Six
The rain had stopped sometime during the night and dawn had been gray with mist coming up from the river and hanging wet and dripping among the pines along the hillside. It was midmorning now as Mitch came up toward the house from an inspection of the fields, anxiously watching the sky for some sign that the sun was going to break through. If it cleared now it would be two days before they could work in the upper fields and nearly a week before the bottom was dry enough to plow.
He came up past the barn and turned the mules out to pasture, thinking impatiently of all the work that cried out to be done if they were to save the crop and could not be started until the ground began to dry. If it rains any more we’re goners, he thought. It’s got to stop. We won’t even pay off the credit and we’ll be rooting for acorns like the hogs this winter if it keeps on. He cut across the yard, walking silently on the white, hard, rain-packed sand, and nodded a solemn greeting to Mexico as the big hound came out from under the house. Mexico approached him with the stately dignity of age and high rank and shoved a moist black nose against his palm in courtly salutation.
Mitch gave the pendulous chops an affectionate slap with his hand and went on toward the house, hearing now the excited rattle of voices somewhere out in front.. He turned and started around the corner and was hit a glancing blow by Jessie, running full tilt along the side of the house. She bounced off him, frozen-faced, unrecognizing, her eyes full of the horror she was running from, and ran on toward the barn. He saw her go at full flight into the door and turned and ran after her. She was nowhere in sight in the gloomy interior among the empty stalls, but the door of the corn crib was open and he bent over and went in. She was huddled on the pile of unhusked corn with her face in her arms against the wall, not crying, for there-was no sound of crying, but her body was shaking as if with chill.
“Jessie, what’s the matter? What is it, Jessie?” he asked, afraid, and conscious of the old helplessness he always felt when confronted with her problems because they were never the same as his and he could not understand them or cope with them, no matter how much he ached to help her.
She did not answer and he knelt down awkwardly beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. It was still shaking badly and she drew away from his touch as if she would burrow into the corn and escape from sight.
“Go ‘way, Mitch,” she said in a muffled voice.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“Don’t look at me. Go ‘way.”
“Are you hurt?” She shook her head.
“Do you feel bad?”
She shook her head again and drew away.
“Can I do anything?”
“No,” she said in the same muffled voice. “Only go away. I’ll be all right in a little while.”
He stood up, wooden-faced, and went back out the door and across the yard, walking fast. Cass and Joy were sitting on the steps of the front porch and Prentiss Jimerson was walking up and down in front of them bursting with his story and they all talked at once.
“He escaped, Mitch,” Prentiss said breathlessly, in a hurry to get it out before the others could beat him to it.
“Got clean away. They can’t find hide or hair of him,” Cass broke in.
“Killed a deputy,” Prentiss said, verbally shoving Cass aside. “It’s all over the radio, in the news. More’n it was before. Wrecked the car, shot the deputy, and couldn’t find the keys to the handcuffs so he sawed off his hand with a pocketknife.”
“He did what?” Mitch asked.
“Cut the deputy’s hand off that he was handcuffed to,” Prentiss went on in an eruption of words, too excited to see the fury in Mitch’s face.
”And you come over here and told that in front of Jessie? Why, you long-nosed sonofabitch!” Mitch said with the singing edge of violence in his voice. He took a step toward Prentiss and the youth backed up with his hands held out placatingly and shocked bewilderment on his face.
“Hold on, Mitch,” he pleaded. “I ain’t done nothing. I just said what was on the radio.”
“You didn’t have to say it in front of Jessie. You better go on home. When we want any more of your goddamned news, we’ll send for you.”
Prentiss looked from Mitch over to Cass as if for support, with his face puzzled and hurt. He had always been somewhat in awe of both the Neely boys, and this violent reception of his news, especially after the way Cass and Miss Joy had hung onto his words, was disconcerting and a little frightening.
“Well, I didn’t mean no harm,” he said. He looked around at all of them and turned to go. Cass started to say something but glanced toward Mitch and changed his mind.
“Thanks for telling us, Prentiss,” Joy called after him. She threw a spiteful glance at Mitch.
After Prentiss had shuffled his deflated way up the road Cass stirred uncomfortably on the step. “That was a cruel thing to say to a neighbor, Mitch. You oughtn’t to talk like that,” he said, not looking up.
Mitch thought of Jessie trying to shut out the sight and the thought of it by burrowing her face into her arms out in the barn and felt no sympathy for Prentiss. It wasn’t his fault, if you thought about it, but maybe the big-mouthed fool would stay away from her the next time he had any news like that.
“What about Jessie?” he asked coldly.
“Well, she’d have to know sooner or later. No way you could help that. Now you’ve insulted him like that, he won’t come back no more.”
“I can stand it,” Mitch said.
“We won’t hear no more news about Sewell,” Cass said querulously.
Mitch stared at him. “That’ll be all right, too. I don’t want to hear no more of that news about Sewell.”
Cass sighed and looked at the ground. “A hard heart is a sin. You got no feeling for your brother.”
“Listening to it ain’t going to help him.”
“You just got no feeling for him.” Cass brought out a soiled bandanna handkerchief and dabbed futilely at his eyes. “I tried to raise my boys up to be Christians,” he said tearfully to Joy. “But I reckon it’s a judgment of some kind on me that they’re so hardhearted. It’s a sin visited on the father.”
I hope the old goat ain’t going to cry, Joy thought. She patted his arm. “Don’t take it so hard, Cass. It’ll work out all right.”
“It’s an awful thing,” Cass went on piteously. “Thinking of that boy out there somewheres running from the law and prob’ly hurt and hunted down like a wild animal and we don’t even know where he is and got no way of finding out. He might be shot right now with a bullet in him and we’d never know. Got no radio, and no nothing. I reckon nobody cares, though. Ev’body’s got to be hardhearted.”
Mitch looked at both of them with contempt and turned and went around the corner of the house, feeling the sickness in his stomach. If we had a radio, he thought, and could set and listen to the news, everything would be all right and we’d find out that Sewell didn’t hold up nobody or kill no deputy or butcher him up with a knife. That’s all we need—more news.
Because he had to be doing something, he went out to the woodpile behind the house and began splitting wood for the kitchen stove, attacking the pile of red-oak blocks with a bitter violence to shut out his thoughts. In a little while Jessie came out of the barn and went past him toward the kitchen, looking straight ahead like an Indian. Mexico trotted toward her but she went on past him and into the house. Mitch watched her helplessly and left her alone. There’s nothing you can do, he thought.
He looked up suddenly, and dropped the ax. Cass had come around the corner of the house carrying a short length of old plowline in his hand. He stopped a whistled to Mexico, not looking toward Mitch.
Mitch watched him. Well, he’s got it squared around his mind till it’s all right, he thought. I should have known I was just making it easier for him when I bounced that damn Prentiss out of here. He works it around in his mind till all the facts agree with him and then he goes ahead.
He walked over to where Cass was knotting the line about Mexico’s neck.
“You going somewhere with Mexico?” he asked, choking on the fury inside him but keeping his voice quiet because he didn’t want Jessie to hear it in the kitchen and because he knew he was fighting water that would flow around him until he drowned in it without ever finding a solid place to hit.
“I ain’t one to put a dawg ahead of my family,” Cass said with martyred politeness.
“I didn’t say nothing about that. I said, where you going with Mexico?”
“Ain’t air one around here that’s got more regard for Mexico than I have, but my family comes first with me.”
You could talk all day and never get an answer, Mitch thought. “Where you going with Mexico?” he insisted.
“Maybe it’s my fault that I ain’t hardhearted enough to just set here and do nothing while they chase my boy around the state with guns like he was a wild animal and not do nothing about it and not even know where he is, but that’s the way I am, and I’m getting too old to change.”
“You figure that’s going to be a big help to Sewell, setting in front of a radio and hearing ‘em talk about him?”
“No. It won’t help Sewell none, unless there’s some way the Almighty can let him know that there was at least one of us cared enough about him to try to find out where he was.”
I could stop him, Mitch thought. It ain’t that I ain’t big enough to stop him, but it’s what would happen afterward. Any man can raise his hand against his daddy if he wants to, when he’s big enough, but he can’t never live with him any more. Sewell did it when he sold his guitar, he hit him and called him a name nobody can call his own daddy and ever forget about it afterward, but he left when he had done it.
How am I going to leave? I couldn’t take Jessie with me, working in sawmills and road camps. And what would happen if I left her here? He can’t work the crop by himself, even if he would, and you can’t live on grass.
“Go on,” he said, his face dark with passion. “If you’re going to do it, go on before she comes out here and sees you.”