William Gass - Omensetter’s Luck

He didn't seem to care, though, did he, if they got wet or not. Doesn't strike me as a good sign of a responsible tenant. You'd want to know that kind more than a minute, I should think, what with mud on his boots and clothes and a wagon full of trash wide open to the weather.

Lucy, please.

Them and that baby in her… the land so low.

Shut up.

When he rose from his chair or put down his pipe or slammed the strap against the wall, then she would go, but not before she'd asked how much he'd got for it.

The rain stopped but the river rose anyway. It crossed the South Road with a rush. It filled woods. It drowned ponds. It carried away fences. Receding from its mark, it left silt sticking to the sides of trees. It flung skeins of slime over bushes. It took more than it gave. Olus Knox reported that the water came within thirty yards of Omensetter's side yard fence, and it seemed to Henry that more rain had fallen than had in years, yet in the past the Perkins house had always borne the stain of flood high on its peeling sides. Things are running for Omensetter, he said to Curtis Chamlay with what he hoped was a knowing smile. Curtis said apparently, and that was that.

Henry Pimber became convinced that Brackett Omensetter was a foolish, dirty, careless man.

First Omensetter ran a splinter in his thumb and with amusement watched it swell. The swelling grew alarmingly and Mat and Henry begged him to see Doc Orcutt about it. Omensetter merely stuffed the thumb in his mouth and puffed his cheeks behind the plug. Then one morning, with Omensetter holding close, Mat's hammer slipped. Pus flew nearly across the shop. Omensetter measured the distance it shot and smiled with pride, washing the wound in the barrel without a word.

He stored his pay in a sock which hung from his bench, went about oblivious of either time or weather, habitually permitted things which he'd collected like a schoolboy to slip through holes in his trousers. He kept worms under saucers, stones in cans, poked the dirt all the time with twigs, and fed squirrels navy beans and sometimes noodles from his hands. Broken tools bemused him; he often ate lunch with his eyes shut; and, needless to say, he laughed a lot. He let his hair grow; he only intermittently shaved; who knew if he washed; and when he went to pee, he simply let his pants drop.

Then Omensetter bought some chickens from Olus Knox, among them one old hen whose age, as Knox told Henry after, he thought his buyer hadn't noticed. The next morning the hen was gone while the rest ran fearfully and flew in hops. At first they thought she was lost somewhere in the house, but the girls soon found her. They were diving, Omensetter said, hiding under the lifting fog, bending low to see beneath it the supernatural world and one another's bare legs stalking giants. The hen lay dead by the open well and the dog crouched growling at its lip. Henry had come to collect the rent because his wife insisted that he go in person — face to face is safer, she said — and Omensetter showed him the eyes of the fox reflect the moon. The girls swung in graceful turns around the hole, their dresses palely visible. His eyes are like emeralds, they said. They are green emeralds and yellow gold. That's because they're borrowed from the fire at the center of the earth and they see like signals through the dark. Then Omensetter told them of foxes' eyes: how they burn the bark from trees, put spells on dogs, blind hens, and melt the coldest snow. To Henry, kneeling gingerly upon a rotten board, they were dim points of red, and his heart contracted at the sight of their malice.

How do you plan to get him out, he asked, rising in front of Omensetter's chest.

You can see how bad the well wanted him. He'll have to stay where he's been put. That's the way it happened and maybe the well will tire of him and toss him out.

Henry tried to laugh. Kneeling had made him dizzy and a button was missing from Omensetter's coat. Our fox is in our well, our fox is in our well, our well was empty belly, now our fox is in our well, the girls sang, whirling more rapidly.

Be careful there, he said, those boards are rotten and one's missing. The cover should have been repaired.

It was his well really, and he fell silent when he remembered it. Then he tried a cautious, apologetic smile. It might be the fox that had been stealing Knox's chickens, he thought. That would be like Omensetter's luck, certainly — for the fox to seize the bitterest hen, gag on her as he fled, and then fall stupidly through the ground. What an awful thing: to have the earth open to swallow you almost the moment you took the hen in your jaws. And to die in a tube. Henry found he couldn't make a fist. At best, the fox must be badly bruised, terribly cramped, his nose pressed into the damp well wall. By this time his coat would be matted and his tail fouled, and his darkness would extend to the arriving stars. A dog would bloody his paws and break his teeth against the sides and then wear out his body with repeated leaping. By morning — hunger, and the line of the sun dipping along the wall, the fetid smells — bitter exhaustion of spirit. No wonder he burned with malice.

You know what those eyes are? They're a giant's eyes.

The girls squealed.

Sure — that hole goes through to the land of the giants.

Omensetter struck Henry heavily on the back.

As a boy Henry hadn't been able to carry a bucket brimming from the well; he couldn't spade or hoe with strength or plow; he couldn't saw or wield a beaverish ax. He stumbled when he ran; when he jumped, he slipped; and when he balanced on a log, he fell. He hated hunting. His nose bled. He danced, though he could never learn to fish. He didn't ride, disliked to swim; he sulked. He was last up hills, stayed home on hikes, was always "it." His sisters loved to tease, his brothers to bully him. And now he couldn't even make a fist.

Honestly — what are you going to do?

Omensetter swung happily about the well with the girls, their bodies casting a faint shadow on the yellowish grass.

Naa-thing, they sang, naa-thing.

Omensetter must feel the cruelty of his mood, Henry thought, or was he also free of that? Shed of his guilty skin, who wouldn't dance?

Of course you can't do that, he said; you'll have to get him out. He'll starve down there.

He'll have to stay where the hen has put him, Omensetter said firmly. Spring will float him to the top.

That poor animal? — you can't do that. It's dangerous besides.

But Henry thought how he would fare if the earth spoke of his crimes. Suppose the instant you uttered a cutting word, your cheek bled.

Anyway, you'll have to board it up… the girls, he said.

Suppose your tongue split when you lied.

This well, it's in a manner of speaking… mine. I totally forgot — the existence of… He sighed. Murder would also be suicide.

I'll help you close it up, he said.

Oh they enjoy it, Omensetter said. They'd cry if I covered it.

The girls pulled gaily at their father's arms. He began to whirl like a ribboned pole.

How long… do you think… that giant's eyes… will last?

Henry held unsteadily to a sapling.

You could shoot him, I guess. You have a gun.

The well wants him… maybe he'll get out… hooh… it's getting dark, girls… no… whoosh… stop.

I'll do it then, Henry said, and he imagined the shot leaping from the barrels of his gun to rush at the fox.

Lamps lit in the house. Henry measured the walls of his sky while he drifted away to the buggy. It wasn't dippered yet, but soon there'd be nothing to aim by, for darkness would silence the fox's eyes. The grass had begun to glisten. Animals felt pain, he understood, but never sorrow. That seemed right. Henry could crush a finger, still the wound might be a war in a distant country for all the concern he could let it cause him, he lived so fearfully; but such a creature as the fox filled up the edges of its body like a lake the shot would dapple as it entered. You could startle an animal, but never surprise. The buggy's seats were slick, the dew heavy. He thought he should have a cloth somewhere, a piece of toweling. There were bats overhead. Yes, here's where he had it. Henry began to dry a place for himself. Fluttering like leaves, the bats flew securely. And would the stars be startled, looking up, to find the fox out burning in their early skies?