June ended; haywagons stopped rolling by, and the farmers, up and down the road turned to cultivating corn. The pines took their richer summer color, and the maples and beeches were so full of leaves that the woods across from the Stop-Off were dark as an apple bin. July came, and farmers began to combine oats. The silence in which he and Callie worked had become a settled matter now, as if something they’d consciously agreed on. And yet, in spite of the silence, it seemed to Henry that he and the girl were closer than they had been before. Perhaps she guessed that he knew and shared her fear — surely she must have guessed — but if she did she did not tell him. He studied her eyes, her hands, her ankles, watching the signs, and at night he couldn’t sleep for worry and the pain in his chest. Because sleep came later and later, he began to oversleep sometimes. When he awakened, in the middle of the morning, he would find the door of his room closed and he would hear the clatter of dishes and the small-boy banter of truckers in the diner. When he went in to help her, Callie would snap, “You need your rest, Henry,” and would turn away, too busy to waste more words. Tears would smart in his eyes. He would insist — these days, it seemed to him, Callie ought hardly to lift a napkin — and she would give in without ever asking the obvious question, Why are you doing this? She’d begun to show a little now, and those who watched their comedy — his solicitude, her indignation — drew the obvious conclusions (but this neither one of them would know until later). At night, just before she left, she would come to his room to dust or straighten his chairs, irritably, then stand near the table in the middle of the room, sharing his dull, trivial thoughts, wondering with him, but wordlessly, whether or not the rain would come or, after it came, whether it would stop in time. Henry, alone with her in his room, learned to hug his arms to his sides as though the slightest movement might drive away a mist that protected them both, covered, on his side, sagging flesh, lumbering absurdities of soul, and covered, on her side — well, nothing, of course. Youth. Unhappiness. Her stony Baptist guilt and, maybe, terror.
One afternoon (it was the end of July; a hot, muggy day) Henry said, “I sure don’t know what I’ll do around here without you, Callie. When you go and get married this place here’s gonna fall down around my ears.”
She smiled, false, then covered her face and cried, and it hit him that Willard Freund was not coming back.
“Now here, here,” he said, going to her, patting her shoulder. “Callie old girl, you been working too hard. You just take this afternoon off.”
“Get away,” she said, pushing at his arm. “Damn you, please. Just this once, leave me alone!”
Henry backed off, scratching the back of his hand. He went back into his room.
12
“All right, then,” he said to himself. “All right, then.”
He’d sent her home early, a little before eight, and had turned out the neon and the diner lights and closed the lean-to door behind him. The only suit he had was the black one his father had left, but it fit as though it had been made for him. (He was getting heavy, by Jesus. He’d never have believed he could fill the old man’s suit.) He found the old brown fedora on the shelf, and that fit too, nearly. It rested on his ears. When he inspected himself in the mirror he found he looked very good. Big as the world, but good. Serious, anyway; imposing. That was what he was after. He locked the back-room door behind him, because of the dark formality in his chest — he hadn’t locked that door for maybe fifteen years — and went out to his car. The night was as hot and muggy as the day had been; not a breath of air, not so much as a cricket stirring. He took one of the little white pills and started the motor.
Crow Mountain was dark as a tomb. All the way up to George Loomis’s place there wasn’t a car but Henry’s on the road. He pulled up in the driveway and sat a moment to calm himself and go over what he meant to say one last time; then he got out. The house was dark and he felt an instant’s panic: He hadn’t been prepared for the possibility that George might be away. But then he saw he’d made a mistake. There was the usual blue-white flicker in the kitchen. He knocked.
“Well, Jesus please us,” George said, stepping back from the door. “Who in hell died?”
Henry took off his hat. “Do you mind if I come in, George?”
George held his hand up. “Let me think a minute. Yes, I do. I do mind. You’ve taken up selling Bibles on the side.”
“Now, George,” Henry said.
“Well, shit,” George said, “come on in, then. But don’t tell me why you’re dressed up like that. Either you been to church or you been courting, and whichever it is, I think I might get sick.”
“Now, damn it, George,” Henry said.
“Oh, hush up and sit down. It’s good to see you. I’ll see if I still got some whiskey.” He started past the television, paused a moment to watch one of the cowboys shoot the other one, then went on to the cupboard under the sink. “Just a little bourbon left,” he called back.
“That’s fine,” Henry said. He could use it.
George talked about television programs while he fixed the drink and brought it over to the metal table. Henry was missing a great deal, George said, refusing to give in to the electronic revolution. He ran on for maybe five minutes or more, Henry merely nodding helplessly, playing with the hat on the table in front of him, missing half of what George said because of the noise from the machine. At last Henry said feebly (it was hardly going exactly as he’d planned), “Could we turn the television off, George, so we could hear?”
“What the hell? Sit in the dark?”
“Maybe the room lights still work,” Henry said. He laughed.
George considered it, then got up and went over to the switch by the door. The lights went on, and George seemed surprised and pleased. He turned off the television. “Ok,” he said then, “what are you selling.”
“I want you to marry Callie Wells,” Henry said. He had not meant to make it quite so blunt, and he felt himself reddening.
George stared, then looked over at the television as though maybe that had said it. He came over and sat down. “You’re willing to pay me, I suppose?” he said, lifting his glass to drink.
It seemed to Henry a natural question, though he hadn’t expected it would come up so quickly. He said, “I’ll write you a check right now for a thousand dollars.”
George choked, set down his glass, and got up to go to the sink. “You crazy old goat,” he began, but another choking fit hit him. The cords of his neck pumped, and it looked as if he might retch. Henry watched, wide-eyed, the checkbook in his fist. “You crazy old goat,” George Loomis roared, “you think I’d marry some girl I hardly know for a thousand dollars? Or ten thousand? Or a thousand million? Look, I don’t love her. I don’t even like her. She stinks. You know that? The word of God!”
“George, that’s not true. You said yourself—”
“I said myself what?”