Heed the Thunder (17 page)

“Sherman!” cried Edie. “Don’t do anything you’ll be—”

“I’ll settle him!” Sherman shouted, and in the next instant he was halfway down the block.

He leaped into his buggy, clucking to the horse even as he cut the lines. The bay laid back his ears and seemed to leap. The wheels rolled up on the sidewalk and for a precarious moment the buggy stood on edge. Then the bay leaped again, broke into a gallop, and they went tearing out of town toward the depot.

From where he paced the station platform, Grant Fargo saw the cloud of dust racing up the road. But he did not identify it for what it was until it had crossed the tracks, and there was nothing he could have done anyway. The train was still a mile or two off.

Too frightened even for profanity, he watched his brother alight, remove the buggy whip from its socket, and roll leisurely toward him. His knees trembled; his whole body shook as with the ague. He licked his lips, and his tongue was harsh and dry against them.

“Going somewhere, was you?” said Sherman, in his choked explosive voice.

“W-why, no,” Grant stuttered. “N-no, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Just come down to watch the train, I ’spect,” Sherman nodded. “Don’t mind if I watch it with you, do you? If you do, just say so. Y’know I ain’t the kind to force my company.”

Grant shook his head miserably. “I don’t mind,” he whispered.

“Well, I’m proud to hear you say so,” Sherman declared. “Don’t know when I’ve heard anything that cheered me up so much.” His pipe cocked in the corner of his weather-beaten mouth, he flexed the whip, studying it critically. “What do you think about that whip?” he inquired, as he snapped the tip to and fro. “Figure it’s any good?”

“Sherman! You aren’t—”

“Never had a chance to use it,” Sherman explained. “Never was much of a hand to hit a horse, and the old lady’s got her blacksnake for the boys. Well, I’ll probably be breakin’ it before long and then I won’t have to worry about it.”

Grant was on the point of collapse. His lips moved, but no words came forth.

“What was you sayin’?” said Sherman jovially, putting a hand to his ear. “Never mind. Let’s just watch the train and pleasure ourselves.”

With false comradery, he dropped a hand upon his brother’s shoulder as the train steamed into the station, dwelling in hideous innuendo upon the advantages of travel and the possible—nay, the probable—discomforts of home. And Grant shivered and shook and was wordless.

The conductor alighted and went into the station, coming out, after a moment or two, with several slips of paper. He looked coldly at the two men, and Sherman rendered him a polite howdy-do. He assumed a stance at the vestibule, gripped the handrail, and shouted “Bo-oo-ard!”

The train jerked, and rolled away.

Sherman had played long enough. He had exhausted his meager supply of humor.

“You got a satchel cached somewhere?” he demanded.

“N-no, Sherman.”

Sherman pointed with the whip. “Git!”

Head hanging, Grant tottered off and Sherman swaggered along behind him. Reaching the buggy, he looked around quickly to see whether anyone was watching them. Then he hauled off and kicked his brother with all of his stocky might.

Grant yelled and went sprawling headlong into the rig. Sherman stepped in over him, on him, and clucked to the bay. They went sailing down the road away from town.

From her vantage point behind the grain elevator, Bella Barkley cursed long and bitterly. The jellyfish! she thought, as she cranked the Chandler and backed it out into the road. The weak-spined shrimp! If he’d had any nerve, if he’d stood up to Sherman at all, they could have got away. By now, they would have been miles away on the train.

She headed the car toward home, wondering how she could get her bags into the house without being seen.

Damn Grant! Oh, damn damn damn him! She wished she could kick him herself.

L
incoln Fargo was feeling mean and frisky again. Just as he had claimed his son’s going to work had brought on his stroke, he now declared that Grant’s adventure into forgery, and its aftermath, had revived him. He said that the cursing he had given the dandy had cleansed his system of the last of its paralytic bile. He said that the urge to use the horsewhip on his son had been so strong that mind had overcome matter, said matter being his stubborn muscles.

He did not whip Grant, as he had promised, because he believed the youth had suffered enough, and because (or so he said) he had no whip that he could discard and he would not boost his son’s esteem by later using the same one on an animal. (There was, too, the animal’s pride to be thought of.) At any rate, the old man was up and around again. And, today, he swaggered through the living room of his home, dressed in his best pants, his shiniest gaiters; and his big black hat was cocked venturesomely low over one scalene eye.

He paused in the kitchen, cane swinging, champing at his long black stogie, giving his wife time to look around from the stove and protest.

She looked around and her sullen brow furrowed.

“Now where you think you’re going?” she demanded.

“Goin’ to hell. Want to go along?” Link swished his cane with savage delight.

“You ain’t going strollin’ off to town. You know what Doc Jones told you.”

“To hell with Doc Jones. I reckon you think he knows more about how I feel than I do.”

He snorted with pleasure at his irrefutable logic, and stared longingly through the screen at a passing chicken. The chicken paused and looked in at him. Involuntarily, his fingers twitched.

“Well, here I go,” he announced.

“I know what you’re goin’ to do. You’re going in to throw your money away playing poker.”

“No, I ain’t, either,” Lincoln denied. “I’m going to give it to God.”

Snorting and coughing, he went out the door. The chickens had grown careless during the months of his convalescence and some, even, had never seen him before; he nailed six of them with the crook of his cane before they learned that the days of peace were over. He swaggered out the gate to the tune of their squawking. Merrily he cursed them, jeered them as they fled, their bare red butts exposed in the nest of their terror-spread tail feathers.

“Pretty goddam sights, you are,” he jeered. “All ass and no brains.”

He decided that he’d like a mess of the goddam things for dinner one of these Sundays. He’d teach them what was what, all right.

He decided that it was one hell of a fine day.

As he passed Doc Jones’ place, he was compelled to stop and lean against the fence for a few minutes. And at Rory Blake’s house, he stopped again.

Well, hell, though, it was the first time he’d been out in months; and here he was right on the edge of town. Hell, anyone was liable to want to stop and rest once in a while. He gripped his cane again and strolled on, but more slowly; and he was secretly grateful when he saw his grandson, Robert Dillon, loitering on the courthouse lawn.

“Hi, there!” he called, bracing his back against a building. “What you doin’ over there?”

Bob came scuffling across the road, kicking up choo-choo puffs of dust with his bare feet.

“Hi, Pa,” he said. “Where you going?”

“Where you going?” the old man retorted. “Why ain’t you up to the hotel helping your mother?”

“She don’t want me around there,” the boy said truthfully. “She says I’m just a nuisance and to go on and keep out from under her feet.”

“Well, goddam if you ain’t a fine one!”

“Where you going, Pa?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Take me fishing, Pa. You promised a long time ago to take me, and you never did.” He squirmed a little, his eyes fixed eagerly on his grandfather’s face. “Take me fishing, Pa.”

“Damned if I won’t,” snarled Lincoln, not yet ready to move on. “First thing I’d know, the fish’d be holding the pole and you’d be on the hook.”

“No they wouldn’t, Pa. I’ll be all right.”

“I just bet! Oh, no! Any boy that thinks he can fly a bunch of two-by-fours out of a barn loft ain’t no company for me.”

The boy twitched fretfully. “But I’ll be good, Pa. Honest, I will.”

The old man, resting, appeared to deliberate. There was the matter of bait to consider, he pointed out. And he expressed an unreasonable doubt that his grandson would know a fishworm if one approached him with a tag in its ear and a letter of introduction.

“We won’t need worms, Pa! I’ll get some liver,” said Bob, and his squirmings increased.

Well, what about poles, the old man inquired. And he profanely and flatly refused the boy’s solution to the problem.…Oh, no, they would not get poles at the river. Not by a damned sight. Bob would doubtless pick up a rattlesnake and try to use that.

He declared that he was a reasonable man with no more than a normal regard for his life. He did not fear death at all, he said, in its usual guises, but was only averse to such unpleasant fates as being swallowed by water moccasins, nibbled to death by fish, or fatally mutilated by bent pins. So, unless Bob could show him how…

Hysterically, his mind feverish with eagerness, Bob explained how the excursion could be made in safety and comfort. And as Lincoln sadly shook his head, the boy offered alternates—a dozen of them. But to each plan the old man found some objection. He hated it, too, he said—he would like to go fishing himself.

It was too bad, he implied, that a strain of idiocy had cropped out in his grandson.

The ultimate result of the teasing upon the boy was what Lincoln called a “dance,” a term that insulted the art of Terpsichore even back to its rudest beginnings.

The tortured youth clasped himself about the middle, in the manner of one having overeaten of green apples. Bent double, he rocked his head from side to side, hopping first on one foot, then on the other—like a rooster on a hot stove. And all the time he emitted cries so filled with agony and rage as to turn every coyote in the distant sand-hills gray-headed:

“Ye-ou praw-miss-ed, Pa-w-w! Yeow-u praw-miss-ed tew-w take-a mee-a feesh-inn…!”

It was his mother’s habit, when he was thus seized, to shake him until his teeth rattled. And his grandmother had always socked him with a dishrag or a handful of scourings from the churn, or something equally unpleasant. Today, Lincoln, having had his rest and amusement, hooked his cane into the boy’s suspenders and pushed. And Bob sat down on the sidewalk with a silencing jolt.

“What the hell you bellering about?” he demanded, a sudden notion entering his head. “I said I’d take you fishing.”

“Ye-ou deed nawt—
what!
” said Bob, leaping to his feet.

“Why, sure,” said Link, airily. “We’ll catch us a nice mess of suckers.”

The boy jumped up and down with delight. “Hell’s fire! I’ll go and get the bait!”

“Now hold your horses—” Lincoln began.

But Bob was already in the next block, turning in at Dutch Schnorr’s meat market.

Among the boys of the town there were disturbing rumors about the meat market. More than one hapless youth, it was said, had gone into the place, never to be seen again except in the unidentifiable form of sausage. The proprietor, a stolid-faced Hollander with little pig ears, looked to his reputation, and did his best to perpetuate it. While he inwardly boiled with amusement, he would make leering inquiries about a boy’s weight, or insist on his examining the sausage-making equipment.

“Vell?” he said, now, while he whetted a long knife. “Vot do you vant?”

Bob decided that they would need lunch at the river. He asked, tremulously, for five cents’ worth of Bologna, five of headcheese, and a pound of liver.

Scowling ferociously, the butcher wrapped the purchases and laid them on the counter. Bob glanced over his shoulder at the door. Pa should have been there by this time. He should have come in.

“Vell?” said Dutch.

“P-pa’s going to pay for it,” stuttered the boy. “You know Pa?”

“No,” said Dutch, flatly.

“W-well—w-well, he’s my grandfather. H-he’s got the money.” Fear-struck, he inched backwards in the sawdust.

“So!” said the butcher, whetting his knife. “Now it gifs gran’fadders. I t’ink I will yust…”

He started around the counter.

With a wild yell, Bob fled.

A few doors up the street, his grandfather hooked him again, gave him a curse-filled lecture on the perils of brashness, and sent him back with the money for his purchases. Bob, seeing the butcher in his doorway holding his sides, went back grinning sheepishly. He took his packages and paid the dime due. (Liver, of course, was good only for cat food and bait and had no price.)

He caught up with his grandfather just as the latter was turning up the stairs that led to the Opera House, and loudly reiterated his demand that they go fishing.

“Goddamit, we’re going to!”

“When? There ain’t no fish up there.”

“The hell there ain’t!” the old man snorted with secret glee. “But never you mind, now. We’ll go fishing. You just stop pestering me or I won’t take you.”

“You’ll really take me fishin’?”

“I really will,” said Lincoln, and he started up the steps, wheezing and chuckling.

The Opera House was owned rather vaguely by the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Eagles, and the township. But the old soldiers of the Grand Army were the
de facto
proprietors. There were three of them there today, playing cards on a rickety table down near the stage: Cap’n Ball, Cap’n Finigan, and Veterinary Sergeant Doc Hallup.

They greeted Lincoln with amiable profanity which became profanity unqualified upon the sight of his grandson. But Lincoln drew back a chair, deriding their protests.

“Hell, he’s only going to stay a little while. He’s going fishing pretty soon.”

“Why can’t he go now?”

“Well, he will pretty quick. Come on. Deal me a hand. Or are you scared I’ll take all your money?”

Stung by the jibe, the old men allowed Lincoln to sit in and Bob to remain—a bit of weak-mindedness for which they cursed themselves until their dying day.

For during the next half-hour the boy (a) upset a gaboon over the two cap’ns’ feet, knocking a live cigar into the cuff of Doc’s boot at the same time; (b) crawled under the floor and had to be extricated; (c) swung out from the stage on a curtain-rope and knocked over the card table.

This last misadventure, which of course created a misdeal, had found Lincoln heavily bluffing and about to be called. Nevertheless, he simulated dismay.

“Now, Bobbie,” he said, so mildly that the boy was shocked into paralysis. “You hadn’t ought to have done that.”

“He hadn’t ortto of done it!” howled Cap’n Finigan. “You chase that scamp on out of here to his fishin’!”

Lincoln arose regretfully. “All right. I sure hate to go, though.”

“You go? You ain’t goin’!” snarled Doc Hallup. “Not the winner you are!”

“Well, I got to go when he does. I got to take care of him.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that at the beginnin’?” demanded Cap’n Ball.

But the three saw that they were trapped.

Doc snatched a dollar from the pot and threw it at Bob Dillon. “Go on out,” he commanded. “And don’t come back until you’ve spent every penny of it.”

The boy picked up the coin and made for the street. Snarling and swearing, the four old men resumed their game.

“I never seen worse in my life!” declared Doc Hallup.

“I have,” said Cap’n Finigan. “But I always had artillery to back me up.”

“He don’t bother me hardly none at all,” said Lincoln, innocently.

Meanwhile, Bob had arrived at the racket store, the then small-town counterpart of the modern five-and-ten. Old Man Sneaky Anderson, the rheumatic proprietor, met him at the door; and after he had exhibited his money and been warned of the dire consequences of handling things, he was allowed to enter.

The boy began a vague meandering through the crowded aisles, pacing block after dreamy block and forcing Old Man Sneaky to creep along behind him. He bought a tremendous bag of red-hots and licorice; then returning to the end of the store whence he had just come, he bought a cap pistol and a quantity of ammunition. Going back to the front again, he bought several large white button badges, inscribed with such legends as “Beer Inspector” and “Kiss Me, Girls.” From that counter he made a complete circuit of the building, crossed it sidewise through three aisles, and, finally, purchased a long calfskin coin purse.

By this time his eclecticism had so enraged the proprietor that the old man pressed fifty cents change upon him and thrust him out the door.

The boy’s next stop was at the Pulasky Confectionary and Bakery, where he downed, without noticeable effort, four chocolate ice-cream sodas. Paulie was there and watched him shyly through this feat, her slate-gray eyes warm with humble adoration. Naturally, he did not offer to treat her; since her father owned the place and she could get everything she wanted for nothing, it would have been stupid.

However, since the bib of his overalls was virtually enameled with the legend-bearing buttons, he did give her one that he could find no place for. Her little round face grew rosy with delight at this act of (
sic
) generosity, and fat John Pulasky beamed upon him while he frowned and grimaced at his daughter to be at her best.

Tottering out of the confectionary, he passed the saloon. And seeing his grandfather and his cronies at the bar inside, he would have entered. But they made such fearful faces and threatening gestures at him that he passed on. So he returned to the Opera House.

Going over to the table, he examined the playing cards, and, with the aid of moistened red-hots and licorice, he made quite artistic alterations on a number of them. He fired the pistol a few times; then found, or so he thought, that the remaining cap-strips were duds. He deposited the strips, wadded, in an ashtray and went over and sat down against the wall.

He was sitting there asleep when the old men returned to their game, and they took care not to wake him.

Two hours passed and Lincoln was losing steadily, and the other three old soldiers found themselves glancing at the boy with only mild revulsion.