WHEN Gerald Calhoun, on Monday, back from Saint Louis on the noon train, entered his office, his secretary handed him a pad on which was written a number, and said: “It was calling Friday, but I said you were out of town. And it’s been calling all morning. Every half hour. I said you’d be in on the noon train, but they called anyway.”
Gerald Calhoun recognized it as his father’s number. He picked up the telephone and began to call the number.
The secretary lingered a moment, saying: “And Mr. Blake, he’s anxious to see you as soon as possible. He ought to be back from lunch any minute.”
The voice came over the wire, from miles away, from the shadowy room where old Mr. Calhoun’s big mottled hand clumsily held the receiver, like a bear’s paw with an egg, where the old blind woman sat by the fire and breathed asthmatically; and Gerald Calhoun, sitting alone in the office, enclosed by the antiseptically glistening walls, his hand lying carefully on the cold glass top of the big desk, heard the voice: “Son?”
“Yes?” Gerald Calhoun said, “Yes?”
We got to move, the voice said.
Foreclosed, the voice said.
“My God,” Gerald Calhoun said, and the sickness was cold in his stomach, and the knot of something, hatred, fury, despair, was there, deep down, as it had been years ago when he stood and watched the big hands fumble the strap, fumble the staple set on the wire, fumble the file, fumble the button—the tiny knot cold and deep like a horrible seed, swathed in the sickness—and he cast his eyes desperately about him as though the walls closed in, into the black, anonymous transmitter, and said: “I thought they’d hold off—they held off before—you paid them something—I thought—I thought—”
It ain’t them, the voice said.
They sold the mortgage, the voice said, and never said nothing to me.
“I told you, I told you,” Gerald Calhoun said, “I can’t—everything I’ve got is tied up—borrowed everything I can—tell them—”
We got to move, the voice said. Five days.
It’s a man named Perkins, the voice said.
Son, the voice said.
And Duckfoot Blake came in.
“Jesus,” he said, “you look like you swallowed the worm in the peach.”
“They foreclosed,” Gerald Calhoun said. “On my father. He’s got to go. The First State sold the mortgage. They held off before, but they sold it. Hell!—” and his hand struck the glass, furiously, “—I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it! Everything I got tied up in Massey Mountain and Pretty River Quarries— Hell, I’ve borrowed every penny I can. God damn it, I can’t help it—I—”
“Easy,” Duckfoot said. “Nobody said you could.”
“I couldn’t! And the bastards sold the mortgage. God, couldn’t they hold off— Right now and the Massey Mountain Bill just passed, and I’d have something. It’d be easy.”
“How much is it?” Duckfoot asked.
“Three thousand something. Just a little longer and I—”
“I got a little dough,” Duckfoot said, “that I ain’t squandered on the devil’s pasteboards. I got that much. And it isn’t in Massey Mountain, either.” He adjusted a cigarette in his holder, flung a cigarette on the glass in front of Gerald Calhoun, and lighted his own. “Now,” he said, “you just go to whoever bought the mortgage and— By the way, who is it?”
“His name is Perkins.”
Duckfoot removed the holder from his lips, looked at the ceiling, and exhaled the smoke. Then he said: “Pal, it’s no sale.”
“What?”
“No sale. Don’t you know who Jake Perkins is?”
“Hell, no!”
“Pal, Jake Perkins is trigger man for the Happy Valley Hunt Club. He was a four-bit realtor with dirty underdrawers and the conscience of the South American bushmaster at shedding time and now he is trigger man for Happy Valley. Hell, you been asleep? They began getting hold of all those places out by your old man, and restoring them with spinning wheels and flintlocks in the ee-poch—”
“I knew, but—”
“—and they gonna ride pink coats across the riotously colored autumn landscape. And you, my somewhat overfed centaur, will be right there giving the view-halloo, unless—” He detached the butt from his holder, and flipped it dizzily, accurately, across to a bronze wastebasket.
“Unless,” Duckfoot said, “you are ripe.”
“Ripe?”
“Jesus,” Duckfoot said, “I got to get off my dogs.” And he sank into a chair. He flung an envelope on the desk before Gerald Calhoun, who picked it up and inspected the single sheet enclosed. Then he stared at the other man, his mouth ready to frame the question.
“To quit,” Duckfoot said. “Hell, it’s written in English. You can just copy it, and sign your name. But you better copy it fast. I’m mailing it this afternoon, to take effect tomorrow. I figure I’ll have twenty-four hours’ jump on the sheriff.”
“You’re crazy, you—”
“Listen, here, Jerry,” Duckfoot said, “Murdock’s bleeding this place white. He’s got collateral here would make Continental shin-plasters gilt-edged. There’s enough phony deposit certificates floating round to provide fuel for Guy Fawkes Day. There’s—”
“Those State deposits—it’s a lie!” Jerry jumped up from the desk. “I know—I saw those bonds, the ones up for the State deposits. I saw every damned one of them!”
“Sure,” Duckfoot said, “you saw ’em. But you saw ’em when they were put up for those last State deposits. And me—I saw ’em, too. When? Last week. Right back in this bank last Friday. Switched. Somebody switched ’em. And, pal, I ain’t gonna be here when the roof falls!”
Jerry got his hat from the rack. “I’m going to see Murdock,” he said.
“Write him a letter,” Duckfoot said.
“I’m going to see him. Right now.”
“Heed not the voice of the charmer,” Duckfoot said.
Jerry was at the door, his hat on his head. Duckfoot leaned back in his chair to watch him, sadly, biliously. “Well,” he said, “remember one little thing. When he puts his hand on your shoulder, and smiles the smile of the Crucified Redeemer, just remember Happy Valley. Bogan Murdock is centaur number one of the Happy Valley. And he is,” he turned his gaze to his propped-up feet, “Jake Perkins’ boss. Though,” and he watched his toes work the soft leather, “he wouldn’t admit it. Oh, I don’t mean he sicked Jake Perkins on your Old Man in particular. He probably don’t even remember your Old Man’s place is out there where the Happy Valley boys are going to operate. He’s just told Jake to buy up God’s green globe cheap so he can put a fence around it and ride a horse over it.”
When was the decision made? Later, he was to lie in the dark, and ask himself that. But was not to be able to answer it. Certainly, as he rushed down the street, through the pale autumn sunlight and the traffic, unwittingly shoving other men from the sidewalk, he had said to himself that he would find out, he would find out, he would ask Murdock, point-blank, and if—if—But the if, even then, had remained suspended, undefined, and was suspended when he entered the high, quiet office of Bogan Murdock. But perhaps it had been decided long before, and all his own confusion and passion and wrestling of spirit, and his rushing down the street, and the night without sleep, had been nothing but the little bangings and clinkings of the nickel dropped into the slot of the slot machine, while the mechanism whirred and ran, nothing but the senseless effort of the toy tin monkey climbing the string. Or perhaps it had come later.
But with the passion and the if—in that delusion, if it was delusion—he had entered the office of Bogan Murdock, and had seen the man sitting there, and in that quietness before he spoke, or stepped forward, and before Bogan Murdock spoke—there was always that infinitesimal delay, the instant of gathering and focus, before Bogan Murdock’s simplest greeting—Gerald Calhoun’s agitation subsided, as when one walks into the shadowy, empty church and sees only the distant candle-gleam, and the noise of the street outside sinks into an uncompelling whisper.
“Yes,” Bogan Murdock was to say, “there have been irregularities in the handling of the Southern Fidelity paper held by the First and Fifth to secure the State deposits. The matter came to my attention last week, and this morning I had a conference with Mr. Jacobs of the First and Fifth.” His voice was to be perfectly even, perfectly calm, and his eyes unwavering on Jerry Calhoun’s face. “And they are letting the man responsible go—a Mr. Hawkins. The man responsible in the First and Fifth, that is. I shall soon know who was responsible in my own organization. He will, of course”—he was looking away, through the window, over the city—“be dealt with.”
“The collateral—” Jerry was to manage to say, “the Meyers and Murdock collateral that—”
And Murdock: “Jerry, you know finance. You know conditions. Values are not, at the moment, stable. A complete review of collateral is being conducted by Mr. Shotwell. I suggest, my boy, that if you are uncomfortable you confer with Mr. Shotwell. All I ask, my boy, is that you make a sober investigation before you come to any decision. You must act according to your best judgment. You must not be swayed by your personal attachments. I do not want”—his eyes were to be steady on Jerry Calhoun’s face—“any loyalty to me—any false conception of chivalry—to sway you. Now, as for Mr. Blake—”
“Yes,” Jerry was to say, clutching obscurely at that name, “Duckfoot—Mr. Blake—I talked to him—he—”
“As for Mr. Blake,” Bogan Murdock repeated evenly, “I cannot say what his views or motives are.”
“Duckfoot—he—” Jerry began gropingly.
At that moment the girl had come in—the slight knock, the feet noiseless on the deep, blue carpet—and had laid the newspaper on the desk before Bogan Murdock.
Perhaps, if she had not come at that moment, he was to think. Perhaps, if there had not been that distraction, and the distraction of the news story which was to involve his feelings, things might have been different. Perhaps—but she had brought that little line across the course of his feelings. She had dropped the paper, like an innocent catalytic, into the ferment of his being. “Duckfoot—” he had uttered again, in the moment before he knew what the paper meant. But Bogan Murdock was not listening.
Bogan Murdock was holding the paper in both hands, his knuckles taut and whitening under the brown. The rage was there on his face, like a sudden, and suddenly extinguished, flash in the dark; then his face showed nothing.
He swung to the telephone and dialed. “The scum,” he said, “the scum!”
Jerry saw the paper lying on the desk. The black headline ran: “Murdock” Bill Passed. Beneath it, down the center of the page, to the bottom, the print ran, in a black box.
“The scum!” Murdock said. And: “There was a time—”
Jerry could not make out the print in the box.
Murdock was talking: “Anse—yes—get the evening paper! Get it—yes—the Standard. . . . Don’t let my father get it. . . . Do you understand? Under any circumstances. Get it!”
He rose from the desk, very erect. “The scum,” he said. “To attack that old man! To attack me through that poor old man. I have stood their attacks. I can stand them. But that old man—” He had come around, and stood before Gerald Calhoun, who rose. “Excuse me, Jerry,” he said, softly. “Excuse me, but I’ve got to go.” He took two long paces toward the door, turned, hesitated an instant, and said: “My God, there was a time a man could do it. He could defend his honor. If he had to.”
Then he was gone.
The room was, again, very quiet.
Gerald Calhoun leaned over the desk, and read what was there, printed on the paper.
It said: “Murdock” Bill Passed.
Below, it said:
The Governor will sign it.
Why?
Because Governor Milam is a creature of the Murdock gang.
Why did Private Porsum support the Murdock Bill?
Because Private Porsum, who was once a hero, has become a creature of the Murdock gang.
Why does the Murdock gang want the Bill passed?
Because the Bill makes it possible for the holding of the Massey Mountain Timber Company, the Atlas Iron Company, and Pretty River Quarries to be dumped upon the tax-payers of this State at an enormous figure.
Who owns this property?
The Murdock gang.
What is the record?
More than two years ago Mr. Bogan Murdock, financier, philanthropist, and sportsman, presented to this State seven hundred acres of mountain land to become a State preserve and park. It was named the Major Lemuel Murdock Park. It is to become, if Governor Milam signs the Bill, the nucleus of the greater Major Lemuel Murdock Park.
Who is Major Lemuel Murdock?
He is the man who, on April 4, 1892, in this city, shot and killed, willfully and of malice aforethought, Judge Goodpasture, a political opponent, who in the heat of a campaign uttered certain remarks which offended the vanity of Major Lemuel Murdock. Major Lemuel Murdock was tried and convicted in the courts of Mulcaster County. Upon appeal, the conviction was reversed.
Were the remarks uttered by Judge Goodpasture true?
The remarks were true.
What was the defense offered by Major Lemuel Murdock?
That he shot to protect his honor.
What is honor?
Conceptions differ.
What is Mr. Bogan Murdock’s conception of honor?
There was more, but Gerald Calhoun did not read it.
Instead, he stood in the high, quiet room, and stared unseeingly out the great window, which framed the black roofs of the city, the wisping smoke, the faded landscape beyond; and it all, the distant earth and structures set solidly on the earth to conceal it, heaved like the sea. He let one hand sink to the top of Bogan Murdock’s desk, as though to steady himself.
He had not made a decision. He had not said to himself: I shall do this: or I shall do that.
The old man sat on the step of the tack room, in the stable hall, mountainously decayed, sagging from the big maned head, the gray streaked yellowly as by old rust stains, the whole mass sagging, as by long slip and erosion, from the hunched head and shoulders to the great paunch, which fell between the spread thighs, on one of which was laid the puffed, yellow-and-mauve-streaked old hand; and the hand moved a little, as in and of itself, like some blind subsea creature drawn up, bloated with the release of pressure, mottled yellow and mauve as its color faded, expiring slowly with soundless gasp and twitch.
“Yeah,” the old man said, “yeah—” through the ruined teeth, and shook his head twitchingly, and the facial muscles tightened under the loose, stained skin in an effort of painful, groping concentration. The red-rimmed, bloodshot blue eyes adjusted themselves under the disordered dignity of the shaggy brows; peered out from under the brows, sufferingly, resentfully, dumbly-dangerously, like a hurt old beast cornered in the thicket; came to focus upon the little Negro boy who squatted on the stable floor before him.
The other little Negro boy, smaller, five years old perhaps, clad in old overalls too big for him, stood to one side, watching the old man.
“Yeah,” the old man said, and exhaled heavily.
The smaller boy swung a little to one side, jumped with excitement a couple of times, with the graceful, stiff-legged, steel-spring quality of a kid, his feet coming clear simultaneously of the floor, and stretched out his right hand, the forefinger pointing like a pistol toward the lighted area of the hall opening, and with enraptured face, the little brown face contorting, the eyes glistening, uttered the word: “Pow!” Then: “Pow, Pow!”
“Shet up!” the other boy hissed at him, snatching the overalls leg, jerking downward. “Shet up, you Peewee!”
Peewee sank slowly down, squatting on his little hams, the rapture smoothing from his face, his eyes now fixed on the old man.
The old man swung his head ponderously, twitchingly, suspiciously, from one to the other.
“Yassuh, Maj’r Lem, yassuh,” the other little Negro boy said soothingly, whisperingly, almost caressingly.
“He said—he said—” the old man began, stared about him suddenly, and failed. His breathing began again with its hissing, weary, difficult pull and exhalation, while the boys watched, waiting.
A horse stirred in one of the stalls, down the hall.
“He say—” the bigger little boy whispered caressingly, insinuatingly, “he got up thar, and he say, that ole Maj’r Lem—he say—”
The old man’s bulk heaved forward a little, and he lifted his head, his wet lips half open to show the old teeth. The children watched him, scarcely breathing, not moving. Their faces were still, caught in a trancelike expectancy; their eyes glistened at him, unblinkingly, the whites showing; they squatted with the patience of worshipers, in the dusky hall, before the hulked, sagging, swollen, idollike mass, waiting for the utterance.
“He say—” Peewee whispered.
The old bulk heaved.
“He say—” Peewee whispered, and the other boy, jerking the overalls leg of Peewee but not taking his gaze from the man’s working, slowly twisting and curding face, whispered: “Ssh ssh, he come-en, he a-gonna come.”
“At Essex,” the old man said.
“At the courthouse,” he said, and his face worked.
“He come-en, he come-en,” Peewee whispered, and clenched his hands together under his chin and shuddered in prayerful rapture.
“He stood up there—that blackguard stood up there on the steps of the courthouse. In Essex. And he said. That blackguard said—”
“He say—” Peewee whispered.
“He said, Major Lemuel Murdock—Major Lemuel Murdock—but I—I never had a Yankee dollar—”
“Dat whut he say, dat whut he say,” the other little boy whispered urgently, leaning forward. “He say, that ole Maj’r he, the ole scalawag son-a-bitch, he a ole sheep-snitchen son-a-bitch, he a—”
“He said—that blackguard said—”
“Ole Maj’r Lem, he a son-a-bitch bastud,” the other little boy whispered, scalawag bastud, a piss-ass ole bastud, a piss—”
“Piss-ass ole bastud, piss-ass ole bastud, ole Maj’r Lem, piss-ass ole—” Peewee shivered in his ecstasy.
“He come on the train,” the bigger little boy said, “yassuh, and you—”
Peewee, squatting, jerked his knees, saying, “Choo-kee-choo-kee-choo,” puffingly, and moved his forearms like the drivers of a locomotive.
“He come,” the other little boy urged, “he come, and you—whut you do?”
And the old man heaved and stared at him pitifully, pleadingly, while his wet mouth convulsed without sound.
“Whut you do?” The boy hunched closer, still squatting, sliding his feet forward in little jerks. “Whut you do, huh?” he repeated, and his eyes glittered, and a touch of mastery, of compulsion, came into his voice. He stared upward at the old face, unrelentingly, victoriously. “Whut you do?”
“He came up the steps,” the old man managed, croakingly. “I was there, and he came up the steps. The band was playing—” he said. “The band was playing,” he said. “I was there,” he said, “and the band was playing—” He did not go on.
“Toodle-oo-toodle-oo—too-too,” Peewee made the music softly, as though a long way off, and patted his hands in time, softly.
“Whut you do, huh? And he call you, ole Maj’r Lem”—You-Bub hitched himself closer, peering up at the old face—“he say, ole Maj’r Lem, he a son-a-bitch, he a—”
“The band was playing—the band—”
“Toodle-oo—toodle-oo-oo,” Peewee made the music. He cocked his head and puffed his cheeks like little brown, slick billiard balls, and his thrust-out, puckered, peeled-back lips were like a little, astonishingly pink-hearted flower.
“Whut you do, huh? And he say—”
The old man heaved up his big head, and the gray, yellow-tarnished mane shook as he cast his eyes wildly, awakeningly, around. “I shot him!” he uttered in a strong, terrible croak. “I shot—”
Peewee had leaped up. His stiff, spread-out legs made twice the kidlike dance, coming clear of the floor together. He thrust his right arm out, the forefinger pointed like the pistol at his brother. “Pow!” he exclaimed, his voice falsetto with joy, “Pow!”
You-Bub half rose, and fell back on the ground, clutching his stomach, his eyes rolling.
“Pow!” the finger pistol pointed at him, and Peewee danced.
“Pow, pow, pow, pow!”
“You, Peewee,” You-Bub ordered, not ceasing to writhe, “you stop it, he never shot but three times, it was three—”
“Pow, pow, pow!” Peewee screamed, and danced.
You-Bub rolled on his back, twisted in elaborate agony, lifted up his knees and then sprawled them out, rolled his eyes, and moaned, clutching his stomach, making no further protest, surrendering himself completely to the pantomime of death, the delicious fulfillment, the perfection of pain, the bliss. There on the dunged floor, at the feet of the old man, who stared.
“Pow, pow!”
But the old Negro had come in the door, Old Anse running rheumatically, exclaiming furiously and with short breath: “You, Peewee, stop it! You-Bub, I bust you, I—”
Peewee stood frozen, his arm stretched out, his mouth shaped for a pow which did not come.
Old Anse snatched up You-Bub by the arm, jerking him to a squatting position, and began to box him on the side of the head, with a creaking, stiff-armed motion, exclaiming: “I done tole you, I done tole you I bust you. I bust you both. You make Ole Maj’r cry agin, and I bust you. I tell Mass’ Bog’n—I gonna tell ’im, and he snatch you. I tole you, you make Ole Maj’r cry agin, and I gonna—” while the blows fell, and the breath failed, “—and you, Peewee, I—”
But Peewee, unfrozen, was fleeing down the dusky hall.
Old Anse dropped You-Bub, like something used and forgotten. You-Bub crawled away a couple of yards, then leaped and ran out into the lot, into the sun, and was gone.
Old Anse leaned toward the wet, quivering face, which was lifted toward him. The big, yellow-and-mauve, swollen hand clutched Old Anse by the sleeve of his jumper. Muttering, “Now, Maj’r Lem, now, Maj’r Lem, I done tole ’em, I done tole ’em,” Old Anse fumbled with his free hand in the breast pocket of the black broadcloth coat and got the big, snowy linen handkerchief, initialed, and wiped the cheeks, and patted the eyes gently, like a child’s, and held the handkerchief to the nose, muttering all the while.
Major Murdock looked up, still clutching the sleeve, and said: “I shot him, I—”
“Ssh, now ssh, Maj’r Lem, it’s done long gone, it’s—”
“I had to! I had to, I—”
“He said—”
“Shore you had to. You had to. Doan you fret, doan—”
“I’m Major Lemuel Murdock,” the old man whispered, and clung to the sleeve, and lifted up his face.
“Shore, you’se the Ole Maj’r. You’se Maj’r Lem, and ever’body know. You’se the Ole Maj’r, and no mistake.”
“He said—” Major Murdock began, but Anse patted him on the shoulder, and wiped his face, and said: “You jes hush now. You hush, and it’s bout time yore paper git here. You go git yore paper and fergit all it. You walk down ter the big road, and meet the man and git it. Maybe it in the box by now.”
Major Murdock went out the door, blinked a moment at the light, and started across the lot, beside the stables, toward the house. But he did not go to the house. He cut across to the drive, skirting the dead rose garden, and went around the end of the house. He went down the hill, beyond the cedars, between the bare oaks, blinking now and then, owlishly, at the westering sun, which was not yet going red.
The paper was in the box.
He took it out, and started up the rise, not looking at it at first. Halfway up he stopped for breath, and standing there, opened the paper. He began to read, his heavy head hanging forward over the paper, the eyes not moving, the head swaying from side to side to carry the eyes from one word to the next, from one line to the next, swaying in a difficult, sad, bull-like motion. Then he lifted up his head, and made a sound in his throat. He looked widely around, over the landscape. Then he made the sound again, and the lax skin of the jowls shook.
He started up the hill again, holding the paper in his hand. His breath came heavy, and the sweat began to slide down his cheeks.
He entered the house by the front door, and stood for a moment in the empty hall, while his breath rasped and labored. He seemed to be listening, but there was no other sound. Then he went into the library. He passed through the library, and into the room beyond.
In that shadowy room, the heads of great beasts, with glassy, unrelenting eyes, protruded from the walls, twisted-horned, antlered, spiked, tusked, fanged, hairy, bearded. On shelves, in the shadow, silver cups and mugs gleamed. In the far wall, under the enormous, fungusy moose head, seemingly bearded with moss, rifles were racked under glass, which gleamed. Gun cases hung on the wall. Major Murdock, with ponderous, wheezing stealth, opened another cabinet, and took out a revolver. He found cartridges in the drawer. He loaded the weapon, and left the room. On his way out, he paused cunningly at each door to listen before passing through it. But there was no sound.
He walked down the hill, faster now.
At the stone pillars, he looked up and down the highway. Nothing was visible, except toward the left, a wagon coming in his direction. He turned right, and began to walk beside the concrete slab, on the soft earth, going toward the city, the smoke of which was visible.
The wagon, half on the slab, half off, overtook him. The mules were almost upon him before he noticed, and was forced to step down into the ditch. The wagon drew up even with him, but when he faced it, standing there in the ditch and lifting his hand, the old Negro man who was driving said, “Whoa!” and pulled back on his rope reins, and turned a slow, incurious gaze, beyond surprise, upon him. The hammer-shaped, antediluvian, saurian, earth-colored, as out of the earth, crusted heads of the mules sagged forward, motionless in the late sunlight.
“Are you going to town?” Major Murdock demanded.
“I’se aimen to, Cap’m,” the old Negro man said.
Without a word, Major Murdock approached the wagon, laid both his hands on the never-painted, splintery, gray sideboard of the bed, set his foot to the hub, and heavily, puffingly, with veins suddenly violent on his temples, got himself up, and into the bed, and subsided on the loose boards laid across the bed for a seat, in front of the heaped cordwood. The old Negro hitched himself over to make room, took his impartial gaze off Major Murdock and directed it down the long, white road, over the heads of the mules, and uttered, “Gi-ap,” without emphasis, as though nothing had happened, as though he were still alone; and the wheels began to turn softly on the right hand where the earth was, metallically, with a grinding patience, on the left, on the slab.
The sound of Major Murdock’s breathing abated, somewhat.
“It’ll be night fore I git nigh, Cap’n,” the Negro said.
Major Murdock did not reply, breathing and looking down the road.
A car snatched past them, whining, whirring, and dwindled toward the city.
“This-here ain’t no otty-mobile, Cap’m,” the Negro said, and gave a dry snigger.
“Drive on,” Major Murdock ordered, not turning.
A quarter of a mile, and the wagon neared a lane bearing off to the right.
“Cap’m,” the Negro said, “I takes off this-a way. It’s a shawt-cut and ain’t no otty-mobiles kin go. It dirt and ain’t no bridge on Broadus-Fi-ord. But me—I kin go. It dirt and ain’t no bridge on Broadus Fi-ord. But me—I kin go. Ole Sal and Beck, they kin—”
“Drive on,” Major Murdock said.
They went down the lane, jolting in the dry ruts, with a crumbling sound.
“It’ll be night, Cap’m. And me, I’m gwine stop at my boy’s. Jasper, he live on the aidge of town, and I kin take my stove wood on ter town in the mawnen. To Mister Tawm Taylor, lak I done tole him. Cap’m, you know Mister Tawm? Big heavy-set man—” He eyed Major Murdock, who did not answer.
“Cap’m, how you git in frum Jasper’s, huh? It a piece, frum Jasper’s, and night fore we nigh. How you git in, Cap’m?”
Major Murdock’s head swung weightily to face him, and the eyes blinked. “Captain—” Major Murdock said, “captain—” He blinked. “I’m Major Murdock,” he said. “I’m Major Lemuel Murdock, and he was at Essex—it was at Essex—”
“Ex-cuse me, Maj’r.”
“—and he said—” He began to move his head from side to side. “And he said—”
“Yassuh, Boss, yassuh—”
Major Murdock heaved his bulk, and wheezed, leaning toward the Negro, his mouth working. Then he said: “The band was playing—it was the band—and I—”
“Whut band, Boss?”
“The band was playing—and I—I—” The swollen, sagging face made its effort, “—and I shot him.”
“Lawd-God, Boss! Lawd-God, Maj’r,” the Negro exclaimed, staring at, drawing back from, the laboring face which leaned toward his own. “Lawd-God, shot who?”
“Judge Goodpasture—the blackguard, the lying blackguard, and I—”
“Lawd-God!”
Major Murdock’s hand clutched the Negro’s wrist, the flabby mass closing on the withered little stick-thin bone. “I’ll tell you,” he said, leaning, “I’ll tell you. The blackguard—”
“Boss,” the Negro pleaded. “Lawd-God, Boss, not me. I ain’t a-listenin. Naw-suh, I ain’t a-gonna listen. Lawd-God, and I doan wanta know. Not and you shootin nobody. Not nuthen, Lawd-God!”
“The blackguard—and I—”
The Negro’s eyes bugged out, as though a hand had been closed on his windpipe, and he made a retarded, squeaking exhalation, like a rubber toy in a baby’s fist. His eyes were fixed on the revolver, which Major Murdock now held in his free hand.
“I’ll shoot him like a dog!” Major Murdock proclaimed, and lurched, and lifted the revolver.
“Naw, Lawd-God! Lawd-God.”
“I’m Major Lemuel Murdock—I’m Major Murdock—and I—”
“Maj’r Lem’el, Maj’r Lem’el, please, Maj’r Lem’el, put it away, please, Maj’r Lem’el Murdock, you gonna put it away, please. You ain’t gonna shoot nobody, not no human-man, not nobody, please—”
“He said—he said—”
“I doan like it, I doan like them things, please, Maj’r Lem’el Murdock, what yore name is, please—” He gave up, in his agony, the big old hand on his wrist, clutching, and his gaze riveted on the revolver, which was bright in the last light.
The revolver sank slowly into Major Murdock’s lap.
“It was the band,” he said.
“Yassuh, yassuh!”
“It was the band,” Major Murdock repeated, his voice low in the painful, groping musing. Then he leaned again toward the Negro, shaking his head, begging: “The band—it was the band—I can’t remember what the band was playing—”
“Lawd-God,” the Negro uttered, like a prayer, and jerked forward on the seat, and with his free hand lashed the ropes over the mules in a frenzy, breathing, “Lawd-God!”
The wagon lunged forward, hammering the ruts, jerking and bouncing down the slight grade.
Major Murdock’s right hand, laxly grasping the revolver, bounced and joggled on his lap, like something dropped, lost, and forgotten.
Perhaps the decision was made the next morning, when Gerald Calhoun stood before Bogan Murdock, whose face out of the strain of sleeplessness looked sculptured and hard, as though irrelevancies had been chiseled and polished away, had been so stylized, to exhibit only the simple verity of the fundamental structure, and whose eyes were bright blue-black, brighter than ever and unwavering. The brown of the face was, however, streaked a little, yellowly, so that the slick, hard flesh resembled a carved onyx. On the left cheek was a razor nick, on which a fleck of blood, neglected, had crusted in darker brown, as though the onyx had painfully exuded that one large, rich, dark drop, which had then, in its turn, solidified.
“Yes,” Bogan Murdock said, “they struck through him. At me. They struck through him, that—” and he turned away, very erect, the dark, perfect cloth of his coat molding and defining the square, straight, almost too narrow shoulders; and he stared out the window. “That—” he said, and paused. He seemed to gather himself, and concluded: “That poor old man.”
Jerry stood there, watching, and could think of nothing to say. He wanted to say something, but he did not know what it was he had to say, as though he were a table, a tree, some natural object with a vitality locked deeply within it, an object about which people moved and spoke, and which observed, eyelessly, and knew, and suffered with the numb, obscure germination within it.
“That poor old man,” Bogan Murdock said, softly, and turned and fixed his eyes upon Jerry.
Jerry wet his lips. He felt as though he had been detected in the horrible, dreamlike, submarine circumstances of a crime which he had not committed—no, he had not done it, he had not—and there was one word to clear him, if he could speak it. Or, even, if he could think it.
“That poor old man,” Bogan Murdock almost whispered, with his gaze uncompromisingly fixed, “—and they found him—they found him in the railway station. Standing there late last night, with the revolver in his hand. How he got there, God knows.” He stopped, and again, for an instant, looked away. “I don’t want to know how he got there,” he said.
Then he turned his head: “And they found him. A policeman found him. And took the revolver. And do you know what he said?”
Jerry tried, and the word came: “No.” But it had no reality for him. He was not sure he had said it.
“He said, ‘The band isn’t playing. I don’t know why the band isn’t playing.’ Then they took him away. To the police station. They didn’t know who he was. And he sat there, in that police station, like a common thief, and all he could say was, ‘Get Beau, get Beau.’ They stood around and laughed. Beaumont Grey—Beau—he was a friend of my father. He was the lawyer who defended him in the old trouble. A great gentleman. He has—” he said, and hesitated, as though mastering himself and the passage of time, “been dead these twenty years. Did you,” he asked Jerry, “ever hear his name?”
“No,” Jerry said.
“No,” Bogan Murdock said, “no, but he was a great gentleman. One of the last. There are few left.” He paused. “My father,” he said quietly, “is a great gentleman.” And he waited.
“Yes,” Jerry said.
“And—” Bogan Murdock blazed, the controlled fury pin-pointed like a jet, “that scum! They struck through him. At me. I have fought them. I can fight them. But they struck through him. And I—” his head seemed to bow infinitesimally, giving only that little under the weight, and he spread his hands in the air before him, “cannot help but feel guilty.”
Guilty, guilty, and the word rang in Jerry’s consciousness, but it was not like a word, but like a wave, without a name, pulsing out cold from a knot in his stomach, leaving him weak, and clammy at the temples, before the next wave came through him, spreading through him like the concentric, irrevocable ripples from the spot in the very center of his being where the stone had been dropped; and it was like eyes on him, not only those blue-ringed black pupils which were on him, but other eyes, the eyes of people he knew, and strange eyes, fixed on him.
“I should not have been surprised,” Bogan Murdock was saying, “for they would stop at nothing. They have struck at me in other ways. Through people in my organization. People who were close to me. They can,” he said, “reach people. People,” he said, “whom I have trusted.”
“Duckfoot—” Jerry said, with an effort, drawing the word up out of himself, like a weight. “Duckfoot—you don’t—you don’t think he—”
Bogan Murdock sat down in the chair at his desk. He meticulously adjusted a bronze paper weight, under which there were no papers. “There are,” he decided, and the fine fingers rested on the paper weight, which he seemed to be inspecting, “things which I do not feel at liberty to discuss.”
But Jerry said: “Duckfoot—you don’t think he’d do a thing like that?”
“Excuse me, Jerry,” Bogan Murdock interrupted, and smiled precisely as he did in the mornings, in the corridors, in the elevator. “Excuse me,” he said, “but have you spoken to Mr. Shotwell?”
“No—I—”
“I mentioned the matter to him this morning. I told him you were very much concerned. He—”
“No—” Jerry began.
But Bogan Murdock was going on, evenly: “—expects you to get in touch with him. You remember,” he said, “the collateral question—you remember, you were disturbed about that?”
“No,” Jerry said, summoning himself, “no—”
But Bogan Murdock, smiling as in a distant, understanding compassion, shook his head gently.
Or had the decision been reached the afternoon before, when, after leaving Bogan Murdock’s office, Jerry had gone back to the Southern Fidelity and had found Duckfoot Blake cocked back in his chair, his feet on the desk, the ivory holder hanging from his face, and Ham Murdock standing before him, flushed and surly, with a lock of coarse hair dangling to his brow.
“Well,” Duckfoot demanded, as Jerry entered, “did Bogan tell you everything was jake? Did he say that he, Herbie Hoover, and J. H. Christ had just had a little conference and fixed everything up? Did he say—”
“Shut up,” Ham Murdock said, heavily, “you think you’re so God-damned—”
“Smart,” concluded Duckfoot for him, and added: “Not very, Hammie-Wammie, but smart enough to figure out that two and two add up to fifteen years in the pen. And the doctor has prescribed fresh air for yours-truly. You know, weak chest.” He coughed theatrically.
“Yeah,” Ham said, twisting his face, “yeah, you’re smart enough to crawl. You get ready to crawl. You crawl out now and you’re a son-of-a-bitch, you—”
“This,” Duckfoot said to Jerry, gesturing toward Ham Murdock with the air of an impresario, “is that spirit of tact and persuasion Bogan sends over to fix me up. To take me back into the fold. To soothe the fevered brow, to—”
“It’s a God-damned lie,” Ham broke in, stepping forward, clenching his fists. “I haven’t seen my father. Somebody tipped me. I just came—”
“I,” said Duckfoot, “am not Mr. Pinkerton. Nor am I Mr. Holmes. But I can do simple sums. I composed my resignation at nine A.M., in a felicitous prose. My secretary typed it. You, Pal Jerry, saw it at two P.M., Central Standard Time. Three people only—secretary, Pal Jerry, yours-truly—saw it, or knew about it, and at three-ten in bursts our friend with the olive branch in one hand and the brass knucks in the other. How did he know, how—”
“It’s a damned lie!” Ham proclaimed.
“Simple,” Duckfoot said. “Little Miss Flo Forbes, on whom I built a trust somewhat less than absolute, has betrayed me. She types my piece, heads for the ladies’ john, and ducks to a telephone to tip Bogan. And Bogan sicks Hammie on me, thinking that my document is in the morning mail and he will get it at two-thirty. Indeed, Miss Flo put it in my mail basket, but I took it right out again to show Pal Jerry whenever he got here. So Hammie beats the gun. My little piece is right here.” And he tapped his inside coat pocket. “And, boy,” he added, “do I love it!”
“You son-of-a-bitch,” Ham Murdock said.
Private Porsum stepped inside the door.
In his large weathered face, cedar-colored as though hewn out of wood, or clay-colored, earthy, the grayish eyes, which were pale in contrast to the color of the flesh, looked out, moving over the scene with a puzzled, painful candor.
“President Porsum,” Duckfoot greeted him. “Well, Private!”
Ham Murdock broke in, stepping toward Porsum, pointing at Duckfoot, saying, “He’s quitting—he wrote a letter—he—”
“Right,” Duckfoot agreed, meeting the grayish, metal-colored eyes, which were on him.
“Duckfoot,” Private Porsum began, “I didn’t know, I—”
“My apologies,” Duckfoot said. “I wrote my resignation to Bogan. I was just going to tell you as a friend, when you came in this afternoon. A friend, mind you. For, Private, you ain’t President of the Southern Fidelity. You are, to be blunt, a sucker. You are a stooge. You are a waterboy.”
“God damn you, Blake, you—” Ham shouted, and stopped, as, for an instant, Porsum looked at him before turning his gaze upon Duckfoot, shaking his head, preparing his face to speak, saying in his slow, melancholy voice: “Naw, naw, Duckfoot. You’re not leaving now. Not now. Not after all Bogan’s done.”
“Sure,” Duckfoot agreed, “Bogan made you rich. He put you in politics. He makes his friends buy your ponies. But you paid him. Sure, you broke the big strike at Massey Mountain with your silver tongue. You showed your heroic frame on the stump and elected Governor Milam. You don’t owe Bogan a thing. You have—”
“You—you—” Ham shouted, pointing at Duckfoot, “my father made you, and you crawl!”
“Pal,” Duckfoot replied gently, “nobody made yours-truly, University of Chicago, Ph.D. I was found under a cabbage leaf. I sprang full-armed from the brow of Pallas. The Pixies brought me. And now—” he lowered his feet from the desk, set them lovingly on the floor, and uncoiled his height, “I go back to the burning fountain whence I came. I am, to be exact, hauling ass.”
He picked up his hat, the soft black felt hat, like a preacher’s. “Duckfoot,” Porsum said, and did not go on.
“I’m leaving, Private,” he said. “You can stay, and the ponderous and marble jaws of the bastille yawn. For you, but not for me.”
“Look here, look here, what do you mean?”
Duckfoot came around from behind the desk and laid his hand on Porsum’s shoulder. “You are a hero, Private,” he said sadly, softly, “but the war is over and heroes’ wits are kept in ponderous vases. You ought to know what I mean. I mean my little soldier is trying to dump no-good Massey Mountain on the State. I mean the collateral on State deposits has been switched. I mean the paper on Murdock’s loans ain’t worth a damn and you ought to know it. I mean he’s milked this bank, and he’s milked this State and he—”
“I’ll kill you,” Ham Murdock shouted, and slugged at Duckfoot, whose body seemed to sway back like a reed, so that the blow only grazed his shoulder.
But Porsum, not moving from his tracks, had grasped Ham Murdock, and had drawn him, and held him with one big arm across his body, pinning him, while Ham said: “Damn you, Porsum, damn you, let me loose!”
Duckfoot looked at him curiously. “The spit-and-image of your old grandpa, huh?” he asked. “Honor of the family, huh?”
He put his hat on his head, and stepped to the door, moving gingerly as on eggs, favoring his feet, and turned to inspect, above Ham Murdock’s head, Porsum’s face, ravaged, furrowed like ripped earth, and the pale-seeming eyes, which looked out in dawning horror, pain, confusion, and appeal.
Then to Ham Murdock: “Keep your fingers out of the till.”
To Gerald Calhoun: “Coming, pal?”
But Jerry did not reply.
Duckfoot went out the door, down the corridor, and into the street. Jerry could see him poised for an instant on the curb, attenuated, angular, his neck outthrust, his coat tail jerked up above the long legs, standing there gauntly and cautiously above the rickety legs, like an aquatic fowl.
That was the way it had been.
That was the way it had been, and the next morning Jerry stood before Bogan Murdock, who fingered the bronze paper weight and said: “Mr. Shotwell expects you to get in touch with him, Jerry. You know, the collateral question.”
“No,” Jerry said, summoning himself, wanting to know, afraid to know, knowing that there was nothing to know, while Bogan Murdock, smiling as in distant, understanding compassion, shook his head.
Bogan Murdock said: “Mr. Shotwell will be free to—”
“I don’t want to see him,” Jerry burst out.
“But the collateral question, Jerry? You were disturbed about the collateral question. You ought to investigate. To satisfy yourself. You owe it to yourself, you know. This is no time for false sentiment. You owe it to yourself, my boy.”
“No!” Jerry exclaimed. And: “No.”
Just as Jerry was leaving, Bogan Murdock, walking with him to the door with his hand on his shoulder, said: “I understand there has been a foreclosure on your father’s place. Forgive me for mentioning it, but it must have been a blow to you—your feeling for him—the family place—”
“Yes,” Jerry said, and that pang, which had been smothered and forgotten in the midst of his more immediate problem, struck him again.
“I don’t know,” Bogan Murdock hesitated, “but—”
“Time—” Jerry said, not in reply to his friend, the word simply bursting out of his suffering, “I didn’t know and all my stuff was tied up. I couldn’t get a penny out in time—you know how things are—I didn’t guess—if there’d just been time!”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Bogan Murdock murmured comfortingly, absolvingly, and continued: “I don’t know, I cannot be sure, but perhaps something could be arranged to give a little time. Even now. Yes, a little time. I am not too hopeful, but something, perhaps.”
He removed his hand from Jerry’s shoulder, and faced him at the door. “We shall see,” he said, and shook hands.
Mr. Calhoun was not compelled to move in five days. It was a full six weeks before the execution. At that time, Mr. Calhoun’s furniture was loaded on a truck and on his own farm wagon and hauled to a small house, not much better than a shack, on a back road. He had rented the place for thirty dollars a month, with some fifty acres of land. The land was not very good, but he thought, he said, he would try his hand at turkeys. He reckoned, he said, he always had had a hand with turkeys, but he just never gave them much mind before. He reckoned there might be some money in turkeys, with Thanksgiving and Christmas and all.
“Money,” Uncle Lew echoed, and spat. “Yeah, money, Mr. Astor!”