The Double Hook

by Sheila Watson

  All along the fence the road had been cut by the wheels of William Potter’s truck. Cut to plague the feet of beasts. To plague the very wheels which cut it. The whole road cut when a day’s wait would have let the mud bake flat. Cut anyway, William said, by the feet of the beasts themselves, moving singly or in herds, by the old moose, his face above man-level, and the herds moving, moving.

  The boy wrestled with the roll of wire, which curled in on itself seeking the bend into which it had been twisted. The sun beat down on him as it beat down on Kip’s horse.

  I’m afraid, thought the boy, and even the light won’t tell me what to do.

  He thought of the posts he would have to drive. He wondered: Is it Lenchen I’m afraid of. Or Ma. Or Kip. Is it the old lady fishing in the creek. Or is it seeing light the way I’ve never noticed before.

  He gathered up the wire and went down to the creek. He looked through the stems of the cottonwood trees, but the old lady had gone. The water caught the light and drew it into itself. Dragonflies floated over the surface as if the water had not been stirred since the beginning of time. But the grass by the pool was bent.

  I knew it was the old lady, the boy said. Shadows don’t bend grass. I know a shadow from an old woman.

  Above on the hills

  Coyote’s voice rose among the rocks:

  In my mouth is forgetting

  In my darkness is rest.

  8

  From the kitchen window the Widow looked out to the hills.

  Dear God, she said, the country. Nothing but dust. Nothing but old women fishing. What can a person do? Wagner and me were cousins. I came, and what I could I brought. I’ve things for starting a girl. Things belonging in my family for years. Things laid by. The spoons. The sheets. The bedcover I crocheted with my own hands. The shame. A fat pig of a girl, Almighty Father. Who would want such a girl?

  I could tell you, the girl said.

  You can tell me nothing, the Widow said. Go. Go. I hear nothing. I see nothing. Men don’t ask for what they’ve already taken.

  She went to the bottom of the stairs.

  You want to go, she said. Go. Don’t keep asking. Go.

  9

  Lenchen watched her mother walk away. She kept pulling the tongue of her belt until the belt bit into her flesh.

  James had not come as he promised. She had not seen him for days. Except from the crest of the hill. She had seen him below at work in the arms of the hills near his own house. Going from house to barn. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with Greta. She could not imagine the life he lived when the door closed behind him.

  She remembered him on his knees in the corral. Holding a heifer down. The sweat beading the hairs of his chest where his shirt divided. She smelt smoke, and flesh seared with the branding-iron. She saw him on his knees with a bull calf under him, the gelding knife bright in his hand.

  She heard his voice again: This is no place for her. And Heinrich’s voice: She’s been at it from a kid, like me. You’ve just not noticed before. She’s been round here always, like the rest of us.

  She remembered James’s face above his plaid shirt, and how she’d slipped down from the fence where she’d been sitting with Kip and had begun roping one of their own calves so that James could see what he’d noticed for the first time.

  10

  If Lenchen had been looking down from the hill just then, she would have seen James saddling his horse. He was alone.

  Greta was in the kitchen talking to Angel Prosper. William had stopped his truck at Theophil’s that morning and asked Angel to go up the creek to give Greta a hand.

  She’s getting played out doing for Ma, he said. She thinks nobody cares. When you go, tell her I stopped and asked.

  And on Theophil’s doorstep before the work was done he’d paid Angel her day’s wages.

  Greta was polishing a lamp globe.

  I’ve seen Ma standing with the lamp by the fence, she said. Holding it up in broad daylight. I’ve seen her standing looking for something even the birds couldn’t see. Something hid from every living thing. I’ve seen her defying. I’ve seen her take her hat off in the sun at noon, baring her head and asking for the sun to strike her. Holding the lamp and looking where there’s nothing to be found. Nothing but dust. No person’s got a right to keep looking. To keep looking and blackening lamp globes for others to clean.

  Angel sat back on her heels. She had been moving, half squatting, to scrub the floor. The water from her brush made a pool on the boards.

  You mean you’re not going to let her do it any more, Angel said. One person’s got as much right as another. Maybe she don’t ask you to clean those globes. There’s things people want to see. There’s things too, she said as she leant on the brush in the wall shadow below the window light, there’s things get lost.

  For nothing I’d smash it, Greta said. A person could stand so much. A person could stand to see her fish if they had to depend on her doing it to eat. But I can tell you we’ve not eaten fish of hers in this house. Ask anybody what she did with her fish. Ask them. Not me. I don’t know anything.

  Why didn’t you take your own lamp and go looking for something? Angel said. You’ve never all your life burned anything but a little oil to finish doing in the house.

  What are you saying? Greta asked. You don’t even know. You don’t know a thing. You don’t know what a person knows. You don’t know what a person feels. You’ve burned and spilled enough oil to light up the whole country, she said. It’s easy enough to see if you make a bonfire and walk around in the light of it.

  Angel scrubbed the last boards, and threw the water into the roots of the honeysuckle which grew over the porch.

  They need all the water they can get, Angel said.

  Then she saw Ara passing by in the road. She saw her loosening the bootlace and taking off her hat to shove back her damp hair. She thought: William Potter got an ugly one. Then she shook the last drop out of the pan and went back into the house.

  Do you want me to clean up the stairs? she asked Greta.

  No, Greta said. I don’t like people looking round. I won’t have people walking up and down in my house.

  11

  Ara hadn’t intended to come to her mother-in-law’s. She had wanted to get away from the house. From the sound of the cow’s breath in the dry grass. From the smell of empty buckets and dust heavy with sage. She had thought of going up the hill into the clump of jack pines to smell the smell of pine needles. She had walked up the hill, stopping now and then to knock off a prickly pear which clung to her sneakers. But when she reached the shoulder, instead of turning away from the valley, she had cut down through the sand and dust and patches of scorched grass to the road which led to her mother-in-law’s.

  If she had gone up to the old lookout she might have seen something to think about as William saw things when he was coming and going with the post. She might have seen a porcupine rattling over the rock on business which had nothing to do with her; or a grouse rising and knotting itself to a branch, settling fork-angled so that the tree seemed to put out a branch before her eyes.

  Roads went from this to that. But the hill led up to the pines and on to the rock rise which flattened out and fell off to nowhere on the other side.

  Yet she had cut down from the hill because she had to talk. She had to talk to some living person. She had to tell someone what she felt about the old lady and the water.

  It couldn’t rise, William would say. Not in summer. Why, the wonder is there’s any water at all. I’ve known the creeks fall so low, he’d say, that the fish were gasping in the shallowness. The day will come, he’d say, when the land will swallow the last drop. The creek’ll be dry as a parched mouth. The earth, he’d say, won’t have enough spit left to smack its lips.

  It couldn’t rise, William would say; but she’d felt it rise.

  There was no use telling Greta. Greta wouldn’t listen. She could hear Greta’s voice rattling like the rattle of dry cowhide: All these y
ears we’ve never had a wipe-up linoleum. But I like boards better. You know when the floor’s splintering away. You know when the rats have gnawed it. I don’t like a linoleum. It’s smooth like ice, but you can’t tell when it’s been eat away beneath.

  She would tell James, Ara thought. He could do what he liked. She’d be free of the thought.

  There were more

  than sixscore thousand persons

  in Nineveh;

  but here were only

  herself and William

  Greta and James

  Lenchen

  the boy her brother

  the Widow

  Prosper, Angel and Theophil

  the old lady, lost like Jonah perhaps

  in the cleft belly of the rock

  the water washing over her.

  She didn’t think of Kip at all until she saw him leaning over the pommel of his saddle talking to James.

  12

  James was standing by the barn. Kip’s hands rested on the pommel. His face was bent down over his horse’s neck towards James.

  James, William said, there was no accounting for. He had gamebird ways. He was like a gay cock on the outside in his plaid shirt and studded belt. Myself, William said, I never needed more than a razor-strop to hitch up my jeans. Yet inside, he said, there’s something’s cooked James’s fibre. He’s more than likely white and dry and crumbling like breast of pheasant.

  Ara heard Kip’s voice.

  She’s fishing down to Wagner’s, he said. How’re you going to go now? The boy Wagner’s there too, he said.

  James’s back was towards her. She saw him take a step forward. Kip pulled himself up and sat loosely against the cantle.

  Ara had stopped at the corner of the barn. James’s horse, saddled, waited on the lines. Ara saw it there. She felt the weight of nickel plate pulling its head to the earth.

  She untied the bootlace again and hat in hand went towards James as if she had just come.

  Didn’t you hear the gate? she said.

  James started round.

  Overhead the sky was tight as rawhide. About them the bars of the earth darkened. The flat ribs of the hills.

  Beyond James over the slant of the ground Ara saw the path down to the creek. The path worn deep by horses’ feet. And higher up on the far side she saw the old lady, the branches wrapped like weeds above her head, dropping her line into the stream.

  She saw and motioned with her hand.

  Kip’s eyes looked steadily before him.

  Your old lady’s down to Wagners’ he said to James.

  She’s here, Ara said.

  James turned on his heel. But when he turned, he saw nothing but the water-hole and the creek and the tangle of branches which grew along it.

  Ara went down the path, stepping over the dried hoofmarks down to the creek’s edge. She, too, saw nothing now except a dark ripple and the padded imprint of a coyote’s foot at the far edge of the moving water.

  She looked up the creek. She saw the twisted feet of the cottonwoods shoved naked into the stone bottom where the water moved, and the matted branches of the stunted willow. She saw the shallow water plocking over the roots of the cottonwood, transfiguring bark and stone.

  She bent towards the water. Her fingers divided it. A stone breathed in her hand. Then life drained to its centre.

  And in a loud voice

  Coyote cried:

  Kip, my servant Kip.

  Startled by the thunder, Ara dropped the stone into the water.

  James was staring down the road. The hills were touched with light, but darkness had begun to close in.

  She’s going to break, James said. There’s nothing else for it. You’d better go in, Ara. Greta’ll make you welcome until it’s over.

  He spoke for the first time.

  Kip’s face was turned to the sky. To the light stampeded together and bawling before the massed darkness. The white bulls of the sky shoulder to shoulder.

  He had risen in his stirrups until the leathers were pulled taut. His hand reaching to pull down the glory.

  Ara looked up too. For a minute she saw the light. Then only the raw skin of the sky drawn over them like a sack.

  Then the rain swung into the mouth of the valley like a web. Strand added to strand. The sky, Ara thought, filled with adder tongues. With lariats. With bull-whips.

  She reached the porch before the first lash hit the far side of the house. She looked back at Kip and at James. James had taken shelter in the doorway of the barn. Kip’s knees had relaxed. He was sitting in the saddle.

  13

  Greta and Angel had been drinking tea at the table by the kitchen window. There were two cups on the table and a teapot. But Greta was standing by the stove when the door opened. Standing with her fingers on the lid of the metal water tank so that she looked across the stove at Ara.

  The rain drove you in to see us, she said. Sit down. Make yourself at home.

  Angel said nothing. She sat tracing the grain of the scrubbed table top with her nail.

  I was walking across the hill, Ara said, and I dropped in to ask after Ma. I thought I saw her this morning down by our place, but she didn’t stop.

  The room was dark. Greta made no movement in the corner.

  You almost need a lamp, Ara said. Did Ma come in? She’s too old to be out in this. It comes on sudden in the summer.

  She’s not been out, Greta said.

  She must be sleeping, Angel said. Not a single board has creaked.

  She’s been sleeping, Greta said.

  You’ve been seeing things, Ara, Greta said. Like everyone else round here. You’ve been looking into other people’s affairs. Noticing this. Remarking that. Seeing too much. Hearing too much.

  Who’s had the trouble of her? Greta asked. Who’s cooked and care for her? I’m not complaining. It’s my place here, and I know my place. If I’d married a man and gone off, there’s no telling what might have happened. He might be riding round the country in a truck. Stopping and talking to women in the road. He might be leaning over the counter buying thread for somebody. He might be playing the fiddle while the pains was on me. He might be meeting the Widow’s girl down in the creek bottom. He might be laying her down in the leaves.

  Ara had been looking at Greta.

  You’ve no right to speak that way of the girl, Ara said. You don’t know.

  You don’t know what I know, Greta said.

  Angel got up and reached for the lamp.

  Leave it down, Greta said. I light the lamps in this house now.

  14

  The storm which drove Ara into Greta’s kitchen woke Felix Prosper. He sat up in his chair. The hounds cowered down, their dewlaps pressed to the earth.

  Who’s shouting on Kip? Felix asked. What’s Kip doing here?

  Recalled as if urgently from sleep he looked around for the cause. The heat was still heavy in the air. Felix noticed the darkening of the sky and heard above the beginning of the storm.

  Thunder. It meant nothing to him.

  Rain. He picked up the fiddle and took it into the house. Then he came back for an armful of wood.

  The hounds had slunk off somewhere. Like old women to a feather-bed. He’d seen Angel light a lamp against the storm. Not a wax candle to the Virgin, but the light she’d said her father kept burning against the mist that brought death.

  A candle. He had no need for one.

  He lit a fire in the stove. He poured water on the grounds in the granite pot. Ground a few fresh beans and added them to the brew. Sat on a backless wooden chair. Splay-legged. His mind floating in content of being. His lips drinking the cup already.

  The cup which Angel had put into his hand, her bitter going, he’d left untouched. Left standing. A something set down. No constraint to make him drink. No struggle against the drinking. No let-it-pass. No it-is-done. Simply redeemed. Claiming before death a share of his inheritance.

  The cup for which he reached was not the hard ironware lined
with the etch of tea and coffee. It was the knobbed glass moulded to the size of his content. Pleasure in the light of it. The knowing how much to drink. How much drunk. The rough knobbed heat of it.

  Above him the blow and the answer. The rain pounding the tar-paper roof. The memory of the time Angel had seen the bear at the fish camp. Seen the bear rising on its haunches. Prostrating itself before the unsacked winds. Rising as if to strike. Bowing to the spirits let out of the sack, Angel thought, by the meddler Coyote. The bear advancing. Mowing.

  Scraping. Genuflecting. Angel furious with fear beating wildly. Her hunting-knife pounding the old billycan.

  He chuckled, remembering the noise and the white face of Angel when he picked up the bear in its devotions. Picked up paper blown off the fish-shack roof.

  The remembrance of event and the slash of rain merged. Time annihilated in the concurrence. The present contracted into the sweet hot cup he fondled. Vast fingers circling it.

  Then he heard dogs bark somewhere in the direction of the barn, as if they’d found a rat in the manger and raftered it. He looked round for the terrier and wondered at her going. She would not run with the hounds or rub hides for manger berth.

  She was equal to a rat her own size. Would tackle one. Like the one he’d poked down. Poked at. For the thing crouching, its tail hanging there above his head, had sprung. Had jumped to the pole seeking it. Had run from pole to arm, its teeth sinking in his neck crevice, its claws clutching mad with dread. He had shaken it off, uncertain in its rage, and her teeth had closed on its throat. White foam on the brown swirl of it. The old lady fishing in the brown water for fish she’d never eat. The old lady year after year.