James Gunn: Wherever you may be

My God, thought Matt, the man is trembling!

"Come in here," said Jenkins. He waved the pint toward the open door, a dark rectangle.

Uneasily, Matt walked into the room. Under his feet, things gritted and cracked.

Jenkins lit a kerosene lamp and turned it up. The room was a shambles. Broken dishes littered the floor. Wooden chairs were smashed and splintered. In the center of the room, a table on its back waved three rough legs helplessly in the air; the fourth leg sagged pitifully from its socket.

"She did this?" Matt asked weakly.

"This ain’t nothin'." Jenkins' voice quavered; it was a terrible sound to come from that massive frame. "You should see the other room."

"But how? I mean why ?"

"I ain’t a-sayin' Ab done it," Jenkins said, shaking his head. His beard wobbled near Matt’s nose. "But when she gets onhappy, things happen. And she was powerful onhappy when that Duncan boy tol' her he wan’t comin' back. Them chairs come up from the floor and slam down. That table went dancin' round the room till it fell to pieces. Then dishes come a-flyin' through the air. Look!"

His voice was full of self-pity as he turned his head around and parted his long, matted hair. On the back of his head was a large, red swelling. "I hate to think what happened to that Duncan boy."

He shook his head sorrowfully. "Now, mister, I guess I got ever' right to lay my hand to that gal. Ain’t I?" he demanded fiercely, but his voice broke.

Matt stared at him blankly.

"But whop her? Me? I sooner stick my hand in a nest of rattlers."

"You mean to say that those things happened all by themselves?"

"That’s what I said. I guess it kinder sticks in your craw. Wouldn’t have believe it myself, even seein' it and feelin' it — " he rubbed the back of his head — "if it ain’t happen afore. Funny things happen around Ab, ever since she started fillin' out, five-six year ago."

"But she’s only sixteen," Matt objected.

"Sixteen?' Jenkins glanced warily around the room and out the door toward the car. He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. "Don’t let on I tol' you, but Ab allus was a fibber. She’s past eighteen!"

From a shelf, a single unbroken dish crashed to the floor at Jenkins' feet. He jumped and began to shake.

"See?" he whispered plaintively.

"It fell," Matt said.

"She’s witched." Jenkins took a feverish swallow from the bottle. "Maybe I ain’t been a good Paw to her. Ever since her Maw died, she run wild and got all kinda queer notions. "Tain’t allus been bad. For years I ain’t had to go fer water. That barrel by the porch is allus filled. But ever since she got to the courtin' age and started bein' disappointed in fellers round about, she been mighty hard to live with. No one’ll come nigh the place. And things keep a-movin' and a-jumpin' around till a man cain’t trust his own chair to set still under him. It gets you, son. A man kin only stand so much!"

To Matt’s dismay, Jenkins' eyes began to fill with large tears. "Got no friend no more to offer me a drink now and again, sociable-like, or help me with the chores, times I got the misery in my back. I ain’t a well man, son. Times it’s more’n I kin do to get outa bed in the mornin'.

"Look, son," Jenkins said, turning to Matt pleadingly. "Yore a city feller. Yore right nice-lookin' with manners and edyacation. I reckon Ab likes you. Whyn’t you take her with you?" Matt started retreating toward the door. "She’s right purty when she fixes up and she kin cook right smart. You’d think a skillet was part of her hand, the way she kin handle one, and you don’t even have to marry up with her."

Matt backed away, white-faced and incredulous. "You must be mad. You can’t give a girl away like that." He turned to make a dash for the door.

A heavy hand fell on Matt’s shoulder and spun him around. "Son," Jenkins said, his voice heavy with menace, "any man that’s alone with a gal more’n twenty minutes, it’s thought proper they should get married up quick. Since yore a stranger, I ain’t holdin' you to it. But when Ab left me, she stopped bein' my daughter. Nobody asked you to bring her back. That gal," he said woefully, "eats more’n I do."

Matt reached into his hip pocket. He pulled out his billfold and extracted a five-dollar bill.

"Here," he said, extending it toward Jenkins, "maybe this will make life a little more pleasant."

Jenkins looked at the money wistfully, started to reach for it, and jerked his hand away.

"I cain’t do it," he moaned. "It ain’t worth it. You brought her back. You kin take her away."

Matt glanced out the doorway toward the car and shuddered. He added another five to the one in his hand.

Jenkins sweated. His hand crept out. Finally, desperately, he crumpled the bills into his palm. "All right," he said hoarsely.

"Them’s ten mighty powerful reasons."

Matt ran to the car as if he had escaped from bedlam. He opened the door and slipped in. "Get out," he said sharply. "You’re home."

"But Paw — "

"From now on, he’ll be a doting father." Matt reached across and opened the door for her. "Good-by."

Slowly Abigail got out. She rounded the car and walked up to the porch, dragging her feet. But when she reached the porch, she straightened up. Jenkins, who was standing in the doorway, shrank back from his five-foot-tall daughter as she approached.

"Dirty, nasty old man," Abigail hissed.

Jenkins flinched. After she had passed, he raised the bottle hastily to his beard. His hand must have slipped. By some unaccountable mischance, the bottle kept rising in the air, mouth downward. The bourbon gushed over his head.

Pathetically, looking more like Neptune than ever, Jenkins peered toward the car and shook his head.

Feverishly, Matt turned the car around and jumped it out of the yard. It had undoubtedly been an optical illusion. A bottle does not hang in the air without support.

Guy’s cabin should not have been so difficult to find. Although the night was dark, the directions were explicit. But for two hours Matt bounced back and forth along the dirt roads of the hills. He got tired and hungry.

For the fourth time, he passed the cabin which fitted the directions in every way but one — it was occupied. Lights streamed from the windows into the night. Matt turned into the steep driveway. He could, at least, ask directions.

As he walked toward the door, the odor of frying ham drifted from the house to tantalize him. Matt knocked, his mouth watering. Perhaps he could even get an invitation to supper.

The door swung open. "Come on in. What kept you?"

Matt blinked. "Oh, no!" he cried. For a frantic moment, it was like the old vaudeville routine of the drunk in the hotel who keeps staggering back to knock on the same door. Each time he is' more indignantly ejected until finally he complains, "My God, are you in all the rooms?"

"What are you doing here?" Matt asked faintly. "How did you — How could you — ?"

Abigail pulled him into the cabin. It looked bright and cheerful and clean. The floor was newly swept; a broom leaned in the corner. The two lower bunks on opposite walls were neatly made up. Two places were laid at the table. Food was cooking on the wood stove.

"Paw changed his mind," she said.

"But he couldn’t! I gave him — "

"Oh, that." She reached into a pocket of her dress. "Here."

She handed him the two crumpled five-dollar bills and a handful of silver and copper that Matt dazedly added up to one dollar and thirty-seven cents.

"Paw said he’d have sent more, but it was all he had. So he threw in some vittles."

He sat down in a chair heavily. "But you couldn’t — I didn’t know where the place was myself, exactly. I didn’t tell you — "