The Track of the Cat

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  "Joe Sam," Harold said.

  He had to speak a third time before Joe Sam raised his head.

  "We have to get done before it’s too dark."

  "Get done," Joe Sam said, and came around the grave slowly, moving in the thin, darkening air like a swimmer treading water.

  Harold took the first shovelful of earth, and then paused for a moment, holding it above the open grave. Then he leaned far down and spread it quietly the length of the coffin. He kept on letting the earth down that way, instead of dropping it, until the lid of the coffin was covered and the space around it was filled. Joe Sam did the same thing at the other end. Then they both stood by the mound and just tossed the earth in. They both swung rhythmically, but their rhythms weren’t quite the same, so that sometimes the two shovels swung together, and sometimes first one and then the other would swing. As the darkness increased on the hillside, the pines around them became great black columns against a white wall, and below them the small, orange window of the kitchen grew brighter, and so did the longer, yellow window it made on the snow.

  20

  Once more there were only the three of them at the table for supper, Gwen and Harold and Joe Sam. And Joe Sam just sat there again, too, not eating anything, and with his coat and the blue bandana and the black sombrero on. The curving light of the lamp crossed his breast, showing the big wrinkles of the worn coat, and the long hair of the braid that had come undone, lying loose and ilat over them. The other braid was beginning to loosen now too, so the ends of the red and blue ribbons stood out from it. In the double shadow of the lamp shade and the brim of the sombrero, both his eyes appeared to be alive and staring with horror, because the irises made single big centers with the pupils. The big centers were looking right at Harold all the time, or through him at something they saw where the stairs went up against the wall. Harold kept looking away, but every time he looked back, the two big pupils in the faintly glittering whites were still staring at him.

  Staring back at them, Harold thought, For a while up there, I had a notion he was coming out of it, but I guess it just set him off again.

  Then he had to look away from the eyes again. He looked at Gwen, but she was keeping her head down over her plate, and picking at her food, as if she were all by herself. In the long silence, the fluttering of the lamp and the fire and the slow ticking of the clock became voices he or didn’t want to listen to. Several times he started to say something to Gwen, but then, each time, thought how loud and foolish it would sound, and didn’t speak.

  He had become afraid of even the sound his fork made on the plate, when suddenly the father’s voice spoke above, angrily and loudly. "It was Curt, I tell you. I saw his coat. I guess I know Curt’s coat when I see it, don’t I?"

  Then the clock and the fluttering came back, and after a moment, Harold said, "Just talking in his sleep, I guess."

  Gwen had looked up quickly when the loud voice spoke, but now she looked down at her plate again. "I left his door open to let some heat up," she said.

  She didn’t say anything more, and finally Harold asked, "How is Grace doing now?"

  "I’m scared for her,” Gwen said Slowly. "She’s quiet enough. She’s too quiet. She just lies there staring. She wouldn’t answer me when I spoke to her. I don’t think she even heard me. I wish she’d take on some way. I wish she’d cry, or do most anything."

  "Maybe now it’s all over, she’ll let up after a while. Maybe she’s just worn out with it."

  "She’s not letting up any," Gwen said. She was still keeping herself away from him. She wou1dn’t look at him, and she might have been talking to anybody, just to answer the questions. Harold looked at her bowed head intently for a moment, and then set his jaw, and pushed back his chair and stood up.

  "Well, I better get at the chores," he said. "Come on, Joe Sam."

  The old Indian didn’t move.

  "Joe Sam."

  "Why don’t you let him alone?" Gwen said sharply.

  He looked at her, and this time she was looking right back at him too. A little fury was dancing in her eyes, almost as wildly as it did in the mother’s or Curt’s sometimes.

  "Why don’t you let the poor old man alone?" she said. "He isn’t fit to do chores, and you know it. You’ve had him doing everything all the time, and he hasn’t slept or eaten for days."

  Harold stood there looking down at her, and feeling the heat come up his throat and face so he knew it showed.

  "Are you trying to work him to death?" Gwen asked.

  Her voice was higher, and even with his anger finally beginning to rise through his weariness, slow and heavy, he was afraid she’d start screaming at him so she couldn’t be stopped, the way Grace had at the mother.

  She had only started again, though, saying, “Just because he’s old, and an Indian, and doesn’t know our ways, you . . ." when they heard steps in the north bedroom. Gwen stopped speaking, and they both looked at the open door. After a moment, the light of the lamp showed there, bright, and then dimmed, and then coming up again, slowly whitening, until finally it was the brightest yet and steady.

  The mother’s voice said, "Harold."

  Gwen looked down at her plate again.

  "Yes?" Harold said.

  "I want to see you before you go out."

  His anger turned against the mother and flared. Christ, won’t you ever let me alone? he thought. Then he thought, Like Curt again, and you made a promise to Arthur. Somebody has to try around here, and you’re the only candidate right now.

  "Al1 right," he said.

  He looked down at Gwen again. It was so quiet they could hear the bedsprings creak as the mother lay down once more, and even the rustling of her stiff, black dress. He stood there, trying to make Gwen look up at him before he spoke, but she wouldn’t and again it was the father’s voice that broke the silence. It was complaining now, almost weeping. "It did, though. I saw it, big as a horse. Listening to that goddamned dreamer," it moaned, and muttered for a moment, and was silent.

  Harold said slowly and distinctly, "I was just going to put goin to put him to bed up in the bunk-house, if that’ll make you feel any better."

  He turned and went to the door of the bedroom. For a moment he was frightened, because he thought, in his dull weariness, that it was Arthur lying there again, and had a couple of wild glimpses of an opening grave and a ghost that carried its dead flesh on it, and couldn’t be kept out of the house. The mother was lying straight out on the bed, with the same white blanket pulled up to her chin. Her hands were crossed on her breast on top of the blanket, and her eyes were closed.

  The wild notion passed, and he thought, though only wearily, What now? Playing dead? It’s a bad joke, old woman. Or do you just forget that fast? He went in and stood by the bed, but the mother didn’t open her eyes or speak. Finally he said, "What did you want, Mother?"

  She opened her eyes then, and without moving her head, turned them slowly to look at him. "I was thinking," she began, hardly moving her lips, but then turned her eyes away from him and let them close again. "It was just a notion I had," she said.

  "What was?"

  "Never mind. It doesn’t matter."

  "If it’s anything I can do," Harold said finally.

  She waited for a long time, and then slowly opened her eyes and looked at him again. "I was just thinkin’ we might keep a fire out front tonight, now it’s clear." She looked away from him. "But it wouldn’t do no good, I know that," she said. "It’s just I keep feelin’ we oughta do somethin’."

  "Well," Harold said, "it wouldn’t do any harm."

  The mother rolled her head a little in the pillow to mean no. "You got more’n enough to do the way it is," she murmured. "It was just a notion."

  "I’l1 get one going as soon as I’ve finished the chores."

  The mother didn’t move or speak, and after a moment he went back into the kitchen, and lit the lantern and roused Joe Sam. Gwen was still sitting there bowed over her plate. She let them go
without saying anything.

  On the way up the hill, Harold stopped once and looked up at the sky, letting Joe Sam go on up the path alone. All the stars were out sharp and small now, and the constellations weren’t broken anywhere until they got down to the hills. He looked north and searched out the Great Dipper, and then the Pole Star.

  He wouldn’t even need the lamp, let alone a fire, he thought, and then, Well, it’s not for him anyway, and felt his weariness settle down upon him full weight again. He felt the cold working into him already, through the house—warmth in his clothes. It pinched his nostrils every time he drew a breath. If he’s still out there, he’d better have a fire for himself, though, he thought, and turned and went on up, climbing with his upright shadow the lantern made on the snow wall of the path.

  When he came into the bunk-house, the lantern showed him Joe Sam, already undressed down to his underwear, and barefooted, but standing by the cold stove again, with his hands out to it.

  "Get in your bunk, Joe Sam," he said. "I’ll make you a fire."

  He set the lantern down by the stove and went over to the woodpile and began to whittle shaving for kindling. When he came back with the long, white splinters in his hand, Joe Sam was still by the stove, but now he was taking off the underclothes too.

  "You better keep those on," Harold said. "It’s gonna be colder than hell tonight."

  The old Indian, his face dead and away by itself, went on taking off the red flannels. Harold stared at him for a moment, but then thought, Have it your own way. Everybody else is, and took an old newspaper from the box behind the stove and wadded it and thrust it down in onto the grate.

  Then he shook the ashes from under the paper, and tossed the light kindling in, and four bigger sticks on top of it, and lit the paper. When the kindling was burning, he closed the stove door and stood up. Joe Sam was in his bunk and under the covers. He was lying on his side, drawn up like a kid again, and his eyes were closed.

  Harold waited until he could put chunks on the fire, and the old man didn’t move or open his eyes. When the chunks were burning too, Harold picked up the lantern and went out. In a slow, tired walk that was still perfectly regular, so it made a monotony in his mind too, he went down the hill and past the house and out across the yard, all broken into white peaks and walls and long black shadows by the lantern moving through the work of the shovels and the drag. He did the chores in the same dull, steady way, his mind hardly taking hold on anything, and his body working by habit. He broke the ice on the corral trough and forked hay out for the horses the last thing, and then, still walking with his legs only, climbed back up to the woodpile and got his axe. Carrying the axe and the lantern in the same hand, he went down once more, and out of the yard to the south, in the track the drag had made. Where the track curved away east on the rise, he broke through the wall of snow it had left and went floundering on up through the loose snow above until he came into the big brush the quail liked. He stamped a circle firm in the snow there, and set the lantern at the side of it. Then he just stood there resting for a while, looking up at the vast dome of stars over the glimmering valley and the ghostly mountains that closed it in, and down at the brighter, yellow spark that was the bunk-room window. The cold began to work into him again, and far up in the northeast, toward the pass, a coyote cried, small and quavering and desolate. Something in him cried back to it so much in the same voice it made him uneasy. When it happened a second time, he shook himself awake.

  He moved out beyond the circle and began to knock the snow out of the brush with the axe, and to kick it away from the stems. When he’d gone as far as the lantern would let him see, he began to hack at the twisted stems of the brush he had cleared. The stems sprang back from the blows, making the axe jump so that his hands tingled, and sometimes it took half a dozen strokes to cut through. He began to strike harder, and to flare with rage when a bush resisted him too long.

  All right, he thought, if you want a fire, I’ll make you a fire that’ll show to Oregon. There’s nobody to see your goddam fire, but what do we care about a little thing like that. We’ll have a real fire. We’ll burn every goddam bush on the hill.

  "Never let it be said," he muttered, feeling the sweat beginning to come on his face, even in that sharp cold, "that a Bridges ever did anything in a small way, even if the small way would be better. Whatever it is, do it big, and do it as fast as you can."

  He worked faster, grunting every time he struck. Each time a bush fell or leapt away into the snow, he caught it up and threw it fiercely back into the circle where the lantern was.

  "Why not burn the damn haystack‘?" he growled. "Hell, we’re no pikers," he muttered. "Burn the sheds, burn the house. Think what a light that’d make for the coyotes to see."

  Later, when his lips were curled back. and his breath was hissing in his teeth, he gasped, "It’s Curt’s fire. Do it Curt’s way."

  Three times he worked out of the farthest reach of the light, and each time he moved the lantern to another side of the circle. When the pile of brush filled the whole circle and was as tall as he was, he rested, bent over and leaning on the axe handle. Little lights that didn’t come from the lantern danced in the night where he looked, like the stars come down and whirling. He closed his eyes, and they were still there. He waited until they slowed down, and became fewer, and darkened. Then his breath was coming slower too, and not so much like sobs. He could feel the sweat starting under his armpits now, and running down over his ribs, tickling them. He opened his eyes and looked at the pile of brush.

  "Even for Curt, that would do," he said.

  He still rested, bent over the axe, until the pain in his side was easier and he could breathe with his mouth closed again. The temper went out of him too, while he waited.

  "Jeez," he said softly. "Watch it, boy. It’s in you too."

  Then he saw the whole performance the way it would have looked to someone else, to Arthur, for instance, that rage of cutting in a little puddle of lantern light, and with the stars there over it all the time, and the big, cold, dark silence of the valley around it. He looked up at the stars and made a little, one-sided grin, and chuckled softly.

  "All right, Art," he said. "Have it your way."

  He stood the axe down in the snow by the lantern, and began to hook the cut brush together by its branches. When he had as much in the bunch as he thought would hold, he towed it down into the track of the drag, and along the track into the yard, and across the yard into the center of the big whorl the drag had made turning around at the north end. He made eight trips that way, and then one more to collect the brush that had come loose along the track. He stacked all the brush into one big pile again, in the center of the whorl, and left the lantern beside it, and took the axe back up to the woodpile. He brought four of the cord-cut timbers down from the woodpile and leaned them on end against the brush. He kept on, stubbornly, but very slowly now, carrying down timbers and standing them against the brush until they made a close, tall tepee over it. Even then he didn’t stop, though he could only carry the timbers two at a time now. He built a stack of them over against the snow wall of the circle. Orion was up over the sheds before he finally stopped to rest once more. He stood looking down at the stack. He had no feeling about what he was doing now, and his thoughts about it came slowly and separately, and had no force.

  "That’ll hold it till daylight," he said.

  It would start better with kerosene on it, he thought, but then thought, It’s in the store room. I’d have to go in the kitchen again.

  Finally he picked up the lantern and went slowly down to the sheds and around to the lumber room. In the lumber room, he broke up some light boards into kindling, and took them in his arm with a pile of old newspapers from the bench. He started to pick up a bucketful of the black oil they used to waterproof the fence posts and poles where they went into the ground. Then he thought of the lantern. He laid the papers and kindling on the bench and fastened the lantem to his belt. Then he
picked up the papers and kindling again, and took the bucket of oil in his other hand, and went back to the pile of brush and timber. He thought carefully about each little act now. He wadded the paper and pushed it under the brush in one place, and pushed the kindling in on top of it. Then he poured some of the oil through the brush onto the paper and kindling. Finally he went slowly around the whole pile, splashing the oil in between the timbers until the bucket was empty. He carried the bucket to the edge of the circle, where the track went out of it that passed the house, and set it down as carefully as if it were made of glass. When he straightened up again, he caught his breath for a moment, because Gwen was standing there, so close she could have touched him. He couldn’t see her face at all in the hood.

  "I didn’t see you there," he said.

  "I haven’t been here very long," she said. "I didn’t know if you had any matches." She gave him the matches she was holding. "I made some fresh coffee," she said.

  "That’s good," he said, but then turned away from her at once, because he was afraid he was going to cry. He was so tired it made him want to cry to think of her making the coffee for him. He went back to the pile of brush and timbers, and squatted in front of the place where he’d put the paper and kindling in. He scratched a match on the nearest timber, held it in his cupped hand until the flame was steady, and then slowly put it in until the tip of the flame touched the oily paper. For an instant the dame shrank, and only tiny wisps of quick, black smoke went up from it. Then there was a sudden little gasping explosion, and a dark red flame leapt up, making a cloud of black smoke. The flame broke into many flames over the surface of the oily paper, and he stood up and moved back from the pile. The flames drew together and sucked up into the brush. The big flame began to roar, and the brush hissed where there was still snow on it. Then a thin, nervous crackling began. The flame brightened and rushed up into the peak of the tepee, and spread quickly through its base, mostly white and noisy, but breaking out in a new, small explosion and another murky red fire every time it came to oil again.