"Fell asleep the minute he hit the bed," Harold said.
He didn’t say anything more about it, though. He carried in wood from the pile against the house and filled the wood-box and built up the fire. Then he brought the mother’s cup and plate from the bedroom, saying softly, "She only drank the coffee again," and blew out the lamp over the table.
Gwen had Joe Sam’s cup and plate ready then. She gave them to Harold and went ahead of him to open the door.
"Make him eat something this time, Hal," she said.
Harold nodded. "And you get some rest," he ordered gently. "You’ll get a little peace for a while now. You let the dishes wait, and get some sleep."
Gwen took hold of his coat with both hands and raised her face toward his. They stood in the doorway, with the idle flakes turning against them and their mouths together. Finally Gwen gave him a quick little extra kiss and let go of him. She stood in the doorway until he had gone around the corner of the house.
14
Harold let himself into the bunk-house, saying, "Here’s some breakfast for you, Joe Sam," and knew before he was done speaking that the old man wasn’t there. The fire was almost out and the whisky smell and the staleness of sleep-breathing were heavy in the cooling air. Joe Sam’s bunk was empty, but his clothes were still lying across the foot of it and his moccasins still stood together under the edge of the stove.
Holy cat, Harold thought, he’s gone out with nothing on. I should have seen his tracks when I came up, he thought, and for a moment felt again the fear and bewilderment that had made him sweat in the clearing in his dream.
"He made tracks, all right," he told himself aloud. "You just didn’t have your eyes open."
He set the plate and cup down on the box by the stove, crossed quickly to the trash keg, and tilted it so the light from the window showed the inside of it. The bottle neck wasn’t there. He let the keg back and went to the door and looked down the hill toward the house. The fear took hold of him again. There were only the two lines of his own tracks, one already softened by new snow, the other still sharp-edged and clear. For a moment he wanted to run back down to the house and see with his own eyes that Gwen was all right. He wanted to touch her and hear her speak. He was briefly possessed by a superstitious notion that everybody on the place was changing toward something strange and evil, but all of them together, and so radually that no one could see what was happening except when some little hint of the unnatural got out, like this. But then he saw the tracks, and they were real enough, only already blurred by the new snow too. They went close along the side of the bunk-house, and then straight up into the edge of timber, where he lost sight of them in the brush. Reading the tracks as far as he could see them, he could imagine the old Indian making them, advancing slowly and watchfully, and stopping often to look around, like a timid, dangerous animal stalking something or escaping. He’d be holding that bottle neck ready all the time too, like a knife.
"This is the craziest yet," he said aloud. "Have to lock the old bastard up next," and again wanted to run down to the house and be sure everything was all right before he did anything else.
"You just came from there," he told himself. "Let’s not everybody start playing crazy games."
He pulled the door shut and started up the slope beside the line of prints left by the small, square feet. Where they turned into the thickets, he stopped and looked warily ahead, stooping a little to take cover in the bushes. Except for once in a while a startling fall of snow from an overburdened bough, there was only the white and shadowy quiet under the pines. There were hiding places everywhere, though: the walls of snow-drifted brush and granite boulders as tall as a man, and all the dark tree trunks. He’d have to keep his eyes open, be sure of the tracks far enough ahead so they couldn’t circle back on him without his knowing it. He could feel between his shoulders the thought of the little, dark man with the bottle neck in his fist and the secret joke in his good eye, creeping out of some cover behind him.
The tracks went south across the hillside above the house. They never came down out of the woods, but zig-zagged from hiding place to hiding place up and down the slope, and deepened in each hiding place, as if Joe Sam had stood or squatted there for a long time. Where the pines had kept the tracks free of the morning snow, Harold stopped too, to stare down. It made him uneasy to see the print of a naked human foot in snow. It wasn’t right there. The split-heart print of a deer, the dots and dashes of rabbits, the fine tail line and tiny forget-me-nots of wood mice, or even the big, broken flower of a panther or a bobcat, those were all as right in snow as black letters on paper. But this complicated, unique print, not even a little like any of them, was all wrong. There was too much time forgotten between. He
shook himself out of the wondering, and moved faster along the trail, sometimes taking short-cuts where he could see both legs of a side trip.
South of the house the tracks curved out toward the valley along the low, descending ridge that made the ranch into a kind of little bay. They led down out of the pines and into the manzanita and then the high, feathery sage where the quail lived. The quail startled him once, breaking up out of cover with a soft, multiple thunder of wings. He caught his breath and stopped where he was. The quail all tied upslope from him, but farming out toward the valley and the mountain. Toward the top of the ridge, they began to drop out of sight again in the brush by ones and twos, and one bunch of a dozen or so together. The silence came back, and he was ashamed, and a little worried, because he had let them startle him. He should have seen them first, and he certainly should have noticed the spidery writing of their tracks everywhere in the lanes through the brush. But he hadn’t; he’d seen only the heavy, human track he was following through them. After that he was ashamed of his worry. It’s still only Joe Sam, he told himself. A little, old man half your size, and full of whisky and dreams.
He was still worried about that bottle neck, though, and because he couldn’t guess what Joe Sam was up to. He tried to remember something that would tell him for sure whether Joe Sam had broken that bottle on purpose or by accident. All he could find was his own dream-groggy first impression that it hadn’t been an accident, and he didn’t trust that now. He thought he discovered something else, though. That was what made the shot, he thought. It was too close for Curt to make it. He was still clear up at the top of that avenue through the trees. That’s how I got into the bedroom and saw the hole come in Arthur’s face. That was when Joe Sam broke the bottle.
What difference does it make? he thought. I didn’t see him break it. He took it back out of the keg, though, and maybe that does. He wants it for something. He was saving it for something all the time, he thought suddenly. He put it down so carefully when I told him to drop it. Well, what of it? When he gets to thinking black painter—
He stopped short again, telling himself sharply, Wake up, will you? The trail had entered an open space in the brush with tracks all over it, and fiecks of blood and the slaty blue feathers and tawny down of a quail. It was a mess that would show from yards off, and he’d walked right into it before he saw it.
A coyote or a bobcat got one, he thought, and Joe Sam stopped to look at the marks, like I am. But then he saw that there weren’t any tracks but the quail writing and Joe Sam’s, except one wandering line left by a hopping rabbit. He looked around until he saw where Joe Sam’s tracks went on out of the open space. There were no blood marks going with it. He hunted around then until he saw the dead quail. It lay under a sage bush a little way above him and to the right, and there was no track going up to it, not the bird’s or any other. He climbed to the place and picked up the quail. It was a valley quail, with the black top-knot curving forward like a plume on an old lady’s bonnet. Its round, gray body was already cold, and it didn’t weigh enough on his hand. The head, with the half-closed eye, hung away limp over his finger tips, and he could feel that the neck was nearly cut through. He turned the quail over on his hand. On the other side the feathe
rs and down were torn away from half the breast and shoulder, and the wound showed. It was circular, with several deep punctures around the edge. Flesh had been torn out of the center of the wound till the bones showed, but there was no wet blood in it.
Not much blood, he thought. Not much dry blood, even, and then thought, quickly, The shape of that wound, and lifted his head and looked carefully all around, but saw only the motionless brush, with the light, separate flakes of snow falling silently upon it. Sucked the blood, he thought, looking down at the hole again. Ate some of the meat raw, and then sucked the blood.
He dropped the bird back beside its bush, giving it a small, pitying thought, but no more, and went down, and out of the trampled clearing along Joe Sam’s trail again. He went much faster now, and kept a watch around him all the time. The tracks curved down along the north slope of the ridge, and then, where the brush thinned out and grew smaller, and the grass began, they changed. There were hand prints, and only narrow rakings of the toes, and deep pits, always two together and a little staggered.
On his hands and knees, Harold thought, watching the houses. And he still has that damned bottle neck, he thought, seeing the print of its teeth several times, spreading out of the ball of the right list.
From there only the footprints showed ahead, though, dwindling in a straight line toward the house. And running, too, Harold thought, seeing them farther apart and the snow between them only lightly marked and sometimes not at all. He broke into a run himself, peering ahead at the house all the time, now that the trail didn’t need watching. There was nothing moving in sight, except the cluster of steers that had come in off the snowy range and were waiting by the fenced haystacks, and more of them coming, far off in the north.
At the corner of the house he had to stop again. because the trail divided. There were crawling tracks again, along the base of the south wall. They ended under the bunk-room window, and then came back, making a confused double trail. It thinned out into a single, clear trail along the back of the house.
Looked in at the window, Harold thought. Watching Grace?
He followed the single trail. It stopped again under the kitchen window, and then under the west window of the bed-room, beside the bed where Arthur was lying. Looking in every place, Harold thought. He didn’t try to get in, though. What’s he want to watch them for?
Half running, he followed the tracks around the corner and along the north side. At the northeast corner he stopped and breathed easier, and even grinned a little. The tracks didn’t go to the door at all. They went out straight across the yard to the sheds and into the tunnel between them.
"What the hell is he up to now?" he asked himself softly.
He went across the yard and into the tunnel, just walking now. From the tunnel, he could see Joe Sam standing inside the corral fence with his back turned. He was naked, all right, and one of his braids had come unraveled at the end and hung in a loose brush behind his shoulder. He had the bottle neck in his right hand, but he wasn’t doing anything with it, just holding it as if he’d forgotten it. Harold came to the gate, where he could see the whole corral. There were mounds of hay newly thrown out along the wall of the shed, and allthe horses were lined up there eating. The tiny feathers of snow clung on the tips of their velvety coats like frost, and their breathing made small clouds in the cold air. Joe Sam was just standing there watching the horses eat, for all anybody could see. Harold spoke his name.
Joe Sam didn’t move, and Harold spoke again, more loudly. The horses all raised their heads together and looked at him, the hay working like big, false moustaches at the corners of their mouths. Curt’s black stallion, Kentuck, was right in front of Joe Sam. He raised his head with the others and looked at Harold, but then, while the others kept watching him, their large, blue-glazed eyes only faintly curious, Kentuck looked at Joe Sam. He reached down and drew sideways at the hay, taking a new mouthful, but at once raised his head again, rolling the hay between his jaws, and looked at the old Indian.
Watching each other, Harold thought. Now what? and stooped and crawled between the bars. He stopped just out of reach of Joe Sam and spoke his name again. This time Joe Sam turned part way toward him, and turned his head farther to look at him. He moved slowly and calmly. "Give hay," he said, "Horse eat."
He was all ready with that, Harold thought. He knew I was
here all along.
“You’ll freeze, standing around with nothing on," he said. Here, give me that thing before you cut yourself."
He. held his hand out, but watched the old face steadily. The life went out of it now. It aged greatly while he looked at it, and became sad and confused. After a moment Joe Sam lifted the bottle neck and looked at it.
"Bottle break," he said dully.
He held it out to Harold. When he had let go of it, his jaw began to shake, and then the shaking spread until he was jerking all over. He hunched his shoulders against the
jerking, and crossed his hands in front of his crotch.
"Cold," he said.
Harold tossed the bottle neck out of the corral on the far side, toward the haystacks. "Come on in the tack room," he said. "and we’ll find something for you to put on."
"Cold," the old Indian said again. "Whisky good."
"No more whisky," Harold said, wondering if it was a joke this time too. He took Joe Sam by the arm, and led him in through the open door of the hay shed.
"Your breakfast’s up at the bunk-house. You get up there and get dressed and put some wood in the fire and eat your breakfast. You’ll feel better then." Like he just woke up from a bad dream, he thought. He doesn’t even know what he’s been doing. Or is he still playing possum?
He found an old linen dust coat of the father’s in the tack room, one he’d used to make a show in, years before, in San Francisco. It was stained in big patches now, and most of the buttons were gone. He took it off the nail, and held it for Joe Sam to get into. The old man wouldn’t move, though, and he had to put it on him as if he were dressing a young child who was thinking about something else. Then he opened the door into the yard and said, "Now go on up there before you freeze to death. I’ll be up as quick as I finish the chores."
"Help," Joe Sam said.
"No. You go on up and get dressed and eat your breakfast."
"Eat soon," Joe Sam said. "Help now."
Sucked enough blood to hold you? Harold thought and after a moment shrugged his shoulders and said, "All right, then. You feed the chickens. Better get something on your feet, though. Here, take these."
From the corner under the work harnesses, he pulled out an old pair of boots with rubber feet and felt tops that were used for mucking out the corrals and the pig pen. Solemnly and slowly, hindered by spasms of jerking, Joe Sam put them on. Then he stood there, small and half asleep, lost in the huge duster, and with the boots like a solid base under him, not anything his feet could move. Harold smiled a little in his mind, remembering, already as if it had happened a long time back, how he had made a mystery to be afraid of out of this tired, little, old man, who was just holding death off with whisky and legends. He rolled up the sleeves of the dust coat, so Joe Sam could get his hands out.
"All right. You feed the chickens."
Joe Sam went out slowly, dragging the big boots. Harold stood in the door and watched until he disappeared around the end of the south shed, toward. the chicken run. Then he closed the door and went out to start the other chores himself.
He finished by tossing out hay from the stacks for the cattle that were waiting in the trampled snow outside the fences. Then he went back up toward the sheds in the lane between the stacks and the corral, and remembered that he’d thrown the bottle neck out there somewhere. Might as well get it out of his reach for good, he thought, but as soon as he started to look for it, saw the trenches the big boots had made in the snow. He looked for the bottle neck out where the tracks ended. He found the mark of it, but the bottle neck was gone.
Still at it
, he thought patiently, but then his patience broke. But it’s the last time, by God, he thought furiously, and imagined with pleasure how his hands would make the old man pay attention this time. He went on up toward the sheds, walking with stiff, quick strides.
When he came to the stake fence of the chicken run, he saw Joe Sam already inside, standing out in the middle, with the wooden, half-peck measure in the circle of his left arm. He was slowly scattering the grain for the chickens, making a kind of ceremony of it, as he always did. Harold could not hold his anger against the peaceful sight.
Don’t you get like Curt, he told himself, and remembered how Curt had bullied the old man, pushing the stallion at him until he was forced to retreat, and then many other times back of that.
He stood holding two stakes of the fence in his fists, and watched Joe Sam. He thought of Arthur watching Joe Sam feed the chickens. It was like watching a kind of play, Arthur said, a small play that had more meaning than you’d think at first. It made you hunt for what it meant. If Arthur was working anywhere near, he’d always stop and come to the fence to watch Joe Sam feed the chickens, and he’d always go away afterwards slowly, and smiling to himself. It made Arthur alive again to think of him standing at the stake fence watching. It was at such times that the quiet, thinking happiness, the peace as lively as hope, was in him, making a light through his face. It was like making a prayer that worked inside to put a hand on his shoulder then, and feel his thin body warm with sun, through the blue work shirt. He always thought of Arthur as watching Joe Sam in sunlight, in the spring, really, when the sun i was just warm and full of promise, and the little movements of cool wind came up from the green meadows, and the pines on the mountain stood perfectly still and glistened softly in the new light. It made the loss worse to remember what could never be dead, while you also remembered the dead face on the pillow, that already could never have been alive. It tore you in two directions; it made it impossible to get across the space between.
The Track of the Cat Page 18