Hardcastle (28 page)

Music couldn’t say, nor did he understand, why Regus had been so subdued with Hardcastle, but whatever, Sheriff Hub Farthing didn’t get the same treatment. Regus unpinned the badge from his shirt and flipped it skittering across Farthing’s desk. Music, who already had his badge loose in his pocket, slapped it down in the sheriff’s hand. Farthing, his eyes narrowed and glittering with offense, looked from Regus’s badge to Regus. “I don’t like a man on a high horse, bud,” he said. “Just who do you think you are?”

“Beats me,” Regus said and raised his eyebrows. “Who do you think I am?”

The sheriff pursed his lips and declined to answer. He looked at Regus for a long moment. “I’ll tell you this,” he said. “I don’t like a man what ain’t a deputy of mine carryin a concealed weapon. When you give up the badge, you give up the right to that.”

Regus looked at the sheriff and nodded his head. “Sure,” he said. “Sure thing.” He drew his pistol from the shoulder holster and jammed it in his belt just behind the buckle. “How’s that?” he said.

Regus pulled the drawing knife toward him, wood curling up ahead of the blade. He took a halfhearted sighting down the edge and fitted the door into the slotted front of the rabbit gum. It slid shut. Music stopped whittling on the trigger stick and picked the door up by the bent nail ring in its top and let it slide shut once and then a second time.

“It’s too tight,” Music said.

“It drops shut slicker than shit,” Regus said.

“Sure,” Music said, “but the wood’s dry. When it sets out on the ground, when it snows, when it rains, it won’t drop slicker than shit.” Music pulled the door out of the slot. “Take a little more off here,” he said, running his thumb down one edge to illustrate, “and here and here too.”

“Well, goddam,” Regus said and yanked the board back.

Music watched him set his jaw and work on the board with the drawing knife. Building a rabbit gum ought to have been a pleasure, Music thought, a good chore, easy and interesting; he shook his head and went back to cutting a notch on the trigger stick. He himself had always enjoyed such things, but it was clear that Regus didn’t. He wasn’t even sure that, after watching him build four of them and helping on two, Regus could knock together anything that would catch a rabbit by himself. Well, of course, if he used one of those they had already made as a model, he could, Music told himself.

“Hit would be a hell of a lot easier and more fun to shoot the goddamned rabbit,” Regus said.

“Well, sure,” Music said, “if a man can afford to run out and buy shotgun shells any time he wants.”

Regus gave him a quick baleful look, turned his head, spat, and dropped the door once again in the slot. It was not a smart thing to have said, but it was getting difficult to steer around Regus’s touchiness. Still, he tolerated it, suspecting, oddly, that last evening with Merlee had somehow made him mild. He stuck the trigger stick through the slanted hole in the top of the gum until it struck the floor toward the center of the box, picked up a second stick, inserted it through the ring in the door, propped up the middle of it with a short notched board which was to stand up halfway down the top of the box, and carefully slipped the end of the second stick into the notch of the trigger stick. He took his hands away cautiously lest the mechanism collapse and the door drop shut. Everything held. “Reach in and poke the end of that trigger stick,” Music said, “and let’s see how she works.”

Regus did as he was told and the door dropped on his forearm.

“How hard was it to trip?” Music said.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Regus said.

“Well, you set her up and let me see,” Music said.

The two of them changed places, and when Regus got the mechanism set up, Music reached inside and fingered the stick. After two or three nudges, the door fell on his arm. “It’s a little coarse,” Music said; “the damned rabbit would have to lean on it.” He withdrew his arm and made the notch in the trigger stick a little shallower. Regus had some trouble getting the trap to stay set the next time, but when Music gave the trigger stick the slightest tickle, the door plopped down on his arm. “Ahh,” he said, “that’s a rabbit gum, by God.” He looked up at Regus and winked. “It’s nearly too good. I think it might catch a field mouse, but let’s set her out.”

Regus nodded without enthusiasm, and the two of them picked up the gum and carried it out of the barn, across Regus’s field, and into the grown-up pasture Music had traveled through the night before. Even after dark it had looked good, but when Music had gone back that morning, he’d found it laced with rabbit runs and droppings. “It’s a hell of a good year for rabbits, ain’t it?” Music said as he got his end of the rabbit gum over the sagging fence at the end of Regus’s field.

“Ain’t but so many of them suckers a man can eat, though,” Regus said, carrying his end and stepping over the fence effortlessly with one long-legged stride.

“Sure, I reckon,” Music said, “but a man might be able to sell them in Valle Crucis if they was all dressed out pretty and clean. And next year—you can’t tell—a rabbit might be hard to find. It seems to go that way. My grandfather use to tell me that if there were too many rabbits, they’d come down with rabbit fever for sure, and then they’d die back to nearly nothin, and the whole thing would start all over again.”

“Can a man catch that from them, that rabbit fever?” Regus asked.

“I never knew anybody to have it,” Music said, “but my old grandfather seemed to think so. He taught me to slit the belly and then sling the guts out on the ground so as not to have to touch em; and if the liver was red and smooth, not to worry and take it on home; but if the liver was lumpy or spotted, to drop the rabbit and leave it lay. Ha,” he said, “I never thought to take exception to anything he told me, I guess, for that’s the way I do it.”

They wandered over the grown-up pasture, each with an end of the rabbit gum, looking for a place to put it. “Jesus, right there by them little cedars,” Music said at last. “Look at all the rabbit shit, for Christ’s sake.”

While Music positioned the gum and set the mechanism, Regus squatted on his haunches. “Do you reckon a man
could
sell the damned things?” he asked.

“Can’t tell,” Music said. “If we git up a batch, we might carry them into Valle Crucis and see.”

Regus shook his head and sighed and looked off at the horizon. Music stood up and backed away from the rabbit gum with the fingers of both hands spread lest the trap be sprung, and Regus stood up too. “I don’t see why ye don’t bait the damned things with somethin, a piece of apple tied to the trigger stick or somethin.”

Music shook his head. “Rabbits ain’t real smart,” he said. “I think they go in just to look around, maybe to see if it’s a good place to set up housekeeping. You might try using a piece of apple or something like that, but if you caught a skunk, then the gum wouldn’t be any account for a long while.”

Regus nodded thoughtfully and spat.

“Well,” Music said, “we got two traps at the edge of the cornfield by the branch, two up in the elderberry bushes on the other side, and two in this here pasture.”

“And a couple of them damned bunnies already skinned out in the springhouse. I’ve lost my taste for them already,” Regus said. “But I got an awful notion that the time for serious rabbit eatin ain’t come yet.”

“Ha,” Music said, “you might grow fond of them.”

But Regus made no answer to that, and the two of them started back toward the house.

“You reckon them silly, softheaded miners have got to Chicago by now?” Regus asked after they had walked a little way.

“They only left yesterday morning,” Music said. “I wouldn’t think so.”

“Yeah,” Regus said, “Chicago’s a ways off, I’ll vow; they wouldn’t be there yet. Tomorrow, do you reckon?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Music said, “if they’ve kept at it and made good time.”

“Yeah,” Regus said. “I expect all hell’s gonna break loose when them idiots get back.”

“Well, it ain’t any skin off you and me. You don’t even have to think about it.”

Regus turned his head and spat, then kicked the spent quid of tobacco out of his mouth with his tongue and spat again. “I’m a man without any goddamned work,” he said. “What the hell else I got to think about?”

“Well,” Music said, “I thought we might cut that bee tree this afternoon and then try to get the honey tonight after dark. You can think about that.”

“Buildin rabbit traps, cuttin down a tree with some goddamned bees in it … shit,” Regus said. “What the hell kinda work is that? And what we gonna do then?”

“Buddy,” Music said and stopped, “I don’t think you’ve got a proper grip on the things that need to get done around here.”

Regus stopped too. “I expect yer right about that,” he said. “Why don’t you just go ahead and lay out fer me what the hell I’ve got to do on a little shirttail piece of land like this?”

“All right,” Music said. “You need to build a pigpen.”

Regus’s eyebrows rose and he colored. “I ain’t got no goddamned pigs!” he said.

“You got to get some,” Music said, “and then you’ll need a place to keep em. And you need to put a stall in the barn for a mule.”

“I ain’t got a mule either!” Regus said.

“That’s right,” Music said. “You got one old rusty plow point, but you ain’t got a plow. You ain’t got a singletree, if you had a plow. And you ain’t got but about half a harness. You need to get some lumber and put a hayloft in that barn. When the shingles I rived out dry, you got to put a new roof on it and reshingle about half of the north wall. Goddamned near all your fences are down, and—”

“Wait,” Regus said. He waved his arms around in frustration, a pained and despairing look on his face. “Just wait a damned minute; yer not more than a year ahead of me.”

“Not me,” Music said, “but this here place is. If you hope to make a decent living from it, you got all kinds of work to do, little and big. In the meantime you got to lay in food where you can, and while you’re doin that, you got to figure.”

“Shitfire,” Regus said and looked Music up and down as though he suddenly found him both incomprehensible and very aggravating, “figure me how I’m gonna get the money to pay for pigs and a mule without no job, why don’tcha?”

“Well, you might sell that purty little pistol you loaned me last night, say.”

Regus snorted. “I’d be lucky to get three or four dollar fer it in these times, maybe not that much,” he said.

“Sure,” Music said, “but you might swap it for a shoat.”

“All right,” Regus said, “and what the hell am I supposed to swap for a mule?”

Music pursed his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He thought about it, shook his head again, and started off around the gone-by kitchen garden toward the house. “Your truck, maybe,” he said over his shoulder.

“I need that truck,” Regus said, coming up beside him.

“Not as much as you’re going to need a mule,” Music said.

“That’s just what the hell you say,” Regus said and caught Music by the arm and swung him around. “How the hell do you know so much about it? I picked ye outten a haystack not so long ago, cousin,” Regus said, “and nearly starved out, you was, too.”

“That’s right,” Music said, and he and Regus looked at each other. Regus’s eyes had a distracted, wild look in them, and his jaw was as rigid as a shovel. Although Music was not prepared for anger, the look on Regus’s face made him lose his temper too; and as if anger were a disease that could be instantly caught, Music said again, “That’s right!” and yanked his arm free.

“Don’t tell me I gotta sell my truck, like you wuz some kinda head knocker around here!” Regus said with his eyes blazing.

“I didn’t tell you that,” Music said. “You ask me to figure!”

Regus stared at him a minute and then seemed to sag. He wiped his face with a sudden vigor, as though he’d stepped into a cobweb; he looked off toward the house and barn. “Yeah, well,” he said, “ye take too much on yerself, Bill Music.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Music said. “I’ll keep my advice to myself.”

“I’m a coal man, goddammit,” Regus said. “I don’t know my ass from my tits when it comes to a farm.”

Music didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“But I reckon I don’t like bein told what to do on my own place. I may need it, but I don’t like it,” Regus said.

Music’s anger began to ebb, even though his ears still rang with it. “You’ll catch on,” he said, which was as generous, at that moment, as he could be.

“Well,” Regus said, “less us go on to the house and get some grub. Long as hit ain’t rabbit, I reckon I’m hungry.”

And they went on.

Ella brought out a washpan of hot water and a clean flour-sack towel, and they rolled up their sleeves and washed, but there was an awkward sullenness between them he knew Ella sensed even before they pulled up to the table to sit down. Still, she did not ask about it. Her head hung deferentially to one side, as though she heard only the sound of her own footsteps, she served them. But Music knew better; she was watching and listening to cipher what was wrong between them, to judge and weigh it.

Music wondered if he ought to stay. His pride and what remained of his anger made him want to drag up. He had the twenty-two dollars, plus the twelve he’d been paid for the last four-day shift, less what he’d spent for mason jars and two pair of undershorts. It was not impossible that he could find a pretty good little coupe for twenty-five dollars, and, hell, two dollars’ worth of gas would more than get him home. He mulled the possibility over until it showed all its shameful and disappointing edges. Fact was—though it was a sad thing to admit it—he wasn’t sure who he would be if he were home. All the things he had done, worthy and unworthy, and the places he had been—all that had changed him; and he knew would appear to have changed his family too; so that, when he went home, they wouldn’t seem quite like his family any longer, but strangers who would be polite to him for his family’s sake. It seemed to him passing strange that, when he was down or hungry or beaten, his memory of home was sharp and clear and full of great sweetness; but in this moment he could not even call up a picture of his mother’s face, who had borne and reared him, or the face of his good father, or the faces of his brothers. But Ella Bone, she was right there before him. And Regus, the difficult son of a bitch. And Merlee, who was only a bit more than a mile away, and who, however mystifying, had lain with him the night before, and who had said she would be his woman. He did not wish to leave.