Nelson Nye - Rafe

In the sun-laced shade of a giant pepper overhanging the stone-rimmed well, an old man sat in a wired-together rocker with a taffy haired girl, arrow straight, behind him. Between them and Rafe, caught frozen in midstride, Rafe saw the pulled-around darkening face of his brother.

"Evenin'," Rafe said, stepping out of the saddle, and saw the girl's hand come up and clutch at her throat.

"Who is it?" the old man called as Rafe came toward them; and Duke, pushing forward, said, "I'll take care of this!"

One hand disappeared inside the green coat and Rafe, coldly grinning, not swerving by even the twitch of an eyebrow, walked right into him. Duke, cursing, fell back and then, with a kind of half-strangled scream, yanked the hand from his coat. Before he could bring the snub-nosed pistol into line Rafe's left hand closed like a vise around his wrist. Without visible effort Rafe dragged the arm up over Duke's head. Like a man with a possum up a tree he shook it, and the pistol flew into the well with a plop.

The old man, trying to get out of his chair, cried again, "Who is it?" and Rafe, laughing into Duke's livid face, shoved him away. "It's your son, Rafe," he said, "come back to take care of you."

"Rafe?" the old man, brightening, got shakily up, the girl putting out her hands to help.

"He's not Rafe!" Duke snarled. "Don't you remember? Rafe's dead !"

The light went out of old Bender's look. He stood there like a stricken oak, wide shoulders sagged, eyes dull, arms loose. "Dead, you say? My son is dead...." A shiver ran through the wasted frame, then the head tipped up. 'Neath tufted brows the eyes reached out like groping hands to find Rafe's shape and search his face and bewilderedly stretch from him to the girl. "Luce—Luce," he sighed, "who is this man?"

Her eyes quit Duke, moving back to Rafe. "I don't know," she said, chin coming up. "I never saw him before."

"He looks to me," growled Duke, "like one of the bunch that's been liftin' our cows! We lost another big jag last night, Spangler says. I think—"

"Be still!" Bender cried. "Let him speak for himself. I want to hear his voice."

Rafe looked from the sullen hate on Duke's face to the cool unwinking stare of the girl. This wasn't the spindle-legged, big-eyed child who'd run clean to Beckston's Four Corners after him that day he'd gone to join up with Jeb Stuart. She'd shot up and filled out, become a real looker—if a man didn't peer too long or too deep.

He shook his head tiredly. "What's to say when a man's own kin look him straight in the eye and don't know him from Adam—"

"You still claiming you're Rafe?"

"What difference does it make? Eleven years ain't a lifetime. I haven't changed that much."

Bender said, "Come over here, boy. Put your hand in mine arid tell me you're Rafe—"

"Are you crazy?" Duke shouted. "God damn it, Rafe's dead! We got a paper—"

"Where is this precious paper?" Rafe said.

Dog-eared and worn so thin along the creases you could pretty near look through them. Bender got it from his vest and, leaning against the well rim, tried with hands that shook to spread it out as Rafe stepped closer.

There didn't seem much point in reading it once his glance had taken in the official seal. It was bonafide enough; a number of women had got remarried, he'd heard, on the strength of papers like that. Give a man a kind of scalp-twitching feeling to come so sharp against proof he was dead. Made him wonder, by grab, it he wasn't better off to leave it!

Then he saw the covert exchange which passed between Duke and his sister; and he remembered how Joseph had been sold into Egypt. He thought, They'll not get rid of me so free! and said to his father, "Seein's how I've come back, you can pitch that away."

But Duke, rushing up, cried fierce through his teeth, "No you don't—I'll take care of that!" and, before anyone realized what he was up to, grabbed the paper and defiantly crammed it into his pocket, backing hastily away.

Rafe, seeing his father's bewilderment, put a hand on his shoulder, the good hand, of course, because there wasn't very much he could do with the other. "Never mind, suh. Let him have it," he said. "It's only a paper. I'm right here beside you."

The old man reached out and, milky stare peering blindly, suddenly stiffening when his touch came against that twisted claw. "Boy, you lied. You're not Rafe—"

"'Course he ain't! Rafe's brother snarled. "We tried to tell you! Clabber 'im, Jess! "

Something smoothly hard, something rigid as hate, came down like a house on the top of Rafe's head. His legs seemed to float right up off the ground.

VI

He came out in black waves across teeth sharp as needles from the depths of incalculable time. And always, it seemed, to hover and bump as though trapped under glass just short of awareness.

This was something he seemed to do over and over with the pain splintering clean up into his shoulders in bursts of recurrent, almost intolerable, agony. More frequently then, with the pain subsiding, the invisible surface appeared to give just a little, to sway like thin ice when his weight came against it; he could imagine he saw light and, sometimes, a garble of sounds echoed fustily down through the shadowy cracks.

At last, in a lamplit room, he broke through, owlishly blinking against the unaccustomed radiance. Eyes swimming into focus he beheld in startled wonder the peeled yeso-coated poles, a remembered halo of copper hair and, feeling bitterly put upon, clamped shut his eyes and dived incontinently back into the oblivion from which he had clawed.

Perhaps there was some good in it, but nothing was substantially altered next time he cautiously examined his whereabouts. He was still in Pike's house and Pike's filly was beside him. Also, like before, he was flat on his back in that dang female's bed!

It was a kind of situation no self·respecting Rebel could bring himself to countenance even for a minute if there had been any way around it. To be obligated once was cross enough for anyone. To find himself in their hands again—Rafe's eyes snapped shut with a shudder.

His mind cast back, trying to think how he'd come here. He remembered Duke yelling, "Clabber 'im, Jess!" and the world exploding like Harper's ferry, but the fog was too thick to fish anything else out.

Cracking open one eye he nervously took another squint. She was across the room now, sitting by the window with her head bent, sewing. You would never think to look at her she could be so dang deceitful, so demure she seemed, so quiet and sweet; but there'd been nothing sweet about the way she'd poked that sawed-off at him and Rafe wasn't about to forget it. Her old man, he reckoned, was probably gone to fetch the sheriff.

A sigh welled out of Rafe in spite of himself, and Bunny's head came up. "Hi," she said, her whole look disapproving. "I suppose what has happened is the story of your life. In again, out again. When are you going to learn to take care of yourself?"

He was so piddlin' weak he couldn't seem, even, to work up a decent outrage. She put her sewing aside and, not waiting for an answer, got up and went off.

Through the door she'd left open he could hear her bustling around in the kitchen. Pretty soon the mouth-priming aroma of chicken made him think he'd pass out before she got the stuff to him.

When she finally came with a bowl of water the gird had been rinsed in he was too whipped to protest; so weak, by grab, he couldn't even get his hands from under the covers. He had to lay there and let her spoon it into him.

Next time he came around it was Pike who sat watching. Pike looking thoughtful, said, "How you feel? Up to taking more nourishment?"

Rafe had been determined to have it out with the feller, but the needs of the body appeared suddenly more important than making clear where he stood on the subject of Yankees. Sourly scowling, he nodded.