stayed just where it had let go of the bottle. He was snoring slowly and heavily.
Every time, Harold thought. He gets out of it every time, and closed the door and came back down the stairs. The mother was standing by the table now, with the shawl over her shoulders, and her hands folded together and holding the little Testament against her, like a priest’s hands holding his breviary. She looked at Harold, asking the question, and he shook his head. Her mouth grew wide and thin, and curved down, but she didn’t say anything.
Harold said, "Come on, Joe Sam," and started toward the north bedroom, but then he thought suddenly, We can’t let it down into the grave, and was frightened at how close he had come to forgetting that. It would be terrible to have them all standing around the grave there, waiting, and then not have any way to let the coffin down. We have to have ropes, he thought, two ropes, one for each end. The words came off the top of his mind. The lariats, he thought. They’ll do, and went over into the wood-box corner. There were four lariats hanging coiled on one big wooden peg there, and he took two of them down.
Gwen and Grace came out of the bunk-room. Gwen was wearing her cloak, with the hood already up, and she had her arm around Grace. Grace was walking in a daze, with her head down, not really over on Gwen’s shoulder, but just turned and bending toward it. One look at Grace made it all worse for Harold, so he could feel the same weakness taking all the stuff out of his own knees. It was funny how, just when you were getting used to it one way, you had to do something about it, like this, and it all got worse again.
You had to tip it part way to get it in, the words from the top of his mind said, so you’ll have to tip it again to get it out. Only he’s in it now. You don’t want them in here watching it tip that way with him in it. He laid the ropes on the table.
"You take them outside and wait, Mother," he said.
The mother nodded and said, "Come along, Grace. We’ll wait outside," and opened the door and went out. Gwen and Grace went slowly across after her. When they were in the door, Harold said, "Just leave it open, will you?"
Gwen nodded so he could see the wrinkles in her hood move, and took Grace out onto the snow. Grace went as if she couldn’t have done it by herself, and maybe didn’t even know for sure where she was going. Then Harold could see the three dark-skirted figures two together, and the third and tallest one apart, waiting out there on the snow, with the steep wall of the mountain snow behind them, with the black pines on it.
He went into the bedroom. Joe Sam followed him, and went to the small end of the coffin without being told, when Harold went to the big end. "All right," Harold said, and they picked it up, first the right side and then the left side, to get their fingers under it, and then all of it together and held level. Harold could feel the weight shift a little inside, but not sliding, like something rolling heavily on an axle.
"We’ll turn it around in here," he said. "There isn’t room in the kitchen."
They turned it around slowly, and Harold backed to the door, and then they had to do the tilting. The weight shifted inside again, this time falling clear down against the side of the coffin, and the top of Harold’s mind said to him, You should have made it so he couldn’t slide in it. It would have gone through the door straight then, too. You wouldn’t have had to tip it at all. Then the big end was through, and they leveled the coffin between them again, and the weight slowly shifted back. After that it was better. Harold backed between the stove and the table, and around the table, so the coffin was headed for the door. Then the top of his mind said, You can’t back all the way up there, and added sharply, because he had nearly forgotten again, And you’ve left the ropes on the table.
"Let’s put it down here a minute, Joe Sam," he said, "and get a fresh hold on it."
They set it down very carefully, so that it scarcely made a sound on the floor. Harold took the ropes from the table, and stood there a minute, holding them and thinking. "You take one over your shoulder," he said, "and I’ll take the other. Then we won’t drop them on the way up." He hung one coil over Joe Sam’s shoulder, with his arm through it. He slipped the other on himself the same way, but then felt how it would slide down when he had to lean over, and said, "No, better put it around your neck, I guess," and changed his own. He thought he’d have to change Joe Sam’s for him too, but the old Indian did it for himself. Then the coils of the rope hung down on his chest like a huge necklace with several strands., After a moment Joe Sam slid it up so the strands were tight against his throat and the coils hung down on his back.
He’s doing better than you are, at that, the voice said to Harold, and he pushed his own rope up to hang on his back too. They stood still at opposite ends of the coffin, their shadows big on the white walls among the shadow moths.
Then Harold said, "You ready?"
Joe Sam nodded.
Harold turned his back to the big end, and saw the mother standing in the door watching them, trying to hurry them without saying anything.
"We’l1 try and go all the way in one lift," he told Joe Sam, "but if you feel it slipping, you say so, and we’ll set it down. Don’t let it fall, that’s all. If you feel it slipping, say so, quick."
Joe Sam made a soft sound to show he heard. Harold squatted and got his hands under the big end, first one side and then the other, and lifted slowly. When he felt the other end rising too, he stood up.
"I’ll go ahead," the mother said, and Harold nodded as he advanced toward the door. "You and Gwen can follow them, Grace," the mother said, and had the little procession arranged the way it was in her mind.
Gwen said, "All right, Mrs. Bridges," and when Harold came out past her, said softly, "You go on, Harold. I’ll get the door."
There was more light left outside than he’d expected, after being in the kitchen with the lamp on. There were still faint, golden edges on the clouds that were getting smaller above the mountain, and there was still color from the sun on the tops of the eastern hills, too. It reflected back, and colored the snow around them softly, and even seemed to rise up out of the snow and make a glowing in the still air.
The mother led the way around the corner of the house and up the slope, walking very straight in the deep, narrow path between the snow banks, but still holding the Testament against her folded hands, and taking her steps slowly, so they wouldn’t get too far behind her with the coffin. Harold had to kick into the snow each step he took on the hill, to be sure he didn’t slip back. Once, when they were half-way up the slope, he heard a long, weak, whimpering sound behind him, and then Gwen’s voice, murmuring too low for him to hear the words. He looked quickly at where his next step would go, and then glanced back over his shoulder. Grace and Gwen were standing still, back around the turn below Joe Sam. Grace had her face buried all the way in Gwen’s shoulder now. Gwen was holding her with both arms and talking softly with her mouth right against the turned-up collar of Grace’s coat. Seeing them like that, with the sound of the whimper still alive in him, Harold felt his knees go slack, and his fingers under the edge of the coffin getting too weak to hold.
"We better put it down a minute," he said.
The turn by the woodpile was nearly level, and the snow was shoveled off it. They set the coffin down there, and Harold straightened up and breathed deeply and looked at the mountain and the dark cloud with a pale fringe of light that was looking over it. Gradually the trembling in his knees stopped and his hands felt stronger. Joe Sam just waited for him, not moving at all, or even breathing hard. The mother went on up the path nearly to the grave before she knew they weren’t following her. Then she turned and waited up there, looking down at them.
Gwen and Grace began to climb again. They moved in step and close together, with Gwen’s arm still around Grace, but Grace was holding her head up now, and trying to step firmly.
"All right?" Harold asked.
The little, private joke was in Joe Sam’s eye, but he only nodded and didn’t say anything. They took up the coffin again, ca
refully, and started slowly up the last slope. The mother turned and moved ahead again, and onto the level space beside the grave. When they got up there, she was already standing at the head of the narrow pit, with her back to the mountain. They set the coffin down again on the north edge.
"You better put it in now," the mother said.
Harold glanced down and saw Gwen and Grace slowly making the turn by the woodpile, and nodded. He lifted his rope off over his head and uncoiled it. He looked across the coffin, but Joe Sam was already uncoiling his rope too. They slipped the ropes under the two ends of the coffin, but then had to wait while Gwen and Grace passed slowly behind Joe Sam, and around onto the south edge. When they were standing there, like one double figure, with Grace hiding her face in Gwen’s shoulder again, Harold looked at Joe Sam and nodded. They lifted the coffin a little off the snow and shuffled sidewards with it cradled between them in the ropes. The mother moved back to let Harold in front of her. When they were standing spread-legged, one at each end of the grave, Harold nodded again. Breathing hard, more from carefulness than from the weight, they leaned over as far as they dared, and then began to let the ropes slip through their hands very slowly. Even so the coffin grated once against a stone in the side of the grave, and then a second time. The second time it swung a little too, and struck gently as it swung back, making a soft, woody, hollow sound. Grace put her hand up to her face quickly, as if to shield it from a blow, and burrowed a little into Gwen’s shoulder, making the whimpering sound again.
The coffin settled onto the bottom with only a faint, sandy grating, and Harold and Joe Sam began to work their ropes out from under it. When they were free, first Harold, and then Joe Sam after him, coiled his rope and fastened it with the twist around it again. Harold took Joe Sam’s rope too, and laid both of them down at the end of the piled earth. Then he came back and stood by himself in the middle of the north side. The mother moved down close to the head of the grave again, and looked across at Gwen and Grace. Gwen murmured something against Grace’s face. Grace drew a deep breath, as if she meant to make it last the whole time, and lifted her head and stood up straight, though with Gwen’s arm around her still. The mother looked around at them all, and then bowed her head. Harold bowed his head too, so that he was looking down at the black lid of the coffin.
But then too much time went by, and the mother didn’t say anything. Finally Harold peered at her from under his brows, and she was standing there, looking right at him, and twisting the little Testament into a roll in her two fists. It was like being hit when he didn’t expect it, because her look was begging him for help, and her mouth wasn’t drawn out thin and tight any longer. It was a little open, as if she couldn’t get enough breath, and her lips were trembling. He looked down again quickly, thinking fiercely, Oh, what does it matter what you say? Only say something. Say anything. Don’t just stand there till you start to blubber. For Christ’s sake don’t start to blubber with Grace like she is. He closed his hands into fists and pressed them hard against his thighs.
The mother began to speak. Her breath came in the wrong places, making queer pauses, and some of the words faded away, as if maybe she wouldn’t get them out at all, but she wasn’t crying.
"I can’t preach no proper funeral sermon for him," she said, "and it don’t seem there’d be much use in it if I could. We all knowed him too well to need much talk about it."
She paused, and started again. "Still, he was a hard one to really know, at that. Seems to me I’m just learning a lot of things about him I should of knowed all along. But even if I could make out clear every last thing about him, body and soul, and had the words to tell it, I don’t know as it would help. It don’t make no difference to him now, that’s sure, and we’d all find it out for ourselves soon enough, with him gone."
When she stopped this time, Grace made another long trembling sob, and what it did was the worst yet. Harold bent his head farther and held himself harder, but the weakness brought innumerable hurrying thoughts and feelings that he couldn’t stop, and they carried him away from Arthur, not to him.
The mother was speaking again, and her voice sounded very loud and much clearer. When he could make out the words too, she was saying, ". . . so if the Lord won’t judge for me, it surely ain’t my place to pass judgment myself. He was a good man, like he was always a good boy, not a mean streak in him, that I ever see, and that’l1 do for us, being mortal ourselves, and the best of us none too good."
But there she lost her way again, and stopped, and when she went on, she sounded as uncertain as she had at first. "Some ways it seems to me he’s with us more now than he ever was before. I keep rememberin’ things he said, and thinkin’ . . ." Her voice trailed off. "Well," she said finally, "Harold done well pickin’ this place for him. It’s close to home, and still he liked it about as much as he liked any place, I guess. It was a kind of favorite spot of his. He used to come up here all the time, about now, or maybe a little earlier, about sundown, and set here and watch the light over on the other side, and do some of that whittlin’ he was always at."
Once more Grace made the long, helpless whimper, and this time Harold couldn’t help looking across at her either. Gwen was holding her in both arms, and crying herself, proudly and silently, with her face up. When he saw them, he couldn’t hold it down in himself any longer. His tears came suddenly, and blurred the two dark figures together on the other side of the grave. He looked down again quickly, and fought against making a sound. He was astonished and ashamed because he was crying. There didn’t seem to be any real reason to cry. It was more for them than it was for Arthur. Nothing anybody could say about Arthur went anywhere near as far as a lot of the things he could remember himself. They couldn’t touch Arthur, any of them. Arthur was the one who was out of it; he was the quiet center of things.
"Everybody just pray accordin’ to your own heart,” the mother said, her voice breaking, and almost not finishing that much.
Harold tried to make a regular prayer for Arthur, but it wouldn’t come, and finally the thought went through his head, all by itself, It would make more sense if it was Arthur praying for us. That was when it got hold of him big, beyond any doubt and beyond any softening it with a living memory, that Arthur wasn’t there at all, and that he never would be again. It was as if all the other times had just been getting ready for this. He stood very still and tight, not making a sound, and without a thought in his mind, feeling the emptiness go down and down in him.
"Amen," the mother said out loud.
The sinking stopped, and then his mind could cry Arthur’s name. He knew that his mouth was closed tight, but it seemed to him that the name, cried out like that, must be echoing all over the valley that was so still now. Arthur, Arthur, his mind cried twice. Then he got the memory that did help. It was as if Arthur had come because he’d called him. He saw Arthur’s long, bearded face quite clearly for a moment. The face was very dark, burned almost the color of an old saddle, the way it got toward the end of summer, the deep-sunk eyes were looking right at him, and they were very sad, but the long, gentle mouth in the beard was making the little smile up one side that it always made when Arthur had his own reason for making secret fun of the person he was pitying.
The mother turned at the head of the grave and started toward the pile of earth with snow on it and the four shovels standing up in it. Then he wasn’t seeing Arthur’s face any longer, but he was feeling only a quiet, easy sadness and a great weariness. It was a queer weariness, not so much like being really tired as like being suddenly a great deal older, tired from time, not from doing anything. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all. His own mouth wanted to make the same kind of an easy, crooked smile about it that Arthur’s mouth had made. He believed that he was pretty close to understanding what Arthur had thought about things, close in a surer way than he’d been that strange, bright, expanding moment in the kitchen.
The mother came back to the head of the grave. In her left hand she was carrying
a little pile of earth from the big mound behind him.
Harold looked down at the lid of the coffin in the pit below him and thought, making that little, crooked smile in his mind, All right, Art, I’ll try and find out. I’ll try and make things go the way you wanted them to.
The mother leaned over the grave, and with her right hand took some of the earth from her left, and without saying a word, sprinkled it wide and thin, with a motion like Joe Sam’s when he fed the chickens, over the lid of the coffin. It made only a faint, sandy tapping, like the beginning of rain on hard ground. At the first tapping, Grace made the long, moaning sound again, but softly, half smothering it in Gwen’s shoulder. The mother paid no attention to her, but sprinkled another little handful of earth onto the coffin, and then a third. Then her left hand was empty too. She straightened up, brushing her hands lightly on her skirt, and took the Testament out from under her left arm and held it in her two hands again. She stood that way for a moment, looking down into the grave. Then she raised her head and looked across at Grace and Gwen, and said clearly, "Al1 right, you girls come on down with me now, and let Harold finish up here."
She came around the grave behind Harold and started down the path, and after a moment Gwen turned Grace and the two of them went down more slowly after her, their heads nearly together and their skirts sometimes brushing the light snow from the walls of the path.
Harold waited until they went out of sight around the corner of the house. Then he looked across the valley to the east, at the vast, deep blue darkness coming up that curve of the sky out of the white hills, and at the first stars showing in it. He shivered a little, and looked down from the stars at Joe Sam.
"All right, Joe Sam," he said.
The old Indian didn’t move or answer. He was standing just where he’d been standing all the time, at the foot of the grave, and he was still staring down into it.
The Track of the Cat Page 25