Garner scratched his head and thought a minute. He said, “I guess not, Sheriff. I think I can answer for her that she’d just as soon testify in front of everybody. Hell, the whole story’s going to get out anyway and maybe sound worse, and like we’re ashamed of her. Damn it, what they did wasn’t so bad—they were in love and engaged, just jumped the gun a little. Don’t tell my wife I told you this, but she and I did the same thing, so how can we bawl out Charlotte? And if the town or the neighbors turn thumbs down on her for it, the hell with ’em. I’ll sell the farm and move. Always kind of wanted to go to California anyway.”
So things had been left. Gus Hoffman had got home by one o’clock, home to the loneliest, emptiest house he’d ever known. He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, until he remembered that there was most of a pint of medicinal whisky in the cupboard. He got it, and a glass. He wasn’t a drinking man; he took an occasional nip on special occasions to be sociable, but this was more whisky than he ordinarily drank in the course of a year. Tonight, though, if this was enough whisky to bring oblivion, he was willing to let it. Tonight was the worst night of his life, even worse than the night his wife had died. For one thing, he’d known for weeks that she was dying; he’d been prepared for it. For another, he’d still had Tommy. Tommy had been three then, but Gus had managed to keep him on the farm and raise him there, with the help, until Tommy was of school age, of a woman who came daily to take care of him while Gus worked the farm.
Now he was completely alone, permanently alone. He knew that he’d never marry again. Not because he was too old—he was still a year short of fifty—but because never since his wife’s death had he ever even thought about living with another woman, or wanting one. He didn’t know why it was impossible for him, but it was. Something in him had died when his wife had died. It was something psychological, of course, but it was something more than psychological impotence. A man suffering from that can still want a woman, at least in the abstract, and freeze only when he tries to have one in the flesh. But Gus Hoffman couldn’t even want one; nor could he entertain the thought of making a sexless marriage just to have a woman around the house for companionship and as a helpmate. He didn’t want a woman around the house, even on that basis. (Having Charlotte around as Tommy’s wife would have been different, of course; he’d looked forward to that.)
All his hopes had been in Tommy. He was not a demonstrative man and had never let Tommy know how important to him had been the boy’s decision to stay on the farm with him, even after his marriage. He’d wanted grandchildren and now he’d never have them; he was now the last of his line, a dead end.
Unless— With his third drink a sudden blazing hope came to him. Unless he was already scheduled to have a grandson. Charlotte could be pregnant and not even know it yet. Or had Tommy taken precautions against that happening?
Suddenly he wanted to know right away. He got up from the kitchen table to go to the telephone. Then he sat down again, realizing he shouldn’t call the Garners in the middle of the night to ask them that. In fact, he shouldn’t ask them at all. He should wait and see, and keep his hope alive for as long as he could.
Meanwhile it would give him something to think about besides his grief and loneliness. He could even plan. If and when Garner learned that Charlotte was pregnant he’d surely sell out and move away; he’d said he’d do that anyway if he found Charlotte in disgrace in the town or neighborhood—and while an affair might be forgiven her, an illegitimate child certainly wouldn’t. Well, Gus Hoffman would sell out too and go with them, wherever they went, California or the moon. If possible, he’d talk Garner into their buying a farm together so he could live with them—or make himself living quarters in the barn if they didn’t want him underfoot in the house—and help raise his grandson. Or granddaughter; he’d even settle for that. If Jed wouldn’t agree to buying a farm jointly, he’d buy his as near as possible. The next-door one if he could get it, even if he had to pay a premium price to talk someone into selling it. Price need be no object, thank God; he had twelve thousand dollars in the bank and in investments, besides what he’d get for his farm here. And he’d had some pretty good offers for that.
He finished the whisky and realized that for almost the first time in his life, certainly for the first time since his twenties, he was drunk. When he stood up he found he had to hold onto things to keep from falling. He didn’t bother to go upstairs or to undress; he made his way as far as the living-room sofa. He managed to get his shoes off, and that was the last he remembered.
That had been last night.
And now it was morning. He’d wakened at dawn. He’d made coffee and forced himself to eat some oatmeal. He’d done his milking and put out the cans for the dairy’s route man to pick up, and had done the few other things that had to be done. All that took two hours, and it was still early. There was still work—there’s always work to do on a farm—but nothing that couldn’t wait until late afternoon, after the inquest. And he’d thought of something more important than work that he wanted to do.
He felt to make sure that Buck’s leash and Tommy’s sock were still in his pocket from last night, and then called Buck and walked across the fields to Jed Garner’s farm.
Garner was hoeing in a small garden patch behind the house. He stopped and leaned on his hoe as Hoffman came up.
“Morning,” Hoffman said. “How’s Charlotte?”
“Still asleep, I hope. Didn’t get to sleep till God knows when last night. What’s on your mind, Gus?”
“Just dropped by to tell you where I’m heading. Back to where—where we were last night.”
“Why?”
“Just want a look around by daylight. The place where we found Tommy’s clothes, the place where we found him. We might’ve missed something, just with lanterns. I don’t know what, but if there’s anything to find now’s the time, before the inquest.”
“Makes sense,” Garner said.
“Another thing, why I’m taking Buck. I’m going to where we first saw Tommy, when he ran up to us. See if Buck can back-trail him from there, find out where he’d been, in that direction. Dunno it’ll tell me anything, but I want to know.”
“I’ll go with you,” Garner said. “Might as well. Don’t feel like working and I guess you’re the same way. Wait till I tell Maw.”
Gus Hoffman waited for him, and the two men started off.
The mind thing wasn’t worried, but he was annoyed with himself for having panicked and killed his first, and thus far only, human host. Subsequent and calmer thought showed him that it hadn’t been necessary. He had to lead them away from the cave, yes, but after that there had been no need for him to make his host kill himself. After he’d led them a safe distance he could have fallen and pretended to be asleep or unconscious when they reached him. When they awakened him he could have been surprised to find himself there, especially to find himself naked, and he could have remembered nothing since going to sleep beside his girl at their trysting place. True, his case would not have been diagnosed as simple amnesia, not after running away from his father as he had, but, it would still have been called only temporary insanity. They wouldn’t have locked him up in an asylum for that, which had been the thought that had made him make Tommy destroy himself—incarcerated, he would have been completely valueless as a host; also, he knew from Tommy’s mind that mental institutions take elaborate precautions to prevent their inmates from committing suicide, and he might have been stuck in Tommy’s mind for quite a while. And an unsuccessful attempt at suicide might have got him into a padded cell, which would have made it impossible.