Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels: A Library of America eBook Classic

by Katherine Anne Porter

  “If you want to speak to Mr. Helton, I’ll go and round him up,” said Mr. Thompson, making motions as if he might get up. “He may be in the milk house and he may be setting in his shack this time of day.” It was drawing towards five o’clock. “It’s right around the corner,” he said.

  “Oh, well, there ain’t no special hurry,” said Mr. Hatch. “I’ve been wanting to speak to him for a good long spell now and I guess a few minutes more won’t make no difference. I just more wanted to locate him, like. That’s all.”

  Mr. Thompson stopped beginning to stand up, and unbuttoned one more button of his shirt, and said, “Well, he’s here, and he’s this kind of man, that if he had any business with you he’d like to get it over. He don’t dawdle, that’s one thing you can say for him.”

  Mr. Hatch appeared to sulk a little at these words. He wiped his face with the bandanna and opened his mouth to speak, when round the house there came the music of Mr. Helton’s harmonica. Mr. Thompson raised a finger. “There he is,” said Mr. Thompson. “Now’s your time.”

  Mr. Hatch cocked an ear towards the east side of the house and listened for a few seconds, a very strange expression on his face.

  “I know that tune like I know the palm of my own hand,” said Mr. Thompson, “but I never heard Mr. Helton say what it was.”

  “That’s a kind of Scandahoovian song,” said Mr. Hatch. “Where I come from they sing it a lot. In North Dakota, they sing it. It says something about starting out in the morning feeling so good you can’t hardly stand it, so you drink up all your likker before noon. All the likker, y’ understand, that you was saving for the noon lay-off. The words ain’t much, but it’s a pretty tune. It’s a kind of drinking song.” He sat there drooping a little, and Mr. Thompson didn’t like his expression. It was a satisfied expression, but it was more like the cat that et the canary.

  “So far as I know,” said Mr. Thompson, “he ain’t touched a drop since he’s been on the place, and that’s nine years this coming September. Yes, sir, nine years, so far as I know, he ain’t wetted his whistle once. And that’s more than I can say for myself,” he said, meekly proud.

  “Yes, that’s a drinking song,” said Mr. Hatch. “I used to play ‘Little Brown Jug’ on the fiddle when I was younger than I am now,” he went on, “but this Helton, he just keeps it up. He just sits and plays it by himself.”

  “He’s been playing it off and on for nine years right here on the place,” said Mr. Thompson, feeling a little proprietary.

  “And he was certainly singing it as well, fifteen years before that, in North Dakota,” said Mr. Hatch. “He used to sit up in a straitjacket, practically, when he was in the asylum—”

  “What’s that you say?” said Mr. Thompson. “What’s that?”

  “Shucks, I didn’t mean to tell you,” said Mr. Hatch, a faint leer of regret in his drooping eyelids. “Shucks, that just slipped out. Funny, now I’d made up my mind I wouldn’ say a word, because it would just make a lot of excitement, and what I say is, if a man has lived harmless and quiet for nine years it don’t matter if he is loony, does it? So long’s he keeps quiet and don’t do nobody harm.”

  “You mean they had him in a straitjacket?” asked Mr. Thompson, uneasily. “In a lunatic asylum?”

  “They sure did,” said Mr. Hatch. “That’s right where they had him, from time to time.”

  “They put my Aunt Ida in one of them things in the State asylum,” said Mr. Thompson. “She got vi’lent, and they put her in one of these jackets with long sleeves and tied her to an iron ring in the wall and Aunt Ida got so wild she broke a blood vessel and when they went to look after her she was dead. I’d think one of them things was dangerous.”

  “Mr. Helton used to sing his drinking song when he was in a straitjacket,” said Mr. Hatch. “Nothing ever bothered him, except if you tried to make him talk. That bothered him, and he’d get vi’lent, like your Aunt Ida. He’d get vi’lent and then they’d put him in the jacket and go off and leave him, and he’d lay there perfickly contented, so fars you could see, singing his song. Then one night he just disappeared. Left, you might say, just went, and nobody ever saw hide or hair of him again. And then I come along and find him here,” said Mr. Hatch, “all settled down and playing the same song.”

  “He never acted crazy to me,” said Mr. Thompson. “He always acted like a sensible man, to me. He never got married, for one thing, and he works like a horse, and I bet he’s got the first cent I paid him when he landed here, and he don’t drink, and he never says a word, much less swear, and he don’t waste time runnin’ around Saturday nights, and if he’s crazy,” said Mr. Thompson, “why, I think I’ll go crazy myself for a change.”

  “Haw, ha,” said Mr. Hatch, “heh, he, that’s good! Ha, ha, ha, I hadn’t thought of it jes like that. Yeah, that’s right! Let’s all go crazy and get rid of our wives and save our money, hey?” He smiled unpleasantly, showing his little rabbit teeth.

  Mr. Thompson felt he was being misunderstood. He turned around and motioned toward the open window back of the honeysuckle trellis. “Let’s move off down here a little,” he said. “I oughta thought of that before.” His visitor bothered Mr. Thompson. He had a way of taking the words out of Mr. Thompson’s mouth, turning them around and mixing them up until Mr. Thompson didn’t know himself what he had said. “My wife’s not very strong,” said Mr. Thompson. “She’s been kind of invalid now goin’ on fourteen years. It’s mighty tough on a poor man, havin’ sickness in the family. She had four operations,” he said proudly, “one right after the other, but they didn’t do any good. For five years hand-runnin’, I just turned every nickel I made over to the doctors. Upshot is, she’s a mighty delicate woman.”

  “My old woman,” said Mr. Homer T. Hatch, “had a back like a mule, yes, sir. That woman could have moved the barn with her bare hands if she’d ever took the notion. I used to say, it was a good thing she didn’t know her own stren’th. She’s dead now, though. That kind wear out quicker than the puny ones. I never had much use for a woman always complainin’. I’d get rid of her mighty quick, yes, sir, mighty quick. It’s just as you say: a dead loss, keepin’ one of ’em up.”

  This was not at all what Mr. Thompson had heard himself say; he had been trying to explain that a wife as expensive as his was a credit to a man. “She’s a mighty reasonable woman,” said Mr. Thompson, feeling baffled, “but I wouldn’t answer for what she’d say or do if she found out we’d had a lunatic on the place all this time.” They had moved away from the window; Mr. Thompson took Mr. Hatch the front way, because if he went the back way they would have to pass Mr. Helton’s shack. For some reason he didn’t want the stranger to see or talk to Mr. Helton. It was strange, but that was the way Mr. Thompson felt.

  Mr. Thompson sat down again, on the chopping log, offering his guest another tree stump. “Now, I mighta got upset myself at such a thing, once,” said Mr. Thompson, “but now I deefy anything to get me lathered up.” He cut himself an enormous plug of tobacco with his horn-handled pocket-knife, and offered it to Mr. Hatch, who then produced his own plug and, opening a huge bowie knife with a long blade sharply whetted, cut off a large wad and put it in his mouth. They then compared plugs and both of them were astonished to see how different men’s ideas of good chewing tobacco were.

  “Now, for instance,” said Mr. Hatch, “mine is lighter colored. That’s because, for one thing, there ain’t any sweetenin’ in this plug. I like it dry, natural leaf, medium strong.”

  “A little sweetenin’ don’t do no harm so far as I’m concerned,” said Mr. Thompson, “but it’s got to be mighty little. But with me, now, I want a strong leaf, I want it heavy-cured, as the feller says. There’s a man near here, named Williams, Mr. John Morgan Williams, who chews a plug—well, sir, it’s black as your hat and soft as melted tar. It fairly drips with molasses, jus’ plain molasses, and it chews like licorice. Now, I don’t call that a good chew.”

  “One man’s meat,” said Mr. Hatch,
“is another man’s poison. Now, such a chew would simply gag me. I couldn’t begin to put it in my mouth.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Thompson, a tinge of apology in his voice, “I jus’ barely tasted it myself, you might say. Just took a little piece in my mouth and spit it out again.”

  “I’m dead sure I couldn’t even get that far,” said Mr. Hatch. “I like a dry natural chew without any artificial flavorin’ of any kind.”

  Mr. Thompson began to feel that Mr. Hatch was trying to make out he had the best judgment in tobacco, and was going to keep up the argument until he proved it. He began to feel seriously annoyed with the fat man. After all, who was he and where did he come from? Who was he to go around telling other people what kind of tobacco to chew?

  “Artificial flavorin’,” Mr. Hatch went on, doggedly, “is jes put in to cover up a cheap leaf and make a man think he’s gettin’ somethin’ more than he is gettin’. Even a little sweetenin’ is a sign of a cheap leaf, you can mark my words.”

  “I’ve always paid a fair price for my plug,” said Mr. Thompson, stiffly. “I’m not a rich man and I don’t go round settin’ myself up for one, but I’ll say this, when it comes to such things as tobacco, I buy the best on the market.”

  “Sweetenin’, even a little,” began Mr. Hatch, shifting his plug and squirting tobacco juice at a dry-looking little rose bush that was having a hard enough time as it was, standing all day in the blazing sun, its roots clenched in the baked earth, “is the sign of—”

  “About this Mr. Helton, now,” said Mr. Thompson, determinedly, “I don’t see no reason to hold it against a man because he went loony once or twice in his lifetime and so I don’t expect to take no steps about it. Not a step. I’ve got nothin’ against the man, he’s always treated me fair. They’s things and people,” he went on, “’nough to drive any man loony. The wonder to me is, more men don’t wind up in straitjackets, the way things are going these days and times.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Hatch, promptly, entirely too promptly, as if he were turning Mr. Thompson’s meaning back on him. “You took the words right out of my mouth. There ain’t every man in a straitjacket that ought to be there. Ha, ha, you’re right all right. You got the idea.”

  Mr. Thompson sat silent and chewed steadily and stared at a spot on the ground about six feet away and felt a slow muffled resentment climbing from somewhere deep down in him, climbing and spreading all through him. What was this fellow driving at? What was he trying to say? It wasn’t so much his words, but his looks and his way of talking: that droopy look in the eye, that tone of voice, as if he was trying to mortify Mr. Thompson about something. Mr. Thompson didn’t like it, but he couldn’t get hold of it either. He wanted to turn around and shove the fellow off the stump, but it wouldn’t look reasonable. Suppose something happened to the fellow when he fell off the stump, just for instance, if he fell on the ax and cut himself, and then someone should ask Mr. Thompson why he shoved him, and what could a man say? It would look mighty funny, it would sound mighty strange to say, Well him and me fell out over a plug of tobacco. He might just shove him anyhow and then tell people he was a fat man not used to the heat and while he was talking he got dizzy and fell off by himself, or something like that, and it wouldn’t be the truth either, because it wasn’t the heat and it wasn’t the tobacco. Mr. Thompson made up his mind to get the fellow off the place pretty quick, without seeming to be anxious, and watch him sharp till he was out of sight. It doesn’t pay to be friendly with strangers from another part of the country. They’re always up to something, or they’d stay at home where they belong.

  “And they’s some people,” said Mr. Hatch, “would jus’ as soon have a loonatic around their house as not, they can’t see no difference between them and anybody else. I always say, if that’s the way a man feels, don’t care who he associates with, why, why, that’s his business, not mine. I don’t wanta have a thing to do with it. Now back home in North Dakota, we don’t feel that way. I’d like to a seen anybody hiring a loonatic there, aspecially after what he done.”

  “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!