Sam shook his head regretfully. “I wisht I could, Lee. But it’s gettin’ close to feedin’ time.”
“Oh, what the hell. It’s not late. Go ahead.”
“No, but I wisht I could. Mebbe some other time.”
Lee’s slightly glassy eyes fastened on his face with a hard stare. “What’s the matter, you snoopy bastard? You afraid to?”
Sam looked at me questioningly and then back to Lee, as though he couldn’t make it out. Before I could do anything or say a word, Lee cut loose again.
“Oh, I know what you’re up to. You been snoopin’ around here the last hour, afraid I might get next to that little bitch. Well, you’re not so goddamned smart, mister. She’s gettin’ plenty of it from somebody, and don’t you forget it.”
Sam still had the shotgun in his hands. I was afraid to make a sudden move and I knew that any move I made would be too late to do any good anyway. I was watching his eyes and I saw the hot, crazy urgency flooding into them and I could feel the skin on the back of my neck tighten up until it hurt, the way it does when you have a hard chill and it seems like every hair is stabbing you. It was just the way it is when you’re skating over deep water when the ice is thin and you hear it start to rumble under you and you try to lift your weight off your feet by sheer will and hold your breath and pray, “Don’t let it break. Don’t let it break.”
He raised the gun slowly and I could hear the ice breaking under all of us, but he was just setting it down in the corner, and he turned his face toward me and the murder was going out of his eyes and there was something hurt in them, a naked and shameful pain that he couldn’t hide.
“Sam,” I said quietly, and put a hand on his arm. “Come outside a minute.”
He nodded dumbly and we went out the small door, leaving Lee cursing behind us. Just before I went out I picked up the gun and took out the two shells and put them in my pocket and took the ones he had in his coat.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry as hell,” I said as we slowly walked away from the little building, and I was conscious of how futile it was to try to apologize for something like that.
He was silent for a minute and I was afraid he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “It’s all right, Bob. It don’t mean nothin’. He’s just drunk.”
There was still that awful hurt in his eyes and his hands were shaking and I knew he was thinking now of how near he had been to killing a man.
“I’ll try to get him away from here. But the best idea is to let him take a few more and he’ll pass out.”
“He oughtn’t to never drink, Bob.”
“I know.”
“He jest can’t handle it.”
“I know.”
“Something awful is goin’ to happen to that boy someday.” He said it quietly and there was regret in his voice.
“I know it, Sam.” It was the first time I had ever admitted knowing it, even to myself. I looked down at the ground and aimlessly pushed a piece of oak bark around with the toe of my boot.
“You’ll tell him for me, won’t you, that I ain’t goin’ to sell him no more?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“He oughtn’t to have no more, ever. An’ I’d rather he didn’t come back, nohow.”
I didn’t say anything and he stood there for a moment, a little embarrassed, and then he said something about feeding and started off. As I stood there watching him I was thinking that there was a lot of man in Sam. If there hadn’t been I would have had a brother over there in the corn crib with his guts blown all over seventy bushels of corn.
“Oh, Sam!” I called after him. “I know it’s asking a lot, but would you give us a lift out to the highway, where the car is? When he passes out, I mean. I can’t carry him.”
“Well, I’d do it for you, Bob,” he said hesitantly, “but my car ain’t here. One of the Rucker boys carried Mama and the two little girls to town in it. He left his car here, but it’s jest one of them stripdowns. It’ll only take two.”
I went back to the corn crib and Lee was still sitting there where we had left him. He had the dead, vacant stare of the very drunk.
“Well,” he said. “It’s my handsome brother.” He said “hansshm,” so I guessed that’s what he meant. He was back on my beauty again.
“You’ve really played hell this time,” I told him.
“Jeesus, but you’re a homely bastard.”
It’s like being on a merry-go-round, I thought.
“Sam can’t take us out to the car. His car’s not here. All he’s got is some kid’s stripdown.”
“I’ll say she’s stripped down.”
It wasn’t any use. We were just going to keep on playing the same records over and over.
“Let’s worry about something.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
I thought about this morning when everything was so bright and fresh and cold and old Mike was holding firm close over the birds, and Lee was Lee and everything was perfect. Oh, hell, I thought.
“Why don’t you have a drink?” I asked. If he’d only go on and pass out.
“You want to get me drunk so you can get it.”
It’s funny, I thought, how they can fix their minds on only one thing.
He took another drink, though. When he put down the jar, which was nearly empty now, it fell over and the rest of the moonshine ran through a crack in the floor He lay back on the corn after a while and closed his eyes
“Horses,” he muttered.
I sat down and took out a cigarette. “What about horses?”
I don’t know whether he heard me or not. He seemed to be asleep, but he muttered stupidly now and then “Sharon liked the horses. Horsh is a noble anim’l.”
I sat there moodily smoking the cigarette, being very careful not to start a fire in the corn.
“Poor Sharon. Always hav’n arms twisted. Twists h’r arms.”
“Who does? The horse?” Certainly a brilliant conversation, I thought.
“No.”
He didn’t say anything more and I sat there and watched him for five minutes and he didn’t move. It was sooner than I had expected. He usually didn’t pass out so quickly. But then, I thought, it hasn’t been much over an hour and a half, but he’s drunk nearly a quart of the stuff.
I went outside and found Sam.
“He’s gone to sleep,” I said. “Passed out.”
He nodded.
“I’m going out to the highway and get the car. I’ll come back and pick him up. “
“That’s a long ways,” he said thoughtfully.
“Two or three miles.”
He didn’t say anything else, but walked over toward the corn crib. I went with him, and he opened the door and looked in at Lee, who was sleeping noisily, with his mouth open. There was something queer about it, but I couldn’t quite place it. He hadn’t moved.
“I’ll drive you out to your car, Bob,” Sam offered. “It’s too fur to walk.”
“That’s fine, Sam,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
He pushed the stripdown out of the garage and cranked it. I climbed up with him and we started down the lane. As we went out through the wire gate I saw Angelina come out of the house with a milk bucket.
The car was just a chassis with an old seat cushion thrown on top of the gasoline tank. It was an old Ford, and there weren’t any fenders on it or any hood, just the bare essentials. I could see what Sam had meant by not being able to haul a passed-out drunk. It was all we could do to stay on it ourselves.
I don’t know why it didn’t hit me sooner. Maybe I just wasn’t up on my toes mentally, after the experiences of the afternoon. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had reached the Buick and Sam had turned around and started back that this awful suspicion began to creep up on me. He had passed out too quickly and too easily.