John looked past Cogswell to the pond. Then he spit on the ground. “Never mind, Mickey,” he said, but he wasn’t angry any more. “You got your own brood to fret over.”
“John,” Mim said and John turned on her too quickly. “If we could go...” she said, ignoring the rising anger in his green eyes.
“It’s time, John,” Cogswell said. “He’s got his eye peeled right on you.”
“It don’t seem like you’re about to scamper,” John said.
“It’s gettin’ to that point,” Cogswell said. “He’s bankin’ on it. After you, then us.”
“Keep your money,” John said. “I ain’t movin. He turned and started back toward the house.
Cogswell took a step after him. “John, you’re a fool,” he said. “You always was that proud you’d cut your nose off before you d give an inch.”
John stopped and turned. “You’re okay, Mickey,” he said. “I don’t forget a turn like this.” His face colored up as his eyes locked with his neighbor’s. “It’s just that I aim to stay.
Cogswell held out the money. “You got it comin’ from one cow alone,” he said.
John looked at it. Mim held her breath. “Guess my land’s still firm enough to carry us,” he said and walked slowly into the house. Mim noticed that his body was bent with age and work and care. He walked as if he were very heavy.
She turned back to Cogswell, eying the roll of bills in his hand, her desire tangible.
He turned to her. “You’re a good woman, Mim,” he said. “You keep tight to your sense of things. Make him see sense too. He thrust the bills into her hand and clouded her with the thick smell of soured whiskey.
Feeling them against her palm, warm still from his, she felt the relief flood over her and longed to fall into his arms. She let her eyes fall into his. Weak with gratitude and the sweetness of the man, she said, “I’m real sorry about her, Mickey.”
He watched her tears come up for him and turned abruptly away. He walked around the truck, got in, and started it with a burst.
Then he got out and came slowly back. “Mim,” he said, his head nodding loosely, “if you can’t get him to see sense no other way, take him to the auction Tuesday at three.” Mickey ran a hand over his face. “Oh Christ,” he said, as if he had forgotten where he was. Then he straightened up and focused fiercely in on Mim. “But mind you don’t let on how you heard about it.”
He got back into the truck and headed up the road over Constance Hill. Mim watched the back of his head through the rear window of his cab. He tipped it back and drank from his flask as the truck swayed precariously up the bad road and out of sight.
Hildie reached for the money in her mother’s hand, jumping up and down to see it. Mim held it high and, standing where she was, counted it twice. Fifteen twenty-dollar bills. Then she turned to the house to face John.
He was standing in the doorway waiting for her. “Give it to me,” he said, his face white and deeply lined.
She gave it to him, feeling the fear that was almost desire touch her fingertips as they brushed his palm. He turned and, in a motion so quick she hardly felt what he was doing, crossed the room, lifted the lid on the range, and dropped in the roll of bills.
Instinctively, Mim dove for the stove. He caught her. One hand tangled in her hair; the other tightened on her arm. She screamed and he shook her.
She felt the world turning around her, the familiar piles of dishes on the shelf over the sink, the board bench and table, Hildie’s frightened face by the door. She screamed and struggled toward the stove. Vaguely, she knew that Ma had hobbled to the doorway and stood leaning on her canes, with Hildie pressing her face to her dressing gown.
“The money, Ma,” she sobbed. “Get the money.”
Finally John flung her loose of him, and even as she fell she yearned toward the stove. Her head hit the fender with a bump she heard more than felt. John slammed the back door so that the kitchen shook. Mim struggled to her feet and opened the stove. A tuft of smoke rose in her face. Inside she saw a jumble of red coals and one bright lick of flame.
Mim crumpled on the edge of the bench, buried her head in her arms against the table, and sobbed. She did not hear the hard thumps of Ma’s canes approaching, but she felt the crooked hand catch in her hair.
“Now, now, Miriam,” she said. “Don’t carry on so. You’ll give the child a fright.”
Mim looked up. Hildie was leaning over the bench on the other side of the table, whimpering. She held out her arms, and the child came into her lap and cried with her.
“It don’t mean he don’t love you, Miriam,” Ma said, stroking Mim’s head.
“Ma,” Mim said. “He’s off the deep end, just like Agnes. He just burned up three hundred dollars.”
Ma’s hand left Mim’s shoulder and clutched the side of the table. “Three hundred dollars,” she said.
“You see him, Ma,” Mim said. “He just sets and does nothin’. Nothin’ but snap and growl. He’s not himself at all. It’s the auction yesterday’s the last straw.”
“Well,” said Ma, “well.” And painfully she took herself back to her chair and settled into it. “It don’t run in our family, bein’ crazy. But then it don’t run in our family, givin’ everythin’ in sight away, neither.” She shook her head. Mim and Hildie were swallowing their sobs, watching Ma. It seemed as if, from the wisdom of her age, she were about to pronounce an answer that would shake the house on its foundations, shake it into order. But all she said was, “With a little luck, it’s the tone and not the other. With a little luck, he’s just a gettin’ stirred up.”
“He was ever stirred up over somethin’,” Mim said.
“A bit of temper shows a man’s got feelin’,” Ma said. “And selfrespect. It’s high time now he got hisself stirred up and movin’”
“You mean you see we have to go?” Mim asked in a small voice. “No!” Ma cried. “That ain’t what I mean at all. I mean its time and then some he moved hisself to put a stop to all this.”
Mim started to sob again. “It’s you is crazy, Ma,” she said.
“No ones stoppin’ you, girl. I see you jumpin’ up and down you’re so antsy. Well go, if go you must.”
“Oh, Ma,” Mim said, and turned her face to the stove, rocking over Hildie.
“Just leave me the shotgun,” Ma said, watching Mim, her eyes stormy underneath the spray of pale hair. “This land’s been Moore land since before the likes of us was born and it’ll go on bein’ Moore land after the likes of us is gone. John’s grandfather and his great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather, they didn’t fight for this here land just to have—”
Mim lifted her head and shouted through her sobs at Ma. “Big talk, Ma. The shotgun’s gone.”
John did not come back until Hildie was in bed. When he appeared at the door, Mim left the room. His supper was on the table, though everything else was cleared, as if life had made its sweep and left him out. Ma watched him without speaking. He ate the cold pea soup and the baked potato, troubled by her silent attention. When he finished, he took his dishes to the sink, scooped up a dipper of water from the pail under the sink, and rinsed them. “Well?” he asked.
“She’s fearin’ for your mind,” Ma said. “With good reason, I say.”
John moved to the back door and looked at his reflection in the dark glass.
“That was a bad mistake about the money,” Ma said. “You got to feed a child somethin’ more than pea soup and potatoes.”
John leaned his forehead against the door and looked up through the dark toward the pasture. In the stove, the fire settled and a green stick gave a long high whistle of complaint as it hit the coals and burned.
“I’ll give you a hand to your couch, Ma,” he said.
“Take the lamp yourself,” Ma said. “I’ll manage. You go make your peace with her.”