The Night of the Hunter

by Davis Grubb

  He was in bed asleep when she returned. The lights were out. The ragged window blind flapped like the gray wing of a hurt bird beside the bed and she stared back at her pale sister in the mirror as she stood waiting and wondering if he would call to her.

  The only pretty thing I ever did own, she thought. My body. Because even the muslin nightgown was gray from too many washings and the feathers on the slippers had withered and clung to one another since that long-ago night when Ben had won them for her at the shooting gallery at the Upshur County Fair.

  Harry? she called softly.

  He was snoring lightly. And the window blind flapped.

  Fix that window, he said suddenly in a clear, wide-awake voice as if sleep and waking were no different to him; as if he could move swiftly from the world of dreams to the world of waking with no break in the sound track of consciousness; with only a flutter of his thin lids.

  She rolled the blind all the way up, thinking: He was pretending to be asleep, he was pretending to snore. That is because he is embarrassed.

  She slipped between the sheets, fresh and sweet from some country widow’s washline, and lay for a moment listening to the radio down in the town and her own heart thundering and then she turned on her side and stared at the back of his head. She could hear his lips moving in the darkness with a small rapid sound like the feet of mice.

  Harry? she breathed.

  He stirred impatiently.

  I was praying, he said.

  Oh, I’m sorry, Harry! I didn’t know! I thought maybe—

  He turned suddenly and although she could not see his face on the pillow she could feel the anger in it.

  You thought, Willa, that the minute you walked in that door I’d start in to pawing and feeling you in the disgusting, abominable way men are supposed to do on their wedding nights! Eh? Ain’t that right, now?

  No, Harry! I thought—

  That’s the kind of thing they make jokes about in those filthy burlesque houses downriver at Louisville and Cincinnati! Oh, yes, I’ve witnessed them with my own eyes! I made myself go, Willa, just so’s I could witness with my own eyes the degradation and stink to which mortal men and women can fall!

  Her eyes widened in the pitch-darkness of his looming face until they burned and her mouth grew dry as his words lashed her.

  I think it’s time we got one thing perfectly clear, Willa! Are you listening?

  Yes, she moaned.

  Marriage to me represents a blending of two spirits in the sight of Almighty God! I reckon it’s time I made that clear, Willa!

  She shut her eyes, hating herself for the shame and dirtiness and hurt she felt now and she prayed that he would stop but somehow she knew that he had just begun; somehow he seemed to have roused himself to sermon pitch and suddenly he got out of the bed and stood in the yellow light which the window cast into the cheap room: his thin, wiry arms moving stiffly in the sleeves of his nightshirt.

  How are they any better, he said, than the Whore of Babylon?

  She buried her mouth in the pillow and smothered a moan in the thickness of it between her teeth.

  Get out of bed, Willa! he commanded, not violently, but with a dangerous edge of anger still in his voice, while with one arm he pulled the window blind clear to the sill. Now he moved across the room, his dry naked feet whispering on the boards, and snapped the light on. It flooded the room with its uncharitable yellow glare and a faint singing commenced in the golden bulb.

  Get out of bed, Willa!

  She obeyed.

  Harry, what—

  Take off your nightdress.

  Harry!

  Do as I say, Willa!

  She obeyed with sick, trembling hands and stood at last, naked and blushing before him.

  Now go and look at yourself yonder in that mirror.

  Harry, please! Please, I—

  Do as I say!

  She felt her feet moving, felt the grain of the cold boards under her soles and then the thin, worn nap of the square of carpet by the bureau.

  Look at your body in the mirror, Willa!

  She made her eyes travel the miles upward and stared into the brown mirror, streaked and stained like the surface of some condemned and poisonous pool. She saw her breasts, still pretty and young and firm and the shoulders that Ben had used to kiss when she wore her bathing suit to the river.

  What do you see, girl?

  I—

  She could see her mouth begin to curl and the vision went blurring then in a burning, yellow wash of tears.

  You see the body of a woman! he cried. The temple of creation and motherhood! You see the flesh of Eve that man since Adam has profaned and filthied—has made into a vessel for the corruption and lust of his own rottenness!

  He was pacing now, thin and mad and touchingly absurd in the white nightshirt.

  Mind you, my girl, I’m not pointing you out as worse than the rest. But that body—that body—

  He pointed to her shivering loins and the dark feathers of her quivering, convulsed belly.

  —that body was meant for begetting children! It was not meant for the whoring lust of whoring men! That’s filthiness! I say that’s filthiness and the Devil’s business, my girl! Do you understand that?

  Yes! Yes!

  Do you want more children, Willa?

  I— No, I—

  No! Of course you don’t! It is the business of our marriage to mind those two you have now—not to beget more! And if not to beget more—then why should we soil our bodies with sex and rottenness? Ain’t that talkin’ sense, my girl? Ain’t that the way the Lord wants it?

  Yes.

  He stood staring at her a moment longer, his head cocked a little to one side and that curious remoteness wandering in his eyes again; his face twitching a little as if he were straining to hear, to listen to a faint, far counsel from heaven.

  You can get back into your nightdress now and stop shivering, he said.

  She felt the gown fall over her hair and shoulders and crawled back into the bed, sick and drained of feeling, while he turned off the light and let the window blind up again. He stood for a moment by the side of the ancient brass bed with the street lights touching his profile of flesh and cheekbone with a thin line of gold.

  I’m sorry. She shaped the words soundlessly with her lips, waiting for him to get into the bed, and watched him at last crawl stiffly under the sheets again and turn his back to her again and then listened to the dry, faint breath of his swift, whispered prayer running on as endlessly as a reel of film on an unillumined movie projector.

  She lay on her back staring at a dark stain on the ceiling and thought to herself: He is right but just the same it is queer that he would know he is right because he has never had a woman ever in all his life. He is right, though. It is rottenness, all of it, and I’ll ask Jesus to help me get cleaned and purified of those thoughts so I can be what Harry wants me to be. He is right: I mustn’t never want that again because it is what he says: a sin and an abomination; even when Ben and me did it it was that and maybe God is punishing him and me for it now. Ben. Ben—

  And just before she fell asleep she heard another sound and thought: Well, I must be wrong. He wouldn’t be doing that!

  But it was so. He was crying softly in his sleep like a child and all she could do was lie there in an agony of fear, not able to touch him in any way, not able to reach over into that strange land of dream deaths and save him, not able to do anything at all but soundlessly shape the words against the wrath of God’s anger and God’s mercy there in the dark room of the little country hotel: Good night, Harry! Good night!

  But they were lost beyond recall, beyond answering, borne on the winds above the meadow.

  —

  The golden June morning quivered like water in the new leaves of the grape arbor. Pearl squatted with the doll Jenny and the doll was Willa now and the tomato stake with the rag wrapped around it: that was Mister Powell. Pearl stood them side by side against the bricks at th
e bottom of the arbor and sang a song because Willa and Mr. Powell were married and they had returned from their honeycomb. Now the scissors from the pantry flashed in her fingers as she cut out the green paper faces. These were the two children and she was a patient mother because when the wind blew those mischievous children would try to run away.

  Now, Willa! You must make me my supper for I am very hungry.

  Yes, Mister Powell! Right away, Mister Powell! And what about our two green children—Pearl and John?

  Well, you can make Pearl some supper, Willa, but John is bad. Put John to bed without his supper.

  Oh, no! I can’t do that, Mister Powell! John is hungry, too!

  Well, well, if he promises to be very good and stop being so bad.

  Pearl tucked the jagged bits of paper tight between the bricks at the feet of the doll named Willa and the stick named Mister Powell. In the kitchen she could hear her mother rattling pots and plates for suppertime.

  Now! cried Pearl, when she had fed her family. Now it’s bedtime! Off you go, children!

  But suddenly the errant wind swept fitfully through the vines. John and Pearl fluttered away from the child’s helpless fingers, sailed, and drifted high over the buttercups, into the sky, over the sun.

  Come back, you bad children! wailed Pearl. Come back!

  We shall bow our heads in grace.

  John waited till Pearl’s eyes were closed and then he lowered his shaggy head over his plate of ham and hominy and shut his eyes. The light shone distant and red through the quivering lids and he waited, mouth watering, as the rich incense of a dish of watermelon preserve tickled his nose. Preacher’s grace rolled on in interminable catalog. At last his voice rose to conclusion.

  —Though we live under the curse of Cain, Almighty God, we turn our backs against the temptations of this mortal flesh. Bless this good food, Oh, Lordamighty, and let it build up our stren’th to fight the Devil’s fiendish persuasions and the temptations of sex and gold and lust amen pass the bread please, boy.

  Willa kept her eyes on her plate throughout most of the meal. She ate very little. Perhaps more than any of them, John saw the change that had come over her since Preacher had entered the family. Her eyes bore dark shadows and her mouth was thinner—paler—and her flesh itself seemed to have capitulated to the urgent moral protocols of her marriage until the very roundness of her sweet figure had turned epicene and sour in that lean season. Still, in a curious way, she seemed happier in her strange union with Preacher than she had ever been with Ben Harper. Something new had come into her life. Willa had discovered Sin. It seemed somehow that this discovery was something that she had sought and hungered after all her life. She talked about Sin constantly to John and although Pearl understood only that Sin was being bad she was pleased to sit and hear Willa out when the sermonizing mood was upon her. Willa kept after them ceaselessly each night to be sure that each prayed long and well, on their knees, on the cold, naked floor by the bed. Preacher’s spring revival meeting in a tent down the river at Welcome had brought them enough money to live on through the summer. These meetings had been highlighted by Willa’s own impassioned testimony, and her shrill, fevered voice had risen above the cries of the most penitent sinners in the valley.

  You have all suffered! she cried out one night, her eyes burning in the torchlight, her face blanched and bloodless with the thrill of her vision. And you have all sinned! But which one of you can say as I can say: I drove a good man to lust and murder and robbery because I kept a-hounding him and a-pestering him night and day for pretty clothes and per-fumes and face paint and do you know why I wanted them things? I wanted them so’s he would lust after my body more and more and more!—instead of thinkin’ about the salvation of his soul and the souls of them two little kids down yonder! And finally he couldn’t stand it no more and he went out and took a gun and slew!—yes, slew two human beings and stole their money and come home with it to give it to me and say: Here! Here! Here, Whore of Babylon! Take this money that is tainted with the blood of Abel and go to the store and buy your pretty dresses and per-fumes and paint! But, brethren!—ah, that’s where the Lord stepped in! That’s where Je-e-esus stepped in!

  Yes! cried Preacher, rolling his head gently till the paper collar bit into his neck. Ye-e-es!

  Yes! panted Willa, her voice rising to hoarseness, to a scream. The Lord come down out of the sky and stood by the smokehouse that day and told that man that the money would just drive his poor weak whore of a wife to hell headlong!—headlong!

  Yes! Yes! panted the sinners and the saved under the tent, under the torches.

  —and them two kids would git dragged along to hell, too! Headlong! Yes! Yes!

  —and their almighty souls would bu-urn in hellfire, too! Yes!

  —and the Lord told that poor bloody-handed man to take that rotten money—that Devil’s money—that bloody gold of greed and murder—

  Yes! Yes!

  —that money that dri-i-pped with the blood of a murdered man!—of two murdered men!—

  Yes!

  —The Lord said, Take it and throw it in the river yonder, brother! Wrap it ’round a stone and throw it in the old Ohio River and let it get washed clean down into the Mississippi! For it is better that it be your neck with that stone tied on it and throwed to the bottom of the river than to lead one of my little ones astray!

  Yes! Yes! Hallelujah!

  —Throw that money in the river! In the river!—

  Amen!

  —and let it wash out into the ocean where the fish can look at it! Because a fish has got more sense sometimes than a man!

  (Laughter.) Yes! Oh, yes, Sister Powell! Praise God!

  —and then the Lord told that man to give himself into the hands of the Law and let justice be done—!

  Amen! Yes!

  —and after justice had been done to Ben Harper the Lord made me suffer alone like Moses suffered in the Wilderness!

  Praise God!

  —and then he led Brother Powell to me and said, Salvation cometh!

  Amen! Amen!

  And the Lord bent down and said to me: Marry this man and go forth with him and preach the Word!

  Amen! Amen!

  And then someone began to lead them in singing “When the Mists Have Rolled Away” and they sang for nearly half an hour until the whole bottomlands echoed with their voices and under the headlights of Ben Harper’s old Model T that night Preacher counted out the collection and told Willa it had been one of their best. It was close to thirty-five dollars, two bushels of Wine-saps, and a half-gallon jug of maple sirup.

  Somewhere—somehow Preacher always managed to find John alone in the house after supper. Now he stood beside him at the cellar door and because Preacher was standing in the way it was impossible to walk down the hallway to the stairs and go up to bed. Willa had gone to Cresap’s Landing to visit after supper with Icey and Walt. Pearl was still playing with her doll family under the grape arbor.

  Because, Preacher was saying, and his manner had long since stopped being wheedling and pleasant. Because sooner or later I will find out where it’s hid, boy. It’s just a matter of time.

  I don’t know! I don’t know nothing about it!

  Yes. Yes, you know!

  No, said the boy, impudently. I don’t.

  I could thrash you for contradicting me, boy. That’s back talk.

  John thought: I would rather have the thrashing than the questions because the thrashing hurts quick and then it’s over but the questions keep on forever and ever amen.

  Well, boy?

  No, he thought. No.

  Where is it hid, boy?

  He thought: And even she is changed now—my mother. If I go to her and tell her that he asks me the question all the time she says I am lying, that he is a man of God, that I am making it up because I hate him and because I am sick with Sin and because I am trying to turn her against him.

  Preacher read his thoughts.

  Your mother says you
tattled on me, boy. She says you told her that I asked you where the money was hid. Isn’t that so, boy?

  Yes. Yes.

  That wasn’t very nice of you, John. Have a heart, boy.

  It don’t matter, the boy murmured.

  No. That’s right. It don’t matter. Because it’s your word against mine. And it’s me she believes!

  Yes, he thought. Because you have made her be crazy.

  She thinks that money’s in the river, smiled Preacher.

  John listened to the tick of a death watch somewhere hidden in the ancient, dark wood of the old house.

  But you and me—we know better! Don’t we, boy? John pressed his lips tight, listening to the far-off chant of Pearl, making her little home under the grape arbor.

  Don’t we, boy! Goddamn you! Answer me! Answer, you little son of a bitch!

  I don’t know nothin’, he said dully and thought: Now he will shut up and go away from me for a while. After he shouts at me he goes away. He takes the knife out of his pocket like he is doing now and he presses the button and the sharp thing flicks out and he looks at me for a minute and then he starts paring the big, blue thumbnail on the finger without a name and then he goes away.

  No matter, Preacher said in an even voice, and the knife dropped back in his pocket. Sooner or later, boy, you’ll tell. The summer is young yet, little lad.

  He loomed above the boy, a vast dark hulk against the light behind him on the hall table: the lamp with the stained-glass shade and the silver chain pull that Ben Harper had given his wife one Christmas.

  Now go and fetch your sister and put her to bed!

  The big figure did not move aside for the boy to pass, making him flatten against the damp wallpaper of the passageway to get through. John ran to the kitchen and strained his eyes into the golden river dusk. The grape arbor was luminous in that twilight; its luxuriant leaves possessed strangely of their own rich light at this evening moment.