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She laughed. “You and Bowser! Both of you are crazy.”

“Of course we are. You can’t live with a dog for years…”

“And chickens. I remember I did see some about.

Have you pigs and horses and..”

“No. Chickens are all. Eggs to eat and an occasional fryer. I considered buying a cow, but a cow is too much bother.”

“Asa, I want to talk business with you. You said you didn’t want the university horning in — I think is the way you put it — on this dig of yours. What would you think of me horning in?”

I had a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth and now I put it down. There was something in the way she said it that was almost a warning. I don’t know what it was, but all at once, I was a little scared.

“Horn in?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Let me share your work with you.”

“What a silly thing to ask,” I said. “Of course you can share it with me. Haven’t I already shared my discovery with you, telling you about it?”

“But that wasn’t what I was talking about. I wasn’t asking for the sharing as a gift. I meant a partnership.

You don’t want to go back to teaching. You want to keep on with the dig and I think you should. You are onto something important and it shouldn’t be interrupted. If I could help a little so you wouldn’t have to leave …”

“No,” I said harshly. “Don’t go any further. No, I wouldn’t have it. You’re offering to finance me and I won’t have it.”

“You make it sound so terrible,” she said. “As if I had proposed something horrible. I’m not trying to take you over, Asa. It isn’t that. I have faith in you, is all, and it’s a shame that you have to …”

“It’s big business offering to bail out the underprivileged,” I said angrily. “Damn it, Rila, I will not be patronized.”

“I’m sorry, then, that I mentioned it. I had hoped you’d understand.”

“Damn it, why did you have to mention it? You should know me better than that. It all was going so fine and now…”

“Asa, remember the last time. The horrible fight we had. It ruined twenty years for us. Let us not let that happen again.”

“Fight? I don’t remember any fight.”

“I was the one who was angry that time. You had gone off with a couple of the men and got plastered, neglecting me. You tried to explain, you tried to say you were sorry, but I wouldn’t listen. It was the last day at the dig or the next to the last day and I never had the time to get over being angry. We can’t let something like that happen now. At least, I don’t want it to, How about you?”

“No,” I said, “neither do I want that to happen. But I can’t take money from you. No matter how well off you are, how little you would miss it.”

“Not well off,” she said. “And, again, I’m sorry.

Can’t we just forget it? And can I stay around for another little while?”

“As long as you wish,” I told her. “Forever, if you want to.”

“How about your friends and neighbors — will they talk about us?”

“You’re damn right they’ll talk about us. A place like Willow Bend hasn’t much to talk about; they grab at any little thing.”

“You don’t seem concerned.”

“Why should I be? I’m that nutty Steele kid, who came back to the old hometown, and they’re suspicious of me and resentful of me and the most of them don’t like me. They’re friendly, certainly, but they talk about me behind my back. They don’t like anyone who isn’t bogged down in their particular brand of mediocrity.

It’s defensive, I suppose. In front of anyone who left the town and came back short of utter defeat, they feel naked and inferior. They are acutely aware of their provincialism. That is the way it is. So, unless you are concerned about yourself, don’t give it another thought.”

“I am not at all concerned,” she said, “and if you are thinking of making an honest woman of me …”

“The thought,” I told her, “has not crossed my mind.”

SIX

“So you want to know about the coon that isn’t any coon,” Ezra Hopkins said to Rila. “It took me, God knows, long enough to find out that it wasn’t any coon.”

“You’re sure it’s not a coon?”

“Miss, I’m sure of that. Trouble is, I don’t know what it is. If old Ranger here could only talk, maybe he could tell you more than I can.”

He pulled at the ears of the gaunt hound that lay beside his chair. Ranger blinked his eyes lazily; he liked to have his ears pulled.

“We could bring Hiram here some time,” I said.

“He could talk with Ranger. He claims that he can talk with Bowser, He talks with Bowser all the time.”

“Well, now,” said Ezra, “I won’t argue with that.

There’d been a time I would have, but not any more.”

“Let’s not talk about Hiram and Bowser now,” said Rila. “Please go ahead and tell me of this coon.”

“Boy and man,” said Ezra, “I have ranged these hills. For more than fifty years. There have been some changes other places, but not many of them here.

This land isn’t fit for farming. It mostly stands on edge. Some parts of it are used to run cattle in, but even cattle don’t get no farther into the hills than they have to go. Time to time someone tries to do some logging, but it never amounts to much, because they lose money trying to get the timber out of here once it has been cut. So, all these years, these hills have been my hills. Them and the things that are in them. Legally, I own the few useless acres that this shack stands on, but, in another way, I own it all.”

“You love the hills,” said Rila.

“Well, I suppose I do. Loving comes from knowing and I know these hills. I could show you things you never would believe. I know a place where the pink lady’s slippers grow and the pink ones are wild for sure. The yellow ones will stand some tampering with, although not very much; the pink ones won’t stand tampering at all. Turn some cattle into a place where the pink ones bloom and in a couple of seasons, they are gone. Pick more than a few of them and they are gone. People say you don’t find them any more, that there are no more in these hills. But I tell you, miss, I know where there is a patch of them. I don’t tell no one where and I don’t pick them and I don’t tramp around among them. I let them strictly be. I just stand off a ways and look at them and think of the pity of it — that once these hills were covered by them, but not any more. And I know where a she-fox has her den, hidden well away. She has raised six litters there, and once the cubs are grown a bit, they come out and play around the den, little awkward things that fight among themselves, play fighting, that is, wrestling and tusseling, and I have a place where I can sit and watch them. I think the old she-fox must know that I am there, but she doesn’t seem to mind. After all these years, she knows I mean no harm.”

The shack crouched against the steep hillside just above a stream that dashed and chattered down its rocky bed. Trees crowded close and a short distance up the hill from the shack, a rocky outcropping thrust out-of the sloping earth. The chairs in which we sat, in front of the shack, had their back legs sawed short to equalize the slope. A pail and washbasin stood on a bench beside the open door. Against one wall of the shack was ranged a pile of firewood. Smoke streamed laxily from the chimney.