The Ultimate Egoist (43 page)

“I won’t,” Clissa replied to the closed door, and went back to her stitching by the lamp.

The path up the slope to the wood was very dark when Cory went up it, peering and calling. The air was chill and quiet, and a fetid odor of mold hung in it. Cory blew the taste of it out through
impatient nostrils, drew it in again with the next breath, and swore. “Nonsense,” he muttered. “Houn’ dawg. Huntin’, at ten in th’ night, too. Alton!” he bellowed. “Alton Drew!” Echoes answered him, and he entered the wood. The huddled thing he passed in the dark heard him and felt the vibrations of his footsteps and did not move because it thought it was dead.

Cory strode on, looking around and ahead and not down since his feet knew the path.

“Alton!”

“That you, Cory?”

Cory Drew froze. That corner of the wood was thickly set and as dark as a burial vault. The voice he heard was choked, quiet, penetrating.

“Alton?”

“I found Kimbo, Cory.”

“Where the hell have you been?” shouted Cory furiously. He disliked this pitch-darkness; he was afraid at the tense hopelessness of Alton’s voice, and he mistrusted his ability to stay angry at his brother.

“I called him, Cory. I whistled at him, an’ the ol’ devil didn’t answer.”

“I can say the same for you, you … you louse. Why weren’t you to milkin’? Where are you? You caught in a trap?”

“The houn’ never missed answerin’ me before, you know,” said the tight, monotonous voice from the darkness.

“Alton! What the devil’s the matter with you? What do I care if your mutt didn’t answer? Where—”

“I guess because he ain’t never died before,” said Alton, refusing to be interrupted.

“You
what?
” Cory clicked his lips together twice and then said, “Alton, you turned crazy? What’s that you say?”

“Kimbo’s dead.”

“Kim … oh! Oh!” Cory was seeing that picture again in his mind—Babe sprawled unconscious in the freshet, and Kimbo raging and snapping against a monster bear, holding her back until Alton could get there. “What happened, Alton?” he asked more quietly.

“I aim to find out. Someone tore him up.”

“Tore him up?”

“There ain’t a bit of him left tacked together, Cory. Every damn joint in his body tore apart. Guts out of him.”

“Good God! Bear, you reckon?”

“No bear, nor nothin’ on four legs. He’s all here. None of him’s been et. Whoever done it just killed him an’—tore him up.”

“Good God!” Cory said again. “Who could’ve—” There was a long silence, then. “Come ’long home,” he said almost gently. “There’s no call for you to set up by him all night.”

“I’ll set. I aim to be here at sunup, an’ I’m goin’ to start trackin’, an’ I’m goin’ to keep trackin’ till I find the one done this job on Kimbo.”

“You’re drunk or crazy, Alton.”

“I ain’t drunk. You can think what you like about the rest of it. I’m stickin’ here.”

“We got a farm back yonder. Remember? I ain’t going to milk twenty-six head o’ cows again in the mornin’ like I did jest now, Alton.”

“Somebody’s got to. I can’t be there. I guess you’ll just have to, Cory.”

“You dirty scum!” Cory screamed. “You’ll come back with me now or I’ll know why!”

Alton’s voice was still tight, half-sleepy. “Don’t you come no nearer, bud.”

Cory kept moving toward Alton’s voice.

“I said”—the voice was very quiet now—
“stop where you are.”
Cory kept coming. A sharp click told of the release of the .32-40’s safety. Cory stopped.

“You got your gun on me, Alton?” Cory whispered.

“Thass right, bud. You ain’t a-trompin’ up these tracks for me. I need ’em at sunup.”

A full minute passed, and the only sound in the blackness was that of Cory’s pained breathing. Finally:

“I got my gun, too, Alton. Come home.”

“You can’t see to shoot me.”

“We’re even on that.”

“We ain’t. I know just where you stand, Cory. I been here four hours.”

“My gun scatters.”

“My gun kills.”

Without another word Cory Drew turned on his heel and stamped back to the farm.

Black and liquidescent it lay in the blackness, not alive, not understanding death, believing itself dead. Things that were alive saw and moved about. Things that were not alive could do neither. It rested its muddy gaze on the line of trees at the crest of the rise, and deep within it thoughts trickled wetly. It lay huddled, dividing its newfound facts, dissecting them as it had dissected live things when there was light, comparing, concluding, pigeonholing.

The trees at the top of the slope could just be seen, as their trunks were a fraction of a shade lighter than the dark sky behind them. At length they, too, disappeared, and for a moment sky and trees were a monotone. The thing knew it was dead now, and like many a being before it, it wondered how long it must stay like this. And then the sky beyond the trees grew a little lighter. That was a manifestly impossible occurrence, thought the thing, but it could see it and it must be so. Did dead things live again? That was curious. What about dismembered dead things? It would wait and see.

The sun came hand over hand up a beam of light. A bird somewhere made a high yawning peep, and as an owl killed a shrew, a skunk pounced on another, so that the night shift deaths and those of the day could go on without cessation. Two flowers nodded archly to each other, comparing their pretty clothes. A dragonfly nymph decided it was tired of looking serious and cracked its back open, to crawl out and dry gauzily. The first golden ray sheared down between the trees, through the grasses, passed over the mass in the shadowed bushes. “I am alive again,” thought the thing that could not possibly live. “I am alive, for I see clearly.” It stood up on its thick legs, up into the golden glow. In a little while the wet flakes that had grown during the night dried in the sun, and when it took its first
steps, they cracked off and a small shower of them fell away. It walked up the slope to find Kimbo, to see if he, too, were alive again.

Babe let the sun come into her room by opening her eyes. Uncle Alton was gone—that was the first thing that ran through her head. Dad had come home last night and had shouted at mother for an hour. Alton was plumb crazy. He’d turned a gun on his own brother. If Alton ever came ten feet into Cory’s land, Cory would fill him so full of holes he’d look like a tumbleweed. Alton was lazy, shiftless, selfish, and one or two other things of questionable taste but undoubted vividness. Babe knew her father. Uncle Alton would never be safe in this county.

She bounced out of bed in the enviable way of the very young, and ran to the window. Cory was trudging down to the night pasture with two bridles over his arm, to get the team. There were kitchen noises from downstairs.

Babe ducked her head in the washbowl and shook off the water like a terrier before she toweled. Trailing clean shirt and dungarees, she went to the head of the stairs, slid into the shirt, and began her morning ritual with the trousers. One step down was a step through the right leg. One more, and she was into the left. Then, bouncing step by step on both feet, buttoning one button per step, she reached the bottom fully dressed and ran into the kitchen.

“Didn’t Uncle Alton come back a-tall, Mum?”

“Morning, Babe. No, dear.” Clissa was too quiet, smiling too much, Babe thought shrewdly. Wasn’t happy.

“Where’d he go, Mum?”

“We don’t know, Babe. Sit down and eat your breakfast.”

“What’s a misbegotten, Mum?” the Babe asked suddenly. Her mother nearly dropped the dish she was drying. “Babe! You must never say that again!”

“Oh. Well, why is Uncle Alton, then?”

“Why is he what?”

Babe’s mouth muscled around an outsize spoonful of oatmeal. “A misbe—”

“Babe!”

“All right, Mum,” said Babe with her mouth full. “Well, why?”

“I told Cory not to shout last night,” Clissa said half to herself.

“Well, whatever it means, he isn’t,” said Babe with finality. “Did he go hunting again?”

“He went to look for Kimbo, darling.”

“Kimbo? Oh Mummy, is Kimbo gone, too? Didn’t he come back either?”

“No dear. Oh, please, Babe, stop asking questions!”

“All right. Where do you think they went?”

“Into the north woods. Be quiet.”

Babe gulped away at her breakfast. An idea struck her; and as she thought of it she ate slower and slower, and cast more and more glances at her mother from under the lashes of her tilted eyes. It would be awful if Daddy did anything to Uncle Alton. Someone ought to warn him.

Babe was halfway to the woods when Alton’s .32–40 sent echoes giggling up and down the valley.

Cory was in the south thirty, riding a cultivator and cussing at the team of grays when he heard the gun. “Hoa,” he called to the horses, and sat a moment to listen to the sound. “One-two-three. Four,” he counted. “Saw someone, blasted away at him. Had a chance to take aim and give him another, careful. My God!” He threw up the cultivator points and steered the team into the shade of three oaks. He hobbled the gelding with swift tosses of a spare strap, and headed for the woods. “Alton a killer,” he murmured, and doubled back to the house for his gun. Clissa was standing just outside the door.

“Get shells!” he snapped and flung into the house. Clissa followed him. He was strapping his hunting knife on before she could get a box off the shelf. “Cory—”

“Hear that gun, did you? Alton’s off his nut. He don’t waste lead. He shot at someone just then, and he wasn’t fixin’ to shoot pa’tridges when I saw him last. He was out to get a man. Gimme my gun.”

“Cory, Babe—”

“You keep her here. Oh, God, this is a helluva mess. I can’t stand much more.” Cory ran out the door.

Clissa caught his arm: “Cory I’m trying to tell you. Babe isn’t here. I’ve called, and she isn’t here.”

Cory’s heavy, young-old face tautened. “Babe— Where did you last see her?”

“Breakfast.” Clissa was crying now.

“She say where she was going?”

“No. She asked a lot of questions about Alton and where he’d gone.”

“Did you say?”

Clissa’s eyes widened, and she nodded, biting the back of her hand.

“You shouldn’t ha’ done that, Clissa,” he gritted, and ran toward the woods. Clissa stood looking after him, and in that moment she could have killed herself.

Cory ran with his head up, straining with his legs and lungs and eyes at the long path. He puffed up the slope to the woods, agonized for breath after the forty-five minutes’ heavy going. He couldn’t even notice the damp smell of mold in the air.

He caught a movement in a thicket to his right, and dropped. Struggling to keep his breath, he crept forward until he could see clearly. There was something in there, all right. Something black, keeping still. Cory relaxed his legs and torso completely to make it easier for his heart to pump some strength back into them, and slowly raised the 12-gauge until it bore on the thing hidden in the thicket.

“Come out!” Cory said when he could speak.

Nothing happened.

“Come out or by God I’ll shoot!” rasped Cory.

There was a long moment of silence, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

“You asked for it,” he said, and as he fired the thing leaped sideways into the open, screaming.

It was a thin little man dressed in sepulchral black, and bearing the rosiest baby-face Cory had ever seen. The face was twisted with fright and pain. The man scrambled to his feet and hopped up and down saying over and over, “Oh, my hand. Don’t shoot again! Oh,
my hand. Don’t shoot again!” He stopped after a bit, when Cory had climbed to his feet, and he regarded the farmer out of sad china-blue eyes. “You shot me,” he said reproachfully, holding up a little bloody hand. “Oh, my goodness.”

Cory said, “Now, who the hell are you?”

The man immediately became hysterical, mouthing such a flood of broken sentences that Cory stepped back a pace and half raised his gun in self-defense. It seemed to consist mostly of “I lost my papers,” and “I didn’t do it,” and “It was horrible. Horrible. Horrible,” and “The dead man,” and “Oh, don’t shoot again.”

Cory tried twice to ask him a question, and then he stepped over and knocked the man down. He lay on the ground writhing and moaning and blubbering and putting his bloody hand to his mouth where Cory had hit him.

“Now what’s going on around here?”

The man rolled over and sat up. “I didn’t do it!” he sobbed. “I didn’t I was walking along and I heard the gun and I heard some swearing and an awful scream and I went over there and peeped and I saw the dead man and I ran away and you came and I hid and you shot me and—”

“Shut up!”
The man did, as if a switch had been thrown. “Now,” said Cory, pointing along the path, “you say there’s a dead man up there?”

The man nodded and began crying in earnest. Cory helped him up. “Follow this path back to my farmhouse,” he said. “Tell my wife to fix up your hand.
Don’t
tell her anything else. And wait there until I come. Hear?”

“Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you.
Snff
.”

“Go on now.” Cory gave him a gentle shove in the right direction and went alone, in cold fear, up the path to the spot where he had found Alton the night before.

He found him here now, too, and Kimbo. Kimbo and Alton had spent several years together in the deepest friendship; they had hunted and fought and slept together, and the lives they owed each other were finished now. They were dead together.

It was terrible that they died the same way. Cory Drew was a
strong man, but he gasped and fainted dead away when he saw what the thing of the mold had done to his brother and his brother’s dog.

The little man in black hurried down the path, whimpering and holding his injured hand as if he rather wished he could limp with it. After a while the whimper faded away, and the hurried stride changed to a walk as the gibbering terror of the last hour receded. He drew two deep breaths, said: “My goodness!” and felt almost normal. He bound a linen handkerchief around his wrist, but the hand kept bleeding. He tried the elbow, and that made it hurt. So he stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and simply waved the hand stupidly in the air until the blood clotted. He did not see the great moist horror that clumped along behind him, although his nostrils crinkled with its foulness.