Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (36 page)

When she stopped this time, Grace made another long
trembling sob, and what it did was the worst yet. Harold bent his
head farther and held himself harder, but the weakness brought
innumerable hurrying thoughts and feelings that he couldn’t stop,
and they carried him away from Arthur, not to him.

The mother was speaking again, and her voice sounded
very loud and much clearer. When he could make out the words too, she
was saying, ". . . so if the Lord won’t judge for me, it
surely ain’t my place to pass judgment myself. He was a good man,
like he was always a good boy, not a mean streak in him, that I ever
see, and that’l1 do for us, being mortal ourselves, and the best of
us none too good."

But there she lost her way again, and stopped, and
when she went on, she sounded as uncertain as she had at first. "Some
ways it seems to me he’s with us more now than he ever was before.
I keep rememberin’ things he said, and thinkin’ . . ." Her
voice trailed off. "Well," she said finally, "Harold
done well pickin’ this place for him. It’s close to home, and
still he liked it about as much as he liked any place, I guess. It
was a kind of favorite spot of his. He used to come up here all the
time, about now, or maybe a little earlier, about sundown, and set
here and watch the light over on the other side, and do some of that
whittlin’ he was always at."

Once more Grace made the long, helpless whimper, and
this time Harold couldn’t help looking across at her either. Gwen
was holding her in both arms, and crying herself, proudly and
silently, with her face up. When he saw them, he couldn’t hold it
down in himself any longer. His tears came suddenly, and blurred the
two dark figures together  on the other side of the grave. He
looked down again quickly, and fought against making a sound. He was
astonished and ashamed because he was crying. There didn’t seem to
be any real reason to cry. It was more for them than it was for
Arthur. Nothing anybody could say about Arthur went anywhere near as
far as a lot of the things he could remember himself. They couldn’t
touch Arthur, any of them. Arthur was the one who was out of it; he
was the quiet center of things.

"Everybody just pray accordin’ to your own
heart,” the mother said, her voice breaking, and almost not
finishing that much.

Harold tried to make a regular prayer for Arthur, but
it wouldn’t come, and finally the thought went through his head,
all by itself, It would make more sense if it was Arthur praying for
us. That was when it got hold of him big, beyond any doubt and beyond
any softening it with a living memory, that Arthur wasn’t there at
all, and that he never would be again. It was as if all the other
times had just been getting ready for this. He stood very still and
tight, not making a sound, and without a thought in his mind, feeling
the emptiness go down and down in him.

"Amen," the mother said out loud.

The sinking stopped, and then his mind could cry
Arthur’s name. He knew that his mouth was closed tight, but it
seemed to him that the name, cried out like that, must be echoing all
over the valley that was so still now. Arthur,
Arthur, his mind cried twice. Then he got the memory that did help.
It was as if Arthur had come because he’d called him. He saw
Arthur’s long, bearded face quite clearly for a moment. The face
was very dark, burned almost the color of an old saddle, the way it
got toward the end of summer, the deep-sunk eyes were looking right
at him, and they were very sad, but the long, gentle mouth in the
beard was making the little smile up one side that it always made
when Arthur had his own reason for making secret fun of the person he
was pitying.

The mother turned at the head of the grave and
started toward the pile of earth with snow on it and the four shovels
standing up in it. Then he wasn’t seeing Arthur’s face any
longer, but he was feeling only a quiet, easy sadness and a great
weariness. It was a queer weariness, not so much like being really
tired as like being suddenly a great deal older, tired from time, not
from doing anything. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all. His own mouth
wanted to make the same kind of an easy, crooked smile about it that
Arthur’s mouth had made. He believed that he was pretty close to
understanding what Arthur had thought about things, close in a surer
way than he’d been that strange, bright, expanding moment in the
kitchen.

The mother came back to the head of the grave. In her
left hand she was carrying a little pile of earth from the big mound
behind him.

Harold looked down at the lid of the coffin in the
pit below him and thought, making that little, crooked smile in his
mind, All right, Art, I’ll try and find out. I’ll try and make
things go the way you wanted them to.

The mother leaned over the grave, and with her right
hand took some of the earth from her left, and without saying a word,
sprinkled it wide and thin, with a motion like Joe Sam’s when he
fed the chickens, over the lid of the coffin. It made only a faint,
sandy tapping, like the beginning of rain on hard ground. At the
first tapping, Grace made the long, moaning sound again, but softly,
half smothering it in Gwen’s shoulder. The mother paid no attention
to her, but sprinkled another little handful of earth onto the
coffin, and then a third. Then her left hand was empty too. She
straightened up, brushing her hands lightly on her skirt, and took
the Testament out from under her left arm and held it in her two
hands again. She stood that way for a moment, looking down into the
grave. Then she raised her head and looked across at Grace and Gwen,
and said clearly, "Al1 right, you girls come on down with me
now, and let Harold finish up here."

She came around the grave behind Harold and started
down the path, and after a moment Gwen turned Grace and the two of
them went down more slowly after her, their heads nearly together and
their skirts sometimes brushing the light snow from the walls of the
path.

Harold waited until they went out of sight around the
corner of the house. Then he looked across the valley to the east, at
the vast, deep blue darkness coming up that curve of the sky out of
the white hills, and at the first stars showing in it. He shivered a
little, and looked down from the stars at Joe Sam.

"All right, Joe Sam," he said.

The old Indian didn’t move or answer. He was
standing just where he’d been standing all the time, at the foot of
the grave, and he was still staring down into it.

"Joe Sam," Harold said.
 
He had to speak a third time before Joe Sam raised
his head.

"We have to get done before it’s too dark."

"Get done," Joe Sam said, and came around
the grave slowly, moving in the thin, darkening air like a swimmer
treading water.

Harold took the first shovelful of earth, and then
paused for a moment, holding it above the open grave. Then he leaned
far down and spread it quietly the length of the coffin. He kept on
letting the earth down that way, instead of dropping it, until the
lid of the coffin was covered and the space around it was filled. Joe
Sam did the same thing at the other end. Then they both stood by the
mound and just tossed the earth in. They both swung rhythmically, but
their rhythms weren’t quite the same, so that sometimes the two
shovels swung together, and sometimes first one and then the other
would swing. As the darkness increased on the hillside, the pines
around them became great black columns against a white wall, and
below them the small, orange window of the kitchen grew brighter, and
so did the longer, yellow window it made on the snow.

20

Once more there were only the three of them at the
table for supper, Gwen and Harold and Joe Sam. And Joe Sam just sat
there again, too, not eating anything, and with his coat and the blue
bandana and the black sombrero on. The curving light of the lamp
crossed his breast, showing the big wrinkles of the worn coat, and
the long hair of the braid that had come undone, lying loose and ilat
over them. The other braid was beginning to loosen now too, so the
ends of the red and blue ribbons stood out from it. In the double
shadow of the lamp shade and the brim of the sombrero, both his eyes
appeared to be alive and staring with horror, because the irises made
single big centers with the pupils. The big centers were looking
right at Harold all the time, or through him at something they saw
where the stairs went up against the wall. Harold kept looking away,
but every time he looked back, the two big pupils in the faintly
glittering whites were still staring at him.

Staring back at them, Harold thought, For a while up
there, I had a notion he was coming out of it, but I guess it just
set him off again.

Then he had to look away from the eyes again. He
looked at Gwen, but she was keeping her head down over her plate, and
picking at her food, as if she were all by herself. In the long
silence, the fluttering of the lamp and the fire and the slow ticking
of the clock became voices he or didn’t want to listen to. Several
times he started to say something to Gwen, but then, each time,
thought how loud and foolish it would sound, and didn’t speak.

He had become afraid of even the sound his fork made
on the plate, when suddenly the
father’s voice
spoke above, angrily and loudly. "It was Curt, I tell you. I saw
his coat. I guess I know Curt’s coat when I see it, don’t I?"

Then the clock and the fluttering came back, and
after a moment, Harold said, "Just talking in his sleep, I
guess."

Gwen had looked up quickly when the loud voice spoke,
but now she looked down at her plate again. "I left his door
open to let some heat up," she said.

She didn’t say anything more, and finally Harold
asked, "How is Grace doing now?"

"I’m scared for her,” Gwen said Slowly.
"She’s quiet enough. She’s too quiet. She just lies there
staring. She wouldn’t answer me when I spoke to her. I don’t
think she even heard me. I wish she’d take on some way. I wish
she’d cry, or do most anything."

"Maybe now it’s all over, she’ll let up
after a while. Maybe she’s just worn out with it."

"She’s not letting up any," Gwen said.
She was still keeping herself away from him. She wou1dn’t look at
him, and she might have been talking to anybody, just to answer the
questions. Harold looked at her bowed head intently for a moment, and
then set his jaw, and pushed back his chair and stood up.

"Well, I better get at the chores," he
said. "Come on, Joe Sam."

The old Indian didn’t move.

"Joe Sam."

"Why don’t you let him alone?" Gwen said
sharply.

He looked at her, and this time she was looking right
back at him too. A little fury was dancing in her eyes, almost as
wildly as it did in the mother’s or Curt’s sometimes.

"Why don’t you let the poor old man alone?"
she said. "He isn’t fit to do chores, and you know it. You’ve
had him doing everything all the time, and he hasn’t slept or eaten
for days."

Harold stood there looking down at her, and feeling
the heat come up his throat and face so he knew it showed.

"Are you trying to work him to death?" Gwen
asked.

Her voice was higher, and even with his anger finally
beginning to rise through his weariness, slow and heavy, he was
afraid she’d start screaming at him so she couldn’t be stopped,
the way Grace had at the mother.

She had only started again, though, saying, “Just
because he’s old, and an Indian, and doesn’t know our ways, you .
. ." when they heard steps in the north bedroom. Gwen stopped
speaking, and they both looked at the open door.
After a moment, the light of the lamp showed there, bright, and then
dimmed, and then coming up again, slowly whitening, until finally it
was the brightest yet and steady.

The mother’s voice said, "Harold."

Gwen looked down at her plate again.

"Yes?" Harold said.

"I want to see you before you go out."

His anger turned against the mother and flared.
Christ, won’t you ever let me alone? he thought. Then he thought,
Like Curt again, and you made a promise to Arthur. Somebody has to
try around here, and you’re the only candidate right now.

"Al1 right," he said.

He looked down at Gwen again. It was so quiet they
could hear the bedsprings creak as the mother lay down once more, and
even the rustling of her stiff, black dress. He stood there, trying
to make Gwen look up at him before he spoke, but she wouldn’t and
again it was the father’s voice that broke the silence. It was
complaining now, almost weeping. "It did, though. I saw it, big
as a horse. Listening to that goddamned dreamer," it moaned, and
muttered for a moment, and was silent.

Harold said slowly and distinctly, "I was just
going to put goin to put him to bed up in the bunk-house, if that’ll
make you feel any better."

He turned and went to the door of the bedroom. For a
moment he was frightened, because he thought, in his dull weariness,
that it was Arthur lying there again, and had a couple of wild
glimpses of an opening grave and a ghost that carried its dead flesh
on it, and couldn’t be kept out of the house. The mother was lying
straight out on the bed, with the same white blanket pulled up to her
chin. Her hands were crossed on her breast on top of the blanket, and
her eyes were closed.