the water tower

THE WATER TOWER

by Roger Maybank

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

Hilda pressed her forefinger against the ramp of thick frost at the bottom of the window until it was smooth and slippery from melting and her finger was cold, and watched the man climb down clumsily from the morning bus, holding his suitcase in his arms. He didn’t look very steady on his feet. He swayed a little as he waved to the bus, and coughed in the exhaust it swirled up around him. She ought to have some music on for him, she thought, in case he didn’t feel so very cheerful, arriving in a strange place when it was practically still dark. She felt the globe of coffee to make sure that it was nearly hot, and she put some nickels in the juke-box, thinking she would have to remind Harry again to buy some new records; but the man didn’t seem to notice that there even was a cafe. He was still standing where the bus had dropped him down, as if he couldn’t make out exactly where he was, turning his head first one way and then the other, looking at all the dead-looking buildings on the other side of the street. He had dropped one of his gloves on the ground and was rubbing his bare hand with the other, but not as if he knew what was wrong. He ought to come inside and keep warm until people were up. It would make a change from Mr. Wilkinson just sitting and smiling with never a word to say. It would keep her awake till Josey came.
Probably he was a salesman, though he didn’t somehow look like one, and he wanted to get the feel of the town before people started appearing. Or he could have relatives here, of course, though nobody had said they were expecting anybody. He seemed a big kind of man under his clothes, not so old either, but even when he turned her way she couldn’t see his face so well for his frozen breath drifting up in front of it. And he had a kind of limp, she could see that now that he started walking up and down a little;; like one of his legs wasn’t as long as the other. But she couldn’t make out which one it was, because he seemed at the same time to be stretching himself up like there was something over the buildings across the street that he was trying to see, but he wasn’t seeing it. He almost fell over his suitcase, and noticed his glove on the ground and picked it up, and started jumping up and down in one place, but turning round and round. When he was facing the cafe for the third time he saw her at last and stopped jumping and straightened his fur hat and grinned. She moved back from the window and put Mr. Fitts’ soup on the stove to heat. The man came into the cafe, pushing his suitcase through the door ahead of him and followed by the beginning of a cold wind that was rising.
“There isn’t any elevator here,” he said, still breathing hard from his jumping. He pulled off his fur hat and sat it on the counter and took off his heavy overcoat and unzipped his flight boots and sent them flopping across the floor. He was bald, but he was a strong-looking man all right, and the thin shirt he was wearing was wet with sweat.
“You’ll catch pneumonia,” she said. “You must wait until you stop sweating.”
“That’s a new coat,” he said. “And a new hat. And new boots. All good stuff. First sight’s important. Why isn’t there a elevator here?” He had a funny hoarse voice, but she didn’t mind that; it was his eyes being such a pale blue and not moving in his face that the sweat was trickling down. She put a cup of coffee in front of him.
“There is one,” she said. “Only it’s not a real elevator, it’s just a kind of warehouse.”
“I didn’t see it. I’m short, of course, but I can jump till I’m like six feet almost, so I should’ve seen it from where I was if it’s any size.”
“They say it’s not big,” she said. “Not big enough, they say. They still must load grain from trucks usually. Except this year it’s almost empty because the harvest was not so good last year, so there’s none couldn’t be shipped away. When it’s bumper, lots has to be kept there till spring.”
“Small, eh?” he said. “Not so big as the big building down the street? Taller, maybe. Taller? Just to get an idea.”
“That’s the hotel. That’s the biggest building in town, only it’s not used any more. The elevator’s not so big. You want to see it? You go out and turn right, and turn right at the first street you come to and you keep going. It’s by the edge of town. You know Mr. Wilkinson? He’s the agent. I think he’s not up yet, but he’ll be coming in for coffee soon enough. He always comes.” He was looking at her all the time, but his eyes were blinking more than they were.
“I guess I don’t want to see the elevator,” he said. He was swaying a little on the stool. “Maybe I will later. I’m not in any hurry, I guess, to see anything.” He pushed his half-full coffee cup away along the counter and pulled his fur hat towards him and laid his head on it and closed his eyes. “If it’s all right with you,” he murmured in a blurred voice, and then he was asleep. She stood where she was, watching him, until Mr. Fitts’ soup was hot enough to be cool enough for him to eat without too much complaining when she got it to him. Then she locked the cash register, just in case, and stopped the juke box playing, and put on her coat and carried the tray out into the cold windy street. Half an hour later, when she was making Josey’s breakfast, the man sat up and blinked at her.
“I just conk out sometimes,” he said, rubbing his big hands all over his face. “Where am I going to stay, d’you think?” He watched her fill up his cup with coffee.
“Is it for long? There isn’t a hotel since the big one closed. People don’t usually have a reason to stop here.”
“I guess there’re plenty of free rooms. It’s for a good while. Maybe I’ll just wander around and get the feel of the place.” He pushed his feet into his flight boots, leaving them to flap unzipped, and struggled into his coat.
“There’s not much for seeing,” she said, while he drank his coffee down. “It’s a small place. Mrs. Ledbetter maybe has a room.” He was already red in the face and beginning to sweat from the clothes. He opened the door and Josey ducked in past him.
“I’ll just take a look round,” the man said. “I’ll leave my bag here, eh?” He laid his hat carefully on top of the bag and went out, with Josey watching him and frowning.
“He’s going to be staying a while,” she said.
“He can’t walk straight,” he said. He sat on the stool where the man had been sitting, and then shifted to the one beside it and looked back at it suspiciously, it must be still warm from the man. “What’s he want here?”
“I don’t know,” she said.

*

Waking as usual just in time to silence her alarm clock before it rang, Amanda Purl listened for the music which she thought she had heard while asleep, but no trace of it remained. She lay on her back, unmoving, and listened to the boards creaking throughout the house and the faint wailing from one of the livingroom windows, and waited for the sleep in her head to settle out. She had no right to blame her aunt, she thought, she ought not to allow herself: if she had left the radio on it would still be on. The music must have come from somewhere else. From within herself, most probably, since the sense of it had been so keen.
The early sun glowed through her lowered blind, as warm as the air in her room was cold. A slender beam reached all the way in, to her very bed, lighting a patch of the maroon counterpane like a jewel, so that she couldn’t refrain from touching it with her fingertips though she knew she oughtn’t to delay. There would be other mornings now that the winter was dying; it would always be light when she woke, she needn’t be loth now to remove her hand from the clear warmth of the sun.
She heard her aunt’s muffled snoring, which gave her strength; she was younger and stronger than that. She inhaled the cold fresh air as deeply and slowly as she could, tensed her body from head to toe when her lungs were full, relaxed and exhaled as gradually as she could. Ten times, feeling the better for it as usual. Then she folded the bedclothes back from her throat, sat up, folded them down to her knees and slipped her feet over the side of the bed into her waiting fleece slippers.
She shivered, and realized that she had just been gazing at the glowing yellow of the blind, watching it ripple faintly as eddies of air filtered through the three holes in the storm window from the rising wind outside, thinking what a beautiful colour it was; which it was, of course, there was no denying it, but it was hardly the moment for looking. There were others to think of and, besides, she might easily give herself a chill.
She lifted her bathrobe off the brass knob at the foot of her bed and wrapped it round herself, and listened for a moment to the loud rattling of the back storm door. Not that there was any point now in reminding Frank of the times he had promised to put it right. It would soon be coming down to let the warm air in, and she might even find that she missed the noise after a winter of hearing it whenever there was a wind. She raised the blind and lowered the window and blinked into the rising sun, beyond the road and the flat fields and the frozen ditch of a river. The wind was certainly rising, which was a good thing; it would bring in the spring the sooner, and there would be a month or two at least when it would be neither too cold nor too hot, when she would be able to dig her garden and tend it and hope for the best, even for the rose tree which she should never have planted, as she knew as well as anyone. Yet if it died she would plant another, though they thought her foolish, because with care it might be kept alive.
She thought that she was beginning to feel dull, which would help nobody. Her aunt was still snoring, as if nothing could wake her except the wind crushing the thin walls of the house and blowing them away. She walked to the bathroom and pumped the cold March water into the basin and plunged in her hands and soaped and splashed her face and dried herself vigorously until her flesh tingled. When she felt as clean as the wind outside, she settled herself on the stool by the window and began to brush her hair.
The garden didn’t look like much now, she thought, but it was better than it looked, all the same. It wasn’t merely a patch of prairie with a fence around it. It would show itself when the snow on it now melted into the ground. The sunflowers particularly were always very handsome in their central circle, taller than she was by a good deal, almost as tall as small trees.
There was that sound again. She stopped brushing her hair. It was music, certainly, and it seemed to be the same music she had heard on waking. At least it felt the same, though with the wind whining at the window and the whole house creaking, she couldn’t make out the tune. She couldn’t see anyone either, nothing but the open ground between her house and the beginning of the town proper, and the buildings there, with their long black shadows on the snow and the smoke blowing out of their chimneys. Nobody was out yet; nobody except Mr. Jessop ever was at this time of year, and if he could make music he had certainly never shown it. She stroked her brush through her hair slowly and tried to make out where the tune, such as it was, was coming from. It was unsettling, and she thought it would be better these days if she were not unsettled. She laid down her brush and waited until the electricity stopped peppering through her hair, and then braided it and wound it up against the back of her head. Before her aunt had grown old, she had had thick hair too. And a figure, come to that.
The music had stopped. There was only the wind, the winter wind she liked, however cold it blew. Any wind for that matter; even a hot one full of dust was better than none at all. But the end of winter was always an uncertain time; she would do well to keep a close watch on herself, and not let her aunt see that her time had come at last.
She dressed herself in her bedroom, and cleared her aunt’s dirty late-supper dishes off the table in the kitchen, and sat down to correct the week’s spelling test and wait for the water to boil, while the sun streamed in.

*

Hiram Jessop arrived back at his drug store well after eight o’clock, his fingertips still numb from the frozen earth. He ought to have gone right into the cafe, he thought, or gone right past it. It was half-way measures ruined a man. He pushed open his front door with his foot and made his way across the small dim room to the counter. Hilda had looked surprised, seeing him standing in the doorway, as if she saw a connection already. Because she saw him taking an interest, as like as not, when she didn’t see that he had any reason, since it wasn’t his day for checking the accounts. It was habits that caused the trouble, you had to be on guard against them, they showed people what you were. But as long as it was only Hilda who noticed, he was all right, she wouldn’t say. They claimed her father was the same silent kind. Mother the same, more like; Indian blood was as powerful as sap.
Ducking under the counter, he piled his lumps of earth in the crook of his left arm and fished out his key with his free hand. In the room behind, he stopped to inhale the smells of himself. They were quieting. He needed quieting. It was all happening too quickly, he thought, peering at the sun pouring in through the ragged hole in the drawn blind. He hadn’t had time to get ready. A lot of the snow would be carried off in vapours and too much of the rest run off into the river. No good for the plants, no good for anybody. If there wasn’t a good deal of rain in the spring they were all going to find themselves with a bucket they couldn’t fill. Better no bucket at all if you didn’t have any water. The bigger the empty bucket the worse off people thought they were. But it was too late by a long way to tell Maggie. She was probably laughing anyway, as usual, seeing him with troubles. Her troubles.
He had better carry the clods into the dark room, before any seeds they had dropped out on the floor, no good to anybody. It didn’t look as if there was much in them, not at first glance, but they came from a better place than most, and there was something everywhere. Though they grinned and made their little jokes, of course, seeing him out again for the first time in the year. He lifted his tumbled blankets back onto his bed with his boot, and glanced at Mr. Fitts’ empty bottle on his desk. He couldn’t make up any fresh mixture now. The old man would just have to hold it in by himself, or run. Teach him patience like the tortoise, and not to start complaining to Hilda every time his medicine was delayed. He would make it up when he was feeling more easy, when he knew better how things were going to go. Nobody could expect him to have a quiet mind after so many years of making ready, and now suddenly the time had come, and so far as he could see it was the wrong time. He raised the latch on the small door to his dark room, and stooped to go through, though he knew he didn’t need. Habits didn’t matter where nobody could see.
He breathed in the warm dampness, feeling for the box he wanted. They could talk all they liked about the strange man, and make up their stories. The more stories the better. Though they had only seen him from a distance so far, walking round; only Hilda and Josey had seen him close. They’d talk this way and that. He couldn’t have come here without a reason, could he, so they’d be talking about that. And waiting for Harry, to have a chance to ask him what he thought, so they could think themselves. He crumbled the earth, listening to the hard ice-crumbs hit against the wood of the box. Fresh and cold and black it was, earth like a virgin put in a grave, ready to rot and send up fumes of heat and swelling. So other things would grow. And then other things and then others. His hands felt cool and hot together, hot from the ice. People thought probably he did it in test-tubes, mixed a few dried seeds. But the smell spread all over, not now so much, but when it was hot. They mostly walked by on the other side of the street then, when the smell started leaking out through the walls. Bella more than the rest of them, he had seen her, she wouldn’t even come near the place now. Too strong for her. Scared of things she didn’t know. They all were, come to that. But they were going to have one soon, all the same. And they wouldn’t know even then how it could happen. If the old woman let it happen, that was; it all depended on her.
He felt for a flat where roots were growing, smelling rank. He rested a hand on each end of it and leaned over and breathed the smell in as deep as he could. He had to remember that he was secret, that nobody could see him, or nothing would work. He wasn’t even in the background, he wasn’t there. He would be like Harry if they knew what he was. And Maggie would laugh harder and call him a fool. He couldn’t be rid of her if he lost his head.
He was half-asleep from the rich smell of everything. He nearly lost track of himself, and seemed to be floating; but he heard the faint echo of somebody limping on the sidewalk planks outside, and he heard from a long way off the ringing of the bell on the counter in his shop. Then he started awake at the thumping of a heavy hand on the counter itself.

*

“He’s looking for a place to stay,” Willa Gleave said over the telephone. “That’s what he told Hilda. But he’s not making much of an effort, if you ask me. He’s walking round the town, all right, but he’s not asking anybody. I’d take him myself if it wasn’t for Ray. Every little bit helps, particularly with Alvin saying all the time he’s looking around for some other job, being bored, you know, the way he is. Not that I’ve any complaint against Ray, he’s very regular; but I suppose this man’d pay a bit more, being a stranger. He’d want to feel at home, I expect, and with a family round it’s more friendly, isn’t it? Lord knows, he must be feeling like a fish out of water the way everybody goes round peering at him. I don’t think he’s so very strange myself. Why shouldn’t he stop in town if he wants to? Of course it’s not as if Ray was a full brother, but still, family’s family. I expect he’ll find somewhere all right.”

*

Harry Otterdown placed his foot on the edge of his desk and tied his shoelace, thinking that it was lucky that his arms were as long as his legs. In proportion, that was, everything in proportion. And there seemed to be no opposition at the moment; his other leg supported his body placidly, the shoe was
neutral, didn’t seem to feel unpolished, the lace itself was friendly, and even his hands, though priding themselves a little on being the same capable hands, however long his arms, behaved like part of the whole. If anything, it was the arms themselves which were taking up a slight separate attitude, the result maybe of being commended for their length. Reactions were so swift and unsure; he never knew what anything would say to praise or blame, they all sported subtle smiles of misunderstanding. All praise to the mouth, for it could be kept closed, gating wayward thoughts, sending them back to be edited for sense and style. There was no use having power if it couldn’t be controlled. Hearing and smelling were almost as useless as feeling; seeing was like talking, it could be stopped. Thinking was worst of all.
He sat down at his desk and warned himself of the dangers of free thought. Since he was lucky enough to have free moments, they ought to be better spent. They ought to be used for sifting the wheat from the tares, for finding out who and what were on his side, and marking the rest for burning or betrayal when the time came. That was the passover principle, a sound one enough; but the question was not so much his enemies, since all could be that, all right, could be turned into that or, at worst, false friends, if he wanted to be left alone. The question was from the other side: was he himself the first-born in danger, or the first-born spared? Or only later born, only looking on? Not that it mattered at the moment, but it was right to be ready. Many a king had fallen on a clear night.
He riffled through the nearest papers on his friendly littered desk, thinking it early for philosophic reflections. Or late, since the usual time was in bed after fitful nights. The usual pastime for the mid-morning was quiet; and for that matter he was quiet. It was the others who were unquiet, stirring up eddies all round him with their watching of the stranger wherever he went. As if there were something suspicious in his spending the morning wandering round the town. Though Mr. Fairling sometimes did, and nobody complained. Jessop wandered from thaw to frost, and nobody cared. They were all very possessive, it seemed. It was their town; the stranger should make his intentions clear.
On the other hand, not to be harsh, seeing both sides of the question, seeing with their eyes, curious, suspicious, doubting: what was there to interest him, eh? Since he claimed to care only about elevators and found theirs too small. Couldn’t find it at all in fact, but jumping in the main street wasn’t the best way. If he didn’t like how the town was arranged, nobody was asking him to stay. He didn’t need to get off the bus, did he? He could have ridden through, without paying much more, to a town where he could see the elevator by jumping in the main street. He had a nerve finding fault with their town in the first minute he arrived, and it being practically pitch-dark at that.
To interpose a cooling counsel: wait-and-see. He would doubtless reveal his purpose in the fullness of time, when everyone could decide whether or not he cared. In the meanwhile, accept him as a diversion in the dead between-season.
Pleased with his moderation, he shifted his chair round so he could gaze from his official perch over his store below, where only Maida was, the only
citizen he had for now; though beyond the windows, in the bright main street, Mrs. MacNamara was passing, and Ray was crossing over to the cafe, where else? There was a wind out there, sweeping along, but here there was only the noise of the stove keeping him warm, and the soft sound of Maida filing her nails. He leaned forward to rest his chin on the wooden railing, and reached a mental hand into the air above her and the blouse counter she was leaning against, and laid a blessing on her and all her works. She was a quiet girl, no trouble at all. Frank knew how to raise children all right. It was a pity she wanted to marry and go to the city while Mavis was not yet full-breast grown and Maureen was only a gawky child-thief. Still, at Maureen’s age Maida had shied mechanically when a hand was raised near her.
“That’s seven times he’s been past so far,” she said, not looking up. “He’s been nearly everywhere in town, looked at everything.” She still had a general interest in the passing show, what more could a man want? She was pretty, and she liked listening more than talking. If she had a telephone on a party line, she wouldn’t ask to move for hours. An object lesson to them all.
He seemed to be taking a very moral tone this morning, with very little ground for doing so. When had his own behaviour been impeccable? Perhaps, after all, the stranger was having his effect: the whole town was under surveillance, Maida said, but he felt the gaze personally. The gaze of an assessor, which the man might well be, why not? Nobody so far had come up with a better suggestion. A travelling salesman they said who had never had to deal with them and their smart cases and evasive smiles. A land surveyor? The land was already surveyed. Surveyor for a road, then? Or for a bridge across the Rat, a simple spanning. Or both. The town might find itself on a cross-country highway. It might not be worthy. They had had to send out a man to discover. When he had finished with the site, he would work his way through the citizenry, querying, jotting notes, assessing each. That was it, he did well to prepare himself: he was under scrutiny as the town’s first citizen, its reeve and judge. The stranger had not come by accident. How many of the town would be loyal?
Yet maybe, keeping the ever-open mind, the man intended no harm. He seemed fresh to his job, whatever it was. He seemed fresh to most things. Perhaps he had been inside for a long time, and that made his eyes look wide. Jail? The boobery? It was a pity he hadn’t any hair to crop, as the sign for which the town was crying out. Or maybe he had come from the south with the spring, was only a halting bird of passage. Or of omen. The sun and snow here seemed to dazzle him, his mother said, keeping near the window, keeping a look-out. Even from behind her, a long way behind, he could sense her waiting for the mouth organ to start up its music again. So there was some good come of him already, he thought: he was causing her to take a little interest. He settled back comfortably in his chair and stretched out his legs. Messengers would tell him the news when there was any.

*

Phil Nagy looked up from the gasoline pump he was polishing, when Miss Purl stopped on the sidewalk in front of it. On her way home from school. Her shadow was small and sharp in the high sun.
“It looks as if the good weather’s just around the corner,” she said. “I’ll be bringing my grass-clippers over one of these days.”
“Yeah, you do that,” he said. She’d be ready for planting before anybody else, because she thought ahead. It was being educated, of course, it made you see which were the things that mattered, and then do them. He knelt down to polish the base of the pump, thinking it was handsome all right when it was clean. And bluer than the sky was these days, though not always. She must have something else to say; she wouldn’t just stand there for nothing.
“I suppose you’ve seen the stranger,” she said. He nodded. “I haven’t seen him myself. I think I must be the only one.”
“Not much to see,” he said. She’d notice in a minute he had things on his mind, and leave him quiet. Not like some.
“It was just that I expect Aunt Vera will want to have a report, and. .”
“She’s been past,” he said. “About eleven.”
“Yes? Well then, I won’t trouble you. I hope Annabel continues well.”
He nodded and looked after her walking away. Annabel was fine. She was the same as when there was no baby coming. And he was the same too, though there wasn’t anything fine in that. He ought to be different, and leave her alone. Animals didn’t do it, they left the females then, he had read all about it; it was only men did it. And knowing they did only made it worse, made it harder to stop, even though he knew it wasn’t natural. If he had an example it would help.
It was just as much Annabel’s fault, when you came down to it, but he couldn’t make her change. She wasn’t like Miss Purl, there or not there, one thing at a time; she was all over the place, and he couldn’t make her see, she only giggled. She was still a girl only. Frank shouldn’t have let her come to him, but he didn’t care either, nobody cared. If the house filled up with kids, they’d all say he was lucky. It was just the time for Ray to make jokes about this stranger looking round the town to find a good place to set up another garage. Though if he’d come to open something else, like the old hotel over the way, then maybe business would pick up. The company might even give him a new red pump as well then, though it wasn’t likely.
He couldn’t make the blue pump any cleaner, and there wasn’t anything else to do, without making something up, and Annabel was still lying up there in bed, ready for him whenever he wanted to come. He didn’t see how he was going to be able to keep himself away.

*

“Is he still here?” Mr. Fitts asked, when Hilda brought him up his lunchtime soup.
“He’s walking around still,” she said. “Why are you in bed? You’ll have sores;”
“Don’t move me,” he said, raising his hand against her. “I’ve been thinking over my wrongs. Esterhazy’s got mice down there. I didn’t sleep all night. He’s got them there to torment me. He’s trying to weaken my will.” He struggled up into a sitting position, smoothed his bedclothes for the tray and pulled down his pyjama sleeves.
“Ray hasn’t been up to shave me yet,” he said crossly. “I’ve been thinking to use my siren to bring him.”
“That’s only for if you’re dying or something,” she said, turning to leave him. “I’ll tell him you’re waiting.”
“Still walking round, is he?” he said as she closed the door. “He’d better get on with what he’s got in mind, or she’ll fix him with her old eye. Doesn’t do to look around first.”

*

Mrs. Otterdown had been waiting for the stranger a long time when she opened the door to him standing on her front steps, his breath frosting a little in the late afternoon. He was like Simon before he was old, though they wouldn’t know that, they were all long dead who might have seen that; he walked something like, and he had the same look. The sun was still strong enough to make the snow glitter behind him. So it was strong enough to melt it, it was changing the air, filling it with the smell of water. The earth would smell soon, there would be patches coming bare. That was what he was here for, she could see.
“Maybe you’ve got a room for me, ma’am,” he said.
“Who said I took boarders?” Everybody knew she didn’t. But she had seen him all day coming nearer and nearer, circling; only holding off while Harry was home for lunch. He had a blind look, as if he hardly saw most things, but he saw what he wanted all right. So did Simon. He looked at her, blinking slowly, and didn’t move. He didn’t care about her questions. “There must be those who’re glad to take a man in,” she said. “There were once. No reason why that should change.”
“It’s not for so very long,” he said. As if that made a difference. His feet would be heavy, the old boards would creak. She was old, they expected her to die and leave them in peace, she expected it herself. She was quiet, she hardly moved, trouble would be strange, like her head being wrenched. It was going to be a hot year as it was, hot and sudden; she was better off inside, waiting for the end. She couldn’t go back again now. The sun was shining on his bald head and sweat was trickling through his thick eyebrows and down along his nose. The wind seemed to have died away.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “What have you come to the town for?” She felt hot herself, even with the sun sinking down. It was nothing the last day, the last clear day, haggard and watery, and now it was burning.
“I’ve got work,” he said. He had made up his mind. There were small patches of snow still when she watched Simon from the kitchen, hammering in the morning, and brought him water and watched his throat move as he swallowed. The icicles were dripping. She was too old to make him go.
“I like my house to myself,” she said.
“It’s for four months, I figure. No more.”
“Who told you? Who said my name?”
“Jessop,” he said. Jessop. There was no reason for that. He could have left her quiet. He already had everything he wanted. “Because you own everything,” he said. “And they leave you alone. Except that field he gave me part of for my work. The field the school uses behind your house.”
That was almost honest of Jessop, keeping so near his bargain. Probably he liked to keep near, probably he felt safer with her propped in her window for all eyes to see: the public landowner. Still, reasons didn’t matter. So long as he didn’t tell Harry.
“The field is my land too,” she said. “Everybody knows that.” He only went on blinking, waiting. His whole head was glittering with sweat. He looked as if nothing could move him. “There’s only one room to choose from,” she said.
“That’ll do,” he said. He tried to move her back by moving forward, but she didn’t move back. She could still keep him there, with his legs almost touching her knees, she was still strong enough for that.
“Maybe it won’t suit you,” she said. But she could see he didn’t care, and she thought she didn’t care herself; she could still go on as she was. Whatever he did, he needn’t trouble her; at her age she probably wouldn’t even feel new feet in the house. “Well, come and see it,” she said.
He nodded, and grinned suddenly, showing two broken front teeth, and followed close after her as she wheeled herself back into the house.

CHAPTER TWO

The Indians were first, as far as anyone knew; but how long they had wandered over the country nobody knew, themselves least of all. In their own myths they had sprung from the earth like dragon’s teeth, fully grown. Their gods were nature gods and were strong, expecting sacrifices and worship, not expecting to be understood; holding different names with different tribes, wandering as they wandered themselves across the face of the earth.
No single tribe could claim the site of Otterdown without a battle, although the last to drift over it were the Crees. They had come from the eastern woodlands, leaving their canoes, to follow the buffalo like the Bloods, the Assiniboines or Stonies, the Piegans, the Blackfeet, and the Athapaskan to the north, each tribe like a squall on the face of the prairie, moved by their gods, the Sun and the Wind and the Rain, unchanging like their gods. When the buffalo was scarce they killed and ate whatever other animals they could find, or ate the roots which they knew were not poisonous because somebody beyond their memory had staked his life on them and the knowledge had been handed down, or starved.
Sometimes they scratched in a desultory way at the patch of ground on which they found themselves camped; and if seeds happened to fall there they might regard with benign incurious smiles whatever pushed its way up through the loosened soil. But if they saw that the sowing was linked to the sprouting, they saw no interest in it. Even as the seedlings grew, their camp shifted away across the prairie, following the shifting buffalo, following the will of their gods. The land was their foothold, not their living. Their only fixed points were the clumps of trees where the bodies of their dead were hung in hammocks, even then open to the wind.
When the horse came among them from the south across the endless plain, they marvelled at its beauty and mildness and swiftness, they mounted it and
pursued the buffalo, and ate more often than they had before. More again when the gun followed the horses. They slaughtered the buffalo in hundreds, proud of their skill and strength, wandering ever more widely over the prairie, tribe fighting tribe for the right to hunt the herds. But they were all doomed: after the horse and the gun came the white settler; and after that there were no buffalo anywhere. They called out to their gods, but their voices only echoed in the empty sky.
They left no mark on the town, no ghostly traces of the many times they had ridden back and forth over the patch of ground where it was to be built. Two miles to the west lay a pile of buffalo bones, the remains of a feast; half a mile to the north, another pile, smaller. These marked their claim, they said, bargaining to keep a small part of the prairie their god, the Wind, had granted them without let or hindrance. But the white settlers gathered up the bones and piled them into boxcars to be shipped to the east as a cash crop.
The Metis were transitional, but they left a few signs. Born of the Indians’ women to the white trappers and traders, they lived like the Indians on the whole of the prairie where they had been so strangely born. Some of them, feeling their fathers’ blood, settled in irregular communities, in shacks along the banks of rivers, sheltering there against the winter, ploughing a little ground at the winter’s end. But they had small faith in the life, they were their mothers’ sons, when they were not free on the prairie they were not alive. They returned to the buffalo hunt, they trapped other, smaller animals, they felt themselves to be the kings of the prairie, outnumbering their fathers’ encroaching people, rivalling their mothers’ retreating people, taking all the land as their unclaimed legacy.
When they claimed it, they lost it. They were postmen, couriers, transporters for their fathers’ people, carrying them and their possessions across the almost trackless land, the heavy wooden cart-wheels jolting over hummocks and holes. They left them on their plots of land, moving only between them, holding their own freedom. By the time they saw this endangered in the land being squared against them and their prey, their opportunity was gone. The pure-white settler was arriving in droves.
On the banks of the Rat River, a hundred yards downstream from the town, there were still some rotting boards to show where some Metis had built their shacks one winter. Mrs. Otterdown had seen them arrive, asking no one’s permission although their rebellions had failed. The next winter she saw them again. She watched them and spoke with them and waited for them in the winter after that, but they never came back. Their shacks fell apart in a summer.
But those were only a few late Metis. Most of them, grown weak and careless, had retreated to the Indians, to reserves or over the westward horizon, dwindling in numbers, their energy trickling out of them as what had been their life could not be their life much longer. Only the prairie stayed, and the sun and the rain and the wind, gods without believers.
So if a dream was to be with the town and the land round it, it had to come with the white settlers: out of eastern Canada, a generation or two settled there, or straight out of Europe, jolting with their families and belongings in carts and wagons across the grassy sea.
The first of these to reach the Rat River was Simon Otterdown. He was twenty-five, with very strong arms, bandy legs and a broad flat face. He didn’t know where he wanted to stop; all the land was open to him, one part seemed as good as another. He had been travelling over it for so long, with halts for fresh supplies which were given him in return for the blacksmithery which had been his trade, that he didn’t see how he could settle again. The longest he had stopped was for the winter before, in the village of Dauphin, from which he had come away with a girl called Brigid as his wife. She was quiet and still, and he was afraid she was already pregnant. In the back of the wagon, the sacks of grain were waiting; it was getting late for planting, he was beyond where people would want a horse shod, beyond people altogether; in a few days he knew he would have to stop.
He drove the two horses down the low riverbank, through the shallow muddy water which gurgled round the wheels, and up the other side. They had just reached the level of the prairie again, and he was gazing ahead at the slowly setting sun and the miles of billowing grass, when the back axle broke for no reason. The wagon swayed unsteadily, his wife fell against his shoulder, then straightened herself, and climbed to the ground.
They unloaded the wagon together and removed the axle. He sweated with the metal over a fire while the horses grazed under the poplar trees and his wife sat silent in the twilight. He joined the ends together and hammered them into shape, but he knew as the metal cooled that it wouldn’t bear the strain. Though he fitted the axle back in place, and bound it with stakes and rope, he did it only for pride. As the fire died down and he lay beside it with his wife, he stared up at the unending starry sky of early summer and knew that the end was almost upon him. Before dawn his wife had a miscarriage, with no apology or explanation. He buried the foetus where she asked him, in the prairie earth a hundred yards away from the river and its trees, deeply to protect it from the coyotes, but leaving no burial sign since it hadn’t been a child. The day after that, when they were able to move on, they had travelled only fifty yards beyond the grave when the back axle broke again. He climbed down from the wagon, pulled absently at the prairie grass in which his feet were entangled, and heard his wife say that the earth looked as if it would grow things. He nodded. He could see that for himself. Before winter came they were settled there in a sod hut and she was pregnant again.
So they began together what developed imperceptibly into the town. They began with a farm which for the first six years grew barely enough, over seed requirements, to keep them well-fed, and for two of those years not even so much. They had a vegetable garden, which Brigid, still as awkward and adolescent as when he first saw her, watched and cared for with a missionary zeal, even when her thin body was swollen with one growing child after another. She made it produce more than she could herself, for her first child, a girl, was born dead, and her second, a boy, flickered alive for only three weeks. Simon had to force it out of her arms while she wept in a way that he never wanted to hear again. Nine months later she had a second miscarriage, buried beside the first, after which there were two barren years when they were able to give all their strength to bringing life out of the soil, which was, as they had known, good for growing things. The vegetables flourished and, increasingly, the grain. The earth began to give back, apart from two years of frost, one early in the fall, the other late in the spring, much more wheat than they had sown. .
Gradually other settlers took up land not far from them; some haltingly, mistrustfully, assessing the prospects and the rival claims of land beyond; others wearily, gratefully. They staked their claims on the prairie in accordance with the national survey, and fenced them with strands of wire, and began to plant them. But not all of them stayed. Some were restless and others were discouraged by early failures; these gathered up their belongings and moved back towards the railroad, where towns were springing up beside the right-of-way; or they pushed on, hoping for better prospects, lurching in their wagons after the Indian over the horizon.
A sngle man, a bachelor, settled on the quarter-section right beside the Otterdowns to the west. His name was Henry Hoyt. While he was building his sod hut, he shouted to them whatever he was thinking, and he laughed. Simon watched him uneasily, and set out alone soon afterwards to establish a squatting claim to the quarter-section beside him along the river before it was too late.
The settlers helped one another and were friendly to one another, wherever they had come from and whatever they had believed, because the life was hard and there weren’t many of them. They learned by experience to hide their far families and customs and myths and private fears from their neighbours; they learned how much of what they had could be taken, and so, how much to give. They ploughed up the prairie in amity, they planted their seed and harvested what they could, and hoped that their children would lead a good life.
A road developed. Nobody built it intentionally, but the wheels of the grain-bearing carts found a common route to the railroad which ran east and wet some miles to the south. And from the town which had grown up at the railside, each settler carried back his supplies, his tools and clothes, and seed on credit if the crop had failed, since they had no town among themselves. But already the men met in the Otterdown farmyard, and the women, when they could, sent their children to Brigid to give them simple lessons, since she still had no children of her own. She sat with them for hours, her narrow face alight and her long black hair hanging in a thick plait to the middle of her back.
Then Hoyt came to talk to Simon one day, gesturing and joking and spreading his enthusiasm through the newly built frame house; and by the time he left, Simon had bought his quarter-section across the cart track, all but a small plot where Hoyt was going to live. He hadn’t the knack of farming, he said, grinning at Brigid so warmly that she turned away her head.
He began to haul supplies on commission for farmers who had no time to go to the railside themselves, and when he had a clientele he built himself a store and a room for living on the ground he had reserved. He chose his stock well and gave easy credit, and warmed people, particularly women, with his grin and his laugh and his steady stream of talk. He seemed to prosper; but on one morning late in June, after three years as a merchant, he didn’t open his store. All the provisions were there, all the bills and accounts, neatly docketed, were there, but he and his horses and wagon were gone. People waited, short of supplies, for three weeks, growing impatient, until Simon said that he would buy what was in the store, stating a price which was thought to be fair or better. As he couldn’t take over the ground, he locked the store with the money inside, built a new store for the provisions on the other side of the cart track, and established himself as the father of the town.
Some months later, Brigid gave birth, with the help of two farmwives, to a boy and a girl; and the girl, even at birth as dark as herself, lived. She was called Millie, and she grew like an animal. She followed her mother everywhere from the day she could crawl, she was dirty from morning till night, she pushed over smaller children, and she was wary of Simon, who watched her and never called her near. With her seemed to come fruitfulness, for before she was three she had a sister, and before she was five, two sisters. Then, before she was six, she died, after three days of fever which burned like fire.
Simon, his face grown round and his eyes set in webs of fine lines which came of much smiling, himself read the child into the grave, there being no qualified minister by. As many as could come from the twenty-some families living round about sang hymns in the gentle sunshine of late October, but stood well back from the small oblong hole where Brigid stood alone, allowing nobody even to approach her. With her arms folded across her breasts and her head held up to the steady morning light, she looked older than all those watching her. While her husband was reading the twenty-second and twenty-third psalms, she released her hair from the coil in which it was wound and let it flow down over her shoulders, fretted by the breeze, as she had worn it from the day the girl had been born. Then she walked away from the grave beside the graves of her other children and near-children. Afterwards they found her standing in no particular place, gazing absently at the eastern sky just above the horizon.
Her two living daughters were called Janice and Christina. They were both fair lie their father, but their eyes were brown. She looked after them carefully and gently, and when they were old enough she gave them lessons as she continued to give them to the children of the other women. She began to walk on the prairie at night, particularly when there was a moon, both winter and summer. Sometimes she was seen from farms five miles from her own, but she never called on anyone. Women of all ages began to go to her for advice.
Meanwhile, the town was growing. Two or three houses at first, all built close to Otterdown’s store, which had to be enlarged. A blacksmith from Bavaria, called Otto Grunwald, built a smithy for himself and stables for farmers shopping at the store, and for travellers on their way elsewhere. Otterdown said that he was pleased to be able to surrender the smithing which he had done for others as a convenience. At the same time he enlarged his house to make room for his wife to teach the growing numbers of children in a more regular manner.
At last the railway came, a spur line threading across the prairie to pick up the grain which the farmers could no longer effectively haul the many miles to the main line. The station was built on the right-of-way at the far side of Hoyt’s old quarter; and ‘Otterdown’, by general agreement, was painted on the hanging signboard to make the town official. More houses were built and services supplied. The farmers came in regularly and sat around in chairs in the back of the store or the front room of the smithy, warming their feet and hands in winter, making jokes away from their wives and telling each other how the country was prospering. Otterdown wouldn’t sell any of the lots in the town, but he helped people to build on them and he charged no rent at all for the first five years. He was like a father to every newcomer, ready with advice and practical help. He spent more and more time in the back of his store, summer and winter, growing fatter, smiling at foolishness, laughing at jokes, taking an interest in everyone living within reach of the town. His wife was quiet, her face weathered and fixed, her black hair always coiled to the back of her head. The new people watched her uncertainly, greeted her carefully. and thought her much older than she was. But the chief attention and energy of everyone was devoted to making a new life on the still wide-open prairie.
It was in the late spring of 1913 that Dudley Fitzgerald halted his steaming car in the main street and asked the gathering children where he could find Mr. Otterdown. He was a short man, and thin, and under his dusty driving suit very well dressed. He held out his hand to Simon and claimed the plot of land which Hoyt had reserved for himself. He showed the title deed, which he said Hoyt had lost to him, and from the following day labourers began to arrive in the town. Half of them were Chinese, lured from the laying of railway track by higher wages, and apparently happy to work from dawn to sunset; the rest were of all races and they kept the town in a turmoil with their quarrels and laughter.
The first day they demolished Hoyt’s store, and Fitzgerald distributed as bounty the money that Otterdown had left inside to pay for the provisions he had taken. The next day they began to build a hotel. They camped on the site, in tents and in the open, until the walls and roof were built and winter came; then they all ate and slept inside. Fitzgerald lived with them and watched keenly over everything they did. He was never without a waistcoat and tie, and his shirts were washed regularly by one of his Chinese workers. During the winter he was seldom out of doors; when he was, he wore a greatcoat and walked slowly around the hotel. By the beginning of spring men were carving ornaments over the front doorway and all the lower windows, and working patterns in plaster on the ceilings of the public rooms, and polishing the smooth oak floors. By the middle of May many of the workmen had gone, and those who remained were carrying furniture and furnishings from the railway station. By the end of May everything was clean and polished, and thick carpets were laid; and the last of the workmen had gone. Fitzgerald walked slowly back and forth along the balustered front porch and nodded to people who passed, and told them that, if they were interested, the hotel was now open.
There were comfortable rooms for travellers, of course, but the attraction was the bar. Men came from twenty miles and more to see the long stretch of polished oak and the glitter of a hundred bottles under the giant chandelier where the candles were changed every day. At first they gaped at the ceiling two storeys away and walked gingerly over the thick carpets, and hand-brushed themselves carefully before touching the upholstered chairs; but the drink was strong and the bartenders friendly, so by the end of the summer they raised their glasses easily to Fitzgerald when they saw him walking back and forth along the gallery over their heads. He smiled vaguely. He didn’t mix with the people of the town.
Every man could drink what he wanted for as long as he could stand; the hotel didn’t close until all had fallen or gone. Every summer night, except Sunday, candle-light and laughter and singing poured from the open doors and broad windows into the main street. Most of them went there every night, though many of them drank little and some didn’t drink at all. They went for the company and the light. It was a bad year for the crops.
But when the harvest was over, and the stubbly fields were hardening with frost, most of the men went to Regina to put on uniforms for the war. The women walked in the main street, watching the hotel which none of them liked, where the men who hadn’t gone to war had begun to gamble, and complained to Otterdown over their purchases. He agreed with them, he didn’t go to the hotel himself, but he didn’t see what could be done. Fitzgerald was within his rights. It was only a pity, he said, that he didn’t own that piece of land himself.
Then, one cold night in December, Mrs. Otterdown was seen walking towards the bright windows through the iron-hard streets only scattered with snow. The men turned from the bar and from their cards to see her standing just inside the door, not bothering to close it behind her, looking with wide eyes at the glittering cavern around her, dressed as usual all in black.
“A whisky,” she said from where she was. The men shifted uncomfortably. She walked slowly in the uneasy quiet towards the bar, her eyes fixed straight ahead of her, as if she were in a trance. “A whisky,” she said again. The barman said they couldn’t serve ladies. The men stopped drinking as she gazed blankly round at them, then up the broad oak stairs to the encircling gallery, higher than the chandelier, where Fitzgerald stood as if he had been waiting. He came down to her slowly, brushing his waistcoat and straightening his tie, to pour out the whisky. She drank it without choking and put the glass carefully back on the shining bar.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said to Fitzgerald, in a voice loud enough for all the men to hear. “And I won’t be alone.”
Janice and Christina were in their early teens at the time, and looked very pretty when dressed in pink frocks as they were the next day. They were gentle girls, wanting to please; they looked frightened as their mother led them towards the hotel at suppertime while everybody watched. People followed them up the steps and watched through the doorway as their mother helped them off with their coats in the rich yellow light of the chandelier.
The hotel was empty except for the two bartenders waiting passively behind their bar, and Fitzgerald, who stood on the bottom step of the stairway, facing Mrs. Otterdown, waiting quietly, his pearl stickpin glowing in the candlelight. She gazed round the enormous room, her expression almost childlike, while her daughters clung to her coat.
“Who would have thought it would grow into this,” she said at last. “A little piece of land.”
“Hoyt was nothing to do with me,” Fitzgerald said. “I only took over the land. All that’s here is of my making, all of it. And you have no right to. .”
“They won’t come here anymore,” she said quietly, and put her daughters coats on again and took them home.
For six months after that the hotel was open every day, but nobody drank there. Children ran in and called names and laughed and ran out. Fitzgerald continued living there alone, always immaculate; and when he walked back and forth along the front porch, he was always courteous to anyone who passed. Not until June, when the legislature closed all the bars in the province, did he quietly padlock the doors and board up the windows and climb into his car and drive out of the town. It was rumoured that he had returned years later to hang himself from his chandelier, but nobody knew for sure, because the hotel had never been seen open since the day he had left.

CHAPTER THREE

Harry leaned against the cash register in the back of his store, poking at the keys with his fingers, sounding out the notes in his mind through a secret transcription; for Maida the machine only rang up sales. He kept his ears on the men round the stove behind him, and his eyes on a family of Hutterites who were gathering goods into their arms; the father, he suspected, had been trimming his beard. The world was in a sad way.
“I just wish he’d get to work on it,” Rupe Windflower said, his voice high, an easy voice to know. “It’s this waiting.”
“How’s he supposed to till it thaws?” asked Alvin Gleave.
“He could be measuring the ground at least. Hammering in stakes, something like that,” said Ephraim Ledbetter, his voice deep and low. “Since the snow’s pretty well gone.”
“He could be friendly since he’s here,” Archie Dworshak said. “Come and give us an idea, like, what he’s got in mind.”
He could tell them more than that one word, Hank, which he called his name, Harry thought, taking their part. There were a dozen of them around the stove behind him, enough for a quorum, and he could feel the pull of claim in their voices; they wanted his opinion, his support. He shifted his feet so that his back would look reassuring. He thought that his duty stretched further than that, but he wasn’t ready to pursue it. He was out of practice after a number of easy years and, after all, appearances too were important. His father could agree to that.
“It’s only that he makes me nervous, watching me the whole time I’m painting the roller,” Rupe said.
“He’s been watching me in the grease pit,” Phil Nagy muttered, just loud enough to be heard. “He keeps picking things up and saying he could use them.”
“Looking round at Annabel the same time,” Ray Keefer said; he was a sly one all right, he could wink with the best of them. “Some of the women cross the street when they see him coming.”
“There’s no need for that,” Alvin said. “Willa says hello to him regularly.”
“My wife says there’s something eerie about him all right,” Lon Esterhazy said. “She don’t like the way he looks at her.”
“You think maybe he wants to use the roller for this tower?” Rupe asked, his voice uneasy. “Maybe I could work it for him, but what’s he want it for? It’s got no traction. If it was a caterpillar, I could see him hanging around.”
“On Sundays, Iris said, it’d be a big danger to the children,” Humphrey Wilkinson said mildly. “Said her husband said so. Could be, too, when you think of it. They’d maybe climb up and fall off and break their necks.”
“Specially where it’s going to be,” Ron Macnamara said. “Can’t say I blame Overgaard for being angry, losing nobody knows how much of the playground.”
Harry watched the Hutterites coming towards him to pay. He didn’t suppose they would be interested, after holding out so long against everything with their peasant costumes and patriarchy, if he told them that a strange man had come to build a water tower in the town. Probably they wouldn’t see in what manner he was strange; all who were not Hutterite were strange. He smiled at the father and the mother and the three small sons, and stood at ease, as if he hadn’t heard MacNamara’s oblique criticism, as if he didn’t know that they were all glancing at his back, all uneasy and fretting and knowing there was nothing they could do: if his mother wanted the tower built behind her house, that was her privilege as landowner; so much the worse for the school, if it was worse. So was it her privilege to lodge the man in her house, in the bedroom next to his own, a thin wall only between, so he could hear the mouth organ playing softly, in tunes he knew and didn’t know, when everybody else was asleep.
“You’d think he came here to burn the town down, instead of giving it something we can all do with,” Alvin said.
“If he gets round to doing it,” Frank Chopek said.
“Where’s the water coming from when he does do it?” Ledbetter asked.
“We got enough wells as it is,” Esterhazy said.
“Won’t help the fields,” Dworshak said.
“He’ll pump water up from the river, in the spring,” MacNamara said. “I got nothing against the idea.”
“It’ll make for extra work,” Alvin said.
“There’ll be nothing to pump the water into, this spring,” Wilkinson said. “Maybe he should have started it last fall.”
“Maybe he couldn’t, last fall,” Ray said. “Maybe he was busy somewhere else.” There was something odd in his tone which seemed to silence them all for awhile, so that all Harry heard from them was their breathing and the creaking of their chairs. The Hutterite were leaving as quietly as they came, calling on him for nothing but goods, serving under another system, another government. It was peaceful to watch them come and go in the middle of his neglected duty. Maida was standing by Mrs. Paradis, the only other customer, as she sorted through a pile of plastic plates. Ray was the clever one, they all said so; but they listened to MacNamara when they listened to each other at all. His own best course was to invoke his father’s shade and keep easy and count his blessings: his mother had looked as if she would die and now she didn’t, at least not for a while.
“Somebody was saying he’s been in the town before,” Wilkinson said.
“Before my time, then,” MacNamara said.
“If he wasn’t,” Phil said. “It’s queer him coming here now.
“Maybe as a young fellow he was,” Ledbetter said. “I don’t remember so well”
“Family moved away, maybe,” Esterhazy said. “In the thirties, maybe.”
“Well, I got no objection to him being here,” MacNamara said. “Whatever he’s here for, as long as he don’t cause no trouble.”
“He tried to talk to Bella in the street this morning,” Ray said. A warning for them not to rest easy. “Phil saw him.”
“She was looking a treat, Bella was,” Rupe said. “She came round to see how the paint job was getting on. Said it marked the beginning of spring for her when I first took the roller out. Something was bothering her though, I noticed that. But she didn’t say anything.”
“It was just surprise, she said, made her tell him to go away. Because he was a stranger,” Phil said.
“Seems to me her mother had time to warn her she might bump into him,” Ray said.
“If he tries anything of that kind,” MacNamara said. “We’ll soon get him out of town. Water tower or no water tower. If he don’t respect things the way they are.”
“We could always build one ourselves, I guess, if we wanted,” Ray said.
“Old Simon always said a water tower’d be the making of this town,” Ledbetter said. There was a calming word. If old Simon said so..
“That’s what I say,” Alvin said. “He’s got the whole thing worked out, blueprints and everything. We ought to give him a chance.”
All they wanted, Harry thought, was for him to say something, just something, as the landlord’s son and heir. He could say he was for the tower or against it, or that Bella wasn’t to be touched by strange men; nothing more. He had only to turn and face them and, like his father, be amongst them, persuasive and soothing, saying that Hank talked to him of nights through the wall they shared, about his dream of bringing water to a parched community, or one he had thought was parched. He could invent a history for Hank, and a satisfactory surname. His father would even have convinced them that the tower was really a community effort. It was a pity that he wasn’t his father, since he was left with his father’s role; left to explain why his mother had taken the man into her house, away from them all, making no claims that she cared what any of them thought or did, so long as they left her alone and paid her rent. Daily the gap between Hank and them was growing wider, and only he, as vizier was left to bridge it; which he felt unfit to do. It was a painful stretching of his quietude, which had taken some years to form.
Still, the change was rousing her, his mainstay; that was good. And the man might yet be no problem, though they had all decided he was, so why so uneasy? They could sit round his stove on his chairs in his hereditary store until doomsday, and call up the shade of his father for comfort and guidance, and still he need do nothing but stand near them, not even facing them, showing them only his easy, unworried back. If they were discontent with that, they would have to settle on a plan; if they wanted to depose him for inaction, they would have to choose a leader and a dagger and a time. And then face the vengeance of the old queen? Their debts called in, foreclosures sent out. Oh, he was a lucky one, with his caul and all.
They weren’t talking much now. Some of them had gone outside. Mrs. Paradis had gone, and Maida had gone to answer the telephone in the post office. It seemed they had stopped expecting his opinion; they were satisfied just to sit round his stove. But the question was still there. He ought to try out some kind of answer, at least for the sake of form.
All right then: did he, himself, object to the water tower being built in the town, smack in the middle of his inheritance? No. He approved of it, if anything. It would be useful even if it wouldn’t be handsome; and, after all, nothing had been built for beauty in the town from the beginning, except the hotel, and that hadn’t come to much, so maybe it was as well that the tower was for use. Any new building was good for the town; it brought in money and raised people’s spirits. As the reeve, he gave his blessing. Provided only that the hotel was left as it was: a minor rider to the agreement, nobody but himself would care.
But the question was further: did he object to the location of the tower, not wanting it so near his house or, more generously, not wanting the school playground to be diminished? No. Or did he think that the man was a threat to Bella’s virginity or to the general peace of the town, and if he did, did he care? Well no, it wasn’t that, not exactly that, that was a side part of his duty, the question was elsewhere.
The question was right in front of him, he didn’t need to hide it, he was long grown up now, even beginning the slow decay.. He was digressing; he was unsettled, he must keep his back and shoulders easy, they were waiting for his weakness to show, whispering round from chair to chair in the half-darkness of the dying afternoon. All he had to say was that he shared their doubts; they would still worry, but they wouldn’t worry him. But he couldn’t manage that. His doubts were all his own, and not so smooth with years of handling as he had thought.
What he should tell them, if they got round to asking, was that he would feel a good deal better if they all filed out of the store, away from his unsheltered back.
He was becoming nervous. It would show. He gazed straight ahead of him at the empty store and fingered the cash register keys gently. He was troubling himself about nothing. Probably the uneasy feeling he had had for the two weeks this man Hank had been in the town would settle in good time, as feelings generally did. Maybe, as they said, when the ground was all thawed, soon now, and he really began building his water tower, all apprehension would die.
But then what happened to the question which wouldn’t change? It might as well be a water tower as not a water tower, since Hank was building it to build; that was clear enough. And it might as well be built in the town as out of it or in some other town or city; it could at least be useful here. Then? Then?
The voices of the men behind him were blurred by the faint buzzing in his ears. He was as good as alone. Then he ought to ask himself directly, and answer, why he wasn’t building a water tower himself. There was a sense of duty for his father; not a new sense either, though it jangled now like new. But, even so, the answer was final and , if it was depressing, well, it was his question and his answer; if he didn’t build a water tower and never had and was never likely to, for any reason, because he didn’t feel he wanted to, then that was simple enough. If he minded after that, he had only himself to blame. He smiled his broadest smile at the empty store in front of him; yes, he minded. Doubtless he was cursed.

*

Jessop sat on his usual stool, furthest from the window, watching his coffee spin round with the spoon. Hilda didn’t fret him; she let things go as they would. Even if she had thought anything was out of the usual, she seemed to have stopped thinking it now. Josey was more of a problem; he pretended he wasn’t interested in anything except the food in front of him, but his eyes flickered all along the counter. Though the trouble wasn’t yet, it was quiet yet.
“You got an opinion on him?” he asked Hilda, letting go of the spoon so it was carried round the cup by the coffee, and watching her straighten her back from the sink. “Everybody’s got one, far as I can make out. Keep changing them too. One day you hear one thing, next day another.” She pushed back her hair with a soapy wrist and looked at him in the mirror. Josey was looking at him too. What was in what he said? It was like they had antennae, not just eyes, to notice things. If they did find out and the word spread that he was behind it, that’d be the sure end of what small peace he had. He never should have gone to Maggie when she asked him, that was his first big mistake. If he hadn’t gone to her he wouldn’t have promised her. “I guess we’ll all see what it’s about soon enough,” he said, flatly, to turn them off.
“He has a look like he lost his way,” Hilda said. He blew gently into his coffee, as if he didn’t hear. The thing was not to show any interest. Then they could watch Hank all they liked and the only person they’d see behind him, like it was all her doing, was old Mrs. Otterdown. He’d be as safe himself from their eyes and tongues as if he was in his own earth room. Let them see her. And Harry. And leave him alone. He wouldn’t even be in this place, or any one place such a deal of years if it hadn’t been for Maggie calling when he thought he was too far to hear.
That was what made him think there was no harm in going to see her, just to see her. Since he was so far, and she was getting old and tired. And the next thing he knew her big hands were out, as usual, grabbing him. And making him promise the way she always did, crying and holding him and telling him he knew best and could do best, that if he had the money he would hold onto it and turn it into more, against the time and need. And he had, that was what he had done all right; and all she had done was get drunk on a cold night, the way they always said she would. They were glad if anything.
“I was thinking. I didn’t hear,” he said. Hilda’s black eyes were looking at him out of the mirror.
“It’s to Josey I was saying,” she said. “If he wanted any more.”
It was the spring not coming, he thought. When he had thought it would. It was this cold closing down again. When he could get out on the prairie he’d be all right, he’d be quiet then. He wouldn’t mind anything when plants were pushing up everywhere out of the soft earth, all kinds of green and smelling and their roots wet and stretching in his fingers. They could do what they liked then. And by the time the next winter came it would all be over, one way or another, and whatever Hank did or didn’t do Maggie couldn’t make him promise anymore. He could go off wherever he wanted then and leave this town to rot. If only they didn’t find him out before.

CHAPTER FOUR

The church was white, with a steep roof of reddish wooden shingles and a steeple like a short jousting lance. It was forty-some years old and attached to the rites of the United Church of Canada. People had tried at certain times to organize other forms of worship at one farmhouse or another, but none of them had endured. The present minister, Archibald Fairling, had been a Methodist before the Act of Union. He was an elderly man now, but still vigorous; in most weather he walked about a good deal in the town. Both the manse-which he shared with his housekeeper, Mrs. Watson, and her daughter, Bella-and the church itself stood on ground donated by Mr. Otterdown.
The first church ever built on this part of the prairie had been, as was usual, of sods. It had been an appendage to the house of the third farmer to arrive, a man called Esterhazy, later the father of a large family who drifted one by one away to towns, except for the youngest son, who established a seed store opposite the derelict hotel and sold the farm to migrating Ukrainians when his father was dead. It was better than average land, but all the land was good.
The service in Esterhazy’s church was, in principle, non-sectarian, but in feeling not so pallid, for Esterhazy was the son of an Ontarian Presbyterian circuit rider and, though he tried to restrain himself, he had inherited the flair. Nobody minded this at first; everybody was pleased to have some place for common worship. But eventually, as Esterhazy’s intensity began to slide into mysticism and the service began to lose what regular shape it had had, people grew discontented and asked each other why Esterhazy should be allowed to play God. So that when Otterdown said he had located a qualified minister, and offered to accommodate him in his own house and furnish as a church the back room of his newly enlarged store, there was general relief. Esterhazy came with the rest of them, but gloomily, and drove all the way to the railside when he needed supplies.
This church was inaugurated in the spring by the Reverend Mr. Keefer, who stood on the front step of the corner entrance to the store to greet the congregation, blinking his owl eyes in the strong sunlight. His wife, born in Poland, stood squarely beside him to shake every hand in her own broad flat one. Their wagons parked side by side in the street, the settlers made their way uncertainly toward the doorstep, themselves smiling and welcoming, their children by their sides or in their arms. Whatever secret beliefs they had carried with them out onto the prairie, they didn’t talk about; it was enough that they could make their way through the dark aisles of Otterdown’s store, past the piles of familiar weekday goods, to something like a real church at the back, where chairs and a lectern had been installed.
Mr. Keefer was a simple preacher and a kindly man. He was much regretted when he died of pneumonia four years later. At his own request, his body was shipped to his sister in southern Ontario. But his wife, who had given birth only a few months before to a son, her first child, said that she had nowhere to go herself. She was strong and young, but her English was still not good. For some years she lived on the homestead of a German family.
From then until long after the Great War, the town had no resident minister. Itinerant preachers of all denominations passed through, sometimes even staying for a month or two if travelling was difficult or the man himself was tired. The last to stay did so to bury the victims of the influenza epidemic which swept through the town in October of 1918. Three people were feverish on the night of his arrival, and more than twenty had fallen sick by the following Monday. He conducted no service, for everyone kept fearfully to his house, but he visited and he comforted, taking with him a woman they called swarthy once she had gone, whom the minister said was French Canadian and who evidently had much Indian blood. She also had been trained as a midwife and nurse, and her solemn face soothed their panic. They learned that her last name was Laframboise, but they called her by her first, Helen.
Although more than a third of the people living in the town and around it were stricken, only three died, apart from the minister himself, whose body was preached over by Esterhazy while the other mourners froze.
The three apart were Janice and Christina Otterdown, and a man called Palmerston, who, though much older than either of the girls and long a bachelor, farming some fourteen miles from the town, had become engaged to Janice. He was at least a few years younger than her father, and as they had walked round the town together to tell people they had both seemed quiet and happy. He had been the first to die, Christina the last. The minister had lived long enough to bury them properly, while Otterdown cried like a baby. Nobody could think what to say to his straight, silent wife, who heard out the service and then led him away. The house which had been built beside theirs for their daughter and son-in-law remained empty for thirty years. Helen Laframboise stayed on in the town as general nurse and midwife, living in two rooms, not very cleanly, over the cafe.
In the following spring the foundation was dug for the present church. To be a memorial, Otterdown said, for those who had died in the war and at home. Over the concrete basement seasoned timbers were raised, double walls and roof fixed securely in place against the winter, a steeple raised over the roof and a bell hung in the belfry, all under the careful supervision of Otterdown who was paying the greater part of the cost. Both the church and the manse beside it were completed by the time the first snow fell. In mid-November the bell rang out through a cold, cloudy morning for the first, inaugural service, taken by an itinerant Methodist minister returning east after seven years of preaching to farmers newly placed on the prairie. Warmed by the glowing stove behind the large central pulpit, he delivered a strong sermon on the power of God to the congregation which was packed together between the roaring side-aisle stoves. They followed him in prayer and sang the hymns as loudly as they could, and shook him eagerly by the hand when the service was over. The next morning everybody saw him to the eleven o’clock train, the only one out of town, and waved until he was gone. Afterwards, they forgot his sermon and even his name, but for a long time they liked to remember the occasion. It was better than kneeling alone under the blank face of God.
Even with a church, however, the town was dependant on itinerant ministers, some of whom preached hell-fire and some restraint and some the coming of the Kingdom of God. One of the early ones, calling himself a Unitarian, married Mrs. Keefer to a middle-aged bachelor named Gleave; another, a baptist, christened their son Alvin, and read the burial service over the childless wife of Otto Grunwald the blacksmith, who was finding himself clumsy as an automobile mechanic and was often found slumped in his well-worn chair in his office where men, having forgiven him for the war, gathered again in winter and summer when they weren’t in Otterdown’s store; even before his wife’s death he was muttering of the dark end closing in. None of the passing ministers could do anything for him except the last, who was a freckled, strong young man, believing in social progress. He married Grunwald to Helen Laframboise, who had gradually lost the trust of the people as she showed more and more of her Indian blood in her heavy body and slovenly ways. He also christened a boy of six, whom Otterdown led privately to the font, explaining that his wife objected unreasonably to baptism, saying that the boy’s name was Henry John.
In 1929, the last good year for a long time, the Reverend William Watson, Congregationalist, settled himself into the manse with his thin intense wife and enough books to fill every shelf in the house. He was a youngish man, but he looked middle-aged and sounded it and seemed to wish to be. His eyes were blue and staring, and his reddish hair was sparse. He seemed to like reading in the manse, particularly in the winter, better than he liked paying visits to his congregation, and the sermons he preached were scholastic and difficult to follow; but when he sang a hymn all by himself, people said it was a long time since they had heard anything so beautiful.
They couldn’t believe it when he died suddenly during his third winter in the manse. His wife sat beside his dead body with uncomprehending eyes, asking people blankly what she ought to do, and leaving the funeral arrangements to Otterdown, who was gentle and firm and managed to keep her quiet. But afterwards, when she realized that she was pregnant, her mourning turned to terror. She called round on everyone in the town to make them promise not to have her removed from the manse, at least not until the baby was born; she told them that she had nowhere to go, that she had no family, that she wasn’t strong. As the child swelled inside her she grew frantic, afraid of the pain of birth and of what would become of her after the birth. At last, when the baby was due and was known by everyone to be due, she locked herself in a dark room in the manse and cried with fear.
Mrs. Otterdown, in response to the women who came in a body to ask her help, walked slowly to the smithy with Harry at her heels in carnival mood. When she glanced at him, when he called to her, running ahead, behind, around, her eyes were bright, but she didn’t lose her step. She looked old to be his mother, she looked careful. She still taught all the children in the large room at the back of the store, the room that had been the church.
In the living room over the stable office, where Helen Grunwald sprawled on a couch, suckling her baby girl and playing with its toes, Mrs. Otterdown said Mrs. Watson would die. Grunwald, in a chair across the room, grunted that it was what she wanted, and doom was coming anyway with the dust and depression and new-fangled cars; but Helen heaved herself up off the couch, gave Mrs Otterdown the baby to hold, and scrubbed her hands and face.
They found Mrs. Watson in an upstairs room, lying exhausted on a bed, fully clothed, her fine fair hair plastered to her frail skull with sweat. The delivery was difficult and very painful, but Helen’s brown hands brought the baby out at last. It was a girl, healthy in appearance but, as they later discovered, blind. Mrs. Watson couldn’t nurse it, didn’t know how to handle it and was frightened even to look at it. Mrs. Otterdown sat alone with her, watching her fear, for twenty-four hours; then she stood up, quietly took the baby away and gave it Helen to nurse with her own. Mrs. Watson became hysterical, then delirious, crying out fear after fear; at last she was quiet, but white and wasted. She was told she could stay in the manse since no minister could be found, and when she was stronger she was given back her child.
Meanwhile, the prairie was drying up, thirsting for rain; winds swept over it, sucking out what water there was. Crops shrivelled on the stalk, barely worth harvesting, and farmers gazed as long as their eyes could bear it at the clouds of dust which had been their land. People sank ever deeper into debt, with little hope of paying for years; but what they owed to Otterdown he told them they could contain to owe, and they were grateful for that. The old, the middle-aged, the earliest settlers for the greater part remained, but most of their children drifted off the land, climbing into the train or passing cars to make their way out of the dust which choked them.
Otto Grunwald packer his bags at last. What he had managed to learn about mechanics, he couldn’t use, for people could no longer afford to run their cars. There were some horses to shoe again, but they were mostly taken to Otterdown who had said casually that he would like a little practice at what had once been his trade. Helen had died of a tumour in her womb that both she and Otto had thought would be a second child. Once she was buried, he sat in his worn office chair, smoking steadily and frowning over German language newspapers; and then he sold everything, his stables and smithy-garage and office, to Otterdown to cover his debts and the cost of going back to Germany with his small daughter, Hilda.
There were not many preachers of any kind during these years. The endless billows of dust covered everything, filtering into the houses, while the sweeping winds parched and warped every unpainted board. The church, even for much of the time the front church door, was backed high with dry balls of wind-driven Russian thistle. But Mrs. Watson, entering by a side door from the manse, with Bella, her small blonde daughter at her heels, kept the interior scrupulously clean, against the coming of itinerant ministers and even the resident one whom Otterdown assured everyone they would soon be receiving. Most people preferred to believe him. Winter and summer they had not much to do; they sat with him in the back of his store, while the sounds of their children learning filtered through the partition, and they felt at home in the chairs and around the old pot-bellied stove he had had carried from Grunwald’s smithy for their use.
The Reverend Mr. Archibald Fairling arrived at last, on a blood-red dusty afternoon in late summer. The men lifted his bags from the train, the women came forward to shake his hand, and the town, almost in a body, headed by Otterdown smiling at and talking to everyone round, led him to the manse. On the way, while passing his own house, Otterdown apologized that his wife had not been at the station, explaining that she was growing arthritic and found it painful to walk. But she wouldn’t miss church, he added. At the door of the manse, Mrs. Watson reached both scrubbed hands forward to welcome the minister, and told Bella to curtsey in front of him, and looked round uneasily for his wife.
Not until he was well settled into the manse, cared for by Mrs. Watson who had begun to breathe easily, did he announce that he did have a wife. She proved to be older than himself and very frail; he was extremely gentle with her, did whatever she wished, and kept Mrs. Watson to look after the house and church. Mrs. Fairling liked Bella to sit with her and talk to her and listen to her reminiscences of her own childhood in the rich fields of Prince Edward Island. She wasn’t old, but she found the dusty prairie too harsh for her health, which steadily declined. She died in the first year of the second war, while the rain returned. Three old people, including Esterhazy, died within weeks of her; her husband, already white-haired though still under fifty, buried them all with the same sorrowful face. His heavy eyebrows, his long bony nose and his heavy jaw looked as severe as on the day he had arrived, but his manner without his wife was, if anything, milder. His sermons were simple and easy to follow: he preached for morality, kindness and love. In good weather in the early years the church was always full. Otterdown, regularly in his back pew, with Harry usually beside him, taller than him from his fourteenth year, said that he always learned something about himself when Mr. Fairling preached.
But in recent years, the year’s since Otterdown’s death, the congregation was not so large and the sermons were not so clear.

CHAPTER FIVE

“We’ll know now if he’s a Christian or not,” Mrs. MacNamara said. “Even Harry comes to church at Easter.”
It was the first week of April, and the old people said the sun was too hot too soon. The snow had melted, except for cold, sunless corners, and the snow
fences around the town, faded with the years, leaned between their leaning posts, waiting to be rolled up. Although there were still overnight frosts which silvered roofs and walls as well as trees, they were like dew in the morning sun. The sky was clear of any cloud; the air was clear; the rich smell of the damp earth filled the town. Already, early as it was, farmers had wheeled their oiled and polished tractors out into the fields to plough under the acres and acres of stubble, upturning the sods which shone dully, like old metal.
Men sat outside the side door of Harry’s store when they were free. They stood in the sun wherever they were, and breathed in the air. The women found themselves busier every day, with hardly enough time to do what had to be done, to buy food and cook it, and wash and sweep and beat and dust and open all the windows to let in the spring. The children were everywhere, running, stopping, looking round, shouting across the bare streets, investigating the river which gurgled through reeds and drowned dead branches, which foamed at the shores of mud islands it couldn’t submerge; They followed the ploughing and tried to burn the damp grass and pushed each other into the dirt and tried to catch the cats and break into the old hotel. And they trailed after Hank wherever he went in the town.
“He’ll be coming, I know that much,” Mrs. Watson said; who, from cleaning for Mrs. Otterdown, knew more than most. “He handed me his suit for pressing, as if he was the new lord and master of the house and I didn’t have enough to do to keep my hands from being idle. There’s nothing else he can want it for.”
Good Friday was windless and sunny, and Saturday was the same. In the early morning, when the night’s frost was glittering water on last year’s grass, Rupe Windflower stood for a moment to admire his diesel roller in its open shed before climbing up its side, removing the protective cover from its seat and sitting down. When he had the engine running well, he drove slowly out of his back yard, testing the steering and the braking, and then made his way out onto the road, while his wife stood in the back doorway and waved.
The children ran with him all the way to the church, so he had to drive very slowly, which he was glad enough to do since the morning was so fine. But Janey Gleave kept running back and forth in front of the roller. With her long, skinny legs there wasn’t so much danger, but she led the others on, as usual. He had to shout out to warn them, and honk the horn loudly to scare them, and drive so slowly that he was hardly even moving; but nothing stopped them until one of the small ones ran across practically in front of the big front roller, and tripped and fell at the side of the road and began to cry. Every year the first few times out were the same. He was sweating and uncomfortable by the time he stopped in front of the manse and honked the horn for Bella standing there.
“It’s not the same paint as last year,” she said, holding her coat round her and walking towards him slowly with her head tipped back and her hair all shining in the sun. Nobody could claim that she wasn’t beautiful, not that anybody wanted to naturally; but she certainly didn’t look so very strong. It was being inside practically all the winter. She’d be better now.
“It’s the same all right,” he said. “I thought of red, but then I decided to keep it orange as usual.” The way her hands were touching it, so light, it was more as if they were feeling the air around it.
“That’s colour,” she said. “I mean the paint itself.”
“Oh yeah, well, maybe that’s right,” he said uncertainly. “I only asked Harry for orange waterproof.”
“It hardly had any life when I first smelled it, any past life, you know. It’s better now though. It was just that I was expecting something I knew and it wasn’t there. It was just as if you’d bought a whole new roller.”
“I wouldn’t ever do that,” he said. She seemed to find the air half-cold even now, even with the sun shining full on her face so she’d be blinded by it if she could see. It was strange thinking of her being in the dark like that, all warm and dark, and still she kept pulling the coat round her closer as if any minute she was going to shiver. “I guess I’d better be getting on with the job,” he said. “And maybe you’d better not stay out too long, or you’ll get a chill maybe, and it wouldn’t be Easter if you weren’t there singing.” She smiled up at him then and moved back from the roller. “I’ll look at the paint cans,” he said, letting in the clutch and rolling slowly forward. “And I’ll make a note to get the same kind of paint for next year. All right?”
“Don’t do it just for me,” she said. But he honked the horn to show he wasn’t listening. It was nothing to do anyway; paint all smelled much the same to him.
He rolled back and forth along the soft road in front of the manse and the church for most of the morning. And she walked back and forth on the manse sidewalk, and he knew she was listening and smelling the whole time, just as she did every year, just like a small girl really; and every now and then he honked to show that he knew. He wasn’t in any hurry to finish, but the road was flat at last, so he had to, and he thought she looked very cold then. He was all in a sweat himself, which he hoped she wouldn’t be able to smell.
“Now you go inside,” he said.
She went, just smiling a little still, and he breathed easier when the front door closed behind her; they wouldn’t leave him in peace if she couldn’t sing on Easter morning because of him. Going home, he drove through the town so everybody could see him. He waved to them and honked his horn and felt in good spirits when he brought the roller to a halt in its shed.

*

Before dawn on Easter morning the wind rose, blowing cold across the black, frost glistening earth, ruffling the muddy water of the river, bending the bare branches of the trees on the riverbanks, what few trees there were, and tousling tufts of dead grass. By mid-morning, high white clouds blew in strips across the sky, only fleetingly blotting out the sun which , in sheltered corners, was as warm as it had been for the whole of the week before. But in the open the wind was cold, and everybody set out for the eleven o’clock service in overcoats buttoned up to the throat. At the church door they smiled at and greeted each other, and pushed through the cold vestibule into the warmth of the church itself.
Ray Keefer nodded a welcome at everyone who passed him and took a prayer book and a hymn book from his hand. The heat from the stoves and all the people was making him sweat some, and his skin prickle. He tried to smile, the way Alvin found so easy, but he couldn’t hold it, his face got tired and sweat trickled over his lips. And it didn’t help either knowing Mrs. Watson wasn’t ever far off, muttering the whole while against him for building the fires in the stoves too big. Somebody stumbled and jostled the potted ferns on the table behind him. That would bring her, wherever she was. People were certainly pouring in. There would only be just enough hymnbooks to go round.
“I suppose we’ll have to sit at the back,” old Mrs. Comstock said, passing him as if he wasn’t even there, smelling of more cologne than usual. It covered her other smells though, that was the good thing.
“Where you usually sit’s still empty,” he said to Miss Purl, who smiled and gave him back the hymn-book as usual. “I roped it off.” The old woman was pulling her by the sleeve and others were pushing up behind. A good many were going to have to stand. He couldn’t be expected to provide for everyone, when most of them hardly came on other Sundays and hardly believed more than a cat or dog.
“The fires won’t last out. You can count on that,” Mrs. Watson whispered loudly from somewhere behind him. “Maybe next time you’ll know enough to let me be the judge of how much coal the stoves need.” Whenever he did let her, everybody complained that they froze. He got the blame whichever way it went. Alvin was passing and grinning, pulling Janey and Alice behind him. It was his biggest joke seeing somebody light into somebody else.
“You can’t stand here,” he said to old Mr. Paradis. “The choir’ll be coming in this way.” Soon there wouldn’t be anywhere they could stand, they were all Christians for Easter, particularly this Easter. And they would be coming in late, too, he could count on that; and he would have to try to find room for them and not make any noise. Frank Chopek was pushing his way through, with Nancy and all the girls keeping as close behind him as they could. There would be trouble from them as like as not; Maureen was already reaching out to pinch the rump of somebody who wasn’t looking. He glanced down at his watch. It was time to ring the bell.
“I suppose you’re forgetting your own work,” Mrs. Watson said, brushing past him and trying to straighten the hemp matting while people walked over it. “You’re so busy with mine. It’s eleven o’clock, you know.”
“I know, I know,” he said. She was right, that was the trouble with her, she was always right.

*

In the vestry, where the choir was waiting, sitting all round their small stove, the tolling of the bell nearly blotted out the sounds of the anthem which Iris Overgaard was playing on the organ.
“Ray’ll bring that bell down one day,” Willa Gleave said quietly. “I’ve told him so many a time.”
“Are we all ready?” Mr. Wilkinson asked, glancing round. Some of the women murmured that they were, and two of the girls stood up and smoothed out their surplices, and Mr. Cronkite, the only other man in the choir, nodded his head and continued reading through his part in the opening hymn. Bella was already standing, with her back against the wall, as far from the stove as possible. Rose Dworshak, who was the youngest member of the choir, looked out of the window from where she was sitting, to see as many of the people arriving as she could.
“I don’t guess he’s coming after all,” she said. “He’d’ve been here by now if he was.”
“His suit must’ve been pressed for some reason,” Mrs. Zimbicki said.
“What’s a more important time than Easter Sunday?” Mrs. Esterhazy asked.
“For that matter,” Mr. Wilkinson said, “I haven’t noticed Harry arriving either.”
“The wife saw him this morning.. this man Hank, that is,” Mr. Cronkite said, not looking up from his music. “He certainly wasn’t dressed for church then.”
“She’s come herself,” Rose said in a low voice, staring out the window.
“He was looking over our fence around eight,” Mrs. Windflower said. “Round by the shed he was, just as bold as you please..” But nobody was listening to her, they were all looking out the window at the road where Harry was wheeling his mother slowly towards the church. He was wearing just his suit, in spite of the wind, and she was wrapped up in a brown blanket so that they could hardly see her face.
“He looks thinner every year, if you ask me,” Mrs. Esterhazy said, but like the rest of them she had her eyes on his mother. Mr. Wilkinson stood beside Bella and told her what was happening and said that the old woman looked years older than the last time she had been seen.
“It’s the pain, it must be terrible,” Mrs. Windflower said. Bella stood quite still with her head straight and her hair falling loose over her shoulders and one hand holding the other tightly in front of her.

*

Men carried the chair up the church steps, while Mrs. Watson stood warily nearby, and sent whispers of warning ahead of them so that room was made for the chair to roll forward. Mrs. Otterdown let the blanket fall away from her face and shoulders, and gazed straight ahead of her blankly as a narrow twisting passage somehow cleared in front of the chair. All round her there were murmurs and glances, but the noise of the big bell still slowly ringing drowned all other sound. By the time Ray let the rope go and wiped the sweat off his face in the dying resonance, she had stopped the chair at the back of the centre aisle and said that that would do very well.
In the midst of the sudden quiet the sound of the mouth organ spread through the air, a mournful sound from somewhere outside the church, growing louder and louder, like a wail. People turned their heads about to find where it was coming from, but it glided around with the wind, now near the main door, as if it was trying to slip in, now drifting off, now pressing hard up against the memorial east window, Mr. Otterdown’s last gift to the town. Mrs. Otterdown sat unmoving, with her eyes fixed on the small door through which Mr. Fairling would come into the church; behind her Harry held the back of the chair and bent his head down towards hers. Mrs. Mundt whispered to her sister that he was losing his hair. Her sister said he ought to eat more. Mr. Mundt, between them, said he couldn’t see any reason for Mrs. Overgaard not starting the introductory hymn. The wailing of the mouth organ outside rose and fell. Some of the congregation, particularly the women, began to shift in their pews uneasily.
“You think he doesn’t know there’s about to be a service?” Mrs.Ledbetter asked her husband in a very low whisper.
“Nobody’s stopping him coming in,” Mr. Dworshak said. “The church is for everybody.”
“If he’d play something happy, it wouldn’t be so bad,” Mrs. Chopek said. “It’s not as if it was still Good Friday.”
At last the first low sounds came forth from the electric organ beside the pulpit; they spread through the hot church and the spaces between them closed until they made the only sound. If the mouth organ outside was still playing, nobody could hear it, though a few of the congregation nearest the walls found themselves uneasily straining their ears. Then the front door opened again and a gust of cold wind blew in, and the first sounds of the singing choir. The men standing at the back pressed even closer together to let them through, some reaching out to guide Bella who was in front, all of them trying to find the right place in their hymn books and take hold of the tune and keep it. Turning into the centre aisle, Bella hesitated and then moved forward cautiously. Harry reached out to her to guide her safely past his mother’s chair, but she slipped by without his touching her, and led the choir to the front of the church. As Mr. Wilkinson passed, last, Mrs. Otterdown turned her head sharply and stretched her arm into the aisle behind him.
“Stop there,” she said in a whisper which made the people nearest turn round. Hank, in a blue double-breasted suit and white shirt and red tie, and carrying a plate of purple pasqueflowers, stopped where he was while the choir moved on.
“I have an offering,” he said. His voice was so loud that more people heard and turned round.
“You are a stranger here,” she said, lowering her arm and gazing again at the door through which Mr. Fairling would come into the church. “Harry will look after them.” Harry straightened up from the chair and looked at Hank with a small smile on his face and held out his long bony hand for the plate. Hank gave it to him and stood where he was in the middle of the aisle, frowning; and then frowning less as he watched the choir singing, and not frowning at all by the time they sat down. During the last verse Mr. Fairling entered and stood in the pulpit with his head bowed. When the hymn was over and all of the congregation who had seats were seated, he raised his eyes to the back of the church.
“Hallelujah!” he said in a loud deep voice. “Christ is risen. Let us pray.” Two or three women crossed themselves furtively, and everyone in the congregation bowed his head. It was a long prayer, calling for God’s guidance and comfort to sojourners in the wilderness, though their time was but the time of a shadow and their achievements were dust on the face of the earth; yet, since it had pleased Him to place them there, let them not wander in darkness all their lives. Some of the children began to fidget a little before the end, and somebody had a fit of muffled coughing. A few people glanced at Hank from time to time, to see if his head was still bowed, and glanced also at Mrs. Otterdown and Harry, both of whom were as still as monuments in the aisle, carved out of one piece of stone.
“The anthem,” Mr. Fairling said, gazing round the church with a softened face, “Will be: When I Saw My Saviour’s Empty Tomb.”‘ He sat down in the pulpit so that the congregation couldn’t see him, and Bella stood up alone, holding her hands in front of her, one cupped in the other, and faced towards the back of the church, and sang. Behind her the choir and in front of her the congregation were perspiring in the overheated church, but as long as she was singing nobody shifted or shuffled. Everybody listened and watched her face, and watched her slowly sit down when she had finished, and even then only the children made any noise. But people noticed that Hank had slowly moved forward until he was halfway to the front in the centre aisle.
“It would be a fine thing if we all stood where we liked,” Mr. Macnamara said to the man beside him at the back of the church. “If I was the minister, I’d tell him to move back.”
“I guess Harry’ll tell him,” the other man said, as Harry left his mother’s chair and walked slowly up the aisle towards the lectern. But he passed Hank without looking at him, stooping as always, looking down at the ground.
“The lesson is taken from the twentieth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John,” he said, bending over the lectern and raising his eyes fleetingly to the congregation facing him. He read through the chapter slowly, in an unchanging voice from beginning to end. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,” he said, glancing again at the congregation watching him; then he walked back to his mother’s chair, passing Hank again as if he didn’t realize he was there. Mrs. Otterdown, when he reached her, offered to hand him the plate of flowers which he had laid on her lap when he went to read, but he pushed it back at her and bent over her and muttered something so softly that even the people nearest them couldn’t hear.
The whole congregation sang a hymn, filling the church to bursting with the sound, singing with all their strength, however good their voices were, while Mr. Fairling stood in the pulpit with his head bowed down in prayer.
“This is a day of rejoicing,” he said when the hymn was over. “For on this day the Lord God fulfilled the promise made to us in the time of the prophets that a Saviour would live on this earth and die on this earth for our sins, and rise again upon the third day. He rose, and then he rose to God, and was with us, and is with us still.
“He died that we may live,” he said, gazing round at the congregation. “We should think about that now. We should always think about it, but we should particularly think about it now, now that the winter has retreated at last and the prairie is coming alive outside.” He wasn’t speaking loudly, so that the men standing at the back had to lean forward to try to catch his words through the breathing of the people sitting in front. The people sitting at the very front, looking up at him from below, thought he looked unsettled, because they could see his head moving around a good deal and they couldn’t clearly see his eyes. He said they should remember, all of them gathered there, and all not able to gather there, that just as the buds on the bushes pushed their way out of dry twigs, and grass poked its way through the dead-looking earth, so Christ Himself rose up out of what seemed dead and wasn’t dead. He asked them to pray then for their hearts to open to the radiance of Christ; he asked them to bow their heads as he bowed his head and to think as hard as they could of the miracle of the Resurrection, of Jesus rising out of the darkness and coldness of death into the warm light of springtime, with everything growing around Him, all fresh and green as after a rain, and only the tomb, like the seed that had died, empty and discarded. He himself prayed aloud while their heads were bent. He prayed not to be closed to God. He prayed for strength to face God. He seemed to many people to pray for a very long time, so that they found themselves nodding in the stuffy heat, and starting awake again, embarrassed that they might have been seen. Some watched the floor to keep their heavy eyes working, and tried at the same time to follow the prayer, and were relieved and uneasy when it had ended and they were able to look up at Mr. Fairling again.
He said that the prairie was wide, and that there sometimes seemed to be nothing beyond it, and that when the prairie itself was not green, when the summer dust blew across it for endless miles, it was hard to remember that.. But they could remember now. That they weren’t alone. That Christ had died for them and was even now living for them. As he spoke he gazed out through the window at the bright sun outside the church; he fingered the notes in front of him, but he talked without referring to them, and at times his voice almost died away. Whenever it did, Hank moved a little further up the aisle, with the eyes of nearly all the children on him all the time.
“So let us be joyful,” Mr. Fairling said in an abrupt loud voice. “God is with us. God is within us. God is all.” He hesitated for a moment then, and seemed to see Hank for the first time, looking up at him from the front of the middle aisle. He glanced to where Mrs. Otterdown was sitting as straight as ever at the far end of the aisle, gazing steadily in front of her. He put his hands flat together. “Let us pray,” he said, and swung round to face the east window, which was glowing warmly with sunlight, and raised his eyes to the roof while the standing choir and congregation bowed their heads.
At the closing of the service, while standing ready to sing the recessional hymn, people watched Hank uncertainly, for he was still standing in the middle of the aisle and he was looking steadily at Miss Purl who was standing beside him; he didn’t seem to realize that he would be in the way of the choir. As they came down the chancel steps, all singing, with Bella leading them out as she had led them in, he still didn’t seem to notice what was taking place. Harry took his hands from his mother’s chair, and looked about to go forward to move him to one side, when he moved of his own accord nearer to Miss Purl and reached out to share her hymn-book. She showed him the place and he sang with the rest of the congregation, in a very loud voice which he turned towards the choir as they passed, as if he was trying to drown them. Bella was startled and seemed, some of the women said, as if she was about to stumble, but she walked on to the back of the aisle and through the passage the men made for her to the door of the church.
When the choir had gone and Mr. Fairling, following them, had made a short prayer of farewell, nobody moved until Harry had wheeled his mother’s chair round and folded the blanket over her arms and shoulders, and pushed her ahead of him to the door of the church. Outside, in the sharp wind, many people waited to greet her when they had come from thanking Mr. Fairling at the door. She smiled a little at everyone who came near, glancing around her from the shelter of her blanket, and gave up the plate of flowers to Hank who pushed his way through the growing crowd near her to demand it. People murmured that she looked very old, and couldn’t be strong. They stood back in quick understanding when Harry said the wind would eat through anything, and they watched him wheel her off along the road.
“Good planting weather, eh?” Mr. Fairling said to the last of the congregation coming out of the church. “Though it’s very early, and I know many things can go wrong.” Already most people were moving off to their cars or walking quietly away towards their houses. Hank, whose suit in the sunlight was a very bright blue, was standing close to Miss Purl, who was gazing down at the pasqueflowers which he had tipped from the plate into her cupped hands.
“They’re already wilting,” she said. “It seems a pity to have picked them.”
“Throw them out on the prairie, Amanda,” her aunt said, pulling her by the arm. “Let them take their chances and let’s get on home. This wind’s like a knife.”
“I guess it’s not the time to talk business,” Alvin Gleave said, pressing near to Hank with a grin. “But maybe you’ll be wanting some kind of help before long. This looks like being a big job you’ve taken on; I guess it’ll need a good deal of organizing”
“I don’t need any help,” Hank said, frowning.
“OK then. Sorry. No offence meant.” He grinned and patted Hank on the shoulder. “But if you change your mind you just look round for me. I’ll be here. And if you don’t, I just want you to know I think it’s a great thing you’re doing.”
“Amanda, are you stuck to the ground?” Mrs. Comstock asked, and pulled so sharply at Miss Purl’s arm that two of the pasqueflowers slipped between her hands and fluttered to the ground.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said. They were almost the last to go. Mr. Fairling waved them off and went back into the church. Alvin stood where he was, kicking at a pebble and keeping a watch on Hank; and Hank, as if he suddenly saw that they had gone, ran after Miss Purl and her aunt, and walked with them all the way to their small house.
“This is where you live, eh?” he said, as Miss Purl opened the gate in the picket fence. “Very handsome place.” Mrs. Comstock snorted, and made her way along the boardwalk to the door.
“I’m afraid I haven’t anything to..” Miss Purl began. “I mean, there’s beer, of course. My aunt’s beer.”
“Bring him in for a drink, that’s right,” Mrs. Comstock called over her shoulder.
He suddenly took hold of Miss Purl’s hands and shook them so that all the purple flowers were blown out of them by the wind.
“Things will grow better than ever now,” he said. “You’ll have the best garden in town.”
“Those particular things won’t grow at all,” she said, watching the wind tumble them away, right across her bare garden. When she looked round for him again, he was already walking off; and as she gazed after him, he pulled his mouth organ out of his pocket and began to play some song she thought she knew but couldn’t quite make out.
In the empty church, where the fires were dying down at last, Mr. Fairling gathered his notes together in the pulpit and gazed absently into the nave and listened to the drifting music of the mouth organ somewhere outside, and thought, without being sure, that it was like a descant on the anthem Bella had sung.

CHAPTER SIX

On Easter Monday Mr. Fitts woke later than usual and hungrier than usual, with what sounded like rushing water in his ears. The sun was rising. The noise wasn’t water, it was something falling, splashing against the ground like water. He pulled himself upright in his bed to look out at the hotel: it was there, as ever, untouched. The noise was coming in the other window beyond the foot of his bed, where all he could see was the sloping roof of Otterdown’s store over the road. He sank down on his bed again with a pain in his back. It was the sound of a tree falling, no mistaking it. A small tree, though he couldn’t think where it was; there weren’t many around, none that he remembered nearer to him than the river. . He coughed a little and wondered how long he could hold out against his swelling bladder. Thinking about it was the worst thing, like watching a kettle, only in reverse. Someone was chopping somewhere; another tree was on the way out. It made a nice sound, though, falling. The birds were making a nice sound too; they were the loveliest things left.
Willa Gleave, lying on her back, held the alarm clock up in the air to read it, not sleepy any longer but not in any hurry to take her shoulder away from Alvin’s back, and uneasy about the day beginning. Something was going on, there was no doubt about that; she could hear Hank talking in Mrs. Otterdown’s back yard. Why did he suddenly want Alvin’s help? He didn’t want it yesterday. And it wasn’t as if it was a job that would last: one day the tower would be built, it wouldn’t take so very long probably, and suppose he couldn’t find a job after that? Or suppose Hank ran out of money, or decided he didn’t want his help any longer, or even just wandered off, he seemed like he might do that easily, or any of a thousand things; it just wasn’t safe trusting a man who banged on the door at midnight and shouted at you to be ready to work the next morning. And where did it leave her? She wanted him to do what he wanted, even if he had to keep changing jobs to find it, but somebody had to think about the girls. And all he could do was grin, and say at least he would be working near home. Because he knew she wanted that. It was just as if he stroked her. She pressed her face against his shoulder and shook him gently and told him it was time to wake up.
In his room across the hall, Ray Keefer snored softly with a kind of whimper, as if he was having a dream. From time to time he twitched, but he didn’t hear any of the early morning noises outside. Nor did most other people in the town, since they too were sleeping later in honour of the holiday. Mrs. Watson was just on the edge of sleep, brushing fretfully at a fly which seemed to keep landing on her cheekbone; she thought she heard Bella calling her, but she couldn’t rouse herself enough to make sure. In the room below her, where the window was wide open and the curtains were gently billowing, Mr. Fairling lay on his stomach with his head half buried in his pillow, breathing in short shallow draughts. Mrs. Windflower was awake, and thought she heard a curious noise from the direction of Harry’s store, and was sure that she heard the man Hank calling out, but she was waiting for the water to boil for coffee for her husband, in bed still, and she gazed while she waited at the wedding photographs of their one son and two daughters. Frank Chopek sleepily pulled his wife closer against him, while Maureen and Myra, pulling their two smallest sisters with them, climbed out of the house through their bedroom window. Grant Overgaard blinked at the bedroom ceiling and thought he would get up, and half-dreamed of irrigation streams and the sun beating down on them until they steamed and dried up. Mr. and Mrs. Mundt slept side by side, unmoving.
In the main street Jessop stood alone with his basket in his hand, in the sunlight which streamed through the empty lot where Otto Grunwald’s smithy and stables had once been, and gazed past Josey, chopping the branches from the third ash sapling he had felled, to the big field beyond, where Hank was moving about by himself, a big silhouette against the early sun.

*

By nine o’clock in the morning, everybody knew that the tower had been begun. A large rough area right behind Mrs. Otterdown’s house, nearly a third of what was used as the school playground, was marked off with the stakes Josey had cut, and fenced with three strands of wire. Alvin and Josey were both inside the enclosure, but if anybody else, any of the children, tried to slip through the wires. Hank shouted at them to keep out. The day was warm and still, and the sky was all blue.
“I don’t know any more than you do,” Alvin said whenever he was near enough to the wires for anybody to ask him a question. “I just do what he says. But I guess it’ll be a good tower all right; he’s got all kinds of plans and blueprints. And it’ll be big. You’ll see from where we’ll be marking the places for the feet.”
In the middle of the enclosure there was a table piled with papers and all kinds of tools. Hank worked over it and moved away from it to take measurements and came back to it to check what he had measured, and studied the papers and leafed through them, and became so absorbed in them at last, frowning and scratching his head, that he stopped noticing anybody else. The children saw that he didn’t see them and began to creep through the fence again and make their way softly towards the table. Alvin, away smoothing out the ground with a rake and a hoe, called to them to get back, but they didn’t pay any attention to him. The people standing outside the wire, watching, and wondering when something interesting was going to happen, called them back as well. But four of them crept on until they reached the table itself. Three of them touched it safely, but the fourth, Maureen Chopek, found Hank staring down at her over his papers while her hand was still outstretched. He didn’t say anything, or move, but she began to whimper and to creep backwards and then run, and after that the children stayed outside the enclosure.
Josey did all the odd jobs. He held the end of the tape while Hank measured distances and he held the stakes while Hank hammered them with heavy strokes into the earth. He pulled out those which had been hammered into the wrong places, and resharpened them and piled them with the others, ready to be used again. He went to the cafe for jugs of water and for sandwiches which Hank ate almost as soon as he set them down on the table. He carried things round for Hank and kept his eyes on him all the time and kept as near to him as he could. His face was always expressionless, and as the morning advanced it grew dirty. Some of the people looking on said that he thought pretty well of himself. Mr. Overgaard said that he would be surprised if he ever turned up at the school again.
For most of the morning there appeared to be no progress. So many stakes had been pulled up again from where they had been hammered in, and resharpened time and again by Josey, that they were now hardly more than half their original size. Alvin glanced at them from time to time, and looked round to see if he was seen glancing, and was silent and unsmiling.
“Maybe somebody’s bitten off more than he can chew,” Ray Keefer said, not loud enough for Alvin to hear. Ledbetter, beside him, nodded and said that he wondered where Harry had got to since he wasn’t in the store or anywhere else and his car was beside the house. Some of the other men, gazing at Hank bent intently over his blueprints, wondered as well, and Phil said it made him uneasy Harry not being there. Just in case anything went wrong.
Then there was the sound of a screen door slamming shut, and everybody’s head turned in the direction of Mrs. Otterdown’s back porch, where Mrs. Otterdown herself was now sitting in her wheelchair, wearing a large green eyeshade to protect her eyes from the bright sun, and a coat to protect her body. Mrs. Watson looked apprehensive, and made her way around the enclosure so as to be nearby if needed. A few other women moved, as if absent-mindedly, in Mrs. Otterdown’s direction. It was years..four years, or even five..one or two of them said, since she had come out of the house like that all by herself.
“I’ll get it right,” Hank shouted at her. “Don’t you worry.”
Almost everybody watching her said that she nodded, and one of the nearer women maintained that she smiled.

*

It was a pity. Miss Purl thought, slipping off her rubbers at the back door of the school and letting herself inside; it was a shame and quite unnecessary, since all the wood anybody could want he could easily buy. She entered her school-room and closed the door behind her and walked to the window and gazed across the playground at the new enclosure and the people standing round it outside. Everybody said that it was to everybody’s benefit, this tower which he claimed to be building, but they saw only what they hoped would do them good; they didn’t look behind them at those three stumps that had been the nearest thing the town had had to trees only a few hours before. They would smile at her for thinking so. She was better standing off some way.
The other children were glad enough to tell her, coming close to whisper; it was another mark against Josey. Not that they cared themselves, there were still small saplings for their whistles for screeching with round the school at recess, and the poplars by the river for the sticks for swishing when the last whistles cracked; and the patterns they had carved on them they could carve on the sticks and rachet them against the sidewalks and walls, and their desks when they could, as the days grew hotter and hotter and still the school wasn’t let out. But it was no use asking them to stop. They wouldn’t. They stopped when they wanted, as if it was planned, and then there wasn’t a sound. She shivered, and realized that the room was cold since the school wasn’t heated for the day.
It was clear, of course, from the way he pulled up flowers and then made some huge excuse that he hadn’t any proper feeling for things that grew. They said he came for the town, but she could see he didn’t. He came for himself; and what he found in his way he would break. Even if they weren’t in his way, if they caught his eye. The leaves of the trees would have reached as high as the roof of Harry’s store this year, which she had been waiting for and watching; which the children had noticed, of course, there was little they missed. So they had to run and tell her. The weeds and saplings would soon grow up and bury all the dirt and debris in the vacant lot, including the old car, but the sun would bake its roof and the roof of Harry’s store, and the likelihood of another sapling slipping through the boy’s hands year after year until it developed into a tree wasn’t worth considering.
She walked back and forth along the aisle beside the windows, and gazed at the desks in the room and murmured to herself the names of the children using each one now. She thought she remembered as well as she ought, except for one in the corner where the only child she could remember was Josey, who had been gone from it for years. It was because he had cut down the trees. He wasn’t a bad boy, it wasn’t his fault, it was the fault of the man Hank. She thought that she didn’t feel terribly well, and stopped walking and gazed out of the window and didn’t find that that helped.
It was the way that he looked at a person that was so unsettling; it was almost as if he wasn’t quite right in the head and might do anything next. And when he stared his eyes were so alight that it wasn’t really possible to look at them. And yet perhaps he meant no harm. He couldn’t help his looks. Her aunt said she thought him good-looking. If only he would be quiet and build the tower properly to bring the town more water, and not harm anything else, there would be nothing to complain of. But she thought he wouldn’t, she couldn’t help it. She sat down on one of the desks and continued gazing across the playground to the new enclosure and the people standing round it, and wished that her time would pass over soon, and quietness settle down. Then she thought of the days to come, when the room would always be full of children.

*

At noon, when most people had drifted away, either hungry or bored, Hank paced his way round and round a great square which was staked out with four worn and broken ash stakes and bound into shape by a single strand of wire. His face was deep red and his shirt was stained with sweat, and as he paced he grinned and waved at Mrs. Otterdown who was still on her back porch in her chair. Alvin, mopping his face with his handkerchief, stood just within the enclosure, beside the table which he and Josey had carried there out of the square, and said to the few men who were standing near that finding the proper measurements when you had nothing to work from was a good deal harder than most people thought.
Hank stopped at the corner of his square nearest to Mrs. Otterdown.
“We’re going to do the circle now,” he shouted to her as if she were a long way off. “Straight from the square. Without any of those footling tools that never give you the same answer twice. We’re going to do it clean.” The tape measure he had in his hand, with the tape trailing out of it onto the ground, he suddenly threw into the air behind him. It rose and fell, with the tape flowing like a tail behind it, and bounced when it hit the ground. “Now we’re free,” he said. Josey picked up the tape and stuffed it in his pocket, and continued raking the earth smooth inside the square.
“Now we’ll really get on,” Hank said.
Mr. Overgaard, leaning against Hilda’s sagging back fence, said he had his doubts whether he could get on. He was willing to offer his help, he said to Mr. Fairling who was standing beside him, if he was asked. Hank knelt down beside the stake at his feet and called Josey over to him and told him to bring the spool of fine wire. He wound the wire around the stake and sent Josey off with the spool along the side of the square.
“That’s far enough,” he shouted, when Josey had gone more than halfway to the next stake. “Now cut it. Everything’s easy enough if you use your head.” Mr. Overgaard said that at least the boys might learn a little geometry if they watched; if they saw it was useful they’d learn soon enough. Mr. Fairling nodded and tried to keep his attention on what was going on: he heard Hank shout to Josey to wind the wire around a loose stake, and he heard Mr. Overgaard explain that it was a question of drawing intersecting arcs with this stake, and he watched Josey do this; but all the while his mind was on his own weakness in not insisting that Bella come out with him. It was such a fine day, and she would have liked all the people being round. Mrs. Watson was much too fearful. Bella would be walking back and forth in the house now, alone.
“I thought he’d get it wrong,” Mr. Overgaard said after a while. “He keeps moving the wire after every arc, instead of marking the two sides from the same stake. That way he could do it in half the time. But they’re all watching him as if it’s some kind of magic he’s showing off. It’s the practical things they like. Tell then something’s an ideal and they won’t come near you.”
The children were back in force by now and had slipped, one by one, through the wires into the enclosure. They watched Hank scar the earth with the stake-point, standing in a rough semi-circle around him and all the while alert for a sudden change in his humour, but he didn’t seem now to mind them being near; he watched that the wire was taut and that the arc was smooth and he didn’t seem to notice anything else. And when all the intersecting arcs were drawn, and Josey was sitting back on his heels waiting, he walked once right round the square, letting the children follow after him; and some of them followed very close. Then he picked up a big hammer and four stakes, and hammered the stakes in turn into each of the four points where the arcs intersected outside the square.
“Get them out of here,” he said abruptly to Alvin, who was standing with his hands in his pockets, with nothing to do. The children backed off. And while Alvin moved after them to make sure they all went. Hank called out for wire and Josey ran and brought a big spool of it, and watched him wind the end of it round the last stake he had hammered in, and followed him as he walked slowly across the square to the stake in the middle of the opposite side, unreeling the spool as he went and stretching the wire taut and winding it tightly around the stake when he reached it. He cut the wire with the cutters Josey was waiting to hand him, and then stretched another wire across the square between the two other fresh.stakes.
“Where’s that hammer got to?” he shouted. “And another stake. I want a stake.” Josey found the hammer where he had dropped it and brought it to him with a stake, meeting him with them at the centre of the square, at the crossing of the two taut wires.
“Listen to that sound,” Hank said, stooping down and strumming one of the wires and then the other with his forefinger. “They’re singing the same note, that’s a really good sign.” Then he took the stake and the hammer from Josey, and placed the point of the stake carefully on the point of the crossing, and raised the hammer high in the air and brought it down hard, and continued hammering as hard as he could until the stake was practically all the way into the ground. Then he sat down beside it and looked at the flayed end of it, and slowly a smile spread over his face.
“Brains did it,” he said, squinting through the bright sun in the direction of Mrs. Otterdown. “Brains and patience. We’ll take a rest now. We’ll all eat.” He didn’t move himself from where he was sitting. His hands lay limp on his legs and his eyes drooped closed and slowly his head fell forward.
“He oughtn’t to sleep like that,” Mrs. Dworshak said. “Even if the sun isn’t yet so very strong.” But nobody went to suggest he move. Mrs. Otterdown turned her chair round and opened the screen door with her stick and wheeled herself back into her house. Mrs. Watson breathed a sigh of relief that nothing had gone wrong, and Mrs. Windflower whispered to Mrs. Gleave that she for one would never have believed that the old woman was still able to sit so straight for so long.

*

A fly settled on Ray Keefer’s ear and resettled when he brushed it off. There would be a lot of those soon, he thought, and they would swarm around him more than most people, as usual. Hilda could at least keep them out of the cafe if she made any effort. Maybe Jessop paid her not to; they had some kind of secret together, maybe he wanted the flies to fly in from the garbage and land on the food and leave their germs, so more people would have to use his special medicines. When you were sick you didn’t care so much how they were probably made in that secret back room of his. Rotting weeds and other garbage. He brushed at the fly again and shifted on the stool to make himself comfortable, and tapped his spoon on the counter. Since she had the place open for lunch, she ought to be there, not spending all her time with old man Fitts. She only had to take the tray up and come back; he was past anything more long ago, past everything except complaining when he wasn’t shaved regularly, as if anybody would notice, and poring over all the junk he’d pulled in around him over the years. There wasn’t any record on, she’d forgotten that as well, and he didn’t have any of his own nickels to waste, and he wasn’t feeling so very good. It was more than just after-Sunday feeling, he had a real pain in his stomach. It was something in the air maybe, a bug of some kind. Or he should have told Willa to hold off on the potatoes. He stroked his stomach with one hand and pillowed his cheek in the other and gazed out the window at his shop and the empty lot beside it across the street.
It was a shame the trees around the old car being cut down, he thought, what did Josey have to do it for? Now unless the weeds grew high enough, which wasn’t likely, the boys were going to have to find somewhere else to hide away in at night. Not down by the river either, where the Chopek girls snooped around so quiet you never heard them until it was too late, looking at you as if you didn’t have as good a reason for being there as they did. Sly things they were; Frank’s hitting them didn’t seem to do them a bit of good. Except for Annabel, maybe, but she was as bad in another way, blinking at people like she was only half-awake. Still, she knew what she wanted too, come to that; they all knew, just aching to open themselves up wide. If a man wanted that, it was easy enough to get. They were one as bad as the other, even half the married ones. Except Miss Purl, maybe. Or Bella.
Maybe the boys wouldn’t care about the trees being gone, it was a hope. At night nobody would see anything anyway. It was only habit might make them not feel safe now in the old car without them. The thing was not to lose the habit, to go on sitting in the car as usual, settling down into it and poking at the stuffing and the lining and getting the smell of it for the year, and the smell of the others who had sat there and stretched their legs up over the front seat and whispered and handed round a cigarette and sniggered and maybe more, you never knew for sure when boys got together in a dark place. When they were used to it they wouldn’t care if there were trees round it or not. And they’d bring the younger ones in when it was time and tell them all they knew themselves, that the older ones had passed on, even from the place before that, down by the river before there had been any Chopek girls to snoop and he had been the youngest himself and they had taught him a thing or two. That was the way you learned things, boys passing them on year after year, not sitting up straight in school, pretending. And when they grew up they forgot about the car, so it was always a safe place. Even if people could see it in the daytime, they couldn’t see it at night when it mattered, and they wouldn’t think to go poking round it at any time. He was probably the only person in town who noticed how it was still used at night, just as much as ever. It was just an old joke for the rest of them, nothing in it except remembering how Harry and two or three others had stolen it and filled the gas tank with sugar and the cylinders with cement, and left it in the lot there, so old Jim Jorgenson, not so old then, couldn’t ride round the town anymore showing off to the girls.
He twisted round on the stool. Hilda was coming back at last, calling out for Josey as she came. Calling for the sake of calling, since she’d know well enough he wasn’t going to leave Hank’s side till he had to. That was turning a lot of the people against him, for no good reason; just the way he looked around him turned them against him: with those blank black eyes that hardly seemed to see them. And his black hair, they didn’t like that either, it was so black it was black even in the full sun, when most things weren’t. Indian hair they said it was. It was long now too, shaggy nearly; Hilda would soon be sending him across to him to have it cut. He’d better not think about that.
“Put a record on, eh?” he said to Hilda as she came in the door with the old man’s dirty tray. But she went round behind the counter like she didn’t even see him, it was one of those times when her eyes were empty and she was inside herself looking at something else. Remembering something maybe, she had a fair lot to remember. The trees coming down could easily be reminding her that that was where her father’s old smithy was before old Simon laid his hands on it, biding his time as usual, and pulled it apart plank by plank till there was only the vacant lot. In the field beyond it they were gathering again, waiting for Hank to start up again.

*

“If he asked my advice, I’d be willing to give it,” Mr. Overgaard said to Phil, as they stood side by side outside the enclosure, watching. “If I knew what he was intending, that is.”
“I guess you could, all right,” Phil said. “I got no idea myself. Some of those tools he’s using are mine, though. It doesn’t do them any good throwing them around.”
Hank was walking slowly round the staked and wired square, glancing from time to time at Mrs. Otterdown, who was on her back porch again, but wrapped in a blanket, for the day was beginning to cool. Some of the women said that she shouldn’t be out at all, not being used to it, and that she wouldn’t be if Harry weren’t away, and wondered why Harry was away, and where.
“All right,” Hank said. “It’s ready.” He stepped over the wire into the square, and motioned to Alvin and Josey to stay out of it, and looped one end of some very fine wire he was carrying with him around the flayed centre stake. After making sure that it slipped round freely, he played out the wire towards the corner of the square nearest Mrs. Otterdown’s house, and fixed a stake to it when it was exactly the same distance from the centre as the stake which was marking the corner.
“He’s going to draw a circle around the outside,” Alvin said quietly to a group of older men standing just outside the enclosure.
“It’ll be a surprise to me if he gets it right,” Overgaard said in a not particularly low voice to Phil. People were gathered in little groups now, all around the enclosure, watching closely to see what Hank was trying to do, and feeling strangely uneasy. Which there was no reason for, Macnamara said; but he was himself. Quite a few said they wished there were some sign of Harry, and Ledbetter said to his wife that if old Simon were still around he would feel easier in his mind. Mr. Fairling had to hold Bella’s hand because she had begun to tremble.
“No noise,” Hank shouted, and whatever whispering there was stopped. Josey began crawling backwards away from the staked corner, crawling in a rough arc and smoothing with both his hands a broad track for the stake to follow. Hank crawled after him, scarring the earth with the point of the stake, making sure that the wire was constantly taut, with an expression of extreme concentration, and so sweating that beads of it rolled over his bright bald head and trickled in a steady stream to the ground.. When the stake reached the wire bisecting the first side, Josey pressed the wire flat to the ground; Hank pressed the stake into the earth to mark the point on the circle, and then continued crawling after Josey to the corner of the square. As they neared it, the tension of the people watching increased, and Willa Gleave twisted her hands in her dress; and when the moving stake met the fixed stake exactly, a good many of the women and one or two of the men smiled with relief. Overgaard said, but in a very low voice, that he could have saved himself all this trouble by drawing the circle first.
Hank continued to crawl round the square after Josey, breathing heavily all the while, except when he stopped breathing altogether to press the point of his stake into the earth at the points on the circumference halfway between the corners of the square. The stake touched the second corner exactly and then touched the third corner exactly, and some of the people breathed out the breath they didn’t realize they had been holding. Mr. Fairling put his arm protectively around Bella’s shoulders, and murmured that there was nothing to worry about, that he was only measuring the ground. Hank continued crawling along the arc of the last side of the square, his eyes fixed on the stake cutting into the surface of the earth, and he seemed to be crawling slower and slower as he crawled nearer and nearer the fourth stake, which was the first stake, and when the stake he was holding reached it and touched it exactly, two or three of the children suddenly cheered. He himself sat down where he was and gazed blankly at the two stakes touching while sweat poured off his head like rain.
“There now,” Mr. Fairling said. “Everything’s all right. He’s managed it.”
“It’s the throbbing,” Bella said in a whisper. “I can’t bear the throbbing. Please take me home.”
“Of course, of course,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry.” What would her mother say now? How could he have known that there would be so much tension? As he led her away, murmuring to others that she was cold, she smiled around her so that no one would worry; that was always her way. But her mother would know.
“What’s wrong with her?” Macnamara asked, watching her from some way off. Nobody near him knew. “If this guy causes her any trouble..” he said, half to himself, but everybody who heard him nodded. Hank was still sitting and gazing at the stakes touching each other, closing the circle; but Josey and Alvin together were hammering stakes into the earth at the four points Hanks had marked out on the circle’s circumference. When they finished, they stood round and waited, and everybody watching waited, until Hank roused himself and climbed slowly to his feet. He looked around him, blinking, and swayed back and forth as if he were about to fall down again, and when his gaze touched Alvin and then Josey he frowned and then squinted at them as if he were seeing them for the first time.
“Get the hell out of here,” he shouted so loudly that a great many people jumped. Alvin nearly ran to escape from the enclosure, and even Josey, though he made some show of not hurrying, was only a moment behind him. Hank looked round keenly to make sure that he was alone in the enclosure, and then unwrapped the wire from each in turn of the four stakes marking the corners of the original square; and then took some fresh wire and bound each of the eight stakes to the next until all were bound together in an octagon. Then he faced Mrs. Otterdown, still unmoving on her back porch, and said in an even voice, not too loud, that he was done.
“Eight points for eight feet,” he said. “It’ll rise up out of them.” He stood where he was then for some time, until people began to walk away, encouraged to do so by Alvin. When only a few were left, and they too going, except for Josey who wasn’t even making as if to go, he began to make his way very slowly around his staked octagon, erasing the sketched circle with one dragging foot.

*

At deep dusk, Harry walked between the unsteady gateposts out of his back yard. When he reached the enclosure he swung his leg over the wires and walked to the octagon and stopped. The air was still and cool, the lights of the houses were yellow and warm, and the first stars were piercing their way through the sky. He walked slowly round the octagon, trying to keep his mind blank, waiting for the cloudy darkness to open into night. He heard a door open somewhere and a woman call and a child answer and the door close; he heard the cool hooting of an owl, and a car on some far road, going away; and the sound of Hank’s mouth-organ, muted, mournful, down by the river.
It had been a long day for his mother, she should rest; but he thought he could still catch a faint sound of her wheeling herself about the house, even through the door, closed against the chill of the evening; Mrs. Watson polished the floors so well that the least movement of her chair made the tires squeal against the wood. He thought he would have to go further off to be quiet, when the lid of a near garbage can clattered to the ground, blotting out everything else for a moment. He listened then to the sound of soft scrabbling, and then to a threatening growl, and a cat-scream; and four eyes were suddenly very near him in the darkness, watching him, and the noiselessly gone. He thought it was good not to have thrown out a threatening hand or even moved, though they were so close and strange. It cheered him somewhat, but he was gloomy.
He ought to be thinking of her, since she was so restless, not of himself. He ought to entertain her: with a song at the piano, maybe, a rousing song to shake up the pictures and make her cheerful and still; or tell her tales of how he had passed his day, abroad from the town, following the course of the noble Rat River in the direction of its source, and the various adventures through which he had passed on the way. Though not why he had gone. If she didn’t know, he didn’t want her to. That was thinking of her, wasn’t it, in a way? He would doubtless recover soon and be content to sit in the room while she wheeled herself past him again and again, stretching her head back over the chair-back to listen for that music wherever it was. He ought to rejoice that the squeals of her wheels all over the house, after so long a silence, were different from those of three years past which had kept him dry and fearful on his bed night after night, until all he had wanted was for her to be still, one way or another. Rejoice was too strong; allow was more like it. He ought to allow.
He ran the toe of his shoe along the underside of the octagonal wire. It wasn’t much, only the barest beginning; which, with ten minutes’ work, he could bring to an abortive end, and so re-establish on good foundations his own position. As his father knew so well how to do, when the ground under him began to shift. Yes indeed, but unlike his father he had little support from his mother. For him all she had been able to think of to do had been to wheel herself round and round the house to find some way to die. But not now.
The sound of the mouth-organ seemed to be growing stronger. Coming nearer, maybe, to warn that the proprietor was on the watch against jealous vandals. Or come to make a pact, there was some hint of that. To gain support in case the project went wrong? Hank was a wise one, he didn’t say what he wanted, he just grinned and walked out with the goods. And yet he might well know that if things went wrong, and people began to think that they were giving out more than they were taking in, they might begin to fret and frown and look at him with anger as they gathered into the store as of old, as his father had taught them, encouraged them, practically forced them. Back to their old comfortable habits. And would he, the heir, hold out his arms to them then, and smile on them and comfort? Just a moment, it hadn’t happened yet; it might never happen; not, at least, like that. Since it was only their demands which seemed to keep him in touch, he might prove hard to find if they stopped searching for awhile.
But he could take up the reins now if he wanted, and placate his father’s spirit. He could send out word, and gather them all into the lumber room behind the store, making of it again both a church and a school, and speak to them simply, as to little children..he knew how, he was his father’s son..saying that the man had raved in his sleep and revealed his past, which was dark and bloody. He could accuse him of thievery, murder and madness, in gentle persuasive oratory; throw doubt on the purity, even the clarity, of his intentions; suggest that his avowed project was a danger to the whole town. And then, in the name of the new spring season and the sowing they must all do, plead unsuccessfully that he be allowed to leave the town in as good condition as he came. And face his mother afterwards with a tale of necessity and sorrow.
Oh yes, he could do many things; but it helped, to persuade himself to them, to offer himself a reason. It was distinctly a waste of time to say he could do things when he didn’t want to do them, for reasons probably good enough, and so didn’t do them, and never would. Well, he had known himself to waste his time before; it was his mother and not he who was in training for a change of life. All that he had to do himself was gaze down on Hank’s achievement for the day, now that the heat had subsided and the crowd gone home, and there was more of restfulness out in the open than there was closed in with the squealing of his mother’s resurgence. If the evening’s stillness settled into him, it might make him still, and he might understand better what was going on, inside and out. If he could be still, he would be clear, like water, like air. And to and fro would be one, and his foot would be him, not his judge.
He stepped back from the octagon. He was pitching his demands very high. To have a quiet mind, it was best to begin simply, with a quiet mouth and closed eyes and plugs in the ear and nose. Then it was a question of will, which meant a question of want, now as ever; and he thought he had better admit that he wasn’t strong there, though it didn’t always appear through the sleight of hand.
What he could do, of course, by ancient custom, was challenge Hank to single combat, though it meant displaying his difficulty in public, the more so if both of them were to wear her favours. Yet he might say that he was acting in the name, and for the honour, of his dead father, whose concern, not the son’s, it was supposed to be; though that was all one now, a question of title, the consort of the moment. But ought anybody to allow a stranger to massage her hands, only making them pain the more, though she said nothing of that herself? How could he stop it being allowed? Times had changed, and were moving to change some more. He could probably watch yet awhile, nobody’s advocate or mediator, but if he slept, he might find himself a stranger without power or position when he woke. And the tower built, and all the town gazing up in wonder at the water which cascaded down in a flood.
Well, he still had his caul in his top drawer, though it was shrivelled and dry, and some of it had flaked off on his handkerchiefs. And old Helen had promised that it would protect him, a godmotherly gift. So the rest could do what they wanted, was that right? They could follow Hank or not, as they pleased? No, not so; if he was his father’s son, he had the rights of traditions as well as the duties. He could not be ousted so easily from the throne. He wouldn’t sleep, though he wouldn’t take part. He would watch. And if he had a request to make himself, it was that Hank would learn to play the mouth-organ so that other people could follow the tune: he didn’t like to feel it closing in on him without knowing what it was playing. He was nervous enough as it was, trying to keep control of everything from his brain outwards without having his communications fouled by music in code. And it was stronger now, definitely stronger and nearer. What did the man want anyway? Nobody thought to damage his embryo tower. Why did he think he had to trumpet his way through the night as if it harboured no one but himself?
He heard the creaking, then, of the back door, and the snapping shut of the screen door, and the wheels of his mother’s chair squealing on the back porch; and through the darkness he could just make out her shadowy craning figure.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The following days were ballooned with spring, drenched in the morning, steaming under the first sun, warm in the forenoon, hot at noon, still hot in the afternoon, cooling slowly as the sun settled down through bright bars of aimless cloud, then cooling quickly in the dusk, and almost cold, heavy with dew, but not frosting at night. There was sun every day, almost from morning to evening, and the wind, when it blew, was clear and fresh, blowing in a long steady sweep over the prairie from the west, from the mountains hundreds of miles away, which almost nobody in the town had ever seen.
There was a smell of smoke every day, particularly in the afternoon when school was out, for the children of all sizes went round the town with rakes and old brooms, and matches in their pockets, starting grass fires wherever the grass was dry. They raced and chased each other with flaming disintegrating brands of tiny flames, and piled grass in bonfires as big as they could make them. Sometimes women told them to be careful, but none of them paid any attention. They burned off all the grass on the school playground and the dead crisp weeds under the poplars by the river. The only ground they didn’t burn was in the empty lot where the old car sat. When they went home every night they were dirty with smoke and ashes and earth.
“I hoped there’d be just once you’d come in clean,” Willa Gleave said to Janey as she undressed her in the kitchen.
“They’re just as dirty,” she said, gazing through the window to the enclosure where Hank and some dozen others were just stopping their digging for the day.
“They have work to do, that’s different.”
“I’d work if they’d let me. Josey’s working.”
“You’re a girl. Now get in the tub and scrub yourself.”
Where the grass was burned off, bright points of green appeared, almost overnight, first in the damp bottoms of ditches into which the last melting snow had drained, then on the ditches shallow sides, and then everywhere at once. Wherever the earth was open to the sun, even a sliver between rotting pieces of board, or at the edges of gravel, or through old, worn gravel, or through cracks in the one or two private concrete sidewalks there were in the town, wherever there was warmth and moisture and neglect, grass and all kinds of weeds stretched out their roots and stalks and leaves for the sun which was there in plenty and for the water which was not. Even as they all grew and tangled with each other in open lots and alongside the roads and board sidewalks, even under the sidewalks, pushing up through the slits between the boards, crawling through cracks and knotholes and rotted places in fences, growing most quickly and strongly against sunny walls, in the shelter of south-facing porches, in windless corners, by piles of left-over wood or ashes, in the reflected heat of old iron, around the foot of every telephone pole, and most luxuriantly all along both banks of the river; even as some of them flowered, pungent and not all pleasant in the noon heat, attracting bees and wasps and flies from their dark winter holes, the newspapers which were flung from the morning train and were sorted out by Humphrey Wilkinson in the station waiting room predicted that it was going to be an unusually dry spring and summer.
“What the fellow says here, the fellow who handles the long-range forecasts,” Lon Esterhazy said, rustling the newspaper and glancing round at the men in the back of Harry’s store, himself sitting on the stove which was cold now that the weather was warm. “He says that the rain, what there is of it, is going to pass north of here. Maybe it’ll fall up there and maybe it won’t. Either way it won’t fall here. Wind’s not right. That’s what he says.”
“They’re the ones that know, all right,” Archie Dworshak said. “We’re in for a bad time, probably.”
But like all the farmers round, he bought as much seed as usual, and began his planting.

*

“It’s not me,” Gord Macnamara said. “It’s Dad. He says he can’t do it all alone, so I’ve gotta go. I’ll be back after.”
“Everybody’ll be back after,” Alvin said, paying him off. “It’s now you’re needed.”
Only six of the holes for the concrete legs of the tower were fully dug, and only Newt Newton, whose father was just a hired hand himself, working for Ledbetter, hadn’t been called off the digging to help with the family planting. He worked in the seventh hole and Hank worked in the eighth, and Josey hauled up earth and clay from both of them in a bucket. In four days they finished, and in two more they had carted all the loose earth to the edge of the enclosure, but the other young men still weren’t ready to come back to work. A concrete mixer was delivered to the site, and truckloads of sand and gravel and bags of cement and rods of steel and stacks of lumber. Alvin supervised their handling and setting down and payment. Hank looked things over as they arrived, and checked them off from a long list he always carried with him, and examined all the holes again with great care, and paced out the distance between them, and peered closely at anybody who came near the enclosure.
Then, one morning after two days of doing nothing, he wandered off. He walked about the town, trudging aimlessly this way and that, scrutinizing everybody and frowning to himself. Josey followed him, whittling stick after stick, and throwing the butt ends at any cat which strayed his way. Newt was left to watch over the eight holes and the tools and the supplies. He ate on the site and slept there under a tarpaulin and turned lobster-red and looked content. But when he tried sleeping in the daytime, in the shelter of a pile of lumber, Hank came upon him suddenly and cursed him and pummelled him with his fists. He threatened to cut off his head if he found him sleeping again. Then he wandered off to the river and waded across it, soaking his pants up to his thighs. That same evening, Miss Purl, on her way home, heard old Mr. Fitts hitting his spoon violently against his windowsill, and saw him pointing across the main street to where Hank was poking around the base of the old hotel as if he was trying to get inside.

*

“He’s started stopping people in the street,” Overgaard said to Mrs. Comstock in the post office. “He stops and talks as if their time was his time.”
“No harm in that,” she said. “He can stop and talk to me any time he likes.” Stiff little man that he was, it wasn’t any surprise to her that Hank made him nervous. He was worried, as like as not, that Iris wouldn’t mind being stopped by him either, even in the dark. None of them would mind, none of the whole pursy lot. “There’s just the usual pamphlets,” she said, handing them to him across the counter. So he could read what was going on in other places and feel better. Couldn’t blame him for that. Anybody might do the same who knew anything better, not that most of them did. “When you see him again,” she said, as he turned to go, “Tell him I’d like to talk to him. Tell him to call round here anytime.”

*

The catkins on the poplars stretched and drooped, like yellow-flecked oatmeal, and fell to the ground. Nearer the river, which was already shrinking back from its spring flood, the casings of the swelling pussy willows snapped off and lay on the ground like overturned beetles among the grass and weeds and flowers which were pushing their way through the flat, dun leaves of the year before. All along the banks most of the girls and some of the smaller boys gathered bunches of whatever flowers they could find. They followed the river a long way out of town upstream and downstream to make their bunches bigger, but wherever they were they kept a sharp look-out round them for Jessop’s shaggy white hair and thin bent back, since none of them wanted to be caught the way Maureen Chopek had been the year before, and shaken until all the flowers flew out of her hands in all directions and she thought she would die for sure. They saw that he was doing most of his grubbing beside the railway, so they stayed away from it themselves, although some of the boys said they weren’t afraid of any old man who spent his time digging up weeds.

*

The railway track ran straight to the horizon, gleaming like silver in the sun. Jessop walked slowly along it, peering between the ties, sniffing the air, and stooping from time to time to uproot a small plant that had forced its way up through the gravel and sand. Metal was a cool thing, he thought, though it wasn’t good for much, not being a live thing. The deadest thing there was, in fact, whichever way they pushed it. Which was why it was cool and why everybody liked it probably: it only went through the motions. It could be left lying under the ground or laid out like these tracks on top of it or even sent flying up over it; it was all the same. Until it rusted it couldn’t come to anything. But it was cool all right, even when it was hot in the hottest August, when the wood was so dry it was splitting and even the ties under his feet had sprouted half-dead seeds. It was cool now that he could see trouble coming, with things not settling out the way he had hoped. Though it was only the same kind of coolness as Maggie breathing in him still, smiling and laughing that it was all all right, when he knew a good deal better himself.
He stopped a minute in the middle of the trestle and looked down through the ties at the gully that didn’t have any water in it even now, and listened for any sounds that were different. She would say he ought to keep watch, he could be sure of that, but he couldn’t play nursemaid all day to her hulking son. If they saw him shadowing along behind, they’d begin to think why. They had a feeling for changes, for anything different. If he never left the town, the boys would soon see, and they’d be after him like bees, while the men grinned round and the women backed off, like all the years, worse and worse, since old Simon died. As if they smelled something and didn’t know what it was.
He could walk some way further, he thought, without any danger. If there was shouting, he would still hear it; though there wasn’t much likelihood of that and not much he could do if there was. Hank wouldn’t stop and listen to him if his anger suddenly got the better of him because he couldn’t work, and he took it into his head to tear down somebody’s store. Or something. If only they would finish with the planting; but they didn’t see that they ought to hurry, they didn’t see anything, as usual. They thought, if they thought at all, that Hank could be left cooling his heels. They didn’t think he might kick them up. They didn’t know the first thing about him, and there wasn’t any way he could let them know, since he swore to be secret, and it suited him anyway to be secret, and the first bit of news he gave them would only start them asking for more.
He slid down the embankment at the end of the trestle, and stooped to the ground to see what he could find. The sun was hotter there because the wind didn’t reach him, and the smell of growing was local because it was the wind that carried the miles-long smell of ploughed earth. He fingered some leaves gently. They were all right now, but they would soon be drying, before time. There was so little water in the earth it would be a surprise if everything didn’t dry before time. The crops particularly. He dug his fingers into the ground and uprooted a mallow and shook it free of earth and laid it in his basket, and furrowed in the earth round another. There were good things, all right: self-heal and crane’s bill and moly and beebalms; but it was like being tied on the end of a rope. Already he would see just the top of the town if he stood up, he would soon have to turn round to go back All these years he had spent making it ready for Hank, letting Maggie and the old woman tie him there for their sons, and only now was the end on its way. It had to be on its way. It was hard to believe it.
It was the old woman’s hands, he thought, feeling the stinging of sap and nettles on his own: they reached out after him, to hold onto him, because he could go where she couldn’t. She had to look out on the prairie day after day and smell it and breathe it in and hear the wind and the birds and the flies, and just sit there. He would have gone mad himself, but she didn’t; she was strong, all right. He could still feel those hands of hers touching his every time he took one of the title deeds from her, holding onto him like that, keeping him on a rein and making him promise not to tell for Harry’s sake, as if he cared about Harry. If he had to, he would still tell, if it would keep them off his back for a little while longer, until Hank was done. Yeah, done. Then Maggie would leave him alone, at last. Instead of being more with him than ever she was alive. At last he’d have done everything she had asked him to do. Just as always, as far back as he could remember, because he’d made a habit of it when he was too young to see what he was doing; because she was always younger. He gazed along the flowering ditch, full of flowering weeds, in the direction away from the town. Soon he would be able to follow it. As long as he liked and as far.
The train was coming. He could feel the vibrations in the ground. And suddenly he felt the lightness coming over him; nothing much, nothing he couldn’t control, just the first of it. But it would get worse.
He looked for the smoke of the train. He couldn’t see it, and he thought that maybe the shivering in the ground was part of the lightness, which would be worse then. But he was sure he could hear the train, growing louder all the time, and then he did see the smoke, blown off to one side by the wind. He dug his fingers a little way into the ground, to be sure, since his weight seemed to be lessening the nearer the train came. He tried to find roots for a better hold, and watched his basket bouncing lightly on the ground, and the weeds in it shivering, and a couple of year-old sunflower heads nodding against the barbed wire round the field beside him. He ducked his head and closed his eyes.
The train rushed past, coach after clattering coach, and flung small stones and cinders over him. Then the sound of it died away, like the wind, and he felt his weight sink back into him again, and the earth under him become still. He eased his fingers out of the ground and cautiously stood up; and picked up his basket, and made his way back towards the trestle. If it was as bad as that already with the summer only beginning, what was he going to do? Soon it wouldn’t need the train to start it, and it wouldn’t be safe then going out of town, he would have to stay where there were things to hang onto when the time came, and they’d sense it and they’d be after him, laughing and poking, day in and out, and he wouldn’t be able to stop them and he wouldn’t be able to go. Until Hank had done what he came to do. It seemed a long way off He walked across the trestle with his hand on the railing and gazed up at the empty blue sky.

*

Rupe Windflower, with a large spotted handkerchief, knotted at the corners, over his head and reaching down to his ears and eyebrows, more for the sweat than the sun, since the roller’s canopy protected him pretty well, spent the whole of each day rolling the roads of the town. He set out in the early morning, singing softly to himself under the noise of the engine, and worked until dusk. He even rolled people’s driveways if they asked him, though the money the town paid him wasn’t for that; and only in the evening, well after dark, did he open up the bank for anyone who had business there. He did what counting and checking and tabulating and clearing had to be done, and he ate there with his wife the supper she had carried down the street. He was awake again by dawn and in the shed where he kept the roller, examining it and tuning it and cleaning off the dust of the day before. His face and arms turned red and then brown, and he waved at everybody, and sometimes let careful children ride with him in the cab, and apologised to women who saw him without his shirt, saying that it was hot for April and that the engine made it hotter.
He felt that Hank was watching him always, and following after him wherever he was working, even when he couldn’t catch sight of him. He didn’t mind being watched, he even liked it, but not that way, not being stared at with eyes that never seemed to blink. It was worse than when he had been painting the roller. He found himself twisting round while he drove, to try to find out where Hank was and whether he really was watching. And he practically always was, and each day from closer, from the corner of the street or from between two houses or over a fence, just standing there looking. And Josey usually with him. It began to make him so uneasy that he decided to leave some of the small streets in the town for later, and drove out along the west road, right out on the prairie, to smooth it while the earth and gravel were reasonably soft, and then the south road the same, and then the north road, for as far as two miles. When he arrived back in town in the evening it was practically dark, and people complained that the bank had to be open sometime and that he ought not to be wasting his time and the town’s money rolling what was the concern of the province. He said he didn’t expect to be paid for it. He said he just wanted to do it, and didn’t say anything to anybody about Hank. His wife said that he looked tired and that maybe he ought to take a rest because, after all, he wasn’t getting any younger. But he told her that it was his roller and his job, and what would he do if he didn’t do it? And he told himself that Hank was just restless because he couldn’t get on with work of his own.

*

Miss Purl took little notice of any trouble people said they were afraid was in the air. When she wasn’t at school she had all she could do to start plants growing in her garden and keep them growing. The rose tree was clearly dead; she didn’t need her aunt’s mockery to point it out: its branches were dry and brittle. It was all very well for the catalogue to claim that it would thrive in sheltered corners; there were no sheltered corners. She gave her attention instead to the flowers near the ground. She wore a scarf round her head against the sun and the afternoon dust, and worked the earth before school and at noon between school and after four o’clock until dark. It meant eating the food that her aunt messily managed to cook, but she put up with that. She hoed the hard earth in the flower beds, and loosened it around the roots of the few perennials which had survived the winter, many fewer than she had hoped. She carted manure in the wheelbarrow from the pile beside the toolshed, and worked it into the earth, breaking up the clods and marvelling with mild despair at the little good it seemed to do and at the way it vanished from year to year. She sowed seeds from packets in careful whorls, intermingling them, sowing more than should have been necessary, because she knew that most of them wouldn’t sprout. She transplanted seedlings from pots on sunny windowsills, and she raked the narrow border of grass which ran round the whole of her small plot just inside the picket fence to prevent Jessop, if he had a mind to it, from reaching plants to which he had no right. From time to time, when she found that she was breathing too hard, she straightened her back, placed her hands on her kidneys, stretched, and looked round at what progress she had made. She wasn’t very hopeful, but she could see that she had wrought a clear improvement; and if her aunt was rocking herself on the porch, with her usual book-and-glass-of-beer, she said to her that she thought it was coming along quite well.
When Hank stopped her in the town, coming suddenly round the corner of Esterhazy’s seed store, as she was about to cross the street on her way to school, she spoke to him politely enough, but she tried to make him see that she didn’t have any interest in whatever he had to say. He asked her if she had any tools and she said she had none to lend.
“I was just with Annabel,” he said. She nodded, and waited for him to stand aside. “It’s a saw I’m looking for. A power saw, that is. But she says Phil hasn’t got one.”
“I expect you could buy one,” she said.
“Well I don’t see the point in that if there’s one just lying around, and I got the idea from Annabel that maybe there was, though she wasn’t any too clear. She’s sure big eh? I guess she hasn’t got much longer now before the baby’s born. I’d like to see that, all right. I bet it’ll be a good one, the way she moves all lazy and slow, like the moon coming up full.” He wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything, unless at something a long way behind her.
“I don’t want to be late at the school,” she said.
“You know what I think,” he said. “I think that any woman who wants a baby just ought to go up to the nearest man and get him to start one for her. I’ve been a father a good many times myself, I guess. That Annabel sure is beautiful.”
She managed to slip past him and not answer him. He didn’t realize, of course; he might have said it to anybody. Doubtless he couldn’t tell just by looking at her that she was likely to be at her change of life. It wasn’t his fault. It was the sun growing so hot and the air being so close, not like the days before, and her vague queasiness being more than usually pronounced.
The next time he stopped her it was windy, and she felt much better. He asked about the saw again and she realized that he meant the school saw, and she told him that it didn’t work and never had from the day it had been given to Mr. Robinson, the principal before Mr. Overgaard.
“He said that it was a bribe from a politician who wanted to be elected. He was a very moral man, and he spoke against the politician, who lost the election. It’s a little difficult to remember quite how things went,” she said, keeping her face turned into the wind which she could hear whining from room to room in the derelict hotel beside them. “Mr. Robinson has been dead a long time. Nancy Chopek is his daughter. She ran away.” The man listened very quietly, that was certainly a point in his favour; and he didn’t stand between her and the wind, though that of course was chance. “The politician gave the saw to the school, nonetheless. He left it on the front steps and Mr. Otterdown said that it would be useful for manual training, but Mr. Robinson locked it away in a cupboard.” There was one thing about the hotel, she thought, whatever complaints people made about it slowly falling apart, it was comforting it being there, almost exactly the same as the day she arrived, with only a little more paint flaked off, and a baluster or two knocked further askew. And you could still see how it was a lovely building once. “There are pieces missing now, Mr. Overgaard says, so it doesn’t work. I expect if you ask Frank Chopek he’ll tell you what the trouble is.” Mr. Fitts was watching them with his binoculars, she noticed. It made her uneasy in spite of the wind and the clearness she felt all round her. She put out her hand to Hank’s elbow to guide him to the edge of the sidewalk so she could walk on. A little to her surprise, he stepped down into the street; certainly he had his good qualities. She waved across the street to Annabel, who was pumping thick oil into a bottle while Phil tinkered in the grease-pit with the underside of a car; and when Hank called after her that he was ready to give her some help with her garden if she wanted it, she answered that that would be very nice.

*

“There was somebody on the stairs this morning,” Mr. Fitts said to Hilda when she brought in his tray. It was one of the days his room stank more than usual; she thought maybe it was his fear. “I heard the cats growling. She’s sending out spies, you can be sure. Wants to see if I’m still alive.”
“Anybody who wants can see you at the windows.”
“Not when I’m in bed.”
“You aren’t in bed in daytime. You don’t like that.”
“Not when I’m well,” he said, pulling his binoculars out from where he always kept them between himself and the side of his chair; so she couldn’t put down his tray. “But I’m getting worse. You think I don’t notice, but I do. I’ve got to concentrate.” She noticed, but what was the use of that? She watched him look through the binoculars down at Bella, who was walking along the sidewalk in her usual long green dress. She wasn’t walking fast, still it was too fast for the fat little Chopek girl who was holding her hand and skipping and running to keep up. It was funny how she was fat when all the rest were thin. Except Annabel, especially now.
“I’m eating too much, that’s my trouble,” he said, putting the binoculars away again. “I’m flabby, see?” He poked his finger into the flesh of his arm. “It doesn’t spring out again. I think I’ll fast for a few meals. It strengthens the brain. And I’ll keep to the other side of the room, away from the windows, so they’ll think I’m dying and be foxed into showing their hand.” He always had some new idea to keep him going.
“I’ll send Josey up for the tray,” she said, arranging it on his lap at last. “And you better eat. You’re old. You don’t want to die before you have to. Mr. Jessop said he’d bring your medicine later on.”
“Nothing does any good,” he said, gazing out as usual at the hotel across the street. “I’m weakening fast and she knows it. Stay with me a little while.”
“There’s no good in that,” she said. “There’s work I have.” If he felt that way, he might as well die right then.
“You’re one of them, that’s what,” he said, turning on her as she left the room. “You’re one of her hirelings.”
“Nobody is,” she said, closing the door behind her. “You eat your food.” She heard one of his books hit the floor as she went downstairs; he’d have pushed it, or thrown it, which made her feel better for him, there was still life in him as long as he got angry. But she was glad to be out of his stale room and in the street where the sun was hot and bright. Then she saw Hank, right in front of the cafe, talking to Bella and holding her wrist.
He looked quiet and she was smiling. If he wasn’t quiet she wouldn’t smile. She was pretty, she was maybe even beautiful the way everybody said, but if he wanted her for more than talking he was wasting his time. And he wanted more than that, she could see just by looking, it stood out all over him. She pulled her dress down over her hips so it was tighter over her breasts, and crossed over the street towards him. If the women wanted to talk they could talk, she had played their game long enough. Josey was near enough grown now, and there might never be another man. And she still had the habit Josey’s fathers had given her when they all came running through the broken streets and the smell of her father’s brown shirt was like blood.
Ray was in his chair across the street, watching in his slit-eyed way in case anything went wrong for Bella, and the fat little Chopek girl was standing near him, watching as well. They didn’t matter, all they wanted was Bella left alone. So she was helping them. She glanced at Hank as she went into the cafe, and said there was some hot coffee freshly made. Since she had been born in the town it was her town too, so she could begin to move a little, maybe not so fast at first.
Hank let go of Bella’s wrist and left her standing on the sidewalk and followed her into the cafe.

*

Mr. Fairling expected to be intercepted when he saw Hank running across the playground in his direction. He halted where he was on the sidewalk, and tested the board under him with his heel and the board in front of him with his cane. Both were sound. Relatively few boards, in fact, had rotted during the winter, so far as he had been able to discover. Only two short sidewalks were better for Bella still to avoid.
“You have any sons or nephews or other relatives might be interested in helping me get on with this tower?” Hank asked, breathing heavily from running.
“I have no relatives of any kind,” Mr. Fairling said. “Not now.”. It was understandable, of course, that he should want to get on. The weather was so fine and the smell of the earth was in the air, and the smell of the tractors on the wind, and the sound of the tractors as well, and the far, intermittent sounds of men calling. It made one want to do something oneself.
“I guess you’re too old yourself,” Hank said.
“I’ve always been healthy, thanks be to God.” It was the man’s unfortunate way of staring which was troublesome. Other people mentioned it as well.
“The ones I had deserted. So I’m looking for anybody I can find. I guess your time’s past though.”
“Naturally the planting came first. The planting comes before everything.”
“Sure, sure, that’s right,” he said, backing off a step. “Let ’em get it over with. I’m not complaining. I’m just not getting on myself, that’s all, and I get nervous when I just have to hang around. I’ve got things to be doing and I can’t do ’em. And every day passes is going to make it harder and we’ll have to work faster, and there’s a lot of heat riding in on the back of this sun. But maybe I’m taking your time,” he said, frowning suddenly. “You’ve probably got a sermon to work up.”
“I’m testing the boards of the sidewalks,” Mr. Fairling said; but it was true that he really ought to have been preparing his sermon. The sounds and smells of spring were always distracting. “So that Bella can walk on them safely. I do it regularly.”
“The last preacher I knew looked like you,” Hank said. Perhaps his eyes were not staring in the proper sense of the word. Perhaps they were only blank. And curiously the colour of the clear sky behind him, as though they were mere holes, right through his head. “He was very holy and he used to scare me.” Yes, that was the nature of holiness, but appearances were deceiving. “He would get up right in the middle of us without any reason and start shouting. He used to preach on circuit, they said, and he had muscles like iron. Yours are pretty flabby,” he said, reaching forward suddenly to feel them. “Still, since you’re only wandering around, you could maybe do some of the lighter jobs, helping Josey.”
“I’m not wandering around. I have to make sure that the sidewalks are safe for Bella.”
“You could rake the place clean after we finish every day, I guess. Once we get started, that is. Come round and see me then and I’ll see what I can do. Everything’ll work out, don’t you worry. It’s just a question of the right time and place.”
“God sees what is necessary,” Mr. Fairling said. The man certainly seemed to be good at heart, but there was something queer in what he said, just as there was in the way he fixed his eyes on something one minute, and then on nothing. It wasn’t surprising that he made people uneasy: in some way he didn’t fit in. In which there was no necessary harm, of course; but he pressed himself close to people in rather a disconcerting way. As he was doing now, so that it would be a relief if he would turn his attention in another direction. “We must all of us trust in God.”
“It’s uncanny the way you look like him,” Hank said, his blue eyes gazing at him altogether too steadily; it was no particular comfort to be told that one looked like anybody. “You’ve got the same tall forehead, and eyes pushed so deep in your head you can hardly see them. Only he had black hair, and maybe more of it, and big reddish lips. I guess he was as old as you are, but he must have been twice as strong. This place we were at, he climbed up to the chimney top and began preaching, holding on to the chimney with one big bony hand and swinging an axe in the air with the other. Of course they shouted at him to come down, and in the end he did. Kersmash. Brains scattered all over the ground. It was cement, you see, too hard even for him. And there was a lot of trouble afterwards; but you’d know about that, of course, I guess you’ve seen a lot of that kind of thing, being a priest.”
“No, no, I can’t say I have,” Mr. Fairling said, tapping the sidewalk uncertainly with his cane. “I don’t remember that I’ve ever seen an unnatural death.”
“Looked at one way, they’re all unnatural,” Hank said. “His was more natural than most. It being natural for him to be violent, I mean. As he was going down, the axe flew out of his hand and caught one of the men below in the belly, which made two of them that had to be carted off. It was the kind of thing he was always doing, like the time he threw a dart at me and hit me in the cheek and then ran to pull it out when it was hanging down like a streamer, and pulled out a piece of flesh with it.” He grinned and rubbed his right cheek where it was true that there was a small bluish depression. “When my mother saw it, she said I was lucky not to have lost my eye. She always knew how to cheer me up. But they said they wouldn’t give him a funeral, because it was murder and suicide put together, they said, because it was well-known there wasn’t much love in him for the guy the axe plunged into. So that was a problem, because if there was one thing he wanted, it was a good big funeral with him in the middle of it, piled high with flowers, and people singing all around him. That was religion, he said, not all this morality.”
“I don’t know that it’s as simple..” Mr. Fairling began, feeling that he ought to make some protest, but clearly the man wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even looking at him anymore, he was gazing up at the sky.
“It was Mrs. Dowker who was the first to say he didn’t jump,” he said. “And the rest of us joined in. And since everybody knows it’s no trick controlling a full-fledged axe when you’re in mid-air, they had to give him his funeral after all, and let us cover him with every flower we could find; which he needed, of course, being pretty well smashed. Look, you know what,” he said, abruptly fixing his eyes on Mr. Fairling again. “If these young ones fall down on me, I’ll come round for you, eh? And we’ll build this tower together; and when it’s done, we’ll have a roaring party on the top.” It wasn’t clear if he wanted an answer to that, and it was even less clear what answer would be neither acceptance nor discourteous denial, so Mr. Fairling only nodded his head and smiled at the man; and after waiting a moment longer so as not to seem to be hurrying, he moved past him, trusting that he wouldn’t be stopped. He could hear a bird singing as he walked back towards the manse, and he continued to tap the planks with his cane and to listen for the sound that meant that the wood was rotting, but he couldn’t deny to himself that the man had somehow taken all the spring brightness out of the day.

*

Mrs. Otterdown sat in her wheel-chair on her back porch, her face protected by a broad-visored cap from the sun which lay on her body. She kept her eyes almost closed and rested her head against the chair-back, and gazed through feathery slits at Newt Newton alone, cross-legged, in the octagon, flipping a knife into the ground; and at the school beyond him where the children’s heads were in rows beyond the windows, murmuring. The rest was blurred: a house or two, and corners of houses and a fence and some washing, white and blue, and something red like a kite tumbling over the ground, caught by the breeze, nobody with it, and three trees together on the low riverbank, and the prairie and the prairie and the horizon at last, she was at the horizon, it quivered and melted hazily into the thick blue sky. It was more like summer than spring; but it wasn’t the first time for that, and it wouldn’t be the last, there wasn’t any order for anything. June might be cold and hail thunder down in August, like a battering white wind, and the fields all broken and steaming and the sky clear as the sky in winter, pale blue and empty, with the weak yellow sun drifting through the south half of it, washed out before it set. And then the night opened, and opened, and she could see to the end of space, from star to star. If there was no moon. She heard her feet walking but she didn’t see where. When she climbed over fences they were like other fences, all other fences, then and before, long-fallen fences; and still Simon wanted her to tell him where she had been. There were marks to show sometimes when she sank into snow to her knees, and lay where she sank and the stars glittered everywhere round. And there weren’t marks, there was no way he could follow in the morning through the clouded November fields where the frost shone like the night and the earth was like stone and stiff sharp stubble was all that was left of the sun, and for miles around her nobody moved.
Now was their time. They were all in their fields now, day after day, while Hank had to wait and grew troublesome with waiting, and Harry pulled back and watched her from far off like a long shadow over her. It was years and years since he had been a boy never at home, more years than all the years of all his sisters; which were fixed now, and long since, they were in the time of the smoking giant machines trundling out to harvest on wheels taller than herself, hauling bunkhouses for all the men to the middle of a field, and belching pale gold chaff into the air. And Millie teased the men and made them cross when they were hungry: she hid from them under wagons and ran from them into the rain of falling chaff, while Simon called after her and the snaking belt shuddered to a halt. And Christie cried when they fetched her out, and Janice toddled after her with wide-open eyes. Poor pale things, it was no wonder it was Millie Simon had his eyes on day and night, though he wouldn’t go near her, until she wasn’t. And after that he let her go out when she liked and where, under the moon whitening the land in all seasons, or the white blanket of cloud or just the bare black sky and the air for miles around patched orange and streaked with smoke from the blazing strawstacks; since, with Millie dead, the only living trace of Henry was gone, and the only dead trace was his boarded-up ramshackle store. So then Simon asked around for mild information: to know where she had walked. Whoever they were then to ask, blurred now into the ones before and the ones since. It was past, long past. And she was too old now, surely she was too old by many years, to bear the blood running through her again like the sun, every day hotter by a little, as Hank was making it run. She would only burn out, and Harry would stoop mournfully and weave her into the middle of all his thoughts.
She closed her eyes as the pain began again, not so harsh as the last time, more a lazy throbbing somewhere inside her: in her stomach maybe, her liver, her womb. As it died down, back into itself again, she opened her eyes. She would have to pretend that the arthritis was worse, since Harry would see her wincing. He was too much like his father now not to need lies here and there to protect him. And, after all, it might be nothing more than a memory in her womb, old as it was, moved again by the strange new heat swelling and thickening around her, pressing ever deeper into the willing earth; the kind of heat she walked in at noon when the grain was ripe and the roads were empty and escape sunflowers grew in the ditches and fell like trees when Harry attacked them with his knife, and the earth itself was hot as deep as she could dig her hands. And Harry cracked a whip of rope in the dust and shouted at her like a mule-driver and made her run ahead of him along rutted tracks and pushed foxtails up her sleeves while she lay on the ground and pressed her hands and arms on the unnumbered wild flowers and told him to stop and tried to catch her breath. While Simon stripped down to his underwear with fat Helen over the cafe and people thought it mattered. It was only more weight on Otto’s back for taking her on as his wife to give him sons when she didn’t have any in her. But Simon had Harry, and drew him closer to him with every year that passed, so Hank had better be wary. He was all alone and staring, but Harry saw every detail of what he looked at, and however quiet he was now he was still Simon’s son and he couldn’t be counted on right to the end just to watch.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Probably, Harry thought, sitting outside his store between Alvin and Frank and gazing along the street at the remaining patches of crumbling paint which glistened like pollen on the walls of the hotel, he ought to have taken a stronger stand. It was his wall as well, after all; in fact, hospitality aside, both sides of the wall were his, as the heir. He need have no truck with a usurper, he could have thrown him downstairs and denied him the house. He could at least have tried, he was stronger than he looked, and Hank was unsteady on his feet. Josey’s loyalty had long been withdrawn, but in memory of its green time he might have stood hesitantly off to one side. Half of the wall anyway might have been saved. As it was, the word would go round that he was ineffectual, outmanoeuvred, fainthearted; already the pineapple can in his hands, though it couldn’t prevent his rifling its contents, spared him from none of its scorn. Attitudes, postures, poses, impressions, even false ones, all had their purpose, not to be sneered at, his father would understand the technique, would see that his position was difficult; but yet, there had to be substance somewhere. If not, what? Death. Absolute absence; which wasn’t what he had resolved upon, to overstate the case, some days ago.
And yet, on the other hand, there was no need to fall into despair; the first night of sharing the new, enlarged room had passed without disaster. He balanced a cube of pineapple on his forefinger, and watched it slither off and fall to the ground. A tit-bit for the faithful dog who stretched her neck to sniff at it, ever hopeful. But there was no use pretending that she liked tropical fruits now that she had tricked him into taking her in. Which was no reason to throw her out. She was no trouble, and maybe, having been so long lost on the prairie, she had mistaken the fig she had gobbled for a kidney. But she had set him a bad example, tempting him to join her in mindless sloth, trying with her wiles to draw him back from the idea he had somehow taken hold of that he must try. Trial unspecified: a good work maybe, a boon to the community, brought back from the great beyond, or the uncreated within. He stroked the dog’s head with his foot and listened to her tail thump against the sidewalk. Would it be considered sufficient, he wondered, by the lords and ladies in judgement if he were to devote this peaceful time to a study of ways and means by which he might harness the power of a dog’s wagging tail for the good of those around him? He could tie a string to the end of it, to thread up to pulleys to a fan, giving a summer of coolness for only a kind word or a stroke. Feeling a slight spasm of disgust, he thought of pushing the dog away from the foot of his chair, but didn’t; whomever the shoe was to fit, it wasn’t the dog, an established barefoot.
But what was he supposed to have said?
“I couldn’t breathe,” Hank said. He had never slept in that room himself and his own room was bigger and had an extra window, so how could he say it wasn’t true? It was nearly impossible for either of them to breathe with the plaster dust floating around them, while he made a small effort to explain his point of view and Josey piled broken cakes of plaster into the pail. He looked away from the derelict hotel. There wasn’t the quiet there that there had been.
“It’s because he can’t get on with the tower,” Alvin said, tapping a small hammer against a nail in his chair. “It’s this waiting around. It makes him nervous.”
“He wants the school saw,” Frank said. “I guess maybe I’ll give him it. Loan it, that is.”
“Josey’s the one who ought to have a good talking to,” Alvin said. “He acts like he’s king kid around here.”
Josey treated it all like any other job, scrambling on his knees for the lumps of plaster, gathering up the split boards and leaving white tracks all through the house to the back door. It was rather Hank who confessed to a kid-wish to lift off the roof over his bed so that he could see the stars while he lay there. Though he thought better of that, he thought of the chance of rain. He also thought that nobody would be the worse off for the new dormitory, and promised that he had many thoughts worth telling to make the short nights shorter. He was barely sane, that was clear enough, but what was to be done about him? Was it his own concern more than his mother’s when the lodger saw fit to demolish one of the house’s walls?
His ears were irritated by the noise Alvin was making with his hammer and nail; he had better find himself some fresh distraction since the pineapple was gone. He reached one of his sullen hands round the door jamb to his shelf of provisions and blindly sorted out an orange for peeling. The great chandelier was beginning to give out its gentle glow inside his head, like a great ball of dust in the rain-light. There was considerable comfort in that, and these days one took one’s comfort where one could; but Alvin’s little hammer-blows were sending zig-zags through the light and breaking it in pieces.
He would do well to collect his mind and repeat after himself that it could certainly be argued that his view of his own life was foolishly gloomy. He had many advantages. For example: if he had passed his time in the greater world, a member of one of the skilled professions, he would have had to pay for his tropical and semi-tropical fruit, his pineapples and dates and figs and olives, instead of enjoying the fruits of wholesale purchase, and having a good supply on hand always against the threat of siege. That was a continuing benefit. And to be fair, Hank seemed, on the evidence of one night, to talk less than he promised, only a word or two of sleepy good cheer, then the extinction of the light. Not even a snore. And the two-by-fours still sketched the wall once between them. A roll of burlap could screen it and one day it could be rebuilt: on the day Hank was gone and things were back to normal. And he himself that much older and not noticeably wiser, still waiting for that opportunity, call it the call.
Well, that was the way things were, just the way they were. He must try to remember and be quiet.
It would be easier if Hank would stop poking at the foundations of the hotel. He had no business going anywhere near it. Nobody knew how strong its walls were now, maybe they were weak. If he pushed his way through them, others would soon push through after him as their reviving memories tickled their curiosity to see for themselves if Fitzgerald’s skeleton was or was not hanging from the chandelier; and if his ghost still was or was not still walking back and forth along the high gallery, gazing coolly down on them as they gazed up. As he had, and nobody else had. The skeleton was just a story, my boy, his father had said, just a story. There was nothing but loose cobwebs hanging from the great chandelier, and nothing but loose shapes all round him of furniture draped in sheets; and in their midst his father’s gentle stretching hand, and some other word touched against his wet ear, what was it? He was altogether wet, it was the freak thunderstorm, and he was dirty from dust and coal-dust from the basement where he had pushed his way in. That’s all right, my boy, his father said, and his hand was gentle and the fear settled down. What fear? What was there to fear? There was only the great air furnace and the huge pipes winding up from it into the main body of the hotel; there were only stairways and hallways, and the great saloon where the chandelier was looming in dust and cobwebs while the sound of the rain outside was muffled and he walked round and round in a circle, gazing up. And then down, when he had climbed up the stairs, to see everything the way Fitzgerald would have seen it. His father’s eyes were watching him. His father’s head was nodding; something was slipping past him, it always slipped past, what was it? Leaving a little trail of fear. He walked past the little circular windows, he told his father. He walked past them one by one, walking just the way people said Fitzgerald walked, and he looked down on the big chandelier, and he tried all the doors of the rooms leading off the gallery, but they were all locked. Then he walked slowly down the stairway again.
If people broke in there now they would destroy it. We won’t let them, his father said, his eyes were clouded, they were troubled; don’t you worry, don’t you worry.
Alvin was still making a noise; he was always doing something, usually aimless. It was a screeching noise. He blinked his eyes to make them focus, and turned his head away from the hotel to Alvin’s chair beside him. But Alvin was gone from it. Frank was gone too, they thought him poor company. The noise was a cat on the sidewalk, arching her back and screaming a warning at the dog who was barely awake. Across the street two other cats were sitting, watching, and the head of a third, a marmalade one with a torn ear, was stretching round the back corner of the store, There were cats everywhere, threading their lives through the streets and lots of the town, threading their town through his town. Some of them were mere eyes under parked cars, watching him and biding their time. The dog was no help against them, she was so gentle she would let herself be ripped apart with hardly a whimper. The best course was to outstare them and not move, until he could glide swiftly back into the store.
Hilda came round the corner from the main street and walked towards him. The cats drew back. He must look peculiar, he thought, since she was staring at him so. He felt he was blinking more than he need.
“Josey will help you repair everything,” she said. “It’s not right to have done.”
“I’ve decided to overlook it,” he said, standing up from his chair, feeling too short in front of her and then too tall, stepping backwards, down a step, into the shadow of the store. The sun was like glowing water reflections on her arms and face. “Perhaps we’ll both breathe better now. It was the plaster dust I minded.” He wasn’t explaining well, she would think something was the matter with him. Nothing the matter, a little problem here and there, dirty flecks in the white radiance. It was strange how her eyes could shine into somewhere where there was no light for them to reflect. “Tell Josey to go on with his tower building.” He didn’t sleep well of nights anyway, he might as well listen if Hank wanted to talk. If the worst came to the worst, the store was well provisioned; with a six-gun or two he could keep off the mob.
She had gone, there was only the sunlight in the doorway.
Well. There he was. In his father’s store; and he admitted he had a duty to his father and his memory, call it a form of repentance; but it was a duty to the hearth, to guard it; not to press into no-man’s land to extend his dead sway.

*

“You’re a woman of the world,” Hank said, standing in the doorway of the post-office. His head was wet and dripping, and he was breathing as though he had been running. Mrs. Comstock looked up from her new horoscope magazine; probably she was too old for him, but people had strange tastes. She widened her eyes, knowing that whatever else had befallen her, there was still some beauty there; but she didn’t see why she should say anything to him until she could make out what he was saying to her. She watched him move very slowly into the room on the other side of the counter, as though he thought somebody might be hiding behind the door, and look round at everything there was, from the large bank calendar, which was out of date as far as she knew, to an old election proclamation and an old announcement for the mobile vaccination unit, and the voters’ list, dog-eared from the farmers wanting to make sure their names were spelled right, or just to see them in print. One of the stains on the wall seemed to have caught his fancy, he had lost interest in her quickly enough. He wouldn’t be wanting mail, since he didn’t give out his last name. Wouldn’t be expecting it anyway, they all of them wanted it, couldn’t blame them for that.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said, facing her now. His reddish-brown head was shining, his thick eyebrows were wet, even dripping water, and his denim shirt was damp with more than sweat. He licked a drop of water from his upper lip. He must have had his head under the pump only a moment ago. “Cosy in winter, I guess.”
“Draughty,” she said. “And like an oven in summer.” And practically always dirty, since Frank took money for sweeping it and then usually forgot. “It was never meant to be permanent, but it’s going on twenty years old. Nobody’s made much effort for this town since Mr. Otterdown died.” Still, it was better than sitting alone at home all day, and then only Amanda for company after school. Not that the others were any more interesting, but they made a change. Though there was no hope they could ever come to understand what it was to have lived the way she had and where they hadn’t, where more people than they’d ever seen in their lives didn’t care a damn where and how she lived hers.
He seemed to have forgotten why he had wandered in, he was just gazing at her hands on the counter, at her rings probably. She spread out her fingers so that he could see, if he could tell, that all the bands were gold, all five of them, three gifts and two weddings; all together now, the same way she remembered, the only good things she had left.
“I pawned them more times than I can say, but I got them back at last,” she said, noticing that he didn’t seem very steady on his feet, that he was swaying slightly in a circle. His shirt was open half-way to his waist. Amanda would have called for help by now, she thought.
“I had the idea of a drinking party,” he said in a low voice, looking all round him again, holding himself nearly still for a moment when he saw the steps leading down to the store. “Harry in there?” he asked, finding her again and fixing her with his strange pale eyes. “We’re good friends, Harry and me, I’ll bring him along. We’ll just get crates of beer, Alvin’ll get ’em, that’s what he’s good at, and we’ll carry ’em out on the prairie somewhere, all of us, and we’ll drink them all up under the moon.” He grinned at her and nodded to himself, reaching the counter with his outstretched hands just as he seemed about to fall. It was almost as though he had drunk the beer already. “Got to find the right night,” he said. “Not just any night. I’ll call round and get you, eh? And you’ll be ready and we’ll lead ’em all. .” His fingers felt their way over the irregular surface of the old grey paint until they reached her edge of the counter, where they clung, “. . way, way out where the moon’s. . like water.” He lowered his head onto his outstretched arms, and his body slumped against the counter.
“A very good idea,” she said, unmoving although his knuckles were only an inch from her breast. She listened for his breathing to ease and then to come in long, almost silent waves. The smell of his sweat, as fresh as the pump water, made her feel stale. She reached into her personal pigeon-hole, took down her cologne and dabbed some behind her ears. If she was a woman of the world, even in this castaway settlement, it was because she had learned long enough ago how to make people think they cared. If somebody thought he had some reason to turn her way, she knew how to take advantage of it, watching out for the others who knew the tricks as well. The best thing to do was what he said: find people who wanted to drink and laugh on the same day, because you were in this thing alone. She gazed at the gently heaving body in front of her, and thought of Amanda changing life and trying to hide it, and felt a little sorry for her, because she had never had anything worth having; but she felt more sorry for herself, because she knew what she was long past having, with nothing to show for it. And if they went out on the prairie, she would see the stars, which always reminded her of death.

*

Maureen Chopek hid behind what was left of the fence of the vacant lot between the post-office and Mr. Keefer’s barber shop, holding aan empty milk bottle in each of her hands against her chest. Through the knot-hole in front of her she could see most of Hank and he couldn’t see her at all. She watched him blinking in the sun and not moving any way for a while, and then she crouched down to the ground because he started coming her way. She thought she was all right, it looked like he was going on past, and then he stopped and looked down at Mr. Keefer’s empty chair on the sidewalk and then in through Mr. Keefer’s front window, and she thought he wouldn’t ever leave looking. Then he started coming back the post-office way, and she had to lie down practically in the weeds, but he could have seen her through the gap in the fence just beside her, but he didn’t look. She watched him stand about on the sidewalk and look round him, every way, and scratch his head, and then walk off the sidewalk into the street, as slow as anything, patting his hand on a car there so he left marks all over it where the dust came off, and then he was walking faster and faster, and then he was running. He banged his hand on a car roof across the street, so it sounded like a gun, and he cut the corner of the sidewalk and he ran off down the middle of the street going to the station. When she heard the sound of his feet die out at last she stood up and half her leg was stinging from a nettle. When she was sure he couldn’t come back right away, she ducked out into the main street and ran across it to the cafe.
“Just two cents,” she said to Hilda. “And one of those.” She put one of the bottles on the counter and stayed in the back part of the cafe and kept her head turned away from Mr. Keefer on his stool by the window. She held the other bottle against her face, in front of the eye that hurt, and held the other eye shut with her hand. She turned round and round slowly, watching the whole room swim like water. The juke-box was all colours, running together.
“What’d you do this time?” Mr. Keefer asked. He must’ve seen her coming across. He saw an awful lot.
“I didn’t do nothin'” It was all right when it was over, but they all had to ask and find out. Even the sun was wavy, coming in the window.
“Let’s have a look at it.” He was all blurred through the glass, he was as big as anything. She backed away and opened her ordinary eye. He was reaching out. He was making it hurt all over when it had nearly stopped. She heard the cash register ring and looked to see her eight cents marked up, steady. She kept looking as long as she could without them noticing, and then she put the bottle down on the counter beside the other and took her chocolate bar and her two cents change from Hilda.
“He caught me doing things with Janey,” she whispered to her. “It was her fault, I didn’t wanta do them. She said everybody did them. I won’t go blind, will I?”
Hilda’s face came right down even with hers, and close, and her hand touched her all round the eye where it was sore, and her fingers were so soft she could hardly feel them.
“It will maybe swell a little,” she said. “Even a lot, maybe, so it closes. It will be all right.” She was smiling and her hand was touching where it didn’t hurt.
“Janey ran away, calling things, but he wouldn’t’ve hit her anyway.”
On her way out she stopped at the door to make sure Hank wasn’t anywhere about, and she heard Mr. Keefer say that her father would hurt one of them one day so it wouldn’t get better.

*

Phil rubbed himself hard with the towel, shivering from the cold shower and feeling clean. Dirt was all right when he was working, when it was all part of the job, but it seemed different afterwards. It depended, sometimes he didn’t feel it, and sometimes he had to come in here right after, as though there was something the matter with him and he had to get rid of it and not go near Annabel like that. He would be better if he never went near her, the way he was. Already he had probably put twins in her at least, she was big enough; but she didn’t care, she still waited for him to come at her. And when she wasn’t waiting for him she was sitting out by the pumps like now, just gaping. And every time Hank came past she watched him with her slow eyes. And he watched her. And for all her watching he still got away practically every day with another tool. But nobody cared. Nobody cared a damn.
He mopped the floor of the cubicle and dried his feet carefully and pulled on the clean socks he had laid ready and padded across the little room to pump water up, ready for the next time. He could hear her outside now, talking to somebody, and laughing slow, the way she laughed. She was like a big round cat in the sun, all smiling and pleased with herself. He was feeling hot again, already. He couldn’t take showers all day, and if he left the room there wasn’t anywhere he could go. He should’ve known better, right from the beginning, and told her where to go when she kept coming round and waiting for him to make her, when she ought to have been in school still and doing what she wanted with boys.
He dressed himself in clean clothes and brushed his hair. He couldn’t hear her any longer, but he knew she was still just on the other side of the wall. He looked at the white plaster for awhile, and then he took down a few of his geographical magazines from their shelf and sat on his stool and leafed through them slowly, looking for the pictures he remembered as cool, the ones with not many people in them and good long views. But he didn’t have much hope they would do any good, not these days.

*

Except for the one light hanging over the heads of the choir in the chancel, the church was dark. Mr. Wilkinson, facing them, rapped his knuckles against the pulpit and nodded to Iris to play the introduction to the hymn on the organ. Behind them the memorial window was gloomy, and in the nave Mrs. Watson’s head was in dim silhouette. Mr. Fairling, right at the back of the church, chafed the back of one hand with the palm of the other, and thought he couldn’t be seen by anybody in the choir; yet he sensed that they knew he was there; and Mrs. Watson seemed to be restless in her pew, perhaps peering round to make him out in the darkness, which made him think that he really ought not to stay. It was the irregularity which they might mind; they might be unsettled by thinking that he had some particular reason for attending their practice.
They started to sing, and he thought he ought at least to sit down, though he really felt more like strolling back and forth. Walking usually best settled his mind, though he thought that hearing Bella sing and not being seen himself, just a listener like anyone, might settle him more. He heard the door near him softly open and saw a shape pass him quickly and sit down in the pew right in front of him and hunch down and press his hands between his thighs. It was Ray, of course, smelling of hair oil as on Sundays. For him it was different, since he came every Friday; probably they would miss him if they thought he wasn’t there.
He walked slowly along the hemp matting towards the other side of the church, where the shadow seemed to be deepest and the smell of hair oil would be less. It was a question of letting his mind rest, he couldn’t expect that it would continue forever to work as well as it used. Sundays like the one to come had always been troublesome, since they had no particular character; and the silence in the manse and the darkness in his study with only the one still pool of light on his desk accentuated things. He was better, less nervous, if he didn’t sit too long all alone, though naturally he couldn’t make calls on people simply for his own convenience. He was there to help them, not they him.
Mr. Wilkinson stopped the choir and gave them some words of advice and started them again, singing the baritone line with them. Considering whom they had to choose from, Mr. Fairling thought, they really managed very well, though the voices of all of them sounded coarse near to Bella’s. It was a pity there wasn’t greater opportunity for her to sing alone. Everyone enjoyed it when she did. He felt better himself when she did. But her mother would insist on treating her as if every exertion she made was a danger to her body and even her soul. Ah, she was going to sing alone now, the others were stopping. He leaned forward a little over the back pew as Iris played the last bar of one verse on the organ and then began the next.
But Bella had hardly begun to sing, only two or three words, when she faltered and stopped. She smiled around her uncertainly and looked upset.
“I’m afraid the time is a little slow,” she said. One or two of the women glanced round uneasily, and Iris laid her hands in her lap and gazed straight ahead of her. Mr. Cronkite coughed.
“Only a very little slow,” Bella said in a low voice, looking flushed and embarrassed. Mr. Fairling didn’t like to see her that way and be so far from her that he couldn’t give her any help. He wasn’t at fault, of course, there was no reason to think that his presence had interfered with Iris’s rhythm; still, perhaps he had better leave. Already Mrs. Watson was half-turned round in her pew as if she were trying to catch sight of him, as if he were a stranger in the church and unwelcome. Ah no, perhaps it was not he whom she thought a stranger, for there was someone else, a man, standing not so far from him. Ah, Hank. When had he come in?. Was it he who.? Iris had begun again to play, but now Bella seemed to have lost the time, for she faltered again and reddened and stopped.
“Are you all right?” Mr. Wilkinson asked kindly. The other women were looking at her in some apprehension.
“Yes. I’m all right. I’m quite all right,” she said. “Shall we try again?”
Mr. Fairling watched her in great unease, but this time her voice held true and filled the church with its sweet clarity, and he felt the curious pressure inside him diminish and subside. It was only when she had finished that he realized that Hank was standing right next to him now, even touching him.
“You like that, eh?” he said in a whisper so loud that Bella clearly heard it with her uncanny ears, for she started. “I can see you like it. I like it too. What about me coming round on Sunday and playing my mouth-organ while she sings? I did that with a woman once where I was.” The whole choir was peering now and trying to listen, and Mrs. Watson was quite twisted round in her pew. Mr. Fairling put an admonishing finger to his lips and moved a step away. The man was so hot; it must be his unused energy. It would be a very good thing indeed when he could spend his time building his tower and leave the rest of them to themselves.

CHAPTER NINE

Harry was up and dressed before it was light, and was driving over the gully out of town before even Jessop was stirring. He drove slowly, not in any hurry, gazing out at the dim ploughed fields on one side of the road and then on the other, while the cloudless sky turned to a pale bluish-grey. The dew was heavy on the road, so the car wheels didn’t raise any dust, and the air that rushed into the car was cool and damp, and smelled of the night and sounded of waking birds. It was the best time of the day, he would argue it with anyone; it was the only time of the day when he felt quiet. He even felt washed, like all the miles of black land stretching away, looking like fallow land but all of it sown and the seeds in it already starting to swell. There was nobody else anywhere in sight, only a house or two far off, and miles of wire fences, and the row of telephone poles reaching ahead of him, like the skeletal fin of an enormous fish, right to the horizon. But the sun was already rising, and was warm against the side of his face and the back of his steering hand. It was clear of the horizon and growing strong when he reached the main road and turned east, and accelerated into the midst of its rays.

*

The sun was hot that day, hotter than the days before, and there was no wind. The first freshness lasted until mid-morning, but by noon it was more like August, and the children were restless and wouldn’t work. Mr. Overgaard sent them off on the stroke of twelve, before he lost his temper, and waited until they were all gone, and Miss Purl was gone, before leaving the school himself. He sneezed in the sunlight, in spite of his glasses, and decided he would have to start using the darker for outside now, and the ordinary ones for the classroom. If Iris hadn’t broken them or lost them, that was, and forgotten to mention it as usual. At least Jessop’s serum had kept the swelling down, and at least he could breathe. So far. But they would soon be puffing up their faces on the playground and laughing. Other people’s troubles were always a joke. Hank seemed to be waving at him from his eight holes, trying to attract his attention; but he couldn’t be sure, the way the sun was glaring and making the air shiver with strange flashes. In any case he couldn’t expect him to go over there if Josey was with him, standing by just as if he were anybody, not a regular truant setting a bad example to all the others. Not that he could expect much, of course, when his mother didn’t seem to have the least interest in his schooling herself.
Though Hank did seem to be alone, at that; and it was possible he had some problem. He stopped where he was on the sidewalk and squinted across the playground. Near him a chicken was scratching in the dirt. One of Willa Gleave’s probably, loose again. Hank was coming his way now.
“Stay there,” Hank shouted. “I’ve got a question to ask you.” As if nobody had anything to do but answer his questions. Mrs. Otterdown probably gave him that idea, they were so close these days. He couldn’t stop them taking land which was morally part of the playground; he was only the principal, he didn’t have any power against landowners, but they couldn’t make him give advice. He started walking home again, watching the sidewalk boards ahead of him closely, since if he happened to walk off it there would be sure to be some boy near or far who would see and the word would be all around town. Rupe was coming straight towards him on his roller. There would be dust from that, and it would sit on the air and he would have to walk through it. Rupe wouldn’t think of that, naturally, he would expect everyone to be so pleased to see him rolling the streets in the town again, when he ought never to have been doing anything else. Hank had reached the sidewalk and was walking along beside him. Lurching was more the word. His whole back was a glaring red.
“I thought maybe you’d be able to tell me how long it takes a stone to fall how far,” he said. He wasn’t trying to stop him, to give him his due. “To make sure the holes are deep enough.”
“I don’t remember offhand the rule for falling bodies.” All he had to do anyway was tie a stone to a string to measure the depth, his question must be some kind of joke. “And I’m afraid my wife’s waiting lunch.” If he hurried, he might just reach the corner before Rupe did. He couldn’t help it if Hank told Mrs. Otterdown he wasn’t being co-operative, she didn’t own him after all, and if his health was ruined he wouldn’t be able to help the children or her or anybody. He nodded at Hank to show that he didn’t mean to be rude and walked on as fast as he decently could; but Rupe passed him before he could reach the corner, and the clouds of fine dust billowed over the ditch, all glittering in the sunlight so that he could hardly see. He sneezed again and again, feeling his nose and eyeballs swelling. He leaned against Hilda’s fence to catch his breath and peered angrily after Rupe through the glaring light which made even the grass seem afire, and could just see Hank following after the roller down the middle of the road.

*

“He’s got no more right to it than anybody else,” Nancy Chopek said, holding down the corner of the chest with all her strength. “Not without my permission. You know as well as me what my dad thought about that saw. Bribery he said it was. You’d have given back the parts long ago, I know you, if anybody’d had a mind to ask for them, which they hadn’t, thank God, people have got some principles left, even if not much, not like when he was alive and knew right from wrong.”
“Get out of my way,” Frank said.
“You think you’ll be a hero, don’t you? But it’s mine, you’ve got no right to it. He’ll break it probably.” He squeezed her shoulders in his hands, pulled her from the chest and threw her across the bed.
“You just stay there and shut up,” he said, lifting the lid of the chest. “Where is it then? Where’ve you put it?”
“Find it yourself,” she said. “I suppose you think this’ll put you in good with the old lady. I don’t suppose you thought to wash your hands first, before poking around in all those clean things, no, I don’t suppose so. As long as you’re in big with those who’ve got the money and things. Maybe the old lady’ll start sending us food parcels, she’ll be so grateful. You don’t have to throw everything onto the floor. It’s not that end anyway. They’ll still look down their noses at me, living here in this shack, as if most of their fathers even went to school. And it’s not that end either, as you might as well know.”
Frank pulled a small brown paper parcel from the trunk. Nancy looked at it, then sat forward on the bed and looked at it closely.
“That’s it, eh?” he said. “Well, is it?”
“It’s mine,” she said quietly, reaching out with both hands for it. “He left it to me. You shouldn’t’ve told we had it. He could get a saw anywhere, he’s got money, I guess. Give it back.” She bent further forward Her fingertips touched the parcel. Frank slapped them down with his free hand.
“He’s gonna use this one,” he said. “It’s a machine, ain’t it? It was made to be used. I’ll work it myself and he’ll pay me. How’s that?”
“It was bribery,” she said. “My dad said. It was bribery, he said.”
“Fuck your dad,” Frank said, and swung out his arm and hit her on the shoulder with the parcel, so hard that she gasped.
“It’s not yours,” she said, her voice suddenly shrill, sliding along the bed away from him, but he followed her and stood over her. “He was my father, not yours. He warned me against you. Everybody warned me against you. I think you’ve done it this time, you’ve broken it.” She felt her shoulder with careful fingers.
“You should’ve taken their advice then.”
“I hope you have broke it. Then they’d know. My trouble is I don’t bruise like the girls do.”
“Your trouble is you never keep your trap shut.” As she started sliding along the bed to avoid him, back the way she had come, he held her by the shoulder he hadn’t hit.
“He left it to me,” she said, her head down.
“He didn’t leave it to anybody, he just left it. He popped off and left it. And if you want reasons for complaining about me taking it from his ever-loving daughter who skipped out on him to be fucked by the janitor, then you’re sure as hell going about it the right way.” When she didn’t answer, he let her go and walked out of the room, not bothering to shout at Maureen who scuttled out ahead of him.

*

“I suppose the bird’s singing out of tune as well,” Mrs. Watson said to Bella, as they walked along the sidewalk towards the main street. Bella was still in one of her short-sleeved dresses, but she thought that after today her mother wouldn’t allow it. And she would be hot inthe dress, closed in, like the windows everywhere when the screens were put up as protection in the summer.
“Ididn’t say anyone was out of tune.”
“Out of time then, same thing. You do your best yourself in the eyes of God, and let others look after themselves.”
“You said you wouldn’t bring it up again,” Bella said, concentrating to keep to her mother’s pace; but she had to take such short steps that she couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t stumble. It was strange how it was so different from walking alone.
“Well, I won’t. The bird reminded me, that’s all. You just remember that God’s watching over everything, and He sees what’s good and what’s only pride. He didn’t give you your voice so you could show it off like new clothes.”
Bella didn’t say anything and hoped that her mother would leave her quiet. She was wrong to have blamed Iris, even if she was playing slowly, but there was no way she could make it right. She heard things so clearly that she forgot that other people didn’t, not even her mother. She felt suddenly a little unsteady on her feet, and too tall, as if the ground were a long, long way below her. She held more tightly to her mother’s arm, and told herself she was foolish to be afraid of falling, and listened to the voices of some children playing in the street ahead of them. Mrs. Gleave called out a good afternoon from across the street, and she turned her head to smile in her direction.
“He’s not getting on with it, I notice,” her mother called out, without stopping. “Even with the planting nearly over and a man or two free. I expect he’s more talk than action, like most people nowadays.”
“Alvin says there’s a thing or two they’ve got to have,” Mrs. Gleave said. “They can’t get on without them, he says. “But they’ll start going ahead and never break, once they do have all they need, he says. He ought to be back from out of town any moment now.”
“They’re one as full of wind as the other,” Mrs. Watson muttered. “Just like children with a new toy. Alvin drives that car of his all over the country, telling himself he’s doing important work, when he ought to have stuck with the farm machines which he at least knew was a real job. And that man Hank! He kept Mrs. Otterdown up till all hours again last night, talking about some crazy thing or other. She looked half-dead with exhaustion this morning; and her eyes were glittering as if she were starting a fever, and dark rings all round them. He’ll be the death of her, you mark my words. If only old Mr. Otterdown were still alive, things would be different. He would have seen through this man soon enough. Now you go away and don’t bother her,” she added, as they reached the main street and one of the children who were playing there ran up to Bella and tried to take her hand.
“Can’t keep their hands off people,” Mrs. Watson said, while the child slipped round to the other side of Bella and nuzzled close to her, holding her dress with both hands. “Parents don’t know how to bring them up; don’t even seem to remember they’re there half the time. Just let them do as they like, that’s their motto. It’s a wonder they aren’t worse than they are. Now then,” she said, loosening her arm from Bella’s hand. “The best thing to do first is for me to go to Jessop’s for that salve. If he’s there, which he more than likely isn’t. In case you burn. You look as if you might.” She walked a couple of steps away, and Bella felt the child cautiously creeping round towards her hand. “And don’t you just stand there, or wander around. The sun’s got very hot suddenly. And that man Hank’s moving about somewhere, you may be sure. I don’t suppose he’s up to any good. He’s got a restless look in his eye. You better wait for me in the store, he won’t bother you in there.”
“I don’t mind him now,” Bella said hesitantly, as the child took her hand and held it tightly. “I mean, he doesn’t bother me any more now. In the last days I’ve walked past him two or three times, and he pretended he wasn’t even there.”
“I don’t call that nice behaviour. If he was there, why couldn’t he say so? What’s he got to hide? I suppose you’d like him watching you wherever you go in the town, never telling you he’s doing it. You’re sure you don’t want to come with me to Jessop’s?”
“I’ll wait in the store for you,” she said, and listened to her mother’s steady footsteps crossing the main street; which was beginning to rumble with the approach of the steamroller.
“Maureen,” she said in a low voice, bending her head down to the child and trying to loosen her hand. “Not so tight, please. You’re hurting me. I won’t go away.” None of the other children held so tightly.
“The steamroller’s coming,” Maureen whispered. “Mr. Windflower and the steamroller. He gave me a ride yesterday, me and two other girls. And we all waved at everybody like we was film stars. And then he said it was dangerous and made us get down.”
Bella listened to it coming. Though most of the day was past, it was still very hot. She thought she would certainly burn if she didn’t shelter herself, and then her mother would make her stay in the manse for days. But she stayed where she was, with Maureen squeezing her hand and pressing up against her, until the roller came abreast of her and filled up the air around her with its noise.
“Hallo,” Rupe shouted out through the rumbling. “I’m out to roll the north road. Want to come along for the ride?” She smiled and waved, and he laughed. She breathed in the diesel fumes and the smell of the new paint, which still seemed strange though she was more used to it, and the smell of Rupe and the smell of dust.
“Your mom’s looking at you,” Maureen whispered. “From in front of Jessop’s store she is.”
Bella started, and realized that she was still standing where her mother had left her, and walked as quickly as she could to Harry’s store, with Maureen hugging her side; and smiled to feel its coolness wrap her round as the screen door clacked shut behind them.
“I’m going to work here some day,” Maureen said as usual. There was no sound of anybody else in the store. Harry didn’t let anybody sit at the back when he went out of town to buy things, and Maida must be in the post-office, listening to the telephone. “After Maida gets married,” Maureen said. “And after Mavis as well. Then I’ll sell you whatever you want. My dad’ll leave me alone then.”
Bella freed her hand and told her to go and see her sister, and listened to her feet dying away on the old boards, and then began to walk slowly along the long narrow aisle towards the back of the store. There were one or two things at least which she could take over to the cash register before her mother came, but there wasn’t any hurry. Even if Jessop was in his shop, the salve wouldn’t probably be ready.
Maida must’ve been mopping the floor with pine disinfectant, she thought; which was a pity, though naturally it had to be done, what with all the people walking on it, and all of them probably carrying germs. But it buried the smells. And it seemed to dull her nose as well, because anything she remembered as being faint the last time, like the pipe tobacco Mr. Otterdown used to use, which still lingered by the cash register after so many years, she couldn’t trace at all. Still, the strong smells were clear enough: blankets and leather and soap and coffee and oilcloth and towels and sawdust and onions and potatoes, and the plastic in the front window, hot from the sun, and piles of old newspapers, and the old wood of the store itself all round her like the walls of a cave. And the smell of the men as well, even one or two of the dead ones, all of them different but mixed up together, even Harry. It made her feel strange to smell them all there, and others as well, women who came shopping practically every day; it was like being in the middle of ghosts, all of them watching her and all of them pretending not to be there. But, really, they didn’t know that she was there. She was alone. It was more as if she was eavesdropping on them.
She walked right to the back of the store, to the door which led through to the old school-room, where they kept the lumber for the sidewalk for when some of it rotted. She could smell the boards from where she was, and other things stored there as well, and she thought she could even catch some faint trace, something like chalk, from when it had been the school, and something she couldn’t place which reminded her of Mrs. Otterdown; but nothing which was a smell of herself from the years when she had sat there learning, and nothing of the church that the room had been before it had been the school; the smell of the disinfectant was too strong, and the smell of all the men sitting round the stove beside her.
She caught the smell of Jessop as well, which wasn’t pleasant. He was almost never in the store, it seemed, or the smell of him would’ve been stronger than anything. Even in the street, when he had been by not long before, she sometimes had to stop and go a different way. It made her feel guilty, even though people wouldn’t know what she did, since they couldn’t smell much themselves. She didn’t like to shy away from anyone, and Jessop had certainly never done her any harm. Fortunately, these days, he was usually gathering his herbs out of town. But the longer her mother spent waiting in his shop for the salve, the worse she would smell when she came back.
Somebody was running towards her from the direction of the post office. Two people, with light feet. Maida it would be, with Maureen behind her, almost on her heels, and making excited noises.
“It’s that Hank,” Maida said, taking hold of her hand and pulling her towards the front door. “He’s stolen Mr. Windflower’s steamroller, they say, and he’s heading into the middle of town at top speed.”
Bella followed after her, while Maureen scampered round them both, and just as they reached the door, it opened, and her mother was there, reeking of Jessop’s shop.

*

Harry’s eyes were aching from gazing into the late-afternoon sun; his neck and back were aching as well, from being bent forward so he could peer under the sunshield at the dusty highway ahead, and his whole body was weary and stiff from mile after mile of straight westward road. He drove faster to end sooner, but the prairie all round was the same. The front wheels jolted in a rut which he didn’t remember noticing. His eyelids were heavy. The car jolted again and he found himself on the shoulder, about to go into the ditch, with just time to swerve back onto the road, and the dying blare in his ears of a car horn going the other way. There were only ten miles between him and the side road turning off home, a short distance in which to have an accident, but his trust in himself was declining by the moment. He thought it might even be a good thing to stop and stretch himself, take a turn or two along the roadside and breathe in a little of that fresh air which was hanging over all the fields; then he saw a man standing beside the road, hitch-hiking he presumed, and stopped beside him and asked him if he wanted a ride.
“You can keep me awake,” he said, as the man climbed in and slammed the door. More a boy than a man he looked, though he was so covered in the dust of cars swirling past that it was hard to tell; and an Indian by the looks of him. “But I’m not going far on this road.”
“I’m going to Edmonton,” he said, holding his haversack on his lap with both hands and slitting his eyes against the sun. “There’s work in Edmonton.”
“So they say,” Harry said, accelerating.
“There’s jobs everywhere in the west. I’ll maybe go through to Vancouver.”
There were jobs where he was going himself, if predictions could be trusted. Perhaps he could suggest it, though it was outside his jurisdiction. An Indian might be a good omen, might bring good luck, always a useful thing when playing with water. Though this one probably wasn’t from a local tribe, and perhaps not a plains Indian at all. It wasn’t easy to know his provenance, since he wore the clothes of his conquerors and cut his hair like theirs and spoke their language to ease his way.
“You don’t have to go so far west,” he said. “There are jobs only a few miles from here. I happen to be the representative of a large building concern.” A misleading claim, to say the least, and to what purpose? What did he think he was doing? Did he imagine a fresh infusion of blood would strengthen the tribe and even bolster his position as Peace Chief? More, exactly, not to say sanely, what would happen if Hank looked the man over and turned him down? Planting was more or less over, the men would be ready to work again on the tower building. Which of them would want an Indian in their midst?
“I can’t promise you the job,” he said quietly, glancing at the young man, who was still staring straight ahead at the road. “It’s not quite mine to offer.” Not his at all. He could with as much right, perhaps more, offer him the succession to the Chieftainship of the town. He didn’t look unfit for it. He was young, had a good strong face. Had his father thought of such a solution, in his time, much might have been different. Though the land was even then somewhat like used chewing gum, no Indian might have wanted it back.
It was the same season. Roundabout the same season, but the fields were still unturned and cold. Like his father, colder each day. It was a fine thing, they said. People said. For a son to give up university when his father was dying. But none of them tried to persuade his mother. Or even came to the house through the days of rain. While he sat on his bed with his caul cupped in his hands, as if the rain had been some kind of danger, wondering if it was his flesh or his mother’s; and listening to her canes on the floor downstairs as she walked back and forth and answered his father from where she was, never going any nearer, whenever he called with the voice of a shadow from their bedroom; taking over a week to die.
“I turn off here,” he said.
“I guess I’ll give that a chance,” the young man said. “That job you said.” Harry nodded, and turned the car into the road to the town. The fields looked a dark rusty colour in the late sun, and they began to have names of people he knew.
“By July you’ll be able to see a tower from here,” he said. “It’s not far now.” But it wasn’t till they were much nearer that the top of the hotel, like water glittering on the road ahead, rose slowly over the horizon. As they closed in on it, the roof of the elevator and then the roofs of other buildings caught the sunlight. Then, when they were only a mile away, he thought there was much more dust than there ought to be, and wondered why, and gradually accelerated. By the time he reached the bridge over the gully, he was sure there was too much dust, drifting slowly away. The car jolted off the bridge into the main street, where the only thing he noticed near him looked like a dead cat, some cat-sized animal, sprawled in the dirt beside the road, and a small girl stooped over it, poking at it, and Mrs. Strachan waving to him or pointing and calling the child away. What was clearer was in the distance, coming quickly nearer as he didn’t slow down: a crowd, looking big enough to be most of the town, in front of the hotel. They had broken in at last. His father thought he could keep them out forever, and he thought so himself; but they all had to have a look at last at the man who built it and lost all his flesh from hanging on the chandelier; taking advantage of his absence.
No. They were only in front of it, they were all looking the other way, at something in the garage. He stopped his car in front of his store, behind Alvin’s which was straddling the corner of the sidewalk. There were people gathered there as well.
“I said no good would come of him.” It was Mrs. Watson’s voice, cutting through the others. She was on the sidewalk beside him, and Bella was behind her, holding her arm and turning her head this way and that and looking scared. “He won’t be satisfied until he’s broken everything to pieces.”
“He’s just sitting in it,” Mrs. MacNamara said. “They can’t get him down.” The crowd round his car was growing. People seemed to be coming to find him. They wanted something from him. Somebody poked his head in beside the young Indian, and a small hand, somebody else’s, was poking in as well. Two boys butted against each other on the sidewalk, laughing, and another made a noise like a scared chicken. They were asking him to come and see. He pushed open the door of the car and made his way out among them. He wanted one voice to explain, but he had them all. He looked all around him and let himself be led by them and tried not to show that he felt tired. They held onto his sleeves, they pulled at him and pressed up against him, and told each other to be quiet so it could all be explained. They broke apart in front of him like separating waves, holding back until he passed through, and flowing together again. What did they want him to do that they couldn’t do themselves?
Mrs. Paradis stood in his path, her face working, a bundle of dirty cloth in her arms.
“Somebody’s goin’ to pay for these,” she said. Her eyes were tearful, they were trying to hold her back. “Dragged them the whole length of the street, he did. No apologies or nothing. And everybody tramping over them like they was rags. They are now. Nobody need think I can pay.” Her washing. They were telling him, he heard the information coming in, unsorted. The clothes-line had wound into the front roller. She had taken back only what wasn’t torn to pieces. A hen had been caught in it somewhere and been strangled. Willa’s hen. One of her best layers. Gord MacNamara was punching his brother in the chest and they were both laughing.
“If he hadn’t tried to drive the thing backwards, it maybe wouldn’t have been so bad,” Ledbetter was saying, pushing a boy out of his way. The boards of the sidewalk were splintered. Everybody smelled of gasoline, the earth was damp with it. Rupe was standing in front of him, Rupe was going to burst, he was as red as the setting sun. His face was bleeding, and both his arms, and his clothes were torn. Somebody should take him home. He was trying to talk. The crowd seemed to be growing bigger, pushing round him closer.
“I only got down for a moment,” Rupe said. “How was I supposed to know? I thought for once he wasn’t watching me since I’d kept a good look-out. It was like an ambush.” He hardly seemed able to breathe. Stella was touching his scratches with iodine, pushing people back with her elbow. Harry felt people pushing him forward, pushing him sideways.
“I told him to get down,” Rupe said. “I thought he just wanted to sit in it, you know? But the engine was running, of course, I was only out of it for a minute, they came up one side of the bridge while I was going down the other. And he started rolling right at me.”
“He was still going frontways then,” Mundt said. That wasn’t so bad, someone else said. And slowly, Cronkite said; it sounded like Cronkite. With Josey standing up in the cab. He hit the cat like that. Rupe fell down trying to get out of the way, and then it was after him again.
“He was like a maniac,” Stella said. “I was scared out of my wits, seeing Rupe running. I thought he’d kill him, and shouting the whole time.”
“He didn’t have to run into my yard,” Mrs. Paradis said from somewhere, her voice high. “He could’ve stayed under the bridge.”
“I couldn’t just let him loose in the town, could I?” Rupe said, his chest heaving.
“I don’t see you did much good anyway,” MacNamara said, his voice just behind Harry’s ear. “You didn’t stop him sideswiping my car, as far as I noticed.”
“He was going backwards then. What was I supposed to do? I’d be a pancake now if I hadn’t jumped clear.”
“Machines like that ought to be locked up,” MacNamara’s heavy voice said against Harry’s ear; other voices, like echoes, were agreeing, saying Ron was right and Rupe was wrong. And calling on him to play the judge. He moved forward. Rupe moved back. Everybody moved back, and the way was open in front of him, and he reached the court of the garage. Phil was kneeling there on the concrete, both hands on a cloth tamped into a reeking pipe, and Annabel was sitting on a chair in the sunlight which streamed past the hotel, with women around her, and Hank was sitting on the steamroller in the garage itself. Rupe was still explaining, clutching his knotted handkerchief.
“He’s done more damage than this,” MacNamara said, pushing up from behind.
“It was in the Paradis’ back yard that he got turned around somehow,” Rupe said. “He was stopped and I rushed up on him, when he started rolling again, only backwards now, and then he couldn’t control it at all, I guess, not for a while anyway, it was just running loose. It dragged down all her washing and broke up some boxes, while he kept shouting the whole time that he was going to tame it. It’s never any trouble to run, never has been, but all he could make it do was go faster than it was made to do, and round in circles so I couldn’t get near it. And then he was rolling away out across the prairie.”
“There was lots of us after him, not only Rupe,” Mundt said. “But the kids kept getting too close.”
“We almost stopped him at the station,” one of the young men said. They were the fastest, they had been nearest; Hank had driven straight at them with the roller and scattered them in all directions, but they were soon after him again, along the railroad right-of-way and over barbed wire fences he smashed down, which shredded Mrs. Paradis’ washing, then back into town, through Dworshak’s vegetable garden, and right into the main street. Almost every time he changed direction, Rupe had to run to get out of the way. He had fallen time and again; he was bruised and cut all over.
“He almost smashed Alvin, car and all,” Frank said. “He came rushing out of the side street over there, honking the horn and shouting, and when he saw Alvin he made straight at him. Right by your store there.” Alvin was just arrived back, they said, and asking what was what; but he didn’t seem to be around now, unless he was standing back, worried for his employer and employ.
Josey was thrown out of the cab of the roller. Practically everybody saw that. They said he was winded and just lay there, because Hank suddenly waved his arms and spun the wheel and swerved the roller away from Alvin’s car. Hilda was like a mad woman, they said. She ran through the midst of them screaming, and pushed Mrs. Wilkinson so hard that she fell to the ground. But she didn’t reach Josey. He stood up before she got there, and ran after the roller again along the main street south, where MacNamara’s car was half-crushed, and the fender of another one flattened.
“He was trying to get it to his tower, that’s what I figure,” Ray said. “But Alvin’s car was in the way.” And he couldn’t go round the outside of the town either, it seemed, if that was what he wanted. Nobody had much idea. He was still going backwards and sitting sideways on the seat to see and steer at the same time, but Rupe admitted that it wasn’t easy backwards, because a cog had gone. Every time he turned he turned to the right, so he went away from the river at the south end of town, and drove straight at Miss Purl’s place, though she wasn’t there herself then, only Mrs. Comstock was, standing on the back porch eating, they said, as calm as anything. He ran into the fence, knocking it down, and headed for the house, and then swerved back to the fence again, knocking more of it down, while Josey stumbled over the splintered wood and somehow climbed aboard again, ducking under the blow which Hank aimed at him. And Janey Gleave ran along beside them, and looked like climbing aboard as well until she ran into MacNamara who slapped her face and told her not to play the fool with her life and everybody else’s. Two whole sides of the fence were flattened and the tool shed was crushed before Hank had the roller heading back into town again. Miss Purl hadn’t seen the damage herself yet. She had come over faint in the crowd here, it was the smell of the gasoline, others had been nearly sick as well. She was across the street now, walking ba ck and forth on the hotel porch.
They were talking still, describing the last lap, up the main street again, sending the information in; but the excitement was slackening, Rupe was almost dead on his feet, his eyes were glazing, he was leaning on his wife. The steamroller was quiet, backed into Phil’s garage, across the lake of gasoline, and pale smoke was still rising lazily from its engine. And Hank was quiet, gazing blankly from his seat at the crowd which had gathered to see him. Certainly there seemed circumstantial evidence enough to back up their mingling stories. The clothesline, with some cloth still wound round it, was trailing through the gasoline to the stump of pipe which Phil was holding and cursing. When the pipe had snapped, they said, gasoline had sprayed over everything. Josey was standing on the crushed blue pump casing, watching everyone with suspicious eyes and flicking with a stick at a torn piece of sheet. Even Jessop was standing by, glancing all around, waiting. It was an occasion.
“It looked from where the rest of us was following up the street that he couldn’t miss Annabel, even if he tried,” Frank said. “She was polishing the pump, see.”
“It was only new in the fall,” Phil said. “I don’t see how I’m going to explain.”
“There’s no explaining any of it,” MacNamara said. “He’s crazy, that’s all.”
“She didn’t move the whole time, you’d have thought she didn’t see it,” one of the women said. She wasn’t moving now. “Right on top of her he was coming. I don’t suppose it’s done the baby much good, poor thing.”
He looked so peaceful, Harry thought, for a thief and a vandal and a near-murderer, but all the eye-witness accounts were against him. And they wanted him to judge. They were pushing behind him. They wanted him to judge now. To require an explanation and order Hank back to the ground. The pressure on his back was unyielding.
He walked forward, away from them, into the gasoline lake towards the steamroller at its far shore. They were watching him, maybe even supporting him, but they would call out against him if he thought to turn back. The gasoline was like dying rainbows rippling under his feet, rippling away for what felt like a considerable distance. But it wasn’t, already he had almost crossed safely, had almost reached the steamroller; he could look up.
But they were warning him now, they were uneasy; he could hear their voices calling out to him, naming his name; because this man who called himself Hank was dangerous, and unstable, and might do anything next. And he was even then climbing down from the steamroller, with a grin spread over his face. Harry stood where he was, waiting with an answering ready half-smile and wondering what, in the circumstances, was the proper reprimand.
Hank patted him on the shoulder, a generous patting; and blinked around everywhere, as if he were just waking up. Then he set off through the still rippling gasoline, straight at the waiting crowd. They fell back from in front of him, pressing against each other to leave him a path, and turned round themselves to follow the course of his progress, until their backs were all to Harry, who leaned against the steamroller thinking that a riot act to read out would perhaps have been helpful. They all stood where they were, watching, while Hank crossed the street to the steps of the hotel and called out something, some kind of good word, to Miss Purl, who continued walking back and forth along the porch as if no one else were about; until he shrugged and left her, and walked off along the street. Practically everybody followed after him, though none of them went too close.
“I’d better take it home,” Rupe said. He was practically the only one still around, except for his wife to lean on; and Phil, who was trying to mop up the gasoline with what remained of Mrs. Paradis’ washing; and Annabel, sitting quietly by herself now, gazing along the street.
“You do that,” Harry said, and watched him climb up into the cab, and heard him groan at the way he found it, and at the noises the engine made when he managed to start it. Stella called out directions, and he drove slowly out of the garage, while plaster and tools and splintered shelves clattered to the concrete floor behind him. Harry followed in his wake, and was soon among the people again, who were still milling about and talking and explaining; and boys and some young men here and there were hitting each other and laughing. Then Hank was in front of him again, stopping him beside Alvin’s abandoned car, trying to win his attention. Yes, he was listening, he set himself looking and nodding.
“This fellow’s just what I’ve been looking for,” Hank said. He was holding the young Indian by the elbow. “He says he’s mixed lots of cement, and he’s got the right look, eh? It won’t be all gravel one day and all water the next. We’ve got to find him a tent so he can sleep right where we’re working. Tomorrow we’ll really get going.”
Alvin was there as well, a step behind, pleased that they were going to move on with the building, smiling. The young Indian was swinging his haversack back and forth with his free hand, taking what came. Edmonton was a long way off. Though not so far as the return of the land. That was still his own responsibility. Even though, for all the considerable time of his occupancy, he was still more of a queen’s regent than a king.
“This thing better not just end like that,” MacNamara said. “There’s a lot of damage to be accounted for, one way and another.” Harry nodded to him, and around about him generally, to reassure if that would do it, and stepped to one side as some young men pushed Alvin’s car off the sidewalk in front of his store. The boards didn’t seem to be damaged. The steamroller was rolling away down the street and people were drifting away at last, but Hank and the Indian were still standing near him.
“I think there’s an old tent somewhere at the back of the store,” he said. The Indian seemed willing enough to follow him in, but Hank was still holding him by the arm and gazing after the steamroller.

*

“It was just sitting there, waiting for me, going brrm, brrm, brrm,” Hank said. “Orange is sure the most beautiful colour, eh? Made it look like the sun, resting on the bridge a minute, so what was I supposed to do? Hey Harry, can you hear me?”
Harry lay on his back in his bed, hearing through what had been the wall, looking out his window at the black sky, thick with stars. He probably wouldn’t have slept anyway.
“I can hear you,” he muttered.
“It doesn’t work like a car, you know. I guess he knew that, so he kept putting me off. Anybody can drive a car, like the way ants ride beetles, it’s a kind of nature, organized. But it makes old Rupe kind of great when you think of the way he’s been going round in this thing all this time. Only he rides it like he doesn’t really know what he’s got under him, like it was only some kind of special machine he could make do what he wanted because he pulled levers and pushed pedals. But that thing’s alive! It was driving itself today. That’s why I couldn’t do what I wanted, so it was a kind of failure.” He stopped. Harry waited. He had nothing else to do. He was in a temporary sheltered cave, away from the sky opening out from him. Gravity was hard to believe in at night.
“You know what I was going to do? I was going to bring it here, right up to the back gate, and sit your mother in it, and take her for a trip round the town.”
“She’d have liked that,” Harry murmured.
“But it had its own ideas. It was like a wild beast, eh?”
“So they say.”
“I thought it was going to run that Rupe into the ground, and a couple of others as well, running round like dogs after their tails. But it was Annabel it went for, straight at her, she could’ve been squashed. And she just sat there, staring like a cow. I like that woman.”
He was silent for a long time. Harry turned on his side and felt the bed begin to float a little, and hoped he was going to sleep.
“Hey,” Hank called, not loudly, like a drifting whisper. “You think she thinks I’m doing all right?” Harry didn’t know whom he meant, but he nodded into his pillow. His mother, as like as not.

CHAPTER TEN

“I may be blind,” MacNamara said. “But I can’t see what’s the matter with him paying himself for all the damage he done.”
Nobody disagreed with him, what he said seemed logical and fair, but nobody was sure how to go about it. The first day afterward they watched Hank when they had a chance, waiting to see what he was going to do, but he didn’t seem to know they were waiting. He was awake before anyone else, had banged on Alvin’s back door before the sun had risen, calling him to wake up so that they could start work as early as possible, then bounded across the field to the place in the enclosed area where he and Josey had set up the tent the night before, calling out to the Indian as he ran. Before the sun was far above the horizon, all the men he had hired were on the site, and the cement mixer was already working. Norb Pelletier, helped by Newt who was yawning the whole time, shovelled in sand as the Indian told him, being as surprised as anybody that the Indian did know about mixing cement, just as he claimed. They poured it all morning, wheeling up barrowful after barrowful, until half the holes were filled flush with the ground, with the long steel stresses pointing up out of them. In the afternoon they continued, with Josey doing whatever they would let him do. They stopped work at last when the last of the eight holes was filled to the brim with concrete. At different times throughout the day Hank’s eye caught sight of people watching, but all he did was grin and say that now they were really going to build. They thought he would talk about the day before when the work was done, but nobody saw him after the work was done. Then, long after it was dark, they heard his mouth-organ; but they couldn’t locate that either. He seemed to have gone out on the prairie.
“It seems to me Alvin ought to say something,” Ledbetter said. But all Alvin said was that, in his opinion, building the tower was the most important thing, that first things were first, and that everything would be paid for he was certain. They waited longer and watched the thick concrete piers begin to rise slowly above the ground, day by day, but they didn’t attract Hank’s attention. They talked near Harry, to see what he would say or do, but he didn’t seem to hear them most of the time. He didn’t seem to hear the women either, though he looked at them and nodded his head while they told him their opinions, mostly about Mrs. Paradis’ washing and Miss Purl’s fence. He didn’t give them any opinion of his own; he seemed to have his mind on other things, they said, almost as if he had already forgotten about the damage himself.
The trouble was that more and more of the young men were being hired to work on the tower, and the wages were good. That didn’t prevent people complaining, of course, right was right, but it wasn’t so simple just to walk right up to Hank and claim his whole attention. He might easily tell a complainer that he didn’t want his help any longer. He might even tell them all that if they didn’t want to work they didn’t have to and he would take the next bus out of town and build his tower somewhere else. Or just not build it at all; they thought he might do anything. As the days passed, the men changed their minds, until only MacNamara held out for compensation, and he not with any great force.
“The way I see it,” one of the farmers said, whose son was working from sunup to sundown on the tower and saying in the evening how great it was going to be. “It was more of an accident than anything.”
“Which won’t happen again,” Dworshak said. “Now that he can get
on.”
“Maybe he doesn’t realize what damage he done,” Mundt said, gazing at the dangling light bulb in Harry’s store, and the flies flying silently in rough squares beneath it. “He looked kinda dazed, I thought.”
Some of them thought the whole thing was best forgotten; they said the big damage would be paid for by the big companies. MacNamara was insured and Rupe was insured. They could all chip in to pay for the small damages. When Phil, who hardly said anything, said time and again that the company would maybe fire him, they asked him who would be able to take his place; and when he didn’t know, they said the company would be as glad as anybody to see the tower being built, since it showed how the town was moving ahead, which meant it would need a garage more than ever.
Rupe was difficult at first. He had had a mild heart attack the moment the roller was back in its shed, and had blacked out, and had to be carried by neighbours up to his bed, where he had been ever since. His wife said that he shouldn’t be fretted, and wouldn’t let any visitor stay for long. So Cronkite and Wilkinson, when they came to see him, stood quietly near the door and didn’t know how to begin. Nobody thought it was a good idea, Cronkite said, but they didn’t know what else to do. It was maybe not quite straight, Wilkinson said, but the companies had more money than they knew what to do with, and if Hank had to be told now that he ought to pay, well, he might do anything, there was no knowing what he might do. He might go berserk again, and break more things, and then they would have to do something about that as well, and there was no telling where it would all end. There wouldn’t be a water tower, that was for sure, Cronkite said. They stopped then and looked at each other for a lead, because Rupe seemed to be getting very red.
The trouble, Wilkinson said, leaning his long body forward, was that Hank didn’t seem to remember what he had done. The companies would want to ask him questions, wouldn’t they? And if he didn’t remember, you see.. Looked at any way, it was a problem, Cronkite said. They had thought of blaming it on a hit-and-run driver, a really big truck, and the dust in everybody’s eyes so they couldn’t see the licence number, but the companies would’ve thought it was funny, they decided. The best thing, Wilkinson said, was for Rupe to say he had been driving it himself, and it went out of control. Because of the cog that didn’t work in reverse, maybe, Cronkite said very quietly, leaning back as Wilkinson leaned forward. Just for the pump and the two cars, he added. And the roller itself, of course. The rest they could fix themselves.
Rupe grew short of breath, so that he could hardly answer. He said he wouldn’t do what they wanted. He said it was criminal. He said Hank was guilty and ought to be punished. Stella dabbed cologne on his forehead as he grew redder and redder, and when he couldn’t speak any longer she told the men to go away in a voice like a whispering scream. But the next day he was quieter, and he called the men back to say that he had changed his mind, that there was no need to disrupt the town further, that he would write a letter to his insurance company and explain things in his own way. When they had gone, he asked his wife to bring him his insurance policy and read it through to him from beginning to end.
The sidewalks weren’t extensively damaged, but where they were they were crushed. Four places in the main street and three along the side street to the station had to be boarded off, not so much for most people..though at night there was no moon..as for Bella. Nobody could remember exactly where the steamroller had gone, so they examined all the planks which they thought might have been weakened; and the children, as if it were a game, tested them by jumping up and down on them wherever they were, most of all on the sidewalk by the playground, where they could watch the men working on the tower; though they knew as well as anyone that the roller had never been over that way in Hank’s hands. If a board made a strange noise, they shouted and crowded round, and some of them ran off to tell Harry or Mr. Fairling; or Frank, whose job it was to repair what was broken. Or whose job it was supposed to be, but he was busy by the pile of planks in the tower enclosure, sawing them into lengths for frames for the concrete piers with the power saw he had carried to Hank from the school, and offered him on the condition that he be allowed to work it himself, since it was he who had re fitted the parts which his father-in-law had removed. He worked for Hank all day, and watched jealously over the saw, which was plugged on a long lead into Mrs. Otterdown’s kitchen; and whatever else the town paid him to do he did when he found some spare time. But when they carried him the planks for the sidewalks from the storage room at the back of Harry’s store, he at least sawed them into the lengths they wanted.
All but one of the broken places were repaired before the insurance assessor arrived; and because the boards were old boards, from the walls of Otto Grunwald’s old smithy, and stored over the years by Mr. Otterdown for general town use, they nearly matched the boards already in place. The assessor didn’t notice. He examined the damage which was pointed out to him and listened to the men’s accounts of what had happened, and then talked to Rupe in Rupe’s house, where Stella brought him a lemonade, for the day was hot. Rupe said that he hadn’t any history of heart attacks, but that this one had come on him suddenly; everything had gone bright white, he said, and he felt he was floating, but in the middle of what he was floating in, not on top. Something between water and air. Not thick, he said, but he couldn’t breathe it, and he thought he was going to burst. Then there was a noise like the sea must sound like, smashing everything. And then they were lifting him down. His eyes were bright. The assessor said that he was sorry, but that under the circumstances the company, though it would fulfill its present obligations, would not probably be able to renew his policy. Stella saw him out of the house, apologizing for the trouble he had been put to, coming so far.
The last broken patch of sidewalk, and the worst, between the two concrete entries to Phil’s garage, was repaired as soon as it was no longer needed for evidence. The gasoline company agent, when he heard that the insurance company would be paying, said that they would soon have the pump replaced, and whistled at the damage and was gone. The men breathed more freely, surprised at how easy it had been, but still felt they had done wrong and didn’t like to talk about it. The women shared out their housekeeping money to replace the clothing Mrs. Paradis had lost, and replaced her sheets free from their own closets. Mrs. Ledbetter, older than most, said that it reminded her of old times. People were as good now as ever, she said, but there wasn’t usually the opportunity to show it. Willa Gleave said she didn’t mind about her hen, and others who had sustained slight damage said they could repair it themselves. Bella was soon able again to walk without guidance anywhere in the town, always in her broad-brimmed hat now that the sun was growing strong. But Miss Purl’s fence still lay on the ground.
“If we all got together,” MacNamara said, “We could put it up in an afternoon.”
“In an hour,” Mundt said. Three of them had stopped Miss Purl at last to say their mind. She stood facing them, where she had come upon them at her own back gate, the children’s exercise books in her arms.
“I know how you feel,” MacNamara said. “We all feel like that.”
“It’s better, though, to have the fence up, wouldn’t you say?” Wilkinson said. “I don’t see him ever getting round to it.”
She smiled at them and thanked them for their trouble and for what they offered, and stepped forward to her gate, so that they had to move aside. Only a few feet away the fence was broken down. The splintered boards and two-by-fours, and the posts which weren’t still standing at crazy angles, were piled on the open ground outside her lot. She had piled them herself, with the help of her aunt, and she had redug the broad swath of earth and grass and newly sprouted plants which the roller had flattened.
“Since it was he who caused the destruction,” she said. “It ought to be he who repairs it. I have told him and I am waiting.”
They knew that well enough. The whole town knew it, since she had walked out of her way to school and crossed the playground to the wire round the enclosure, and even made her way through that, and threaded her way through the piles of lumber and cement and tools and rubble, while the men all looked at her to find out why she was there, and Frank was sure she had come to get him to clean the school, and Alvin made his way along beside her, trying to persuade her not to stay. But she walked right up to Hank, where he was standing over his table and frowning at the men who were building the eight big piers all around him. She told him what she had come for, and then she left him. But two mornings later she came back with the same demand, and in the evenings she waited. The three men left her at her gate and went back into town, saying they had done what they could. She didn’t make it easy for people to help her, other women said; and most of them thought she thought herself too good. Children imitated her talking to Hank when they thought they couldn’t be seen. It wasn’t the time to make trouble, Willa Gleave said to Rose MacNamara, not when everybody else was putting personal things aside for the good of the town.
On Sunday it was discovered that the Indian was a Christian, which made people feel easier. His name was Nathan Goodfellow, and he had been raised, as he told Mr. Fairling, in a United Church Mission. He sang three of the four hymns without using the hymn book. He sang very loudly, and Iris complained that he sang off-tune; but most people, though some of them agreed, said it didn’t matter, it was good he came to church at all. Mr. Fairling said probably his parents had sung a very different kind of song. Everyone agreed that he seemed to be a good worker, not at all shiftless as Indians generally were. He kept the cement mixer running practically all day long, almost never looking up from under the old hat he wore. He ate his lunch at the cafe and was back on the site long before anybody else, ready with the concrete from the moment they arrived. Whatever Hank told him to do he did at once. In the evening, while he ate his supper in the cafe, he played record after record on the juke box, and answered any questions that were asked him, but didn’t ask any himself. He went back to his tent early, and there, before it was quite dark, some people saw Jessop talking to him and pulling things out of his basket, and they wondered who he thought he was, and who the Indian thought he was, that he let him inside the enclosure at night when it was forbidden to everybody else. But when Alvin told Hank how the Indian wasn’t being a perfect guard for the tower, Hank looked at him as though he wasn’t there.
Every day, as the work went on and the piers rose higher in their scaffolding, Mrs. Otterdown sat on her back porch in her wheel-chair, watching, as some said; dozing, as others said. Nobody was encouraged to speak to her, so nobody did, though it was the first time for years that she had stayed so long outside her house in any season. When it was time for lunch. Hank walked slowly over to her back porch and sat on the back steps, almost at her feet, and people could see him talking to her, but nobody could hear. When Harry, back from the store, came through the house, they all three went inside to eat what Mrs. Watson had prepared and left for them.
Hank was steadier these days than he had been. Sometimes he was suddenly angry and shouting, but never for long. He prowled round the site from pier to pier, watching the men carefully and sometimes patting their backs and urging them on. He carried a notebook and a blueprint everywhere with him, and when he was busy with one or the other, nobody liked to disturb him. Day after hot cloudless day his whole attention was on the rising piers: he watched Nathan and his helpers mix the concrete, he watched the men wheel it in barrows up the ramps, every day higher, and tip it into the frames of one pier and then another, working their way round and round the octagon; he helped the men unscrew the frames and remove them when the cement had fully hardened, and he examined the fresh concrete with both his eyes and his hands, feeling his way all over its surface, trying to find flaws, looking everywhere with eyes full of distrust. When the piers were too high for him to watch from the ground, and when the barrows were hoisted up by a system of pulleys, he was always in the scaffolding of the pier where the concrete was being poured, making sure the frames were properly bolted and the steel stresses properly in position, and watching every move of the men who were pouring and stirring the concrete. He never relaxed for a moment, and when each day was over he looked exhausted. But at night he was out on the prairie and the sound of his mouth-organ drifted into the town.
Then the sound of it was broken, on some nights for a long time; and some of the men said to other men that they saw Hilda walking out of town these days after she had closed the cafe. Jessop, out looking for plants under the full moon, saw her rise up with Hank out of Mundt’s north quarter, where the wheat was just beginning to show, but he didn’t say so to anyone.
People worried increasingly that the sky was never cloudy, day or night. In the cool evenings they sat on their porches and talked in low voices. They had to have rain, they were all agreed about that; there was so little moisture in the ground that if it didn’t rain there would hardly be any crop. Ledbetter said it would be like the drought in the thirties. Alvin said that things were different now, because scientists were working on ways to bring rain. MacNamara said that he supposed you had to have the clouds to begin with, and his wife agreed. Mrs. Watson said that no good could come of trying to interfere with God’s plans; they would be flooded out of their homes, as like as not. Some of the young men at lunchtime stopped in the post office to ask Mrs. Comstock, as a joke, if her astrology books told her when rain would be coming their way; but she told them that what she knew was for sale not for giving, and none of them offered to pay. In her bedroom, she puzzled through her charts for her own information, but she found that she kept falling asleep, and worried that she was growing older than she could manage.
Late one afternoon at the end of April, heavy banks of cloud drifted up in front of the setting sun, sending out thick rolls of thunder and darkening the whole prairie. Everyone looked up and waited, as the clouds overspread the sky, and some were hopeful and most were not. Mrs. Dworshak said she felt a drop on her hand; others also felt drops, and saw them fall, splashing into the dust of the street, splattering on the faded roofs of cars; enormous drops, and more and more of them. Janey Gleave ran across the main street, her palms and face turned up to the sky. People backed into doorways and breathed in the freshness, watching closely for the moment when they could say it was raining. But the drops diminished again, and then ceased altogether, and the thunder rolled slowly away to the east, dying to a dry crackling, and the clouds broke open and drifted apart, and the warm setting sun shone again. A cock crowed over and over while everyone else was quiet.
That evening Hank arrived at Miss Purl’s back gate while she was still working in her garden. He had a roll of chicken wire under his arm, and Josey, walking close behind him and looking uneasy, carried a bundle of stakes and poles. Miss Purl straightened herself slowly, pressing her hands against her kidneys, and the back screen door screeched and slammed as Mrs. Comstock appeared on the back porch with a glass of beer in her hand and a cigarette in her mouth, smiling welcome.
“What have you in mind?” Miss Purl asked.
“We’re gonna fix your fence,” Hank said. “We’ve got an hour before it’s dark.”
“It will take more than an hour.”
“What we’re gonna do is put up a temporary one first, just to keep out chickens and things. This is strong stuff, you feel it,” he said, coming in through her gate. Mrs. Comstock came down the steps of the porch.
“Something temporary is just what I don’t want,” Miss Purl said quietly, fixing her gaze on Josey who followed in behind Hank. “I suppose those stakes are from the saplings you cut. I don’t want them here in that condition.” She stood where she was, so that to move ahead they would have to move around her.
“We haven’t got much time,” Hank said. You keep saying you want a fence, so I’m giving you one.”
“Not any fence. I want my fence, or no fence. Or build me a wall of stone. But not that.”
“What about a glass of beer?” Mrs. Comstock said, coming nearer along the path from the house.
“I came to put up this fence,” Hank said. “And I’m going to put up this fence. You better move out of the way.”
“Why must you walk on the path now?” Miss Purl said. “You weren’t so careful of my garden before.” Her aunt stood close behind her, pulling gently at her dress.
“I didn’t come here to talk,” he said, walking past her over the earth she had prepared again for planting, with Josey at his heels. “I got enough on my hands without that.”
“You haven’t been here very long,” she said. “You think it’s all very easy.”
“Amanda, you’d better let him. .” her aunt said quietly from behind her.
“I will let him, of course,” she said, with a small smile. “Since I haven’t the strength to stop him.” But she stood where she was to watch him put up the chicken-wire fence, and after a few minutes her aunt shrugged and went back into the house. By the time it was fully dark, the work was done, and Hank came over to her, grinning.
“That’s a good job done, eh?” he said, standing very close to her.
“It’s not what I wanted,” she said. His grin faded.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said.
He did come back, but only to throw down some boards on the ground outside the wire, saying that they were for the tool house, which he would build better than before when he had the time; and promising her that he had a song which he would play for her one night.

*

The river was already shrinking, the nights were no longer cold, and it was only the end of April. If rain didn’t come, Overgaard thought, the prairie would be like an inferno by the end of June. Already he was suffering badly; he kept the blinds in his classroom lowered as far as he could without the children complaining, he kept his office dark by drawing his special heavy curtains, and when he was at home he lay on the couch in the darkened living room, unable to read, cursing the ineffectualness of Jessop’s serum which Iris injected into his buttocks, and thinking gloomily about the waste he seemed to be lost in, when there were so many places in the world where he might be doing good. Iris, when she had left him to himself, sat in the kitchen and looked pensively out across the empty prairie, thinking of what it had been when she was young and in the city.

*

Mr. Fairling watched Bella and thought she was growing thinner, and worried for her. The trouble with the roller seemed to be preying on her mind, although she said nothing to him to suggest it. Twice she had woken up in the middle of the night and called out for her mother, which he couldn’t remember her having done since she was a child. And there was something apprehensive in her face, he thought, whenever she left the house to go walking in the town alone. Her mother only made matters worse, if anything, by her fretting and scolding, but there was nothing he could do himself except be gentle with her and hope that everything would be all right.

*

Mr. Fitts didn’t sleep well. Evening after evening he thought he didn’t have the strength to move from his chair to his bed, and then when he lay there his eyes wouldn’t stay closed. He kept hearing noises on the stairs. He was sure that something peculiar was afoot in the town which nobody but himself was aware of, because nobody else thought to look. The stranger was more and more often snooping round the hotel at twilight; looking for the easiest way in, probably: he had shown clearly enough what sense he had of other people’s property. And he wasn’t alone either, he only pretended he was. Somebody was behind him, somebody with brains. The old woman it would be, as usual, since nothing happened in the town that she didn’t want to happen, and since she never gave up once she set her heart on something.. The noises were her plans getting ready, moving to finish him, to get him out of the way, sending Jessop up more than he ever came before with medicines and cures and nothing that did any good. He could see from the way he stooped in the window and looked across the street and smiled his little smile that he knew well enough what was going on. They all knew. They were just waiting.

*

His feet were as heavy as the earth, Mrs. Otterdown thought, hearing Hank overhead, and then on the stairs as he came almost falling down them. She waited to hear the back door slam and his footsteps die as he walked into the night where everything was moving, fluttering and gliding. She waited for his music to begin, when everything fixed was behind him and everything open in front. The urge was growing inside her, what had been dull black and white was filling with red. If she could only know when Harry was sleeping, as Simon slept until she came back with the night still on her and stood at his bedside looking down at his smiling sleeping face while the baby warmth of him rose to her nostrils. And Harry as well then, though he woke and blinked at her and didn’t believe when she said she thought she had heard the wind banging his door. And he came up behind her barefoot in his pyjamas, and raced ahead into the night, calling back to ask where they were going. She couldn’t hear him run. She could never hear him, even when he was walking over her head. She couldn’t hear his feet on the boards. She didn’t know what he did alone in his room.
She wheeled herself restlessly about the dark house, hearing the prairie alive with noises, smelling everything growing, rain or no rain, and feeling the cancer inside her throbbing like something wanting to be born. Hank would have to build her a ramp to the ground. He would have to take the time from his tower. She wanted to feel the prairie in her bones.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As the sun filtered down to the horizon through thin bars of cloud, the light day-breeze died, the cocks and crows fell silent, the children drifted home for supper, and the hired men, all of them tired, walked away from the tower site towards the main street, not talking to each other, and none of them glancing back.
In the middle of the eight piers, Hank stood with his hands dangling limply at his sides and gazed at the eight enormous shadows which undulated across the uneven ground, overlapping each other, reaching over the playground to the sidewalk and the scrub field beyond the road, and the bushes by the shrivelling river, and the river itself, and right across the large field beyond it, blotting the last sunlight from the sprouting grain. High over his head, in the scaffolding of one of the piers, Josey knelt on a platform and whistled to himself and played out a long rope to the ground.
All the piers were to the height Hank had called for. They were taller than anything else in the town. During the day the last moulding frames had been removed and lowered to the ground, but all the scaffolding was still in place, ready for the men to begin building the great tank at the crack of dawn on the following day. Alvin moved among the depleted supply of lumber and cement and sand, rubbing his peeling red face and murmuring to himself as he noted in a little book what he would have to order to keep the building going smoothly. He looked up once, to say that he didn’t think Josey should be fooling about so far from the ground, but Hank didn’t take any notice. Near him in the octagon, Nathan was busy with a besom and a brush rake, clearing the ground of every kind of rubble. Usable things like laths and pieces of board and cable and wire and rope and even small mounds of dropped nails, he gathered up and stored with the rest of the supplies; the rubbish of dirt and bits of paper and bent nails and gravel-stones and lumps and crumbs of concrete he dumped into a big metal bin. By the time he had swept the ground clean, the sun had long set and Alvin had gone home, and Josey was swinging hand over hand down one of the dozen ropes he had tied to the pier high in the scaffolding, and Hank still hadn’t moved.

*

Mr. Fitts was on the alert as the dusk thickened. Nothing would probably happen for a couple of hours, but he couldn’t afford to sleep since he couldn’t be sure. The moon wouldn’t be up until late to help him, and he couldn’t trust anybody to warn him, Jessop least of all, though he pretended to be so friendly. Hilda might raise a hand for him, it was possible, since he paid her, which made his interest her interest; but he couldn’t be sure of her, and what could she do anyway against the old woman and all her hirelings? She was growing stronger as he grew weaker, she was feeding on his strength, and she was growing tired of waiting. He only had his siren against her if she sent her man Hank to break in.
He sat with his head half-out of the window, and waited. He listened to people’s feet on the sidewalks, and the sounds of a car or two starting up and driving somewhere, out of the town probably, home for the night. He gazed along the street at the lights that were still on and waited for them to go out. He waited until he couldn’t hear or see any trace of anyone, until he was sure there was nobody awake in the town except himself and his enemy, and he turned the siren handle once around slowly to hear the whispering wail.
But it was so dark he could barely make out the front of the hotel, and the man could as easily, maybe more easily, break in the back way, and he wouldn’t know then until too late. He could even miss seeing him going in the front way before the moon rose. And he couldn’t work the siren just on his fear, and he could feel his diarrhoea coming on him again. He didn’t have a chance against her.
He fumbled on the table for his spoon and the last bottle of medicine Jessop had brought him. He didn’t trust it, it could easily be poison, but if he didn’t take it, Hilda would only find him in the morning stewing in his own stinking juice. He measured two spoonfuls as well as he could into his glass, and was afraid he had spilled a good deal on his dressing gown, and drank the mixture sip by sip. He thought it tasted different from what he remembered, but he didn’t taste anything well any longer, so he couldn’t be sure. If it was poison he was done for at last. They could carry him out of here on a plank and all gather round him like the yokels they were and poke at him, and dump him out on the ground when she told them to. Nobody would think to hold an autopsy, or would be afraid to suggest it, being all of them either her agents or her dupes. And then there would be nobody left to tell her what she could do or what she couldn’t do. She could burn the hotel down any time she wanted, or break it up for scrap to repair the sidewalks with.
But as long as he was alive and awake, she and her hirelings had better watch how they walked. He wasn’t the fool he once was; now he saw through what people, all smiling, pretended. And he could stay awake all night if he had to. He didn’t need much sleep any more.
Then he noticed that he was blinking more than he needed, and that his eyelids were heavy. He felt very warm, as well, and very comfortable. He tried moving to rouse himself, but his whole body seemed soft and flowing. The sky in front of him was growing light, and the hotel was shining as it did the day it was finished. He tried to stare through the vision to the night he knew was still in front of him, where danger was lurking, but the light was too bright, it was blinding him, it was shining all round him. His hands and his feet were soft and furry. He couldn’t move, and he found that he didn’t want to move. He knew that Jessop’s medicine was drugged and that everything would change now, but what his head was full to brimming with was the hotel in front of him all bright and new and shining.

*

Annabel didn’t know what time it was when she woke up from a bad dream. Everything was so quiet, it was almost eerie. She couldn’t even hear Phil breathing, since he had to go and lie right across the room on an old mattress, where the moonlight was shining on him, making him look bright. It was only a part moon, but it was making things outside look white, especially Mrs. Mundt’s washing which she had left hanging out; and the roof of the church was shining. It looked miles away. She couldn’t hear anything, not anything. She couldn’t remember her dream, but it was still inside her, like something dry and hot. She thought she would get herself a glass of water: she had to take care of herself, that was what they said. It was hard to believe in, even feeling it moving around. Maybe the pains were so you would know it wasn’t a dream. They were worst for the first one, they said.
She walked slowly across the bedroom floor in her bare feet to the open window and leaned her face against the screen and breathed in the silent night, still feeling sleepy. Everything seemed sleeping, not even breathing. And there weren’t any mosquitoes against the screen, trying to get in; that was the good thing about it being so dry, there were hardly any mosquitoes at all.
She saw two of Mrs. Mundt’s sheets ripple and then draw back from each other, like curtains, and she was smiling at the funny things could be seen when you were half asleep, when she saw that it was Hank who had pushed the sheets apart and come between them, and was coming slowly towards the window, like on water, shining white himself in the moonlight. He was looking up at the window now and calling her name and asking her to go out. The night air felt so soft she thought she would just like to drift out of the window. She smiled down at him. Looking up, so serious, he looked like a dwarf.
I’ll have to put on my dressing gown,” she said, moving back from the window.
Phil wouldn’t approve, she thought, as she tied a ribbon round her loose hair; he would say she oughtn’t to go out at night. Everyone would disapprove. But everyone was sleeping except her. She looked down at Phil and kissed the air over his head and crept out of the bedroom. Hank was waiting beside the new blue pump, playing his mouth-organ softly; in the moonlight, all by himself, he wasn’t like he had been on the roller in the sun, he was quiet. And he almost didn’t seem to see her, he looked almost like the pump, just shining in the light, very still.
“That’s where we’re going,” he said in a husky whisper, pointing with the mouth-organ across the street at the hotel.
“It’s been closed for years,” she said. The old half moon was right over it, making it look black, like a huge rock. Probably he didn’t know about it. “People have heard things in there. Nobody can go in. The man hung himself, they say. He’s still there, they say.” She had sometimes heard noises herself at night. Of course they could have been the wind, or mice; or they could have been what people said. Some nights it looked like not a building at all, more like a kind of animal. She pulled her hand away when he tried to lead her. “I’m not going in there,” she said. She oughtn’t to have come out at all. It was just because the night was so beautiful.
“I’ve opened it,” he said. “It’s just an old hotel.” He took her by the wrist and held her tightly, and pulled her slowly after him across the street. She looked at the big front of the hotel coming closer and closer, growing until it blocked out the moon and she was in its black shadow and being pulled up its front steps, and she was making noises and the boards were creaking, and the door opened which had never been open, and closed when she was inside, and clicked. Then he let go of her wrist and left her standing there not knowing what to do except keep near the wall, and watch him walk away.
There were two oil lamps, one on the floor straight in front of her and one even with her eyes, but farther away. They didn’t seem to light anything, but they blinded her when she looked at them, so all she could see everywhere else were white shapeless things spreading off into the darkness, and something like a giant wasps’ nest over her head. There were noises over her head as well. Somebody walking. They said he had walked, every night, high over their heads; which made her scared to remember. She couldn’t see where Hank had gone now, but somebody was coming towards her, somebody fat, walking slowly.
“Don’t worry, nobody’s going to hurt you. We’re just having a small party.” It was Mrs. Comstock with a glass of something yellows in her hand. The light was shining through it. She could maybe try to go back outside again since Hank wasn’t near. “I’ve been at gayer ones, I can tell you. But there’s plenty to drink, at least. When the fellow left, he left everything. First scotch I’ve had in years. Amanda keeps me on beer and doesn’t like me drinking that. You’ll have to serve yourself though, because he won’t. Follow me, I’ll show you.”
Annabel followed her. She could just stay a little while maybe. It was all so strange; the floor was soft, it was so thick with dust. Phil wouldn’t like that. The lamp they reached was flickering and smoking and sending out strange shifting shadows; and there were a lot of bottles near it, and glasses. There was still the walking overhead, more like four feet than two; probably it wasn’t a ghost, it was making too much noise for a ghost, and Mrs. Comstock didn’t seem to mind the noise. And there were pretty many footprints in the dust, going off in all directions out past where the light faded and it was all gloom.
“This is the bar,” Mrs. Comstock said. She was smiling and she seemed very friendly. She must have been drinking a lot. The big wasps’ nest was the big chandelier all covered in cobwebs, where they said he was hanging, but he wasn’t. Nothing was so bad when you knew what it was. “The longest bar in the province, I expect they called it. But all the men are gone, more’s the pity. What’ll you have?” It was certainly long. It stretched so far she couldn’t make out its end. They’d stopped walking overhead, whoever they were. There wasn’t any noise at all, except for Mrs. Comstock breathing. It was hard for her to breathe, she was so fat. One of the dangling drops of glass was swinging slowly back and forth. Still moving from the walking. She trailed her fingers in the dust on the bar and slid her bare feet along through the dust on the floor. Mrs. Comstock was singing to herself, very softly. Then some glass broke and she stopped singing. She was muttering, but she was a long way back. The bar stretched way into the darkness and the dust was like thick snow that had just fallen, all soft and furry, but warm like snow in dreams. And she could just see herself in the long mirror behind the bar, like a dim ghost walking. When you knew what it was, the darkness was friendly, because it had been here all these years, always the same darkness, like in a big cave, and always the same things in it, the same chairs and tables and whatever else was under the dusty sheets all round her that she could hardly even see any longer, but she could feel her way from one to the next. And there would be a wall at last, there had to be, though she couldn’t make it out. In all these years there had never been anyone in here at all, it was just like the man had left it, there were only the stories like air.
Then she saw a cigarette burning in front of her and she stopped. Hank didn’t smoke. She was sure he didn’t smoke. The cigarette burned brighter and lit up the Indian’s face. She moved back. She waited for him to move, but he didn’t. His face turned red from the cigarette, and dark, and red and dark. She reached behind her for a chair her hand had just left off touching, and she followed it backwards, guiding herself to the next chair and watching his face the whole time. It was eerie the way he didn’t move. Not that there was anything wrong with him, it was only the suddenness of seeing him. He wasn’t so very different from anybody else. His name was Nathan; she would explain to him when next she saw him in the daytime. She could still smell his smoky breath when she turned round to find out where the light near Mrs. Comstock was, and it looked so far, she couldn’t believe it. She had never been in a room so big before. She bumped against one of the chairs and then against another; it seemed harder to make her way through them now. If the Indian did come after her, she couldn’t.. Not that he would, of course. He probably only wanted to be left alone. He would have seen her coming the whole way; right from the light he must have been watching her, and not moving the whole time. She bumped her elbow against something that made pains shoot up and down her arm, but she was nearly back to the light now, and then she would be near the door and she could go back to bed without Phil even waking up if she was lucky.
Mrs. Comstock had gone somewhere else, and the light on the bar was flickering wildly, making crazy shadows. The lamp on the floor was flickering too, and the pieces of glass from what Mrs. Comstock must have broken were winking in the dust like big diamonds, so she had to watch where she put her feet. They were walking over her head again. They were near the top of the stairs that went up where she couldn’t see, up right into the darkness where he used to walk around and look over the banister they said to make sure everything was going the way he wanted it. And Hank was at the bottom, looking up, and the lamplight was flickering all over him. He looked like he was waiting for whoever was up there in the dark to come down. And the big front door behind him was wide open, so she could see the bright white street outside and if she walked carefully he wouldn’t see her creep out.
But Mrs. Comstock called out her name as she was passing through the light of the lamp on the floor; she was sitting in a chair beside the open door, holding her glass in both hands and nodding her head from side to side.
“Annabel wants to go home,” she said in a sing-song voice, “Annabel is sleepy.”
“Nobody goes home until I say so,” Hank said without turning his head from the stairs. Mrs. Comstock smiled a wide smile and patted the seat of a small chair beside her; and when Annabel sat on it, just on the edge, she leaned over to her and said in a low, husky voice: “It’s the eve of May, didn’t you know? We’re all going to do a dance.”
Hank began to play his mouth-organ very softly, and the feet that had been walking on the gallery began to come slowly down the stairs. Annabel moved further back on her chair. She heard them coming down step after step after step, and she kept thinking each minute that she would see them, and still she didn’t. All she saw was Nathan come out of the darkness and stand by the lamp on the bar. Mrs. Comstock beside her was humming another tune louder and louder and swinging her glass back and forth.
It was Hilda, with Josey beside her and her arm round his neck. She was looking about her as she came down, and smiling, and Hank was playing his mouth-organ louder and louder.
“The bride, the bride,” Mrs. Comstock called out, nudging Annabel at the same time. Hilda reached the bottom step of the stairs and looked over Hank’s head to the street outside. Josey ducked out from under her arm and ran past Hank out of the front door. Mrs. Comstock waved her glass after him.
“A lucky boy,” she said to Annabel. “He’ll be a great man.”
“I don’t like it here,” Hilda said, walking past Hank after Josey. “The night is better outside.” Hank didn’t stop playing. He was playing faster, and he was weaving this way and that while he played. Then Hilda was gone and Nathan leaned forward and blew out the light beside him on the bar.
“We’d better go now,” Mrs. Comstock said. “Help me up.”
Annabel helped her up and helped her stand, and turned her round to the open doorway. Behind them the other light went out. Hank was still playing, loud and high, but he was moving towards the door now, his feet were making the floorboards shiver. Annabel tried to make Mrs. Comstock go forwards.
“Don’t push me,” she said, pulling away and almost falling over. “I can manage by myself.” She tottered out onto the porch swinging her empty glass, and Annabel followed her. There was no sign anywhere of Hilda or Josey. She could go too, if they did; it would only take her a minute to run across the street to the garage. But at the top of the porch steps Mrs. Comstock started to sway and reach out with both hands for help and her glass fell and broke on the boards. When her fingers closed on Annabel’s shoulder, they squeezed it so hard she almost had to scream.
“She’s gone to the tower,” Mrs. Comstock said, putting her mouth almost against Annabel’s ear. “She and her boy. We’re all going there now.”
“If Phil wakes up,” Annabel said. “He thinks I’m sleeping. What if the baby..?”
“There, there,” Mrs. Comstock said, sliding her hand round Annabel’s neck as they reached the street. “You just come along and don’t you worry. I had a couple of children once myself.” Annabel thought they would probably both fall down. Hank was gone again, there was no sound of him now. There was no sound of Nathan either, but that didn’t mean anything; he could easily be walking right behind them. “Boys they were. Here today and gone tomorrow. Never a trouble in the world, ‘less you try to hold onto ’em. You better have a daughter to look after you decently when you’re old.” They walked along the main street together, right along the middle of it, not walking very straight. They walked to the corner and turned into the side street. Annabel wanted to know if Nathan was behind them, but Mrs. Comstock was holding her so tightly she couldn’t even turn her head. Behind Harry’s store they crossed over the sidewalk and made their way slowly across the big white field to the tower legs that were standing up so high in it with the moon shining on the scaffolding that looked like it was holding them all together, so they looked more like one great big shape that Annabel couldn’t see the top of properly now because of Mrs. Comstock’s arm keeping her head from tipping back. She thought she saw Hilda ahead of them, and then she thought she saw Josey, but then she didn’t, and she thought it was too far for them to walk with old Mrs. Comstock holding on so, and feeling strange herself, something was happening in her body. If they fell she hoped she wouldn’t be on the bottom. They were both breathing fast, and the ground seemed to be more and more uneven.
“It’s the Maypole,” Mrs. Comstock whispered hoarsely. Hank’s music was coming from somewhere again, close to them. Hilda was holding the end of a rope in her hands, it was white with the moonlight, and lifted way up into the scaffolding. She was facing the other way. “We have to sing as we dance round,” Mrs. Comstock murmured. There were ropes trailing near them on the ground, but Annabel didn’t see how she was going to reach down and take one. Then Nathan was beside them, he must always have been behind, and he picked up one of the ropes and gave her the looped end to hold, and pulled Mrs. Comstock off her so that for a minute she felt light enough to float.
“Greensleeves is my heart’s delight,” Mrs. Comstock half-sang, holding onto a rope of her own. Josey was holding a rope as well. And Hank was holding one and standing close to Hilda.
“Here we go,” he called out, and began playing some soft slow song, and walking after Hilda round the scaffolding. Josey followed after them, and then Mrs. Comstock, singing something, though it looked like she could hardly walk, and then Annabel felt Nathan push her, just lightly, and she walked after the others with her long rope trailing on the ground. They walked once right round the tower leg, and everything was checkered black and white with the moon and the criss-crossing shadows. When they started round a second time, Hilda was walking faster and Hank was playing louder and stumbling to keep up to her and Mrs. Comstock was stumbling so much it was hard to see why she wasn’t falling right over, and Annabel felt lighter and lighter, almost like air, and her feet hitting the hard ground and stubbing on lumps and small hard things seemed a long way from the rest of her and all the stars in the sky and the moon-shadows on the ground were turning round slowly, and the others of them were making sounds, all of them some kind of sound, singing mostly, though she couldn’t follow what, it was queer how she never could. Hilda’s legs looked so long. They were running. They were all running, but nobody could keep up to Hilda, she was like the wind, she was always just out of Hank’s reach, he was reaching out after her with his hand in the rope, he was limping more and more and Josey was right behind him and shouting, but the music was as loud as ever, it seemed to be rising up and up, and her rope was rising as well, it must be all wound round, it was pulling on her arm, stretching her so much that she could hardly touch the ground anymore. Mrs. Comstock was gone. She must have fallen. And they were all out of order. She was the last. They were all ahead of her, and the ropes were pulling them up as well as if they were all going to fly right off the ground. Her chest was burning, she thought she would fall if the rope broke. Her feet didn’t seem to be touching the ground. She was swinging loose, it was like flying. Everything was swinging loose. Nathan glided out away from her like a bird that hardly used its wings, and Hilda flew after him and Hank after her. But they were going away, they weren’t on their ropes any longer. She was the only one who was and the towers over her were all turning round and her arm was shooting pains, and suddenly she wasn’t light any more, she was as heavy as heavy.
Somebody stopped her spinning round. Somebody was holding her, and then her hand slipped out of the rope and she was lying down, but the earth was heaving and rolling, and when she tried opening her eyes all she could see were all the towers weaving round like jelly-things over her head and all the stars like streaky comets, and she was afraid to move because she didn’t want to be sick. But it didn’t help not to move, because her body started hurting and it hurt more and more, in waves and waves. She had to sit up quickly and try to hold onto the ground; and then she suddenly vomited all over it, and still felt sick, and the pain was worse, and she began to cry. She wiped at the tears with the backs of her hands but she couldn’t stop them coming. She was cold and damp, and there was a wind blowing right through her dressing gown, and she was afraid if something didn’t happen soon she would just have to bring the baby out right there and it would die and she wouldn’t ever be able to explain.
Then she saw Mrs. Comstock only a little way off, lying on her back and snoring. She pulled herself onto her knees and started crawling over the hard ground and the white ropes that seemed to be everywhere. She kneeled over Mrs. Comstock’s face, which she couldn’t see very well for the way her eyes were blurring, and she called her quietly to wake up and help her, but she was snoring too loud to hear anything else. Her mouth was hanging wide open and her whole body was heaving up and down
“I’m going to have the baby,” Annabel said over and over, and louder. The pain was getting worse. She shook Mrs. Comstock a little by the shoulders, but it was hard to hold on because they were so soft and fat and her hands were so wet. She tried holding in different places to shake harder. She pulled and she pushed, and then she was hitting her; she thought that she was hitting her hard but she couldn’t feel that she was hitting her at all. Then she heard something tear in the middle of the snoring, and she pulled what she had in her hand and there was more tearing and she could hardly bear the pain and she saw Mrs. Comstock’s blurry face move and she slapped at it again and again, and the snoring stopped.
“I’ve got to go home,” she said. “Please help me.” But Mrs. Comstock was struggling, she was pushing herself up and she was shouting at her to get away. She felt so soft and she was so strong it wasn’t possible to hold her she was pushing her back and back until she couldn’t even stay kneeling any longer she fell over on her side on the ground and a loud noise came out of her.
“It’s the baby, is it?” Mrs. Comstock said, and her voice was suddenly clear. She was standing up. She was standing over her and looking round and she still had her rope in her hand. The whole sky behind her head wouldn’t stop shivering. “Only a fool would dance around in your condition.” She held her hands down to Annabel and pulled at her hands until she was standing as well, though she thought she would fall again if she didn’t keep holding on. Mrs. Comstock was so soft, she felt better being close against her.
“Phil will be angry,” she said.
“Don’t you worry about him,” Mrs. Comstock said. They started walking across the field, but it was very hard to walk straight. “If we ever get that far, then you can worry if you like.” She was turning her head this way and that, and she suddenly started to chuckle. “They’ve all gone off, eh? Not a sign of any of them. Left us in the lurch when the fun was done. That’s the way of it, all right.” Annabel tried to watch where her feet were walking, and wondered who had taken her off the rope and laid her on the ground, and decided it must have been Nathan, because he saw more things than the others.

CHAPTER TWELVE

He was on his own, Harry admitted, walking slowly around the hotel in the mid-morning sunlight, stretching his legs to be ready for any action, though there was no call upon them, nor likely to be. There was no call upon any part of him, so far as that went, people only stated what they had seen or heard; what action there was was over. Hank was standing on top of one of his piers, waving his arms and shouting at somebody lower down in the scaffolding, both of them a good deal higher than the roof of the store. The sky was bright blue, and clear. The light breeze was soft, and the sunlight glowed warmly against all the wooden walls of the town. It was a beautiful morning. High up in the middle of it birds of some kind were singing., and two crows on two posts were gazing into Dworshak’s vegetable garden, their cawing as sunburnt as their feathers. Even the fuzzy head of old Mr. Fitts was leaning out of his window, to feel the air probably, how strange and soft it was, as if everything had been made ready for the exorcism. Ready at last.
Only a keen eye, alert for infection, would have noticed that the hotel was different; there were no signs of ransacking or even, at first glance, of invasion. Annabel was no problem; she could be the victim of a sequence of dreams. Milord. Unpleasant dreams, for the most part, as far as one could make head or tail of them, but still dreams, no foundation upon which to justify a wholesale invasion of someone else’s dream. Why should she be supported in her strange claims merely because her whereabouts were known? The man Fitzgerald had done no wrong, what he had built ought to be left in peace. By whom? By himself? He was only defending it, milord, against further wanton assault. As his father would have wished. The crowd was unruly, milord, they would wait until it was dark and then creep into what had been sacred precincts, and further desecrate, now that they knew that the swinging skeleton was not there. And never had been. It helped to keep them away, my boy; it was the best I could think of. It will still keep them away. Oh thank you father.
People had not shown any particular interest in the building itself while they were giving in their reports of strange noises in the night before, attributing them to Hank with whom they preferred not to interfere, at least not yet; but they were covering up, because they added, almost to a man and woman, that they had also noticed that the padlock on the front door was swinging loose in the open hasp. So that, come noon-time, the children would probably start pushing their way in. While they, the elders, watched, milord, the way old Fitts was already watching; because if there were no relics of the despairing builder, no holy remains to consecrate the precinct, nor ever were, it would follow that there was no special spirit within, no ghost. The hotel was simply empty. What he claimed to be pursuing himself, logically of course, milord, was something generally admitted not to be there. That was the way of all religion, was it not?
He came upon his own footprints in the dirt, and followed them around the hotel once again. He would have to stop soon; either he was able or he wasn’t. All that was required was that he padlock the door again, in his father’s name. To which he would be adding his own. Let it be a secret between us, his father said, stretching out a soothing hand. Why was he backing away from it? Why was he still walking round? And round. His footprints were already a path. Soon they would notice and wonder. Annabel in labour was for the moment keeping their attention partly averted. But it would swing full on him and the peace of the morning would be gone if he didn’t very soon either make his way into the hotel or padlock it afresh without going in, or simply go back to his store and leave it to the rest of them to do with as they wanted.
As an encouragement to action of some kind, it was worth taking note that he hadn’t yet fallen into absolute abeyance, despite the pressure upon him and his natural inclination. He was seeing as well as seen. He saw the flowering weeds which grew all round the foundations of the hotel, white-flowered, some of them, and some yellow, and small pale-green leaves, quite a few of those, unfolding out of vines which had been clinging like dead things through the winter to the walls and shutters. And by the back door, each time past it, a blotched black-and-white cat, eyeing him like a gargoyle. Also, he could hear Annabel’s cries across the street, breaking through her wish to be a mother some days ahead of her time; and he could still remember, clearly, Phil’s telling him how Mrs. Comstock had tripped and fallen over him, and cursed him as she lay on the floor, in language he claimed he had never heard a woman use; and he had himself heard her calling in the half-light before sunrise, calling to Hilda to be midwife to Annabel; finding her at last, they said, coming out of this very same hotel. Naturally. And Hank with her, equally naturally; although nobody quite said that. Which was not to the point, he himself having no claim at all upon her, being at best a far admirer. But between the two of them they had brought him to this hard decision, which would have been better left until his qualifications were sure. Unimaginable time. Until at least he might have known what to do with this temple once its mystery, or lack of it had been revealed.
But merely taking note of what was, wasn’t sufficient to the day. Not for others, and not for himself. And walking round and round didn’t help the fact or the appearance, since the manner of his walking didn’t resemble a constitutional. All right then.
He stopped on the sidewalk at the bottom of the three front steps. Only Mr. Fitts, at his upper window across the street, was apparently watching him, his binoculars at the ready, but there could easily be others, probably were others: they were always on the look-out for weaknesses in the family armour. He could hear a moaning sound from Annabel, and the same birds singing, or others, and hammering noises coming through the streets and over the roofs from the tower..gently, as from a long way off. He walked up the steps, tucking in his shirt, and looked at the big closed door and the old lock dangling open, broken, and reached out to the tarnished brass knob which only the night before had been turned like the knob of any door. He turned it himself, very slowly, waiting for the admissive click, then pushed the door inwards, and followed it, and closed it behind him.
It was darker even than he remembered. His eyes, of course, only a question of that; they were used to the sun, having come in by the front way. He waited, without trying to move, for them to ease to the darkness, and felt the stillness spread out around him, and felt nothing quiet in himself. He even felt a stirring of fear; or a memory of fear.
The tall narrow windows which rose from the floor to the gallery were still curtained as well as shuttered, but some light filtered in through the round windows above the gallery; that was as he remembered. And the light was all gathered into the chandelier, which still glowed like something big and dying. And straight ahead of him the great stairway was still rising out of the great saloon.
There seemed to have been no destruction, no anger vented on the temple for the mystery not being manifest in bones. An oil lamp was lying on its side on the floor; strange blurred bottles were on the bar, where they hadn’t been; a sheet was trailing on the floor, and there were misty tracks in the thick dust; nothing that any man would call desecration more than the mere entry itself was that. And was his own any the less? He was unwashed and unready, and the image of his father’s hand reaching out to him kept clouding his mind. What had he come to do? How could he re-seal the mystery when all he had in his pocket was a bright new lock he couldn’t rely on now that the veil was torn?
But whatever spirit had been there was still there. Surely. Maybe it had been absent while Hank and his band had been present, but their dull jollity couldn’t have driven it out altogether. They had come for revelry and imported liquor, so that was what they had found. But it would still be manifest to him, if he was properly groomed. If he was patient. If he gave himself up to this darkness. Even now.
Annabel had had hallucinations, common in pregnant women. He could plead that well. If she had been seen moving in the street past midnight, that was nothing. Even seen on the steps of the hotel was nothing. And if they claimed she had been inside the hotel, searching for the skeleton; if everyone who had seen her verified her fanciful tale, he would still stand out against them. If the whole town rose up, crying for entry so that they might search in all the closets, calling down vengeance upon him and his father for their deception and their self-seeking, he would hold them at bay, like a knight with his duty, telling them that he was the sole guardian of this hotel, that none of them would find in it what he was seeking, that Annabel should stand as an example to those who sought more than they could understand. He might add that he was sorry if he sounded proud; he was proud, it was a condition with him that he had never been able to subdue, though he had tried. It was a condition, not to call it a gift, which had been bestowed on some early occasion; not baptism, he remembered being proud before that. He knew he had no right to it, but what could he do?
He wouldn’t convince them. It was too late. And something was wrong at the heart of the argument, making it wrong from beginning to end. What was it? Why was the fear stirring in him again under his father’s soothing outstretched hand?
He bent down to the oil lamp on the floor and set it straight. There was a faint smell of cologne in the still air, and a stronger smell of stale tobacco smoke. They had been here, there was no point in denying it. It made no difference anyway. Everything else was so much the same; he himself was a little different, and the time, but not much. He wasn’t wet, or dirty with coal and dust, and his father wasn’t sitting at his desk with understanding in his much-lined eyes; he was sitting there himself.
He held himself straight, even stiff, and peered round into the gloom. Perhaps the fear he was feeling had come in with them, and was only one night old; perhaps they had brought it in with their laughing. A flickering of fear in Annabel when she caught sight of Hilda coming down the stairs out of the darkness. Though there was no report of fear. Annabel only said that she looked beautiful. That was well enough, but why should Hilda walk along the gallery? There was nothing to be seen up there except small round windows and the row of locked doors, why was the fear stretching in him, there was no reason for fear. The gallery was old and unused to being walked on, perhaps it was dangerous, that wasn’t the reason. Nobody had walked on it since he had walked on it, since he was smaller than Josey, nobody had walked anywhere in here nobody had even breathed in here, the saloon wasn’t used to being breathed in. What right had any of them even to pass the door, with their hands feeling round for bones that were never there, why should his father not have told them his little lie about Fitzgerald’s bones? Would it have been better if they had come bursting in twenty-five or more years ago, to find nothing then as now, but less dust, and the liquor not so mellow? Not only his father’s lie; his own lie. But his father’s first. He was trembling, there was no reason at all for that.
It was the rain: it drenched him and made him shiver. There was no rain now, why was he shying from his father’s hand, it was to comfort him, why was he running? The wind was moaning through the rain and lashing it against the dusty walls, the only rain in all those years; it fell so heavily he could hardly breathe and he thought he might drown if he didn’t have a caul; and then he saw where the coal chute was half broken open by a telephone pole the wind had brought down, and when he crawled through it and into the basement it was as though the hotel had saved him, like a whale. But he left it again while it was still raining, he was running through the rain why was he running he was running from his father. No. Not only.
He was very tired, and he wasn’t fit, and he felt like a horse at water. He wasn’t even freshly shaved. He walked slowly back and forth, gazing round him, trying to keep his mind open to receive any lurking impressions; but he could feel it closing in on itself. His eyes looked and didn’t see. What did he want them to see? In this light? And his ears didn’t hear. They had set up a buzzing.
What he had to discover was what was inside him and what was out, he was sure that he had to begin there. There had to be open darkness which wasn’t him, to take him in; which was no part of him now or then or ever. If it was part of him it was hot and dark, and he needed something cool and dark. Cool like water. Well water.
He was stopped at the bottom of the stairway. That was the third time. It was so broad that long as his arms were they would hardly stretch from one banister to the other. Why should that intensify the fear? And it wasn’t a new fear, it didn’t come in overnight with the others that was just joking, it was an old fear, years old. Years waiting.
He set his legs to walking away from the stairway; when he was clear-headed he would climb it, there was no point before. Perhaps there was no point anyway. He still had a little time yet to decide.
He walked to the bar and straightened and capped the bottles. Making footprints in their footprints. Which were everywhere in the dust, treading it deeper into his own long-buried prints, they were there all over the floor, but blurring, he couldn’t see them well he was coming to them too fast to see them clearly all he saw was the floor rushing to meet him. No. Not these stairs. The stairs, the small narrow stairs, in the store from the office landing. He came down the stairs here slowly, just as Fitzgerald came down them, gazing at the great chandelier. While his mother stood at the bottom, waiting for him. Not for him, for Fitzgerald. There was something wrong. His mind was confused and his body was sweating. He was standing at the foot of the stairway again. He gazed up into the dusty gloom, and imagined Hilda standing alone at the top.
It was another world up there, he said. His father nodded. His father was listening and smiling, and holding a pencil in one hand. He could feel the banister against his back, and his father’s store stretching behind him. His store. There was nowhere else you could be so high, he said. The chairs were like ghosts on their hands and knees, and the chandelier was floating like a giant puffball, and all the doors to all the rooms up there were carved in strange shapes, and.. It was like nothing he had ever seen. It was better than anything he had ever seen. His throat was dry. His father was saying he should go home and change his clothes for dry ones. He would close the coal chute up again, he said, and nobody would know. The absent skeleton would be a secret between them, wouldn’t it? He was shivering. He would catch cold.
He wrenched away from his father’s hand and ran down the narrow stairs and bolted out of the door into the pouring rain. Away from his father’s voice, calling. He slipped in the mud and fell, and fell again, and again, he was covered in mud. The railway tracks were shining in the rain and there were other voices calling. His feet were so heavy with mud he could hardly lift them. The houses were everywhere around him. The houses were nowhere around him. The trough of the dead river was filling up with rain. He couldn’t climb his tree to where his mother was sitting on a branch with her dangling feet in the water, he was too slippery with mud and his legs were too heavy with mud, he couldn’t make them move anymore.
He saw that he had climbed the wide stairway right to the top. He began to tremble. He reached out with both hands to the banister of the gallery and held onto it and looked down. It looked strange, wrong; the scale was wrong, the scale of everything was wrong, it was too high or too low or.. It was changed. Someone had changed it. Hank must have changed it, that was why he had broken in, what else he did was only to hide his real purpose. He had a free hand with his tower, nobody interfered with him, he could treat everyone just as he liked, since he had the support of the town’s great landowner and benefactress, he had Hilda to lie with whenever the urge took him..even in here, he had to lie with her here, where no one was ever supposed to come, it wasn’t a public place it was Fitzgerald’s particular place, and he didn’t only come here he had to change the fixtures of years which were in no way his, to alter the height of the banister and make the windows so big that they were like fearful huge dim eyes, all rheumy with cobweb, all watching him..
No, no, not so. It was not so. It was otherwise. He breathed as slowly and deeply as he could, to calm himself, and held tightly with one hand to the banister and turned half-round to the wall behind him, to be sure. Yes. There was no row of doors, all different; there was only an opening to a dark corridor leading away from the head of the stairs. Which anyone climbing them would have seen.
So.
He had not climbed these stairs. He had never been on this gallery before. He had spent his years protecting something he had never seen.
There was no harm, probably. Already his breathing was a little more regular, he was becoming quiet. The fear was still swelling in the great hollow below him and it made him vertiginous, but mildly now, and more mildly, like the wash of something dead. His own fear, waiting for him. Of what? Of bigness and darkness? Well it seemed he could bear that now, for whatever good it might do him. Which didn’t make his father wrong to try to shield him when he couldn’t. That was what a father was for. Even if he couldn’t shield himself at last, and cried out from his dying bed; and his wife was only angry and his son aloof, fingering his caul in his bedroom, like a resentful bird in a cage, because someone had to run the store. And the town. Well that was long past too.
It wasn’t his lying, and his father’s knowing he was lying, since he had watched the hotel being built; he had lied before, often enough, and not been taken up, and not been resentful therefor. He had always furnished his stories richly from his imagination. And it wasn’t his father’s lying either.
It was the fear. The lying tried to cover it over and his father tried to cover the lie, however big it bloomed; but he couldn’t. He couldn’t pat it or stroke it or talk it away, because what he had seen was there: three steps only up from the floor the darkness went on forever. There was nothing to fear, nothing that he could see or hear or smell; but the banisters were miles beyond the reach of his arms and right ahead of him was the dark, and it was empty. He couldn’t move for terror. He was screaming, but there was no sound. Then he fell backwards, it was this floor rushing towards him; now he could even remember hitting it. And then he ran. He thought he would never twist his way out. Passages buckled round on him and doors he came to wouldn’t open; but he scrambled out through the coal-chute at last and the rain poured over him. And then on the roof of the store, drummed on the roof; and there was nobody in the store but his father. And the darkness was too big for his father too. Which he saw in his outstretched hand. And ran from. And ran and ran.
He noticed that the banister that both his hands were still holding to wasn’t dusty. Hilda or Josey had wiped it clean; they, not he, were the first people to lay their hands on it, and their feet on this floor, since Fitzgerald himself. Not that that mattered; a trial was a trial only if it was seen to be so. Anyone could walk in the spaces between. He took his hands from the banister and ran them through his hair, scratching his scalp. The same could be said for himself, since he had climbed his fearful stairs at last, all unknowing, and what did he have to show for it, beyond a patch of memory restored? His father had been kindly and had done for him what he could, not only then; and all he had for his pains was dull resentment and then dull atonement, neither of them doing anybody any good. Still, maybe something had now been gained, how could he know? He gazed at the dusty light filtering round him from the big round windows, and he felt everything in him slowly subside. If there was a void here and he was gazing at it still, he didn’t any longer feel it, which might be gain and might be loss. But anyway it was so. Perhaps then he could make a fresh effort to love his father, even at so late a day, though he was probably too fixed in his ways to accomplish much. Besides, he loved his mother beyond all measure, which it did no good to deny. Besides, he was very tired.
He walked back along the gallery the few steps he had come, thinking that, whatever else, the hotel was at a kind of rest now and was better not disturbed. Who could say what mild ghost might still be there in the near-dark? So, when he had walked slowly down the stairway and out of the hotel, and had closed the big front door behind him, he lifted the broken old lock out of the hasp and slipped it into his pocket, and locked the door fast with his own.
It was only as he walked down the porch steps that he noticed that children were in the street and that some were playing but more were watching him, and he realized that it must be noon.
“Annabel’s had a baby boy,” Janey Gleave shouted out to him.
“That’s good,” he said, and made his way back to his store.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“He’s got no right to have done that,” Ledbetter said, shading his eyes to look at the hotel. “That’s sitting on the one piece of land in the town old Simon didn’t own, I remember him saying so often. Harry’s got no more right to lock it up than any of us has.” He had been in the town longer than the others, which gave him the right he thought to say his mind. He remembered like yesterday the day he had stood on the front steps of Simon’s store that cold night, him and two or three other young fellows, watching Simon’s two girls shivering against each other as they followed after their mother. Looked like a girl herself then. Everybody was watching, not saying anything, not even Simon, who talked a good deal as a general rule, just their breath coming out white in the air from the doors all along the street, waiting to see what Fitzgerald would do, the women pleased all right and most of the men not so sure. They were all of them waiting again when he walked down those steps in the June heat to his big open car, practically the first one any of them had seen; and even the women were feeling sorry for him then. One of them ran up to him just as he was climbing aboard and held out a pail with some sandwiches in it for him for the journey. She was left holding it though. Old Mrs. Gleave that was, as he remembered; Mrs. Keefer as she still was then. They were mostly all dead now. He would probably be following them before long.
“You’d think once it was opened, he’d leave it open, wouldn’t you?” Mundt said. “There don’t seem to be no need to close it again.” He didn’t like saying critical things about people, Harry even less than most; they had a way of bouncing back on whoever said them, he found. But he was curious about the hotel; it had been shut up before ever he had come into town in his father’s wagon, what town there was then, just a few houses and this big yellow-painted building in the middle of them, all the shutters closed like now, and that big padlock hanging on the door, but shiny still, that his father had let him look at closer and then called him back from before he hardly reached it, as if he might do something wrong. But the boys in the town who had seen it before told him how the man had walked up and down the big front porch every day that spring before he left, looking like some kind of visiting king, and they told him the jokes they had shouted, laughing, which he didn’t remember now. He had had to be specially friendly with them all then, because of having a German name and worrying they were going to turn on him at any time, though they never did. They knew about his brother being in the army, and anyway his father never gave them much chance, since he hardly ever brought the family into town then. Himself, he had stopped paying any notice to the hotel over the years, naturally, like everybody else, since there was nothing could be done about it, what with all the women being so dead against liquor and the man who built it gone God knew where; but now, since it was open, or could be if Harry would take off his lock, he didn’t see why everybody couldn’t look around inside.
“It’s not as if the man’d ever be coming back,” he said. “Not now.”
Some of the younger men, late sons or grandsons of early settlers, or late settlers themselves, taking up old dry farms with the return of the rain, said that they agreed with Mundt. They didn’t see how it could matter any longer what happened to the hotel, since the man who built it had either given it up or died. Or both. But they were careful what they said, not wanting Harry to hear, since he might remember it against them, or his mother might, when and if they had to call on him for credit; which they thought, watching the weather and hearing the forecasts, they would most probably have to do. They turned their attention more towards the tower, where the work and money were, and what they said about the hotel was more and more in the way of jokes: jokes about drowning in liquor, jokes about setting the place on fire so they could break in lawfully to see what liquor there was, and then see how long it would take to put it out with a pump brigade, jokes about Annabel and Mrs. Comstock and the Indian.
But they were careful how they talked about Hank, because he was protection against the crops being poor, when they would need the money he was paying now, as the women around them told them often enough. And there wasn’t much doubt that the crops were going to be poor. The sky had recently filled with clouds which drifted overhead both day and night, against the course of the sun and moon, but they weren’t a smooth blanket of cloud, they were huge white flat-bottomed billows, which raised no hopes of rain. And although they shielded the earth from the sun which was drying it out, they came with a sucking wind which dried it instead. The surface of the growing grain was ruffled and squalled like water, glittering in patches of sunlight, deep green in the cloud shadow, always moving under the wind. And where the ground lay fallow, a fine mist of dust and dry seeds rose up and was carried by the wind over all the neighbouring fields. None of the men, farmers or merchants, of any age, liked the look of it. They talked about it, but not loudly, as if they thought that somebody who shouldn’t would hear; as if lost hope was as wrong as hope. Several of them prayed to themselves when they were alone, and more of them than usual went to church on Sunday to hear Mr. Fairling pray for the crops of them all.
Most of the women were quiet. They watched the wind in their back yards and most of them could remember the years when it hadn’t stopped blowing until the prairie was a sea of dust. It was early yet to lose hope for the present crop; there could still be rain, forecasts had been wrong before; but they kept a close eye on their husbands and their fathers and their grown sons gazing at the far flat horizon and saying less and less of what they thought, only muttering at suppertime and walking about restlessly in the early evening. Most of the women, particularly the older ones, the ones who remembered more of the open hotel than their mothers’ complaints that their fathers weren’t yet home, were glad that Hank had not been able to open it again as it had been. But few of them said so, because their men were working on the tower. They didn’t know what the law was any more than the men did, since nobody knew how or by whom the lock had been broken open; but they did know that Harry, as reeve, had the right and duty to maintain order; and some of them told him quietly while they shopped that they were content with what he had done. If there was going to be a difficult time ahead, they didn’t want it made worse by alcohol. It would be no help to anyone, as some of them said, if all the extra money the young men were earning from the good wages Hank was paying was spent getting drunk in a saloon because the crops had failed. Even as it was, they were difficult; they came home from work weary, but then, after supper, became restless and haunted the main street, walking up and down, looking for something more to do, keeping one eye at least on the newly roused hotel, not arriving home until after midnight and then getting up at dawn. One evening two of them began fighting on the sidewalk outside the hotel, for no reason that either of them remembered afterwards, and a week later Esterhazy’s youngest boy, only sixteen, was beaten by his father with a paddle for being found drunk on the riverbank in the early morning, with a bottle of rye whiskey which he didn’t have to explain. Later the same day Harry nailed boards over a broken shutter at the back of the hotel.
Esterhazy himself stood out against those who were curious. He remembered Fitzgerald’s coming, and the shininess of the car underneath the dust, but he didn’t remember his going, because then he had been in a trench in Belgium, and by the time he had arrived back the hotel was as quiet as it had been ever since, just when he had been old enough to go inside it at last, instead of hanging round the door and pushing his head in for a minute when the bartenders weren’t looking. The women had given him all kinds of good food when he had climbed down off the train that day, but what he remembered best was his father whipping the horses out of town and telling him not to believe a word about what the rest of them said about Mrs. Otterdown closing the place for herself or for the other women. She had done it, he said, because that was what old Simon wanted, because old Simon didn’t like competition. But his father was old himself, and had had a grudge for a long time, and was so queer by then that a good many people called him crazy, because nobody sane would have driven his whole family off the farm, one by one, and then let it go to rack and ruin, so that when he died at last the price wasn’t anything like what it ought to have been. Old Mr. Otterdown was always quiet about things, but he did a huge amount for people, one way and another. It was the government, after all, which had really closed the hotel, it was what people wanted all over the province, not just in one small town, though it had taken him some time to realize that, coming home thirsty from the war.
“Open or closed, it’s the same thing,” Alvin said. For himself, he would like it well enough open, since it would be friendly talking and drinking inside. But it wasn’t a good time for the rest of them: they would get drunk and they wouldn’t work so well and the job would slow down and Hank would be on top of him. So it was better Harry closed it, whyever he did. The tower was what mattered. The forms were ready for the bottom of the great tank to be poured; it wasn’t any time for troubles. The hotel was dead and might as well fall down.
Wilkinson looked at the hotel with the rest of the men and took either side indifferently in public. Being a mild non-drinker himself, he said that it seemed a pity, that it would be better if those who wanted to could go there for a beer once in a while, in moderation, but that maybe after all Harry was right to relock it, if opening it caused so much trouble. But in private, saying so to nobody, he wanted it closed and kept closed. It had been locked and deserted from the day he and his wife had arrived in the town in the twenties, so he had never particularly noticed it before. He had heard the talk about the skeleton and ghost, which he hadn’t believed, so he wasn’t surprised that no man was found hanging inside, and he wasn’t curious. But he had seen with his own eyes Hilda coming down those front steps in the early morning, with Hank behind her; which was different from hearing the women talk about what had already happened out in the fields or about Josey being a bastard.. He had seen her walking and breathing, and slowly crossing the street, just as if she didn’t care who saw her, to where Annabel was screaming and Phil was walking back and forth outside, hammering his fist on one gas pump and then on the other.
It wasn’t any of his business, she was old enough to do what she liked, even if it was what no man or woman ought to do in the face of God, just for pleasure; but he didn’t like to think that she was going to be like her mother after all, dirtying Otto’s name when she was all the children he had ever had. Maybe he had wanted those sons and daughters more than he ought, more than any man ought to want anything, so God had made his wife barren right to the end, and only let him have Hilda out of Helen, though marrying her was more an act of mercy than anything else, since everybody knew she had been sinning with Simon. It was as if Otto was cursed and Simon was blessed, so it didn’t matter what either of them did, or which was good and which wasn’t, the whole town went with Simon and listened to Simon. They looked at the hotel now and they said they were sorry for the man who had built it, though most of them couldn’t remember him, but they none of them spent much time feeling sorry for Otto, though most of them had sat in his smithy often enough, and huddled up close to his stove and worn down the seats of his chairs, and then just stood around and watched while everything was carried over to the back of Simon’s store and both the smithy and the stable were torn down to the ground. He had gone along himself, for that matter, after a few years, when staying away didn’t change things one way or the other.
Still, he had kept a watch over Hilda from the day she appeared back in the town, in case there was anything he could do though he never told her so. She didn’t even have much use for him, he could see that well enough, he was more in her way than anything; but it was the only repayment to Otto that he could think of. And it was growing harder now that she was going more and more her own way. And since she pushed his wife over in the middle of the street and didn’t apologize he didn’t get any support at home. She was like her mother, that was the trouble. It was the Indian blood; Josey had it as well. There seemed to be no way of keeping it down, it was taking her from what she ought to be; so all he could do for her now, and for Otto, was not to say what he thought, which was that Simon’s side was right at last.
Ray Keefer was practical. He said that the hotel either sold liquor, which it couldn’t do so long as the county stayed dry, or else it stayed closed. There was nobody looking for a room who couldn’t be put up somewhere else. What he wanted to drink himself he could ask Alvin to bring back from the city.
And if you ask me,” he told Dworshak while giving him his usual morning shave. “It’s not the women should be so worried there might be liquor again, it’s us men, when you notice that aside from Hank there was only Josey and old John Stonyface in there and they didn’t drink, either of them, as far as I can make out. The Indian would likely have gone on the warpath if he had, and scalped the rest of them like as not. But what I was meaning to say was there were three women there, and two of them anyway ended up in the morning in a pretty poor condition.”

Bella didn’t really know what had happened, because nobody saw fit to tell her. Her mother said it only proved how right she had always been not to let her go out walking at night, since night was different from day even if she couldn’t see the difference herself. Her mother said that what had happened was the kind of thing that did happen at night, but she didn’t say clearly what that was. All that Bella could make out was that people had been inside the hotel, which made it different now, and made people talk about it, and that Annabel had a baby. She went with her mother to call on Annabel, because she wanted to touch the baby, if Annabel would let her, but her mother said that the baby was still too small for that, so she stood by the bedroom door while her mother went alone to the bed where Annabel was lying.
Phil stood beside her and told her in a low voice that they were going to call the baby Otto, after Hilda’s father, though they hadn’t either of them ever known him, because that was what Annabel wanted. Hilda came to see her twice a day, he said. If it hadn’t been for Hilda the baby might have been born dead, he said. Bella didn’t like him standing so near; she could feel his breath on her neck as he whispered. But she couldn’t move away without seeming rude. It would have been Hank’s fault, Phil said, if anything had gone wrong. They were all ready to say that, Bella thought. Hank was trying to ruin him, Phil said. He sent Josey over practically every day to steal some of his tools, so he had to go across to the tower every day to get them back. But half the time he couldn’t find them, he said. He even climbed up into the scaffolding to look, though it made him dizzy being so high. But everybody working on the tower was against him; they all laughed at him, as if it was some kind of joke to have all your tools taken away.
Bella didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She wanted to go nearer to the bed, so she could listen to the baby feeding against Annabel’s breast. But Phil wouldn’t stop talking, and she couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. He wasn’t the only one. Many of the others didn’t like Hank either even if they didn’t say it out loud. They came up close to her and they said friendly things, and she didn’t have any reason to think they weren’t friendly, it wasn’t that. It was the sound of what they said; their voices went against what they said. It was even as if they were asking her something that they didn’t ask, and maybe they didn’t even realize, or they were trying to hide it. And more people were talking to her. It made her nervous, but she didn’t see what she could do. Something was changing somewhere and nobody would say so straight, and nobody would tell her. She would find out by herself, that was what would happen, when she wasn’t expecting it. Like the day she had come out of the back door because the chickadees were chirping over the bread she had left out for them, and the two boys were fighting practically on the back doorstep, swearing and groaning, and banging each other, and then one of them was running away, making a sound more like a dog than a boy, and the other one was standing in the snow only a foot or two away from her, panting.
“Will you be able to sing something when the time for the christening comes?” Phil asked. She said that she would be able, and that she would like to; and almost at the same time her mother’s voice from the bedside said loudly that she would of course be able, that there was no reason to ask. In the silence then there was only the soft sound of Annabel murmuring to her baby as if she were all alone. Bella felt her neck and face grow hot.
“I always sing at christenings,” she said quietly. Her mother was right: she was vain and proud; she thought her voice was a gift which the rest of them had to ask for. She stopped trying to edge away from Phil, as the least penance she could do, though she didn’t believe it would make any difference. She thought that God must be growing tired of the way she treated what He had been good enough to give her. She tried to remember to sing only for Him, but she was too weak, she forgot, she sang for everyone in the town and she was glad when they praised her. “I’ll sing whatever you want,” she said.
“There’s no hurry about that.” Her mother’s voice was still sharp, she was still in the wrong. “There’s a time for everything. It’s only God’s mercy that the child’s alive at all.”
Bella didn’t try to say anything more, since she couldn’t be sure what was right or wrong. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be alone.
“Phil looked so scared when he saw the baby,” Annabel said with a gurgling giggle. “I thought he was going to pass right out.”

Some of the young men called on Mrs. Comstock in the post-office to hear what she could tell them about what had happened, but she didn’t remember very clearly. She was able to say things which made them chuckle and grin, and look wide-eyed, particularly when she described the rows and rows of bottles behind the bar; and she tried for awhile to fill in the wide blank spaces..when for all she knew she had been sound asleep..with vague tales of what might have happened, thinking how Amanda would mind her telling, truth or not. But she found increasingly that her tongue, which she had always trusted, was stumbling; and she found that she was tired of the questioning faces, whether they were curious or thirsty or resentful, or didn’t want to think about their crops drying in the wind which blew them back and forth along the street outside the open post-office door; so, after a while she said she couldn’t remember a thing, and told them to go away. She knew they were making jokes about her, of course, but that didn’t matter, she was used to that. What she minded was being too tired to tell what would embarrass Amanda, when the opportunity was so good; which meant she was getting old, really old. She kneeled in church for a long time before the service, to prove that her body was still strong, but she felt all the same that the end of her time wasn’t now so very far off. She took care to keep away from Hank, and called him a dangerous practical joker; but when she sat on the porch with her glass of beer, she couldn’t keep her eyes off the tower.

Hank himself didn’t leave the tower so long as there was daylight. Josey carried food to him from the cafe, and Mrs. Watson said that she was glad to have one less mouth to feed, particularly that mouth. He munched at his food wherever he was, at his table or in the middle of the new lumber Alvin had had brought in, or moving about in the disorderly enclosure, looking for some tool, shouting for it until somebody brought it to him, or high up in the scaffolding, examining everything with a worried frown, likely to turn angrily on the first man who came near him, which all the men learned soon enough. He hardly ever sat down, even over his blueprints. Even when he wasn’t moving he was standing, gazing at something, usually something over his head where the men were beginning to build the framework for the sides of the huge tank. But sometimes he lay down on the ground, more or less wherever he had been standing, or leaned against some scaffolding and wrapped his arms around a cross-bar for support, or sprawled over some bags of cement, or crawled into any corner out of the way, and slept. Never for very long, half and hour at most. Nobody ever tried to wake him then, though Alvin once waited around, impatiently kicking his heels; so nobody knew whether it would be easy or not. When he woke up he was more friendly than usual.
Then, when all the men went home at dusk, he walked about in and out of town until long after dark. He stopped in front of the garage whenever he saw Annabel sitting outside with her baby, and waved at her. She smiled, and poked her finger into the cocoon of blankets and murmured to the baby. He didn’t seem to hear when Phil shouted at him to go away. And one evening very late, when night was over everything and everyone was asleep, Willa Gleave was woken by the sound of hammering, and looked out of her bedroom window and saw him working at something at the back of Mrs. Otterdown’s house. For three nights he worked on it, and when it was done it was a long shallow ramp, leading from the back porch to the ground.

“My complaint,” MacNamara said to Rupe Windflower, as they sat side by side in Rupe’s back yard at dusk, gazing across the open ground to where the black skeleton of the tower reared up against the darkening sky, “Is that there’s something we’re not being told.” Rupe nodded. These days he hardly ever spoke, he turned kind of blotchy after hardly a sentence, and wheezed like he wasn’t getting enough air. He still had enough strength to put up the winter walls around his roller, doing a bit each day, in case Hank took it into his head to steal it again, and once a week he managed to get to the bank, but the rest of the time he just sat there watching the tower. And everybody else just let him sit, MacNamara thought, glancing at him sideways, once they had got him to make things quiet for them. That was the way it was always.
“Mrs. Otterdown knows all right, I guess,” he said. “And maybe Harry.” But the rest didn’t. Whatever it was to know. They were just working, or watching the way Rupe was watching, only not so keen. Himself, he agreed with all the men who said the extra money was going to be useful; and the water in the tank would make a big difference to living in the town, for vegetable gardens and all. He was a man who looked forward, so he had to admit that Alvin was right when he said that the town would be nothing without men like Otterdown had been to get it going, and like Hank was to wake it up again to see its possibilities. But opening up the hotel was different, it only made people look back; further back than he knew the town himself, since from the day he’d set foot in it the hotel was closed and dead. So he had to put up with them talking about things before his time, making him feel the town wasn’t his town as much as it was theirs because he couldn’t remember as much, as if that mattered. So it was good Harry closed it. They’d soon enough forget again. There was nobody on or near the tower now, and the sky behind it was turning purply-black.
“I’d just feel a whole lot easier,” he said,” If I knew what he’s building it for.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“There’s something gone wrong with Nance,” Frank Chopek said to Harry when there was nobody else in the store. “I was just shaking her this morning because she’d fouled up the lunch somehow, and she went all limp, like she was going to fall down, so I let go of her, I was scared all of a sudden, but she didn’t fall.”
“Maybe she was just tired,” Harry murmured, thinking that he ought to come forward with a good piece of advice; playing a simple tune on the cash-register the while. “Maybe she’s decided to be quiet when she sees you’re angry, maybe she’s decided to do your every bidding. Maybe she’s repentant.”
“Are you listening to me?” Frank asked. Harry nodded, inclining his head to where Frank was making roads with his finger on the counter. “You don’t think I did it without a reason, do you? When she behaves all right, we get along fine. I’m used to her. And her old man was educated, that’s right enough, and I don’t even mind so much the way she’s gotta talk about it all the time, because she hasn’t got much in the way of brains herself, so I guess she thinks it makes people think she’s better than maybe she thinks she is herself. She’s as stupid as all hell. You know what she wants more than anything else? A deep-freeze. Then she thinks she’d be a lady. Every time I come home from the tower, you know what she says? She tells me how much I’ve made so far. So we can get this deep-freeze she says. And then she changes her mind and says I shouldn’t be working on this tower at all, what if it falls down and kills somebody, and everybody blames us then for helping with it, and how do we say we’re not guilty when everybody knows her father’s last wish was for that saw never to be used, and keeping the parts was a kind of promise. She’s crazy, Harry, she’s just crazy. She’s just like her old man, get an idea in her head and you never get it out. And it wasn’t hard I shook her either. Maida’ll tell you, she was there. All the kids was there. Her head just rolled around like it was loose, like I’d broken her neck maybe, that was what scared me.”
He still looked scared, Harry thought, blurred but scared. He ought to be told that he still had his daughters to knock about; though it wasn’t the same, of course, it was more of a perversion, he realized that. Wives were for beating if anything was.
“She wasn’t scared,” Frank said, frowning. “Usually she is, even when there isn’t any reason, when I’m just fooling; but she edges away anyway, pretending she’s not, with that silly laugh she’s got, until I have to catch her and show her; and then she fights me back. Only now she just stood there and waited for me to leave her alone, and one of the girls started to cry. Maybe if I gave her the parts back.”
“Maybe if you bought her a deep-freeze,” Harry said lazily. And kept her inside it until the world was a finer place, which he had better not say. Already Frank was looking at him as if he thought he’d gone a bit strange. But the music in his head was still cooling him, like the sound of Bella singing. “She’ll be all right, don’t worry,” he managed to make himself say. Frank didn’t look comforted. He would be better off telling his troubles to Annabel; she was a dutiful daughter, and gentle.

*

Maybe he could manage to go a little way out of town, Jessop thought, passing quietly by the chicken-wire fence Hank had put up for Miss Purl, and thinking that with the whole earth drying up it was something of a crime the way she poured water over plants which were never made to grow on the prairie anyway. The only good things she had were her sunflowers, coming up fast now, and they would do just as well if she left them alone, instead of clucking over them the way she did. Having only the chicken wire now along this one side probably scared her, made her feel wide open to the whole prairie. He kept well away from it in case she was watching from the house; there was no point in fretting her, since she left him alone anyway, which was more than so many of them did now they saw he wasn’t going out of the town. It wasn’t just the children, even the young men now, even some of the older ones, were beginning to grin when they saw him going past, giving him half a mind to tell them.. But he couldn’t.
He blinked at the heat haze over the prairie. It was so thick and bright it looked nearly like water; which meant the real heat was beginning now, and all the herbs and weeds were growing thick and strong all round the fields they thought were so important, some even growing right in the midst of their wheat-and-oats-and-barley-for-sale. And he couldn’t reach them. It seemed time and again that maybe this day would be all right, maybe the morning when it was cool, or just after sunset, or even in the middle of the night. But it was always the same, he could feel the ground beginning to heave a little and he had to hold on tight to something until it passed.
Maybe the noon heat now would be heavy enough to hold him down. It was his last chance. He edged forward slowly to the end of the wire fence, thinking if he could make it to where the fencing began around the first field he could follow along beside it and hold onto it; but it looked nearly a mile off, though it was just over the road. He stooped down and pulled up some horsemint and laid it in his basket. Once they saw him going out on the prairie again they’d all keep well back; they were scared of him when he was free, they were just like animals. He put one foot carefully in front of another, feeling the ground.
It was doing what he oughtn’t to that caused it, no question about that, but how was he supposed to stop? The thing was, he shouldn’t have started. But Maggie always could make him do what she wanted, right from the time they were kids. ‘He just has to have somewhere when they let him out. It won’t be for long, you won’t have to wait long.’ Her hands were holding onto his, he could still see her broken red-painted nails. Oh no, not long. Spring after spring he looked for him, and waited. Maybe you’d like to buy a little more, the old woman said. Since he was still waiting, though she didn’t know that. Or what for. But she held out the deeds, one by one, and he took them. Since the more lots he owned the more places Hank had to choose from to build his precious water tower. ‘Please’ Maggie said. ‘It’s all he talks about when I go to see him.’ It wasn’t any use telling her he couldn’t stay waiting in one place for long, he never stayed long in one place, any more than she did; if he did he started finding it hard to breathe. Hank wanted one place, she said. Just keep me a place ready, he said. It didn’t matter what place. ‘Whatever place you’re in yourself. Just so he can find you when he’s out. Then you give him the money and that’s all.’ The money that was left. More than enough.
Only it wasn’t all, it never was all. The old woman didn’t just want to be untied from the land, she didn’t want anybody to know it, Harry particularly, until she was dead. Thinking only of herself as usual. And then Hank made him promise not to say either, so it was like he was tied three times over. That was why he couldn’t leave now, the prairie started heaving whenever he tried, it was nearly like it was angry and was trying to throw him off.
It was starting to heave now, the heat didn’t make a bit of difference. All his weight was trickling out of him and he was starting a cold sweat. And there was nothing to hold onto, there was only open ground around him. Miss Purl’s house didn’t look so far off, but it was shimmering so much it hardly had any shape, it was like a lump of water, and the prairie was heaving worse and worse any minute he’d fall off it he reached out with both his hands there were some big dusty spiderplants near him just a minute ago but he couldn’t see them now he could hardly see anything clearly now he was just about to float off his feet weren’t touching anything
One of his hands found something hard and cutting and closed on it. Both his hands. He held on and waited, while the silver light swirled round him.
Miss Purl was in the middle of the light. She was facing him and she was growing bigger, she was drifting over the ground towards him. What did she want? He began to feel a little heavier, but he still couldn’t feel his feet.
His fingers were curled tightly into the chicken-wire fence Hank had put up for her. How had he got there? Maybe he had never left there. She would think he was trying to break in; he tried to pull back his hands. She was saying something but he couldn’t make out what. Her voice sounded like whistling, high and shrill. She kept coming nearer. She was asking. He didn’t have to answer her. She paid rent to him the same as everybody did.
Water. She was asking if he wanted water. He shook his head. He could see her so clearly it hurt his eyes. He could see every blade of grass and every single flower petal and even every leaf on the poplars way over by the river. His hands came loose suddenly and he staggered back and nearly fell down with the swaying of the earth. He was going away from her, she was getting smaller and smaller. He must be walking backwards. He bumped into something. A fence. He heard himself hitting against it though he hardly felt it, his weight must be coming back. The ground was settling and things were holding their places better. But he’d left his basket somewhere. The boys would steal it. Miss Purl was coming at him again. She had the basket, she was holding it out and whistling. She had very long arms. He took the basket and stumbled back from her along beside the fence and other fences, and walls, and at last felt his way along the side wall of his own store. He reached the front door and closed it behind him, and fell down.

*

He still had to be shaved, Mr. Fitts thought, lifting himself out of his chair and leaning on Ray’s shoulder to make his way through his rubble of books and boxes and God knew what all objects, past treasures, to the regular upright chair in the small space cleared for it in front of the side window; even corpses had to be shaved. His shuffling foot kicked something which rolled ahead of him. He pointed at it as he sat himself down, and Ray picked it up and gave it to him. In front of him, outside, the morning sun was streaming along the street, and the men were working away on the tower, the same as for weeks past, filling the town with their noises. He could just see Josey going past below, swinging a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other.
“It’s going to be hot,” Ray said, stropping his razor and watching Josey. “Real hot.”
Mr. Fitts gazed at the object he had kicked, and turned it over in his hands, but he didn’t remember seeing it before. He couldn’t even make out what it was. It just looked like a block of wood, a rough block. Maybe it had fallen from the ceiling, not a souvenir at all. Either way it didn’t matter; if it was his from way back, or if it had never been his, it was all the same now. He could even give it to Ray now, or let him filch it if he liked that better. If he gave it, it would give him a real surprise after all the times he had tried to sneak off with something, to take to the old woman for her witchcraft probably, but never succeeding. She had to use Jessop in the end, he was the only one smart enough. He dropped the object down beside his chair and let Ray drape him in the cotton smock, and thought that maybe he ought to say something to Hilda about the way Ray looked at Josey, hot-eyed; the pious types were always the worst, playing a double game more than most, trying to fool themselves as well as everybody else. But there was probably no use in telling her; she couldn’t pull out of the town. And probably Josey could take care of himself. And anyway she had been inside there with the others, where nobody had the right to go, though Harry seemed to think he did; so she would have to take what came now, the same as the rest. He had nothing left to do himself, since it was Harry’s lock, not his, on the door now. Which meant hers.
“You’re getting a rash on the side of your face,” Ray said. “Heat rash, it looks like. You got one last year, I remember. Jessop’s got something for it, I guess. Or’ll claim he has.”
It didn’t itch, but he might as well put some of last year’s lotion on it anyway, if he could find it, which wasn’t likely. Or he could ask Jessop to make him some more, even though he was her hireling. She didn’t have any reason to poison him now, since she had her own son in charge of the hotel. She could rest quiet.
“You know,” Ray said, working up a lather. “Hank wheeled Mrs. Otterdown down the ramp he made. Last night it was. Willa saw it. She don’t sleep so good, every little noise wakes her. She said the old lady just sat there in her back yard. Didn’t try wheeling herself about, the ground being rough, you know. Doesn’t seem to be any reason her coming out at all. It was eerie, like, seeing her, Willa said, all alone in the back yard. Pitch dark, practically.”
Mr. Fitts looked out over the sunlit roofs to the tower rising up over them on its eight legs. So she wasn’t quiet, she wasn’t satisfied yet. Soon she’d be out in the town. And soon after that she’d be coming to find him. There was some kind of ease in having lost at last.
“Reminds me of the time I was a kid,” Ray said. “Still living out on the farm, and hearing my mother whispering with my aunt Ilse..that’s what I called her at least, but she wasn’t any relation, we were just living there..and they were both of them looking out of the window and they told me to go back to bed; because she was going by, Mrs. Otterdown that was, way over by the crossroads. And I saw her myself when the moon was big, and they used to say she’d come and carry me away if I wasn’t good. It was because of all her children dying, they said; but she kept it up even after Harry was born. Until she couldn’t, of course, because of the arthritis.”
She could still move when she wanted to, Mr. Fitts thought. Soon enough she’d be ready, and coming after him. She would find him ready too, and waiting, like any old man come to die where he had been born you might say; so the circle could be complete, so there would be no trace of him when he was gone. Except the hotel, and the story of it handed down, and his name as the builder attached.
“She wants to get nearer to the tower, maybe,” Ray said. “That’s all her interest now. They’ll be finished before the end of June, Alvin says. Be the tallest thing for miles and miles. A landmark, as you might say.”

*

“I saw a fish,” Hank shouted from his bed. “It had cruel jaws and mighty silver spikes all down its back like spears, and a tail that flailed the water into a storm. There was thunder and rain, and a harpoon like a lightning bolt stuck into its head. With a rope running from the end of it and I was holding on, trying to haul it in. There were hundreds of people all round me and they were all shouting and wading and swimming out to the fish. And some of them were singing.”
“You were in a far land,” Harry thought he said, but not sure, feeling more awake than asleep, but not sure of that either. At some time, that same night it seemed, there had been white clouds floating loose against the black sky, reminding him of himself, while the still eye of the moon was veiled by the rays of the sun where he wasn’t then or now, but would be again, that much could be relied upon. The wheeling world wouldn’t stop just because of him.
“Nobody was wearing any clothes.” Hank was shouting loud. The whole town would hear his dream, all sitting up in bed to listen, to find his past and pin it on him and sleep the sounder thereafter. “But Mrs. Dowker had her hat on like always, the one with the big flopping bow and her eyes like she’d just seen God. She told me to hold on, so I did. She always told me right, Harry, she was the wisest woman I ever knew. I was a nothing when she saw me first, I was all huddled in a corner watching the way they all walked back and forth watching me. Some of them poked at me and laughed until they were bleeding and they took me someplace else. But she told me. And she saw me right out to the gates at the end, playing on her flute until I guess she couldn’t see me any longer, but she told me not to look back, so I didn’t. And she told me to hold on, so I did.”
A guide was what was needed all right, the world being what it was, Harry thought, spreading out his legs to find some cooler sheet; somebody to watch over your goings out and your comings in. But not a father, particularly not a big father. A smallish wayside figure would be best, pointing out the way without getting in it himself; which was a lot to ask of any man. Though not of a woman. A woman was more loving, and lovable. Though not altogether trustworthy, she swung round and left you in darkness, like a moon that never came up where you looked for it, turning her face the other way, to the consort of her late age, consort and child, her womb again opened through the grace of God. And he himself cast out in this strange familiar land where he felt no others but only Bella in a tall hat seated by the river where she washed her feet and called out to him in song while cool music filtered from the leaves. He walked slowly toward her, as knight and supplicant, his common earthly sword dangling against his thigh.
But the music died and Hank’s voice was calling him again, making lights flicker in his head. He had been sleeping then, or nearly, though even when awake, with his body feeling his bed, the land was as strange as ever, and the face of God was hiding behind a veil as thick as his eyelids.
“Don’t you want to hear what happened to the fish?” Hank called. Harry didn’t mind, and said so. He thought he had heard already, without remembering. But it was music he had heard, not a story.
“I pulled it in,” Hank said. “And everything was as quiet as it is now. Everything just died quiet, the way she said it would. And the fish just lay there, bigger than anything you ever saw, so big we couldn’t even see all of it. And its scales were shining like stars, brighter and brighter, and we all had knives so we started cutting into it, but it didn’t change any, as far as I noticed. I think I’ll play a tune now. Got any suggestions?”
Something quieting, Harry thought, something to make him sleep. Then he too might have fine dreams, wander in search of Bella and bow to her will and do great deeds. But he felt too wideawake to sleep, whatever the music; he felt lucid.
Then it was morning, and the sun was hot on his thin blanket, and Hank was gone. From his bedroom window he watched the early work on the tower, and noticed Willa’s chickens walking along the shadow of one of the tower legs, pecking it and scratching it; and he wondered whether he should warn Hank of the danger, in case he wasn’t his rival but his friend.

*

Miss Purl turned her cheek to the breeze which drifted over the playground from the direction of the school, dying almost as it reached her amid the dust which all the children were raising. It seemed days since she had felt it, though it couldn’t have been so very long, for it seemed only yesterday that she had heard others complaining that the wind was so strong it would be a danger to the topsoil if it didn’t soon cease. Time moved as one wanted it, of course; or rather the contrary: pleasant things never lasted for as long as unpleasant.
“You know you’re not supposed to go beyond the fence,” she called out to a boy whom she couldn’t immediately place, who glanced at her and turned away, retreating back to some other boys. The girls at the ends of the chains which stretched from her hands began to giggle. Maureen Chopek pulled at her hand as they circled away from the tower site back towards the middle of the playing field.
“I’ve seen the Indian doing things down by the river,” she whispered loudly.
“My dad says Indians oughtn’t to be let come round here,” the girl on her other hand almost shouted, as if there weren’t noise enough. “Not any kind of Indians. You can’t trust them, he says.” They were all a little nervous of the Indian, though he behaved as well as ever. He always nodded politely whenever she passed him herself. His having been in the hotel troubled some people.
“He was pulling up things like Jessop,” Maureen said.
“Mr. Jessop,” Miss Purl said.
“Weed things they were. I saw him,” Maureen said. There was no harm in that. She had seen him with some herself. Goodness knew Hank left him little enough time to himself.
“Indians are all alike, my dad says,” the other girl said.
Recess seemed to be lasting a very long time. Miss Purl thought. She hoped that Mr. Overgaard was keeping watch. It wasn’t very pleasant walking in the heat and dust, with the tower they were all so pleased with rising already so high above her. Like a mockery of a tree, she thought, swinging the chain of girls around to walk towards it again; if she didn’t keep watch on the other children they would all of them be trying to go too near. And she must watch herself as well, and not think ill of what would bring water just because she was hot and tired and not so very well.
“Miss Purl?”
“Yes?” The girl on her right hand again. It was annoying not to be able to remember her name; one of the Mennonite children, she thought. Her memory seemed to be shortening from day to day.
“Why is he building it so high, Miss Purl?” They were all looking up towards the top of it, where the noise of the men working seemed to be never-ceasing. All over the playground there was noise as well, what with the shouts of the boys everywhere around, and the periodic screams of the girls, even from very near her, and complaints of hair being pulled but the boy had run away. Hank at least was quiet, she would have to grant him that, standing quite still at his table, as if he didn’t even know that all the work over his head was going on hour after hour because of him. He seemed happy enough just to gaze out in front of him. The girl was pulling at her arm and looking up at her.
“So the water will run quickly out of the taps, I suppose,” she said, and realized that her voice was sharp, and tried to mend it by adding something gentle, but couldn’t think of a proper remark until there was no longer any reason for trying, since the girl was looking elsewhere.
She hoped that Mr. Overgaard hadn’t dozed off as he sometimes did of an afternoon. It was a pity his not being strong, but he ought not to give up entirely and leave all the burden on her shoulders. The boys were like devils, running about everywhere and doing everything they knew they weren’t supposed to do and even inciting the girls to do the same. Two of them were fighting now by the wall of the school, it was evidently more than playing, and a good many others were huddled over by the road, where doubtless they thought they wouldn’t be noticed, setting off firecrackers. She couldn’t of course call over all the noise around her, and she would never reach them before they dispersed, being warned of her coming, so that nothing would be there but scuffed earth and blown firecrackers. And laughter that couldn’t be muffled. Before long, she could be sure, somebody was going to be hurt, and then they wouldn’t laugh. It was a wonder indeed that somebody hadn’t already come to harm, the way none of them could keep away from the tower enclosure for long, whatever they were told. If Hank weren’t right there at his table, glowering at anybody who went too close, some of the bigger boys would have been up in the scaffolding by now, even in the full light of day. God alone knew what they were up to after dark. It was hard to believe that one young Indian could keep them away.
“Don’t pull like that, Maureen,” she said, glancing down. “I can’t be everywhere at once.” She was afraid she was losing her temper, which would help nobody. They had walked nearly to the wire fence, nearer than she ought to have brought them, since it only brought the boys along as well. Maureen had pulled loose from her hand and darted away into the middle of a group of larger girls some little distance off.
“It’s her dad,” one of the girls near her said. “I guess she done something.”
“Did,” Miss Purl said. Frank, covered in sawdust from head to foot, was standing by Hank at his table and looking in her direction with sharp darting eyes. She would have thought he’d have chosen to look somewhere else, knowing that the town was paying him to keep the school clean, and knowing that she knew that he didn’t even appear in the school four days out of five. In fact, he hadn’t done a stroke for more than a week, and didn’t seem the least contrite about it, so far as she could make out. If he were to abandon the school altogether to work on the tower, nobody would think to object. Not even Mr. Overgaard. The tower before all things. Still, she had only herself to blame; she had told Hank about the saw, and where to go for information, and this was the result. She had felt peculiar that day, pleased with herself for some reason, light-headed. The wind had been blowing, that was the reason; cold and clear it was, when would it ever be again? The children were trying to pull her back from the fence, that was a change; had she been standing there long? Hank was looking straight at her. Frank was walking away.
“He beat Myra yesterday,” one of the girls was whispering. “She was showing the bruises.” The girl holding her right hand let it go.
Hank was grinning at her. A big wide grin, as if he wanted to be friendly. Well then, perhaps now was as good a time as any to remind him. She freed her other hand from whatever little girl had taken Maureen’s place, and walked forward the two steps which separated her from the wire around the enclosure. Doubtless he thought that because wire was good enough for his purposes it was good enough for hers. But he hadn’t seen Mr. Jessop clinging to his fence and swaying back and forth as the wire sagged under him, or heard him breathe like an animal, all gasping and fearful, or seen him running off at last, so bent over that his dangling arms nearly trailed on the ground. She oughtn’t to think of it, it did no good to think of it. But her old fence would have given him some kind of support. But that wasn’t to the point. The point was that he had given his word and he hadn’t kept it. His grin was like the Cheshire cat’s: it didn’t mean a thing, though it fooled the rest of them well enough. It was only to help him do just as he wanted, which somebody had to speak against; somebody had to say what was right and what was wrong.
“I’m still waiting for you to mend my fence,” she said, raising her voice to clear the noise of the children behind her and the men above her. “I hope you didn’t think I had forgotten.”
“You really liked that old fence, eh?” He was still grinning. Two men by the cement mixer turned to watch.
“It doesn’t matter whether I liked it or not,” she said. The children had drawn further back from her. The heat of the sun was very great, and the weight of the tower looming right over her was oppressive. “It was the fence I had and you destroyed it, so you must mend it.” She wasn’t being sensible. They talked about her and said so. They would have mended the fence for her long ago, though they wouldn’t offer now. It was the spring when they offered, months and months ago it seemed, almost impossible to remember in this burning heat and windless air, with the earth under her feet so hard and dry, worn bare of any grass. But if she concentrated she could maintain the memory. “If you don’t come in a day or two, I shall come to remind you again,” she said.
“I’ll come, don’t you worry,” he said, still grinning, but not so broadly she thought. He was so brown and unmoving he looked like something made all of leather. “Only don’t you bother coming round here any more.”
“If you don’t come, I shall come, you may be sure.” All the men working round the base of the tower had stopped and were watching. She could at least make people notice that not everyone gave in. But she didn’t feel well, not so well even as usual, and she didn’t like looking at his pale unmoving eyes. Somebody was pulling at her hand.
“It’s the bell, Miss Purl,” One of the little girls was saying, and others seemed to be echoing her. She turned from Hank and the men near him watching her, and saw all the children in front of her, looking at her silently. The school seemed a very long way off across the open ground.

*

“Leave me here,” Mrs. Otterdown said, when Hank had wheeled her out onto the dark road in front of her house. “You go to her.”
“When’ll I come back for you?” She felt the touch of one of his hands on her shoulder and the weight of the other on the back of the chair, and the uncertain wind lightly touching her hot, dry skin.
“Whenever you come back, I’ll be here or near,” she said, wanting him gone.
“Maybe I won’t go at all,” he said.
“You’ll go. Your time is running short. Leave me to myself for now.” His hands were gone and he was walking away, his music beginning; slow and melancholy at first, which made her smile. It began to change as the sound of his feet died away on the gravel; it was louder, and some pain crept into it, and then a kind of crazy joy. She sat where she was, listening, until he was far out of town, wherever Hilda was waiting for him in a field, and the sound he made was so faint it was only another one of the noises in the night.
She began to wheel herself slowly back and forth. A hen somewhere was clucking and an owl was coolly hooting. Insects were chewing the boards of the sidewalk near her, somewhere further a tomcat was making loving moans and two others were growling, and a coyote was mournfully wailing far off. She pivoted her chair and watched all round her, cold to the pain in her body. The houses near her were dark like the houses not so near. There was no light to be seen anywhere in the town. There was nobody moving, nobody to disturb her. Even if Harry was awake, he couldn’t see her from his window. He couldn’t bend over her and block out the moon with his long shadow.
She could feel her heart beating fast. The sky was black and brilliant and the earth was black and white in the light of the half-moon which was already past its height. Best would be to wheel herself swiftly along the road to the main street and across it, through the great shadow of the hotel, and out the road westwards, past the station and the tracks and every building standing in the way. To the moon setting, where the empty prairie rose up to meet it and swallow it, the way she had seen it do so many times, running across the open fields with the wheat growing up around her for miles unending.
Hank would have come to Hilda by now, the way Henry had come to her; over the open ground from first to last, shouting from so far away that she couldn’t make out where he was coming from, as if he were riding on the wind and she were standing all alone under the black endless sky. Even with the moon she heard him before she saw him, and she felt his feet shivering the earth while she turned about slowly in the middle of the blazing glare of white unploughed prairie which stretched away from her, empty, to the flat horizon and beyond. Though they were rolling her way already in their wagons to plough it, and Simon was already making preparations for them; while Henry thought of nothing but coming to her in the night, running and scuffling and jumping, until at last she laughed out loud when he was almost upon her with his black eyes staring, and for a minute he wouldn’t come a step nearer.
Simon sitting in the house heard him calling, of course; but he wasn’t in any hurry to drive Henry out, he was watching the other incoming settlers then; claiming the land so near him. But he smiled; he stood in front of them and held out his hand to them and smiled his welcome to their tired and hopeful faces. And said the land was good land. He was still saying it when the dust threatened to bury them all and his own strength was failing in front of the voices which were croaking of despair, muttering that the earth was dead, was never meant to be planted, would never grow anything again, rain or no rain, since the wind was blowing all the topsoil away. He dreamt about them and woke up sweating, and reached out for her. But in the day he kept smiling and ever helpful, talking and talking while the sun glared through a haze of dust.
And this was what had become of it all, she thought, looking round at the moonlit houses and the dark bulk of the dead hotel: what he wanted. A little established town. His town. Except that now it practically all belonged to Jessop. And still she wasn’t free.
She turned a half-circle round to face towards the river which they said was drying up. She breathed in the smells of the night and listened for the croaking of the frogs and brushed away a late whining mosquito. The smell of everything was strong, stronger than she had known shut up in the house: the air was full of the smell of forced sap and the smell of the dryness itself. Soon the ground would burn under the copper sun and the wheatstalks would crackle underfoot like stubble, dripping out unready seeds, and they would look round for Simon and see only Harry, and remember themselves back to the days when the dust choked their throats and blocked the sun and rimmed their eyes red and clung to their eyelashes and the hairy stems of weeds; sifting down through everything, filling cracks and hollows in the earth, velvet when they touched it, holding for a little while the patterns of their fingertips, filtering irresistibly into all of their houses. When they saw Harry running through the broken fields, pulling up the broken stalks they were shocked, and when he taunted them for shouting at him they were all in a rage, and even told Simon. It was the principle, they said; they knew the fields were dead.
She began to wheel her chair along the road towards the river, though it seemed miles away, further than she could reach. It might be the last time she would see it if it was drying up so fast. She still had some strength, more than she expected to have after so many years of hardly moving, but the pain jolted her muscles so that it was hard to hold onto the wheels. She would have to exercise.
When she reached the river, she was exhausted and the moon seemed to be swinging about loose in the sky and her heart was pounding to get out of her body. She had to hold herself hard to keep her chair steady at the top of the shallow bank in the middle of the swimming night. Ahead of her, below her, the river was soft and dying, no more than a muddy trickle between cracking cakes of earth.
An owl flew past very near her, a squealing mouse trapped in its claws. The loose leaves of the few poplar saplings rustled like light rain. But the cottonwood had long ago been chopped down and carried away in pieces.
‘If you start to drown,’ Harry said, when the mud cakes were so dry they were crackling and crumbling under her feet, and the sky was red with sun and dust, ‘call out’. It was August and hot. The leaves of the poplars were shrivelled, like the leaves of the cottonwood which Harry was perched in, dangling his thin legs in the air high over her head. She would be safe there with him, he told her, if she could climb; he would protect her against the flood. He grinned as she dropped her cane and climbed slowly up towards him. He didn’t try to help her, he just watched her, and called out how close upon her rear the water was creeping, how it was gushing down the river, drenching roots and whole bushes, forcing plants into flower and then drowning them, overturning chicken coops, sending chickens squawking, and drowning them as well. Water was everywhere. It bubbled out of the ground, it shot up in geysers, sparkling in the sun, washing the dirt and dust and mud out of the air and sky. She reached the branch exhausted and sat down beside him, and he laughed. He said that the whole town was floating about like chicken coops, and people were shouting for boats and catching at roofs and windows, and sinking in a cloud of bubbles. Bloated rabbits were floating on the surface, and a big bloated pig, and old Mr. Esterhazy was calling to the water to go down. He said the cottonwood was the only safe place, and rolled backwards over the branch and hung by his knees and pulled at her feet and stretched his hands and arms deep into the water, and laughed and laughed and laughed.
They both saw Simon at the same time, standing at the foot of the tree, peering up at them through the dusty air and calling out that Mr. Fairling had arrived with the morning train. And then the freak storm came only a few days later, and Simon with his usual foolish optimism said it was a sign that the drought was ending; and came back to the house late the same day with Harry wet and muddy in his arms, and the pneumonia burned through him and she thought that was surely the end.
But the end was coming now, only now, and others besides herself would know it soon. Hank wasn’t like Harry, even as Harry was once; he couldn’t be turned. And he wasn’t like Henry, leaving before dawn that yellow morning so the others wouldn’t see him; pushed out by Simon, his fear of Simon and what Simon might do; only looking back over his shoulder and waving over his wagonload of clanking things for as long as he could see her standing in the road. Only when she turned away did she see Simon, watching her; and he watched her body as it swelled with Millie. But he knew well enough that Harry was his own, so he called him after Henry; as a gesture he said smiling, as a small memorial. As if the name mattered. As if any name mattered now, or anyone, or any place: Hank would be ending it all soon. Somewhere out on the prairie an animal was screaming.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The days grew longer and hotter. The sky was deep dark blue, empty of any cloud, and the blazing sun in the middle of it poured its brassy heat down on the unsheltered prairie. In the town, even the square shadows were hot and heavy, wheeling slowly round their dry and cracking buildings. A fire could break out easily, some people said; if it did, there would be no stopping it, it would sweep right over the prairie. Everybody waited each day for the sun to set, for the little coolness which still came with the night.
“I never knew it to go dry so soon,” Dworshak said, gazing from his back steps out over the land he could see, some of it his own.
“It’s like everything was ripening early,” Esterhazy said to Phil, as they stood together on the sidewalk in front of Phil’s garage. “Looks like it, I mean.” Phil nodded. The garage was locked up against anyone stealing anything more and he was working on the tower himself; leaving Annabel to look after the pumps. Nobody was going to spend any money these days on having any machinery repaired.
They all knew the grain was dying. Some of them said they could see it coming since the thaw, but most of them didn’t say anything. When they weren’t alone they talked about whatever came into anybody’s mind, and when they were alone they gazed out over the prairie at the yellow wheat and oats and barley, all of it dying seedless. When they walked about town they walked slowly, not making much noise. Although there was almost no wind for day after day, not even a cooling breeze, except sometimes for a short while at sunset and sunrise, the earth of the fields sifted into the town, covering everything exposed in a soft dust.
The only noise came from the tower, and that continued all day long. The young men who were working on it, in two shifts from dawn to dusk, sweated and cursed and hammered and sawed while the sun burnt their skin and bleached their hair; and Hank was always near them, watching them pour the concrete to make the sides of the enormous tank, pointing and sometimes pushing whenever one of them didn’t seem to understand, but almost never speaking now. He inspected every foot of what had been built and checked it against his plans, climbing up and down the scaffolding any number of times each day, always in the full sun as if it were the same thing as shade, chewing some leaves Jessop brought him each day, and pouring with sweat which glittered so strongly in the sun that the men could hardly look at him. Most of the men had decided anyway that he was crazy. They only worked hard for the wages he paid.
And when they came off work they felt restless, didn’t know what to do. After dark they walked up and down the main street, away from the cafe and back to it, scuffing at the sidewalk boards, kicking haphazardly at fence-boards, and pelting small stones at any cat eyes they saw gleaming in the still night from under cars still hot from the day or from under steps or from behind fences or from any shelter there was. If a cat ran, any man near tried to kick it.
The older people watched everything from where they sat on doorsteps about town, feeling more uneasy than they could explain, waiting every day for sunset when the noise of building would end, and the heat would lift a little; then feeling more troubled than ever in the warm dark. And they listened for any sound of Hank being abroad in the town. Everybody listened. Most people were of the opinion that it didn’t matter where he was at night so long as he kept building the tower during the day; so long as he didn’t make trouble for anyone else, that was, which he didn’t seem to be doing any longer, as they all of them admitted; and they all of them listened for his night sounds whatever they said, and they shushed one another when they heard his mouth-organ play, and they argued in low voices about where his music was coming from at any one time. For many days nobody could claim to have seen him at all after dark.
But everybody could see the tower from every point in town, and everybody looked at it again and again, day and night, whether it was white and noisy, cased in its sun-bleached scaffolding, crawled over by all the sweating young men, or at night, when only the Indian guarded it, when it was black, blacker than the sky it loomed against, and still.
The children were increasingly troublesome: all ages of them, both boys and girls, troublesome and noisy and always in gangs. When the evening was quiet they ran through the streets, shouting, and hitting at cars and bicycles and telephone poles and railings, at anything they could find, with sticks they carved and notched into patterns in the day. Sometimes they hit each other, and then there were screams and wails, but by the time somebody reached where it happened, they had all run away. Some people blamed Josey, since he wasn’t with Hank now after dark, though he still worked on the tower and was paid like the men; some people said that he was always in the front of the children running, he and Janey Gleave. They were the ringleaders, they said; but others shook their heads and said that all kids were the same.
Harry took to sitting on the front steps of the hotel in the evening, gazing for a long time along the main street in one direction, and then in the other, smiling broadly sometimes for no reason anybody could see, and furrowing his hands through his hair. He was guarding the place, he said more times than he needed: children were the worst marauders there were.
Miss Purl began to think that the weeds were the main cause of the trouble, but she didn’t like to say so for fear they would think she was going odd. Simply because they troubled her was no indication really that they were rousing the children; there had been weeds before, certainly, and the children had been wild before, but that didn’t mean the two were connected. She had only her feelings to guide her, and she oughtn’t to rely on them since they had been so often wrong. She was managing to keep control of her classroom, which was the main thing. It wasn’t as if they could do much harm at recess even if they did run wild. And Mr. Overgaard could hardly blame her for not being everywhere with them then, since he sheltered in the school himself. Still, it was a relief to arrive home, even though her plants were drooping and looked like dying, every last one of them, whatever she did. Except the sunflowers, of course, because they were weeds like the rest. They were growing amazingly, taller every day, while practically everything around them died, as if their roots were stretching out under all the ground and drinking in the water she poured out for the others, so their thick coarse stems could grow bigger still and their rough leaves stretch out further and further, just as if they wanted to take over all the garden there was. Already they were easily the biggest of any growing thing in town, and the first of their monstrous heads was about to open.
Everybody noticed the weeds, and nobody could remember them ever being so thick. They grew and flowered as if they were feeding on sun and dust. They overspread all the fallow ground like a jungle, and sprouted up in the sown fields in the midst of the dying grain, and along the roadsides and the railway track, and all through the town, four feet high, some of them, and higher, filling every patch of open ground: tarweeds and sneezeweeds and frenchweeds and conefiowers and beggarweeds and knotweeds and fleabanes and yarrows and mulleins and squaw-weeds and silverrod and mallows and thistles. Day and night the smell of them filled everybody’s lungs. Mrs. Paradis was seized with a terrible attack of hayfever, and Mr. Overgaard, just when he thought he was beginning to overcome his sunblindness, if that was what it was, found his face so swollen one morning that his eyes were almost buried, and he had to be guided to the school by his wife. He sat at his desk, nearly blind, and cursed his feeble body, and listened with all his attention for any sound of laughter. When the day was over he was exhausted, but he was no better the next day nor the day after that, though he managed to find his way to the school alone. It was the brightness of the weedfiowers, he said to Miss Purl, not the smell or the pollen; it was all those blinding yellows and whites everywhere he turned. They seemed to flutter in front of his eyes like thousands of butterflies, he couldn’t keep them still.
Out of school, the children mocked him, blowing up their cheeks and squinting their eyes and stumbling into each other on the playground. They mocked Miss Purl as well, and they teased each other and chased each other and fought with each other and hunted each other through the jungles of weeds near walls and fences, uprooting big ones for clubs and spraying each other with the dry earth in their roots. They sliced off flowerheads to pelt each other with, and then all pelt one until at last he stopped laughing and howled. When they went home from school the playground was littered with petals and broken stalks.
They spent more and more of their time out of school following Jessop around the town. They crept up close behind him when he was digging his garden fork and his fingers into the hot hard ground, feeling for roots. They were watchful not to go too close, because sometimes he turned without any warning and lunged at them, and once he would have caught one of them if Janey hadn’t run in to pull him free, and once he did catch one and beat him with a stick while the others watched, not trying to stop him; but after that there was hardly a time when a few of them at least weren’t following him. They darted round him and pulled at his clothes, and laughed when he lunged at any one of them and missed; and stayed with him right up to the door of his store.
After dark, some of them sat in the old car behind the post-office and whispered and smoked, and some of the boys hid where the weeds were thickest and tried to make the girls pull down their pants; and some of them crept like shadows about the back of the hotel, trying to find some way of breaking in. But they all went home at last, and their parents went home, calling good-night to Harry who continued for a long while to sit quietly on the front steps of the hotel.

*

The manse was hot. Mr. Fairling found it increasingly difficult to breathe. He stood in the window of his study or the window of the dining room when the shade was there or on the front steps, always waiting for a light breeze to reach him. When he sat at his desk to prepare for Sunday, he often found that he had fallen asleep, and he knew that Mrs. Watson noticed. He walked up and down to rouse himself and then would find that he had stopped in front of the window, breeze or no breeze, and was gazing out at the golden dying fields. The manse was silent with the heaviness of afternoon, and the town was unmoving, almost as if it were empty, and the only noise of life came from the tower.
In the evenings he went walking, and tried to speak to the men who were sitting in the main street, and called on their wives to offer what comfort he thought they might want. He didn’t think he was doing any good, he didn’t even see how he could do any good, but time and again he found himself in front of somebody’s gate or door, and so he called. Their house were as hot as the manse, but they smiled to see him and asked him questions about Bella, since it was so long, they said, days and days, since they had seen her; and some time later he went away. He didn’t sleep easily. Some nights he didn’t seem to sleep at all. He often sat until long past midnight at the window of his study, gazing out into the darkness where the only sounds seemed to be harsh and low, like grasshoppers scratching between jumps on the dry earth.
He wished he could persuade Bella to go out walking, with him or alone. She came into his study sometimes, and walked about in a fretful way, stroking her fingertips against the furniture and the walls and the backs of his books and her father’s books in the bookcase. She even came in when he was supposed to be working, as if she didn’t know, and he couldn’t ask her to go; but when he asked her what it was that was bothering her, she didn’t seem able to speak. Sometimes she smiled uncertainly and sometimes she looked a little frightened, and once she said that she had been awake all night and how quiet it was and how strong it smelled, stronger than ever it did in the day, and asked him why. But before he could even try to answer, her face changed and she turned away and wandered out of his study. And day after day she practised her scales in her room, as she never had before.
He found it increasingly difficult to stay in the manse himself. He began to call on everybody, not only on those who might expect it. He knocked on the door of the Chopeks’ ramshackle house and sat in the kitchen with Nancy while she told him what a good man her father had been and what a poor thing her life had become, and how Frank this last while had been more or less leaving her alone. She didn’t know why, but she was glad enough, it was more peaceful, though the girls were worse than ever, noisy and rowdy, and Frank treated them worse than ever, hitting out at them whenever he saw them, particularly Maureen. She thought he hated Maureen. She sat quietly with her hands in her lap and apologized two or three times for the state of the kitchen. When Mr. Fairling left her he stood on the riverbank for awhile and thought how curious the nearly dry riverbed looked with its mud cracking and curling. It took an effort to rouse himself to think of what he ought to do next.
He called on the Windflowers, and sat with them on a wooden bench under an awning in the middle of their back yard, and listened while Rupe told him everything that had been done on the tower that day and each day before for a week. He heard who worked at what time and who worked well and who didn’t, and what Hank himself did at any time of day. From his other side Stella said that the roller was well locked up now and safe until the day Hank left the town, though Rupe wouldn’t be driving it again for some time.
He drove in his old car out to farms where he hadn’t been for months, and listened to them telling how they had first seen the tower on the horizon, and had watched it rising higher and higher, though it seemed now to have stopped. One of the wives said that there was something comforting in being able to see exactly where the town was, and thought it would be better still in the winter when all they were used to seeing was snow in every direction. But she was a young woman, not many years on the prairie, and her husband looked away from her, frowning. Most of the farmers and their families didn’t talk much at all; they looked out at their dying crops and their fresh-washed faces looked grey and their eyes blinked slowly in the dusty light.
Sometimes the farms were empty. He drove into the yard and honked his horn, but nobody appeared. One of them had a dog who barked, and chickens ran loose at another, and a very old woman hobbled to the screen door of a third, and called out in a cracked voice that the family had gone into town. The feeling of the empty farms made him uneasy, like a foreboding of desertion which drove him on to farms still living, but he sat with the old woman for more than an hour, rocking beside her on the porch and nodding his head whenever she said that whatever happened or was going to happen was the will of God.
Every day the air seemed hotter, and the earth drier, and the whole land stiller, and he came upon more farms where the family had gone into town for the evening. And time after time, between farms, he found himself just sitting in his halted car, gazing at whatever dying field he happened to be near.
He wondered if people were trying to avoid him. He left notes for them on their doors to say that he had called, and looked in the town for them afterwards, stopping by the men in the main street and with the women on the porches of friends, always trying to say what he felt he ought to say, and feeling time and again that he wasn’t saying it, that he couldn’t find the words. He listened quietly to whatever troubles people wanted to tell him, and he told them to trust in God, and knew that they did that already, each in his own way; but if God wasn’t going to give them rain, they couldn’t be very happy in their trust. He found it hard to give comfort with the prairie dying all around him. He felt half-dead in the heat himself, half-awake.
He took to walking in the main street particularly, because that was where most people were. He nodded and smiled and greeted. He stopped outside Ray’s barbershop and sat down in the chair Ray gave up to him, though he would rather have stood and he knew Ray would rather have sat, and talked about the Sunday to come and managed to breathe so shallowly that his stomach wasn’t upset by the smell of the hair ointments which filtered from the shop. He climbed the dark unsteady stairway beside Esterhazy’s feed store to visit old Mr. Fitts, who looked startled and suspicious, and smelled of urine and rot, and gazed steadily out of his window at the hotel across the street, muttering the whole time that he was soon going to die. He sat in the cafe and talked to Hilda, who didn’t seem to hear anything he said, and to the young men coming off work or going on to work, and to the Indian. He didn’t try to say anything in particular, but he wanted to be among everyone and give what encouragement he could and feel what they were feeling. He told them one and all that Bella wasn’t ill, but that the heat was too much for her and that he didn’t know when she would be out walking again. He tried to persuade everybody to come to church so that they could pray as one body for rain.
He didn’t call on Mrs. Otterdown. Some afternoons he stood at the window of his study and gazed steadily through the heavy air at her house with the huge tower rearing up behind it, and he told himself that he must go that evening, but he didn’t go. He watched her in the morning from the sidewalk leading to the school, or from the path across the playground to the rear of Harry’s store; while pretending to be looking at the tower building, he looked through the great scaffolded legs to where she was sitting on her back porch, every day the same, moving only once in a while to lift a pair of binoculars from her lap to her eyes and fix them on the uppermost reaches of the rising great tank. One afternoon, in the worst heat of the day, he walked back and forth beside the hollyhocks, all colours of them, which grew wild in front of her house among the flourishing weeds, taller than the dwarfish fir trees which stretched like a fence along the front of her lot; but he couldn’t think of a reason for calling, or of any word with which to begin at the door. He realized that he had a perfect right to call, even a duty; but he crossed the street at last, postponing, and watched her again from a distance on her back porch, and from his study window when she wheeled herself past the manse at night.

*

Harry stopped in the middle of the westward road, between two yellowing fields of wheat, and turned round to gaze back in the direction of the town which lay beyond the horizon, just beyond, even the topmost mark of the tower. It seemed a long time since he had set out, and many miles covered, and the sun was beginning to fail; but he knew that he was moving slowly these days, when he moved at all; so maybe he wasn’t really very far. He stood for some time gazing at the empty horizon, blinking slowly and letting the dry sounds and smells of the fields filter slowly into his head, where he registered them mechanically, not trying to halt himself or rouse himself.
It was peaceful being alone, he thought; fairly peaceful. He ought not to be uneasy, everything would turn out all right. Even if it didn’t, he need only say it couldn’t, and believe it; there was no intervention of a personal nature required. Or possible, not from him at least. God disposed. If all Hank’s glory led only to the grave, and that by a straight way, then so long as he was nearby himself, apparently concerned, there was no more that anybody could ask. If fact, to be honest, nobody at the moment would probably ask so much, since there must be increasing question in their minds as to his role altogether in the town, and this endless land about it. Since they as well as he, if they were awake, could see his mother wheeling through night after night, with Hank if not alone, never with him.
He noticed that his legs had begun to walk forward towards the town; a few steps only, but he brought them to a halt. If he was cast out, he would do better to stay where he was. Cast loose; free, he might say. He ought to do what he could to make his freedom good: be still and quiet, and keep to himself in an open place, not huddle in the darkness of his store, his father’s store, his mother’s store, the bosom of his family. And then, when prepared, stand erect and turn his eyes to the bright blue sky, and wait for the vision to come.
He found himself walking again; his legs, ever furthest from the centre of command, were drawing him back. Straight ahead of him along the road, at the very edge of the prairie, he saw a glittering patch of light, like water, and knew it was the top of the tower.
It was no distance to fall, he thought, seen from so far. Anyone might try it without another pushing in front of him to cry him nay. And why should anyone? If that was what he wanted, as his night-stories and dreams-retold suggested, why not? If only he himself was allowed to be let alone to hold together the portion of strength still remaining to him. It was little to ask. Since he wasn’t his father to hold him back, somehow to hobble him, he was better not there; but gone. Far gone.
He gazed at his shadow stretching along the dusty, rutted road ahead of him, and felt the sun so heavy against his back that he thought if he let go he would be driven forward and down; but he didn’t let go. He bent quickly and picked up a sturdy stick by the roadside, and wondered how it had come there, and used it as a precautionary support. He walked forward a little further, and stopped again when the tower was clearly above the horizon, the only thing which was. Then, as he gazed at it steadily, blinking steadily, he felt his mind losing control of his legs which were walking again, all on their own, and of his arms, the one swinging freely, the other moving him forward with the stick. He could feel what he was doing, he still took in reports, but his eyes, like his brain, seemed fixed open, and the tower was glowing brighter and brighter, until it was no tower but all light, blinding light pouring into his skull. Then he staggered and felt some kind of pain shooting up through his right leg, and closed his eyes and stopped. Both his hands clutched the stick and held him steady, while he slowly recovered behind the darkness of his eyelids. His body was with him again, but his leg was still throbbing. He must have stepped in a rut and twisted his knee. He stood where he was for he didn’t know how long, until long after the need to will himself not to move had passed, until he felt entirely quiet again and his head felt almost unusually clear. As if a fit had come and gone, he thought; he ought not to have walked so long in the sun.
When he straightened his head at last and opened his eyes, the light flashed in as bright as ever, making him sneeze. A grasshopper landed on the back of his hand and he shook it off almost before he knew what it was. The tower was still in the shimmering distance, where the road seemed to end. Maybe his adventure was there, not abroad, that was the usual discovery, he thought, trying to keep his mouth and mind from smiling; as if smiling might be a kind of blasphemy, and he couldn’t be sure that God was nowhere near. There were many instances, and honest, of the quest waiting in the back yard, even when all seemed to conspire to send the young man packing. Not so in this instance, he decided, not so far as he could see, for what that was worth; everything was conspiring rather to keep him from packing, and had been so conspiring for years. And anyway he wasn’t any longer a young man.
Perhaps then, he was himself the chief conspirator. Or one among them, breaking out of his acceptable body at night, like a Hyde, and joining the padding cats, and calling up, whining beneath his own window for the whole of him to wake and come down to be destroyed in his own yard, because only then.. A far-fetched thought. The clearness, like a little light which he had felt in his brain, had flickered out, and he was joking again. Not that there was anything wrong with joking, as such. Was there? He wasn’t sure; he wouldn’t bet on it either way. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand, still holding himself steady, just in case, with the stick in the other.
Well, whatever his own will, it would be over at the next full moon, in three weeks time now, maybe a little more. If he wanted the exact day, Hank could tell him all right, there would be no trouble about that; as likely as not Hank would be telling him the exact day every night from now until it came. And then everyone would know, somehow or other: he would breathe it out to them through his mouth-organ maybe. And more and more of them would be out walking at night; and every night moving in closer to the tower. Like animals. Three weeks. He wouldn’t sleep the whole time for the soft sound of their feet.
He bent forward slightly and with the end of the stick sketched a circle in the dust at his feet. Then he lifted the stick from the circumference of the circle and with a deft though questioning movement made two small holes near the middle of the circle; and gazed down on them for some time, trying to decide, while he felt
his hands waiting, none too pleased at the delay, whether to make a third hole for a mystic trinity, or two eyebrows for a face. But his mind seemed filled with a haze, like the heat haze on the horizon, bright and quivering, changing the shapes of things, swelling them and distorting. Still, he oughtn’t to despair. He ought just to make his effort, his contribution, his discard, like a snake shedding its skin, and hope for the best. All right then.
He bent down and dug a hole in the middle of the circle, absorbing the two smaller holes, and smiled at the thought that maybe that was the answer, and reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his caul. He let it flutter down to the hole he had dug, and then he buried it and gazed at the little mound of dirt over it.
Not so big even as a molehill, but maybe it marked a step forward, he thought, trying to discover whether he felt better or worse for his courageous action, and feeling much about the same. He wondered if anybody would notice any change in him. And would stand back, watchful. And murmur to each other. And behind her locked window Bella would smile and her fingertips tap eagerly against the glass. And Miss Purl would come up behind him and tug at his armoured sleeve and tell him that at last he was ready to face the unknown. With her as guide and counsellor. And he would not return until he was old and bent and gimlet-eyed, full to the brim with wisdom and love.
He bent down quickly and furrowed in the hot silky dust with both hands; and found the caul, and stood up again, cupping it close while the tower shimmered in the distance between the hot blue sky and the burning prairie, as yellow and brown and barren as a desert. Where the hole had been he smoothed the dirt with the toe of his shoe; and then smoothed away the circle as well, so that nobody passing by would be brought wondering to a halt. Since it made no difference either way, since nothing could ward off what was going to happen, he had better put the caul back in his drawer than deceive himself that he had saved himself by throwing it away. It was the caul inside him he had to throw, though it seemed to do no good to know it. It seemed he couldn’t change. He could stand as long as he liked exactly where he was, and never know more at the last than at the first if the ground on which he stood was dreadful, being the gate of heaven where Jacob’s angels went up and down. If he wasn’t here alone, if the Lord was with him, he could only say that he didn’t feel it. And when Hank’s time came he could be sure that he wouldn’t feel it to be his own time too. He would still be alive and murmuring, and watching the rest of them in the light of the moon as they watched and eagerly waited. Afterwards he might offer whisky round to soften the echo of arms flailing in the air.
His feet, falling heavily and raising puffs of warm dust around his ankles, were carrying him nearer and nearer the town. He watched the tower rise slowly ever higher from the horizon as the miles wound down, and then saw the hotel appear, and the church steeple, and the grain warehouse, and then his store and the houses nearest him, and then those not so near. He was crossing the railway track, and feeling the heat greater and the air heavier, and the tower too much between him and the sky, the great rearing bulk of it pushing him down, when he noticed Jessop huddled against the side wall of the station, and some boys running away.
“They better watch out, damn them all,” Jessop said, beginning in a mutter and ending in such a shout that one of the boys turned round and thumbed his nose and another of them laughed. “I’ve been pushed just about as far as I’m going to allow. So you better watch out.” His hand was holding like a claw to the clapboard wall and his eyes were fixed on Harry, who stopped in his tracks. “You flick your eyes around over everything, eyes just like your father’s, eyes like a snake’s, don’t think I don’t notice. I’m not blind like the rest of them. And not so helpless either, nor half so mean. I wouldn’t set kids on anybody. But you would. Like father, like son. Push one against the other, so in the end they all owe you. And you can just sit there smiling, and say it’s all good fortune.” His breath was coming in short gasps and he seemed to be slipping down the wall. Then he added, in a low soft voice, more as if to himself. “Only you haven’t got what he had, have you?”
Harry leaned on his stick and thought something should be said to try to straighten what was crooked, since he had never meant Jessop any harm, and wasn’t after all his father; but his mouth had somehow drained dry, even his glands were rebelling, and his leg was shooting pains, and his eyes would only stare.
“And you’ve got trouble too, at last, eh, haven’t you? It was bound to come in time, eh, wasn’t it? There’s some for everybody, because fortune comes by turns. Doesn’t it? And we don’t know when to expect trouble, or how or why. Do we?”
He looked more like a gnome than ever, Harry thought, all huddled down and squinting. He found his legs were willing, and able, so he continued walking on into town.
“And there’s those you wouldn’t guess can cause trouble too,” Jessop said in a sudden loud voice, sidling along the wall beside him. “And if they don’t, it’s because they don’t care to. Yet. But they could..” At the corner of the station he pulled himself up straight and said in a slow clear voice, “Either those kids leave me alone or you-watch-out.”
Harry nodded his head and walked on, feeling the heat of the dying windless day press in on him from every side.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“It’s not a smell I like very much,” Miss Purl said, stopping in front of Ray Keefer, who was leaning against the window of the cafe in the hot shade of the late afternoon. Inside the cafe, the juke-box was playing loudly and some of the young men who worked the morning shift on the tower were lounging on the stools with their backs to the counter. The street was empty, except for some parked cars, and was divided right down the middle by the shadows of the buildings on the west side.
“Can’t say I do myself,” Ray said, mildly surprised at her stopping, since she never as a rule found reason to. If anything, she shied from him, except Sundays, when she gave out a friendly word or two. Probably thought she had to then. “But it has to be done to make sure it doesn’t leak.” It didn’t look like she heard him. She walked on a couple of steps, and then teetered a little, like she couldn’t quite make up her mind to go on or not, looking the whole while across the street at the empty lot.
“I wasn’t suggesting they stop on my account,” she said, but not like she thought anybody was paying much attention. She had her own thoughts, most probably, like everybody else. Better not looked into either, probably. Leave people to themselves, that was his motto.
“I suppose they will grow again,” she said, turning to him when he wasn’t expecting it, and even smiling, which made him uneasy. She wasn’t much given to smiling, as he remembered. It didn’t sit well on her. “If they can manage to live until next year, that is. And then there will be water for everything, won’t there? Perhaps the whole lot could be made into a little park then. Don’t you think?” She turned away from him before he could decide what kind of an answer she had in mind, so all he could do was nod his head and cluck his tongue. All she wanted anyway, probably, was a bit of agreeing. Like everybody. But she didn’t have all that much need to talk against the tower, just because of a bit of her fence. There were others Hank had hurt as bad. He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his forehead, and thought he would feel easier if she would go away. All he asked was to be left standing where he was; it was hot enough without having to make conversation. He gazed through the empty lot to the men moving round at the foot of the tower, looking very small all right compared to it standing up over everything, and he watched the thin smoke rising up from the big fire where the barrel of tar was heating, and he thought there was something peaceful in the way it drifted up and up, higher even than the tower itself, till you couldn’t tell what was smoke and what was sky. Then he noticed that Miss Purl had slipped between two of the parked cars in front of them and was crossing the street towards the empty lot. Unless she was going to the post office. No, she was going to the lot, all right; she seemed to have the lot on the brain just now.
He watched her walk into it, into the middle of all the weeds which were drying up at last, there and everywhere. He didn’t like her going there. It was like interfering. People didn’t go poking round her yard any time they liked.
Maybe she was serious about that park idea of hers. Maybe she would try and get the whole place cleaned up, get the car dragged away and all the weeds and things cut down nice and neat, so none of the boys would think of going in there of a night, so they’d all have to find some new place. And wherever it was they went, he wouldn’t be able to hang about nearby, or people would talk for sure. He watched her make her way over to the car and pick at one of the curling-up leaves on one of the saplings near it, and stay there until the young men inside the cafe started laughing, and one of them came and stood in the doorway.
“She’s bushed, that’s what.” It was Norb Pelletier, Ray could see from the corner of his eye. “The kids’ve done it at last.” Ray grinned a little and mopped uncomfortably at his forehead. He thought he must feel the heat more than anyone. His shirt clung damply to his back and his face felt raw from having the sweat wiped off it, and his groin itched. He scratched himself a little from the shelter of his pocket. It was the sweat there too that caused the trouble; but scratching only led to other troubles. He doubled both his hands into fists. One of the young guys, leaning over Norb’s shoulder, said Miss Purl might find things in the old car she wasn’t expecting; but she didn’t turn away from it like she had, she just walked on through the weeds and out the other side of the lot. She was walking faster now, and straight towards the tower; and they were all pushing out of the cafe now, they all wanted to see. Hilda as well, and she had to stand right beside him, smelling all of sweat from working, and he couldn’t very well move away.
“She’ll tell ‘im now,” Norb said, nudging Gord MacNamara. They were always looking for something to make a joke of these days, all of them. If it wasn’t tossing down bread near a cat and then chucking stones at it when it crept up to snatch it, it was urging the kids to keep after Jessop, or trying to grab his basket or trip him up. When Hilda wasn’t watching that was. Anything to give them a laugh. He realized he was scratching his groin again, and stopped himself. With Hilda standing so close to him it maybe wouldn’t swell the way it usually did these days, the least touch setting it off, but that didn’t make him any better. And her being Josey’s mother.. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them behind his back. Two of the guys now were crossing the street to the empty lot; hoping to hear, probably, if Miss Purl called out loud enough; and pass it on.
“She should leave him alone,” Hilda said. “He’s got his work to do.”
“Maybe she wants him to work on her,” Norb said, grinning. They all grinned. Newt Newton doubled up with laughter.
“Hey, you hear what Norb said?” he shouted across the street.
They made Ray uncomfortable. Miss Purl wasn’t like that and they knew it. It wasn’t a fitting thing to shout about a woman anyway, even about old Mrs. Comstock who had done things in her time and didn’t mind admitting it. Anywoman in town except Hilda would’ve complained straightaway. Not that she was in much position to, of course, but still.
His groin itched like blazes. And now he had to look at the boys in the field creeping along behind Miss Purl, all in a huddle, the way they were at night sometimes, when you never knew what might be going on in the middle of it. It wasn’t them that cared, they did things among themselves; it was all part of learning what they never learnt in school. But when you grew up you had to stop learning that kind of thing. You had to do it like everybody else.
“I guess I’ll go for a walk,” he muttered to Hilda, and started away down the empty street. Even with his pants as baggy as they were, people could see all right if they looked. It seemed to be getting worse, every year worse instead of better; he never seemed to get any peace from it, these last days more than ever, as if he was sick or something and was all swelling up with dirty blood. And he couldn’t go in the church, not even by doubling round the whole town, because the chafing of walking had already brought it right up and he couldn’t be sure when it would go down again, maybe not for hours. He couldn’t go there like that; it was sacrilege to bring it like that into God’s own house. He thought he had better at least get out of the main street, and was about to turn into the back lane he was at the corner of, when he saw Josey standing in the hot sun halfway along it, pissing. He walked on in the main street as fast as he could, but he had trouble breathing, and the sound of Hank’s voice shouting down from his tower resounded in his ears like the voice of God.

*

Miss Purl heard the children giggling behind her, and saw Alvin frowning unhappily in front of her, and knew that her voice was high and shrill when she raised it, but she called Hank’s name three times. It was very embarrassing, but she managed to call even a fourth time, and then mercifully his head appeared out of the scaffolding near the top of the tower, and he looked down at her with a suspicious frown.
“Have you got anything new to say?” he shouted. She shook her head. Everybody had stopped working. There were men looking at her from everywhere up in the scaffolding. Everybody was quiet; even the children were quiet. The only noise which pierced the humming of her ears was a slow monotonous metal screeching. She felt unwell, nothing she could place as usual, more intense than usual. She didn’t like looking up for so long.
“There is nothing new to say,” she said. “I’ve come only because I said I would come, because you said you would come and you haven’t.” He never would come, there was no question about that. He wasn’t the kind to keep his word. He thought rules and peace and order were all part of some game. But perhaps the others would see. “And don’t send other men in your place,” she said. “Because I’ll send them back again.” But it wasn’t a job for a woman, she oughtn’t to have to do it, however well she might feel. The sound of the screeching metal was very irritating, it was upsetting her nerves and her stomach; and the burning air was stifling with the smell of tar.
“You get out of here,” Hank shouted, as loud as she had ever heard him shout. “You’re holding up the work. It’s no place for a woman. You come round here again and maybe a whole pot of tar’ll come falling down on your head.” One of the girls behind her giggled.
“If you can build a tower, you can mend a fence,” she said; but she lowered her head as she said it. Her neck was stiff, and her voice had lost what strength it had, not being used, like his, to shouting. They must all think her very foolish. Alvin was moving back from her, and beyond him the Indian was gazing at her steadily, blank-faced under that battered hat he always wore, stirring the whole time at his cauldron of tar, making the poker screech against the rim. She turned and walked away.
When she reached her house, she went into her bedroom and pulled down the blind and lay on her bed. But the smell of the tar was there as well, and the music from her aunt’s radio jangled her nerves, and the light in the whole room was yellow and hot.

*

“But night’s no different from day,” Bella said, as the sun was setting. “Except that it’s cooler and quieter, and I won’t get burned.”
“You think there’s nobody about at night, I suppose, since you don’t seem to want to see people any more,” her mother said. “You think you’d be alone. Well you wouldn’t, not these last days. They’re all in town, night as well as day, unless you had in mind walking out at four in the morning. It’d be quiet then, all right. Then there’d only be that man Hank out walking as well, I expect. You think he’d just give you a good-night and pass on, do you?”
“I just want to walk alone,” Bella said.
“Walk alone if you like. Don’t think I’m saying I have to come with you. But either you walk in the daytime or you don’t walk at all. Lord knows,” she added, her voice so tired suddenly that Bella was startled. “You get enough exercise just moving about the house all day long. If you’d only sit still for a little while..”
“I can’t,” Bella said. “I try, but I can’t.” She wasn’t good enough, that was the trouble; if she were, it wouldn’t be difficult to sit still, and she wouldn’t mind the heat or the noise from the tower-building which beat through the walls of the house all day long, or the blanketing smell of the tar, so strong that she couldn’t smell anything else, as if they were trying to disinfect everything in the town; and she wouldn’t even want to walk at night, away from everybody else, when the tower was silent so that it didn’t seem even to be there, instead of almost on top of her, higher than anything she knew, with the noise of all the men climbing up and down and shouting and banging, as if they were going right up to the sky. More than anything she wouldn’t want to find herself near Hank, after the many times her mother had told her how much more bad he did than good, if she were good herself.
But he had never been anything but good with her. He had always been gentle, and his voice when he talked to her was always deep and low, not harsh the way it was when he shouted at the men working on his tower. But they all judged him from his shouting, it wasn’t fair. It was only because she had been surprised that first time that she had been frightened, because the sun had been gentle and the air had been light and cool and the boards under her feet had sounded of spring, and everyone had been greeting her as if she had just arrived back from a long trip; and she was just thinking how everything was happy around her, which was her pride, when suddenly the boards in front of her shook and he was standing there as if he had fallen from the sky, and his hand was holding her arm. He was so strong she could hardly believe it, though he didn’t hold her very tight, and he seemed to be heavier than any other three men in town; but even then, after the first moment, she wasn’t frightened. But Hilda came up behind her and drew him away, which made everybody happier, she could feel it.
Everybody was concerned about her. They showed it in different ways, but they were all concerned, and it made the air seem close around her. Even their singing in church was as if they were singing all round her, to protect her; and they seemed to be singing louder every Sunday, and the louder they sang the less in tune they sang, so she had to sing with all her strength herself to keep the song from being lost altogether. The only peace she had was at night when Hank was out on the prairie and she could sit at her bedroom window and listen to his mouth-organ singing.
But then she wanted to leave her room and creep out of the house and go walking all through the night herself, and even sing out in the night, and that was wrong. If she met him somewhere in the town, she didn’t know what would happen. She would probably be frightened then, and there wouldn’t be anyone to help her, and her mother would be right. She wasn’t good enough; she ought just to be still, and sing as she was able, for God alone. Or one day, surely, God would say that she was no longer fit to serve Him, and then she would be just like anybody else, because she wouldn’t have anything special to give.
She walked aimlessly about the hot house until she heard the noises on the tower die down; she listened in the sudden quiet until she couldn’t hear a sound except the voices of the men in the main street, and the starting of some car-engines, and the music from the juke-box in the cafe. Then she went out onto the front porch and stood with her face towards the silent tower and waited while the night drew on, carrying the smell of the prairie into the town, overcoming at last the dying smell of the tar. She stood unmoving while the sounds in the main street, the music and the murmur of voices went on and on, until she heard the faint music of Hank’s mouth-organ somewhere down by the riverbed rising in the midst of them, twining its way among them. She listened to it, and smiled, and began to sing the tune softly to herself.

*

“Listen, you can hear her,” Hank said, not so loudly as usual. Harry listened, wide-awake as usual; but not losing hope, though the moon had long set. He could hear the usual night-prairie noises. Nothing else. Wherever his mother was in the midst of them, she was quiet. She could look after herself. And if he was lucky he would be asleep before Hank climbed out of bed to go and wheel her up the ramp. He hadn’t a care in the world himself. Hank was playing a few soft and halting notes on his mouth-organ.
“I can’t follow her properly,” he said, stopping. “It’s too far away. She’s learnt something new since she sent me off. They’re all listening to her there, but it’s me she’s playing for, so I don’t lose my way, like she said. With all the noise there would be, she said, like everybody coughing and wheezing at once, and breathing; not the way you breathe, but like their hearts were beating in their breath. You know? And all padding round to drown her out, like from the very first day I was there. Only they can’t do it, she’s more’n a match for them, she’ll be playing for me when they’re all just standing there watching the moon come up big and white and silver, with their laughs like loose bells and their eyes all white at the edges. And they’ll see that moonlight slide down out of the sky and trickle all over me, and the water stretching off as far as anyone can see.”
“I’ll be there,” Harry said. “Waiting. And wearing my caul. But you ought to leave some planks around for us to float on when we’ve all stopped singing.” He was glad to see that his mind was clear, though he thought it wouldn’t last. He thought he would like to go downstairs and outside; and look for his mother on the prairie, like old times when he was young and fresh and the roads were white with the moon. But the moon was set, and anyway he was too old for her now, when she felt him behind her now she only wheeled the faster to escape. He felt himself shiver as Hank suddenly started laughing and bouncing up and down in bed.
“God, what a crazy woman,” Hank shouted. “You never knew which way she’d go. She cried so much when they came to tell me they’d found Maggie drunk and dead and frozen that the tears dripped off the end of her nose, and she marched me up and down outside, as if I was the one who was drunk, playing her flute the whole time and trying to make me learn this tune. For hours because I couldn’t get it. But whenever Maggie came round to see me, smiling at everybody and teasing the men all red, she just sat in the farthest corner and never moved. She took everything in, of course, because I was in the middle of them all, like some kind of king, and Maggie fed me things, and her new lover winked at me and said it was an ill wind that blew nobody good. But she never took any of the nuts and oranges that Maggie handed round. And then she wouldn’t stop crying the whole day, and the way her breath came out of the flute holes like fog, because it was winter, you see, that was why Maggie froze, just started me off laughing at last and I couldn’t stop, so she started chasing me round the yard and throwing stones at me, saying it wasn’t her mother who had kicked off, it was mine, and that big bow on her hat flopping like mad. I had to go down on my knees and tell her I was sorry.
“But when the old man jumped with some kind of curse off the roof, and we all had to promise the preacher he’d fallen by mistake, she looked like vinegar for more than a week. And when I didn’t keep away from her, she kicked me in the ankle. But hard, not just any gentle tap. I think she must’ve broke a bone or something, the trouble I’ve had with it since. Then one day she turned right round and said we all ought to go and dance on his grave. She made us dance round the yard in a circle while she played her flute, until I fell down somehow and banged my head, which made her laugh so much she couldn’t play any more, because she said it reminded her of the old man. I guess that’s when I first got the idea. What do you think, Harry? Am I doing good in her eyes? Harry?”
Harry’s mouth felt dry: it was trying to make things difficult. His eyes stared up into the darkness, trying to distract his attention with some shadowy shape they claimed to have detected. The night was passing quickly; if he didn’t sleep soon he would still be awake when his mother came home.
“Yes,” he made himself say at last. “She’ll be pleased.” But his voice sounded so weak and Hank’s breathing sounded so loud that he doubted if the message had carried. “Yes,” he said, loudly and clearly. But Hank seemed all at once to have fallen asleep.

*

Out on the road which led northwards away from the town, Mrs. Otterdown wiped her forehead with a damp towel which she dropped back again afterwards into the catch-all box at her side, while her chair drifted slowly to a halt. The night was as hot as a sunless midday and as still as a closed room, but she felt there was a wind somewhere, high over her head, sweeping between her and the maze of stars. The fields were bluish white and breathing out the rich scorched smell of their dying, all bound by the weeds dying round them, and the parched shrivelling flowers. It was years and years since a night was like this one; what died through most of the drought was only half-alive to begin with. And they all felt it well enough, however they pretended; they couldn’t keep themselves still, they had to be walking. They even walked in the fields, as if they were dead already, though they ducked down quickly enough if they thought they were seen. And they were so quiet, they were more like ghosts than live people. Maybe they were ghosts; of people and names she knew better than the ones around now. Watching and waiting. With Simon.
Harry was the trouble. If there was a wind high over her, blowing slow and dark, he was riding on it, he was watching her. But he never moved now, and his laughter never twisted up high like a snake. “I want my caul,” she could still hear his voice, and see his hand pulling it under the covers and his white bony face full of fever, while the three days of drenching water in the wrong season steamed out of the earth like a mist. His muddy and coal-stained clothes were dry and crumpled then and she knew she ought to have them washed before he died, but she held them fast whenever Mrs. Watson came near. And they weren’t washed yet, though he didn’t know that. There were many things he didn’t know, even with watching her night and day.
She wheeled herself uncertainly back and forth over the rough gravelled road, and wondered if she still had the strength she was going to need. She would have to try it soon, but there was time. The tower was still in its scaffolding shroud; but nearly done, Hank said, nearly ready. He was growing quieter every day, and was wandering less at night, almost not at all. When the tar was all poured that he said was necessary, having his own ideas about things as usual, they would be able to pull the scaffolding down; and there would be only the long line of iron rungs to the top. And then they could have what they were all restless for, all Simon’s people, dead and alive, lifting themselves up in Simon’s town and Simon’s graveyard, all moving silently toward those eight big feet.
Ahead of her, all the buildings of the town were black and silver in the starlight, and the hotel was four-square in the midst of them, like something strange to them all. Strange like Fitzgerald’s cool eyes watching them all as he walked along his porch every morning of the winter; while Simon stayed huddled in the back of the store and pretended to think the town would be better for being dry. What he thought didn’t matter: if he wanted the hotel closed she would close it; since even then she couldn’t forget the winter he had come for her in her father’s house, when his eyes were still full of light and had found her watching him from behind her mother’s shoulder.
She could smell the beer even now, like wet earth and drying grain; but the dust sifted over it and the Russian thistle rolled and bounced along the front porch, with Harry kicking and chasing it, and banging on the big door with both his hands to hear the echo. He said he could hear the skeleton swinging. Almost from the time he could walk he wanted to go inside. And now he sat on the steps, Mrs. Watson said, for hours every day, not talking to anyone, guarding it against everyone, as if there were anything to guard. People were worried about him, Mrs. Watson said, he didn’t seem to care if the store and everything else went to rack and ruin. Poor Simon, it was like a judgment on him, soon there would be nothing left of all he had contrived to lift himself up on the prairie, on the backs of everyone else; except the sign nailed to the railway station. And one day, who knew? they would even gather up his bones like the bones of all the slaughtered buffalo and the bones of the huge old steam tractors, rusting like dead dinosaurs at the edges of fields until they were wanted for scrap and hauled away. Hers as well, what dry and crumbled bits were left.
She felt hotter than the night, and felt her blood coursing through her head and hands, and even her feet. She began to wheel herself forward, slowly, towards the bridge into the town. Cats in the undergrowth in the dry gully were muttering fretfully, warningly; and a bird suddenly fluttered up into the night air, squawking. As she crossed over the bridge she began to wheel herself faster. The chair bumped down off the bridge and jolted her as if its axle had broken, but she clenched her jaws against the pain and pushed the wheels harder, straight down the long main street, feeling the warm air stir against her face like something near-dead trying to rouse itself to life. The blurred, black buildings lost their clear shape; they seemed to be moving as well, sliding out of line on each side of the street. She held her mind steady and tried to steady her wheeling, for no good would come of losing control; but she couldn’t, the chair seemed to have a life of its own. A car reared up in front of her suddenly like a boulder. She swerved and avoided it, and avoided another, but the chair had begun to careen. A telephone pole was straight in front of her, then was nowhere. The buildings were swaying and silver-edged against the sky. She clamped her hands with all her strength on the wheels to halt them, and the pain which was crouched inside her suddenly stretched itself through her whole body, and she thought she must have screamed; but she felt the chair slow down. She saw a great wall of blackness loom up in front of her, and felt herself bump to a halt.
Her heart gradually slowed its beating and the pain retreated to a knot inside her. The chair was resting against the sidewalk, facing the front steps of the hotel. She wiped her face with the damp towel, and sat for a long time without moving, satisfied that she was as strong as she needed to be, gazing the while at the old and weathered front porch.
It was dead and dry as a bone. Harry could sit here day and night if he wanted, but now that they knew there was nothing inside it but liquor they would carry it off board by board. Even while he huddled all feverish in her arms in his muddy wet clothes and couldn’t tell where he had been, Simon went back out in the pouring rain and boarded up the coal-chute himself. But Harry wasn’t Simon, however quiet he turned after that, as if the fever had burned something out of him; he’d never be able to keep it closed after the tower was done. And why should he, what did it matter anyway, Fitzgerald must be dead these many years.
And yet she could still hear, somewhere far inside her, the chairs creaking as the men twisted round from their tables to see her, and a glass falling and not breaking. The whole room was hazy with tobacco smoke, and the hundreds of candles burned in a cloud over her head, with the stairway climbing right up into them. It was so quiet when the men’s shouting and laughing died, the only sound was Fitzgerald’s slow walking along the gallery, high over her head. His eyes were so still, like eyes in a mask, when he handed her the glass. On the riverbank afterwards the flecks of snow she shook from the poplars onto her hot face were cool, but the whisky was still burning inside her when she went home at last to Simon’s uneasy, unsatisfied eyes. Well now she could satisfy him, she thought, wheeling herself slowly backwards; there was still time. Hank would have to help her. Harry was only strangling himself by holding on so to what was so many years dead.
By the time she reached the back of her house the sky was beginning to grow light, and the tower reared up over her like a gigantic blasted tree. At the foot of the ramp she pulled her bell out of the catch-all box and rang it softly for Hank.
“He’s asleep,” Harry said, lifting his head from the porch where he was lying. “I’m looking at the stars myself, though they’re fading fast. You’re all right, are you? You’ve had a nice outing?”
“I’m tired,” she said. She looked at the ramp so as not to look at him. “Will you wheel me up?”
“I can rouse him for you,” he said, sitting up. “I can hoist him out of bed. I can push him onto the floor.”
“Since you’re here, you can wheel me up yourself.” She was afraid for him; he looked feverish and strange and mild. But she didn’t know what she could do for him now. “Please, Harry.”
He looked at her for what seemed a never-ending time, then he swung his legs over the edge of the porch and jumped down.
“For you I’d do anything,” he said, taking hold of the back of the chair and pushing it up the shallow ramp. “You’re my queen.”
When she was on the porch, he walked back down the ramp and away across the back yard. She listened to his light, long-legged tread going away through the fading darkness, and then she listened to the birds waking up and beginning to sing.

*

“Who’s there?” Jessop called out, straightening up from his weed-sorting. It was Nathan’s knock, but they’d had time enough to learn it. And even if it was him, they could easily be hiding behind him. They might even try slipping in with him. He pulled back the bolt and opened the door a crack. It was Nathan all right, with his arms full.
“They didn’t follow you, did they?” he asked, letting him in and bolting the door. “I guess it’s too early for them.”
“These are from way out on the south road,” Nathan said, letting them fall to the middle of the floor and brushing himself off. “Haven’t you got enough yet?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve got enough,” Jessop said. The drying weeds crackled under their feet. “You keep finding them and I’ll keep paying you.” There was one thing about Indians, you could count on them; they knew without telling what was good and what wasn’t, though for that matter almost nothing wasn’t. They could go to the church and sing as many hymns as they liked, but a mission school couldn’t make them forget what they were born knowing. Just everybody thinking he was in the tent all night kept them away; everybody knew Indians never slept through a blade of grass turning over.
“Well I’ve gotta be getting back then. If he finds I’m away..” He was holding a stem of yarrow in his hand and sniffing it, and his eyes were flickering round the room in the dim light, and his feet were shuffling like they didn’t know if they were staying or going; but he still said he only did it for the money. He was mission-trained, all right.
“Sure you don’t want to stay and help me?” But he shook his head and dropped the yarrow and backed over to the door. Jessop followed after him and let him out and bolted the door quickly behind him, and retreated back into the middle of the room, where at least there would be some comfort in the thick sharp smells of the weeds, and waited.
It wasn’t long before they began. First he could hear their breathing right up against the walls all around him, and a low laugh. And then they began their tapping on the walls and on the front window and on the window of his room at the back. He heard their feet running over the hard ground and on the sidewalk planks. Away and then back. Quick and light. Something banged against the front door and then against the side wall. Then all sound of them died away and he knew they were planning something. His ears were buzzing with the beating of his heart in the silence when they started thumping behind him, heavy and hard and in only one place. His herbal room, they were trying to break into it. He ran to it as fast as he could, but when he reached where the noise had been, all he could hear was somebody’s soft laughter, and then nothing at all.
He waited and waited for them to try to break in somewhere else; the walls were weak and they wouldn’t stop trying until they did break in, they’d driven him right back inside the only shelter he had and still they wouldn’t leave him alone. He breathed in the smell of everything growing and drying and rotting, as deep into his lungs as he could, and he told himself that nobody else could stand it, it was so strong and rank, not even the Indian, but it didn’t help him stop clenching his fists in spasms, or stop listening for the furtive sounds of the children outside.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What are you doing?” Hilda asked, pushing her way into Mr. Fitts’ room. The floor was littered with books and boxes. He was standing with his back to the wall beside the window which looked across the street to his hotel. He was wearing a clean pair of black pants and a clean white shirt, an old-fashioned kind, with creased frills all down the front of it. He waved one of his canes at her, holding himself up with the other.
“Keep back,” he said. “I’m not as helpless as you think.”
“That’s good,” she said, setting the tray down on the dusty table beside his armchair. There was dust everywhere, there was nothing to be done about it. About him either. He was dying, that was pretty clear, and people changed their ways when they were going to die. Like her father, going for long walks in the streets as the soldiers poured in, as if he was all alone.
“Is there anything you want?” she asked. The sounds and smells of the tower-building were filling the room, but she couldn’t see the top of it from where she was, she couldn’t see more than two-thirds of the way to the top. She made her way through the rubble of things on the floor to the side window.
“I’ve got everything I want,” he said. “I don’t need anything from you. And just be careful you don’t damage anything, walking where you like without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“I like to look from here,” she said, standing at the window. Now she could see the whole tower. And the men working on it, all red and brown and shining. And right at the top of it Hank was standing, waving and pointing. Angry, he was always angry on the tower. And so quiet at night. And gentle.
“I’ll be dead before it’s finished,” Mr. Fitts said. “That’s as near as certain. I’m half-buried already in this dust. I don’t suppose you’d think to clean the room a little.”
“You don’t pay me to clean,” she said, not taking her eyes off the tower. “You never want anything touched.”
“That was before. There were things might be taken.” His feet were shuffling behind her and his canes were hitting on the floor.
“You must not stand up so long,” she said. He probably thought it made a difference if he could show he could walk. That wasn’t why her father walked, there wasn’t any reason for him walking. He still looked heavy and strong when the soldiers carried him in dead. All of them grinning at her even then. Over the roofs as far as she could see the prairie was yellow-gold and shining, and Hank’s legs were so wide-spread on the top of his tower she could see some blue sky between them. Mr. Fitts’ breath was on her neck, and the stink of it in her nose.
“She’s only got one reason for building that tower, and you know it as well as I do,” he said, close to her ear.
“Mrs. Otterdown isn’t building it. She’s watching, like everybody. Hank’s building it.”
“That’s what it looks like, of course. She doesn’t like things to appear openly. She doesn’t want people to know why she does them. But just you wait for the day they hoist her up to the top of that thing. Then you’ll see. She’ll have a telescope in her hand, and nothing will escape her eye after that. Of course, I’ll be dead myself before,” he added, pushing past her to the window and breathing heavily. “With this heat she’s turned on, I won’t probably last more than a couple of days longer.” He leaned his back against the wall beside the window and looked like he was all out of breath. His face was all wrinkled now, not smooth like before, round and smooth, like a grey balloon almost. Now it was like the air inside was leaking away. It was days since he had eaten more than a couple of mouthfuls of whatever she brought him. He was thin, her father said, when he was building the hotel; thin and small, and always looked smart, like the town was a capital city. And his back was straight and he didn’t look right or left as he drove off in his car. This funny little old man. And he was still too fat for his old clothes, if that was what they were. The shirt hardly met across his belly.
“Heat’s drying these walls to tinder,” he said in a low voice. “All the sweat they’ve taken from me they’re bleeding back over me. I’ll stew in my own juice. And she’ll just chuckle, I know, and send her hirelings to carry me out of here and dump me into the ground like garbage.”
“Nobody’s got it in mind to trouble you,” Hilda said. “Nobody’s even interested in what you do.” When her father was hunched by the fire, all gloomy, he rubbed his hands together all of a sudden and his eyes lit up all black, and he said that small man made everyone see that Simon Otterdown was smaller still. Through the open side door of Harry’s store across the street she could see the chairs where the men sat, and her father’s stove with the dent in the top of it that he told her to look for, and the backs of Harry’s long legs as he waited on somebody at the counter. “All Mrs. Otterdown cares about is the tower,” she said.
“I see her wheeling round these last nights, don’t you worry; wheeling round my hotel, with those eyes of hers watching. Just her arms moving, nothing else. Biding her time, that’s what she’s doing, don’t think I don’t know after all these years.” He reached out and held onto her arm, his hand still holding the cane, so she could feel the end of it pressing into her flesh. “You didn’t see her then,” he said. “You didn’t see the way she looked around. I saw her. I was coming down the stairs to meet her, and she was looking up, and all the candles were shining on her face and glittering in her eyes, and nobody else was hardly breathing.” He let go of her then and moved back against the wall, looking at her suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not helping her? You were inside with the rest of them. Deny that if you
can.”
“I’m not helping anybody,” she said. “You better sit down or you’ll fall.”
“I’ll fall anyway,” he said. “I’m done for.” He was going soft again, and his eyes were wandering the way they usually did. “Nowhere, that was where I wanted it, right in the middle of nowhere. No harm in that.” He was trying to bend down to pick up something from the floor. “I’ve got to make things tidy before I go. She can do what she likes then. I don’t want her to find me like this.”
Hilda helped him back across the room to his armchair. He seemed half the weight he had been, but his old clothes were tight everywhere; he must once have been as thin as a boy. She sat him down and put his tray on his lap, but he only gazed straight ahead of him at the hanging-open doors of his big wardrobe, which she had never seen anything but closed before. If he wanted to put on some of his fancy old clothes to die in, that was his business. He certainly had plenty to choose from.
“She was like a girl, a little girl,” he muttered to himself.

*

Her eyes were failing, there was no doubt about it, Mrs. Comstock thought to herself, as she sat on the porch in the shade of the middle of the afternoon. If she could just look out across the prairie instead of into the town, she might forget about it, but she couldn’t do that and sit in the shade. It was a pity the house wasn’t on the north side of town, but it wasn’t, so it wasn’t. Which meant she couldn’t fool herself into thinking it was just a heat haze, to do with the season and not with her, since even the nearest houses were blurred as if they were half-hiding in a kind of bright mist. Even the fence at the back of the garden wasn’t altogether clear, and the tower looked nearly twice its real size, which made it look nearer and farther away at the same time. If she looked at it for long she began to feel slightly dizzy. It seemed to begin to sway.
Only in the garden itself could she see clearly, and there there was hardly anything to see. A few flowers only, and drooping, shrivelling leaves. And the earth around them looked more like concrete than anything else. But Amanda wouldn’t give up, of course; she saw it as her duty to waste all the water their well gave, so they might soon have to beg for it from others. Or die of thirst. If things were going to grow, they would grow without any help from her. Like the sunflowers, which were the only things worth looking at. They made her feel a bit better, such sturdy things they were, with stalks as thick as young trees. They were more a weed than a flower, of course; that was why they took all the water from other things and let them shrivel away. But at least something came of it: big sleepy heads all facing the morning sun.
Somebody was coming along the road from the middle of town, half-hidden by the sunflowers, half-hazy and shining. A man, it looked like; maybe he would stop for a beer. He was moving queerly, she thought, as he came nearer. She blinked her eyes to clear them, to see him better, but he was almost at the back fence before she realized that it was Hank, limping worse than she had ever seen him. But then, she hadn’t really seen him at all for weeks, except way up on his tower or shuffling around underneath it, too far for her to see much of him. More was the pity, since even if he did run off in the middle of things, he had given her the first good time in years. Well, anyway, something near to a good time; as much as a body her age could expect. And he was a real man anyway, which was more than could be said for most of them roundabout.
“Maybe you’d like a beer,” she called out to him. But he didn’t answer. He was holding on to the good part of the fence and peering over it into the garden. “Something to cool you in this heat. He didn’t seem to hear her. He was limping slowly along beside the fence, still holding it. If he had anything particular in mind he wasn’t showing it very clearly. He seemed to be looking at the sunflowers, as if they were the only interest he had and nobody else was anywhere near. But maybe he had come at last to see about the fence; maybe Amanda’s nagging had made some impression. Anything was possible.
“Come and have a chat,” she said when he was almost even with the porch, but he kept walking along the fence and staring at the sunflowers until he was cut off from her by the corner of the house. Then, a few minutes later, when she was just wondering if she had the strength and curiosity to lift herself out of her chair to go and see where he had gone, he appeared again on the other side of the house, running both hands along the top of the chicken wire. He looked a bit dazed, she thought. All this time in the blazing sun, probably; enough to addle anybody. And still looking at the blessed sunflowers.
“It’s certainly a fine sight from here,” she said, nodding in the direction of the shimmering tower. “I expect you’ll be taking down the scaffolding any day now.” He turned his head and looked at her then, his eyes wide-open and staring. He opened his mouth as well, but he couldn’t seem to make any sound come out.
“I’ll fix this,” he said at last. “I’ll make everything good. I’ll be round tomorrow.” Then he moved slowly off, like a wounded animal almost, heading towards the railway track. He looked weary to death, she thought, and she was glad when she couldn’t see him any longer for the mist she saw round her everywhere. But she was afraid of the mist as well, because it seemed to be closing in. At least if he came to fix the fence and the tool shed it would give her something to watch, and someone to talk to for awhile.

*

Miss Purl arrived at her back gate as Hank was finishing. She had seen him leave the tower with Josey at his side. The children had seen him as well and had started whispering. Not that that had been proof of anything, naturally; he might have left for any reason, though he seldom did leave. Why, after all, should he suddenly bother to keep his promise? She had rapped her ruler to keep the children quiet, but they really had been making very little noise. The heat was affecting them as well. At last. They kept falling asleep during the day. She would rather, really, not try to wake them until it was time to go home, it would be a rest; but that was only her weakness. And it was only her condition which made her feel so weak; if she held onto herself, it would pass. And the children would still be there, they would always be there.
“I told him,” her aunt was saying, standing on the other side of the gate. “I told him he was a vandal and he couldn’t do just as he liked, but he wouldn’t listen.” There had still been a few flowers on the petunias and one or two bright orange ones on the trailing nasturtiums, like small flames on the hot earth. The smell of the tractor’s diesel exhaust wasn’t very pleasant. Perhaps if he had used horses.
“You might have telephoned the school, I think,” she said. Not that it would have done any good, probably. If he was fixed in his course there was little either of them could do to dislodge him. The sunflowers were certainly handsome; he must have thrown buckets of water over them to make their leaves look so fresh and green. He was touching them in an absent-minded way with one of his hands, and gazing at her in that fixed way he had. Probably he wanted her to say that she was pleased.
She would have to say something. Even if the ground looked strange, it was enclosed by her fence, or partly by her fence; it was her ground, more or less.
“It’s not, of course, my house,” she said. He mightn’t have acted on his own. Mrs. Otterdown might have sent him, though it would have been courteous to have told her what she had in mind. But in any event she couldn’t have stood by her gate at constant alert from morning to night. There were the children to teach, for one thing.
“You’d better come inside,” Vera was saying, reaching out to her arm; but she backed off from her.
“I think another time would have been better,” she said. She wasn’t handling it well. She was taking a very weak line. But it was such a surprising thing to have done. If she had been annoying him, as doubtless she had been, he needn’t have done so much to make her stop. Dry as it was, she looked forward to her garden in the evenings. He was walking towards her over the furrows. A very serious expression he had.
“Would you please turn off the engine,” she called out to Josey, thinking her voice sounded very peculiar. “I don’t like the smell of the exhaust.” It seemed that he was the one who had driven the tractor; he would know how to handle it better. Certainly, the furrows were very regular. It was all a bit like the sea when it was choppy; particularly where the furrows seemed to be breaking on the shore round the island of sunflowers. Hank was shouting now at Josey to drive the tractor and plough right out of the garden through the place where they had pulled the chicken wire down. He sounded in a fury. A person never knew whom he would turn on next. Now he was smiling at her and reaching out one of his enormous hands; reaching it right over the fence. It was peculiar, really, his being on the inside and her on the outside, with Vera making some kind of sound in the middle.
“Everything’ll grow better now,” he said. “It’ll grow like fury. You’ll have the finest garden anybody ever saw.”
“Nothing will grow at all, now, I’m afraid,” she said. “Not this year, certainly. And many things were perennials, you know. It will mean starting all over again, from the beginning. So if you have finished what you wanted to do, I think you had better go away.” She hoped he would go without her having to say anything stronger. Even though the tractor was now on the empty ground outside her garden, she could still smell the drifting exhaust. Josey seldom obeyed anybody, she ought not to have expected it. He hardly seemed to notice she was there, he was only waiting for Hank to go. But Hank wouldn’t go; he wouldn’t leave her alone. He was red and hot-looking, and pressed so hard against her fence to reach out his hand to her that she thought he would bring it crashing to the ground. And his bright blue eyes were staring straight at her.
“I’ve got a song for you. I want to play it for you,” he said.
“Not now,” she said, keeping back from the fence. She felt very hot and tired, and wanted to lie down, but he blocked the way.
“I mean one of these nights. Soon now. I haven’t got a long time left.” The fence creaked loudly under his weight. Not that it would make much difference, of course, if he did bring it crashing to the ground.
“That would be very nice,” she said, and managed to keep her eyes fixed on him until he stood back from the fence and seemed quieter, frowning a little to himself.
“OK then,” he muttered. “OK.”
She nodded at him and gave him a small smile, which was only her nervousness, and waited as he lurched his way back over her ruined garden, and out of it, to where Josey was only waiting for him to drive off in the tractor.
“There wasn’t any way of stopping him,” Vera said. She seemed to have said it before. Probably she felt she ought to have tried harder. She was so fat she seemed to block the whole gate. If only there were a wind, she was sure she would feel better. The stillness doubled the heat.
“The children are better behaved these days, I’ll say that for them,” she said, reaching out her hand to her aunt’s arm to show her she didn’t blame her, thinking she looked white and not very well. The smell of the crushed and uprooted plants hung in the still air, which was at least better than the smell of the exhaust of the tractor.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A meadowlark was singing on a dusty fence-post and grasshoppers were screeching softly in the fields as Miss Purl walked along the north road out of town at sunset. She ought to have taken the children out for nature classes more often, she thought. They liked being in the open air even if they didn’t learn very much. And for that matter, there was little evidence of them learning much wherever they were. She swung her basket forward and back, and walked briskly, and breathed in the breeze that blew in her face. She had nodded to them all, for there was no reason to be rude, but it was good to feel that they were all downwind.

*

“I guess he just had it in for her,” Wilkinson said, more to himself than not, gazing after her back through the dark-red air.
“Once a field’s ploughed, it’s ploughed,” MacNamara said. “She’ll realize that. She ought to have let us fence it when we asked.”
Ray Keefer, beside them, tilted back in his chair against the wall of his shop, didn’t like seeing her go out of town, even if it was only just for a walk. She didn’t care for him, he knew that well enough, and that was what he needed now. He needed to be looked at and stopped the way his mother used to do it. Being all on his own wasn’t safe, he could think things that.. He tried humming a hymn, but almost right away it made him cough. He listened to the noises from the tower slowly dying. It was the night coming that was the big trouble; when the light died and the heat stopped pressing him down, and he saw the shadows of them sliding about in the dark right near him, so near that.. If only he could keep still, he had to keep still. He thought of another hymn and thought of Bella singing it.

*

From where Rupe Windflower sat, on his bench at the back of his house, everything he could see was red: the tower and the school and the field they were both in, and the dry weeds and the backs and sides of other people’s houses, and the men climbing down off the tower, one after the other, straggling, since there wasn’t any reason to be in any hurry. At the bottom they stood around, and some of them looked back up into the scaffolding as if they were waiting for somebody still to come, while Alvin stood by the gate out of the enclosure and chewed his pencil impatiently and rubbed at the side of his red face, waiting to check them out. Every day they took longer leaving. They stood around aimlessly while the Indian covered over the tar-pot with its big wooden lid that always looked too heavy for him even to lift, and banged it down in place, and soaked the fire carefully. They watched the black smoke rise up from it, some of them stretching their necks back to watch it drift up higher even than the tower-top, where the last sun was still shining and where Hank was still standing, all by himself as usual, staring straight ahead into space. They only went when they saw the Indian going, as if it was some kind of sign.
They were scared of the end coming, that was what it was, and it wouldn’t be long now. A week at the latest and they’d be taking the scaffolding down. Then he’d be firing the lot of them, and the days would be long with no harvest to wait for. But only him to watch, since they all knew he didn’t come to town just to build them a water tower and go away again. They all of them guessed he had more on his mind than that. What he did to Miss Purl’s garden was only the start. So the thing for everybody to do was to keep his eyes peeled for what he would do next, and be there before him, ready. He wouldn’t, himself, be caught unawares again.

*

He had his duty, Harry told himself, his job for the dying day, when the children came out with crowbars into the ruddy light and huddled, whispering, in the purple shadows, flickering their eyes towards the hotel and away. He ought not to be standing dully at his own bedroom window staring down at the ground as if at a strange patch of sunlight at the entrance to his cave. There was nothing curious in Janey Gleave plucking a chicken; she was a resourceful girl as everyone knew, full of devices for passing a halcyon hour, while the sun was dying and the slender moon was sliding down in its murky wake. But untouched, of course, like a mediaeval virgin, so white and slight and pure. No one would think it would come back as red and full as the sun itself. That would be the time.
He oughtn’t to brood. He ought to be grateful. His arch-enemy would soon have done his worst, and be gone. Ceremoniously carried off. And then he himself would be free. Wouldn’t he? Free to go? Free to stay, with his mother, until she.. Free then even to topple over himself, in mild mimicry; out of the window into the hollyhocks. Janey could pluck him then too while the town gathered round and wept and claimed there had never been, never was, never would be such another. And the coroner could say that he had died of a distraction, and somewhat of a fall.
He must not. He held onto the window ledge with both his hands and looked up through the dusky air at the sky which was strangely faraway and blue, and he thought if it went on much longer he would just go quietly into the midst of them. And they would be quiet then too. Wouldn’t they? They would wait and not hurry; and when they closed in, they would close in slowly, and the wound they would give him would be gentle and deep. And the funeral the grandest since his father’s.
He couldn’t stop himself. His mind went round in dull circles, all on its own. The chicken which Janey was holding fast in her long thin legs clucked softly as she stroked it and cooed near its head. Then it squawked and she laughed as she suddenly yanked out another feather, and then stroked it again until it subsided. The air was losing its little breeze and the light was sinking into darkness. He would go down. He had to go down. And out.

*

“It’s my luck,” Phil said, sitting hunched on the edge of the bed and staring out the window at the hot night. “I just start working for him and he goes off and does that to her because she told him what it was right to do.”
Annabel sat in the middle of the bed, combing her hair and listening to the soft sparking sounds it made. It was growing fast, it would soon be as long as he wanted it, long enough to bury his hands in. Which he wanted now though he tried to pretend he didn’t, coming right into the bedroom with all his sweat and dirt on him instead of taking his shower, and not wanting any light on. So he had to keep talking. She stretched out her foot and tried to pull his shirt-tail out of his pants with her toes.
“I ought to quit, that’s what; to show I’m on her side,” he said, pushing her foot away, but not hard. “It’s nothing to me what happens with this tower, or what it does or anything.” She stroked her foot against his sweat-wet back and watched him slowly straighten up and turn away from the window where there wasn’t anything to see. “It’s only for the baby,” he said, shifting himself nearer. “I’ve got to stay at work for the baby, don’t I? I can’t see what other way there is.” He crawled over the bed to her, so she could see his tired eyes and his face all lines, and she thought it was queer the way he was sliding his arms around her so gently, not his usual way. It was all these problems he had, and not being used to working so hard. “He didn’t have any right to do that,” he said into her hair. “She never harmed anybody.” She sank back on the bed under him, and breathed in all the smells of his work on the tower.

*

Bella walked slowly back and forth along the front porch, through her mother’s voice saying she ought to come in because of the mosquitoes and through Mr. Fairling’s voice saying that a short walk in the dark would do her no harm. There were other people out, he said; and she could hear them herself, even with the noise of the juke-box playing on and on and on as if they were trying to make the daytime last right through the night to the next day, when she had waited all day herself for the night to come, and the stillness that might come with it, and the tunes that Hank might play out on the prairie.
She stopped at the railing facing towards the church, and tried to feel quieter. If her mother thought she was at all feverish, she would put her to bed. She tried to hear the prairie sounds and not hear the town sounds, the sounds of everybody’s feet walking on the sidewalks, and their voices talking to each other from sidewalk to sidewalk. Even late at night they came right past the manse and called out good night to her, they wouldn’t leave her alone. She held tightly to the railing and prayed to God to help her to be quiet, but she kept hearing her own pulse beat, and she couldn’t pray out loud to drown it or her mother would hear her, and she couldn’t sing her scales now the way she could in the daytime to keep the noises out. Even as it was she was straining her voice, because the day was so long. It never seemed to end. And there wasn’t much night and they were trying to take that away as well. They didn’t care for her, it was only her singing..
“Are you feeling all right?” Mr. Fairling asked from close behind her, talking through the pulsing in her ears.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Would you like to go for a walk? I’ve persuaded your mother it might be a good thing.”
“I don’t think so, Uncle Arthur. When it’s darker, maybe.”
“It’s night now.”
“Yes, I know.” She turned back to the railing. She meant quieter, but he was almost deaf, he wouldn’t understand. She listened to his feet going away along the porch and then down the front steps. It was so easy to go. If only the noise would die and the night would come and her mother would forget that she hadn’t gone to bed.

*

Mrs. Otterdown sat in her living room with her hands on the wheels of her chair, listening to the blurred sound of cars starting up in the main street and driving out of town at last. They all of them had to sleep a little. Someone walked past the house, walking slowly, going home. She waited, listening for every sound of them to die away; and then she wheeled herself across the unlit room to the open front window, and breathed the air which billowed warmly in through the screen, and felt peaceful. Hank was out there somewhere, strong and heavy, walking wherever he wanted on the prairie, paying no mind to their fences, with a smile on his face like a baby’s grin.

*

Harry closed the door of the store behind him, and locked it, and stood in the warm darkness and the years-familiar smells. It ought, he thought, to be a comfort to him to know that he continued. But it wasn’t. He was tired. If he had a choice he would stop. If they asked his permission to do away with him, poison him say, tired of him at last, and tired of both their games, saying the time had come they all thought, the time for a change, holding out a phial of wolfsbane or whatever else Jessop squeezed from the secret places in the earth and passed on to them in darkness, he would bow his head and be glad. It would be cheering to think that they thought him worth the killing, since even his being a gargoyle was only a game. He kept no one away. All he could do from the hotel steps was gaze over Esterhazy’s roof to the tower top and see Hank standing there ready, nearly all his preparations done. And not be able to move himself. Well, how and where should he move?
He stumbled against a chair and sent it crashing to the floor, and felt the pain in his knee start throbbing again. The sudden noise was startling, it was so loud, almost as if the whole store was crumpling to the ground around him; but the wish fathered that, and his own father frowned out of the darkness, since how had he proved that he would be better if the store was not? Long though he had thought it. Oh yes, not a store, but a lovely closed hotel, shut tight against vandals. He leaned against the stove and his hands explored the surface of it and the pain in his leg died down. He thought he heard some small noise in the back storeroom, but when he listened all he heard was the humming of the silence. His fingers amused themselves by pulling flakes of iron oxide from the stove.
Time certainly had a feeling about it of running short. Everybody felt it. But why did they think it could come to an end before their very eyes and leave them seeing just the same? When backwards and forwards were just the same. Like a swing swung from the heavens, and Hank spread-eagled on it with four eyes in two heads, looking both ways.
Not swung. Falling. Falling.
Well. Let him fall. Let him arch in the moonlight, and throw out his arms and kick out his feet and glide; through his sky full of moons, and his night full of crying like the crying of birds, and song even, who knew what his rushing ears would hear? There would still be, for the rest of them, even for his mother, alive though her body might be to his falling, only a tumbling down and splashed blood over everything. Which they could wash off. And go back to their homes. And sit round together to embellish the tale.
Here. They would sit here. Around this warm winter stove that was Otto Grunwald’s, as none of them bothered to remember. And if he waited here himself, somewhat dried out with the weather and all, but not dead, they would turn back to him, forgetting all others, as they always turned back to his father. It was a consoling prospect. All he had to do was hide away in here and bide his time, and come out after the shouting to be king again. For as long then as he himself might quietly last.
He thought he heard the door to the back room open softly, and somebody breathing through his mouth only a few yards away, but he didn’t see how that could be. The other door to the lumber room was locked and the door behind him was locked and the front door was locked and the door to the post-office was locked. And everyone was outside. He was alone inside, or with his shadowy father at most, so what creature could be over there breathing? He scraped his shoe against the stove-belly to attract its attention, and it fled back the way it came, on soft light feet. Perhaps it was an animal, trained to open doors. Or an enemy scout, taken unawares. Since he was the caretaker of the precinct and had a free moment, he followed it, though his leg still complained that it hurt.
He struck a match in the back room and peered through its flaring light, but he couldn’t see anything except the usual things, the sacks and boxes of things,and bundles of paper, and the dusty row of small desks from his mother’s time of teaching, and the dustier hand-made lectern, his father’s hand, from the holy time before that; and the pile of lumber from the buildings his father had gathered unto him. A small pile now, barely enough to furnish fresh boards of good quality for the sidewalks. Perhaps when he was king again he could organize a bee to pull down the hotel. Then he could fill the room to overflowing and gain his father’s blessing. And make all the sidewalks safe for Bella, if she ever came out of the manse again. He heard a small rumbling noise in the far corner of the room and caught a glimpse of a face as the match burnt his fingers and went out.
“Honest, I didn’t mean to hurt anything. It was the others. He said he’d beat me dead.” It was Maureen, her face shining white in the half-full potato barrel, huddling away from the light of his second match. He smiled to show that he was friendly to all maids calling on him for protection, and looked round the room to find out how she had gained its sanctuary; and saw that the bottom half of the window in the wall facing the empty lot was broken. She must have climbed up on the old car. Probably she would be safer, feel safer, if he didn’t switch on the light.
“He’s looking all over the town. He’ll find me, I know he’ll find me.” Between matches her face was a pale blur. In the first flare of one match he saw her licking the blood from a long scratch in her arm, but she stopped when she saw he could see. Maybe she was hungry, he thought; being awake so late. He put his finger to his lips to caution her and went away to bring her some iodine and cotton wool and a can of pineapple cubes. And a candle for steady modest light.
He could make her stretch up her arm for the iodine-swabbing, but he couldn’t make her come out of the barrel. She didn’t want the pineapple cubes either. She was shy. But she ate one, watching him while she chewed it and swallowed it; while he smiled to reassure her that it was good, and ate one himself to prove it.
“I think I heard him,” she whispered. Her face was so white and shining she wouldn’t be safe from Frank even in the dark. “He knows every hiding place in town. He’ll find me sure as anything. He said he’d dig a big hole in the ground and bury me in it and stomp on me ’til I was all broke up. This stuff makes my arm hurt worse than blazes.”
There wasn’t any use finding a maiden in distress if he couldn’t relieve it. He didn’t know what maidens wanted, that was his trouble; he never had. He offered her another cube of pineapple and watched her eat it quicker than she ate the first. He watched the window as well, for her sake, since no place was really safe, however filled, as this one was, with relics. If a crack opened, the wide night came in; if you had a dog, it slept, or wandered the town to find a breeze.
Suddenly he heard Hank’s mouth-organ playing not far away, the first time that night. Maureen looked round, looked scared.
“That’s for me,” she said. “He’s comin’ after me.” He shook his head to reassure her. She was a timid maid, fearing and distrusting. “Mr. Jessop sent him after me. I know. I seen them together sometimes. But it wasn’t just me, it was all of them. It was because I’m small and we thought he was outside somewhere lookin’ for more weeds, so they pushed me in through his window and I was supposed to open the door, but he was standin’ there, waitin’ the whole time. And he grabbed at me and missed and kept grabbin’ and shoutin’ that he’d get me anyway at last. He’ll find me, I know he will, whatever Josey says. I just wanted to see what he does with all those weeds. I didn’t mean no harm. Josey said he’d look after me.”
Harry looked at her closer, and wondered if she was a true maid after all. She had more the look of a false one, the way she breathed through her mouth and flicked her glance about and listened for Hank to come nearer, and tried to make him think at first it was against her father she wanted his help. She had a sly look, there was no denying it, the way her eyelid drooped from the last blacking Frank had given it. She was probably fashioned to mislead him and weaken him and betray him to his enemies, creeping right into his father’s innermost shell. And she was looking surer, she was clambering out of the barrel and looking round like a girl easily able to take care of herself. Hank’s heavy feet were almost at his back on the sidewalk beyond the wall.
“Don’t let him get me,” she said. Hank blared a loud note on his mouth-organ, then again and again. Maureen started running towards the store. Harry’s arm, more quickly than he thought it would, or could, wrapped itself around her thin body.
“I never did nothin'” she whimpered. “I never..” He patted her head with his other hand. Probably she was neither true nor false, that was the likely fact of it. Nor Jessop either. Nor even Hank. His arm holding her tightly, he led her to the side door of his store, and unlocked and opened it to the night. Hank was there, right in front of him, his mouth-organ to his mouth. From which the sound died away as he saw Maureen. Josey was standing beside him, with a bundle under his arm. Maureen stopped squirming. Harry let her go, and backed down the step again into the store, and closed the door. The night felt much too wide. He backed through the near dark to the stove, and stood beside it, listening to Hank’s feet going away; and wondered idly if Josey stayed nearby even when Hilda was being mounted, or whittled a stick in the next field.
When everything was quiet again he walked slowly back to the back room, and looked round at it, wondering how it might have looked to Maureen’s frightened eyes. Then he stuffed the hole in the window with newspaper, as a gesture; and wondered what to do after that. He might hang himself, he thought; right in the middle of this ancient room. Of many high uses. That would keep it from intruders, and keep his father’s memory warm, since the mere rumour of a skeleton had kept Fitzgerald’s lifework inviolate for years.
But even if he had the will, and the strength, to hitch himself to a beam, they would soon enough come in and cut him down; and bury him grandly as they had his father, and that would be the dull end. He picked up the still half-full can of pineapple cubes, and ate them one by one off his dripping fingers, and absently gazed at the shifting shadows the candle flame made.

*

In the empty lot, close to the front fence, Ray stopped himself even from breathing as he heard somebody coming very quietly along the main street. It was so dark he could hardly see anything more than some roof edges against the stars. And the tower, all right, he could see the tower, blacker than anything, and bigger. And that funny light, that he couldn’t even be sure was there, in the room behind Harry’s store. He had to be careful; Harry might be there himself. He had heard some sounds from round here when he was over by the tower, and Hank blowing loud notes for some reason; and Josey ran past really near him in his white T-shirt, coming this way. Just like he wanted to be seen, and maybe even stopped since the night was the same around them all, hiding everything nobody wanted the rest to see. Boys liked more things than they said. They pretended they were the same as they would be when they were men, but they weren’t, they were easier than that, and they stopped pretending sometimes and did things they had to forget when they were grown up. In the night they did them, it was all in being near when they were ready.
It was Jessop going by, making almost no more noise than a shadow. There was something happening, that was for sure, something going on that didn’t happen in the day. He was all hard and throbbing himself, he couldn’t stop it, it was the feeling in the night; and he wasn’t the only one feeling it. He breathed in and out as slow and easy as he could.
Maybe Josey was even waiting for it, he thought. Maybe he wouldn’t mind at all. Maybe he even did things with Hank, you could never be sure. Boys got up to all kinds of things. He felt his sweat trickling out of his armpits and his groin, and he held his hands behind his back and pressed himself up against the fence.
He was getting out of control. He ought to go home and shut himself in his room. He could do what he wanted there, it wouldn’t do any harm to anybody there; but it was looking like he maybe couldn’t trust himself to hold himself back if he stayed out and Josey came too near. It was the heat and the dark, and the old car being so close, and all of them sitting in it, years and years of them. He pressed himself harder against the boards of the fence, and thought again that he ought to go home, and kept seeing a white blur in the dark that was Josey coming near.

*

Bella walked down the steps of the manse into the late night, and walked carefully along the boardwalk, feeling unsteady on her feet, and so strangely free and light that she thought with the least wind she would float right off the ground. She could hardly hear any sounds at all; even the grasshoppers and the far coyotes and the night birds were asleep. She felt as if she had been ill and she was well at last, and that it was all a bad dream. She listened to the sounds of her own soft shoes on the boards, and couldn’t hear the sounds of any other shoes, and thought how she could go all over the town on the sidewalks. And if she was careful, she could even leave the sidewalks; there was nobody anywhere to see her and tell her mother. It was as if the town wasn’t really there at all, as if the boards were just laid out on the bare prairie and she was alone for miles and miles and miles.
When the sidewalk turned left to go towards the main street, she stepped down from it deliberately, and smiled to herself at the feel of the soft dirt under her feet, like feathers almost, and under it miles of solid earth. She walked cautiously along the road, listening.
At last she heard Hank’s music, but she couldn’t make out where it came from. It was cool and faint, and it seemed to be high up in the air, far over her head, like the singing of a bird. Perhaps he was standing on his tower, right on the very top; and watching her even, waiting for her to come to him now that they were all asleep and couldn’t keep him surrounded any longer, so she could sing something for him the way he asked her to do, holding her wrist so gently, and his voice like nobody else’s, heavy and low.
Then she didn’t hear him at all. She stopped quite still, but she couldn’t hear him; and she thought she wasn’t quite sure where she was and she began to feel a little frightened. Her mother really knew best, she oughtn’t to have come out on her own. What if he were to be suddenly right in front of her the way he was the first time?
She started and heard herself make a noise, because something brushed against her legs. It was a cat. It was the feel of their fur she could never bear, but they always came near her. She told it to go away and it made soft growling noises, half-purring. She thought she had better go home again, because the night was too hot and she felt uncomfortable, when she heard a night-bird sing its one cool note only a few yards away; and then, from further away, his mouth-organ trying to answer it.
It wasn’t high in the air now, and it didn’t sound so very far away, but she had gone off the road somewhere and was on some kind of open ground where it was hard to walk and where she half-fell two or three time before her foot touched a board and she found herself on one of the sidewalks again, though she wasn’t sure which one. She walked along it a little way, but it wasn’t taking her to where he was playing, so she stepped off it carefully, and found she was on some kind of rough ground again, and open, as if what she had thought had now really happened, the town had all vanished and there wasn’t a house or a fence or anybody anywhere.
Then she smelled the tar that filled the air in the day, and she knew that she was in the field where the tower was, and that she must be practically right under it, and the Indian must be very near and wideawake in his tent, because they said Indians could hear even birds’ feet on the ground, however Christian they were. She backed away and circled round. She couldn’t hear the night bird any longer, all she could hear was his mouth-organ, which was much closer. She began to be a little afraid; although she knew where she was, she she had to walk carefully or she might fall, and the ground was hard from the children playing on it.
He was playing louder now, and not moving at all from where he was, and he was playing a hymn. Which sounded beautiful, but it wasn’t right to do, her mother would say it was wrong if she heard. Carefully she made her way over the hard ground right nearer and nearer to where he was playing, until it was like the hymn and his breathing in the hymn were everywhere around her.
Then he stopped, and all she could hear was his breathing, only a few feet away. She made herself smile in his direction, in case he could see her, and she told herself not to be frightened.
“You sing for me,” he said. His low voice was gentle. And he began to play one of his soft sad songs that climbed up the scale higher and higher. She murmured that she couldn’t sing. She listened to him playing and she hummed the song as faintly as she could in the back of her throat, but she didn’t sing. Her voice wasn’t for that, as her mother said. It wasn’t for pleasing herself or pleasing other people. It was for God.
She felt him moving back, away from her, she could feel the ground shivering. He was going. He was like them all: if she couldn’t sing, he didn’t want her. The humming in her throat was stronger, but he didn’t know, because he was twice as far away now, and he couldn’t hear for his own playing. If she sang, they would all hear her. She followed after him slowly, frightened.
She opened her lips a little, and the sound of her voice came out softly between them, and he stopped backing away. His playing was louder, and rising higher. And her voice was rising too. She couldn’t stop it. She could feel it coming out of her, but it wasn’t her; it was just in her. And there weren’t any walls or roof to cover it, only the music he was making around it. It was wrong what she was doing, it was almost as if she was naked in front of him. God would be angry and never let her sing again however much everybody wanted it. But the sound kept coming out of her, and though her throat was burning with it, she couldn’t make herself stop.
She realized he had stopped playing, the only sound was her own singing; and a shiver of fear went through her as she smelled him very near her. Then she felt him pressing against her. He smelled so strong she could hardly breathe, and his hands were heavy against her back, and she couldn’t understand what was happening, and then she thought she was falling over.
A voice was shouting. A high voice. A child.
He had let her go, and she was stumbling away from him. She could still feel his hands on her, but they weren’t; and she wasn’t falling, she was walking, she could feel the hard earth like stones through her shoes. She prayed to God to help her find her way home, and she told her mother she was sorry, but she wasn’t sure which way she was going, and she kept hearing the child’s voice shouting, and something hitting something, something small hitting something big, and she was sure the whole town was alive with people watching her with those eyes of theirs, and her ears were echoing dully with her own voice, as if she was still singing, when she wasn’t. Everywhere around her there was only the same hard open ground, how was she ever going to get home again? Then she stumbled against one of the sidewalks.

*

Ray couldn’t make out what was happening. He had never heard her sing like that before, not since the day she was only ten and stood up by herself, all in white and everybody watching her and nobody able to believe that a little girl could make such a sound. It hardly even sounded like her, and then it stopped dead, like a radio turned off. He stood right at the edge of the empty lot, and leaned forwards over the sidewalk to look down the street to the north bridge, but he couldn’t see a thing. He thought he heard some kind of small shouting, but he couldn’t swear to it, what with his ears still ringing with her voice and his own breath coming and going more irregular than he ever remembered. When he’d heard it begin, he’d thought it sounded so beautiful, and it’d calmed him down a little, even quite a bit, as if God had seen the danger he was in and sent her out into the night to help him. But he was wrong. God was leaving him on his own. The night was hotter than ever now, and he was hotter than ever. Maybe he hadn’t ever heard her, just made her up out of his head.
There was somebody in the street. Not far and coming nearer fast. Must be running. It must be Josey, it was his white T-shirt. He was running right down the middle of the street, like a white blur in the dark, nearly like a light. He ducked back in behind the fence and held onto it with both hands to keep himself there. He wouldn’t do anything. If he held the fence Josey would be gone and he’d be safe, he had to hold on. He prayed to God to help him.
Josey stopped. Right in front of him. And started running towards the fence. He was going to go right by him, right where he..
He was in his arms, what had he done, he.. He held him as tight as he could against himself, it was too late now; but it was like holding a twisting snake and he couldn’t stop him shouting and screeching, he was as hot as fire in his arms.

*

Bella heard the screaming, and started to run. She tried to stop herself as soon as she started, she knew it was dangerous, but she couldn’t. It was a girl screaming, and somebody else was groaning, it was a man, in a way she had never heard anybody groan, it sounded almost beside her, it was a little behind her now. She mustn’t run, her mother always said she mustn’t. Hank wasn’t fresh and washed the way he was in the spring, he smelled thick and strong and dirty nearly like the way Jessop smelled and now she smelled like that too. If she didn’t stop running she would fall. The sidewalk would come to an end. She prayed as hard as she could to God, saying that she was sorry, that she knew she had done wrong and it couldn’t be undone. But she would be better, she would sing what everyone wanted, she would never think of herself. Then she tripped, and stumbled, and suddenly something hit against her head and she felt herself sinking down. She drifted and floated, and waters lapped round her, and wrapped her, and slowly rolled her over till she was floating on her back. But it was such thick water that she could barely breathe.

*

When Harry found Bella across the street from his store, the town was quiet. But other people soon came, and he heard them coming, and he looked up from stroking her hair. She was making queer whimpering noises. He watched them take her up, and heard somebody say maybe a bone was broken, and watched them carry her away. He saw Jessop watching as well, and then he didn’t see him. Then he didn’t see anybody, or hear anybody, and then he went for a walk.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Somebody must go,” Hilda said. “All night Nathan says she was there.”
Harry gazed down at her through the railings, but he couldn’t make her out clearly because of the sun shining in the doorway behind her. He had been awake all night himself, though not much out of the store, and he didn’t see that it had done him any harm. In fact, he felt better than he had for a long while; he felt serene, like a cloud that was slowly breaking up and the light, all golden, pouring in. He didn’t understand it, of course, he didn’t claim that, but there wasn’t any reason to think that it understood him either, so it was all one. Still, he realized that for Miss Purl a night alone on the prairie might be an ill thing; the one was still many. He smiled to himself a little, but not so that Hilda waiting down below, waiting for him to move, could see, and traced his pencil once again round the pentangle on the paper on his desk: the mystic, mediaeval knot; endless knot, full of virtue.
“Maybe she’s happy there,” he said, pleased to find himself in such clear control. It was a pleasant morning still, as far as he could make out, too early to be hot, happily filled with the sound of nails being wrenched out of wood, and from time to time the sound of the wood itself splitting. They were all working well to do themselves out of work, and then there would be no noise at all. Just quiet waiting for the full moon to rise. “Maybe we should let her do what she wants,” he said, giving Hilda a full smile.
“There is no shade. It will be so hot and she is not young.” She was trying to tarnish his well-being, but he remained cool. She was a stranger in his store. She was ploughed and maybe seeded by alien hands that did what they wanted and went their way, that threw birds into the air with clipped wings and wondered when they fell down smash. She wasn’t for him, though he could feel her breath spreading into the air around her; she was poached, like all his kingdom.
“She will maybe die,” she said. She was the earth, trying to pull him down from the light. He was only the reeve, only a formality, who could call it part of his duty to bring back women who had wandered out onto the prairie and thought they would stay there, and why not? She could dig herself a burrow and eat roots, and beckon with a bony forefinger to passing squires on their way to look for the sun, and give them the pollen they would need for the journey. Hilda wouldn’t take her eyes off him.
“You will go?” she said. “You must go before it’s too hot.”
Maybe he would go, after all. Maybe a walk would be pleasant after so long sitting in his chair. He could stroll round the town as well, to see how people were getting on, assuring himself that they were busy and happy. He said yes, he would go, and watched her turn away, and stroke the old stove as she passed it, and stop to feel the dent her father had made in it with a hammer, angry against his father; and go out the side door into the street where the sun fell on her like a lover. The store was empty then, and quiet, except for the faint sound of Maida’s voice on the telephone in the post-office, passing all the news from one caller to another. He sat still and gazed a little at the sun in the doorway where Hilda was no more Then he stretched his legs and arms and stood up, and as he walked to the stairs he let one of his hands give a mocking blow to the leg which still claimed it hurt from the twisting he had given it out on the west road.
He walked into the main street and stood about for awhile, nodding at one or two people. He strolled along one way, and saw Frank further on, holding out Maureen’s hair for the inspection of a few admirers, and strolled the other, past the hotel, which was doing very well without him, and crossed to the garage, where Annabel was gazing at the orange stream of gasoline she was guiding into a gallon can, and wished her a good morning.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “It makes you want to drink it. It’s for Hank. He said he’d come back for it later. For burning up all the old boards, I guess. Isn’t it awful about Bella?” The can overflowed suddenly and the gasoline gushed out onto the ground. She giggled, and reached up to turn off the pump. She was right, Harry thought, it was certainly beautiful; everything was beautiful. He strolled away, thinking that the hotel was particularly beautiful.
He walked out of town the south way, thinking that he would circle round beyond the river to the north, and make his way slowly to Miss Purl. There was no hurry for anything, there were some long days yet before the full moon.

*

“I beat up Nance again,” Frank said gloomily. “I guess I beat her pretty bad.” Annabel held the baby’s face close to her own, and talked to it softly.
“She makes me do it. It’s not my fault.” Annabel nodded. The sun was hot on the baby’s feet; she would have to take him inside soon. “All the time she’s been nagging me to give up using her old man’s saw, when it never was his anyway, so now I do, and I take those parts out and take ’em home to her, and all she’s got to say is what’s the use now?” He was fiddling with the pile of hair on his knees, and pulling some strands out of it. Like copper they were, Annabel thought, the way they shone in the sun. “As if I thought there was any use. But whatever happened to Maureen, he had something to do with it all right, everything that’s gone wrong in this town, practically, he’s had something to do with. So I quit working for him, that’s all, before he says he doesn’t need me any longer. So what if it is only a day or two before, is that my fault? Nobody’s goin’ to scare my kids half out of their lives, so all they can do is make funny noises when you ask them what it’s all about and what they think they’re doing staying out all night in somebody else’s clothes and all scratched and covered with dirt. And all their hair cut off so another kid finds it under the bridge when he’s pissing in the morning. I gave her something to open her mouth all right. I gave her a hiding she won’t forget in a hurry.” He pushed all the hair into a ball and covered it over with his hands, and stared down at the concrete.
“But she was like Nance,” he said. “She hardly made any sound, she just kept saying she hadn’t done anything. It was the others, she said, but quiet as anything, like she was talkin’ to herself only. It’s Nance all over again, they’re all like Nance, you’re the only kid I ever had was like me a little. I never hit you much, did I? I never hit you. It’s these Nance kids, they’re all of ’em the same. Practically everything they do makes me see red.”
“You used to hit me too” Annabel said. “Look, he can hold my finger.”
“At least I quit,” Frank said. “That was something. Nobody else’s got the guts. They’ll hang on right to the last, and try to get others laid off first. And old Alvin’ll have the grin on them, for a day or two, and then he’ll go as well and that’ll be all. And you know what Nance said? She said what’re we going to do for money now, how’re we going to save anything for the bad times coming? She’s got nothin’ inside her, that woman, she’s not like your mother was, she’s empty as a gutted pumpkin. After all this time telling how she wanted those parts back, she just looks at me with those blank eyes of hers, and turns them over on the table where they was lyin’, just like she didn’t hardly know what they were, and says she doesn’t want to be a janitor’s wife all her life. So I threw those parts into the back yard as hard as I could, and she says what good does that do? And that’s when I gave her a good slap or two across the face, and I guess a bit more, and came out. But when I try to find out what happened, everybody just goes glassy-eyed, like they hardly knew what I was saying, or like it was all my own problem, and all they cared about themselves was Bella falling and hurting herself so she probably can’t ever sing again. Nobody gives a damn that Maureen’s been scared nearly out of her life.”
“It’s by the blue pump. In the shade,” Annabel said over his head to Hank. He nodded and limped across the concrete and picked up the can; she smiled at him when he came to pay her, but he didn’t seem to see her hardly, and he went away without saying a word.
“When he’s finished that tower he ought to be run out of town,” Frank said under his breath.
“Why will he want to stay then?” Annabel asked, hitching up the baby for his feeding.

*

Miss Purl saw Harry coming from a long distance, and thought what long legs he had. He was like a tall bird with a drooping neck. When he reached her small hillock, he settled down a little behind her, which she thought was considerate, and he didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything either for some time, but at last she thought that really she ought. Perhaps he found it hard to begin, and she was in a way the hostess, since the horse gave her the land.
“Nathan is a very nice young man,” she said. “Very kind and thoughtful.” She waited for a moment, in case he wanted to answer, but there really wasn’t much he could answer. “He came to see me two or three times during the night. He was just passing by, he said, because he was out gathering herbs for Mr. Jessop.” She felt tired quite suddenly, and thought she had said enough. Perhaps all he wanted was to sit beside her. She would rather he didn’t, but it wouldn’t be easy to say. The white horse was as still as stone, and the light was still shining under his belly, but the wind seemed to be dying, there was only a breath of it now, and the humming in her ears was rising again.
“He gave me his hat to wear,” she said. “It was the only thing I forgot to bring with me.”
“Bella fell down in the street last night,” Harry said. “And hurt her throat. This morning she can’t even talk. They say.”
She nodded her head a little and clucked her tongue. Though she couldn’t seem to feel it herself, there must be some wind, at least a breeze, because all the grain and dry grass she could see was rising and falling, like water almost. And glittering like water too. It was hard to imagine Bella falling in the dark, it seemed more the time she wouldn’t fall. Everybody must be very unhappy about it.
“She sang beautifully, so Nathan said; though he said as well that it sounded quite different from the way she sang in church. I suppose that might well be so. He stayed with me for quite a while at one time, just when it was getting light, and he said more than once how beautiful it was. Her singing. She was running when she fell, he said.” She thought how strange running blind would be, running with the wind against her face, cool and fresh, reaching her from miles away. “I didn’t hear her myself. I didn’t hear anything all night. And it was so warm, you know, I didn’t need my coat at all.” She thought the horse had started to move away, and she lifted her head as high as she could to see the light under him, but it was only her eyes playing tricks again; he was in exactly the same place. The sun was certainly growing very hot. She reached into her basket and pulled out her silk scarf and tied it around her neck. Harry was poking at the ground with a stick, which she would have preferred him not to do. He really ought not to have come so far out of town, when anybody could see that he wasn’t well. Still, there was no knowing what was best. He might feel better for having come.
“He’s started taking down the scaffolding,” he said. “It’ll all be over soon.”
“I expect it will,” she said. She didn’t like the sound of his voice, it was dry and flat. It was a pity none of them ever learned to speak as they might. “I shall have to move on soon, I think.” Although he was downwind, he seemed to stop it from blowing. It was unfortunate that he seemed to think he had to help. She bent forward and removed her shoes. “I washed my feet before I came out,” she said. “But in this heat, of course..” She didn’t notice herself that they smelled. She sat with her legs stretched out straight and her hands in her lap, and waited for him to go. He was so unquiet. Nathan, or somebody like him, she wouldn’t have minded at all.
“The kids are running about in the street,” he said.
“Yes, I expect they are. It’s an extra holiday for them.” Unless he went she wouldn’t be able to take off her stockings.
“I suppose people will start worrying about you,” he said. He was drawing things with his stick. He couldn’t leave things alone.
“When they know I’m out here,” she said, “They won’t worry. They naturally don’t want me to be sick. And I may well be back in town in time for the afternoon classes. I can walk there in an hour if I choose. It’s all chance, really.” She pulled Nathan’s hat down more firmly on her head. Probably it was dirty. No matter. Probably she was no longer so very clean herself. “I wore white, you see, as much as I could, to reflect the sunlight.”
“It won’t make any difference,” he said. “It’ll beat you down anyway.”
“You may be right, of course. More probably that, than that I’ll starve. Nathan showed me some roots which he said I could eat, and one which would be a good tonic if I felt faint; and something which looks like larkspur a little, but isn’t, which he said I shouldn’t try to eat however hungry I became. So I’m not all unprepared, you see. I have a bottle of water as well, and a good many sandwiches. It will be the sun, I expect, as you say.” The wind had died to a whisper. Even the driest-looking grass was hardly moving, and the humming in her head was growing louder all the time. If only he would leave her alone. She wasn’t on his land. She wasn’t on anybody’s land, really. In spite of the horse, she didn’t even claim it herself. “I suppose you feel you have to stay with me,” she said.
“I don’t feel anything much,” he said. “I don’t think I’m quite awake. Would you like to walk back to town with me?”
“No.”
“You can plant your garden again. You could plant hollyhocks, they grow well. I like hollyhocks myself.” At least he was a little quieter now, and letting the stick rest on the ground. And a sudden puff of wind seemed to come from nowhere.
“You may be right,” she said. “I may do that. I think the horse is beginning to move off. I’m afraid I’ll have to go.” She lifted herself up on her knees, but she couldn’t see the light under his belly until he stood. “It was Nathan who told me how they measured the white man’s land by white horses on the horizon. The sun was just rising then and we were both watching it, and he was smoking, but downwind. I suppose I’m the only one who didn’t know, not being born here. They must usually have measured from rivers, or the land they gave would move as the horse moved, wouldn’t it? And there would be fights long before anybody finished planting. Is he moving, do you think? The horizon is so bright, I can hardly make him out at all. It will be hard to keep up if he runs.”
“He can’t go far,” Harry said. “Dworshak keeps him in his fallow quarter. He won’t lead you to any shade.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, walking a few steps forward. “Don’t come with me. I don’t suppose I shall be out here so very long.” Her voice wasn’t clear. The sun was burning it. She wondered if he could hear her. “Tell Aunt Vera not to worry. And tell Mr. Overgaard that I won’t teach any more, I think. Or not for awhile. And tell Hank that I’m not angry. I was, but I’m not. I picked up some of the dry dirt when he had gone, and crumbled it. It wouldn’t grow anything, he was quite right. It was just dust. There was a seed that fell out, like a watermelon seed. I didn’t remember planting a seed like that, but I pushed it back into the ground. Please don’t come. I just want to walk to collect my thoughts, I’ll come back at dusk. Or in a day or two.” The earth under her feet was soft, but it would ruin her stockings. If he would leave her, she would stop and take them off, when the horse stopped walking. Her forehead was stinging from perspiration, but a little wind seemed to be rising and blowing against her. She could breathe a little better. If only Harry weren’t walking over the ground almost beside her.
“Please leave me,” she said. “I’m perfectly all right.” She couldn’t see as well as she would like, but she kept her eyes fixed on what seemed to be the horse on the horizon. “I thought it was a big seed to have been blown by the wind, so I dug it up again and looked at it. Then I carried it over to the bottom porch step and crushed it under my heel, to powder. Tell Vera not to worry. Nobody meant any harm. Tell her not to worry.” He had stopped. She couldn’t feel him near her. She pulled Nathan’s hat down over her eyes, and breathed in as much of the wind as she could, and continued walking to keep the mile of prairie between her and the white horse.

*

In the town there was hardly a breath of air all day. At times the thick dust in sheltered corners eddied uneasily, and rippled, while people who were standing and sitting nearby watched it, and small children poked sticks into it; but whenever it seemed that it was about to rise up in billows, the breeze which was fretting it died. Almost everybody from the country round was in the town, even the oldest and the babies; sheltering wherever there was shade, inside and outside, in groups of all sizes, sometimes calling for their children who had run off, but more often letting them be. The noise of the scaffolding being torn down ricocheted round them, and some of those who were sitting where they could watch the work passed on remarks, in murmurs, to those who weren’t.
“We can go out and bring her back, at least,” MacNamara said to Rupe, who was eating the lunch his wife had brought him under his canvas shelter in his back yard. “Before this sun knocks her out.”
“Can’t if she doesn’t want,” Rupe said. “Can’t force her. They’re gonna drop that plank if they’re not.. There it goes.” They both watched it sail lazily to the ground, hit it with a smack, and spring up again like something alive and then splinter, while the men nearest it turned away to protect their eyes. Alvin shouted at the men who had dropped it, but they went on working as if they hadn’t heard him. On the top of the tower, where the scaffolding was all gone. Hank shaded his eyes and peered down at the ground where the plank had fallen.
Lying on her back on her bed, Bella started at the sound and tried to raise herself up, but Mrs. Watson reached out her hand to her forehead and gently pressed her down again onto the bed.
“You must lie still,” she said. “You mustn’t move.” She stroked her hand along Bella’s bare arm to soothe her; her skin all over was as dry as could be. “It was only something falling,” she said, gazing out at the tower through the heavy air. The window would be better closed, she thought, it would make the room quieter; but Bella seemed to breathe easier when it was open. The main thing was to keep her quiet. She stopped stroking her arm and gave her a fold of her dress to hold. There was nothing to expect of anybody. They would talk and talk, but they didn’t really care a penny for anybody but themselves. Not even Mr. Fairling, for all his sad looks and even tears when they carried her in. She had been through it all before. She adjusted the poultice on Bella’s throat, and thought that the swelling was bigger if anything, and told her that God wouldn’t desert her even though she had tried to desert him, and continued reading the Gospel according to St. Mark from where she had left off.
On the riverbank, half under a dry bush and sheltered from the sun by the curling leaves of a clump of poplar saplings, Maureen hid all day from Jessop. Other children brought her soft drinks and sandwiches and told her where he was and what he was doing while they huddled round her, all cross-legged. She let them feel her cropped head by turns, and made them promise never to tell, and told them in whispers all about what had happened to her during the night. She said Ray would probably kill them all if he knew they knew. He was much stronger than he looked, she said. He was easily as strong as her father. She showed them the bruises he made just holding her. But it was Jessop she was really scared of, even if he was small, because he was crazy. She was as sure as anything that he would find her at last. But after Janey came with Josey and two other boys and a bottle full of chicken blood, she felt better. They all swore they belonged to the same tribe, and streaked each other’s faces with the blood, and left the bottle with her for swearing any others who came to see her. She buried it in the hot earth beside her and poked her fingers in after it from time to time all day long to make sure it was still there.
Some of the children, mostly boys, followed Jessop around wherever he went; and when he was in his shop, they sat on the sidewalk in the shade outside it, ratcheting their sticks lazily against anything that made a noise. Some drifted away and others drifted back. They didn’t do much to bother him, they hardly called out to him at all, but they never left him alone. Once he shouted at them in the main street, and ran and tried to kick at the nearest one, and swore he would be revenged on the pack of them. Some of the men standing round tried to call the boys off, and one or two said if Jessop stopped paying them any attention they would go away soon enough, and one or two others laughed.
“They’re playing at being Indians,” Norb Pelletier said. “Look at that war-paint. But they ought to leave him alone,” he added, glancing at Hilda in the cafe doorway beside him. The boys kept their eyes on her as well, and kept their distance, since Josey wasn’t with them; but they followed Jessop all the same. And whenever he tried to head towards the river they ran in front of him and waved and shouted at him until they made him turn back.
Some of the boys, and Janey, went with Josey right out of town to see if they could see Miss Purl. They walked along the crunchy riverbed for awhile and then cut across the fields, slicing at the grain with their sticks and leaving a wide path behind them, and falling flat on their faces twice when cars went past in a dust cloud along the nearest road. They saw her at last and watched her and nudged each other. She was facing the other way and standing still. They crept closer, on their hands and knees through the grain, right to the edge of the fallow field she was in. Her white dress was dirty-looking and her hair hung in a long braid down her back from under the Indian’s old hat. They didn’t go any nearer, but when they had crawled back into the grain, Josey picked up a clod of hard earth and flung it at the fallow field. It landed and shattered a good way from her. She didn’t even turn her head, but they all ran off through the field as fast as they could.
Ray didn’t leave his bedroom all day, telling Willa that he was feeling sick. His window was closed and his curtains were drawn across it, but the noise of the tower work going on as usual was almost more than he could bear. He prayed as much as he could, on his knees in the middle of the room, but it didn’t really do any good. He started at every sound he heard downstairs, sure that they had come to ask him things, all of them together, the whole town against him. When Willa knocked at his door, bringing him lunch, he could hardly make himself say that he didn’t want any. He wanted to go to the church, but he couldn’t since he had said he was sick, and anyway it would be locked. And he was afraid to walk through the streets for everybody to stare at him. He couldn’t see why they didn’t come for him. He didn’t see how he was going to get through the day and the night and the day after day after that.
Mr. Fitts moved about his room very slowly with a feather duster, leaning on his cane and resting wherever he could. Everything wasn’t clean, he was too weak now to make everything clean, but practically everything was tidy. His breathing was strange, it came in gulps that he couldn’t control, and one of his arms went numb again and again; but at least his room was in proper order for her coming. And he looked proper himself, for the first time in years. When he felt strong enough, he stood for awhile in front of the mirror and smoothed out his shirt front and straightened his tie and brushed his waistcoat with his hand. Yes, he was just as he had been before. She would know him when she saw him. They would all know him, all of them waiting down there in the streets for her to come in her best clothes and call him down. He was ready. He sat on the arm of his chair and gazed across the street at the hotel to make sure that nobody was trying to get into it ahead of time, and listened to the noises the men made as they worked, and idly stroked the feather duster which lay on the other arm of the chair, and thought it would soon be time to be shaved.
“We must pray for rain,” Mr. Fairling said to whomever he stopped beside in the street. “Everything is so dry.” When they asked him about Bella, he didn’t answer them. He said that the church would be left open for private prayer at all hours of the day and night. He didn’t stop long with anyone.
Mr. Overgaard cancelled school for the afternoon, and made his way to the store to ask Harry what to do about Miss Purl; and then asked the opinion of other men sitting roundabout when Harry said he didn’t see what anyone could do if she said she was happy there. The others said she ought to be brought back whether she wanted it or not, and Overgaard nodded agreement with this, and waited for them to move to do it, but none of them did. The sun was setting by the time Gord MacNamara jumped out of his father’s car and said he had just been driving by and seen her topple over and stay toppled.
Three cars of men went out to see her then. They stopped as near as they could and walked across the field in a body, carrying an old stretcher from the back of Harry’s store. She didn’t stir or make a sound as they laid her on it and carried her carefully back to the road. It was sunstroke, MacNamara said, there was no doubt about that; it might be serious and it might not be, there was no way of telling yet. They carried her carefully into her house and laid her gently on her bed and left her to the care of Mrs. Comstock.

*

“My idea at first was for all of us to climb up on it,” Hank said in a low voice. Like a voice asleep and dreaming, Harry thought; there was soothing in the sound. “And we’d all line the edge in a big circle and wait for the moon to rise and all jump together. But she said it wasn’t practical. She said I’d never get them out, and they’d only be troublesome if I did. They weren’t ready, she said. I was the only one who was ready. That made me pretty proud, because all I had was my bed at first, to sit on and keep all the rest of them off. I couldn’t see anything except beds and them wandering round. The ceiling was higher than I could see, and the lights were blinding, hanging down out of it everywhere, and they came up close to me one after the other like blurs with eyes in them. But she was the only one who wouldn’t go away. She sat down right beside me, and I pushed her over so her hat fell off and rolled onto the floor so she had to crawl under the bed to find it. Every time she sat down, I pushed her over again. And then I must’ve started laughing at the way she dusted off her hat every time and put it back on, because she started hitting me and kicking me and saying I wasn’t a gentleman. And then we were friends. But she was always scared of Maggie.”
There was no sound in the late night at all, as far as Harry could hear; nor any light. Only heat. The sheet under him was wet from his sweat.
“Let’s not talk any more. Let’s sleep,” he said.
“She said I was wrong to do what I did,” Hank said. “But Maggie didn’t mind. She was better off with the one after, she said. He was better in every way, she said, and tickled me until I nearly rolled off the bed, and all of them round laughed and tried to tickle me as well and tickle each other, until there was such a noise they had to come in from everywhere to quiet us down. But she sat in the corner as usual the whole time, and said it didn’t matter what he did, I ought not to have done it.”
“She was always right,” Harry murmured. She was the wise woman in the wood, pointing out the way. His own wise woman had fallen over. And his fair lady too. Some adventurers had better luck than others.
“But he looked beautiful going down,” Hank said. “Like a fish gliding down through water, down and down and down; and the wet towel he’d been hitting Maggie with wriggled behind him like a tail. And Maggie’s face was all red from the setting sun, and scared. They were all as quiet as pins when I told them, and they did his falling with their hands in the air, and I could tell them one from another then, and I knew where I was.”
“You were coming round,” Harry said, hot but peaceful. Peace was best; peace and quiet. Nothing in the night was calling him now to go Or come.
“She said I should be clean at the end, so the wind I made would be sweet. So I’m going to have a bath tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and every day until it’s time, so she can lift her nose in the air as the moon rises, and know I’ve done as she said.”
“We’ll all lift our noses in the air,” Harry said. “It’ll be a big occasion.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mr. Fitts stared when he saw the first few flames. Then he held his siren close to the screen and turned the handle of it as hard as he could, making it scream into the hot night. He had to stop when he started to hiccup, and then the hand holding the siren went numb, and loosened of its own accord, and the siren fell in a clatter to the floor. He fell back into his chair, and gazed at the flames which were flickering in the faces of the first people to appear in the street. It was too late for anything. She had won outright.
“Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” Mr. Fairling murmured to himself, sitting in his pyjamas on the edge of his bed, with the bible, open at Job, in his lap. They were good words, but they weren’t the words he wanted. He heard Mrs. Watson walking along the hall upstairs to Bella’s room, and gazed out at the redness rising in the dark. He didn’t see how the whole town, so dry it was, with only a little well-water under it, should not be consumed. God gave and God took away. God was almighty. He leafed the pages of Job back and forth, trying to find the words. But he didn’t see well, his eyes didn’t focus properly, and he couldn’t easily make sense of what he could read. The light from the fire was beginning to flicker round the frame of his bedroom window. He heard somebody running past in the street.
The evil came to the wrong person: he couldn’t see his way around. The fault was his, he had urged her out into the darkness. She was only a child, but God had let her be stricken. And the house was so silent without her voice in it, it was empty and dead. He would have to leave it, and go to the church to pray, for the town to be spared. He gazed at the light of the fire over the roofs of the nearest houses. The hotel was one of the desolate palaces that men built for themselves; it wouldn’t matter if it vanished. But it would matter if it carried the whole town off with it. He could hear the fire clearly now, the noise of it was growing greater, almost by the moment, and its garish light was ever brighter. And he could hear as well small noises against the ceiling, noises of Bella’s bed moving as she moved on it. He would have to go out. Perhaps they would let him carry buckets of water to throw onto the fire; there would be some comfort in that. But more probably they wouldn’t. They would say he was too old and tell him to keep back.
Everything was so hot and dead, it would burn quickly. All the fields would burn, and there would be dust everywhere again, as when he first came here. He was young then, almost young. He bent over the bible and tried to concentrate to find the words he wanted. He was sure they were in Job; only Job said that God was Almighty and dwelled neither in right nor in wrong. But man was given right and wrong, and saw wrong and couldn’t make it right, and couldn’t believe it didn’t matter. “There is one thing,” he said, loud enough to blur somewhat the sound from the fire and the sounds from upstairs. “Therefore I said it. He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.” He couldn’t understand that. It was Job speaking in his bitterness. But Job was God’s servant, and God said that His arm was strong, and that His voice was full of thunder, and that everything under the whole heaven was His. They were all under heaven, they were all His. But the wrong wasn’t His, it was his own. Why should Bella suffer because of his weakness and sin? He wasn’t important enough to cause such suffering.
He oughtn’t just to sit there. He ought to go to the church and pray for the town. He ought to go to the fire and see if he could help. He could hear Mrs. Watson now, reading loudly in the room upstairs. His hands were stiff from holding the bible.
His whole body was stiff; he must have dozed off. The flames from the burning hotel were throwing a flickering light over everything in his bedroom, and the noise of them was like a storm. He stood up and laid his bible on his desk, and rubbed his hands over his face to rouse the blood, and dressed himself. He was about to leave his room when he turned and went back to his desk for his bible. He might need it; anything might happen with so big a fire. He slipped it in his jacket pocket and walked quietly to the front door and closed it quietly behind him and stood on the porch for some time. Tongues of flame were reaching up to the height of the tower and then falling back. The whole town was alight, all red and orange and purple, like a town in a black cave. He saw people running in the street, carrying things and calling to each other, and through the crackling of the fire he could hear the sound of people shouting all over the town.
Perhaps it would be best if he prayed awhile in the church first. Probably they would expect him to do that. After all his years in the town they still counted him a stranger, and they were right. He ought to leave the town; he ought to have left it long ago. If only God would correct him even now. He oughtn’t to be allowed to wander free when he didn’t know which way to turn.

*

It was a question of keeping the fire from spreading, everyone agreed. Some of the men tried to organize others, but it was difficult to make them listen. Some people said they could smell gasoline. Others said fires didn’t just happen in the middle of the night, even so hot a night; but others again said they did. Spontaneous combustion, they said.
The three pumps in the main street and every private pump near enough to be useful were set working. People still in pyjamas and underclothes pumped the handles up and down as fast as they could, sending a steady gushing stream of water into bucket after bucket, into cans of all kinds, which others ran with, making their way by the glaring light of the fire, and threw over everything around the hotel. The garage’s two gasoline pumps were covered in sacking and kept soaking wet by Phil and anyone who was free to help him, and all the concrete round them was doused and doused with water. Water splashed against the walls of the buildings nearest the hotel hissed against the hot boards, and hissed again as huge sparks spurted from the fire and bounced like firecrackers against the walls. People poured water over themselves and each other and attacked loose patches of fire with wet sacks and brooms. The hotel was dry as a bone, people said over and over, hardly able even to glance at it for the heat pouring out of it; it ought to have been pulled down long before this happened. It was like tinder now. It would set fire to the whole town. They didn’t have a chance. Though everybody who could kept running back and forth with buckets of water, all their eyes were apprehensively on the steaming walls of all neighbouring buildings, which seemed to waver in the hot shifting light. Even when they were far enough off to bear the heat, they couldn’t take time to look at the fire itself; if they did, the flying sparks would settle on every roof in town and that would be the end. They laid ladders against sheltered walls up to all the roofs nearest the fire, and boys and girls not strong enough to bring up water were wrapped in wet sacking and sent up to the roofs to beat out any big sparks that landed, and to cry out for help if one lodged where they couldn’t reach.
The hotel itself was so buried in smoke that nobody could see more than patches of its walls. Flames swept out of the smoke, high up into the darkness, and then vanished, and for a moment it was almost too dark to see, and then again so bright that people covered their eyes. It couldn’t last like that, MacNamara said; the heat was building up inside. There would pretty soon be some kind of explosion. Other men agreed. They kept their eyes on the work they had to do, but their ears were all listening for a change in the sound of the burning. Old people and small children were told to keep well back along the main street; everyone else, men and women, called each other to be ready to do whatever they would be able to do. Men shouted to the boys and the girls on the roofs to keep near the ladders and to keep out of the buildings nearest the fire until they knew the worst.
It was then that Hilda left the pump where she was working and pushed through the crowd, calling out that old Mr. Fitts must be still in his room. Two young men said that they had banged on his door, but he had locked it, and he had shouted at them to go away. Esterhazy said he didn’t want anybody trying to kill himself on his property, and MacNamara took a couple of men with him to pull him out by force if they had to. They pushed their way into the building, but just as they were making their way along the dark hall towards the staircase, they heard footsteps in front of them, coming towards them. It was Mr. Fitts, hobbling on a cane. They let him pass through them and followed him out, ready to help him away when he reached the street. But when he was outside he stood stock still on the sidewalk, gazing up at the burning hotel in front of him. Men shouted at him through the groaning and crackling of the fire, telling him he couldn’t stay there, and one of them poured a bucket over his head. They couldn’t any of them stay there long; even drenched in water, the heat was more than they could stand. They were about to pull him with them when he suddenly walked forward off the sidewalk and into the street, weaving a little and shuffling, and started across it. Two young men, sheltering their faces, rushed after him and lifted him by an arm each and carried him back out of danger. He struggled a little as they made their way to where other people were watching the fire and waiting, and then he sagged in their arms; and when they laid him on the ground in a sheltered street, they found that he was dead. People gathered round him and looked down at the small body, and then some of them carried him still further from the fire, where some old people were sitting in the half-light, and keeping an eye open for any flying spark which might kindle a new fire. They covered him with an old sheet someone brought and left him there as the shout went up that the fire in the middle of the hotel looked about to break out of the walls.

“What happens if they find out you did it?” Harry asked in an indifferent voice. Mrs. Otterdown didn’t answer him, gazing at the flickering fire-light in the dark living room, hearing the noises of the people rise and fall. It wouldn’t matter what they found out now, once it was gone it was gone. All at once was best; Fitzgerald himself would like it best. The chandelier would be wrenching loose now, at long last, to plummet down tinkling, and shatter; and the gallery must be sagging and splitting, and soon the walls. For a while maybe, a year or two, there would be a soft lump on the ground where the children would ferret for toys. And then nothing, as if Henry’s ramshackle store had never been, that he laughed at himself in building, catching Simon’s watchful eye, and hers; that all Fitzgerald’s builders had laughed at in tearing down. The wind would blow over it and the snow would cover it and the melting would trickle it into the ground, and the grass would grow. And Simon could rest. There would be nothing left of anybody’s dead dream, there would be only houses and stores, the way he wanted it when he couldn’t go any further himself; since that evening when the Rat River flowed through their wheels and the wagon shuddered and stopped.

The stillness was their only hope, people knew as they waited, apprehensively watching the smoke-shrouded but still unbroken walls of the hotel. So long as no wind rose, nor even a breeze, there was a small chance that they would keep the fire where it had begun. But the groaning in the hotel was growing louder all the time, as the timbers on which everything else was built strained and cracked in the heat. Buckets were passed from hand to hand into the most endangered buildings, up their stairs to their upper windows where the water was splashed down their scorched walls and the buckets thrown back into the street. Other brigades soaked roofs and eaves, while everyone who could carried rain-butts as near as possible and filled them with water in readiness for the moment when the fire would burst out of its shroud of smoke. Nobody was talking now; everybody was too weary and short of breath to talk, and the noise of the burning had grown so loud that even shouting would hardly be heard. All the children were brought down from the roofs.
Suddenly, with a loud explosion and a sharp intake of air like a wind, flames shattered the smoke and gushed with a deafening roar out of every window and doorway and new-burnt hole, and out of the wood itself, so the whole building was an inferno, and people, scorched and black, pushed each other back along the streets to shelter. There was nothing now that they could do but watch and wait and hope.
In a side street, with a few old men and women around him, Mr. Fairling prayed silently, while the light on everybody’s face was as strong as the light of the afternoon, and sparks glittered in the air and filtered down among them. Children of all sizes raced after the sparks with wet sacks and brooms, pounding out everything that reached the ground. In the main street, nobody moved at all, except slowly backwards, pressing against one another, sheltering themselves from the heat. They still kept an eye on the buildings which they couldn’t any longer keep damp, but they couldn’t be sure in the blinding light whether they were still steaming or starting to smoke. What they did see, almost all of them at once, was that the whole front of the hotel had begun to sway. Very slowly it seemed to be breaking away from the roof, leaning further and further into the street, ablaze from top to bottom. People watched it through fingers laced in front of their eyes or through wet sacking draped over their heads, and everybody barely breathed. The whole wall seemed suspended over the street.
Then, abruptly, it shuddered, and the timbers at its base gave way, and some timbers in the roof gave way, and the whole front crumpled backwards into the heart of the fire, carrying with it a good part of the roof. Sparks and balls of flame and blazing planks showered into the street. Swathed as much as possible in wet sacking, men rushed forward to beat them out; but almost immediately they were pulled back again, because the part of the roof which had been left suspended by the fall of the front wall was about to fall itself.
It broke into two parts as it crashed down, and only one part fell into the street, but even that was more than they could handle with their buckets and sacks. Flaming pieces of wood scattered all over the street and the sidewalks, many of them coming to rest against buildings, particularly Esterhazy’s feed store, where nobody could go to remove them, because the fallen piece of roof, like a blazing ball of fire, was only a few feet from the store itself. Some of the young men did what they could, first stamping out all the burning wood on the forecourt of the garage, where it was a mercy, people said, that the roof hadn’t fallen; then running right up to the great blaze in front of Esterhazy’s store with buckets of water; but their clothes and hair caught fire, and the older men held them back since they were doing no good. As everybody watched, the front of Esterhazy’s store began to char and smoke.
The noise of the fire was so great that only the people furthest back from the fire heard the honking at first. But they pushed at others in front and shouted for the way to be cleared, and a path opened in the crowd for Rupe to drive his roller through. Men covered him and as much of the roller as they could with soaking sacks, while his wife tried to make somebody understand that he would probably kill himself if he wasn’t stopped. Then he honked the horn again and accelerated towards the burning rubble pile in the street. He hit it at top speed and made it shudder and spurt fire, but didn’t move it. He backed up and waited while men drenched him again with water, and attacked it again, and then again. It didn’t seem that he could break it, and his wife started crying and calling his name over and over, but at the fourth blow it fell apart and the crowd behind him cheered. He rolled back and forth over burning planks, smothering them and all the small piles of fire. People swarmed after him with water and sacks, beating out what flames and sparks and smouldering ashes remained, and drenched the hissing walls of Esterhazy’s store, while the heat from the hotel burned them all. When the street was steaming with water, Rupe was helped down from the roller and sat in a chair in a sheltered place, where he whispered that he would be ready for the next trouble once he had caught his breath.

“And if they can’t keep it in check?” Harry asked, as the knocking on the front door died and footsteps ran away. It was unlucky he had been waiting for her again, Mrs. Otterdown thought, with the gasoline still rising from her hands, but it couldn’t be helped. Hank had his own work, he couldn’t wait like a servant on hers. She breathed as shallowly as she could to keep the pain from Harry’s ears; she would have to be quiet for the short time remaining. She could see Simon’s eyes again clearly, shining as he claimed her from her father; he would take her he said to a place with more miles between them and everyone else than she had ever seen.
“There’s not much to burn if it has to,” she said. They could rebuild it and they would. And for a little while in between the prairie would be nearly as it was in the beginning. Except for the tower. But Harry wanted what had been when he was born. From the day he came back for Simon’s dying..wanted to come back, Simon had found some way into his soul..he was beyond her touching. In the flaring light he looked feeble and pale, with his long body stretched on the couch and his arm trailing over the floor; it was all she could do to look at him. “If you want to know what’s happening, go and see.” His hand on the floor waved a little, but he didn’t answer her. The only noise in the house was the noise of the fire, burning and burning. There would be no peace until it was gone. She pressed her hands against her belly for the numbness that came after the searing pain.

It was only as the night drew to an end, and the eastern sky became less black than the rest, and then was hardly black at all, and then was growing light, while the stars in it faded, that people looking away from the still roaring fire saw Hank standing on top of his tower, the upper half of which was, like him, in clear silhouette against the sky, it’s scaffolding all taken down. Somebody said that he could at least have given a hand, and somebody else said that he didn’t care for anything which wasn’t his own, but most people were too weary and sore to feel much for or against what he hadn’t done. The back of the hotel had sunk into the middle of the fire, and one of the side walls as well, carrying with it what remained of the roof; but the other side wall was still tottering, and everybody knew that the town was still far from out of danger. If a wind was to come, it would come with the dawn. Rupe, wrapped in sacking, sat in his roller, waiting. Some men waited near him, turning their heads apprehensively this way and that, but nobody said that he felt any wind. A cry suddenly went up that the roof of Harry’s store was on fire. Young men ran up ladders with sacks and brooms, and had just beaten it out when a cry went up from a roof across the main street. Small fires seemed to be breaking out everywhere; after one was found more than fifty yards from the hotel, the older children were sent scouting everywhere in the town to find sparks and to kill them or call for help.
The fourth wall broke in two at last. The top half of it fell back into the fire, for which the old people watching thanked God, and the bottom half, from the tops of the tall windows, was left standing, like a giant up-pointing fork. Rupe stayed hunched over the wheel of his roller, but a few of the people began to feel a little more hopeful.
“As long as there isn’t a wind,” Ledbetter said. “Though we’ll be lucky if a small one don’t rise pretty soon now, with the sun getting ready to come up.”

Mrs. Otterdown wheeled herself close to the front window as the morning light grew stronger. It looked as if Harry would have his town. And Simon. If they wanted that, it was good they had it, but the smell of the spring poplars was in her still, the sharp smell of their bark, and the smell of the leaves she was lying on, hundreds of years of leaves under her, while the pain burned and the muddy water gurgled past her feet and the horses murmured and Simon worked on and on by the light of the small fire. His face was all flickered over by the flames and he looked so old, he knew he’d never reach the horizon now. His hands smelled of the axle, so strong that she could still smell where he had touched her face long after he had gone away to bury the pain in the dark, turning the first sod.

*

The fire began to die, and the noise of it to die, and the noise of it to die, as the sky turned pale yellow and then pale blue, and the eastern horizon grew brilliant with the coming sun. Everything that could be used against the fire was ready, but only a few people were moving, carrying water from the pumps and splashing it against the scorched walls of the near buildings. The rest stood where they were, on all sides of the hotel and along the main street and the two cross streets. And on the roofs where the sparks would most probably land if a wind came, young men waited who would be able to move fast. As the sun began to rise, everybody turned towards it silently, and watched and waited and didn’t move. The only noise was the noise of the fire crackling and groaning, as the first rays stretched out across the prairie and bled the red from every flame they touched. Then somewhere some shouting rose up, and one or two people turned their heads to find out where it came from, but not with much interest.
“It’s only some of the kids,” Esterhazy said, shading his eyes to look into the sun. A few running boys were silhouetted against it, running towards the crowd.
“They’re after Jessop again, poor man,” Mrs. Ledbetter said. “And at a time like this too. They ought to be stopped.”
Jessop was shouting and waving his hands, but nobody could make out what he was saying. They moved back to let him run through. Josey was leading the boys, five or six of them, all streaked with charcoal like Indians, all shouting and waving long sticks. MacNamara grabbed one of them and slapped him with the back of his hand, but the rest pushed their way through, shouting that Jessop had started the fire. Nobody paid them much attention; some said it was possible and others said it was unlikely, and all of them continued watching the sun rise, their scorched cheeks alert for the first breath of wind.
The sky grew deeper and deeper blue, and the sun grew warm and then hot, and the hotel burned on steadily into the morning, and the wind didn’t rise. Most of the women went home, taking the children with them, after Mr. Overgaard, his puffy face as dirty as the next man’s, and his thin hair singed away almost to the scalp, had gone round quietly saying that there would be no school that day. But there would be work, Alvin said to one young man after another, after they had washed and eaten, as he had himself. Hank was still standing on top of the tower, and he was waiting for them to report. He would pay double that day, Alvin said, to anyone at all who would work, and a bonus if the scaffolding was all down and the rubble of building cleared away by nightfall. The men were so tired that moving at all seemed an effort, but they heaved themselves away from walls where they were leaning and went slowly to make themselves ready for the day.
The streets were almost empty when MacNamara said to one or two of the older men that something ought to be done about the body of Mr. Fitts. They agreed, and a few of them went to where he had been carried, where there was still one old woman sitting, half-asleep. Behind her, beside the body, Jessop was kneeling. He was holding in his hands the sheet that had been covering the old man’s face and was looking down at him. When the men were only a few yards away from him he looked up in sudden alarm.
“It wasn’t me,” he said in a low voice. “I just gave him something so he’d sleep, while.. I didn’t want to hurt his hotel. It was her who did it. He always knew she’d do it. He was only waiting..”
The men went nearer, until they were standing right over him and the body. Ledbetter leaned past MacNamara’s shoulder to peer down at Mr. Fitts’ face.
“You know,” he said slowly, after a minute, “He looks a lot like..”
“Like?” Jessop said sharply, his eyes darting from the face of one man to another. They were all looking closely now at Mr. Fitts. “He looks like, does he? Because he’s thinner, maybe. Looks like a real gentleman, doesn’t he?” he said, pulling the covering sheet off his body. “In his frilly white shirt. And good tie. But he’s thin, all right. Thin like a skeleton, eh?”
“Of course, he’s a lot older,” Ledbetter said. “But he sure looks the same. You think he’s been there all these years and nobody knew?”
“Who?” MacNamara said. All the men were looking closely now at Mr. Fitts.
“Fitzgerald,” Ledbetter said. The man who built the hotel.”
“Fitzgerald,” two of the other men said in low voices. The old woman peered at the body between their legs.
“He wore shirts just like that,” she said. I remember..”
“Well who else would it be?” Jessop said, letting the sheet fall on the body and moving a bit back. “That would bring her out in the middle of the night with gasoline. I saw her.”
“We better put him somewhere,” MacNamara said.
“We should give him a good funeral,” Esterhazy said, as they all stooped down round the body and carefully lifted it up. They didn’t look to Jessop to help, and he didn’t offer. As they reached the main street, Esterhazy, carrying one of the feet, guided the way to his feed store. Though the hotel was still burning strongly, it looked now like a great pile of rubble and ash. And the danger from it wasn’t so much, Esterhazy said, if they watched it; and wherever the body was, it would keep for a day, he said. And it was fitting it should lie close to where his hotel had been, and to where he had been living these last years himself. So the men laid him as gently as they could on the long counter in the feed store. The old woman was already going about telling people that Mr. Fitts was Fitzgerald.

In the side street, Jessop turned round and saw Josey and Janey standing only a few feet from him. Josey’s face was still streaked with charcoal.
“Go away,” Jessop said. He felt very tired. “I’ve had enough of you.”
“So what?” Josey said. He flicked idly with his stick at Jessop’s basket and tipped it over on its side. There wasn’t much in it, but it was still his basket. He was about to set it right again when Janey kicked it so it rolled a little way off. He went after it and picked it up.
“I can make you go,” he said.
“Sure you can,” Josey said.
“We’re not doing any harm,” Janey said. “It wasn’t us burned down the hotel and the whole town nearly.”
“It wasn’t me either.”
“Sure it wasn’t,” Josey said, flicking his stick against the bottom of the basket. “Who was it then?”
“Mrs. Otterdown.” Why shouldn’t they know? Why shouldn’t everybody know? Now Fitzgerald was dead. She was no better than a murderer.
“Oh yeah,” Josey said. “Sure.”
“Why would she want to do that?” Janey asked. Jessop just looked at them.
“I’d know it if she did,” Josey said. “Hank’d tell me. He tells me everything.” He flicked his stick against the basket only a little way from where Jessop was holding it.
“Does he?” Jessop said.
“Yeah.”
Everything. That couldn’t very well be true, Jessop thought, looking from the one of them to the other. Or they wouldn’t all be chasing him day in and day out. But Hank knew they were chasing him. Everybody knew.
“Has he told you where he came from?”
“Sure,” Josey said. But his eyes glanced away.
“And where he’s going when the tower’s finished?” Soon, very soon, now. The noise of the men pulling down the scaffolding was beginning. And he was standing right on top, and looking out over everything, and he didn’t see what was happening right here. When he wouldn’t be standing there, or anywhere else high and mighty, if he himself hadn’t told Maggie he’d make it possible. Fool that he was.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Josey said. “He’s staying right here.”
“I see.” It was all lies. Hank didn’t tell him anything. Or he told him lies. They were both hitting his basket now with their sticks. He swung it at them, but they didn’t even move back. Josey laughed.
“You said you’d kill Maureen,” Janey said. Her stick hit the handle of the basket right beside his hand. There wasn’t any way he could make them stop, only Hank could make them stop. But he wouldn’t. He just stood up there on his tower and let them all do to him what they wanted like he was no more to him than anybody else in the town. Or anywhere.
“I’m not just anybody” he said. Josey laughed again. They were hitting his basket harder. “I brought him here.”
“Who?” Josey said. Why shouldn’t he say? He was nearly done. Maggie only said until he was..
“Him. Up there on his tower. Hank.”
“You didn’t bring him,” Josey said. “He brought himself. He came out of nowhere. He told me.”
“Ask him then,” Jessop said. “See what he says.” Their sticks were faltering. “And ask him who Maggie is. Just ask him that” They’d stopped hitting his basket. They were both just looking at him. “And ask him who his uncle is. Yeah. Just you go and ask him.”
“You don’t look like him,” Janey said. “Not anything..like..” But she was backing off a little.
“Ask him,” he said. “Ask him.”
“What if you are anyway?” Josey said. But he was backing off now too.
“Ask him,” Jessop said, and watched them as they turned away and walked off along the street together, kicking a stone ahead of them.

Harry was sleeping. His breathing was easy and his face was smooth. He was like a boy again, Mrs. Otterdown thought; and he was like Simon, like Simon dead. The room was full of the sounds of the scaffolding being wrenched board from board, and already the air was hot from the sun as well as from the fire, the day was going to be burning. It seemed very long since the gasoline stream had gleamed in the darkness, and gurgled against the coal-chute boards as if it had been slaking their thirst. They could have seen her wheel tracks by the firelight if they had looked; maybe they had, maybe they knew. Maybe the old man with the siren had told them by now.
Harry was so still he looked dead. He was sprawling half on the floor, and she couldn’t see from where she was if he was breathing. The daylight and the noise should have woken him. She called his name across the room, but he didn’t stir. It couldn’t be that he had died like all the others, not so late, so near the end. She wheeled herself halfway across the room toward him and called him again, and again; he twisted over onto his side at last, and opened his eyes and looked at her mildly.
“It’s morning then, is it?” he said. He didn’t move for some time while she watched him, except to blink at the ceiling. But he sat up at last and stretched, and peered out the window.
“It seems we’ve escaped,” he said, smiling at her. She wheeled herself slowly backwards. “Still, I suppose I’d better go and see what damage you’ve done. I expect they’re wondering by now why I wasn’t among them. I’ll say I couldn’t see my way.” He stood up and tucked his shirt into his pants and combed his hair with his hands. “Of course they may all turn their backs on me, you never know.”
She watched him until he was gone from the house, and then wheeled herself into the kitchen to watch the scaffolding coming down. It would soon be peaceful, and Harry wouldn’t be bothered. Because the town was Jessop’s now, everything was Jessop’s. Everything except the tower.

*

The hotel burned slowly and peacefully throughout the day, dwindling hour by hour as charred beams and planks crumpled into themselves, already almost as light as ash. People continued to watch it, for as long as there was any fire there was danger, but some of them dozed from time to time and others found themselves staring blankly and seeing nothing. The sun blazed down on everything, bleaching out all the flames, so hot that the heat from the fire ceased to make itself felt. On the tower, except for those men who were inside the great tank, removing through a square hole all the supports for its concrete roof, there was no shelter, only water to pour over themselves from time to time, and the air was like the breath of a furnace. They didn’t talk to one another, and each of them worked as fast as he could, pulling at the boards which were nearest him, breaking them if that was easiest, because Alvin told them it didn’t matter how the scaffolding came down so long as it came down fast. When Frank started gathering up some of the fallen boards, saying he needed them to make Fitzgerald’s coffin, most of them didn’t take any notice, and those who did soon turned back to their own work, blinking out the glaring white of the hard ground and the blaze of the sun, and even the blue of the endless sky which was more like fire than air. They worked steadily all through the day, munching when they could the hundreds of sandwiches which Hilda and other women made in the cafe and which boys carried to them in big paper bags. By early afternoon they were down to the level of upstairs windows.

*

Mr. Overgaard, though he couldn’t see well through his smoked glasses, made his way along the main street past the dying fire and out of town, to call on Miss Purl. Although Jessop’s serum was working at last and his body felt more normal, he couldn’t run the school all by himself.
She was lying on her bed under a sheet and her room smelled pleasantly of cologne, but she didn’t seem to understand the problem.
“In the circumstances I’ve had to give all the younger children a holiday,” he said. “It seemed the only thing to do. Nobody else being available, you understand.”
She nodded her head and smiled at him. Her hand was stretched out from the side of the bed, almost as if she were reaching for something; but she didn’t ask him for anything.
“Of course you’ll be better in time to examine them on the year’s work. Won’t you?”
“I dare say. I may.”
“They’re troublesome, I know. I’ve thought of walking out on them myself. They think only of themselves.”
“I suppose they do.”
“I don’t like to bother you just now, but..”
“Of course you don’t.” Her hand was still stretched out and she was moving it slowly up and down. “I quite understand.”
“Nobody else in this whole town cares what happens in the school or anybody in it. “It’s our duty,” he said. But she wasn’t looking at him any longer, or listening; she was looking at her hand and smiling.
I’ll come back in a few days,” he said to Mrs. Comstock as she let him out.
“You do that,” she said. Her breath smelled of beer. As he walked back into the town he looked through his smoked glasses up at the tower which was all anybody in the town seemed to care about.

*

As the sun was sinking to the horizon, and the last of the scaffolding was removed, Alvin said that Hank wanted everything cleared away, every last lump of rubble, and the ground raked over till it was bare. He divided the men into three teams and the area into three sections, but everything was to be carried outside the enclosure and made into one big pile. The men were very tired. They didn’t even look at each other as they worked. They arranged the lumber, broken as much of it was, as neatly as they could. They carried and piled unused bags of cement and bundles of steel rods, and all the tools of every kind that Phil, who was going round examining every hammer and screwdriver and wrench, didn’t claim. While Nathan packed his personal things in his haversack, they unpegged his tent and rolled it up, and two of the boys who brought the sandwiches carried it back to Harry’s store. They gathered up all the rubble as well, sacks and bags and lumps and papers and shards and cans, and took rakes and brooms that Alvin brought by the armful, scorched and smelling of smoke from the fire, and cleared the ground of every small thing that lay on it. When at last they finished it was as bare and hard as concrete, and Hank, kneeling on the rim of the tank high above them, gestured with his arm in a big circle, and Alvin said that it was time to take down the enclosing fence. The sun was setting now, and the hot air was rust-red, and some older people were coming slowly towards the tower to see how things were going. The men worked silently, uprooting the stakes and rolling up the wire and filling in the holes and smoothing out the ground. It was dusk when all sign of the fence had gone, when it had been heaved onto the big pile of rubble and the pile itself covered over with a great sheet of canvas which was staked to the ground; and it seemed that the work was finished at last. The men looked about them uncertainly, and murmured a little to each other and to the older people who were standing round everywhere now, watching. Alvin moved about uneasily, chewing his lip, and saying in a low voice to the working men that the job was done, and well done, and that he would pay them, bonus and all, in the cafe if they would go there and wait for him. A few of them made as if to go, but most of them stayed where they were, gazing at the eight giant legs of the tower and up at the giant tank which rested on them. On the top of it Hank couldn’t be seen, but they knew he was there. And suddenly everybody heard him shouting.
“There she comes. She’s rising.”
All anybody on the ground could see was a glow at the eastern horizon and a little silvery light at the upper rim of the tank; but the glow grew brighter and brighter and brighter and the moon rose. It was big and only a day short of full, and the dusty air hanging over the prairie made it look nearly red. Alvin moved through all the crowd asking them to go. He said that there was nothing more to be there for, since the work was done; but he couldn’t persuade anybody to move. They were all looking up and watching Hank who was limping round the rim of the great tank, staring steadily at the moon, until it was well clear of the horizon even from the ground. Then he stopped and looked down at the people looking up, and waved both his arms in the air.
“Clear out of here!” he shouted in a voice loud enough to carry far across the prairie.
“It’s his property, after all,” Alvin said. “Even if it isn’t fenced anymore.”
“He don’t care about anybody else’s property,” somebody muttered. But they all shifted uneasily. Some of them glanced at Mrs. Otterdown’s back porch, where for the first day she hadn’t been sitting, and began to turn away. Across the field there was the first roar and then the slow throbbing of Rupe’s roller.
“You want to see something, you come tomorrow,” Hank shouted, and began walking again around the rim of the tank. The men who had been working moved off first one by one towards the main street, and the others who hadn’t been slowly followed. Soon there was nobody at the foot of the tower or anywhere on the open ground except Alvin, and Nathan beside him holding his haversack and saying in a low voice that since he wasn’t needed any longer he’d be on his way out west. Alvin told him to wait, and waited with him, and at last Hank climbed slowly down the iron rungs to the ground.
“I kept Nathan,” Alvin said. “What do we do now?”
“I want to be getting out west,” Nathan said.
Hank took the haversack from his hand and set it at the foot of the leg he had climbed down, and took him by the shoulders and sat him on the ground beside it and told him not to move from there until morning.
“What d’you want me to do?” Alvin asked uncertainly.
“Pay the men,” Hank said, gazing across the field towards the rising moon. “And then pay yourself. That’s all.”
“You’re sure there’s nothing..” But Hank was already walking away towards the river. Alvin watched him go, and saw Janey and Josey run out from behind Hilda’s fence, and run after him, and stop him as he reached the road.

In the main street the fire was glowing in the dusk, but there were no more flames; it was only a great heap of ashes, with a few charred and broken beams jutting out from it. People brought up water from the pumps and filled the rain-butts and soaked all the brooms and pieces of sacking, and stood by in readiness, even the young men who had been working all day on the tower, and watched Rupe drive his roller straight at the heap. Where he hit it, sparks shot into the air and ashes drifted up like feathers, and buried fragments of wood and charcoal crackled and snapped as they were pressed into the ground. He backed up and asked for water to be thrown over the roller, and the sacks drenched again which he had wrapped around him, and when they were dripping he drove against the heap again, flattening the edge and driving the fire inwards. Gradually he circled round it, pressing it back and into the ground from all sides, while men and women followed in his wake, drenching the crushed coals and ashes, and beating them with wet sacks and brooms. They worked round and round the heap, tramping through the smoking and steaming mud they made, until only a small central mound remained uncrushed, and they were on all sides of it. They poured buckets and buckets of water on it and listened to it hiss and slowly die. Then they stood back and watched Rupe roll over it and flatten it like the rest. For a while afterwards many of them kept watch, and drenched the ground and beat it wherever too much smoke seemed to be rising. But slowly they drifted away, being all very tired. Only a few of them, older men mostly, stood about and gazed at the big open space which they weren’t yet used to seeing there.

Mr. Fairling looked into the cafe and asked the young men who were sitting there in a daze of weariness for help in carrying Mr. Fitzgerald’s body in its coffin to the church, where it would lie overnight; and reminded everyone who passed him that the burial service would take place at nine in the morning, before it became too hot. People drift away almost noiselessly towards their homes. Hilda closed the cafe, and the last lights went out, and the town was quiet and bright under the high moon.

*

Jessop heard his front door crack under the first kick; and waited, and heard it splinter under the second. He heard Hank’s heavy feet on floorboards of the shop, and the soft crackling of the dry weeds he had to push his way through, and his fist slamming down on the counter. He ought to have told people about him sooner; they hadn’t put him in the booby hatch for nothing. And now there wasn’t anything strong enough to stop him. He crouched down in the corner of the herbal room and waited; and crouched closer when he heard his bedroom door shudder under one kick, and shatter. Then he didn’t hear a thing. Hank must be standing still, he couldn’t move even a step without making a noise. Now he was moving, he was at the door now, breathing against it. Everything was so thin and flimsy. His first kick knocked the door right into the room, and then his body was in the doorway, so bulky it blocked out nearly all the moonlight flowing from the bedroom.
“Are you in here?” he shouted. People would hear him right through the walls, they would come and help him. No they wouldn’t. What did they care what happened to him? He wasn’t anything to them. He didn’t answer. “You’re here, all right.”
“Maggie won’t like it,” he said in a low voice. Hank kicked a box near him, splintering it, and swept some flowerpots off a shelf onto the floor, where they broke.
“You don’t say her name,” he shouted. “You promised her. She told me how you promised. And now you broke it on me.” He picked up a flat full of earth and growing things and threw it onto the floor. Then he threw another, and kicked what his feet stumbled against, and overturned a table he fell against, spilling all its bottles onto the floor, and cursed and began hitting everything he could find, and filling the room with his breathing. Jessop huddled down as far as he could in his corner and hoped all the breaking would dull his anger. He couldn’t do what Maggie asked; he thought he could, and he tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t, they wouldn’t leave him alone, they..
Hank was standing right over him. He tried to say that he hadn’t meant, but Hank lifted him up by one shoulder, and hit him in the chest so hard that he couldn’t breathe. He felt himself slipping down to the floor again, and he seemed to drift away. He heard Hank shouting, and kicking and hammering the wall above him, but the sounds were muffled, then he heard it screeching as it fell away and he heard it crash to the ground, and he felt and smelled the night air flow in over him. When Hank picked him up again, lifting him right off the ground, he didn’t bother to struggle against him. He felt as light as a balloon, and he drifted like a balloon, and he seemed to fall like one, hitting the ground outside very gently he thought. He lay face down, and listened to the pattering sound of things landing around him, and sometimes on him, and he didn’t try to move.
Much later something touched his shoulder, when he was shivering and full of aches. He pulled his shoulder back and twisted his head round, and saw Harry sitting cross-legged on the ground almost beside him. But he didn’t see him clearly, the moon was making everything so white and bright. He tried to tell him to go away, but his voice wouldn’t work. He lay still and tried to gather his strength.
“Clear out of here,” he managed to say at last, but only in a weak voice; and Harry just looked at him.
“I thought there might be something I could do,” he said.
“Well there isn’t. So clear out.” He tried to raise himself up, but he wasn’t ready yet. He kept both his hands flat against the ground, so he could push his body up when he was stronger, and he rested. But Harry was still sitting there and looking at him, he wouldn’t go away. He thought he could do just as he liked. “Clear out, I said.”
“I nearly tripped over you,” he said. “Moon and all.”
“Just go away. It’s nothing to do with you. Nothing’s to do with you.” But he wouldn’t go. He was just like his father, he had to meddle. “This’s my land you’re sitting on.”
“It’s no man’s land,” Harry said, glancing round him. “Always has been, for some reason. Not a popular lot.”
“It’s mine,” Jessop said, twisting over and raising himself to a sitting position. His body ached all through. “Everything’s mine. Everything in this town, nearly, is sitting on my land. Though maybe you thought it was yours. Ask your mother then.”
“I believe you,” Harry said, picking up a clod of loose earth. “Is all this Hank’s work? Had a free moment, I guess.”
“You think I’m joking? You ask her. Ask her. See what she says now. I don’t care what she says. I’ve had enough of keeping quiet for her all these years. For her and.. That doesn’t matter. I’ve bought everything from her that your father once owned, except your house and your store. You don’t own a thing else. Even the tower’s on my property. I can do what I like with all of it.”
“Well, well,” Harry said, looking at him and blinking, and bouncing the clod up and down on his hand until he reached out and took it away from him. “Well. That’s yours too, is it? All these lumps are yours, I suppose. I could help you gather them up. If you want.” He smiled then, for no reason. Just smiled. There was something wrong with him, that was for sure.
“You just move off, that’s all I want,” Jessop said, lifting himself slowly up to his feet, and shuddering from a pain which shot from his shoulder to his knee, “I can do everything by myself. I don’t need your help or anybody’s.” He began to pile clods and roots into a broken flat, but he kept an eye on Harry until saw him stand up at last and look round and walk a few steps off one way and then another; and then come his way again, still not looking very steady on his feet.
“I’ve got some advice for you,” he said in hardly a whisper, dropping a lump of earth into the flat. As if he needed advice from him. “Fence all this in. Otherwise people will start making claims of common passage.”

*

Miss Purl heard Hank’s mouth-organ out in the still night; not so far off, but she was sure he wouldn’t bother her now. It was a beautiful tune he was playing, one she didn’t remember him playing before. It was slow and high, like a lament. She lay on her back in bed and listened. He seemed to be coming nearer all the time. Perhaps he was playing for Mr. Fitzgerald, poor man, about to be lowered into this strange Indian ground. It would be odd when she went out again not to find the hotel there.
He was right outside her window. She sat up in bed and adjusted her night-dress on her shoulders, and reached out and raised the blind so that the moonlight poured into the room. The music stopped and the only sound through the screen was his breathing.
“Yes?” she said.
“I hit him,” he said in whisper. “The one thing she told me not to do was that and I did.” He seemed very quiet. She slipped her feet out of bed and stood up on the cool floor and smoothed down her night-dress.
“It’s very late,” she said, and saw shining tears trickling down his cheeks. He was a strange man certainly.
“There’s a moon all ready,” he said. “And it’s going to be a waste. She told me. The old man went sour that way and so we all had to lie and say he fell. She won’t have a good word for me now.”
“Now, now,” she said. “Nothing’s as bad as that. But you have caused a lot of trouble, you know.” She unhooked the screen and let it drop to the ground, and pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed it on his face. “And crying doesn’t help. Whoever she is, I’m sure she’ll understand.”
“She’ll curse me. She’ll sit on her bed and curse me.” He pulled the handkerchief out of her hand and rubbed it all over his face. “And he’s not even half my size.”
“You can’t help that,” she said. “Some people grow bigger than others. Nature decides these things. You go out there where you were, and play some more music. It’ll quieten you.” His tears seemed to have stopped, but he stood for such a long time with his chin on the windowsill, just blinking, that she thought perhaps he had forgotten where he was.
“It’s her music, it’s all hers,” he said at last. “I didn’t know a thing till she taught me.”
“She’ll feel better, then, hearing you play it. I’m sure I feel better, listening.”
“It’s what I told you I’d play you,” he said. He stood back from the window, and didn’t look quite so gloomy. “You’re sure it’ll be all right?”
She nodded, and he smiled a little, and he moved back further. He wasn’t going to return her handkerchief, it seemed. Still, she had a good many others.
“Will you be watching me then, tomorrow night when the moon rises? The rest of them will be there.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, thinking he ought not to keep walking backwards without looking. “I’ll stay in my room for a while yet.”
“You can watch me from your porch.”
“Perhaps I’ll do that, then.”
“I’ll be visible for miles,” he said, and turned and walked away through her front gate and straight out onto the prairie. He played his mouth-organ as he walked, another new tune, and she could see he had forgotten her from the way he didn’t once look back.

*

The next morning was hot before the sun had been up an hour, and the air was windless and dry. The ground where the hotel had been was no longer smoking or steaming, but it still smelled strongly of fire. The whole town smelled of fire.
Slowly people began to gather in the streets wherever there was some shade, in black or as near to black as they had. The stores were closed; even the cafe was closed. Farmers and their families came into town in car after car. Nobody talked much. Some people gazed at the empty ground where the hotel had stood for more years than they had known the town, and one or two of the oldest murmured what they remembered of the time of its building and the excitement there had been, and the trouble. Men shook their heads and some of the women said that it was only God’s mercy which had spared the town. They held onto their children as well as they could, to keep them from dirtying their Sunday clothes, and they called them back sharply when they slipped away. Nobody went near the tower, but many looked up at it over the roofs from where they were standing. It looked bare and deserted. It was strange, people said, how quiet the town was with all the work done at last.
“Wouldn’t you like to well-wish him on his way?” Harry asked, straightening his tie in front of the hall mirror. “They might take it as a kindness on your part.”
“How they take anything is of no matter,” Mrs. Otterdown said, gazing out the window at the people walking slowly past in the direction of the church. They were all going, every last one of them. But so quiet and dry that she could hardly hear them passing. It was a long time since they had had the pleasure of a big funeral; the first since Simon’s. But the earth would be dry this time, crumbling and dancing on the wooden lid. And the dry rustling of the curled poplar leaves a little nearer. Nearer with everyone who died. In a generation or two they’d have worked the graveyard right back to the riverbank. Where some Metis probably were still, the bones of them, though nothing showed of that.
“They don’t need me for their courtesies,” she said. But Harry was already gone, as quiet as a shadow; he was walking to the front gate.
She wheeled herself back from the window. She felt shut in, the house too close around her. And Hank heavy over her, she could feel his weight on her; and there were hours and hours yet before the day would die.

“They aren’t much,” Willa said, taking from Ray the hollyhocks that he had gathered in the back yard, where they were growing like weeds. “They’re half-gone to seed. But they’ll give a little colour.” Ray stooped to pull some burrs off his pantlegs. He was sweating and prickly, and afraid that if they didn’t hurry they would be late, and noticeable, and maybe whispering would start. But if he went alone it might be worse. He was safer if he was with Alvin and Willa.

By nine o’clock in front of the church, where the open coffin was resting on trestles, the crowd was much bigger than the shadow cast by the church. Mr. Fairling stood on the church steps by the head of the coffin, gazing down at his prayer book and murmuring to himself. The choir in their surplices stood on the porch behind him, with Bella in their midst, looking pale and unwell. People whispered that it was a shame, that her mother ought to have had more sense. A few women pushed their way forward to look at the face of the dead old man, and lay on his legs and feet what drying wildflowers they had been able to gather.
“Let us pray,” Mr. Fairling said, raising his eyes to the back of the crowd where people were still arriving. Hilda, pulling Josey after her, her black hair loose and shining in the sun, pushed her way right to the foot of the coffin and stayed there, though the two nearest pallbearers, Ledbetter and Esterhazy, tried to stare her down. At the edge of the crowd, Harry walked slowly back and forth. In the middle of it, Ray stopped handing out hymn-books and bowed his head, while a girl near him gazed up at him and pressed closer against her mother. Mrs. Watson, beside the coffin, kept her eye on Bella and fanned the dead man with a newspaper to keep the flies off his face and the clothes she had spent the whole night cleaning and pressing. Maureen, wearing an old tam of her mother’s to hide her cropped head, kept standing on her toes to see the corpse, but Frank’s hand on her shoulder kept pressing her down. Even those who were shaded by the church were sweating from the heat. Mr. Fairling prayed God to give peace to the soul of him who had died, and guidance to those who would follow him in the short time to come.

In Mrs. Otterdown’s kitchen there was no noise except the shrill grasshoppers and the slow tolling of the church bell. Hank was lying still on his bed; if he moved she would hear him, feel him. She didn’t move herself, and the light pouring in through the window was so bright that she saw almost nothing else. Only the big dark shape rising up and up, with whiteness all round it, nothing but whiteness, making her blind. She had to wait, only wait, be still and wait. She found she was counting the times the bell tolled.

Mr. Wilkinson, facing the choir, had raised his hand to guide them into the first hymn, and the six pallbearers had bent down, ready to lift the coffin, while the crowd moved to clear a passage, when Mrs. Comstock, panting and apologizing, pushed her way forward, her arms wrapped round a big cardboard box.
“It’s Amanda’s doing, it’s not mine,” she said to Mr. Fairling, resting one end of the box on the coffin while she opened the flaps. She looked very hot and smelled strongly of perfume. “She insisted.” She turned the box upside down over the coffin and sunflower heads spilled out of it, all over Mr. Fitzgerald’s body. Mrs. Watson breathed in sharply. There were so many flowerheads that they almost buried him. Mrs. Comstock turned over a big one which had fallen on its face, and stepped back and dropped the box and pulled her black velvet dress down over her hips.
“I had to climb up on the step-ladder for some,” she said to no one in particular, while people nearest the coffin stooped to pick up the few heads which had fallen to the ground, and lay them on the body with all the others. “But when Amanda wants something..” She stepped, in backing further, on Mr. Overgaard’s foot, and apologized without looking round, and fanned her face with her hymn-book. The choir began to sing, raggedly at first, while Mr. Wilkinson beat out the time and Bella stood with her hands folded in front of her, mouthing the words. Mr. Fairling gestured to the crowd to fall back, and to the pallbearers to carry their burden forward. As he walked slowly after them, gazing straight ahead, he sang the words of the hymn in a loud monotone. The choir followed after him, and the congregation followed the choir. Some people sang, and others tried to, but had trouble keeping the tune and the time, and others still walked without singing along the dusty road, but watching the words in their hymn-books. Harry, in their midst now, walked with his hands behind his back, and nodded to people who looked at him, and gave them a smile. He walked behind Maureen and watched the way the tam bounced softly up and down on her head.
Near the cemetery the hymn ended, and there was only the sound of everybody’s feet walking and everybody’s good clothes whispering, and the shrilling of grasshoppers in the dry fields on either side of the road. As the pallbearers turned and cautiously made their way over the narrow bridge which crossed the ditch between the road and the cemetery, an old man stumbled and had to be helped
The coffin was set down on planks over the new grave, and people pushed in as near as they could. Mr. Fairling lifted his gaze from the face of the dead man, which was bright yellow with the reflected light from the sunflowers, and said that there was no knowing the ways of God, that He gave and He took away as He saw fit. He took men in age and weakness and men in their strength. They would lie down alike in the dust, he said; and he called for mercy for the dead man. One of the oldest women whispered that he had had such a fine head of curly hair, and looked such a gentleman. They must all trust in God, and believe in His mercy, Mr. Fairling said, for they dwelt in houses of clay and their foundation was in the dust. The deceased had died quietly after a long life. If they prayed God would hear them. He prayed aloud from his prayer-book for the peace of the man’s soul, and then gestured to the pallbearers to cover the coffin, and gazed over the heads of the people in front of him at the hot blue sky.
Everyone around the coffin helped to lift out the sunflowers and the hollyhocks and small wildflowers, and laid them in a pile on the ground. Mrs. Watson brushed the dirt off Mr. Fitzgerald’s clothes, and the pallbearers laid the lid over him and nailed it in place. As they lowered the coffin into the grave, a few women began to cry; and when Mr. Fairling shovelled the first earth onto it, they cried more. The men passed the shovel from hand to hand, gradually filling the hole, while Mr. Fairling prayed in a low voice, and Mr. Wilkinson, after two false starts, led the choir and congregation into a hymn. Mrs. Watson pressed close to Bella and whispered to her to sing as well as she could. The first sounds she made were hoarse and low, making Mr. Fairling look round sharply; then she found a little of her own voice, which a few people near her smiled to hear. Mrs. Watson, unsmiling, watched the shovelfuls of earth filling the hole.
When the grave was a mound and the hymns were over, people laid the flowers all over the new earth, and Mr. Fairling said a short prayer. Then he led the way out of the cemetery and back to the town. As they walked, not in any hurry and hardly talking, people looked and blinked at the high still tower.

It was all so quiet when the burying was done, Mrs. Otterdown thought. The river flowing round her legs was cool, and the bottom was soft oozing up between her toes. There were only the birds waking and the horses making soft morning noises. Simon, wrapped in his blanket, was just sitting and looking at the burnt-out fire. The heavy dew was shining on the ground, and the air and the water smelled of the earth, and through the few small poplars behind her she could see the prairie stretching off to where the sky was still as dark as night.

Harry unlocked both doors of his store and left Maida to look after it and anybody who wanted to sit there, and walked about the town for a while, and then made his way towards the river, still in his good clothes. In the late morning two boys said they saw him walking south out of town along the dry and crunchy river bottom. Some of the women, keeping busy in their houses, said they would feel easier if they knew he was around. The men couldn’t find enough to keep themselves busy, particularly the younger ones, who wandered about the town aimlessly, gazing a good deal at the tower which they had helped to build and which was as still now as something dead. Some of them asked where Hank was, but nobody knew. Most of them, at some time or other, walked right round the tower, and touched one or two of its thick concrete legs. Again and again they went back to the main street, where the juke box was playing in the cafe. Hour after hour the sun beat down, as if it would never weaken. In the early afternoon Nathan climbed on the bus and left the town.
Rupe Windflower was quiet under his back-yard shelter, slowly drinking one bottle of cold beer after another. When any man sat with him, he offered him a bottle, and smiled the same whether he took it or not. In memory of the dead man, he said he was drinking. Nobody stayed with him for long.
Nobody stayed anywhere for long. They stopped and they moved on. They walked to the railway tracks and back, and to Miss Purl’s house and back, and to the north bridge and back, and to the river and back. At some time each of them stood and watched Jessop methodically pulling apart the fallen wall of his herbal room and rebuilding it board by board, but not even the boys who went nearest tried to attract his attention.
The sun at last began to sink down in the sky. The women sat uneasily on their porches and the men stood about in the streets, not talking. Mr. Overgaard walked about restlessly, saying that things couldn’t just slide, and that he intended to call on Mrs. Otterdown. The air was hot and still, and the sun turned red and the sky turned mauve and then purple. Mr. Fairling walked up and down the centre aisle of the church with his hands behind him and his head bowed, trying to keep his mind on God’s mercy, trying to pray. The sun set, and the dusk thickened, and Hilda pulled out the juke-box plug and said it wouldn’t work anymore. Alvin came through the empty lot to the main street and looked about him as if he were lost, and said that Hank had come out of Mrs. Otterdown’s house. The dark sky to the east was just beginning to lighten at the horizon from the rising of the moon when Mrs. Comstock, rocking slowly back and forth on her porch and slapping at the first mosquitoes and thinking that she would have to go inside, turned her head to see her niece standing in the doorway in her night-dress, gazing through the screen at the tower.

*

The wind of him falling might at least make a cool night, Harry thought, his back lightly touching the leg which Hank was climbing; taking his time, as if it wasn’t so easy. He had plenty of time, he had the whole course of the moon.
Although his eyes were used to the dusk, he couldn’t see much. But he could hear, he could hear their feet on the ground, coming nearer. On every side. There was no sign of his mother, not yet, no sign that he could read, no blurred shape on the back porch, no faint squealing of wheels. She was in retreat, maybe, gathering her strength for the wake. He felt quiet himself, very quiet, the quietest place was where he was.
Hank’s feet were feeling fainter, he was nearing the top. A car’s headlights flickered between buildings in the main street, then its engine died and its doors slammed. Late-comers. Somewhere a small child was crying. They were circling round, and nearer. All of them. They were hardly talking, but they were coming from all sides, like shadows, closing round him at last when they didn’t know he was there, thinking all the ground in front of them was empty except for the legs of the tower. They would see him when the moon rose; and while the ground was still shivering they might call him, and pull him among themselves with both hands, as they used to pull his father. To bring them his own quiet, nodding as he moved among them, slipping the right word in here, there and everywhere. He pressed his back against the concrete leg to feel any further vibrations, but it was still now. Hank must be standing on the top.
The light in the east was spreading further and further into the sky, the moon must already have risen for Hank and the topmost part of the tower. He would have to board up the basement stairs again to keep his mother from wheeling herself down them; and sit with her to occupy her mind, and talk to her like a loving son, and assure her that he didn’t care what titles Jessop held, and that in troubled times ready cash was always better than land. Particularly this land around them, so hot and dry.
The moon pushed up over the horizon, pushed higher and higher. They were all turned toward it and murmuring. The first light in the dark world, rising like a mound out of the prairie, red from all the dust; like a swelling fire. Its underside was beginning to show. It was heavy and huge. It was too heavy to rise into the air. It would roll over the flat fields and burn up whatever was left alive. They were making more sounds. They were stirring in the soft blurring light, looking up now, waiting for the skyrocket launching into the night, to marvel and murmur and blend their voices in a dying fall.
Ah. His mother was there, she had slipped past his notice and was sitting in her chair in the midst of them; in the front line of them; sitting still. Waiting and watching with them all. The moon had broken with the earth and was rising slowly into the sky, still red and big, giving more and more light. They would be able to see him now, if they looked, for what it was worth to see him; sharing, partaking, if that was what he was doing. But they were all looking up to see Hank. The moon would be higher where he was, but he was probably in no hurry, being well out of everyone’s reach. As for himself, quiet as he was, he wasn’t as clean as Hank, he smelled sweaty from the long day walking in his good clothes; but probably he wasn’t alone in that, they would all be sweating now with excitement and fear. It was fortunate the theatre was out of doors.
He didn’t feel any shiver in the leg, but a noise came out of them all at once, like a wind. Hank was in the air. He was orange, it was the light on his white shirt, an orange-breasted bird, gliding, his arms outstretched and his back arched. He was coasting through the warm light of the moon. He looked clean all right. Some of the people were screaming now, but they couldn’t touch him; it was a cool flight.
They were screaming his mother’s name. What was she doing? The ground was bouncing her and her hair was flying out behind her all red and white and her arms were flailing and her breathing was deafening his ears. She couldn’t do it, she only wanted to smell the sweet wind he made that was it she wanted to be nearer than anybody she wanted to touch him first, he was falling straight through the moon his legs as far apart as his arms her head was stretched so far back her neck would surely break..
He buried his head in his arms and pressed his back hard against the concrete leg, but it was too late; the light was throbbing inside his head and it would never get out. There was screaming all around him, the night was screaming, the ground was shaking with people’s feet running his sore leg was giving way it was melting from under him he was falling, all around him there was crying and white eyes and white voices the wheel chair was still splitting and flying the earth wouldn’t be still they were all walking through him he was throbbing with their bodies and their crying.
They were lifting him up.
The crying was his own crying. Around him they were all quiet and their big eyes were troubled and he could feel his throbbing flooding out through their hands. His crying wracked through him in wave after wave. He tried to point with his arm and they seemed to know for they carried him over the ground and laid him down so gently beside the broken bodies of Hank and his mother, and his tears poured into the earth.