Heed the Thunder (5 page)

“No, it ain’t all right! I told you it was to be made over to me. I told you that a dozen times!”

“But God’s goin’ to get it, anyway,” said Mrs. Fargo. “I thought it would save trouble.”

“But God da—God ain’t got time to fool with such things. That’s why He sent me here. I’m supposed to handle His business for Him.”

“Well…”

“Now I got to copy this whole thing over so you can quitclaim it right. I tell you, Sister Fargo, the Lord loveth not those who abuse the patience of His servants!”

“Well, I’m sure sorry,” said Mrs. Fargo, humbly.

The parson said nothing.

The moon had not yet risen, and the night was almost totally dark. The only sound was the whispering of the wheels and the suck of the nag’s hoofs in the sand. Mrs. Fargo felt embarrassed and put out. She tried to make conversation.

“Looks like a fire over there through the grove,” she said.

“Umm,” said the reverend.

“Looks like there’s a bunch of men around it.”

“Umm.”

“Couldn’t be burnin’ off corn stubble,” Mrs. Fargo persisted. “The corn ain’t in yet.”

“Umm.”

“Anyway, it ain’t a cornfield.”

Whitcomb ran his hand through his hair and narrowed his thin lips. He was on the point of saying something anent the idle chatter of women when the horse shied, throwing him back against the seat. The next instant there was a weird whistle, the rattle and crash of horses in the underbrush, and the gig was surrounded.

“Who are you?” Whitcomb demanded, standing up. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“You’ll find out,” said a voice. “Is that you in there, Mrs. Fargo?”

“Y-yes,” said Mrs. Fargo. “It’s Jake Phillips, ain’t it?”

“No, it ain’t,” said Jake Phillips, the sheriff, firmly. “We’re just a bunch o’ citizens that’s goin’ to give this humbug his deserts. But don’t you mind. You just sit tight and you’ll be all right.”

Whitcomb suddenly shouted and swung at the horse with the reins. But someone was holding the bridle and the animal only reared dispiritedly.

“Let us pass!” the reverend-parson demanded. “Beware, lest the Lord strike you down! I demand—”

There was a swish of rope, and the parson leaped backward over the seat and landed heavily in the dust. Breathless and bruised, he was nevertheless on his feet instantly, gouging, kicking, and swinging his flail-like arms as they closed in on him. It was not a new experience for him, and he was certain of the outcome. But he had never learned how to give up.

Cursing and praying, fighting with his last ounce of strength, he was caught by the arms by two of the masked band. They swung him between them, cut their horses, and rode back through the underbrush.

There was a moment of comparative quiet as they dragged him across the field. The fire flamed bright, and it was still quiet. Then a piercing scream crashed and rocked against the night. It came again and again, so swiftly upon its echoes that it was as though Mrs. Fargo was listening to a chorus of agony. The chorus ended abruptly, turned into a vast choked sobbing. The fire disappeared. The horses broke back through the underbrush.

One of the riders headed the nag back toward her home and gave it a swish with his hat for encouragement. So Mrs. Fargo did not see all that ensued, but she knew. She knew, and a sick terror filled her. It was not so much because of the mob and its deed, for mobs were more or less commonplace, and the reverend, assisted by the Lord, was probably better able to bear up under their brutality than most. In fact, she almost envied him. She wished that she was in his place and he in hers. As it was…

She sobbed dryly, dreading the inevitable day of reckoning.

…As it was, she had deeded her place to God, and His agent had just been tarred-and-feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

W
inter fell like a harlot upon the valley. One day there was only the musky odor of her, the rustle of her skirts; the next, she lay sprawled across the land in all her white and undulant opulence, and the valley groaned and shivered uxoriously.

It was an early winter, and it would be a harsh one. The corn crop would be short, and, inevitably, feeder cattle would be high. The question was: would they be sufficiently high to allow a profit after being fed on high-priced grain?

All up and down the valley men discussed the subject—around the pot-bellied stoves in the general store, in the saloon, the livery stable. They stood in little groups in the post office, arguing, worrying, studying the white blanket which lay beyond the steamed-over windows. The
Daily Drover
was read and reread, then hurled into the trash container or thoughtfully stuffed in mackinaw pockets. The Omaha
Bee
with its livestock quotations was similarly treasured or scorned. Every man—well, almost every man—calling for his mail was obliged to render an opinion.

The exceptions to this last were Grant Fargo and the “foreigners”—the Russians, Poles, and Bohemians (Germans and Swedes were not considered “real foreigners”). No one asked the dandy young ex-printer whether he thought it would pay to feed, although he would have given his opinion gladly and it probably would have been as good as any. No one asked the bohunks and Rooshans. The foreigners did not feed except what they needed for their own use. Possibly, probably, because of the ancient fear of having any movable and valuable possessions commandeered, they owned little more than the land they farmed. They maintained almost the same poverty in their corrals that they did in their homes. No one understood the foreigners or cared to. They meant little to the banker, the storekeeper, or implement dealer. They were merely farmers who did nothing but farm.

Sherman Fargo believed that it would be a good year for cattle, and he already had the stock on his farm; but he lacked the money to feed them through the winter. He had done well with the thresher, much better than he had hoped to, actually. But he had had a number of expensive repairs to make on the machine, and he was little more ahead at the end of the season than he had been at the beginning.

He would not say that the thresher was no good, being ever reluctant to admit that he had made a bad bargain in anything. Neither would he admit that the breakdowns were due to his failure to keep oil in the machine. Sherman felt that the damned thing should get along without oil, seeing how much it had cost him. He was inclined to believe that much of this oil talk was foolishness, anyway. Hell, next thing they’d be telling him to buy a fly net for the contraption and build a box stall for it!

He didn’t know why the thing had broken down, and he didn’t care. But he did want to feed, and he lacked the money.

“I figure I could swing it on maybe twelve or fifteen hundred,” he told his father. “Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I figure on profiting two or three thousand.”

“I’d say a thousand would be plenty good,” said Lincoln.

“Well, that’s what you’d say,” said his son, mildly. “I figure I probably know more about the business than you do.”

Lincoln did not dispute the facts of the remark, nor did he take offense at it. There was none intended, he knew, and Sherman, as a man, had a right to say what he thought.

They were at Lincoln’s house, seated on the porch that was now snugly closed in. Both men were smoking, Sherman a cob pipe, Lincoln a stogie. A box filled with ashes, which served as a cuspidor, stood on the floor between them. Robert Dillon sat back against the wall of the house, intensely interested in the conversation. He could not see why anyone would want to pay money to feed cattle. It seemed to him that it ought to be the other way around.

“Bobbie,” said Lincoln Fargo, turning his head slightly.

“Uh-huh,” said the boy.

“Do you suppose you could get downstairs and back without tearin’ the house down?”

“Sure, I could. I can do it, Pa.”

“Well, I doubt it like hell,” said the old man. “But go on. Fetch me and Sherman one of them quart bottles of cider.”

Titles such as “Uncle,” “Aunt,” and so on were not used in the Fargo family; they were omitted in many families of that day.

The boy entered the kitchen, and a moment later they heard him raising the trap door to the cellar.

“Well, Edie got off for her school today,” said Lincoln, his voice low. “Rode in-country with the mailman.”

“How’d Bobbie take it?” asked Sherman.

“He don’t know where she’s gone yet. He thinks she’s just downtown.”

“He’ll get over it,” said Sherman, knocking out his pipe in the ash-box. “He’ll be staying with us tonight, and he can start to school with my kids in the morning. By tomorrow night he’ll be sort of used to his mother being gone.”

“I hope so,” said Lincoln. “Now, how soon do you want this money? I figure I can borrow fifteen hundred on the place easy enough. It’s all clear.”

“Well, we ought to get started within the next thirty days,” said Sherman.

“We can make it by then,” the old man nodded. “Ma will sure be over her ailin’ spell by then. She’ll have to go down to the bank with me.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Sherman. “Well, here’s the way it stands, then: you buy the feed, I furnish the cattle, and we split the profits and the work.”

“That’s it,” Lincoln agreed. “O’course, I can’t work like I used to.…”

“Maybe,” drawled Sherman, “you can get Grant to help. You an’ him together ought to make one fairly good man.”

Lincoln chuckled, spanking the cigar ashes from his vest; and Sherman grinned in modest self-appreciation.

The cellar door slammed and Robert Dillon came in from the kitchen. The sleeves of his blouse were dripping, and his clothes and face were flecked with bits of yellow matter. Lincoln almost howled at the sight of him.

“Now, what in the name of God have you been doing to yourself?”

“Nothing,” the boy grinned. “I just stopped to look in the egg jar for a minute.”

“And I suppose the eggs jumped up and threw themselves at you! What the hell was you trying to do, anyway?”

“Looks like you’d been having an egg fight with yourself,” Sherman remarked. “Pa, do you remember that time in Kansas City when you was running the saloon and I took those settin’ eggs of Ma’s and slipped ’em into your free lunch?”

“Seems like I do remember something about it,” said the old man.

“Hell, you ought to! Your arm must’ve been lame for a week after the hiding you gave me.”

“Why, now,” said Lincoln defensively, “I don’t know as I was ever so hard on you kids. Can’t recollect that I ever gave you a real trouncing.”

“Well, maybe not.” His son shrugged. “Bob, you’d better run and get yourself cleaned up. We’re going to have to be on our way as soon as I have a drink or two of this cider.”

“All right, Sherman,” said Bob, and he left the porch meekly.

He had had the idea for a long time that eggs could be made to bounce, but he was willing to concede now that they would not. Previously he had experimented with fresh eggs stolen from the hens’ nests. And he had tried bouncing eggs that were hard-boiled. But today had been his first opportunity to use eggs put-down in lime water. He had used about a dozen of them, he guessed, and Ma would be mad at him when she found out. But she would be mad, anyway, so it didn’t matter much.

Tiptoeing into the bedroom allocated to him and his mother, he sat down on his cot and began changing into the clothes he was supposed to wear to school tomorrow. He put on the new overalls, admiring the copper stapling of the suspenders; he put on the jumper, the stocking cap, and the new sheeplined coat. The boots, the prize of the ensemble, he saved until the last. They were, he knew, just like those the cowboys and policemen wore—knobby-toed, thick-soled affairs which extended halfway up his legs and buckled at the top. Reluctantly, he covered their magnificence with overshoes.

He pulled out the lower drawer of the dresser, climbed upon it, and stood staring at himself in the mirror. He had new red mittens, too, connected with each other by a length of yarn. Spreading his arms, he tried to see if the yarn would break; and the dresser rose precariously on its rear legs. He bent his knees and let his arms drop, and the dresser settled back to the floor. He rocked it back and forth several times, thinking:

Papa would be coming to see him next week, or next month, or next year. Or tonight, maybe, if he was a good boy. Maybe tonight, Mama had said. It would be sometime very soon, anyway:

There would be lots of good stuff to eat at Sherman’s for supper. There was always lots of good stuff at Sherman’s. He had told Ma so, and she:

Papa had bounced an egg one time. It had been ’way off somewhere, and he wasn’t a big man like he was now, and Papa had tossed the egg to him and it had bounced up and hit him in the nose and he had cried a little and Papa had spanked the egg, making it bounce harder than ever, and then they had both laughed:

That was a ball, though. You couldn’t bounce eggs. Everyone knew that. Balls were like clothes without anything in them. You couldn’t bounce anything with anything in it unless…unless…well, unless you could:

Papa wore clothes, too. Mama wore clothes, and Pa wore clothes, and Ma, and Sherman, and Alf, and Grant, and the man made you buy clothes. You gave him about a hundred or a million dollars and he gave you the clothes.

With everything thus settled in his mind, Robert went back out to the porch and stood self-consciously between his uncle and grandfather.

“Well, now you look almost like a boy,” said Lincoln with warm approval, and Sherman emitted a noncommittal grunt.

“What does that cider taste like?” asked Robert, encouraged by their reception of him.

“Oh, kind of like chocolate ice cream sody,” said the old man.

“Can I have some?”

“Why,” said Sherman, “you don’t like sodys, do you?”

“Uh-huh. Sure, I do, Sherman.”

“He’s just joking you, Sherm,” said Lincoln. “He don’t really like ’em. He told me he didn’t.”

“I de-ud not!” cried Robert, frantically and emphatically. “I do, too, like ’em, Sherman. I do, I do, I do!”

“Well, that’s the goddamnedest thing I ever heard of,” said Sherman. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t’ve drank it all.”

The boy looked from one man to the other. Sheepishly, he realized that they had been teasing him again. Pa and Sherman were always teasing him, Pa ’specially, but he kept forgetting how they were. Once again, he resolved inwardly to discount their statements in the future.

“We ready to go, now, Sherman?” he asked.

“I reckon,” said Sherman, reaching for his overshoes.

“You behave yourself over there to Sherman’s,” said Link.

“I will.”

“Well, where you wanderin’ off to, now?”

“Just to tell Ma good-by. I ain’t—I haven’t told her good-by yet.”

“Oh,” said Lincoln, and he chewed his cigar angrily.

Mrs. Fargo was asleep when Robert entered her bedroom, but Robert did not know it. She was lying with her face to the wall, the covers drawn up over her head, and the room was dark.

He said, “Hello, Ma,” softly; then, “Good-by, Ma.”

She didn’t answer, but he thought nothing of that. She was in the habit of taking her time in answering him, valuing his time at nothing and her own at a great deal. Just why he felt impelled to tell her good-by he did not know, but he was sure that he had to. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, there was an admonition of his mother’s: “Always tell Ma if you go off any place.”

“Ma,” he said. “Oh, Ma.”

He stepped up to the side of the bed and said, “
Ma!
” And Mrs. Fargo stirred a little but did not speak. She had been sleeping badly since the night the parson had disappeared with the deed. Now, she was catching up.

“Oh, Ma.
Ma!
”

He giggled suddenly, nervously. Maybe she was playing with him, like Mama, or Pa. Pa played like that. He would pretend to be asleep; then, when Bobbie tried to slip up on him, he would reach out and poke him with his cane. Maybe Ma was playing. Maybe she liked him, now, and wanted to play like he and Pa did.

Taking hold of the head of the bedstead, he inserted a foot between the rail and springs, and stood teetering precariously above her. He leaned over her and his feet slipped. With a wild shout of, “MAW!” he fell on top of her.

Mrs. Fargo cried out, wildly, and tried to raise herself. She struck out blindly with both hands, flinging him to the floor. She sat up, hysterical, not fully awake, and clutched her head, sobbing, for a button of his sheeplined coat had caught in her topknot.

Robert got to his feet. “Good-by, Ma,” he said.

“What? What’s that?” said the old woman.

“I just came in to tell you good-by.”

Mrs. Fargo looked at him incredulously, rocking her head. “Up to some meanness again, wasn’t you? What was you tryin’ to do, kill me?”

“Huh-uh. I just—”

“You get out of here!” snapped his grandmother, her face a mask of hatred. “Get out! Get out! Get out!…”

She swung her legs to the floor, grasping for him with a furious, wrinkled hand; and Robert got out.

“Well, did you tell your gran’ma good-by?” asked Sherman.

“Uh-huh. But she didn’t tell me.”

Robert’s face was white, and he was shaking a little. He had hurt Ma, and she would tell Mama; and maybe Mama would go off, way off, some place and leave him.

“I think I made Ma mad,” he said.

“Huh!” Lincoln scowled scornfully. “Well, don’t let it worry you none. I’ll tell you good-by twice. How’ll that be?”

“Fine,” said Robert.

“All right. Good-by, good-by. Take care of him, Sherm.”

“I’ll take care of him,” said Sherman. “I’ll cut his ears off and nail ’em to a fence post.”

And he grinned sourly as the boy burst into laughter.