Mim stood at the foot of the stairs looking out through the glass in the front door. The sky glittered with stars and the pond was outlined like a dull pewter plate. But the land was so heavily swathed in dark that she could not see the road. They could be standing in her very yard, fooling with their jacklights and their guns, moving in that slow silent way of hunters, so as not to frighten her away from the doorway before they had a chance to paralyze her with the light and the dozen gunsights.
She crept into bed and lay with her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, sensing in the perfect silence John’s wide eyes. She clasped his fingers where they were cupped around Hildie’s back, but he made no response. “John?” she whispered, but he made no answer. “John?” she said. “Tomorrow, can we bring Hildie’s mattress in here close to ours?”
The next day Mudgett came with Gore.
“Where’s Cogswell?” John asked as he met them in the dooryard.
“Hits the cider a mite too hard,” Mudgett said. “Makes him sentimental.”
“Can’t have no drunks on the police force,” Gore said. “It ain’t like I got a grudge or anythin’ against Mickey. But the way Perly figures it, maybe if we bust him down a bit now, we can—”
“How come,” John said, “if you’re so smart, you can’t keep the hunters in line?”
“You got any complaints?” Gore asked. He shut his heavy lips tight on whatever else he might have said and kept John well centered in the range of his small eyes. His hand fluttered restlessly near the butt of his gun in its holster.
“They was jackin’ deer up here last night,” John said.
The lines bracketing Mudgett’s thin mouth deepened and he said, “Feelin’ tender for the deer, Johnny boy?”
Moore shrugged. “Last I heard there was a law,” he said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Gore said, straightening up with interest. “You got no idea who it was?”
“You got good reason to be nervous,” Mudgett said. He folded a stick of gum and shoved it into his mouth, dropping the wrapper to the ground. “Sam Parry got a stray shot in the shoulder walkin’ to his barn. Just missed his heart.”
John turned to Mudgett. Mudgett’s face was as grizzled and dark from outdoor living as his own. Face to face like that, John still felt the authority of Mudgett’s five-year advantage, and of his cleverness with sums. “Real sharpshooter,” he said under his breath.
Mudgett considered, chewing his gum as if it were a form of contemplation. Finally, his face cracked into a flat-eyed grin. “You got to admit,” he said, “Harlowe ain’t half so borin’ as it used to be.”
Mudgett was in high spirits. He toured the entire house and shed, taking his time, loading Gore with every last screwdriver and pair of pliers he could find, as well as the ax, the mallet and wedges, the whetstone, the scythes, the rakes and hoes. Every once in a while he stopped and laughed out loud. “Real sharpshooter, eh?”
Gore, incapacitated by his armload, kept a wary eye on John and never turned his back.
While Gore was loading the tools into the truck, Mudgett took John’s big wooden toolbox from the kitchen and practically danced into the front room. “A cuckoo clock!” he exclaimed and lifted it off the wall as Ma watched from the couch. Gore reappeared empty-handed in the doorway.
“I would just like you to know, Red Mudgett,” Ma said, struggling to stand between her canes, “that when my time comes, I am goin’ to rise up and haunt you the longest day you ever lived.”
Mudgett chuckled. “Will you look at her?” he said to Gore. Some Sunday School teacher. Nothin’ I could ever do was good enough for her. You should a seen her.” He puffed out his chest, pulled in his chin and intoned in a falsetto not unlike Ma’s, “You children just ain’t a goin’ to come to no good.” He nodded with satisfaction.
“I remember,” Gore said, making no commitments.
“And many’s the Saturday night, Bob Gore,” Ma said, “you shared Johnny’s bed with him and ate at my table—your own pa too drunk to abide you. And just you keep in mind, young man, it’s sorry luck to bite a hand that’s fed you.”
“Ain’t my idea,” Gore muttered, but Mudgett was already rushing down the front lawn to put the clock and toolbox in the truck. Gore turned to follow him, but, before he could escape, he bumped into Mudgett returning.
“All we got’s a load of scrap,” Mudgett said. “Not one decent piece.”
“Tools sell good, Red,” Gore said.
Mudgett stood in the front doorway snapping his gum. Ma’s program rattled on unheeded. Suddenly Mudgett’s dark eyes came into focus. He swept across the room and unplugged the television set so that the picture of Dr. Rebus and Susan shrank to a point and disappeared. “Grab an end, Bob,” he said.
Gore side-stepped warily around the room, keeping John within his sights, and picked up one end of the console.
“Just hold on half a minute,” Ma cried, struggling across the room to block the door.
Gore put his end of the console down, which forced Mudgett to put his down as well.
“Ain’t nobody goin’ to just walk off with my TV set like that,” Ma said.
“Want to put money on it?” Mudgett asked.
“I’ll put money on it,” John roared. He lunged for Mudgett, but Mim caught him and stopped him momentarily.
Gore backed into a corner and, fumbling, unsnapped his holster and pulled out his gun. John shook himself free of Mim, but stood where he was, watching Gore.
Mudgett sneered, leaned over, and picked up the console himself. He was a small man and the set was so big it gave him the look of an ant struggling beneath an enormous crumb. He staggered toward the doorway where Ma stood.
“Oh no you don’t,” said Ma, but even as she spoke, the corner of the set caught her in the shoulder. She grabbed at her cane for balance, but the cane slid out sideways on the floor and tangled in Mudgett’s legs. Ma, her weight on the cane, fell headlong to the floor. Mudgett struggled, his feet encumbered by the cane and Ma’s housecoat. The television set swayed precariously. Finally, he freed a foot and groped for the floor ahead of him. When he stepped, he landed on a pile of Hildie’s marbles. His foot flew up in front of him, the television set leaped from his arms and smashed against the stairway, and Mudgett fell swearing into the debris.
“Jesus, Red,” Gore gasped, still standing in his corner watching as John lifted his mother and led her to the couch.
Mudgett picked himself up and kicked at the wreck of the television set. The glass was smashed and the cabinet broken open, revealing a tangle of transistors and tiny colored wires. Mudgett had cut his forehead and a slow trickle of blood started down beside his eye. “I’ll get you for this,” he said to John.
Suddenly Mim came running at him. “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out of here.” Mudgett stepped back to avoid her fists and sidled out the front door. “You too,” she screamed at Gore. “Get out. I just can’t stand it.”
Gore backed around the room past John and his mother and hurried down the path after Mudgett.
Mim leaned against the wall and sobbed. “I can’t stand it,” she moaned. “I just can’t stand it.” Hildie clung to her legs, crying loudly.
John looked up from his mother, his face fierce. “Then why’d you grab me when I went for him?”
Lassie came in and started to whimper.
Ma patted her hair into place as John rearranged her on the couch. “Stop that,” she said coldly, sitting bolt upright on the couch. “You stop that wailin’ this minute, the lot of you. If there’s one thing I won’t have in my house, it’s hysterical women.”
Mim and Hildie looked up, startled into silence.