They ate with the empty place still set at the table, but nobody said anything about it until they were nearly finished. Then Grace, who had eaten very little, and hadn’t spoken at all before, said abruptly, "I wish Arthur would get back. It’s going to snow again."
She interrupted a story the father was telling, and for a moment he held his fork still and glared at her. She didn’t even look at him, though, so at last he spoke.
"For heaven sakes, girl, stop your fretting. Did you ever know him to get anywhere on time?" and as an afterthought, "And there’s no telling when Curt’ll be back, either, if he’s found something to hunt."
He couldn’t get his story started again, after that, and the meal was finished in silence, except for his muttering to himself, now and then, as if someone were arguing the matter against him, about the state things had come to when the head of a house couldn’t even finish a sentence at his own table.
At last the mother rose and picked up her plate and Harold’s and carried them to the sink. She came back and picked up the father’s and Gwen’s, and paused there, holding them.
"I’ll fx up a plate for Joe Sam, and you can take it out to him," she said to Harold.
"He’s asleep," Harold said. He didn’t want to say it, and he put his hands on the edge of the table and looked at them instead of at her.
The mother didn’t say anything, but remained where she was, holding the plates and waiting for him to go on.
"Already?" Grace asked.
Harold nodded. "I went up to see if his fire was all right, before I came in, and he was asleep."
"We1l," the father said loudly, "that’s a good sign. Must be the storm’s about over. There you are, Grace, all that fretting for nothing."
The mother began to moved again. She carried the plates to the sink, and spoke from there, with her back turned.
"You can wake him up, can’t you? He has to eat something. You take it out, and stay there, and see he gets it down him."
"I don’t much like to wake him up," Harold said.
"Don’t you worry. He’ll go back to sleep fast enough," the mother said. She came back and picked up the last things from the table. "In fact, he ain’t likely to do much but sleep for a week now."
"I don’t know," Harold said. "He looks bad. He looks sick to me. I’ve never seen him look so bad before."
"That’s because Curt bullied him," Grace said. "Showing off this morning."
The father snorted. "Don’t be a fool, Grace. The boy didn’t touch him."
"Don’t you think he has any feeling?" Grace asked. "Just because he’s an Indian, don’t you think he has feelings?"
"Stop it, Grace," the mother said. "How do you mean, he looks bad?" she asked Harold.
"I don’t know," he said uneasily. "He was sleeping all curled up, like a little kid would, with his arms around his knees."
"Did he have any covers over him?"
"No, but. . ."
"Then he was cold, that’s all. Why wouldn’t he be, lally-gaggin’ around out there in his shirt-sleeves half the night?"
"No, his fire was still going good enough. It was good and warm in there. He don’t look right to me. His face looks kind of too old, some way, even for him. Kind of all caved in. And he was breathing hard and sort of moaning to himself, or talking to himself, maybe."
"Cou1d be he ain’t over his spell yet," the mother said. "Just went to sleep with it still on him."
"He never has before," Grace said sharply. "Did he say anything you could understand?" she asked Harold.
Harold made a fist out of his right hand on the table, and slowly rubbed the other hand over it, and said, "He was dreaming about Arthur, I guess. He said his name two or three times, but that was all I could get."
Grace sat staring across the table at him, with the white, old look on her face again, but the father made a short, impatient laugh.
"There’s nothing in that to get all worked up about that I can see," he said. "He always looks for Arthur, if he’s in any kind of trouble. Arthur’s the only one will take the old fool seriously. Birds of a feather," he said, and laughed again.
Grace turned her face at him, and for a moment it had almost the sharpness of the mother’s when she was angry.
"Joe Sam is no fool," she said. "He knows a lot of things that . . ."
"He knows a lot of things that never was, in this world or the next," the mother said. "Did you wake him up?" she asked Harold. "Maybe it would stop his dreaming."
"I tried to, but I couldn’t without getting pretty rough, so I just covered him up and fixed his fire."
"Well, that’s probably as good as anything," the mother said, and started toward the sink with the dishes she was holding. "Let him sleep it off, then. He can eat when he wakes up."
"Good lord, such a fuss about nothing," the father said. "Can’t we talk about anything but Joe Sam and black panthers today? After one of those spells, the old fool always sleeps as if he’d been on a three-day drunk."
Grace stood up and pushed her chair in. "Harold’s seen that before," she said.
"Now where are you going?" the father asked quickly. "I thought we were going to have our little game of cards now."
Grace sighed and made a thin mouth of patience. "When the dishes are done, Father."
"You get on with your card game," the mother said. "I’ll take care of the dishes."
The father was excited by the idea of the card game. He pushed himself to his feet hurriedly, almost falling.
"You just sit down, Grace. I’ll get the cards," he said quickly and cheerfully.
He shuffled over to the bookcase in the corner and bent down and began to fumble in a black box at the end of the lowest shelf. He kept talking cheerfully while he hunted in the box, and didn’t hear Grace, who went to the outside door and opened it, and stepped out into the snow, and stood there with her hands together in front of her, looking north. From his place at the table, Harold could see her out there, with the long, low sheds of gray sapling poles across the yard behind her, with the dark entrance to the corral between them, like a tunnel, and beyond the sheds the tall black V of the hay derrick against the lowering mist of the snow.
The old man, still hunting in the corner, was saying cheerfully, "A good lively game is just what we all need to cheer us up. Gwendolyn, you sit in Mrs. Bridges’ place there. You’re my partner. I wouldn’t want you to have any but the best. Those two think they’re a pair of pretty smart hands with the cardboards. Vanity of youth, that’s all; vanity of youth. We’l1 show them a thing or two about how it’s done, you and I." He chuckled. "Confound it," he muttered, "how all this trash—ah, here they are."
He straightened up, helping himself with one hand on a bookshelf, and half turned toward the table again, and stood there counting the cards, slipping them rapidly off the top of the deck from one hand into the other, and wetting his thumb every few cards, to draw them.
Finally he said happily, "Disgraceful condition, disgraceful. But they’re all here, and you can read the spots still."
He hunted out a piece of paper and a stub of pencil from among the litter on the lower shelves, and came back to the table. He saw Gwen still sitting in her own place, and nodded across at the mother’s chair.
"Over there, right across from me," he said, "and not too far around, either," he added chuckling. "Leave a good safe place between you and Harold. Holding each other’s hands is one thing; looking at them’s another."
He watched her until she was seated across from him, and then nodded his approval and laid the cards and paper and pencil down at his own place, and went across to the sideboard in that same busy, slightly stooping walk, and came back with his bottle and a glass. He sat down and drew out a cigar, clipped it carefully with the silver knife, and lit it.
Then he poured himself a third of a glass of whisky, corked the bottle and set it aside. After taking a sip of the whisky, he sat back and drew deeply at the cigar, and blew the cloud of smoke slowly
up around the lamp. Then he was ready. He laid the cigar carefully on the edge of the table, picked up the cards, and began to shuffle them. They bent limply under the pressure of his big thumbs and knuckles, and made a soft, cushiony fluttering as they fell together.
He winked at Harold, and asked in a loud, serious voice, "Well, what shall we play, Black-Jack or poker?"
The mother was rattling the plates in the dishpan in the sink, but without looking around or stopping her work, she said, "Not in my house, you won’t. Neither of ’em."
The father chuckled, and winked at Gwen this time.
"Well, it’ll have to be just Hearts, then, I guess," he said mournfully. "It’s a poor, female kind of a game, but still, it’s cards, and better than nothing. Where did Grace get to now?" he asked, holding the cards ready to deal. He looked around, and couldn’t find Grace, and muttering, "Where on earth did she get to now?" he turned in his chair, and saw the door open, and Grace standing outside in the snow.
"Grace," he called. "Come on. We’re waiting for you."
Grace came back in and closed the door. She went around behind the father, and sat down opposite Harold.
"For goodness’ sakes, girl, stop your fidgeting," the father said. "Arthur knows this valley like the back of his hand, and he always takes his time. And if he didn’t, Curt would bring him back. Maybe he’s gone with Curt. Besides," he added, "he is without a doubt the world’s worst card player.
The sky’s the limit," he said happily to all of them, and began to deal the cards.
He kept on talking while they played, but it was easy to talk with him now. There were no old stories, and no self-importance to be careful of. Gwen began to laugh when he did, and to joke back at him. Even Harold grinned at him, and defended himself sharply when the old man belittled him as an opponent. They quarreled cheerfully and loudly about the score, and accused each other of cheating. Only Grace didn’t seem to be really in the game. Each time the father thumped a losing heart down on a trick, with a loud, triumphant, "Ha," she started and looked at him. Often she was slow to play her card, so that he became impatient and rebuked her, though always making a joke of it. When the cards were being dealt, or the old man was laboriously calculating the score and writing it down with the stub of pencil, she would look around to see what the mother was doing, or stare out the window behind him at the deepening gray pall of the snow clouds in the valley, and he would have to call her back to pick up her cards.
The mother paid no attention to the game. When the dishes were done, she sat down in the platform rocker with her big Bible, but read in it for only a few minutes. Then she rose and laid it in the chair, took a dust cloth, a broom and a dustpan and went upstairs into the big bedroom. They could hear her up there, moving the bureau and the bed, and opening and closing drawers, and advancing slowly and heavily across the floor with her broom. When she came down again, she went into the bunk-room. After a while she came out and put more wood into the kitchen stove, and then carried wood and paper back into the bunk-room. They could hear the sounds of her laying a fresh fire in there too.
When she returned to the kitchen after that, the father said, "In the name of sanity, woman, rest yourself for a while."
"I got all rested out this morning," she said sharply. "You stick to your game, and let me please myself." She carried the broom and cloth and dustpan into the north bedroom, where Grace and Gwen had slept, and closed the door. The door was still closed a dozen hands later, and Grace stood up while the father was recording the score.
"She’ll freeze to death in there, with the door closed," she said.
"Now, don’t you get to popping around too," the father said. "You might light the lamp while you’re up, though. It’s getting so dark in here I can’t tell the black lady when I have her."
"It needs filling," Grace said.
Harold got up, brought the kerosene can from its place beside the woodbox, and drew the lamp down. Grace held it for him while he filled the bowl, and then he held it while she removed the chimney and trimmed the wick and lit it. When the flame was around the wick, she set the chimney back on, adjusted the wick to an even burning height, and Harold let the lamp back up.
Gwen began to deal the cards out of the rim of light and across the shadow of the bowl. Harold returned the kerosene can to its corner and came back and sat down again, but Grace went to the door of the north bedroom and opened it. Harold, pulling his cards to him one by one, looked past her into the bedroom, and saw the mother standing at the north window, looking out.
"You’l1 freeze, Mother," Grace said. "Are you done in here?"
The mother turned. "Yes, I’m all done, I guess," she said. She picked up the broom and pan and cloth, and came back into the kitchen. Grace stood there for a moment still, looking out the north window herself, and then closed the door.
"It’s snowing again," the mother said.
The others looked at the east window, even the father turning in his chair to look too, and saw the big flakes coming down slowly but steadily in the gray light outside. The father turned back, shaded his eyes from the lamp with the hand that held his cards, and peered at the clock. Two of the moth shadows made by the roses on the lamp shade were fluttering on the face of the clock, and a streak of light shone across the glass between them, but at last he found the hands.
"It’s only four-thirty, Mother," he said. "There’s a good hour of daylight still; hour and a half, more likely."
"I know," the mother said.
She put away her cleaning things, and came over and sat down in the big chair again with the Bible on her lap. She didn’t open the Bible, though, but only sat holding it with both hands.
"What in the name of God do you suppose those two fools are doing out there so long?" the father asked suddenly and angrily.
"I’m sure I don’t know," the mother said.
The father took a drink of his whisky, set the glass down, and answered himself. "Curt found a trail he could follow, I expect," he said, "and he must have taken Arthur with him."
"I suppose so," the mother said.
"Wel1, don’t sound so like they were lost forever. They’re both grown men."
"I know."
The father muttered something, and then said clearly, "Whose lead is it?"
After a few tricks had been played, he was as cheerful as ever. The others kept looking out through the window, though, at the snow coming down softly and slowly onto the yard and the sheds, and after a little while, when she thought no one would notice, the mother turned her chair so that she could watch through the window all the time.
At five-thirty it was too dark to see the snow from the lighted room, except for the flakes that drifted down right next to the window. The father gave Grace the queen of spades on the last trick of a hand, and he slapped it down with a triumphant roar. His voice was deep and resonant now, as it was after he had been talking for some time about politics or stock manipulation.
"Gwen," he declared, loudly and happily, beginning to add the score, "Gwen, there’s no use their even trying against us, what with you having all the luck, and me all the skill." He laughed uproariously. "They’re so far in the hole now, it would take them a lifetime to pay it off."
Grace suddenly stood up and turned her back to the table.
"What’s this? What’s this?" the old man asked, looking up from the score. "Giving up already?"
"We’re letting the fire go out," Grace said.
She went to the stove and put wood in, and poked it about to let the flames up through.
"I’ll be back in a moment. Go ahead and deal," she said.
The father began to shuffle the cards. "She wants more, Gwen," he said happily. "She thinks they can turn the tables. Some people never learn."
Grace set the lids back on the stove, moved across the room to the outside door, and opened it. At the sound of the latch, the mother looked around from the window, and watched her.
The father began to deal. While
he flipped the cards out, he said to Harold, "You’d better get up and walk around your chair, or spit and make a cross."
After each four cards, he licked his thumb.
He was still chuckling, and had his thumb to his tongue when Grace said, "Harold." She spoke quietly, but with the suddenness and intensity of a cry. The mother glanced out the window, and then stood up, forgetting her Bible, so that it fell heavily to the floor.
"No, Mother," Grace cried, and then, again, "Harold," and disappeared from the room.
Harold jumped up and ran heavily after her. Gwen stood up too, and put her hands to her cheeks without knowing it.
The mother said, half moaning, "Oh, I knew it; I knew it."
"What’s all this? What’s the matter?" the father asked.
Harold had stopped in the doorway, and was peering across the yard. "No, Mother," he said quickly and sharply.
"You stay here. Gwen, you stay with her, will you, please? Maybe it isn’t anything," he said thickly, peering out again.
“This light. You can’t really tell."
He went out after Grace.
Gwen came around the table to the door.
"What is it? What the devil’s the matter?" the old man asked loudly. He was struggling to rise, hoisting himself up between the table and the chair.
In the gray light, in the even, almost straight falling of snow, Gwen saw Harold running toward the sheds, and Grace running ahead of him, and stumbling weakly as she ran. Then, beyond them, she saw the horse, a dark, blurred silhouette against the poles of the shed, with no one riding him, but queerly bulky where the saddle should have been, and in spite of herself cried softly, "Oh, no, no."
Grace cried out twice. The cry was shrill and hawk-like in the silence under the looming, veiled shadow of the mountain. The burdened horse started at the sound, and began to trot toward the mouth of the tunnel between the sheds. In the kitchen the mother moved too, coming slowly, as if in a trance, to the door, and pressing sideways to get past Gwen. Gwen held her arm with both hands, pleading, "Please, Mrs. Bridges. Harold said stay here. We’d better stay here, Mrs. Bridges."
The father came behind them, still asking, "What’s wrong? What. . ." but then, weaving slightly where he stood, and peering out between them, squinting against the fumes in his mind and the gloom outside after the lamp over him, said "It’s Kentuck. It’s Curt’s horse."
The Track of the Cat Page 12