And not till then did Sarah cease to squirm. Jassie felt her become limp and yielding. That was what allowed him to let her go. She dropped from his grasp, to the floor at his feet. And there she sobbed, great heaving sobs that shook her like a leaf in the wind.
“Thanks, Jassie,” Van said when he’d had his drink.
Jassie remained, confused, staring down at Sarah, till Van came over to him and told him, “You can go now, Jassie. I can take care of things here now.”
He went, and heard the door shut behind him. He walked aimlessly about while his wits came slowly back to him. Gradually he got to know that his arm hurt a little, and he explored the drying blood that Sarah’s teeth had drawn. But pain had never mattered much to him.
It was a long time, perhaps an hour, before he tired of trying to find company in the desolate stars and crept miserably back to the lean-to at the rear of the house. The lean-to wasn’t much of a shelter, for its board walls leaked air. He was seldom aware of that deficiency, and least of all at this moment. He moved his bed close against the house itself not to escape the drafts, but to listen again.
For a while he could hear nothing. Then finally Sarah. Her sobbing hadn’t stopped completely. The tiny choking sounds came infrequently and very softly.
And Van’s voice, saying to her, over and over, “Stop it, Sarah... you’ve got to stop it...” The words were spoken in little more than a whisper. He must have been near her, kneeling on the floor beside her perhaps.
Maybe it was toward midnight that the sobs came to an end, and the whispers changed, became strident, took on a new kind of urgency. “Come on, Sarah... please... let’s forget everything... start all over again... come on...”
“No,” was the answer she kept repeating.
“I love you, Sarah.”
“No, you don’t. Don’t pretend.”
“Well anyway, you’re my wife, Sarah. Don’t forget that.” Anger was creeping into his voice again. Already he seemed to have forgotten how the shotgun looked pointed at his belly. “Come on, Sarah.” Hardly a plea any longer. More of an order.
“No, Van. Never again.”
“Don’t say no to me. I’m your husband.”
There were confused sounds again. Possibly he had picked her up and was carrying her. But she must not have struggled. The fight had emptied out of her.
Jassie listened. He heard the door into the far room opening. Then it shut again. Afterwards there were other sounds that Jassie might have heard. But he put his fingers in his ears and rolled away from the wall. This was something he couldn’t save her from. And there was a great disturbance in him that he couldn’t comprehend.
In the morning the sun woke Jassie as it always did. Mechanically, without thinking that anything should be different on this morning, he did his early chores, made the rounds of the pens. It was what he had been taught to do.
When he came into the kitchen to get his breakfast just before seven o’clock, he found Sarah there alone. It never occurred to him to be embarrassed, and he scarcely noticed whether her attitude toward him had changed. She’d always been somewhat afraid and shy of him.
“Where’s Van?” he asked her.
“Still asleep,” she said. “He always sleeps late when he’s been drinking.”
When she was filling his plate she saw the teeth marks on his arm. “Is that what I did?” she questioned him. She paled a little, and seemed horrified that she could have inflicted such a wound.
He nodded.
Without further hesitation she brought things to repair the damage, water, a wash cloth, antiseptic and bandages. He sat placidly while she worked. If she hurt him at all in the process, he gave no sign. He was too fascinated with the deftness of her small, soft hands. He had never seen her head bent quite so close to him. He admired the luster of her hair. And her neck, slim, delicate, so white...
She caught him looking at her that way, and her customary fear of him brightened in her eyes. Her fingers worked even faster after that. She seemed glad when she was finished, but she sat opposite him nevertheless, and ate her own breakfast.
Finally, when the food was gone, she asked him another question. “Jassie, why did you stop me last night?”
He looked at her, but he knew no words to explain.
“Why did you want to save Van’s life?” she pursued. “Do you like him?”
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t like him.”
“Then why did you do it, Jassie?” She was persistent, relentless.
He thought for a while, and then a lie occurred to him, a lie that was part truth. “If Van was dead, I wouldn’t have a job. Where would I go?”
She didn’t seem to know whether to believe that. “There ought to be plenty of jobs for someone like you. You’re big and strong... I found that out last night. You’re stronger than Van.”
“Yes, I’m strong,” he agreed with a smile. He liked to be told that. He was proud of his strength.
“I don’t know why I should be asking you questions,” she said. She wasn’t really talking to him. She was thinking aloud. “I should be asking myself. What am I doing here? Why should I be spending my life in a place like this? With a drunkard and... and you...”
She looked at him, letting her revulsion and her instinctive wariness of him show in her face. Then suddenly she laughed. “When I wanted to go outdoors last night,” she went on, “Van accused me of wanting to go to you...”
She left the table with a sudden movement, and crossed to the window. Then she laughed again, even more bitterly. “Ye gods... from the frying pan to the fire.”
Jassie sat still at the table and tried to understand. He said nothing because he couldn’t understand. Instead he let his eyes admire her. She was small, like a toy. It was her smallness which most fascinated Jassie. Her smallness and her beautiful little white neck...
“I could leave,” she was saying. “I could leave any time. I can drive the truck. I could get in it right now and leave this place... But I can’t. I don’t want to go back to being what I was before. That’s why I married Van... No, I can’t do that. I haven’t got the courage. I have it only when he’s like the way he was last night, when he drinks... I have courage then. But then I get mad at him and I want to kill him...”
She turned around to him, showing her lovely, innocent, childlike face. “I guess I’ll never leave here on my own,” she said. “But some day... some day I’ll kill him...”
“No!” Jassie spoke finally. His fear for her made the word explode out of his mouth. He got up from the table and walked toward her slowly. “No. You mustn’t do that.”
She shrank away from his advance, but she argued defiantly. “Why not? What have I got to lose? Tell me that. What can I lose?”
He had gotten very close to her. Her back was against the window and she could move no farther. He towered over her, looked down on her, his face just inches above hers.
“You mustn’t do it,” he repeated with a desperate emphasis. “If you do it, they’ll say you murdered him. And they’ll take you to a prison... and there’ll be a rope... I’ve seen it... it’s a big, thick rope, with a loop and a knot... they’ll put it over your head, and you’ll stand on a place where the floor falls open... and when you drop through, the rope will tighten... around your neck...”
His fingers, heavy and strong though they were, went out and caressed her soft, white neck with the tenderness of a lover, the daintiness of a girl. Her eyes never left his, and she didn’t move, seeming to be afraid that were she to move the fingers might behave quite differently.
“You mustn’t kill him, Sarah,” he repeated with a kind of sternness. “You mustn’t kill him.”
And they were standing there like that, in a mutual fascination born of different emotions in each of them, when Van’s voice sounded at Jassie’s back. “I’ll take my breakfast now, Sarah.”