“I’m going up the creek.”
“There’s nothing up the creek.”
“There’s a heel named Moke Blue.”
“You know Moke?”
“I’ve seen him and I guess I’ve spoken to him, but I’ve never shaken his hand and until I got Kady’s wire I never even thought about him. I’m thinking about him now, though. And I’m putting him in jail for kidnapping my boy.”
“You’re taking him in, yourself?”
“That’s it, Jess.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You mean we’ll do it together?”
“Soon as I get my rifle.”
“I won’t need it.”
“How you know?”
“He’s got no gun, I’m sure of it.”
“He could get one, and anyway, all he’d have to do is holler and about eighteen brothers and in-laws and cousins would be there, and at least half of them have guns.”
“If we bring a gun, Jess, I’ll kill him.”
“Maybe we better not.”
We got in his car and rode up as far as the church, then got out and walked up the hollow to the end of the path, then followed the gully up to Moke’s shack. Nobody was in it, and except for some beans in one corner that didn’t prove much, there was no way to tell if anybody had been there for the last two or three days, or had just stepped out and would be right back, or was up the hollow or down the creek. But while we were whispering about it he held up his hand and I looked. Through a cornfield, just below us, a boy was moving on tiptoe, toward the woods on the other side of the gully.
“You know him, Jess?”
“Birdie Blue. He’s Moke’s cousin.”
“He’s gone to tip him.”
“Then he’ll be back, to keep watch.”
“If we time him, we’ll know how far he went.”
He took out his watch, and we waited and I kept an eye on him, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. He didn’t talk, but kept staring at the place the boy had to cross on his way back, and he had that mountain look in his eye that said if it took a week he’d still be staring, but he’d do what he came for. In a half hour the boy showed, and then all of a sudden Wash got up.
“We’re a pair of boneheads, Jess.”
“What we done now?”
“The banjo’s gone!”
“Well?”
“If he was in hell waiting to be fried he’d still have to pick the damned thing. Come on.”
There was no window in the back of the shack, but there was a loose log, and we pushed it out and crawled through. Then we crept up the gully, keeping the shack between us and the boy, where he was squatting in the bushes, keeping watch on my hat, that we left in the doorway to keep him interested. It was around sundown, and the mosquitoes were beginning to get lively, but we kept from batting them somehow, and pretty soon we came to a place where Wash stopped and looked around, and whispered if there was any sounds in the neighborhood, we’d catch most of them here, because sound travels upward. And sure enough, there were all sorts of things you could hear, from the creek going over the stones near the church to people talking in cabins and birds warbling before going to sleep. And then he grabbed my arm, and we listened, and there was the sound of the banjo. He stood up, and turned first one way, then the other way, then covered one ear, then the other ear, and in a minute he knew where it was coming from, and we crept over there. And when we got there it was a little stone well, with a frame over it and an iron wheel, and Moke was sitting on the rim, his head lopped over on one side, the banjo across his belly, plunking out sad chords that weren’t like the comical tunes he used to play, and looking so little he was more like some kind of a shriveled-up, gray-haired boy than what he was, a man. Wash crept around the well from behind him, grabbed him by the shirt collar, and jerked him over on the side, so he let out a little whimper. “What you doing to me? Wash, what are you doing here?”
“Didn’t the boy tell you I was here?”
“How would he know? He said Jess and a man.”
“I’m taking you to Carbon City.”
“What for?”
“Put you in jail. For what you did.”
I stepped out then and told him to shut up with his bawling and told Wash to cut it short with his talk. Because you pass three cabins on the way down, and four more up the mountainside that you can’t see but they see you, and if we ever gave them a chance to wake up to what was going on we might see something cutting the leaves. We hustled him down to the car and Wash drove and I sat on the outside. So when we got to my cabin, the table was set out under the trees with some candles on it and both Kady and Jane were looking down the creek to see what had become of us. Wash began talking to Kady. “Don’t wait for us. We’ll be back soon as we can after we get this thing booked, but don’t let the stuff get cold waiting for us.”
“Booked? What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t he kidnap our boy?”
“He didn’t mean any harm.”
“It could have cost Danny his life.”
“Wash, Moke is a friend of my mother’s, and she’s not well, and maybe she needs him. He’s not any more than half-witted anyhow, no matter what he did, so why can’t we forget it and go about our business instead of putting him in jail for the next five or ten years, where’s he’s not any good to anybody?”
“Maybe I’m not so half-witted as you think.”
“Maybe a skunk don’t stink.”
It was me that said that, and then I told her there were some things that can’t be forgotten, and that Moke was lucky we didn’t shoot him, as that’s what he had coming to him. But while I was talking she kept looking at me, and then she said: “Jess, you’ve had plenty to say since I’ve been living here about things that had to be fought if they were wrong and they were in you, and all I’ve got to say is that remembering things long after they do you any harm is another thing that people might fight a little bit, specially if they live up the creeks in this part of the country, and got the habit of remembering things long after anybody could remember what they were trying to remember.”
“Do we take him in, Jess?”
“Let’s go.”
He had cut his motor, but now he started it again, and she stood aside. “All right, Wash, but you’re taking a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“You think it’s for nothing?”
“He’s not yet your child.”
“He will be tomorrow.”
“I’m not talking about what he will be. I’m talking about what he is, and what he was when he was taken. If they ask me, I’ll tell them I’ve got nothing to say, and if the mother won’t sign the writ, that ends it, unless of course the child has a father.”
“Kady, why are you standing up for Moke?”
“Jess, are you crazy? Who’s standing up for Moke? I’m standing up for myself, and for my little boy that nobody else is thinking about that I can see. Do you think I want this in the papers, and then have it come out that Danny is what they call a love child, and God knows what else they would think up to put in?”
“It’s not any piece for the papers.”
“A kidnapping?”
She stepped up to the window and talked straight at Wash. “Haven’t you done enough to me without this, and for no reason except to give a simple-looking imitation of a West Virginia bad man?”
“I’m turning him over to the law.”
“You can’t even do that, right.”
“So you know a better way?”
“You’re turning him over to Carbon County when the crime was committed in Blount? Gee, but you’re smart, aren’t you? Gee, but you’re going to look wonderful when you get to Carbon City with him and they say, sorry, son, you’re in the right church but the wrong pew. Gee—”