If Vi sensed anything unusual during the rest of the night or the next day, she didn’t show it. Alex was very kind to her and that, in itself, was suspicious. But since he had begun work on the pit, he felt a tenderness toward her that he had seldom felt since the days of courtship. He felt genuinely sorry for her when he saw the untroubled ease with which she carried on her household routine. She did not act at all like a condemned woman. But, then, she didn’t know that she was condemned. Only Alex knew that...
At dusk he went out again, bolder, now, straight for the fields, not bothering to conceal the truck. He finished his job in an hour and sat down to smoke a cigarette on the mound of earth he had thrown up. He smoked it leisurely, threw it into the hole when he was finished, and breathing heavily, drove back to the house. He parked the truck and walked slowly to the house. As he went, he kept repeating to himself in a low, trembling voice: “Come on, Vi, get your coat on and bring the flashlight. I need some help.” Such a simple, natural thing for him to say to her; and yet, he felt that he had to practice saying it, as if nothing were so important in the little drama he had devised as getting the opening line just so.
He opened the back door and was relieved to find that his wife wasn’t in the kitchen. Now there would be no necessity to face her, for a while yet. “Vi,” he called. “Get your coat on and bring the flashlight. I need your help!”
“All right,” she said from the front room. “Where?”
Alex ran his tongue over his parched lips. “Where? Where what?”
“Where do you need some help, Mister Faffner?”
Why fool around? he thought. “In the far field!”
Vi shuffled into the kitchen, putting on her coat as she came. Seeing her come, Alex walked into the back yard to wait for her. He felt a little drunk, a little too giddy, and he clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms until the pain steadied him.
Vi had just come out the back door when two brash fingers of light were thrown in a wide arc from the highway into the drive. Alex felt the back of his head go hot. That was something he hadn’t figured on: someone coming to the house. He grew panicky, grabbed Vi’s arm and implored in a frantic whisper, “Vi. Come on, let’s hide. Let’s go! Let’s hide!”
Vi wrenched her arm away and looked coldly into his wild eyes. “Why, Mister Faffner, whatever’s the matter with you?” she said quietly. “Gracious, it’s probably only Richard Kulze.”
Richard Kulze? Dick Kulze had seen him digging the pit! That was why he had come, to snoop around. To poke his nose in other people’s business. Alex’s reason would have told him that the contour of the land made it impossible for Kulze to have seen him, but Alex was lost somewhere between reason and unreason.
Vi was right: it was Richard Kulze’s car.
Alex closed his eyes, as though that might relax him. At this moment he recalled, oddly enough, that when he and Vi had had their wedding photos taken, the photographer had told them to relax by taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, fighting to get a grip on himself. That scene with Vi was bad enough — she probably knew something was up — but he couldn’t let on to Kulze, just in case Kulze hadn’t seen him digging.
Kulze turned down the window of his car and leaned out. He said that he was going bowling in the town and thought maybe Alex would like to come along with him.
“No, not tonight,” said Alex shakily. He could tell that Kulze hadn’t seen him dig the pit. Kulze wasn’t that deep.
“Now, what are you and Mrs. Faffner doing out this time of night?” Kulze laughed. “Going to finish your plowing?”
Alex hated him and his laughter. “Why, no,” he said, “having a little trouble with the pick-up. Thought I’d work on it a little tonight. Vi is going to hold the flashlight.”
Vi looked at him curiously, but said nothing.
“Need some help?”
Alex refused more emphatically than he had intended and there was an uncomfortable pause. He could feel the sweat on his back and his shirt sticking. His hands were damp and he rubbed them against his overalls. He studied his shoes, aware that Vi and Kulze were looking at him.
Kulze cleared his throat uneasily. “The pick-up, eh? What’s the matter with her?”
“The... the distributor, I guess.” Alex had to keep his wits about him now, had to concentrate on what Kulze was saying; but he found himself repeating childishly in his mind, “Go away! Go away!”
“So you’re a mechanic, too, now, eh, Alex?” said Kulze.
Alex saw no trap in that question. “Why, yes, I guess so.”
“You know, Alex, I always say that a good farmer got to be a good jack-of-all-trades. We got to do plumbing, carpenter work, mason-work, and what have you. Got to be good on all them things. Like you, even got to know how to tinker with a motor.”
“Guess that’s right, Dick.”
“Now, take you, Alex,” Kulze persisted, “if you ever wanted to give up farming — and I’m not saying you would — you wouldn’t have no trouble at all making a damn — pardon me, Mrs. Faffner — damn good living in some town doing carpenter work. Now, am I right or am I wrong?”
“Why, yes, I guess so,” said Alex, hoping that he had said the appropriate thing. He became acutely conscious of Vi standing next to him, saying nothing. He felt her eyes burn into him and he wondered what she was thinking. All of it was so strange and confusing; Kulze and Vi and the pit in the fields. Even he himself seemed strange, not like Alex Faffner at all.
“I won’t keep you folks,” said Kulze after a pause. They exchanged goodbyes, Alex’s being elaborately cordial, and Kulze turned his car around and drove away. They stood and watched the tail-light disappear down the highway.
The air seemed lighter to Alex. He turned and started walking toward the fields, not wanting to look at Vi or talk to her, not wanting any questions. He felt better now, and ready for what lay ahead. He’d gotten over that extra hurdle all right. “Come on, let’s get going!” he called over his shoulder.
“All right, I’m coming,” said Vi wearily, and she labored after him over the fields.
A stillness hung about the Faffner house when, a week later, Richard Kulze once again pointed his car into the drive-away. He sounded his horn, but there was no response. Puzzled, he got out of his car and walked to the front door. It was ajar. He walked in gingerly, his head cocked. There was a stir in the kitchen, and the faint sound of someone weeping softly.
Kulze was in the kitchen now. He stopped short when he saw Vi sitting in a straight-back kitchen chair. “Why, Mrs. Faffner, what’s the matter?”
“He’s left!” Vi said, composing herself with much effort.
“Who’s left? Alex?”
“The day after the night you came. Mister Faffner took the bus to town; said he had to get a new distributor for the pick-up.”
“And ain’t he been back since?” Kulze asked with astonishment.
“And hasn’t been back since.” She looked at him significantly and said very slowly: “Mister Faffner took most of his carpentry tools with him!”
Her eyes encouraged him as he deliberated the implications of that fact, and her head nodded affirmatively as he did arithmetic in his mind, adding the taking of the tools to the strange conversation of a week ago and to Alex’s disappearance and getting the obvious result.