Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (20 page)

11

When Harold came in, the father was already eating,
his heavy face bent down close to his food, his eyes red-rimmed and
vacant. He was holding a whisky glass out in his left hand, and every
once in a while he would straighten up and chew his food a little
longer before he swallowed it, and then take a sip of the whisky.

"Grace got to sleep finally," Gwen said. "I
couldn’t get her to eat a thing, though. Or your mother either,"
she added.

Harold nodded, set the lantern down by the table, and
went to the door of the north bedroom.

Arthur’s still body still lay on its side in the
clothes it had come back in. The black suit was hanging against the
wall, and on the back of the chair under it was a clean, white shirt,
with a black tie lying across the collar. There were clean, summer
underclothes and a pair of black socks on the seat of the chair.
Arthur’s black dress boots, with the silver thread leaves on them,
stood together in front of the chair. They were newly polished, and
gleamed in the lamp-light.

The mother was kneeling beside the bed, with her
hands together on the edge of it and her forehead laid against her
thumbs. The light showed Arthur’s face above her, lying very quiet
on the pillow, with the mouth still a little open, as if he were
asleep and about to speak out of his dreams.

"Mother,” Harold said softly.

The mother raised her head slowly, and turned it to
look at him. She wasn’t crying, but her look made a much greater
distance between them than the length of the room.

"Won’t you try and eat a little supper,
Mother?"

The mother shook her head slowly, twice. "You
might bring me a cup of coffee when you’re done eating, though,”
she said, and bent down to her praying again. After a moment, Harold
turned and went back into the kitchen. Gwen was at the stove, filling
his plate, and she looked at him, asking the question silently. He
shook his head and went on past her to the pegs by the outside door,
where he took off his cap and mackinaw and hung them up.

Then he came back to the table and sat down in
Arthur’s place. He saw the lantern still burning on the floor
beside him. He picked it up, and blew it out, and set it down again
slowly. Gwen brought his plate, and he smiled at her.

She smiled back at him, the quick, far—away smile,
and sat down in the mother’s place with her own plate.

She took one small mouthful, and then said, "Oh,
I forgot the coffee," and stood up again. She poured coffee for
them both, and brought it back.

They didn’t try to talk. Only the father spoke up
once in a while. He took it personally that Curt hadn’t come back.
He also took it personally that Arthur had let himself be killed. He
remembered a great many earlier misfortunes too, and saw himself as
the chief victim of them all. He wept a little because fate had
picked him out for so much undeserved bad luck. With his mouth full
of tears and whisky, he complained, "A man works hard all his
life, and what does it get him? Does it all for his family; tries to
give them the best there is, and what happens?" Neither Harold
nor Gwen had to speak, because he answered all his own questions. He
was by himself anyway, sitting there breathing hard through his big
nose and staring down into his whisky glass.

Harold couldn’t even look at Gwen, and finally he
stood up abruptly, leaving most of his supper on the plate, and took
a mug from the corner shelf and filled it with coffee. Then he stood
there holding the mug and looking down at Gwen. She was sitting with
her hands in her lap, staring at nothing in the shadow of the lamp
bowl. Most of her food was still on the plate too. Only the father’s
plate had been cleaned up and pushed aside.

"Gwen," Harold said softly.

She looked up at him.

“
Fix me a plate for Joe Sam, would you?"

She nodded and stood up slowly, using the table to
help her, like an old person.

Harold went into the bedroom with the coffee. The
mother was still on her knees by the bed, but this time she looked up
when she heard him, and then labored to her feet. Harold drew the old
straight-backed rocker from the corner to a place beside the table,
and she let herself down into it. He gave her the mug of coffee. The
room was still cold, and the hot coffee made a column of steam above
the mug. The mother blew on the coffee long and slowly, staring over
the mug at the depression in the edge of the bed where she had rested
her hands and head. Finally she took a sip of the coffee, and a
second sip, and then sat there with the mug between her hands, still
staring at the edge of the bed.

"He was a good man, lots of ways, though,"
she said. "He had a good heart." All the masculine depth
was gone from her voice now.

“
Yes," Harold said. He glanced at the face on
the pillow, and then closed his hand into a fist in front of him and
looked down at it.

"I knowed it would be him," the mother
said. "The mark was on him. You can most always tell the ones
that’ll go early. They ain’t got the hold on things that most of
us has."

What does she know about it? Harold thought. Just
because they never spoke the same language. But it disturbed him to
find her thinking that way about Arthur. He couldn’t think of
anything to say that would help, though, so he only nodded, and stood
there waiting.

"It makes a body think," the mother went on
at last. "I didn’t think too much about him when
he
was with us, I guess. He used to talk such foolishness. Hardly ever
say right out what he meant, either. I guess I just got to takin’
it for granted he was makin’ light of whatever was spoke of, and
sort of let his talk go in one ear and out the other. Like you have
to Curt’s cussin’ all the time, knowin’ it don’t mean
nothin’. But I guess he most always really meant somethin’,
didn’t he? In his own way?"

"I guess he did,” Harold said finally.

"Deep down I knowed he did, of course. Only I
wouldn’t give it no heed." She sipped at the coffee and
lowered it into her lap again.

"He was always botherin’ himself with a lot of
fool questions, though," she said.

Who doesn’t? Harold though defiantly. And if you
look at it big enough, what question isn’t a fool question? At
least he didn’t get all his answers out of some old book, and then
take ’em for the word of God. "But it don’t seem like he
really meant to mock," the mother said.

"No," Harold said.

"It was mostly just a way of talkin’ he got
into," the mother said. "What with the rest of us thinkin’
different, mostly. Except maybe Grace."

"I guess it was."

Finally the mother said, "It’s a lonesome
place, this valley, and sometimes I wonder now wasn’t he the
lonesomest one of the lot of us."

She looked up at him, and her eyes made him afraid of
the question she was going to ask. She was studying his face as if
she’d never really seen it before, and now she wanted to figure out
what kind of a man he was.

She’s takin’ it hard, he thought. She’s takin’
it all on herself, and looked down at his knuckles again.

"You was the only one he ever really talked to,"
the mother said. "Was he really so terrible lonesome, do you
think?"

Harold wanted to give her a real answer, but with the
question straight out like that, and the mother looking at him and
waiting, it wouldn’t come together in his mind. He only felt how
much older Arthur had been than he was himself, and couldn’t trust
the things he remembered. It put him off just to feel how much older
Arthur had been, for that matter. He’d never thought of Arthur as
being any particular age before. He spoke carefully.

"I guess he would have been pretty much alone
any place, Mother. It wasn’t anything about us."

The mother looked back at the edge of the bed. "I
guess he would of," she said.

After a long time she said, "He was a queer son
for your pa and me to have. Like there was somethin’ the Lord put
in him that wasn’t in either of us. Or the devil," she added,
almost whispering. "Sometimes I ain’t too sure which."

Harold set his jaw and closed his fist tighter. You
and your devils, he thought. Less devil than any of us; that was his
trouble. Why don’t you let him alone?

"Seems like he suffered in his mind so,"
the mother said.

Harold’s anger thinned away. "It wasn’t so
bad for him, Mother."

Again the mother looked at him with her eyes awake
and searching. "You don’t think it was?"

Harold shook his head. "He liked it here more
than any of us, lots of ways."

The mother kept studying his face until he could feel
her look as if she touched him. At last she looked away again, and
said, "Maybe so. I’d like to think it was so." She took
two sips of her coffee and lowered the mug once more.

"He give some real thought to the ways of God,
though, didn’t he? Times he was so quiet?"

"Pretty near all the time, I’d say. One way or
another."

"I’d like to think so," the mother said
again. "And I guess it was so, pretty much."

For a minute both of them were as quiet as the figure
on the bed. The flame of the lamp and the snow against the window
made important sounds in the room.

Then the mother said, "There was times I used to
think it wouldn’t make a heap of difference if Arthur was to go, it
was so like he wasn’t here anyway. He’d set right there at the
table in the kitchen, and I’d forget he was there. God forgive me,"
she said slowly. "There was even times, when he’d get on one
of them heathen streaks of his, I’d think it might be better if he
was to go. I could see his notions sproutin’ out in you, and comin’
out rank in Grace, she bein’ the next oldest to him, and so foolish
fond of him too. Now I ain’t so sure. Seems like maybe he was the
most here of any of us, even when he’d just set there whitt1in’
and never sayin’ a word."

"Yes," Harold said, thinking of the ghost
in the bunk across from his.

"Still I can’t seem to pray right for him,
some way," the mother said. "Not from the heart. I start in
to pray, and then I get to thinkin’ of somethin’ he said, near
enough blasphemy to burn for, and I see how he could of meant
different than I took it, maybe, and the next thing, there I am
puzzlin’ my head about it, instead of askin’ the Lord to forgive
him.

"Well," she said more strongly, "if I
can see that much, the Lord can see a heap more, that’s certain
sure." She drank the rest of the coffee without stopping, and
gave the mug to Harold.

"You go along and keep Gwen company now,"
she said. "This is a lonesome business for her to get into, and
none of it hers."

Harold started to put a hand out toward her shoulder,
but then couldn’t touch her, and let the hand down.

"Why don’t you let me take over for a while,
Mother? And you go get a little rest in the bunk-room?"

"It’s no good trying to rest the body till you
can get some rest in the mind," the mother said. "Go along
and leave me be now."

Harold still waited, though, trying to think of a
good way to ask the question that was bothering him. He looked at
Arthur’s body in the red coat with the black stripe around it.

"You’ll need some help changing his clothes,
won’t you?”

"I can’t do it for a while yet, anyway,"
the mother said.

"If I need any help, I’ll call you."

So there was nothing to do but ask straight out.

"Was there anything to show how it happened?"

The mother closed her hands tightly over the arms of
the chair, but she spoke quietly enough. "His neck’s broke,"
she said, "and there’s claw marks on his shoulder."

"So it was the painter."

"It looks like it was. You go along now."

"It’s still pretty cold in here, Mother. You
better let me get you your shawl."

“
I ain’t none too warm at that," the mother
admitted. "Maybe you could bring me my coat; I ain’t just sure
where that shawl’s got to. And fetch me my Bible too, while you’re
about it, would you?"

"You couldn’t eat a little something?”

"I can’t even stand to think about it. I could
do with more coffee, though."

Gwen wasn’t in the kitchen now. He filled the mug
himself, and left it standing on the water tank of the stove while he
went over to get the coat. The father heard his boots on the floor,
and pushed himself slowly upright and looked at him, squinting to see
beyond the light.

"Is she going to stay in there all night?"
he asked.

Harold found the old black dress coat of the father’s
that she wore in cold weather. It was faded nearly green now, and the
velvet collar was worn down to nothing at the edges. He took it down
and folded it across his arm.

"I guess she is," he said.

"There’s no sense in her wearing herself out
like that. You could sit for her yourself, if you’d think of
somebody else for one minute."