William Gass - In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

He’s got me and your ma and your pa lined up with our hands here back of our necks, and he’s got a rifle in between them yellow gloves and he’s waving the point of it up and down in front of your ma’s face real slow and quiet.

Hans got up and waved the bottle violently in ma’s face. She shivered and shooed it away. Hans stopped to come to me. He stood over me, his black eyes buttons on his big face, and I tried to look like I wasn’t hunching down any in my chair.

What do you do? Hans roared. You drop a little kid’s cold head on the table.

Like hell—

Hans had the bottle in front of him again, smack in my face.

Hans Esbyorn, ma said, don’t pester the boy.

Like hell—

Jorge.

I wouldn’t run, ma.

Ma sighed. I don’t know. But don’t yell.

Well christ almighty, ma.

Don’t swear neither. Please. You been swearing too much — you and Hans both.

But I wouldn’t run.

Yes, Jorge, yes. I’m sure you wouldn’t run, she said.

Hans went back and sat down and finished his drink and poured another. He could relax now he’d got me all strung up. He was a fancy bastard.

You’d run all right, he said, running his tongue across his lips. Maybe you’d be right to run. Maybe anybody would. With no gun, with nothing to stop him.

Poor child. Wheweee. And what are we going to do with these?

Hang them up, Hed, for christ’s sake.

Where?

Well, where do you, mostly?

Oh no, she said, I wouldn’t feel right doing that.

Then jesus, Hed, I don’t know. Jesus.

Please Hans, please. Those words are hard for me to bear.

She stared at the ceiling.

Dear. The kitchen’s such a mess. I can’t bear to see it. And the baking’s not done.

That’s all she could think of. That’s all she had to say. She didn’t care about me. I didn’t count. Not like her kitchen. I wouldn’t have run.

Stick the baking, I said.

Shut your face.

He could look as mean as he liked, I didn’t care. What was his meanness to me? A blister on my heel, another discomfort, a cold bed. Yet when he took his eyes off me to drink, I felt better. I was going to twist his balls.

All right, I said. All right. All right.

He was lost in his glass, thinking it out.

They’re awful cold in that cellar, I said.

There was a little liquor burning in the bottom. I was going to twist his balls like the neck of a sack.

What are you going to do about it?

He was putting his mean look back but it lacked enthusiasm. He was seeing things in his glass.

I saved the kid, didn’t I? he finally said.

Maybe you did.

You didn’t.

No. I didn’t.

It’s time you did something then, ain’t it?

Why should I? I don’t think they’re freezing. You’re the one who thinks that. You’re the one who thinks he ran for help. You’re the one. You saved him. All right. You didn’t let his head hit the table. I did that. You didn’t. No. It was you who rubbed him. All right. You saved him. That wasn’t the kid’s idea though. He came for help. According to you, that is. He didn’t come to be saved. You saved him, but what are you going to do now to help him? You’ve been feeling mighty, ain’t you? thinking how you did it. Still feel like a savior, Hans? How’s it feel?

You little bastard.

All right. Little or big. Never mind. You did it all. You found him. You raised the rumpus, ordering everybody around. He was as good as dead. I held him and I felt him. Maybe in your way he was alive, but it was a way that don’t count. No — but you couldn’t leave him alone. Rubbing. Well I felt him… cold… christ! Ain’t you proud? He was dead, right here, dead. And there weren’t no yellow gloves. Now, though, there is. That’s what comes of rubbing. Rubbing… ain’t you proud? You can’t believe the kid was lying good enough to fool you. So he was dead. But now he ain’t. Not for you. He ain’t for you.

He’s alive for you too. You’re crazy. He’s alive for everybody.

No he ain’t. He ain’t alive for me. He never was. I never seen him except he was dead. Cold… I felt him… christ! Ain’t you proud? He’s in your bed. All right. You took him up there. It’s your bed he’s in, Hans. It was you he babbled to. You believe him too, so he’s alive for you then. Not for me. Not for me he ain’t.

You can’t say that.

I am saying it though. Hear me saying? Rubbing… You didn’t know what you was bringing to, did you? Something besides the kid came through the storm, Hans. I ain’t saying yellow gloves did neither. He didn’t. He couldn’t. But something else did. While you was rubbing you didn’t think of that.

You little bastard.

Hans, Hans, please, ma said.

Never mind that. Little or big, like I said. I’m asking what you’re going to do. You believe it. You made it. What are you going to do about it? It’d be funny if right now while we’re sitting here the kid’s dying upstairs.

Jorge, ma said, what an awful thing — in Hans’s bed.

All right. But suppose. Suppose you didn’t rub enough — not long and hard enough, Hans. And suppose he dies up there in your bed. He might. He was cold, I know. That’d be funny because that yellow gloves — he won’t die. It ain’t going to be so easy, killing him.

Hans didn’t move or say anything.

I ain’t no judge. I ain’t no hand at saving, like you said. It don’t make no difference to me. But why’d you start rubbing if you was going to stop? Seems like it’d be terrible if the Pedersen kid was to have come all that way through the storm, scared and freezing, and you was to have done all that rubbing and saving so he could come to and tell you his fancy tale and have you believe it, if you ain’t going to do nothing now but sit and hold hands with that bottle. That ain’t a burr so easy picked off.

Still he didn’t say anything.

Fruit cellars get mighty cold. Of course they ain’t supposed to freeze.

I leaned back easy in my chair. Hans just sat.

They ain’t supposed to freeze so it’s all right.

The top of the kitchen table looked muddy where it showed. Patches of dough and pools of water were scattered all over it. There were rusty streaks through the paste and the towels had run. Everywhere there were little sandy puddles of whiskey and water. Something, it looked like whiskey, dripped slowly to the floor and with the water trickled to the puddle by the pile of clothes. The boxes sagged. There were thick black tracks around the table and the stove. I thought it was funny the boxes had gone so fast. The bottle and the glass were posts around which Big Hans had his hands.

Ma began picking up the kid’s clothes. She picked them up one at a time, delicately, by their ends and corners, lifting a sleeve like you would the flat, burned, crooked leg of a frog dead of summer to toss it from the road. They didn’t seem human things, the way her hands pinched together on them, but animal — dead and rotting things out of the ground. She took them away and when she came back I wanted to tell her to bury them — to hide them somehow quick under the snow — but she scared me, the way she came with her arms out, trembling, fingers coming open and closed, moving like a combine between rows.

I heard the dripping clearly, and I heard Hans swallow. I heard the water and the whiskey fall. I heard the frost on the window melt to the sill and drop into the sink. Hans poured whiskey in his glass. I looked past Hans and Pa was watching from the doorway. His nose and eyes were red, his feet in red slippers.

What’s this about the Pedersen kid? he said.

Ma stood behind him with a mop.

3

Ever think of a horse? Pa said.

A horse? Where’d he get a horse?