eyes flashing, and her lips smiling slyly as if she were eavesdropping on matters now astir in the wind: nothing that he had heard, had sensed. Yet still she heard and sensed, her face uptilted now with an ear to the wind, to the hills behind them and to the dark: to a less than sound: a thrum too faint for his perceptions, a murmur from behind the very night

—

itself.

Do you want

to

go back

to the road?

he

said. It's getting

cold.

And

she was

her face turned round to darkness if to the spoor of some waiting beast among the moonday's long shadows: a presence that kinned and creatured her to itself and to the heart of night. There's a north-bound bus due along soon, he said. We stiU

now, her

can

flag

it

silent,

nostrils shivering as

down and

ride

on

in, Jill?

— The Watchman

126

Hush, she whispered. Jill?

Oh, hush, Jason. Listen, she said softly. Listen to what? he said. Can't you hear it? she whispered, radiant with perceptions and smihng faintly still, her nerves all listening as if to a hand now fumbling at the moon as if it were a silver-latch: the creaking footfall of a boot heel on that dusky, shimmering floor of

meadows

to the road.

him, she said. I can always tell. No matter how softly he comes I can always tell his tread. Jill, there's nothing. You're imagining. I? she laughed softly in his face. Imagining. Or maybe Is that what you mean, Jason? mad. Not that, he said. I only mean there's nothing but the river and the wind. But listen, Jason, she whispered. Can't you hear it? the barest, faintest sound in all the world tonight! deep, soft murmuring. Jason? And so he set himself, hopelessly, to listening hard for a spell, then shrugged. Nothing but river, he said. And wind. And the faraway sound of the towboat miles and miles away downstream by It's

Am

—

A

—

now. Oh, no, she

not the boat. The boat sound stopped Jason? Wait till the it,

said. It's

coming long ago. Can't you heart wind changes.

And

so, listening

still

again, straining his ears to catch the

sound of something he did not believe in anyway and yet now, faintly, suddenly at the fall of the wind and in the instant of its rise again, deep and perceptible, it seemed to him, not to his ears at all but to some organ of apish, aboriginal intuition long-atrophied in humankind but now, through some queer empathy with her, resurrected to keenness and alarm among his wits. Is it someone up on the road? he said. Yes!

A

car,

he

said.

But

I

clear as a bright ribbon

No, she

said. It's

can see the road in the moonlight there's no car on the road, Jill.

—

driven

down

into the

meadow.

It's

down

there in the timothy.

She drew her hand away from

his touch and laced her touching their tips to her chin. matter where I go, she whispered, in a voice of exultant.

fingers,

No

The Watchman enthralled devotion.

He

has to

127

come and watch me

—

^to

see

that nothing hurts me.

he said. Who is it there? Oh, she laughed softly. You know. You know, Jason. Her dark eyes, moon-touched to brilliance and yet flashing, seemed to him, from some other lights within, held their

Who,

it

Jill?

adoring regard upon some presence, pinpointed among anonymous and shadow-peopled vagueness of the meadow: something she saw quite plainly that he could not see, as she had first heard what his ears never learned to tune to. I can hear it, he said. The car. Jill, is it your father? What

fixed,

the

does he want? He wants me safe, she said. Always safe. No matter where I'd wander in the world he'd come and find me and look to

Even here, Jason. On what you say's the floor of comes here to watch over me. His girl Jill in the deeps of sea-fathoms, Jason, and he comes to watch me. Oh, no one ever had such a beautiful fatherl Isn't it see

me

safe.

the ocean

—he

beautiful, Jason? hellish and suspicious, he murmured. Oh, you don't understand it! she cried. Not if you say that. It's spying, he said. It's ugly-minded, jealous eavesdropping! No, no, she laughed, too happy to be even angry with him. It's love for me, Jason! His love for me that's always watched over and cared for me Uke a shepherd guards his lamb! And now Jason's eyes had found what she had seen at once: the shape of the station wagon some hundred yards away: nothing of it showing but the dull gleam of the moon dusk on its top; all fenders hidden in the high grass: nothing but a disguised and sinister volume loomed up in rounded It's

from the rippling timothy; small as a plaything at that and yet nothing suggestive of play about it: something rather of a juggernaut resting, a relentless and menacing projectile seen in stopped-motion on its hurtling inrushing assault, and Jason, seeing the big shape of the man beside it, like a figure roughed out swiftly in charcoal among the piebald patterns of moon dusk: the shadow and the light: angles

distance,

just

standing there, watching, perhaps waiting in a gathering

and

as yet irresolute deliberation, drifting

its

decision, as

it

were, toward the abruptness of some violent, despairing gesture. And Jason thinking, angered at it: angered at the car and him: her father; more angry perhaps at himself than even at these that he should be frightened now almost beyond the

The Watchman

128

point of standing still and wanting to take to his heels in panic down the dam-wall parapet toward the far asylum of if he's the lock tower. Jason thinking: Then if he's come and if it's all so aboveboard and fine and fatherly why there aren't there lights or is he too ashamed or something worse than ashamed? Where are the lights of his car? he thought and then, as if his thought had triggered off some obligingness from the figure there were those different, unexpected lights: the three-quick burn of them in the dark and the holed black in their aftermath like the darkness scorched and almost in the same fragmental instant the flat crack of the pistol shots and the smack of slugs into the concrete six feet to either side of him, the bullets angling in obliquely and singing off the stone like insensed, steel-winged insects into the river sky: all of it so swift, so unbelievable and stunning that he scarcely saw or heard or, would afterwards, even remember the three shots more, these striking, too, with the same accurate and threateningly placed trajectory, slamming into the stone two yards away from him as if, unquestionably, they had been so aimed and so fired to strike just there and not an inch to either side: bullets not to kill but to intimidate, to warn: like punctuations emphasizing the bleak, unuttered threat of the presence there of the man and the car

—

—

themselves.

And yet, for an instant, as she turned, covering her face, and stumbling into his chest, Jill, he thought, is hit. My God, he has killed her and when she lifted her face there was nothing in its bloodless and mesmerized countenance to make mouth pressed her hands tweed, of his out of shape against the harshness digging his back as if she were dying, and all the while

him think

other:

her

now

against him, her

whimpering something indistinctly among his wadded, bunched-up jacket-front: a word, a name, a something: an iterant

singsong of hysterical sameness.

And

then the car

banged noiselessly on and, more faintly, the illumination from the instrument panel: a dusky scarlet that lit, however faintly, still unmistakably, the ravaged and disordered face of Luther Alt. The lights moving now, stabbing up and down as the car maneuvered savagely around and jostled, backfiring, up the furrowed ruts through the polkweed and goldenrod and highgrain toward the road-berm and then at last on the silvered asphalt itself and off, as if in some new and more ferocious pursuit of the headlight beams that raced, diminishing and in terror before it. And then he thought

lights

The Watchman

129

suddenly, seeing she was not hurt, that he had been hit himself somewhere in the body by one of the bullets; the sudden, palsied slackness in his legs: as if all bones in them had gone, all strength and warmth gone hemorrhaging out of him as through some welling wound. Yes, it was that sound which she whimpered fast and reiterant: Cole. Cole. Cole. Her voice rising now and then, as suddenly, falling to stillness, her head bowed as if she stared intently at something of great interest behind the shocked veiled unseeingness of her wide-staring eyes. Then abruptly, shrill as screaming, she began to laugh through her unmoving, unshaping lips, until his slap brought her round. Brought round however not to any consciousness more reasoning than before; only a

shocked, stunned madness that was as still as the other had been rioting. And all the while he led her up the high, wet grass to the road again, stumbling and holding her up who seemed to need no propping at all: she moved with a stricken elegance, straight and sure-footed, guessing out each ploughditch even before her toe had touched it, her face pulled back to the moonshine in a bleached and peaceful mask of passive misconstruction of all and everything around her: an expression full of that incedulous, disoriented and uncaring placidity of survivors walking away from train wrecks, and all the while speaking in a kind of soft, savage and concentrated accuracy to herself, to her mind, certainly not to Jason who for all purposes of her understanding, was not

even there; talking quietly to herself and quite carefully placing the words one after the other as a child stacks wooden blocks fearful of their tumbling: No. We shouldn't have, Cole.

Of

all

places not here.

You know what

every-

one knows boys bring girls to the Mound for and you know I won't I can't do that. Cole. No. Now see what you've done It's torn. Oh, Cole, why can't it be the other you I love and not this Cole that brings me here for this. Cole, I won't, I told you, No. Why are we all not home where it's warm tonight with Mama. We'll sing songs and play the harmonium and crack pecans for the Christmas cake. No, go back go back! Oh, my God Jesus, Cole, look at you now with your face all jelly in the moon. No, Christ, no. Mama, can you buy new heads for dolls at the Mexican bazaar because look, Mama, my doll's head. Cole? Oh, Cole, put your face back again so I can see your eyes and hear your

—

mouth say you do.

don't hate

me

for the thing I won't, can't

The Watchman

130

Though, on the north-bound bus that stopped for them near midnight, she was silent again, almost sleeping, he thought, until they were nearly within sight of the beer hall lights on Lafayette and then suddenly she lifted her eyes to him as if nothing, none of it, had ever happened at all. She even reached over, taking his hand, and squeezed his fingers in a gesture of warming reassurance as if he had been the stricken one. So that he felt it himself: that they were wakening from a dream. That none of it, that nothing had really happened. And yet he didn't want her to say anything yet; wanting her to be very quiet till she was very sure that he was he and not the other, faceless one: his friend, his god. And all the way down Fourteenth Street from Lafayette they were both silent, walking in careless ambling strides like children coming home from a movie whose violence had been only that and no more: a shuttering light of gray and silver dreams, where none of it, where nothing had really happened and there was not the blood of tongue-bitten fear in their throats but only the innocence of salted popcorn lingering round their tongues. In the shadow 'of the carved arched doorway, beneath the trellised honeysuckle spilling down its milk of scent and everywhere in the air's pellucid and crisp freshness the promiscuity of jasmine, insolent with lusts: they did not touch one another for a while, not tactilely at

touching only with those other more myriad and probing tendrils of bewildered and bashful research into each other's meanings: and searching for, as well, the meaning of

least:

any, of their selfless sum. He knew, without question and without suspicion of his senses, and with an accepted knowledge of acuity of his nerves and ganglia, perception caught somehow from her that night, that Luther stood behind the shut door at the top of the stairs. As certainly as if he could hear the restrained, hoarse breathing

the oneness,

if

behind the panels: the breathless exasperation of a man after a long and draining violence. But I don't care, he thought. Let him spy, let him listen, let him come down with his gun and do his worst because I don't care any more. And something in him both exulted and trembled in the presence of that dangerous indifference. Because she is here with me, he thought. And we've been through the worst that could be for us this side of dying together. The worst that could be, back there on the dam, at the edge of the meadows on the floor of the moonlit sea with the dark and ancient catfish wandering in the fath-

The Watchman

131

omless heights a million years above us in the waves. Let

him come down. Let anything be but her

to call me Cole again and for me to have to see her face like that, not knowing who nor when is now. Yes, it was as if nothing, none of it -had happened at all then. She rose on fresh, tiptoe innocence like a child to kiss him on the mouth good nig^t. And nothing of the horror

it had not happened. Because he loved her with the stoked and glowing slag-pile fires that had been only a scratched match's flame before now. And it was the he she wanted who loved her. As for that other self of him it was seized now, strangely, in the aftermath of dreamed and forgotten gunfire, in a cramp and scald of unappeasable sexual letch. But it seemed to him that it had nothing to do with Jill, that she was safe from that: there was a someone else who would feed her flesh to that tiger burning in the forests of his coiled night; leaving him safe to love. Now Jni's small nostrils breathing a little blowtorch in his ear and in his loins love, like a lake of naphtha fired, bloomed up, billowing flame. But Cristi would take care of

was remembered:

now

that: the sex.

Cristi

came

balancing her hand.

it

in sullen with his plate of eggs

in the kitchen

doorway, bouncing

it

and bacon, a

little

on

Don't you want to eat in the kitchen, Jase? she said. got up and slunk through the doorway in her brisk and irritably cheerful wake, following her like a child who has been ordered in to supper from his games. Milk or coffee, Jase? she said. Oh, water wUl do, he said. She sighed and turned the flame on beneath the saucepan; watching it with her arms folded, whistling softly to herself. The offkey sharpness of Cristi's whistle was always in precise ratio to the full head of her outrage. And tonight she was sharp by almost half an octave. He ate in guarded silence

He

as she

came

from him,

presently with his coffee and sat across the table staring

and tapping her

fingers very lightly

on

the fabric of her folded arms. And when he had finished she asked: Have you finished? and he smiled up brokenly at

her and said he had finished and so she said then: Let's

You said you came to talk to me. Then talk. Well, Cris, a person can't just start talking when you put

talk.

that way,

he

said.

it

The Watchman

132

Why not? she said. You said you had nightmares and couldn't sleep and had to get dressed and come down here and talk. You certainly must have a lot to talk about: a a bus ride down the river. Were your folks date with Jill you talk to your father? didn't Why asleep? all

—

They were

asleep,

so you came

And

he said quietly, with slumped face. me, she said.

to talk to

]

>

Yes, Cris, he said. She got up quickly, hurried to the stove and poured herself a cup of coffee, keeping her back to him, furious with herself because already she had begun to feel that damned, undoing sympathy for him. And because she was furious with herself she wanted suddenly to hurt him more because he had turned all her anger inward on her. She dumped sugar twice in her black coffee and stirred it savagely thinking: Oh, Christ, sometimes it's rotten to be born a girl. A girl with all those thousand parts of you to feel and understand with and you think you've got the main ones stoppered up against some damned boy and suddenly you discover you've left the very ones he always reaches you with, naked and open and unprotected! I know what you want from me, Jason Hunnicutt, she sobbed, bitter and dry-eyed to the wall above the stove.

But

it

isn't talk.

had But not to Cris, I

to see you.

she said, turning to him suddenly. The only time for talk is afterwards, isn't it, Jason? talk. Cris, he said. We said. We talk when you've had your she talk, Yes, we talk,

—

of me. She turned from him suddenly, seized the little kitchen chair, and lifting it, banged its leg-pegs sharply on the floor.

fill

she turned to him again. that's not anything for me to whine about, she sobbed, jabbing angrily at the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. And I'm not. It's the way I said it was going to be

Then

But

from the first, isn't it? So two people who use each alone. it

any

it's

all

other, Jase.

—

Not

We're just For that and for that that. I wouldn't have

right that way.

just for talk or for love other way. But even to that kind of friendship there

—

—

not very important ones but little rules And one of them is this God game. kind of rules! Like any other person and then come the hurt don't damn it, you just You don't take people for happened. back like nothing has are

rules,

Jase

—

— The Watchman granted, Jase, not even in a than bed!

You want me sister

game when

it's

nothing more

to apologize? he said. Because I took your

out?

don't care

I it

I33

will

if

make you

you apologize! she shouted. Apologize feel better.

Or

else tell

—

me

to

go to

if

hell

and it's none of my business. Apologize don't apologize. I "I'm sorry" or "Go to hell" don't care! Just say something!

—

or something! Don't just walk in afterwards and grin at me and expect me to come over and start kissing you like nothing had happened. And, now that I think of it, what the hell

has apologizing got to do with it anyway? You still think I asked you not to go out with Jill because I was jealous? Oh, Jason, Jason, I'm not\ My God, I had reasons for asking

you

that!

tell me those reasons? he said. can tell you one of them, she whispered savagely, leaning toward him with her wide eyes wild and brimming. I don't want to go to your funeral! He smiled and looked at his empty dish, his cold, dark cup. For the first time since the bullets in the meadow he was afraid. And yet he knew it was nothing that was going to change, nothing he would do anything about. And that

Can you

I

was the frighteningness of it. It was not that Cristi's words had scared him, nor the vision of the pistol in her silks, nor that Luther Alt had fired on him that night. He was afraid, momentarily, because he was not afraid. He felt as though he were moving into a region of grave peril to his sanity if not his life and not resisting that movement; almost welcoming it, as though it were a retribution long overdue,

—

—

though he could not imagine to whom. Don't fight with me tonight, Cris, he again makes

me

said. Just seeing

you

You talk's made me all gone. Come

feel better. Just talking to you.

See?

never want to talk. And just this little good again nightmares forgotten, fears here, Cris. Just sit on my lap By God, you're insane\ she cried out. No, I mean just sit. I promise I won't touch you. I won't even try to kiss you, he laughed, beckoning her to him with say

I

—

feel

his fingers.

Jason, that.

I

Not

can forget

won't, she said.

tonight. it.

So

You might

if that's

as well understand

what you came here for you

The Watchman

134

Cris, please, he said, stifling the almost incontroUable welling up of hysterical laughter. Just come sit. She looked at him gravely, her eyes Eve-ancient, patient and time-biding, her face quiet with infinite and uterine intelligence wearily waiting out the cerebral idiocy of men. All right, she said. You may as well have the whole cake as a crumb. Here then! And she snatched at the cord at her waist, loosening her housecoat, tearing at it, struggling her shoulders and breasts out of it, dropping it at last; standing naked with her ankles in a fallen pool of seersucker.

on, she said. You can have me. It's what you came won't back out on contracts once made. You've been with Jill tonight and nothing happened. No, nothing happened because with Jill nothing could ever happen. And now you're all hot and excited and so you come running to me. Here I am, Jason. Why are you sitting there? What's the matter, Jason? You look as if suddenly you didn't want me any more. He got up quickly and went into the parlor and she heard him lighting a cigarette, dropping his lighter on the rug, fumbling for an ashtray beside the stiff-backed chair by the door where now, she knew, he would be sitting in that posture of clenched, rebuked humiliation she had seen in him so many times. In the small mirror above her stove she stood a moment, watching her weeping, soundless face, the big tears dropping off her cheeks to the rounded tops of her

Come

for

—

I

breasts.

Christ,

Christ,

it's

awful, she whispered to the glass.

Oh Mother

of

Woman,

it's

Oh Mother

of

so awful to be born a

bitch.

When his swift,

he heard her in the doorway he looked up with infant smile and then stared back to his knees. The

robe was knotted tight at her waist again; she stared down at him with grave, frightened eyes, the corners of her lips quivering to make a smile of atonement. Cris, why dcHi't we ever know what we want, he said. Till it's not there any more? She sat on the rug at his feet, resting her cheek with an uneasy humility against his knee, stroking the top of his hand with one finger of her own. Don't ever think I hate you, she said in a voice he could scarcely hear. Whatever awful things I say or do, Jase, don't ever think that.

— The Watchman

135

He

patted the top of her head awkwardly with the rigid his hand, touching its parted, silken roundness gingerly as if his hand were grazing an object of dangerous or unfamiliar fragility: a crystal heirloom or a loosened land-

palm of

mine.

know, Cris, he said. I know you don't hate anyone. can be rotten, Jason, she said. I can be mean and cruel as anyone you'll ever know. Not you, Cris, he laughed sadly. Not ever. I can, she sobbed. Oh, I can. If you only knew me, Jase, you'd know. I'm a mean bitch inside me, Jase. He was still a moment, his face immobile, his mind working up a decent way of saying something like a cancer in I

I

his pride.

Well, he said. Think

what you will about yourself, Cris. But if it will make it anywhere near even, I'm something even worse a liar. A liar's worse than a bitch, Cris any common sense will tell you that. Cris, when I came up tonight I did want that. I guess I should have known you'd know it anyway. I guess being a liar about it was just kidding my pride. I said I only wanted talk and, Cris, believe me I wanted had to talk to you tonight. But most of all I wanted to talk

—

—

that.

know, she mumbled, her lips sticky with weeping, and cheek harder against his knee. I know, Jase. Would I ever hate you for that? And what you said about our talks, he went on, fumbling, trying to stumbling, anguished like a man on a high ledge put his words like footsteps forth in careful judgment. Saying the only time I ever talked to you was after Cris, I guess that's true. At least, I always want to talk more then. I don't know why. It's like something was out of the way between us and a sort of quiet a sort of Ustening quiet there between us. Oh, I know. I'm that way, too! she said. Isn't that queer? he went on. As many times as we've done that together you'd think it wouldn't always be new and not really talk ^till afstrange. That's why I never can talk I

snuffled, pressing her

—

—

—

—

—

—

terwards.

me awake

and hours talkdeep that it ended in a sob that almost set her weeping once more. You, too, he laughed. Sometimes when I want to sleep. But almost always we're both wide awake, smoking, looking at Sometimes you keep

ing, she blurted

for hours

in a laughter that she felt so

The Watchman

136

on the ceiling. And that's when I think of the things to tell you that I never can before. I wonder why. Something out of the way between us. I mean, lying there in the bed, in the room and the dark and the air full of the strange, beautiful, musky smell of us both and the smell of what we've done that and the cigarette smell and somehow even the smell of the dark. All of it and the smells of us a-mingling and making that kind of sense in your mind, Cris, where you want to tell someone things you never even wild, crazy things you never even thought. told yourself That's the only time a person can really talk. So what you the wallpaper

—

—

said about

my

never talking except then, Cris

—You

know?

Oh, I know. I know, Jase, she cried in a breath, squeezing his knee with the tips of her fingernails. It's such a damned shame, he said sadly. That being in even though I love can't be like that. Sometimes with Jill know I don't want to do that to her I wish there was some kind of drug we could take that would make it be like that. The way it is afterwards with you and me. She kept quite still, letting him say it out; once more,

—

—

with the

tip of

on the back of

her index finger, thoughtfully tracing the veins his hand.

Because I couldn't even imagine what it would be like doing it to Jill, he said. I don't somehow ever let myself think about it much. If we ever did it I'd probably die or go up in flames, I guess. Cris, does it make you sore when I talk about Jill? No, she said slowly, drawing the vowel out somberly. And not jealous? he said. No, she chuckled oddly. No, Jason, not jealous. What does it make you feel? he said. Your voice tells

me

it

makes you

feel

something.

makes me feel afraid. won't stop seeing you, he said. As long

Afraid, she said softly.

Why? still

I

I

want

me

It

as

you

to.

mean that, she said. you know I'd want to

didn't

Still,

see you, he said, stroking her

hair, the little moist tendrils of

You

it

at

her nape.

couldn't see me, she said sadly,

if

you were dead,

Jase.

Why

do you keep on saying

Because ing

Jill it's

I

know

it's

so,

she

that, Cris?

said.

only a matter of time.

That

if

he

said.

you keep on

dat-

— The Watchman

Do you know who

it

is

that

137

would want to

kill

me? he

said.

Yes, she whispered. because it seemed to him as if his fingers rested on the cold knob of the door to the last dark room of all he could not ask her Who; and would not because, indeed, he

And

need not: all of the fireflash thunder of the racketing meadow and the skidding bullets burning away like hot, brass hornets into the dark, all of that now suddenly returned again, real again, into his consciousness.

The same one who

killed

Cole? he whispered, cold.

Yes.

And you

think the same one would kill me, too? you don't want my answers to these questions, she said, lifting her head suddenly. Why ask them. It won't change whatever you decide to do. I'm completely resigned. All my life I've spent trying to change the way things are and Jase,

the things people move towards like a blind man tapping his white cane along a road toward a humming railroad track. And the train always comes and the blind man's always there under the wheels. No matter how many times I learn and learn it over and again I always forget. But it's never any good. Deep down something sensible in me has learned that much, at least. When I was six years old there was a man that stray kittens always followed because his pockets were always packed with catnip you know him: Joe Tzchak, my father's deputy. Well, one morning it was my sixth birthday Tzchak brought me this kitten and it was beautiful with a face like a brown and white pansy and it had a ribbon round its neck with a little bell. Jase, I waited till Tzchak and my father were gone and I threw mangoes at that little kitten till it went away. And all that night I could hear its bell tinkling somewhere out beyond the old Mexican agava tree and I'd get out of bed and go to the screen door and throw more mangoes till it finally went away. And then I cried myself to sleep. Because it was Tzchak that gave it to you? he said. You

—

—

—

him so was that why? loathed and despised him, she said. I always have. I always will. But that wasn't the reason. I would have cherished that httle kitten. But I knew if I kept it and loved it, someday it would die. Jase, I don't mind losing things people I've been losing things and people all my life. But, at least, I can tell myself that somewhere in the world they didn't like I

—

The Watchman

138

are alive. And knowing they're alive in the world is as good if they are alive in the house Vm in. But dying Jase, I when things when people stand love it I die. can't as

—

—

But now he seemed distant from her; his eyes lost in the streetlit curtains at her window. What's wrong, Jase? Oh, something I would ask you if I thought it wouldn't make you sore. It won't make me sore, she laughed. I won't ask you, he said gravely. Now that does make me sore, she laughed again. Tell me. Ask me what you want, I

don't

know how

She studied

to say

it.

his face carefully in the twilight of the

room.

she said. It's about Jill. That's plain. nodded, keeping his eyes carefully averted from that He measuring, sensitive stare. She got up suddenly, straightened her housecoat and got a cigarette. If it will make it easier for you, Jason, she said, her lashes dark against the flesh of her cheeks, yellowed in the match flare. I'll ask the question for you. And I'll answer it. Even though you may be sorry I did. You want to know if Jill's a virgin, don't you? Not, he said, that it would matter either way how I felt Well,

about her. But that's what you wanted to ask me, wasn't

Jase?

it,

Yes.

She walked away from him, parted the

down

into the cold, clear crystal moonlight

curtains,

looked

on the autumn

street.

answer anything you asked me, Jase, she said. then you asked me that. Maybe I can't keep my promise. Because, however I tell it to you you won't quite underwanting stand. You'll think I'm trying to spoil something to dirty up some vision of Jill you've got in your mind. And even if I tell you I wouldn't be meaning to do that you'll still think it. And it's a hard story to tell it's hard to make it sound even like something that ever happened once. But it I

said I'd

And

—

—

did. Jesus,

it

— —

really did.

He looked at her gloomily in the dark. You should see your face even now,

she said. Even when Well, you asked me, Jase. No, Jill has never slept with a boy not that I ever knew and I would know, or Father, at least, would know. Because, you I've just

gone

this

far.

—

—

The Watchman

139

my

father never developed particularly sharp eyesight about these things until a thing happened that gave him

see

reason

to.

Now

she stopped, thrusting her cigarette into the ashtray, smiled at him and gave a small shrug, flinging her arms out to either side of her in a little helpless gesture and letting them fall against her hips. Jase, she murmured. Let's go in the bedroom. I can't talk in here. It scares me to hear myself telling it and not having someone close to hold onto. In the dark, on the bed, he lay clothed beside her, stroking her shuddering arms beneath the fabric of her robe and all the while she was shaking and jumping in little starts as if she were seized by a chill, instead of thoughts. Hold me, Jase. Hold me. Oh, God, I'm so scared. But so anxious and savage was her embrace of him that he could not hft his arms to comfort her. It's so terrible, raced her hot whisper in his neck. So terrible even remembering it. It scares me like it was here and now all over again. And the strange thing is I wasn't even there when it happened. I only knew about it from old and from all the murderous proof of Juanita who told me

—

—

saw burning in my father's eyes. What was it happened, Cris? he said. But wait! she whispered, punching

it I

make me

palm. Don't

tell it

the

way

it

his shoulder with

should be told

her

—from

the beginning. Because I can't tell it that way, Jase. There's so much that goes before. Well, tell me about old Juanita, he said.

Who? Oh,

She was the old Indian nurse that took before little. And even before that she took care of Mama. I never could understand Jill even why Father always kept her he couldn't afford a maid for Mama even as cheap as Indians come. And she was horhalf-crazy with pulque and marijuana every rible inside night after Father had gone to bed. It was as if she had some kind of hold on him no not sex: he worshiped and adored Mama too much for any other woman. Though Juanita was beautiful, I suppose, even if only in a savage way: a tall woman, graceful and straight she could have been any age because she was never going to get old and wrinkled like the peons' wives do. Maybe there was Aztec blood in her or some race old and tall and lost. Her skin was dark and her eyes were so black that in certain lamphght care of us

—

Juanita.

—

when we were

—

—

—

—

I

The Watchman

140

they didn't look like eyes at all: more like holes shot there with a gun; and she had a flashing smile of stunning moonwhite teeth all except one, in the front, and it was dead and had turned that blue you see inside of certain sea shells: the color of a black pearl. And nothing anyone could ever tell Father about Juanita ever swayed his loyalty to her it was as though he felt he owed her some kind of debt, a justice: there were some who said her husband had been shot in the legs and kicked to death long years before by some old drunken lawman. So maybe that was it Father being a sheriff, too: he may have thought it was a justice: an atonement for his calling and for the breed of men his calling usually makes. Or maybe it was just that he couldn't afford any better nothing servant for Mama. Because there had to be a maid was too good for Mama. He wouldn't let Mama wash a plate at night or even sew a button on because he said she had a too genteel and soft for that. So, even before lady's hands Jill was born, Juanita was always there, taking care of Mama, and sometimes the both of them, for all I know, laughing at Father's back. Lord, I'd dread ever to have a man love me as if she didn't belong to this earth or like he loved Mama to any other: the child of angels and no mortal woman at what made her like she all. Maybe that's what was wrong was. Maybe she didn't want to be worshiped but just loved. Well, I'll never know. Father was away a lot and before Jill came it was just Mama and Juanita together alone in that old falling-down house we lived in by the bay. But even if he had been there I don't think he would have known don't think he ever would have seen. And if he'd seen I don't think he'd have believed it anyway: that it was going on. What was going on, Cris? he whispered to her, cradling her in his arms, in the dark: her shakes had not subsided yet

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

The men, she

The

other men. friends? Yes, she said. Six maybe ten maybe a dozen. She always had a lover who'd come and toss pebbles on the panes the minute Father had ridden out of sight. And the queer

You mean

said.

— — —

your mother had

thing is that I heard them tell of this in the town when I was nine and ten years old it was street-talk, common as

—

gossip of

new

oil

strikes

or hurricanes or elections.

And

—

I

never could understand why Father never heard well, they were afraid to tell all the wild legends of Mama's lovers in his presence. And yet I don't think he would have beJuanita bathing Mama in the lieved them even if he'd heard

—

— The Watchman

141

old tin tub, powdering her, laying out her fancies and kimonos before the lover came. Father's a Sheriff and yet he never seems to see the things that happen in the streets. It's

always like he had fixed his eyes in the heavens, expecting to catch the angels at some misdemeanor, looking always for some far more awful crime than humans could imagine; some terrible harm he maybe had seen once strike, like lightning, against some loved one once or maybe against himself. It's true, Jase except for boys that he catches chasFather can't even see what men are doing round ing Jill him in the street. It's as if he paces the sidewalks of the towns with his head thrust back, policing the stars, watching God for some felony he knows, sooner or later, he'll catch Him at. And since that awful night the night of the thing with Jill he's worse. He seems even more certain now that heaven's a crooked game: and so awful have been the crimes it's done against the ones he loves, he knows he's right. So maybe that's why he never saw, never even guessed, and wouldn't have believed it if they'd told him about Mama's lovers. With Juanita it was something more terrible than any she never had a lover of her own. of the rest of it, in a way They said she never wanted another man after that Sherijff kicked her man to death, and so instead she seemed to take a secondhand pleasure in the lovers Mama had pouring wine

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

them

dusky dark, sometimes coming into the hallway outside Mama's room when she'd be in bed with one of them, and play the guitar and sing some old, dark love song from her childhood in Durango. And when I was little and Mama dead so long Juanita would come to my room at night and tell me about all of them, all Mama's lovers, their good looks, the way they made love. She knew I wouldn't, couldn't run to Father with her tales. Because he wouldn't have believed. Sometimes at night even yet I wake up and hear Juanita's low voice whispering in the dark: "Chiquita, if you are very fortunate when you become a woman you will have a lover like that fine young soldier who used to come and stay with your mother in the old days." And on and on like that, Jase. Like she hated Father for something that happened long ago. As if she lived mainly for the pleasure of seeing him lose something behind his back and laughing at him for thinking any woman ever born could be that much goddess. And telling it all to me those nights in the dark by my bed as if she hated me, too for

—

in the

—

The Watchman

142 because

was the thing

I

that

had made

Mama

die

and

spoil

Juanita's games.

Your father never knew, he said. But didn't your mother worry he'd come home some night too soon? He did come home one night, she said. And even then it wasn't Mama who got caught. Oh, it's all so just, in a way, for a man to be deceived that way thinking of any woman

—

that way.

And

yet so awful, too.

he would catch her.

It's

Still

Mama

very funny, Jase, but

never worried only when a

it's

woman

starts getting careful that she's caught. Because when she starts getting careful it's because she wants to get caught. To hurt some man. Or to have him hurt her. For some women being hurt's a kind of love the recognition that, at least, her man knows she's there. And so Mama never bothered never cared. And so naturally never got caught. It's almost as if Nature is on the side of women like Mama: protecting them because they're too busy making love to bother with such a pettiness as hiding it. Maybe that's the reason girls like me can be careless for years and maybe only get pregnant once or twice or never, and then some poor little kid does it once with her boy friend in a back seat and the very first time she's knocked up. You've stopped shaking, he said, stroking her cheek with

—

—

his fingers.

Well, maybe, she said. Or maybe it's because the rest of what I have to tell you is so awful that it stuns me even remembering; a thing so sickening that it's beyond being even afraid of or wanting to cry about or having a chili over. There are such things, you know. No, dear kind Jase, you

couldn't know. tell me? he said gently. Far beneath the floor, in the empty, darkened drugstore, one of Mister Peace's clocks, ubiquitous and never-resting, struck: a brassy laugh, muffled and predictive of certain pro-

Can you

fessional services.

Something woke Jill up that night, Cristi began slowly. it was Mama and him in the next room. Father was away gone to Austin for a week, he told her. And so, of course. Mama and her latest lover were naked in the big feather-bed it was a hot August night, breathless and humid from the gulf and Juanita outside the open bedroom door, beyond those beaded curtains Mama loved, with a big palmetto leaf in her hand, fanning the air so they'd be cool. Not hot or cool either. They were that they would have felt it

Maybe

—

—

—

The Watchman

143

loved-out and bored, spent-out and silent the way it gets between people when one of them's about to go looking for someone else. And they were glazed and softly giggling from

time to time from the little brown cigarettes Juanita had brought for them that night. So maybe Mama thought it was only a hallucination when she saw Jill come through those chains of twinkling beads, like a little fairy walking out of a glass, dream rain. Jill was wide-eyed and sleepy and maybe she wasn't quite five years old half-scared from a nightmare and she wanted to get in bed with Mama. You that summer know how children think anyone can be Papa just so long

—

—

as

Mama's

there.

And

— —and —Mama took her

so

so

into the

—maybe Mama she was out of her mind on red mary-jane. And time —you know how moves when you're no sense —time was going sideways and the man bed and

really

Jill

lay there

still

didn't believe

so high,

Jill,

don't

rich,

like that, Jase, so there's

to describe

it

was

Juanita's

time

trying

in the

it

bed was laughing at something and Juanita had put the palmdown by now and was singing some old Zapatista lovesong on the bench beneath the gaslight in the hall. Maybe Mama knew and maybe she didn't know sometimes I make myself beUeve she never knew what had happened. It's

leaf

—

easier thinking that.

What did happen? he whispered, feeling the chill spread from her flesh to his own as, on so many other nights, her warmth had come. Jill was raped, she said. What did you think? At four years old, she said, her voice speaking now in a measured careful lightness, an effort against the pressures within her of a cascading hysteria. I got sick that night Juanita told me. They thought I had the yellow-fever and Father got doctors and they piled me nearly smothering under blankets and quilts and comforters to sweat away my fever and the chill. And when it was over for a long time I couldn't even remember what Juanita had told me that night she had the native's gift of making a story rich and real with lights and color and all the fine details: just where the moon stood in the curtains, the way Mama watched and laughed as if it were all a dream she was watching: a dream-lover and a dream-her and now, from heaven or maybe from the green

—

dream-nymph come to please her fading lover's jaded appetite. All of it she told me and even when I could remember, later, I couldn't tell which was real

jungles of her fantasies, a

and which was dream as

if

I

had been

in there high with

— The Watchman

144

them myself

in the bed, seeing it happen and knowing it couldn't and suddenly the sound of Father's car backfiring in the vacant lot between our old house and the market and the excitement and zest in Juanita's deep, quivering voice when she told me how he had come leaping out over the runningboard at the sound of the gunshots from the bedroom

a six-foot mud fence at one vault into the wisteria in our yard and found Mama in her nightgown screaming and hysterical and Jill, bleeding and unconscious on the pillows, and the man who had come, too late, and driven the drunk, sex-mad Mexican off, firing at him in the dark, of course. And missing him, of course. Because there

window and jumped

was no drunken Mexican

that climbed in the window and raped Jill the way Mama and the man and Juanita made Father believe. We lived a little ways out of town on the bay and Father wrapped Jill in his coat and took her in to

—

the hospital at Corpus Christi and got a doctor to quiet Mama's hysteria and came back and drank a tumbler of whiskey the only time, Juanita said, she'd ever seen him drink and he thanked his friend, at least, for trying. And all the time Mama still whimpering, half-doped from what she'd already smoked and the medicine the doctor had given

—

—

her on top of that and the man standing there, shaking his head in sympathy, and stroking the horn-handle of his pistol as if his hands itched to tear it out and go gunning

down

Mexican who had done so terrible a thing and he would say as, in fact, he has kept on saying ever since: "No. No. Vengeance does not mend it. No. Healing my child is all that matters now and helping her poor mother to forget. Prayers maybe, too, for a man so deathly, madly sick that he would do to a child a thing such as this a thing inhuman and yet so dreadfully human, that

Papa

saying, as

too."

And

—

—

all

the

while the noble rescuer

—

the

savior

moving around the kitchen sipping Father's whiskey and fingering his gun butt and begging Father to let him go out and find the Mexican or if not that Mexican at least another who would have, even if he didn't, done the same thing, given the chance; slipping around Father in the kitchen with the that followed him everywhere tiptoeing between his ankles, rubbing against the tooled-leather of his boots. So Father, you see, never could repay the man enough. He kept him with him even when Mama was dead and we had to leave Texas and come eastwards through the towns. And in cats

all

the towns that

man

there with his cats, smiling, fondling

— The Watchman the head of the

little,

long-haired,

145

dark-tressed girl beside

him: Jill, remembering nothing of it or of him: remembering only a horror which even in dreams would be known to her only by the back of its head. And always and always Father's undying gratitude to the man for having tried. And with an equally fixed passion keeping his eye always on Jill, never letting her play with boys even when she was still in middy-blouses and hair ribbons. And what about you. Oris? he said. What were you throughout all this? Still disbelieving, she said. For at least a year. It took at least that long after the night Juanita told me before I believed it. And then seeing Jill in her bath when Juanita would be washing her for bed, I saw the scars. So I knew then. Yes, I knew. And Father would never go away anywhere and leave her unless he was sure that he the man ^Tzchak was there to tell her stories and keep the nightmares away and, perhaps, keep off the Mexican, too, if he came back for more. And never guessing it was Tzchak who had done it any more than he had ever suspicioned that Mama had done what she had done and that not just one time but hundreds. Jase, it wasn't long before I couldn't stand it around the house and that's all it ever was: a house knowing what I knew and having to watch Tzchak coming with us wherever we went all the towns across the Rockies and beyond them eastward the nothing, nowhere towns and Tzchak always there calling Jill his "Little Kitten" and staying close to her so she'd never suddenly remember and tell Father and staying close to Father so he could lie to him in case she did remember and tell and Father keeping them all close to each other because he felt such a safeness that his baby was in such guardian hands when business called him away. Sometimes I used to get sick to my stomach right in the middle of supper and run out to the bathroom and throw up seeing those two men bound together in that queer, weird blend of cautions and misunderstanding. And Jill sitting there eating quietly. With whatever bloody memories she might have had of it hidden so deep that there were never any faces she could

—

—

—

—

recognize.

Do you No,

think she*s ever remembered? he said.

said Cristi. Yet,

it

seems

like

sometimes something

the flicker of a picture in her mind, like someone shuffling a deck too fast to see the extra ace that doesn't belong and then the shufiSing stopped suddenly in will

trigger

off

— The Watchman

146

mid-motion and she'll half-see it and start knowing and something in her will get ready to start screaming out the name. But Tzchak knows Jill. And every time it seems she's when Tzchak senses he's in danger close to remembering he manages to get her of having his face seen in that deck I don't ofT alone somewhere and does something to her know what I used to think it was some kind of hypnotism or a drug he gave her but now I don't know what. At any rate, she'll be quiet again and her face not only peaceful but like she's just beaten him at filled with a kind of triumph something. Maybe that's it something in her that knows and has to have its vengeance on him every now and then. Do you think I mean, is there a chance he has done it to her since? Maybe that's what he does? Well, look at it this way, Jase, she said. Even if Jill would which she wouldn't do you imagine he would dare let him do something for the third or fourth or maybe the two hundredth time that would take away all reason for her tell? No, Jase, not to remember the first? And remembering it's queer it's not that. Tzchak's too smart for that. And yet it makes me think that sometimes Jill remembers, Jase. I found a picture once in the little box where she kept her treasures under the house. She was twelve or thirteen then. Father had never seen the picture. It was one of those quick, hand-colored carnival portraits they used to do down in the Mexican markets: Mama and a man yes, it was Tzchak with his arm around her, both of them a little high on tequila, I guess, and not giving much of a damn about a picture that someone might find and get ideas from later on. Well, Jill knew I'd seen the picture and that very night I remember the windows were open and it was blowing and the first rain Jill got of a bad August storm was scattering over the sills yes, it out of bed and got something from under her pillow spent a kitchen and the went out to and picture the was the pump, scrubbing the by the sink, at minutes good ten man's body, legs and face away with a piece of steel-wool and some soap crying and sobbing as I've never heard Jill so wild that she hadn't even bothered to take it out of cry the frame: she'd smashed the glass out on the pump handle. She still has that picture, too. The last time I was down to the room at Mrs. Moonshine's I saw it on the dresser, still with no glass, still with no sign of the man: just Mama standing there laughing with her colors slightly running and her arm lifted up and disappearing as if she had laid her arm

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

— —

The Watchman

\A1

around an emptiness: a space in time and a nothing in the sunlight of that long ago day.

And

when he looks at that picture, don't want to look into again, Jase. He smiles gently and says it's his favorite picture of his darling Jane Nancy and then his eyes narrow as if they were trying to pierce that mist of nothing in the tinted Texas

too,

I've seen Father's face

and

it's

something

I

noon, almost as if he knew that no woman has her arm up like that, even if it disappears at the shoulder into thin air, unless she's got

around someone and Mama's got that arm-

it

around-someone look in her slightly tipsy face that even a man who knows as little about women as my father would surely know. So maybe there's something in him that knows. and he doesn't know. Yes, he knows She stopped speaking suddenly, lifting her head from the pillow, turning her eyes to the door to the darkened parlor. No, she said. I thought I heard a click. It was something out in the street. Men like my father, Jase, have one code Cris, I heard it too, he said. Did you lock the door to the stairway? she asked. Yes, he said. I think so. It was unlocked when I came in. I think I did. It's nothing, she said. It was something in the street. As I was starting to say: Men like my father have one code they Uve by, Jase, and that code is honor. But on the other hand they only have one love, too, and that love is kin. And sometimes kin-love and code-honor are fighting a terrible fight

—

inside

them

all

Uves.

their

—

As much

as

my

father loves

peace and gentleness, Jase no matter how he sickens at the thought of violence and bloodshed there's always his love for Jill, If he thought anyone was ever going to come near that old wound of hers again Jase, I know what he'd do. He's strong my father but God knows which would v^dn in

—

—

him

if

things

came

to that old

—

—

showdown

again.

As sometimes

in the past they have.

no reason why I shouldn't tell you this, he and I went down to Captina on that bus tonight. Nothing happened. You know it couldn't that I wouldn't want it to. We walked down the bottomland meadow to the dam and watched the catfish playing in the moonlit waters of the locks. That's all. Nothing else. A kiss maybe that was no more than a kiss I'd give my mother. But then suddenly suddenly I knew someone was back there in the Cris, there's

said suddenly.

Jill

—

—

tall

grass of the field.

Someone

in a car

—watching

us.

I

The Watchman

148 didn't

know who it was knew who

see, Cris, Jill

—

i

could couldn't even see. But was. And suddenly, without warnJill

I

it

were shots and bullets all around me in the air, thudding into the concrete along the lock-wall and singing off into the dark. Cristi, it was your father. Well? she said. What do you mean well! he said. After all I've told you tonight, she said. Are you surprised? Even after that awful note with the pasted letters could you be surprised? It was courthouse paper, Jase. After and after what I've tried to help you understand tothat how things have been in our family are you still about night ing, there

—

—

—

my

father shot at

you tonight?

surprised that Aren't you, Cris? he said. man defends the thing he No. Not at all, she said. loves best with the thing he hates the most if he has to. And for my father the thing he hates most in the world is a gun. Jase, I haven't been telling you all this without a reason. Jase,

A

there's all

—

more

that

You

to

I still

haven't

Not much

it

—God

have to

knows, the most important part of

you. out much, he said. just the most important thing of tell

left

—

all for you that may keep you alive, knowing said. A she know, to late already. not too and it's it if believe Jason, if you Cole, he said. who shot me tell want to You mean you think I don't you Well, Cris, And who wants to kill me, too. tell me? know that already? Is that all you want to No, I don't want to, she said. I have to. He got quickly up from the bed, straightening his clothes,

—

tucking in his unloosed shirt-tails, briskly tightening his belt and the knot of his tie. I'm listening, he said. Tell me the thing that, Christ knows, I can see plain enough without your telling me. Tell me that your father will keep on trying to kill me as long as I love her, keep on seeing her, keep on trying to save her from this sick

and crippled family

she's

grown up

in.

God damn it, Jason! she shouted. Will you stop thinking with your cock and use your head for once? Now, listen to what I'm saying!

He

stood at her

feet,

stared at her eyes, smirked at her

and indefatigable femaleness. on, he said patiently. Just know that nothing you say wants to kill me, Cris? Then tell me. will change it. She gazed at him quietly, her face struggling to hold its

eternal

Go

Who

The Watchman

149

parts together; she was sitting now bolt upright in the bed, her fingers clenched in the candlewick spread. Sister, I think you've told about enough tonight, said the voice of Luther Alt from the doorway. And now I believe it's time your young friend went along home and left us to do some talking of our own. For a moment neither of the two moved; it was as if their ears, having heard and passed the words to their wits, now must wait until those wits could believe. With that buoyant, darting stealth of big men he had come into the threshold so abruptly that it seemed to them almost a materialization of him there on the wood: as if he had not come humanly, softly, swiftly up the outer stairs, and crossed the parlor to that brink of their incredulous, astonished privacy. Jason, his head half-turned, saw the Sheriff's shape from the corner of one eye. While Cristi saw nothing and dared not lift her look to the glass that mirrored him in the door, and knowing, needed not confirm it anyway. Young Jason, I don't think you understood me, said the Sheriff, looming against the twilit room behind, waiting, quiet with an awful and infinite patience. Some men in the imminence of peril brighten and sharpen to what seems an inhuman clear-mindedness, others go watery and palsied in the sickness of disbelieving terror; Jason became reckless. Perhaps it was because he was young; perhaps, on the other hand, because he had suddenly become old. Old, that is, with the knowing that beyond the critical instant of certain showdown there is nothing left: a moment of facing-up worth all the odds since beyond it Ues no chance at all, nor even pieces to be saved. Sister, will you tell this boy to leave? Jason sat down again on the seat by the dressing table, staring at Luther Alt.

whispered brokenly: Jase, for God's sake, get out. you were just going to tell me something that would save my life. Jason smiled impudently. Isn't that worth waiting around for? My God, Jase, get out, she sobbed. It*s too late for that now. Too late to tell me who murdered Cole? he said. And who now wants to do the same to me? Yes! Yes! she moaned, straining her face back to the ceilCristi

But, Cris,

ing.

Too

late,

Jason.

Too

late!

Because he's standing there? No! she sobbed. Because it doesn't matter any more.

It*s

— The Watchman

150 too

late!

You'll

would change ways known?

do what

it.

I

you'll do and nothing I can tell you should have known! Christ, haven't I al-

Jason looked at the Sheriff; his lips still livid and quivering with that smile. Or maybe he wants to do it here, Jason said. Get it over with now. Luther Alt looked back, not blinking, his face filled with that mad and imperturbable patience. You're a might rash youngster, he said quietly. Do you

know that, boy? Or maybe I'd

—

this way, said Jason. rather get it here Instead of out of the darkness the way Cole Blake got it. Sheriff. Maybe I'd rather see it coming than get it from an ambush of bushes on the Mound! Boy, I'm asking you again to leave, Luther said, his lids drooping as if from some sudden weighted weariness. And I say to you, Sheriff, go to hell, said Jason. The Sheriff nodded, a swift, slight acknowledging bow of his face, or as if letting something of inconsequence fall

away from

it.

Without having the good judgment, he said, to realize how lucky you are to even have the chance to go away at all having heard all you've heard knowing as much as you know. Think of it that way, boy. Doesn't it strike your mind that you've shaved it close enough already tonight? No man's

—

luck is infinite. Jason, / don't want you here! cried Cristi. My God, if it's some kind of child's pride you have about not running from then run from me. It's me that doesn't want you here. fiim sake get out, Jason. Christ's For shoot me, Cris, Jason said to her, still keeping not Oh, he'll his eyes on the Sheriff's face. There's too much light. Your father likes to do his shooting in the dark. And aren't you a witness, Cristi? Or would you lie for him? And you. Sheriff, don't you like to see people break down and crawl to you for mercy? Don't you want me to stick around long enough for

—

that? I

want

to see nothing of you, said the Sheriff, except your

exit.

Don't you even want to know what it is I want? cried What it is I'm going to get and not your guns nor hell itself can stand in the way of my getting it? Please go home, boy, sighed Luther Alt. Jason.

The Watchman

Go

ahead

—ask me what

I

151

want cried Jason. I

Please, boy.

Ask me, damn you! What is it you want? murmured Luther

Alt, turning his eyes away, his whole massed hugeness expressive of a tireless forbearance. I want Jill, that's what God, I'm going to get her. No, said Luther, rubbing

I

wantl shouted Jason. And, by

his

forehead with his fingers. No,

you're not going to get Jill. Not you nor anyone. Your face is sweating, Sheriff, Jason said. Your eyes look tired and your hand is trembling. Could it be you're not I won't? I'm sure, said Luther. I am entirely sure. Cristi whirled and crawled clawing across the bed toward her father; she looked up at him, wheedling and cajoling, her

so sure

bled-out face trying a quivering

little

smile of persuasion.

can make him go. But not while you're here, she whimpered. Daddy, go away for fifteen minutes and come back then. Daddy, I swear he'll be gone. Yes, that's the way we'll do it. I know Jason will go if I ask him to. Then we can talk. Or maybe, said Luther Alt, you'll spend that quarter hour filling his ears with a little more of your Judas treacheries

Daddy,

listen.

I

—betraying us

all. Is that what you meant to say. Sister? Father, I swear! she sobbed, face-down in her fingers. I won't tell him any more. Father, I can make him go. But I can't do it while you're here! Please, Father. No, said Luther. I will stay. It seems late enough

Fm

coming

as

it

is.

Are you going to

get out of here

now,

boy?

Not

yet, said Jason. Luther's face shot up and his eyes thinned as searching Jason more carefully.

if

they were

In a dozen towns, he said. For forty years I've seen your tragic kind: children singing off into wars infants shouting away in hot-rods; street fights and death rows; dope and switch-blades and chicken-runs and charging headlong into mine-fields or flame-throwers. And every one of you says it's Danger he's hunting. But it's not, boy. It's Death your kind looks for. Wants. Why? What drives you to it? Boy, why do

—

you want so much

to die?

Jason's face softened

and yet with the sag not so much of it was fear not of Luther so much

mind's-ease as of fear; and

—— The Watchman

152 as of

some

had evoked by that question: a

vision Luther

vision of himself hurtling pellmell in a drag-run toward the irresistible precipice and he thought suddenly, anguished, of Cristi's whispers only an hour before: That's just it, Jase.

—and you should

You're not afraid tell

be. That's

why

I

have

to

you.

He

looked up at Luther with a face emptied of all the feckold bravado. Will you listen to me? Jason said. Couldn't you listen to my side of it for just a minute? I've heard your side of it too many times, boy, said the

less,

Sheriff.

promise to go afterwards? Jason said. If I could tell you all of it in three minutes if you'd give me that if I'd promise to go when I was through? All right, said Luther Alt. Well, I'm in love with Jill, Jason said abruptly, addressing the words to his upturned palms and not to Luther's face. And that's about all there is to tell. I love Jill that's all. And it's not anything cheap or dirty like Like it seems to you to be with my other girl here Sister? smiled the Sheriff. Is that what you meant? Cris, he's bending my words into shapes I don't mean, Jason said. She shut her eyes and nodded, telling him silently that it If I

—

—

—

—

was

all right.

What

mean

—

want to marry Jill. know, said Luther Alt. Well, then what right in God's name do you have to stop it? sobbed Jason. Is the thought of it so terrible? No, said the Sheriff. Not terrible. Just impossible. Impossible? said Jason. Impossible and just because you I

this,

is

Sheriff

sir

^I

I

say

it's

impossible?

Just impossible, said Luther Alt. It will have to rest at that.

And you

expect

me

to forget about her and stop because you say it's impossible?

just

seeing her and go away whispered Jason. You expect me to give up the thing I love more than anything on earth because you give it that word impossible? And you expect me to keep my mouth shut knowing that knowing the way you stand guard over her with a gun so that no one can take someone away from you that you clutch and covet with the sickest kind of love on

— —

earth?

—

You

figure

I'll

keep

my mouth

—knowing

shut

what

—— The Watchman

153

know now? Do you think I'll go out of here tonight even if I never saw Jill again and not go tell Mister landers or Chief Smitherman what I know about you that you killed Cole Blake because you couldn't stand to see him have her? That you tried to kill me tonight down at Captina? I didn't try to kill you tonight, boy, said Luther gently. I'd have killed you. If I'd tried to kill you Well, then what in God's name do you call five buUets shot at a person if it isn't meaning to kill them. A warning, said the Sheriff. Do you fancy for one minute that I couldn't have killed you where you stood if I meant to kill you? Do you reckon a man who's handled guns for forty years couldn't have brought you down with one bullet without wasting four more or even the time it takes to squeeze a trigger that many more times? Then you just weren't ready, said Jason. Is that it? You wanted to tease me a little before that one sure bullet comes. All right. Maybe, said Luther Alt. Maybe that's the way I

—

—

—

it

was.

And maybe after that first one killed Cole Blake you found it was so much fun you couldn't end it there so you kept on shooting till you'd torn his head half off with the

—

other four?

Maybe mind

it.

that I

was how

reckon

I'd

was, boy, said Luther Alt. I don't rather have you think it was like

it

that.

Luther shot a sidelong glance at the clock on

Cristi's dress-

ing table.

Yes. All right, he said. As you say, boy. You have one minute and sixteen seconds left to talk. Keep on. Make the most of your three minutes. Why do you want to keep her boxed up and locked in from the very things Life wants her to have? said Jason. Tell

me that. Do you know what

Life wants Jill to have, boy? Yes, by God, I know I do. Sister? said Luther, looking at the bowed figure of the girl on the bed. In your little chat with the boy here tonight your little betrayal of all the terrible secrets of our family did you tell him that? Did you tell him what Life wants Jill to have? But Cristi only moaned now, fallen to one side, her face drowned in the deeps of her pillow. I

think

I

do,

sir.

— 1

The Watchman

54

Boy, I tell you this, said Luther Alt. Though I know I might as well be telling it to the wind out yonder. So it won't matter. I tell you that my little Jill has nothing between her and what you call Life but me nothing to protect her, noth-

—

from the horrors of what you call Life ing to save cruelty and stupidity and suffering. No, you can't understand. You use that word Life as if you'd lived enough of it to know what it means. Well, maybe if you live, someday you will. I'll live, Jason said. I'll live long enough to get Jill! Will you, boy? asked Luther Alt. I will, he said. Unless you shoot me now. That's the only way you'll stop me. Are you afraid to shoot an unarmed her

—

man

in cold blood, Sheriff? Yes, said the Sheriff. I'm afraid to do that. man unarmed armed; in cold blood in anger. Yes, I'm afraid of killing anything that lives. You couldn't understand that you couldn't even believe me if I'd tell you I'd rather die myself than do that. But you'd better damned well believe me when I say I'd do anything that had to be done to keep what you call Life from ever hurting my little girl again. Jason glared at him for an instant, his face working, his eyes brightening as if with some fever-sick intention behind them, and then suddenly he crossed the rug, flung open

A

—

—

drawer, thrust his hand fumbling down among her cool silks and fetched out the pistol. He held it up, dangling it on his thumb by the trigger guard for Luther to see. The way you used this on Cole Blake? he said. Cristi sprang alive from the bed, maddened, and leaped Cristi's dresser

upon him, grappling for the gun. Give it to me! Jase, give it to me. Oh, damn you Jason Hunnicutt! Give

it

to

me!

Damn

to hell,

you! she shrieked,

beating him and tearing with her fingers. Oh, God, how spying and sneaking through my things for thisl could you! God damn you, Jason, give it to me! I took it, away from the night Cole was killed I took it and hid it. I hid it so no

—

one would know! take it, said Luther Alt, the old movement of wearied, He turned away and slumped the long, cold thing behind his I'll

stepping between them with constabulary practice. back to the doorway, stuffing belt, against his shirt, against

the chilled, flinching flesh beneath it. Jason collapsed back the little seat, his face in his palms. It's the murder gun, isn't it? he said.

on

The Watchman Jason,

No, he

155

damn still

you, your three minutes is up! Cristi said. has thirty seconds more, Sister, said the Sheriff.

is the gun that killed Cole Blake. wish to God, Jason mumbled among his fingers, that so that I could have killed you it had been loaded fresh with it just now, Jesus, how I wish to God that gun had been loaded. Then here, said Luther Alt, fumbling at his hip beneath the leather coat and moving across the rug to Jason. Here, boy. This one should do. Take it. This gun's loaded. If you want to kill me so much take it. Here. Jason, through the lace of his fingers, saw the dangling blue-steel barrel, and fought back the impulse to shamefiU

Yes, boy, this

And

I

—

—

tears.

Well, take it, said Luther Alt gently. Wouldn't that solve everything for you? I'm giving you the chance, boy, the chance you might not get again. Get it away from me, whispered Jason. As you wish, boy. I'll not argue, said the Sheriff, bolstering the gun again. Because your time's run out. JasOn got up slowly, keeping his hands over his face still, not wanting either of them to see the shame and the tears his fingers hid, moving toward the door, past Luther Alt, his shoulders shaking with sobs.

You think you've beaten me, don't you! he cried, with his back toward them. You think you've scared me away from her, both of you. Cris, my God, I thought you were my friend. Well you're not. You're worse than him even rotten and selfish inside! Both of you you think you've stopped me and Jill! Well, you haven't! Do you know that? You made it even stronger! That's what you did! Luther sighed, looked at the back of Jason's neck. You've been warned, he said. I can do no more than that. Father, listen to me! cried Cristi. I know what we'll do Father, look at me! Listen, we'll leave again tonight! You and me and Jill and even Tzchak if you want him. There's a bus at midnight. Father! We'll find another town like we've always done. We'll be together again on the move safe again a new town, Father. I won't mind. I always told you I hated all the towns but I didn't mean it. Father That will do. Sister, said the Sheriff. No, listen to me! she raved on, seizing his arm. Think, Father. We've always gone on to the new towns before all the

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

1

—

— The Watchman

156 towns, Father.

The

land's full of towns, Father.

It will

be

all

right again.

All the towns, he smiled. All the towns from here clean back to Christ's Body, Texas? No, Sister. No. Then you want more of it? she shouted. Isn't that it? Oh, my God, Father, hasn't there been enough? Three! Christ above, isn't three enough. Father? Three boys murdered in six years between here and the Gulf. Can you live with that any longer? Aren't you satisfied by now? Don't you ever see the boys in your dreams, Father? Boys with their faces shot away? Does this child Jason here have to be fourth? Is that what you want? I'll not run any longer, said the Sheriff. There are no more towns for us, Sister not in all the land. No. You're right I won't live with it any longer for I can't. And there'll be no more running to the towns. I'm tired. She bent at the waist, slumping to the rug, against his boot heels, her weeping face hidden in the fallen tumble of her tawny hair. Then he worked his boots gently free of the clutch of her fingers, walked slowly toward the door, turned and looked at her. Tired, little Sister, he said again. So tired I've only the always enough strength left in me for one thing. Yes that for that so long as I live. Nor too tired to keep this boy in nor any boy in any town, never this town away from Jill from here to Christ's Body away from my Jill. He seemed indifferent to Jason's presence now; heedless almost of the girl herself: speaking as if only to his mind as men talk to themselves in solitudes. But Jason who, by now, should have been apprehended and overwhelmed by the horrors of that night but who was instead helpless whetted to ever darker ones, had gone. Neither Luther nor his daughter spoke nor moved as he had walked from the bedroom silently and without a word clicked the hall door closed behind him. Cristi, in the glass, had glimpsed his face before he moved away: a face that did not seem to know she was there, nor Luther, nor yet that danger which lay in the air between them all like the acrid, residual chemistry of their violent interaction; it was as if that face were obsessed and fevered, not driven to caution and retreat but, on the con-

—

—

—

—

moving now compulsively, almost dreamily, out into the night as if to confirm one catastrophe with an even greater one. Father, will he go tell Mister Janders? she whimpered. trary,

157

The Watchman

No, said Luther. If it was his mind that moved that boy's that. But legs and hands and mouth tonight he might do that them It's now. just spunk and he's all fever and glands alive he's if tomorrow will And moves that boy tonight. by then. Like a pack of three cocky mongrel dogs chasing a hit by cars and two little lady dog across a street and them with a broken back, even of them dead and the third one,

—

sniffing dragging himself to the curbstones, still yearning, still movalready— dead and hoping, even planning as good as not He'll pain. or ing by glands and not by mind or sense BeSmitherman. Chief tell landers, Sister. Nor will he tell them. cause the warning— my threats— he's heard none of So there is nothing in his mind that wants telling. He paused and shot her a level look of queer-smiling,

—

pensive portention. He won't, Sister, said Luther. But will you? She looked up at him, then away into the air absently, and shook her pain-drawn face negatively.

Are you

sure, Sister?

he

said.

Doesn't he

mean

that

much

to you?

won't tell, she said in a flat voice. No, I won't tell belike it's cause it wouldn't do any good. It's too late for that you stop would it thought too late for everything else. If I screaming out run or him or her or any part of it I would wouldn't. This now is that it to the streets tonight. But it second when it's too late to do anything, you can only close I

—

your eyes and wait for the sound the second when a clock's machinery whirs and clicks and gathers before the bomb explosion—too late to stop the clock or turn it back or even break it. Like that. No. I won't tell your bloody, terrible secrets to them. Father. toward That's as well, said Luther Alt, sighing and turning

on the butt of the deathgun in his shirt, his big fingers recoiling from it, then touchnot so easily ing it again, as if his tactile senses had comachieved the decisions to which his wits were already you, from coming proper be mitted. It wouldn't somehow

the dark parlor, his

hand

resting

—

he

said.

So

I will tell

Mister landers myself.

I

deem

that

proper. Yes.

She was

still

began to which she was unsure whether or

for that brief instant before she

cry again; a moment in instant not he had said that and then for another flickering of it. hearing the believed had unsure whether or not she

The Watchman

158

She threw herself against him; she buried her face between the flaps of the open jacket.

in hia

shirt,

Don't, he whispered, patting her shaking shoulders clumsily, been so long since he had touched her. Don't, it had Sister. Don't cry. Didn't we always know that it would have for

to

come to this someday? There, there, now. Oh, Father, she wailed. Father, I always loved you! Why, yes, now, he said. Yes, now. I've known that, Cristi. Cristi? she grieved. Cristi? After all these years of Sister,

Father,

I'm

again.

Cristi

Father,

just

listen

to

us.

We're

really talking. Cristi,

he said.

I

wanted

Can you understand?

It

to talk.

But

purely wouldn't

it

let

wouldn't let me. me. Daughter, I

never hated you. Oh, I knew, she said. I knew you didn't hate me. But I knew you didn't love me either and I'd rather had hate than that. He tilted back her streaked and haggard face, ugly with the loveliness of sorrow, and looked down at her. Listen to what I say, Cristi, he said gently. You think I never forgave you when my Jane Nancy died horning you. And you think I've sat in judgment's seat on you since you've grown and run around the earth squandering your precious pennies on candy-love like a child on a Saturday night. No. I won't leave you thinking that. I'd come back wailing from the grave to make you hear if I thought I'd gone away and left you with a memory of me so broken-hearted in you and so spoiled. Do you hear me, Cristi? Do you understand me? Yes, she sobbed. Do you think I've gone along through all this bloody, awful exodus thinking that it was easy for you? That maybe wasn't harder ever for you than even for me? Yes, it having to live with harder. I know that, he said. And you having to keep that still tongued; that knowing and still keep maybe even laugh. And left to stillness and still have breath that it kissing busy keeping that pretty mouth of yours so would never have time to tell. Why, sometimes I fancy you're

—

—

the bravest of us

all, little Cristi.

She clung to him as if her arms disputed some deadly contest between themselves and the down-pulling earth which lay one story and a cellar beneath the floor. In that strange, close, clumsy embrace: awkward with years of distance and disuse, it seems hard to guess which one holds the other up from falling. But now her face brightened again with that

The Watchman feverish, last-ditch illusion:

sensibly

(

doomed them,

whimpering the words as if she hoping savagely, before

disbelieving,

they even reached her lips. Father, listen, there's still a chance? she whispered in a breath hollow with the sickened certainty that there were really none left. Isn't there, Father? Like the times before? You and me and Jill, Father, to another place? Cristi, Cristi, he said gently. What other place? Think, Cristi. What places in the end for all of it, Cristi? The electric chair ran away before! No, Father! she cried. can run

—

We

I

(

159

New

again.

We

places!

The places, Cristi, he said. Think of the places. The hangman's noose, Cristi? The gas chamber? The long, slow deathin-life of a penitentiary cage? Or, at best, the staring wooden corpses standing dead-alive along the giggling walls of some asylum. Are those the places you'd have me ask for when I buy the next three bus tickets out? Don't you know, Cristi, that those are the only places left now? Would you have it end in one of them? No, Cristi. You're too brave and honest to kid yourself. Can't you fairly hear all the doors closing all the doors but those doors all the doors to the little towns closing one by one. They've been closing behind us for years, Cristi, a few at a time and now, listen. Can't you hear a great host of all the rest of them clicking, slamming, latching shut against us in citizen terror. All the doors to all the places. All except those little rooms that the world in sickness and complicity has painted green like life to shut us up with dark like death? She dragged away from him, wincing as if at fresh tendrils torn loose from him and never to touch again; she tottered to the bed and sat, looking wanly at him in the

— —

mirror.

with the fumbling gesture of a lonely guest who has overstayed a call. She leaped from the bed as if she had to face him full to savor this last look at him; as if she were wanting to fix some last image of him, like a snapshot, to keep against the I'll

go now, he

said,

times.

—him?

You're going to she said.

And

tell

you'll

go wake up Mister landers now?

Father, where are

you going? Tell

me!

To do the first thing first, he said, in the parlor's darkness now. Mister Christmas landers will have to be convinced that

The Watchman

160 I am And I

My

a murderer

if

the thing

is

to be brought off proper.

reckon that won't be easy.

God, what do you mean? she

cried.

What

are

you

talk-

ing about?

landers has looked murder in the face for decade upon tiring country-trials, said Luther Alt. Ain't it queer how a man can look at something so often he doesn't recograzor-bright. No, I nize it any more? Janders is bright

decade of

—

mean

But still and all he's honed that Sheffield blade of his so keen that once somewhere sometime he cut the nerve of his own bright brain's instinct and never even I've known him in a hundred country felt it. I know Janders towns. He thinks me a man incapable of murder. So it would be a foolishness to just go tell him. Mister Janders, sir, I am your killer. A foolishness. No. Daughter, I've lived with this, thought this, dreamed this out so long. I can't be wrong. Mister Christmas Janders must be proved to that I'm a murdidn't

stupid.

—

derer!

Father, you're insane! she cried, racing to the bedroom door, staring through tears at his great hunched shape by the hall door with his hand on the knob and the thin bar of light from its half-opened slit slicing his eye, cheekbone and jowl with a thin bar of fire. It's very reasonable, he said. Mister Christmas Janders must

be proved to that I'm a murderer. How? she whispered into her knuckles, with her face

bowed in terror, seeing him blurred through her lashes. Why, with my gun, he said, and in the moment when he opened the door and slipped swiftly into the dingy yellov/ of the hallway, she saw the oiled-blue shine of the pistol in his fist. And now, fainting and sick against her door jamb, listening to his anguished progress

down

the stairwell, Cristi

heard from him for the first time ever in her life the last sound she would ever hear in his: the diflBcult and strangled choke of Luther Alt's dry tears.

There were clouds now; scudding wispish herds of them racing across the moon above the rose of Sharon: small and torn clouds scurrying in straight flight as though to some appointed urgency, racing their way clean round the earth perhaps to meet the night tomorrow and come to earth then in the fumed, immobile congregation of autumnal river fog. And now, as if because of that not only: earthbound no more, they skimmed along those starry altitudes and left the moon-

The Watchman

161

its chilled, nocturnal brilliance. Dede slept a stone in the deeps and patchwork shambles of her brass bed's eiderdown. Dede always slept good on clear nights. It was the tarnal, teasing fog that kept her muttering and fitful in her quilts: and even in brief, snatched sleeps it taunted her with dreams and on such shrouded nights she would groan, creaking and cursing, out of bed and go suck half a tin up of cold coffee or a few, gorge-scouring drags of bright hurley from her cherrywood pipe and then go peer out all of it out there into the mists and perceive that it was eighteen-ninety as it had been once, was now, and would be always when the fog so appointed it: a fog doing, as does the snow, whatever it wishes with the sorry, daytime shape of things: the fog all white, with shadows and shapes without time, and not a fact in sight; only the everlasting truth of fireplugs miraculously become long dead and well-mourned family pets and the fantasy of traffic meters standing like the thin, austere captains of the vanished steamboats' century.

washed valley to like

—

But Dede sleeps now:

this clear, this

almost noonday, this

moonbathed brilliant night in that September. For otherwise she would long have been up, sloshing for her optical dentures in the dusty tumbler by her bed, stomping off in her bare feet to the pantry to throw curses at the night-comer who stood beneath the rose of Sharon now, pelting pebbles against a window of her second floor. The sash flung up, the lead weight rumbled in the window jam^bs, the glass panes chattered.

Who is it? called

the girl softly, frightened.

me. Jason. Jason! Whatever in the world are you doing down there? Have you any notion how late it is? I had to see you, he said in a sort of whispering shout, above the river wind. Jason, my father'll be howle directly, she gasped. I don't care! he said, exultant in that moving, chilled dark. I love you. I had to see you. Put on something. Come down Jill, it's

for a minute.

Jason,

it's

freezing out! she said.

Yet now something

I'll

catch

my

death.

in her as thrilled as he; something in

her already deliciously decided. It's awful important, he said. Something I've got to ask you. Now, Jill, tonight. It won't wait. There's no time. Jason, this is crazy! she cried softly back, then paused. What is it you want to ask me?

— The Watchman

162 I

can't ask

laughed.

It's

it

the

with you up there and me down here, he kind of asking that's just not right for

shouts.

me, she said, as close to pleading as he had ever heard Oh, Jason, now I won't be able to sit still even if I don't come down! Oh, wait. Only a minute though. Wait And scarcely before her silhouette was gone from the window he was racing round to the door stoop, waiting the wait she had ordered: a centuried minute, breathing the essence of the jasmine now ghostly in the cold touch of hinted winter and smelling in it that evocation of Jill: scent of hair, fleshscent and the always fresh-lavendered sweetness of her clean and shabby clothes: she had her mother's old coat on over her foot-length nightdress when she opened the door. And in the dim hallway's shine he saw, beneath her scolding frown, the pride, the flustered, pleased glow of the wonderful waiting for words which could not wait. Her lips were cold till their softness was pressed in and then his own mouth felt their warmth. Now, she said. You can't have any more kissing till you tell me! Yet still he held her close against him, as if he could not feel her close enough, silent for a moment in the fancy that all the things he could imagine to tell her would flow through the fabrics between them, into her breasts, her thighs, all her inquisitive, wise flesh, so that the words could wait, or never be needed at all. Now what's this midnight secret? she pleaded. I want to take you away with me, he whispered in the hollow of her throat. Jason, what? she gasped. What did you say? I said I want you to run away with me, he cried softly, hugging her and .swinging her bare feet off the threshold and Tell

her.

into the air.

down. Oh, Jason, you don't know what you're saying, she gasped, her great, dark eyes wide in the Jason, put

me

moon-silver of her face. Oh, yes I do, my love! he laughed, swinging her ankles dangling round him in full circle and putting her toes back again on the wooden stoop. Tonight. Now. On the midnight the things you'U bus. I love you, my Jill! You'll pack a trunk wrap her in a little need. We'll take your little dog along shawl. Then you must write a note to your father

—

—

The Watchman

163

Oh, no, Jason, she cried, struggling away. Oh, let me think, You're saying it all too fast. It's happened to me fast, too! he whispered, feeling with

at least.

his lips for her

clear to

mouth again

my mind

in the dark. Everything

—

came to me things them matters now. Jill

tonight. Things

came we'll

someday. But none of is all Jill with me. Oh, listen to me, honey, that matters now and don't keep pulling back. She shook her head, not negatively, but as if trying to clear away some obscurement between her thoughts and his. Jason, I need to think to think my brain's aching and talk about

—

—

—

with all this: so much, so quick, she whispered, touching her closed lids lightly with a thumb and finger tip. She gave a little gasp that was half pleasure, half sob. No boy, she said, ever asked me that before. To marry him! I know, he cried softly. Oh, I knew that because I wanted rattling

—

that to be.

Jason, this dizzy. it

My

is

all

too racing

she

fast,

legs are like water. Jason,

—

why

mumbled. can't

we

I

feel so

talk about

some more later: not tonight. For reasons, he said. Reasons you wouldn't argue with me

for.

What

reasons, Jason? she said, a

little

gravely.

reasons that make me love you, he lied lovingly. Those are the best reasons after all. Jason, tonight? Oh, Jason, I don't think No, Jase, I couldn't tonight. Oh, it's all too quick! You love me, don't you? he whispered casually, in a sudden squeeze of terror. She stared at him carefully, slowly, her gaze feasting upon his face in the shadow of leaves and all the dying flowers. Yes, she said. I love you, Jason Hunnicutt, I do love you. More than anyone before? he asked. More than Cole? Her face was bright and tinted with the breathless excitement of a child at the prospect of a new game. Yes. I love you, Jason, she went on. More oh much more than ever I loved him! Because never could I fancy Cole asking me that to go away with him. To marry. And as much as the times when I wanted more than anything to run away forever from something here that's dark and sad and dangerous I could never think of that with Cole.

Oh,

just say for the

—

—

Then you ached.

will?

he whispered, squeezing her hands

till

they

The Watchman

164

—

No yes. Oh, Jason, I can't think it out straight! she gasped. There's something here that holds me. And, for the life of me, I can't even remember what that thing is. Tell me what it is that keeps me here, Jason? Who, Jason? Nothing, he said. No one. There's no one to keep you here. There's everything to make you want to run away with me. Yes, Jason, you're what I want to run away with. But, Jason, what is it I've wanted to run away froml she went on. Oh, you can't know the times it's come over me only flickers of it: they never last long enough for me even to re-

—

—

member

a terrible wanting to run.

me away from something

To

find

—from someone

someone

to lead

here.

Isn't being in love reason enough to go with me? he said. Yes no, she said. Yes. Btit no, too. Oh, Jason, you're making me think too fast. It's coming all checkered, all broken in my mind pieces of thoughts, not whole ones.

—

—

Wait, Jason, let me think. Oh, wait. You're shaking, he said. You mustn't shake, darling. It's so cold, she said. I'm so scared. Do you want my jacket round your shoulders, over your coat? he asked gently. Your jacket wouldn't warm my scaredness, she sighed. Oh, there should be rooms in the world for talks like this, he sighed. Rooms just for that. People shouldn't have to talk about such important things as this out-of-doors. In the wind and nothing but the cold moon of a fall night to keep them

warm.

—

you promise me something But you'll have to promise first. Anything, he said. Well, you can come upstairs with me, she said. And we can talk in my room. But you'll have to promise to leave in five Listen, she said suddenly. If

have an

^I

idea.

minutes. Well, he said. Sure. But there's your father to keep in mind. Are you afraid, Jason? she said. said. Not any more. No. Then will you promise? she cried softly. Five Jason. Not a second longer. Promise? Don't you want

No, he

minutes, to

come?

promise, Jill. Then come, she breathed, and grasping his hand in her fingers drew him after her up the shafts of lamplight that fell in black and yellow zigzag down the scooped and narrow stair-

Yes, he said.

way. She said:

I

No

boy has ever stood where you stand now,

The Watchman

165

—

Jason Hunnicutt, beside my dresser by my picture of her. Look at her, Jason. Here. Isn't my Mama beautiful? She was very beautiful, he said, taking the peeling chrome

frame

in his fingers.

Not was, Jason. 7^.' she cried. Look at her face there, Jason. Then look at mine. Can't you see it? There's not a shade, not a hair of difference. Even that dress she's wearing why, it's yonder in my clothespress now. Do you want me to put it on

—

for you?

you like you look, he said. Don't change how you look now. Yes, I can see. Like the picture. Like her. Not like her. I am her, she said. In every way that really counts. Jason, that's the only way we can keep people from being dead. By being them. But then I was always Mama. Even before. Daddy says that. I

love

we've only a few minutes. Five, she laughed. You promised. And she knelt and scooped up her little white dog: fat and foohsh with sleep, long silky hair round its face and feet; it had roused itself from its corner cushion and come waggling to her toes, shaking its face and yawning, trying to be awake Jill,

enough Jill,

to

make

a decent

think about

it

show

now, he

of pleasant welcome. said. Oh, please say

—

you

she beautiful my BamBam? murmured, hiding her lips in the little dog's silky neck. Isn't

she

beautiful

pretty?

Isn't

will. Jill

My

BamBam.

he said quietly. Won't you tell me now? Yes? Say yes? Tell you what, Jason? she whispered. Yes to what? The thing I asked you down there on the steps, he said. She looked at him strangely, put the little dog down, stood a moment, a baffled frown on her wide, smooth brow. She looked at him again and then shook her head a little and sat down suddenly, sideways, on the edge of the bed, staring at Jill,

the flowered squares of the quilt. Mama made this, she said absently. Pieces of her oldest dresses she wore when she and Daddy were first dresses so beautiful and old. Aren't they beautiful, married. So old

—

—

Jason?

He

sighed, nodded, sittmg miserable

on the edge of the

rocker by the dresser. Jason, what did you ask me? she said then. Everything's gone so fast in my mind tonight torn pictures, colored paper faces. I can hardly think. Jason, do you know you're the first boy who's ever been in this room since I've lived

—

— The Watchman

166

Can you imagine

it? Cole always wanted to come up put an end to that. Because I knew good and well why he wanted to be up here with me alone. It's such a shame about Cole he was so good, so kind. He was someone I could have loved nearly as much as 1 love you if it hadn't been for that other him. Why did he have to be that way? His hands always wanting to stroke me Uke I was some kind of cat. Jason, do you know I was always fighting with him, pushing his hands away? Sometimes he was like a crazy person. Jill, there's only a few minutes, he said. Oh, no, she cried with a gentle laugh. There's forever, Jason.

here?

here. But

I

—

Only minutes for me, he

You

said.

said that.

You made me down

promise. Minutes to ask you again what I asked you there.

at him, still dreaming out her puzzle, smiling a with her face tilted to one side. What was it you asked me, Jason? Jill, I asked you to come away with me, he said. Tonight. On the midnight bus. Yes, she said. Oh yes, I remember now. You want to take me away from all the dark, evU danger that's here among

She stared

little

what you want to take me away from, Jason? want you to come with me because I love you, he

us. Isn't that Jill,

said.

I

Not because of anything

Yes,

I

know, she

You

else.

But the other reason

said.

—

is

strong,

Jason like a dark, heavy cloud a mist with fear and death inside it. A fog with sudden, jarring flashes inside it and someone being dead beside you when it's over. Don't you, Jason? Sometimes I see it daytimes when I'm not even sleeping I dream, Jason and I want to run away. Sometimes I can't stand it for the wanting and the of someone to take me away from that cloud dream face that's always there inside it. I know, he said. It will all go away when we're alone some-

Jason!

—

feel

it,

don't you,

— —

where together.

And he I

said.

No more

bad dreams then,

The

terrible thing

love very much.

And

about that face

—

it's

well,

thinking that face would ever do

You him

Jill.

the terrible thing, she went on, heedless of anything

don't

tonight.

know him, he

me

said.

it's

is

just

that

it's

someone

purely laughable:

harm.

Not

like I've

come

to

know

The Watchman

167

Him, Jason? she murmured, looking up

Who? You know who, Oh, no, she

Mama's

face.

he

And

Your

said.

said. It's

that's

at his eyes again.

father.

—

not his face

—

I almost see. It's hers Jason. Mama, who'd never surely and surely not some-

it's silly,

—

hurt a hving creature. Not me one I loved. No, Jason. Not beautiful Jane Nancy, my lovely mother. She never harmed a Uving soul! Oh, Jason, I have the most awful headache. It's like the one I got the night poor

Cole died.

Maybe quick.

by asking you so you so much. It has to be

spoiled everything, he said,

I I

Jill,

couldn't wait. I love

tonight. I

know, she

said, lying

back on the bed and touching her

forehead gently with the knuckles of her hand. It's very sweet. It's very beautiful of you, Jason, to want to take me away. Oh, Jason, I feel like dying every time I imagine something happening to you.

Nothing's going to happen to me, he said. It might, Jason, she said in a voice so soft that he could scarcely hear and the little dog BamBam whimpered suddenly and stepped down from her cushion and, standing a moment looking at Jill, wagging her tail uneasily, went then to the bedside and looked up at her, making little gasps: a queer, choked whimpering. Sometimes I have these pictures in

Of you being Jason: Mama's be

Mama—so

my head, she went on. then and then I see her face, face. Oh, it's too horrible. Because it couldn't

dead.

gentle.

Look

and see how Mama's face anyone.

Is

it,

No, he

Not me,

—

And

at is

me, Jason. Look at my face a face that could never hurt

Jason?

said.

you know what

Jill,

Jason,

she said abruptly

think about you. and with a kind of

I

oblique sternness. I'm talking about Mama's face. He glanced over at the face of the paper woman, blurred and drowned in its fading suns, amid the, even originally, improbable colors of fiesta cheapness, arm raised and vaporising into her extinct lover. No, it's not that kind of face, he said. Oh, Jason, I'm cold cold, she cried softly, covering her eyes with her fingers. head aches and I'm cold. And it's fear that makes the cold, Jason. If only I could run away. Maybe someday Daddy would forgive me maybe he would.

—

My

But even

if

he didn't

—

—

I

wouldn't care. Not

if

someone could

— The Watchman

168

—

me away from that face the cloud and the dream I That dream when I'm wide awake. Horrible horrible! Jill, that's why I'm pleading, he said suddenly, rising and going to her side at the bed's edge. To take you away tonight. I think, she said. Yes, I think I could. Daddy would be so

take

—

see.

I think I could. Jason, I really do. don't wait. In a minute you'll change your mind, he

sorely hurt. Btit Jill,

bending over her. She turned her gaze to him, her face illumined and beautiful with fresh kindled resolution; yet still some darkness behind the wide, dilated pupils of her eyes suggested a savage effort at what her stumbling mind seemed now regarding as a last chance, a fevered, valiant thrust toward some terminal try for safety and love. We'd hve together in a little room like this just the two of us, she cried softly. With little pretty things set round on things we both love. Mama's picture shelves and tables somewhere always where you could look at it and see me when I was gone to the store to buy things for our supper. Oh, Jason, I can vision it so clearly. Just the two of us children living forever in a playroom full of love. We'd play games and tell stories and read great poems to each other and hear grand music on our little victrola. Jason, can you see it? You wouldn't mind Mama's clothes I wear, would you, Jason? and I mend them when the seams give I keep them so clean or when they get holes. Would you, Jason? You wouldn't

cried,

—

—

—

mind? No, he said. You know what you wore. Oh, but

I'd

I

wouldn't mind.

I

wouldn't care

always be dressed to look pretty, she

said. I'd

buy little scatter-pins and flowers so the old things would look different every day. Jason, we'd be like children in a playhouse all our own! And we'd fix a Uttle bed for BamBam to sleep in the corner where the morning sun comes in the window. She loves the

light!

Oh, Jason,

I

can see

it.

new Jill for us to love. a new Jason. Would you name a boy for me, Jill? A boy? she murmured. Jason, why would there be a boy with us? Jason, what do you mean? a new Jason for us to

And Maybe

presently, he said, there'd be a

—

love? baby, he said. Jill, we'd have a baby. She turned her eyes to the picture on the dresser scarf, staring at it a moment, then seized her full lower lip in her white teeth and shook her head slowly.

A

The Watchman

169

Oh, no, Jason, she said. I don't see that at all. Oh, Jason, no! No! Never! But, Jill, we'd be married, he said, sitting on the bed beside her. Jill, people who love each other always have that. You don't understand, she said. Jason, no. That's not how it would be at all. We'd be together Jason, children in a room our own. We'd love each other and be kind. We'd feed each other from our fingers and it would be love, Jason, love. It wouldn't it couldn't be that, because that's not love! Jason, tell me you didn't mean that about babies. Oh, please, Jason. No. He felt cold now; cold as she had been in the wind, in the light of the warmthless moon; but he shrugged and smUed, looking at her, shamed by the shame she was making him

—

—

feel. Jill,

I just

day and

room with you all the time, make love to you, he said. Then it's not like I saw it then.

couldn't live in a

night,

and not want

to

she said. Well, I see. Then it's not like that at all. Isn't there any boy on earth who could want to be with me like that? in a room where we could love and sing and play with BamBam and tell each other stories by the windowsill on nights of moon? just that I see,

—

—

—

just love.

Jill, you're just frightened of easy and gentle. I'd teach you.

it

now, he

said.

I'd

be so

Teach me what? she said in a voice suddenly softly harsh. Teach me what, Jason? To die? No, Jill, he said. I'll be patient. We'd have time you'd

—

have years to learn. Not to die either, Jill. To learn to live. Something new and more wonderful than anything you ever dreamed. No, Jason, she sobbed suddenly, and then her face resumed its mask of resolute control. Nothing wonderful nothing new either. You're the same as all the others. And for a while tonight I thought you were different. He stared at her an instant, bowed his head suddenly to place a swift kiss on her cringing mouth, and then got up and walked briskly back to the rocker. It can be Uke you want, he lied. If you want, I'll make it the way you dreamed it. I won't touch you. Oh, but I can't believe you now, Jason, she said. I'U prove it, he said. Jill, come away with me and I promise I won't touch you for months. Not for as long as you want

The Watchman

170

Jill, I swear never if you don't want me to. And ever once I break my promise you can leave me. He was sweating now, despite his chilled hotness: and every cell of his body ached and swelled with a scalding want. He felt ashamed. And the shame grew sharper when the thoughts which he could not restrain came goatish and lustful, leaping the fences in his mind. He got up and went to the bed's edge again, looking down at her with his face fixed in a spUt visage of ambiguity: his lips trembling with love and tenderness while his eyes above were hot with the Janus contradiction of a furious and unappeasable affront. You want a child to marry you, Jill. You don't even want a boy to marry you much less a man. You want a child it

like that.

if

—

playmate \n that httle room somewhere. Jill, I'm not a chUd. I'm a man. You've got to learn that now. He sat suddenly on the bedspread and leaned over her, touching her cold lips with his mouth, waiting, brushing them gently, waiting for some answering press, some warmth, though she did not move: no inch of her, her lips deathlike in a melancholy dream of shut-eyed wakefulness, and he waited still an instant more and nothing of her seemed to hve and hope rose in him then that when he pressed down, embracing her, that it would be a miracle of lifting Lazarus: and now his feeling nothing but her and his flesh leaping toward her hke a leashed and yearning ram toward his ewe in rut: his hands on her now, fumbling at the pathetic, antique pearl buttons of her close-clasped nightdress, her breasts warm on his finger-ends as he pried their tight ripeness

jumping free from the cupped underclothes and pressed the cold, risen nipples in his palm.

Jason, sighs.

my God my God my God, she wailed me die\ And the

No. Jason, don't make

pleats of her mother's ancient skirts

now

wind of preposterous lifted and tumbling in a

clenched thighs and rounded loins and in himself heedless now, hating himself now more even than that intransigence in her, something in him knowing that he was ruining it all forever between them both but his hands now moving at the petition not of mind but of some other and more heedless, remorseless insistence of wholly endocrine instruction. He heard the taut silk tear, felt suddenly against his fingers with a scalding freshened impulse her moist and cloven gender and the curled, ferncool fleece of her mystery. When suddenly she seemed to

round her something

slender,

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171

rouse and now her hands were tugging at his sleeves, seeming to him at first to draw him to her, so that he stopped, lifted his eyes to hers, saw them staring down at him, indifferently almost, uncaring any longer, he thought, but then she was whispering something, her eyes glazed in that limbo beyond the utmost infinities of dread. Then look at me there, she whispered, covering her face then with the backs of her hands, hiding her face's shame and horror from his seeing. Look at me down there. Yes, I mean it. See for yourself. And even lifting her hips from the bed and slipping her body down free from the bunched skirt-pleats so that he might see. Yes, she murmured. You can see them, those white, ragged can't you, Jason? They're still there lines. They're scars, Jason. And he saw them, as Cristi had told it: the striated and livid web upon her flesh that a strike of lightning might have left: the branching, cicatrice web of them rising Uke a delicate, irregular lace beneath the pink quaking smoothness of her abdomen. Scars, she sobbed again, dry-eyed. And do you know who made them there? Yes, he said quietly, his passion suddenly subsided beneath the chilled dousing of her icy grief. No, you don't, she murmured into her knuckles. You couldn't know. It was Cole's fingers who made those scars on Jill. Oh, Jill remembers. Cole Blake's fingers that night she could not keep them away till it was too late and they tore the silk and then tore Jill. Well, are you satisfied now? Or does Jason want to make some more white scars there on Jill. They bleed at first but then they heal imtil they're white. Like a white crocheting down there. Let me up please.

—

Excuse me, would you let me up? He drew away in a misery and stunned, shameful sorrow, watching as she straightened her clothes, pressing the old, dark pleats down again across her knees and slender calves and rising from the bed, brushing past him as if she saw not him, nothing, lifting her fingers to re-order the tousled, spilling tresses neatly around her shoulders as if she were rising to meet a guest, moving now to the dresser by her mother's picture and humming sofUy to herself in the mirror; her smile belying the shackled frenzy in her eyes. Cole did that to Jill, she murmured in a lilting singsong to him in the glass. Or was it only Cole? Weren^t there three more? Sometimes Jill's memory's just so poorly she can't even manage the grocery Ust. Only Cole? Weren't there three more? Juanita could tell you but Juanita's gone to

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172

Christi for the morning to shop while it's cool before the heat of the afternoon rises. My, my, these August days. Where's my Httle girl my darling? She smiled at him with the smirking, sluttish deference of a morning housewife teasing the iceman.

Corpus

—

Mister, you mustn't mind my looks, she simpered, tucking in place. I know my hair's a caution of a morning. lock a gone to Austin for some business or other and Mister's My it's just me and my darhng little honeybaby home here and, of course, my jewel of a maid Juanita. She'll do my hair when she gets back this noon. I declare there's nothing that beats a half-breed Indian woman when it comes to maids and I don't mean one of them whores from the government reservations either. Don't mind my talk. Or does it shock you, Mister? Well now you just best get used to me for I'm purely outspoken and I hold with calling a spade a spade. half of them It's true about them Zuni women though all. not with gracious knows what I'd let one of diseased them mop my patio. You likely know that though, being a gentleman who looks like he knows his way a little among women. Well now I don't mean indiscriminately, understand, but a lady can tell when a gentleman's been here and there and around. Or, naturally, I wouldn't be talking to you. Heavens, I wouldn't even let you sit on the edge of my bed if I thought you'd ever gone finagling round one of those Zuni whores. Juanita's clean and neat as a pin. You'll hkely

—

meet her

very forenoon! He watched, aghast, transfixed and silent: her fawn-shy primness vanished now and her body, in its fugue-Uke transition to almost instant, sensuous ease, swaying beneath her this

movements of skillfully undecided invitation: rumorous of a confirmed and practiced boudoir expertise. Jill? he somehow managed to breathe the name. Jill? she answered with a brisk and earthy chuckle. I dechilclare I don't know where that child's got to. My lands!

clothes in the

yet

—

—

dren these days especially little Jills. I swear that child's a worse

girls.

vamp

And

especially

at four

little

than most of

those glamour-girl picture stars at thirty. She'll be in directly and you'll see with your own eyes. Jill? Oh, Jill? she yelled. She just will go play with those little Mexican kids down by the docks and there's just nothing I can do nor say to stop her. Well, I don't reckon it'll harm her any. I declare, Juanita'll be back this forethere's not a drop in the house noon. I'd offer you something cool. Tequila? You fond of

—

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173

your name now? Never mind it. No anyways. I declare, I'm the world's worst when it comes to names. So that for this terrible interval, at least, Jason could not speak to her at all and could not move to touch her. He could only sit in baffled, stunned fascination: seeing her move now, speaking, gesturing and totally existent within the captivity of her hallucination as if forever she had been this illusory, troubled soul and not the reality: the fragile, stilted beauty of the girl he knew: as if this latter her had been a lengthy madness and the other had been her truth. Her voice now sometimes sniggering, cynical, now lowered tequila, Mister?

What

sense you telling

is

me

murmurous, honeyed tones of wily, confiding enticement, now ragged and whining with vexation as if at some indecency imputed to her by the spying nastiness of neighbors. And yet for all its frightful authenticity he could perperhaps no more than the frailest layer ceive beneath it beneath it ^the child playing its game and wholly believing the game: a Uttle girl in boas and outsized beaded dress, dainty feet in loose and clopping bedroom mules, her child mouth inaccurately smeared with lipstick as if she had been eating red candy, play-housing: though not as a little girl shut in on a rainy day might mime her mother in grown-up clothes but rather ^ child forced to present with horrible and depraved artistry the tawdry, strutting airs of an accomplished slut; a child-puppet helpless in the grip of a dybbukmanipulation: the voice of JiU, the delicate and vestal Jill face and fingers, Jill bones and adolescent coltishness of Jill now become and being all that jaded and piteous duphcity: every inflection, gesture and leer, each thrust of breast and adept roll of trim hips translated with exquisitely accurate and deadly precision into the whole nervous, mincing repertoire of a languid nymphomania. So that Jason could only watch and, watching, move from the initial dreadfulness of incredulity into an even finer torture: belief. Thinking at first that it was a mistake of his own senses, thinking next that it was a joke of her own invention, thinking then that it was a game of her unaccountable capriciousness, finally reasoning that she was in the grip of some deranged and temporary hysteria. And thioking that, perhaps from seeing it once done in a film, got up and slapped her lightly across her babbling cheeks. She drew back smiling, touched the pink finger-marks with her hand, giggled. Well now, I like a man, she said, who's just a httle rough to the

—

—

— The Watchman

174

on a

lady. Yes,

though

I

do.

I

wouldn't want no

man

beating

—blacking my eyes and marring my beauty.

I

me up

declare,

Juanita says I've got the most delicate complexion she ever saw. Now just look a little and made mouths at her face in the glass. look at them four little pink marks you made on me. They'll be there for a whole hour. That's how frag-ile

She bent

—

just

complexion is. I get the tiniest little bruise on my thigh and it's months before it fades. I just don't dare do heavy housework because of that. My husband's so particular he says I got the most flawless white body he ever seen. Aren't you awful! Just look at those little red finger-marks you left. A whole hour it'll take for them to fade away. Unless, of course, you kiss them. Not that I'd let you, mind. But if I did, let's say. I know for a fact they'd go away in a minute. I'll bet you haven't the slightest idea how a woman's skin responds to affection. Well, now, you know what I mean by affection. I mean, you just look at so many of these young girls and married women these days shadows under their eyes, all blotchy complected, well, now, it's all because of this terrible war: all the fine, strong young men off somewhere fighting in Italy and the Philippines and heavens knows where all, and those poor young girls and married women just not getting enough, to put it plain. That's why their skin's that way. It's just like it was tattooed right there on their cheeks in plain words: I'm not getting it steady. Oh, my. I sure wish Juanita was back. I could sure do with something tall and cool and tinkly. Are you comfortable? Why not loosen your necktie. I'm not the least bit stuck-up nor formal. Once you get to know me you'll find out I'm the frankest, easy-going creature the good Lord ever made. Oh, do be comfortable, Mister Mister Well, I declare, I never can keep names in this little featherbrain head of mine more than two minutes. Blake. That's it. Mister Blake. Are you comfortable, Mister Blake? Mister Cole Blake. My that's a sweet-sounding name. I declare, it just goes with you somebow. Cole like cold. And Blake something so manly My Mister's always telling me I'm too skinny. Thins the word he uses and I just can't abide it. You don't think I'm thin, do you? Honestly, now. Do you think I'm too skinny, Mister Hunnicutt? Stepping back from him now, hands behind her, drawing the old dress taut against the lithe roundness of her womanchildness: and Jason now, hopeful perhaps that her slip into

my

—

—

—

—

—

—

\

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175

name was a movement toward reality, imagined that he could perhaps kindle that ember of sanity into the whole real warmth of his Jill once more, moving against her suddenly now with his arms around her and his mouth, passionless as if he were about to suck snake venom from a rattler's strike, pressing down hard upon her lips, scarcely feeling it when her mouth opened, grimacing, and her white teeth bit together, almost meeting, in the softness of his underlip. And she was out of his grip then, livid, stiff-standing and with the white knuckles of her clenched hands crackling. Don't touch Jill\ He felt the well and trickle of blood along his chin but felt no pain on his mouth, watching her face now: seeing the ripple and flow of m5^iad, swift and instant thoughts sweep through it: the flicker of unnaturally quickened and perceptive judgments, crafty and sweetly secret in their racketing speed like frames on a reel of film and each, to her, slowed and separately seen and considered without that continuum of vision's persistence which let him see her face gradually subside from that rictus of exposed teeth to her

his

—

now

—

cautiously derisive smile.

Oh, I'm wise to you, Mister, she murmured with a nasal httle laugh and snatching up the crumpled pack of cigarettes, thrust it upward deftly and tossed the tip of one between her lips, keeping her dark eyes on him all the while she snapped the kitchen match alight on the wood of the dresser top and held the flame to catch, sucking in and blowing out blue smoke through a languorous rounding of her lips; staring at him, amused, through the curdling cloud of it. You're not the first one, you know, who's looked at my child that way. You're the four t hi She shrugged her shoulders with a swift, practical movement and shed the coat, letting it drop round her feet, standing now in her nightdress, arms folded under her breasts, one elbow cradled with the cigarette in her hand raised to her lips. I

can't never figure out smooth-talking studs like you, she

man might be just the about it. Hell! It's just not exactly the most flattering thing for a lady to find out a man's not chasing after her but her daughter. Is it now? Well, I reckon you've not been around like I thought or else you'd know. Tliougb you're not the first: I reckon there's been at least four others come out just as open about it right first-thing. Hardly what said. I

mean, a person would hope a

Uttlest bit subtle

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176

must say. Smooth-operators. Cool studs. what's that child of mine got that makes every age and shape and size of man come sniffin' round her like bears round a honey tree. Why, she's only four. And here I am a grown-up woman! Well, I know. You wouldn't know. But / know. Some girl-babies are just purely womenchildren the moment they come to horning. I was the same way. Just exactly the same. Mama used to say she felt like soldering one of them chastity-belts onto me the moment I was old enough to walk. Oh, I know. It's a look, a certain smell, a certain I-don't-know-what-all. I started going with boys when I was eleven and I never knew it to fail on the very first date. They'd just go crazy wild and try to rape me. And I didn't have no easy reputation nor anything to deserve that I'd

call

Hah!

I

finesse,

I

declare,

I declare, it seemed like when all my girl friends went out on dates they got flowers and all I ever got was a sudden choice between Fight, Feel, or Foot-Race. My little JiJl's the same just like me. There's not a one of my gentlemen friends that comes to call who don't want to dandle her on his knee before he's even hung up his hat or gives me so much as a look, hello, or go-to-hell. My baby Jill. She looked away suddenly, her eyes fixed on the pale tints of the picture at her elbow, the tinseled frame like a dusky window looking-in rather disrespectfully upon some clandestine encounter amid the glare and blare of an afternoon of time-lost indiscretion. Jill's lip suddenly trembled and she turned her watchful, suffering gaze quickly back to Jason's eyes. And now her own were suddenly hot and shamefully brimming with tears. Mister Himnicutt, I may be nothing more than a lady who's weak and pretty and foolish enough to let gentlemen take advantage of her now and then, she said. But 1 take good care of my little girl! You hear me? By God, I take care of my baby Jill! Is that understood. Mister Cole Blake Hunnicutt those or whoever the hell your name is? They talk about me they say and most of what fine ladies at the five-and-dime them woman is damned lies because there's not one of enough to know enough about how a woman could misbehave even to make up good lies about me. Oh, they talk\ But there's nary one of them can ever lay it to Jane Nancy

neither.

—

—

—

Alt that she neglects her baby! You hear me? I'm talking about my Httle baby-doll Jill the same little, pure name you been hinting about and sneaking into our conversation since you first come in here out of the heat of the sun! There's no

—

•

The Watchman

man

111

a finger on that little angel while don't believe me, do you? Oh, I know. I've had three gentlemen friends since my marriage to Luther and they've all been scissored from the same boltl And I can see it in your eyes: you're not any different. living who'll ever lay

around.

this bitch is

And who

can

You

go to for help for her? he thought in that can I fetch to heal her, my love, my lost, my Jill? The Sheriff? The prosecutor? Which shall I run fetch to save, to soothe, to raise her from this spell? The doctor whose hands are colleged wise to judge the hanged man hanged? the burned assassin burned. Peace? ^the last and who preaches vengefinite arbiter of flesh? Reverend Godd scaffold of his lectern? No. There's ance from the ropeless no one. And there is nowhere. Yes. I was right. The world should have rooms for talks like these for such as her and me. But there is only the wind. And there is only the mad and warmthless moon of cold September. For her if there is any saving thing that only thing is love. For her if there that one is me. is anyone not too late He reached his fingers out again to touch her chilled and quaking hand and with his other reached up and touched her wet lashes with his finger and brought away the droplet glitstunned

silence.

I

Who

—

—

—

—

— —

— —

ter of a tear. Jill,

all

he whispered. My love, in there. Listen, Jill. Behind I can see you. You can't hide, my love. You, in Jill. I love you. Does my voice get through? My love, in

this

there,

there, hsten! Jill?

was a heavy slow expiration that left her from a fisted tension. She sighed again, more lightly, looked at him and slowly shook her head. Well, I guess there's just no reasoning with your kind, Mister, she said quietly. Lord knows I tried. For the Lord knows how I hate the other way. But I just guess the other way's the She sighed.

It

slightly slackened

only

way

for the likes of studs like you.

She withdrew her hand coldly from his fingers and began to turn, to move away. Jill. Jill, he whispered, his eyes clenched closed, his arms hanging now at his sides. Jill, I can make you hear me in there. Can't I, Jill? Oh, Jill, let me love you out of there! Leave go of my thoughts, Mister Hunnicutt, he heard her say. It's just like your nasty hands was clawin' at my nice clean nightgown. Jill? he whispered.

She spoke

in a

low voice now,

inquisitively,

almost loving.

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178

knew she would be bending a ransacking of her image in the mirror. You, Pretty Thing, in there! she yet he

know where

it's

hid, isn't that so?

little

now

to the quiet

whispered. Only you Only you. Pretty Thing.

And

nary other one knows. Not even Juanita knows. at the name, her pupils dilate, her eyes sidling. Juanita? she shouted aloud to the shadows behind her.

She started

You back from market No, she sighed

yet?

to the contrapuntal self of her within the

fugue of mirror. She ain't back. That's good. Not back from market yet. That's good. Just you and me, Pretty Thing. And

him yonder. But, Jill, I love you! he whispered. Well, you see? He won't have it no other way, she sighed. Oh, dear God Almighty rest him and them, as well: our three poor gentlemen friends. Well, you know where it's hid, don't you, Pretty? Then fetch it out and have it done and over with. Lord only knows you hate it when it has to be this way.

The sound,

the sound

—

the jarring, awful sound, the blasting, your hand. And where do their faces go to of then? Is maybe there a hell for their bodies and heaven for their faces. No, now. I reckon that's a pure, silly fancy. And what if there was another way. But no there ain't! Yet for an instant she broke through, returned; for an anguished flash like that moment when the face of the drowning swimmej rises from the deeps of breaking water glares a last, lost, glorious stare in wonder at the sky before he sinks again: she altered, she returned: some terrible and glorious effort of human spirit; immeasurable, powerful as the birthing gesture of the spasmed, driven womb; valiant, futilely jarring

—

human, humanly futile. J-A-S-O-N! S-A-V-E M-E! She wailed it once in that one sane twinkling; hymned it to stars beyond the winds and the rattling rains that swept the ancient slates which roofed the room. But in another instant the face had vanished, the waters closed, the deeps reclaiming their own, and she turned suddenly, glaring sluttishly about her, startled at the sound of the strange voice. Jill? she cried. Juanita? Who's that yelling yonder? And still, stubbornly, stupid with the persistence of love, he thought he might bring her back to him. Jill? he said, quietly moving toward her where she stood, forlorn and deadly by the dresser. Oh, my, Mister Hunnicutt Blake, you are a most persistent

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179

she laughed loftily. I declare, a body almost has to adthat. Nothin' will do till you have what you want. That's so now, ain't it? My, my, what a sorry shame. Kindly keep a respectful distance from me. Mister. Oh, I know. You'll make a mockery of it you'll put on a fine show of wanting me you'll just naturally love me to pieces, won't you now? But don't never think I don't know why. Don't think poor dumb little old me will fall for that kind of cotton-candy sweet-talk. Because you think I'm easy you must think I'm dumb along with it and maybe that's the way all your other ladies are but this one's different. Well, now I know. Sure I know. You've had your eye on her from the first and it never mattered about me. How old you reckon I am, Mister Whoever Hunnicole? Four years old, would you say? Wrong, you damned fool. I'm twenty-nine and I'm fed-up. By God, yes, I'm fed-up because from the time I dragged free from my mother's breast it was always someone just using me as a sort of a ladder on yonder bed to crawl across to get to someone else they wanted more and in the first place and all along and it's still that way and I'm fed to hell up with it! You hear me, Mister? goddamned Papa loved

sort,

mire

—

—

My

Mama

better

than

me!

And now my goddamned

Mis-

my child better than me! By God, someday I want my face in the mirror and know I'm the be-all and

ter loves

to look

some man's loving and no longer to be nothing more than a kind of soft, silly stepladder laid across the matend-all of tress.

he thought and so he said it: Jill, he said. Let me fetch Snedeker. He'll bring you something to make you sleep. Sure, buddy! she raved. Sleep. And whilst I sleep you'll come with your hot, spoiling hands a-feeling for my child my Jill-baby. Jesus, Mister, did you think I wouldn't know? Well, where now? yes, I know. It's here in the drawer because I hid it in the candy box because Luther won't let me keep them and ever' time I take one of his he takes it from me with nary consideration that a lady might need something with which to defend herself and her child whilst he's away. Tzchak. He knows. Tzchak understands that part of it, at Jill,

Doc

—

—

least. But even when Tzchak give it to me to defend my child he said. Keep it hid. Don't let him know where it's hid at nor the box of bullets neither. Because Tzchak has more sense than my own poor dumb-headed Mister about the kind of so-called gentlemen oh, yes, my fine stud gentlemen friends Tzchak knows and he knows it's hid right here so a

—

—

180

The Watchman

lady can defend her baby against such child-violating sons of bitches.

Everything slowed that he witnessed, it seemed, had imparted its agonizing slow-motion to his movements as well. So that he was too late. She was into the drawer in a flash

and had the barrel of the gun leveled at his chest and the ratbox of cartridges in her hand and even as he watched the blue muzzle lifted slowly toward his eyes, the long steel of the barrel swiftly foreshortening. And she was crying, her face impassive and cold as the china face of a Victorian doll and yet all her eyes suddenly become the drizzled windows facing onto a territory within which some vast and titanic tling

violence battled against its selves. Yet, save for her eyes, the rest of her seemed steadied to such a calm of unshaken, justminded purpose as to seem almost indifferent and when she fired the first time and the bullet creased his temple above the left ear it was not so much the stun of that winging blow that shook him as it was, amid the common sensibilities of a natural terror, his absolute and irreconcilable astonishment at this vast, natural quiet about her body's efficient, unruffled resolution while, above the bones of her fine cheeks, all was a windowed riot. He would remember little of it in the years to come: mercifully, in one sense, tragically in the other by

which he would, on certain nights of winds and rains to come, treasure any torn and cracked snapshot remembrance of her, however terrible: the little dog barking a bright, unnatural quacking alarm and Jason running down the zigzag black-and-yellow abstraction of the stairwell while behind him, her naked feet calmly finding the steps as she came to each, Jill in her nightdress followed quietly, except for her wetted eyes, with the police thirty-eight booming and jolting slightly in her slender hand while in the late-arriving goodsense of terror now he fled, leaping off the stone stoop to the bricks and crashing into the fragrant, rainswept jungle of Dede's rose of Sharons and hollyhocks and jasmine, crouching to hide in the dark, straining his eyes to find her, listening as she stopped and knelt on the bricks by the cistern and hearing the chink of the spent cartridges as she plucked them out methodically and with that calm, unruffled efficiency swiftly reloaded the chambers and then moved on, as if instinctively flushing him out, moving with a prim grace among the stalks of flowers and stepping with dainty unhurriedness beneath the wind-and-rain lashing boughs forever in his wake, firing calmly as she came. Each drop of rain that

The Watchman splattered his cheek,

head or lets.

his

181

each bough that struck his wounded to Jason the first of the kilHng bul-

mouth seemed

And now

it

seemed the

flashes of the pistol originated

everywhere around him so that there was nowhere to hide, no running to another havening bush or drainage ditch. But these were only the windows of the Adena bedrooms coming with light, windows thrown up, doors opening, alive women somewhere crying words which the winds with their rains erased.

From

their pillows the sleepers

wakened

to the

and in the sudden blinding hght of bedroom lamps men and women glanced at one another, smiled, knowing, then looked quickly away: kicked out of sleep by this somehow long-remembered, long-expected fusillade it seemed to them that what they now were awakened to was, curiously, an event which, though not remembered as such, was nothing gunfire

more than a continuation of some indistinguishably communal dream. Each knew; for each had waited. Each, in a sense too shameful for his most arcane reckonings, had longed for this night when the killer, even if that killer killed again, might show himself to be killed. Adena's wakening spread up the town from Water Street. Even above the gusting sweep of rain and wind its angry yet rejoicing murmur could be heard. Though Jason did not hear. In an instant when he was certain he was dead, his living foot, providently, caught in a snarl of Dede Moonshine's pumpkin vines, pitching him face forward into darkness, into a dazzle of breaking, soundless lights and then, more profound, the velvet black of wooled unconsciousness: silence beyond the pistol's measured fire, beyond her finding, beyond the barking of a less,

little

dog, the cries of the wind and the rain; a sightbeyond earshot, as well, of that even

senseless silence

noise

subtler

which was more ominous and emblematic

than the others:

Adena waking,

stirring,

flexing

itself,

a

town rising and gathering into languid yet inexorable momentum, Adena moving: the shadowed accretion of something more old than the mound, these sleepers of Adena awakened and on the march, and crowds now of something hunched, panting and darkly primordial moving down her blustering, rainswept streets.

When

Luther Alt came up Lafayette toward the Court just begun to rain. Through the jail corridor he admitted himself to the dark, deserted labyrinths of its lower floors, moving through the blackness of the central hallway's

House

it

had

182

The Watchman

]

stale and boxed-up air, breathing in its miasma of ledgered and archived molder: the dead breath of immemorable and obsolete birth, death, and tax-assessment mingling with the stinging reek of oiled and disinfected floor-wood which was an odor suggestive of that justice-temple's totaled and reckonable sum of seventy years' unpartisan and indifferently ruthless ritual decorum; feeling his way by sense and recollection, Luther now groping toward the wall phone by the padlocked door to the office of the County Clerk and all thej

while racking among his wits for the number of the home phone of Mound County Attorney Mister Christmas Janders. Leaning his jowl against the phone's mouthpiece, his bigj hand resting on the receiver, breathing a moment, trying to order his reason back into disciphned regimen, struggling to calculate, without panic, whether he was doing it all in that precise sequence and logic which is always, in such struggling moments of travail, the very exact illogic of flawless and inevitable imdoing; thinking: Their little table in the window down at the Hotel? Not there. At the house? Would have seen them together on the stone steps or the door-yard. Jill's light on in her room. Not at the house then. Only her there. So the boy, in the fatigue of too much one-night's terror, stumbled home to bed. Must hurry. Janders. Yes, it is Janders now. Janders. Maybe ought to call Hunnicutt to be sure. The boy. No. Sure of that. Sure of anything? Yes, sure of that. No margin for mistake now. Must hurry. Janders. Mister Christmas Janders. Fetch him out of bed and bring him yonder to his office for the showdown. My brain in my head: a drum. Pounding. Slow down. Hold on now. What if you'd have a stroke and drop down dead before you can die? Die right. Give Mister Janders his murderer and his clean, closed case and die properly. Must think. Thoughts sometimes racing backwards, not forward. Jane Nancy. No. For God's sake no thoughts of her nor Jill nor love nor persons loved. Think coldly. Nothing but duty now. Duty to persons loved. Think, man, think. Panic. Panic. That will do, Luther Alt. Get hold now and think. Panic! By God, now, I said that will do, Luther Alt! Was it old tears on his cheek that pressed against the phone's black cone: sweat of fear? or the first clean drops of the vanguards of the rain? He gathered up his muscled immensity within his jacket, straightening himself, his fingers lifting the receiver from the hook, then put it back, blinking his eyes at the sudden wire of dusty gold which split the

— The Watchman

183

j

dark a dozen feet away across the wastes of shadowless and oiled floor. Something cried thin and puling amid that razored and blinding revelation of light: the voice perhaps of aged wood speaking from the tongue of seasoned, brassgreen hinge. Luther Alt glared at the wire of gold, his pupils widening as this itself grew wider: a bar of hght now, the gentle drifting open of a heavy-paneled door. Door to the chamber within which blazed with cold, judicial brilliance the desk lamp of Mister Christmas Janders. Yet he knew then that it had not been the cry of hinge nor wood he'd heard: he saw the shape of the little cat that, mewing forth, nudged and sinuously shouldered the bar of light still wider and then, breaking the goldness with the silhouette of his bleak and somehow bloodless vigilance, the black form of Mister Christmas Janders opening the door to a full flood of dusky light, bending now to scoop the Uttle cat up, cradling it in his arms, stepping back a httle now, stroking the small creature's ears, smiling at Luther Alt out yonder, blinking, with his hand on the phone. Come in, Sheriff. Come in, said Mister Christmas Janders, You know, sir, I half expected you might be down here to see me tonight. I've been working late, as you can see. One more Uttle detail and I was about to shut up shop and go

home.

Come

Luther Christmas

in, sir,

come

Janders

in.

fumed-oak chair and looked

sat in the

through

the

fan-shaped

fall

at Mister

of

light

across his desk.

Quite an evening's labor. Sheriff Alt, said the prosecutor in that voice of deadly amiabiUty. Doesn't look

it,

though

does it now? Not a sheet of paper on my desk. Not so much as a note, sir. Yet, six hours at this desk tonight, Sheriff, shuffling tediously and carefully through a sheaf of nothing but notions, possibilities, guesses, fancies. All of them yonder there on my desk, Sheriff, though none of them visible, naturally. Abstractions, sir. Opinions scribbled across the strong, thin tissue of probabihties the attorney's bond of trial-and-error. Though, I must say, in my profession if there's very much

—

error there

is

damned

Uttle trial.

And what have you found

written on your invisible papers yonder. Mister Janders? said Luther Alt.

Why,

stantial, sir.

—

you probMister Christmas Janders. All of them circum-

probabilities.

abilities, said

Sheriff.

Just as I've told

But most damningly circumstantial,

sir.

The Watchman

184

Circumstantial to exactly what, Mister landers? said Luther Alt.

To

the arrest of a killer. Sheriff, said the prosecutor.

And

I

have strong hopes to something more than arrest. I mean to the indictment, trial, conviction and execution of a killer. The killer of Cole Blake, said Luther Alt. The killer of Cole Blake, Sheriff, smiled the prosecutor. I think I've riddled out that killer's name among those heaped and invisible papers there tonight. Sheriff. Well, I confess it's had me in a sweat these past few weeks. And now tonight there came to me unexpectedly out of this pleasant September night the one missing piece which gave logic and sense and sequence to all the jumbled others. Out of the night. Mister landers? said Luther Alt. Literally, said the prosecutor.

me

A visitor,

Sheriff. Please don't

Let us just say that tonight when the cat entered the courthouse the cat was let out of the bag. Isn't she a charmer? he murmured softly, stroking the little cat's gray chin with the tip of his forefinger. Such a wise, such an informing little cat. I think, Sheriff, that when all of this dirty business is over and done with and the killer safely locked up in death-row that I'll adopt this little lady and take her home with me. And not merely as a house pet. Sheriff. My, no! Small wonder the Egyptians worshiped cats I may one day worship this one. She may have saved me from

press

for names,

sir.

—

defeat at this November's polls. Tell me. Sheriff, do you think she would take offense if I made a little lawyer's joke and called her a poll-cat? I smell something, said Luther Alt. Though I doubt if it's that cat you hold yonder, Mister landers. Sheriff, I know very well how you feel, said the prosecutor with a smile of assentations piety. Every man feels a little bitter when a colleague gets there first. You mustn't look at it in that light. Remember the afternoon we talked here. Sheriff? you and our efficient police chief and my humble self? Even you agreed that day that the job of finding that boy's murderer was a duty that fell between us both. Now, why

—

should it rankle you that the answer came pure, chance dropping-by of a friend tonight?

Yonder

cat, of course, said

first

to

me

by a

Luther. You've spent the eve-

ning cross-examining that cat, you can. Not exactly, smiled Mister Christmas landers. Let us just say I spent the evening listening interestedly to someone the cat followed into the courthouse.

— The Watchman

Would you

object to teUing

me

the

185

name

of that inform-

ant?

with the case as good as ended, laughed the proseshould we degrade a pleasant evening's talk with sordid and unpleasant details. Believe me, sir, if there were any question left if the case were still under investigation I, naturally, would have no right to such reticence. But now, Sheriif ^what are names to us? You want your murderer mighty bad, don't you, Christmas Janders? said Luther. Mighty bad. Sheriff, said the prosecutor, his face not smiling any more. Mighty bad. And you fancy that you've as good as got him? Him, Sheriff Alt? smiled Christmas Janders pleasantly. I know I have my murderer, if that's what you meant. Who, Mister Janders? smiled Luther Alt boldly back into that most questionable smile. Don't you know. Sheriff Alt? asked the prosecutor. / do. And so, said Luther Alt, ignoring this, you plan to have your office make an arrest for the county? Yes, Sheriff. That is correct. Sheriff,

cutor.

Why

—

—

When? Tonight, Sheriff, said Mister Christmas Janders. He fixed Luther with a slitted, glittering gaze, smiled, stroking the cat with one hand, tapping his fingers Ughtly on the desk top with the other. Would you care to make the arrest yourself. Sheriff? he said softly.

On The

the basis of the pieces

fit.

word of a police-informer?

Sheriff Alt,

said the prosecutor.

—

They

fit

with a beautiful, wonderful inseparableness they dovetail fast and tight! The strands of a rope, Sheriff. Let the jury try them let it take the whole cloth of it in its hands and tug wrench it pull the fabric from every corner every it mine angle. Let the jury see if it slips apart. That's their job wiU be done by then. I'll have the testimony of a state's witness of unimpugnable character. Someone who saw Cole Blake's murder? asked Luther. Unfortunately, no, said Christmas Janders. But someone who nonetheless has absolutely irrefutable authority for what he says. Nothing will more surely send the accused to the electric chair than what he will say at the trial. What finally brought this informer around to you? Sheriff, the emotion that brought him round to me is that

—

—

—

— —

— The Watchman

186

human

sentiment without which the police mawithin a very few days come chinery of civilization would to a grinding and chaotic standstill, said the prosecutor. Perhaps it is not one of the higher feelings of man: this emotion. And yet sometimes the lowest sentiment can make

priceless,

—

—

possible the most lofty justice.

What brought him round

to

you? said Luther again.

Fear, said Mister Christmas landers. Cowardice. Selfish, craven terror. Pin any mean word on it you can think of, Sheriff, and it won't make it ugly in my eyes. Label it with the lowest of words and that won't make it any the less noble and beautiful

if it

leads to a noble and beautiful justice.

Can you

me

that the

yonder as a peace officer, Sheriff, and

sit

tell

whole Christian structure of law enforcement would last long without a world full of obliging Judases? And why was this little Judas so afraid? whispered Luther Alt.

Why, because we made him

afraid,

said the prosecutor.

no different from any other emotion, really. Love, hate, Sheriff, you know as well as I do how easily pity, mob-fury they can be made synthetically. I sensed this man knew something. I got busy. We followed this man. We built up a sound, imaginary case around him. I must say I think it was so perfect that I think I could have sent him to the chair with it if he hadn't come round to my way of thinking. By the time we'd done our work I actually think he half-believed he'd really killed young Blake. And to think, whispered Luther, glaring upward into the heavens far beyond the architecture of that fantastic, ageless Fear's

—

To think that tonight I could have killed him. To think that I held a gun in his beUy tonight and listened to him rave on that he'd do anything to get what he wanted despite me or heaven or hell! I could have killed him. Didn't that he'd as good as told me if I see it plain in his eyes? he would see it destroyed! wanted he he didn't get the thing They've played on me jokes the By God, lawyer, if you knew which is it: They or Him up there. Lawyer, you're so wise believing in stopped gods or the Lord? God knows I've

structure.

—

—

Him any believe in

—

more. Thank the Lord for that, Him no more. To sit as I must

at least sit

—

that

1

tonight and

hear the hedging, hinting, never-saying snickers of scum like you tell me of the treachery of scum like him! That boy that Jason. By God, I'd not have guessed they come that low that young. And what else did he tell you tonight, prosecutor?

— The Watchman

187

did he tell you about my girl tonight? What did tell you, lawyer? Jasonl cried Mister Christmas Janders, throwing back his head in a soundless laugh. Oh, Lord, Sheriff, stop right there. God, the incalculable, unforeseeable minds of men. thousand years more at the bar and still I'd never fail to trip and stare aghast, confounded, eternally baffled and drunk with the wine of wonder at the things men think they see. Oh,

And what

Judas Jason

My

A

Lord, Sheriff! Not another word along this train of thought. Another sentiment like that from you and I'll start doubting God myself. I'll quit the church and take up chess instead or maybe poker at least some decent game where the bluffer with the sleeved and crooked aces isn't Him! Cat, did you hear? No. Thank God, no. Sheriff, don't you know at last tonight how infinitely blessed of Heaven are the lower beasts? Luther stood up, still shaken from his outburst, and quaking even more within his wits at his conception of Jason's betrayal of Jill to the prosecutor. He seemed now clenched and struggling to keep all his mind from flying to bits like a thundering flywheel. All right, Janders, he said. You've got your informer. You've got your creaky proofs. You've got your killer's instinct to bind them all together for that day lq the arena. And now, smart man, I'll give you what I came here to give you in the first place the piece of paper that v/ill knock your case to pieces. It would take more than any piece of paper to do that, Sheriff Alt, said the prosecutor. ream of paper couldn't shake it to pieces. Sheriff. Luther closed his eyes, drew in his breath resolutely and then looked at Christmas Janders with perfect calm. I mean a piece of paper, he said flatly. With my signed confession to the murder of the Blake boy. Mister Janders smiled, looked down, and fondly stroked

—

—

A

the cat. Sheriff Alt,

you are an extraordinary man, he

said. I will

never forget you. Listen to me, said Luther. You'll be helpless in court to do anything but convict me with that confession. Will you look at me and hear what I'm telling you, Janders I killed Cole Blake.

what you're saying now would take it as an insult.

Sheriff Alt, said the prosecutor. If

didn't

move me

so deeply

I

The Watchman

188 I

killed

Cole Blake! said Luther Alt

in a

broken, croaking

voice.

All

my

years of law, said Mister Christmas Janders.

—

The

whores forgetting them. Think of the numberless murderers I've faced and watching them scurry and race across this dirty floor studied of earth until Id pinned them like insects to the card. Thirty up yonder in the pen tonight. Sheriff. Do you think I don't know murder when I see it face to face? Do you think I could live with it so long and then be fooled? Do you imagine that even when I sent a man up that I knew was not exactly no matter how much my guilty that I ever fooled myself duty and my hallowed responsibility made me fool the juries that he was? Thirty up yonder in their ceils tonight. Sheriff! And never one from Mound County that ever hanged, said Luther Alt. Never one that ever got the chair. Which is no fault of mine, shrugged Christmas Janders. That's something deep in the curious mentality of Mound County that they've never hanged one of their own, burned one of their own. That tradition, I think, is presently to end. That superstition began to die in Mound Countians the morning of Cole Blake's funeral. I sense these things, man. And I will wager you whatever stakes you name that within three months the first Mound Countian in history will go to his

thieves, wife beaters, burglars, bootleggers,

—

—

—

death in the penitentiary. All right! cried Luther Alt. And that one will be me. No, Sheriff Alt, said Christmas Janders, almost kindly. It will not be you. God damn you, I confess! the Sheriff shouted. Fetch me paper and pen! You shall have it, sir. My confession in full.

And you

me

will see

what you want?

A

A death for you,

sir!

die

up

there.

death? Fetch

Think of

me

that, sir! Isn't

it

a paper and pen then!

me but I need my pen just now, said Mister Christmas Janders, dropping the little cat and opening his desk drawer. I have a warrant to draw up. Why do you doubt me? roared the Sheriff. Because I know you're not a killer, Sheriff Alt, said Mister Christmas Janders, fitting his spectacles onto his nose and running through a stack of forms he had fetched out from the drawer. You know nothing, you pimp of Death! How do you know what I am! cried Luther Alt. With scarcely a motion wasted in his fumbling for the Sheriff,

forgive

—

— The Watchman

189

warrant form among his papers Mister Christmas landers swept a large, gray-rubber eraser off his desk and sent it bouncing across the floor. I know, he said. The same way the little cat yonder knows that's not a mouse. Luther Alt turned his head, slowly straightened, moving now toward the prosecutor's desk, the immense and legended

composure of his great face gone now to rack, the hand the only steadied thing about him.

You

pistol in his

kill, he whispered. That's why you think that? I do, said Mister Christmas landers, unflinching even as the first bullet from the booming, racketing muzzle cut into the oak-paneling three feet behind him. I know you couldn't

think

won't believe

I

couldn't

me? You

Sheriff Alt.

kill,

Luther squeezed the trigger again and the room chattered and rang with the explosion and the gargoyle-head of the chair-back just to the left of Christmas landers' shoulder disappeared and something clattered yards away amid the

paws of the stiff- tailed, bushy cat. you believe it now, Mister Christmas landers? roared Luther Alt. Do you smell a killer yet? Does that long, wise counselor's nose of yours at last sniff murder in this room? No, said the prosecutor quietly. It does not, sir. Aren't you afraid to die. Mister Christmas landers? shouted tiptoe

Do

the Sheriff, leaning over the desk a httle. Yes, said the prosecutor gravely. We're

—

all

afraid to die. But

men and on a guess. Because The third bullet did not seem to touch him and yet astonishingly the slight padding of his shoulder exploded and you this, gamble my

I will tell

law

I'd

Sheriff

that in the matter of

life

flowered out suddenly into a ridiculous flower of ragged gauze petals, like an ingeniously improvised paper carnation. because, the prosecutor continued, unflinching. In the first place my guess is never a guess. It is a knowing. And in the second place Even, it seemed, before the roar of the gun again, the spectacles lifted in a tiny snow of splinters and rose in an almost leisurely arc out of the fingers which had toyed with them on the blotter. in the second place, he said, even while the fifth bullet smashed the pen and ploughed into the oaken desk top at his elbow, splattering his shirt front with splashes of ink: the illusion of some lifeless, cold blood of azure fluid, welling

—

—

The Watchman

190

now from bosom

the judicial breast to stain the dustless, immaculate

of Mister Christmas landers.

—

I

would not

particu-

wish to go on living after forty years of law-school scrimping, humiliating apprenticeship, begging, fawning, boot-

larly

licking electioneering in the years of

my

tenure

—thinking

j

all

that has been wasted and that I had come, at last, to know that, in fact, I did not know that ' that I had learned nothing which it is life itself for me to know: the face and sense and recognition of those God-forsaken sons of Cain whom it is i my art to punish or destroy. Is that clear to you. Sheriff I believe the chamber of your policeAlt? If I am not wrong special holds five cartridges. Now, do you wish to reload and continue your demonstration to me that you are a murderer by merely spoiling my clothes, riddling my office furniture and frightening a little cat? He watched, wiping with his spotless white handkerchief at the splattered ink on his hands and wrists: Luther sitting again now, not slumped, but holding the empty revolver between his boots, not looking at Mister Christmas Janders but obliquely listening, vaguely absorbed rather in some vast and gathering tumult somewhere behind the rain and imagining, perhaps, that it was the wrath of somewhat tardy heaven, coming to put him to judgment; listening though, his head cocked a little, with all the old, sharp readiness of his sorrowful craft; hstening as, indeed now, Christmas Janders listened to the growing, grumbling murmur in the streets beyond the rain. Janders now at the window, bending to peer out through the pane and turning suddenly to Luther's squared and awakening shoulders in the chair.

jl

—

'

—

The mob. By God,

mob,

cried the prosecutor, following the Sheriff's racing figure down the black corridor of the

courthouse.

God. Not no they

—

the

By God, we mustn't

let

it

go

this

way. No, by

after all the fine case I've built against her.

—they

can't

By God,

mustn't. She's mine! It mustn't go this mustn't get her before I do! They must not take

way. The mob the vengeance into their hands that rightfully belongs in minel

By now not as

if

the rain had stopped. The wind had gone, though it had fallen but rather had soared aloft to rarer

and raced now beneath the washed, emerging galaxies: sweeping the vast skies clear of those last, small, glum and remnant clouds of the rains. The street bricks glistened. And now in the once more motionless and humid air of dripping aftermath the flooded gutters leaped with small,

altitudes

The Watchman

191

and from the conduits beneath there came the muffled noise of huge throats drinking. And now again the

flashing freshets

fog came wisping up from the willows. Not all the closepacked shoulders of Adena's legion could keep it from Dede's yard long after that now voiceless, shifting mob had gone, the fog would stay and steal up town and lay its siege upon

—

Adena.

Dede Moonshine, awakened at last, stood in her pantry, thunderstruck and gawping out her window at the nightmare in her dooryard and the shuffling, silent horde which had come to her very step; women, children, men pressed and shoving from solid blocks around, down Water Street as far as the night revealed: a blinking, mismatched, sullen multitude,

some

half-dressed,

some

still

in nightclothes with trou-

and coats tugged hurriedly over: a noiseless and undulant mound of people and more still coming: men's shouts, women's cries, babble of car horns far in the straggling remoteness of their hindmost reaches from which this dinning racket rose, though at the front ranks, this brim of their overflowing vanguard silent at what it saw, at what it had come, indeed, to see as if in consunmiation of things dreamed. It ringed and spread out, almost motionless now beyond sers

Dede's window though, at the slightest movement in the

would reach, at last, this foreset them forward in a wave of staggering, unpurchased foothold, spilling them further a few feet, like lava, across the bricks and flower beds beneath man-mound's center, most perimeter, and

ripples

Dede's rose of Sharon. Dede could not believe, nor could she doubt, and wanting no more of either horror she snatched the teeth from her mouth, turned away and went to fetch her mother's ragged Bible from the breadbox and sat in her rocker, suddenly, like a collapsed accordion, heaving chords of grieving, asthmatic dumbfound to the dark, rocking swift-

motion might somehow exempt her from the millennium, hugging the book's limp, cold leather to her bony, muslined breast as if in tardy afterthought. Far off in the shot-riddled dark Jason raised his head from the rock ly as if that

among the pumpkin vines, and struggled to his feet. And like Dede, as he moved into the faint light of the dooryard, seeing the sea of them: the people oceaned out infinitely to the ends of Water Street and spilling back down through the shoreweeds, brush-filth, and willows across the bricks of the

The Watchman

192

old steamboat landing; Jason now, like Dede, believing, dis-] believing; neither, both.

The once gardened and tended earth-shapes among the patterned bricks beneath the rose of Sharon were torn up and packed tight again as if beneath the hooves of driven cattle: Dede's nasturtiums, her lilies-of-the-valley impressed so flat into that stampeded and flattened soil as to appear painted upon a ceramic blackness: earth tamped and pressed by the aggregate tonnage of that militant, marching and now-retreated multitude. In the hollow of heel-flattened sourgrass and chick-weed beside Dede Moonshine's cistern lay what might have appeared at first to be a white, small heap of child's nightclothes a little laundry thrown there and walked :

though more to it, once stared at closely, than the spilled and hollow limpness of thrown-off nightdress: something shapeless, to be sure, though something broken, too, and since laundry does not break nor does it bleed, something dreadfully shapeful, after all, and something, as well, unreckonably pitiable, desolate and unspeak-

upon

indifferently:

ably familiar. few yards away, nearer the moon-flower vines which lay torn and strung out among their smashed and splintered arbors, some bricks of the paving by the door stoop lay strewn about, wrenched loose and uprooted as if by an implement of steel. While a foot closer to the brim of the crowd lay that implement: a revolver, its barrel twisted round like a baling hook and its muzzle tamped with the earth which

A

jammed into it. High among measwind sent scudding into the north the last of the night-rain's clouds and freed the moon so that, with soft suddenness, everything not shadowed by leaf or bough lay bright in that cold lambency: the trampled whiteness in the trench by the cistern now showing one tumbling lock of long, dark hair almost as if it had been carefuUy fixed so by the primping fingers of a girl; and from the rose of Sharon one stout, blossom-stripped, leaf -peeled branch bowed tautly earthward toward the bricks like a boy's fishing this

savage enterprise had

ureless altitudes the

its tip, at the noose-end of a double-yard's length of Dede's clothesline was hanged the motionless body of a small, white dog, its pink tongue showing among its little beard, its glassed toy eyes regarding sadly, it seemed, the moonlit, blameless faces of its executioners. And so those among those fortunate few at the crowd's innermost circle were able to see everything. Everyone stared

pole, while at

— 193

The Watchman t

amid that moral no one numbers, algebra of man's quaint inmiunity through in that even perhaps, felt bad at what everyone did. And yet, jarred of wince hangdog moment, some among them felt a with a ranks, propriety when suddenly, far back in their

at

what nobody had done. Because

voice hoarse from his panting the shout of Matthew Hood first row's inner sanctum. Let me through! Have they madam! Have they caught her

after

all,

struggle to shoulder through, shattered the stillness of the

got her yet? Let me by here, yet? cried the ragged, shriek-

murdering bitch! ing voice of the old hangman. Kill the little don't stand by people, sake, God's For Oh, kill her nowl Don't let that you! beg I now, her Kill and let her go to trial. her! get prison the at damned wop electrician up The faces bordering the spectacle seemed momentarily darkened. Though this was only because of one last errant which, for an instant, masked the moon yet scurried cloud

black sheep before the shepherd wind. Still Matthew Hood's zealous informality had somehow broken the sullen, tongue-tied mood of them all. That's her yonder, ain't it? someone muttered.

now

like a

Yonder by

the cistern. Yes. That's her.

Who

done it? Don't ask me!

^

Look like she's been fakly stomped Who'd you say done it? It

was an

accident, said a

man

into the earth.

to the fore, his eyes heavily

involved in certain details of his muddied shoe tops. Ever' one just come a-rushin' at her in droves and tumbling and pushing through the yard yonder. So that there wasn't no chance to seize her or nothing. Us that was in front might

stopping with a bulldozer at our backs everyone just a-pushin' us on and right on top of her. Was she out of bullets? Dog if I know, said the man. Because we was all a-coming in so fast there was no chance to see her or know what we

just as well tried

was doing. By God, now, I seen her, cried another. I knowed God damned well what we was doing. Well, observed the man. There's no one can lay it on to us that any one of us done it. One man's shoe is just like another's

when

there's folks in droves like that. Well, they can't

send a town to prison, can they?

The Watchman

194

By God! screamed a woman, as if she were testifying in church. It's a justice all the same. That's for God damned sure, choired a scattering of voices

among

the vast,

massed mound.

ltd been us that done it if she'd have went to the chair, observed a man somewhere. As it was us that done it as we done it here. Til be blamed if I can perceive the difference. Say now! cried a woman. You reckon he could have knowed it was her all along. Who could have knowed? asked the man. Why, the Sheriff, said the woman. He was her Pap, wasn't he? You reckon he could have been that close to her and not never saw'n it in her. No-o-o, scoffed the man, watching interestedly as a faint gust of wind sent the

little

dog

lightly twirling

on the rope.

never knowed. He was a good Sheriff, Luther Alt. He'd not have stood by not doing nothing if he'd knowed. Looky there at that dog. Like one of them little dancing dogs in

He

the circus. Some laughed. Who hanged the dog? cried a man. Damn if 1 know, laughed the other, with a shifty, modest smile.

What'd they go and do Do what?

Hang

that for?

dog, cried the voice. It never hurt no one. I seen it up in Pruney Wrinkle's Hardware one morning last spring, laughed a lady. I seen it kill a fly. Still, what'd they hang it for? cried the voice again. It the

little

never hurt no persons. Don't matter, laughed the man. Time we got through stomping across this yard there wasn't no girl left to hang. We had to hang something, said another. Ain't that awful now, an older woman said, pushing her head through to survey the damage. Just look at poor Miss Dede's nice flowers every last one of her geraniums stomped

—

down

flat.

she won't care, said the man. Winter's a-coming anyways. They'd all a-been dead 'fore long. And in that closeness of them there they were of a single mind, a single sense and blood, so that something happening at the remotest edges of their kinning unanimity seemed almost instantly transmitted to the mind of them, as if by great, strange ganglia which webbed out through their oneHell,

The Watchman

195

and now something stirred, spreading them asunder the deep alto subsidence of a siren and the bloodUke flickering cast of the Grimes Hght atop the Sheriff's station wagon. This was Tzchak. And in their wake came the Buick with Luther Alt and Mister Christmas landers. Make way. One side now! Make way! Step aside, folksl cried the voice of the prosecutor. Make way. What's happened here? And they fell aside and pressed each other back into a clear path before the eminence of law; opening like the sea

ness,

at their midst:

before the Jews. My God, what's this? cried Christmas landers. Luther moved past him, past Tzchak, past the chief, oblivious of them all, moving into the little fan of light from poor Dede's praying pantry, standing for a moment looking at the little smiling dog which hung within the rose of Sharon's noose, then seeing, at last, the whiteness of the trampled nightdress by the cistern: its laced and spinsterish neatness spoiled now by earth and the rape of feet and the stains of grass and blood; its roundness vanished and the texture of it jutting here and there in fresh arrangements of skeletal brokenness. Hey Luther, whispered Tzchak, peering round into his face. Why not leave me to manage all this? I will manage all this, thank you, Mister Tzchak, he said, and went to the bench and caught up the old Indian blanket upon which Dede Moonshine sometimes sat to catch a little sun on summer noons, and fetching a clasp-knife from his jacket pocket cut the noose from the little dog's neck and, spreading the rug, laid it carefully there, and then went, steady and sure-footed, to the trampled cambric shapelessness close-huddled by the cistern; stooping a moment, lifted the lock of soft dark hair, held its weight for an instant in his jfingers and then carefully rearranged it as it was. Necks strained to watch him now: his back was to them. He could not, it seemed, have giieved; he would surely not be crying: not Luther Alt. By God, a man whispered to his neighbors. He's iron, that man he^s iron. Tough as a chestnut rail! The Sheriff seemed fixed there, squatting, regarding her without emotion, surely, for his shoulders were not shaking: he did not move for a time which, to them, seemed interminable and left them restless as showgoers at a dragging drama. But presently he stirred, as if rousing himself, bent

—

The Watchman

196

over her, plucking with his fingers, shifting, feeling, perhaps searching for some place to lift her, perhaps, it seemed to others who would remember it in years to come when they

would tell it in their kitchens, trying to put that trodden wreckage back into the shape of something which, even for a foolish moment, might give him the counterfeit of the sleeping quick and not the undreaming dead. And when he raised her in his arms it was not difficult to conceal from them, beneath the flap of his jacket, the broken face upon her snapped and lolling neck, and doing that as if he would spare them, as if he could not bear even for them to suffer what they now, in fact, expected and perhaps even wanted from him: some show of vengeance. For a moment he saw one face among those hundreds ranked around him and that face separate from the others; no part of them: a livid, stricken mask far back in the baroque tangle of Dede Moonshine's ruined yard: the face of the boy Jason, But then he moved on and laid her quickly in the blanket beside the white dog and folded them both with deft swiftness so that none of the crowd would even snatch that quick glimpse of her despoilment, tucking the fringed folds close and gently round those young dead as if for a warm sleep in a cold room in the bitter of a biting Texas winter's night, and lifting the bundle, gaudy with Navajo tints and shapes, movfi back toward the crowd. Something I can do? said Tzchak, peering round at him. Nothing, Mister Tzchak, said Luther Alt. It's all mine to do. You've been a good friend and I thank you. The crowd opened before him now as if he held an outthrust torch which could set their clothes ablaze. Tzchak stood beside Mister Christmas Janders watching as the crowd closed in behind the Sheriff and his shawled-up, ruined treasure.

By God,

man now.

Mister Janders, sir, said squaring of his shoulders. Tzchak with a brisk, efficient Yes, deputy, there's a man, said the prosecutor. Mister Janders, murmured Tzchak, with a fawning air of aplomb, yet still with an air of manly self-assurance. This may be a poor occasion to bring the subject up but I've had something on my mind I mean, since our little chat tonight there's

a

—

in

your

office.

Yes, deputy, said Mister Christmas Janders. Well, I know what Mound County thinks of Luther, he said, looking at the ink-stained shirt front in the prosecutor's

I

1

—

—

The Watchman

197

—

Even with all this nothing's much changed about well, you the way they look up to him. But still and all open

coat.

—

know the county court and all, Mister landers Yes, deputy. Sheriff Alt will surely be removed from office. Well, Luther wouldn't even Hkely want to stay on as Sheriff here, said Tzchak. Lord, I know him. Even if they didn't fire him. Even if the County Court didn't decide to make a change he'd surely want to

go. get right to the point. Within a week when the Court comes to a vote there may be an or so opening for a new Sheriff here. And so, I wondered seeing

Mister landers,

—

I'll

how you complimented me

—

—

my

good word put in a could you police for me. Well, didn't I finilsh the case for you? Sure, I did. You as much as said so yourself tonight when you and me was alone up there in the courthouse and I told you it was as

work

And

—

I

so highly tonight

was wondering

on

if

Mister landers Yes, deputy, said Mister Christmas landers. Get on with

her.

so.

it.

was wondering if you could think of me as filling Luther Alt's boots, Tzchak said. Filling them? said the prosecutor. Deputy, don't you mean shining them? I

the stool at the end of the counter in the dining room Mound Hotel Cristi sat waiting for midnight. She clutched her good white gloves in one hand and the bus

On

of the

other. Beside her high heels on the linoleum suitcase. In the darkness behind her in the her floor stood long empty room and to the fore the stuttering neon twilight in the big window fell across the deserted table with its two empty chairs. She had not presumed to sit in either. She listened absently to the rumbling voices of the three men beyond the doorway in the lighted lobby. And she heard, beyond those sounds, somewhere behind the farthest visible reaches of Lafayette Avenue along which street lamps now bloomed soft halos among the first gauzed bunting of the ticket in the

attenuated rumor of some deep and gathering approach: the sound at first no more than the faintest susurration: a whisper so fine the wind might have made it. But there was no wind now. And the increase of it gathering now into audible definition: the sound as of some huge thing shuffling yonder with inexorable advance: the rumbling whisper of footfalls or, perhaps it might even be fancied, of one lifting mists, the

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198

and immeasurably gigantic, which now crutched way forward with shambling, crippled will.

foot, single its

paper envelope in her hand. Insectioned bus ticket. She could not think for a while where the bus was going to take her to, of what city she had named to Ort Dobey by the little Greyhound sign on the hotel desk. It would make no difference. This was a long ticket: that was enough. She had left no Cristi

side

it

looked

was the

at the blue

long,

It was not that she had nothwas rather as if there was not anyone to say it to. When she had heard them shouting Jill's death down on Lafayette and in the open doorways of the beer and pool halls she commenced packing at once. She left behind her radio, some books, a little vial of expensive perfume, some shoes and dresses. She did not even think of them when she closed the door behind her for the last time. Cristi was accustomed to closing doors. Long afterwards she frequently imagined the first astonishment and later pleasure when someone would come to open the doors and find the things she always left. It seemed to her a means of reaching back through the mile-ages of time and touching with her vanished fingers the faces of strangers. Beyond in the lobby the mortician's clock struck eleven o'clock; the hour to wait for the bus seemed unendurably long. She would have a long cry about Jill someday far away from now. And about her father. But she felt nothing much of anything now about either of them. She waited, and she listened disinterestedly to the groaning, gathering tramp behind the dark, and the talk of the three men in the lobby. In the couches and chairs before the long window sat Doctor Snedeker, Peace the Undertaker, and the gouty horse trader Jibbons. Sounds as if they're all heading back up town, the Doctor

notes,

no good-bys

to anyone.

ing to say to anyone;

it

said.

trader grunted and seizing the tip of a fresh his gold and stained-ivory teeth bit it off as if between stogie living. something it were proud to say I wasn't no part of it! he cried By God, I'm in a hoarse, emotional voice and cracked a match to flame on the tip of his shoe. I don't hold with no dirty mob vengeance. When the time come to kill her it should have been done up yonder in the chair in a decent. Christian way. I heard they hanged her, said Thomas Peace, his brow aleady furrowed with the thought of the technical problems with which, before the morning, he might possibly be

The horse

The Watchman faced.

Hanged, he

said.

To

a sycamore

199

down

in that grove of

trees south of the old landing.

No, no, no, grumbled Jibbons. Shot. Pruney Wrinkle phoned me not fifteen minutes after it happened and he'd been there and seen it. Shot, Mister Peace. And with the very same murder gun she used to slay the boy. Not hanged. Shot.

In the head?

Or did he say? asked

the undertaker, anx-

iously.

Yes, said the horse trader. If my memory serves it the head, Mister Peace. In the face? inquired the undertaker analytically.

was

in

Pruney never went into details, Mister Peace, said Jibbons. He was in a hurry to get back to the scene. It seems the girl had some sort of a watchdog half-mastiff, halfGerman shepherd. It run amuck and bit several women and

—

children seriously. Until, of course, they brought it down with a bullet, too. Doctor Snedeker roused and leaned forward with a sour smile, the glittering stethoscope thrusting like ice tongs from the pocket of his coat. Someone phoned my wife and told her that it was Chief

Smitherman who fired the shots that finished her, he said. Flick Smitherman hell, growled the horse trader. He wasn't even there. He wasn't even in town. It was the damned mob that done it several of the boys had guns, I under-

—

At a police chiefs' conference. put up much of a struggle? said the Doctor. As I hear it, said Mister Jibbons, she got a round of shots into the crowd and caught a couple of old women in the legs. Pruney Wrinkle's wife Thorny for one. I think she was one of them. Thorny's lame with arthritis an)rways, you know. This will prpbably mean the end for Thorny. It's all a shame and a disgrace, gentlemen. Yes, but it's more than that, said the Doctor. It's a loss, as well. I have always held that it was a major disgrace to the conscience of this county that in more than seventy years there has never been a Mound County murderer that a Mound County jury has had the guts, nor I judge the gumption, to send up yonder to the death house. The girl, without doubt, would have changed that tradition had she lived to stand trial. Look yonder, said Peace the Undertaker. Clean down Lafayette by the Polack church. stand. Flick's in Pittsburgh.

Did the

girl

The Watchman

200

What? said Jibbons, straining forward, glaring into the unmoving mists. Where, Mister Peace? It's them, said the undertaker. Clean down on the corner by Tenth Street. By George, it appears like the better part of the town by the size of the mob. Well, by God, I'll not lower myself by going yonder into the street to watch them pass, said the horse trader with huffy loftiness. I'll set right here and see the fools. Fools! Where's Matt Hood? smiled the Doctor quietly. Surely he's not among them. Surely not Matthew Hood with his strong

—

opinions against folks free-lancing in his trade. No, said the horse trader, with his infallible, authoritative incorrectness. Matt's upstairs in his room. I seen him directly after supper in the dining room. He's up there playing with his ropes, I reckon. Yes, playing with his ropes. That poor old soul sits up there on the edge of his bed fondling them old limp, useless ropes like a man without a prostate playing with himself. Still and all, said the Doctor with a dry twinkle to his eyes. I'm rather surprised that Matthew Hood wouldn't prefer seeing her killed that way rather than have to sit by and watch our state electrician Mister Rudy Diaz do the honors. No, Doc, said the horse trader sternly. Not Matt Hood. He's a stickler for all the pomp and process of orderly law, Matt is. I'll say that for him he never got bitter enough to run with the pack. Matt Hood's queer but he's conservative

—

and decent-minded when it comes to the law. Look now, said Peace the Undertaker. They're nearly to the corner of Eighth and Lafayette. By God now, I never saw such a multitude. And who's that walking in front of them? And what's he carrying in his arms? Why, maybe it's the flag, boys. By George, there are times when you can't blame the people for moving on their own intuitions. After all, wasn't it a mob, gentlemen, who lynched the tyrants of perfidious Albion and laid the cornerstone of our God-willed Republic? And what is Justice, gentlemen, when you get right down to it, if it isn't the inspired vengeance of Christian vigilantes who have come at last to accept the slower rituals of order and due process? What would you say to that, Doc Snedeker?

am

a businessman, said the Doctor, smiling faintly at the approaching shapes beyond Deke Virgin's Lunch. I'm a businessman and so are you and, in my judgment, theoretical chitchat like this is poor business and a Mister Peace,

I

The Watchman

201

waste of time, as well. It means not one red penny more in the pockets of either of us and beyond that I think it's the

bad for the community. Your busiup where mine leaves off but that doesn't make either of them any the less a business. If I bothered my conscience and laid awake sweating every night a patient died I'd have been in the Weston Asylum thirty years ago. When my business makes a mistake, Mister Peace, your business sort of talk that's rather

ness takes

buries I

And

for that sort of professional collaboration, sir, my gratitude. It is the provident arrangeof the Almighty that no man shall live forever, Mister it.

extend to you

ment

Peace, and if men did we'd both be fellows mighty less elegant than we are and be out there tonight, most likely, among the rag-tag-and-bobtail trash of that crowd of ignorant ruffians.

Now suddenly the door to the street flung open and the haggard, gray-flannel figure of the Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd tripped gracelessly over the threshold, righted itself, and stood by the side of the three. By Jove, now, smiled the Doctor into the crowds beyond the window. We scarcely mention the subject of business. Mister Peace, when our middle-man appears. Bob Godd, what brings you out tonight? I'd fancy you up in your parish praying for the mob. Or perhaps the girl? Which, sir? How does your mercy bend these days? Gentlemen, I've got to find the Sheriff, whispered the Reverend. Has he been told what has happened? Has any of you seen him? Sit down. Bob Godd, said the Doctor grimly. Forget about souls and think of your stomach and liver and heart a little. If you appeared in my office the way you look right now I'd order you into Glendale Hospital for a month. Your face is blue as Charley Waitman's was last month when he dropped dead in my waiting room with his second and last angina attack. Any pain in the left arm, Bob? I've got to find the Sheriff! cried the minister. It's absolutely essential, gentlemen. What for. Preacher? laughed the horse trader. Did you want to report a crime? You all seem to think this is pretty funny! said the preacher. Please take me seriously! I've got to find Luther Alt. Why, Bob Godd? smiled the Doctor. Because I want to talk with him, said the preacher. I suppose that seems ridiculous to you? Yet, think, fellows! man

A

—

a

The Watchman

202

—

a man at the lowest tide of his endurance. He needs me, gentlemen. I've got to tell him something. Or ask him something? observed the Doctor. Bob. I imagine Luther could tell you things tonight that would give you material for ten years of sermons. Have a heart, Snedeker, said the minister. This is hardly a time for levity. Come on now. Has any of you seen him, gentlemen? It's absolutely essential that I find him talk to him tell him something. Tell him what, Bob? asked the Doctor. Tell him why the always will be? world's a slaughterhouse? Always has been Do you reckon he needs to be told that tonight? In the darkened dining room Cristi, motionless as a stone figure throughout, suddenly sprang up and rushed round the counter to the stainless-steel sink beneath the dishwasher's spigots. She bent over it, swallowing hard and then gagging in little choking gasps, clutching the cold metal edge to supin his

hour of Gethsemane

soul's

—

—

port herself. She remained

bowed

there a

moment,

slavering

and racked with the subsiding heaves of her nausea. Her throat seemed contracted and tightened as if in a hangman's noose. Ah, the hell with you, she whispered. The hell with you, Cris Alt! Can't take anything, can you? She rested there a long time, still feeling the spasms, clinga

little,

ing to the sink edge, her eyes closed, feeling

now

cold-sick sweat spring across her forehead,

its

the chill of

moistness in

the fine, small strands of blond along her temples. By God, look! bawled Jibbons the horse trader from the lobby. It's him out there in front! By God, I can't hardly

my

Look, Peace! Looky there, Doc. It's the her he's got in his arms. I can't see, said Thomas Peace. All I see is something bundled up in some sort of old horse blanket. Didn't you see her dark hair dangling in the street light's gleam? cried the horse trader. Just then in the light glimpse of her face. 1 seen it plain! Where in the hell are they alJ going? Well, gentlemen, said Thomas Peace. I'd best be getting back to the Parlors. He's likely fetching her there. Cristi ran to the window, leaned on Jill's old chair, looking out at the vast and strange procession. Luther was carrying the shawled dead in his arms. Beside him strutted Deputy Tzchak, his eyes flashing, his head held back in a grimace believe Sheriff

—and

eyes. it's

—

—

The Watchman

203

With a cry the Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd hurled open the door, scurried down the stone steps and ran into the street by Luther's side. Cristi of hopeful yet self-effacing piety.

could hear nothing: she could only see the preacher's face, his eyes beseeching, mouth working as if in words which might have been either zealous consolation or desperate inquisition.

might have appeared to heretical and silly-minded onlookthough the Man of the Cloth were begging from out of the ravaged and bankrupt lawman's face some single, conIt

ers as

solatory set

at

among

word of

rest

his

unriddling, touchstone finality

certain

which would

long-sought and torturing uncertainties

own humdrum and

rotarian

theologies.

Cristi

looked through the hats and huddled shoulders of the shuffling, milling mob and, for the last time, saw the back of her father's upthrust head. Then, hearing the klaxon of the bus, she rose, caught up her suitcase and moved slowly into the dark of the back passage to the side door. The bus would be leaving soon; Cristi would wait on the pantry steps under the big sycamore behind the Mound Hotel, beyond the whispering fringe of the crowd, where no one would see her leave. She watched the nimbus of the gathering fog round the street lamps like the hovering smoke of old souvenirs, impetuously burned. Luther walked slowly up Seventh, holding the rug-wrapped bodies of the girl and her strangled, small accompUce so Ughtly that it might have seemed that when life had left them all weight of substance went as well. He seemed mesmerized, wholly heedless of the deputy at one elbow or of the whispering, desperate minister at the other; heedless of the crowds behind him, oblivious even of the throngs that lined the pavement ahead, spilling out before the bulge and press of their neck-strained, nudging numbers, then falling away before him to make a clear and curious path of open, unobstructed leeway as his boots came on. Their eyes fixed upon him, intent upon his face, feeding upon its features for the slightest novelty of momentary alteration among its stiff arrangement of anguished fortitude: their mouths fallen open in moist, dark gaping, like the witnesses who appear suddenly at accidents, too busy with eyes to think of mouths. The naked and shameless fever of inquisitive fascination froze them in these masks and postures, though some other yeast-

seemed deep at work amid this helpless, morbid move, to close those fallen mouths, to drag away these glassed, hot stares so pinned upon his face. ing ferment paralysis to

204

The Watchman

They watched to see what he would do; they looked to see what they had done: they waited, watching, for the end of it; standing like creatures in dreams, unable to move, dreading their dream should break off unfulfilled and leave them sweating with questions in the bed of night. His face, slowmoving past them, might have been a dark mirror, within whose scorched and blistered silvering they might hope to catch one wrinkled, fleeting image of themselves. Though none of them there, likely, dared reckon that in the SheritT's face they would find an answer: each would have been comforted enough to read a precise statement of his question. By the corner of Seventh and April streets he moved past the courthouse, under the shadow-tattered canopy of lowboughed maples and sycamores, beneath which, set back in the mists some twelve feet from the curb and flanked by twin, outmoded cannons whose deep, rifled throats, through sixty years of civic insensibility to the splendors of some old war with Spain, were stuffed nearly to the muzzles with pop bottles, newspapers and cigar wrappers, rose a massive square of polished granite, chiseled with names. Atop this stone extravaganza stood a ten-foot high bronze effigy of a bareheaded doughboy of the First World War. Slung from one shoulder hung the warrior's Springfield rifle whose fixed bayonet thrust upward with careless belligerence among the neutral boughs of high, old courtyard trees. The weathered, sculpted metal of the childishly youthful face was tossed back in a bared grimace which its artist may have meant to express victory's joy, spiritual sorrow, physical pain or combat-induced insanity. In the young soldier's forearms lay the draped, dead figure of a young girl. Through forty years some Mound Countians had found this feature of the monument even more cryptic than the expression on the soldier's face. Some thought the figure of the dead girl represented Edith Cavell, nurse, shot as a spy by the Hun firing squad in

Belgium; others called it symbol of all the young American war-dead, one Adena minister of radical-leaning and shortlived rectorate likened it to the intimidated, betrayed and finally extinguished mind of Woodrow Wilson. In the final sermon of his brief tenure this minister revised his interpretation to an even more shocking one. He had said the bronze warrior on the quiet courtyard corner marched homeward everlastingly bearing in his arms the mutilated and self-slain soul of himself. And he had said the smile on the bronze face was not a smile at all but the guUt-maddened rictus of

The Watchman

205

human cruelty. This minister left Adena on the earliest Monday train. For he was, of course as were all the other total

—

—

guessers

entirely mistaken.

The figure of the doughboy was posed for by the recently and gloriously returned Private Will Hunnicutt and the girl in his arms, draped in the veils of her neo-classic dance fad was his sweetheart, young Jo Clay. Five hundred dollars of the memorial's cost were pennies donated from the lunchmoneys and twenty-five-cent weekly allowances of Mound County schoolchildren while the balance of the expense of ten thousand dollars was made up from the pocket of Will Hunnicutt himself who had made his fortune in Pittsburgh steel. The monument was universally referred to as the Memorial to Mound County's War Dead. Those old enough to remember who its models had been were respectful enough to forget that there had been models at all. The solitary exception to this public mood of patriotic amnesia was Colonel Bruce who frequently and publicly addressed the statue as "The Tomb of the Weil-Known Soldier." Luther passes beyond it now. The Ughts of the courthouse, its windows all ablaze from the riot of the night, caused the figure of the bronze boy and his girl to cast a long shadow of accurate, echoic definition across the ghstening bricks. But now the crowd moves across it, obliterating these momentary simiUtudes of shadow and substance. Where's he a-taking her? whispers a voice. Dog if I know, answers a tree's shadow softly*

Up

to Peace's Parlors? asks the dark.

Not hardly, says a mouth in the mists. He's sure takin' the long way round if he is. Peace would be thataway. He's walking thisaway.

Toward

the

On up

Mound?

Seventh.

asks the shuffling whisper of two

shoes.

Toward

the

Mound,

says the dark.

And

each of them raised his eyes, troubled and edgy now, toward the looming shape of that vast, dark preeminence: the mists which now veiled it were luminous with a grayishyellow radiance from the lamp posts round the base of the and prehistoric grave. Some in the procession whispered disparaging excuses and fell away from the crowd, waiting behind to watch, while letting the others go on to a gamble with menaces which none would admit. Perhaps none before that night had ever clearly seen their Mound before: surely no light of day had ever shown it to them so plain as great

The Watchman

206

now

it loomed against that night sky's huge and hazy frieze. Luther moved on, without pause. And yet, it seemed that, beneath the Mound's great shadow, those behind him slowed, flinched, an instant of scarcely perceptible hesitation, before they quickened and hurried it behind their vision. But Luther was not carrying his dead ones to that Mound. Their common sigh: a vast and relieved expiration might have been only the wind. But there was no wind. The naked lights of the state prison blazed ahead. The pen, ran the whisper through the streets. The pen.

The

pen.

And

at the sight of that giant, black

them each was warmed by senses of

Gothic shape before

safety and comfort.

The

blackened granite of walls stretched for five town blocks: almost as far as a man could see into the mists on either side. The prison: the shape of childhood's castle: turreted and, to those outside it, grim and frightening only in the makebelieve of scalp-prickling, nursery legend; the cardboard castle of evil-ogres resting on the playroom floor and always hovering below whatever frightening fancies it might make, the strong authority of parents just downstairs. No, nothing ever quite believable about the place when seen out there, outside. Fortress of phantoms and mound of fantasy: castle of ogres. But no sane man out there is scared by tales. No Christian man out there will ever be shut up in those quite unbelievable interiors. As well imagine being closed up in a toy. Even now in close perspective nothing uneasy in that prospect; something, quite the contrary, of warming safety, comfort, solace, even of a pleasurable detachment. And all

of that great, spreading bleakness: the turreted castle in which a child snaps shut the drawbridge and locks in tight his faceless toy legions of scuffed and villainous men of lead: the

box

to latch

up

all

undone deeds of Luther Alt bears his soft and

the yeamed-to-do and

punishable naughtiness.

And

as

broken package to the wheel-gate the footfalls shuffle whispering in his wake and in the shifting, shifty hiss of shoes behind him an echo of the old and great forgotten child in each heart speaks.

By God, they're openin' the wheel-gate for him, cries a voice soft as a breaking leaf in the darkness. He's a-takin' her into the pen, comes another voice wisping. He's gone. Yes, gone. Clean out of his mind, I reckon. It's a justice, still, says another in the mists. Yes, a jus-

The Watchman

207

He's carrying her dead to the place where we'd have

tice.

carried her alive to die!

The guards at the wheel-gate stare, falter, stiffen; they lift the oiled, long barrels of pump-guns toward Luther and the mob. What's this? What the hell is all this? one growls. Let him in, says a voice from the faces behind the big, quiet man with the faded gaiety of the rug wrapped round his lightly rounded burden. The pump-guns steady, yet something unsteadies them: faces of prominence, of law, of eminence, of wealth in all that sprawling sea of masks; it was not a mob to open fire on with impunity.

What's he want inside for? What the hell's he got in that bag there? drones the voice, not certain now, not pump-gun cocky now. It

don't matter, let

The pump-guns

him

falter.

in.

A man may

not

fire

magnum

slugs

into the bodies of preachers, lawyers, deputies, doctors:

for

each guard dreadfully envisions himself in aftermath of such brute rashness: the guarded now and not the

an

instant,

man

and not the man who puts him ask afterwards, says the guard. And something of a strange, primordial mood drifts in upon him from the mob, the fog, the mound. Some dark and ancient rite is being done. And who of them who once has seen the green room and the galleried faces of its pews upon those gala nights of executions does not sense and grasp, with creature-quickness, the spell and gallantry of dark and anguard: the

in the chair

there. Yes, step aside:

cient rite?

away. Above the high stone portico, the chiseled motto of the state bitten into the smoky stone of the arch: Mountaineers Are Always Free. Some men have laughed at that: even manacled men who have moved beneath its leering irony, never to glimpse it again except in quaking, fitful, simpering death-row dreams. Like an enormous iron carousel of chilledsteel bars the cogged, cage turnstile of the wheel-gate groans and goes slowly turning on its huge, oiled drum. The guards look at Luther's face; some turn away, disturbed: they have known him, some have respected him. Now something in the news of him tonight, something at this moment in his face awes and frightens them. Deputy Tzchak and Prison Chaplain Godd are permitted inside with him. The wheel-gate

The long guns

visible

even

now

fall

in those mists,

The Watchman

208 begins guards raised,

its

slow orbit again, barring

move down the steps into angrier now than before at

crowds.

off the

midst,

their

the

mob

Now

the

pump-guns

for something

they have remembered in the face of Luther Alt. The crowd falls back. It waits. It will stay there till fresh news comes whispering out. Crowds have always waited outside prisons for the grass-fire news of things inside to come whispering out.

Slowly Luther walks up the echoing corridor, his boots now as steady as ever they rang in the still, safe nights

ringing

when men and women

of Adena in their beds, hstening, felt the comfort of that sentried pace along the mist-swathed bricks of lonely streets' vigilance. Tzchak and the minister hurry along behind. And in the darkened hallways between cell

blocks

men

lift

their

anonymous and

the bars and watch the three in silence.

faceless faces to

Reverend Doctor

Godd

goes sobbing now, almost falling, reaching out to grab Luther's sleeve, still gasping at him in those begging whispers. Listen to me, Sheriff. Oh, my brother, if only you'd let me help you in this hour of travail. If only you'd talk to me, cried the minister softly. Tell you such as what? smirked Tzchak. Well, did I ever reckon I'd live to see the night when a preacher of the gospel would ask for answers to anything from a broken-down law-

man? The

minister

tried to pull

the certainty

reached Luther's sleeve, seized it weakly, It was as if he were obsessed with

him round. that

Luther, in this

moment

of that terrible

perhaps only for an instant, the clue to aspects of man's Janus face; perhaps that, in a and all both revelation Luther had leaned sight-bestowing blinding flash of over the brink of tragedy and seen cruelty's face plain and now, in wonder, his tongue was suddenly gifted to the simple phrase which would be key to crime, to punishment, to atonement. And yet in every falter and rickety gesture of the minister's graceless, palsied pursuit it seemed, as well, that he dreaded to possess the very truth he chased, and would faint and wither in the knowing of its knowledge. The faces without faces clutched in their cages, witnessing; the guards looked at Luther, lowered their eyes, let down their guns, moved aside. They had known him, respected him, had night,

possessed,

strength on nights when other men must die. night they felt him, troublingly, stronger in the very felt his

of his weakness.

Now

to-

moment

The Watchman Sheriff, in Christ's

name

wait,

209

sobbed Doctor Robert Godd.

I've got to talk to you.

But Luther seemed to know of the existence of nothing beyond the bloodstained blanket-bundle in his arms. Behind his steady, ringing boots came cocky Tzchak and the stumbling minister. Far ahead of them at the end of the corridor, in the faint illumination of a single light bulb, two guards stood on either side of the small green door. In the deadfall of that

the little door stood out bright as spring against the chalk-white concrete. At the sight of it the minister, who had gone that route and seen that door so many times before, stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. It was the deputy who helped the Reverend Doctor Godd back to his tottering legs again, crutching him under the armpits, easing light

him

along.

Courage,

my

son, courage,

ing, into the chaplain's ear.

moments,

my

Tzchak whispered

You must

softly, smil-

be brave in these

last

son.

Luther blinked up at the light, then looked down to first one and then the other of the guards' faces. Let me by, he mumbled. The men looked away from his face, the tough leathered passivity of their masks was troubled and unsteadied. Sheriff, you don't want in there, said one of them softly. Luther, you're all upset tonight. Go on home now. Let me by, he said again. Sheriff, what's the sense? said the other. Ain't nobody scheduled to go down tonight. Let me by, Luther sighed, bowing his head, closing his eyes, holding the bundle a little closer as if it were something pre-

ciously alive that he felt stir in fright

reassure and comfort with

and which now he must

awkward

pats of his giant fingers. Unlock it, Jonse, whispered the first man. Can't do no harm. Keep him in there, if you can, whilst I go fetch Snedeker. The other man looked at Luther a moment, then fetched up his big ring of heavy keys, fumbled among them for the large, bright brass one to the green door's lock, unshot the massive bolt,

pressed

the

door open,

stepped

aside.

No, not you two, he said to Tzchak and the preacher. Tzchak shrugged and turned away but, when the minister tried to push past, the guard thrust out his arm and held him back.

But I've got to be with him! implored the preacher. There's something I've got to tell him.

The Watchman

210 Preacher,

But

let

there's

Luther Alt alone, said the guard. something I've got to tell him!

cried

the

Preacher. Preacher,

tell it to me, smiled the guard, blocking the way and pulling the green door closed behind him. There's no man alive in Mound County can tell Luther Alt much he don't know in there already. So tell it to me, Preacher. Can't never tell I might need to hear it now so's I can remember it someday. Maybe a night sometime when I might be alone in

there like him.

Let me by, guard! cried the Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd. I'm chaplain of this penitentiary. You've got no right to keep me away from a desperate man who needs me.

He

don't need you. Preacher, said the guard softly. Jonse, run fetch Snedeker. This poor parson needs a doctor worse

than Luther Alt. I'll

report this to the warden, said the minister bitterly. said the guard. The one that

Which warden, Preacher?

my prison or the one that runs yours? Behind the closed door Luther heard none of this, and likely would not have heard it had the door been open, for in the intervals when he was not whispering to the broken bundle in his arms he seemed listening, head tilted a little, to the murmur of lost voices beyond the walls, listening and then resuming his own soft reassurances, rocking a httle to and fro, pressing the bundle close against him in cradling arms, sobbing a breath or two, then leaning his head forward to whisper again. I wanted them to think it was me, he explained gently. Lord, I'd not have minded come here to sit and burn for you, my Jill. But it all come about too fast. And all I tried to do for you I did too late. Hasn't it always been that way with me now, Jill? Didn't I always come fumbling around trying to do things when it was too late? Yes, Lord, too late. But I'm here now. You know I'm here now, don't you? Does it help it any? No. Too late, too late. Look yonder, my two little ladies look there on the benches. See yonder? They've all come watch us. The noble, the respectable, the genteel folk of Mound County. Well, we must not find ourselves unable to

runs

—

forgive

them

that.

from the bundle and cast a long, slow glance of sweeping, smiling inventory across the shadowed tiers of benches gleaming faintly in the obscure light from the two red bulbs above the shut, green door. It would have

He

raised his eyes

F

The Watchman

211

seemed

ungenerous, unforgiving, he felt, if he did not smile at them: those faces that seemed watching there. Then suddenly he seemed to gather himself up in a powerful spasm of outrage and snapped his eyes open, glaring into the gallery, searching the paUid phantoms of the faces there, squaring his shoulders for some final gesture of his

dwindled officialdom. Mister Christmas landers, take the prisoner and draw up the indictment, sir! he roared, his voice echoing in ricocheting chatter among the close, green walls. Mister Prosecutor Christmas landers, I arrest the earth Oh, it's a clear case, sir, and you should be pleased at the evidence, for you shall certainly have an easy day of it in courtl The death sentence? Oh, most certainly, Mister Janders, and what an execution night! Gallows and witnessing chairs sprung up like mushrooms round the earth! Oh, what a gala gallows nightl Take the prisoner, sir. I deliver him into your custody, Mr. Christmas Janders, and may His soul have mercy on God. What's that? The prisoner's name, sir? The prisoner's name is that what you asked? Oh, yes, is We. Any ahases, sir? indeed, Mister Janders. The prisoner We has committed the majority of his crimes under the alias Them. That's always a matter of where he happens to be standing at the time, sir. His crime? Yes, now, the crime. Mmmm, let me think a spell. Lord, I knew it only a moment ago. The crime. Yes, now it comes back. The prisoner's crime, Mister Janders, is the crime of being a prisoner. Are you getting all this down? Good. Then let me go on. The prisoner's crime is the crime of being a prisoner in a room without light ^without lampshine to see, to understand. The lamps, sir? Why were they out? Mister Janders, why are lamps ever snuffed suddenly out? You know that as weU as I, sir. The wind. The wind. The blowing curtains and the wind of night. A sighing suddenly a flame gone guttering and then the dark come clanging down like the iron door of evening when dusk I

—

—

—

—

has done.

He moaned and

closed his eyes, thrusting his big head back clasps above the ghastly chair, moving his side against the heavy dangling straps, the cathodes at the scuffed calf of his dark boots, rocking his lost children in his arms as if he would soothe them again to sleep from their waking to his surly outburst. Hush, he whispered. Hush, my little broken ladies. Hush. I'll shout no more. There now ^hush. Sleep again. against the

shadowed metal legs from side to

—

The Watchman

212

And so he stayed in that rocking, anguished posture, his' knees pulled up, holding his bundle clenched close against him, patting it with clumsy, pacifying fingers, and then stopped moving, poised, his head quite still and once again a-tilt, as if listening to certain loquies beyond the thick walls.

murmurous, enormous

col-

Mercy? Reprieve? Forgiveness? he whispered. Too late, too All time's run out. The Governor's gone a-fishing in his boat and struggles now with nets among the wind and spindrift seas. The Governor's gone fishing for lost souls in late.

the roaring oceans of the dark Too late, too late! No mercies no reprieves. The wind's too loud he'll never hear our I

—

—

shouts from shore. No pardons now. No. And it is dark. Jill, is there light down there inside your folded, shawled-up warmth? Yes, light for JiU it's there I glimpsed a flicker of its gleam. Light from the little dog's love, I would reckon. Or maybe that queer, pale light of dreams. Now, by God, it's

—

light

we need

He moved

—

in here!

head wearily downward with something of his eyes and slowly reaching his hand across faint surprise between his body and the close-cradled bundle, felt a mohis

ment, then raised his hand to a space close inches from his squinting, fading eyes, staring at the glistening scarlet of his dappled fingers. It's seeping through my shirt, he commented quietly. The warm, the wetness of it. Yes. No wonder my head bows and my eyehds won't stay up. Yes. I didn't know. He stared sorrowfully an instant more at the crimson, jellying liquid on his outstretched fingers, before his hand fell to the rug again, struggling to lift it closer, tighter against his breast.

That's almost a miracle, he smiled. I never felt the wound blood. I only all. Yet here's the proof: my blood. thank the kindly Christ of mercy that it isn't yours, my bro-

My

at

ken

dears.

And

Good

night.

forever slumped his cheek tucked-in, silent shapes.

down

close against their

Now in the strange, still halfway hours from midnight till dayrise the pavements of the mist-bound street before the window of the Mound Hotel still stured and thronged with restless, sleepless people. Among their feverish, gossiping faces of holiday time excitement the pale face of Jason moved shouldering and nudging among them, his eyes raised and

213

The Watchman

searching through them for the briUiant blond curls, the pale and dark-eyed face of a girl whose small, moist footprints upon the leafy bricks by the bus stop had already vanished beneath the thousand erasing shoesoles which had aimlessly shambled across them in the hours since she had gone. The faintly light in her room still shone in the mists above the and dark nameless, gUstening drugstore bottles filled with had ominously tinted liquids. But she was not here: Jason been there. Restive and glittery with brass the instruments the of the Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band flashed among players The shoulders. and arms mist-dampened fabric of

blew into the mouthpieces of their horns, shook them out, net-bound, oiled their valves; a tall and gangling girl with buckwheatof face longing long, a mouse-colored hair and and batter complexion, struck the hide of her bass-drum now assembled had band little then and tested her cymbal. The the moment the news spread that Luther Alt had disappeared into the prison gates. They seemed waiting, almost baton fall listening, for some swishing whisper of an invisible the mists to strike up a hymn. Hood the old hangman smiled at everyone for no imaginable reason to those who did not know him: he had dropped his battered cornet several

among

times on the bricks

among

the feet that shuffled round

and

about him and each time he had stooped, unsteadily, to feel gave out for it among their shoes, his loose, shabby overcoat a music of

its

own: the

tinkling chink of

all his

half -swilled

zippertiny liquor bottles. Young boys and girls in open Cole the of letters stenciled jackets with the house paint backs leather wet black, Blake Rebels spelled out across

the crowd. Voices hushed and harsh in the hotel lobby raced crisply back and forth above the rumble of the restless, errant crowd, evanthe tuning-up of instruments among the zealous little indifferent gelic band in the mists beneath the stteet lamp's and undistinguishing haze of woolly luminescence. Fresh rumor had come and ran whispering but, unconfirmed, it was not yet fresh news and so could not run shouting.

moved laughing through

In the dining room Jason got up and walked slowly to the table by the window. His hand stole out, hesitated, then rested on the chrome-barred back of the chair. After a long while he eased the chair legs back from the table, looked at frown creasing his it a moment more with an appraising, soft enigma of this simthe by confused brow, his eyes seemingly of iinrestir aching the to ple, utilitarian object in contrast

The Watchman

214

^

lated

reminiscences

lunchroom

furniture

among

thoughts;

his

bewildered

him

as

if

this

momentarily which

for lost, arcane, intrinsic meanings

simple in

his,

search of could not possibly now, in fact, any longer imply. He sat down slowly, like a man with sore, stiff joints, lowering himself cautiously into a seat of suspect and untested soundness. His eyes wandered to the sill of the longl window, not seeing the crowd beyond, not hearing the rising aspiration of their grumbling gossip. His gaze rested on 1 something, noted it absently in its obscured and shadowy corner, perhaps something deep in the stunned jumble of his thoughts thinking: Strange. This lunchroom always so j neat. The clean farm waitresses in their bright, starched ^ aprons constantly fussing, readying the tables, polishing formica tops, filling sugar bowls, dusting, mopping and remopping in the ruddy midnight shadows after closing time. dusty dixie cup. He leaned over a little to see inStrange. side it. It had been there for ages, surely: in the bottom of it was the crust of some dark and unimaginable liquid, long dried out to this brittle residue among which the burnished j relics of dead flies glistened in the neon burn, like the minuscule bodies of fossils immured in coal for many and immeasurable millenniums. Jason sighed with weariness and looked away, reminded of nothing but the carelessness of kitchen help. Then suddenly, a moment later, there came to his nostrils most unmistakably the faint, frail scent of a rose. He got up suddenly, placed the chair carefully back where it had been, and crept back it

it

A

'

uneasily to his dark stool at the counter. get a little sleep, at least, he thought. I'll take off my jacket, roll it into a cushion and lay my head on it there, on

m

the counter. No one will find me. Dayrise will wake me. I'll few hours sleep, at least. hear the bus. He breathed in and out heavily once or twice and finally blew his nose into his handkerchief, replaced it in his pocket, then sneezed. The scent of rose persisted. He lifted his eyes to the window, to the crowd, searching angrily for some sight of the flat, spotless beige of the round, uptilted top of

A

his father's

officer's

cap.

No

sign of that.

A

man moved

among the close throngs, smiling with chilly benevolence, his mouth moving with animation, his fingers passing out little white cards like a stage magician; now nodding his thanks, now shaking his head with self-effacing modesty, he moved swiftly, sidling sUckly through the weaving shoulders, smil-

The Watchman

215

ing again, nodding with that jerky, supplicating arrogance, pressing the little cards into outstretched hands with thankful piety: a man announcing a candidacy. Women clasped

squeezed them gratefully.

his fingers,

Men

slapped him on

the shoulder, threw back their heads in nodding laughs of admiration and assenting pledge. Deputy Tzchak with the indefatigable concurrence of his native enterprise and the hasty labors of a Lafayette Avenue job-printer had the cards of his campaign for office set up in

type no more than five minutes after word came of the childmurderess's death. Jason, ill at ease, turned on his stool and searched among the stretching black of the dining room for some pale evidence of roses. But now suddenly the voice of Jibbons the horse trader rose in a bawling, ragged shout from the lobby.

By God, he What say?

died!

Shrilled a woman's voice from through the half-open door. Who's that died?

the

What

street

say,

Mister?

The

Sheriff died! roared Jibbons, his voice

just

quavery with

newsboy announcing apocalypse. Jake McCartle phoned me from the prison. Did you all hear that?

thrill, like

a

Luther Alt just died! The dinning murmur

of

them hushed

now,

all

feet

paused, breaths just drawn in were held, breaths just exhaled hovered in the mists. How? shouted a man's voice from somewhere among the frozen, poised torrent of hats and bright-shawled heads.

Did he

kill

hisself? shrilled a small child's voice.

Did he

taken his pistol and kill hisself! Doc Snedeker's been working over him for fifteen minutes! cried the horse trader. And he don't know how! He died in the chair!

Like a single breath, like a great, communal gasp the mur-

mur

of their wonder drowned him out. Wait now! bawled the horse trader. He never killed hisself. And no one so much as laid a finger on him! But he's dead just the same. When Snedeker and McCartle and the other guards and the warden come in the room they found him sitting there with the girl bundled tight in his arms in

—

the electric chair.

Who th'owed the switch on him? shouted the hat again. No one, I tell you! shouted Jibbons, gold teeth ghttering

The Watchman

216 in his

open mouth

died, that's

like

ranked

bullets in a

gun

belt.

He

jus

all.

Well, what's he die from? cried the woman. Snedeker's still working on him, I tell you! cried Jibbons flushing angrily like a courthouse raconteur whose point has' been spoiled by the question of a small, unwelcome boy. Snedeker don't know a bit more about what he died from than McCartle nor the Warden nor ary other of them up there. He just died, that's all. McCartle said it took three men to pull his

arms unwound from round the

girl.

They was

all

clenched about her bundled body like a fist. McCartle had to break his right arm to get her loose. It was God Almighty struck him dead! cried the ex-hangman, snatching the cornet mouthpiece from his puckered, ready lips. Maybe, said another quietly somewhere in the mists. And then again maybe he just wore out. Maybe he bumped against some sort of a live wire there in the chair

1

No, I tell you! cried the horse trader. He just died, that's aU. Snedeker says he can tell no more than that. Not a mark

on him.

No

grief, none of them there mentioned that of massive will might will to die. By God, Luther Alt was a good Sheriff! roared a man, his voice shaking with emotion. man folks could respect. good man! chorused others. By God, now, said another. I'll miss hearing those old boots of his ringing down the bricks on foggy nights like this. Me and my missus slept easy hearin' that sound. Nobody blames him for his Godless daughters! That's a fact! shouted Pruney Wrinkle, wanting to be remembered for having said something on that night to be so infinitely remembered. There's bad apples in the best of orchards! Ain't that so now, boys? Yes. Yes, they roared softly in bumbling accordance.

a

one spoke of

man

A

A

That's so. Yes. That's a God known fact! Now the figure of a man in shirt sleeves, flushed and breathless from an evening of ingenious exertion, clambered on top of a parked car beneath the movie-house marquee and smiled, bowing with anxious petition like a flexing puppet. Tzchak's hand thrust out, the fingers opened, the white cards rose, broke and drifted down upon the heads of the

people like a spurious and scissored snow.

The Watchman I

want

all

217

you good Mound County

folks to

know, the

deputy announced, that I'm here to offer myself as your servant. That and no more. With the dead body of my dearest and closest friend of more than twenty years hardly cool yet on the stone table up at Peace's Parlors it would not be fitting for me to say more than that. Luther Alt was a brave man a good Sheriff. I'd not presume to tell you I can ever fill those boots that stand limp and empty now beside the undertaker's table. All I can say is this if you want me I'm here if you ask me I'll step forward if you let me I'll serve, as I've always tried to serve. Your safety the lives of poor young lads Uke Cole Blake the hallowed innocence of your littlest children. You there, little darling. Lady, lift

—

— —

—

—

—

her up here to me! Instantly then, the figure of a small girl in a green flannel coat thrust up above the heads of the mob as if propelled

from a circus cannon. She wailed and blubbered, reaching her hands back beseechingly to the gnarled, young hands of the mother who had held her to the deputy. Tzchak cuddled her and the crowd murmured and laughed warmly after he fumbled in his jacket and fetched out a small, gray catnip mouse to play with. Why, sure now you can keep it! cried Tzchak, just loud enough for all of them to hear, yet carefully not loud enough to frighten the child into tears again. fingers

took the strange, gray toy with

The its

fat,

four-year-old

tiny eyes like hat-

pin beads, examined it, snuffling, still shaking now and then from the subsidence of her sobs. Sure now you can keep it, Tzchak said. You don't reckon I'd haul you all the way up here and scare you half to death and then give you a toy I was going to take back again. That's yours, little kitten, that's yours! Reckon you'd have right smart of a tussle getting that playtoy back even if you wanted it, Sheriff! roared a man who promptly set off a flurry of heart-warmed laughter. Did someone yonder call me Sheriff? said Tzchak with a slow and humble shake of his hand. No, friends, Luther Alt's still Sheriff of Mound County even in death. Not until the court of Mound County at you people's bidding elect a new man will you have the right to any other man by the name of Sheriff. That'll not be long, Tzchak! shouted Deke Virgin from the open window of his second-story flat. Tzchak for Sheriff! cried the mother of the little girl, tak-

—

The Watchman

218

from the deputy's gentle hands and brandbody aloft above the heads: a banner of wailing innocence. Tzchak for Sheriff! came a great chorus from the waiting, readied mouths. The deputy with a diffident wave of ing the child back

ishing her

the hand, a boyish, appreciative shake of curly, black hair,

ducks smiling now and jumps from the car top back down into the democratic midst of his cheering constituency. Like a moving river in the congealed ocean of massed heads, jostling, laughing dozens now bear him up Seventh Street toward the Court House. But ain't one of us ever gonna forget Luther Alt shouts Jibbons from the hotel steps. I

That's right, Trader! cries a woman. I reckon it wouldn't be amiss if we was all to spend a minute's silence, cried the horse trader in a moved and broken voice. Let us bow our heads in the Sheriff's memory. And

think about the Lord! Put perhaps it was simply that the crowd was in no mood not even for a minute: perhaps, on the for silence then other hand, the words of Mister Jibbons had been misunderstood. For suddenly the old army cap of the band leader gave a nod, his baton slashed the air, the cornet of Matthew Hood led them off with the bass-drum boom and the cymbal clash of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." By the small desk at the hotel door stood a pale boy: Jason shakes his

—

head; Jason's mouth shapes No. He moves down the steps, fighting his way through the heaving shoulders of the singers. They must be told; they must know about a warm and dimlit bedroom in a long-lost Texas night. Jason shouts but no sound is heard above the hymn. Jason's mouth shapes No and shouts it close into their faces. But they think only that, like

them, he

No! shouts believe.

And

is

singing.

Jason.

hear, make them among their shoulders, seizing their mouth opening and closing in dumb,

He must make them

so he tears

arms, shaking them, his

unheard dissent before their faces which smile into his, acknowledging his enthusiasm, nodding their heads to the tune and singing all the louder. The hangman's horn rings golden through their chant; the bass drum thumps like fate's fist banging at the door of

mounded

mists; the cymbal's plangent splash of brass rings ready sword of Christian War. Almost insanely now, yet never so sane, Jason's lost, diminutive shape hurtles and shoulders through the choiring

like the

The Watchman

219

He

shakes his livid face; he rounds his mouth to No. told. And what must they be told? Some slander against their freshest, heroed novelty; protege of all their strongest, happiest instincts, and on the very night when hero is what they need the most to fill some dangerous, steaming gap? What must they be told? Words babbled from the lips of a mad girl who lies now, providently and by a providence of their own, smashed, extinct, no longer babbling? What must they hear? Soiled and guessed-at hearsay from the corrupt mouth of her harlot sister? Yet Jason moves on, his voice ragged and failing from his soundless, screaming imprecations; he stumbles, falls, not feeling the knee bruise from the street bricks, struggles up again, swims shouting on among them. One man leans forward, sensing something in the boy's man eyes, perhaps cupping one hand behind a hairy ear to catch the faint-cried word. What's say? Jason's mouth works in idiot, inaudible fury before the old

crowd.

They must be

man's eyes. What's that, boy? On-ward, Christian Sol-diers

—Marching on — boy? What say?

With the cross of Jee-e-e-huh-sus Can't hear ye,

Again

his

goi-ing

dumb-show mouthing

to Wa-a-ar! be-fore

as

I

to the old man's straining

face.

Juanita? Juanita who, boy? Ain't no one round here by name that I know of. Juanita? says the old one. No. Fraid not. Nope. In the hotel lobby, Jason slams the door behind him. Beyond the shut door the sound of singing, the clash and thump and bugling band persist. He breaks down now in sobs of frustration at a throat soundless and useless for speech; he weaves toward the side door, leaving the old night clerk staring at him, astonished. Beyond the crowd now, in the mists and immediate stillness of the tree-shadowed bricks Jason wanders down Lafayette Avenue toward the river road, into the night. Cristi? he thinks. Will you forgive me this last, worst failure of them all? Cristi, I tried. God, I couldn't make them hear. They were shouting about Jesus so loud I couldn't that

My

make them hear about TzchakI

Cristi?

Behind him, as if slowly smothering away among the mists, the voices and the band grow faint. Jason walks a

— The Watchman

220 while,

more

exhausted, his sobs subsiding, his legs grown again steady, his pace footsure.

Something glimmers on the

before him. He turns and sees the twin lights of a trailer truck approach, like a slow, fire-eyed behemoth making its massive way across the floor of that gray ocean. Jason stands, waving a weary hand. Ain't supposed to pick up hitchers, boy, says a voice from the high cab, the pipe above him spouting black smoke of its diesel like giant ink from an angered squid. Well, which way you going? West, croaks Jason.

wet bricks

in the fog

Which way? West! cries Jason.

Get

in,

said the voice.

burgh in the morning. But for a moment

drop you

I'll

in the

cab the old

off outside

Parkers-

zeal, the fury, the

panic seizes him for an instant: they must be told, he must go back, he must make known his No. And for that instant as the truck lights sweep round across the veiled poplars of the ancient yard of Colonel Bruce, Jason's face thrusts out of the cab window, his mouth rounded and gawping its broken, senseless soundlessness. The truck moves on, its tires singing on the black-top of the highway's westward bound. Yet who else tonight gawps in Adena with dumb and shout-torn throat to cry, unheeded and wilderness-lost, craving for ears unhearing in the din of rainy hymns and windy praise. Now in this late and hallowed hour of imminent earliness what other soundless mouths croak broken: "Man, wake up. Man, light up the wet wick of your eyes while still there's time to see." Who else wanders the peopled nothing of this autumn river night? whose blood, in menstrual premonition, already seedling, wombs the murder of a child not bom? What steals creeping by there, Watchman-who-walksno-more? or face of the prosecutor, fresh as pearled dayrise with new and skeptic sense; legal face with one black, crazed crack run up in storm-struck zigzag through the virgin bellmetal of that tough and untolled conscience: lawyer

quenched

and

slaughtered,

drifting

mad

mists

girl-child

—

Christmas Janders tongue-tied with doubts before the railing of these yawning, juried mists? What else, Silence-that-walks, what else to be seen in the Mound of mists tonight? the Colonel's window slammed chattering to its casement, latched, sealed against sound of Adena and world this once in ten year's time; old Colonel, beyond windows, beyond

—

V'

The Watchman

221

beyond disenchantment, beyond all but this last shock thunderclap of cruel and blasphemous idiocy, beyond all further ragging hurt, though not beyond an everlasting astonishment at human cruelty remembered in every aching holy-relic bone of sainted cynicism and all the anguish of his mankind-loved-too-well: old, mad Colonel Bruce, bunched deep and fisted in a brass bed's tick, mounds of pouched, feather bolsters like purses of misered snowfall from murdered peace doves, pillowed and stuffed close around his ears: Colonel beyond his window, beyond those honking, surprise,

bugling, braying confirmations of his life's sorriest, sourest prophecies, beyond his hermetic sill, though not beyond the cauterizing and incendiary thermite of his outrage. What else

—

walks yonder, white-piled-thought? whose are those smoking wispish boots which pace their soundless round along the unconscienced bricks, what shoulders sculpted from huge mists and what pearled eyes of fumed insubstance watch, what wind-ruined and rain-banished mouth lifts to wake and warn Adena's castrate sleep; lips shaped to shout, rounded light! For what to anguished love, christened to ugly need: is Hate but Love that has lost its way in the dark! My God, a little light while there's still time for love to find its way.

A

Christ of the fishes. Lord of loaves still warm! Christ with wrist and heel bone bums of frock-blessed and chapel dispensated War and the four smoldering electrode-scorched stigmata of baptized, priest-praised jails! Sir, Jesus Christ! Joke-named, Christ-word, Kilroy scratched with a dirty pin upon the painted walls of earth's babbling, creed-bound, toileted churches! Gentle Jesus of all names of human love! Sir, the wind rises and the rains sweep in! Lord, please, a light! a little light! Lord, sir, in Love's name, please! A simple flame to light this poor lamp's blasted, blacked and Sir,

—

blown-out wick!

gone home to bed again; Adena a dreamless sleep. For that night's savage dream, at least, is done, spun out, and all the tale, at last, is told and tied up at its loose yarn-ends. The pavements of the street before the Mound Hotel lay glistering with the wet of vanished mists, deserted. Towards three o'clock, upon the sudden rising of a river wind, the fog

And now And

sleeps.

rolled off.

they have

all

sleeps a spent, a deep,

Now

the curl of whittled country

moon

rides like

a sickled silver in its violet vastness. Somewhere west beyond the river Jason rides the high-

The Watchman

222

ways

continent, tains.

manhood, and his Cristi heaped haystack of the long prairie and the bulTalo-back mounfind her. But perhaps, foremost, he will

to his quest, golden fleece of

glistening

somewhere in beyond green

Perhaps he

will

find, at last, himself. If

Yet perhaps,

if at

all,

he

the

is

lucky; that

is,

if

these findings will be

he

is

very lucky.

months or years

A

measuring, thinking time, a lone time for each coming. of them: a time of mending, a spell to heal, nights of selfsumming. By chance these two may meet again amid some season of the earth's great renewals: perhaps in the big heart

in

of the green comebacks of a spring, or maybe in the ridge and hillside reapings of another summer's end. And maybe better so. Yes, surely, better so. The corner at Lafayette and Seventh is nearly deserted. Even the doors beneath all the scratched, tawdry beads of beer-halls necklaced out below it are empty. And yet, persistent, indomitable, immortal: the close-clumped members of the Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band; bugling, thumping, crashing on as if they had not even noticed the wandering one-by-one away of everyone, the falling-off of tenors and altos each-by-each, the shambling away of weary, homebound shapes. It is quite possibly "Rock of Ages" now that they are playing: a rock, if it is that, of stunning and heterogeneous mosaic. It is hard to guess. For even in this hour of staled and unrefreshed exhaustion the little band goes jubilantly on in the achievement of their brilliant effects of that at last furiously Separate Enterprise: the very if not Free

—

—

voicing of the spirit of eccentric, personal and nonconforming joint-effort which is the peculiar and most hallowed excluding Darkies, Jews, Innative paradox which America

—

—

celebrates on such redians and the other parvenu elements holds forth to be its and ligious nights and patriotic holidays most hallowed symbol of virginal originality. And so now the Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band plays on, heedless of the desolate street corner across whose polished bricks blow bright, dry leaves in scuttling flurry

among

small white cards

which hands have dropped, forgot, and trampled there. The band goes bleating on with no one left to hear, nor any left to sing along; no solitary, mortal ear to heed salvation from their hymns. Ort Dobey sleeps behind his hotel registry. Jibbons the horse trader has gone up. All gone. And yet, with savage zeal the musicians persevere against that shadowed, earless solitude; the flashing brass of their instruments catch lights of moon and star and streetlight gold. Surely they re-

The Watchman main there left

in the fierce certainty that the night

one soul for

223

must have

their salvation.

High in the washed and watery crystal of autumn night stand the stars. The carved, bright wisp of moon seems hasting in movement when clouds race across it and away; then it

seems to stand, halted, as hushed and motionless as the

themselves when no clouds are near. Staring squint of moon; meadowed scatter of stars across the velvet dark. Is it beyond imagination that the little band might have the souls of these in mind? The old revival tune blows and rises on the wind. Do stars listen? has the pagan moon an ear for music? And the agnostic wind which intervenes between their might it not, at last, repent? Percarolling and the skies haps it is these last-to-go which the chapped-cheeked, earnest little band hopes to convert, blowing and beating in the lonely majesty of night. For surely stars, moon and wind godless and headstrong by legend do need saving. It is scarcely beyond the unswerving, steadfast passion of the little band's zeal to fancy this is so, to strive for that, to stubbornly blow and pound and puff for that. For whom else would they stars

—

—

—

stay so late to play?

Who

—

After such a each of them drives him to make the druid, mocking tribes of heaven come down and round to earth's angelic ways, at last. Matthew Hood, his bright-belled cornet lifted, his hot, flat hangman's eyes fixed savage on the moon swells out his cheeks like an amorous river frog, as if the very iterance of his sound would woo her loose. The ritualed night,

something

else is there to listen?

in

drum bombs away at Venus and her harlot handmaidThe trombone threatens the Pleiades. The cymbals' crashes shake the whispering wind. Moon, wind, stars: bass

ens.

penultimate converts before that last to humble and bring down to earth the thermonuclear, infidelic Sun. The Trumpet Home Tabernacle Band bursts forth in a fresh flurry of bugling, thumping, clashing sound. The wind blows, the :

moon

squints coldly, the stars stay put. Yet still there's hope. For Heaven, it must surely seem to some, seldom ^if ever knows what's best for it.

—

—

CRIME FOR THE CONNOISSEUR

Tales for a Rainy Night Edited by David Alexander

"A luscious mulligatawny of detection, suspense, fantasy, comedy, realism

and horror."

—Washington Post w Times Herald BY Stanley Ellin

Michael Gilbert MiRL\M Allen de Ford

Raymond E. Banks Donald A. Yates Nedra Tyre Maurice Procter

Anthony Boucher and

1

other top suspense writers

YOU GET A COPY OF TALES FOR A RAINT HlGHr TO FILL JUST THAT NEED." New York Herald Tribune **ADVISE

—

^ild/

ON

SALE WHEREVER PAPERBACKS

ARE SOLD-ONLY SOO d557 10^ for postage and If your dealer Is sold out, send only 5O0 plus handling to Crest Books, Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn. Please order by number and title. If five or more books are ordered, no postage or handling charge is necessary. No Canadian orders.

INNOCENCE AND EVIL mingled lay

murdered Hate,

in

deadly embrace, and a young

for no reason

revenge,

fear,

man

anyone could see.

mre

profit ... these

/

motives people could understand. But who

murder

in

his

right

s.

mind would want to

handsome Cole Blake?

likable,

Grief and bewilderment gave

ing chill

of fear. The

shadow

way

of

to a brood-

madness hung

over the town.

Which familiar face masked some hideous need

to kill?

Only

bound him

man

one in

knew

... but

had

anguish

helpless, terrible silence.

"Mr. Grubb mingles the comic with the grotesque, the light of

day with the qualities of a nightmare

.

.

.

his

prose has a richness of texture and depth you don't

often encounter

WATCHMAN

is

a

in

contemporary fiction

horrifying tale fraught

marvelous."

.-.

THE

superb novel."

^_-Omaha 'A

.

World Herald

with terror ... truly -Cincinriati Enquirer

FAWCETT WORLD LIBRARY