Satan's Bushel (11 page)

The wife swallowed, twitched the corners of her mouth, and looked at the family’s friend, who silently repeated the admonition, “Be firm.” The child at the window continued to look out. The others listened. They heard him drive in and open the barn door. Neither of the two boys stirred. A few minutes later they heard him close the barn door and began to hearken for his step on the back porch. It did not come.

“What’s he doing?” the wife asked, speaking to the girl in the window.

“Walking around,” she answered, not turning her face. Her voice had changed.

Several minutes passed in silence.

“Now what’s he doing?” the wife asked.

Instead of answering the girl threw her arm across her face, leaned against the window frame and began to sob.

“Oh, that child!” the mother sighed. “Stella, do look. See what he’s doing.”

Stella was wiping a plate. She approached the window obliquely, intending to glance out in passing. What she saw caused her to stop and look again and then to stand gazing. The hand that was drying the plate went slower and slower round and stopped. Then she turned from the window, shaking her head, frowning.

“I don’t know what he’s doing.” she said.

“Can you see him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, what does he seem to be doing?”

“He seems to be hugging the trees,” said Stella.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the mother aspirated. “That’s it. That’s it.”

“What’s it, mother?” Stella asked in a petulant voice.

“Hush, child. Don’t ask me. Will that young one stop her crying?”

Just then Weaver’s steps were heard on the porch. The doorlatch clicked. He paused on the threshold and looked around him, at each of them in turn, at the room, at the familiar objects in it, as if he were trying to remember something. Then he picked up the fuming lantern, put it out and set it on the floor again. Forgetting to close the door or to remove his hat and outer coat he walked mechanically to the oven and drew forth his plate of supper without looking at it. He put it on the table, seated himself, and began to stare at it, as he had stared at everything else. Stella laid a knife and fork by his plate, holding herself aloof. He might have been a stranger. Nobody spoke to him. Then he seemed to see the food for the first time, or to become aware of it as food, and pushed it away with a gesture of distaste. The girl in the window was all this time regarding him with a stricken expression. The ticking of the clock became very loud. Weaver heard it. They were greatly mystified to see him go to the stove and begin thoughtfully to search the woodbox on the floor. He found a small splinter, whittled it a little and fitted it under the low side of the clock, making it plumb. Instantly, of course, its fickle heart changed. It ceased exhorting the wife to
“be firm, be firm, be firm,”
and began contentedly to murmur,
“that’s it, that’s it, that’s it.”
On the wall was a picture of Maud S. in a fluted walnut frame, crossed at the corners with carved butterflies. For a long time Weaver stood looking at that. Then he looked at his wife, took a step toward her, and stopped as one who remembered a hurt. What could he say? He was not one to repent, promise or pray. He turned toward the door and was walking out. And it was then the family’s friend spoke his mind out heroically. He had no way of understanding a man who in guilty circumstances would not grovel and stultify himself with explanations.

“Absalom Weaver,” he said, “land is for them that’s fit to own land. You ain’t fit. That’s why you’ve lost it. You ain’t fit for anything, nor be you sorry.”

Weaver was already in the open doorway, going out. He turned and spat on the floor.

“That’s what I do when I cross a snake’s trail,” he said. “I spit in it.” Then he went out, closing the door behind him. The family’s friend ever afterward believed this act was a sign of how deeply his weak little shaft went in. He reared his pride upon it.

The natural dramatic period is never completely realized. Something unexpected happens. There was now a stir in the kitchen. The youngest child, no longer weeping, had taken her little coat down from its peg and was getting into it and pulling on her arctics at the same time. Everyone sensed what she meant to do; and no one spoke. Without stopping to fasten her arctics she snatched up her knitted cap and mittens and rushed headlong out of the door in pursuit of her father. That the mother made no gesture to restrain her seems at first a little strange, and yet it is naturally explained. Secretly, perhaps not admitting it to herself, she must have realized that Weaver’s exit was final. Trust a silly woman to know her own man’s folly. Secretly, too, she wished it so, and because she wished it she could not acknowledge it. In permitting the child to run after him she proved to herself that she did not know and did not wish it. Afterward she was able to say, even to believe, that she supposed he was going for a walk in the night, as he often did, and would bring her child back. And thus she was provided with a monstrous grievance— namely, that he never did.

“From that day to this Absalom Weaver’s been walking to and fro in the earth, and the girl with him,” said the absurd little primate who sat in the shade of the ash tree. He clicked in his beard with a malevolent sound, like a mechanical toy shutting up. He had done his worst. There the delation ended.

“How long ago was that?” Dreadwind asked.

“Nineteen years and five months.”

“And how old was the girl that went with him?”

“Ten.”

Dreadwind reflected. That would make Cordelia’s age nearly thirty. And he had thought her still a girl. Her age thrilled him. Thirty! A proper age. Thirty, with the look of youth. A miracle reserved for him!

One more question. It was malicious, therefore he held it until the very end. “Did you marry Mrs. Weaver?” he asked.

Until then, through all that recital, only the lips of the patriarch had moved. Now the fingers twitched and the knees trembled. There seemed for a long time no likelihood of an answer. But it did come.

“She died,” he said.

That was his last utterance. Not another word could be got out of him.

Now Dreadwind retraced his steps. There was nothing else to do. He was thinking he knew everything about them except how to find them when suddenly he remembered that pouch of brownish vile powder. He had left the stuff at the state agricultural laboratory to be analyzed. Forebodings assailed him as he stopped to get the report. The plant biologist on seeing him behaved in a constrained manner and referred him to the executive secretary of the bureau. That person scrutinized Dreadwind suspiciously and produced the laboratory’s report with an ominous air. But instead of showing it he sat for a long time looking at it himself, tapping his foot against his desk, unable to decide how to act.

“Where did you get this stuff?” he asked.

Dreadwind said he had found it at the roadside in a pouch.

“You didn’t bring it here in a pouch. You brought it in a paper.”

Dreadwind said he had thrown the pouch away.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t like the look and smell of it,” said Dreadwind, beginning to realize that he needed his wits. The last thing in the world he meant to do on any account was to involve Weaver in serious trouble. And this was evidently about to become serious. His answer was perhaps technically true. He had thrown the pouch away as an instinctive precaution. Even so, he could say that he liked not the smell and look of it. Then he was asked if he knew of any person having a possessory relation to the pouch? Had he seen anyone drop it? That was coming too close.

“I’m not to be interrogated in this grand-jury manner,” he said, affecting to be irritated. “I found this stuff by the roadside, as I have said, and I was curious to know what it was. So I brought it to you. That’s quite simple, isn’t it? I don’t know yet what it is, and since I took the trouble to bring it to you I’d like to know.”

“It’s rust,” said the secretary, bluntly reacting; “the germinating principle of wheat rust.”

“I’ve heard of rust,” said Dreadwind, “but I don’t know exactly what it is. Tell me, please.”

“Rust,” said the secretary, “is the common name for a parasitic fungus that attacks and destroys wheat. It multiplies with incredible rapidity from spores, somewhat like mushrooms, if you know. There is black rust and red rust. This stuff is the seed—that is to say, the spore—of black rust. Enough to kill half the wheat in Kansas. I never saw anything like it. The spores do not naturally occur in this concentrated way. Someone must have gathered or cultivated the stuff for a felonious purpose.”

“If I come across any more of it I’ll know what to do,” said Dreadwind, and departed.

This, then, was the explanation of Weaver’s excitement and tragic manner that morning when Dreadwind surprised him in the act of spreading the powder on the air.

He was killing the wheat!

But how was Weaver himself to be explained? One day kneeling in ecstasy at the foot of a wheat stalk to observe the nuptial ceremony!—another day sowing black death upon it! Dreadwind kept seeing him first in one act and then in the other; and these were as the acts of separate persons, one a mystic, the other a monster. And this was also Cordelia’s father! He grew sick from thinking of it.

It was natural that his thoughts of Cordelia should associate with Mrs. Purdy, who had been the one and only point of contact. He liked the woman. He remembered her smile. There was knowing in it; also a little teasing and that slightly roguish, sweetly ironic air with which a woman looks on at these matters, as at a play wherein she has more of the secret than the actors and enjoys their silly confusion. He went to see her again. Nearly three weeks had gone by.

“I was passing,” he explained.

“Oh,” she said with a certain inflection. “Won’t you come in.”

She seemed more friendly, more knowing; and without asking if he was hungry she began to set the table and prepare food. It was mid-afternoon.

He watched her for a while without speaking. Her movements were quick and deft. Just to sit there under her ministrations was a soothing experience. Also for some reason it was reassuring. She knew Cordelia. Was that it? And with all her archness she was sympathetic.

“Are you sure the envelope she left was meant for me?” he asked.

“Weren’t you?” she answered, bending over the stove.

“But how will she ever know I got it?” he said.

The food was ready. Mrs. Purdy put it before him. Then she made a trip to the spring house for butter. With putting the butter on the table she sat down herself, and said, looking at him steadily, “She knows you got it.”

“What!” said Dreadwind. “How did she find it out?”

“I shouldn’t have told you,” said Mrs. Purdy. “Will you have some jelly?”

“Why shouldn’t you have told me?”

“Shouldn’t have,” she said with a puckered mouth, shaking her head.

“Has she been here?” asked Dreadwind.

“What a pity, now, you couldn’t have been passing three days ago,” said Mrs. Purdy.

“Was she alone?”

“Who?”

“Cordelia. Was her father with her?”

“When?”

“Three days ago.”

“My, how you do pin a body down,” said Mrs. Purdy. “Have I said she was here three days ago? I only said what a pity you couldn’t have been passing.”

Dreadwind could see that she meant in the end to tell him. And whether she told him all or less, she gave him more than she knew. Cordelia had been discovered at daylight, sitting alone on a bench in the front yard.

“That round bench under the apple tree?” he asked.

Mrs. Purdy nodded. Of course; there was no other bench. What more commonplace object in the world than a bench? Yet suppose it happens to mark the point in space where the lines of two lives, infinitely predetermined through all the chances of matter, have crossed for the first time. That was the bench on which he sat down beside her in the lantern light. It was there she gave him her name. Mrs. Purdy knew nothing of this. She paused for a moment and studied him when he mentioned it; but she saw nothing in it and went on. They had found her there at daylight in a kind of reverie. Nobody knew when she came. She had been weeping. A woman could guess it. But she was not sad, except in the way one might sometimes like to be sad. And she was lovely. Mrs. Purdy would say it herself. She said it twice, noting the effect upon Dreadwind. They had asked her to stop for breakfast, and she couldn’t, because her father would presently miss her. What she wished to know from Mrs. Purdy was whether anyone had asked for her. If not she would like her envelope back.

“Did she seem pleased to know it had been delivered?” Dreadwind asked.

“She was relieved,” said Mrs. Purdy, a little severely, slowly choosing her word.

“And she left no message?” Dreadwind asked.

Mrs. Purdy frowned, hesitated, thought better of something she had been about to say, and continued: “What the girl really wanted was to tell me about a dream that worried her. This was the dream: There were two great vines. One she knew and the other she had forgotten the name of. Both had twined themselves around her. She did not mind that. She would have liked it, in fact, only that each one struggled to tear her from the other and without meaning to do so they were hurting her terribly. She kept saying to them, ‘It is unnecessary! So unnecessary!’ But neither one would listen. With that she woke up. She had dreamed this many times and it was giving her great anxiety.”

“Did she wish you to tell me her dream?” asked Dreadwind.

Mrs. Purdy disdained to reply or to look at him, but rose suddenly and began clearing off the table with an acrimonious air, like the gust of wind that comes suddenly aboard ship and causes everything movable to slap and bang in a warning manner.

“Would it be possible for me to get a message to her through you?” asked Dreadwind, rising.

“It would not,” she answered, going on with her work. Relenting a little she added: “She won’t be back. She was sure of that.”

“And you have no way of reaching her?”

“No more than you have,” she answered over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand.