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

Who found it? Who found it? God dammit, who found it? Which one of them was it?

Ma was trying to measure the flour but her hands shook. The flour ran off the scoop and fell across the rim of the cup, and I thought, Yeah, You’d have run, Yeah, Your hands shake.

Why don’t you ask Jorge? Big Hans said.

How I hated him, putting it on me, the coward. And he had thick arms.

That snivel, Pa said.

Hans laughed so his chest shook.

He couldn’t find nothing I hid.

You’re right there, Hans said.

I could, I said. I have.

A liar, Hans, hey? You found it.

Pa was somehow pleased and sat on the corner of the table again. Was it Hans he hated most, or me?

I never said Jorge found it.

I’ve got a liar working for me. A thief and a liar. Why should I keep a liar? I’m just soft on him, I guess, and he’s got such a sweet face. But why should I keep a thief… little movey eyes like traveling specks… why?

I ain’t like you. I don’t spend every day drinking just to sleep the night and then sleep half the day too, fouling your bed and your room and half the house.

You been doing your share of lying down. Little Hans is half your size and worth twice. You — you got a small dick.

Pa’s words didn’t come out clear.

How about Little Hans? Little Hans ain’t showed up. Folks must be getting pretty worried at the Pedersens’. They’d like some news maybe. But Pedersen don’t come. Little Hans don’t come. There’s a thousand drifts out there. The kid might be under any one. If anybody’s seen him, we have, and if we haven’t, nobody’s going to till spring, or maybe if the wind shifts, which ain’t likely. But nobody comes to ask. That’s pretty funny, I’d say.

You’re an awful full-up bastard, Pa said.

I’m just considering, that’s all.

Where’d you find it?

I forgot. It needed reminding. I was going to have a drink.

Where?

You’re pretty good at hiding, Hans said.

I’m asking. Where?

I didn’t, I told you, I didn’t find it. Jorge didn’t find it neither.

You bastard, Hans, I said.

It hatched, Hans said. Like the fellow, you know, who blew in. He hatched. Or maybe the kid found it — had it hid under his coat.

Who? Pa roared, standing up quick.

Oh Hed found it. You don’t hide worth a damn and Hed found it easy. She knew right away where to look.

Shut up, Hans, I said.

Hans tilted the bottle.

She must have known where it was a long time now. Maybe she knows where they’re all hid. You ain’t very smart. Or maybe she’s took it up herself, eh? And it ain’t yours at all, maybe that.

Big Hans poured himself a drink. Then Pa kicked the glass out of Hans’s hand. Pa’s slipper flew off and sailed by Hans’s head and bounced off the wall. The glass didn’t break. It fell by the sink and rolled slow by ma’s feet, leaving a thin line. The scoop flew a light white cloud. There was whiskey on Hans’s shirt and on the wall and cupboards, and a splash on the floor where the glass had hit.

Ma had her arms wrapped around her chest. She looked faint and she was whewing and moaning.

Okay, Pa said, we’ll go. We’ll go right now, Hans. I hope to god you get a bullet in your belly. Jorge, go upstairs and see if the little sonofabitch is still alive.

Hans was rubbing the spots on his shirt and licking his lips when I hunched past Pa and went out.

Part Two

I

There wasn’t any wind. The harness creaked, the wood creaked, the runners made a sound like a saw working easy, and everything was white about Horse Simon’s feet. Pa had the reins between his knees and he and Hans and I kept ourselves close together. We bent our heads and clenched our feet and wished we could huddle both hands in one pocket. Only Hans was breathing through his nose. We didn’t speak. I wished my lips could warm my teeth. The blanket we had wasn’t worth a damn. It was just as cold underneath and Pa drank from a bottle by him on the seat.

I tried to hold the feeling I’d had starting out when we’d hitched up Horse Simon when I was warm and decided to risk the North Corn Road to the Pedersen place. It catty-cornered and came up near the grove behind his barn. We figured we could look at things from there. I tried to hold the feeling but it was warm as new bath water and just as hard to hold. It was like I was setting out to do something special and big — like a knight setting out — worth remembering. I dreamed coming in from the barn and finding his back to me in the kitchen and wrestling with him and pulling him down and beating the stocking cap off his head with the barrel of the gun. I dreamed coming in from the barn still blinking with the light and seeing him there and picking the shovel up and taking him on. That had been then, when I was warm, when I was doing something big, heroic even, and well worth remembering. I couldn’t put the feeling down in Pedersen’s back yard or Pedersen’s porch or barn. I couldn’t see myself, or him, there. I could only see him back where I wasn’t any more — standing quiet in our kitchen with his gun going slowly up and down in ma’s face and ma shooing it away and at the same time trying not to move an inch for getting shot.

When I got good and cold the feeling slipped away. I couldn’t imagine him with his gun or cap or yellow gloves. I couldn’t imagine me coming on to him. We weren’t anyplace and I didn’t care. Pa drove by staring down the sloping white road and drank from his bottle. Hans rattled his heels on the back of the seat. I just tried to keep my mouth shut and breathe and not think why in the name of the good jesus christ I had to.

It wasn’t like a sleigh ride on an early winter evening when the air is still, the earth is warm, and the stars are flakes being born that will not fall. The air was still all right, the sun straight up and cold. Behind us on the trough that marked the road I saw our runners and the holes that Simon tore. Ahead of us it melted into drifts. Pa squinted like he saw where he knew it really went. Horse Simon steamed. Ice hung from his harness. Snow caked his belly. I was afraid the crust might cut his knees and I wanted a drink out of Pa’s bottle. Big Hans seemed asleep and shivered in his dreams. My rear was god almighty sore.

We reached a drift across the road and Pa eased Simon round her where he knew there wasn’t any fence. Pa figured to go back to the road but after we got round the bank I could see there wasn’t any point in that. There were rows of high drifts across it.

They ain’t got no reason to do that, Pa said.

It was the first thing Pa’d said since he told me to go upstairs and see if the Pedersen kid was still alive. He hadn’t looked alive to me but I’d said I guessed he was. Pa’d gone and got his gun first, without dressing, one foot still bare so he favored it, and took the gun upstairs cradled in his arm, broke, and pointing down. He had a dark speckled spot on the rump of his nightshirt where he’d sat on the table. Hans had his shotgun and the forty-five he’d stolen from the Navy. He made me load it and when I’d stuck it in my belt he’d said it’d likely go off and keep me from ever getting out to stud. The gun felt like a chunk of ice against my belly and the barrel dug.

Ma’d put some sandwiches and a Thermos of coffee in a sack. The coffee’d be cold. My hands would be cold when I ate mine even if I kept my gloves on. Chewing would be painful. The lip of the Thermos would be cold if I drank out of that, and I’d spill some on my chin which would dry to ice; or if I used the cup, the tin would stick to my lip like lousy liquor you didn’t want to taste by licking off, and it would burn and then tear my skin coming away.

Simon went into a hole. He couldn’t pull out so he panicked and the sleigh skidded. We’d had crust but now the front right runner broke through and we braked in the soft snow underneath. Pa made quiet impatient noises and calmed Simon down.