by Davis Grubb
More?
No, sighed John glumly, shuffling away into the kitchen, his heart heavy with thoughts of the good old times that were gone. I don’t feel like it, Pearl.
She followed in his footsteps like a lost lamb, hugging the old doll tight as if it might some day be her last comfort, and she stood beside him at the kitchen window, nose squashed flat to the icy pane. The hanging man. Yes, they could see him dimly even now—far away down the frozen road amid the winter mists—the little white man on the red bricks. He had not gone away in the night. When you looked one way at his angular arms and legs he quite resembled an airplane. But, of course, one knew better than that. He was a neat little man with stiff arms and stiff legs and a little pointed hat and there was a white scratch for the rope and two white scratches for the gallows tree.
Hing Hang Hung! whispered Pearl, softly.
For she knew that John would never strike her. It was only Mom who could not abide the song.
Hung Hang Hing! she crooned again; the breath of its music caught in her throat.
John scowled and sketched a hing-ing hang-ing man on the foggy windowpane.
You better never let Mom catch you singing that song.
Why won’t she tell, John?
Because you’re too little.
I’m not, John! I’m not!
He said nothing, sucking his lip. He would have loved nothing more than to tell her. Since the day when the blue men had taken Ben away the burden of this solitary knowledge was almost more than he could endure. It was not a knowing that he could share with his mother or with anyone. It was a secret that was a little world of its own. A terrible little world like an island upon whose haunted beach he wandered alone now, like a solitary and stricken Crusoe, while everywhere about him his eyes would find the footprint of the dangling man.
—
Ben lay back in the bunk and smiled. Preacher has stopped talking now. Preacher just sits there across the cell from Ben with those black eyes boring into him. Preacher is trying to guess. Not that Ben hasn’t told Preacher everything that he told the others at the trial: Warden Stidger, Mister McGlumphey, Judge Slathers, and the jury. Everything, that is, but the one thing they wanted the most to know. Ben won’t tell that to anybody. But it is a kind of game: teasing Preacher. Ben tells him the story over and over again and Preacher sits hunched, heeding each word, waiting for the slip that never comes.
Because I was just plumb tired of being poor. That’s the large and small of it, Preacher. Just sick to death of drawing that little pay envelope at the hardware store in Moundsville every Friday and then when I’d go over to Mister Smiley’s bank on payday he’d open that little drawer with all the green tens and fifties and hundreds in it and every time I’d look at it there I’d just fairly choke to think of the things it would buy Willa and them kids of mine.
Greed and Lust!
Yes, Preacher, it was that. But I reckon it was more, too. It wasn’t just for me that I wanted it.
You killed two men, Ben!
That’s right, Preacher. One day I oiled up that little Smith and Wesson that Mr. Blankensop keeps in his rolltop desk at the hardware store and I went up to Mister Smiley’s bank and I pointed that gun at Mister Smiley and the teller Corey South and I said for Corey to hand me over that big stack of hundred-dollar bills. Lord, you never seen such a wad, Preacher!
Ten thousand dollars’ worth, Ben Harper!
Then Mister Smiley said I was crazy and Corey South went for his gun in the drawer and with that I shot him and Mister Smiley both and while I was reaching through to get that green stack of hundreds out of Corey’s dead fingers Mister Smiley got the gun and lifted up on the floor and shot me through the shoulder. Well, sir, I run and got scared and didn’t know which was up or down before long and so I just got in the car and come home.
With the money?
Yep!
And then?
Ben Harper smiles.
Why, they come down the river after me about four that afternoon—Sheriff Wiley Tomlinson and four policemen.
And where was you, Ben?
Why, I was there, Preacher. You see I was done running. I was just standing out back by the smokehouse with them two youngsters of mine—John and that little sweetheart Pearl.
And the money, Ben? What about that? What about that ten thousand dollars?
Ben smiles again and picks his front teeth with his thumbnail.
Go to hell, Preacher, he says softly, without rancor.
But listen to me, Ben Harper! It’ll do you no good where you’re going. What good is money in heaven or hell either one? Eh, boy?
Ben is silent. Preacher walks away and stands for a spell staring out the cell window with his long, skinny hands folded behind him. Ben looks at those hands and shivers. What kind of a man would have his fingers tattooed that way? he thinks. The fingers of the right hand, each one with a blue letter beneath the gray, evil skin—L—O—V—E. And the fingers of the left hand done the same way only now the letters spell out H—A—T—E. What kind of a man? What kind of a preacher? Ben muses and wonders softly and remembers the quick-leaping blade of the spring knife that Preacher keeps hidden in the soiled blanket of his bed. But Preacher would never use that knife on Ben. Preacher wants something from Ben. Preacher wants to know about that money and you can’t use a knife to get at something like that especially with a husky fellow like Ben. Now Preacher comes back and stands by Ben’s bunk.
Set your soul right, Ben Harper! That money’s bloodied with Satan’s own curse now. And the only way it can get cleared of it is to let it do His works in the hands of good, honest poor folks.
Like you, Preacher?
I am a man of Salvation!
You, Preacher?
I serve the Lord in my humble way, Ben.
Then, says Ben Harper softly, how come they got you locked up in Moundsville penitentiary, Preacher?
There are those that serves Satan’s purposes against the Lord’s servants, Ben Harper.
And how come you got that stick knife hid in your bed blankets, Preacher?
I serve God and I come not with peace but with a sword! God blinded mine enemies when they brought me to this evil place and I smuggled it in right under the noses of them damned guards. That sword has served me through many an evil time, Ben Harper.
I’ll bet it has, Preacher, grins Ben and presently Preacher goes up into his bunk and lies there a while longer muttering and praying to himself and scheming up new ways to get Ben to tell him where he hid that ten thousand dollars in green hundreds. It’s a game between them. And in a way it is Ben Harper’s salvation—this little game. In three days they are coming to take Ben up to the death house and a body has to keep busy with little games like this to keep from losing his mind at the last. A little game—a little war of wills. Ben Harper and Preacher around the clock—day after day. And Ben Harper knows that it is a game that he will win. Because Preacher can talk the breath out of his body and Ben will never tell a mortal, living soul. But Preacher keeps on; stubborn, unremitting. In the quaking silence of the prison night: Listen, Ben! Where you’re goin’ it won’t serve you none. Tell me, boy! Buy your way to Paradise now! You hear, boy? Mebbe the Lord will think twice and let you in the good place if you was to tell me, boy. Tell me! Have a heart!
Go to sleep, Preacher.
Salvation! Why, it’s always a last-minute business, boy. There’s a day of judgment for us all, Ben Harper, and no man knows the hour. Now’s your chance. Mister Smiley and Corey South is both dead, boy! Can’t nothin’ change that! But if you was to let that money serve the Lord’s purposes He might feel kindly turned toward you. Ben, are you listenin’ to me, boy?
Shut up, Preacher! Ben whispers, choking back a giggle at the game, the furious little game that keeps him from thinking about the rope upstairs and his own shoes swinging six feet above the floor of the drop room.
Listen, Ben! See this hand I’m holdin’ up? See them letters tattooed on it? L
ove, Ben, love! That’s what they spell! This hand—this right hand of mine—this hand is Love. But wait, Ben! Look! There’s enough moonlight from the window to see. Look, boy! This left hand! Hate, Ben, hate! Now here’s the moral, boy. These two hands are the soul of mortal man! Hate and Love, Ben—warring one against the other from the womb to the grave—
Ben listens to the familiar sermon; shudders with a kind of curious delight as Preacher writhes the fingers of his two tattooed hands together and twists them horribly, cracking the knuckles as the fingers grapple one hand with the other.
Warring, boy! Warring together! Left hand and right hand! Hate and Love! Good and Evil! But wait. Hot dog! Old Devil’s a-losin’, Ben! He’s a slippin’ boy!
And now Preacher brings both hands down with a climactic crash on the wooden bench by the bunks. Then he is silent, crouched in the darkness, smiling at the glory of God in his evil fingers and waiting to see if his little drama has done anything to the boy in the lower bunk.
I could build a tabernacle, Ben, he whimpers. To beat that Wheeling Island tabernacle to hell and gone! Think of it, Ben. A tabernacle built with that ten thousand dollars of cursed, bloodied gold. But wait, Ben! Now it’s God’s gold. Thousands of sinners and whores and drunkards flocking to hear His word and all because you give that money to build a temple in His name. Listen to me, boy! You reckon the Lord wouldn’t change His mind about you after that? Why, shoot, Ben! He wouldn’t let them little old killings stand between you and the gates of Glory. Hell, no!
Ben rises on his elbow, tired of the game now.
Shut up, Preacher! Shut up and go to sleep before I climb over there and stuff your bed tick down your throat!
Silence again. Preacher up there in the darkness, in the thick, creosote silence of the vast prison. Preacher lying up there on his back with those tattooed fingers criss-crossed behind his sandy, shaggy head thinking how he can worm it out of Ben Harper with only three days to the death house. Ben stuffs his knuckles into his teeth till he tastes blood. The ropes beneath his straw tick squeak to the rhythm of his ague-like trembling. Ben Harper is quaking with agony beneath the little dream that the night’s blue fingers reach out to him. Once more it is that winter afternoon on the river shore by the old house up the road from Cresap’s Landing. He is looking into the moon faces of the children: Pearl stony and silent as a graveyard cherub and John’s big eyes wide with everything Ben was telling him, while Pearl clutched the old doll against her body.
Where you goin’ to, Dad?
Away, John! Away!
You’re bleedin’, Dad.
It’s nothin’, boy. Just a scratched shoulder.
But there’s blood, Dad.
Hush, John! Mind what I told you to do.
Yes, Dad.
And you, Pearl! You, too. Mind now! You swore!
Now, from the corner of his eye, Ben sees the blue men with the guns in the big touring car coming down the road beyond the corner of the orchard. John’s mouth is a white little line as his dark eyes follow the blue men. They circle and walk slowly in through the dead grass that rims the yard.
Now I’m goin’ away, boy.
John’s mouth breaks and trembles but then it tightens back into the thinness again. He makes no sound.
Just mind everything I told you, John.
Yes, Dad.
And take good care of Pearl. Guard her with your life, boy.
Yes, Dad.
Who’s them men? whispers Pearl at last.
Never mind them. They come and I’m goin’ off with them, children. Don’t even waste time thinkin’ about that now. Just mind what I told you—mind what you swore to do, boy!
Yes!
Swear to it again, John. Swear, boy!
I swear! I swear!
Ben Harper lies in his bunk now with the sweat beaded like morning dew on his forehead. He does not move lest Preacher may sense that he is awake, frightened beyond all reason or caution, and think that now is the time to break the seal at last and end his quest for the knowledge of the hidden money. But Preacher is snoring and mumbling in his sleep about Sin and Gold and the Blood of the Lamb, and Ben relaxes after a spell and watches the edge of the winter moon in the window, just the rim of it in the blue square of window with the corner of one of the wall towers black like a child’s school cut-out with the sharp little machine gun sticking out. He closes his eyes, thinking of the day just ended. His wife Willa had been allowed to see him that morning. He looked at her there on the other side of the chicken wire and wanted to say things to her that he hadn’t felt in a longer time than he could remember. Back in the spring of 1928 when they had run off to Elkton, Maryland, and gotten married and spent the first whole night together in a tourist cabin making love the way she had always wanted it to be instead of sneaking off somewhere to do it. He had thought about how all that honeymoon night they had listened to the whirr and roar of the roller skates in the big rolla-drome across the highway and that record that played over and over again, that one that went, Lucky Lindy up in the air! Lucky Lindy flew over there! and he had dreamed of the life they would have together in the house down in the bottomlands above Cresap’s Landing and how he would get himself a raise at the hardware store and buy her a player piano. It was funny how it had always been a matter of money. Right up to the very end. Even that day at the prison she kept asking him about it—the ten thousand dollars he had hidden somewhere. She kept saying over and over that it wasn’t going to do him any good and he had no right to leave her and the two kids without anything but that old bottomlands house her Uncle Harry had left her. Nothing but that and the clothes on their backs. But he would not tell. And it made him sick at his stomach to sit there on the other side of the chicken wire and see her mouth saying it over and over again until her face began to look for all the world like the face of Preacher; weak and sick with greed; the same greed that had led Ben to murder and the gallows. He watched her eyes all bright and feverish with hope of finding out, her little pink tongue licking her dry lips with the excitement of it and, at last her mouth gone slack with disappointment when she realized that he would not tell—that he would never tell.
That same afternoon Mister McGlumphey, his lawyer, had been to see him, too. There was no getting around it—they had all been mighty nice to him at his trial. Mister McGlumphey had done his very best to get him off with life imprisonment and the jury was as nice a bunch of people as you’d want to see and he thought to himself many times since: I wish them no harm nor vengeance in this world or the other. Mister McGlumphey had told him at the outset that it would sure go easier with him if he was to tell what he’d done with that ten thousand dollars and it was really then that Ben had made up his mind not to tell. Because any poor fool could see that it wasn’t justice they were after—it was the ten thousand dollars. So Ben simply said that he wouldn’t tell them even if they was to break his arms and legs to make him tell and Mister McGlumphey said they wouldn’t do anything like that but they’d like as not break worse than that and he couldn’t see any possible way to save him from swinging if he felt that way about it. And so Ben was more sure than ever that he was right. And he concluded with grim Calvinist logic that if he needed to tell them about the money to be spared the hanging then there was no real justice in the courts and so he would take his satisfaction with him to the grave. It was Sin and Greed that had brought him to Moundsville and it was Sin and Greed that was making them hang him. It was the face of Willa begging and wheedling behind the chicken wire. It was the face of Mister McGlumphey arguing. It was the voice of Preacher in the dark.
Where? Where, Ben? Where? Have a heart, boy. Where, Ben? Where?
He awoke. The corner of the moon was gone from the window. The blue square was empty except for the ragged thatch of Preacher’s head inches from his own. Ben gathered himself slowly under his blanket and let his muscles coil like a steel spring and then lashed out with all his strength until he felt his hard fist crunch into the bones of the wh
ispering face. Ben, you hadn’t ought to have hit me! I’m a man of God!
You’re a son of a bitch! Sneaking up and whispering in my ear whilst I’m sleeping! Hoping you could make me talk about it in my sleep! Damn you, Preacher! Damn you to hell!
Just the same you shouldn’t have done it, boy! I’m a man of the Lord!
You’re a slobberin’ hypocrite, Preacher! Now get the hell back up in your bunk before I smash your head in! I’d as soon hang for three killin’s as two!
Ben lies rigid now, listening as the other scrambles fearfully up into the rustling straw tick and falls back, mopping his bleeding nose and whimpering. Ben fell asleep and saw it clear as day: the little room and the rope. His Cousin Wilfred and old Uncle Jimmy John Harper got passes to a hanging back in 1930 and Wilfred got sick and had to be taken to a drugstore to be revived and cleaned up and Uncle Jimmy John wouldn’t even talk about it when he got back home and every time one of Ben’s kids would come to him with a rope and ask him to take the knots out of it he would shoo that youngster out the kitchen door. Ben could see himself plain as day: in the little room and a man was putting that rope over his head and he saw then that the man was Preacher and Preacher laughed when they sprang the trap and Ben was falling, falling, falling. He sprang up in the bunk, striking his head against the wall. What did I say, Preacher?
What, Ben?
Now he was scrambling up into Preacher’s bunk and his fingers were around Preacher’s throat like a ring of baling wire. I said something in my sleep just now! What did I say, Preacher?
Nothin’! My God, nothin’, Ben!
You’re lyin’, Preacher! Goddamn you, you’re lyin’!
He tightened his fingers—pressing his thumbs into the gristle of the man’s windpipe until Preacher’s breath came rattling and gasping. Then he took the hands away for a moment.
I said something! What did I say, Preacher? What! What!