9
I was up before dawn, and got all my feeding and milking and cleaning done, and put on my best suit, and we had our breakfast. Then I took a rest while they worked, because they had to get Danny ready and get dressed themselves. Then women began dropping by from all up and down the creek, and they had to have it explained to them all over again, how Wash would come out around noon and take the girls and Danny in, while I would follow along in the truck, so I could take Jane back, while Kady and Wash would go over to the hotel with Danny and change into other clothes, so they could drive off some place. So then there was a lot of talk about the flowers Wash was going to bring, and I had never worn one in my life, but I thought for Kady’s wedding I would put one in my buttonhole. So I knew where some wild roses were, down the creek a way, at the edge of a piece of woods, and started down there. But I didn’t more than get started when up on the mountainside I saw something move. Now so far as I was concerned, that still up there I knew nothing about, had never seen, and never heard of. But that was so far as I was concerned. So far as an officer was concerned maybe I was the fellow that lived closest to it. Or maybe I had left something up there and forgotten about it.Or maybe when I talked to him I’d have got a funny look on my face. I had to know who it was, because there was no regular business anybody could have up there, fifteen feet from the shaft mouth, but nowhere near anything else.
I crossed the creek on some stones, kept under the cliff so I couldn’t be seen, and hit the path that led up to the timbered drift, the one we had used to roll our stuff into after we hauled it up on a block and falls from the road. About a hundred feet inside was a tool chest where I kept extra lamps, water, carbide, canned beans, and some dynamite, in case I had to shoot the tunnel down and get out quick through the shaft. It was the first I had been there since Jane came with Danny, and already I hated it that I had ever had anything to do with the liquor. Because the mash I had left fermenting was so high it turned your stomach to smell it, and the rats that had come in for our grain almost knocked me down jumping off the bins to get out of my way. You don’t kill rats in a mine, because if something’s going to happen they know it before God knows it, and the way they run out with men right on their tail, they’re called the miner’s best friend. Just the same, they turned my stomach worse than the smell.
I watched for a minute, but I didn’t see anything so I started up the ladder, first putting out the light. Then I came down and took off my shoes. Then I went up again, and when I got to the top I raised my head easy, because if a deputy marshal would have me covered, or what would be there, I didn’t exactly know. But it was no officer. It was Moke, and across his knees was the same Winchester Ed Blue had thrown on me the day before, when he wouldn’t let me in the church. And where he was sitting was the one spot on the mountainside where he could cover a sharp bend in the road, where I’d have to come almost to a stop, on my way in to the wedding. I held my breath, because if he ever saw me I’d never make it down the ladder before he stepped over and plugged me. And then my heart stopped beating, and I almost fell down the shaft. Because it was hot, and he had taken off the jumper of his denims, so he was bare from the waist up. And I could see why Belle had fought with him over Danny, why he had kidnapped the boy, why he hated Wash, and all the rest of it, or thought I could.
By his navel was the butterfly.
When I got back to the cabin both girls were up the road with Danny, saying good-by to a woman that lived up the creek. Jane had on a dress, but Kady had on nothing but shoes and stockings and pants, with nothing over them but a blue checked apron she had slipped on to go out in. I waited while the woman, that was named Liza Minden, told it how she had known all the Blounts before Wash’s father had owned a mine or anything, and how they were wonderful people, and Kady was going to like them fine. And the more she went on, the crazier I got. I took down my rifle and loaded it, and waited some more. Then I went to the window—and leveled it, and drew a bead on her. I meant to shoot her through the heart for what she was, a rotten little slut that would even go to bed with her own father if he would let her, and that had already gone to bed with her mother’s lover, and was getting ready to marry a boy that was no more relation to the child she said was his than a possum was. But when I sighted the gun I couldn’t pull the trigger. I went outside, so I wouldn’t see her any more, and my feet lifted high off the ground when I walked, like I had just been hung and was dancing on air.
“Jess, you’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Everybody’s got birthmarks.”
“Wash, if the birthmark was all, I might not pay any attention to it either. But it’s not. Ever since Jane got here and found the boy in his shack, I’ve been trying to figure out why he kidnapped him, and so have you and so has everybody. Ever since Belle came in that night, I’ve been trying to figure out what she was doing there, and since she tried to kill Moke, I’ve been trying to figure out why. So have you, so has Jane, so has everybody. All right, now we know. He kidnapped Danny because Danny’s his child, and he knew it from the birthmark and so did Belle, and so did Kady. But Jane got him back, and then Kady had the chance to marry you, if she could ever keep it dark about this other thing. But Belle knew Moke better than anybody else knew him. She knew if it was the last chance he had, Moke would spill it. And she didn’t have much longer to live anyhow, so she came up here to stop him, the only way she knew. And what the hell do you mean, everybody has birthmarks? How could a baby and a man have a birthmark like that and it not mean anything?”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, all dressed for the wedding except for his coat, that was on the back of a chair with a carnation in the buttonhole, and two boxes of flowers in the same chair. He lit a cigarette and smoked a long time. Then he said: “Listen, Jess, it just can’t be true. In the first place she’s not that kind of a girl. And if she was that kind of a girl, she couldn’t be that kind of a girl with Moke. And he’s old enough to be her father. He’s almost as old as you are, Jess.”
“He’s thirty-nine.”
“Then she couldn’t fool around with him.”
“Yes, she could.”
“Jess, I say she couldn’t.”
He snapped that at me with a killer light in his eye, and I don’t know what kind of a look I had in my eye when I slung it back at him, but it must have said something, because he staggered back against the wall and said, “Jesus Christ.”
“You think I’m just fooling?”
He lit another cigarette and thought a while, and said: “Then I’ve got to kill him, Jess.”
“That I won’t let you do.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“You don’t know where he is and I won’t tell you and even if you did know you couldn’t get to him without a guide. And by the time you find one, if you can find one, he’ll be dead, because I’m going to kill him on my way back.”
“She’s the mother of my—”
He broke off and looked at me, and I think it was the first time he got it through his head, the meaning of what I had told him.
“I really got nothing to do with it, have I?”
“Not a thing in this world.”
“Unless— ”
“You killed her, is that it?”
He didn’t answer me. He just went and looked out the window, but that was what he had started to say. “Well, Wash, I tried it, but I couldn’t.”
“I could.”
“Him, that’ll be different.”
There came a ring on his buzzer and he opened the door. It was his father and mother. His father was tall, like he was, with gray hair and a brown, sunburned face. But his mother was pink and pretty and sweet, and went over to him and kissed him and asked if the bride was here, and where was the baby, and lots more stuff like that. He said who I was, and both of them shook hands, and said they had hoped I’d be able to get to the wedding.
“There won’t be any wedding, Mom.”
“What?”
“Sorry you took the trip for nothing. Now we’re going home.”