Home from the Hill (38 page)

Then he saw the other man's face.

Harvey had never seen a grown man in tears, never had heard one sob as Albert Halstead sobbed when he recognized him. It was by its very remoteness from anything he had ever been brought to that Harvey sensed a little what it must take to make a man cry like a baby. He saw how it upset him to be seen in that state.

He watched him hasten down the walk, then turned and saw something more. Down the path he saw Captain Wade Hunnicutt standing on his front porch in the light with his legs spread, the giant straddling shadow of him flung out upon his yard, looking down at the gate through which poor distraught Albert Halstead had just passed. Harvey looked again and saw Albert passing under the streetlamp and into the darkness beyond. Suddenly the gate light went out. He looked up at the house. Captain Wade was just stepping inside. The door closed and the porch lights went out.

He had (a thing, somehow, most uncharacteristic of him; he felt that himself) stood in the dark pondering what he had seen, had thought about it the very first thing next morning. It remained a vivid and haunting memory, and he could no more bring himself to talk to anyone about it than he could forget it.

After the christening of Albert Halstead's grandson, or rather, after the gossip following that christening, Harvey understood at last the drama behind the strange tableau he had seen that night seven months since.

54

“Where you going?” said Opal. He'd just better watch his step. She'd had just about all she was going to take. Inwardly she smiled a sly smile. She had secret resources. In the cannister labeled TEA which sat upon the kitchen shelf at that very moment there was tea, all right, but known to nobody else in the world was the fact that underneath the tea there nestled, as of this week, eighteen dollars and sixty-three cents.

“Out,” Theron replied. “I'll be back in an hour.”

“I won't be here,” she said.

It was no empty threat. She knew what she would do, and she was desperate, desperate. A girl hadn't ought to be tried like this: sleeping night after night in the house with a man—legally married to him, too!—and never getting so much as a hug and kiss. Eighteen dollars and sixty-three cents would take a girl to Dallas or Ft. Worth and keep her there till something came along. She'd go in a minute now. She wouldn't tarry to get legally unhitched. Hah! What hitching had taken place but on a piece of paper? Off up there in the big town where nobody knew her, all she would have to do was show her annulment paper (somewhat chewed) and be as sweet and sassy a young grass widow as you please. Just drop Mr. Theron Hunnicutt right out of her past.

“Where will you be?” he said.

“I won't be here,” she said. “Where will you be?”

The trouble had begun some weeks earlier, when one night he failed not only to come home for supper, or to eat the supper she had left out for him, but failed at breakfast the next morning even to offer any excuse or explanation, any mention of the fact that it was 2 a.m. when he came in. They had quarreled then; or rather, she had quarreled at him: he had said nothing. And she might as well not have: that night he did not come home for supper either. She had put the baby to bed and gone into town to look for him, though she had no idea where to look. She had not found him in the places where it seemed to her an errant husband would likely be—not in the pool hall, the drugstore, or in any of the honky-tonks. At breakfast the next morning she kept silence. She wondered if perhaps this was a mistake; he might take alarm from her silence. To her infuriation she discovered that her silence made no more impression on him than her complaints. That night she did not wait to see whether he would be home for supper. She put the baby to bed and went into town and took up a post of observation outside the mill. The quitting-time whistle blew at last and she saw him come out and saw him turn his steps not in the direction of home.

She followed him across town, across the square, and into a residential district. It was just getting dark when in the middle of a block he stopped. She stopped around the corner. She thought he had gone into a house, then the flare of a match as he lighted a cigarette revealed him in the shadow of a doorway. Apparently he was watching the street, or the house just across the street, the house with the blinds all lowered. She watched the spot, marked by the steady glow of his cigarette. After a while she saw the cigarette drop to the ground—it was quite dark by then, and it made a red arc in falling, like a little shooting star, and she saw then that it was still in his mouth, then saw the explanation: he had lighted another from the one he had just dropped. And this was all that happened for nearly an hour. He stood in the shadow, a glowing red dot marking him, for nearly an hour.

At last he moved out onto the sidewalk and set off again. At the spot on which he had stood she stood for a moment—only a moment, because she did not want to lose him—but she could tell nothing from it. Across the street was a house no different from the other houses, except that the shades were drawn, and in which nothing apparent was going on. She had to run then to catch up.

This time he led her to a place she knew, but his behavior there was no less mysterious, and was more disturbing to her. He went to his parents' house. There he entered the grounds and she followed. He went to the dog pens, went inside, and spent a quarter of an hour petting the dogs. Then he prowled around the house, looking into the windows. Twice—once outside the den and once outside the drawing room, both of which were lighted—he stood to smoke and watch, and as she watched him a numbing chill of exclusion and neglect passed over her.

At last he bestirred himself and moved on again. He passed out of the grounds, and she followed. But he was not going home. He returned to his first spot. This time it seemed that this was where he intended to stay until 2 a.m., so, after watching for another half hour, she slipped away and went home.

She left the house shortly after he went to work the next morning, this time carrying the baby, and made as straight as she could remember the way for the spot of his vigil. It looked as if someone had emptied an ashtray there. From staring at the house across the street, however, all she could learn was its postal number and the fact that in daytime, too, the shades remained drawn.

How did one learn who lived at a certain street number without making inquiries? Opal could think of only one way, and could think of this only after three days of thinking. That was to read the telephone directory alphabetically until she came to a name beside that address. Unfortunately, they had no telephone, thus no directory. The town directory was not very thick, but thick enough so that beginning at A and reading every name, and having to do it under the increasingly captious eye of the pharmacist in the drugstore which had the nearest public telephone, every morning for five minutes, which was as long as she dared, and not being a very fast reader, Opal was many days getting to Shumway, Fred. She had, in fact, only found it (and having found it, had not known where it got her) just a couple of days before. Then this morning after breakfast, over her second cup of coffee, reading the local paper and not yet attentive to the fact that Theron was going in and out of the bathroom, drawing a bath, shaving, getting dressed, she came across an announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Fred Shumway's infant son would be christened Sunday, today, in the First Episcopal Church, following regular services. There was a Mrs. Shumway then, one young enough to have just had a baby. Then she noticed his unusual preparations, and then there came to her a new and very different explanation of his celibacy. And then without any explanation or leave-taking, he went to the door. Suddenly she knew who Mrs. Fred Shumway was. She was not Mrs. Shumway the first time Opal saw her. She was the girl who came to the house that day, whom Theron had gone out to see, between whom and him there was a spat, some kind of difference, a scene, upon which she had intruded. She was the bride being married in the courthouse that day she got her decree—and her new proposal and her second husband—who, on seeing the new Mrs. Shumway had turned white as a sheet. There had been a spat between them, but he had not known she would take it as hard as that.

“If you step out that door it's good-bye,” she said. And yet she did not feel it. To her own amazement she was neither angry nor jealous. What she was, was excited. Dallas! Single! Freedom! $18.63!

He saw that her threat was real, but for him it was no threat. “Where will you go?” he said. It would be Libby's first public appearance since her confinement, and he was going. He felt a sense of relief. He did not feel beholden to Opal. He did not consider that he had done her any harm. On the contrary, he had not gone near her.

“Where I'll go is my business,” she said. She saw that he was not daring her. Nor was she daring him when she said, “There's a bus for Dallas leaving in an hour, and I've got my fare.”

“Well,” he said, “I'm going.”

“I won't be long behind you,” she said.

And they both tried to disguise their joy by seeming to threaten.

He emptied his pockets onto the couch. Two dollar bills and a few pieces of change fell out. “I've got money,” she said. “I've got plenty of money. Not just my fare.”

He did not pick up the money. There seemed nothing more to do or say. He turned to go, then turned back and extended his hand. “Goodbye, Opal,” he said. She took his hand. Then, flushing, he bent and kissed her cheek. “Will you divorce me?” he said.

“In my own good time,” she said. “I ain't thinking of getting married again any time soon. Are you?”

55

The general recollection was that the Shumways had been a clan of camp-meeting Baptists. But Fred meant to rise, to leave the tabernacle for more indoor and respectable congregations. Long-headed even in early adolescence, he had hauled himself discreetly up the first rung of the religio-social ladder while still in high school, which landed him in the Campbellite fold. He had meant from there to ascend in the established order and in the approved time, which would have made a Presbyterian of him next and at about the time when he might expect to be tapped by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. But pride had made him reckless. He knew he risked considerable comeuppance, but he had run the risk and swarmed right to the top of the ladder. He had wanted to be married in church, but there had not been time, so now he was making up for that by having his son and heir christened in the Episcopal Church.

It was—as the People are admonished it is most convenient that it should be administered upon—Sunday: and, the Godparents having given to the Minister knowledge thereof before the beginning of Morning Prayer, the People, with the Child, were ready at the Font.

Stanley and Pearl Benningfield and Willie Carter were the Godparents—come to take upon themselves parts and duties to see that the Infant be taught what a solemn vow, promise, and profession he had there made by them that day. The People were: Fred, who knew he had worked hard at it, but had hardly realized himself that he had so many friends and well-wishers; his widowered father; Mr. and Mrs. Halstead; and Libby, still pale and drawn from her hard delivery and filled with timorous misgivings about this exhibition and this unexpectedly large crowd. She had pled to have the ceremony performed at home. But Fred was determined on a big display and was supported by the Minister's warning that without great cause and necessity they procure not their child to be baptized at home in their house. The Child was, or was about to be made, Albert (for her father) Terence (for his).

And then the Minister coming to the Font (which was then filled with pure water) and standing there, said:

“Hath this child been already baptized, or no?”

At the Minister's recommendation Libby had scanned the service beforehand—she could not have been said to have read it, being already in a state of agitation—but now all she heard was a severe and pompous voice issuing from a man attired in robes of authority, in those Biblical-ending verbs vaguely associated with authority and judgment, interrogating her about her baby. She was flustered and frightened, and yet sufficiently aware of her surroundings to flush hot with the consciousness of everyone waiting upon her answer. At last Fred said, “No, sir.”

Then the Minister proceeded as follows, the People all standing:

“Dearly Beloved—”

But just then in trooped a band of Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, and other backsliders absent from their own congregations this Sabbath morn. The Minister paused and peered over his spectacles, frowning slightly, and everyone turned around to look at the late arrivals. Men and women, there were over a dozen of them, and Libby thought she detected a ribaldry in their faces not even meant to be hidden by their expressions of churchy solemnness. She exchanged a rapid glance with her father, and her misgivings were quickened by the apprehension in his eyes. But turning back, she found Fred's face beaming with satisfaction.

The latecomers filed into pews and Reverend Mead resumed:

“Dearly Beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin—”

Such an epidemic of coughing broke out at this point that the Minister had to stop and wait upon it.

“Forasmuch,” the Reverend began again, “as all men are conceived and born in sin—”

“A-men!” came a voice from among those in the rear.

Certain now that they meant mischief, Libby turned sick with dread. Her neck stiffened involuntarily, and a shiver ran down her spine. She stole a glance at Fred. But no flicker of doubt had appeared on his face; he was as happily self-satisfied as ever—a discovery which increased her misery. She shrank backwards a step to be nearer her father.

The Minister continued, “—and our Saviour Christ saith, None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew—”

“A-men!” came from two or three voices this time.