The hallway was a dark cavern, thick, musty with the smell of old books, old leather goods stored for years in the closet. He reached the door that entered to the living room, heard the slow hesitant movements of Gar Newell beyond the door. He forced the icicles that were his fingers to close about the knob; he opened the door.
Low lamplight tinged the room with faint yellow. He saw the ancient piano, the mohair furniture, a portrait of a shepherd feeding a flock on the wall. Secondary details. In the middle of the room stood the man.
He was tall, with great, spare shoulders that age hadn’t drooped, a face that might have been carved and lifted out of Georgia stone and a shock of white hair.
The old man said, “Eva?” but his tone revealed that he knew the sound of the steps hadn’t been Eva’s.
“Not Eva.” His chest cold, and this other thing twisting his insides, made his voice unreal.
The old man laid down the pipe he had been filling. He stood without an outward tremor, only a faint frown knitting his brow. He stared very hard, and the young man had to remind himself that old Gar Newell was blind. Blind as the night.
He had nothing to fear. He had the gun, the eyes, everything... and yet he had to hold himself desperately to his purpose, to keep from bolting blindly away.
“What might you be wanting, neighbor?” the old man asked.
“I’m not your neighbor.”
The old man shrugged. “Even so, if your heart’s in the right place, you can have most anything I got.”
“But not this,” the young man’s voice said.
“Then I reckon you want my money. I reckon, too, that you’re holding a gun on me?”
“I’m holding a gun on you, all right! Where is it?”
“You care to tell me why...” the old man began.
“Oh, you fool! You think I came here for a sermon?”
The old man reached for his pipe again, listening, thinking perhaps of his wife. This is good! Let the old devil wonder about her. For nearly ten years I put up with this old nut and his righteousness — now let him crawl!
“No, I reckon you didn’t come here for a sermon. But you’ll have to tell me. Who you are? Why you want the money?”
Humor the old fool along. That’s the easy way. He held the gun cockily and said, “I’m Jim.”
The old man’s hand stumbled over his pipe. “No! You’re not Jim! I’d know Jim’s voice, his walk.”
He smiled thinly and thought: I got a cold. The voice ain’t natural. I didn’t walk down the hall like I usually done, anyhow. It was hilarious.
“You’re not my Jim,” the old man repeated savagely. “The voice, the walk — and Jim wouldn’t do this to me. You’re thinking of packing this on Jim, the way they done the Hergishiner murder! You’re a young rascal to try and do that to my Jim!” This was rich! He said, “All right, all right. Have it your way, you crazy old fool. I ain’t your Jim. I...”
Old Gar broke in with “Ah,” softly. He sat down. “I knowed it. And it’s a mite encouragin’ that you give up that dirty angle so easy — tryin’ to pack this on Jim! Sit down, young man.”
Sit down?
“Listen,” he screamed. “I got the gun! I give the orders!”
“Shore,” the old man’s chuckle was placating. “You got the gun, but you ain’t scaring me none. Think I never seen a gun before, faced one? Lots of times, lots of times. Son, I used to be a regular hellion. Handy with my fists and brain, as well as a gun. Bobbed a couple people, beat several fellers up to take their money. Most of them was afraid to squeal on me, too. Then one day an old sheriff grabbed me. Know what he done?”
“The hell with the old sheriff!”
“I tell you what he done. He stripped his coat off and right there in the jail cell he licked the living hell out of me. Then he sent me to the pen. I stayed there five years. I learned I wasn’t so smart. I took in the lesson that old sheriff didn’t know words to tell me with his tongue but made me understand with his fists. Then I come out of the pen. And I reckon everything that had been turned upside down in my life was turned right side up. I even sneaked in Church one Sunday.” His voice broke; the wind and rain whispered about the house. The old man’s eyes stared, blind, but still able to look back over the years.
“The money!” the young man shrilled.
“What? Oh. The money. The money I saved and hid here in the house. Who told you about the money, young man? You know, it took me a long time to save that thousand dollars. Now back when I married I was stone-broke — but the woman... she was the sort of woman a young hellion who has just sneaked in Church the first time finds only once in his life. She...”
“Damn the woman!”
“...She musta had faith,” the old man continued placidly. “She musta knowed deep down inside that I’d really changed. Women is funny that way sometimes. She never would marry me when I had a pocket full of money, but when I was broke she did, and she stuck right by me when I lost my sight three years later and all the years after that.”
“Damn you and the woman! I want the money!”
“Well, I reckon you can damn me and the woman,” Old Gar said, “but the money, young man, will damn you. That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you, I reckon. Money rightly come by is fine — but if it’s stained with blood, some of it will always come off on your hands, your soul. They’re pretty hard stains to wash away.”
“Damn you and your soul!” the young man screamed. He held the gun with both hands now because he was trembling so.
The old man was quiet a moment. Then he spoke again and his voice hadn’t changed. “The woman and me — we never had a son. Till we found Jim, young man. A young hellion in some ways. He’d been in a little trouble. So the woman looked at Jim and I touched him and it was like touching myself. We brought Jim home. We called him son.” The old man paused, remembering...
“Folks was down on Jim,” he went on. “Always carryin’ tales, always sayin’ that he’d be a real bad hellion except he was a coward, he didn’t have guts enough. But I never believed them, because I wanted to believe that Jim was me thirty or forty years ago. I wasn’t all unselfish. I was sort of using Jim to wash the stains away, I guess, and I never believed the talk.”
For a moment, the young man’s trembling stopped. Years flashed through his mind. He stared hard, as if seeing something that he had never fully seen before. He remembered the way this old fool had rushed to his defense the time he’d stolen the pig, the time he’d taken a pot-shot in a moment of blind panic at a farmer down the road who’d been coming after him for stealing watermelons. Nothing could be proven on a score of occasions like that — and there had been the old fool with a lot of other fools’ respect of him, his persuasion, telling them that Jim wasn’t really bad. Bad? Hell, he was nervy! Smart. Tough. How he had wrapped this old gink about his finger! It was rich!
The young man shouted half-hysterical laughter. The old man shook his head against the sound of it, said wearily, “Nothing I’ve said has done you any good, young man? I reckoned not from the first, I guess. Like talking to a rock. Some is born with bad breaks like my Jim; and some is just born bad. You want the money; then you want to shoot me and Eva so you can keep the money and never be identified or have an alarm raised until we’re found two, three days from now. You figure to be a long ways off by then.”
“Yes, the money... the money!” He ventured to step close, lashed the old man’s face with the gun barrel.
“I ain’t got the money,” the old man rose slowly. “The money I saved for Jim. The money I done give to Jim.”