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

trouble. For a moment that gave him a sad thrill. He had been marked out. But why? He started to raise himself to see if the answer didn’t lie somewhere near at hand, and halfway up was caught and held by the thought that nobody knew why, nobody could tell him. He lay back heavily and said aloud, “I probably have it all coming to me.” It made him sad that he couldn’t remember whatever he had done to deserve it.
    They sat down to supper with Harold quiet and cautious. He had been punished for something and Dan felt like being sure he had deserved it. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.
    Laura looked at Harold, waiting for him to speak up and declare how bad he had been and just what he had got for it. “He got a spanking,” she said. Harold squirmed. Laura straightened him up with a look and said, “He got hisself a bell and went around ringing it all day. I asked him a hundred times to stop it but he wouldn’t. I was jumping out of my skin all day long every five minutes thinking it was you and something bad had happened.”
    Dan threw his knife on his plate with a clatter. “Jesus Christ! Did you have it on your mind every minute that I was going to sound off on that damn thing!”
    Laura bounced in her seat as if he had hit her; a slow hard pinch started in around the edges of her eyes. “Well, yes,” she said, picking out all the bruises and breaks and bumps up and down him, “I did!”
    VIII
    Dan sat hunched up on the front porch, wandering wearily back and forth between the two minds he had about everything. He had sat there, just breathing, ever since they left, and now it was hard to believe that in the house behind his back anything had happened for years, or again, it seemed something had happened all right, the last thing that ever would, and now the house lay dead. Laura, she was down behind the barn, crying, he supposed, and one minute he would reckon he ought to stir himself and go out and try to comfort her, and the next minute figure he had just better keep out of her sight—not rousing himself to do either and not caring the next minute one way or the other, just wishing he could keep out of his own sight.
    She was only going to take the boy over to her place until Laura had a little more time to spare him, the grandmother said, and Laura had taken no exception, even agreed with a tired nod that she hadn’t given him much time of late and that Harold looked it every bit. It was not time she hadn’t given him—though she hadn’t given him that, either—and she knew it wasn’t time or attention that his grandmother was thinking he needed. The old woman looked the boy over, tallying all the hollow spots that a few square meals would fill out. Her man was torn—strutting around throwing it up to Dan that he couldn’t support his only child, pleased that he could, had figured for years that sooner or later he would have to, then suddenly fearing they might get to thinking he was better able to do it than he wanted them to think. Then he would pull a thin face to show how pinched he was going to be with his new responsibility.
    Laura had followed them out to the buggy, wanting to say, We’ll have you back soon, Harold, don’t you worry. And afraid he would act as if that were the only thing that worried him. Suddenly she wanted to tell him that it wasn’t any of her doing, that she wasn’t that way, that there wasn’t anything wrong with her—because he did look at her as though, since she was staying behind, the same thing must be wrong with her. Instead, settling him on the seat, not thinking, she said, “Drive careful, Papa.”
    She watched them move away and, turning, shoved the gate shut and watched it fall back in exhaustion. As she walked up the path her words scraped dryly in her mind: be careful, Papa. Be careful, careful, be careful. She came to the front steps and