Read Online The Collected Stories of William Humphrey by William Humphrey - Free Book Online

encouraging him to lie. He started to tremble and she knew he was thinking the same thing. Poor little fellow, what a fix to put him in. He shied away when she tried to hug him. Dan put his paper down and cleared his throat and limped to the door while they both stood and gaped at him. The thought in Laura’s mind scared her and made her ashamed. Her husband, the father of her child, and for a minute she had stood there and just hated him.
    Harold knew how bad he always got to feeling after he told a fib, so he thought Dan might use a little cheering up. He found him in the barn and said, “You know, that was a pretty deep cut I got,” thinking he would give him a little company.
    â€œIt didn’t look like much to me,” said Dan.
    â€œYes, it was but I didn’t cry a bit.”
    â€œWhy should you have? It wasn’t nothing but a scratch.”
    Harold thought deeply. “I’m not as big as you are and for my size it was just about as much as your cut hand was for you.” After a moment he added gravely, “I don’t think it needs stitches, though.”
    â€œYou look like stitches,” said Dan. “You couldn’t even stand the thought of a little iodine.”
    â€œDo you think I ought to lay off with it for a few days?” asked Harold.
    Why, the little smart aleck! Dan drew back his hand to fetch him a good one, then let it fall. “Get out of here,” he said, “and leave me alone. And the next time I catch you whittling towards you I’ll give you such a whipping as you never had.”
    VII
    Dan had been on his feet about two weeks when Mr. Johnson brought over a riding plow and an extra mule. Dan could not really make out now, he knew it and had for a long time, but maybe he could keep from getting quite so far in the hole with some late-maturing truck crop. He had the land for it, three acres, black as coal.
    â€œNow, Dan,” Laura pumped herself up to begin, “I hope they won’t be nothing else happen. And probably nothing will.” Lord, what else could? “But you never can tell and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I was thinking, what if something was to happen and you wasn’t able to get home. Here you are now still in that cast, I mean, and so you ought to have some way of calling me. Just in case, you understand.”
    Dan nodded. He couldn’t afford to seem mulish.
    She looked at him to see if it was all right to go on. “Now they’s an old cowbell hangs in the barn. Suppose we wrapped up the clapper and hung it on your plow, then, just in case—”
    She stopped. He was hopping mad.
    It made him madder every time he thought about it all day long and he wouldn’t have spoken a word to her when he came home if he hadn’t come with a big blue bruise like a windfallen plum over one eye where he had fallen off the plow seat and just laid there, unable to believe it, for half an hour. So he spoke just about a word and Laura didn’t urge him to any more. Herself, she hadn’t one. Next morning, without letting her see, he took the big brass cowbell off its hook in the barn, wrapped the clapper in a strip of burlap and hung it under the plow seat. It made him feel like a fool, like a clabber-headed heifer that jumped fences, but when he reached down to yank the thing off and throw it in a ditch the blood pounded in the knot over his eye and he left it.
    He plowed along and tried to forget it was there, but it might just as well have been strung around his neck. He couldn’t be mad at her, she meant well and he was past pretending she didn’t have reason for fear. He had got to feeling like he ought to have a bell, not to call anybody to him, but to warn them he was coming and they’d all better hide so they wouldn’t catch whatever it was he had. People already looked at him like they would rather he didn’t come too close, like he had caught something nasty, not