Katherine Anne Porter (39 page)

“I didn’t understand your home was North Dakota,” said Mr. Thompson. “I thought you said Georgia.”

“I’ve got a married sister in North Dakota,” said Mr. Hatch, “married a Swede, but a white man if ever I saw one. So I say
we
because we got into a little business together out that way. And it seems like home, kind of.”

“What did he do?” asked Mr. Thompson, feeling very uneasy again.

“Oh, nothin’ to speak of,” said Mr. Hatch, jovially, “jus’ went loony one day in the hayfield and shoved a pitchfork right square through his brother, when they was makin’ hay. They was goin’ to execute him, but they found out he had went crazy with the heat, as the feller says, and so they put him in the asylum. That’s all he done. Nothin’ to get lathered up about, ha, ha, ha!” he said, and taking out his sharp knife he began to slice off a chew as carefully as if he were cutting cake.

“Well,” said Mr. Thompson, “I don’t deny that’s news. Yes, sir, news. But I still say somethin’ must have drove him to it. Some men make you feel like giving ’em a good killing just by lookin’ at you. His brother may a been a mean ornery cuss.”

“Brother was going to get married,” said Mr. Hatch; “used to go courtin’ his girl nights. Borrowed Mr. Helton’s harmonica to give her a serenade one evenin’, and lost it. Brand new harmonica.”

“He thinks a heap of his harmonicas,” said Mr. Thompson. “Only money he ever spends, now and then he buys hisself a new one. Must have a dozen in that shack, all kinds and sizes.”

“Brother wouldn’t buy him a new one,” said Mr. Hatch, “so Mr. Helton just ups, as I says, and runs his pitchfork through his brother. Now you know he musta been crazy to get all worked up over a little thing like that.”

“Sounds like it,” said Mr. Thompson, reluctant to agree in anything with this intrusive and disagreeable fellow. He kept thinking he couldn’t remember when he had taken such a dislike to a man on first sight.

“Seems to me you’d get pretty sick of hearin’ the same tune year in, year out,” said Mr. Hatch.

“Well, sometimes I think it wouldn’t do no harm if he learned a new one,” said Mr. Thompson, “but he don’t, so there’s nothin’ to be done about it. It’s a pretty good tune, though.”

“One of the Scandahoovians told me what it meant, that’s how I come to know,” said Mr. Hatch. “Especially that part about getting so gay you jus’ go ahead and drink up all the likker you got on hand before noon. It seems like up in them Swede countries a man carries a bottle of wine around with him as a matter of course, at least that’s the way I understood it. Those fellers will tell you anything, though—” He broke off and spat.

The idea of drinking any kind of liquor in this heat made Mr. Thompson dizzy. The idea of anybody feeling good on a day like this, for instance, made him tired. He felt he was really suffering from the heat. The fat man looked as if he had grown to the stump; he slumped there in his damp, dark clothes too big for him, his belly slack in his pants, his wide black felt hat pushed off his narrow forehead red with prickly heat. A bottle of good cold beer, now, would be a help, thought Mr. Thompson, remembering the four bottles sitting deep in the pool at the springhouse, and his dry tongue squirmed in his mouth. He wasn’t going to offer this man anything, though, not even a drop of water. He wasn’t even going to chew any more tobacco with him. He shot out his quid suddenly, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and studied the head near him attentively. The man was no good, and he was there for no good, but what was he up to? Mr. Thompson made up his mind he’d give him a little more time to get his business, whatever it was, with Mr. Helton over, and then if he didn’t get off the place he’d kick him off.

Mr. Hatch, as if he suspected Mr. Thompson’s thoughts, turned his eyes, wicked and pig-like, on Mr. Thompson. “Fact is,” he said, as if he had made up his mind about something, “I might need your help in the little matter I’ve got on hand, but it won’t cost you any trouble. Now, this Mr. Helton here, like I tell you, he’s a dangerous escaped loonatic, you might say. Now fact is, in the last twelve years or so I musta rounded up
twenty-odd escaped loonatics, besides a couple of escaped convicts that I just run into by accident, like. I don’t make a business of it, but if there’s a reward, and there usually is a reward, of course, I get it. It amounts to a tidy little sum in the long run, but that ain’t the main question. Fact is, I’m for law and order, I don’t like to see lawbreakers and loonatics at large. It ain’t the place for them. Now I reckon you’re bound to agree with me on that, aren’t you?”

Mr. Thompson said, “Well, circumstances alters cases, as the feller says. Now, what I know of Mr. Helton, he ain’t dangerous, as I told you.” Something serious was going to happen, Mr. Thompson could see that. He stopped thinking about it. He’d just let this fellow shoot off his head and then see what could be done about it. Without thinking he got out his knife and plug and started to cut a chew, then remembered himself and put them back in his pocket.

“The law,” said Mr. Hatch, “is solidly behind me. Now this Mr. Helton, he’s been one of my toughest cases. He’s kept my record from being practically one hundred per cent. I knew him before he went loony, and I know the fam’ly, so I undertook to help out rounding him up. Well, sir, he was gone slick as a whistle, for all we knew the man was as good as dead long while ago. Now we never might have caught up with him, but do you know what he did? Well, sir, about two weeks ago his old mother gets a letter from him, and in that letter, what do you reckon she found? Well, it was a check on that little bank in town for eight hundred and fifty dollars, just like that; the letter wasn’t nothing much, just said he was sending her a few little savings, she might need something, but there it was, name, postmark, date, everything. The old woman practically lost her mind with joy. She’s gettin’ childish, and it looked like she kinda forgot that her only living son killed his brother and went loony. Mr. Helton said he was getting along all right, and for her not to tell nobody. Well, natchally, she couldn’t keep it to herself, with that check to cash and everything. So that’s how I come to know.” His feelings got the better of him. “You coulda knocked me down with a feather.” He shook hands with himself and rocked, wagging his head, going “Heh, heh,” in his throat. Mr. Thompson felt the corners of his mouth turning down. Why, the dirty low-down hound, sneaking
around spying into other people’s business like that. Collecting blood money, that’s what it was! Let him talk!

“Yea, well, that musta been a surprise all right,” he said, trying to hold his voice even. “I’d say a surprise.”

“Well, siree,” said Mr. Hatch, “the more I got to thinking about it, the more I just come to the conclusion that I’d better look into the matter a little, and so I talked to the old woman. She’s pretty decrepid, now, half blind and all, but she was all for taking the first train out and going to see her son. I put it up to her square—how she was too feeble for the trip, and all. So, just as a favor to her, I told her for my expenses I’d come down and see Mr. Helton and bring her back all the news about him. She gave me a new shirt she made herself by hand, and a big Swedish kind of cake to bring to him, but I musta mislaid them along the road somewhere. It don’t reely matter, though, he prob’ly ain’t in any state of mind to appreciate ’em.”

Mr. Thompson sat up and turning round on the log looked at Mr. Hatch and asked as quietly as be could, “And now what are you aiming to do? That’s the question.”

Mr. Hatch slouched up to his feet and shook himself. “Well, I come all prepared for a little scuffle,” he said. “I got the handcuffs,” he said, “but I don’t want no violence if I can help it. I didn’t want to say nothing around the countryside, making an uproar. I figured the two of us could overpower him.” He reached into his big inside pocket and pulled them out. Handcuffs, for God’s sake, thought Mr. Thompson. Coming round on a peaceable afternoon worrying a man, and making trouble, and fishing handcuffs out of his pocket on a decent family homestead, as if it was all in the day’s work.

Mr. Thompson, his head buzzing, got up too. “Well,” he said, roundly, “I want to tell you I think you’ve got a mighty sorry job on hand, you sure must be hard up for something to do, and now I want to give you a good piece of advice. You just drop the idea that you’re going to come here and make trouble for Mr. Helton, and the quicker you drive that hired rig away from my front gate the better I’ll be satisfied.”

Mr. Hatch put one handcuff in his outside pocket, the other dangling down. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, and reminded Mr. Thompson of a sheriff, somehow. He didn’t seem
in the least nervous, and didn’t take up Mr. Thompson’s words. He said, “Now listen just a minute, it ain’t reasonable to suppose that a man like yourself is going to stand in the way of getting an escaped loonatic back to the asylum where he belongs. Now I know it’s enough to throw you off, coming sudden like this, but fact is I counted on your being a respectable man and helping me out to see that justice is done. Now a course, if you won’t help, I’ll have to look around for help somewheres else. It won’t look very good to your neighbors that you was harbring an escaped loonatic who killed his own brother, and then you refused to give him up. It will look mighty funny.”

Mr. Thompson knew almost before he heard the words that it would look funny. It would put him in a mighty awkward position. He said, “But I’ve been trying to tell you all along that the man ain’t loony now. He’s been perfectly harmless for nine years. He’s—he’s—”

Mr. Thompson couldn’t think how to describe how it was with Mr. Helton. “Why, he’s been like one of the family,” he said, “the best standby a man ever had.” Mr. Thompson tried to see his way out. It was a fact Mr. Helton might go loony again any minute, and now this fellow talking around the country would put Mr. Thompson in a fix. It was a terrible position. He couldn’t think of any way out. “You’re crazy,” Mr. Thompson roared suddenly, “you’re the crazy one around here, you’re crazier than he ever was! You get off this place or I’ll handcuff you and turn you over to the law. You’re trespassing,” shouted Mr. Thompson. “Get out of here before I knock you down!”

He took a step towards the fat man, who backed off, shrinking, “Try it, try it, go ahead!” and then something happened that Mr. Thompson tried hard afterwards to piece together in his mind, and in fact it never did come straight. He saw the fat man with his long bowie knife in his hand, he saw Mr. Helton come round the corner on the run, his long jaw dropped, his arms swinging, his eyes wild. Mr. Helton came in between them, fists doubled up, then stopped short, glaring at the fat man, his big frame seemed to collapse, he trembled like a shied horse; and then the fat man drove at him, knife in one hand, handcuffs in the other. Mr. Thompson saw it coming, he saw
the blade going into Mr. Helton’s stomach, he knew he had the ax out of the log in his own hands, felt his arms go up over his head and bring the ax down on Mr. Hatch’s head as if he were stunning a beef.

Mrs. Thompson had been listening uneasily for some time to the voices going on, one of them strange to her, but she was too tired at first to get up and come out to see what was going on. The confused shouting that rose so suddenly brought her up to her feet and out across the front porch without her slippers, hair half-braided. Shading her eyes, she saw first Mr. Helton, running all stooped over through the orchard, running like a man with dogs after him; and Mr. Thompson supporting himself on the ax handle was leaning over shaking by the shoulder a man Mrs. Thompson had never seen, who lay doubled up with the top of his head smashed and the blood running away in a greasy-looking puddle. Mr. Thompson without taking his hand from the man’s shoulder, said in a thick voice, “He killed Mr. Helton, he killed him, I saw him do it. I had to knock him out,” he called loudly, “but he won’t come to.”

Mrs. Thompson said in a faint scream, “Why, yonder goes Mr. Helton,” and she pointed. Mr. Thompson pulled himself up and looked where she pointed. Mrs. Thompson sat down slowly against the side of the house and began to slide forward on her face; she felt as if she were drowning, she couldn’t rise to the top somehow, and her only thought was she was glad the boys were not there, they were out, fishing at Halifax, oh, God, she was glad the boys were not there.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson drove up to their barn about sunset. Mr. Thompson handed the reins to his wife, got out to open the big door, and Mrs. Thompson guided old Jim in under the roof. The buggy was gray with dust and age, Mrs. Thompson’s face was gray with dust and weariness, and Mr. Thompson’s face, as he stood at the horse’s head and began unhitching, was gray except for the dark blue of his freshly shaven jaws and chin, gray and blue and caved in, but patient, like a dead man’s face.

Mrs. Thompson stepped down to the hard packed manure of the barn floor, and shook out her light flower-sprigged dress. She wore her smoked glasses, and her wide shady leghorn hat
with the wreath of exhausted pink and blue forget-me-nots hid her forehead, fixed in a knot of distress.

The horse hung his head, raised a huge sigh and flexed his stiffened legs. Mr. Thompson’s words came up muffled and hollow. “Poor ole Jim,” he said, clearing his throat, “he looks pretty sunk in the ribs. I guess he’s had a hard week.” He lifted the harness up in one piece, slid it off and Jim walked out of the shafts halting a little. “Well, this is the last time,” Mr. Thompson said, still talking to Jim. “Now you can get a good rest.”

Mrs. Thompson closed her eyes behind her smoked glasses. The last time, and high time, and they should never have gone at all. She did not need her glasses any more, now the good darkness was coming down again, but her eyes ran full of tears steadily, though she was not crying, and she felt better with the glasses, safer, hidden away behind them. She took out her handkerchief with her hands shaking as they had been shaking ever since
that day
, and blew her nose. She said, “I see the boys have lighted the lamps. I hope they’ve started the stove going.”

She stepped along the rough path holding her thin dress and starched petticoats around her, feeling her way between the sharp small stones, leaving the barn because she could hardly bear to be near Mr. Thompson, advancing slowly towards the house because she dreaded going there. Life was all one dread, the faces of her neighbors, of her boys, of her husband, the face of the whole world, the shape of her own house in the darkness, the very smell of the grass and the trees were horrible to her. There was no place to go, only one thing to do, bear it somehow—but how? She asked herself that question often. How was she going to keep on living now? Why had she lived at all? She wished now she had died one of those times when she had been so sick, instead of living on for this.