The Double Hook

by Sheila Watson

  She pulled the girl over to the foot of the stairs.

  I heard her breath stop, she said. And the cold setting her flesh. Don’t believe what James might say. She’s not looking still. I heard what we’d been waiting to hear. What James and me had been waiting to hear all these years. There was only James, she said. Only James and me waiting.

  What do you want? the girl said. What are you telling me for? What can I do?

  She pulled herself free and went to the door. But outside was night. Outside was Kip. Outside was floorless, roofless, wall-less.

  Let me stop, she said. I’ve no place to go.

  Greta crossed the room.

  Go away, she said. Go away and leave us in peace. Don’t ask me. Don’t put the blame on me. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can say. Go yourself while there’s still time.

  The girl did not move from the doorway.

  He’ll kill me too, Greta said. He’ll shove me down for standing in his way.

  Then they heard James’s voice rising in the barn. They heard a cry. They heard Kip’s voice: You bastard, James. They heard James’s voice. They heard his words: If you were God Almighty, if you’d as many eyes as a spider I’d get them all.

  They heard a bucket overturn and animals move in their stalls.

  Then they heard James’s voice again: Miserable shrew, smell me out if you can.

  Now Greta and the girl stood watching in the doorway.

  James came out of the barn alone. He came one hand swinging the lantern, the other trailing the rawhide whip he used to break his horses. He came out of the barn and up the rise towards them.

  James, Greta said.

  He lifted his whip. It reached out towards her, tearing through the flowers of her housecoat, leaving a line on her flesh. Then as the thong unloosed its sweep it coiled with a jerk about Lenchen’s knees.

  Not long after they heard him ride off through the gate.

  14

  Ara heard and woke. William had raised himself on his elbow and was looking down on her in the thin morning light.

  I’m sure, he said, I heard the beat of a horse’s hooves.

  It’s probably Kip, Ara said. Just looking round.

  He’ll look once too often, William said. But he lay down and reached out his arm towards her.

  Angel heard. Got up. Went to the window. Saw only the dust raised by something which had disappeared. Turning saw Theophil and the children asleep on the mattress.

  He’d no right to turn Kip out, she thought. He’s gone off perhaps, and now I’ll never hear the things he sees.

  The Widow heard. It’s the boy, she thought, going off again.

  But the boy was stirring in the kitchen below. Knocking the stove wood into place with the lifter.

  She put her hand over her eyes.

  Dear God, she thought. How easy death would be if there was death and nothing more.

  Felix Prosper slept. He dreamed that Angel was riding through his gate on a sleek ass. He was pulling the scratchy white surplice over his uncombed head. It was early and the ground was wet with dew.

  I mustn’t forget, he thought. I mustn’t forget.

  He saw a coyote standing near the creek. He wanted to follow it into the hills. He felt its rough smell on his tongue.

  He turned away from the creek and went to the gate. He could feel the surplice straining at his armpits like a garment which had shrunk in a storm. He reached up his hand.

  Dignum et justum est, he said as he helped Angel down.

  THREE

  l

  Heinrich too had heard the beat of hooves. He wrenched a stick of wood into place in the stove. Stood watching the flicker of light on the board ceiling. Stood trying to think that he’d heard nothing. That it was a morning like every other morning he’d known.

  He went to the shelf and took down three cups. He put the pan on the stove and cut bacon and bread. He heard his mother moving about. He went to the foot of the stairs.

  Can’t you smell the bacon? he called.

  His mother came down and sat at the table.

  He gave her her plate. Seeing as he gave it to her her thin grey hair pulled tight from the crown of her head.

  The Widow pushed back her plate.

  I’m afraid, she said. What is said is said. I couldn’t pick up the shame again, she said.

  A man needn’t hang himself because he’s put his neck through a noose in the dark, Heinrich said. What will you do if I bring the girl back?

  Dear God, the Widow said. Dear God.

  2

  Felix Prosper had wakened after his dream. He sat on the steps in the morning light. The hounds lay away from him, their heads coiled under their paws, their backs cramped against the side of the house. The terrier had crept down under the covers. Felix sat by himself. The edge of the step cut into his flesh. He had brought his fiddle with him, but it lay beside him. His eyes looked out on an empty world. His flesh was heavy on his bone, a cumbersome coat folded and creased and sagging at the seams. His hands dropped empty between his knees.

  So one grew old. Haunted by an image of Angel come back filled like a cup with another man’s passion. Haunted by the image of a boy Felix come back in sleep asking: Can your joy be bound by a glass rim? Is death a fishbone in your hand?

  Felix reached for his fiddle. He set it in the soft fold between chin and shoulder. The hounds stirring coiled tighter against the sound. Then something answered in the bushes by the creek. Felix heard branches pushed aside. He looked up. It was Kip. Coming over the rise. Lifting his face windward like an animal.

  His shirt had been torn by the branches. His legs were splashed with creek water. His face was a livid wound.

  Felix put down his fiddle and got up from the step. His hand reached for Kip’s arm.

  What’s happened? he said. Where have you been?

  Walking down the creek, Kip said. Finding my way by the smell of the water. I wanted a man’s girl, he said. I’d seen enough to buy her.

  Fool, Felix said. But he took Kip into the house and shaking the terrier out of the blanket sat Kip on the bed. He lit the fire in the stove and made coffee. He heated some water and put it in the hand-basin. Then he looked in at Kip silent on the blanket and putting on his cotton cap he walked barefoot out into the dust of the road.

  3

  In the cabin by the quarry Angel was getting breakfast. The children sat on the bench by the stove. They were still dressed in the short cotton shirts which they wore in bed. Rolled over on the mattress Theophil smoked, his arm propping his head.

  You’ll burn up the bed, Angel said. Then where will you have to lie about on all day long and all night too?

  It’s my bed, Theophil said.

  He shut his eyes and drew his knees closer to his belly. Then he looked up.

  You used to listen and learn from me, Theophil said. Now you just tell. Right from the squeak of dawn. Telling. Telling. A man would be hard pressed to wedge a word into the silences you leave.

  You said you wanted to take care of us, Angel said. Now you just want attention yourself.

  It’s the way you work on a man, Theophil said. Wearing him out. Forcing everything. I liked the look of you, he said, when you were out of my reach.

  Of course, Angel said. Poor and thin as you are. And having climbed up, she said, you’d spare yourself the trouble of climbing again.

  She pressed a hotcake flat with her knife.

  You needn’t spoil the cakes, he said.

  Who would be riding down the road just at daylight? she asked.

  How would I know? he said. What’s it got to do with you? Is there nothing you can’t let alone?

  It might have been Kip, she said. And then again not. It might have been one of the Potters. There’s trouble already at James Potter’s, she said, and there’ll be more. That Greta’s got a whole case of dynamite under her skirt.

  More like that James has a stick in his britches, Theophil said.

  A
ngel turned around from the stove. She wiped her hand on her skirt. Then she spat on her finger and held it up as if she were trying to find the direction of the wind.

  Oh-ho, she said.

  Theophil got up from the mattress.

  Get those cakes on the table, he said. Or I’ll oh-ho and ho-oh you till you think twice next time before you make fun of me. You came jumping into my bed over Felix’s back, and you’ve got me squatting nice for another jump.

  Angel jerked the children off the bench where they sat.

  Get into your things, she said. What do you think will happen to you if you doze around all day with your backsides hanging out?

  What do you think will happen to them anyway? Theophil said. They’ll be stupid and ugly as the rest. They’re nice enough kids, too, he said. But I sure don’t need you and your kids round here showing me how miserable a person can be. I don’t need you or anyone else painting in big letters what’s easy to see.

  4

  In Ara’s kitchen William laid down his knife and fork and put his coffee-cup in the middle of his plate. Then he put some more sugar in his cup.

  I shouldn’t have come away, he said. But a man has his own things to see to. I took it they could straighten things out between themselves. There’s things even a man’s own brother has to pass by.

  Ara sat fraying threads from the edge of the oil-cloth.

  There are things, she said, that can’t be straightened out. They have to be pulled and wrenched and torn. And maybe just stay muddled up. Or pushed out of sight and left where they are. You can’t tidy up people the way you can tidy up a room, she said. They’re too narrow or too big. And even rooms, she said, don’t take long to get untidy again.

  I don’t complain, he said. Though for myself I like to keep my gear in order.

  You never complain at all, she said. Sometimes I wish you would. There’s a sort of dryness settled on us like dust. You’re seeing things all the time, but you never look at anything here. Sometimes when your mother was going up and down the creek I wanted to call out: What are you looking at? She was the one who noticed. If we had a child, she said, you’d care enough to complain. Your mother hated me and you pity me. Where can a woman lift herself on two such ropes. One pulling her down. The other simply holding her suspended.

  I don’t know, William said.

  That’s the first time I’ve heard you say you didn’t know and really mean it, Ara said.

  She pressed her hands against her eyes.

  William got up and went round the table. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  Don’t, Ara, he said.

  Don’t what? she asked.

  Don’t squeeze at your eyes like that, he said. I’ve known men blinded by less. Over a period of time, he said.

  Could I be blinder than I am? she asked. Seeing things only in flashes.

  He put his hand on her shoulder again.

  Why are you so set on scorning yourself? he said. Put on your things, he said, and come up to James’s with me. I’m going as soon as I finish here.

  He sat down and began to pull on his boots.

  If you come thinking Greta’s going to light out at you, he said, she probably will. People keep thinking thoughts into other people’s heads. I’ve seen a woman thinking how a man despised her, and keep thinking it till a man knocked her down. It’s best to be trusting and loving, he said.

  What’s loving? she asked. Loving just makes trouble. Look at the girl Wagner, she said. She’s got through loving what loving never gave me, and it’s as much or more shame to her. I told Greta not to speak that way, but I knew. Was Greta right, too, about your leaning over counters when you’re not here. Are you looking for someone else to get children for you? Who is the father of the Wagner girl’s child? Tell me, she said. William, tell me.

  What do you want me to tell you? he asked.

  Nothing, she said. Nothing at all.

  I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Ara, he said. You’ve never talked like this before. It doesn’t make sense in your mouth somehow.

  Ever since I was in Greta’s kitchen during the storm, she said, I’ve been trying to fit the pieces into a pattern.

  Some of the pieces aren’t so far to look for as you think, he said.

  Do you know, Ara, he said, for a man who sees so much I’ve not seen what was growing up in my own yard. It’s like a man who stands on a rock looking over a valley. He doesn’t notice the rock, he said. He just stands on it.

  He got up, but he did not move away.

  Suppose the rock should suddenly begin to move, he said. Or started clutching at you like gumbo.

  There’s too much supposing, Ara said. Yet how can a man escape it since he can’t hold and shape the world. I often envy the horses, she said, standing tail to head and head to rump flicking off each other’s flies.

  And biting one another from time to time, William said. And letting go with their heels. Beasts aren’t much different from me, he said, though they’ve often less freedom. Take my horse, he said.

  He could break out, Ara said. He’s the strength to defy you. You or any man at all.

  He could, William said, but what would he gain by it. He wouldn’t know where to go or what to do after the break. I’ve seen horses, he said, untie themselves and go walking out of barns. I’ve seen them knock down fences and kick themselves out of corrals. But I’ve seen them come wandering back to the barn and the hay. Some, he said, are pure outlaw. But there’s the torment of loneliness and the will of snow and heat they can’t escape, and the likelihood that some stranger will put a rope on them at last.

  Or perhaps even the man that branded them, Ara said. There are some men I suppose who follow, their ropes coiled and waiting. Sometimes I think of God like that, she said. The glory of his face shaded by his hat. Not coaxing with pans of oats, but coming after you with a whip until you stand and face him in the end.

  I don’t know about God, William said. Your god sounds only a step from the Indian’s Coyote. Though that one would jump on a man when his back was turned. I’ve never seen God, he said, but if I did I don’t think I’d be very much surprised.

  I don’t suppose you would, Ara said. Then she picked up the dishes and put them in the pan.

  You’re right, she said. Let’s get ready to go. I’ve a feeling that perhaps we’re wanted.

  You might have baked something, William said. But it’s too late to be thinking of that now.

  5

  Before Ara and William had shut the door of their house behind them, Felix Prosper arrived at Theophil’s.

  Angel had cleared the dishes away and sent the children out, but Theophil had gone back to the mattress. He lay loose there like a dog on a rumpled sack. His eyes sagging half shut. His face twitching and jerking as if in near sleep he sniffed again the rank scent of other men on the grass which grew tufted at his own doorstep.

  You’re just thinking up trouble, Angel said, the way a man thinks up reasons for what he’s got his mind harnessed to do.

  Go on, Theophil said, opening his eyes. Go on as if you were reading out of a newspaper what’s in my mind. Go on as if my head was as plain to see into as an old shack with the curtains off. Last night you knew what my intentions were, he said, but you didn’t know why I intended. Why that Kip is nothing but a go-between for James and his women.

  What women? Angel asked.

  Well, the Wagner girl for one, Theophil said.

  And for two? Angel asked.

  A knocking at the door answered her.

  Just a minute, Theophil said. He got up from the mattress and pulled on his trousers.

  To think, he said, that someone would come so close and I’d not hear.

  Well, said Angel, am I to answer or are you set on combing and scrubbing yourself first? What’s good enough to lay round in is good enough to open the door in.

  But the door opened itself. Was opened by Prosper who stood hearing the words before and after the knock. Who stood li
stening when the occasion for listening had come and gone. Who stood feeling the sweat leak from under the grip of his cotton cap. Stood feeling the dust nagging the soles of his feet.

  Felix heavy on the doorstep. Angel spun round like a flame on the wide boards of the floor. Behind Theophil rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

  What could he say, Felix thought. All the way up the road he’d been trying to form the words.

  Peace be with you, he said.

  Angel took a step forward.

  Forgive us our trespasses, Felix said.

  Theophil shoved Angel aside and started for the door.

  And lead us not into temptation, Theophil said. His fingers curled into the palms of his hands. The priest taught me the same way he taught you, he said. He spat on the floor.

  And uncurling one hand he wiped it across the back of his mouth.

  Felix shut his eyes. He could feel the sweat trickling down the furrows of his cheeks.

  Angel, he said, I need you.

  She drew back behind Theophil.

  I’ve heard those words before, she said. What’s the use of going from worse back to bad?

  Felix felt the scratch. He put out his hand. He saw her for a moment as a small cat, trying to step her way through the puddles of the world. Fighting the dogs. Mousing for her young.

  Angel, he called as he called the terrier. Angel.

  Stop bellowing like a sick cow, Theophil said. And get moving. We don’t want any trouble here. I don’t want to answer in justice for knocking you down. Besides, he said, I’d have to hire a block and tackle to get you off my doorstep.