One and Wonder (38 page)

Chickens scattered in front of the wheels, fluttering and squawking; pigs squealed in a pen beside the house. Matt stopped in front of the shanty, appalled. If the two rooms and sagging porch had ever known paint, they had enjoyed only a nodding acquaintance, and that a generation before.

A large brooding figure sat on the porch, rocking slowly in a rickety chair. He was dark, with a full black beard and a tall head of hair.

“That's Paw,” Abigail whispered in fright.

Matt waited uneasily, but the broad figure of her father kept on rocking as if strangers brought back his daughter every day.
Maybe they do,
Matt thought with irritation.

“Well,” he said nervously, “here you are.”

“I cain't get out,” Abigail said. “Not till I find out if Paw's goin’ to whale me. Go talk to him. See if he's mad at me.”

“Not me,” Matt stated with certainty, glancing again at the big, black figure rocking slowly, ominously silent. “I've done my duty in bringing you home. Good-by. I won't say it's been a pleasure knowing you.”

“You're nice and mighty handsome. I'd hate to tell Paw you'd taken advantage of me. He's a terror when he's riled.”

For one horrified moment, Matt stared at Abigail. Then, as she opened her mouth, he opened the door and stepped out. Slowly he walked up to the porch and put one foot on its uneven edge.

“Uh,” he said. “I met your daughter on the road.”

Jenkins kept on rocking.

“She'd run away,” Matt went on.

Jenkins was silent. Matt studied the portion of Jenkins’ face that wasn't covered with hair. There wasn't much of it, but what there was Matt didn't like.

“I brought her back,” Matt finished desperately.

Jenkins rocked and said nothing. Matt spun around and walked quickly back to the car. He went around to the window where Abigail sat. He reached through the window, opened the glove compartment, and drew out a full pint bottle.

“Remind me,” he said, “never to see you again.” He marched back to the porch. “Care for a little drink?”

One large hand reached out, smothered the pint, and brought it close to faded blue overalls. The cap was twisted off by the other hand. The bottle was tilted toward the un-painted porch ceiling as soon as the neck disappeared into the matted whiskers. The bottle gurgled. When it was lowered, it was only half full.

“Weak,” the beard said. But the hand that held the bottle held it tight.

“I brought your daughter back,” Matt said, starting again.

“Why?” he asked.

“She had no place to go. I mean—after all, this is her home.”

“She run away,” the beard said. Matt found the experience extremely unnerving.

“Look, Mr. Jenkins, I realize that teen-age daughters can be a nuisance, and after meeting your daughter I think I can understand how you feel. Still in all, she is your daughter.”

“Got my doubts.”

Matt gulped and tried once more. “A happy family demands a lot of compromise, give-and-take on both sides.

“Your daughter may have given you good cause to lose your temper, but beating a child is never sound psychology. Now if you—”

“Beat her?” Jenkins rose from his chair. It was an awesome thing, like Neptune rising out of the sea in all his majesty, gigantic, bearded, and powerful. Even subtracting the height of the porch, Jenkins loomed several inches over Matt’s near six feet. “Never laid a hand to her. Dassn't.”

My God,
thought Matt,
the man is trembling!

“Come in here,” said Jenkins. He waved the pint toward the open door, a dark rectangle.

Uneasily, Matt walked into the room. Under his feet, things gritted and cracked.

Jenkins lit a kerosene lamp and turned it up. The room was a shambles. Broken dishes littered the floor. Wooden chairs were smashed and splintered. In the center of the room, a table on its back waved three rough legs helplessly in the air; the fourth leg sagged pitifully from its socket.

“She did this?” Matt asked weakly.

“This ain't nothin’.” Jenkins’ voice quavered; it was a terrible sound to come from that massive frame. “You should see the other room.”

“But how? I mean
why?”

“I ain't a-sayin’ Ab done it,” Jenkins said, shaking his head. His beard wobbled near Matt's nose. “But when she gets onhappy, things happen. And she was powerful onhappy when that Duncan boy tol’ her he want comin’ back. Them chairs come up from the floor and slam down. That table went dancin’ round the room till it fell to pieces. Then dishes come a-flyin’ through the air. Look!”

His voice was full of self-pity as he turned his head around and parted his long, matted hair. On the back of his head was a large, red swelling. “I hate to think what happened to that Duncan boy.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “Now, mister, I guess I got ever’ right to lay my hand to that gal. Ain't I?” he demanded fiercely, but his voice broke.

Matt stared at him blankly.

“But whop her? Me? I sooner stick my hand in a nest of rattlers.”

“You mean to say that those things happened all by themselves?”

“That's what I said. I guess it kinder sticks in your craw. Wouldn't have believe it myself, even seein’ it and feelin’ it—” he rubbed the back of his head—“if it ain't happen afore. Funny things happen around Ab, ever since she started fiilin’ out, five-six year ago.”

“But she's only sixteen,” Matt objected.

“Sixteen?” Jenkins glanced warily around the room and out the door toward the car. He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Don't let on I tol’ you, but Ab allus was a fibber. She's past eighteen!”

From a shelf, a single unbroken dish crashed to the floor at Jenkins’ feet. He jumped and began to shake.

“See?” he whispered plaintively.

“It fell,” Matt said.

“She's witched.” Jenkins took a feverish swallow from the bottle. “Maybe I ain't been a good Paw to her. Ever since her Maw died, she run wild and got all kinda queer notions. ‘Tain't alius been bad. For years I ain't had to go fer water. That barrel by the porch is allus filled. But ever since she got to the courtin’ age and started bein’ disappointed in fellers round about, she been mighty hard to live with. No one'll come nigh the place. And things keep a-movin’ and a-jumpin’ around till a man cain't trust his own chair to set still under him. It gets you, son. A man kin only stand so much!”

To Matt's dismay, Jenkins’ eyes began to fill with large tears. “Got no friend no more to offer me a drink now and again, sociable-like, or help me with the chores, times I got the misery in my back. I ain't a well man, son. Times it's more'n I kin do to get outa bed in the mornin’.

“Look, son,” Jenkins said, turning to Matt pleadingly. “Yore a city feller. Yore right nice-lookin’ with manners and edyacation. I reckon Ab likes you. Whyn't you take her with you?” Matt started retreating toward the door. “She's right purty when she fixes up and she kin cook right smart. You'd think a skillet was part of her hand, the way she kin handle one, and you don't even have to marry up with her.”

Matt backed away, white-faced and incredulous. “You must be mad. You can't give a girl away like that.” He turned to make a dash for the door.

A heavy hand fell on Matt's shoulder and spun him around. “Son,” Jenkins said, his voice heavy with menace, “any man that's alone with a gal more'n twenty minutes, it's thought proper they should get married up quick. Since yore a stranger, I ain't holdin’ you to it. But when Ab left me, she stopped bein’ my daughter. Nobody asked you to bring her back. That gal,” he said woefully, “eats more'n I do.”

Matt reached into his hip pocket. He pulled out his billfold and extracted a five-dollar bill.

“Here,” he said, extending it toward Jenkins, “maybe this will make life a little more pleasant.”

Jenkins looked at the money wistfully, started to reach for it, and jerked his hand away.

“I cain't do it,” he moaned. “It ain't worth it. You brought her back. You kin take her away.”

Matt glanced out the doorway toward the car and shuddered. He added another five to the one in his hand.

Jenkins sweated. His hand crept out. Finally, desperately, he crumpled the bills into his palm. “All right,” he said hoarsely. “Them's ten mighty powerful reasons.”

Matt ran to the car as if he had escaped from bedlam. He opened the door and slipped in. “Get out,” he said sharply. “You're home.”

“But Paw—”

“From now on, he'll be a doting father.” Matt reached across and opened the door for her. “Good-by.”

Slowly Abigail got out. She rounded the car and walked up to the porch, dragging her feet. But when she reached the porch, she straightened up. Jenkins, who was standing in the doorway, shrank back from his five-foot-tall daughter as she approached.

“Dirty, nasty old man,” Abigail hissed.

Jenkins flinched. After she had passed, he raised the bottle hastily to his beard. His hand must have slipped. By some unaccountable mischance, the bottle kept rising in the air, mouth downward. The bourbon gushed over his head.

Pathetically, looking more like Neptune than ever, Jenkins peered toward the car and shook his head.

Feverishly, Matt turned the car around and jumped it out of the yard. It had undoubtedly been an optical illusion. A bottle does not hang in the air without support.

Guy's cabin should not have been so difficult to find. Although the night was dark, the directions were explicit. But for two hours Matt bounced back and forth along the dirt roads of the hills. He got tired and hungry.

For the fourth time, he passed the cabin which fitted the directions in every way but one—it was occupied. Lights streamed from the windows into the night. Matt turned into the steep driveway. He could, at least, ask directions.

As he walked toward the door, the odor of frying ham drifted from the house to tantalize him. Matt knocked, his mouth watering. Perhaps he could even get an invitation to supper.

The door swung open. “Come on in. What kept you?”

Matt blinked. “Oh, no!” he cried. For a frantic moment, it was like the
old vaudeville routine of the drunk in the hotel who keeps staggering back to knock on the same door. Each time he is more indignantly ejected until finally he complains, “My God, are you in
all
the rooms?”

“What are you doing here?” Matt asked faintly. “How did you—How
could
you—?”

Abigail pulled him into the cabin. It looked bright and cheerful and clean. The floor was newly swept; a broom leaned in the corner. The two lower bunks on opposite walls were neatly made up. Two places were laid at the table. Food was cooking on the wood stove.

“Paw changed his mind,” she said.

“But he couldn't! I gave him—”

“Oh, that.” She reached into a pocket of her dress. “Here.”

She handed him the two crumpled five-dollar bills and a handful of silver and copper that Matt dazedly added up to one dollar and thirty-seven cents.

“Paw said he'd have sent more, but it was all he had. So he threw in some vittles.”

He sat down in a chair heavily. “But you couldn't—I didn't know where the place was myself, exactly. I didn't tell you—”

“I always been good at finding things,” she said. “Places, things that are lost. Like a cat, I guess.”

“But—but—” Matt spluttered, “how did you get here?”

“I rode,” she said. Instinctively, Matt’s eyes switched to the broom in the corner. “Paw loaned me the mule. I let her go. She'll get home all right.”

“But you can't stay here. It’s impossible!”

“Now, Mr. Wright,” Abigail said soothingly. “My Maw used to say a man should never make a decision on a empty stomach. You just sit there and relax. Supper's all ready. You must be nigh starved.”

“There's no decision to be made!” Matt said, but he watched while she put things on the table—thick slices of fried ham with cream gravy, corn on the cob, fluffy biscuits, butter, homemade jelly, strong black coffee that was steaming and fragrant. Abigail's cheeks were flushed from the stove, and her face was peaceful. She looked almost pretty.

“I can't eat a bite,” Matt told her.

“Nonsense.” Abigail filled his plate.

Glumly, Matt sliced off a bite of ham and put it in his mouth. It was so tender, it almost melted. Before long he was eating as fast as he could shovel the food into his mouth. The food was delicious; everything was cooked just as he liked it. He had never been able to tell anyone how to fix it that way. But that was the way it was.

He pushed himself back from the table, teetering against the wall on the back legs of his chair, lit a cigarette and watched Abigail pour him a
third cup of coffee. He was swept by a wave of contentment.

“If I'd had time I'd a made a peach pie. I make real good peach pie,” Abigail said.

Matt nodded lazily. There would be compensations in having someone around to—

“No!” he said violently, thumping down on the two front legs of his chair. “It won't work. You can't stay here. What would people say?”

“Who'd care?—Paw don't. Anyways, I could say we was married.”

“No!” Matt said hoarsely. “Please don't do that!”

“Please, Mr. Wright,” she pleaded, “let me cook and clean for you. I wouldn't be no trouble, Mr. Wright, honest I wouldn't.”

“Look, Abbie!” He took her hand. It was soft and feminine. She stood beside his chair obediently, her eyes cast down. “You're a nice girl, and I like you. You can cook better than anyone I've ever known, and you'll make some man a good wife. But I think too much of you to let you ruin your name by staying here alone with me. You'll have to go back to your father.”

The life seemed to flow out of her. “All right,” she said, so low that it was difficult to hear her.

Dazed at his sudden success, Matt got up and walked toward the door. She followed him, and Matt could almost feel the tears welling in her eyes.

Matt opened the car door for her and helped her in. He circled the front of the car and slid into the driver's seat. Abbie huddled against the far door, small and forlorn.

Since Matt’s speech, she hadn't said a word. Suddenly, Matt felt very sorry for her and ashamed, as if he had hit a child.
The poor little thing!
he thought. Then he caught himself. He shook his head. For a poor little thing, she had certainly managed to browbeat her father.