Authors: Sheila Watson
She lit the lamp. She shook the pot of potatoes on the stove and looked under the cloth that covered them. The woodbox was almost empty.
Dear God, she cried. Then she stopped short. Afraid that he might come.
Father of the fatherless. Judge of widows. Death, and after death the judgment.
She opened the door.
Heinrich, she called. Heinrich.
All round the animals waited. The plate on the table. The knife. The fork. The kettle boiling on the stove.
Dear God, she said. The country. The wilderness. Nothing. Nothing but old women waiting.
In the cabin by the quarry Kip leant across the table towards Angel.
These eyes seen plenty, he said.
Behind Angel, Felix’s children lay, their faces nuzzled close in sleep on Theophil’s mattress. At one end of the table Theophil played patience. Long fingers turning up a deuce of spades with a slipping thud.
It’s not always right for the mouth to say what the eyes see, Theophil said. Sometimes, too, it’s better for the eyes to close.
Sure, Kip said. Sure. But sometimes, he said, when the eye’s open a thing walks right in and sets down.
The best thing to do, Theophil said, is to shoo it out. If you had a back door now, you could just keep it moving on. Back doors do have their points, he said, though they’re powerful mean for letting in the draughts.
He looked at Angel.
If I’d been here when William Potter came, he said, you’d not gone off the place. I don’t care to get mixed up with others. Moreover and besides, I don’t care to have you scrubbing for those strong enough to scrub for themselves.
She got herself a dollar, Kip said.
And what does she need a dollar for? Theophil asked. I bring back all that’s needed here.
You best move on, he said to Kip.
What did your eyes see? Angel asked. Just what?
Step, Theophil said. Step.
He put down the part of the deck which he still held and stood up. He shoved the door open and leaned against the frame.
Lively, he said. We don’t want to hear nothing. We don’t want to see nothing.
A tomcat uncoiled like a flame around the door-jamb. Raising its back against Theophil’s trouser leg. Bending its head sideways to his ankle.
Just how can I get out? Kip asked.
By putting one foot in front of the other, Theophil said. By getting that carcass in locomotion.
I don’t see no way out, Kip said. All these eyes see is a cat and a man filling up the door space. An old yellow cat and a man.
Angel stood up.
Go along, she said to Kip. Phil’s boss here. The thing about a man who knows his own mind is that his mind is plain to others.
Not so plain, Theophil said, having let Kip slide past him at the door, having shut the door behind him. Not so plain that a man’s woman doesn’t mistake his intent from time to time.
Angel looked away.
I had my own reasons for going, she said, when William Potter came knocking.
A woman has no call for reasons, Theophil said. Not when her man treats her good. I make up the minds here. I don’t want trouble.
There’s trouble enough, Angel said, without anybody’s asking you. A man can’t peg himself in so tight that nothing can creep through the cracks. Old Mrs. Potter’s dead, she said. Kip seen Coyote carry her away like a rabbit in his mouth. There’s no one he hasn’t got his eye on.
That Greta, she said. She’s just making big. A man full up on beer saying in that beer how big he is. Not knowing that Coyote’ll get him just walking round the side of the house to make water.
I don’t set no store by Coyote, Theophil said. There’s no big Coyote, like you think. There’s not just one of him. He’s everywhere. The government’s got his number too. They’ve set a bounty on him at fifty cents a brush. I could live well at his expense. On the other hand, I’m best to depend on myself, he said, and not go mixing myself up with the government. If you take money from anyone at anytime, it indebts you to the person handing it out. Let’s forget it, he said.
Let’s go to bed, Angel said, since you’re so anxious on forgetting. A man is either up thinking or in bed forgetting. A man feels strongest in bed, Angel said.
Theophil took off his trousers and shirt. He stood in the
candle-light in his undershirt and long cotton drawers. His arm stretched out to roll Felix’s children to one side.
This is a thin mean place, men and cattle alike, he said.
The cat stepped up into the space he had cleared for himself. He took it up in his arms and sat on the edge of the mattress. With one hand he held the cat close to his chest, with the other he stroked the fur between its eyes.
Outside the cabin Kip leaned against the closed door. Forced out by Theophil under the white lick of the moon.
All the time, he thought, people go shutting their doors. Tying things up. Fencing them in. Shutting out what they never rightly know.
He thought: Angel can see but Theophil’s let fear grow like fur on his eyes.
He stood on the doorstep looking at the moon. Stood roped to the ground by his weight of flesh. Reaching out to the white tongue of moonlight so that he might swing up to the cool mouth. Raising his hand to the white glory for which he thirsted. Then remembering: Coyote got the old lady at last.
He went through the shadows of the trees to find his horse. Untied it. Climbed into the saddle. Swung the horse round with a jerk.
He was alone under the moon in the white shed of the world.
I’ll go back to James Potter’s, he said.
Lenchen was coming down the hill behind James Potter’s house. Fear rising. Fear flooding her body as the moonlight flooded the hills. Exposed in the white light like a hawk pulled out and pinned up on a barn door for all to see.
She had fed full by Felix’s stove and slept a little. Felt the hardness of the saddle under her head, the press of boards, the thin scratch of the saddle blanket pulled round her. Had bedded down for a while in her own gear. Heard from the next room grunts and deep-bellied breath. Taken comfort in huge indifference. Shoved off the terrier which had come growling and sniffing in the dark.
Then she’d slid away from Felix’s stove. Crossed the creek on foot and climbed the hill so that she could circle her mother’s. Crossed above William’s and seen his late lantern in the feed-lot. Come hoping to surprise James at some last chore.
Now, because she was afraid, she crept down into the brush on the far side of the creek behind the house.
James would come. He would take her into the house. Or he would saddle up and take her to town, where men drank beer when they drove beef out for shipping and the red-headed bartender who kept the parrot would say: Mrs. James Potter. I am surprised. Or he would hide her in the hills and creep out with food and covers that he’d somehow stolen from Greta.
But, indeed, she saw him in his plaid shirt his arms reaching forward saying: Did Kip bring my message? Did Kip tell you I was waiting?
As if drawn by the thought, Kip came up the road towards her. Nearly everyone else was in bed.
William pulled the sheet up under his chin. His body filled the length of the bed. He rolled over, kicking the covers loose, gathering them over his shoulders.
It’s curious, he thought, how a man lies down in the ground at last.
Ara, he called. What’s keeping you? A man doesn’t expect to lie waiting for his wife half the night.
He heard her pumping some water in the kitchen.
You’re mighty dainty all of a sudden, he said. I can remember the time you’d be calling out for me to come.
Prosper had wakened on his mattress. The girl had gone. Her coming had stirred thoughts which buzzed about waiting to torment him. Yet he sank back into the comfort of his flesh, his eyes creased in sleep.
Angel stirred restlessly under the weight of Theophil’s arm. Theophil moved aside. Grinding his teeth a little. Shoving Felix’s children to the wall.
Do that Coyote really be prying about? Angel thought. Who says where a woman shall lie but that very woman herself. Who keeps chawing at a man but a man’s own self?
The Widow lay stiff on her fat feather pillow. She could hear the boy heavy in sleep.
The girl chose to go. How can God judge, she said.
But she pulled the covers up over her eyes to shut out the moonlight.
Kip’s mind was on James. James’s strength. James’s weakness. James’s old mother. James and Greta. James and the girl Wagner. The messages he’d taken for James.
He’s like his old lady, Kip thought. There’s a thing he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know you can’t catch the glory on a hook and hold on to it. That when you fish for the glory you catch the darkness too. That if you hook twice the glory you hook twice the fear. That Coyote plotting to catch the glory for himself is fooled and every day fools others. He doesn’t know, Kip thought, how much mischief Coyote can make.
Coyote reaching out reflected glory. Like a fire to warm. Then shoving the brand between a man’s teeth right into his belly’s pit. Fear making mischief. Laying traps for men. The dog and his servants plaguing the earth. Fear skulking round. Fear walking round in the living shape of the dead. No stone was big enough, no pile of stones, to weigh down fear.
His mind awake floated on the tide of objects about him. Was swirled in a pool. Caught in the fork of a tangle. Diverted from its course. Swept into the main stream. Birds’ eyes. The veins of leaves dark in the moonlight. A beetle caught blue on a shelved stone.
Not far from James’s gate Kip turned his horse off the road and led it across the creek into the matted willows.
So it was not James that the girl saw first but Kip. There was no mistake. The moonlight was clear around her. So clear that she could see every split shake on James Potter’s roof.
A man stumbles on things, Kip said. Just walking along in the brush. I go all the way down to your place with some words for you and you’re hanging about in the house. Now girls should be in bed. And now I just find you sitting outside in the bushes.
What are you doing here? the girl asked. What words did James send?
How do you know it was James sent words? Kip asked. I didn’t say James’s words.
The girl said nothing.
Supposing James did send words, Kip said. What do you think he said?
Still the girl did not speak.
I forget, Kip said. A man can’t be remembering things all his life.
He turned away and started towards the creek.
Where are you going? the girl asked. Come back.
Kip walked a few more steps away from her. She got up from the ground and followed him.
Tell me, she said, what words he sent. Tell me.
Kip looked around.
You got anything to oil up a man’s mind? he asked.
Nothing, she said. Nothing worth having. Nothing that someone else wouldn’t take back from you. Girls don’t have things to give. I’ve got nothing of my own.
You gave something to James, he said.
Go away, said the girl. Go away. Then she ran.
It seemed to her that it was someone else breaking through the brush. Splashing across the creek. Racing up the hoof-pocked path to the barnyard. Running headlong for the door she’d been watching.
She could hear hands beating wood. Each stroke prolonged joining the first. Clamour filling the night.
Yet Kip had not followed her. There was no one but herself in the emptiness before James’s house.
James had forbidden her to come.
The door opened outward.
I have broken my word, Lenchen thought. And she imagined the old lady’s eyes and Greta’s blazing like lamps in the inmost corners of the room.
What do you want here? It was a woman’s voice. Greta’s. But the girl heard at the same moment the explosion of a match. Saw flame rise gold from its blue fire. Saw James lifting the lamp so high that the light slanting down over Greta’s shoulder reached out towards her.
Yet Greta stood almost full in the doorway like a tangle of wild flowers grown up between them. All green and gold and purple in the lamplight. Fat clinging clumps of purple flowers. Honey-tongued. Bursting from their green stems. Crowding against green leaves. Her face above. Fierce. Sharp. Sudden as a bird’s swinging out on the topmost surge.
Lenchen shrank away from the riot of the falling skirt. Shut her eyes against the tumult of branch and leaf. Calling: James. James. As if she saw him at a great distance. While behind her Kip’s voice sounded. Loon laugh shivering the night.
James shoved Greta aside. He held the lamp high as he came.
Can a man have no peace? he said.
He took the girl by the arm.
Kip came out of the shadow by the barn.
Why are you hallooing about my house? James asked. In a whole miserable country can a man have no rest?
Not when he’s got the weight of his doings on him, Kip said.
You wanted the old woman out of the way, didn’t you? Kip asked. You wanted to see the girl, didn’t you?
How can a man know what he wants? James said.
The girl didn’t move.
Greta had gone back into the house. She sat in her mother’s chair, the folds of her housecoat falling between her knees.
Send them away, James, she called out. Drive them off the place.
Oh-ho, Kip said. Just the same old Greta. The same old Greta inside some plants and bushes.
You’d best take us in, he said to James. We can’t just keep standing about. Tell her we came to help you.
He lifted his face. Smiling.
That Greta, he thought. Standing there proud like the glory. Fitting herself into a glory the way a man fits himself into a shirt and pants.
James stood uncertain before the door.
Come in, James, Greta said. Come in and shut away the moon.
Did you forget, he asked, I’ve others with me?
How could I forget? she called out. How could I forget with their noise still in my ears. Yelling and shrieking outside in the night like cats in torment. Can you think that I didn’t
see with my own eyes what was going on out there in the moonlight. It’s Kip should have known better since he knew there was death in the house. It’s not as if there weren’t plenty of hollows in the hills where he could chase his mares.