They had another reason, too, for beginning to feel hopeful. On the Monday night a month and three days after Simon’s first coming, Simon packed himself a lunch and drove down the mountain to the Grant Hotel. Henry and Callie had no idea when or how he’d gotten in touch with the man who owned the place to tell him he was coming back; in fact, until Simon got home, at seven-thirty the following morning, they had no idea where he’d gone. He left again the next night, and Henry said to Callie’s mother, when they were standing in the diner with nothing to do (it was ten-thirty, always the slackest time of day), “Well, Ellie, Simon’s started working again. He’ll be on his feet in no time now. We’ll soon see the last of him.”
“I imagine Callie’s pleased about that,” she said. Henry smiled at her restraint. But she could not help adding, “I wonder how they feel about it at the Grant.”
And when George Loomis came in that night, Henry said, “Well, he’s gone back down to work, George. Must mean it won’t be much longer.”
“Maybe,” George said.
Henry laughed at George’s skepticism. He went on chuckling, wiping off the counter; but something unpleasant began to nag at the back of his mind, and he could neither shake it nor make out what it was.
Again, Wednesday night, Simon went down to the hotel.
Doc Cathey said, “He’s a different man when he’s working. And you’re a different man too, I’ll say that.”
“Different how?” Henry said. “Simon, I mean.”
Doc Cathey shrugged, then tipped his head and thought about it, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Oh, tougher, I guess. More sure what he’s about. I’ve noticed it before. You take a man that’s different from everybody else around him and when he’s holding down a job he’ll do things he’d never even think of some other time.”
Henry considered it. “It may be,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed it. Maybe so. I’m glad to see him pulling his life back together, just the same. You have to hand it to him, man fifty-four years old that’s gone through what Simon has.”
Doc Cathey went on chewing his cheek. Henry went over to clean the booth where Nick Blue had had his supper, and as he stacked the dishes he began to whistle under his breath. But it wasn’t good spirits pure and simple.
Again on Thursday night Simon Bale went down to the Grant. He returned at seven-thirty the next morning, and Callie fixed him toast and eggs. When he’d eaten he went into his room and shaved with his electric razor, then took off all but his dirty underwear and went to bed. He got up around two in the afternoon and went out to sit in the garden, reading his Bible. (It had rained that morning. The garden was muddy and the bench soaking wet, but Simon seemed not to notice.) Jimmy wandered around looking for him, as soon as he discovered that Simon wasn’t in bed, and finally, smiling, shaking her head at the thought of the mess she would have to clean up when the mud got him, Callie led him out the back door. He ran-slid along between the glittering lettuce and beets to the rose bushes and between the bushes to the bench where Simon sat. Callie smiled again, thinking how hard they’d all been on Simon, after alclass="underline" However crazy he might be, some ways, there was something good in him or Jimmy wouldn’t hang on him that way. After that she called into the diner to Henry to ask him if he’d remembered to bring in the mail, and when he said no, he was sorry, he’d forgotten, she went around to the mailbox out in front. There was nothing much — something from Farmers’ Insurance, one of those Occupant circulars, the monthly statement from the bank. She opened the statement, without much interest, as she started back to the house.
He saw the canceled check to Wiegerts’ lying alone in the middle of the kitchen table, and his breath went out of him. He got the bottle of pills in the pocket of his shirt. Callie wasn’t in the house, and she wasn’t in the diner either. I’m sorry, he thought. It was all I could do. But that was no good and he didn’t want it. He’d done it and he would take whatever fury or grief was coming, because though it was all he could do he’d nevertheless chosen to do it, and it was as though the act were not his fate’s but his own. It came to him then where she would be, out on the highway crying and walking off her rage or, no, fear — that sensation like falling through endless space, the feeling she’d learned from sixteen years of living through the battles of her mother and father. He thought of driving out to hunt for her, but then he couldn’t make out whether he ought to or not: Maybe she was better off getting through it on her own. She knew he was not her father, or anyway that his foolishness was a different kind of foolishness (except that he was not going to admit for a minute that what he had done was foolishness, finally, and maybe Callie would make out even that, he didn’t know). He decided to see if she was back in half-an-hour, and if not, to go look for her.
It came to him that she wouldn’t have taken Jimmy with her. No doubt he’d be in the garden with Simon, if Simon hadn’t left yet, but he’d better go make sure. He went down the steps and around the corner of the house. Simon was asleep on the bench, and he was alone. Henry went back into the house and through the downstairs rooms, calling. He called up the stairs, but there was still no answer. He went up the stairs, pulling himself up on the railing and puffing like an old woman. He’d just reached the top when Jimmy screamed. Henry’s heart banged in his chest as if to split it. When he got to the door and looked in, Jimmy was crouching on the floor by his crib, clinging to the railing and staring into the shadows in the corner of the room.
“What’s the matter?” Henry roared.
“It’s the devil!” Jimmy screamed, coming across to him now on all fours, as if he’d forgotten how to run, “Daddy! Daddy! It’s the devil!”
And then Simon Bale was standing there too, behind him in the hallway, panting from his sprint from where he’d heard the screams in the garden. When he saw Henry’s face he went back two steps, smiling as if in horror, ducking his head quickly down and to the left and whispering, “Forgive—”
“You!” Henry yelled, and it came out as much like awe as like rage. His rage came slowly — or so it seemed to Henry’s suddenly racing mind — but when it hit it was like a mountain falling. He might have killed him if he could have done it (so Henry Soames would say later, dead calm, at the coroner’s inquiry), but he couldn’t even hit him because he was holding Jimmy in his arms; he could only advance on him, howling in his fury, feeling his neck puffing up and throbbing. The room around him was red and his lips felt thick. Simon was whispering, “Forgive, forgive,” again and again and smiling as if his brain had stopped running (which perhaps it had, recalling like motionless, final judgments when Time was over and what was was — pictures standing out from the newsprint around them — his son Bradley Bale with a sign niggers and something more that was out of sight, his daughter Sarah looking out with a thousand centuries of icy, prophetic eyes) and suddenly he turned and bolted toward the stairs. Henry shrieked, driving, as the man reached the top. He did not seem to step down but to leap, looking over his shoulder with a fierce grin, as though he thought he could fly, and Henry rushed toward him in alarm and hate or was rushing toward him already by that time. (He would wonder later which came first, the scene rising up in his mind undiminished; and he would wring his hands). He saw him hit halfway down and tumble and fly out in all directions, reaching. At the bottom he lay still a minute, upside down, his arms flung out and one knee bent, the light from the kitchen door like a halo on his murderous face, and then his body jerked, and quickly Henry turned his back so that Jimmy wouldn’t see.