“Do you want———” Gowan hissed.
“You mean old thing!” Temple cried.
“You mean old thing!”
Gowan shoved her into the house.
“Do you want him to slam your damn head off?” he said.
“You’re scared of him!” Temple said.
“You’re scared!”
“Shut your mouth!” Gowan said.
He began to shake her.
Their feet scraped on the bare floor as though they were performing a clumsy dance, and clinging together they lurched into the wall.
“Look out,” he said, “you’re getting all that stuff stirred up in me again.”
She broke free, running.
He leaned against the wall and watched her in silhouette run out the back door.
She ran into the kitchen.
It was dark save for a crack of light about the fire-door of the stove.
She whirled and ran out the door and saw Gowan going down the hill toward the barn.
He’s going to drink some more, she thought; he’s getting drunk again.
That makes three times today.
Still more dusk had grown in the hall.
She stood on tiptoe, listening, thinking I’m hungry.
I haven’t eaten all day; thinking of the school, the lighted windows, the slow couples strolling toward the sound of the supper bell, and of her father sitting on the porch at home, his feet on the rail, watching a negro mow the lawn.
She moved quietly on tiptoe.
In the corner beside the door the shotgun leaned and she crowded into the corner beside it and began to cry.
Immediately she stopped and ceased breathing.
Something was moving beyond the wall against which she leaned.
It crossed the room with minute, blundering sounds, preceded by a dry tapping.
It emerged into the hall and she screamed, feeling her lungs emptying long after all the air was expelled, and her diaphragm laboring long after her chest was empty, and watched the old man go down the hall at a wide-legged shuffling trot, the stick in one hand and the other elbow cocked at an acute angle from his middle.
Running, she passed him—a dim, spraddled figure standing at the edge of the porch—and ran on into the kitchen and darted into the corner behind the stove.
Crouching she drew the box out and drew it before her.
Her hand touched the child’s face, then she flung her arms around the box, clutching it, staring across it at the pale door and trying to pray.
But she could not think of a single designation for the heavenly father, so she began to say
“My father’s a judge; my father’s a judge” over and over until Goodwin ran lightly into the room.
He struck a match and held it overhead and looked down at her until the flame reached his fingers.
“Hah,” he said.
She heard his light, swift feet twice, then his hand touched her cheek and he lifted her from behind the box by the scruff of the neck, like a kitten.
“What are you doing in my house?” he said.
7
From somewhere beyond the lamplit hall she could hear the voices—a word; now and then a laugh: the harsh, derisive laugh of a man easily brought to mirth by youth or by age, cutting across the spluttering of frying meat on the stove where the woman stood.
Once she heard two of them come down the hall in their heavy shoes, and a moment later the clatter of the dipper in the galvanised pail and the voice that had laughed, cursing.
Holding her coat close she peered around the door with the wide, abashed curiosity of a child, and saw Gowan and a second man in khaki breeches.
He’s getting drunk again, she thought.
He’s got drunk four times since we left Taylor.
“Is he your brother?” she said.
“Who?” the woman said.
“My what?” she turned the meat on the hissing skillet.
“I thought maybe your young brother was here.”
“God,” the woman said.
She turned the meat with a wire fork.
“I hope not.”
“Where is your brother?” Temple said, peering around the door.