Joe did not answer.
He did not seem to be watching the marsh, the creek, at all.
On the contrary he was watching the single light which marked the house, looking back now and then as if he were gauging his distance from it.
They did not go fast, yet in time they came to the boundary fence which marked the end of the pasture.
It was now full dark.
When he reached the fence Joe turned and stopped.
Now he looked at the other.
Again they stood face to face.
Then McEachern said:
“What have you done with that heifer?”
“I sold her,” Joe said.
“Ah.
You sold her.
And what did you get for her, might I ask?”
They could not distinguish one another’s face now.
They were just shapes, almost of a height, though McEachern was the thicker.
Above the white blur of his shirt McEachern’s head resembled one of the marble cannonballs on Civil War monuments.
“It was my cow,” Joe said. “If she wasn’t mine, why did you tell me she was?
Why did you give her to me?”
“You are quite right.
She was your own.
I have not yet chidden you for selling her, provided you got a good price.
And even if you were beat in the trade, which with a boy of eighteen is more than like to be so, I will not chide you for that.
Though you would better have asked the advice of some one older in the ways of the world.
But you must learn, as I did.
What I ask is, Where have you put the money for safekeeping?” Joe didn’t answer.
They faced one another. “You gave it to your fostermother to keep for you, belike?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
His mouth said it, told the lie.
He had not intended to answer at all.
He heard his mouth say the word with a kind of shocked astonishment.
Then it was too late. “I gave it to her to put away,” he said.
“Ah,” McEachern said.
He sighed; it was a sound almost luxurious, of satisfaction and victory. “And you will doubtless say also that it was your fostermother who bought the new suit which I found hid in the loft.
You have revealed every other sin of which you are capable: sloth, and ingratitude, and irreverence and blasphemy.
And now I have taken you in the remaining two: lying and lechery.
What else would you want with a new suit if you were not whoring?” And then he acknowledged that the child whom he had adopted twelve years ago was a man.
Facing him, the two of them almost toe to toe, he struck at Joe with his fist.
Joe took the first two blows; perhaps from habit, perhaps from surprise.
But. he took them, feeling twice the man’s hard fist crash into his face.
Then he sprang back, crouched, licking blood, panting.
They faced one another.
“Don’t you hit me again,” he said.
Later, lying cold and rigid in his bed in the attic, he heard their voices coming up the cramped stairs from the room beneath.
“I bought it for him!” Mrs. McEachern said. “I did!
I bought it with my butter money.
You said that I could have—could spend—Simon!
Simon!”
“You are a clumsier liar than even he,” the man said.
His voice came, measured, harsh, without heat, up the cramped stair to where Joe lay in bed.