AT TIMES there dwells a meanness in the best communities—in a community of human folks, or one of fox-hounds, for I’ve seen it work both ways. The news came out as soon as Camden stopped down at the bank in Wolf Center, to cash herself a check. Roy Lancey saw the pretty gyp within her car, and all the suitcases piled up.
So people had their calls to make, inquiring of the Davises, and then the word went round. Vacation, ha! the women all declared; the most of them were on the side of Camden, critical of Benjy; though there were hearts which held a jealousy for both, and spoke it out.
Plenty menfolks, on the other hand, made grim opinion of the waywardness of Camden, going off to leave her husband. They swore they’d never let their own wives do a thing like that, though just what means they’d have taken to stop their wives in such a case they never did describe.
We heard that Benjy stalked the woods, the .22 beneath his arm, determined to hunt down that Bristles dog. But any trail the critter left behind him was just as hard to discern, now that his mischief was worked, as it had been when he and Little Lady first departed to the wilderness. No track of him was ever glimpsed again; he’d gone and lost himself in other neighborhoods long since; and people guessed that Satan must have come to fetch him.
Weather turned to wrath the day when Camden left, and we had storms from hell to breakfast. Heaven Creek was flooded wide. We Roysters never ran our fox-hounds for a solid week, until a night was right.
Then out we came, and Benjy heard, and the seasoned ears of Springfield Davis might detect the chop of Five Point Nine a-hanging out in front. So pretty soon the twin lights of their truck came nigh; they had some dogs with them, and let them loose to seek the pack. Thus we were hunting once again, and liking it, though there was one name that was never mentioned.
Benjy kept a solitary life that year, eating mostly at his folks’ and keeping well aloof except when working with the dogs. He had another dog to hunt with, come the middle of the winter. Late one afternoon, when he was getting feed down for the stock, he heard the grinding of an unfamiliar car. He came out, and there it stood, a blue sedan. The face above the driver’s wheel was unfamiliar just as well.
Some ears went up behind the seat, and there was wagging fit to kill. Benjy walked with slow pace to the car and turned the handle of the door. Little Lady dove upon him.
“My name’s Butler,” said a young man, grinning there in front, and they shook hands. It seemed that Butler was engaged, or nearly so, to Camden’s cousin Florry; he had to drive to Rolla to see his folks, and our region wasn’t much outside his route. Camden had asked him to fetch the fox-hound home again.
“Better stop a while,” Benjy muttered, but young Butler claimed he had to be a-getting on.
Benjy said abruptly, speaking from a heart so mightily disturbed: “How’s my wife?”
“Camden? She’s just fine, far as I know. I only saw her briefly when I stopped to get the dog.” In another minute Butler’d shaken hands again and driven off. Benjy stood, with Little Lady rubbing tight against his leg, and watched the car recede. He put his hand down slow, a-feeling Little Lady’s head and mouth and then her soft and tender underside.
She was dried up, but you could tell she’d had some pups. “Those hairy feists,” thought Benjy Davis. “Bet ten dollars Camden kept the lot. She couldn’t drown a pup. She couldn’t—” Then he spat, and swore within himself, and lifted up his arm to brush across his face. He went back, old and heavy, to his work, and Little Lady bounced along.
But rumors still persisted through the months as they were bound to do. At least one whisper reached the ears of Benjy and drove deep like a nail into his brain.
It was warm spring—I remember, because I had picked up the two least Armstrong girls on the side road from Chilly Branch (they had whole fists full of bluebells and corn lilies; they were good to look at, with their scraggly gingham dresses, and warm faces all excited by wild flowers and the spring).
Benjy turned sharp right out of his lane. As our cars met and passed I must have looked my astonishment, because he was dressed up with a suit and necktie—not his usual clothing.
I peered back; he had halted in the weeds, so I stopped my own car and walked toward him. He didn’t get out—just sat there with his hand on the wheel and the clean new motor still turning, even when I stood near the door.
“Word came to me,” he said. “Maybe it’s not so. I did hear that Camden was sick in the hospital.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Guess it would be in Warrensburg, Johnson County. That’s just about as close to the farm as Independence or Kansas City, and her relatives have got an old doctor friend there.”
I had heard the same tale through my sister-in-law, and even more than that, but judged that Camden would inform her husband if she really wanted him at her bedside. “Do you think she’s took very bad?”
“The story that came to me didn’t say.”
This was merely a time for the rubbing of fingers on a car door, for listening to the light breeze and new frogs in the slough—not a time for asking specialized questions.
“You seem to be on your way.”
His tanned face looked mighty grim. “Little Lady’s over at Pa’s. I’ve fixed it with your brother Del, for him to look after the stock.” Away he traveled.
He never did want to speak about it much, but I had known him since the week of his birth; I could recall a thin child with a black scalp of hair, who begged me to fetch home a German beltbuckle with Gott Mit Uns on it, so I did bring him one. And we had been on top of the hills with our dogs for many a year.
Thus later he related some portions of what was in his heart, but the whole story was long in the telling. He said that he broke a pinion or some such contrivance in the differential of his car when only part way to Johnson County. Therefore it was late in the evening before repairs could be made and the remaining miles could be crossed, and he might park beneath strange trees in Warrensburg.
He had inquired the way and found it with ease. Now that he was arrived he couldn’t bring himself to step inside the hospital door. He walked across and around, patroling the region of the hospital for hours. He was fighting back the vanity of his spirit, and then yielding once more, and having it rise in wrath to direct his steps.
There spread ghastly bright lights in what might have been an operating room; and he thought of Camden there with masked people all about; he thought of her lying silent beneath some napkins on her face, as he had witnessed in moving pictures.
So at last Benjy tore his legs loose from the ropes which bound them. He forced himself along a sidewalk and through a door, determined to stand beside her bed; and maybe she would let him take her hand; but maybe she would only turn her head slightly to the side, and look away forever.
There didn’t seem to be anybody in the hospital offices at that hour. Benjy went a-hunting. The scent of awful drugs was in his nostrils, and fearful restricted silences bleating in his ears; then he would hear a murmur behind a door which he couldn’t understand. In one room some poor soul was weeping aloud, as if in pain. Not groaning, not screaming high, he said; but just crying as if so sad, so sad.
Down a far corridor at last he saw a little desk and a white shape sitting. Thus he went up, bareheaded and on tiptoe and all constrained, asking after his wife but not saying that she was his.
“Mrs. Camden Davis?” The nurse or sister (Benjy didn’t know; she wore a queer cap) repeated the name that way. She didn’t say, “Mrs. Benjamin S. Davis.”
The lady smiled and said, “Why, she’s just fine. She was discharged from the hospital yesterday.”
“I’m obliged to you,” said Benjy, and he turned and walked away. The nose of his automobile seemed pointing toward the late Mr. Elnathan Camden’s farm, over yonder across the county line, when again Benjy stood in the street. Like an eager metal dog the car seemed lifting up imaginary ears, demanding, “Shall we go?”
But sternness of nature and habit wouldn’t let him soften. His spirit should have been buzzing with reassurance, and thankfulness that the one he loved was now strong. Instead there dwelt in him only the same sodden emptiness which had oppressed ever since a special hour in August, so far and hideously gone.
He climbed into his car and drove back to the house above Heaven Creek. He only stopped once on the way; it was after daybreak when he got home.