Cory strode on, looking around and ahead and not down since his feet knew the path.
“Alton!”
“That you, Cory?”
Cory Drew froze. That corner of the wood was thickly set and as dark as a burial vault. The voice he heard was choked, quiet, penetrating.
“Alton?”
“I found Kimbo, Cory.”
“Where the hell have you been?” shouted Cory furiously. He disliked this pitch-darkness; he was afraid at the tense hopelessness of Alton’s voice, and he mistrusted his ability to stay angry at his brother.
“I called him, Cory. I whistled at him, an’ the ol’ devil didn’t answer.”
“I can say the same for you, you … you louse. Why weren’t you to milkin’? Where are you? You caught in a trap?”
“The houn’ never missed answerin’ me before, you know,” said the tight, monotonous voice from the darkness.
“Alton! What the devil’s the matter with you? What do I care if your mutt didn’t answer? Where—”
“I guess because he ain’t never died before,” said Alton, refusing to be interrupted.
“You what!” Cory clicked his lips together twice and then said, “Alton, you turned crazy? What’s that you say?”
“Kimbo’s dead.”
“Kim— Oh! Oh!” Cory was seeing that picture again in his mind—Babe sprawled unconscious in the freshet, and Kimbo raging and snapping against a monster bear, holding her back until Alton could get there. “What happened, Alton?” he asked more quietly.
“I aim to find out. Someone tore him up.”
“Tore him up?”
“There ain’t a bit of him left tacked together, Cory. Every damn joint in his body tore apart. Guts out of him.”
“Good God! Bear, you reckon?”
“No bear, nor nothin’ on four legs. He’s all here. None of him’s been et. Whoever done it just killed him an’—tore him up.
“Good God!” Cory said again. “Who could’ve—” There was a long silence, then. “Come ‘long home,” he said almost gently. “There’s no call for you to set up by him all night.”
“I’ll set. I aim to be here at sunup, an’ I’m going to start trackin’, an’ I’m goin’ to keep trackin’ till I find the one done this job on Kimbo.”
“You’re drunk or crazy, Alton.”
“I ain’t drunk. You can think what you like about the rest of it. I’m stickin’ here.”
“We got a farm back yonder. Remember? I ain’t going to milk twenty-six head o’ cows again in the mornin’ like I did jest now, Alton.”
“Somebody’s got to. I can’t be there. I guess you’ll just have to, Cory.”
“You dirty scum!” Cory screamed. “You’ll come back with me now or I’ll know why!”
Alton’s voice was still tight, half sleepy. “Don’t you come no nearer, bud.”
Cory kept moving toward Alton’s voice.
“I said”—the voice was very quiet now—“stop where you are.” Cory kept coming. A sharp dick told of the release of the .32-40’s safety. Cory stopped.
“You got your gun on me, Alton?” Cory whispered.
“Thass right, bud. You ain’t a-trompin’ up these tracks for me. I need ‘em at sunup.”
A full minute passed, and the only sound in the blackness was that of Cory’s pained breathing. Finally:
“I got my gun, too, Alton. Come home.”
“You can’t see to shoot me.”
‘We’re even on that.”
“We ain’t. I know just where you stand, Cory. I been here four hours.”
“My gun scatters.”
“My gun kills.”
Without another word, Cory Drew turned on his heel and stamped back to the farm.
Black and liquidescent it lay in the blackness, not alive, not understanding death, believing itself dead. Things that were alive saw and moved about. Things that were not alive could do neither. It rested its muddy gaze on the line of trees at the crest of the rise, and deep within it thoughts trickled wetly. It lay huddled, dividing its new-found facts, dissecting them as it had dissected live things when there was light, comparing, concluding, pigeonholing.
The trees at the top of the slope could just be seen, as their trunks were a fraction of a shade lighter than the dark sky behind them. At length they, too, disappeared, and for a moment sky and trees were a monotone. The thing knew it was dead now, and like many a being before it, it wondered how long it must stay like this. And then the sky beyond the trees grew a little lighter. That was a manifestly impossible occurrence, thought the thing, but it could see it and it must be so. Did dead things live again? That was curious. What about dismembered dead things? It would wait and see.
The sun came hand over hand up a beam of light. A bird somewhere made a high yawning peep, and as an owl killed a shrew, a skunk pounced on another, so that the night-shift deaths and those of the day could go on without cessation. Two flowers nodded archly to each other, comparing their pretty clothes. A dragonfly nymph decided it was tired of looking serious and cracked its back open, to crawl out and dry gauzily. The first golden ray sheared down between the trees, “through the grasses, passed over the mass in the shadowed bushes. “I am alive again,” thought the thing that could not possibly live. “I am alive, for I see clearly.” It stood up on its thick legs, up into the golden glow. In a little while the wet flakes that had grown during the night dried in the sun, and when it took its first steps, they cracked off and a small shower of them fell away. It walked up the slope to find Kimbo, to see if he, too, was alive again.
Babe let the sun come into her room by opening her eyes. Uncle Alton was gone—that was the first thing that ran through her head. Dad had come home last night and had shouted at mother for an hour. Alton was plumb crazy. He’d turned a gun on his own brother. If Alton ever came ten feet into Cory’s land, Cory would fill him so full of holes, he’d look like a tumbleweed. Alton was lazy, shiftless, selfish, and one or two other things of questionable taste but undoubted vividness. Babe knew her father. Uncle Alton would never be safe in this county.
She bounced out of bed in the enviable way of the very young, and ran to the window. Cory was trudging down to the night pasture with two bridles over his arm, to get the team. There were kitchen noises from downstairs.
Babe ducked her head in the washbowl and shook off the water like a terrier before she toweled. Trailing dean shirt and dungarees, she went to the head of the stairs, slid into the shirt, and began her morning ritual with the trousers. One step down was a step through the right leg. One more, and she was into the left. Then, bouncing step by step on both feet, buttoning one button per step, she reached the bottom fully dressed and ran into the kitchen.
“Didn’t Uncle Alton come back a-tall, Mum?”
“Morning, Babe. No, dear.” Clissa was too quiet, smiling too much, Babe thought shrewdly. Wasn’t happy. “Where’d he go, Mum?”
“We don’t know, Babe. Sit down and eat your breakfast.”
“What’s a misbegotten, Mum?” the Babe asked suddenly. Her mother nearly dropped the dish she was drying. “Babe! You must never say that again!”
“Oh. Well, why is Uncle Alton, then?”
“Why is he what?”
Babe’s mouth muscled around an outsize spoonful of oatmeal. “A misbe—”