Was there somethin else?
Well, Ezell buzzed. Last time you gave me a little somethin.
Sutter took out his wallet. Peered inside. Just how little was this somethin I give you?
Last time you give me forty.
If I did it must of been good news, Sutter said. This only qualifies for twenty. Hell, by all rights you ought to be payin me.
Ezell rose and took the proffered bill. By some sleight of hand it disappeared into his khaki pocket. Just whatever, he said. I’m always lookin out for you.
He crossed the yard to the car and got in. Lifted a hand farewell and drove away. Sutter went on sitting. Everbody’s always lookin out for me, he said. He thought of Schieweiler. His bulging earnest eyes. Of Bellwether, the sheriff who wasn’t for sale. An anger that would not dissipate seethed somewhere inside his chest.
All these son of a bitches, he said aloud.
His old mama died in the madhouse, you know. Died huntin a butcher knife she swore she’d hid and couldn’t find. She’d get up in the mornin and hunt all day like a man puttin in a day’s work. She’d’a hunted all night if they hadn’t of strapped her in.
They’ve always told that when Granville was a boy he woke up one time in the middle of the night and she was settin on the side of the bed watchin him and she was holdin a butcher knife. Said she was watchin him, but it was like shewasn’t really seein him. He laid awake the balance of the night waitin to see what she’d do, then he took to sleepin in the woods or in the barn. Just wherever. She’d set up all night like she was studyin about somethin. They took to hidin all the knives.
Then finally she tried to kill old Squire Sutter. They kept her locked up awhile, and when she got to be more than they could handle, they put her in the crazyhouse. They was funny folks, them Sutters. The last time Granville even seen his mama was the day they come and hauled her off, and if he ever regretted not seein her before she died, he never said so.
Then later on when the old man took sick and got down, I heard he was bad off and went down there. That old man was in a hell of a shape. He hadn’t been took care of. He hadn’t been shaved or washed since God knows when, and with Granville doing the cookin, no telling what he’d been eatin. If anything.
Granville was grown then and about ready to leave the nest. He already had that look in his eyes. That look like he’s lookin not just at you but right on through you to whatever you’re standin in front of. He was settin on the front porch, I never heard tell of anybody catchin him workin. I told him I heard his daddy was bad off. Asked if they’d had the doctor out there. He said there wadn’t any need for a doctor nosin around his business. The way he said it, I could tell he meant me, too. Hell, I wadn’t nosin around. I always liked the old squire, even if he was funny turned. I told him they didn’t have one, his daddy would likely die. He just looked at me. Well, he said, if he lives, he lives. If he dies, he dies.
I left and I didn’t know what to do. He put me on a spot. Iknowed I ort to send a doctor, and I’d always worry about it if I didn’t, but at the same time Granville was goin to hold it against me, and somewhere down the line I’d have cause to remember it.
I sent old Doc Powers down there. That was before Pierce ever come here. Paid him out of my own pocket to go, but when he did Sutter was already dead. Granville was on the wing then, and there wadn’t nobody left to call him back. I knowed right then that Sutter was always goin to make people feel that if they done the right thing, like anybody would, a ticket was goin to be made on it, and sooner or later they’d have to pay it. I don’t like to feel like that myself, so I’ve steered clear of him.
And never regretted the loss of his company.
All day doves cried close to the house and all day Corrie moved in an impending sense of dread. Long a believer in signs and portents she felt this was one of the worst and signified a death in the family. Why don’t he come on? she wondered. She did everything about the house she could think of, and then she cooked his supper.
The day drew on. She went out once to look up the road to see if the truck was coming. She stood in the packed earth yard. A hand to shade her eyes. Wanly pretty, slightly harried. Her shadow was long before her. She stood gazing up the road in an attitude of listening but there was nothing to hear nor did she see the truck. She waited for a moment in seeming uncertainty, and then she went back in.
The house had seemed empty since the old man died. Hisghost hovered yet in dark corners; the air seemed forever resonant with his voice. Once she’d forgotten and set his place for supper. Before twilight she went about the house turning on lights, dispelling shadows though light still lay redly at the western windows. He didn’t come and he didn’t come. She went out again to listen for the truck, but there was nothing. Even the doves had fallen silent. Nothing she could name drew her eyes to the hillside. Black slashes of inkblack trees against a mottled red sky. An angular shadow, one among other less substantial shadows, moved as if in some curious way the weight of her eyes had given it life or at least the kinetic semblance of it, and it rose from where it had been crouching there in the twilight and ambled down the slope toward her. She stood motionless and mute. A hand to her mouth. When she saw the rifle, there was a moment not of apprehension but of relief, for she thought: a hunter. When the figure reached the fence it didn’t come around to the gate like anyone else would have done but simply stepped across it as if to show what he thought of fences and the folks who’d built them. He carried the rifle aloft across his chest like one fording deep waters, and when the light struck his face, she saw then it was Sutter. As with a terrible inevitability she’d known it had to be.
Hidy, he said.
She didn’t say anything. He skirted a planter made of an old cartire turned wrong side out and its edge scalloped and sat on the edge of the porch.
I been waitin up there, he said. I been kinda holdin off thinkin he’d come, but I don’t think he’s goin to. He may have left plumb out. He may be across the Alabama line by now. He sat idly tapping the stock of his rifle against a booted foot. Just a weary traveler taking brief respite from the road. Soon to be off again.
Then you ain’t seen him?
Not today, Little Sister. But I was supposed to. Ain’t you goin to ask me in to supper?
No. I don’t know what you’re doin here in the first place. Kenneth’ll run you off when he gets in.
Kenneth couldn’t run water through a garden hose. And nobody’s runnin me anywhere. Not today. I come here on business, and I ain’t leavin till it’s finished.
He had risen and stepped onto the edge of the porch. In the failing light his face was all angular shadows and with the skin drawn tight seemed composed solely of the skull beneath it and out the wells of dark the yellowflecked eyes as compassionless as a cat’s.
Let’s go in, he said. He would grasp her arm but she jerked away and whirled as if she’d slap him then thought better of it. She went through the door fast and tried to slam it on him, but he kicked it hard with her shoulder against it and she fetched up on the front room floor with her head against a toppled end table and a ringing in her ears. She wiped her forehead with a hand and the hand came away bloody.
It would save time, Sutter said, if we just cut through the front part and go right to the end. The front part is where I ask for the pictures and you tell me you don’t know what I’m talkin about. None of that is in question. I know you got em. You tried to blackmail Fenton Breece with em, and he sent me to get em back. Now come up with em before you do somethin to put me in a bad mood.
She was on her hands and knees. The pattern on the linoleum floor went in and out of focus. Geometric white tilesA single drop of blood dropped off her nose and splattered into a crimson star.