Byron couldn’t bear hymning and to him this was the most dreadful of all—
‘O God,’ Byron answered all like a cry – ‘O God who scorns the shoeless – forget our daily bread but hasteth thy vengeance! Hasteth! Hasteth!’
‘Who the hell’s side is he on now?’ somebody wondered.
But before anyone could make a guess, Byron had turned and was lost in the dark. Yet his father’s voice pursued him.
‘Friends, I reckoned when I told you, a minute ago, about the invasion of lepers ’n hailstones weighin’ fifty-six pounds ’n flame-throwen cavalry two-hundred million strong ’n a rain of toads big as cats ’n mothers eatin’ their new-born ’n wind stavin’ in walls of brick ’n steel ’n a river of burnen blood up to the horses’ bridles, that you were heading for a bit of trouble. Now I have to tell you your real troubles won’t begin till Antichrist get worken on your sinnin’ hides.
‘Already he is spreadin’ the Doc-treen of evolution, the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Already the Wall Street labor unions are armin’ to help him, preparen for the day when no man will be able to earn his bread by the sweat of his face unless he has the mark of the beast – A-F-L – upon him. Neither will he be able to buy or sell. City unions teach you that Chinamens are your brothers! Ayrabs! Mexes!
‘You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country. You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.’ – He leaped straight up and came down barking like a gibbon—
‘—O! Look yander! Comen down the streets of gold! I do see a great bloodwashed throng all robed in white!’
A dozen heads turned quickly to see God only knows what, but all they saw was Dove Linkhorn looking forsaken. As though wishing his poor crazy pappy would come down off the courthouse steps. When the crowd’s eyes moved toward him he turned away to follow his brother into the dark.
He passed the little movie where Thomas Meighan was being featured in ‘Young Sinners.’ But paused in front of the curio shop to admire the little fringed souvenirs festooned there, pretending to be made of buffalo hide and to be engraved with a branding iron.
Byron had read the words to him long ago. All over town were signs and posters, legends, warnings and invitations Dove had learned by heart. Now it was his amusement to stand making his lips move with his memory, so that some passerby might get the impression that he was actually reading. He even frowned now and again to pretend he’d hit one that was tough enough even for an educated boy like himself.
Passersby paid little heed to the sloucher with the hair in his eyes. So he paused below the barred window of the old jail. Prisoners, at least, had time for him.
But the only one the jail held this night, his fingers wound whitely about the bars, was Chicken-Eye Riley, an Indian gouged in a brawl years before. He wore his hair long, pioneer-fashion, with a tucking-comb in the back. And stood with his scooped-out skull bent between the iron, trying to get a breath of the night he could never see. Dove saw light glint off the comb.
‘Got t’bacco for me down there?’ Riley demanded.
Dove picked up a pebble, slipped it into his Bull Durham sack for ballast, and glanced about for the sheriff. The old man raged at the townsfolks’ habit of tossing sacks of this and that or anything, even grapefruit, through the bars, for it forced him to plod a steep flight of stairs to make the prisoner stand inspection.
‘Stand back, Chicken,’ Dove told Riley. Then tossed the tobacco – he heard the stone hit the floor with a tiny clink. The skull reappeared.
‘Thanks, son.’
‘What’s it for this time, Riley?’
‘Same old thing. Refusing to make love to my wife when she was sick. What kind of a man do they take me for anyhow?’
‘What kind of sickness have she got, Riley?’
‘You sound like a pretty well-growed boy. You know how women are. Wouldn’t a man be a beast to go to his wife at that time of the month?’
‘Reckon he sure would.’ Dove took a hazy guess.
He actually didn’t know how women were.
‘Now if I’d took her against her will – if I’d beat her, if I’d tortured her, that would be something to arrest me for. If I did a thing like that I’d turn myself in. I’d give myself up.’
‘You oughtn’t whup a woman, Chief.’
‘I didn’t whup her, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I wouldn’t hurt my sow, far less my wife.’
‘You oughtn’t whup either one, Chief. A dumb brute like that.’
‘I’m glad you see it that way. But just suppose I did? Suppose I was kicking my sow and the sheriff happened along. Do you think he’d interfere?’
‘I should think he ought.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t. You know why? Because the sow is mine to do with as I please. He would no more tell me how to deal with her than he’d tell the barber how to cut hair. So why should he interfere now if I’m not kicking my sow at all but just being tender to her till my wife is well? Can I help it if my wife is even more jealous than usual at that time of the month? A little kindness and they treat you like a monster.’
‘You shore aint no monster, Chief,’ Dove didn’t sound too certain, ‘but I got to get to work now. I’m maintenance engineer at the hotel up the road. Come in when you get out. I’ll have my cook fix you up.’
Dove left the tender monster puffing contentedly against the bars. ‘Mighty mannerable fellow,’ the maintenance engineer decided, feeling pleased with the impression he himself had made.
He had to step carefully over the gulleys that the townsfolk called ‘love-holes’ because they were supposed, in horse-and-buggy days, to throw lovers into one anothers’ arms.
He passed the ramshackle Negro church where the town’s dozen Negroes gathered to pray, and heard them beginning as he passed:
It was that moment before frogs begin, when Mexican women and Mexican men draw their shawls across their mouths to keep the night damp out. In the dust-blue dusk the boarded windows of La Fe looked down as blindly as Riley. The careworn stairway, the windworn walls, the sandworn doors down a heart-sore hall, all remembered Terasina.