Heed the Thunder (23 page)

“They’d’ve done the same thing to you, Pa.”

“I don’t know, Edie. Maybe, maybe not. I ain’t very smart. It seems to me, though, that there was never a fight or a killin’ or a war yet that wasn’t started to keep someone from doin’ something to someone else. If they got a chance.…

“It was a mighty pretty land, Edie, the South. An’ from what I seen of the people, they were fair decent. Never saw a one of ’em that had horns or a tail. ’Bout all you could say was wrong with ’em was that they weren’t Northerners an’ their thinking apparatus didn’t quite tick with ours.…But that seemed to be enough.

“So we run ’em off their places, their homes, an’ then we burnt ’em to the ground after we’d carried off everything that was worth carrying. We done it because we knew they’d’ve done the same thing to us if they’d had the chance. We done it because they’d done some shameful things to us, because they knowed we’d’ve done the same things to them if we’d had the chance.…”

“Pa, don’t drink any more.…”

“There’s not much left, Edie.” Lincoln lay back with his eyes closed; he gasped painfully, and there was a low rattle in his chest.

Edie got up. She watched him, hesitating.

“You want me to get the others, Pa? Shall I—”

“Bob—Bob ain’t come yet?”

“Not yet. I’ll go call again, and—”

“No. No, don’t you do that, Edie.” The color came back into his face, and the gasping slackened. He sat up again.

“I guess we don’t never learn, Edie. We don’t never learn. There ain’t none of us can tell whether it’ll rain the next day or not. We don’t know whether our kids are goin’ to be boys or girls. Or why the world turns one way instead of another. Or—or the what or why or when of anything. Hindsight’s the only gift we got, except on one thing. On that, we’re all prophets.

“We know what’s in the other fellow’s mind. It don’t make no difference that we’ve never seen him before, or whatever. We know he’s out to do us if he gets the chance.”

“Pa!”

“You got plenty of time to talk, Edie. I ain’t.…We came to a house one day—not far out of Atlanta it was—and I was bringin’ up the rear, an’ all I got was a book. Don’t know why I bothered to take it, but I did. Guess I just had takin’ ways. Well, so I took it an’ I read quite a bit of it before I got tired packin’ it around. It’d been wrote a long time before and it didn’t make much sense to me, then…but part of it stuck in my head and I used to mull it over, and tonight, when that bell started ringin’, it sort of reminded me of it again.…

“I don’t remember the words no more, but I got the idea. I know what the fellow was thinkin’, and I know he was right. I know now, maybe, what the Bible means when it talks about a sparrer falling—I mean, every time there’s a death, the whole world dies a little. There ain’t no death, no deed, no o-mission or co-mission that don’t leave its mark.…

“We burn off a forest, an’ all we see is the cleared land, an’ the profit. We burn the forest because we say it’s ours to burn, an’ we can do what we want with what’s ours. We burn it, an’ the birds leave, an’ the grubs come, and the grain don’t grow so good. And there’s hot winds and dust.

“We plow up the prairie because it’s ours to plow, and we dam up the cricks because they’re ours to dam. We grab everything we can while the grabbin’s good, because it’s ours an’ because some other fellow will do it if we don’t.…And, hell, there ain’t nothin’ that’s really ours, and we don’t know what’s in the other fellow’s mind.…

“I had a thousand acres once. I said it was mine.

“Sherman had a hundred and sixty clear. He said it was his.

“And we was just two out of thousands, out of millions.

“I remember when the hay-flats—what we call the sand-hills, now—was fair land. It wasn’t as deep as the valley and more loamy, but it was fair land. It was hay country, like I said, and any damned fool could see it was. But the people wasn’t satisfied to grow hay. It wasn’t enough money for ’em, and it was their land, they said, and if they didn’t grow grain, someone else would.…So they had half a county, and they still got it—and they got something else along with it: sand and cactus an’ buzzards and rattlesnakes an’ months on end of drought, an’ half-starved rickety kids that’s going to grow up to do with what’s been given to them.…

“And now we ship in most of our hay. Prob’ly from fellows who ought to be growin’ wheat.

“I had a son, an’ he was mine. And what he done was mine, too. Fifty years or more ago we marched through Georgia, and it was ours. And, now, Ted and Gus…Ted an’ Gus…”

Edie had begun to sob. The tears, at last, had broken through her Fargo reserve.

“It’s no good cryin’, Edie,” said the old man.

“D-don’t you w-want me to call the—”

“I don’t see no point in it. It’s too late. But—but tell Bob…tell him…”

“Pa!” screamed Edie. “Ma! Sherman—
Sherman!
”

Lincoln’s eyes grew wider and wider. They stood out in his head like yellow apples. His hands went to his throat, seeming to claw at the rattle there. He gasped and a cable of blood and mucus rolled out of his sunken mouth. He looked around wildly, searching, and one of his hands ceased its clawing and gripped the cane. Twisting, he swung it viciously.

“You sons-of-bitches!” he roared, and then he fell back. And with the last twitch of his fingers, he flung the stick from him.

He had no use for canes.

A
month after Lincoln Fargo died, his wife turned the place over to Sherman and moved into the hotel. She did not want to, nor did she have to, for, while Lincoln had taken title to it after the deed-to-God fiasco, he had left it to her during her lifetime, with Sherman the ultimate heir. But Sherman needed money badly, now, and she did not need so much room, and so she moved.

In making her home with Edie Dillon, she was, it seemed to her, killing two birds with one stone. It was not only Edie’s daughterly duty to provide for her mother; she was financially obligated to do so. By staying with her, Mrs. Fargo could collect the debt which she and her son had incurred during her stay at Lincoln’s house.

She explained this to Edie on the day she moved into the hotel; quite innocently, if a trifle stupidly. And Edie, while she tried to make allowances for her mother’s incipient senility, was infuriated. From the beginning the arrangement was off to a bad start, and it progressed rapidly from bad to worse.

Edie was having a hard time making ends meet. She needed every cent she could lay hands on, and every bit of her available time was required for her paying guests. She was willing to take care of her mother, even without gratitude. But if she wanted to place herself in the rôle of someone collecting a debt, she would have to take what went with it. She would give her as good food and room and attention as she gave any other boarder. But her privileges would end there, as those of the other boarders did.

She would not allow her to nose around the kitchen and boss the DeHart girl. She would not allow her to nag at her son.

Mrs. Fargo was drawing a widow’s pension of almost thirty dollars a month, and she had a small sum laid away. But, while she had ever a ready dollar for the church and its manifold excursions against the heathen, she had never a nickel for her own doctor bills, patent medicines, toilet articles, and similar things.

She tried to explain the why of this to her daughter. She
had
to give to the church. (That was her explanation of that.) She had to hold on to all the money she could get, because what would she do if the government took a notion to stop her pension? (And that explained that.) It was all very clear to her, and she could not see why anyone else should be puzzled by it.

She didn’t see that there was anything for Edie to get mad about. And, anyways, if that DeHart girl didn’t waste so much stuff and if that young un, Bobbie, wasn’t always teasin’ for money and wearin’ his clothes out almost before he got ’em unwrapped, why…

One day, when Myrtle was visiting her, the old woman revealed the story of her abuse to the banker’s prissy wife. Edie wouldn’t let her open her mouth about anything. She wouldn’t buy her medicine no more. Bobbie was always doing things to plague her. The DeHart girl had given her a bowl of oatmeal with a fly in it.…

Myrtle rushed downstairs to confront Edie with her crimes, and such was Edie’s state by this time that she threatened to pull her sister’s hair if she heard another word from her.…Myrtle had a big house, and more doggone time on her hands, apparently, than she knew what to do with. Let her take care of her mother for a while and see how she liked it.

So Mrs. Fargo moved to Alfred Courtland’s home, and she remained there a little less than two weeks. She never knew exactly why Myrtle suggested that she move on to Sherman’s. On the morning of her departure, she went downstairs and found Myrtle lying on the lounge with two black eyes and a split lip. She said that she had fallen down the cellar steps the night before, and she’d been thinking maybe her mother would be happier out in the country again.

Mrs. Fargo said that she liked it there, all right, but Myrtle said, well, she’d better try it at Sherman’s, anyway. After all, she wouldn’t know whether she liked it or not until she tried it; and she kind of felt like it might be best.

So the old woman moved to Sherman Fargo’s farm, and whatever her complaints were before, they were doubled now. There were three kids to nag at, instead of one—three to make her upset—and Josephine was even less appreciative of criticism than Edie. She might skin them alive herself, but she wanted not one word as to their management from Mrs. Fargo. And Sherman, for one of the few times in his life, sided with his wife. He owed her something, he admitted, for turning the place over to him and, by God, she had a home there as long as she wanted one. But she’d have to keep in mind whose house it was. She’d made everyone step around in her home. Now it was her turn.

Mrs. Fargo was frightened. She couldn’t go back to Edie’s. Nor to Myrtle’s, either, she realized now. If Sherman should turn her out—if that mysterious and unpredictable thing, the government, should cease sending her the pension…

From a cranky and demanding attitude, she swung to the other extreme. Normally a hearty eater, she took to remaining away from the table. And when she did go, she ate only the things there were the most of, those that were cheapest. She even asked what they would prefer that she take, and when Sherman angrily demanded whether she thought she was at the goddamned poor farm, her fright became almost apoplectic.

When she was not eating her stingy meals, she remained in her room, making and remaking her bed, cleaning things over and over, demonstrating that she was a clean and able-bodied guest who would be no trouble to anyone.

But there was no satisfying these strange people who were her son and his family. Just as her economy at table displeased them, so were they angered by her attempts to keep out of their way.

She would sit far back in the corner of the living room on the hardest chair, her hands folded, scarcely breathing. And Sherman would suddenly emit a stream of curses and ask her what the hell she was afraid of. He would demand of Josephine and the children what the hell they’d been doing to the old lady; and Josephine sulked, and the kids despised her. Sherman would force her to drag her chair up close to the stove, to keep warm. And when she sat there sweating, but afraid to move, he would scowl and curse the more and perhaps get up and stamp out of the room.

She did not know what to do. She was afraid to eat and not to eat. Afraid to talk and not to talk. Afraid of being in the way and out of the way. Afraid.

One day she was sitting in the middle of the living room. She was sitting still, but now and then her arms jerked and her hands fluttered. She was not talking or smiling or frowning. But her lips moved and she grimaced, both smiling and frowning.

A team drove up in the yard, and a moment later Josephine waddled to the door.

“Is Pearl here,” said Philo Barkley.

“Pearl?” said Josephine. “Who’s that?”

Mrs. Fargo wondered who it was, too. It had been so long since she had heard her own name that she had forgotten it.

Then, suddenly, it came to her. He was asking for her. And she cried out to him in an excited voice, “Here I am, Bark. Right in here.”

Josephine hollered at her not to bust a blood vessel, and ushered the ex-banker in. Then, shooing the children away, she closed the door on them. Josephine was a proud woman, although it was not many an opportunity she had to show it. She had as much manners as anyone, she guessed, even if she did come from the sand-hills.

“Well, how are you, Pearl?” he said, sitting down.

“I’m not any…I’m fine, Bark.”

“I’ve been meaning for a long time to come an’ see you. Meant to see Link before he passed on. I wanted him—I wanted both of you to know I didn’t hold nothing against you.…”

Mrs. Fargo nodded. “We felt awful bad, Bark.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, it’s all behind us now, Pearl.…You know, Pearl, we’re kind of getting on, ain’t we?”

“Yes, we are, Bark.”

“Seems like the old friends are dropping off one by one. Seems like the old friends and relatives that are left ought to kind of stick together.”

Mrs. Fargo nodded that this was true.

As with everything else, there are relative degrees of slowness. In comparison to his sister-in-law, Barkley arrived at a point with the speed of a race horse and his mind was as fast as blue lightning. He droned on and on, repeating himself again and again, before she realized that he was asking her to come and live with him.

“B-but, Bark,” she stammered, blushing, “I’m quite a lot older’n you are, an’—”

“Maybe in years, Pearl. But—”

“An’ I ain’t any good in a family way no more, an…an’…”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Barkley, frankly. “Can’t see no sense to it. We’re both old enough so’s there wouldn’t be talk, if that’s what you’re thinking of.”

“Well—well…” said Mrs. Fargo. And a great load seemed to slide from her shriveling body. “Bark, I—”

“I just figured we’d be comp’ny for each other. You could keep house, run it just like you would your own. And we could go to church together of a Sunday, and—an’ I thought it would be kind of nice for both of us.”

Mrs. Fargo could not trust herself to speak. She could not speak, anyway. Her vocal cords had become momentarily paralyzed from sheer joy and relief. She could only look at him, hoping that he would not go away before she could answer.

And Bark looked at her and understood, for he was slow himself. He drew out his pipe and filled it, spending some five minutes in the tamping and igniting of the tobacco. When he had it going satisfactorily, a matter of another five minutes, he looked at her again.

“Think you’d like to come, Pearl?”

She bobbed her head.

“When?” he inquired.

And, as though the word were magic, Mrs. Fargo found her voice.

“Now, Bark. Now. Take me now, Bark.
Now. Now. Now!
”

…So he took her, then, and from all accounts the arrangement was a happy one for both of them.

They were comp’ny for each other, and she kept the house and ran it like it was her own. And on Sundays they went to church together—and it was kind of nice.

Sometimes she wish’d he’d break loose with a good cussing spell. But since that wasn’t his way, she never complained about it.

She guessed she probably wasn’t perfect herself.