Web and the Rock (7 page)

 She paused and shook her head. "I guess he'd seen some awful things," she said. "I reckon he'd been with many a poor feller when he breathed his last--they had to admit it, sir, when they came back!
 Now, they can laugh at him all they please, but they had to give him his due! Jim Alexander said, you know, he admitted it, 'Well, Rance has preached the comin' of the Lord and a better day upon the earth, and I reckon we've all laughed at him at times for doin' it--but let me tell you, now,' he says, 'he always practiced what he preached. If everybody had as good a heart as he's got, we'd have that better day he talks about right now!'"
 She sewed quietly for a moment, thrusting the needle through with her thimbled finger, drawing the thread through with a strong, pulling movement of her arm.
 "Now, child, I'm goin' to tell you something," she said quietly.
 "There are a whole lot of people in this world who think they're pretty smart--but they never find out anything. Now I suppose that there are lots of smarter people in the world than Rance--I guess they looked on him as sort of simple-minded--but let me tell you something! It's not always the smartest people who know the most--and there are things I could tell you--things I know about!" she whispered with an omened tone, then fell to shaking her head slightly again, her face contracted in a portentous movement--"Child! Child!... I don't know what you'd call it... what explanation you could give for it- but it's mighty strange when you come to think about it, isn't it?"
 "But what? What is it, Aunt Maw?" he demanded feverishly.
 She turned and looked him full in the face for a moment. Then she whispered: "He's been--Seen!... I Saw him once myself!... He's been Seen all through his life," she whispered again. "I know a dozen people who have Seen him," she added quietly. She stitched in silence for a time.
 "Well, I tell you," she presently said, "the first time that they Saw him he was a boy--oh! I reckon along about eight or nine years old at the time. I've heard father tell the story many's the time," she said, "and mother was there and knew about it, too. That was the very year that they were married, sir, that's exactly when it was," she declared triumphantly. "Well, mother and father were still livin' there in Zebulon, and old Bill Joyner was there, too. He hadn't yet moved into town, you know. Oh, it was several years after this before Bill came to Libya Hill to live, and father didn't follow him till after the war was over.... Well, anyway," she said, "Bill was still out in Zebulon, as I was sayin', and the story goes that it was Sunday morning. So after breakfast the whole crowd of them start out for church--all of them except old Bill, you know, and I reckon he had something else to do, or felt that it was all right for him to stay at home so long as all the others went.... Well, anyhow," she smiled, "Bill didn't go to church, but he saw them go, you know! He saw them go!" she cried. "He stood there in the door and watched them as they went down the road--father and Sam and mother, and your great-uncle Rance. Well, anyway, when they had gone--I reckon it was some time later--Bill went out into the kitchen. And when he got there he saw the lid of the wool-box was open. Of course father was a hatter, and he kept the wool from which he made the felt out in the kitchen in this big box.-
 Why, it was big enough for a grown man to stretch out full length in, with some to spare, and of course it was as good a bed as anyone could want. I know that when father wanted to take a nap on Sunday after noons, or get off somewheres by himself to study something over, he'd go back and stretch out on the wool.
 "'Well,' thinks Bill, 'now who could ever have gone and done such a trick as that? Fate told them'--that's what he called my father, Lafayette, you know--'Fate told them to keep that box closed,' and he walks over, you know, to put the lid down--and there he was, sir!" she cried strongly--"There he was, if you please, stretched out on the wool and fast asleep--why, Rance, you know! Rance! There he was!
 ... 'Aha!' thinks Bill, 'I caught you that time, didn't I? Now he's just sneaked off from all the others when he thought my back was turned, and he's crawled back here to have a snooze when he's sup posed to be in church.' That's what Bill thought, you know. 'Now if he thinks he's goin' to play any such trick as that on me, he's very much mistaken. But we'll see,' thinks Bill, 'We'll just wait and see.
 Now, I'm not goin' to wake him up,' says Bill, 'I'll go away and let him sleep--but when the others all get back from church I'm goin' to ask him where he's been. And if he tells the truth--if he confesses that he crawled into the wool-box for a nap, I won't punish him. But if he tries to lie out of it,' says Bill, 'I'll give him such a thrashin' as he's never had in all his life before!'
 "So he goes away then and leaves Rance there to sleep. Well, he waited then, and pretty soon they all came back from church, and, sure enough, here comes Rance, trailin' along with all the rest of them.
 'Rance,' says Bill, 'How'd you like the sermon?'
 'Oh,' says Rance, smilin' an' grinnin' all over, you know, 'it was fine, father, fine,' he says. 'Fine, was it?' Bill says, 'You enjoyed it, did you?'
 'Oh, why, yes!' he says, 'I enjoyed it fine!'
 'Well, now, that's good,' says Bill, 'I'm glad to hear that,' says he. 'What did the preacher talk about?' he says.
 "Well, then, you know, Rance started in to tell him--he went through the preacher's sermon from beginnin' to end, he told him everything that was in it, even to describin' how the preacher talked and all.
 "And Bill listened. He didn't say a word. He waited till Rance got through talkin'. Then he looked at him, and shook his head. 'Rance,' he says, 'I want you to look me in the eye.' And Rance looked at him, you know, real startled-like; says, 'Why, yes, father, what is it? What's wrong?' he says. Then Bill looked at him, and shook his head. Says, 'Rance, Rance, I'd have let you go if you had told the truth about it, but,' says, 'Rance--you have lied to me.'
 'Why, no, father,' says Rance, 'No, I haven't. What do you mean?' he says. And Bill looked at him; says, 'Rance--you have not been to church,' says, 'I found you in the wool-box fast asleep, and that is where you've been all morning. Now,' says Bill, 'you come with me,' and took him by the shoulder. "Oh, father, I haven't done anything--begins to cry, you know, says, 'Don't whip me, don't whip me--I haven't lied to you--I'll swear to you I haven't.'
 'You come with me,' says Bill--begins to pull and drag him along, you know, 'and when I'm through with you you'll never lie to me again.'
 "And that," she said, "that was where father--my father, your grand father--stepped into the picture. He stepped between them and stopped Bill Joyner from going any further. Of course, father was a grown man at the time. 'No,' says father, 'you mustn't do that,' he says, 'You're makin' a mistake. You can't punish him for not attendin' church to day.'
 'Why, what's the reason I can't?' Bill Joyner said. 'Because,' said father, 'he was there. He's been with us every minute of the time since we left home this morning. And he heard the sermon,' father said, 'He's tellin' you the truth--I'll swear to that--because he was sittin' next to me all the time.'
 "And then, of course, the others all chimed in, mother and Sam, said, 'Yes, he's tellin' you the truth, all right. He was right there with us all the time, and we'd have known if he left us.' Then Bill was bit ter against them all, of course, thinkin' they had all joined against him in an effort to shield Rance in a lie. 'To think,' he said, 'that childern of mine would turn against me in this way! To think that you'd all join together in a lie in order to shield him. Why, you're worse than he is,' he said, 'for you're abettin' him and leadin' him on, and you--' he said to father--'you are certainly old enough to know better,' says, 'Fate, I didn't think it of you, I didn't think you'd help him to lie like this.' And father said, 'No.' He looked him in the eye, said, 'No, father, no one is helpin' him to lie. He's not tellin' you a lie.
 We're all tellin' the truth--and I can prove it.'--Why yes, didn't it turn out then that the preacher and all the folks at church had seen him and were willin' to testify that he was there?--'Now I don't know what it is you saw,' said father, 'but whatever it was, it wasn't Rance.
 At least, it wasn't the Rance you see here, for he's been with us every moment.' And then Bill looked at him and saw that he was tellin' him the truth, and they say Bill Joyner's face was a study.
 "'Well,' he said, 'this is a strange thing! God only knows what will come out of it! Rance has been Seen!"'
 She paused; then turned to look straight and silent at George. In a moment she shook her head slightly, with boding premonition.
 "And let me tell you something," she whispered. "'That wasn't the only time, either!"
 There were, in fact, from this time on, an increasing number of such apparitions. The news of the first one had spread like wildfire through the whole community: the uncanny story of the boy's discovery in the wool-box when his corporeal body was two miles distant at the church became instantly common property, and inflamed the wonder and imagination of all who heard it.
 And, as seems to be almost the invariable practice in these cases, the public did not question at all the evidence which was dubious; they questioned only that which was indubitable, and, finding it to be con firmed beyond the shadow of a doubt, swallowed the whole, hook, line, and sinker! They took it instantly for granted that Bill Joyner had seen the boy, or "at least, seen something, now--that's one thing sure."
 But was Rance really present at the church that day? Had he been with the other members of his family from first to last? Had there been any opportunity for him to "slip away" and leave them without their knowing it? To all this there was only one answer--testified to by a hundred people. He had been present at the church from first to last; he had been seen, greeted, and remembered by minister, sexton, deacons, choir, and congregation, not only before, but also after services.
 Therefore, the fact was now established in their minds with an unshakable conviction. There was no longer any possible doubt about it-
 Rance had been Seen.
 Then, about eight months after this, when the story of this ghostly apparition was still fresh in people's minds, and made matter for awed conversation when they gathered, another extraordinary incident occurred!
 One evening, towards the end of a harsh and ragged day in March, a neighbor of the Joyner's was driving hard into the backwoods village of Blankenship, which stood about two miles distant from his home.
 Night was coming on fast; it was just the few minutes of brief, fading grey that end a Winter's day, and the man, whose name was Roberts, was driving along the hard, clay-rutted road as fast as the rickety rig in which he sat, and the old grey horse he drove, could carry him. His wife had been seized suddenly by a cramp or colic, or so they called it, and now lay at home in bed in mortal pain until Roberts should reach town and fetch help back to her.
 Just outside of town as the troubled man was urging on his nag to greater speed, he encountered Rance Joyner. The boy was trudging steadily along the road in the grey light, coming from town and going towards home, and, according to the story Roberts told, Rance was carrying a heavy sack of meal which he had plumped over his right shoulder and supported with his hand. As the man in the buggy passed him, the boy half turned, paused, looked up at him, and spoke. In this circumstance there was nothing unusual. Roberts had passed the boy a hundred times coming or going to the town on some errand.
 On this occasion, Roberts said he returned the boy's greeting some what absently and curtly, weighted down as his spirit was with haste and apprehension, and drove on without stopping. But before he had gone a dozen yards the man recalled himself and pulled up quickly, intending to shout back to the boy the reason for his haste, and to ask him to stop at his house on the way home, do what he could to aid the stricken woman, and wait there till the man returned with help. Accordingly, Roberts pulled up, turned in his seat, and began to shout his message down the road. To his stupefaction, the road was absolutely bare. Within a dozen yards the boy had vanished from his sight, "as if," said Roberts, "the earth had opened up and swallered him."
 But even as the man sat staring, gape-mouthed with astonishment, the explanation occurred to him: "Thar were some trees that down the road a little piece, a-settin' at the side of the road, and I jest figgered," he said delicately, "that Rance had stepped in behind one of 'em for a moment, so I didn't stop no more. Hit was gettin' dark an' I was in a hurry, so I jest drove on as hard as I could."
 Roberts drove in to town, got the woman's sister whom he had come to fetch, and then returned with her as hard as he could go. But even as he reached home and drove up the rutted lane, a premonition of calamity touched him. The house was absolutely dark and silent: there was neither smoke nor sound nor any light whatever, and, filled with a boding apprehension, he entered. He called his wife's name in the dark house, but no one answered him. Then, he raised the smoky lantern which he carried, walked to the bed where his wife lay, and looked at her, seeing instantly that she was dead.
 That night the people from the neighborhood swarmed into the house. The women washed the dead woman's body, dressed her, "laid her out," and the men sat round the fire, whittled with knives, and told a thousand drawling stories of the strangeness of death and destiny. As Roberts was recounting for the hundredth time all of the circumstances of the death, he turned to Lafayette Joyner, who had come straightway when he heard the news, with his wife and several of his brothers: "... and I was jest goin' to tell Rance to stop and wait here till I got back, but I reckon it was just as well I didn't--she would have been dead a-fore he got here, and I reckon it might have frightened him to find her."
 Fate Joyner looked at him slowly with a puzzled face.
 "Rance?" he said.
 "Why, yes," said Roberts, "I passed him comin' home just as I got to town--and I reckon if I hadn't been in such a hurry I'd a-told him to stop off and wait till I got back."
 The Joyners had suddenly stopped their whittling. They looked upward from their places round the fire with their faces fixed on Roberts' face in a single, silent, feeding, fascinated stare, and he paused suddenly, and all the other neighbors paused, feeling the dark, pre monitory boding of some new phantasmal marvel in their look.