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Delaware County District Library Ohio. I thought Henry and I might have another happy day—in a world as varied as this one, anything is possible—but it would not be in the summer of Or the fall. I could use a drink. Lester watched him go, then turned back to me.
He had unbuttoned his duster. Nailing fence is hot work. This time it had a touch of rue in it. I could see his eyes already flicking here, there, and everywhere. It would be a little cooler. But he handed the dipper to Lester first.
The screen door slammed and Henry came out of the house in his overalls and bare feet. He gave us a glance that seemed utterly disinterested—good boy! I sat down on the woodpile we kept under a swatch of canvas on this side of the house.
In point of fact, I came out here to look for her. Then to chuckle, because chuckling came next in the stage directions. Everyone called him Pop Bradlee. Back in the buckboard days, this was. Seed corn was what their trading was mostly about, at least in the spring, but sometimes they also swapped tools. There was no mail-order back then, and a good tool might circle the whole county before it got back home.
Took French leave. Did a midnight flit. As an avid reader and student of American slang, such terms occur naturally to me. Or him and the boy, in this case. But when she does, I would advise you against the expense of a legal action you would surely lose. One of my overall straps had fallen off my shoulder, and I hooked it back into place with a thumb. It sounds to me as if she got as tired of you fellows as she did of me and the son she gave birth to.
Said good riddance to bad rubbish. A plague on both your houses. Romeo and Juliet. A play about love. His cheeks were now not just flushed but bright red. We need to remember what Pop Bradlee said, Mr. Why, the man was a countrified genius. Poor feller! Think of it as a. And I can assure you, Mr. I felt sweat spring out on my forehead. He looked worried, maybe even guilty, but that was all right.
When you called me to breakfast Friday morning, she was gone. Packed and gone. But if things went all right, we were closer to the end than we had been. He started across the dooryard, then turned back. God knows why. If you so much as drop a seed there, you will be seeing me in court. I can wait. That sounds like an excellent seven years to me.
Lester, and mind the sun going back. Lars waved to me and Lester snapped at him. When they were gone except for the rooster-tail of dust Henry came back out on the porch. Sheriff Jones was getting on in years and up in pounds. Still, I thought we had at least two days. A filled-in well might make him suspicious about why it got filled in, so recent and all.
Tell me! What came was Shannon Cotterie, looking pretty in a cotton blouse and gingham skirt, to ask if Henry was all right, and could he take supper with her and her mama and her poppa if he was? Henry said he was fine, and I watched them go up the road, hand-in-hand, with deep misgivings. He was keeping a terrible secret, and terrible secrets are heavy. Wanting to share them is the most natural thing in the world.
To make things worse, he had a lie to tell, and she might know it was a lie. Sometimes they see too much. I hoed in the garden pulling up more peas than weeds , then sat on the porch, smoking a pipe and waiting for him to come back. Just before moon-rise, he did. His head was down, his shoulders were slumped, and he was trudging rather than walking. I hated to see him that way, but I was still relieved. She loves them and they love her. If he bothers to talk to the Cotteries at all, that is.
Round and round it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows. I said nothing. For awhile, neither did he. We watched the moon rise out of the corn, red and pregnant. Can I have a glass of beer? Then I went inside and poured us each a glass of beer. Everything about this is dirty. A little while later, after the moon had gone to silver, I stepped around to use the privy, and to listen to the corn and the night breeze tell each other the old secrets of the earth.
When I got back to the porch, Henry was gone. His glass of beer stood half-finished on the railing by the steps. I believe he was crying. I watched for awhile, but in the end said nothing. It was a long time before I went to sleep. The only thing that remained when she regained enough wits to put the lid back on was Elphis, the goddess of hope. But in that summer of , there was no hope left for our Elphis. We should have converted her into comestibles a year before, but I balked at the cost of having Harlan Cotterie butcher her, and I was no good at slaughtering much beyond hogs.
Halfway to the well, Henry stopped. His eyes shone with dismay. I smell her! This is all your fault, that look said. Yet I had no doubt that he would help me do the work that lay ahead.
I had forced him to it, but she would never understand that. We led Elphis to the well-cap, where she quite reasonably balked. We went around to the far side, holding the halter-strings like ribbons in a Maypole dance, and hauled her out onto the rotted wood by main force.
The cap cracked beneath her weight. The old cow stood on it, head lowered, looking as stupid and as stubborn as ever, showing the greenish-yellow rudiments of her teeth. We held onto the halter-strings, although I thought for a moment I was going to be dragged into that damned well with two dislocated arms.
Then the nose-rig ripped free and flew back up. It was split down both the sides. His hands were fists against his mouth, the knuckles digging into his upper lip. Her hoofs continued to beat against the stone. Except Henry still was hearing her, and so was I. I got my varmint gun from the high shelf in the pantry. It was only a. And if Harlan heard shots rolling across the acres between his place and mine?
That would fit our story, too. If Henry could keep his wits long enough to tell it, that was. You think you have seen the most terrible thing, the one that coalesces all your nightmares into a freakish horror that actually exists, and the only consolation is that there can be nothing worse. Even if there is, your mind will snap at the sight of it, and you will know no more.
But there is worse, your mind does not snap, and somehow you carry on. You might understand that all the joy has gone out of the world for you, that what you did has put all you hoped to gain out of your reach, you might wish you were the one who was dead—but you go on. You realize that you are in a hell of your own making, but you go on nevertheless.
Because there is nothing else to do. And the rats had come back. The cow falling into their world had doubtless caused them to retreat into the pipe I would eventually come to think of as Rat Boulevard, but then they had smelled fresh meat, and had come hurrying out to investigate. It had picked a hole in the burlap sack and pulled a tuft of her hair out with its clever claws. Nothing can be any worse than this, I thought.
But yes, there are always worse things waiting. Still the ear-to-ear grin remained. That it was no longer aligned with her eyes made it even worse. It was as if she now had two faces to haunt me with instead of just one. Her body shifted against the mattress, making it slide. The rat on her head scurried down behind it. Elphis lowed again. I thought that if Henry came back now, and looked into the well, he would kill me for making him a part of this. I probably deserved killing.
But that would leave him alone, and alone he would be defenseless. Part of the cap had fallen into the well; part of it was still hanging down. I loaded my rifle, rested it on this slope, and aimed at Elphis, who lay with her neck broken and her head cocked against the rock wall. I waited for my hands to steady, then pulled the trigger. One shot was enough. I was too shocked myself to consider this strange. At that moment, he seemed to me like the only truly hopeful thing in the world: soiled, but not so filthy he could never be clean again.
I bent and kissed his cheek. He moaned and turned his head away. I left him there and went to the barn for my tools. When he joined me three hours later, I had pulled the broken and hanging piece of the well-cap out of the hole and had begun to fill it in. I recommenced shoveling. I heard the truck cough once, then twice. The third time he turned the crank, our old truck bellowed into life. He retarded the spark, gunned the throttle a time or two, then drove away.
He drove it to the edge of the well and killed the engine. He had taken off his shirt, and his sweat-shiny torso looked too thin; I could count his ribs. I saw a rooster-tail of dust coming toward us. I looked down into the well. Half of Elphis was still sticking up. That was all right, of course, but the corner of the bloodstained mattress was also still poking out of the dirt.
Henry grabbed it, and we began shoveling dirt and rocks out of the back of the truck as fast as ever we could. Sheriff Jones got out, hitched up his belt, took off his Stetson, brushed back his graying hair, and resettled his hat along the line where the white skin of his brow ended and coppery red took over.
He was by his lonesome. I took that as a good sign. She decided to come back, did she? Have some. But first I need to use your privy.
Since I turned fifty-five or so, seems like I have to wee on every bush. Just follow the path and look for the crescent moon on the door. Would he pause on his way to look in the windows? At least in his younger days. He spoke in a low voice. I looked at him. That was a short conversation, but one I have pondered often in the eight years since.
Sheriff Jones came back, buttoning his fly. Henry went. Jones finished with his fly, took off his hat, brushed back his hair some more, and reset the hat. His badge glittered in the early-afternoon sun. The gun on his hip was a big one, and although Jones was too old to have been in the Great War, the holster looked like AEF property.
His son had died over there. Need to stretch out my spine. He stood beside me, looking down. Henry came out with a glass. Sheriff Jones poured his own lemonade, tasted, then gulped most of it down at a go and smacked his lips. Not too sour, not too sweet, just right. And then all the way to Hemingford City after that? Amounts to no more than paperwork, but there it is. And you know how Judge Cripps is. He looked at me earnestly, then at Henry, then back at me again. I believe that doings between a man and his wife are their own business.
Bible says the man is the head of a woman, and that if a woman should learn any thing, it should be taught by her husband at home. Book of Corinthians. His face was placid, but the eyes were keen and always in motion: peeking and prying, prying and peeking. If you see me flick my thumb, that means I think we have to take the chance. But we have to agree, Hank. I raised my glass and drank the last of my lemonade. When I saw Henry looking at me, I flicked my thumb.
Just a little. It could have been a muscle twitch. Sheriff Jones laughed heartily, his big belly shaking behind his belt. Lawyers are fleas on the hide of human nature. His thumb flicked twice as he did it. I stood up. It was a relief to be on my feet. Standing, I had three or four inches on Jones.
After a few complimentary remarks about how neat the sitting room was and how tidy the kitchen was, we walked down the hall. I pushed open the door to our bedroom with a queer sense of certainty: the blood would be back. It would be pooled on the floor, splashed on the walls, and soaking into the new mattress.
Sheriff Jones would look. There was no blood and no smell of blood, because the room had had days to air out. Men with flat feet can only kill wives. That sense of certainty returned, stronger than ever. The one that belongs there in the middle of the top shelf? His sharp eyes—bright green, almost feline—went here, there, and everywhere.
And the ones that were practical, I suppose. Man or woman, pants are good for traveling. And a woman might choose them. If she was in a hurry, that is. Well, I suppose she would. I blessed each one. Broke in, too. The kind that would be good for walking.
The faded green ones she used to call her gardening shoes. Tempus is fugiting right along. We walked with the Sheriff toward his Maxwell sedan with the star on the door. I was about to ask him if he wanted to see the well—I even knew what I was going to call it—when he stopped and gave my son a look of frightening kindness. And the Cotteries are clean folks. Pretty daughter, too. And her on you, from what her mama says. He sounded surprised, but pleased, too. Cotterie said you were troubled about your own mama, and that Shannon had told her something you said on that subject.
So I did. Even though it was going just the way we had hoped it would. Someone must have come along and given her a ride before her head cleared. A trucker on the Lincoln-Omaha run would be my guess. His eyes sharpened. There was dollars put by in it, to help pay the pickers when they start next month.
Cotterie has a corn harvester. A Harris Giant. Almost new. Pardon my Polish. Very generous of her. Unless he owes favors to the Farrington Company, that is. He ducked away, embarrassed. That useless well should have been filled in three years ago. I had to shoot her. Another time. You could have been a lot less so, considering who sent me out here.
He was sure of it. But there was no Elphis for Henry and me; our Elphis was dead in the well. The inquisitive glitter had gone out of his eyes. So had the green. They looked dull and gray and hard, like lake water on a cloudy day. Man to man. I tried to brace myself for what I felt sure was coming next: Is there another cow in yonder well?
One named Arlette? Not on just a hundred and eighty smackers. I could have her brought back. Dragged back by the hair of the head, if you want. A good whacking has a way of sweetening some gals up. Think it over. Two minutes later he was no more than a diminishing boil of dust on the farm road.
The hoof was about four feet below the lip of the well. Flies circled it in a cloud. The Sheriff would have marveled, all right, and he would have marveled even more when the dirt in front of that protruding hoof began to pulse up and down.
Henry dropped his shovel and grabbed my arm. The afternoon was hot, but his hand was ice-cold. His face seemed to be nothing but eyes. It was as if the well were alive, and we were seeing the beating of its hidden heart. Then dirt and pebbles sprayed to either side and a rat surfaced. The eyes, black as beads of oil, blinked in the sunshine. It was almost as big as a full-grown cat. Caught in its whiskers was a shred of bloodstained brown burlap.
He was grinning. There he sat down and stared at me raptly. And that shred of bloodstained burlap. From her snood. She was still wearing it down there in the dark, only now there was a hole in it with her hair sticking up. That look is all the rage among dead women this summer, I thought. Henry was still grinning. It took him four or five minutes to laugh himself out, and he scared a murder of crows up from the fence that kept the cows out of the corn, but eventually he got past it.
By the time we finished our work it was past sundown, and we could hear owls comparing notes as they launched their pre-moonrise hunts from the barn loft.
He regarded me soberly. If I got down on my knees, I think God would strike me dead. Or I might get feeling guilty enough to just go into Hemingford and confess to that Sheriff.
Henry shook his head, slowly and emphatically. Did you see his eyes? Go to bed. I love you. Pepys says. We slept while the owls hunted and Arlette sat in her deeper darkness with the lower part of her hoof-kicked face swung off to one side. The next day the sun came up, it was a good day for corn, and we did chores. When I came in hot and tired to fix us a noon meal, there was a covered casserole dish sitting on the porch.
There was a note fluttering beneath one edge. It said: Wilf—We are so sorry for your trouble and will help any way we can. Harlan says dont worry about paying for the harvister this summer. Please if you hear from your wife let us know. Love, Sallie Cotterie. I stuck the note in the front pocket of my overalls with a smile. Our life after Arlette had begun. There was thunder and lightning some afternoons, but never one of those crop-crippling winds Midwestern farmers fear.
Harlan Cotterie came with his Harris Giant and it never broke down a single time. For farmers out in the middle, the Great Depression started when the Chicago Agricultural Exchange crashed the following summer. But the summer of was as perfect as any farmer could hope for.
Only one incident marred it, having to do with another of our bovine goddesses, and that I will tell you about soon. Lester came out twice. He tried to badger us, but he had nothing to badger with, and he must have known it, because he was looking pretty harried that July. I imagine his bosses were badgering him, and he was only passing it along. Or trying to. Did I think my wife had had an accident? Or did I think she had fallen afoul of some bad actor while on the road? The second time he showed up, he looked desperate as well as harried, and came right out with it: had my wife had an accident right there on the farm?
Was that what had happened? It was almost possible to feel sorry for him as he stood there with that collar poking into the underside of his chin and sweat cutting lines through the dust on his chubby face, his lips twitching and his eyes bulging. I have warned you off my property, as is my right, and I intend to send a registered letter to your firm stating that very thing. Take warning, sir. When Lester reached the doorless passenger side of the truck, he whirled with an arm outstretched and a finger pointing, like a courtroom lawyer with a bent for the theatrical.
And sooner or later, murder will out! He had been pitching hay and he held the pitchfork across his chest like a rifle at port arms. He got in. With no door to slam, he settled for crossing his arms over his chest. I turned to Henry. Made him squeal. He saw a lot of her more of her than was good for either of them; that I found out in the fall.
She began coming to the house on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, long-skirted and neatly bonneted, toting a side-sack loaded with good things to eat.
Henry and I just threw steaks in a skillet on the stove; she had a way of seasoning that made plain old chew-meat delicious. She brought fresh vegetables in her side-sack—not just carrots and peas but exotic to us things like asparagus and fat green beans she cooked with pearl onions and bacon. There was even dessert. Update: The paperback edition of Full Dark, No Stars contains a new short story by Stephen titled Under the Weather that was not included in the orginal hardcover release.
For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.
In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage.
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