Lant cut across Thaddeus Lantry's deserted clearing. He had remembered an old rain barrel at one corner of the house, whose hoops could be salvaged and used for new barrels at the outfit he was piece by piece assembling. He stopped short at the over-grown stoop. Cleve's tracks were thick about it.
He thought, "This where you been layin' low all week, eh?"
He went cautiously into the dilapidated shack. No one was there, but a pile of fish-bones swarming with ants lay on the old clay hearth. A pallet of fresh Spanish moss was flattened out on the floor in a corner of the room. Cockroaches scrambled for shelter when he kicked it. He left the clearing without getting the hoops. He struck through the hammock, which thinned here to a bare fringe along the river. He hesitated. It might be wise to return over his own trail and then, walking backward, to efface it with a handful of brush.
He thought angrily, "Leave him know I've found him."
He wished now that he knew exactly what Jim and Abner had meant. He had ignored Kezzy's warning to move the still. He had been sure Cleve would not go through with the business. It occurred to him that perhaps Jim and Abner were warning him as Kezzy had done. They might know more than they had told him. Yet if they considered Cleve a graver menace, surely they would have said so. He was confused and anxious. At the edge of the swamp he saw a fresh chunk chipped from out a hickory.
He thought, "He's been lookin' for timber for a axe handle. I could of told him that hickory wouldn't split."
He followed the swamp to the site of the burned still. He had salvaged the bricks and stacked them neatly to be moved to Taylor's Dread. The barrel hoops were twisted but he had beaten some back into form. At the house, his copper pieces were already cut and shaped. He had new barrel staves piled under clumps of palmettos and he set to work to assemble these inside the hoops.
He noticed that the sun was setting earlier. Soon the winter would begin, with cool bright days and hearth-fires in the evenings. The burned swamp and hammock about him began to grow dark. Ahead of him shafts of sunlight shot among the sweet gums and magnolias. Squirrels moved quickly and in silence along the limbs, hurrying to their beds. A chill air wavered from the brown creek water as the last of the sunlight left it. It was too dark to work longer. He piled staves and hoops again under the palmettos, slung his rifle across his shoulder and started up the ledge.
Suddenly he knew that something was behind him. He had heard no sound, but a movement, impalpable as a breath, had stirred between him and the swamp. He took a quick step forward and was conscious of a similar step behind. He was chilled, as though a gust of cold wind had moved across him. He had never before been followed. He had stalked deer and tracked wild cat and panther and bear. Nothing in his life had moved like this to the rear of him, stepping when he stepped, halting when he halted. He felt his lips dry and thicken. He turned sharply in the middle of his paces.
The white face that looked at him from behind a clump of sparkleberry belonged to Cleve—and it did not belong to Cleve. The light in the hammock was green and murky. It picked out the sick grin and exposed gums above the teeth that were Cleve's. The resemblance ended. A lifted gun-barrel glinted under the face. The face was round, like an obscene moon strayed from a strange and evil universe.
All his life, he knew now, he had been afraid of something. He had drunk a fear in his mother's milk and in the buck Zeke Lantry had given him in a hollow gourd. He had sucked it from the air old man Lantry had puffed out from his dying lungs. A fear pulsed in his veins like poison. And of what was he afraid? A soundless tracking at his back and a white pasty moon above the sparkleberries—He was blind with fear. Danger was a remembered danger, remembered in his bones and in his blood. He lifted the rifle and did not know he fired.
He had once shot a rattlesnake in such numb terror. He had put his foot across a log and had held it in mid-air while he blew the snake head from the body, flexed to strike.
He heard the echo of his shot die away through the hammock and across the scrub. His sight cleared. He moved woodenly to the clump of bushes, where a wisp of smoke still hovered. The evil moon was gone and the danger was gone. The twitching body was Cleve's and the face was Cleve's, with the eyelids fluttering and the mouth gaping and blood flowing smoothly over the chin. He leaned his rifle against a tree and sat down with his back pressed to the trunk. The last of the light faded. Nothing was left of Cleve but a prone shadow near him. Someone might come, but it did not matter. He was purged of fear. In its place was sickness. He buried his face in his hands.
He thought over and over, "I never studied on killin' him."
A flock of ducks flew down the river. Overhead he heard the measured sweep of their flight. Then for a long time there was silence. The hammock was black, yet when he took his hands from his eyes, he thought the white of Cleve's face was visible. The magnolia leaves rustled and he heard the beat of great wings. The hoot-owls began to cry. He lifted his head. South moon was under. On the other side of the earth the moon rode high, and it had power to move the owls and rabbits. He closed his eyes and listened in the darkness to the rhythmic call.
He wondered if it might be so with men. Perhaps all men were moved against their will. A man ordered his life, and then an obscurity of circumstance sent him down a road that was not of his own desire or choosing. Something beyond a man's immediate choice and will reached through the earth and stirred him. He did not see how any man might escape it.
Neither river nor swamp nor hammock nor impenetrable scrub could save a man from the ultimate interference. There was no safety. There was no retreat. Forces beyond his control, beyond his sight and hearing, took him in their vast senseless hands when they were ready. The whole earth must move as the sun and moon and an obscure law directed—even the earth, planet-ridden and tormented.
A rabbit startled him with its sneezing. He sat quickly alert. He could not leave Cleve's body to be found here. No one visited the island above the landing. It merged imperceptibly into creek and swamp. It was a succession of boggy pools from which cypresses and palms grew thickly. It was covered with hollow logs. He acted swiftly.
He dragged Cleve to the rowboat at the creek landing and poled up the shallow channel to the island. He felt his way among the trees and through the muck. He groped to the spot where a great cypress log had lain hollow for years. He lit a match. The openings were clogged with cobwebs and the fine powder of decay. He crawled in backwards and edged along on his belly.
Inch by inch he dragged Cleve after him. He backed out and wiped the sweat and dust from his face. He filled the openings with muck and humus. The ants would make a fine trail through it and clean the bones. He poled down the creek and walked up the ledge to the cabin.
Piety was in bed. She called to him.
"Where you been so long? I done had me a bad spell while you was gone."
He did not answer. She heard him take out the whiskey bottle from the flour-barrel. His chair scraped in front of the hearth and she could hear him blowing the embers and putting on fresh fat-wood. The light flickered over the rafters and lit her bed across the room-high partition. His shoes dropped on the pine floor. A match scratched and the sweet rankness of his corn-cob pipe drifted through the rooms. The chair scraped again. He was pacing up and down in his bare feet. Up and down, up and down, like a panther in a cage.
"Lant?"
He did not answer.
"Lant!"
A match scratched again. He was smoking a cigarette.
"You come here now! I want to see you."
He came to the side of the bed. She sat upright, leaning on one hand, and lifted the mosquito bar. The light from the hearth-fire was bright through the opened door. She shaded her eyes.
"I wisht I could see you," she said.
His face was a red-brown blur. She could not see the torment. But a panic and a distress came to her from him as tangibly as though she touched it.
"You tell me!" she wailed. "What is it? You tell me!"
"You lay down and be still," he said. "You won't git you no sleep, rarin' so."
He went out and closed the door behind him. He sat by the fire until midnight. The woman lay on her back until the pillow was damp with tears. She made no sound. She moved the pillow to one side to dry. The rest of the night she heard him tossing in his bed. Towards morning a rain fell. It was a rain heavy enough to wash out tracks.