Father Abraham Read online

  “Henery,” the woman said again without raising her voice, and she laid her gnarled hand on her husband’s sleeve.

  “Git on, now, like I tole you,” the man repeated harshly, shaking off her hand.

  “He haint no more despair’n to buy one of them things,” the woman said generally and without heat, in a voice at once patient and hopeless and grave, “and we’uns not five dollars ahead of the po’ house, he haint no more despair.”

  “Shut yo’ mouth, and git on back to that waggin,” the man said with cold fury. “Do you want I taken a stick to you right yere in the road?”

  The bystanders stood and lounged, quietly incurious. Buck cleared his throat loudly. “How about that hoss, Eck? Make me a bid and git ’em to goin’. Ten dollars? How about a ten dollar bid, Eck?”

  “What use I got fer a hoss I’d need a bear-trap to ketch?” Eck rejoined.

  “Ketch them hosses?” Buck repeated with hearty astonishment, “Why, Bud hisself yere can ketch any of them hosses with a little practice. Didn’t you jest see me ketch one of ’em?”

  “Yeah,” Eck agreed drily, “I seen you. And I dont want nothin’ as big as a hoss if I got to wrastle with it ever’ time me and it’s on the same side of the fence.”

  “Har, har,” Buck roared without mirth, “listen to Eck, boys. He wants a piece of crow-bait he’ll have to prop up again’ the fence ever’ time he stops, I reckon. Now, listen yere, Eck: I tell you what I’ll do, to git the arction goin’: I’ll give you that wall-eyed hoss if you’ll start the biddin’ on the next ’un. How about it?”

  Eck considered for a while. The others stood or lounged, quietly attentive. “I jest starts the biddin’,” Eck said at last. “I dont have to buy lessen I aint overtopped?”

  “Sure, sure,” Buck agreed. “Year that, boys? That there wall-eyed hoss with the scar neck is Eck’s hoss: I’m a-givin’ it to him. All right, boys: let’s go. See that there pony that looks like he’s had his haid in a flour bar’l? Yere he goes, there. Wuth fifteen dollars of any man’s money. All right, Eck: whatcha goin’ to say? Ten dollars?”

  “A dollar,” Eck said.

  “One dollar?” repeated Buck. “One dollar? I sho’ly never heard that right, Eck. Why, a dollar wont pay fer the vest that hoss cut offen me yistiddy. Look a yere—”

  “Dang it,” Eck said, “Two dollars, then.”

  “Y’all are foolin’, boys. I ask you, now: Is that any way fer a man to act at a arction sale of livestock guaranteed sound and hearty and willin’? Two dollars is bid: I got to except it, but are you boys goin’ to stand thar and see Eck git two hosses fer a dollar a head? Air you?”

  “Three dollars,” the husband said, and his wife tried to pull him away and he flung her hand off, and she folded her hands across her lank stomach: a quiet tragic figure with eyes that saw nothing and held nothing but the dead ashes of an instinct become habitual and compulsory. “Misters,” she said in her flat emotionless voice, “Misters, we got chaps in the house, and not cawn to feed the stock we got, and five dollars I earnt a-weavin’ atter dark and him a-sleepin’ in the bed and he haint no more despair.”

  “Henry bids three dollars,” Buck shouted. “Raise him a dollar, Eck, and you got two ponies at two dollars a haid.”

  Eck considered a while.

  “Henery,” the woman said again, with her dull and infinite patience. The man, glaring at Eck, paid her no heed.

  “Fo’ dollars,” Eck said.

  “Five dollars,” the husband shouted, holding aloft his closed fist.

  “Mister,” the woman said without passion, and she raised her gaunt face and looked at Buck soberly with her faded and empty eyes, “Ef you takes that five dollars I earnt my chaps a-weavin’, fer one of them hosses, hit’ll be a curse onto you and your’n durin’ all the time of man.”

  “Five dollars,” the husband shouted again. He shoved himself to the fence and raised his closed hand to the level of Buck’s knees and opened it and revealed a wadded mass of worn bills and silver. “And the feller that raises it’ll beat my head off, er I’ll beat his’n.”

  “Yere, Bud,” said Buck in a hoarse whisper, “run over to the sto’ and git me a box of gingersnaps.” Again the sun came level across the earth and into the apple tree among the blooms and bees and upon the wagons lined along the road, and the horses and mules tethered among them and among the locust trees. Buck yet on his gate post, the loungers in faded negligent blue in easy inert attitudes beyond the spaces between whose heads, ceaseless fluid gleams like gaudy and patched calico. Admiral Dewey’s diminutive overalls trotted, a little wearily now, up the road to the store; in their battered and weathered wagon, behind two abject and somnolent bone-racks, Henry’s wife in her dun shapeless garment and sunbonnet sat quietly, a figure of patient and tragic despair. On a wire stretching from a china-berry tree to Mrs Littlejohn’s back porch, assorted garments dangled laxly and heavily damp. Smoke no longer rose from beneath the blackened pot, and the half hogshead lay propped on its edge against the wooden block. Beside it the scrubbing board glinted its metal ridges.

  Buck had sold all but two of his beasts for prices ranging from a dollar and seventy-five cents to eight dollars, and he climbed wearily and stiffly from his fence post and stamped his feet into his boots and removed his hat and mopped his brow with his sleeve. The beasts were weary too, after the long foodless day of sunlight and voices in monotonous rise and fall and quiet constant human faces watching them always. Above, the bowl of the sky hushed itself into mysterious ineffable azures, and the apple tree where tethered horses stamped and gnawed was like a candelabra tinged faintly with pink and gold. No mockingbird, though. The bystanders stood and lounged timelessly and patiently one with the grave rythm of the earth, talking among themselves in sparse monosyllables. Except Henry, the husband. His voice alone went on in flat nasal repetition: a sort of querulous and savage impatience.

  “I bought a hoss and I paid cash,” he said again, harshly belligerent, shouldering himself among passive faded blue shirts nearer the auctioneer, “And yit you expect me to stand around yere twell they’s all sold. Well you kin do all the expectin’ you wants: I’m a-goin’ to take my hoss outen there and git on home. What about it?”

  “Take yo’ hoss, then,” Buck answered coldly, and their glances clashed, and it was Henry who looked away. He stood with his head slightly bowed, tasting despair and rage, swallowing it like a delicate warm salt, brooding his baffled eyes upon the drooping gaudy huddle of the beasts without seeing them.

  “Aint you a-goin’ to ketch him fer me?” he asked presently in a quiet tone.

  “He aint my hoss,” Buck answered softly, watching Henry’s working profile steadily, and it was as though he had gone completely away from behind his still unwinking eyes. Admiral Dewey returned at his weary unflagging trot and gave Buck the fresh box and Buck, still watching Henry with grave detachment, ripped the end from the box and shook five or six of the cakes into his hand and gave them to Admiral Dewey. “Much obliged, bud.”

  A stillness had fallen upon the group, upon its easy unchanged attitudes. Henry stood again with his head bowed a little in an isolation of impotence. Then he raised his head. “Who’ll he’p me ketch my hoss?” he asked in a dry light voice. None moved. The sun hung without heat in the western sky, the lower part of the rim flattening with perspective. The level shadow of Mrs Littlejohn’s house advanced across the lot and overtook the weary huddle of the ponies, climbed the barn wall and there lost itself. Smoke rose in the still air from the kitchen, and supper sounds; and sparrows swept in a garrulous cloud across the lot to roost in the barn and sat in a row along the eaves for a while before turning in, and in the high mysterious blue swallows twittered and stooped and whirled in erratic indecision.

  “Bring that there plow-line over yere.” The man raised his voice a little, and the woman descended obediently from the wagon and reached a new coiled cotton rope out of it and came to her husband. The man took the rope from her
and shouldered himself toward the gate, without raising his head. Buck was in his path and the man went around him and Buck watched the man with his quiet detached stare. “Come on yere,” the man said gruffly, and the woman moved again and followed.

  “Dont go in there, missus,” Buck said without emphasis, and the woman stopped. The man opened the gate and entered, then he turned with his hand still on the gate, but without raising his eyes. “Come on yere,” he repeated.

  “Dont you go in there, missis,” Buck said again, without any inflection whatever. The woman stood quietly between them: it was as though she had left her body for the time.

  “I reckon I better,” she said presently, and she followed her husband into the lot and he shut the gate behind them. The spectators stood or lounged quietly, their eyes bent on the ground as though in rapt contemplation. The man advanced toward the ponies, and the woman followed like an automaton, and the spectators watched them quietly across the fence, and the horses huddled and blended and moved intricately among themselves and shifted on the point of disintegration. The man shouted curses at them and advanced slowly and the woman followed step for step, then the huddle broke and the beasts slid on high stiff legs around them, and they followed with a dull implacable patience. “Now,” the man said, “Thar he is: get ’im into that corner.” The horse slid its stiff legs and the woman shouted at it and it spun, but the man hit it over the head with his coiled rope and it whirled again and slammed into the angle of the fence. “Keep ’im in there, now,” the man said, and he approached gradually. The horse watched him with wild glaring eyes, then it rushed again. The woman shouted at it and waved her arms, but it soared past her in long bounds; and again they followed it patiently and hemmed it up again, and again it rushed past the woman’s outflung arms. Then the man turned and struck the woman with the coiled rope. “Why didn’t you head it?” he said, “Why didn’t you?” and he struck her again. Those along the fence stood quietly, brooding on the earth at their feet.

  Buck entered the lot and Flem Snopes appeared among the bystanders chewing steadily. One or two greeted him and he responded and spat and gazed quietly into the lot. Buck strode quickly to the man and caught the rope from his upraised hand. The man whirled and made to spring, but the spring never came and he crouched with his dangling arms by his side and his half-mad gaze on Buck’s feet. The woman stood quietly, and it was as though she were in another place. Then Buck took the man’s trembling arm and led him to the gate, and the woman followed, and Buck opened the gate and thrust the man through it and held it open until the woman had passed through.

  “Here, missis,” Buck said. He dragged a mass of bills from his pocket and took a five dollar bill from it and put it into her slow hand. “Git him into yo’ waggin and git him on home.”

  “What’s that fer, Buck?” Flem asked.

  “Thinks he bought one of them ponies,” Buck answered. “Take him on, missis.”

  “Give ’im that there money back,” the husband said. He was trembling. Below the frayed cuffs of his homemade calico shirt his hands shut and opened against his flanks. “Give it back to him.”

  “Git him on away, missis,” Buck repeated.

  “You take yo’ money and I take my hoss,” the man said. “I bought that hoss and I aim to have him if I got to shoot him.”

  “You dont own no hoss of mine,” Buck said tonelessly. “Git him away, missis.”

  The man raised his wild face. His shaking hand reached for the bill. The woman did not move her hand while he fumbled at it, and at last he drew the bill from her hand. “It’s my hoss,” the man said. “I bought it. These fellers seen me. I paid fer it. It’s my hoss. Yere,” he said, and he offered the bill to Flem Snopes. “You got somethin’ to do with these hosses. I bought one. Here’s the money, see? I bought one. Ask him.”

  Flem took the bill and put it in his pocket. The spectators stood gravely attentive in relaxed attitudes. The woman crossed her hands patiently on her lank stomach while evening came yet more, accomplishing itself.

  “Flem’ll have it fer you tomorrow,” Buck said gently. “He dont own none of them hosses. Better git back to yo’ waggin.” The woman turned obediently and returned to the wagon and mounted and sat quietly in the dusk. But her husband merged again into the throng.

  “How many you got left?” Flem asked.

  “Got two. Swap ’em both and the waggin fer a buckboa’d. Who’ll make a good trade quick?”

  They considered gravely. Presently one spoke.

  “I got a buggy I’ll swap you that-a-way. ’Taint right new.”

  “Got fo’ wheels?” Buck asked.

  “Sure,” the man replied. “Thar ’tis acrosst the road.”

  It wasn’t new, but it had four wheels, and the man went over and untethered his mules from the wheels of it and dragged it across the road. “It’ll do,” Buck said briefly, and he entered the lot again and the ponies slid away from him and circled and clotted and he entered the barn and reappeared presently with his coat over his arm and leading his driving horses. He paused at the wagon and reached his blanket roll out and came on and the ponies fled before him again circling and huddled and watched him with their various eyes. The bystanders helped him hitch his team to the buggy, then he mounted to the seat.

  “Well, so long, boys,” he said. “Glad to’ve saw you.”

  “Wher’ you headin’ fer now? Back to Texas?” Eck asked.

  “I guess not,” Buck answered. “Not right away. I reckon I’ll go and have a look-see at them nawthun towns while I’m yere. Washington and Noo Yawk and Philadelphy. Time enough fer Texas after that. Well, remember about bustin’ them ponies over the haid occasionally till they gits used to you. Then you wont have no trouble with ’em. Them’s bargains, boys. Well—” he gathered up the reins again but he said Whoa immediately. “Yere, bud,” he dug into his pocket again, “run over to the sto—Ne’mine: I’ll go by thar my self. You better stay and he’p yo’ paw git his hosses home.”

  “I’ll ride as fer as the sto’ with you,” Flem Snopes said, climbing into the seat.

  “Git up there.” The buggy moved forward and Buck slanted his Stetson forward and jerked his hand in casual farewell. “Take keer of yo’selves.”

  “Well,” said Eck after a while, “whut are we a-waitin’ fer? fer’m to go to roost like chickens?”

  Evening was completely accomplished. The sparrows had gone, and the final cloud of swallows had swirled into a chimney somewhere and the ultimate celestial edges of the world rolled on into vague and intricate subtleties of softest pearl. The apple tree was a ghost in pearl also, gustily and hauntingly sweet, and the horses tethered beneath it were stamping shapes without bulk or emphasis. In her weathered and fading wagon the woman sat quietly, patient and tragic as a figure out of Sophocles. Mrs Littlejohn came to her door and clanged the heavy handbell and the throng beside the fence stirred slowly while the ponies in the lot, twenty-four hours without food, ceased pawing and snuffing at the matted chaff to watch them.

  “We better git our ropes,” one said at last. “Ever’body git a rope.”

  “Wher’s our’n, Ad?” Eck prompted. “Go git it.”

  Admiral Dewey departed obediently and trotted wearily and indefatigably to where their wagon was hitched and got the rope, and others repaired to their various conveyances and returned with various ropes, and still others had no ropes and headed by the clerk, I.O. Snopes, departed in a quiet clump to Jody Varner’s store and there purchased rope by kerosene light amid old grave odors of cheese and leather and fecundated earth and returned; and Mrs Littlejohn came to her door and rang the bell again, but none paid her heed. Overhead, in the mysterious ineffable windless with pearl convolvulae, stars. Beyond the west the sun was a fading coal. The ponies huddled like phantom splotched fish in the violet lambence of the lot. Moon presently. Already it was a serene ghost overhead.

  They gathered at the gate, with their ropes. From the now shapeless clump of beasts against
the barn there came stamping sounds and expulsions of breath. “I reckon,” one suggested, “we better all take and ketch ’em one to a time, hadn’t we?”

  “One to a time,” said Henry savagely, and he cursed with slow impotent rage, “After I’ve stood around yere all day, waiting fer that—” he cursed again, in a kind of spent fever of despair, and his hands knotted in the moonlight upon the fastening of the gate and tugged at it and shook it and tugged at it. From Mrs Littlejohn’s came a subdued clashing of cutlery, and an anonymous one filled the yellow door to the kitchen and stood there.

  At last Henry opened the gate, and passed through it and the others followed. A beast snorted from their shapeless huddle, and the huddled shifted without breaking. Eck took the rope from his son, and Admiral Dewey pressed on behind his father.

  “Yere,” Eck said, “You wait out yere.”

  “Aw, paw,” Admiral Dewey protested.

  “You wait out yere,” Eck repeated firmly. “You been run over twicet today, already.”

  “Aw, paw. Lemme he’p to ketch our’n. We got two to ketch,” he added diabolically.

  “That’s right,” Eck said, “We air got two, aint we?”

  “Lemme he’p, paw,” Admiral Dewey pressed his advantage.

  “Well,” his father agreed dubiously. “But you stay clost to me, you year? Ef you gits in front of them varmints again like you done this morning, I dont know whut I’ll do to you, but I’ll sho’ do it.”

  The others with their ropes formed themselves into a tentative and reluctant fan, without enthusiasm. The ponies stood utterly motionless but restive, watching them, gaudy in the waxing moon. That one emptied Mrs Littlejohn’s yellow kitchen door and emerged into the silver wanness and removed the nearest washed garment from the invisible line, stopped in midgesture and looked into the lot again. Eck and his son came up and a man glanced quickly at them.