It saddened me to my very marrow. It seemed I could hear it braying its terrible bleak lonesomeness forever. I wept for it and I wished I could say something, but how can you offer comfort to one of the bleak tricks of God? It brayed louder. Not so bleak, now, nor far-off sounding, and I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. Out the window I saw Otis under the moon, howling and running in circles, way past wishing he'd blown the dust out of his brandy glass. Devlin and the others were trying to get him, but he still had his wooden sword and was slashing at them.
"Keep your place. It wasn't me not this wienie he had no call! Devlin? Dobbsy? Help me, old chums; he's put the glacier on your old – he had no justifications I'm already pruned!"
First begging for help then whacking at them when they came close, screaming like they'd turned into monsters.
"He's trimming me, boys, dontcha see? Me who never so much as – he had no right you black bastard all I was was just foolish!"
And get so wound up he'd scream and run right into the fence around the chicken yard. He'd bounce off the fence and hew the men back away from him then he'd howl and run into the wire again. The chickens were squawking, the men hollering, and Otis, Lord Jesus, was going plumb mad. This isn't just foolishness, I told myself; this is simon pure unvarnished madness! He needs help. Somebody to phone somebody. Yet all I could do was watch like it was more of my same cold dream rushing about in the moonlight and chicken feathers, until Otis got his sword snaffled in the wire and the men swarmed on him.
They carried him thrashing and weeping to the house, right past my cabin window. As soon as they were gone from sight I was up out of that bed. Without a further thought on the matter I put on my housecoat and slippers and struck out toward the ash grove. I wasn't scared, exactly. More like unbalanced. The ground seemed to be heaving. The trees was full of faces, and every witch-doctor and conjure-man story I ever heard was tumbling up out of my Ozark childhood to keep me company, but I still wasn't scared. If I let myself get the slightest bit scared, I suspicioned, I'd be raving worse than Otis under the curse of Keller-Brown.
But he wasn't sticking pins in dolls or such like that. He was sitting calm in his therapeutic recline-o-lounger reading one of his big books by the light of the Coleman lamp, a big pair of earphones on his head. Through the bus windows I could hear there was a tape or record or some such playing, of a bunch of men's voices chanting in a foreign tongue. His mouth was moving to the words of the chant as he read. I slapped on the side of the bus stairwell.
"Hello… can I come in a minute?"
"Mrs. Whitter?" He comes to the door. "Sure, man. Come in. Come on in. I'm honored. Honest."
He gives me his hand and seems genuinely happy to see me. I told him I had been thinking and if there'd been a misunderstanding I wanted to be the first – But he cuts right in, apologizing himself, how he'd acted abominable and inexcusable and hang on a second. Please. Then held up a big palm while he swirled around to flip a switch on his phonograph. The speakers went off but the tape still turned on the machine. I could still hear a tiny chorus chanting out from the earphones on the recline-o-lounger: Rah. Rah. Rah ree run. Like that…
"I'm glad you come," he says. "I been feeling terrible for the way I acted. There was no excuse for it and I apologize for getting so heavy on you. Please, come on in."
I told him it was understandable, and that was why I was there. I started to tell him that I had never said anything about the little boy having the kitten without his mom's consent when I glanced back to the waterbed. She wasn't there but the little boy was, lying propped up on a pillow like a ventriloquist doll, his eyes staring at a glass bead strung from the ceiling. He had on his own pair of earphones, and the bead twisted and untwisted.
"Well, I get to apologize first," I told Mr. Keller-Brown. That that was why I'd come. I told him that he'd been completely correct, and that I had no right telling his child those kind of whoppers and deserved a scolding. The chant went something like Rah. Rah. Tut nee cum. Mr. Keller-Brown says okay, we've traded apologies. We chums again? I said I guess so. Rah. Rah. Tut nee eye sis rah cum RAH and that bead turning slow as syrup on its thread. He says he hopes I'll still consider riding down to LA with them; they'd be honored. I say it's too bad it ain't to Arkansas; I need to go to Arkansas – for legal business. He says they go to St. Louis after Oklahoma City and that's near Arkansas. I says we'll see how I feel tomorrow; it's been a big day. He says good night and helps me back down the steps. I thank him.
At the bus window waving, his face gives me no clue whether he believed it or not. Everything suddenly turned ten times brighter as I felt him withdraw that terrible pruning shadow and return it to its sheath. Now forget it, I told myself, all, and made a picture of the rain stopping and the duck flying off.
I walked through the bright moonlight at the edge of the ash grove. The look of things was headed back to normal. There were crickets in the trees, nothing else. The ground ran level and the night was calm. I had just about convinced myself that it was all over, that it was all just a widder woman's nightmare, nothing more, nothing worse, when I heard the mama Siamese meowing.
The kitten was stuffed under some ash roots and covered with big rocks. I could barely move them. You were right, I told the mama; you should've kept him in the rhubarb. She followed crying as I carried it up to the cabin. I kept talking to her as I walked, and fingering the poor stiffening little kitty to see if it was cut or broke or what. And when I found it at the furry throat I was reminded of the time I was picking pears in the dusk as a kid of a girl in Penrose, Colorado, and reached up to get what I thought was sure a funny fuzzy-feeling pear, when it suddenly uncurled and squeaked and flew away and I fell off the ladder with bat bites all over my hand… was what I thought as my fingers recognized the cameo and chain knotted around its neck. O Lord, I cried, what have I got into now? And tossed it under the cabin porch without even trying to break that chain. Then I come inside and took another pill out of my bag and got right down on my knees for a sign. And a dumb old rooster just crowed. Okay. Okay then. If not a sign Lord Jesus to make me certain then how about the strength to act like i am for it looks to me like i am left with no choice but to go ahead along a fortress or harbor Amen Lord amen --