Track of the Cat - Walter Van Tilburg Clark (35 page)

The mother was reading with her fingers and her lips
now. She finshed the passage she was reading and lowered the
Testament into her lap and closed it.

"It’s pretty near dark already," she
said.

"I’ll change as quick as I can," Harold
told her.

"Never mind any changing n0w," she said. "I
don’t reckon there’s anybody to care what you have on."

"I’ll get Grace up," Gwen said, and rose,
and took Grace’s coat from its peg, and went into the bunk-room.

"You might light the lamp for us to come back
by," the mother said, "and then go up and see is your pa
fit to come with us."

Harold pulled the lamp down and lit it, and let it up
again, and the little moths stirred on the white walls. Then he went
up the stairs onto the landing and opened the door and looked in. The
reflected light from the hills came in the east window and showed the
father sprawled on the bed with the top quilt pulled half over him. A
bottle with the cork out of it lay on its side under the edge of the
bed. The old man’s hand was hanging limp over the edge, as if it
had
stayed just where it had let go of the
bottle. He was snoring slowly and heavily.

Every time, Harold thought. He gets out of it every
time, and closed the door and came back down the stairs. The mother
was standing by the table now, with the shawl over her shoulders, and
her hands folded together and holding the little Testament against
her, like a priest’s hands holding his breviary. She looked at
Harold, asking the question, and he shook his head. Her mouth grew
wide and thin, and curved down, but she didn’t say anything.

Harold said, "Come on, Joe Sam," and
started toward the north bedroom, but then he thought suddenly, We
can’t let it down into the grave, and was frightened at how close
he had come to forgetting that. It would be terrible to have them all
standing around the grave there, waiting, and then not have any way
to let the coffin down. We have to have ropes, he thought, two ropes,
one for each end. The words came off the top of his mind. The
lariats, he thought. They’ll do, and went over into the wood-box
corner. There were four lariats hanging coiled on one big wooden peg
there, and he took two of them down.

Gwen and Grace came out of the bunk-room. Gwen was
wearing her cloak, with the hood already up, and she had her arm
around Grace. Grace was walking in a daze, with her head down, not
really over on Gwen’s shoulder, but just turned and bending toward
it. One look at Grace made it all worse for Harold, so he could feel
the same weakness taking all the stuff out of his own knees. It was
funny how, just when you were getting used to it one way, you had to
do something about it, like this, and it all got worse again.

You had to tip it part way to get it in, the words
from the top of his mind said, so you’ll have to tip it again to
get it out. Only he’s in it now. You don’t want them in here
watching it tip that way with him in it. He laid the ropes on the
table.

"You take them outside and wait, Mother,"
he said.

The mother nodded and said, "Come along, Grace.
We’ll wait outside," and opened the door and went out. Gwen
and Grace went slowly across after her. When they were in the door,
Harold said, "Just leave it open, will you?"

Gwen nodded so he could see the wrinkles in her hood
move, and took Grace out onto the snow. Grace went as if she couldn’t
have done it by herself, and maybe didn’t even know for sure where
she was going. Then Harold could see the three dark-skirted figures
two together, and the third and tallest one apart, waiting out there
on the snow, with the steep wall of the mountain snow behind them,
with the black pines on it.

He went into the bedroom. Joe Sam followed him, and
went to the small end of the coffin without being told, when Harold
went to the big end. "All right," Harold said, and they
picked it up, first the right side and then the left side, to get
their fingers under it, and then all of it together and held level.
Harold could feel the weight shift a little inside, but not sliding,
like something rolling heavily on an axle.

"We’ll turn it around in here," he said.
"There isn’t room in the kitchen."

They turned it around slowly, and Harold backed to
the door, and then they had to do the
tilting.
The weight shifted inside again, this time falling clear down against
the side of the coffin, and the top of Harold’s mind said to him,
You should have made it so he couldn’t slide in it. It would have
gone through the door straight then, too. You wouldn’t have had to
tip it at all. Then the big end was through, and they leveled the
coffin between them again, and the weight slowly shifted back. After
that it was better. Harold backed between the stove and the table,
and around the table, so the coffin was headed for the door. Then the
top of his mind said, You can’t back all the way up there, and
added sharply, because he had nearly forgotten again, And you’ve
left the ropes on the table.

"Let’s put it down here a minute, Joe Sam,"
he said, "and get a fresh hold on it."

They set it down very carefully, so that it scarcely
made a sound on the floor. Harold took the ropes from the table, and
stood there a minute, holding them and thinking. "You take one
over your shoulder," he said, "and I’ll take the other.
Then we won’t drop them on the way up." He hung one coil over
Joe Sam’s shoulder, with his arm through it. He slipped the other
on himself the same way, but then felt how it would slide down when
he had to lean over, and said, "No, better put it around your
neck, I guess," and changed his own. He thought he’d have to
change Joe Sam’s for him too, but the old Indian did it for
himself. Then the coils of the rope hung down on his chest like a
huge necklace with several strands., After a moment Joe Sam slid it
up so the strands were tight against his throat and the coils hung
down on his back.

He’s doing better than you are, at that, the voice
said to Harold, and he pushed his own rope up to hang on his back
too. They stood still at opposite ends of the coffin, their shadows
big on the white walls among the shadow moths.

Then Harold said, "You ready?"

Joe Sam nodded.

Harold turned his back to the big end, and saw the
mother standing in the door watching them, trying to hurry them
without saying anything.

"We’l1 try and go all the way in one lift,"
he told Joe Sam, "but if you feel it slipping, you say so, and
we’ll set it down. Don’t let it fall, that’s all. If you feel
it slipping, say so, quick."

Joe Sam made a soft sound to show he heard. Harold
squatted and got his hands under the big end, first one side and then
the other, and lifted slowly. When he felt the other end rising too,
he stood up.

"I’ll go ahead," the mother said, and
Harold nodded as he advanced toward the door. "You and Gwen can
follow them, Grace," the mother said, and had the little
procession arranged the way it was in her mind.

Gwen said, "All right, Mrs. Bridges," and
when Harold came out past her, said softly, "You go on, Harold.
I’ll get the door."

There was more light left outside than he’d
expected, after being in the kitchen with the lamp on. There were
still faint, golden edges on the clouds that were getting smaller
above the mountain, and there was still color from the sun on the
tops of the eastern hills, too. It reflected back, and colored the
snow around them softly, and even seemed to rise up out of the snow
and make a glowing in the still air.

The mother led the way around the corner of the house
and up the slope, walking very straight in the deep, narrow path
between the snow banks, but still holding the Testament against her
folded hands, and taking her steps slowly, so they wouldn’t get too
far behind her with the coffin. Harold had to kick into the snow each
step he took on the hill, to be sure he didn’t slip back. Once,
when they were half-way up the slope, he heard a long, weak,
whimpering sound behind him, and then Gwen’s voice, murmuring too
low for him to hear the words. He looked quickly at where his next
step would go, and then glanced back over his shoulder. Grace and
Gwen were standing still, back around the turn below Joe Sam. Grace
had her face buried all the way in Gwen’s shoulder now. Gwen was
holding her with both arms and talking softly with her mouth right
against the turned-up collar of Grace’s coat. Seeing them like
that, with the sound of the whimper still alive in him, Harold felt
his knees go slack, and his fingers under the edge of the coffin
getting too weak to hold.

"We better put it down a minute," he said.

The turn by the woodpile was nearly level, and the
snow was shoveled off it. They set the coffin down there, and Harold
straightened up and breathed deeply and looked at the mountain and
the dark cloud with a pale fringe of light that was looking over it.
Gradually the trembling in his knees stopped and his hands felt
stronger. Joe Sam just waited for him, not moving at all, or even
breathing hard. The mother went on up the path nearly to the grave
before she knew they weren’t following her. Then she turned and
waited up there, looking down at them.

Gwen and Grace began to climb again. They moved in
step and close together, with Gwen’s arm still around Grace, but
Grace was holding her head up now, and trying to step firmly.

"All right?" Harold asked.

The little, private joke was in Joe Sam’s eye, but
he only nodded and didn’t say anything. They took up the coffin
again, carefully, and started slowly up the last slope. The mother
turned and moved ahead again, and onto the level space beside the
grave. When they got up there, she was already standing at the head
of the narrow pit, with her back to the mountain. They set the coffin
down again on the north edge.

"You better put it in now," the mother
said.

Harold glanced down and saw Gwen and Grace slowly
making the turn by the woodpile, and nodded. He lifted his rope off
over his head and uncoiled it. He looked across the coffin, but Joe
Sam was already uncoiling his rope too. They slipped the ropes under
the two ends of the coffin, but then had to wait while Gwen and Grace
passed slowly behind Joe Sam, and
around onto the
south edge. When they were standing there, like one double figure,
with Grace hiding her face in Gwen’s shoulder again, Harold looked
at Joe Sam and nodded. They lifted the coffin a little off the 
snow and shuffled sidewards with it cradled between them in the
ropes. The mother moved back to let Harold in front of her. When they
were standing spread-legged, one at each end of the grave, Harold
nodded again. Breathing hard, more from carefulness than from the
weight, they leaned over as far as they dared, and then began to let
the ropes slip through their hands very slowly. Even so the coffin
grated once against a stone in the side of the grave, and then a
second time. The second time it swung a little too, and struck gently
as it swung back, making a soft, woody, hollow sound. Grace put her
hand up to her face quickly, as if to shield it from a blow, and
burrowed a little into Gwen’s shoulder, making the whimpering sound
again.

The coffin settled onto the bottom with only a faint,
sandy grating, and Harold and Joe Sam began to work their ropes out
from under it. When they were free, first Harold, and then Joe Sam
after him, coiled his rope and fastened it with the twist around it
again. Harold took Joe Sam’s rope too, and laid both of them down
at the end of the piled earth. Then he came back and stood by himself
in the middle of the north side. The mother moved down close to the
head of the grave again, and looked across at Gwen and Grace. Gwen
murmured something against Grace’s face. Grace drew a deep breath,
as if she meant to make it last the whole time, and lifted her head
and stood up straight, though with Gwen’s arm around her still. The
mother looked around at them all, and then bowed her head. Harold
bowed his head too, so that he was looking down at the black lid of
the coffin.

But then too much time went by, and the mother didn’t
say anything. Finally Harold peered at her from under his brows, and
she was standing there, looking right at him, and twisting the little
Testament into a roll in her two fists. It was like being hit when he
didn’t expect it, because her look was begging him for help, and
her mouth wasn’t drawn out thin and tight any longer. It was a
little open, as if she couldn’t get enough breath, and her lips
were trembling. He looked down again quickly, thinking fiercely, Oh,
what does it matter what you say? Only say something. Say anything.
Don’t just stand there till you start to blubber. For Christ’s
sake don’t start to blubber with Grace like she is. He closed his
hands into fists and pressed them hard against his thighs.

The mother began to speak. Her breath came in the
wrong places, making queer pauses, and some of the words faded away,
as if maybe she wouldn’t get them out at all, but she wasn’t
crying.

"I can’t preach no proper funeral sermon for
him," she said, "and it don’t seem there’d be much use
in it if I could. We all knowed him too well to need much talk about
it."

She paused, and started again. "Still, he was a
hard one to really know, at that. Seems to me I’m just learning a
lot of things about him I should of knowed all along. But even if I
could make out clear every last thing about him, body and soul, and
had the words to tell it, I don’t know as it would help. It don’t
make no difference to him now, that’s sure, and we’d all find it
out for ourselves soon enough, with him gone."