Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (32 page)

Harold came in first, carrying the big end of the
coffin, and with the lantern hanging from his belt. The coffin was
black, with a new, thin coat of paint. It looked huge, coming into
the small, white room, and a strong smell of tar came with it. Joe
Sam stumbled up over the sill, carrying the narrow end, and blinking
against the light. There was a fine powdering of blown snow clinging
all over both the men, making them almost white, except for their
faces, and a sifting of dry flakes stirred like sand on the lid of
the coffin. Grace closed the door and stood against it, and watched
Harold and Joe Sam carry the coffin slowly around the table and into
the bedroom. Their feet made a soft shuffling because they were
taking such short steps, and in the bedroom door, Harold had to turn
around and tilt the coffin a little to get it through. The figure on
the bed was covered with a white blanket now, and there was a folded
quilt on the floor by the table.

The mother stood up and pushed the rocking chair back
to make room by the bed.

"Put it over here," she said, "where
I’ll have the light to see by."

They set the coffin down beside the bed, being very
careful not to make a loud sound. Then Harold took the lantern off
his belt and set it down by the coflin. He lifted the lid off the
coffin, and a strong smell of wet sage came out of it, stronger even
than the tar smell. He carried the lid over and stood it on end
beside the wardrobe. The nails were already standing up all around
the edge of it, ready to be driven in. He came back and took a hammer
and a box of tacks out of the coffin and put them on the table.

Then he took out the two, big, twisted pieces of wet
sage and stood there holding them, one in each hand. "He liked
the smell of it when it was wet like that," he said.

The mother nodded. "You could leave it on the
bed," she said.

He laid the two gray branches on the bed, one on each
side of the feet under the white blanket.
The
mother looked down into the coffin. The inside was still white, raw
wood, and there were sage leaves scattered all over the bottom.

"I thought maybe I’d put balsam in the
lining," she said.

Harold nodded.

The mother looked at Joe Sam, who was standing at the
foot of the bed, looking at the long shape under the blanket. His
face didn’t show anything.

"That’s all for now, I guess," the mother
said.

"Well," Harold said, "if you want me
for anything, you can send Grace up for me."

The mother looked at him, but she didn’t say
anything, just nodded. Harold picked up the lantern, and said, "Come
on, Joe Sam," and went back out into the kitchen. The old Indian
followed him silently. Harold hesitated for a moment between the
stove and the table. He
looked at the open
doorway of the bunk-room, and then back into the white bedroom. The
mother was already bending over the coffin, unfolding the quilt along
the edge of it. It was a patchwork quilt, with patches of all shapes
and colors on it. Some of the patches shone in the light like water,
and changed color when the mother moved the quilt.

" Grace was still standing by the outside door.

"I’ll leave the lantern," Harold told
her. He blew the lantern out and set it on the table. "If she
needs me for anything, you come up and call me, will you?"

"Al1 right," Grace said.

Harold looked at the door of the bunk-room again, but
it stayed empty, with only the soft light showing in it from the lamp
that was out of sight.

"And you might tell Gwen good night for me."

Grace came away from the door and stood beside the
table, "You better tell her yourself," she said.

"I don’t guess so. You tell her for me."

"A1l right," Grace said. "I’ll tell
her."

"And you get some sleep too."

"Oh, I will."

He tried to grin at her, and patted her arm, and
said, "Come on, Joe Sam."

They went out, and Harold pulled the door closed,
getting a last look at Grace, still standing there against the table,
looking at nothing. Then there was only a square shaft of light
coming out of the window beside them. The light spread quickly
against the driven snow, and didn’t reach far. When they had
crossed it, the darkness was thick everywhere in front of them, and
when they came around the corner of the house, the wind shut them off
too.

"Keep close behind me, Joe Sam," Harold
yelled, and then looked ahead and up the slope, trying to keep the
bunk-house window in sight. Sometimes it would show brightly for an
instant, but most of the time it was dim and small behind the
twisting veils of the blizzard, and sometimes it almost winked out.
Twice he felt Joe Sam touch him on the small of the back, to make
sure where he was.

18

Harold woke gently into a deep hush in the morning.
For some reason he could not remember, he felt lazy and profoundly at
peace, almost happy. After a minute, he turned his head on the pillow
and looked at the window. There was a little wall of snow at the
bottom of each pane, and beyond them he could see huge, far-separated
flakes floating down through a
brightening air.

It must be pretty well snowed out, he thought, and
then, remembering the sweeping blizzard of the night before, he
remembered everything else that had happened too. The wall of peace
that sleep, and perhaps good dreams, had raised in his mind, crumbled
away. It seemed to him then that he must have slept too long, and
that something had happened while he slept, something he might have
prevented if he’d been awake. He threw back his blankets and
started to roll up onto the edge of his bunk. Then he saw Joe Sam,
and froze where he was, propped up on one elbow.

The old Indian was crouched on one knee, so close to
the head of the bunk that Harold could have reached out and touched
his face. He was naked again, and holding the bottle neck down
against his hip, like a knife ready to be driven forward and up. He
was whispering rapidly and softly, like an excited breathing, and
making little, quieting motions with his left hand, as if to keep
someone else still. Harold glanced quickly past the old man to see
who it was, but there was only the bare floor, with a little sawdust
and a few shavings on it, that he had missed when he swept up after
his work. Harold looked back at the bottle neck again, to be ready to
jump when it started. It didn’t move, though, except to tremble a
little where it was.

I can’t stay here all day like this, Harold
thought, and turned his head very slowly to look at Joe Sam’s face.
Joe Sam wasn’t watching him at all; he was watching something down
at the foot of the bunk. He was turned a little toward the foot of
the bunk, and was holding himself ready to leap at it. Harold looked
quickly down where the old man was looking, but there was nothing
there either, except the shape of his own legs and feet under the
covers. He didn’t dare to move his feet, for fear Joe Sam would
pounce on them like a cat. He was watching them like a cat watching a
hole where he’d seen something move.

That’s it, Harold thought, the cat. He’s holding
the cat back, but he’s ready to help it, too. They’re together.
The image was distinct for a moment, but then it passed, and he
wasn’t so sure. Or maybe he’s helping Curt, he thought. Maybe
it’s the cat he has cornered. What’s the good of making fool
guesses? he asked himself more wakefully. The old man’s seeing
things again, that’s all that’s sure.

"Joe Sam," he said quietly.

The excited whispering stopped at once, but Joe Sam
still crouched there, with one hand out to hold back his invisible
ally. He appeared to be holding his breath now, in order to hear
better.

"Joe Sam," Harold said again, and more
loudly.

Moving only his eyes, the old Indian looked up
Harold’s length from the feet he had been watching so intently.
When he saw Harold’s eyes looking into his, his body slackened a
little at once, and then, gradually, the excited pleasure faded from
his face. His lips, which had been drawn back in a half grin, closed
over the worn stumps of his teeth, and he let the bottle neck down to
the floor. Then, before Harold could speak again, he stood up and
padded softly
across the room and let the bottle
neck down into the trash keg without a sound. More slowly, all the
purpose gone out of him, he drifted back to the stove and stood
beside it, holding his hands out to the cold iron. The snow light
from the window revealed all the bony knots of his dark body. He
began to shake heavily. He hunched and tightened himself against the
shaking, but that only made it worse.

Same as it was in the corral yesterday, Harold
thought. He comes out of it, and he’s a hundred years old again. He
swung up onto the edge of the bunk, and felt much better because he
had completed the motion.

"Joe Sam," he said once more.

The old Indian looked back over his shoulder. His
face was sad, and his jaw was shaking like the rest of him.

"Hello," he said.

Like it was any morning, Harold thought, and asked,
"What were you after with that bottle neck?"

"No got bottle neck," the old man said
finally.

Harold watched him intently, but he said nothing
more, and finally he looked back at the stove. Harold shrugged his
shoulders and stood up.

"You better get into your bunk. The fire’s
out."

The old man slowly drew his hands away from the stove
and held his elbows with them, hugging himself. Still hugging
himself, he moved slowly across to his bunk, but then just stood
there beside it, staring down at it.

"Get in, Joe Sam. Get under the b1ankets,"
Harold said.

Still the old man just stood there, staring, until
Harold began to feel uneasily that it wasn’t the bunk he was
looking at, but something left over from the excited dream. Then,
instead of getting into the bunk, he took up the red flannel
underwear that lay on top of his other clothes and began to get into
it very slowly. He was shaking so badly that he had trouble balancing
himself when he had to stand on one leg.

He doesn’t know it, though, Harold thought,
watching him. It’s like he woke up into a dream, not the other way
round.

"Y0u better get under the covers and warm up
first," he said.

"Whisky," Joe Sam said. "Make warm."
He went on trying to get into the red underwear.

"All right. I’ll get you a drink when I go
down. But you better stay in bed a while first. You
got
the shakes bad."

"Feed chickens," Joe Sam said. He got into
the underwear finally, and buttoned it and reached for his shirt.

Harold stared at him, angered in spite of himself by
this stubborn, sleepy defiance. But then he thought, letting the
anger pass, Better keep him where I can watch him, at that, and
looked down at the boot he was holding, and began to pull it on. But
no more bottle necks, he thought. We’re done with bottle necks.

He slowed his dressing to let Joe Sam Hnish first.
When the old man was dressed, he said, "You go on down, Joe Sam.
I’ll be along in a minute."

He stood up and crossed to the wash basin and poured
it full of water. The film of ice that had formed in the night
clicked faintly as it broke into the basin. Harold watched Joe Sam in
the piece of mirror on the wall. It was more real, some way, than
looking right at him, to see the small figure standing out so
distinctly in the middle of the room in the white, snow light, and
behind him, much farther behind him than they really were, so that he
was standing in a long hall, the bare board wall of the other end and
the pile of stove wood, with a bridle hanging from a nail above it.
It was Joe Sam’s dress-up bridle, and the silver studding on it
made tiny points of shining. The points of shining weren’t attached
to the bridle. They were alive in the air by themselves.

The little, dark man in the center of the hall just
stood there, looking at Harold’s back. He was too small for his
face to show clearly. Only his eye on the side toward the window
shone by itself, like one of the silver nails. Harold wanted to turn
around and look at the face that was too small to show anything in
the glass. He didn’t, though, but doused his face quickly with the
cold water, wetting his hair too, and looked into the long hall in
the mirror again. The httle, dark figure was still there, but water
had splashed onto the mirror, and made it appear only waveringly, and
then disappear. Suddenly Harold was really afraid of the figure. It
became the same dangerous stranger who had come to life before, when
there were no tracks in the snow.

"You go along, Joe Sam," he said sharply,
and then, ashamed of the edge in his voice, added, "You’re
cold enough now. Get down there and get yourself warm. I’ll be down
directly."

He doused his face again, and cleared his eyes, and
saw the little figure in the long hall turn toward the door,
appearing between water streaks and vanishing behind them. Then the
door opened, making a white rectangle in the dark hall. The figure
appeared in the white rectangle, and vanished from it as it had
behind the water on the glass. The faraway door remained open,
showing only a faintly moving whiteness, like breath on the glass.