“Doing what?”
“Their press agent. I guess you’d call it that.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m scared,” she told me. “More scared than I was last night. I tried to talk to Gavin about it and I tried to talk with Dow. But I couldn’t force myself to. What’s the sense of talking? No one would believe us.”
“Not a soul,” I said.
“I’m coming home. In just a little while. I don’t care what Gavin finds for me to do; I’m going to leave here. You won’t be gone for long, will you?”
“Not for long,” I promised. “I’ll put the groceries in the unit and you get dinner started.”
We said good-bye and I walked back to the car.
I lugged the groceries into the unit and put the milk and butter and some other stuff in the refrigerator. The rest I left sitting on the table. Then I dug out the rest of the money I had hidden and crammed my pockets with it.
And having done all that, I went to see the old man about his skunks.
I parked down at the end of the farmer’s yard, the way Higgins had told me to do, off to one side of the gate that led down to the barns, so I wouldn’t block the way if someone wanted to come through. There didn’t seem to be anyone around, but a smiling, tail-waving, nondescript farm dog came out to bounce around in an unofficial welcome.
I patted him and talked to him a little and he went along with me when I went through the gate and walked through the barnyard. But at the wire gap which led into a field of clover, I told him to go back. I didn’t want to take him down to the old man’s shack and have him upset a bunch of friendly skunks.
He wanted to argue with me. He indicated that it would be nice the two of us going out into the field, adventuring together. But I insisted that he go back and I paddled his rump to emphasize my words and he finally went, looking back over his shoulder to see if I might possibly relent.
When he was gone, I went across the field, following the rutted wagon road which showed faintly through the stand of Clover. Late-fall grasshoppers went scuttering out of the hay as I strode along, making angry whirring noises as they scudded up the field.
I reached the end of the field and went through another wire gap, still following the wagon traces through heavily timbered pasture. The sun was westering and the place was filled with shadows and down in the hollow some squirrels were holding carnival, scampering in the fallen leaves and shinnying up the trees.
The road plunged down the hillside and went across the hollow and up the other slope, perched below a great rock ledge that punched out of the hillside, I came upon the cabin and the man I sought.
The old man sat in a rocking chair, an old, rickety chair, that creaked and groaned as if it were about to fall apart. The chair rested on a little area that had been leveled off and paved with native limestone slabs that the old man probably had quarried and hauled up the hill from the dry stream bed that twisted down the valley. A dirty sheepskin pelt had been thrown over the back of the chair and the skinned-out forelegs swayed like tassels as he rocked.
“Good evening, stranger,” said the old man, unperturbed and calm, as if a stranger dropping in on him were an occurrence of every afternoon. I realized that I probably was no surprise to him, that he had watched me angle down the hillside along the wagon track and come across the valley. He could have watched me all the way and I had been unaware of him, since I did not know where to look to find him.
For now I realized for the first time how the shack blended into the hillside and the rock outcropping as if it were as much a part of this wooded pasture landscape as the trees and rocks. It was low and not too large and the logs of which it had been built had weathered until they were a neutral tone that had no color in them. A washstand stood beside the door. A tin washbasin and a bucket of water, with the handle of a dipper protruding from it, stood upon the bench. Beyond the bench was a pile of firewood, and the blade of a double-bitted ax was stuck in a chopping block.
“You are Charley Munz?” I asked.
The old man said: “That is who I am. How’d you make out to find me?”
“Larry Higgins told me.”
He bobbed his head, “Higgins is a good man. If Larry Higgins told you, I guess you are all right.”
At one time he’d been a big man, but he’d been whittled down by age. His shirt hung loose upon a heavy pair of shoulders and his trousers were rumpled with the unfilled look characteristic of old men. He was bare-headed, but his iron-gray hair made it look as if he wore a cap, and he had a short and somewhat untidy beard. I could not make up my mind whether he meant it to be a beard or if he simply hadn’t shaved for weeks.
I told him who I was and said I was interested in skunks and knew about his book.
“It sounds,” he said, “as if you’d like to squat and talk awhile.”
“If it’s all right with you.”
He got out of the chair and headed for the shack.
“Sit down,” he said. “If you’re going to stay awhile, sit down.”
I looked around, too obviously, I fear, for a place to sit.
“In the chair,” he said. “I got it warm for you. I’ll pull up a block of wood. Do me a world of good. I been sitting comfortable all the afternoon.”
He ducked into the shack and I sat downin the chair. I felt a heel at doing it, but he’d have been offended, I suppose, if I hadn’t done it.
The chair was comfortable and I could look across the valley and it was beautiful. The ground was paved with fallen leaves that still had not lost their colors and there were a few trees that still stood in tattered dress. A squirrel ran along a fallen log and stopped at the end of it, to sit there, looking at me. He jerked his tail a few times, but he wasn’t scared.
It was beautiful and calm and peaceful with a quietness that I had not known for years. I could understand how the old man could have sat there comfortable through the golden afternoon. There was a lot to rest one’s eyes on. I felt the peace descend upon me and the calmness running through me and I wasn’t even startled when the skunk came waddling around the corner of the shack.
The skunk stopped and stared at me, with one dainty forepaw lifted, but a moment later proceeded up the yard, walking very slowly and sedately. It wasn’t, I suppose, a particularly big one, but it looked big to me, and I was careful to keep on sitting quietly; I didn’t move a muscle.
The old man came out of the shack. He had a bottle in his hand.
He saw the skunk and cackled into delighted laughter.
“Gave you a scare, I bet!”
“Just for a moment,” I told him. “But I sat still and it didn’t seem to mind.”
“This here is Phoebe,” he said. “A confounded nuisance. No matter where you go, she’s always underfoot.”
He kicked a block over from the woodpile and upended it. He sat down on it ponderously and uncorked the bottle, then handed it to me.
“Talking gets one thirsty,” he declared, “and I ain’t had no one to drink with in a month of Sundays. I take it, Mr. Graves, that you’re a drinking man.”
I’m afraid I almost lapped my chops. I hadn’t had a drink all day and I had been so busy I hadn’t even thought of it, but now I knew I needed one.
“I’ve been known to drink, Mr. Munz,” I said. “I will not turn it down.”
I tilted up the bottle and took a modest slug. It wasn’t topnotch whiskey, but it tasted good. I wiped the bottle’s neck on my sleeve and passed it over to him. He had a moderate drink and passed it back to me.
Phoebe, the skunk, came over to him and stood up and put her forepaws on his knees. He reached down a hand and boosted her up into his lap. She settled down in it.
I watched, fascinated, and so far forgot myself as to take a couple of drinks, one atop the other, getting one up on my host.
I handed back the bottle and he sat there with it in one hand, while with the other he scratched the skunk underneath its chin.