The Double Hook

by Sheila Watson

  Lilly twisted round towards James.

  Sit down, she said.

  The other girl turned over on her belly and propped her chin in her hands.

  Where did Traff pick you up? she asked.

  He didn’t pick me up, James said. We just happened together. No obligation on either side.

  The girl behind Lilly wriggled closer.

  What sort of trouble are you in? she asked. Did you pop someone or something?

  Shut up, Christine, Lilly said. If a man’s in trouble, he’s got enough to think about without people asking.

  Traff looked in from the kitchen, his yellow head gleaming in the lamplight.

  Don’t let them bother you, he said. We’ll be out with the food right away.

  James knew then why he was drawn to Traff. It was the cap of hair, straight and thick and yellow as Lenchen’s. He looked at the two heads beside him. At the dark faces. At the thin and angled bodies.

  Traff means all right, Christine said.

  We all mean all right, Lilly said. It’s just there’s no future in it. Drinking and crying, and everything being washed up the next day.

  No, James said.

  He took out his wallet and put ten dollars on the bed.

  They can take it for food, he said. It’s little enough to get shut of eating a mess of picked fish.

  10

  Outside James could hear the flow of the river. The air was cooler. The night pressed against his eyes. He slipped down over the slanted edge of the bank to the sandbar. For the first time in his life he felt quite alone. If his mother was there, he could not feel even a vibration of her shadow in the darkness.

  But almost at once he heard the clay slipping behind him and the sound of a stone loosed and in motion. In a moment Lilly stood beside him.

  What are you doing? she asked.

  I don’t know, he said. Looking for something I hope is lost.

  Why bother? she asked.

  I guess I want to be sure, he said. I can’t remember the time I’ve been sure of anything.

  What do you go taking up with Traff for? she said. He’s not your kind. If he had money in his purse, he’d not just sit on a bed and go off. Not without taking what he’d paid for. Even when he hasn’t any money, she said, there’s a lot he takes for granted.

  I left the money there for Fleeza, she said.

  Why did you come down here after me? James asked.

  Because I like you, she said. Because, she said, you just sat there looking miserable when another man would have had his hands already on our skirts.

  She came towards him in the darkness. Then he felt her hand on his sleeve.

  It’s all now with Traff, Lilly said. It’s what he wants and quick.

  Do you really believe I’m different from Traff, James said.

  He shook her hand from his sleeve.

  Leave me alone, he said. I’ve enough harm to answer for.

  But he stood where he was, hearing her breath hard in the darkness.

  Go away, he said, putting his own hand on her arm.

  She turned towards him. Her hands pressed against his chest. Running like fire from his arms to his thighs.

  Go away, he said. His arm pulled her close. His face pressed into the angle of her neck.

  He felt the fire of her hand and the night lifting above him.

  Then she was gone.

  He heard her hand on the bushes as she pulled herself up the bank. Her foot on the sliding clay. He heard Traff’s voice and the click of a latch. The night was empty about him.

  11

  He climbed the bank. Through Felicia’s window he saw Traff sitting at Felicia’s table counting a handful of bills: ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, two, four, six. Lilly was sitting on the edge of the table resting back on her hands. In one of them she held a wallet. He put his hand up to his pocket. His wallet was gone.

  Traff’s head shone yellow in the lamplight. James had no desire to move. He watched Traff curiously. Traff put the bills in his pocket. Got up. Took the lid off the stove and, reaching for the wallet, tossed it into the fire-box. James saw him put the lid back. He wondered where Christine, Felicia and the other man were. Traff had gone over to Lilly. As he bent over her she curled her legs behind the bend of his knees. They were both laughing.

  Alone outside the glass of the cabin window James laughed too. Laughed looking in at someone else. The price of his escape lay snug in one of Traff’s trouser pockets. Traff was bending closer. The girl’s hands were on his shoulders. James turned away from the cabin.

  The life which Traff and Lilly led behind Felicia’s dull glass belonged under Felicia’s narrow roof. In the distance across the flats James could see the lights of the station and across from them the lights of the hotel where the parrot who lived between two worlds was probably asleep now, stupid with beer and age.

  James stood for a moment in the moonlight among the clumps of stiff sage which shoved through the seams and pockets of the earth.

  FIVE

  1

  William stood looking into the charred roots of the one suckle.

  What use, he asked, could even three people be since the door was barred and there was nothing but a half-empty bucket among them.

  It’s the horror, he said, of what you find. Fire doesn’t burn clean. The things you see, he said. Beds standing when there’s no one left to lie in them, and bits of dishes when there’s no one left to eat. But I never expected, he said, to see the bones of my own sister lying in the ashes of our own house. A hammer never hits once, he said. It gets the habit of striking.

  The boy turned his streaked face away from the smoke and embers.

  Ara was sitting on the ground, her arms holding her knees close to her chest, her eyes on the boy’s scorched and torn shirt.

  The words of the lord came, saying: Say now to the rebellious house, Know you not what these things mean?

  Greta had inherited destruction like a section surveyed and fenced. She had lived no longer than the old lady’s shadow left its stain on the ground. She sat in her mother’s doom as she sat in her chair.

  Greta was the youngest of us all, William said. You wouldn’t know how she was. Sliding down the stacks and falling into the creek. Ma was hard on her, he said. She thought grief was what a woman was born to sooner or later, and that men got their share of grief through them. I’ve no cause myself to complain, he said, but a man hardly lives long enough to prove a point for certain. Mostly too, he said, when he’s proved it he’s lost the care to know.

  The smoke rose from the charred logs. They had stopped the fire from spreading, but they had not stopped the fire.

  Prophesy upon these bones, Ara thought. Then she hid her face in her hands. She was afraid she would feel the earth shake and see the bones come together bone to bone. That the wind would blow and she would see Greta fleshed and sinewed standing on the ruin she had made.

  We’ve no more chance of finding your sister, William said to the boy, than we had of putting out the fire. It would be like searching a dog for fleas with a comb that had only a couple of teeth. She might have gone off with James, he said.

  The boy turned to him.

  So I wasn’t wrong, after all, he said. She might have gone off with James. You told me I’d best make sure of the facts. They were probably as clear to you as they were to me. You don’t have to spy your way along an actual built fence to know the probable lay of the land.

  Ara sat looking at the smoking doorsill. The door of the house had opened into the east wind. Into drought. She remembered how she’d thought of water as a death which might seep through the dry shell of the world. Now her tired eyes saw water issuing from under the burned threshold. Welling up and flowing down to fill the dry creek. Until dry lips drank. Until the trees stood knee deep in water.

  Everything shall live where the river comes, she said out loud. And she saw a great multitude of fish, each fish springing arched through the slanting light.


  She looked at the man and at the boy.

  How can you go on so? she asked.

  What does a man do, the boy asked, when there’s nothing to be done but dig a grave?

  He digs a grave, Ara said, and holds his peace.

  Above them a coyote barked. This time they could see it on a jut of rock calling down over the ledge so that the walls of the valley magnified its voice and sent it echoing back:

  Happy are the dead

  for their eyes see no more.

  If we don’t move, the boy said, night will be on us, and by the morning there will be no bones to bury.

  I’ve seen the place where a cow stumbled, William said, licked clean before daybreak.

  What are we going to do? the boy asked.

  We’ve definite things to think about, William said. First of all James is bound to come back. He’s not one to throw himself into a pit, though he might stand on the edge looking in.

  Let’s do what we have to, the boy said. Ma’ll be waiting and my stock and yours.

  I’ll go, Ara said. I might as well be what use I can. I’ll ride down from our place to yours and spend the night with your mother. If James is bound to come back, there’d best be someone here.

  2

  The Widow Wagner had waited all day. She moved about the house shifting a chair, a dish, a pile of clothing. At last she went to the wooden box which stood at the foot of her bed.

  She opened the lid and knelt down. Underneath Wagner’s suit, underneath his shoes wrapped in flour sacking, underneath his drawers and shirts, was cloth of her own spinning, cloth left from the time when she had made her own children’s clothes.

  Dear God, she said, how could I know?

  She went back to the chest and took out Wagner’s heavy metal watch. She’d meant to give it to the boy. She’d meant a great many things.

  What is time, she thought, but two hands shaking us from sleep. Fifty years or twenty. Forty years in the wilderness. What help a bed and a good goose pillow?

  Forty years, she said. Then she put the watch back into the box and closed the lid.

  She picked up the cloth and went down to the kitchen. She spread the cloth on the table and took the shears out of the drawer. And out of the cloth she cut a baby’s singlet.

  3

  Meanwhile Angel had gone about her work.

  There’s no use crying, she said to the girl. No use at all.

  Water, she said to Felix. Her finger pointed to the buckets on the bench. Then she turned and went into the other room.

  Kip, she called. What’s the matter, Kip?

  It’s my eyes, Kip said, but I had it coming. There’s no time a bug won’t get its wings frayed in the end.

  I’d a feeling you’d get into trouble, Angel said. Phil had no right to turn you out. I might just as well have been shut of him soon as late. When suspicion buzzes on a mind like his, the maggots eat right in.

  Tell the girl, Kip said, that I didn’t mean nothing. The old white moon had me by the hair.

  The girl was standing at the door looking in.

  You wouldn’t know what he said, she muttered.

  I can suspect, Angel said. It wouldn’t take a great stretch to imagine.

  She knelt down by the bed and took Kip’s face in her hands.

  Who’ll see things now, she said. The bugs. The flowers. The bits of striped stone.

  The girl was crying again.

  It was me, she said. All because of me the whole world’s wrecked, she said.

  The whole world is a big lot for one girl to wreck, Angel said.

  She pulled the blanket round Kip.

  Lay still, she said, till I get some water.

  She stood up.

  Go back into the kitchen, she said to the girl. There’s still some ground to walk on, and I figure there isn’t a single inch tore out of the sky. When you wreck the world you won’t stand round talking about it.

  She walked into the kitchen behind the girl.

  If I did right, she said, I’d pack you up and send you back to your ma.

  The girl sat down on the bench beside the stove.

  I’ll do what you want, she said. Only let me stop.

  She put out her hand towards Angel.

  He hit me, she said. James hit me.

  And well he might, Angel said, if you were snivelling the way you’re snivelling now.

  Felix, she called through the door. Felix, are you waiting for the rain to fill your buckets.

  Angel, the girl said.

  Angel turned. I thought you’d done, she said.

  He went away, the girl said. He got on his horse and went off. He just left me there with Greta.

  Angel paid no attention.

  Felix, she called. Felix.

  But Felix was already in the doorway. He held the bail of the bucket askew so that the water slopped over and left a dark stain on the leg of his overalls.

  I saw James Potter’s old mother standing by my brown pool, he said. I was thinking of catching some fish for the lot of us. But she wasn’t fishing, he said. Just standing like a tree with its roots reaching out to water.

  Give me the bucket, Angel said. There’s things to be done needs ordinary human hands.

  4

  The Widow sat with the singlet half finished in her lap. She could hear the calf bawling in the yard outside. She got up and put another stick on the stove. The lids of the pots rose and fell.

  How long this time? she thought.

  She put on her black sweater and took the cloth off the milking-pail. The calf was in the yard. The cow was in the pasture beyond. As she let down the bars, the calf pressed close at her side.

  When the last bar fell the calf shoved past her. The cow raised her head. Spoke to the calf. Was licking its neck and flanks.

  Wait till I come, the Widow called.

  The cow and the calf paid no attention to her.

  Shoo, she said, lifting her apron and shaking it. She put down her pail and took hold of the calf’s tail. The calf’s legs stiffened. It kept its head down. She could see the movement of its throat and the milk dribbling from the corners of its mouth.

  Stop, she cried.

  But the calf drank on, its tail slipping through her fingers like rope.

  Help, help, she called to the cow. We’re old women both of us.

  The cow adjusted her hip. She raised her horns a little and breathed heavily through her black nostrils.

  5

  When Ara came she turned the calf back into the yard. She watered the horses and threw hay down to them.

  I’ve wasted the milk, the Widow said. There will be none for the children.

  She had set food out for three.

  I hate to think of the men, Ara said as she sat down. They haven’t a bite between them. There’s a sort of shame in eating when grief is everywhere.

  She leant over and picked up the shirt which the Widow had left on the chair.

  So you do know, she said. It would be hard to believe that you didn’t.

  The Widow shut her eyes. Dear God, she said, there’s nothing one can hide.

  Too much has happened, Ara said, to talk of hiding. James’s mother’s dead. Her house has burned down and Greta in it. Your house is standing and your children are alive.

  Lenchen will suffer like the rest of us, the Widow said. She’s done wrong.

  Right and wrong don’t make much difference, Ara said. We don’t choose what we will suffer. We can’t even see how suffering will come.

  She tossed the shirt onto the couch under the window.

  I never see baby-clothes, she said, that I don’t think how a child puts on suffering with them.

  6

  In the cabin by the quarry Theophil slept again. His body turned and twitched on the mattress. Outside the yellow cat rubbed against the door, waiting to be let in.

  7

  Below in Felix’s house there was no noise except the stir and breath of living things. Angel had moved Kip from the b
ed. He lay now on a network of branches which she’d made Felix cut and carry into the house. The scent of pine needles filled the room. Angel sat by the stove. The girl lay curled round in a blanket, her head propped against the saddle Felix had brought from the barn.

  Angel got up and went to the bedroom door. In the shadow of the moonlight she could see Felix lying like a rock rooted in the middle of the bed. About him lay his children. And safe in the crevice of his hip the terrier crouched alert and watching with its amber eyes the figure in the doorway.

  The girl moaned. Angel turned back to her. She put a stick in the stove and filled the kettle. The girl muttered in her sleep. Angel bent over her. The girl whimpered and moved her knees. She opened her eyes and spoke to Angel.

  Will James come? she said.

  Kip stirred on his bed of branches.

  Tell James I didn’t mean any harm, he said. If anyone should ask, I was just riding along and fell into a bed of prickly pear.

  Hush, Angel said. Night’s for sleep when you have a place to lay your head.

  8

  James looked back over his shoulder at the moonlight slanting on the roof of Felicia’s shack. There where the moonlight slid down the walls Traff and Lilly swam in the pool of silver they had stolen.

  The flick of a girl’s hand had freed James from freedom. He’d kissed away escape in the mud by the river. He thought now of Lenchen and the child who would wear his face. Alone on the edge of the town where men clung together for protection, he saw clearly for a moment his simple hope.

  He had walked away from the cabin. He skirted the main street and went back to the barn. The barn door was locked, and he had to pound on the door to waken the owner who lived in the barn with the horses.

  I’ll saddle for myself, James said. Then he remembered that he’d nothing left to pay for the horse’s hay and stabling.

  Write it down, he said. I’ll pay when I’m next in town. There are times when a man spends more than he has and must go on credit.